One of the many diverse educational opportunities at the U.S. Army War College are specialized seminars that deep-dive into specific areas of interest. Kurt McDowell and Mike Smith participated in the AY25 Futures Seminar, and they’re in the studio with host Darrell Driver to discuss their findings. Sponsored by the J-7, Lieutenant General Anderson, the seminar was tasked with exploring innovation for maneuver warfare in 2040. , McDowell, Smith and the team advocate for an “elastic mindset” and “effectual logic,” a means-based approach that focuses on what’s available, rather than a traditional causal, end-state approach. They contrast this with the military’s current high-certainty planning scenarios, which are often based on specific threats like Russia and China.
The first kind of foundational key finding is that the elastic mindset is essential for U.S. military innovation.
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Kurt McDowell is a colonel in the U.S. Army and the Director of the Washington Field Office for U.S. Southern Command. Previously, he held key armor and information operations roles, including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and assignments on the Joint Staff and in U.S. Army Europe and Africa. He is a graduate of the AY25 Resident Course at the U.S. Army War College.
Michael Smith is a U.S. Army colonel and an Army space operations officer. He most recently served as the Chief of Operations (G33) at U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and deployed multiple times in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and United Assistance. He is a native of Ambridge, PA, and is a graduate of the AY25 Resident Program at the U.S. Army War College.
Darrell Driver is Professor in the Department of Military, Strategy, Planning and Operations at the U.S. Army War College.
The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or Department of Defense.
Photo Description: Students from the Infantry and Armor Basic Leader courses train for their future careers and develop realistic tactical skills during a combined competitive maneuver exercise at Fort Benning’s Good Hope Training Area November 03, 2017. Students are tasked with the objective of defending or seizing an installation.
Photo Credit: Patrick A. Albright/MCoE PAO Photographer Used under Creative Commons license
In looking through the “Strange Defeat” book by Marc Bloch — which is prominently and importantly mentioned and recommended at about the 23:00 point in this podcast; in looking at the “A Frenchman Examines his Conscience” section of this book, I came to the part which (beginning at Page 148 of my libraries’ 1968 Octagon Books, New York edition) seems to suggest that, generally speaking:
a. The people and nations that wish to retain that which is important to them, such as certain older customs and ways, traditional places, traditional ideas, etc.;
b. These people and nations — when confronted with serious competition and conflict — and ironically it would seem — must prove themselves to be ravenous embracers, innovators and adopters of that which is different, new and modern.
Example passage from this section of the book:
” … From having seen at first hand how he lives, from having once fought at his side, and from having much pondered the details of his history, I know the true worth of the French peasant, the vigor and the unwearied quickness of his mind. I can feel a vividly as anybody else the modest charm of our old market-towns, and I am well aware they served as the mould in which, through long ages, was formed all that is most active in the French character.
But are we prepared to be what the Italians have declared that they will never consent to be, a mere ‘historical museum’? It is no use pretending: the choice is not really open to us. Even if it were, we know only too well the fate reserved by our enemies for museums. We want to live, and if we are to live we must emerge from this struggle victorious. Let us at least have the courage to admit that what so far has been conquered in our land is precisely the life of our dear, dead towns. The leisurely rhythm of their days, their crawling motor-buses, their sleepy officials, the time lost in their soft atmosphere of lethargy, the lazy ease of their cafe’-life, their local politics and petty trades, their empty libraries, their taste for the past, and their mistrust of anything that may shake them out of their comfortable habits, these are the things that have succumbed before the hellish onset of that ‘dynamic’ Germany whose aggression was backed by the resources of a national life organized around the principle of the hive. If only to preserve what can, and ought to, be of value in our great heritage, we must adapt ourselves to the claims of a new age.”
Question, thus, based on the above:
If only to preserve what can, and out to, be of value in our great heritage, is our state and its societies, today, moving out smartly to adapt ourselves to the claims of a new age?
With regard to the question that I pose at the end of my initial comment above; with regard to this such question, and as a “starting point,” might we consider whether (a) we are, in fact, in a “new age,” if so, then (b) what defines this “new age,” and, finally, if so, then (c) what are the “claims” that this “new age” has put upon us?
In Marc Blouch’s “Strange Defeat” book above, might certain of these “new age”-type questions have been answered by Blouch’s passage above re: “the hellish onset of a ‘dynamic’ Germany whose aggression was backed by the resources of a national life organized around the principle of the hive” (or something to that effect)?
If so, then — are we — in fact — looking at something similar/something comparable today? Or, in the alternative, are we looking at something somewhat — or entirely — different?