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The future of military innovation studies
Adam Grissom a
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RAND Corporation, Washington, DC, USA

Online Publication Date: 01 October 2006

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 The Journal of Strategic Studies
Vol. 29, No. 5, 905 – 934, October 2006
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THE STATE OF THE FIELD

The Future of Military

Innovation Studies

ADAM GRISSOM

RAND Corporation, Washington DC, USA

ABSTRACT This article assesses the state of the art in military innovation
research. It begins with a description of the field’s four major schools of thought,
summarizing their central tenets, key points of similarity and differentiation, and
major empirical cases. It then addresses priorities for future research, observing
that while much has been learned about innovation originating among senior
officers and civilian policy-makers, far less is known about innovation originating
in field formations. Recent empirical studies hint at the importance of such
bottom-up innovation but little progress has been made in achieving a conceptual
understanding of the phenomenon. Therein lies the next major challenge, and
opportunity, for the field.

KEY WORDS: military innovation, military effectiveness, strategic studies

Innovation and stagnation have been important themes since the

earliest writings on warfare, dating at least to Thucycides’ description
of a proto-flamethrower employed by the Boetians in 423 BC.1 Modern
strategic studies carries on this tradition, reframed as a theoretical
inquiry into how and why military praxis changes over time.2 This
article assesses the state of that research program, summarizing the

1
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (London: Penguin 1972), 324–25. For a
discussion of still earlier innovation see Heidi Knecht, ‘Technological Innovation and
Design During the Early Upper Paleolithic: A Study of Organic Projectile Technologies’
(PhD diss. New York Univ. 1991).
2
On the boundaries of modern strategic studies see James J. Wirtz et al., (eds.), Strategy
in the Contemporary World: An Introduction to Strategic Studies (Oxford: OUP 2002)
and Thomas G. Mahnken, ‘The Future of Strategic Studies’, Journal of Strategic Studies
26/1 (March 2003), x–xviii.

ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/06/050905-30 Ó 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01402390600901067
 906 Adam Grissom
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major schools of thought in the field and proposing priorities for future
research.

The Meaning of Military Innovation

For most of the twentieth century scholarly writings on military
innovation took the form of grand historical narratives, operational
histories, or bureaucratic-political case studies.3 In the early 1980s
Barry Posen combined elements of each, translated through the prism
of positivist social science, to assess interwar innovation in Britain,
France, and Germany in The Sources of Military Doctrine. Posen’s
methodology amounted to a new social scientific approach to
studying how and why military organizations innovate.4 The Sources
of Military Doctrine triggered the emergence of a new field, military
innovation studies, that has grown to include several contending
schools of thought, robust debate regarding individual cases, and
a growing influence across disciplinary boundaries and beyond
academia.5
But what exactly constitutes a military innovation? Authors in the
field have proposed a tangle of orthogonal, even contradictory,
definitions over the past 20 years.6 Fortunately, much of this
dissonance is more apparent than real. A close examination of actual
practice in the field, as reflected by major publications and disserta-
tions, reveals that military innovation scholars gravitate toward

3
As examples see respectively J.F.C. Fuller, Armament and History: A Study of the
Influence of Armament on History from the Dawn of Classical Warfare to the Second
World War (New York: Scribner’s 1945); S.L.A. Marshall, Night Drop: Normandy
(New York: Jove 1984), and D. Douglas Dalgleish and Larry Schweikart, Trident
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP 1984).
4
Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany
Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1984).
5
For an example of influence on historical research, see David E. Johnson, Fast Tanks
and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP
1998); for an example of influence on the policy community see Jeffrey A. Isaacson
et al., Predicting Military Innovation (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1999).
6
For example, Matthew Evangelista’s substantive focus is force structure and strategy,
and he accordingly defines military innovation as, ‘a major restructuring of military
organizations, significant changes in strategy, or both’. Kimberly Zisk primarily
addresses intellectual developments and therefore considers military innovation to be,
‘a major change in how military planners conceptualize and prepare for future war’.
See Matthew A. Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States
and the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technologies (Princeton UP 1988);
Kimberly M. Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military
Innovation 1955–1991 (Princeton UP 1993).
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historical cases that share a distinct set of attributes. These attributes, in

effect, constitute a consensus (if tacit) definition of military innovation.
This tacit definition has three components.
First, an innovation changes the manner in which military forma-
tions function in the field.7 Measures that are administrative or
bureaucratic in nature, such as acquisition reform, are not considered
legitimate innovation unless a clear link can be drawn to operational
praxis.
Second, an innovation is significant in scope and impact.8 Minor
reforms or those that have had ambiguous effects on a military
organization are excluded, implying a consequentialist understanding
of military innovation.9
Third, innovation is tacitly equated with greater military effective-
ness.10 Only reforms that produce greater military effectiveness are
studied as innovations, and few would consider studying counter-
productive policies as innovations.11 These three elements constitute a
tacit definition of military innovation that is, approximately, ‘a change
in operational praxis that produces a significant increase in military
effectiveness’ as measured by battlefield results, Correlli Barnett’s ‘great
auditor of institutions’.12

7
The term ‘field formation’ refers to units that directly conduct military operations,
normally corresponding to the tactical and operational echelons of modern Western-
pattern military organizations. Field formations are distinct from staff and institutional
support organizations that do not have operational responsibilities.
8
Some authors prefer definitions containing the adjective ‘major’ linked to the scale of
bureaucratic adjustments made (see note 6 above). However a survey of the research
actually conducted, those cases included and not included in practice, reveals a clear
emphasis on measurable improvement to operational praxis rather than bureaucratic
changes per se.
9
Such consequentialism is admittedly problematic from a methodological perspective;
nevertheless the field appears to have accepted it in practice.
10
Understood as tactical and operational combat efficiency, broadly paralleling Murray
and Millet’s definition of military effectiveness and Martin van Creveld’s ‘fighting
power’ despite the fact that many modern military organizations have deterrence,
rather than combat, as their primary mission. See Allan R. Millet and Williamson R.
Murray, Military Effectiveness: The First World War (New York: Routledge 1991);
and Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939–
1945 (Westport, CT: Greenwood 1982).
11
Notably the field’s definition does not square with the standard dictionary definition
of innovation, which stipulates that any change, positive or otherwise, qualifies as
innovation. See ‘innovation’, The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn 1989 (Oxford:
OUP 2006) OED Online 25 May 2006 dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50117397.
12
Correlli Barnett, The Swordbearers: Studies in Supreme Command in the First World
War (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode 1963), 11.
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Schools of Military Innovation Research

Today the military innovation field comprises four primary schools of
thought. These schools focus, respectively, on civil-military relations,
interservice politics, intraservice politics, and organizational culture.13
Each school has constructed its own explanatory model of military
innovation, postulating that certain factors determine whether a
military organization will innovate.14 This section distills, describes,
and compares the four schools in approximate order of their
emergence.15

