Occasional Paper 38
Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team exit a C-130 

Hercules transport, 16 October 2006, (Department of Defense photo by 

Arthur McQueen) http://www.eucom.mil/media-library/photo/18281/

eucom-photo.
The Army Press

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
ii

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

DeVore, Marc R.

 When failure thrives : institutions and the evolution of postwar

airborne forces / Marc R. DeVore.

 pages cm. -- (Occasional paper ; 38)

 ISBN 978-0-9891372-9-4 (alk. paper)

 1. Airborne troops--History. 2. Airmobile operations (Military 

science)--History. I. Title. II. Title: Institutions and the evolution 

of postwar airborne forces. 

 UD480.D48 2015

 356’.166--dc23

 2015016880

Army Press publications cover a wide variety of military topics. The views expressed in this publication 

are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those

of the Department of the Army or the Department of

Army Press and/or Army University on any republication without the express written permission of the

Provost of Army University.

First Printing June 2015

Layout and Design by 

Elizabeth J. Brown

Combat Studies Institute Press
iii

Foreword

When Failure Thrives is the inaugural publication by the Army 

mark the launch of the new press. In authorizing creation of an 

Army Press, senior US Army leaders envisioned it as a venue for

professional discussion that would examine experiences and challenge conventions and assumptions. Dr. Marc DeVore’s study of the

post-1945 evolution of airborne forces in three very different militaries certainly accomplishes this objective by questioning whether

parachute-enabled forced-entry operations have ever accomplished 

their objectives at an acceptable cost. To establish context DeVore

levels of success. The study then charts the development of airborne

forces in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet

Union.

Ultimately, what Dr. DeVore argues is that the fate of airborne formations within those three states’ national military institusuccessful parachute assaults than on institutionalization-how those

forces were situated doctrinally and “politically” within their armies. 

In the US and USSR, airborne forces managed to gain footholds as

elite institutions and thrived as a result. In the UK, the opposite

dynamic led to the atrophy of the British airborne force. 

When Failure Thrives examines the imconventional thought about the size and missions of the US Army’s

airborne forces. Not all readers will agree with the author’s conclusions, but the resulting discussion and debate will certainly meet the

original intent for the Army Press and its offerings.

Colonel Thomas E. Hanson

Director

Combat Studies Institute
iv

Contents

Foreward ........................................................................................ iii

Chapter 1 Introduction .....................................................................1

Institutional Design and Military Innovation .............................3

Institutional Design and Organizational Inertia .........................7

Chapter 2 The History of Airborne Forces.....................................19

The Origins of Vertical Envelopment ......................................19

The False Promise of Vertical Envelopment ............................21

 ......................25

Why Failed Innovations Survive .............................................29

Chapter 3 The Soviet Union...........................................................39

Chapter 4 The United Kingdom .....................................................47

Chapter 5 The United States ..........................................................55

Chapter 6 Conclusions and Implications for the US Army ............67

Institutional Design and Military Performance ........................67

The Failure of Rationality ........................................................68

Insights for Policymakers ........................................................70

Implications for Current US Army Airborne Forces ................72

About the Author ............................................................................81

page
v

Figures page

Figure 1. Large Airborne Operations of World War II. ..................25

Figure 2. Small Airborne Operations of World War II. ..................27

Figure 3. Soviet, British, and American Airborne Operations. ......30

Figure 4. Soviet Airborne Operations of World War II. .................40

Figure 5. British Airborne Operations of World War II. ................48

Figure 6. American Airborne Operations of World War II. ...........56

1

Chapter 1 

Introduction

Few issues are more important to military professionals or scholars

of national security than understanding the factors that either lead armed 

forces to continuously innovate or succumb to the forces of organizational

inertia. When armed forces successfully innovate, developing new capabilities such as large-scale armored formations and carrier battle groups, 

they can even overcome opponents possessing vastly superior resources. 

Contrarily, whenever military establishments have become too attached 

tends to suffer once those tactics and organizations became obsolete. Such 

a fate befell the Ottoman janissary corps in the 18th century and the horse

cavalry in the 20th century. Consequently, an enduring theme for students of military history is the performance of states with more innovative

armed forces overcoming ones beset with inertia. Because of the issue’s

importance, this study will explore the institutional factors that either lead 

a nation and/or its armed forces to innovate or to retain obsolete force

structures.

The concepts of organizational inertia and military innovation are

closely interconnected. Regardless of how revolutionary they are at the

time of their introduction, all military innovations gradually lose their utility as they are overtaken by further technical and societal developments. 

For example, while the Prussian drill regulations and tactical ordre oblique

introduced by Frederick II (the “the Great”) of Prussia in the mid-18 Century were revolutionary for his time, they became a liability a mere genFrench Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars led to the diffusion of new

models of military organization. However, Prussia proved too slow in responding to these new developments until, after an existential defeat in 

had inherited from Frederick.

This case and others like it demonstrate the validity of Joseph 

Schumpeter’s axiom that innovation is a process of “creative destruction.”1

eliminating existing ones. Consequently, any organization’s ability to innovate is contingent upon its willingness to dismantle or otherwise abandon elements of its existing structure and operational procedures. For this

reason, military innovators oftentimes advocate abolishing organizations
2

considered impediments to reform. For example, Soviet Marshal Nikolai

Ogarkov, an early advocate of a Military Technical Revolution, passionately (yet unsuccessfully) lobbied for his government to shift resources

from armored forces to digital command-and-control networks and longrange precision-guided munitions. In Ogarkov’s case, and many others, 

a military organization’s unwillingness to divert personnel and resources

from obsolescent structures to more promising ones condemned a promising military idea to failure.

2

Although the persistence of obsolete military structures and branches

-

-

borne forces have survived—to different degrees—in three great powers. 

Airborne forces are an ideal case for exploring the survival and evolution 

of a military capability of decreasing utility because of both the nearlyuniversal creation of such forces by the great powers between 1928 and 

1941, and their subsequent development along disparate lines in different

states. 

In this context, although the spread of integrated air defenses, armored vehicles and surface-to-air missiles gradually reduced the utility 

of airborne forces, states adapted to these developments in different ways. 

In the Soviet Army airborne forces continued to claim a relatively large

portion of defense outlays despite their declining utility. In doing so, they 

expended substantial resources in a futile effort to counteract ineluctable

technical trends. In the United States, airborne forces remained an im-

-

borne community sought new roles and missions. Finally, in the United 

Kingdom airborne forces declined in size and importance—and as a share

of the national defense budget—to purely symbolic proportions, preserving the traditions of the venerable Parachute Regiment without investing 

much in that unit’s supposedly unique mission.

Given such a range of outcomes, this study will try to answer two 

important questions: why have airborne forces survived despite the declining feasibility of large-scale paratroop operations? And why have airborne

forces evolved along such different lines in the three states under consideration?

To preview the study’s conclusion, the answer to why obsolete military structures survive must be sought in the institutional processes whereby new military capabilities are created and sustained. As both scholars

and military professionals have long understood, military innovations occur when armed forces establish autonomous or semi-autonomous organizational structures(either a separate service, branch or unit) to explore new
3

technologies and doctrines. However, the same qualities of organizational

autonomy and institutional power that promote innovation in new organizations foster organizational inertia as an institutions’ favored tactics

and technologies become obsolete. In this manner, obsolescent military 

structures can best resist the forces of change when they possess a high 

degree of institutional autonomy and strength, and when their partisans are

dispersed among the other subordinate organizations of the total military 

force. Thus, it is ironically the same structural and institutional-culture

attributes that enable armed forces to pursue new innovative capabilities

that also lead them to retain outmoded capabilities long after they should 

have abandoned them.

Such a “degrees of institutionalization” argument provides a powerful explanation for the varied evolution of airborne forces after the Second 

World War. Indeed, the degree to which airborne forces survived and prospered in the post-war era depended on the degree of autonomy they were

granted upon their creation prior to or during the Second World War. In 

effect, airborne forces suffered cutbacks in countries, such as the United 

Kingdom, where they did not enjoy a high level of institutional strength 

or autonomy to begin with. Contrarily, they proved largely immune to 

cutbacks in the Soviet Union, where they were originally endowed with a

great deal of organizational clout and independence before the war. Finally, airborne forces remained large, but were obliged to engage in frequent

and sustained efforts to reinvent themselves in the United States, where

the airborne community’s institutional strength was substantial, yet not so 

great as to enable airborne forces to entirely neglect the implications of

technical and tactical developments.

