You make the case for having a military with even higher mental skills and educational levels. Some of the current equipment instructional materials are in the form of comic books.
As with all thinks technical, smarter is better.
not sure how many SMART people will sign up for the current B.S. in the military.
Smart people always have options that the rest of the people under the Bell curve do not have.
Even the military upper echelons understands that there may need to be a set of people who are fodder. No different than the charge of the Light brigade. Or the Civil war idiocy when facing Gatling guns, or similarly WW1.
Many upper echelon military are not worriers, they are bureaucrats with much power over their underlings.
Which General in Afghanistan was it that slept with the Reporter? And non of his underlings reported any of this ?