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- [00:00]
Gregory McNiff
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- [00:02]
Matthew Tatter
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Gregory McNiff
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Matthew Tatter
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- [00:29]
Marshall Po
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Hi, welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:36]
Gregory McNiff
Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Gregory McNiff, and I'm excited to be joined by Matthew Tatter, the author of Innovation and Adaptation in War. Matthew is a scholar of military history, strategy and organizational learning. His work examines how armed forces innovate, adapt, and solve problems under the extreme pressures of conflict. His research spans case studies From World War I through modern air and naval operations, exploring why some militaries integrate new ideas effectively while others fail to adjust in time. I should say his title is Associate professor in the War Gaming Department at the center for naval warfare studies, US Naval War College. The book itself is published by MIT Press in May of 2025, and the reason I selected it, in addition to being a great read, is because it really addresses one of the central questions in military history and strategic studies, why some militaries adapt successfully in wartime and why others fail. The book goes beyond technology to examine organizational learning, internal competition, institutional friction, and the speed of adaptation. Matt's anecdotal framework and case studies really bring this book alive, particularly if you're a student of World War I, World War II, or 20th century warfare. And he really helps you understand modern conflict and how technology impacts change and how the other side responds. As Matt will probably say throughout this interview, it's an interactive process or relationship. But with that, Matt, thank you very much for joining us.
- [03:10]
Matthew Tatter
Thank you very much, Greg. I really appreciate being on.
- [03:13]
Gregory McNiff
Matt, why did you write Innovation and Adaptation in War and who is the target reader?
- [03:18]
Matthew Tatter
Great question. First of all, let me say that the views I'm about to espouse here are mine and mine alone and do not reflect those of the Naval War College, the Department of Navy, Department of War, or the US Government in general. Back when I started this journey of research, I thought looking at how militaries innovate and fight, the most innovative militaries didn't seem to win very often. And if I could borrow an analogy from the Simpsons, when Homer was watching the History Channel, he called the Luftwaffe of the Washington generals of the History Channel, this is the opponent that's always set up to lose. And that stuck with me not just because I was an early Simpsons fan, but also because it just seemed like the most. And the Germans are examples of this in both World War I and World War II. They seemed to find new ways of fighting, but they didn't seem to end. The wars did not obviously end up well for them. For better or for worse. For better for. For better for us, of course. So why that was puzzling to me. And I and it seemed to be puzzling or not, not a lot of people seem to be looking at that. There's a lot of literature on the sources of innovation and why some militaries innovate and some don't. But there's not a lot of As a political scientist, first and foremost, the question I like to know is so what? Why is this important to look at? And so the so what of innovation to me is why does it matter in warfare? Instead of just saying innovative militaries win and innovation is good, why is it good? And that's what led me to this research.
- [05:14]
Gregory McNiff
Very fascinating. And before we dive into the use cases, I just want to clarify a few terms. First, how do you define innovation and successful adaptation?
- [05:25]
Matthew Tatter
So innovation, as I Define it is a new mode of operation that yields some initial significant success on the battlefield in the form of operational victories or inflicting huge losses on the adversary, something that the adapter, in my analysis, has to react to in some way or they're just going to lose. And adaptation success is when the adapter is able to significantly reduce the casualties that they're suffering from the innovation and blunt the operational effects of the innovation itself.
- [06:10]
Gregory McNiff
And just to clarify, your case studies focus on particular wars or arenas in war. We'll talk about this, but for example, the Pacific arena in World War II and your innovation, it's based in wartime, is that correct? I think you suggest you could also have peacetime innovation, but that really is not your focus here.
- [06:34]
Matthew Tatter
That's correct.
- [06:35]
Gregory McNiff
And why, Matthew, do you think it's more important or why did you choose to look at wartime innovation?
- [06:40]
Matthew Tatter
Well, wartime is the most stressful time for any military and the most trying or testing time. And I feel like that's when you're trying to do a case study based research project and you only have limited amounts of data to draw from war and case studies in war are thankfully rather rare when you look upon the totality of history. There's not a lot of, there's no way. I'm a qualitative researcher. We're not going to come up with large end studies on military innovations, at least not that I see. But you have to make the data work as much as it can. And wartime innovation and adaptation is sort of the, that would provide the most rigorous test for whatever theory I was trying to test.