Institutional Design and Military Innovation

To understand the persistence of certain military tactics and organizations’ even after technological changes have rendered them obsolescent

it is necessary to examine how different patterns of institutionalization 

shape the development of military capabilities. In one of the most important studies of private sector innovation, Clayton Christensen demonstrated that new capabilities are best developed when they are embodied 

in specially-created organizations, rather than embedded in existing structures.

3 Such is the case because existing organizations tend to focus on 

performing their current tasks optimally, rather than developing entirely 

new approaches to achieving objectives. Therefore, Christensen argues

that corporations must create specialized autonomous orsemi-autonomous

branches in order to exploit major technological developments.
4

While Christensen’s work focuses on private sector innovation, his

conclusions also hold true for military organizations. Indeed, military history is replete with cases when new organizations were more successful

at harnessing the revolutionary potential of new technologies than existing ones. The case of armored warfare provides a powerful example. The

invention of tanks in 1916 and subsequent improvements to their performance created opportunities for land warfare to be waged in radically new

ways. Indeed, military theorists across the globe were quick to recognize

tanks’ potential and most of the great powers had their own armored theUnion), B.H. Liddell-Hart (United Kingdom), Charles de Gaulle (France)

and Alberto Pariani (Italy).

4

However, while recognition of the tank’s tactical value was universal, the creation of armored forces was a much more uneven process. In 

many great powers, including Britain, France and the United States, the

responsibility for employing tanks was assigned to two traditional service

branches—the infantry and the cavalry.5 Contrary to certain misconceptions, both of these branches viewed tanks as potentially very useful. Nevin terms of supporting preexisting infantry and cavalry missions. This

meant that the infantry demanded tanks and armored units that were heavily armored, slow moving and optimized for supporting infantry assaults. 

Meanwhile, the cavalry developed tanks and armored units designed to 

substitute for the traditional horse cavalry missions of scouting and reconnaissance. In the American case, the cavalry even insisted on combining 

tanks and horses in hybrid units.

6

Unfortunately, entrusting the infantry and cavalry branches with 

tank development squandered their revolutionary potential. This became

apparent when Germany launched its blitzkrieg campaigns in 1939-41. 

Rather than subordinating tanks to existing branches, the Germans created 

a dedicated armored branch, the Panzerwaffe, to exploit the new technology. In sharp contrast to the approach taken by existing branches, these

special-purpose organizations exploited the full potential of armored vehicles for deep maneuvers and causing chaos in opponents’ rear areas.

7

Consequently, although Germany’s armored forces were actually numerically inferior to those of their opponents in 1940 and 1941, they neverthe- 8

Thus, as Christensen’s work theorized and the example of armored 

warfare demonstrates, new special-purpose organizations are often better

at exploiting revolutionary new technologies than existing organizations. 

Therefore, when statesmen and military leaders perceive that a new tech-
5

nology or tactic will have far-reaching implications, the best course of

action available to them is to create an autonomous organization dedicated 

to exploiting the technology or tactic to the fullest. In principle, such an 

organization will be more innovative because the new technology/tactic

will constitute the “organizational essence” of the newly created institution.9 Further, the institution will be able to offer desirable career prospects

10

However, even when policymakers recognize the need to create new mili-

-

tutionalize the capabilities they hope to develop.

In simple terms, the question of institutionalization can be reduced 

to one of whether to create a new service, branch, or unit. When the new

capabilities sought are either technologically most revolutionary or vital

for national security, policymakers can decide to institutionalize the innovation in the strongest possible fashion—by creating an entirely new military service, complete with its own technological and educational establishments. The rapid development of military aircraft in the early 20thth 

Century sparked just such a development of independent air services, beginning with the British Royal Air Force’s creation in 1918.11 However, 

because the creation of new armed services is costly owing to their many 

support and administrative services, policymakers frequently prefer to create new branches within existing services. Interwar Germany’s creation of

an armored branch within its land forces is a case in point of this type of

innovative strategy.

When new technologies and tactics are not judged as warranting 

their own service or branch, they can be institutionalized at the level of

individual combat units themselves. For example, when the French Army 

wanted in the 1980s to create a heliborne infantry force specialized in 

employing anti-tank missiles, they created a regiment dedicated to this

mission (the 1st Infantry Regiment).

12 Many other examples of such “boutique” capabilities exist, including Italy’s naval landing forces (the San 

Marco Regiment) and the United Kingdom’s naval saboteurs (the Special

Boat Service). 

While the question of how to institutionalize military innovations

can be conceptualized as a choice between creating a separate service, 

branch or unit, many variations exist on these organizational ideal types. 

For example, the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM)

has possessed attributes of two forms of organization since its creation 

in 1986. In several respects, SOCOM resembles an independent service. 

(approximately $10 billion per year), and possesses a sizeable headquar-
6

ters for developing techniques and equipment.

13 However, SOCOM falls

short of being a service in other respects such as lacking its own military 

academy and depending on the existing services for its units and some of

its training.14

Consequently, when decision-makers perceive technical or tactical

developments as offering new vistas for military innovation, they must

decide what sort of institutions to create. In general, the degree of institutionalization employed should correspond to how revolutionary and distinct the new technology/tactic is judged to be. However, misjudging how

a military capability should be institutionalized, by providing either more

misspent resources. The reason for this is that, on the one hand, an underresourced organization is unable to develop tactics and technologies to 

their full potential; while, on the other hand, an over-resourced organization often produces costly redundancies. 

How too little institutionalization can impede innovation is illustrated by the case of United States special operations forces prior to the creation of the Special Operations Command. Before 1986 special operations

forces existed as discrete units within each of the services. Because they 

neither possessed large staffs nor could offer appealing career prospects, 

were neglected in national-level debates, and were unable to develop specialized equipment for their missions.

15 As a result, American special operations forces did not provide the strategic value that had been anticipated 

at the time of their creation—a fact illustrated in the dramatic failure of the

1980 Iranian hostage rescue operation, Desert One. It was in light of these

shortcomings that policymakers eventually created an institutionally-robust Special Operations Command.16

While the case of special operations forces illustrates the perils of under-institutionalizing a capability, the example of Soviet/Russian National

Air Defense Forces (the PVO-Strany) illustrates the inverse error of overinstitutionalizing a capability. Impressed by the technological promise of

integrated air defense networks—combining radars, aircraft, anti-aircraft

guns and surface-to-air missiles—Soviet leaders established the National

Air Defense Forces in 1948 as an independent armed service on a par

with the nation’s ground, air and naval forces.

17 This entailed endowing 

the National Air Defense Forces with a sizeable bureaucracy, educational

institutions (a military academy and staff colleges), and training facilities that replicated many of the functions already performed by the other

armed services.

18 To make matters worse, the National Air Defense Forces

procured costly aircraft and surface-to-air missiles that were similar to, yet
7

different from those procured by the air force and army.19 Over time, this

unnecessary duplication of effort came to be seen as an excessive drain on 

the state’s scarce resources, leading to the National Air Defense Forces’

abolition as an independent service in 1998.20

In sum, policymakers face a complex challenge when it comes to 

institutionalizing a new military capability. Since too low a degree of institutionalization impedes innovation and too high a degree wastes resources, the policymaker’s task of developing ideal institutions is akin to the

mythological one that faced Odysseus as he navigated the narrow channel

between the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. However, since it is rarely 

possible to assess ex ante what degree of institutionalization should be

adopted, different states adopt a variety of institutional designs when confronted with the same technological developments. Thus, the advent of a

technology or tactic will likely generate diverse institutional outcomes in 

different countries.

