Chapter 1 - Military Education and Industry Integration

First, let me assure all readers I like war; it’s a lot of fun. While I am not the person you would want trudging through the battlefield, I am the proper person for creating the winning strategy. Unfortunately, in war consequences are quite dreadful on people and economies; nevertheless, the technology and tactics are interesting. Most importantly, I happen to be an intellectual and winning is more important than fighting.

Here’s the first important point: try to use threats of power to win without fighting. If you have to fight, be sure you win: don’t play games. I personally dislike losing by making mistakes. This paper is about being prepared for winning and knowing how to prepare properly to win – not just fight - physically, mentally and culturally.

During the last pacifist period of the 1930’s our armed forces were allowed to -- what’s a good word for it— be "minimized"? Even with the furious last minute preparation in the late 1930’s, we still remained unready to step into a real war. And much to the dismay of Gen. Marshall, who promised the Russians we would do so, we never did create a real second front in WWII. I wish to be prepared, this time around, for all wars.

Being prepared is easily defined: what time period is necessary for preparing to fight what war? What does the national defense require? In particular, this paper is about the structure capable of rapidly increasing military strength for winning a negotiation or confrontation, not necessarily to fight but to win.

Not only have military people found political support a necessary activity, the time spent on politicians causes neglect of the connection to the business/production/delivery side of war. I believe military people are aware of this, but the politicians pick generals with political ability and require them to answer not only military questions but political ones too. Both Viet Nam and Iraq are clear memories to the current older generations and they are especially clear memories for the many generals fired for telling the truth.

History, many, many times shown us national leaders who felt they knew more about military matters than the trained military leaders. Napoleon and Hitler both proved incompetent when invading Russia, overriding the good sense of the military strategists. Even military leaders, when they think too much of themselves, create problems such as Macarthur’s ambitions and the Yalu River or the little political clique sending us to Iraq. Educating leaders to win? That’s another campaign.

Additionally, the private sector connection shouldn’t have to be in shadows, rather in the sunlight of national defense. Without a good connection, trying to grow our militarily quickly is just impossible. Moreover, the industrial-military complex can easily project a conspiracy image. General Eisenhower said so point blank. We must be prepared to produce equipment and support on a proper winning foundation through openness and honesty of structure and process.

To meet this necessity I’d really like more of the best and bright intellectuals from places like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc. to attend graduate school at our military academies. I’d suggest a full one-third of the graduate school. This gives a chance of the military elite learning how to communicate with the business people and the business people learning a bit of the difficulty supplying troops. I think a continuing stream of these future business leaders is just what the military needs if it should ever want to gear up. A large supply of industrial contact people also cuts down on corruption.

Just attracting people to the graduate program arbitrarily will never give the breadth of interaction the military needs to be a winner. We need industrialists, lawyers, accountants, verbal-oriented people (sales, communications), doctors, union leaders, politicians, teachers, and others who would be the leaders of tomorrow. Also mix in the minorities and women. The military needs to be able to motivate all sectors of the population. Having a wide range of people interfacing with the military results in a good way to make the most efficient use of our resources for both manpower and weapons. (Always remember all wars are wars of attrition) The interaction required for winning lies in the hands of many people with many interests.

Therefore, at least a third of the military graduate schools, a one-year program with a bit of military training and hospitality, would come from the private sector. The main thought is training the future leaders for readiness.

Did I mention being part of the graduate school is a life-long membership, including reserve duty for two weeks each year plus monthly meetings? What a vacation employers cannot take away. And we have military installations all over the world. My father loved being in the Reserves and my family always enjoyed the two weeks at places like Fort Drum. A life-long connection isn’t so bad.

And if industrial (or military) quality recruits don’t want to join, we have the ability to draft these people. If they complain to me I would just point out our cities and farms and remind them of their job to protect our country. I cannot imagine too many complaints. Going to this graduate school is definitely a quick path to success. On the other hand, the path contains no exits: you have to ride to the end. Of course, we make the path a wonderful place to travel. Our political leadership should have no excuses for not having the best and brightest available for our defense.

What should the private sector group study: The history of supply chains of previous military actions, of course. An overview which would illustrate historical problems of preparation and supply along with learning methods of motivation, planning, training, efficient and rapid cooperative implementation. Again, all wars are wars of attrition, whether it is soldiers or equipment. If you cannot supply the front with enough to win, you lose.

The graduate school year lasts from July 1 to the next July 1. This way people can graduate from their college and get ready for military graduate school - fully 12 months long.

Start with easy-going military style training. While these people aren’t going to fight hand-to-hand, our private sector people should be in good physical shape. Classes follow a normal military academy schedule. And give them reasonable accommodations, but not elaborate -- and no TV’s.

We should also have some social training events, like big dances and sporting events, learning such skills as dancing and golf. Never know when social skills could make the difference.

Now we have spent time with the private sector, let’s look at the best way to train the 2/3 of the graduate class from the military. First, looking back to the concept of fighting and/or winning, we need half fighters and half strategizers making up military graduate students.

The United States population is an interesting mix of fighters and intellectuals. A third group of cultural perception is the Tribal group. For practical purposes of military activity, only the fighters and intellectuals are important. A different leadership style and personality is required for each group. The purposes of educating both sectors together are establishing communications and friendships.

Fighters fight, but they never win wars. In fact, they can barely win battles. Intellectuals think about winning, but real warriors in the middle of the desert or forest are probably not excited about fighting alongside intellectuals. In other words: if you are in a foxhole and the guy next to you is wondering what he is doing there, you need to replace him with someone who is focused in on being trustworthy and loyal and fighting the current battle, not the process of the war. Nevertheless, without planning and strategy there is no winning. Fighters must depend on their intellectuals, and they should be familiar with them before going off to battle, and vica-versa.

