The Occult War on Excellence

lessons from the latest casualty

One of the best leaders in today’s Air Force, Lt. Col. Mike Smith, was just relieved of command of the 320th Special Tactics Squadron (STS). When commanders get relieved it typically makes the news with some vague reference to “loss of confidence.” Usually we never really know what happened unless we’re close to some of the involved parties. There is overwhelming pressure to keep the details of such matters “close-hold.” As bad as getting relieved is for the career of a military officer, airing grievances openly invites aggressive character assassination by senior leaders who are instinctively driven to side with peers without any regard to the quality of their decision making. This typically leads to relieved officers going quietly to their next assignment without giving the world any clues as to what really transpired. Lt. Col. Smith couldn’t take that path. Determining that ongoing circumstances are putting those he was so recently responsible for at risk, he overcame overwhelming cultural pressure to do what he deemed necessary and told his story.

Warriors and Bureaucrats

Please take the time to review Lt. Col. Smith’s (who I’ll refer to henceforth as Mike for the sake of expediency) story linked above. I won’t cover the entire ordeal he went through, but instead give my impressions and how this story is a sort of microcosm of the larger story of the world’s largest and most powerful military collapsing under the weight of perverse incentives and spiritual bankruptcy. I’ll be using examples from the story that will probably make more sense if you have the entire context.

Honorable AF

In the rigid hierarchy of the military, sometimes you come across leaders that don’t fit the mold. Sometimes they’re terrible and have no business having responsibility over anyone or anything. Other times they’re such paragons of excellence it seems a crime against nature to see them subordinated to anyone. Mike fits solidly into the latter category.

After a decade spent cutting his teeth as an enlisted man in combat as a TACP¹ with 3ID and 2nd Ranger Battalion, Mike transitioned to the dark side around 2010. As an officer Mike continued to crush every assignment he was given until he wound up being the Squadron Commander for 320th STS.² While Mike was commanding the 320th they won AFSOC 2022 Squadron of the Year and boasted unparalleled unit morale as demonstrated by the standard DoD survey used to measure such things. To be clear, in so far as leadership can be quantified, Mike was one of the best Squadron Commanders in Air Force Special Operations. So why was he relieved? It wasn’t in spite of his excellence, it was because of it.

Longhouse Egalitarianism Vs. Operators

Mike Smith led serious people with a serious job. People who signed on for a high level of risk for no greater monetary rewards than POGs like myself enjoy. Why? So they could be in a community of excellence. It isn’t easy to escape the egalitarian longhouse that has subsumed nearly every aspect of American professional life. You have to be willing to do things that those who love comfort aren’t willing to do. It used to be that special operations was a way to get away from such people. I’m not exaggerating when I say that there are many such individuals that would prefer to face down hostile enemy fire than tolerate working under a fatuous and incompetent Karen with pronouns in they/their bio. I’m not saying this is Mike, but I’d bet dollars to donuts this describes at least some of the Airmen of the 320th STS. When Mike took command, he was immediately confronted with one such individual, a GS-11 civilian named Ashley Henderson.

Mike’s predecessor warned him about Ashley. Unfortunately for Mike, in today’s Air Force, even in a “Special Operations Wing,” egalitarian longhouse office politics have become pervasive. Ashley had leveraged her position to select allies in the hiring process, punish dissidents within her sphere of influence, and reward the loyal. The influence of this cabal extended into Wing senior leadership either totally naïve to such power dynamics or in full support, allowing her influence to expand more or less unchallenged. Given that frame, any challenge to Ashley’s power and influence, even if communicated with clarity in terms of its adverse impact on mission, was doomed to be perceived as “hostile” and “toxic.” This is essentially how toxic soft competition checkmates those who prefer to resolve conflict directly. Nevertheless, as it became clear that her power and influence were adversely impacting mission, especially within 320th STS, Mike began taking the legally and morally required steps to confront that power in service of his Airmen and their mission capability.

Excellence and Accountability

Accountability is anathema to bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are often forced to pay lip service to accountability, but since it is the principle threat to the laziness and incompetence of the stereotypical bureaucrat, the prospect of real accountability is met with a visceral horror and derision by such organizational detritus. This horror and derision logically extends to the only individuals capable of delivering genuine accountability within a bureaucracy; the virtuous and the excellent. If you keep this in mind as you read through Mike’s story, the impression of mere incompetence guiding these events gives way to a cold logic. The senior command laughing at Mike for clearly articulating the needs of his unit related to physical readiness. The admonition that Mike should “get off his high horse” when defending transparency and candor in working through organizational conflict. The assertion that Mike exhibited “poor leadership” in communicating that his Airmen “were owed answers on root causes, contributing factors, and DoD-wide fixes” in the wake of the Gundam-22 crash…

The lukewarm response to Mike’s stellar DEOCS survey results³ tells the same story. As just another factor highlighting Mike’s excellence, these results magnified the threat he posed as an individual with the power to turn accountability from an abstruse concept into real world consequences for corruption and incompetence. Mike forcing one of his superiors to confront the fact that he made a bad decision⁴ was gauche enough. This was a kind of accountability that bruised that leader’s ego, but didn’t really threaten his career broadly. This changed when Mike brought his Airmen’s concerns about the crash and the airframe involved to the Wing Commander’s attention. It wasn’t that transparency throughout investigations into root causes of the crash would necessarily implicate Wing leadership, it was that it could. Mike explained why a transparent investigation was necessary in a room full of Wing leadership who presided over this tragedy.⁵ He did this as a credible leader with an unparalleled record of success and unquestionable honor. By doing the right thing for the organization and his Airmen in this highly volatile context, Mike spotlighted himself as a threat to the command. For this he was relieved two weeks later.

