Why the U.S. military should mandate officer retirement by age 50

France's military history is littered with cautionary tales and glorious triumphs. And the secret differentiator between the two may be age.

The average age of Napoleon's generals was 41, and many of the brightest were even younger. Jean Lannes was named a general at 27, and a field marshal at 35. Andre Masséna was named a general at 35. Louis-Nicolas Davoust was named a general at 23 (really), and a field marshal at 34. Joachim Murat, Napoleon's legendary cavalry commander, was named a general at 29.

By contrast, in 1939, when France started what would be the most serious debacle in its history, the supreme commander of its armed forces was Maxime Gamelin, age 67. Before the end of the Battle of France, he was replaced by Maxime Weygand, 73. France's only World War II victories were won by a young general, who had previously written a prophetic book on blitzkrieg tactics, by the name of Charles de Gaulle.

This is a pattern so often repeated in military history that you can't help but ask, "When will they ever learn?" A military force wins a series of victories. After doing so, it becomes cocky, set in its ways, sure that its tactics will work forever. A hungrier force comes up with new and unexpected tactics. The older force cannot adapt. It is defeated. The phenomenon is so well known that "generals fighting the last war" has become a common expression.

We should always be wary of over-generalizations. Obviously, some of the world's most daring and innovative people are senior citizens, and some of its dullest and most conservative are in their 20s. But broadly speaking, these are exceptions that prove the rule. It seems hard to deny that there is indeed an inverse correlation between age and willingness to try new ideas, and between age and aggression, which are among the most critical features for military commanders.

And that brings us to America. Today, the U.S. military seems both as strong as ever and as weak as ever. As strong as ever because it has no great power rivals that can even hope to match its conventional strength; and because it has the most aircraft carriers, the best technology, and unattainable command of the skies. And yet, no one but a fool would claim that the U.S. military's recent war-making record is sterling. As Thomas E. Ricks has argued, a great many of the U.S.'s military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are directly attributable to poor generalship.

The U.S. military is the most powerful fighting force in history. And warfare is changing faster than ever. The entire world depends on the U.S. military for security. Whatever the "next war" ends up being, we will all be sorry if U.S. generals are fighting the last war while it happens.

I don't know what the "next war" will be, so I can't make tactical recommendations. Instead, I can make a recommendation that will bias the U.S. military toward more inventiveness, more risk taking, more daring. Is it sure to work? Of course not. Will it make a true difference? Is it necessary? I believe so.

That recommendation is simple: The U.S. military should have a firm retirement age of 50 for officers.

This would be a sea change. It would mean the chairman of the joint chiefs would be in his mid-40s, instead of 62, as he is today. The career path would be compressed to an astonishing extent. It is not just generals who will be (much) younger; it will also be every type of superior officer.

There are, of course, laws in America that ban age discrimination. There are very good reasons for these statutes, and I don't propose changing them anywhere — except in the military's officer ranks.

Now, you might be concerned that my plan will promote people past their level of competence. Don't worry about that. Bureaucracies promote people to their level of incompetence; startups and adventurous militaries promote people past their level into competence, into jobs that they must grow into as they do them. A very common feature of military campaigns, especially successful ones, is officers being promoted very early due to high rank turnover, whether due to dismissals or death in action.

Plus, the U.S. military needs more accountability for senior officers. Some senior officers will not be ready for significant command by their mid-30s. Replace them!

Aren't there a lot of very valuable old commanders? Of course. As I said earlier, there are exceptions to every rule, and there are or should be a lot of exceptions to the current, never-justified, unwritten rule that says senior commanders should be in their 50s or 60s. The point of setting a general rule of this type is not to catch every single eventuality in its net. It is to find a way to shape incentives and culture and probabilities to improve the organization.

One effect of this new rule is that, given the shorter career span, and, therefore, a much more brutal "up or out" promotion system, younger ambitious officers who want to make general very fast will be more incentivized to try to stand out, to try new things and methods.

I realize, of course, how audacious my proposal is. Almost as audacious as Napoleon.

“His actions as a General in WWII were appalling.”

Utter nonsense. Yes, the man had some serious character flaws, but his actions as a strategic commander were highly effective and produced far fewer casualties then those of Nimitz and Eisenhower.

Furthermore, it was Eisenhower who caused the surrender of Wainwright in the Philippines, and not MacArthur. It was Eisenhower’s recommendation on the war planning staff that President Roosevelt and his chiefs of staff relied upon to withhold further support to the garrison in the Philippines. MacArthur wanted to conduct a forward defensive campaign at the beachheads of the Japanese invasion landings, but he was repeatedly overruled by the war plans staff, especially Eisenhower. In the final case, MacArthur tried to make a last minute change of the war plan and make the forward defense, rather than immediately withdraw into Bataan. It worked so well, the Japanese invaders were very nearly defeated in detail after the landings on Luzon. The decision by Eisenhower and the war plans staff to withhold further attempts to resupply and reinforce MacArthur’s defensive campaign denied the defenders the ammunition needed at the critical moment when the Japanese invaders were all but broken. When the ammunition ran out, the defense began a rapid collapse back into the Bataan defensive positions.

Even after the defense fell back into the Bataan defensive positions, the Japanese invasion forces once again were very nearly defeated by the emaciated defenders of Bataan. In assault after assault on the American defensive lines in Bataan, the Japanese attackers took crippling losses of men and material. The situation grew to desperate proportions to the point where the Japanese discussed sending no further reinforcements of troops or supplies to the Philippines and instead to send them to the attacks upon the Malay Barrier. It was only at the last possible moment the Japanese decided to sen in one more substantial reinforcement to the Philippines, which finally broke Wainwright’s lines for a lack of munitions, food, medicine, and able bodied manpower.