Institutional Design and Organizational Inertia

While examining institutionalization is critical to understanding 

military innovation, it is also essential for comprehending the organizational inertia that later overtakes many military institutions. Consequently, 

although a high degree of institutionalization provides a military organization with the freedom to innovate, it also simultaneously provides the

clout and resources needed to resist necessary reforms. In fact, the greater

the autonomy and resources a military organization possesses, the better it

will be at preserving itself when threatened by tactical / technical developments. Such is the case because both conscious and unconscious biases as

well as individual self-interest leads military professionals to defend their

organizations in times of adversity. Consequently, military leaders either

pursue innovations that preserve their organizations’ existing missions, 

to preserve their organizations. However, the nature of the survival strategies that organizations adopt is heavily conditioned by the institutional

resources they possess, with more institutionalized organizations better

able to preserve their autonomy and original essence.

Because warfare is a matter of life and death for individual combatants—and national survival for states—it is mistakenly assumed that

military professionals are ruthless and unsentimental when it comes to 

examples of clearly obsolescent tactics and technologies in military orga- 21 In one extraordinary case, horse cavalry survived in even the world’s most industrial-
8

ized states until the 1950s, a half-century after they ought to have been 

abolished. There are, however, many more examples of this kind of obsolescence. The Swiss military maintained carrier pigeons into the early 

1990s, long after the advent of electronic communications. The United 

States Army has retained a sizeable Chemical Corps since the First World 

War despite the declining importance of chemical warfare. Military forces

in states such as France (the Spahis), Spain (the Regulares) and the United 

Kingdom (the Gurkhas) all retain regiments whose traditions and recruitWhy then do obsolescent tactics and technologies persist within military organization? The equivalent of such holdovers in the commercial

-

net—is virtually unknown and would swiftly lead to bankruptcy. One reason for greater inertia in military organizations lies in the incomplete and 

intermittent nature of how military organizations are tested. Indeed, there

is no certain method to ascertain how effective armed forces are short of

forcing them to conduct a wide-range of military operations against a wide

variety of live opponents. Moreover, even the so-called lessons of recent

rare and the nature of the opponents and geography encountered in the last

will characterize the next one.

22

proof that a technology or tactic should be abandoned. It is, therefore, almost always possible for military organizations to ignore unpleasant truths

by arguing that the circumstances of future wars will be more favorable to 

their preferred tactics and technologies. For example, in one particularly 

brash example of a military professional drawing biased conclusions from

the need for reevaluating the cavalry’s role after their poor performance

in the Boer War. To this end, French wrote, “It passes comprehension that

some critics in England should gravely assure us that the war in South 

Africa should be our chief source of inspiration and guidance...we should 

be very foolish if we did not recognise at this late hour that very few of the

conditions of South Africa are likely to recur.”23 However, as commander

of the British Expeditionary Force at the outbreak of the First World War, 

French soon learned to his chagrin that the Boer War was a more accurate 24

Given the indeterminacy of recent wars for showing how armed forces should be constituted, there is considerable scope for biases to shape

how military professionals respond to developments. Military profession-
9

als’ biases are, in turn, imparted upon them by the institutions that educate them and within which they pursue their careers. Driven by necessity, 

military organizations emphasize tradition, continuity and the value of re-

-

bach argued in a classic study that, “Romanticism, while perhaps stultifying realistic thought, gives a man that belief in the value of the system he

is operating that is so necessary to his willingness to use it in battle....But

faith [in a weapons system or tactic] breeds distrust of change.”25 Thus, a

degree of bias and resistance to change is a natural by-product of military 

organizations’ efforts to develop élan and esprit de corps.

In addition to these unconscious biases, military professionals also 

-

a natural interest in seeing those organizations prosper.

26 Moreover, even 

senior leaders, for whom future promotions are not an issue, generally 

feel a sense of responsibility for securing the careers of their protégés and 

perpetuating the organizations they have served.27 As a result, military 

professionals naturally rally to the defense of their organizations on occasions when technological and tactical developments lead outsiders to 

criticize them. In recent times, no better example of this phenomenon can 

be found than the US Marine Corps’steadfast defense of the V-22 Osprey 

program. Because Marine leaders considered the V-22 Osprey essential to 

the service’s amphibious assault mission, Marines (and former Marines)

successfully lobbied to save the program in the face of grave technical

problems, sustained cost overruns, and politicians’repeated efforts to cancel the program.

28

While military professionals endeavor to protect their organizations

from adverse tactical and technical changes, they cannot simply deny reality when such changes occur. Instead, they must innovate, reform, or

-

tees their continued relevance. Within this context, military organizations

typically adopt one of three distinct “survival strategies” when faced with 

existential threats.

One strategy, the preferred one of military organizations under pressure, is to invest in technological innovations that promise to restore the

validity of the organizations’ core missions. If technical and tactical developments are the reason that a military organization’s existence is being questioned, then it stands to reason that further technical and tactical

developments may restore that organization’s credibility. An excellent example of this phenomenon can be found in the United States Air Force’s
10

responses to technical/tactical challenges. Having obtained its status as a

separate service in 1947 by arguing that air power could independently 

win wars, the Air Force has repeatedly faced criticism when it either failed 

to destroy targets considered essential or failed to achieve the anticipated 

strategic objectives. However, such shortcomings have never prompted 

the Air Force to fundamentally question the dogma of strategic air power.

29

Rather, the Air Force has consistently sought to develop new tactics

and technologies capable of reinvigorating its preferred strategic mission.30

Such was the case, for example, when the Air Force encountered grave

sophisticated Soviet-provided air defense system and the Air Force’s own 

the strategic air campaign against North Vietnam, the Air Force instead 

concentrated its efforts at developing new technologies and tactics. Within 

this context, the Air Force developed a host of electronic warfare equipment, precision-guided munitions, drones, and airborne early warning 

systems.

31 Tactically, the Air Force also implemented revolutionary new

training and exercise methods (eventually culminating in the “Red Flag”

exercises) shortly after the war. These costly efforts at resolving the Air

Force’s tactical and technical problems bore fruit later in the Vietnam War 33 Nevertheless, the service’s goal of achieving 

victory through airpower alone has proven elusive.

34

Besides seeking innovative remedies for the technical and tactical

challenges ailing them, another strategy military organizations under pressure can adopt is to seek new roles and missions. In effect, even if developments render a military organization’s original mission impossible

phenomenon can be found in the United States Marine Corps’ conversion 

from imperial policing to amphibious warfare in the 1930s. Because the

the United States’ frequent interventions in Latin America, many openly questioned whether there was any reason to preserve the service once

President Franklin Roosevelt promulgated the “Good Neighbor Policy” in 

1933, which curtailed the interventions (the “Banana Wars”) that previously constituted the Corps’raison d’être.

35

However, rather than accept the demise of an independent Marine

-

tion. Because of Japan’s emergence as a security threat, Marine leaders
11

amphibious capability could provide the Marines with the leverage needed 

to protect the organization’s size and resources. Assistant Commandant

John Russell, therefore, urgently initiated reforms to transform the Marines from an imperial policing organization to an amphibious assault

force as soon as the “Good Neighbor Policy” was announced. In short order, the Marines constituted the embryo of an amphibious force—the Fleet

Marine Force—in late 1933 and suspended teaching at the Corps’schools

in 1933-34 to allow the schools’ personnel to devote their undivided attention to crafting amphibious doctrine.

36 These developments, combined 

with the Corps’ activism in creating amphibious vessels, laid the basis for

the Corps’subsequent survival and growth.37

In addition to innovating to preserve an existing role or adapting to 

accomplish a new mission, military organizations can also protect themselves by arguing that past contributions to national defense constitute an 

argument for future survival. Within this context, the past victories and accolades won by military units are frequently advanced as a reason for not

disbanding them, even when units’ original roles have become obsolete. 

The logic of such an approach is not entirely emotional however. Instead, 

it is usually argued that a unit’s traditions socialize recruits with values

such as discipline, audacity, and self-reliance that contribute to esprit de

corps and effectiveness.

38 Moreover, it is frequently asserted that such organizations possess a collective institutional memory that transcends the

span of individual careers. Because of the purported value of such immaterial factors, some of the world’s most renowned infantry units—including 

the British Green Jackets and Italian Bersaglieri—survived the disappearance of the long-forgotten niche tactical roles they were originally created 

Within this context, the Green Jackets were founded in 1800 as a unit

of skirmishers and long-range marksmen and the Bersaglieri were formed 

in 1836 to execute the gymnastic and high-mobility infantry tactics that

were favored by certain tacticians at that time.

