Christopher Jordan
Those who innovate well find success, while those who do not become cautionary tales. When discussing military innovation, there are many considerations. The most important considerations that influence military innovation are that the innovation must solve a problem and that no innovation provides a permanent advantage.
When evaluating military innovation, and thinking about how to approach future innovations, an interconnected focus on doctrine, organization, technology, and tactics, or the DOTT framework, provides an effective lens.
Innovation does not occur in a vacuum. Military innovation, as a strategic study, requires a link between a theory and practice. Put simply, military innovation should seek to overcome existing battlefield dilemmas and create new dilemmas for one’s foes. History demonstrates that good innovations come from theories that are tailored to solve specific problems. At the same time, theories that seek a panacea tend to fare poorly.
The improvements in combined arms warfare is an example of innovation overcoming a specific problem. Immediately after World War I (WWI), the defense appeared to be the dominant form of warfare. Trench warfare, accurate predicted artillery fire, and machine guns made the battlefield static. Static battlefields fuel wars of attrition, in which both sides seek to exhaust their foes.
German leaders, like General Hans von Seeckt, responded by developing a new doctrine to “wage offensive warfare even against larger enemy armies and letting it aim at a decisive battle of annihilation against the enemy.” For the Germans, innovation occurred because a new problem, static trench warfare, needed to be overcome.
Though faced with the same dilemmas of trench warfare, the British in the interwar period did not innovate as well as their German counterparts. British failure seems especially galling since J.F.C. Fuller, one of the leading advocates for armored combined arms warfare,
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