Our Generals Are Not Even Good at Tactics: A Hard-Hitting Reply to Gary Anderson

Until we do, our generals will continue to fail us — not because they lack technology or tactical drills, but because the system that produces them was designed for a different war and century.

Not Far Enough

Gary Anderson’s recent piece “Our Generals Are Failing Us” gets one big thing right and almost everything else wrong. He correctly identifies that America’s flag and general officers (FOGOs) keep failing at the operational and strategic levels. Iran, Afghanistan, and the Marine Corps’ Force Design fiasco are only the latest exhibits.

Where Anderson goes soft — and fatally wrong — is in his opening premise: that our generals and admirals are “superb tacticians and technicians.”

They are not.

They are not even good at tactics as the Germans defined it — the art of fighting and winning battles through rapid decision-making, deception, and adaptation against a thinking enemy.

What they are superb at is following a risk-averse process, fighting the graphics on a PowerPoint slide, and producing data that proves the process was followed while the enemy adapts and wins.

They excel at saying the right things to superiors, looking perfect in uniform with the right badges, and crushing the PT test.

They are masters of pleasing the boss under the proven-worthless “up-or-out” promotion system. That is not tactical excellence. That is industrial-age careerism dressed up as professionalism.

Anderson still believes the system occasionally produces “flashes of brilliance” such as David Petraeus and Jim Mattis.

I disagree.

Neither man was a flash of brilliance. Both were products of the same broken selection system that rewards the right assignments, the right schools, the right buzzwords, and the ability to manage upward.

Real tactical, operational, and strategic genius is measured by the ability to out-think and out-adapt an enemy under friction, uncertainty, and stress — not by the thickness of a personnel file or the polish of a briefing.

I just heard Senator Susan Collins (RINO, Maine) at a hearing on 21 July 2026 declare that our military is “the most meritocratic institution in history.””

It is not.

It is an ass-kissing contest dressed in camouflage. Promotion boards look for officers who look, sound, and think like themselves. There are no validated measures of tactical, operational, or strategic ability on those boards.

Yet such measures exist and have existed for decades. We simply refuse to use them because they would threaten the comfortable club.

The real tests short of actual combat performance are straightforward and proven:

• Yearly examinations that force officers to demonstrate mastery of Maneuver Warfare doctrine.

• Free-play, force-on-force wargames against thinking, adaptive opponents.

• High-stress Tactical Decision Games (TDGs) conducted dirty, tired, short of sleep, short of information, and short of time

• Case Decision Games and Case Decision Staff Rides. The expert at them, Dr. Bruce I Gudmundsson lives in Quantico, and is available to help implement them.

These tools reveal who can actually decide and lead under the doctrine of Maneuver Warfare and who can develop subordinates to operate inside a true Mission Command culture. Everything else is theater.

Different Personnel Management System

My friend, mentor and one of the best combat battalion commanders in our history (demonstrated in the mountains of Afghanistan 2002-04), Lt. Col. Asad “Genghis” Khan (USMC, Ret.), has said it better than most: we need a personnel management system that finally admits officers exist in three distinct categories — command, staff, and technical — and creates separate selection and promotion tracks for each. One size does not fit all, and pretending it does is why we keep promoting process-followers into jobs that demand warfighters.

See his book Betrayal of Command and his platform The Sentinel. I made a similar case more than two decades ago in Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs (2002; 2nd ed. 2013) and have expanded it in every book and article since.

Evaluation for the Three Tracks. Officers would be assessed early (ideally by captain or major) and continuously through a combination of objective, performance-based tools that measure what actually matters in war, not just box-checking. No more “up-or-out” conveyor belt.

• Command Track (the warfighters who lead troops in combat and train units for Mission Command): Evaluated primarily through repeated free-play force-on-force exercises, high-stress Tactical Decision Games (TDGs) under sleep deprivation and incomplete information, live-fire leadership in complex terrain, and After-Action Reviews that ruthlessly measure adaptability, subordinate development, and ability to operate inside the enemy’s OODA loop. Key metrics include success in decentralized execution, speed of decision-making, and building cohesive teams that thrive in chaos. Officers who excel here would stay in command billets longer (company through division level) with promotion based on proven results, not ticket-punching timelines.

