Introduction

This book analyzes the challenges of managing major military transformation. It asks

why and how some military organizations are more adept than others at reinventing

themselves, not just introducing but sustaining and honing revolutionary changes

in technologies, systems, doctrines, operations, and training. Why, for example,

did the British Army have difficulty marshalling early enthusiasm and advancing

initial innovations in tank warfare, while the German military leaped ahead with the

truly revolutionary Blitzkrieg strategy that pushed the technological and operational

frontiers for integrating tactical air power and mechanized warfare with devastating

effectiveness on the battlefield? How did the U.S. Navy excel at sustaining the

revolution at sea, steadily supplanting the “big gun” club that dominated the

service and transforming the aircraft carrier from an auxiliary spotter to the capital

ship by the end of World War II? By contrast, why did the U.S. Army resist new

demands for counterinsurgency, and how did it actively sabotage efforts to alter

the post-World War II bias towards a large-scale conventional warfare? This book

seeks to explain the variable patterns to which military services succeed and fail at

institutionalizing radically new approaches to warfare to inform efforts at managing

military transformation today.