- [07:39]
Gregory McNiff
Yeah, that makes sense. Last question before we dive in. I believe four of your five case studies concern the naval arena or field. And I should say The World War II particularly the final one also concerns, you know, US and Japanese naval aviation, but you seem to focus on naval battles. Is there any particular reason for that or is that just the data set?
- [08:07]
Matthew Tatter
Well, I come from a naval background initially. Before my graduate studies, I was in the Navy for a little while and naval history is more, is more of my comfort zone. I do appreciate and study lands, land combat, and there is an air warfare case for Vietnam in there. But I also think that these cases in the literature were kind of stuck under the, how would you say, the technological side of things. It's like purely technological. There's not a lot of organization. There's at least in the literature that I found and it was more when you're talking about organization, land combat is much more transparent, at least in the historical record and in the literature. So I think there was more opportunity to break new ground with naval case studies.
- [09:08]
Gregory McNiff
I want to ask you about three terms and how they're related. One is innovation. And you say throughout the book it's not a panacea. Just because you're able to innovate doesn't guarantee victory. And then two, and this I found interesting is having adequate resources. We ultimately think of wars as wars of attrition, particularly global wars. But you suggest, and Matt, correct me if I'm wrong here, that adequate resources could take a backseat or may not be. I guess I would characterize it as necessary but not sufficient relative to organizational structure and successful adaptation. So that's a long winded question. First, what is your sense for how important innovation is and how would you characterize its effectiveness?
- [09:50]
Matthew Tatter
So I would address that first by saying that you have it spot on. Resources are necessary but not sufficient. And it seems that based on the case studies that I've looked at and others that aren't in the book, that if you have an opponent that has to adapt to your innovation, the better organized that opponent is, the less effective your innovation will be. Because either they're well positioned to face your innovation or they are able to be flexible and create or modify their organization in order to face it directly. And then they know how to, they know how to direct their resources in the proper way. And the most effective way is very much of an interactive process in that organization allows the, the adapting military to react and counter and cushion the blow, so to speak, of, of this new mode of operation that's causing them so much trouble.
- [11:07]
Gregory McNiff
And then I was going to ask you, I guess you talked about innovation not being a panacea. And like you're saying, it depends on the enemy. What is the ideal enemy? The enemy that cannot respond to innovation, that doesn't have the ability to adapt quickly. If you had an innovative technique, approach, weapon, what enemy would that be most effective against?
- [11:35]
Matthew Tatter
Well, I think everybody, any, any military would like to face a inflexible, not adaptable adversary. But I think what part of, part of what? This research shows that if you can, if you can come up with an innovation that crosses organizational boundaries in your adversary or find a niche where nobody will know what to do, or it's nobody's responsibility to counter what you're bringing to the battlefield. So that's reflected in especially the Royal Navy World War I case. But if you can make it so that no organization or multiple organizations within your adversary have to have to deal with what you're bringing to the table, then it will more likely than not work out for you. Well.
- [12:34]
Gregory McNiff
And is that because the internal competition there or the bureaucratic infighting. Why do you want multiple. I think you use the term subunits. Why do you want multiple subunits having to deal with a threat? It almost seems counterintuitive. You think more resources focus on a threat, the better, but you suggest or you actually demonstrate it's almost the opposite.
- [12:57]
Matthew Tatter
Yeah. My view, based on this research, is that a unified effort is superior to having multiple different directions of adaptation, so to speak. So, for example, One of the scholars I rely upon to sort of build the theory is Anthony Downs. He talks about the bureau, Bureau bureaucracy as a landscape and that they, you know, bureaus or, or subunits kind of occupy this territory if you're. If they feel. If their territory overlaps, then that means there's. There's not. There's. There's some sort of conflict between the responsibilities of one subunit and, and another. And if, if you realize that, or when you realize that, that the first task of any bureaucracy is to perpetuate itself, then the decisions to either gobble up extra tasks at the expense of other subunits or to shun them because they don't feel like they're in your wheelhouse, so to speak, becomes more logical. So it might. We don't want to deal with that because it's outside our purview. Our purview is A, B and C. If we go after D, then we, we don't have the resources to do that. We don't have the personnel. We don't have the expertise. We're going to dilute our, our stake in, in the bureaucratic landscape at, at our expense. Or, you know, wow, this is really great mission. We, we are responsible for A, B, C and D, and this other organization is responsible for it, you know, X, Y, Z and D, and that we're both fighting over D, so to speak. And, and we'll spend more time competing with each other over who gets that mission than actually com. Than actually completing the mission. So you see that the, the infighting burns up the resources or the, or the time or. And they, they spend more time on the bureaucratic part, not on the mission.
