Revolutionary Ambivalence: Understanding Officer Attitudes toward Transformation

Overview

Thomas Mahnken of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and James FitzSimonds of the U.S. Naval War College offer an explanation for why the Department of Defense is not having greater success in its strategy to fundamentally transform the U.S. armed forces. According to the authors, "Broad support of the officer corps is a key element in force transformation." Thus far, however, the officer corps, though open to the idea of change in the abstract, does not appear to support changes that would create new services or devalue currently dominant weapons systems.