39 However, the distinctive

missions of both units were eventually overtaken by further technological

and tactical developments, leading Green Jacket and Bersaglieri tactics

and equipment to become indistinguishable from those of other infantry 

formations. Nevertheless, by that time the Green Jackets and Bersaglieri

had distinguished themselves in numerous battles and won elite reputations. Consequently, the leaders of both formations were able to secure

their existence, despite the obsolescence of the tactical concepts that provided their original raison d’être. Moreover, the units were able to perpetuate their elite status because their reputations drew their countries’ best
12

units’ effectiveness relative to functionally identical “ordinary” infantry 

formations.

40

In short, three broad strategies are available to military organizations

tactical developments. Organizations can: pursue innovations that preessential to national security; or rely on reputation and elite status alone to 

preserve the organization. While all three of these strategies can preserve

an organization, they are neither equally desirable nor feasible. 

In terms of desirability, organizations prefer outcomes that preserve

their organizational essence and autonomy to those that do not. Consequently, leaders favor whenever possible those innovations that reinvigorate an organization’s existing mission because such a policy preserves

both the body’s essence and autonomy. Contrarily, leaders are least enthu-

-

tions and decision-making autonomy, which is the case when reputation 

adapting to execute an alternative mission is a strategy whose desirability 

falls between these two extremes as it preserves an institution’s autonomy 41

While the desirability of alternative strategies varies widely, so too 

does their feasibility. Indeed, different degrees of institutional power are

required to pursue each of the abovementioned strategies. Within this con-

-

tions to counteract developments that would otherwise consign a military 

organization to obsolescence. To execute such a strategy, a military organization needs technical departments capable of steering the development

enough to procure large amounts of new equipment, doctrinal and educational establishments that are able to articulate and diffuse new tactical

concepts, and facilities for testing and practicing new tactics under realistic conditions. The scale of the institutional resources needed for such a

strategy can be seen in the United States Air Force’s massive investments

in exotic technologies and its lengthy perfection of new tactics to defeat

North Vietnam’s air defenses.

42

Tailoring an organization for an alternative mission also requires

substantial institutional resources, albeit fewer than are generally needed 

to preserve their original mission. The reason for this is that although new

tactics and equipment will be required for the new mission, that mission 

will presumably be selected as the organization’s new focus based on its

being more feasible than the previous one. This can be seen in the Marines’
13

transition to amphibious warfare. Although the Corps committed itself

wholeheartedly to its new mission, its actual development of an amphibious capability occurred fairly quickly, comparatively inexpensively, and 43 Indeed, having begun in 1933, Marine

Corps General Alexander Vandegrift stated that the Corps had by 1935 

formulated the “basic amphibious doctrines which carried allied troops

over every beachhead of World War II.”44

Finally, military organizationsrequire the least institutional resources

if they intend to rely on reputation and elite status alone to preserve their

existence. In this case, neither new equipment nor doctrine is required. 

Rather, all an organization’s leaders need to do is mobilize public opinion and the organization’s symbolic capital in favor of its preservation. 

For example, the Green Jackets and Bersaglieri waged effective public

relations campaigns for their preservation, but adopted the equipment and 

doctrine of standard infantry battalions when their once distinctive ones

developed for these formations, whose only distinguishing features remain 

unique parade uniforms and an exalted social status.

In sum, military professionals seek to preserve their organizations

when these are later threatened by tactical/technical developments. In-

-

ganizations in times of adversity. Consequently, such organizations rarely 

acquiesce to the threat of obsolescence, but instead seek to demonstrate

their continued relevance to national security. They do this by pursuing inroles, or rely on reputation and elite status alone to preserve the organization. However, the nature of the survival strategy adopted is likely to be

a function of the institutional resources the organization possesses, with 

leaders seeking to preserve as much of the organization’s autonomy and 

original essence as possible.

As articulated above, the central argument of thisstudy isthat the fate

of military organizations is powerfully shaped by their institutional design. 

-

cluding their degree of autonomy and scope of their bureaucracies—determine how successful such organizations will be at exploiting new tactical

and technical developments. Within this context, an organization’s ability 

to innovate is a function of its degree of institutionalization. Later, when 

further technical and tactical developments undermine an organization’s

ability to execute its missions, institutional resources determine the options available to that organization’s leaders.
14

While military professionals universally seek to preserve their organizations, their ability to do so is a function of how those organizations

are designed. Powerful organizations will seek to salvage their existing 

missions by pursuing technical and tactical innovations that can revitalize

those missions. Weaker organizations may seek alternative roles and missions that will be easier to achieve. Finally, the weakest organizations are

likely to rely on their reputation and status to survive, even when doing so 

relinquishes the organizations’ hitherto distinctive roles. Thus, the degrees

of institutionalization originally conferred upon organizations at the time

of their creation shapes their durability in the face of adversity.

The remainder of this study will demonstrate the role of institutions

both in promoting military innovation and in cultivating organizational

inertia. To this end, the fate of airborne forces in three great power militaries will be examined. Airborne forces are an ideal focus for such a study 

because the perceived potential of paratroop assaults convinced all major

powers to create airborne units. However, each followed a unique path to 

achieve this goal, endowing different airborne forces with different institutional designs. These different institutional designs have, in turn, shaped 

how airborne forces evolved in different states once technical and tactical

developments rendered large-scale paratroop assaults obsolete.

To lay the basis for this analysis, the next section, Chapter 2, will

provide an overview of how airborne forces evolved across the world and 

examines the development of the Soviet Union’s airborne forces, where a

high degree of institutionalization enabled the organization to seek innovations that preserved its original mission of launching large-scale paratroop assaults. Chapter 4 then examines the United Kingdom’s airborne

forces, whose extremely low degree of institutionalization left elite status

as the only resource that could be mobilized to preserve the organization. 

In Chapter 5, the case of the United States’ airborne forces will be scrutinized to ascertain how an organization with medium-level institutionalization evolved. Finally, Chapter 6 draws conclusions from these cases to 

provide new insights on institutional dynamics within military organizations.
15

Notes

1. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York:

Harper, 1975 [orig. pub. 1942]), passim.

2. Marc DeVore, “A Dangerous Utopia: the Military Revolution from the

Cold War to the War on Terror” in George Lawson, Chris Armbruster and Michael

Cox, eds., The Global 1989: Continuity and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 221-27.

3. Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 42-48.

4. This list of theorists is by no means exhaustive and each state possessed 

multiple partisans of armored warfare. See J.P. Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks:

British military thought and armoured forces, 1903-1939 (Manchester: ManchesThe Nature of Operations

of Modern Armies (London: Routledge, 1994 [orig. 1929]), passim; Stéphan 

Ferrard, Engins blindés français: Cent ans d’histoire (Paris: EPA, 1996), 33-7;

John Sweet, Iron Arm: The Mechanization of Mussolini’s Army (Mechanicsburg:

Stackpole, 2007 [orig. 1980]), 69-100.

5. David Johnson, Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the US 

Army, 1917-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 124-40; Peter Bale, 

Death by Design: British Tank Development in the Second World War (Stroud, 

Gloucestershire: History Press, 1998), passim; and Gérard Saint-Martin, L’Arme

blindée française, Tome 1: Mai-juin 1940! Les blindés français dans la tourmente

(Paris: Economica, 1998), 79-134.

6. Johnson, Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers, 129. 

7. Mary Habeck, Storm of Steel: The Development of Armor Doctrine in 

Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 

2003), 206-09.

8. One recent study has calculated that the Germans deployed 2,574 tanks

to the Western Front in 1940 and that the French possessed 3,851 modern tanks

at that time. Recent estimates of balance of forces in Eastern Europe in June 1941 

suggest that the Soviet Union possessed between 10,394 and 14,200 tanks in the

region while Germany possessed only 3,648. See: Jonathan House, Combined 

Arms Warfare in the Twentieth Century (Lawrence: Kansas University Press), 90-

117; Jeffrey Gunsburg, Divided and Conquered: The French High Command and 

the Defeat of the West (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1979), 102-03; Ferrad, 67-71; and Anders Frankson “Summer 1941,” The Journal of Slavic Military

Studies, 13/3 (2000), 131-144.

