Creating the Capacity for Innovation: U .S. Army 1945-1960 Kevin M. Woods Advisor: Jolm Gooch Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of PhD The University of Leeds, School of History March 2011 IMAGING SERVICES NORTH Boston Spa, Wetherby West Yorkshire, LS23 7BQ www.bl.uk MISSING PAGE/PAGES HAVE NO CONTENT 2 The candidate affirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgment. The right ofKevin M. Woods to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. @2011, The University of Leeds and Kevin M. Woods 3 Abstract This dissertation argues that in the years immediately following the Second World War, the United States Army created a set of intellectual, organizational, and ultimately institutional processes, which are essential to military innovation. Prior to the Second World War, innovation in the army had remained isolated, ad hoc, and difficult to harness towards a common goal. That changed substantively in the period after the war. Unlike most studies of military innovation, this work does not follow the efforts of a single genius but rather three interrelated activities that when fully developed provide the institutional foundations for an ability to change. First, the army adopted the field of operations research as an essential element of military analysis and decision-making. Second, the army created a set of activities known collectively as 'combat developments', where new ideas moved through a deliberate process of deliberation, analyses, testing, and prototyping in order to deliver a new military capability to the field. Finally, this dissertation describes the modernization of officer education and the change in doctrine development from a focus on near-term doctrine for a mobilizing force to forward-looking doctrine appropriate to a standing force in a time of technological change. Most historians have judged the army of early Cold War to be an innovative failure with a readiness crisis at the beginning of the Korean War, a spectacular failure with its Pentomic concept, and its supposed inability to anticipate and prepare for large-scale counterinsurgencies in the 1960s. However, as this dissertation demonstrates, it was during this same period that more fundamental changes occurred that set the pattern for how the institution would change over the course of the remainder of the century. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLES AND FIGURES 5 ACRONYMS 6 INTRODUCTION and LITERATURE REVIEW 7 CHAPTER 1: The Army and Operations Research 33 CHAPTER 2: The Birth of Combat Developments 10 5 CHAPTER 3: Education and Doctrine Development 16 7 CONCLUSION 25 7 APPENDICES Appendix 1 - Memorandum from General Eisenhower 26 (30 April 1946) 5 Appendix 2 - Memorandum from Major General A.c. McAuliffe, 26 (circa May 1948) 9 Appendix 3 - Letter from Ellis A. Jolmson, 27 (11 November 1949). 3 Appendix 4 - Extract 'Project VISTA' 27 (4 February 1952) 7 Appendix 5 - Extract: Easterbrook Committee Report 28 (5 November 1954) 3 Appendix 6 - Letter from Major General Garrison Davidson, 29 (6 July 1956). 3 Appendix 7 - Briefing - Army Organization 1960-1970 (PENTANA) 29 (15 May 1956). 7 Appendix 8 - Extract: Special Report of the Commandant, CGSC, 30 (1 January 1959). 5 BIBLIOGRAPHY 30 9 5 TABLES AND FIGURES Item Title Page Table 1 ORO Personnel by Profession (January 1949) 66 Table 2 ORO Assigned or Proposed Projects (1949) 79 Table 3 Sample ofORO Korean War Field Research (1950-1953) 85 Table 4 Appendices ofORO-EUCOM R-l Study on Tactical 94 Employment of Atomic Weapons (1952-1954) Table 5 Major ORO Studies by Topic (1948-1961) 100 Table 6 Forms of War and Degree of Atomic use as a Percentage of 249 Curriculum Table 7 CGSC Curriculum Locales (1956-1961) 249 Figure 1 Davidson's Five-Step Doctrine Development Program 233 Figure 2 Davidson's Three-Year Development Cycle 234 6 ACRONYMS AAF Army Air Forces HumRRO Human Resources Research Office AEC Atomic Energy Commission ICR Institute for Cooperative Research AEF American Expcditionary Force JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff AFF Army Field Forces JHU The Johns Hopkins University AGF Army Ground Forces MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology AORD Advanced Operations Research MOMAR Modern Mobile Army Department ASF Army Service Forces NACA National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics ATFA Atomic Field Army NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization AWC Army War College NDRC National Defense Research Committee CDC Combat Development OA Operations Analysis Command CDD Combat Development Division OAS Operations Analysis Section CDEC Combat Development OCAFF Office, Chief Army Field Forces Experimentation Command CDG Combat Devc\opmcnt Group OEG Operations Evaluation Group CDS Combat Develop System OFS Office of Field Services CGSC Command and General Staff ORO Operations Research Office College CJCS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of