Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy
by Trent Hone
Buy on Amazon"Learning War examines the U.S. Navy's doctrinal development from 1898-1945 and explains why the Navy in that era was so successful as an organization at fostering innovation. Trent Hone argues that the Navy created a sophisticated learning system in the early years of the twentieth century that led to repeated innovations in the development of surface warfare tactics and doctrine. This book draws profoundly important conclusions that give new insight, not only into how the Navy succeeded in becoming the best naval force in the world, but also into how modern organizations can exploit today's rapid technological and social changes in their pursuit of success."--Provided by publisher.
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"This is the one history book on my list most likely to be read and discussed by Navy officers today. Trent Hone is a second generation naval historian. His father was a well-known naval historian as well. Hone starts with an important question: Why was the US Navy so successful in World War II? And he comes up with two important answers. According to Hone, what made the US Navy successful was a culture of learning. Naval officers during the 1920s and 1930s didn’t learn strict doctrine, but “clouds of options.” They came to naval problems not with a set of steps to follow, but with a big menu of options to consider. This gave them a flexibility that allowed successful adaptation and response to unexpected developments, like the sinking of most of our battleships at Pearl Harbor. Hone also emphasizes decentralization. The Navy in World War II decentralized decision-making. Subordinates had a lot of authority to carry out the objectives set by their superiors, within set parameters. In the Navy today, there’s a fear that we’ve moved too far away from the intellectual roots Trent identifies. I was brought into the Pentagon as Chief Learning Officer to reinvigorate the Navy’s intellectual foundations. To give you a sense of the problem: in World War II, 99% of admirals went to the Naval War College before the war. Today, that number is more like 20%. Hone’s book is a reminder that the Navy’s success rests on intellectual understanding and development—a fact which we neglect at our own peril. The most important thing? That if we ignore the link between our naval strength and our space and cyber capabilities, we will regret it. The Navy thinks primarily about ships on top of the water and subs below the surface. Officers graduating from the Naval Academy gravitate towards submarines and surface warfare. That’s no longer sufficient. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter After the advent of naval aviation, in the 1930s, our naval technology was nearly useless without air cover. It’s the same with these new tech capabilities. All our ships and all our weapons navigate by GPS, which relies on satellites. If our satellites are knocked-out, our advanced weaponry will become useless. As space is militarized this threat gets greater. Similarly, our command and control systems rely on our communications capabilities, which depend on cyber and software. Space and cyber are critical to our strength and defining the Navy the US will need in the coming decades."
American Naval History · fivebooks.com