“…Of course, that does not explain what causes peer-pressure in the first place.”

THAT is a fascinating subject. Some of the game theory stuff touches on this, and it is weird! For example, a group of people are given a simple math problem to solve, and state their answer verbally in front of the group. The researchers salt the group with a majority of fake participants who will all give the same wrong answer, and a surprising number of people will change their answer to the incorrect one, despite knowing it is incorrect, because of group dynamics and peer pressure.

You get a similar thing in the military, academia and business, where participants will all complain to each other that this particular thing/policy or whatever, is bullsh!t, but support it publicly because the boss does.

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame), did an experiment once. He got one of his friends, who was a high power CEO, to bring him in to give a talk, but in disguise. He wore a fake mustache, and gave a presentation on some made up nonsense about use of the senses in developing marketing plans and ad campaigns.

He instructed his friend to be in front of the room, and nod approvingly at whatever he said, no matter how ridiculous. He then did a long rambling presentation with stuff like, when selling laundry detergent for example, you need to engage all of your senses, so you should taste the product when developing your plan.

Afterwards, he pulled off the mustache, revealed the deception and started a discussion on it. Many participants admitted that they knew it was all bullsh!t but participated anyway because the boss was obviously sold, and, that it was only slightly more outrageous than some actual sales programs they had been subjected to.

I would also point out the fall of East Germany and the communist regime in Romania. With public affirmations of the politically correct position, the dissident either suspects he is alone in his dissent, or if not alone, that he is part of a small minority. Once something happens to pop the bubble, and he realizes that he is in fact part of the majority, the system collapses.

There is also another economic concept to mention, and that is revealed preference. A person will tell a pollster what they think the pollster wants to hear, or what they think safe, but will behave based on what they actually believe when they get into the voting booth. Same with things like a carbon tax. The majority supports it until they actually have to pay it.

Another factor in “People respond to incentives”: an electric utility CEO once commented that we under-estimate the role of peer-pressure in major decisions.

There was a time when a utility CEO could not hold his head up in public unless his utility was investing in nuclear power — and then a time when the opposite was the case. If that impact of peer-pressure sounds improbable, just look at oil company CEOs today rushing out fanciful Carbon Zero plans.

Of course, that does not explain what causes peer-pressure in the first place.

“I have no answer yet, but I think I have put my finger on the root of the problem at least: a rapid cycle of decision making focused on short term goals. What needs to change for medium and long term investment to be incentivized?”….

That is EXACTLY the problem.

Tim Worstal, a British Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute, who comments on politics and economics, made a comment to the effect that all economics can be boiled down to one phrase, never mind supply and demand, Austrian economic theory etc etc.

All economics is encompassed in the phrase “People respond to incentives”. That’s it! What you subsidize or otherwise incentivize, you get more of, what you punish or dis-incentivize, you get less of, end of story.

The problem is to incentivize without unconsciously creating perverse incentives. Stock options for executives are supposed to incentivize the executive to create success for the company, since his interest is now supposed to be tied to the success of the company. Unfortunately, in most cases, HIS best interests are served by a short term boost in the stock price, so he can dump his options at a favorable price, regardless of the effect on the long term prospects of the company.

Likewise, I recall reading of an ill-fated idea at a software company to pay programmers a bounty any bugs they found, which created a black market in bugs to be planted, (and then found), for the bonus money.

I remember reading somewhere about a conversation between Dr. David Suzuki, a well known and (in)famous environmental activist and TV celebrity up here in Canada, and one of our previous Prime Ministers. Suzuki basically told him that a switch to a more environmentally friendly energy policy would produce economic benefits of fantastic scope, besides the environmental benefits. The P.M. responded, with the question “How long would it take to ralize these benefits”. “Twenty years” was the answer. To which the P.M. responded, that it was no use, since politically, no matter how good, no policy that took more than an election cycle to produce results was politically possible, no matter how good or beneficial it may have been.

The French are often criticized for the Maginot Line. How fixed fortifications never work etc.etc. The French knew that. They weren’t stupid. Their doctrine, (which cost them the war), was logical, and based on sound reasoning. It was wrong, but still logical and consistent.

The Maginot Line was never meant to be the one and only defense. Rather, it was meant to buy time while the new mechanized brigades invaded Germany thru Belgium. The Maginot Line was forced on the French army by circumstances.

Remember, that most of WWI was fought in northern France, on some of the most productive farm land and their main industrial region. They also lost horrendous numbers of men. One of the reasons they needed the Maginot Line was that they simply didn’t have enough men. The class of 1932 was far smaller than every previous conscription class, simply because dad was killed in the war before he got a chance to father the potential recruit of 1932.

Combine that with the politics of France at the time, where the social democrat republican politicians didn’t trust the army, since most officers (with perhaps some justification), were considered to be reactionary monarchists, just itching for the chance to stage a coup and restore the monarchy or empire.