- [15:13]
Gregory McNiff
Matt, I'd like to turn to the case studies now. The first one you present is the Royal Navy and the U boat threat. And here you walk through the reasons the British Admiralty failed to react more quickly to the German U boat threat. And in fact, you know, almost that the torpedo threat from the U boats was not viewed as effective when used against merchant shipping. Could you talk why the British Admiralty just didn't react more quickly to the U boat threat? And candidly they seem to take an approach that a good defense is a. I'm sorry, yeah, a good defense is a good offense. And you almost suggest that they should have, you know, worked with the counter to that. Namely a good defense is a good offense. But maybe you could talk a little bit about that where, where the British Admiralty went wrong initially and then I, I guess the first Sea Lord Jellicoe came in and basically help them to adapt to the U boat threat.
- [16:10]
Matthew Tatter
Yeah. So the, what's interesting is that it has its roots in the sort of arcane prize law that the Germans started using for the U boat campaign and that they'd have to surface and then ask the tell the ship to heave to and evacuate and then sink the vessel or take it as a prize. Which quickly became impractical in the World War I atmosphere. They didn't have enough prize vessels and they couldn't deal with the crews in lifeboats and all that. So it became surface the ship and sink it with gunfire after a warning. And then it became sick it with gunfire without a warning. And then torpedoes were used without warning. And that's sort of where the outrage and the, and the war crimes accusations come in. Breaking the law of the sea and whatnot. So when the, when the Admiralty was considering well if we, if we are able to just drive the, the U boat underwater and force them to use torpedoes, they knew the guns would work. But they also knew that if they forced the Germans to use their torpedoes it would be sort of an international outrage. And they thought well that'll either, you know, force the Germans to stop or, or draw on the Americans, which eventually did happen. But they just felt that the, and this is the Admiralty felt that the torpedo. And there's, there's fewer torpedoes than gunshells. So they, they thought well this will force the U boats to go back home sooner and they just won't be able to have the impact that they'll have with gunfire. And that was fantastically wrong. The torpedo was effective. So what the Admiralty in the, the Navy, the Royal Navy as a whole had a very offensive mindset. This is reflective of attitudes of navies well before that and well after that. And rather than go into a defensive and rather dull method of convoying, the Royal Navy wanted to hunt for submarines and gathered massive flotillas of anti submarine vessels and destroyers and other. And go for Sweep large chunks of the ocean, especially between Britain and Ireland, in the more confined waters that The World War I U boats used to operate in vice, the World War II once. And they, they used, they hunted for U boats rather than letting them passively let the U boats come to them. And they did this because the way they calculated the cost of convoy was that they vastly overestimated the number of escorts needed per convoy. And then they overestimated the amount of shipping losses due to the time of gathering convoys and waiting for escorts. And they quickly made the calculation that they didn't have the escorts available and the losses due to time of gathering a convoy was greater than whatever ships they might lose. So instead of going the defensive route, which they were not inclined to do as far as navy culture goes, but also they had a faulty assumption about the costs of a convoy. They decided to go hunting for them, which completely was virtually ineffective. They found very few submarines by chance. And so a number of years went by and they also planted minefields in the approaches to Germany's ports. And they confused the lack of, of U boat attacks during that time for the effectiveness of the minefields, when in reality it was American diplomatic pressure on, on Germany that caused the pause in U boat loss or losses to U boats. So the, the, the decisive sort of factor that came in, in the first, in this first case is that the, the Royal Navy finally came up with an anti submarine division whose job was to look at the problem and come up with results or with solutions. And so they got a handle on what the effort it took to conduct a convoy system was. They experimented with various kinds of convoys and figured out that they really didn't need that many escorts as they thought. And the time to put them together and the losses in the productivity and shipping was not as great as they thought. And they decided to do general, what they call general mercantile convoys in late 1917. And it turned out also that the bonus of this was that the U boats had to come to the convoys to sink the merchant vessels. And so a good defense turned out to be a good offense because then the anti submarine weapons of the Royal Navy could come to bear as the U boats got closer.