• Staff Track (planners and coordinators who support operations): Judged on operational planning quality, synchronization under pressure, resource management, and ability to translate commander’s intent into executable orders without micromanaging. Assessments would include realistic staff rides, wargames, and real-world exercise performance where the staff must adapt plans in real time to a thinking enemy. Promotion would reward those who enable maneuver and speed rather than slow everything down with perfect PowerPoint.

• Technical Track (specialists in acquisition, intelligence, cyber, logistics, engineering, etc.): Measured by deep expertise, innovation, and delivery of capabilities that actually reach the battlefield. Evaluations would emphasize technical problem-solving under constraints, rapid prototyping, and measurable improvements in systems performance. These officers would not be forced into command or joint staff billets they are unsuited for; they would advance based on mastery of their domain.

Assignments would be talent-based, not “broadening” for the sake of a perfect file. Officers could move between tracks only with demonstrated aptitude, never as a default career path.

Replace “Up or Out” with “Perform or Out.” The current system forces everyone upward regardless of competence, creating a bloated pyramid where too many mediocre officers chase too few command slots. “Perform or Out” means retention and promotion are tied directly to proven performance in one’s assigned track. If an officer stops delivering results — whether through stagnation, risk-aversion, or ethical failure — they are transitioned out with dignity and benefits earned, not carried forward to pollute higher ranks. This restores accountability and creates space for fresh talent. It mirrors the German model that produced the superb junior and mid-grade leaders of the early Wehrmacht: merit, results, and ruthless pruning of the unfit.

Reduce the Size of the Officer Corps. Today’s officer corps is artificially inflated to feed the “up-or-out” beast. We have far too many field-grade and general officers relative to the number of fighting units. This bloat creates a top-heavy bureaucracy that stifles initiative, multiplies staff work, and rewards conformity over competence. Shrinking the officer corps by 25–40% (focused on removing deadwood and unnecessary headquarters layers) would:

• Allow better pay and retention for high performers.

• Reduce the toxic competition that drives careerism.

• Flatten organizations so that Mission Command can actually function — fewer layers between the commander on the ground and decision authority.

• Free resources for enlisted leadership development and combat power.

A leaner, more selective officer corps aligned with three clear tracks would produce the adaptive leaders we need for 4th and 5th Generation Warfare. Anything less continues the internal insurgency against our own effectiveness.

Strength of Character: The Missing Requirement

We need leaders at every level — from platoon to four-star — who possess the strength of character to do the right thing even when it damages their career. The German Army’s 1933 keystone manual Truppenführung (Heeresdienstvorschrift 300, Part 1, 1933; Part 2, 1934) put this requirement at the center of everything. It stated bluntly:

“War is the severest test of spiritual and bodily strength. In war, character outweighs intellect. Many stand forth on the field of battle who in peace would remain unnoticed.”

The Germans demanded what they called Charakterstärke — strength of character — and its companion virtue Verantwortungsfreudigkeit (the joy of accepting responsibility).

A leader with true Charakterstärke tells the superior the hard, factual truth even when the PowerPoint looks perfect and the career file is spotless. He refuses to fight the graphics. He will not rubber-stamp a plan he knows is fatally flawed simply to protect his next promotion. The Germans created a system (until it was almost abolished by Hitler), where subordinates could change an original order based on changing conditions without waiting for permission from the top to do so.

That kind of officer cast of mind is almost extinct in our FOGO ranks because the system ruthlessly selects against it.

Stop promoting officers with perfect files. Perfect files are the hallmark of the careerist who never took a risk, never told a superior an inconvenient truth, and never made a hard call that could be second-guessed.

Instead, look for the imperfect files — the ones that contain a non-concur, a pointed after-action review, a memo that said “this will not work and here is why,” or a fitness report that notes the officer “occasionally challenges the conventional wisdom with facts.” Those scars are evidence of Charakterstärke. Those are the officers who will actually fight and win when the enemy does not cooperate with the briefing.

The same broken system infects Professional Military Education.

We still warehouse majors and lieutenant colonels in endless lectures by civilian PhDs who have never heard a shot fired in anger, followed by cocktail-party networking. That is not education for war.

Real PME puts officers into the dirt: multi-day field exercises, continuous decision-making under physical and mental stress, free-play against live opponents, and after-action reviews that ruthlessly expose who can think and who can only brief.

