Recent actions, like alleged 'double-tap' strikes on first responders, suggest the current military leadership, influenced by the Secretary of Defense, views violations of armed conflict laws not as failures but as necessary tactics for achieving victory.
A combat search and rescue (CSAR) mission for one pilot can quickly escalate into a hostage rescue. This forces a nation to commit 'boots on the ground,' crossing a significant political and military red line that leadership had previously avoided.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is deliberately reshaping the military's officer corps to fit his partisan image. This involves removing qualified officers from promotion lists based on their race and gender, treating their very existence as a partisan act.
The Asymmetric Warfare Group (AWG) was shuttered not due to ineffectiveness, but because it successfully delivered uncomfortable truths from the battlefield to senior leadership. Like internal consultants, their valuable but critical feedback threatened the status quo, leading to its elimination.
USCENTCOM continues to operate with a pre-drone era mindset, failing to learn from recent conflicts like Ukraine. This strategic inertia leads to inadequate base security and the preventable loss of critical assets, such as an AWACS plane, to enemy drones.
The military fails to effectively transfer knowledge between rotating units in a conflict zone. Incoming units often discard their predecessors' experience, believing they can do better, thus repeating the same errors and failing to build on crucial, hard-won lessons.
Despite two decades of availability, a deep-seated cultural resistance persists within the US Army. Artillerymen will actively reject fire-spotting data from drones, trusting only traditional forward observers, which cripples the effectiveness of modern combined arms operations.
The Pentagon has created separate innovation verticals (like DIU, AFWERX) that are isolated from core operations. This structure mirrors Enron's ornamental risk division, offloading responsibility for adaptation without integrating learning into the decision-making cycle, leading to institutional stagnation.
The US Army's extensive counterinsurgency experience from the Global War on Terror is largely irrelevant in modern peer-level conflicts. Forces like the Ukrainians and Russians now possess far more relevant and recent combat experience, particularly regarding drone warfare and large-scale conventional operations.