- [22:13]
Gregory McNiff
Yeah, I think you make that point. You sort of answered this. But just to clarify, you would consider the British Admiralty's response and really their initial response before Lord Jellicoe actually allow them to adapt. That would be more of an organizational failure or an intelligence failure.
- [22:32]
Matthew Tatter
It was more of an organizational failure because they, they, they knew how many vessels they were losing. They knew the extent of the problem and what the Germans were doing, but they didn't have the proper organization to interpret the results and look at the data in the right way. I don't think more intelligence would have.
- [22:59]
Gregory McNiff
Helped them in this fascinating case study. And as you point out, it really is a great example of organizational adaptation, particularly a flexible organization adaptation. I want to move to the next case study. The US Navy versus the Imperial Japanese Naval Aviation, which you note demonstrates that having a dedicated organizational subunit or dos, and I should have asked you to explain what DOS is at the beginning, at the outset of a conflict is also beneficial to an adapter. Could you A, explain what DOS is and then B talk about how the US Navy adapted to the Japanese naval aviation techniques?
- [23:40]
Matthew Tatter
Sure. So a dedicated organizational subunit is one that is either extant or is created. So the US Naval Aviation is extant in this case. And the Anti Submarine Division was created by the Royal Navy in the previous, in the World War I case to address the problem of the innovative method of warfare. So it, it's really, it can be of various sizes. You know, the, the Anti Submarine Division was a, a subunit of the, of the Admiralty staff. So just, just a staff organization. U.S. naval Aviation is, was and continues to be a gigantic portion of the U.S. navy. So it's, its size is variable, kind of fit to task, if you will. Yeah. So the, so what you have at Pearl harbor when, when the Japanese attack and put out of action, a large portion of the US Battleship fleet, US Naval Aviation is in a spot where it's the only entity in the Navy that can deliver anything like decisive combat power to the, towards the adversary. So that's kind of how, you know, the battleships drop out of the picture at least for, you know, better part of a year while they're repaired. And the, the carriers are the ones that are able to take the fight to the enemy that therefore they become the dedicated organizational subunit. And it's pretty clear that, you know, that it's, it's like the Japanese innovation, but it's qualitatively different. They have, they have more extensive training pipelines. They have planes and pilots and ships. They're, they're sort of built for the long attritional warfare of the Pacific, whereas the Japanese are, are more of a quick strike, almost, not quite single use, but pretty fragile instrument, even though it's very good at what it does. Later on in the war, the Japanese come up with the kamikaze tactic, which is very jarring for the US Navy as a whole. Reading the Accounts from Okinawa and Leyte Gulf and Iwo Jima and such that it's quite harrowing. The Japanese come up with this because the effectiveness of their aviation in general has dropped off a cliff with the lack of trained pilots and fuel and planes. But this, this innovation which is basically turning their aircraft into guided missiles is. It produces a, a great leap in their, in their lethality. I don't want to say combat effectiveness because as the case study bears out, a lot of the. A lot of the attacks that they were able to prosecute were spectacular but didn't, were not decisive. And one of the main reasons for that is that you had this giant integrated organization of US Naval aviation backed up by ships in the fleet with quite sophisticated anti aircraft radars and weapons which were able to blunt significantly the kamikaze innovation. A lot of things did not work like the. As you can imagine, there was a great deal of pressure to suppress the kamikazes at their airfields. But there's. So even in the limited areas that you know in the Pacific where that you think land is kind of limited and the US resources to bomb these various airfields is quite, quite extensive, they could not suppress the kamikaze attacks before they came. Like they tried bombing all sorts of airfields with U.S. navy and U.S. army Air Force aircraft and put a lot of effort into that. But preventing them from occurring through bombing the airfields did not yield much results. But the blunting of the attacks. The US Navy was able to absorb the kamikaze through battery anti aircraft fire. A lot of coordination between ships and aircraft. The proximity fuse was a big one, still caused a lot of mayhem and casualties.
- [28:45]
Gregory McNiff
You talk about the US Navy relied upon its previous adaptations to the IJN carrier aviation to meet the kamikaze threat. Beyond that, its primary method of adaptation was to use its advantage in numbers. It made important adjustments in its air defense methods, but accomplished the lion's shares of the adaptation by attempting to smother its adversary with newly constructed ships and aircraft. Was this adaptability by the US Navy really just an overwhelming superiority in resources? Or were there techniques involved? How it almost seems like they just threw more and more at the Japanese Navy and wore them down to attrition. But how? There are other aspects. You point out, for example, the kill ratio of the US pilots. Actually they had less training but had a higher kill ratio. I thought that was fascinating and I want to ask you about that. But overall, how would you characterize the U.S. naval adaptability to these kamikaze threats? Was it technique or resources?
