FTA

We used to know what “FTA” stood for, back in the day of Jane Fonda perching on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. But these days it means “Failure to Adapt,” as Frank Hoffman shows in a terrific new essay titled “The Anatomy of the Long War’s Failings.” I was particularly struck by his comment that

The failure to learn is quite understandable if you think of the U.S. military culture. For several decades, thanks in large part to lingering attitudes from the Vietnam War, irregular warfare has been an intellectual and strategic orphan in U.S. professional military institutions. The heavy cost of both wars is the price paid for ignoring known historical lessons and for a narrow military cultural prism that constrained U.S. strategic and operational planning and the intellectual readiness of our Officer Corps.”

This is something I’ve been thinking about for my next book: Did the Army’s good post-Vietnam innovations, especially the establishment of the training centers, focus the institution excessively on battalion command in conventional operations? And did the Army eventually confuse battalion command with generalship?     

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