Usually everybody starts even and
everybody starts wrong…the advantage goes to the side which can most quickly adjust itself to the new and unfamiliar
environment and learn from its mistakes...
This is an aspect of military
science which needs to be studied above all others in the Armed Forces: the capacity to adapt oneself to the utterly unpredictable,
the entirely unknown. I am tempted indeed to declare dogmatically that whatever doctrine the Armed Forces
are working on now, that they have got it wrong. I am also tempted to declare that it does not matter that they have
got it wrong. What matters is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives...
the military profession is, like other professions, also a bureaucracy,
and bureaucracies accommodate themselves with great difficulty to outstanding original thinkers. Such people tend to be difficult
colleagues, bad organization men...
As military science develops, innovation tends to be more difficult than
less . . . . In these circumstances, when everybody starts wrong, the advantage goes to the side which can most quickly
adjust itself to the new and unfamiliar environment and learn from its mistakes.
