Military Rationalities and Irrationalities

I think that statement right there is the crux of it.

I have mixed feelings on Clausewitz, but one thing I that did seep in from my first read of On War was that it is very hard to achieve success (let alone measure it) if you don't have a clear idea of what your goal is. "Kill lots of enemy" is not particularly good goal.

And, ironically, this goal was apparently set by a failed-out Air National Guard pilot.

Part of the money for expensive equipment goes to lobbyists who are responsible for those things being brought.

There not as much money to lobby for buying more mops.

It costs the government several hundred dollars in pay and benefits to have each one of us standing around for a day, yet they were pinching pennies on ammo that cost maybe 10 cents a round.

This is pretty standard everywhere, not just in the military. To an accountant payroll is a fixed expense they have no control over (hiring and firing decisions are made by a different department). So they save on what they can control.

For both you and hyporational, which countries are you talking about?

Ah, the old Peter Principle and its opposite, the Inverse Peter Principle.

Peter Principle: If you're competent, you get promoted. If you're not competent but not bad enough to fire, you stay where you are. Therefore, all positions will eventually become filled with incompetent people.

Inverse Peter Principle: Anyone who is competent soon becomes irreplaceable and therefore ineligible for promotion. The only people who are promoted are those who aren't good enough to stay in their current position but aren't bad enough to fire outright.

Both patterns have been seen in large organizations.

One factor that may explain this is that critical thinking is in a sense compartmentalised in intelligence functions.

Air Force Intelligence Officers do analysis, and their soldiers do analysis. However, in the Navy, intelligence sailors do analysis but there the officers are drawn from a common pool of naval officers under complex selection criterion (and not advertised to the public. This further emphasises that job design occurs as a crude greedy algorithm where the first generation of Officers where assigned the general job of defence and designed subordinate functions and roles from there, who in turn delegated responsibility downward without propogating information back up (which would be more like a neural network).

I want to take this opportunity to discourage any LessWrongers from joining the military, intelligence or not: In a year, a garison'd armu unit of 338 personnel sustained 242 neck, low back, ankle, patella and knee ligament injurie. It's the only public study of its kind AFAIK. And they weren't even infantry soldiers. That's an obscenely high rate of injury. Joining the military, even if you're not in combat, is probably bad for your health. The author doesn't go into categorising the injuries into chronic and acute, but presumably some of them are chronic. I wouldn't want to endure that after discharge. I already have chronic pain. I don't want you to want this.

My story is that I underreported medical symptoms, mental health in particular when I first wanted to sign up for the ADF, then after putting my application on hold to study more, when I had to redo a medical form, I reported more issues (I overreported things which I didn't quite had - self diagnosed). The nurse wasn't happy about this. The biggest issue was the second time I DID report the mental health issues, but when the nurse interviewed me about these due to her concerns over the discrepencies betweeen the first time and the second time, I lied out of shame and said I only saw a psychiatrist twice, just went on one antidepressant for a short time and no other medications, and that was about it. And that my back pain was just temporary and not a big deal. She asked for details of these in writing from my GP to confirm. Unfortunatley I had already disclosed the identity of my GP and location of the university health service, so I really would have to go back there and ask for them to send their summary to the military who would see that I've clearly lied. I'll no doubt get blacklisted straight away from the job, but also from like any security clearance. I reckon I could probably still get a job in a foreign military partner of Australia, like the United Kingdom or something. However, I reckon that the intelligence sharing agreemnts could possible mean they also share personnel security info. Its unlikely, but mite bite me sometime in my career - and I've demonstrated I'm shit at lying and would probably fail a serious security clerance thing anyway! I just have to hope that the foreign allies will be cool with my honest mental health admissions and such, and go for jobs that don't require any serious clearance! I made a mistake, but I've learned a lot!

Call me a pussy but becoming say a medic in new zealand, while extremely appealing for the low barriers for entry, in-demand qualifications and practical skills I'll gain, not to mention cash, community and respect, may not be worth it given how cold NZ is in the Winter!

