Yingling Strikes Again

Tom Ricks has posted the transcript of Lt Col Paul Yinging's excellent talk at Quantico about military leadership and adaptation. The talk emphasizes why the military adapts so well on the battlefield, while the institutional military at home does not. At home, bureaucratic inertia pressures officers towards conformity with the status quo. On the battlefield, soldiers adapt or die.

At my previous flying assignment I worked as a Flight Safety Officer (FSO), managing mishap prevention programs, investigating mishaps, and pushing fixes to equipment, training and processes to improve flight safety. I loved the job, because Flight Safety is a highly effective organizational learning process that protects lives. However, even in such a critical field as Flight Safety, organizational learning tends to happen in the wake of costly accidents. The safety community calls this "blood priority", and it squares neatly with what Lt Col Yingling said. When things are going well, it's difficult to build the momentum to enact organizational reforms. However, when a fatal or costly mishap occurs, it's amazing how fast the bureaucracy will jump.

At a larger level, this is why I believe the Air Force has been so slow to recognize and institutionalize the importance of counterinsurgency. The blood priority mostly lies with deployed soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lt Col Yingling argues the institutionalized Army is shielded from these high stakes, and I'd say the same thing is largely true for the Air Force. The Air Force has participated extensively in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it bears few costs for clinging to outdated mindsets. For example, a strategy that overrelies on air strikes might bear long-term adverse consequences (something that has arguably happened in Afghanistan), but it won't cause Air Force casualties. Air Force PME schools (especially at the junior level) that fail to teach counterinsurgency won't cause a crisis of incompetence on the battlefield; Air Force personnel will continue to operate with excellence and effectiveness at the tactical level. The damage done by a stagnant intellectual environment is far more insidious, and doesn't usually threaten the status quo strongly enough to evoke reformation.

But back to Yingling. His recommendations are a good start, but they are not specific. The discussion needs to go on. Lt Col Yingling has set the stage for a long conversation all the services (as well as relevant civilian agencies) should be having.