The Air Force Vs. Excellence

This dynamic isn’t an entirely new feature of The United States Air Force (USAF) and bureaucracy generally. USAF has a long history of persecuting excellence. The life story of COL John Boyd gives us this proper historical context. Boyd designed the most successful fighter aircraft in history and inspired influential acolytes to make their own key contributions to USMIL. He revolutionized fighter tactics and set the foundation for the USMC’s Maneuver Warfare doctrine credited with the overwhelming success of Operation Desert Storm (which he also helped plan). That he wasn’t able to make general officer given no lack of trying is a standing indictment of USAF’s excellence branding. COL Boyd was just a little too competent. If a general officer was wrong about something, Boyd let them know, often in dramatic fashion. This ensured he would never be allowed into their elite, yet somehow egalitarian little club. For a group that likes to talk about how important professionalism is, it might seem inconsistent to let petty ego stifle the advancement of a proven leader with unparalleled accomplishments, but it isn’t really.

Professionalism to the modern military leader is creating an environment where seniors can take credit for the excellence of subordinates while avoiding accountability for their own failures. In such an environment, true excellence becomes a liability, because competent, passionate, and credible leaders wield the power to hold leaders above them accountable. Without the reality testing of combat operations against a near peer enemy, leaders come to find that it is a much safer bet to take credit for the mere perception of excellence. By counting on such perceptions not being tested, leaders can mitigate the risk of accountability from below by undermining true excellence demonstrated by subordinates at the low price of their soul and sacred oaths. They wrap this up in narratives about “establishing relationships” and “being a team player” but this is the true dynamic. In a functional military, the onus should be on everyone to get along with and support the best, because we’ll depend on the best to lead us should the going ever get tough. In a functional military, a GS-11 civilian with no prior service would fall over themselves to support a combat tested and proven commander at every available opportunity. In a functional military, the idea that such a civilian would hold equitable status and credibility as such a commander would be met with scorn and derision. Lt. Col. Mike Smith’s story highlights an uncomfortable truth: We no longer have a functional military.

Serving What, Exactly?

For those of us still serving, this realization forces us to confront uncomfortable questions.

I think there is an answer that men of honor like Mike can give to this question though, and it all comes down to performance with a nexus to purpose. For members of the Armed Forces I think the purpose part is actually the most straightforward, and it is articulated by our oaths to the Constitution. As for performance, well, that is a huge challenge, especially as we’re forced to contend with insider threats and myriad perverse incentives. For those who bear truth faith and allegiance to the oath, allowing these malign currents to carry us limply into civilian status isn’t an option. Can the current be resisted? I don’t know, but if it can we’ll need excellent swimmers.

For the next article I’ll focus on how I conceive of optimizing performance with a nexus to purpose in this context. Thanks for reading and hope to see you then.

1. Tactical Air Control Party (TACPs) are special operations JTAC qualified Airmen who are embedded with Army units to call for joint fires. They’re extremely high speed. There’s an ego thing with Air Force where they want the dudes they embed with Army units to be ridiculously squared away/operating at a higher level of competence than the Soldiers they’re embedded with. The fact that Mike was a TACP with a Ranger Battalion should tell you what caliber of individual we’re talking about here.

2. An Air Force STS is the rough tier equivalent of an Army Special Forces Battalion with an Air Force Pararescuemen being their version of an Army Green Beret.

3. A DEOCS survey is used to evaluate command climate/how good morale/leadership is in a unit. It is now tied into DoD-wide “prevention” efforts that directly conflict with organizational focus on performance with a nexus to purpose, but that is a larger story for later.

4. COL Giller supporting Ashley Henderson in consolidating gyms was a bad decision that adversely impacted the morale of 320th STS personnel while not seeming to have any beneficial impact on the rest of the Wing. It is not uncommon for senior leaders to promulgate policy that has an adverse impact on morale, then be shielded from the negative feedback bubbling up from troops on the ground by a ring of sycophants who prefer a delusionally contented boss to one who lashes out in anger. If you’re wondering why the truth would anger such a leader, allow me to explain. To such an individual the only reason troops wouldn’t support their policy is because of poor execution. To them, it is impossible that their policy/decision was stupid. This creates an incentive for leaders around promulgators of bad ideas to maintain the perception that everything is great. I can’t say this is a strategy without merit, because candor in such a situation could just result in more “good ideas” on how to fix the problem that all tend to make it even worse.

5. As the saying goes, commanders are responsible for everything that happens or fails to happen within a unit. When tragedy strikes, there is an overwhelming incentive for leaders to keep investigations “close-hold” to develop a narrative that most effectively shifts responsibility away from higher echelon commanders. This is done in a variety of ways, but essentially those with power in an incompetocracy all benefit from diffusing responsibility to reduce the likelihood of accountability.