Umbrellas For Tanks
Israeli tanks add drone protection cages, a lesson from Ukraine war
Ahh the joys of living long enough to see ridiculed concepts achieve success. For 10 years, we have been strong advocates of positive blocking (mostly nets) against weaponized drones. This was repeatedly poo pooed as primitive and unworthy. Ukraine has proven positive blocking to be magnificently effective, and the Israeli’s are now plopping net protection on tanks. Good ideas win over time.
Adam Grant in his seminal work, Think Again, highlighted this human shortfall in thinking. Just as blackberry owned the phone market, and then texting, they failed to break out of their cognitive bias and lost their ass. This is what made Apple such a monster. Steve Jobs hated phones and was decidedly against IPhone development in the beginning, BUT he was able to open his mind to change. Dumping cognitive bias is a secret weapon, and having robust debate in technological developments is necessary.
Of course, in the military, change is difficult because of hierarchy. Boot licking is a codified method to get the best jobs and promote. It’s funny because the most successful units in the military (SOF) tend to ignore hierarchy and be outcome focused. Yet in the vanilla forces, yesterday’s methods reign supreme.
Keshig are data driven because we know our minds play tricks on us. Most humans fossilize in their thoughts, seek patterns that support existing beliefs, and miss the obvious. Keshig are glad to find they are wrong, like to fail fast, and take new technologies on board.
When I was a kid, they used to sell BMWs with the old “hand made” story. Hand made is quaint now because it is accepted wisdom that a high end computer manufactured product tends to be nearly perfect nearly every time. Forget hand made, I want precision engineered.
Do a max set of pull ups RFN because you take joy in data and learning when you are wrong. We are ever evolving, or we are falling behind.