ORSA Operations Research Society of Staff America CONAR Continental Army Command OSRD Office of Scientific Research and C Devc\opment CORG Combat Operations Research R&D Research and Development Group ETO European Theater of RAF Royal Air Force Operations EUCOM European Command RDB Research and Devc\opment Board EUSAK Eighth US Army Korea SORO Special Operations Research . Office FEC Far East Command T/O&E Table/Organization and Equipment FSR Field Service Regulation UMT Universal Military Training G-I General Staff - Personnc\ UN United Nations G-2 General Staff - Intelligence . USAREUR U.S. Army Europe G-3 General Staff - Operations WDGS War Department General Staff G-4 General Staff - Logistics WPD War Plans Division • GHQ General Headquarters WSEG Weapons Systems Evaluation Group GRO General Research Office WUDO Western Union Defence Organization 7 Introduction and Literature Review During the period 1945-1960, the United States Army created an institutional capacity to innovate. 1 Such an institutional capacity did not exist prior to the Second World War. While there were examples of innovation within the army during the prewar era, these were generally narrow applications of new technologies. Moreover, they were often developed in spite of, not as the product of, the organizations and even processes in which they occurred. In the post-war period, three loosely connected lines of effort emerged that resulted in new organizations and processes whose collective purpose was to prepare the army for the 'next war'. The three major elements of innovation described in this dissertation are: • Operations Research. Though widely used by the US Navy and Army Air Forces during the Second World War, operations research came to be seen by the Army as a legitimate source of professional knowledge about land force operations only after the War. • Combat Developments. The creation of a combat developments process provided the Am1y a means of 'tinkering' with the future. • Professional Military Education and Doctrine Development. A shift in both the pedagogical and doctrinal contribution of the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) drew a sharper line between studying the lessons of the last war and contemplating the nature and needs of the next one. Between 1945 and 1960, the army changed the way it 'evaluate[ d] the future character of war, and how [it] effect[ ed] change in the senior officer corps'. 2 The standards of readiness and measure of professional knowledge came to include an uncertain future, one beyond the near-term horizons of mobilization plans, published doctrine, existing J There are innumerable definitions of the term innovation. For simplicity this dissertation defines military innovation as the deliberate adoption of 'new military technologies, tactics, strategies, and structures. According to Farrell and Teriff, innovation is one of three ways a military can change, the other two being adaptation and emulation. Theo Farrel, Terry Terriff, ' The Sources of Military Change', in The Sources ofMilitary Change: Culture, Politics, Technology, ed. by Theo Farrel and Terry Terriff(Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publications Inc., 2002) (p. 6.). 2 This phrase is part ofSteven P. Rosen's definition of peacetime innovation. Steven Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 52. 8 organizations, and even existing weapons. Taken together, these institutional changes represent a significant and overlooked example of peacetime innovation. The army's capacity for innovation did not result from a deliberate set of plans, the forceful action of a single maverick, or the specific support or pressure of an external political force. Instead it emerged out of the gradual, evolutionary acceptance by the army of a set of assumptions about the character of future war, which challenged traditional notions about preparing for the next war. When parsing the complex and interactive behavior of a bureaucracy, one should not discount broad factors shaping assumptions. Assessments of the Soviet Union's conventional strength as well as a continuous parade of new, if occasionally overhyped, weapons technologies animated the army's views in this period. Internal threats to its self-image, its waning influence over the direction of national security policy, and the associated loss of resources also helped shape its views. However, while these factors and others may explain the rush to the ill-fated Pentomic solution of the late 1950s, none fully accounts for the creation of a solution-independent capacity to innovate that endured well beyond the early Cold War. 3 By the late 1940s despite strongly held convictions about the enduring nature of land warfare, key army leaders accepted the notion that success in future war requires continuous doctrinal, organizational, and materiel innovation. This shift gave energy and permanence to the institutional changes described in this dissertation.