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Conway’s Law and Radar
Conway’s Law is a useful paradigm for thinking about system design and a valuable perspective for understanding the evolution of the U.S. Navy’s use of radar in early World War II. Conway’s Law states that “Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s…
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American Sea Power Project Panel Remarks
With my new American Sea Power article coming out soon, I thought it would be worthwhile to post my opening remarks from American Sea Power Project Panel at the Defense Forum Washington last December. In my article, “Sea Control and Command of the Sea Remain Essential,“ I emphasized the continuing relevance of sea control and…
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Learning to Win, a Hudson Institute Report
I was pleased to contribute to a recent Hudson Institute report on operational innovation and the importance of learning to today’s U.S. Navy. The whole report is available in PDF at this URL. In my section, I focused on the importance of creating a learning organization by coupling individual learning outcomes to the Navy’s operational…
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Wait… wut?
Twitter can be an amazing place. I happened on this tweet the other day and knew immediately what my response would be, but I also knew I couldn’t fit that response in a tweet. My biggest “Wait… wut?” moment came in the Naval War College (NWC) Archives. I was looking at a series of “fighting…
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Author of the Year
I’m very pleased to announce that the U.S. Naval Institute has awarded me Author of the Year for 2018. It’s a great recognition of the value of Learning War and the work that went into it. The award ceremony was 25 April. I was fortunate to be able to attend, accept the award in person, and express…
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Learning War in New York Times
I mentioned that Learning War has been getting some good press in my last post. Since then, it has appeared in the New York Times Book Review. I was humbled to be honored along with a series of other new military history books on 11 November, the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War…
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SMH 2018 and “Cross Functional” Officers
I’ve been distracted by the publication of Learning War and the warm welcome its received, so this follow-up post on the Society of Military History’s Annual Meeting (SMH 2018) is later than I intended. What strikes me as I review my notes from the meeting is how “cross-functional” U.S. naval officers of the early twentieth…
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Learning War is Coming!
I haven’t written here in some time, but I have been doing plenty of writing. My book on organizational learning in the U.S. Navy of the early twentieth century is being published by the U.S. Naval Institute this June and I’m very excited about it. What’s it About? Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine…
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2017 McMullen Naval History Symposium
I thoroughly enjoyed being part of the “extraordinary breadth” of scholarship presented at the McMullen Naval History Symposium last week at the U.S Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. It was a wonderful conference, and Cdr. B.J. Armstrong deserves a lot of credit for its success. I’m very glad I finally got to meet him. I…
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“The Rules of the Game”
The subtitle of the July 2013 edition of “The Scrum Guide” is “The Rules of the Game.”1 This is an ironic choice. The Rules of the Game is also the title of Andrew Gordon’s in-depth analysis of the Royal Navy’s performance during the Battle of Jutland, a performance that failed to meet expectations and led…
Trent Hone 