- [29:46]
Matthew Tatter
I think it's A mixture of both. And this one is if I had to rank the ability to adapt between the two, the initial let's adapt to IJN naval aviation in general and adaptation to the kamikazes specifically. I would say that the U.S. navy did much better against the broad naval aviation and got by with what it did against the kamikazes because it was so, it was so novel and, and confusing that. And so hard with the weapons of the day to completely blunt an attack that you needed. The US Needed the numbers. But I'll, you know, it's interesting because this kind of goes back to the overall. You know, the question that I had in the book is why? How important is innovation? And this kind of goes to how important is adaptation? Okay, the United States Navy had hundreds of ships and thousands of aircraft, and they could have just absorbed it. But the difference between absorbing in the way that they would have done at the beginning of the war and absorbing with increased technology and better tactics and better, better techniques was that I think the lives and material saved with those adaptations are probably immeasurable. So maybe the outcome, it doesn't matter, but how you get to that outcome matters a great deal, especially when you're talking about lives and ships. So I would say that yes, there was a. There was a fair amount of smothering, but the, but they did it more cheaply than they would have if they didn't have any of those things. Yeah.
- [31:54]
Gregory McNiff
And I should say you make this point in the book. Everyone thinks the carrier sort of, you know, won the war after Pearl harbor. But as you point out in the book, it really took at least a year or two. I don't think the carriers were fully decisive until 1944. And I think you quote one officer saying, you know, we need to hit the target or they'll stop building carriers. So it wasn't, it wasn't sort of binary like the carriers came on the scene and the US Navy just dominated the Pacific. But yeah.
- [32:21]
Matthew Tatter
And in no way was. Was Pearl harbor or even Midway like flipping a switch from, from, from carriers to, to battleships. The, The Japanese Navy looked for opportunities to use its super battleships right up until the end of the war and that they represented a massive investment of time and resources to bring that firepower to bear. I like to one of the. We read about Guadalcanal and the. Attaining a foothold. But the. In that area. But that whole campaign, that is probably where Japanese naval aviation went to die. The attrition that they suffered from trying to support the, the landings or trying to oppose the US landings on Guadalcanal and US trying to support its foothold and the disaster at Savo island and the follow on battles in that strait. It was less of a carrier on carrier. It was more. It was a battleship or two thrown in the US Fleet. There's a couple of carriers, there's a whole bunch of land based Japanese naval aviation coming down to try to interdict U.S. forces on land and sea. And the. The geometry there was not in favor of the Japanese and. And they lost a lot of. A lot of their aviation in. In that area. And that was not a classic carry on carrier battle like Midway or, or Marianas or anything like that.
- [34:11]
Gregory McNiff
That's interesting and like I. I allude to this earlier but even the kill ratio the Japanese pilots had more training. But I believe the American Navy rotated their pilots and I guess mixed in veterans as well so that the younger.
- [34:26]
Matthew Tatter
Pilots could learn from. That was one of the strengths of us. And that's how the. One of the ways in which the adaptation is quite different from the innovation. You see this also on the. I believe the Luftwaffe their pilots flew until they died and the Japanese pilots flew until they died. It turns out to be you know a large number of good pilots will beat. If you go by World War II it will beat a small number of excellent pilots. The minimum training requirements for a Japanese pilot are spectacular. They must have been highly skilled at their job. But the. When you have a sufficient amount of good pilots then that kind of controls for luck and for other happenstances that just the odds will eventually get to these guys.
- [35:29]
Gregory McNiff
Before I move on I do want to note this probably was not intended but I love the fact you say US Naval aviation in contrast to Japanese a aviation. Naval aviation was quote not a dead end career. And this is in the context of the kamikaze pilot. Sorry, I. I may. I'm not like the screening process but I thought that was a funny. I thought that was funny. But yeah.
