Gasoline and Manure: Change at the Right Moment

The introduction of gasoline-powered vehicles in the 1920s created a dilemma for militaries around the world. For millennia, the horse played a pivotal role on battlefields. How best to implement new technology with doctrine and investments of the past? Could gasoline and manure be blended to create a more effective fighting force?

The start point is the identification of gasoline and manure within our force. Until legacy systems (manure) can be phased out, methods to blend with new and revolutionary technology and concepts (gasoline) are critical. Simply pouring more gasoline on everything is unlikely to maximize capability and may be counterproductive. Moderate and graduated changes to doctrine and material reduce risk; however, the changes must keep pace with the relevance of legacy systems and ideas. Mounted cavalry was quickly deemed irrelevant. What manure currently exists in the U.S. military? A concerted effort must be made to identify change at the right moment.

Soldiers must believe new and untested concepts will achieve the desired outcome. Complex systems are more difficult to understand and employ than simpler ones of bygone eras. Today’s soldier must have faith that the ones and zeroes serving as support by fire achieve the disruption, suppression, and other effects of the more traditional machine gun. Veterans of previous wars could see and smell and readily understand the employment of effects. Today it is not possible to have equal expertise across all domains. The contemporary army requires individual technical experts to accomplish their tasks within a complex choreography. Any misstep resulting in failure.

Leaders are now required to trust new and emerging technologies and integrate them into tried-and-true doctrinal approaches. This requires a working knowledge of doctrine and an understanding of the employment and capabilities of the latest enablers. Today’s soldiers do not have a lifetime to learn and train what was previously reserved for the operational and strategic levels of war. In an age where the digital domain can be leveraged at the tactical level, with the potential for strategic effects, soldiers must gain exposure early and often.

Training events must allow opportunities to experiment and incorporate emerging technology. Units must be allowed to learn and develop as a goal. This may come at the expense of validating existing performance measures. Leaders must be willing to underwrite the risk inherent in new endeavors. It requires boldness to test new concepts when one's report card and monthly sitrep are on the line.

To adequately measure the effectiveness of new technology and concepts, training environments must mirror known adversary capabilities and conditions as much as possible. Leaders must stress the importance of executing “live” without falling for the temptation to get a warm start or hand wave warfighting functions. The use of non-organic equipment or the establishment of infrastructure in advance will help defeat the training scenario but not fully measure true capabilities and gaps.

When gas-powered engines were first integrated into cavalry training events, how often was the scenario paused to allow the horses to rest? If that occurred once, it was too many. Better to debunk doctrine and fail in training than when it really matters in combat.

The current war in Ukraine provides a unique glimpse into the reality of modern warfare. The Russians invaded Ukraine with every conventional asset at their disposal, including doctrine and lessons learned in Syria and the Donbas. They spent months assembling an army of their choosing, while conducting exercises ostensibly to prepare. Against all expectations, their blend of gasoline and manure revealed itself to be obsolete and ineffective. In the face of prepared Ukrainian defenders, equipped with both Russian and Western systems, the Russians failed to accomplish their strategic objectives. The Ukrainians appear to have the right mix.

The U.S. military would be wise to extract lessons learned from the Ukraine-Russian war. From the strategic level through the tactical, across all domains and warfighting functions, analysis must be conducted. Assumptions can be validated; equipment captures exploited; forensics analysis and data computation conducted. Now is the time to learn and adapt. Is the U.S. military holding on to too much manure at the expense of gasoline? Do they have the optimal blend? Iterative training and honest assessments are the best starting points to find out.

MAJ George Fust is an active-duty Army officer. He previously taught in the Social Sciences Department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He holds a master’s degree in political science from Duke University and a Master of Operational Science from the Command and General Staff College. He has published in a variety of sources.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Army or Department of Defense.