The Civil-Military Model of Military Innovation

The civil-military model was developed by Barry Posen in the early
1980s and codified in The Sources of Military Doctrine.16 Posen’s
empirical cases include interwar doctrinal developments in Britain,
France, and Germany. They range from the establishment of Royal Air
Force (RAF) Fighter Command to French adoption of methodical battle
doctrine and German development of mechanized combined arms
tactics.17 Posen concludes that it was primarily civil-military dynamics
that determined whether interwar militaries would innovate.18 Bent on
13
It could be argued that there are two additional schools based, respectively, on neo-
realism and technological determinism. The neo-realist school would posit that fear of
foreign military capabilities is necessary and sufficient to cause innovation. The
technological determinism school would posit that a technological imperative necessary
and sufficient to drive innovation. Over the past 20 years these two arguments have
been undercut and ultimately rejected by the field. The consensus view is that they may,
at best, highlight permissive underlying conditions for innovation rather than causal
models for any specific innovation. As such, they are not analyzed here in any detail.
14
In fact, each school encompasses a set of closely related models. For the sake of
clarity and brevity these have been distilled into an ideal type for each school.
15
The literature on military innovation is vast, and space limits prevent discussion of all
relevant works, or even nuanced discussion of the primary works. This article focuses
on the key attributes of the key works in the field, but unwarranted omissions
undoubtedly remain. Further, this article does not consider the literatures on the
Revolution in Military Affairs or the Military Revolution. For an excellent summary of
these literatures, see Williamson R. Murray and MacGregor Knox, ‘Thinking about
Revolutions in Warfare’, in idem, (eds.), The Dynamics of Military Revolution: 1300–
2050 (Cambridge: CUP 2001), 1–14.
16
Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, passim.
17
Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine. On Fighter Command see 171–75, on
methodical battle see 135–40, on blitzkrieg see 189–92.
18
Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 232–35. Specifically, Posen argues that realist
threat perceptions cause political leaders to push for innovation. They are necessary but
not sufficient to cause innovation (see also supra note 13).
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quick conquest, German leaders pushed the Wehrmacht to innovate,

resulting in blitzkrieg. Fearful of German aerial attack, British leaders
pushed the RAF to innovate, resulting in Fighter Command’s integrated
system of radars, command centers, and fighter squadrons. French
leaders failed push their armed forces to innovate, with notorious
results in spring 1940.19 Posen concludes that innovation will only
occur if statesmen intervene in military service doctrinal development,
preferably with the assistance of maverick officers from within the
service.20 Otherwise, military organizations will gradually stagnate and
ultimately fail the societies they exist to serve.
A number of major empirical studies buttress the civil-military
model.21 Edmund Beard described similar civil-military dynamics in his
early path-breaking research on the development of the US Air Force
(USAF) Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) programs.22 Beard
writes that it was a political appointee serving the Secretary of the Air
Force and direct pressure by the Eisenhower administration that
converted the USAF from its long-established preference for manned
bombers to strategic missiles in the mid-1950s. Had civilians not
intervened, the USAF would have continued to develop successive series
of manned bombers, despite doubts about their survivability.23
Kimberly Zisk’s study of Soviet doctrinal development during the
Cold War makes a similar point.24 She argues that Soviet civil servants
pushed military staffs to respond to changes in North Atlantic Treaty

19
Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 224–26. See also Barry R. Posen, ‘The
Systematic, Organizational, and Technological Origins of Strategic Doctrine: France,
Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars’ (PhD diss. Univ. of California at
Berkeley 1981).
20
Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 222–36. By ‘mavericks’ Posen means officers
with unconventional ideas who are willing to cooperate with civilians to reshape the
military.
21
In addition to the studies discussed below, see Christopher J. Savos, ‘The Irresistible
Force vs. the Immovable Object: Civilian Attempts to Force Innovation on a Reluctant
Military’ (Cambridge, MA: PhD diss. MIT 1993) and David A. Armstrong, Bullets and
Bureaucrats: The Machinegun and the United States Army: 1861–1916 (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press 1982).
22
Edmund Beard, Developing the ICBM: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics (New York:
Columbia UP 1976). Beard’s work predates The Sources of Military Doctrine. At the
time it would have been considered part of the subfield of political science focusing on
bureaucratic politics, but retrospectively we may also place it into the military
innovation subfield.
23
Beard, Developing the ICBM, 145–94. The appointee was Trevor Gardner.
24
Zisk argues that the basic thrust of Soviet planning was established as a reaction to
changes in NATO doctrine and capabilities, as already discussed. However, the
substance of the Soviet response was given its form by a complex interplay between the
 910 Adam Grissom
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Organization (NATO) doctrine. Zisk demonstrates, for example, that

Soviet responses to Flexible Response, the Schlesinger Doctrine, and
NATO Follow-on Forces Attack were given much of their substance in
a process of formal debates and informal coalition building between
senior civil servants and senior military officers.25 The role of civilian
Soviet defence analysts grew markedly over the decades and, according
to Zisk, played a key role in late Cold War Soviet planning.26
Deborah Avant also finds support for the civil-military model in her
research on American and British performance in counter-insurgency
campaigns.27 Her study focuses on the apparent inability of the US
armed forces to react appropriately to the challenge of counter-
insurgency in Vietnam and the British Army’s much more successful
adaptation during the South African War. According to Avant, the
difference can be traced to civil-military relations.28 Due to the
peculiarities of the British and American political systems, Lord
Salisbury had more latitude than John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.
Johnson to replace senior commanders in theater.29 Kennedy and
Johnson were forced to rely on ad hoc micromanagement instead, and
innovation suffered as a result.30

The Interservice Model of Military Innovation

The interservice model of military innovation focuses on the relation-
ship between the military services within a state. The core contention of
the interservice model is that resource scarcity is a key catalyst for
innovation. Military organizations seek to maintain their budget
authority and end-strength, which requires them to maintain control
over their traditional missions. On occasion, a new mission area may
emerge in which none of the services have a dominant advantage, or an
old mission may be reopened for competition between the services. The
interservice model posits that services will compete to develop

Soviet officer corps, political authorities, and (late in the Cold War) a growing group of
Soviet civilian defense planners. Zisk, Engaging the Enemy, 178–79.
25
Zisk, Engaging the Enemy, 55–75 on Flexible Response, 97–115 on Schlesinger
Doctrine see 135–56 on Follow-on-Force Attack.
26
Zisk, Engaging the Enemy, 183.
27
Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from
Peripheral Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1994); Deborah D. Avant, ‘The Institutional
Sources of Military Doctrine – Hegemons in Peripheral Wars’, International Studies
Quarterly 37/4 (Dec. 1993), 409–30.
28
Avant, ‘The Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine’, 417–22.
29
Ibid., 422–26.
30
Ibid., 427.
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capabilities to address these contested mission areas, believing that