- [35:53]
Matthew Tatter
Yeah. Well what's. I think that was in context with the. The pre kamikaze that what's interesting is that commanders of squadrons were. Were not necessarily aviators. The people commanding Japanese pilots were not aviators. They were surface the equivalent of surface warfare or battleship admirals. And the pilots were non commissioned officers or Warrant officers. And U.S. pilots were mainly officers, some chiefs sprinkled in there. But the navy went so far as to take submariners and surface warriors and put them through pilot training when they were admirals like there's a couple examples and gave them the flavor of naval aviation, even though they weren't in that community.
- [36:56]
Gregory McNiff
Yeah. I thought it was interesting that contrast between how the pilots were trained and the organizational structure of naval aviation versus Japanese. I want to move on to the next case study, which is United States Air Force and North Vietnamese air defenses. And you note this case demonstrates that a comprehensive response to innovation need not arise out of a permanent DOS or dedicated organizational subunit. Could you talk a little bit about the setup here? I think you conclude Rolling Thunder's goal was unattainable. There's also the significance of the BOMBER Generals dominating U.S. air Force leadership. What, what was the problem and how did sort of a temporary DOS solve it for the US Air Force?
- [37:38]
Matthew Tatter
Yeah. So the Vietnam. Yeah. Complicated for many reasons. But the, the Operation Rolling Thunder was, was sort of a compellence device that the Johnson administration wanted to use to make the North Vietnamese curtail or stop their support of the, of the Viet Cong and try to. And dissuade them from trying to unify with South Vietnam. Vietnam. In my opinion, and I think according to much of the literature that that exists out there, that goal was not attainable because the North Vietnamese are never going to give up wanting to reunify with South Korea and wanting to unify under their form of government. So in hindsight, it seems that Rolling Thunder was not going to do its job no matter how much effort we put into it. But the role of the organization of the Air Force and the culture of the Air Forces. Of particular interest here is because North Vietnam fielded some pretty sophisticated Soviet style air defenses. And the people who in charge of the Air Force were largely bomber generals or those schooled in strategic bombing, either through experience in World War II or taught by people with experience in World War II. And the air Force was mainly conditioned to fighting a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. And that's a very different campaign than fighting against a smaller power with conventional weapons and not bombers and having to do it over a long period of time. So when you're just fighting a nuclear war, which is presumably just one go, you don't necessarily have to worry about air defenses or you can shoot them from a distance or go around them. You know, the Soviet Union is a big place. And the assumption, a lot of the assumptions was we, we fly where the air defenses aren't and then we hit the targets and we get out, or it doesn't matter if they get out because of Nikko War. What the, what the North Vietnamese did is put all their air defenses near the targets that The United States wanted to hit. And it doesn't matter if the border is defended if the, the strike aircraft have to go after, go into the envelope of the air defenses. So. And the most notable part of the, of the North Vietnamese arsenal was the SA2 NATO coordinate guidelines. And that forced the US Air Force to force it to adapt because the aircraft that were sent north were mainly tactical aircraft, single seat, two seat fighter bombers that were not equipped to face off against surface to air missiles and didn't have the technology like warning gear and countermeasures that could protect them against guided missiles. And that's partly because. In the Air Force at that time it was broadly separated into Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command and Strategic Air Command at the lion's share of the, of the resources.
- [41:33]
Gregory McNiff
I guess if you, I could edit and you could say, you know, what ultimately led to their success was something, you know, how they organize these subunits, you know, particularly around the, you know, the Air Force. And I think you go on to talk about the different, I guess it's SAC and the TAC and how, you know, how they effectively were able to overcome this threat of a integrated North Vietnamese Air Force.
- [42:01]
Matthew Tatter
Yeah, let's see, that's. So the, the division was between SAC and tac and SAC had the, they had the technology. It wasn't really shared with TAC because TAC was sort of starved. That's, I think that's kind of what I was getting at.
- [42:18]
Gregory McNiff
Yeah, you do said for, I remember, I think you said TAC was unprepared at the beginning of the war and they developed an odd hocus.
- [42:27]
Matthew Tatter
Yeah. So ATTCK was unprepared at the beginning of the war because SAC had had most of the resources and was the, the main effort for the, for the Air Force at that time, which is at the height of the Cold War.
- [42:40]
Gregory McNiff
So who, I mean it looked like SAC brought the resources, but TAC developed the ad hoc adaptability. Is that, is that how you would frame it?
