New Testingstan

displacing institutional knowledge is a common problem when a recurring situation or demand is outside the organisational culture's sense of normality

it's easy to set up a new department or team from a particular problem or contract and get them in the right space

but once it's over its back to 'normal' and those people are spread back through the 'normal' 'real' departments

its so common there's even a word for it that i forget

in short the solution is retraining and revisioning what your organisation is actually doing rather than how the people in it see what it 'should' be doing or what is desirable or rewarded

tradition is bad but nobody notices until it is inappropriate etc

Re-org?

That's what we used to call it.

But you know, if they would keep the book they write after each one of these things around, we might not be playing catch up everytime.

in a lot of cases it's not just the organisational structure, it's how people see their role, the goals of the organisation, or what the organisation values

people keep their proficiency when they leave a project, but if they don't feel that it's valued in the organisation or important to their career or a 'proper' thing to be doing they are less liekly to share it / influence decisionmakers / be availabel next time you need that skillset

a lot fo AU mining companies (for isntance) had to go into new markets or areas during th gfc, and they ended up with a lot of people with contacts, influence, experience and understanding of those areas

but because 'everyone knows' that it was temporary or a stopgap or not 'what the company does' as soon as they went back to 'normal' all that knowledge was lost because people follow culture, they follow reward, they follow expectations and they've got their five year plans and internal prestige and goals etc

it's not like the guys got mindwiped
the knowledge is just behind cultural or organisational barriers, and when they want to access it again it's not as easy as phoning those guys up and saying 'lets put the band back togehter'

yeah, stark has got a lot of it

problem with COIN is that when its "forgotten" it often goes hand in hand with an extremely unpleasant political result

french COIN was killed off not just because of the trauma of Algeria, but also because a substantial number of "adherents" found themselves on the wrong side of the Mutiny. its not just a problem of "going back to normal", but not wanting to deviate from normal ever again.

the brits maintained the longest running active COIN doctrine in the 20th century in large part because they never had the extreme political trauma and backlash from a major failure.

yeah pretty much

I was talking to an ex-general in the Aus Army who graduated Duntroon in 75 and he made the point that it was, at that stage, an Asian army. We'd had multiple battalions deployed overseas almost continiously in Malaya and Vietnam (and Korea, I guess) for 25+ years. Over the course of his career the army then spent 25 years going back to essentially being a garrison force in Aus (and very much third in line behind the RAN and RAAF in both doctrine and funding) and then suddenly being returned to the expeditionary role in 1999.

I don't think the loss of focus on low-intensity conflict was anywhere near as great in the ADF as it was in say, the US, but some pretty basic lessons had to be relearned. He was saying how Timor in hindsight was an absolute godsend because it showed the ADF the huge gaps in basic logistical capability that existed, and allowed them to learn a lot of lessons in an essentially begnin environment before Afghanistan and Iraq...contrasting that with the CF who didn't have that sort of experience and maybe suffered for it a bit early on in Afghanistan.

artemas wrote:yeah, stark has got a lot of it

problem with COIN is that when its "forgotten" it often goes hand in hand with an extremely unpleasant political result

french COIN was killed off not just because of the trauma of Algeria, but also because a substantial number of "adherents" found themselves on the wrong side of the Mutiny. its not just a problem of "going back to normal", but not wanting to deviate from normal ever again.

the brits maintained the longest running active COIN doctrine in the 20th century in large part because they never had the extreme political trauma and backlash from a major failure.

it's interesting how galula is the only french theorist who is still in vogue cause he didn't advocate torture as being acceptable...and kind of ironic as well I guess

the military seems to have a lot of potential for cultural inertia, since they have strong traditions, generally a strong self-image, and also have all the pressures of a very visible government department from politics or national pride and whatever

the difference in those kind of cultural factors (even just 'how does the army see itself and its role') is really interesting across countries, like looking at the same ideas in AU, US, JPN and germany

thejester wrote:yeah pretty much

I was talking to an ex-general in the Aus Army who graduated Duntroon in 75 and he made the point that it was, at that stage, an Asian army. We'd had multiple battalions deployed overseas almost continiously in Malaya and Vietnam (and Korea, I guess) for 25+ years. Over the course of his career the army then spent 25 years going back to essentially being a garrison force in Aus (and very much third in line behind the RAN and RAAF in both doctrine and funding) and then suddenly being returned to the expeditionary role in 1999.

I don't think the loss of focus on low-intensity conflict was anywhere near as great in the ADF as it was in say, the US, but some pretty basic lessons had to be relearned. He was saying how Timor in hindsight was an absolute godsend because it showed the ADF the huge gaps in basic logistical capability that existed, and allowed them to learn a lot of lessons in an essentially begnin environment before Afghanistan and Iraq...contrasting that with the CF who didn't have that sort of experience and maybe suffered for it a bit early on in Afghanistan.