additional resources will accrue to the winner. The result is innovation.
An early example of the interservice model is Harvey Sapolsky’s
Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success
in Government.31 Sapolsky demonstrates that development of the
Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile system was driven, in
important ways, by competition with the USAF and its Minuteman
ICBM.32 This interservice rivalry created momentum within the Navy,
clearing away bureaucratic obstacles and helping the Polaris program
managers to assemble talent and resources in a manner that was more
efficient than most programs. The result was a new leg of the nuclear
triad, produced ahead of schedule and within budget.
Michael Armacost has similarly demonstrated that competition
between the US Army and the USAF for the intermediate-range nuclear
mission drove the development of the Thor and Jupiter missile systems
during the 1950s.33 As a weapon with no clear technological pedigree,
being neither a direct development of a fixed-wing aircraft nor an
evolution of the traditional cannon or rocket system, both the USAF
and Army could lay plausible claim to jurisdiction over intermediate-
range ballistic missile (IRBM) development, and both wanted the
resources and prestige that would presumably accompany this mission.
To this end, the Army sought to accelerate its Jupiter program, delay an
interservice decision as long as possible, and develop a doctrine for
using nuclear weapons in tactical and operational roles. The USAF
countered by accelerating its Thor missile program and arguing for the
benefits of centralizing all nuclear weapons under a single service.
Owen Cote’s research supports the intraservice school by demon-
strating that too much interservice jointness can stifle innovation. Cote
contrasts the effects of two US Navy ballistic missile programs on the
innovativeness of the other US armed services. He finds that in the
context of intense interservice rivalry in the late 1950s, the Polaris
program was not only innovative itself (as originally argued by
31
Harvey M. Sapolsky, Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic
Success in Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1972). Sapolsky’s work
preceded Posen’s Sources of Military Doctrine by more than a decade, and at the
time was considered part of the bureaucratic politics field. Retrospectively we may
include it in the military innovation field, a judgment Sapolsky’s subsequent work
would support. See for example Harvey M. Sapolsky, ‘On the Theory of Military
Innovation’, Breakthroughs 9/1 (Spring 2000), 35–39.
32
Sapolsky, Polaris System Development, 37–41.
33
Michael H. Armacost, The Politics of Weapons Innovation: The Thor-Jupiter
Controversy (New York: Columbia UP 1969). See also Michael H. Armacost, ‘The
Thor-Jupiter Controversy’, in Donald A. MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, (eds.), The
Social Shaping of Technology, 2nd edn (Milton Keynes,UK: Open UP 1999), 395–405.
 912 Adam Grissom
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Sapolsky), but its success also spurred the USAF to improve the
survivability of its own nuclear delivery systems. By contrast, the
Trident II ballistic missile program of the late 1980s was developed in
an environment of less intense interservice rivalry. Cote concludes that
because the Navy developed the Trident within the existing joint triad
concept, rather than as a competitor with other services’ systems (as
with Polaris), the Trident spurred less innovation in the USAF.34
Andrew Bacevich’s research on the US Army in the early Cold War
also emphasizes the role of interservice competition.35 Bacevich writes
that in the 1950s the US Army feared that it would continue to lose
budget share and status to the USAF unless it drastically changed to fit
the Eisenhower’s nuclear-centric ‘New Look’ doctrine. As a result, it
acquired several tactical nuclear weapons, such as the Davy Crockett
and Little John rockets, and redesigned its doctrine for dispersed
operations on the nuclear battlefield.36 In 1956 the Army announced
that it would convert to a Pentomic Division design optimized for
atomic warfighting. However, when the Kennedy administration
subsequently shifted away from the Eisenhower-era focus on nuclear
weapons, thus reducing the interservice threat, the Army quickly shifted
back to a more conventional doctrine.37
Several authors have observed that the interservice rivalry of the
1950s and 1960s also spurred the US Army to develop rotary-wing
aviation capabilities, and particularly attack helicopters. James Bradin’s
work highlights the Army’s longstanding discontent with USAF close
air support, which led the Army to desire its own means of aerial
firepower. Though the Army would have preferred a light fixed-wing
platform, such as the OV-10 Mohawk, an existing interservice
agreement prevented this. Instead, the Army developed attack
helicopters armed with guns, rockets, and missiles. This ultimately
led to the establishment of the Army’s aviation branch, the develop-
ment of advanced rotary-wing aircraft such as the AH-64 Apache, and
a robust force structure dedicated to attack helicopters.38 Fred
Bergerson’s classic The Army Gets an Air Force echoes this narrative,
describing the Army’s strategy as ‘insurgent bureaucratic politics’

34
Owen R. Cote, ‘The Politics of Innovative Military Doctrine: The U.S. Navy and
Fleet Ballistic Missiles’ (Cambridge, MA: PhD diss. MIT 1998).
35
Andrew J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: the US Army between Korea and Vietnam
(Washington DC: National Defense UP 1986).
36
Bacevich, Pentomic Era, 103–28.
37
Sixty Years of Reorganizing for Combat: A Historical Trend Analysis (Leavenworth,
KS: Combat Studies Institute 2000), Ch. 4.
38
James W. Bradin, From Hot Air to Hellfire: The History of Army Attack Aviation
(Novato, CA: Presidio Press 1994).
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against the USAF as the two services competed for the close air support
mission.39
Douglas Campbell has argued that the Army’s push to develop attack
helicopters also spurred the USAF to develop innovative close air
support capabilities. Campbell writes in The Warthog and the Close
Air Support Debate that the Army AH-56 Cheyenne attack helicopter
program caused USAF leaders to fear that the entire mission of
attacking enemy fielded forces would be transferred to the Army. In
response the USAF developed its first dedicated close air support
aircraft, the A-10 Warthog.40 Ironically the AH-56 was soon cancelled
but the A-10 remains to this day the mainstay of USAF close air support
capabilities.

The Intraservice Model of Military Innovation

The third school of military innovation research focuses on intraservice
competition, and specifically competition between branches of the same
military service. It suggests that military services should not be treated
as unitary actors. Instead, innovation in modern military organizations
tends to involve competition between established branches of a military
service and new branches that embrace new military capabilities.
The seminal work in this school is Stephen P. Rosen’s 1991 book
Winning the Next War, which defined a model of military innovation
drawn from more than 20 innovations ranging from carrier aviation to
amphibious warfare and airmobile assault.41 Rosen contends that
successful innovation requires a very specific alignment of service
leaders, mid-level officers, and institutional arrangements to protect the
longevity of a new innovation.42 Specifically, he postulates that the
innovation process begins when senior officers develop ‘a new theory of
victory, an explanation of what the next war will look like and how
officers must fight if it is to be won’.43 An ‘ideological struggle’ ensues
within the service. Advocates of the new theory work within the service
to find allies and resources.

39
Frederic A. Bergerson, The Army Gets an Air Force (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
UP 1980).
40
Douglas N. Campbell, The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate (Annapolis,
MD: Naval Institute Press 2004).
41
Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1991).
42
Stephen P. Rosen, ‘New Ways of War: Understanding Military Innovation’,
International Security 13/1 (Summer 1988), 134–68.
43
Rosen, Winning the Next War, 20.
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In particular, they seek mid-level officers with excellent conventional

credentials – such as successful command tours and a reputation for
competence – who can be converted to the new theory.44 These mid-
level officers, once converted, must then be provided with high-quality
professional opportunities. These ‘promotion pathways’ must reward
the young officers for their adherence to the new theory and eventually
lead to the top of the service. Rosen argues, ‘Power is won through
influence over who is promoted to positions of senior command.’45
Typically, this involves establishing a new arm or branch of service and
opening the senior officer echelons to officers from the new arm.46
Once all of these elements are in place – the new theory, the new
branch, and promotion pathways, the service has accomplished
innovation.47
Some studies embrace the intraservice model. Jon Giese and Susan
Marquis have found in separate studies, for example, that the US
Department of Defense created innovative new special operations
capabilities during the 1980s by managing intraservice politics.48 In
1987 the department established a separate Special Operations Com-
mand (SOCOM) to unify the management and oversight of special
operators from all services. Marquis observes that the existence of
this specialized command provided better promotion opportunities
to special operators, drawing high-quality officers to the field and
promoting innovation and greater effectiveness. Giese emphasizes the
advocacy role of the specialized command, and particularly the
expansion of special operations missions during the 1980s and 1990s
to include combating terrorism and counter-proliferation.49
In the naval realm, Vincent Davis describes several US Navy case
studies that fit the intraservice model, including the development of
nuclear gravity bombs, nuclear propulsion for capital ships, and fleet
ballistic missile submarines.50 In each case, alliances between senior
officers and mid-level officers were the key to moving the innovation
44
Ibid., 20–21.
45
Ibid., 20.
46
Ibid., 22–23.
47
Rosen’s theories have been revised and extended, to a degree, by Suzanne C. Nielson,
‘Preparing for War: The Dynamics of Peacetime Military Reform’ (Cambridge, MA:
PhD diss. Harvard Univ. 2003).
48
Jon F. Giese, ‘Military Innovation: Sources of Change for United States Special
Operations Forces’ (Monterey, CA: MA thesis US Naval Postgraduate School 1999);
Susan L. Marquis, Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding US Special Operations Forces
(Washington DC: Brookings 1997).
49
Marquis, Unconventional Warfare, 107–9; Giese, Military Innovation, 90–91.
50
Vincent Davis, The Politics of Innovation: Patterns in Navy Cases (Denver, CO:
Univ. of Denver Press 1967).
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forward over the resistance of the entrenched Navy platform