- [42:49]
Matthew Tatter
Yeah, close to that. There was a. After the first couple of incidents with the SA2 in which a large number of aircraft were lost or damaged, the Air Force convened what they, a commission under General Dempster became known as the Dempster Commission which was responsible for examining the problem and coming up with solutions. And they did this over a number of months. And what they came up with was a number of varied countermeasures. One was the Wild Weasel aircraft which was a mission set that involved a two seater aircraft baiting SAM sites to turn on the radars and then.
- [43:47]
Gregory McNiff
At.
- [43:47]
Matthew Tatter
First just marking them for bombers with, with rockets and then employing a specialized anti radiation missile that guided off the SAM's own radar. Other other gadgetry included radar warning gear that the both the Wild Weasel aircraft but also all fighter aircraft eventually eventually carried and chaff and jamming and ironically a lot of these, these technical things are these, these devices came from the US Navy. The Shrike, the first any air, any radiation missile was a navy, was a navy project for example. But the, but the ability, what this showed was the ability of the commission to there was the urgency of we have this issue and we're losing aircraft and we're not, we don't have anything currently that, that we can use to stop it. They gathered expertise from around the service and realize where, where they could get, where they could get devices to, to counter the same threat.
- [45:20]
Gregory McNiff
Perfect. I want to move to the next case study which is the Royal Navy and the Falklands War. Unlike your previous cases, this is not a great power conflict. But you know, the actual lesson here is that focusing too much on one mission area prior to the war could be a mistake. Could you talk about the, I guess the British Royal Navy's approach to this particular war? Throughout the chapter you refer to the Navy being in the final stages of transition from an east of Suez naval policy to an Eastland naval policy which encompass the seas in the NATO area of operations. So it almost feels like the Royal Navy was unprepared and candidly, after reading your chapter, it almost felt like they got lucky basically because the Argentinian pilots weren't as strategic or patient as they should have been. But could you talk about maybe how the Royal Navy managed to win this one despite not having the right mission focus when entering it?
- [46:19]
Matthew Tatter
Yeah. So when the transition from east of Suez to the East Eastling Navy is a story of well, the British retreated from empire, didn't have a need for power projection and frankly a carrier. So in their quest to focus on anti submarine warfare against the Soviet Union in the northern approaches to NATO, they got rid of or were in the process of getting rid of their expeditionary capability, their naval aviation capability. And those turned out to be the most essential items for the Falklands campaign. And what they really the amount or where luck came into it at the beginning of the war was that the Argentines chose the time when the British were getting rid of this capability but hadn't gotten rid of it all the way. So they still had a couple of small carriers, a couple of the amphibious ships, were on their way to being sold and were called back and put back into service. And what the Royal Navy still had was a lot of excess capacity to take those ships back, keep them crewed, take up a lot of ships from trade. So they built quite an armada based upon the large number of frigates and destroyers that they had. A new light carrier and an old light carrier, a couple of new ships with interesting capabilities and then a lot of freighters and auxiliaries that transport the Task Force and the land element down to the South Atlantic. The Royal Navy was able to use its large number of ships as sort of a cushion. I outlined this in the chapter that the. The main threat was a. Was a very low level one when, when the. The Royal Navy was expecting something in the. In the North Atlantic that was high level and fast and, and something that the Royal Air Force could protect them from, namely the Soviet Union and, and bombers coming from. From the Cola Peninsula. What they ended up facing was small fighter aircraft flying at wave top level and Exocets which are the cruise missiles that famously hit the Stark and other other ships in the US Navy. Just one ship in the US Navy just to be clear. But is, is very low level and very hard to see, let alone hit with, especially with the weapons of the day. But the arrangement of the Task force was such that the Task Force commander was very concerned about the Exocet of course and the commander of the British Task Force and the Argentinians both agreed that the carriers of the task force were the most important ships. And so that the ships of the Task force were arranged so that the Argentinians had to get through three layers of ships in order to get a hit on the carrier. And they didn't have a lot of Exocets in the inventory at least air launched at first. And so the British used their resources to the best effects in that these rather expensive air defense destroyers had great medium to high altitude capability but could not hit things low to the water or out front. And you know, one was, one was lost the Sheffield and then. Yeah, the other ships that were in the Task force were mainly there to absorb missile hits so that the carriers did not. Were not in danger. So it against the Exocet threat the UK the Royal Navy used its. Used its superior numbers in the low level. Yeah, I think I'll stop there.