9. According to Morton Halperin’s classic work on bureaucratic politics, 

“The organization’s essence is the view held by the dominant group in the organization of what the missions and capabilities should be. Related to this are

considerations about what kinds of people with what expertise, experience and 

knowledge should be members of the organization [italics in original].” Morton 

Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics & Foreign Policy (Washington D.C.: Brookings, 

1974), 28. 
16

10. Stephen Rosen has demonstrated the importance of promotional pathways to military innovation. Rosen argues that, “Control over the promotion of

leads to innovation may thus require the creation of a new promotion pathway to 

war can rise to the top.... The new pathway may be necessary to ensure that new

skills are not relegated to professional oblivion.” Stephen Rosen, Winning the

Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 

1991), 20-21.

-

tutionalization was a key reason certain air forces were less effective than others

during the Second World War. Pascal Vennesson powerfully made this case with 

respect to the French air force. See Pascal Vennesson, “Institution and airpower:

The making of the French air force,” Journal of Strategic Studies 18/1 (1995), 

36-67.

12 Jérôme de Lespinois, L’Armée de terre français: de la défense à la projection, vol. 2 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 455-60.

13. Andrew Feickert and Thomas Livingston, CRS Report for Congress—

US Special Operations Forsces (SOF): Background and Issues for Congress

(Washington D.C.: CRS, 2011), passim.

14. Susan Marquis, Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding US Special Operations Forces (Washington D.C.: Brookings, 1997), 148-226.

15. Marquis, Unconventional Warfare, 6-78.

16. On the greater innovative success of the more institutionalized special

operations command, see Jon Lindsay “Reinventing the Revolution: Technological Visions, Counterinsurgent Criticism, and the Rise of Special Operations,”

Journal of Strategic Studies (upcoming, 2013) at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0140

2390.2012.734252.

17. BDM Corporation, History of Strategic Air and Ballistic Missile Defense Volume I: 1945-1955 (Washington D.C.: Center for Military History, United 

States Army, 2009 [orig. 1975]), 69-84.

18. Virtually all of the National Air Defense Forces’training facilities replicated functions already performed by the other services. For example, the Ground 

Forces trained personnel to operate surface-to-air missiles, missile radars and 

interception radar operators. 

aircraft (these included the following models: Su-11, Su-15, MiG-31 and Tu-128)

that were exclusively used by the National Air Defense Forces and never deployed with the Air Force. Certain missile systems, such as the SA-5, SA-10 and 

ABM-1 were also developed exclusively for the National Air Defense Forces. See

John Lepingwell, Organizational and Bureaucratic Politics in Soviet Defense Decisionmaking: A Case Study of the Soviet Air Defense Forces (Ph.D.dissertation, 

Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988), 

passim; and James Quinlivan, Soviet Strategic Air Defense: A Long Past and an 

Uncertain Future (Santa Monica: RAND, 1989), passim.
17

20. For an extremely critical look at the National Air Defense Forces’ effectiveness, see James Oberg, Uncovering Soviet Disasters (New York: Random

House, 1988), 32-49

21. Other complex organizations that are rarely subjected to the audit of

external competition exhibit a similar propensity for adhering to outmoded tactics

and technologies. Government bureaucracies and universities furnish a number

of examples.

22. For a particularly insightful analysis on how armed forces can draw

-

-

tories of the Russo-Japanese War,” The Journal of Military History, 56/3 (1992), 

389-402.

23. John French, “Preface to English Edition” in Friedrich von Bernhardi, 

Cavalry (New York: George H. Doran, 1914), 9.

24. Certain civilian authors drew more prescient conclusions when examining the Boer War’s implications. See T. H. E. Travers, “Technology, Tactics, and 

Morale: Jean de Bloch, the Boer War, and British Military Theory, 1900-1914,”

The Journal of Modern History, 51/2 (1979), 264-286.

25. Edward Katzenbach, J.R.. “The Horse Cavalry in the Twentieth Century,” in Robert Art and Kenneth Waltz, eds., The Use of Force (Boston: Little, 

Brown and Company, 1988), 171.

26. Carl Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy 

and Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), passim.

valued protégés, see: Stephen Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the

Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), passim.

28. Richard Whittle, The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), passim.

29. Robert Pape, Bombing To Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 1996), passim.

30. Michael Brown, Flying Blind: The Politics of the US Strategic Bomber

Program (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), passim. 

31. Gerald Stiles, The Wild Weasel Development Program: One Run, One

Hit, One Error (Santa Monica: RAND, 1990), passim; William Hewitt, Planting the Seeds of SEAD: The Wild Weasel in Vietnam (MA Thesis, Air University, 

Maxwell Air Force Base, 1992), 16-34; and Thomas Ehrhard, Air Force UAVs:

The Secret History (Mitchell Institute, 2010), 22-35.

32. The Air Force’s training revolution lagged behind its technical efforts, 

only really beginning around 1970. On the training revolution, see: Marshall Michel III, The Revolt of the Majors: How the Air Force Changed After Vietnam

(Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of History, Auburn University, 2006), passim.

33. For example, the North Vietnamese destroyed approximately one airlaser-guided bombs to destroy extremely well-protected targets in 1972, such as

the Paul Doumer and Thanh Hoa bridges. See Hewitt, 28-29. 
18

34. Robert Pape, Jr, “Coercive Air Power in the Vietnam War,” International Security, 15/2 (1990), 103-146; and Raymond W. Leonard, “Learning from

History: Linebacker II and US Air Force Doctrine,” The Journal of Military History, 58/2 (1994), 267-303

35. Ronald Schaffer, “The 1940 Small Wars Manual and the ‘Lessons

of History’” Military Affairs, 36/2 (1972), 46-51; and David Keithly and Paul

Melshen, “Past as prologue: USMC small wars doctrine, Small Wars & Insurgencies,” 8/2 (1997), 87-108.2

36. Keith Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corps’Development of Small

Wars Doctrine, 1915-1940, 211-13.

37. On the Marine’s role in selecting the Higgins Boat, see: John Heitmann, 

“The Man Who Won the War: Andrew Jackson Higgins,” Louisiana History: The

Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, 34/1(1993), 38-40.

38. For example, British Lieutenant General Alistair Irwin argues, “We solrecord of military endeavor associated with regimental names that are themselves

stirring and inspiring. To one degree or another the past provides a powerful motive for performing well in the present.” Alister Irwin, “What is Best in the Regimental System?” The RUSI Journal 149/5 (2004), 34. For more on the role of

until tradition as a force of cohesion, see Philip Smith, “Meaning and military 

power: moving on from Foucault,” Journal of Power 1/3 (2008), 284.

39. Arthur Bryant, Jackets of green: a study of the history, philosophy and 

(London: Collins, 1972), passim; and John Whittam, The Politics of the Italian Army (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 30-53.

40. On the Bersaglieri’s

41. Since an organization’s essence is based on its leaders’ self-perception 

of what its missions and capabilities should be, changing an organization’s mission therefore changes much of what an organization is about. Halperin, 32.

42. The following specialized equipment was developed for the Air Force’s

campaign in Vietnam: four distinct air defense suppression “Wild Weasel” aircraft; signals intelligence aircraft (i.e. Rivet Top); laser-guided bombs; and recon43. For example, the basic landing craft that was used by the Marines (and 

Army) during the war—the so-called Higgins Boat—was largely procured thanks

purchased for $5,200 in 1937. Indeed, the entire appropriation for developing 

amphibious equipment was only $40,000 in 1935 and $400,000 in 1940, which 

constituted 2% of the Navy/Marine Corps R&D budget in 1935 and 4% of that

budget in 1940. See Neushul, 144-46; and George Dyer, The Amphibians Came to 

Conquer: Volume I (Washington D.C.: Marine Corps, 1970), 201-15.