communities.51 In the case of nuclear bombs for Navy strike aircraft,
for example, Commander ‘Chick’ Hayward (a physicist, aviator, and
member of the Manhattan Project team) assembled a bureaucratic
coalition within the service to overcome resistance from the Navy’s
own Bureau of Aeronautics.52
Likewise, Gregory Engel argues that the development of the
Tomahawk cruise missile resulted from an alliance between senior
officers and mid-level program officers. This alliance was the key to
overcoming resistance by the US Navy aviation community, which
wished to maintain its control over the surface strike mission.53 During
the 1950s and 1960s, members of the Navy’s surface warfare
community agitated for a surface-to-surface missile, but the develop-
ment of strike aircraft was accorded top priority. In the missile field,
surface-to-air systems were the priority. There was little to spare
for surface-to-surface systems. This began to change, however as the
surface warfare advocates developed allies in the Navy’s submarine
community and, eventually, supporters among Department of Defense
civilians.
With the advent of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in the early
1970s, a nuclear-tipped version of the cruise missile came to be seen as
a potential bargaining chip, which resulted in a steady if modest stream
of resources. The cruise missile advocates capitalized on the additional
time and money to demonstrate that the cruise missile concept could
work for conventional strike as well. By the 1990s the Tomahawk was
an integral component of the Navy’s surface strike capability, despite
long-standing resistance from the aviation community.54
W. Blair Haworth and Rod Coffey have both observed intraservice
dynamics in the evolution of US Army mechanized infantry.55 Their
studies suggest that interbranch politics block doctrinal and technolo-
gical innovation because the mechanized infantry falls between two
dominant communities, the Armor branch and the Infantry branch.
Mechanized infantrymen work closely with tanks, but they are not
‘true’ members of the armored fraternity. They are infantry, but they

51
Davis, Politics of Innovation, 33–36.
52
Ibid., 11–12.
53
Gregory A. Engel, ‘Cruise Missiles and the Tomahawk’, in B. Hayes and D. Smith,
(eds.), The Politics of Naval Innovation (Newport, RI: US Naval War College 1994),
18–22.
54
Engel, ‘Cruise Missiles and the Tomahawk’, 22.
55
Rod A. Coffey, ‘Doctrinal Orphan or Active Partner? A History of US Army
Mechanized Infantry Doctrine’ (Ft Leavenworth, KS: MA thesis, US Army Command
and General Staff College 2000).
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lack credibility with the ‘true’ light and airborne infantry. According to
Coffey, this position dooms mechanized infantry to obscurity, and both
the Infantry and Armor branches are positioned to block innovation.56
W. Blair Haworth echoes this view in The Bradley and How It Got
That Way, suggesting that these interbranch dynamics prevent the
Army from fully exploiting the potential of infantry fighting vehicles.
Haworth contends that the Army’s current infantry fighting vehicle,
the M2 Bradley, is hampered by technical specifications established by
too many army branch communities. The result is a vehicle that is
passable for several missions but truly effective in none, and a missed
opportunity for innovation.57

The Cultural Model of Military Innovation

During the 1990s strategic studies scholars exhibited increasing interest
in strategic and organizational culture.58 In time this wave of interest
reached the military innovation field as well, though it has not yet
attained the same stature as the more established schools of military
innovation. The key figure, to date, has been Theo Farrell from King’s
College London. Farrell has argued that culture (defined as ‘inter-
subjective beliefs about the social and natural word that define actors,
their situations, and the possibilities of action’) is a major causal factor
in military innovation.59 Based on European, American, and East Asian
case studies, Farrell has argued that culture sets the context for military
innovation, fundamentally shaping organizations’ reactions to techno-
logical and strategic opportunities.60 Farrell’s research suggests that
culture can impact military innovation in three ways.
First, senior service leaders can reshape culture to lead the
organization toward innovation – Farrell calls this planned change.

56
Coffey, Doctrinal Orphan or Active Partner? 7–12.
57
W. Blair Haworth, The Bradley and How It Got That Way: Technology, Institutions,
and the Problem of Mechanized Infantry in the United States Army (Westport, CT:
Greenwood 1999).
58
For example, see Peter J. Katzenstein, (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms
and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia UP 1996).
59
Theo G. Farrell and T. Terriff, The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics,
Technology (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002), 7–8. See also Theo G. Farrell,
‘Figuring Out Fighting Organizations: The New Organizational Analysis in Strategic
Studies’, Journal of Strategic Studies 19/1 (Spring 1996), 122–35; Theo G. Farrell,
‘Culture and Military Power’, Review of International Studies 24/3 (Fall 1998),
407–16.
60
Emily O. Goldman, ‘The Spread of Western Military Models to Ottoman Turkey and
Meiji Japan’, in Farrell and Terriff , Sources of Military Change; Terry Terriff, ‘US
Ideas and Military Change in NATO, 1989–1994’, in ibid.
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Second, external shocks can reshape culture thereby providing fertile

ground for innovation.
Third, cross-national professional military culture can lead military
organizations to emulate one another.61 Once a culture has been set, it
blinds the service to some opportunities for innovation while giving
prominence to others. As such, it is a major influence on the course and
content of military innovation.62
Farrell’s argument is echoed by other scholars.63 RAND analyst
Carl Builder has argued that the three US armed services possess
‘distinct and enduring personalities’ that influence innovative
behavior. The Navy is seized with an independence of spirit that
leads the service to favor standalone capabilities. The USAF is
smitten by technology, particularly flying machines, and perennially
favors fixed-wing aircraft investment. The Army, according to
Builder, is caught between a desire to remain the nation’s armored
juggernaut in the World War II template and a desire to meet the
nation’s need for unglamorous stability operations in the post-Cold
War era.64
Richard Lock-Pullan’s work on US Army AirLand Battle doctrine
echoes Farrell’s ‘directed change’ model of culturally-based inno-
vation.65 Pullan traces the efforts of the Army’s leaders to create a
new professional identity for their service in the wake of the Vietnam
War. A focus on conventional war in Western Europe, modeled in
many ways on World War II, was central to this new identity.
A new emphasis on doctrine also played an important role in redefi-
ning the officer corps. In leading this cultural change, Pullan

61
Theo G. Farrell and Terry Terriff, ‘The Sources of Military Change’, in idem, Sources
of Military Change, 8–10. See also specifically Theo G. Farrell, ‘World Culture and the
Irish Army, 1922–1942’, in Farrell and Terriff, Sources of Military Change, 69–90.
62
Farrell’s most recent study echoes these themes while extending the cultural/
constructivist approach well beyond the topic of innovation. See Theo G. Farrell, The
Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner
2005), 176–77.
63
In addition to those described here, Thomas McNaugher’s The M16 Controversies:
Military Organizations and Weapons Acquisition (New York: Praeger 1984) deserves
mention. McNaugher contends that the US Army’s ‘marksmanship tradition’ heavily
influenced its approach to small arms acquisition from its earliest days through the
1960s. However, McNaugher rejects any association with a cultural school of
innovation.
64
Carl H. Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and
Analysis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 1989). Builder did not use the term
‘stability operations’ but it is the mission set to which he referred.
65
Richard Lock-Pullan, US Intervention Policy and Army Innovation: From Vietnam to
Iraq (London: Routledge 2005).
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contends, the Army’s senior leadership also triggered the AirLand

