A633.3.3.RB
Complex Adaptive
Systems
Find a company which reflects Morning Star and St
Luke’s image of a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) and reflect in your blog what
the implications are for you and your present organization (or any organization
you are familiar with). Identify what you believe are appropriate actions to
move your organization forward.
Wow! I performed a Google search and found plenty
of blogs from past classes at ERAU about Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS).
After
spending 27 years in the US Army, limited experience in the public sector, and
almost six years in public education, I have very limited exposure to CAS. In the military, CAS is an acronym for Close
Air Support. Not the same thing.
However,
there has been studies of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) with regards to the
military. One particular study by Keith
L. Green in 2011 evokes Tolstoy:
“From the battlefield adjutants he
had sent out, and orderlies from his marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon
with reports of the progress of the action, but all these reports were false,
both because it was impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening
at any given moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the actual
place of conflict but reported what they had heard from others; and also
because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to Napoleon circumstances
changed and the news he brought was already becoming false. Thus an adjutant
galloped up from Murat with tidings that Borodino had been occupied and the
bridge over the Kolocha was in the hands of the French. The adjutant asked
whether Napoleon wished the troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should
form up on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given—almost as
soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino—the bridge had been retaken by
the Russians and burned...” (Tolstoy, 1869)
War and Peace is of course a narrative
fictional account, but having served in the Russian Army, Tolstoy was conveying
in this passage not just hypothetical knowledge gained through his study of
history, but to some extent his personal experience in the Crimean. One wonders
what Tolstoy might have written had he witnessed the use of technology by the
First-World militaries of today. There exists that data allows commanders to
know within tolerable error where their units are in near or near-real time;
radios permit them to make inquiries of field units and communicate orders in
seconds; Unmanned Aerial Systems provide real-time reconnaissance of an area
many miles from their headquarters. And yet soldiers still die, and battles may
still be won while campaigns are lost. Confusion reigns. Sometimes military
analysts cannot answer except with anecdotal evidence or gut feeling what seems
a simple question: Are we winning or losing? Moreover, military analysts often
cannot answer credibly and convincingly whether a particular action has helped
or harmed the cause. War differs from the subjects that traditional technical
analysis is well-suited to address; however, in attempting to address the
complex problems of war, analysts often attempt to apply traditional techniques
by making simplifying assumptions invalid in the real world. In effect, the
analysts ignore the complexities of war altogether. War displays archetypical
features of complex adaptive systems—systems comprising agents that make
decisions based on local, sometimes erroneous or dated information in which
interactions produce patterns that could not have been calculated or derived
beforehand.
The
mission space for the US military has been dominated in recent years by tasks
that were not the focus of the military during much of the twentieth century,
when major combat operations against other major powers was the primary
concern. These new tasks cut across what has been described as the range of
military operations and the problems associated with these tasks cannot be
adequately addressed by traditional, fixed responses. Such problems require
generalized adaptive strategies and capabilities. Today’s military prevents
genocide, delivers humanitarian assistance, counters insurgents, trains foreign
militaries, assists reconstruction, and supports civil authorities in a range
of missions, from disaster relief to combating drug trafficking. Mission
outcomes can be strongly influenced by factors that have nothing directly to do
with logistics or kinetic operations. Local economic, political, and social
factors exacerbate inherent complexity—as can the economic, political and
social factors in the United States and around the world. A US Marine Corps
manual states explicitly, War is a
complex phenomenon. (Green, 2011)
War
is the same as Tolstoy depicts in his novel, even 147 years later. The only thing that has changed is
technology. War hasn’t changed but those
fighting it have adapted. Adaptation to
technology. The strategy is the same…the
only thing that has changed is how wars are fought.
As a
27-year veteran of the US Military, it has been adaptation to change and
technology that has kept the military relevant. This is what is necessary to move the military
forward.
References
Tolstoy, L. (1869). War and Peace Project Gutenberg, Book 10, Chapter XXXIII, accessed
on 24 Aug 2010 on http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600?msg=welcome_stranger
Green, L. (2011, May). Complex Adaptive Systems in Military Analysis. Retrieved on August
27, 2016 from https://www.ida.org/~/media/Corporate/Files/Publications/IDA_Documents/JAWD/ida-document-d-4313.pdf
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