We learn two interesting facts about the organization of the Time Patrol. First:
"One of the hardest lessons [Everard] had had to learn, when first recruited into the Time Patrol, was that every important task does not require a vast organization. That was the characteristic twentieth-century approach; but earlier cultures, like Athenian Hellas and Kamakura Japan - and later civilizations too, here and there in history - had concentrated on the development of individual excellence. A single graduate of the Patrol Academy (equipped, to be sure, with tools and weapons of the future) could be the equivalent of a brigade.
"But it was a matter of necessity as well as aesthetics. There were all too few people to watch over all too many thousands of years."
-Poul Anderson, "The Only Game in Town" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 129-171 AT 1, p. 130.
"An Army of One" was a US Army slogan.
Secondly:
"...Guion...was at least of [Everard's] own rank. Probably higher. Above its lowest echelons, the Patrol didn't go in for organizational charts and formal hierarchies of command. By it's nature, it couldn't. The structure was much subtler and stronger than that. Quite likely none but the Danellians fully understood it."
-The Shield Of Time, p. 5.
But I think that I understand this strong, subtle structure: a team of experts/"professionals" who know what has to be done and who also know which of them can do what. Formalities and hierarchies are unnecessary.
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But even the Patrol had SOME structure, of organization, even of hierarchies and ranks. E.g., Specialists, Milieu agents, Unattached, the Middle Command, the Danellians. The Patrol even had a support and administrative staff.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The support and admin staff are the "lowest echelons" referred to. Specialists and Unattacheds can coordinate their activities without needing much supervision. There is little direct contact with Danellians. "The Middle Command" is an interesting concept, meaning, I imagine, that its membership is human.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The point being, of course, is that the Middle Command assigns tasks and gives the required orders. Sometimes acting on instructions from the Danellians. A minimum of supervision does not mean no supervision at all.
Ad astra! Sean
Large organizations require hierarchies because otherwise people work at cross-purposes.
That doesn't necessarily mean higher-ups telling people what to do in detail.
Modern Western armies -- working off a series of German developments, btw(*)f -- don't issue that sort of orders any more.
Instead they use what's called "mission command" -- you tell a subordinate what needs doing, and they decide how to do it; and when to disregard obsolete orders, or ones made without information you've discovered.
The superior also tells the subordinate what the orders are -for-. That is, what is hoped to be accomplished.
This provides the overall coordination, so the subordinate can focus on doing their part in helping accomplish the overall mission.
That happens all the way down the chain of command, from General Staffs down to five-man fire teams.
The Russian army still operates on a strictly top-down principle of detailed orders and little initiative. The Ukrainians have been intensively studying and training in mission-oriented command since 2014; and it shows.
(*) there was a famous example in the late 19th century when a German officer was defeated in some exercises because he carried out a plan without reference to new developments and was beaten.
He protested that he was only following orders when reprimanded. His superior remarked: "His Majesty has made you a Major because you are supposed to know when -not- to obey."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: That sounds very good to me, Western armies using orders focused on achieving GOALS, but not giving specific, top down instructions on what to do in detail.
Russians can't be more stupid, on average, than everybody else, so I'm puzzled on why they insist on using such an obsolete and counterproductive command system.
Paul: Poul Anderson was very much inclined to be libertarian in politics, but he was not fanatical about it. Which means, despite frequently expressed frustration with them, he knew we need hierarchies and bureaucracies. As this bit from Chapter X of THE REBEL WORLDS, Aaron Snelund speaking of the need for a civil service, which many don't understand: "Not many do," Snelund said. "But think what an army of bureaucrats and functionaries compose the foundation of any government. It's no difference if they are paid by the state or by some nominally private organization. They still do the day to day work. They operate the space ports and traffic lanes, they deliver the mail, they keep the electronic communications channels unsnarled, they collect and supply essential data, they oversee public health, they hold crime in check, they arbitrate disputes, they allocate scarce resources...Need I go on?"
There's simply no getting away from hierarchies and organizations, not if you want humans to rise higher than the hunter/gatherer level!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: hunter-gatherers have hierarchies too, just ones based on gender, age, and force of personality. Less formalized, but definitely there.
(From SM Stirling.)