doctrinal innovation, which flowed from and complemented the new
identity.66
Culture is also been embraced as an explanatory variable by
Elizabeth Kier. Her 1997 book, Imagining War, argues that culture
decisively shaped French and British doctrine between the World
Wars.67 Kier contends, for example, that the French Army adopted
the methodical battle doctrine because of a cultural belief on the part
of the officer corps that short-term conscripts would be unable to
carry out more dynamic and complex operations.68 Given the short
period of conscription mandated by the National Assembly, French
Army officers could see no alternative but to resort to simple and
methodical operations. Kier argues that this was not a rational
choice, but rather an instinctive assumption based upon a cultural
frame.
Eric Giordano has also argued that US Army operations in the post-
Cold War era demonstrate the effects of service culture. He notes
that beginning in 1993 the Army’s capstone operational doctrine,
codified in Field Manual 100-5 Operations, gave increasing promi-
nence to non-traditional missions such as peacekeeping. However,
echoing Builder, in practice the Army continued to prepare individual
soldiers and tactical units solely for conventional warfighting opera-
tions. Giordano explains this divergence between explicit doctrine
and actual practice as the manifestation of an army culture that
privileges the conventional warfighting mission above non-traditional
operations.69
Robert Mullins has examined the sources of such cultural frames. His
recent study of naval innovation outlines the relationship between
professional military education and the professional culture of a
military organization. Mullins argues that the major increases in
military effectiveness accomplished by the Royal Navy and the US
Navy at the turn of the twentieth century were in fact the result of
deep cultural changes embedded in the officer corps via professional
military education some years earlier. The implications of Mullins’
arguments are that the structure and curriculum of military educational

66
Ibid., 192–94.
67
Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the
Wars ( Princeton UP 1997); Elizabeth Kier, ‘Culture and Military Doctrine – France
Between the Wars ’, International Security 19/4 (Spring 1995), 65–93.
68
Kier, Imagining War, 72–77.
69
Eric R. Giordano, ‘The US Army and Non-Traditional Missions: Explaining
Divergence in Doctrine and Practice in the Post-Cold War Era’ (Medford, MA: PhD
diss. Tufts Univ. 2003).
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institutions will shape professional military culture and therefore

influence the direction of military innovation.70
Thomas Mahnken has applied the cultural approach to under-
standing how states view military innovation abroad. In Uncovering
Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918–
1941, Mahnken compares and contrasts nine cases of US intelligence-
gathering against Japan, Germany, and Britain during the interwar
period.71 He observes that US military intelligence possessed consider-
able raw information about a foreign innovation in most cases, but the
manner in which it interpreted this information, and reacted, was
conditioned by cultural views.72 For example, the Army persisted in
believing that the interwar Luftwaffe was seriously pursuing a strategic
bombardment capability despite much evidence to the contrary.73

Military Innovation as a Top-Down Process

Where does innovation originate? The four contemporary schools of
military innovation, and virtually every major study on the subject,
argue that military organizations are intrinsically inflexible, prone to
stagnation, and fearful of change. They are large bureaucracies and,
according to Stephen Rosen, ‘Almost everything we know in theory
about large bureaucracies suggests not only that they are hard to change,
but that they are designed not to change.’74 The implication is that
military organizations must be goaded into innovating. As Barry Posen
has written, even the most successful military organizations require a
good ‘kick in the pants’ from external authority if they are to innovate.75

70
Robert E. Mullins, ‘Sharpening the Trident: The Decisions of 1889 and the Creation
of Modern Seapower’ (PhD diss. King’s College London 2000).
71
Thomas G. Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign
Military Innovation, 1918–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2002) 44–47.
72
Thomas G. Mahnken, ‘Uncovering Foreign Military Innovation’, Journal of Strategic
Studies 22/4 (Winter 1999) 26–54. A similar point is made in George F. Hofmann, ‘The
Tactical and Strategic Use of Attaché Intelligence: The Spanish Civil War and the U.S.
Army’s Misguided Quest for a Modern Tank Doctrine’, Journal of Military History,
62/2 (Jan. 1998), 101–33.
73
Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War, 101–9. Mahnken and Emily O. Goldman also
contribute to a growing sub-literature on the international diffusion of military
innovation. Diffusion is a sufficiently different topic from innovation qua innovation
that the diffusion literature is not reviewed here in detail. However, see Emily O.
Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason, Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas (Stanford
UP 2003); Emily O. Goldman and Richard B. Andres, ‘Systemic Effects of Military
Innovation and Diffusion’, Security Studies 8/4 (Summer 1999), 79–125.
74
Rosen, Winning the Next War, 2. Emphasis original.
75
Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, 226.
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As a result, all of the major models of military innovation operate

from the top down.76 The civil-military model argues that senior
civilian decision-makers interpret the geopolitical context and impose
innovation upon the military services with the help of maverick proxies
within the service.77 The interservice model of military innovation
argues that senior service decision-makers, such as the chiefs of staff,
determine the best course for the status and health of the service and
then induce the service bureaucracy to innovate accordingly. The
intraservice model contends that senior service leaders imagine a new
‘theory of victory’ then leverage the internal politics of their service to
put the new theory into practice.78
Finally, the cultural model argues that a set of implicit beliefs exerts
fundamental (if largely unseen) influence on the direction of military
innovation.79 Senior leaders are the key to setting this culture.80 In
instances where the culture is not amenable to the innovation that
senior officers view as necessary, they can and will manipulate the
culture to ensure that the bulk of the service complies with the required
innovation.81 According to the major models, therefore, the senior
officers and/or civilians are the agents of innovation. They recognize the
need for change, formulate a new way of warfare, position their
organization to seize the opportunity of innovation, and bludgeon,
politically leverage, or culturally manipulate the organization into
compliance.

Evidence of Bottom-Up Innovation

That none of the major models of military innovation allow for
bottom-up innovation is unusual, because empirical cases of such
innovation are not unknown.82 One famous example is the German
88 mm Flak anti-aircraft cannon, also known as the Flak 18/36.83 The
76
For an example that is more extreme than most, see Fred W. Gaudlip, ‘Vision to
Victory – Space, Mahan, and Mitchell: The Role of the Visionary in Cross-
Organizational Innovation’ (Montgomery, AL: MA thesis US Air Command and Staff
College 2001).
77
See Avant, ‘The Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine’, 427.
78
See Rosen, Winning the Next War, 8–21.
79
See Chapter 2 in Kier, Imagining War.
80
Farrell and Terriff, ‘The Sources of Military Change’, 8.
81
Farrell and Terriff term this ‘planned change’.
82
One of the earliest to recognize this was Eliot A. Cohen, see ‘Change and
Transformation in Military Affairs’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 27/3 (Sept. 2004),
400–1.
83
This terminology is fully explained in Thomas L. Jentz, Dreaded Threat: The 8.8 cm
Flak 18/36/37 in the Anti-Tank Role (Boyds, MD: Panzer Tracts 2001).
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Flak 18/36 was built purely for air defense, mounted high on an
unarmored pedestal and lacking sights for firing at ground targets.84
However, the Flak 18/36 arguably had its greatest impact as an anti-
tank system during World War II.
The application of the Flak 18/36 to the anti-tank role can be traced
to improvisation during the Spanish Civil War. The first employment of
the Flak 18/36 against tanks apparently occurred on 10 March 1938.
On that day a flak battery of the German Condor Legion was
accompanying an assault by the Spanish Nationalist 150th Division
near the town of Belchite in Aragon. During the battle they were
unexpectedly counter-attacked by Republican Soviet-made BT-5
medium tanks and the ‘panic-stricken’ Luftwaffe battery commander
turned his guns on the BT-5s.85 Despite the limits of anti-aircraft
ammunition the battery destroyed three BT-5s, obliged the remainder
to break contact, and preserved the momentum of the assault.86 Thus
was born the legend of the Flak 18/36 in the anti-tank role, much to the
‘horror of experts in Berlin’ who had earlier rejected its tank-killing
potential.87
Though the Condor Legion flak battery belonged to the Luftwaffe,
the results from Spain soon found their way to the anti-tank community
in the German Army. Before the invasion of France in 1940 Flak 18/36s
were fielded to anti-tank units along with an armor-piercing variant
of the 88 mm round.88 During the 1940 campaign in France, the Flak