Besides this, the army had to contend with uncertain funding and support because of the fractured political environment of the time. You got a commitment for funding of the Maginot Line, but six months later, you get a new, politically different government, and you have to sell the whole thing all over again!

This sort of thing drives everything. All concerned know that a better long term plan is desirable, but all are trapped in the circumstances and revert to short term gains, because that is the only kind they will realistically get.

So what often seems to be incompetence or even malevolence is simply well meaning and intelligent people making a clear eyed and well thought out decision to chose the least bad option.

This discussion of obsolete systems being forced to limp along for decades past obsolescence is a massive thorn in my side at the moment. I’ve been thinking about what is wrong with these systems that incentivizes this behavior, and what if anything could be done to change those incentives. I’m learning pretty quickly that no one really wants to talk about that. I’m in a corporate setting rather than a military one, but it sounds like the situation is virtually the same regardless of the context.

I have no answer yet, but I think I have put my finger on the root of the problem at least: a rapid cycle of decision making focused on short term goals. What needs to change for medium and long term investment to be incentivized?

War stock spares of FN-MAG guns were in inventory in Germany for our Leopard tanks against “der tag”, and since we used one on a pintle by the commander’s cupola for flex and AA use rather than a .50, we didn’t even have to convert them, being in ground gun configuration already, complete with bi-pod and butt-stock. After a bunch of those were”borrowed”, “acquired” for “locally authorized experiments”, more were officially procured.

As for the cycle of futility with maintaining old systems and so on…Ah yes! I got to see a bit more of the why and how as an officer, and it has a certain logic. No less frustrating, but at least somewhat understandable It applies equally (or even more so) to bigger more expensive systems. The US Navy is currently struggling with this over their ships, the German Airforce (and many others), with their planes, and I can no doubt find lots of other examples.

The system gets old, it is no longer in current production, spares are running out, and the cost of getting production of at least some more spares is expensive and difficult. “Besides, we are planning to replace -X- with a new system any year now, it would be a waste to spend all that money on an obsolete legacy system”.

The new system to replace the old one is years behind schedule, and mired in the usual delays, mission creep and changing specs. So the old system needs to be babied along “just a little longer”.

The military needs the new system, but hasn’t got any extra money for it, so cuts the O&M (operations and maintenance) budget to try and free up some more money for capital acquisition. This results in even more wear and tear on the legacy system, and even more demand for spares, and the “limp it along for another five years” turns into ten, but there is no budget for enough spares, so cannibalization starts, rinse and repeat.

Then you get the ludicrous situation where the old system cannot be supported any longer. So for example, you get a system where the old valves for the ancient radios or avionics just simply CANNOT be obtained anymore, so an expensive project is launched to upgrade the ancient system on the old obsolete equipment (which is still obsolete, not really fit for purpose and scheduled for replacement) to something less old and still supportable, or worse, new and even more expensive one.

This money was not in the budget, so it has to be found somewhere, so we have new working and supportable radios, but even LESS running spares, and since this was not factored into the current procurement “five year plan”, the new system is now going to be delayed even more, and the old system limped along even longer, and more money needs to be found (by cutting O&M again).

I would tell the entire tale of Canada’s Sea King replacement project, but I am likely to stroke out in rage if I do. Briefly, they were old, at the end of their service life and wayyyy overdue for replacement when I joined in 1990. We have finally got a replacement that is just now starting to join the fleet in small numbers, but we have already lost one with all hands in an accident. The aircraft the military wanted was cancelled by a previous government for politics, and any plane but that one was to be procured. We ended up being the launch customer of a new unproven design and technology, which rumour has it may be the cause of the crash……

But like I said, no matter how screwed up our particular system is, most of our adversaries are even worse off (Chinese jet engines for example).

re: “it’s not the best military that wins the war, but the one that is the least f**ked-up. There is no “best”, just varying degrees of dysfunctional….”

I too had some difficulty accepting that realization, but once I made peace with it, and I applied it to life in general, it made life FAR less stressful. I call it “Paul’s 80% theory”. 80% of all businesses, policies, products etc. will be screwed up in some way. This is unavoidable, since at some level, a human is involved,and humans are inherently subject to confirmation bias, emotional, subject to all sorts of logical fallacies, inter-personal squabbles, perverse incentives etc. etc. etc.

Many times in discussion I expressed the idea that the Falkland’s war was really lost by Argentina, rather than won by the British. Professional and amazing as the British campaign was, they did make mistakes, and if the Argentinians had done an even half way competent job, given the distances and logistics involved for the British, they would have won. Only they wouldn’t have, because their incompetence, politicization, infighting within the Junta and absolute miscalculation of British attitudes is why they invaded in the first place.