Until we rip the current system out by the roots and replace it with Outcomes-Based Learning built around Maneuver Warfare and Mission Command, we will keep producing the same risk-averse FOGOs who excel at process and fail at war.

Anderson ends by calling for a Kobayashi Maru-style final exam at the war colleges.

Fine. But that is a band-aid on a severed artery. The real fix is upstream: change how we select, educate, promote, and assign officers from the day they pin on second lieutenant or ensign. Separate the tracks. Measure what matters. Demand free-play and stress. Fire the process-worshippers. Promote the adapters — especially those whose files are not perfect because they told the truth when it cost them.

Until we do, our generals will continue to fail us — not because they lack technology or tactical drills, but because the system that produces them was designed for a different century and a different kind of war. And they are very, very good at protecting that system.

Endnotes:

1. Gary Anderson, “Our Generals Are Failing Us,” July 20, 2026.

2. On the German definition of tactics and the primacy of character, see Truppenführung (Heeresdienstvorschrift 300), Part 1 (1933) and Part 2 (1934). English translation: Bruce Condell and David T. Zabecki, eds., On the German Art of War: Truppenführung (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), especially the opening paragraphs of Part 1: “War is the severest test of spiritual and bodily strength. In war, character outweighs intellect.” See also William S. Lind, Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), and Donald E. Vandergriff, Adopting Mission Command: Developing Leaders for a Superior Command Culture (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019).

3. The key German terms are Charakterstärke (strength of character) and Verantwortungsfreudigkeit (joy in accepting responsibility). Both appear repeatedly in German officer education and in the commentary surrounding Truppenführung. See also Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, Chapter 3, on military genius and strength of character under the pressure of emotion and friction.

4. For the critique of “up-or-out” and the industrial-age personnel system, see Donald E. Vandergriff, Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2013), especially chapters 3–5. First edition published by Presidio Press, 2002. See also Donald E. Vandergriff, Raising the Bar: Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War (Washington, DC: Center for Defense Information, 2006).

5. Asad “Genghis” Khan, Betrayal of Command: My Marine Corps Journey (Afghanistan 2001–2004) (2025). See also his platform The Sentinel / Sentinel 360.

6. On free-play force-on-force training, Tactical Decision Games, and Outcomes-Based Learning as the real filters for warfighting ability, see Vandergriff, Raising the Bar; and subsequent articles and workshops conducted for the Army, Marines, and allied forces. The German system of continuous free-play exercises and after-action critique remains the gold standard; see also Bruce I. Gudmundsson’s commentaries on Truppenführung and German officer education.

7. Senator Susan Collins’s recent claim that the U.S. military is “the most meritocratic institution in history” was made publicly in July 2026. The statement is demonstrably false when measured against historical officer selection systems (including the German model under Truppenführung) that actually tested tactical and operational judgment and strength of character under stress.

8. Donald E. Vandergriff, The Outcomes Based Learning Professional Handbook, (Manassas VA: Special Tactics Institute, 2022). The German emphasis on imperfect but honest files and the willingness to speak truth to power is implicit throughout Truppenführung’s demand that leaders accept full responsibility and act decisively even when information is incomplete. Modern American promotion boards systematically penalize exactly this behavior.

Donald Vandergriff is also the author of the military fiction series Reforging the Sword that uses fiction to describe how these reforms above would be implemented and what the reformed force would look like.

Begin Gary Anderson Article:

Our Generals Are Failing Us: The U.S. military excels at tactics and technology but too often fails at operational art, strategic thinking, and developing bold leaders.

by Gary Anderson

July 20, 2026, 11:46 PM

Honor guardsmen march in formation prior to a bilateral meeting between Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Italian Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., June 15, 2026. (DoW photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)

America’s flag and general officers (FOGOs) are superb tacticians and technicians, but they are poor strategists and practitioners of the operational art. Iran was a good example. It was clearly President Trump’s intent to use the war as a means to encourage the restive Iranian people to overthrow the regime. Instead of using a mix of information warfare and intimidation of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps — the real power brokers in Iran — our FOGOs chose to treat the whole thing as a targeting exercise concentrating mainly on pure military targets. The Israelis took out leadership individuals, but the real power was in the ability of IRGC units to disperse to their homes and only come out in force to suppress the large gatherings of dissidents intent on storming government buildings as happened in the 1979 revolution.