84
Jentz, Dreaded Threat, 8–12.
85
Ian V. Hogg describes of the emotional effect of the BT-5 attack. See Ian V. Hogg,
Tank Killing: Anti-Tank Warfare by Men and Machines (New York: Sarpedon Press
1996) 79–80.
86
This engagement is described in Raymond L. Proctor, Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the
Spanish Civil War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1983), 190–94. The tanks are
identified as BT-4s in Hogg, Tank Killing, 9–10. However, according to Steven J.
Zaloga, Soviet tank shipments to Spain were limited to T-26s and BT-5s. Hogg’s
nomenclature is likely a typographical error, and the tanks were probably BT-5s. See
Steven J. Zaloga, ‘Soviet Tank Operations in the Spanish Civil War’, Journal of Slavic
Military Studies 12/3 (Sept.1999) 134–62. An anonymous reviewer suggests that the
Germans may also have used 88 mm anti-aircraft guns against tanks during World
War I. This is certainly conceivable, given the way the Germans threw everything they
had at the new threat presented by allied armor, but this author has seen no such
accounts. The point here is that the Flak 18/36 was designed (beginning in 1928) as a
specialist anti-aircraft weapon and later applied to the anti-tank role.
87
The quote is from the diary of a Condor Legion officer reproduced in Proctor, Hitler’s
Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War, 134. The German Army’s 1937 review of anti-tank
capabilities, which specifically dismissed the 88 mm Flak in this regard, is described in
Jentz, Dreaded Threat, 8–9.
88
Ibid., 23–25.
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18/36 proved particularly useful as a counter to the French Char-1bis

and British Matilda tanks, which were more heavily protected than the
Germans expected.89 The potential of the Flak 18/36 was more
completely exploited the next year by Rommel’s Afrika Korps, which
perfected the art of luring British tanks into charges against screens of
Flak 18/36s, with catastrophic results for the British as demonstrated at
Halfaya in June 1941.90 As the war continued, the Flak 18/36 became
ever-more important to German anti-tank capabilities, particularly in
the east against the well-protected Soviet T-34 and JS-1 tanks.91
There are other known cases of bottom-up innovation as well, and
not all of them occurring in wartime. Keith Bickel contends, for
example, that the interwar development of the Marine Corps’ inno-
vative small wars doctrine was a bottom-up process.92 He describes the
efforts of a relatively small group of middle-ranking and junior officers
to assess, synthesize, and disseminate the Corps’ experience in small
wars (Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua primarily) through an
informal discourse carried on in the Corps’ schools and journals. This
discourse occurred outside formal doctrinal channels during much of
the period, and in the face of a major push by senior Corps officers to
embrace an entirely different doctrinal focus, the Advanced Base
mission. Bickel concludes that the top-down models of innovation
cannot explain the development of the small wars doctrine. Rather, the
key figures in the story were, ‘‘. . . lower level officers, experts in their
field, who created and promulgated doctrine, sometimes even despite
the reluctance of their senior-most leadership.’’93
Thomas A. Hughes also portrays bottom-up innovation in the
development of the US Close Air Support (CAS) in the European
Theater of Operations during World War II.94 Hughes describes how
Brigadier General Elwood ‘Pete’ Quesada led the development of
American CAS techniques from his IX Tactical Air Command
headquarters in Middle Wallop, Hampshire. With the Army Air Forces
as a whole, and the 8th and 9th Air Forces in England especially,
89
Ibid., 25–30.
90
Hogg, Tank Killing, 85–86.
91
Jentz, Dreaded Threat, 31–38.
92
Keith B. Bickel, ‘Mars Learning: The Marine Corps Development of Small Wars
Doctrine, 1915–1940’ (Washington DC: PhD diss. Johns Hopkins Univ. 1999), 285–
310. See also Keith B. Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corps’ Development of Small
Wars Doctrine, 1915–1940 (Boulder, CO: Westview 2000).
93
Bickel, ‘Mars Learning’ (1999), iii.
94
Thomas A. Hughes, ‘The Other Air War: Elwood ‘‘Pete’’ Quesada and American
Tactical Airpower in World War II Europe’ (Houston, TX: PhD diss. Univ. of Houston
1994). See also Thomas A. Hughes, Overlord: General Pete Quesada and the Triumph
of Tactical Air Power in World War II (New York: Free Press 1995).
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apathetic toward CAS, Quesada and his staff were assigned the
unenviable task of figuring out how to provide CAS to Allied forces
invading France.95 Quesada led a major study effort to learn from CAS
operations conducted in North Africa in 1942. He also initiated a series
of exercises and experiments in southern England to prepare for the
invasion.96 After many setbacks and frustrations, the studies and
experiments yielded a remarkably effective CAS system melding fighter
aircraft (P-47 Thunderbolts in particular), air liaison parties, and radio
nets that some have credited with considerably accelerating the
campaign in France.97
Field experimentation also plays a prominent role in Robert
Angevine’s account of US Navy attempts to improve its anti-submarine
warfare effectiveness during the Cold War.98 During the late 1960s and
early 1970s the Pacific Fleet conducted a series of anti-submarine
warfare experiments collectively known as the ‘Uptide’ program.
‘Uptide’ pitted the Pacific Fleet’s anti-submarine group against an
aggressor force of US submarines simulating Soviet vessels armed with
cruise missiles. Over three years, the fleet conducted an extended series
of events that allowed new tactics and prototype technologies to be
tried out under exercise conditions. According to Angevine, the ‘Uptide’
experiments resulted in several important insights, including the fact
that the anti-submarine group’s active sonar systems actually allowed
the adversary to find its target (typically an aircraft carrier being
protected by the group) more quickly – they were a ‘beacon’ for the
Soviets.99 These insights led to several important innovations, including
the development of ‘novel acoustic deception devices’ (decoys) and the
turn toward passive sonar for anti-submarine search.100
Finally, Bruce Gudmundsson and Timothy Lupfer have written
detailed accounts of the bottom-up development of German storm-
troop tactics in World War I.101 The stormtroop innovation was
95
Hughes, The Other Air War, 257–62.
96
Ibid., 244–46.
97
Ibid., 28–29.
98
Robert G. Angevine, ‘Innovation and Experimentation in the US Navy: The UPTIDE
Antisubmarine Warfare Experiments, 1969–1972’, Journal of Strategic Studies 28/1
(Feb. 2005). Another case of bottom-up development of ASW tactics is described in
Marc Milner, ‘Convoy Escorts: Tactics, Technology, and Innovation in the Royal
Canadian Navy, 1939–1943’, Military Affairs 48/1 (Jan. 1984), 19–25.
99
Angevine, ‘Innovation and Experimentation in the US Navy’, 90.
100
Ibid., 94.
101
Bruce I. Gundmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army,
1914–1918 (Westport, CT: Praeger 1995); Timothy T. Lupfer, The Dynamics of
Doctrine: The Change in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World War
(Leavenworth, KS: US Army Combat Studies Institute 1981).
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masterminded by Captain Willy Rohr while he served on the Western

Front. Beginning in 1915 Rohr began to develop assault tactics that
emphasized infiltration and onward penetration of small groups of
highly trained infantry and pioneers. His Assault Battalion became a
model that other units sought to emulate. Lupfer notes that the
stormtroop innovation was entirely driven from the bottom up,