You know, that's an interesting point about the CF. I know a lot of the problems early one can simply be placed at the feet of shit kit and bad commanders. But we had long running operations in the Balkans (an active warzone till '96?), Cyprus and various other spots but I'm not sure how smoothly things went logistics wise. Other then hiring drunk Russkie/Ukrainian pilots to ship us around.

do you guys have any understanding of what difference there is between learnings that become a part of standards and learnings that aren't and can be lost

are highly publicised successes important? is the coin stuff devalued because it's so low-key, as well as potentially being outside cultural values? how important are influential decisionmakers or champions to retention?

i'm pretty sure there's stuf around here about normalising change but I don't htink we've done any change management for the ADF

oh except that health stuff... different dept

I know that at a certain point, all the guys who participated in Afghanistan will be out, and with them the first hand knowledge of what to do will go with them. Now they'll have passed it on but it'll get diluted over time as people add in shit they think will help.

Eventually all you'll have is a book and a bunch of training that doesn't much resemble the operation.

What the terms are, I dunno.

But militaries seem to regard COIN as a sidebar to full scale war, we train for both obviously but I don't think NDHQ considers it as important. DUnno why, all the large scale threats are gone.

yeah, the CF has been on more or less constant deployment since 1956, so the logistical capabilities were there for broad categories, but it was really the combat role of the CF that was left to erode, and that can be seen in poor or inapproprate kit, which is largely not a major problem if peacekeeping, because the stakes are lower. certainly other areas are bare, such as detainment capability, which canada left to locals, which led to that abuse scandal. which, ironically, has spurred all other countries to avoid detainee issues if at all possible.

the bigger issue was an institutional aversion to risk and the deep-seated dependency on the us for security issues. the CF hasnt had to stand on its two feet for a while, so at first it staggered a bit.

there was a historic lack of any COIN experience, which certainly took the organization unawares. luckily our close ties with the uk and us in training and exchanges has allowed us to piggyback off them. organizationally, we were badly crippled by the lack of a robust special forces unit (jtf2 only came into being in the early 90s). only just a couple years ago did CSOR, a ranger-style unit get created.

the issue of retaining experience is usually something that occurs at the full-timer level. the soldiers during the falklands for example, had never fought ever. the same as brits in sierre leone, canadians at medak, rangers in mogadishu, etc. only senior officers and ncos ever retain the experience, so the institutional memory is vital.

as for successes/failures, well the (combat) success of the CF at medak pocket was grossly overshadowed by a murder in somalia, so that certainly assisted in relegating the combat role of the CF into the background of the general population. and the failures of the french in algeria and the americans in vietnam assured that "normalcy" didnt include COIN (except at the small unit level, with the inclusion of stuff like Foreign Internal Defence into the core skills of american SF)

its hard to say what comes first: the champion or the system. did petraeus get promoted because the system was looking for a person like him (ie did he reflect the change in the institution) or was change facilitated by his dogged policies?

overall its a bit too early to say whether or not modern militaries have become learning institutions. the US certainly came the farthest, fastest, while the UKs doctrine didnt help them out a whole lot. though, arguably thats due to not dominating the political sphere.

Well had the Airborne remained it would have filled CSOR's role but whether they would have been any better at the start is anyones guess. They were basically the RDF for the Arctic and Norway.

For the CF it's been a boon and a curse, lots of experience, new kit but now we'll have decades of problems.

With Medak, we owe a lot to the French who were with us.

the CAR was pretty screwed up; better for a new unit, or for it to be totally restructured. of course it also raises questions like "if we are perpetually short of troops, is it advisable to keep a elite assault force that has trouble doing peacekeeping, or get more line infantry"

the post-CAR role of the 3rd battalions as specops im not sure would have worked out really well. i mean, they got a load of training, and are killer as light infantry, but they are still undeniably line infantry. i;m not sure how much airmobile stuff they did, or how often they worked with jtf2 or other sf.

and yeah, the french often get left out of the canadian narrative of medak, but my point was that the importance of canadians in combat was overlooked and buried because of inconvenience and embarrasment, and this affected the goals and aims that not only the political establishment, but also popular opinion, demanded of the CF.

Recurring story among guys who were in the CF during the 90s: drunk Russian/Ukrainian pilots. I had a teacher in high school who was an artillery officer. He mentioned his helicopter joyride with a Russian pilot in Congo. He was offered a beer, declined, watched the pilot drink it, and then when they rolled a bit to turn, a dozen empties rolled across the deck from under the seats.

Also deep freezers full of vodka flown in on every plane for the Russians.

the russians have a slightly different logistical footprint to others

it is a fact that russians are 78% alcohol and 21% communism

Geez Batman is such a Warstard (is that even a word?). It's like he can't allow the Federation to have a single positive thing above the Empire in any respect whatsoever. Even if it wouldn't make a difference in the whole "derp the Empire pwnz the Feddies" contest. But nope, they must be inferior in every way, shape and form.

Subject: A Single Warship in either universe

Batman wrote:You're blithely assuming they will. Of course, feel free to show evidence they actually are likely to.

lolwut

"show evidence that the completely hypothetical crew with no details given as to their personality or history will take a given action"

I would like to call him on that, but such a one-liner is probably not enough to be nonspammy. Hopefully I can come up with some bullshit to pad it out.

Are they still going with "sw has better medical technology and replicators aren't that useful"?

What do you think? EDIT Hell they're even saying SW have replicators too, when they're not going ST replicators suck.

Star Wars has time travel too :smugdog:

No no veef - SW doesn't have time travel, but it doesn't need to. Time travel doesn't actually result in changes to any timeline, it automatically results in parallel universes

in other words lets just keep hobbling Trek for no good reason