44. The fundamental amphibious doctrine that the Marine Corps would employing in the Second World War was developed in approximately one year, being 

Tentative Manual for Landing Operations. Vandegrift

cited in Neushul, 141.
19

Chapter 2 

The History of Airborne Forces

The Origins of Vertical Envelopment

The concept of airborne operations was one of many innovative

ideas to emerge during the First World War. Because of the growing size

of aircraft and the invention of reliable parachutes, it became possible to 

imagine aircraft dropping paratroopers behind an enemy’s impenetrable

front lines. Two visionary thinkers, Winston Churchill and William (“Billy”) Mitchell, made forceful appeals for the creation of airborne forces

before the end of the First World War. In late 1917, Churchill proposed 

landing raiders behind German lines to destroy bridges, factories and other

critical objectives.

1 The next year, Colonel Mitchell proposed dropping a

division of parachute-equipped infantry to seize the city of Metz.

2

Although neither proposal was acted on, similar ideas germinated 

during the inter-war period. In 1928, the United States and the Soviet

Union began exploring the feasibility of airborne operations, with the

United States Army experimentally dropping 12 paratroops and Soviet

military theorist Mikhail Tukhachevsky writing a treatise on airborne warfare.

3 Two years later, the publication of (now Major-General) Mitchell’s

memoir publicized his 1918 airborne proposal to a global audience.

4

While the United States did not develop airborne operations after this

initial experiment, the Red Army pursued the idea methodically. Inspired 

by the mobile nature of the Russian Civil War and the modernizing zeal of

the Red Army’s leaders, paratroops joined tanks and motorized infantry to 

form the triumvirate of forces that would produce decisive results in future

wars. Between 1930 and 1938, airborne exercises and doctrine evolved 

rapidly. In 1934, the Soviet Union staged a spectacular airborne display, 

with 1,000 paratroopers jumping from aircraft and then joining air-landed 

infantry and cavalry in complex maneuvers. In 1936 and 1937, even larger

exercises, involving 5,000 paratroops, followed.5

that airborne operations might be decisive in future wars.

6 Inspired by accounts of the Soviet maneuvers, famed British theorist B.H. Liddell-Hart

expounded on the value of airborne forces and coined the term “vertical

envelopment” to describe how paratroopers dropped behind the enemy’s

lines could impose an unbearable psychological strain on frontline infantry.7
20

Despite the growing interest in airborne operations, few states took 

the decisive step of forming paratroop units. Although France and Italy 

formed small units, only Germany followed the Soviet Union’s lead in creating large airborne formations.

8 In Germany’s case, the state’s offensive

establish paratroop division and air-landing divisions in 1938.9 

-

tle when it invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940. These Nazi

fallschirmjäger achieved remarkable results against surprised neutral

countries. While one company seized bridges connecting the Danish 

mainland to Copenhagen, two captured Oslo’s airport.

10 Scarcely a month 

later, German airborne forces launched much larger attacks on the Low

Countries. One unit assaulted the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael, another

aimed to seize bridges spanning three Dutch rivers, and a third sought

to capture the Dutch government in The Hague. The success of the Gerthe third.11 In June 1940, the Soviets added to the growing reputation of

airborne forces by organizing a large-scale airborne operation to coerce

Romania into evacuating Bessarabia.

12

Thus, each month between April and June 1940 witnessed successful

tactical airborne operations that contributed to the achievement of operational objectives. Moreover, these accomplishments were achieved with 

minimal forces, with German airborne forces constituting just two of 156 

German divisions. The results obtained by airborne forces were so disproportionate when compared to the means employed that paratroopers

appeared to constitute a revolution in warfare. 

By the summer of 1940, a veritable airborne fever swept the world’s

armed forces. All of the great powers established airborne forces of at least

divisional size by 1943, while in many countries this new faith in airborne

forces inspired multiple services to compete for the airborne mission.13 In 

the United States, both the US Army and US Marine Corps formed airborne units, while in Japan the army and navy independently established 

paratroop formations.

14 In the United Kingdom, unorthodox air-delivered 

forces, such as the SAS and Chindits, were created in addition to conventional airborne forces. In Germany, Heinrich Himmler’s SS formed an airborne regiment to rival the air force’s existing units. Even governmentsin-exile and smaller states formed paratroop units. Thus, the battles of

1940 transformed airborne forces from a curious experiment pursued by 

revisionist powers into an apparently decisive element of warfare. 
21

The False Promise of Vertical Envelopment

expectations of what airborne forces could accomplish. Soon, paratroop 

drops occurred in locations as diverse as Crete, Indonesia, New Guinea, 

Normandy, Ukraine, Sicily, and the Ardennes. However, most of these operations failed to accomplish their objectives and resulted in unacceptably 

high casualty rates. These disappointments revealed fundamental shortcomings in the airborne concept, preventing airborne forces from achieving the results prophesied by their founders.

Although the battles of April and May 1940 cemented the reputation 

of airborne forces, a more informed examination of the campaignsin Scandinavia and the Low Countries would have led policymakers to adopt a

more cautious outlook. In both campaigns the victims of airborne assaults

were small, neutral states that were neither well prepared nor equipped to 

-

way, a paratroop company in the Gudbrans Valley surrendered after being 

surrounded and having its supply aircraft shot down.15 In the Netherlands, 

-

many’s air-landing division in the process.

16 Thus, even German’s early 

airborne successes were hardly bloodless victories.

As airborne forces were used with growing regularity and against

more steadfast opponents, they suffered greater losses and failed more often to accomplish their objectives. These disappointments revealed four

inherent shortcomings in the airborne concept. First, because of the need 

to deploy by air, paratroops traveled to their targets in large formations of

-

ers and anti-aircraft guns.

17 Second, even if they reached their target zone, 

the vagaries of winds and primitive navigation technologies frequently 

led to paratroopers becoming impossibly dispersed as soon as they exited 

their aircraft.

18 Third, although extremely mobile while in the air, paratroop forces become extremely immobile once they reached the ground, 

where their only means of transport is their feet.

19 And fourth, because

air transportation dictates that airborne forces be lightly armed and laden, 

-

ceedingly vulnerable to attacks by enemy armored units. Combinations of

the above factors transformed most large-scale airborne operations into 

either costly failures or, at best, pyrrhic successes. 

The Germans themselves led the way in exposing airborne forces’

limitations. After the early 1940 missions, the next German operation, an 
22

April 1941 paratroop drop on the Corinth Canal, failed in its time-sensitive

objective of cutting off the British retreat from mainland Greece.

20 One

month later, in May 1941, German paratroops embarked on the momentous task of conquering Crete. Crete was considered an easy target because

Germany possessed air superiority and believed the island to be poorly 

defended. Unfortunately for the Germans, Crete had been reinforced and 

its garrison artfully employed anti-aircraft guns.

21 Although the Germans

force of 22,000, and lost 151 transports (with another 121 damaged) out

of 500.22

In the eyes of German leaders, the costs in terms of elite manpower

that, “Crete proved that the days of the airborne corps are over! Airborne

forces are a weapon of surprise. Your surprise factor has worn out.”23 General Kurt Student, commander of Germany’s airborne forces, lamented, “I

miscalculated when I recommended this attack, and this not only because

it meant the loss of so many paratroopers...but also, in the end, the death 

of the German airborne force.”24 Germany forswore the use of airborne

forces after Crete and only revisited this decision in late 1943, when the

specter of defeat rendered them desperate. However, Germany’s disillusionment with airborne operations did not stop other states from employing them. 

Possessing the world’s largest airborne forces at the time of the German invasion, the Soviets committed their paratroopers to massive attempts to encircle and destroy German forces in early 1942. However, the

practice of “vertical envelopment” proved more complex than Soviet thewind dispersed the Soviets and the Germans quickly responded, capturing 

or killing all but 87 of the 202 paratroops.

25 

In February 1942, the Soviets launched the more ambitious and 

disastrous Viazma operation. In this operation, a corps of paratroopers

jumped behind enemy lines in the hopes of precipitating the collapse of the

German front. However, poor navigation and wind dispersed the Soviet

paratroopers so widely that they became easy prey for German units. Thus, 

the Soviet attempt to encircle German frontline forces soon resulted in 

behind enemy lines, only 4,000 of the 14,000 paratroopers escaped.26 

While one corps was decimated at Viazma, another suffered a simiGermans deduced the paratroopers’ objectives and could prepare their de-
23

fenses. Therefore, when the Soviets attacked, they were repulsed by alert

defenders who captured or killed 7,000 out of 8,000 Soviet paratroops.