Update 2016: I still haven't squashed my military adventure fantasies. I need to remind myself that I'm not likely to be much more fit about military experience because I would like to become injured, particularly because of my history of muskeletal injury. 'Osteopath Paul Raw agrees: 'I've seen a lot of ex-soldiers with bad backs because the idea of military-style training is to push yourself beyond your limit. This means the likelihood of eventual injury is high. It's a British thing I think, to assume that exercise must equal pain.' I really ought to cut out my option by telling the recruiters about my chronic pain, so I don't do something rash, gradually. Or, perhaps if I just push this idea aside I'll stop compulsively thinking about it. Maybe intrusive thoughts on the matter should be indication enough that it's an unhealthy idea.

Legion is out too. It also seems that the minimum 2800-meter (1.7 mile) run in 12 minutes cooper test score for the legion is harder than a level 10 beep test so I ought not to try for the Legion, given my weak fitness!. Comments like this make it seem even less appealing: '....are not very sanitary, so watch as you are in the marching and chow line to the people that are blowing snot-rockets bare-handed or coughing into their hands and plunging them into the huge bread baskets, this is probably how I became sick. '

Interesting effect of that last point: it improves the military's robustness to taking casualties.

Mmm. There are qualifications. First, your orders are enforced by other people- and limited by their ability to understand and adapt your orders. As time goes on and your orders are outdated, they will not be updated until someone of equal or greater rank devotes both attention and personnel to updating them, and it is rare for this to happen until something definitively proves they are outdated (an incident of some sort).

So, yes, a wide impact. But not a wide impact at your top quality level, a wide impact at the level that manages to percolate through your chain of subordinates and a persistent impact (for better or worse) until an incident causes a policy update.

Things that probably helped:

• no caffeine or alcohol whatsoever
• constant slight sleep deprivation
• you couldn't choose how you slept so there was no point in obsessing about it
• you were often physically uncomfortable, so even having a chance to lay down made a big difference
• if you wanted to sleep or nap, there usually was only a small time frame to try it (had to learn tricks to go to sleep quickly)
• light physical activity most of the time, lots of time spent standing upright
• sleeping was many times the most exciting you could do, it worked as escapism
• had the same routines every evenings
• 1min after waking up had to be outside and running

Both. Let me explain using a concrete example of how it happens using the elites from my own field, military computer security.

First, a problem is pointed out. Usually because an adversary pearl harbors something (like a base network goes down.). A commander (usually general level, this is really all they do besides give speeches) picks someone recommended by their staff and their staff's friends. The person picked is usually one of the few very competent people in the military. This person is given absolute dictator-level power and responsibility over the subject area wherever it does not interact with subject areas controlled by a higher-ranking person.

This person's first task is to pick people to make a training program for more people in the field (the 'single point of failure' policy). They pick their friends, who are also likely among the few very competent people, and they get together and actually consult with training experts, have complete authority to make training programs (SERE training includes torturing/beating people and forcing them to eat live animal parts to prepare them for being captured and living in the wild, as an example.)

The person's second task is to requisition people for the field as a 'special duty.' In order to be eligible for special duties you always require basic competence (if your pt scores are bad or you have any poor marks on your record, no go), but you can also require advanced competence (pararescue has a swim test, cybersecurity requires S+ and is moving toward CISSP certifications.)

The third task is to remove the threat using the people and the training program, and they are personally responsible and accountable for making sure the threat is removed. There are no excuses, not even reasonable ones like 'no human being knew that was possible!' or 'there is not enough money in the world to solve this.' The commander comes up with an effective, efficient way of addressing the threat, or they are removed from command.

So, you have training programs which are effective at improving competence (domain-specific competence), and you have personnel entering them who already display a modicum of this DScompetence and a basic level of generalized competence (they have followed the basic military rules like pt, get to work on time, do what you're trained to do, don't break the law.). You get your pick of the applicants, including for training and the people who make regulations.

Over time this urgency fades and you're left with enforcing the (however outdated) legacy of those effective people from whenever the last pearl harbor incident was.