Milstack Saturday (7 June 2025)
The gold medal for apposite, appropriate, and apropos alliteration goes to Steven Webb, of Wallenstein’s Camp and author of Best British Bureaucracies. (If you are reading this, Mr. Webb, I hope that you devote an episode of that splendid series to the best British bureaucrat in my personal pantheon of planners and prognosticators, Frederick E. Morgan.)
The anonymous author of Early Checkout, a decision game published by The Connecting File, wins the Tom Clancy Prize for Balancing Acronyms with Clever Cultural References. (Whoever you are, Marine, you had me at ‘Tactical Assembly Area Holiday Inn’.)
Speaking of acronyms … let poets pen paeans of praise in honor of Democura, who has, in The Science of Military Planning, crafted condign condemnation of the rampant reductionism of our planning processes.
After doing this, they should offer homage to Jeff DeGraff, the West Point professor who, writing on the blog of the Modern War Institute, reminds us that The Age of Answers is Over.
And yes, Virginia, there are better ways to teach planning.
