TLDR maybe but I’m so glad you brought this up! Here’s why we can’t have iconoclast generals in the U.S. anymore:
— InfantryDort (@infantrydort) August 19, 2026
1947: Officer Personnel Act. We standardized “up-or-out.” Officers increasingly advanced through centralized boards and prescribed career timing instead of being… https://t.co/Og5M2Zk2jG
Agreed. I was a very junior officer when DOPMA passed, it didn’t affect me much.
Goldwater-Nichols really screwed the pooch. I was in the reserves then, but still. 24 years later, it’s still screwing things up.
Hmm. It’s probably too late to return to the Roman model which was far more entrepreneurial.
Maybe try the Klingon way, murder your commander for the promotion.😉
I thought that was the Terran Empire? <:-P
To Boldly Assert That Which No One Cares
That didn’t work so well for the Geogian era British Army
I often recommend this one hour lecture by Thomas Ricks:
“Why our generals were more successful in World War II than in Korea, Vietnam or Iraq/Afghanistan”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxZWxxZ2JGE
It’s historically fascinating and makes a lot of important points about how to run a military.
One of my thoughts it inspired was that the guy at the top should swap generals out like they were key players on an athletic team, matching the generals to the situations they are good at handling.
If the battle moves from the swamps into the mountains, perhaps rotate out the experienced swamp warfare expert with a mountain warfare expert. If the situation changes from rapid armored warfare to military occupation, perhaps change out the Patton for someone good at running occupations.
Instead we put each general in charge for exactly one year, no matter what, unless they get caught in a sex scandal or say something to a Rolling Stone reporter that embarrasses the President.
Interesting idea.
Another is nobody comes home until victory: Thats how it pretty much worked in WWII as well – except for the wounded and incompetents.
That was a good video. A key aspect was that losing command didn’t necessarily mean ending a career. But he did note that Marshall ended many careers.
That’s what gave me the idea that the generals should be treated like players on a sports team, with a coach putting them in or taking them out to try and get a win, finding the best match ups, or letting them take a breather and get their head back in the game.
That conception runs afoul of another long held conception of the military hierarchy or chain of command as an analog to an aristocratic social structure or corporate organizational chart, where each slot is a social ranking that is the due of whoever holds a particular position. Dukes and barons and earls, as it were. In that conception, the only way to move is up or out.
My dad was an O-6 in the Puzzle Palace in 1970. He had a sign on his wall-
SOP #1 Never do anything the same way twice.
SOP #2 Everything is an emergency!
He was given two sh*t duty stations after that and retired in ’75. Apparently officer selection boards have their senses of humor surgically removed.
Marshal went through the flag ranks like a 24 row corn head yet we still paid a high price in blood for incompetence, starting at Pearl Harbor and Manila. Peace gets you generals and admirals that are good at filling out forms and we’ve had the longest period of peace in millennia. The paper work is exquisite.
My experience (as a civilian USN mechanic working on subs) is ancient, but even in 1980, the Squidlies were great, the officers not so much.