- [51:05]
Gregory McNiff
Nope, that's great. Matt, I just want to ask you about the fifth case there which you suggested. Illustrative and again this is Japan failure to adapt to the US submarine war on its commerce on its merchant ships during World War II. And you argue this shows that failure is as instructive as success. I think you conclude that Japan's fate was ultimately sealed regardless of what they did. But it's interesting to see how many mistakes they made here. And I'm wondering if you could just briefly talk about that. I mean they seem to, you know, candidly, they failed to develop an effective anti submarine warfare doctrine. Their, their intelligence seemed to be just completely ineffective. There was no real, I guess, relationship between civilian intervention and the competition between the subunits. It seemed like that was very, didn't have a very strong positive impact. But maybe talk about how it's almost like the Japanese Navy didn't help themselves here and just accelerating accelerated their own fate.
- [52:14]
Matthew Tatter
Yeah. When it comes to the, the Imperial Japanese Navy and the, and their anti submarine problem, the, the Japanese did not do themselves any favors. I think. I note at the beginning of the chapter that the. For an island nation who's dependent upon merchant shipping for the survival of the nation, they only had a couple of officers in the navy who were responsible for planning defense of commerce. And you see in the in while they have some very technologically good devices and platforms such as magnetic anomaly detectors, they were one of the pioneering users of that technology. They had these wonderful destroy escort type ships that were quite capable. There was a lot of fumbling around with the organization. There was not the mercantile trade defense was spread out amongst area commands. So the geographic areas and the resources that they put towards ships that could do the anti submarine mission was much less than any of the other countries. The British or the Americans in that when they had to make a decision about where to put their scarce shipbuilding resources, they chose battleships and then carriers and destroyers. And the destroyer escorts were given were kind of shortchanged in the numbers produced. This was reflected when or this is one of the biggest impacts of the decision to make. The super battleships, the Yamato and Musashi, they took up so many resources that the fleet did not have enough destroyers to defend itself against submarines and other things at the destroyer level, let alone defend the merchant vessel. So this lack of resources and then fumbling around between okay, let's have multiple commands do anti submarine, then let's concentrate it. By the time they concentrated into something that approached what the British did In World War I, there were virtually no, there was no spare destroyers or destroyer escorts. They went to a convoy system but they never had enough escorts. And as far as the how they conducted anti submarine warfare, they had some success against the US Navy and there was a lot of US casualties but they tended not to prosecute their anti submarine attacks to the fullest extent. They weren't persistent enough and the flexibility of their weapons such as depth charges and airship coordination wasn't there. So it was very hard for them to get persistent, coordinated and effective anti submarine operations together. However, what was worse is that they did not have an accurate, reflecting accurate accounting of what how they were performing. So they were simultaneously ineffective and believed they were effective, which is probably the worst combination that you can imagine because they thought they were sinking a lot of US submarines when they actually weren't.
- [56:24]
Gregory McNiff
Yeah, that man, they really got it wrong. On that note, I mean like you say in the book, it's almost like they were, you know, completely myopic to their own situation and really just accelerated their demise. Matt, I want to in the conclusion you raised a number of key themes. I just want to ask you about one as our final question here, how would rate first mover advantage versus organizational flexibility? If you could have one, you know, what would it be? How important are they?
- [56:58]
Matthew Tatter
I would choose organizational flexibility and I think seems like if you're able to, I mean this presumes the ability unless the, unless the innovation, the first mover advantage is so great that it just can wipe you off the battlefield. It's so I think it's better to, to perceive how the innovation works and how you can make it better and encounter with a more effective counterpunch because it seems like the, when innovations appear on the battlefield they're kind of, I don't want to say half baked, but they're not, they haven't reached their full potential in a lot of ways and use in the battlefield gives, gives everybody an example of what's possible and what can be improved and how this can be countered and tilted towards your own advantage.
- [57:58]
Gregory McNiff
Fascinating. That concludes our interview. Again, the book is Innovation and Adaptation of War by Matthew Tatter. Matt, thank you very much. It was a fascinating discussion and yeah, hopefully you've got another book in you. I don't think war is going to be extinct anytime soon and I think these questions are so systematic, so intrinsic to studying war and the, the outcome is just so, so significant, so precious, you know, like you know, resources, lives, ultimately the, the victory or the defeat. So thank you very much for your time and it was a great read.
- [58:36]
Matthew Tatter
Thank you very, very much, Greg. I appreciate.
- [58:45]
Gregory McNiff
Was really a great.