31–40 of 58 posts
A bit of rethink based on objective/mission seems well overdue. The 1940s reorganization that lead to the Department of Defense papered over the structural problems.
Why, in this day and age, is the US military organized along a structure (Army, Navy/Marines) based on the Elizabethan English military organization (I recognize the USAF was spilt off to avoid a battle between Army and Navy)? For that matter why are dress uniforms based on obsolete English gentlemen's dress? A bit of rethink based on objective/mission seems well overdue. The 1940s reorganization that lead to the Dep…
Because you make incremental changes (and even then, only based a on clear need, nor rejecting old because it's old) to critical systems unless you have a clear, compelling need justifying a specific more-radical change.
Ground-up replacement based on speculative improvement and theorized benefits is a common recipe for failure.
It's a fairly basic idea in software, but it applies for other kinds of systems as well (in many cases moreso; you can build a ground-up replacement for software on parallel while maintaining the legacy system to mitigate risk and only cutover when the replacement is proven to work; you can't practically build a complete replacement national military in parallel.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No other modern military force has a separate "air force", because having it separate only complicates things when conducting a conventional ground war. Besides the US: Turkey, Syria, Russia, Israel all off the top of my head have air force and ground army (along with, at least, a navy) separate under one "Armed Forces" command. What modern air forces operate as part of the army, rather than separately (as most nav…
The big one is China, where all the services are technically branches within the People's Liberation Army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Liberation_Army
More seriously, this isn't much different that the Army Air Corps becoming the Air Force, logistically it opens up a branch that can have strategies and priorities that are not constrained by its original branch (the original Air Corps was constantly arguing with the Army over what was more important, tanks or airplanes, for example). It also opens up a bunch of jokes for late night comedians like "Look, it is a new customer for the F35 Joint Strike Fighter, now its required to operate in a vacuum!"
Why, in this day and age, is the US military organized along a structure (Army, Navy/Marines) based on the Elizabethan English military organization (I recognize the USAF was spilt off to avoid a battle between Army and Navy)? For that matter why are dress uniforms based on obsolete English gentlemen's dress? A bit of rethink based on objective/mission seems well overdue. The 1940s reorganization that lead to the Dep…
This is getting way off topic, but can you give an example? The Navy officer service-dress blue uniform is basically a business suit with gold-colored buttons and gold sleeve stripes; it's been pretty much the same for probably a century now. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniforms_of_the_United_States_...
Sounds like somebody at USAF Space Command wants a promotion. This seems decades late. The USAF has no manned space capability. The U.S. Government once owned the Space Shuttles. They had astronauts. The USAF once had a Space School. That's all gone. Now, they just buy commercial rocket launches. If anything, the reorganization the USAF needs is to lose the close air support mission, and the A-10 Warthogs, to the Arm…
The organization of the US military really should be mission-based rather than some weird afoot-afloat-aloft separation. There's no particular reason why air superiority fighters, long range bombers, aerial refueling tankers, and airdrop cargo haulers should all be under the same command just because they all fly. Clearly, two of those are for logistics, and two are for force projection. I suspect that the existence…
Makes me wonder if the U.S. military is the next big institution to be "disrupted" by thousands of tiny startups, we just don't realize it because fortunately, everyone would rather have peace.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The organization of the US military really should be mission-based rather than some weird afoot-afloat-aloft separation. There's no particular reason why air superiority fighters, long range bombers, aerial refueling tankers, and airdrop cargo haulers should all be under the same command just because they all fly. Clearly, two of those are for logistics, and two are for force projection. I suspect that the existence…
Interesting how this mirrors the debate in many corporations between functional organization (eng/sales/UX/marketing/accounting/HR) vs. product organization (Search/Ads/Chrome/Android/GMail/etc.) The military is organized functionally. Recently, basically every major company other than Apple has found that product organization yields better results, because each individual product can better respond to competitive th…
Do you have a source for that? Not because I'm challenging you, but because I'd like to read more on it.
Why, in this day and age, is the US military organized along a structure (Army, Navy/Marines) based on the Elizabethan English military organization (I recognize the USAF was spilt off to avoid a battle between Army and Navy)? For that matter why are dress uniforms based on obsolete English gentlemen's dress? A bit of rethink based on objective/mission seems well overdue. The 1940s reorganization that lead to the Dep…
> For that matter why are dress uniforms based on obsolete English gentlemen's dress? This is getting way off topic, but can you give an example? The Navy officer service-dress blue uniform is basically a business suit with gold-colored buttons and gold sleeve stripes; it's been pretty much the same for probably a century now. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniforms_of_the_United_States_...