27 

The Red Army conducted one last airborne operation after its 1942 

disasters. In September 1943, the High Command ordered two brigades

to seize bridgeheads on the Dnepr River. Unfortunately, the drop left the

German panzer division. Over 60 percent of the 4,500 Soviet paratroopers 28 After

the triple failures of Viazma, Demiansk, and the Dnepr, Soviet commanders renounced airborne operations. 

efforts of 1942. As part of their Southeast Asian offensive, 1,000 paratroops jumped into Indonesia in February 1942 to capture Palembang’s

assault failed. Anti-aircraft guns shot down 16 of 70 transport aircraft, organizational cohesion was lost as a result of pilots taking evasive measures

during the drop, and Allied forces quickly overcame the scattered attackers

on the ground. Although smaller operations succeeded elsewhere (Celebes

and Timor), the failure at Palembang dissuaded the Japanese High Command from launching further paratroop assaults until despair motivated a

suicidal operation in December 1944.29

While most nations abandoned airborne operations, the United Kingdom and the United States began to employ their paratroops offensively. 

Although British airborne warfare began with a raid conducted in Febwere launched in support of the Allied invasion of French North Africa

-

countered later. While two operations succeeded in seizing French airoperations against Axis targets failed, as did an attempt to take a third 30

The nextAnglo-American airdrop, on Sicily, was a much greater failure. Poor navigation led to 88 percent of one American regiment landing 

-

troopers who managed to assemble near their objective were then scattered by a German armored division.31 The disastrous Sicilian operation 

and subsequent decimation of an American airborne battalion in southern 

Italy led certain American policymakers to suggest abolishing airborne

divisions.

32 
24

When Anglo-American paratroops jumped into battle during the

1944 invasion of Normandy, larger forces were employed to seize objectives that were kept deliberately modest.

33 Nevertheless, the operation 

encountered many problems, beginning with drops that scattered paratroopers across the countryside.

34 With over 60 percent of their personnel

dispersed, American airborne forces failed to take most of their objectives, 35 In the process, allied airborne forces suffered heavy casualties, including 19 percent 36

After Normandy, Anglo-American airborne forces conducted three

large-scale operations. While the airborne component of the August 1944 

from attacking the beachhead, the September 1944 attempt to seize bridges over three Dutch rivers (Operation Market Garden) proved catastrophic

when depleted German armored divisions annihilated the British 1st Airborne Division.37

across the Rhine in March 1945, yielded mixed results as paratroops captured their objectives, but at the cost of casualties (12-13 percent) that

were considered excessive.

38 The limited results of these operations persuaded American commanders not to use airborne forces in the planned 

invasion of Japan.39

Thus, by the end of the Second World War, the theory of airborne

warfare had been tested and found wanting by all of the great powers. The

drop zones, having paratroops scattered by the act of the drop itself, and 

suffering disastrous losses in combat with an adversary’s heavier regular

forces combined to doom many airborne operations. In fact, as illustrated 

by Figure I, only two out of ten large-scale airborne operations can be

rated “successful.”40

These discouraging results prompted Germany, the Soviet Union, 

and Japan to suspend airborne operations during the war and provoked 

Smaller operations of shorter duration and less ambitious objectives were comparatively more successful, see Figure 2. Only a minority 

of these operations achieved their objectives and several of these were

achieved against unprepared opponents (three involving surprise attacks

on neutral parties and two operations against the weakly-defended Dutch 

East Indies). Far from being the revolution in warfare prophesied by inter-war theorists, large-scale airborne operations proved catastrophic and 

-

sources on airborne units. 
25

While the poor performance of airborne forces during the Second 

World War rendered the utility of paratroop units questionable, technological developments during the Cold War reduced the prospects for successful paratroop operations even further. Airborne forces gradually retreated 

-

1960s, to the status of an intervention force for use against unsophisticated 

opponents in underdeveloped countries. This process reached completion 

in the late-1970s and, since 1978, no state has used paratroopers to achieve

vital objectives. The two US airborne operations conducted since 1978—

Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989)—saw these elite forces employed in 

Figure 1. Large Airborne Operations of World War II.
26

permissive environments, against poorly equipped opponents whose defeat would have been secured without airborne troops’ involvement. 

Although large-scale airborne operations proved disappointing during the Second World War, certain smaller operations succeeded and new

technologies stimulated efforts to revitalize the airborne concept. One

such development was the production of larger, specialized transport aircraft capable of parachuting men and equipment more precisely.41 Another

path pursued was the design of specialized armored vehicles that could 42 Associated with the development of airborne armored vehicles was experimentation with exotic techniques for

dropping heavy equipment using multiple parachutes and retro-rockets.

43

Despite these developments, broader technological trends undermined rather than strengthened airborne forces. One of these trends was

the diffusion and strengthening of armored forces. As already noted, Second World War-era airborne forces were acutely vulnerable to tanks. Fortunately for 1940s paratroopers, armored divisions constituted only between 44 The Cold War, however, 

saw armored vehicles proliferate. During the Korean War, the Communists’lack of precision air defense weapons and dearth of armor permitted 

the United States to conduct two indecisive medium-sized (3,000 man)

airborne operations. However, the rapid spread of such weapons soon limited opportunities to repeat such exploits. Soon, over 80 percent of divisions in great power armies were armored or mechanized, increasing the

likelihood of airborne troops encountering tanks.

45 Moreover, the horizontal proliferation of armored vehicles was accompanied by their vertical

diffusion to Middle Eastern, Asian, and African states. 

The development of airborne armored vehicles provided an insufConstrained by the need to drop vehicles by parachute, designers never

succeeded in producing airborne armored vehicles weighing more than 

16 tons.

46 As conventional armored vehicles grew larger (i.e. from 30 tons

in 1945 to 60 tons in 1990) and acquired better armament, such weight

restrictions undermined the value of airborne armored vehicles. Thus, despite the development of airborne armored vehicles, airborne forces became more vulnerable to enemy armor. 
27

Figure 2. Small Airborne Operations of World War II.
28

While the spread of armored vehicles increased the risk of airborne

forces being crushed on the ground, the development of surface-to-air

missiles (SAM) barred them from reaching potential drop zones. Beginning in the late-1950s, mass produced and exported SAMs provided even 

second-rate powers with the ability to shoot down large slow transports

carrying paratroopers. In the mid-1960s this situation was aggravated by 

the development of inexpensive shoulder-launched SAMs, known as manportable air defense systems (MANPADS) that were cheap and simple

enough for even guerrilla groups to use them.

47

Within this context, the employment of Israeli, British, and French 

paratroops during the 1956 Suez Crisis marked the swansong of airborne

assaults in high-intensity warfare. Throughout the planning process, 

French, British, and Israeli generals accorded airborne forces a principal

role in their combined assault on Egypt.

48 However, although airborne

forces achieved their objectives, the operation could have proven disastrous had the Egyptians properly employed their recently-delivered Soviet

armored vehicles.

49 Indeed, better training, armored vehicles and SAMs

gave medium-sized states the ability to defeat airborne operations within a

few years of Suez. Consequently, only once since the Suez campaign has

an airborne drop occurring within the context of a major conventional war. 

Even then, India’s battalion-size airborne drop at Tangail in support of its

1971 offensive into Bangladesh merely contributed to the collapse of an 

already vanquished army.50

As the ability of airborne forces to contribute to conventional battles

-

conventional guerrillas. In 1944, Germany pioneered airborne operations

against guerrillas when it attacked the Yugoslav partisan movement’s leadership at Drvar and the French guerrilla sanctuary in the Vercors.

51 After

the war, the United Kingdom and France turned to paratroops in their wars

against anti-colonial guerrillas.

52

France alone conducted 150 airborne operations during the Indochina

War (1946-54).