The generals with winning intellectual capabilities stand out in history - like George Patton. He just didn’t like to fight -- he was obsessed with winning. Familiar with individual wars and their battles -- which he realized could be fought over again in many different centuries – he studied the way the Rome, Islam, and even his own enemies fought their wars in their times. Warriors need intellectuals to succeed. We were lucky to have a handful of WWII military leaders (Eisenhower, Patton, Stillwell, Marshall, Bradley, Nimitz, etc.) who were intellectuals.

This all points to the necessity of two paths of education: the field leadership path and the strategic path: they are not the same and have never been the same. Neither group can win the tough wars alone.

On the other hand, a large advantage in technology and military power, mixed in with the ability to conquer large territories with little work, such as the Spanish-American War, were wonderful displays of the perfect win for the conquers, without the need of strategic thought. Lately we are running out of easy situations like the Rough Riders experienced. I’m not sure any Grenadas or Panamas remain.

So, no matter how hard warriors want to eliminate the intellectuals, in reality we need to attract more strategic intellectuals to our military academies. To the traditionalists I am unhappy to speak of the need to end hazing. Warriors use the physical trials method of segregating the most reliable – to their viewpoint - warriors and creating a group loyalty. This works to annoy and disinterest the needed intellectuals. Nevertheless the need to understand the fighters still exists and the intellectuals’ training must include something along this line.

Overuse of religion to isolate the warriors from the intellectuals can also be used to disinterest the important strategic thinkers. Sorry warriors, but the country needs you to be more tolerant and inclusive. The manpower requirements for the modern military mean the military must recruit the best, not just the people who want to join.

This is a very serious sacrifice for warriors. Liking and getting along with people not in the warriors’ loyalty groups is very hard; understanding wars can be won with something besides brute force is equally hard. I apologize to this group for the difficult changes required, yet I see no other alternative in protecting our country.

Military actions no longer watch for bombers with waiting supersonic interceptors, or planning to move a front closer to the enemy’s homeland. It would seem, as a complete reverse of previous conflicts, entering enemy territory is extremely easy today; it appears much harder to exit a conflict. Maybe a time will come when we conquer territories again, yet, more and more, military actions are becoming police actions and political activity.

As radio-controlled drones become important as human piloted airplanes, so must strategic planning must be merged with brute force. We can see this slowly happening, most of forced by technology. For instance, how well do tanks stand up to modern shoulder fired weapons? (Especially since the WWII tanks didn’t stand up too well to the RPG’s of the day and modern tanks didn’t do too well in the Sinai until the shoulder-fired rockets ran out.) So what are the modern strategies of mobile armor? Does the strategy fit into the political realities? What kind of strategic planners can help old entrenched ways stop spending money on useless and many times expensive equipment, and what supply chains are needed to win? This is not any easy task and I believe we need to train people with the leadership tools to keep us a winning military.

Let’s take into account that other countries will, if they haven’t already, see what the U.S. is doing and produce a similar military. I suggest we not try to be the worldwide conqueror, as it’s not going to happen. Under the best of warrior control with the most aggressive behavior won’t succeed in modern war; far too many weapons in play mean the enemy is anywhere. As the Japanese found, it’s far better to buy a power position than fight for it in a modern world. Not to mention we could have bought every house in Iraq with just the money we waste on weapons.

Actual fighting remains vitally important to many warriors. In spite of the facts that consequences can increase the longer the fight without knowing how to win, there remains great belief among the warriors the only defeat is stopping fighting. Europe constantly knew war for the last 1,000 years, beginning with the invasion of Europe by the Norse people from about 900 onwards. Rewards of war went many times to the greatest warriors, further influencing the need to fight to establish who you were. No greater group of warriors has existed better than the Norse decent warriors. Assorted intellectuals, over a period of time, created a religion to match the needs of these warriors, which encouraged them to want to fight and conquer: it’s called Christianity, and not necessarily the original Christianity. Other intellectual warrior constructs are the Arab interpretation of Islam, and the Japanese Bushido. None come close to the conquering ability of the warriors of Christianity. All these groups have a firmly believe who you "are" is always about how you fight.

Unfortunately, resources of the military and the willingness of the public to not consume so the war effort can be large enough to win a modern war are just not happening. One day we will remember the lessons of Korea, Viet Nam, and Iraq: We never knew what winning should be, we lost many good men and women for political reasons, and again and again, there was no political methodology to win without fighting.

Wining is just not the old John Wayne style of hit someone hard enough and they must accept your morality, but rather the ability to speak to the other parties using proper cultural communication tools. Underneath speaking nicely is the unspoken threat of unleashing a group of warriors that know no backing off. Keeping that threat as real is part of readiness. Being ready doesn’t mean you fight: it means you can win.

In this modern age (which translates literally to now) we need troop motivators, industrial capability, and strategic planners trained and ready to go. Ready and willing to quickly commence the activities – such as calling out new recruits, increasing supply lines, and so forth – preparing our appropriate sized fighting machine.

By being careful in the initial planning and then replacing the initial planning with constant planning we avert many costly mistakes. Waiting for a crisis is not the optimum way to design our military structure: A leadership structure, not a single leader is the key to winning military action, whether in battle or as a political negotiating tool, ready to move in coordinated activities, to protect our population.

Thank you in advance to the people with the difficult task of implementing the winning edge.

How soon will this plan be integrated into our military protection is up to the public, which means you. How serious are you?