MacArthur got it right, and Eisenhower and his backers were wrong. The same thing happened in Europe, where Patton had it right and Eisenhower, Bradley, Clark, and Hodges too often got it wrong.

Australian RINOs , eh? The perspective of history is filled with bias and I admit mine. I see MacArthur as a brave soldier and an egomaniac whose persona became perception in a nation looking for a hero.

As an army officer, MacArthur focused on the ground and even that was more planning than reality. In a sense, this campaign proved the adage of the horseshoe. The Japanese never had adequate logistic support, and the American supplies did not help those stranded on Bataan. The failure to resupply was certainly out of MacArthur’s hands, but the initial failure to stage and employ resources was typical–haphazard staging driven by numerous plans and no final decision until it was too late. In fairness, any transition from peace to war is fraught with uncertainty.

The defense of the Philippines was a debacle, and it was an intractable problem given the political and logistic realities. However, I still believe that not attacking Formosa and not deciding on one course of action set in motion the ultimate result.

MacArthur did focus on retaking the Philippines, but many would say that his motivation was to remove the stain of that defeat. Ultimately, his triumphant return was predicated by the same logistical nightmare that defeated Japanese forces throughout the Pacific. The Japanese had no manufacturing base or transport capability to hold anything.

The Japanese Penny Men spent their lives in wave after wave of suicidal attacks, gaining ground inch by bloodstained inch, only to find themselves abandoned to starve or make that final miserable stand rather than face the shame of surrender. That fanatical devotion, so impenetrable to Western understanding, was the final justification for the mushroom clouds that ended their dreams of empire and released the last of those Philippine captives from slavery on the Japanese islands.

“The Japanese never had adequate logistic support....”

The Japanese had logistical support enough to conquer one of the largest expanses of the world ever seen in such a short campaign of conquest. This was due in large part to the weakness of the Allies in the conquered regions. Still the Japanese were outnumbered by the British Commonwealth forces and still managed enough logistical supply to hand their superior enemy a sound defeat.

The deficiencies of the Japanese armed forces and logistics began to be apparent with the near failure of their invasion of Luzon. Conversely, the deficiencies of the American ability to reinforce and supply the Philippine defense forces was all too apparent. This deficiency was well known and integrated into the war plans long before the war and the Japanese invasion. War planners in Washington argued the pros and cons for years whether or not to attempt the relief of the Philippines. It was MacArthur who attempted in vain to persuade the war planners and President Roosevelt to plan for forward opposition to the amphibious landing forces. Washington City authorities denied their approval and a timely creation of the Philippine territorial army as the Philippine President also vacillated giving his own approval.

The Japanese intelligence officer/s inside the Philippine government (baber and so forth) knew full well the internal debate going on for years about these matters before the war. It was the American decision to move forward with the creation of the Philippine army a few years earlier than originally contemplated in preparation for the Philippine independence which added another prompt for Japan to also move forward its timetable for launching the Pacific War.

Japan had earlier planned a start of hostilities against the United States in about 1944. When the United States began its post Washing naval Treaty expansion of the U.S. Navy surface combatants in the late 1930s and later embargoed oil and steel imports used for the Japanese armed forces military campaigns in China, the Japanese moved the war plans forward to Spring 1942. When MacArthur was given the command to begin the creation of the Philippine army with the first traiing classes graduating in Spring 1942, the Japanese moved the war plan forward again until the November-December 1941 launch window was finally implemented on 7 December 1941. This date was chosen in part to preempt the ability of MacArthur to complete the training and equipping of the first echelon of the new Philippine army in March 1942. MacArthur appealed endlessly for more troops and supplies with little success.

So, the situation MacArthur and his command found themselves in during the Philippine Defensive Campaign was not of his doing. The blame rests squarely upon President Roosevelt, President Quezon, the war planners in Washington D.C. (including Eisenhower), and the Philippine pacifists who thought they could persuade President Quezon and the Japanese not to invade the Philippines by offering no threat to the Japanese war plans in the Pacific War.

Despite all of this, MacArthur’s plan to oppose the Japanese invasion at the beachheads succeeded until the handicaps imposed by the Washington and Manila governments took effect with the failed supplies of troops and munitions.

Yes, MacArthur failed the Army Air Corps 10th Air Force. However, we now know by hindsight the 10th Air Force B-17 bombardment squadrons were ill prepared to sink the Japanese invasion force as was originally contemplated by pre-war doctrine. 10th Air force was also a fraction of the strength of the U.S. Pacific Fleet forces that interdicted Formosa in 1944-445, so there was little chance the 10th Air Force had any chance of decisively interdicting the Japanese invasion forces in 1941. Preservation of the 10th Air Force may have helped significantly during the defensive campaign, but it ultimately would have failed due to the chronic shortages of maintenance supplies and reinforcements of replacement B-17 aircraft. It was simply too little too late to change the outcome without the establishment of a convoy route to the Philippines. The U.S. Navy was not prepared to do so and sought to avoid the Japanese effort to compel the U.S. Pacific Fleet into an early and decisive fleet engagement with a victorious outcome for Japan.

Consequently, MacArthur and his command were abandoned by the war planners due to the assumption right or wrong naval relief forces could not successfully conduct a convoy operation to the Philippines.

The Japanese logistical line of communications failed by 1944-45 due to the U.S. submarine warfare finally remedying failed pre-war submarine warfare doctrine and faulty torpedoes, and because of MacArthur’s brilliant island hopping campaign enabling effective air interdiction of those Japanese lines of communication. These accomplishments were well beyond the scope of MacArthur’s command and its establishment in the Philippines of 1941-42.

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