Military Review English Edition January-February 2014

This article does not suggest failure with respect to military trainers, tactics, operational or strategic level training objectives; one must look at an even bigger picture above all of these things.3 Our training centers are full of dynamic, dedicated military professionals who might take offense at the notion of “training to fail”; however if our overarching training philosophy is faulty, even the best efforts will not matter. To contemplate our training philosophy, can we consider on a holistic and ontological level how the Army approaches training, and how we “think about thinking” with respect to training?4 To bring some context to this abstract proposal, I introduce in this article several design concepts that draw from post-modern philosophical and sociological ﬁelds that help us consider whether our Army may inadvertently train to fail, and how it has effectively insulated itself from even questioning these institutionalisms.5 “Design” as it relates to military applications has a broad range of conceptual, holistic applications for dealing with complexity, although most services attempt to brand their own design approach for self-relevant concerns.6 Army design methodology does not include any of these concepts in U.S. Army doctrine nor does our training strategy speciﬁcally reference design theory. However, critical reﬂection and holistic, systemic approaches might illustrate our training shortfalls.7 To conduct this inquiry, we draw from philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulation and simulacra. We also reference sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s collaborative concept of “social knowledge construction,” to demonstrate how the Army potentially trains in an approach that is in conﬂict with what we expect our training to accomplish.8 Are we spending our energies, resources, and time in training approaches that are detrimental to our overarching goals because they train us in the wrong ways? To return to the plot of the science ﬁction movie quoted at the beginning, shall we swallow the red pill and face uncomfortable truths, or swallow the blue pill and continue enjoying the false realities we create for ourselves through training the force toward national policy goals?9 The writers behind The Matrix were heavily inﬂuenced by Baudrillard’s work on simulacra, which 16 emphasizes a stark contrast between false “realities” that we as a society often prefer over the painful, bleak, and more challenging “real world” we tend to avoid. This proves useful in that while Baudrillard’s work is relatively unknown, the Matrix movies are extremely popular in Western society and address the same existential concept. This article’s introductory quote features a conversation between a treacherous character and an agent of the Matrix where the conspirator acknowledges his shared understanding that the steak he is eating within the Matrix is imaginary; it is “fake steak.” The virtual program called the Matrix stimulates his brain, but there is no actual steak in his mouth. Yet despite knowing this, he wants to return to the Matrix and have his memory erased, so he can live an imaginary life full of delicious fake steak in complete bliss. This article employs the “fake steak” metaphor as a vehicle to illustrate the differences between simulation and simulacra concerning our military training philosophy—one that encompasses our strategic, operational, and tactical applications. Again, this criticism is not directed at any military unit, organization, or strategic concepts in exclusion; rather this is a critical reﬂection upon the overarching core training philosophy we use daily. We all are dining on fake steak together. Does our military prefer to train in blissful ignorance of the detrimental actions we perform at the expense of our overarching military strategies? We need to ﬁrst frame what Baudrillard terms simulation, and how his concept of simulacra represents the fake steak that institutions crave instead of less enjoyable “real” meals. Deﬁning Simulacra for Military Planning Considerations Suppose a couple took a vacation to Las Vegas and stayed in a particular casino hotel that specialized in replicating Venice, complete with canals, gondolas, and many of the familiar visual cues associated with the great Italian city. The couple has such a good time that they decide to take their next vacation in actual Venice, Italy. However, upon their arrival to Venice the moldy smell of the real canals, the crowds of tourists, the formidable language barrier, and the lack of slot machines and readily available American food at every turn disappoints them. They crave the artiﬁcial Venetian January-February 2014 MILITARY REVIEW

Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 18