We hate to see it!

Might want to reconsider how we're interpreting "suffer the children to come unto me" here...

Lastly - bureaucracy is about transparency and accountability, not inertia per se. The trade we've long made - deliberately! - is to have slower and more cumbersome processes *because* it improves stewardship of public funds!

More concerning is the general idea that the existence of technology is ipso facto an impetus for adoption and transformation. Start from first principles - what is the mission, how do I prefer to execute it, and what risks do I seek to avoid or mitigate?

I'm personally intrigued by the idea of "quantum and ubiquitous computing." Is the latter an actual term of science? If not, it's weird in a rhetorical mashup with the former which is very much a term of science...

What caught my eye was the direction to "not send up" anything below top priority missions. In this context, that's pretty clearly direction to withhold information to maintain plausible deniability for the senior politicals...

But what if something happens?

That's what you get when your assessment approach is 100% MOP and 0% MOE

I could be wrong on my history, but I don't think the US has actually called an Article V conference in the history of NATO apart from after 9/11/01. Article V isn't *automatically* triggered!

Does SecDef actually have the statutory authority to do this? Feels like something that falls squarely within the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Army...

The role of the Generals is to advise on the feasibility of objectives and the suitability of the resources provided to achieve those objectives.

It is the sole purview of the political leadership to assess the strategic prudence of an intended action relative to the likely cost.

Interesting - I'd never think to use AI to compose an email because the actual work is figuring out what I'm trying to provide or elicit. It seems odd to spend the time crafting a prompt describing the objective of the communication...unless that's the thing that removes the cognitive block?

Or otherwise reporting back that there is no feasible plan suitable to the objectives given, I guess.

The real question mark for me is Cooper at CENTCOM, since he's ultimately responsible for coming up with a feasible/suitable plan (with an associated set of resources and authorities required).

That's true for the JCS generally as well - no matter how imprudent they may believe a policy objective to be related to its cost, ultimately the Services are really only responsible to provide forces and capabilities to CCDRs.

It's not necessarily true that nobody is identifying risks - ultimately, the "acceptability" determination is uniquely held by the political leadership...

For all we know, Caine is in there on the daily saying "this is a cosmically bad idea." SECDEF and POTUS aren't obligated to take his advice...

I don't get the "sign an Executive Order" bit. Like, you're announcing that rather than just telling your subordinate to pay people who work for him (and therefore you), you're...saying you need to wait to be able to do a signing ceremony?

Well designed (analytic) wargames challenge the value structure you've built into your plan - what you think is important, and the degree to which you are willing to irrevocably commit resources to obtain (or retain) it.

A game that doesn't stress your concept of value isn't worth your effort.

It doesn't help that most deterrence discussion in military planner channels presupposes that military risk is the *principal,* if not *sole,* determinant in geopolitical strategic decision making.

I'd argue that the better balance is between breadth and scale of options...

Nothing you don't already know - but it's long bothered me that the press and other frame CJCS as "America's top general" as though Goldwater-Nichols never existed

Technically, Caine isn't in the Chain of Command and his only statutory role is in saying something like "I don't think that's a good idea, boss" or "we could do that but it's gonna take about 100k troops" etc.

It's Hegseth's job to say "Roger that boss I'll get my man Brad on it pronto"

This is also probably a bit of comeuppance for a military policy apparatus that has *for a while*, for force development (programmatic) analysis, insisted that virtually all military problems compress to a single category. If "everything else" is "lesser included" you can focus on buying cool stuff!

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

#ModelAlly

TBH I think this is actually not a bad play by CJCS in that he's putting the decision onus squarely on POTUS and SecDef.

I read it as "we have a few pretty risky options available - we'll have to see if the political leadership wants to pay that cost."

Concur, @radiofreetom.bsky.social - the US military is by any measure an exceptional fighting force, capable of a broad range and scale of actions.

It is not an *efficient* force per se - and in any case its relative efficiency is a function of the strategic objectives it's employed to achieve.

If you've got beings that exist in five dimensions, your three-dimensional corner won't be able to hold them!

Even the comments about attrition caused ("striking 200 targets") is devoid of information about *effect.* That's conspicuous - unless you don't actually care whether your fires are having any sort of effect on the military utility of the targets...