Re: The refusal to issue equipment/parts… I’ve experienced the following syndrome, wherein the idiot managing the issuance of same refuses to issue said equipment/parts ‘cos, “Last of…”. Which leads to the following cascade of issues, in that the fact that the stupid bastard won’t issue the equipment/part in question means that the automated analysis done at higher levels fails to pick up on the fact that the stuff is needed, and does not procure the necessary. Which means that when the time comes to actually get the weapon up and running for wartime deployment comes, the quantity of parts in the system do not come even close to meeting the need. This was one of the root problems with the M60 MG in latter-day US service–The stupid bastards would not spend the money to get us the parts to keep them all running, and because of that, the demand was never established which would have justified keeping the parts stocks up at the levels we’d need them in an actual shooting war. Had WWIII ever happened in Europe during the 1980s, odds are pretty good that a lot of the guns would have gone down and stayed down due to “no parts on hand to effect repairs”, both in the units and depots. They’d artificially depressed the feedback loop that was supposed to keep the system informed about actual requirements, and as a result… Yeah. It would have been uuuuuuugly.

The small arms repair warrant officer I knew from my first assignment followed me to Europe, and I ran into him and buttonholed him about why it was my armorer couldn’t get our guns fixed up at Third Shop. The 20-minute diatribe I got from him about the idiot managing the Proscribed Load List for small arms in Europe left me with a very queasy feeling in my stomach, and a commitment to steal the first unattended MG3 or MAG58 I ran across. He was not a happy camper about that, having spent his formative years in Vietnam in a constant struggle to keep the M60s across an entire Corps operating. His opinion on the gun was verbose, filthy, and consisted mostly of profanity–He was actually the first guy I heard who wanted to take the M240 from the coax role it had, and make it the ground gun, and he was “suggesting” that idea in 1985, about ten years before it actually happened.

Hardest thing for me to realize as a mid-career NCO looking on the idiocy of it all was grasping the idea that it’s not the best military that wins the war, but the one that is the least f**ked-up. There is no “best”, just varying degrees of dysfunctional.

Not to mention, the inherent dysfunction of it all during peacetime is a useful simulacrum for the nature of war itself; if you can survive and thrive in the atmosphere of daily chaos which is garrison military life in general, you may be well-suited to function in a combat theater.

Alternatively, you’ll be so thoroughly enraged by it all that the opportunity to shoot strangers will come as a welcome relief, and you’ll do so with fearsome joy and alacrity.

Either explanation works, I suppose.

One of the characters ends up attached to the hired trawlers used as minesweepers in the Dardanelles, later for embryonic anti-submarine ops. The “duration only” CO of the flotilla of converted trawlers has a serious culture shock dealing with bureaucracy, and our main character explains with dripping sarcasm;

“The games you bloody navy types play, Adams! Couldn’t you just get on with winning the war?”

“Don’t be silly, sir! The war is a minor interruption in one’s career. A boy entering Dartmouth at thirteen or so will hope to serve for forty years. A war of four or five years duration is no more than an incident. It provides the opportunity for promotion, perhaps, but it is more important to ensure that one does not tread on superiors’ toes by being too overtly heroic or efficient. Wiser far to proceed cautiously, sir, and above all, do nothing wrong. You saw what happened at the Dardanelles, after all. A bit of a risk and perhaps a modern battleship lost, and the campaign could have been won. The admiral chose to withdraw rather than risk Queen Elisabeth, newest of the fleet. The Navy without exception believes he was right. More important not to lose a new ship than to win a battle!”

Wareham, Andrew. End To Illusion (The War to End All Wars Book 3) (p. 202). PublishNation. Kindle Edition.

The German armed forces are currently going thru a crisis, not enough spares to keep the fighter fleet operating, no submarines currently seaworthy, etc. etc., but they had a press conference with great fanfare to show off one of their officers who has mid career become the first trans-female officer.

Like you said, probably laid down in the DNA.

I too have come across the quartermaster who won’t issue a needed item because “It is the last one I have and if I issue it, I will be out of stock, and then I won’t be able to issue it if it is needed”, neglecting that he is refusing to issue it NOW, and I needed it urgently. Fortunately for me, higher authority was not so stupid, so I did get my needed item.

On the other hand, I have seen amazing things done to get COTS equipment in an emergency. In Gulf War one, Canada sent a destroyer to conduct anti-smuggling/ant-sanctions busting operations. The aging destroyer was designed initially for ASW in the North Atlantic, and lacked all sorts of modern weapons and equipment, and the on board helicopters were equipped only for anti-sub work.

In less than a week, the choppers were equipped with door guns, the ASW gear removed, a commercial stabilized extremely powerful TV camera installed and a military thermal image system adapted for attachment to said camera. Custom made cooling suits were designed and manufactured for the crew to wear under NBC suits to keep from cooking, since chemical weapons were anticipated as a threat.

The ship, in about the same time frame, got a CWIS, chaff and a whole pile of sensors added and integrated that it was not designed for, simply taken from the shipyard where they were intended to be installed in a new frigate still on the stocks.

The system can still surprise one.

As I said before, we are fortunate in that the staff and bureaucratic foibles that we despair of are not unique to our militaries, but seem to be universal, part of the human condition, and more often than not, our adversaries are more gravely afflicted.