The Model of Combat

The unit (battalion) is a machine

The main metaphor used by officers and soldiers in talking about the battalion is that of a machine. In analytical terms, this metaphor maps the characteristics of a machine onto those of a military unit.

The following excerpt from Yoel, a former commander of the battalion, illustrates this point.

Your mission (mesima) is to build a framework that will be able to immediately undertake any task assigned to it and that it will perform that mission with a minimum of casualties. Your responsibility is that things will go smoothly in this framework and this would include the capability of one company commander to replace another. This means that there will be the smallest number of snags as possible in the way of the framework so it can continue to function as a framework.

This short passage consists in a string of metaphoric mappings: the smoothness and effi­ciency of the unit's performance, the activation of the battalion, or the interchangeability of parts are all qualities we assume (or know) that machines have. Likewise, in the same interview, Yoel goes on to stress that different parts of the unit have different prices at­tached to them, again not unlike the different prices of the various parts of a machine:

I don't think it would be good for the battalion commander to be the first to go [get killed], because of the price this would entail. Not the moral price, but the price in terms of the functioning of the framework. When he goes, the chance that the system will continue to go on working won't be very high.

When we talk of organizations as machines (Morgan 1986: 22), we often have in mind a state of orderly (mechanical) relations between clearly defined parts. In technical terms, the machine is the source domain, while the military unit is the target domain. Because we usually have a more extensive knowledge of the source domain—machines—the use of the metaphor illuminates certain characteristics of the target domain—in our case the battalion.

Tasks undertaken by the service company were often referred to by the deputy battal­ion commander as “finished products,” and in appraising the caliber of soldiers it is not uncommon to hear of “product quality” or “product description.” Commanders often speak of a squad or a platoon “in the cartridge” (makhsanit) to refer to a unit kept in readiness for an assigned mission. Correspondingly, in referring to himself before a combat patrol on the border with Lebanon, one company commander said, half jokingly: “If I don't come out, don't worry, there are plenty of spare parts [sper, literally spare tires] around.” Finally during a training exercise the battalion commander was explicit about the replacement of one commander by the next should the first one be “finished.”

The Israeli military's use of the verb “to operate” (letaf'el) serves as another exam­ple. This verb is used as a continuum stretching from equipment to men: thus one can say to operate light and heavy firearms, APCs (armored personnel carriers), individual sol­diers, squads, teams, platoons, companies, and battalions. Moreover, this term is used re­ferring to people only in the context of the army.

But why is the image of a machine so prevalent? The reasons not only lie in the de­velopment of modern armies and the historical association between the military and large-scale industrialization. I would argue that the continuing currency of this metaphor has to do with the fact that in our societies, properties of machines are so apprehensible to humans [following Quinn and Holland (1987: 28)].

The unit (battalion) as brain

Yet arguing that the primary metaphor used in regard to the unit is that of a machine, a mechanical instrument designed to carry out tasks, is still too simple. In the interview I held with Yoel (a highly successful director of a manufacturing firm), he often used other terms that, while grounded in the language of management, sounded somehow different. For example, he spoke of such matters as “acquiring managerial skills,” “building a sys­tem of working relations,” or of “management wisdom.” I began to comprehend the sig­nificance of this terminology when I reread another part of the interview during which we discussed the resemblance between running a business and commanding an army bat­talion:

Now in terms of thinking and planning. In both places [business and the army] you make decisions, it's your role as commander or manager if you’re looking for the commonalities. Now you can't plan anything if you can’t define the situation—the conditions of the environment (matsav hat.eva). Now here you call it intelligence and there you call it market research. It’s the same thing... Now it’s true in the army, that you won’t send someone [without real directions], sort of like “go over there somewhere there is a wadi,” so it’s the same in business. Policymaking in both places is the same. You have to set the parameters: price, number of agents, advertizing budget.

In general terms, Yoel is talking about the relationship between organizations and their environment. More specifically, he is discussing the planning and reactive capacities of the battalion to uncertain and changing circumstances. The metaphor governing this pas­sage may be clarified against the background of a very common negative label applied to some soldiers and officers within the Israel Defense Forces.

This rather standard term is the derogatory “rosh kat.and which literally means “small head.” Closely associated terms are “pinhead” (rosh sika), or the humorous “tweezers head” (rosh pintseta) (implying a crown small enough to be picked up with tweezers), or “small lightbulb head” (rosh natznatz). These terms usually refer to soldiers who are considered somewhat “lower grade”—whether mediocre, inept, or unwilling— and who lack motivation or are disillusioned with army life. The prime grievance against these soldiers is their unwillingness to take on responsibilities and their apathy. The con­trasting category is a “big head” (rosh gadol), which is used to characterize people with initiative, drive, and a sense of enterprise. Here the related terms include “thinking” (chashiva), “using one’s head” (haph'alatrosh) “judgment” (shikulda'at), or “operating the brain” (haph 'alat moach). The essential metaphor at work here, although it is not one used explicitly by the men, is of “unit as brain,” or “unit as mind.” By this assertion I mean the likening of certain military activities to the information processing and reactive capabilities of the human brain or mind (Morgan 1986: 81).

This metaphor is related to the machine metaphor. The mechanistic approach is well suited to conditions characterized by straightforward tasks and a stable environment, i.e., circumstances in which machines work well (Morgan 1986: 34).

There are a number of examples of the unit as brain metaphor. The first instance is taken from an interview with Itai, the battalion’s deputy commander. We were having a conversation about what he looks for in military service:

Where do the interesting things begin? When the field (shetach) creates problems that are unexpected, and you have to meet those problems with your own initiative.

Corollaries of this view are found in expressions commanders use such as “creativity in managing,” “problem solving,” or “meeting challenges is like solving crossword puz­zles.” Moreover, when officers on all levels talked of accepting “smart comments” from soldiers, they seemed to be stressing the need for a basic openness to suggestions about the operation of the unit in a changing environment.

One of the most common phrases used to appraise troops and commanders is their “ability to think beyond their organizational slot or box” Unishbelset) This concise ex­pression captures a desired ability to comprehend the general picture within which the unit is operating (i.e., the environment), to process information relevant to concrete ac­tion, and to act beyond the dictates of one’s role (in the machine or in the bureaucracy). While I have very little comparative data on this point, I would suggest that to a greater degree than in other armies, the IDF’s elite combat units encourage every person to have more initiative. The IDF expects troops to be open and innovative to a greater degree than in other armed forces (Moshe Lissak, personal communication).

Yet for all the stress on innovation and thinking, the brain metaphor is subordinated to the metaphor of machine.

If you don’t give the company commanders the limiting framework, and if you don’t give them a degree of independence, then you lose any output you can produce from them.

The second passage is from an extended talk with Ehud, commander of C company:

I don’t get up in the morning and give an order here and an order there: “This is what and how I want things!” I think about things and when I send someone I explain why it’s important that he do that thing. This goes on until the stage where I say, “OK, this is, after all, the army. I’ve explained until now, and from this moment on, what I say is an order.”

The implication of such statements appears to be that creativity and innovation are welcome so long as they represent contributions to the greater efficiency of the military machine. The outcome is a situation where units are populated by resourceful and ingen­ious people who contribute (and are encouraged to contribute) to the innovative and mul­tifaceted quality of their military units.