Sean: the Russian pattern is the older one. Mission-oriented command styles depend on subordinates -wanting- the mission to succeed. Top-down "robotic" command worked better when the rank and file were ignorant of or indifferent to the organization's larger goals; and it also worked better when war (or at least battles) were concentrated in time and space. At Waterloo, Napoleon and Wellington could see what was happening, and ride around the battlefield giving direct orders to commanders of subordinate formations. The line soldiers marched and fired to the word of command, and the supreme commander could hold the entire interacting process in their minds. But even there, the voltigeurs/skirmishers and British light infantry and riflemen had a completely different, and far more modern, system and organization -- because they were -not- operating in massed formations, obeying orders like "volley-fire present, by platoons, fire!". They were operating in small groups or as individuals, using cover, moving rapidly without detailed instruction. The whole tendency of the 20th century was to force more and more men to operate like those riflemen and skirmishers, and to spread battles out in time and space so that superiors, first the supreme commanders and then further and further down the chain, found it physically impossible to see and understand and intervene on the scale their predecessors had done. One of the reason the British army had such severe problems in the early years of WW1 was that its officers had grown up working in a -small- army, colonial campaigns where the old hands-on style still worked. Then they were pitchforked into an enormous spread-out conflict.
(From SM Stirling.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I sit corrected, even hunter/gatherers had hierarchies. Less formalized, but THERE.
Understood, up thru Waterloo it was possible for army commanders to give detailed, top dawn orders at their battles, because it was still possible for them to oversee the entire clash.
And one story about the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo was of a British sharpshooter thinking he could nail Napoleon himself and asking if he should try. Wellington prohibited it, tho!
I would have told the sharpshooter to try, wounding or killing Napoleon would very likely have disrupted command and control of the French army after all.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: IIRC, Wellington replied: "Good God, no! Generals have better things to do than to shoot at each other."
In other words, it would be ungentlemanly.
There was an attitude slightly earlier that actually -aiming- at someone in battle was immoral; you fired in their general direction, and luck settled the matter.
Hence skirmishers and light infantry were regarded as disreputable for some time, because they a) took cover rather than displaying indifference to bullets, and b) deliberately aimed at individual targets.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I would have argued with Wellington, saying war is not gentlemanly. War is about bending your enemy to your will, or breaking him, if necessary. A quicker victory could actually save lives, in addition.
As weapons became more and more powerful, pretty much everyone in armies had to become skirmishers.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: most "state systems" have both written and unwritten rules of conduct.
Note that after Waterloo, nobody in France proposed a guerilla war against the Allied powers; they accepted defeat and bargained as best they could.
That was "how it was done".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I agree that's the way it should be done if war cannot be avoided. And that codifying of the written and unwritten codes of conduct by civilized belligerents reached its culmination in the Hague and Geneva Conventions
But, it was a convention that commanding generals should not be deliberately sought out for killing?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: generally, yes it was. There could be random death for anyone, of course. Lord Uxbridge, Wellington's cavalry commander, had his leg shot off quite near to Wellington, and resulted in the following exchange: Uxbridge: "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!", to which Wellington replied: "By God, sir, so you have!"
(From SM Stirling.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Trying again.
And high ranking commanders could be and were killed or wounded in battle. Or not killed, despite exposing themselves to every danger of war, as was the case with the British Gen. Howe, in the US War of Independence.
I was interested enough to look up Lord Uxbridge, who became the first Marquess of Anglesey after Waterloo. The friendship he had for Patrick Curtis, Archbishop of Armagh, convinced him of the rightness and necessity of Catholic Emancipation.
Ad astra! Sean
In fact, there was a joke in gentleman's clubs in London from 1793 through 1816: "I understand that X is returning in good spirits."
From the fact that the way to ship a body home for burial was to put it in a big barrel of rum.
People visiting England for a generation after 1816 noted that half or more of the peerage and a good many gentry in the appropriate age groups bore scars or missing fingers/limbs etc. from the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. It's a lasting tradition -- the most dangerous thing to be in 1914 in England was the 21-year old son of a Duke. Whatever else you can say about the traditional English ruling classes, they were never shy about risking life and limb for Crown and Country. They might be idiots, but they weren't "shy".
(From SM Stirling.)
Kaor, Sean!
As to why the Russians insist on using such a counterproductive command system, it may well be in part force of cultural habit, and in part a sound judgment that what might make army more effective on the battlefield might make the rule of Putin and his siloviki unstable. Decades ago, I took a Russian history course at Amherst College with Professor Czap, and I remember something which Czap wrote about 19th century Russian military organization (elsewhere, this wasn’t part of the course). The Army was not as professional or as effective as it might have been, but that was not the highest goal. The goal was to make sure that the Tsar was in control of the armed forces. Similar considerations may apply today; if junior officers were taught to exercise initiative and their own judgment, they might take initiative to demand reform of the corrupt military machine, where money appropriated for national defense ends up personally enriching generals and other oligarchs, and they might judge that Putin and his gang were not serving the country well.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
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