Understanding the Military Design Movement: War, Change and Innovation

Description

This book explains the history and development of the military design movement, featuring case studies from key modern militaries. Written by a practitioner, the work shows how modern militaries think and arrange actions in time and space for security affairs, and why designers are disrupting, challenging, and reconceptualizing everything previously upheld as sacred on the battlefield. It is the first book to thoroughly explain what military design is, where it came from, and how it works at deep, philosophically grounded levels, and why it is potentially the most controversial development in generations of war fighters. The work explains the tangled origins of commercial design and that of designing modern warfare, the rise of various design movements, and how today’s military forces largely hold to a Newtonian stylization built upon mimicry of natural science infused with earlier medieval and religious inspirations. Why does our species conceptualize war as such, and how do military institutions erect barriers that become so powerful that efforts to design further innovation require entirely novel constructs outside the orthodoxy? The book explains design stories from the Israel Defense Force, the US Army, the US Marine Corps, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Australian Defence Force for the first time, and includes the theory, doctrine, organizational culture, and key actors involved. Ultimately, this book is about how small communities of practice are challenging the foundations of modern defence thinking. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, and security studies, as well as design educators and military professionals. Cover Endorsement Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Preface An Introduction to the Military Design Movement Motive to Change: Why Consider Military Design? Notes 1 Designing Commerce, Designing War: Of Chickens, Eggs, and Hand Grenades The Rise of a Modern Design Commercial Assimilation of the Military Industrial Mode: Designing Products Moving From a Natural Science, Industrial Design to Human-Centered Thinking The Rise of Design Certifications: Of Tribes, Brands, and Trademarks An Epistemological Examination of Human-Centered Design Of Double Diamond Designs: Another Human-Centered Methodology Explained Design Distinctions: Of Warfare and Markets Conclusions Notes 2 Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern War Designs Defining Premodern War: Ritualized, Localized, and Brutalized Premodern Warfare: Dangerous Games, Rules, and Rituals Designing Toward Modernity: Feudal Age Developments The Transformation of Doctrine From Church to Army Defining Modern War: A Rise of a Scientific Way of Organized Violence Designing Modern Managers of War Military Modernization: Technological Machines of Total War Vulnerabilities With the Modern Military Form and Function Entering a Postmodernity, a Postmodern Shift in War, Or Postmodern Militaries? Postmodernism and Military Design Enter the Military Design Movement Notes 3 The Birth of Military Design: Heresy, Innovation, and Betrayal in Israel Becoming a War Heretic: Naveh’s Transformation Through Intellectual Rebirth Designing New Strategies in War: The Israeli Defense Force 2000–2005 Abstractions Folding Upon Themselves: How SOD Challenges Everything Why Is SOD So Different From Previous Developments in Military Thought? Banishment: The Removal of Naveh and SOD Praxis From Israel Notes 4 Design Comes to America: The Army Assimilation of SOD Early Interest in Thinking Differently About Warfare: The Long View of Iraq Army Design Methodology: Design Succumbs to Bureaucratic Resistance Institutional Backlash: The Army Rejects Designers in Ivory Towers The Army Plans Design in Detail: The Assimilation Into Systematic Problem-Solving A Lack of “Why-Centric” Inquiry: U.S. Army Single-Paradigm Design Conclusions Notes 5 Marine Design Methodology: From Innovation to Indoctrination in Two Decades The 2017 Revolution: Marines Brand Their Own Design Methodology The 2020 Publication of MCWP 5–10, Marine Corps Planning Process Flying Too Close to the Sun: Marine Innovation Efforts Crash to the Earth Notes 6 The Design Phoenix Rises From the Ashes: Israeli SOD Reborn Why Did Systemic Operational Design Remain Attractive Yet So Controversial? Flash Back: How SOD 2.0 Came Into Existence Far From Home From Design Frustration to Renewed Curiosity: The Israeli Heretic Returns Home Variations On Disruption: The Friends, Foes, and Fools of Naveh’s Design Notes 7 Designing Further Afield in Canada and Australia Canada’s Military Journey Toward Designing in Organized Violence From Modern to Crisis in the Land Down Under: Designing Military Reforms From Tel Aviv to Toronto in a Decade: Canadian Design Development The Desire for Thinking Differently in War for the Australian Armed Forces Conclusion Notes Conclusion: The Destruction of Old Monsters By New Ones: A Design Insurgency Continues A Shift Toward Multidisciplinary Design Traditions Disrupted: Designing War Anew, to Realize New Ways of Warfare Growing Military Designers: Investing in Innovation With Deadly Seriousness If We Destroy to Create What Is Needed Next, Do We Become Monsters? In Closing: Long Live the Design Insurgency! Notes Index