The concept of storm troopers, like the doctrine of the elastic

defense-in-depth, was not invented by OHL or Ludendorff . . .
Rohr was an innovative officer and he combined a good sense of
tactics with experiments with new equipment. His unit, which
eventually became known as Sturmbataillon Rohr, soon achieved
success in small unit operations against the French . . . Officers and
men from units serving in the front near Rohr’s unit were very
impressed; at their request, Rohr established a one-week training
course in December 1915 to pass on his techniques to other
units.102

The tactics developed by Rohr played an increasingly important role

in German operations as the war progressed, culminating in the spring
1918 offensives. Lupfer concludes that much of the newfound tactical
and operational effectiveness demonstrated in the five 1918 offensives,
first against the British towards Amiens and later against the French
Sixth Army at the Chemin-des-Dames, can be credited to Rohr’s
stormtroop tactics.103

Looking Forward
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn writes that the
accumulation of anomalies within a field of research creates, over time,
pressure for change in the field’s prevailing assumptions and conceptual
frameworks.104 The evidence presented in the previous section suggests
that the military innovation field is advancing toward such a Kuhnian
moment. The anomalies are apparent cases of bottom-up innovation.
These innovations meet the field’s consensus definition of a ‘military
innovation’ yet they are incongruent with the field’s focus on the top-
down dynamics of civil-military relations, interservice politics, intra-
service politics, and organizational culture.

102
Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine, 28.
103
Ibid., 49–54. Col. George Bruchmüller’s artillery tactics also played an important
role.
104
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Univ. of Chicago Press
1962, repr. 1996).
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The existence of such anomalies indicates that the current models

of military innovation, though perhaps still valuable for under-
standing top-down dynamics, are no longer fully adequate. There is
novel evidence to be explained, and a conceptual void to be filled,
regarding bottom-up innovation. This presents two challenges for the
field.
The first challenge will be to develop a more complete empirical
understanding of bottom-up innovation in order to establish the
foundation upon which models and hypotheses can be developed for
comparison and testing. This will not be a trivial task. Archival
documentation on the activities of field formations can be scarce
(particularly regarding peacetime), and even where it exists it can be
difficult for civilians and non-specialists to interpret. Moreover, bottom-
up causality is more complex than top-down causality, involving more
actors possessing less formal authority and tacit or complex causal
chains. For example the Flak 18/36 was apparently first employed in the
anti-tank role in March 1938, but it is by no means clear that the anti-
tank potential of the Flak 18/36 would have gone unexploited had the
Condor Legion never existed. It is conceivable that the German Army
would have realized the Flak 18/36’s potential anyway, perhaps in 1939
but more likely in 1940, as Rommel did, against the Allied heavy tanks
or 1941 in the Western Desert. However, it is also conceivable that in
the press of world war, individual instances of Flak 18/36 operations
against tanks might have failed to cascade into a broader realization of
the potential innovation at hand. Causality and contingency are difficult
to characterize in this case, demonstrating the complexity of developing
a solid empirical basis for understanding bottom-up innovation.
The second challenge will be to develop conceptual models of
military innovation that identify, as precisely as possible, the necessary
and sufficient conditions for bottom-up innovation. Paradoxically, the
existing top-down models can provide important insights translatable
to the bottom-up context. For example, are bureaucratic competitive
dynamics also built into the structure of field formations? Do the
battalions within brigades or the squadrons within air wings compete
with each other in exercises, experiments, or other forums? Under
what circumstances might such competition produce innovation? Are
different types of field formations prone to different types of bureau-
cratic politics; for example do elite or experimental units possess
different political dynamics than conventional units? If so, might they
innovate differently? Do field formations possess cultures or sub-
cultures? If so, are there formation-level cultural characteristics that
tend to foster or retard innovation? These questions hint at the
interesting bottom-up issues that might be appropriated from the
existing literature.
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It will also be useful to look beyond the military literature for insights
into bottom-up innovation.105 The ‘Social Shaping of Technology’
(SST) literature that presently dominates European science and
technology studies is one example of a fruitful avenue for further
research.106 SST emerged in the 1980s as a critique of technological
determinism, the idea that an intrinsic imperative drives technological
change. SST research approaches technological innovation from a
sociological and constructivist perspective, viewing technologies as
(first and foremost) ideas that are shaped by discourse and competition
between ‘interest groups’ with different views on the potential of a
given technology.107 According to SST scholars, these interest groups
(such as research teams, policy-makers, and investors) vie to super-
impose their own vision on a developing technology by building a
coalition around their vision, engaging in bureaucratic maneuvers to
exclude other groups, and ensuring that important design and
engineering choices reflect their vision for the technology.108
From the perspective of military innovation studies the most
important aspect of the SST approach may be that it recognizes users
as an independent ‘interest group’ that shapes the course of
technological innovation.109 Users appropriate technologies by employ-
ing them in a manner that corresponds with their own needs,

105
Some may wonder why the Organizational Learning literature is not discussed here.
Nagl and Downie argue that this literature presents a model of bottom-up military
innovation. However, close examination reveals that the bottom-up characteristics of
Organizational Learning are, as interpreted by Nagl and Downie, limited to
information gathering. According to their accounts, the decision-making process
remains centralized and deliberative. It originates among senior officers and is forced
down on field units. See Richard D. Downie, Learning from Conflict: The U.S. Military
in Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Drug War (Westport, CT: Praeger 1998); John A.
Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup
with a Knife (Westport, CT: Praeger 2002).
106
For an accessible overview see Donald A. MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, (eds.), The
Social Shaping of Technology (Milton Keynes, UK: Open UP 1999). The seminal source
is Trevor J. Pinch and Weibe E. Bijker, ‘The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts –
or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each
Other’, Social Studies of Science 14/3 (Aug. 1984), 399–441.
107
See for example Weibe E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press 1995).
108
The SST approach has been applied to a few military cases. See Donald A.
MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: an Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1993); Timothy D. Moy, War Machines: Transforming
Technologies in the U.S. Military: 1920–1940 (College Station: Texas A&M UP 2001).
109
See James Fleck, ‘Learning by Trying: the Implementation of Configurational
Technology,’ in MacKenzie and Wajcman, Social Shaping of Technology, 244–57.
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preferences, and vision for what the technology can do for them. In
fact, technologies are often used in ways that are unforeseen by
developers.110 In these instances, users play a central role in defining
what a technology means to society. In the context of military
innovation, the SST literature suggests that the impact of a new
technology, doctrine, or organizational schema may not solely be in the
hands of the senior officers and civilians. In fact, the actual impact on
operational praxis may be determined, in the final analysis, by the
‘users’ in field formations.
The potential contribution of the SST approach is demonstrated in
the case of the US Army Force XXI initiative. In March 1994 US Army
Chief of Staff, General Gordon Sullivan, announced a major new
initiative to ‘evolve a new force for a new century’ to be called Force
XXI.111 Sullivan proclaimed that Force XXI would exploit new
information technologies to create innovative new tactical capabilities,
arguing:

Today, we organize the division around killing systems, feeding the

guns. Force XXI must be organized around information . . . infor-
mation will be the means to a more powerful end. It is information-
based battle command that will give us ascendancy . . .112

Under the auspices of the Force XXI initiative, the Army fielded a
suite of digital command and control systems to experimental units. In
command posts at the battalion, brigade, and division levels, paper
maps and acetate overlays were replaced by flat screens and software
packages for planning maneuver, fire support, air defense, logistics, and
intelligence operations, collectively called the Army Battle Command
System (ABCS).113 The Army also fielded digital systems to each vehicle
in the experimental units, called Force XXI Battle Command Brigade
and Below (FBCB2), which displayed the vehicle’s location on a
computerized map and allowed crewmen to send and receive messages