We need our military to do better than we did in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.

We should have gone after the IRGC, which is the real center of gravity of the regime. Using a combination of drone-delivered leaflets and radio broadcasts, we could have called for the people to occupy government buildings in key cities such as Tehran, Qom, and Bandar Arras. When IGRC units came out of hiding to disperse the crowds, drone-delivered precision-guided munitions could have targeted them, giving the revolutionaries confidence. This would have taken imagination and initiative that the U.S. military no longer shows. This is not post-war armchair hindsight. I suggested it in this publication shortly after the war began. (READ MORE: What Next After the Bombing Stops?)

As it turns out, the IRGC’s power has been increased by the war. It is reportedly building new bases in Iraq already, and they will use the billions that they gained in the peace agreement to restore their influence with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen. We are admittedly poor at managing regime change in foreign countries, but we did not really care what happened as long as the IRGC was eliminated as a factor. The best case would be a democratic government; the worst would be a civil war. In any case, the Iranians would not be causing trouble in the region for a long time. Now, we have given the IRGC a new lease on life.

Iran is not the only situation where our FOGOs have failed us. Afghanistan is another example. When it became obvious that the Biden administration was going to leave Afghanistan, the obvious evacuation location was Bagram Air Base. It was defensible and not in a location where crowds of panicked Afghans or the Taliban could interfere with the evacuation. Instead, the generals meekly abdicated their military and moral responsibility to the State Department’s insistence that the indefensible Karzai International Airport be the point of embarkation. Located in downtown Kabul and surrounded by hills dominated by the Taliban, the Karzai location put the evacuation in much the same position that the French faced at Dien Bien Phu in Viet Nam. We were fortunate that the Taliban did not choose to turn the evacuation into a massacre. Instead, it was merely a humiliating rout.

Even when they think they are innovating, the FOGOs get it wrong. The Marine Corps’ senior leadership mistook modernization with innovation when they made the disastrous decision to adopt a Force Design strategy and tried to transform the Corps into a China-centric missile force. In doing so, the Corps’ leadership abandoned its traditional worldwide general force-in-readiness posture. Unfortunately, the short-range, subsonic NEMSIS anti-ship missile system they selected has been rendered obsolete by longer-range hypersonic missiles being procured by the other services as the “transformational” way of the future. To afford the NEMSIS and its associated radars, the Corps divested itself of much of the combat power it would need to contribute to a large-scale regional conflict.

How did our FOGOs go so wrong?

I believe it is a combination of misguided professional education and careerism that leads to a lack of moral courage. Instead of teaching and evaluating real warfighting skills, our officer promotion system discourages risk-taking and original thinking. To become a FOGO, one needs to follow a carefully choreographed routine of command, joint staff, and educational experience which emphasizes going along to get along. Original thinking and nonconformity are discouraged as “rocking the boat.”

Professional military education from the level of major to colonel emphasizes liberal arts rather than a serious study of military history and art. Nowhere is there a challenge to think outside the box and make hard military and moral choices. Our FOGOs generally lack the ability to think outside the box. But when one occasionally gets a really stupid idea, there is not a mechanism to seriously critique it. This is what happened with the Marines who actively suppressed any free discussion of the merits of the disastrous idea of Force Design among active duty personnel.

Somewhere along the line, we need to seriously challenge aspiring flag-level officers both strategically and morally to separate the wheat from the chaff. At the war college level, students should be placed through a series of tough wargaming problems against thinking adversaries that pose challenging military and moral problems. Win or lose, they should be required to justify their decisions to a panel of senior officers. The final exam should be a virtually unsolvable problem that requires both hard decisions and imagination on both a military and moral basis.

In the science fiction Star Trek series, the final exam for students is a problem called the Kobayashi Maru, an apparently “no-win” problem under time-constrained situations. Students who could not or would not make hard decisions and could not justify their decisions failed. The manner in which war college students respond to this kind of pressure would not necessarily exclude them from flag rank, but it would be a way of separating the George Pattons from the George Armstrong Custers and the Admiral Halseys from the Admiral Ghormleys.

We need our military to do better than we did in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. Admittedly, we had flashes of brilliance such as David Petraeus and Jim Mattis, but the depressing progression of careerist military FOGO time servers is too often the case. There has to be a better way of creating competent military leaders in the future.