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Fighting the Last War

© Dennis Morehouse

It is an article of faith through much of our society that the military always prepares to fight the last war. Is that an accurate perception? If it is accurate, why do we do it?

This is an article of faith that is, on the face of it, insupportable. Obviously, not every army can train only for the last war, or we'd still be fighting with sticks. There is a lot of truth to that perception, though. During the American Civil War, armies fought each other the same way the Revolutionary armies had, drawn up in close ranks about one hundred yards apart. The difference was that the 17th century muskets were barely accurate at that range and might miss the entire enemy line, while the rifled muskets of the 18th century were far too accurate and imposed a slaughter unlike anything seen before. To some extent, they were fighting the last war but they were using the next war's weapons.

One of the problems is that all of the elements that make up war, i.e. tactics, strategy, weapons, transport, intelligence, etc., develop at different rates. The items that aren't as fully developed as others show up as deficiencies and re enforce the idea that we're fighting some previous war. Musket technology had advanced by the Civil War but the tactics to deal with that advance couldn't happen until combat showed people how much a simple item like rifling in a musket barrel could change tactical requirements. Though the realization came early, solutions were harder and took longer.

Other technical advances were rapidly picked up and used for the war effort on both sides. Railroads were first used for sending troops forward in this war and their use became more common as the war went on. Hot air balloons for surveying battlefields and telegraphs for sending messages were certainly not leftovers from a previous war.

People also tend to hang onto whatever has worked for them in the past rather than trying to formulate something new, particularly when the workable solution saved the nation the last time it was used. For the French, the end of WW I meant putting defenses in place that would hold the Germans back from invading like they had in August 1914. They had won their war with positional warfare, i.e. trenches, so they built bigger and better trenches. From total reliance on the elàn, or fighting spirit of the troops, at the beginning of that war, they became believers in digging in for defense. The Maginot Line came into being.

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