110
See Nelly E. Oudshoorn and Trevor J. Pinch, How Users Matter: The Co-
Construction of Users and Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2003).
111
Gordon R. Sullivan, ‘Force XXI,’ Letter to the Army’s General Officers, reprinted in
Jerry R. Bolzak, (ed.), The Collected Works of the Thirty-second Chief of Staff United
States Army (n.d.), 316–17.
112
Gordon R. Sullivan, ‘Building the Force for the 21st Century – Force XXI’, Chief of
Staff Message, reprinted in Bolzak, (ed.), Collected Works, 318–19.
113
These systems were called, respectively, the Maneuver Control System (MCS),
Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS), Combat Service Support
Control System (CSSCS), Forward Area Air Defense Command Control and
Intelligence (FAADC2I), and the All-Source Analysis System (ASAS).
 928 Adam Grissom
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and data files over a wireless internet carried over the unit’s radios. The
Army’s hypothesis was that equipping its tactical formations with
ABCS and FBCB2 would allow them to employ innovative new tactics
to defeat future adversaries. To explore this possibility, experimental
formations conducted a series of field exercises at the National Training
Center at Fort Irwin, California and computerized staff exercises at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas between 1994 and 1999.114 The Army
proclaimed these experiments a success in 2001 and began fielding
production systems to operational units shortly thereafter.
In the buildup to war in early 2003, the Army provided ABCS,
FBCB2, and other digital battle command systems to key elements of
the ground forces stationed in the Persian Gulf, including Army,
Marine Corps, and British Army formations.115 According to the
Army’s official history of major combat operations in Iraq, the digital
battle command systems fulfilled their promise and allowed army units
to operate more aggressively, particularly when dispersed and engaged
at multiple points along the route of advance simultaneously.116
Notably, the official history explicitly credits this accomplishment to
General Sullivan, the former chief of staff, for pushing the service
toward digitization during the 1990s. The contributions of officers and
soldiers in field formations are dismissed in the official history as ‘nug
work’.117 The official history even implies that digital innovation had
to be imposed by Sullivan and the senior Army leadership on an
unwilling and uncooperative army.118
This account is congruent with the standard top-down models of
military innovation. However, there is ample evidence that there were
also important bottom-up dynamics at work during the 1990s and
during operations in Iraq. For example, in practice each unit that
deployed to Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ (OIF) used a different mix of
digital battle command systems.119 Before reaching Iraq, units
114
These included ‘Desert Hammer’ (April 1994), ‘Prairie Warrior’ (spring 1994, 1995,
and 1996), ‘Focus Dispatch’ (Aug. 1995), ‘Task Force XXI’ (March 1997), ‘Division
XXI’ (Nov. 1997), and a variety of smaller experiments.
115
Gregory Fontenot et al., On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi
Freedom (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2005) 60–63.
116
Fontenot et al., On Point, 394–95.
117
Ibid., 1. According to OED, such work would be ‘trifling, negligible; of no intrinsic
value or importance; worthless’. See ‘nugatory, a.1’ The Oxford English Dictionary,
2nd edn 1989 (Oxford: OUP 2006) OED Online 25 May 2006 dictionary.oed.com/cgi/
entry/00328264.
118
Fontenot et al., On Point, 1.
119
See ‘Statement by Lieutenant General William S. Wallace Command General, Combined
Arms Center, US Army Training and Doctrine Command Before the Subcommittee on
Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, Armed Services Committee, United
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individually decided for themselves on the basis of field experiments and

exercises which digital systems they could profitably put to use and
which systems were not worth the trouble. Each unit chose a different
mix. Some even chose to independently acquire digital systems that were
different than those developed through the Force XXI initiative.120
Soldiers in Iraq also used the digital systems in ways that were not
predicted by the Army’s senior leaders. Many tactical commanders
relied heavily on an ‘email’ system embedded in the FBCB2 system,
though this was against doctrine and procedures because the system
was intended for routine administrative use in garrison, not as a
primary means of battlefield communications.121 Similarly, many
command post staff officers opted to use ‘chat room’ functions, again
an administrative subcomponent, as a battle-tracking system rather
than the more complex and cumbersome systems built into the ABCS
for this purpose.122 Small unit commanders found that FBCB2 allowed
them to navigate in zero-visibility conditions created by sand storms by
steering their ‘icon’ over digital overhead imagery, certainly a function
never foreseen by developers.123 In the insurgency phase of OIF, units
used digital battle command systems to speedily plan and coordinate
raids on specific houses or even specific rooms within houses, using the
imagery and mapping functions of some digital systems.124 Units in the
United States also used digital systems to conduct real-time ‘virtual
right-seat rides’ from home station in order to prepare for upcoming
rotations to Iraq.125 None of these innovations were foreseen by the
senior Army leadership or system developers. They originated in field

States House of Representatives, October 21, 2003’, accessed 25 May 2006 at:
5www.iwar.org.uk/rma/resources/c4i-interoperability/03-10-21-wallace.htm4.
120
Fontenot et al., On Point, 394–95.
121
See Army Digitization Master Plan 1995, HQ Dept. of the Army, Ch. 2, Sect.2.4.2,
accessed 19 April 2006 at 5www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1995/
admp95-adoch2.htm4.
122
See Cay Wilson, Network Centric Warfare: Background and Oversight Issues for
Congress (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service 18 March 2005) 11,
26–27.
123
John W. Charlton, ‘Digital Battle Command: Baptism by Fire’, Armor Magazine
(Dec. 2003), 26–29.
124
John J. Garstka, ‘An Introduction to Network Centric Operations’, briefing
presented 13 July 2004 an accessed 24 May 2006 at 5www.oft.osd.mil/initiatives/
ncw/docs/NCO_to_NCO_Short_Course___Jul_04.pdf4. See also Jeffrey A. Charlston,
‘The Evolution of the Stryker Brigade – from Doctrine to Battlefield Operations in
Iraq,’ in John J. McGrath, (ed.), An Army At War: Change in the Midst of Conflict
(Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute 2005), 43–54.
125
John C. Tillson et al., Learning to Adapt to Asymmetric Threats (Alexandria, VA:
Institute for Defense Analyses 2005) 129.
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formations and they have significantly changed the Army’s operational

praxis in Iraq.
The Force XXI case serves to underscore the potential value of a
new theory of bottom-up innovation. Many elements of top-down
innovation are present in the Force XXI case: a Chief of Staff with a new
vision of future warfare, the insertion of new technologies into field
formations, and the creation of new types of units. However, the
ultimate impact of Force XXI on the operational praxis of the US Army
cannot be accurately described without reference to innovation within
field formations. Field soldiers appropriated and adapted the digital
systems to their needs and preferences. The resulting changes in opera-
tional praxis were contingent on both top-down and bottom-up factors.

Conclusion
The field of military innovation studies has evolved considerably since
Barry Posen published The Sources of Military Doctrine 20 years ago.
The sheer size of the literature on military innovation is impressive, but
so too are its growing sophistication and empirical depth. Moreover, the
field has drawn an important policy-making audience in the US and
Europe. However, this review suggests that there is an entire class of
bottom-up innovations that have yet to be explored, understood, and
explained. The door is open for an individual or group of scholars to
make a major contribution to the field by developing the empirical and
conceptual basis for explaining cases of bottom-up innovation. This is
the major challenge, and opportunity, for future military innovation
studies.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Jasen Castillo, Andy Hoehn, David E.
Johnson, Jeffrey G. Lewis, Tom Mahnken, Joe Maiolo, Tom
McNaugher, John Stone, and Lauri Zeman for their comments on
earlier drafts.

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