53 Although paratroopers could rapidly attack targets or rerendered them vulnerable to large guerrilla forces. As a consequence, elite

paratroop battalions risked annihilation at the hands of heavier Vietminh 

forces in the battles for Route Coloniale 4 (1950), Tu-Lê (1952), and Dien 

Bien Phu (1954).

54 France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu alerted the world’s

armed forces to the dangers of employing paratroops against insurgents. 

beginning in 1956, they used helicopters, rather than aircraft, to deliver

infantry to critical points.

55 After experiments in Algeria, helicopter opera-
29

tions proved superior to their airborne equivalent and became the norm

for subsequent French, American, and Soviet counterinsurgency operations. When it fought its penultimate counterinsurgency of the Cold War, 

the British Army even preferred to request that Iran loan it helicopters in 

the 1970s rather than using its own aircraft to conduct paratroop drops

in Dhofar Province, Oman.56 Only Rhodesia continued to supplement to 

helicopter-borne forces with paratroop drops because international sanctions prevented them from importing enough helicopters.

Nearly powerless against conventional armored forces and less efforces became relegated to increasingly marginal theaters of operation. In 

fact, paratroops retained true value only in operations conducted at great

distances (i.e. beyond helicopter range) and against ill-equipped irregular

-

ducted during the 1960s and 1970s, including two Belgian hostage rescue

operations in the Congo (1964-65), France’s intervention against Zairian rebels (1978), and South Africa’s raid on a guerrilla base in Angola

(1978).

57 However, MANPADS and better armament eventually found 

their way to even Africa’s insurgents, eliminating the last viable arena for

airborne operations. 

Thus, driven by the development and diffusion of new technologies, 

airborne operations have become a virtual impossibility. Only twice between 1966 and 2001 have US paratroopers jumped onto enemy targets

and on both of these occasions, the United States’ invasions of Grenada

(1983) and Panama (1989), the overall disequilibrium of forces was so 

favorable to the American invading force that planning was driven more

by bureaucratic politics than military necessities (described in subsequent

sections). By way of contrast, combat paratroop drops were absent from

Gulf Wars, the wars attending Yugoslavia’s collapse, Russia’s wars in 

Chechnya and its attack on Georgia. 

However, despite their evident lack of utility, airborne forces have

survived in varying degrees, in numerous militaries. This study will now

examine why a failed innovation has endured for so long.

Why Failed Innovations Survive

Over the course of their existence, airborne forces have gone from a

revolutionary participant in high-intensity warfare during the early 1940s, 

to a tool for counterinsurgency campaigns in the 1950s, until ultimately 

being reduced, in the 1960s, to operating against the world’s least sophis-
30

ticated armed forces. It would be reasonable to expect individual state’s

airborne forces to evolve in a manner consonant with this global trend, 

implying a gradual decline in the size of airborne forces from the 1940s

until the 1960s. 

However, a survey of three states reveals that none of their airborne

forces evolved as expected. As illustrated in Figure 3, Soviet and American airborne forces both remained large, with Soviet forces retaining a

58

Meanwhile, British airborne forces declined substantially, but did so while

war decade.

Airborne forces’ proponents generally advance three arguments to 

explain airborne forces’ persistence and evolution since 1945. Within this

Figure 3. Soviet, British, and American Airborne Operations.
31

context, they contend that the survival of large airborne forces can be accounted for by: 1) states’ strategic requirements for their capabilities; 2)

their past performance in the paratroop assault mission; and 3) airborne

forces’ superior past performance in conventional infantry roles. While

plausible, none of these rational arguments can adequately account for the

variegated evolution of great power airborne forces since 1945.

If differing strategic requirements are used to explain airborne forces’ development, then one would expect states with grand strategies that

privilege long-range power projection missions against unsophisticated 

opponents to maintain the most formidable airborne forces. However, 

great power airborne forces evolved in a manner diametrically opposite

to what one would anticipate based on strategic requirements alone. The

Soviet Union—the power that put the least emphasis on power projection and gave the highest priority to conventional high-intensity warfare—

maintained the largest and best-resourced airborne forces throughout the

Cold War. Contrarily, the United Kingdom—the state that faced the greatest power projection needs as a legacy of its rapidly disintegrating global

empire—went further and faster in cutting back its airborne forces than 

-

tuated substantially during the Cold War, alternatively prioritizing expesize of its airborne forces were less pronounced than a strategic argument

would lead one to anticipate.

If the secret to airborne forces’ post-war evolution is to be sought in 

their past performance in the paratroop assault mission, then states with 

abnormally positive experiences in their wartime use would maintain larger airborne forces, while states whose airborne forces were less successful

would engage in broader cutbacks. However, as the following chapters

demonstrate, in no case does the survival of airborne forces correspond 

to these rational expectations. Indeed, airborne forces remained the largest and suffered the fewest cutbacks in the country—the Soviet Union—

where their performance had been the worst. Meanwhile, airborne forces

-

of United States airborne forces cannot easily be explained by changes in 

performance. 

Besides strategic requirements and operational success, airborne

proponents advance a third rational argument explaining airborne forces’ survival. Accordingly, many argue that airborne divisions’ continued 

-

borne infantry divisions in ground combat. Advocates of this hypothesis
32

draw anecdotal support from occasions when airborne units performed 

-

ably loom large in histories of the Second World War, including the Italian Folgore Division’s last stand at El-Alamein (1942), the German 1st

Fallschirmjäger Division’s epic defense of Monte Cassino (1944), and the

United States 101st Airborne Division’s tenacious struggle to hold Bastogne (1944-45).

59

-

continued size and importance. First, systematic, as opposed to anecdotal, 

data on unit effectiveness is rare. Although airborne units performed well, 

their role was one of static defense in a disproportionate number of the

engagements (e.g. El-Alamein, Salerno, Monte Cassino, Brest, and Bastogne) cited in support of their allegedly superior value as infantry. Engagements such as these emphasize airborne forces’ comparative strengths

support services and tactical mobility. On the few occasions scholars examined World War II unit performance more systematically they concluded that airborne divisions were not necessarily superior to conventional

infantry.60

Moreover, even if one believes airborne forces were intrinsically superior to conventional infantry, competing hypotheses explaining this sushould have been preserved in the manner that they have. As elite units, 

airborne forces had access to higher quality personnel—volunteers who 

met rigorous physical and mental criteria—than ordinary infantry units, 

which were largely staffed by draftees during the Second World War.

61

-

sonnel, the question must be posed whether airborne forces were more

effective because of the airborne training and doctrine they embraced or

place.

62 When the performance of other elite or volunteer units is compared to that of airborne forces, a good prima facie case can be made that

favorable personnel allotments, rather than parachute training, enabled 

airborne forces to perform as well as they did in conventional roles.

63 

Thus, given the impossibility of explaining the variegated evolution 

of airborne forces with rational factors alone, the next three chapters will

examine the institutional determinants of how airborne forces evolved in 

these three states. In institutional terms, the survival of airborne forces

in different states corresponds to the comparative strength of the orga-
33

nizational structures with which they were originally endowed. In this

context, the exceptional durability of Soviet airborne forces can be explained by their enjoying a higher degree of institutionalization than their

counterparts, while the decline of British airborne forces correlates with 

their lower degree of institutionalization. Finally, the United States’ airborne forces possessed institutional resources that lay between these two 

extremes, which obliged American paratroops to continuously seek new

roles to justify their existence. 
34

Notes

1. James Bassett, “Past Airborne Emsployment,” Military Affairs 12/4 

(Winter 1948), 206.

2. John Galvin. Air Assault: The Development of Airmobile Warfare (New

York: Hawthorn, 1969), 1-4.

3. Bassett; and David Glantz, A History of Soviet Airborne Forces (London:

Frank Cass, 1994), 4.

4. Franz Kurowski, Jump into Hell: German Paratroopers in World War II

(Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 2010), 1.

5. David Glantz, The Soviet Airborne Experience (Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute, 1984), 4-17.

6. Kurowski, Jump into Hell, 2-3.

7. B.H. Liddell-Hart, Europe in Arms (London: Faber and Faber, 1937), 33.

8. Pierre Sergent, Histoire modiale des parachutistes (Paris: Société de Production Littéraire, 1974), 45-48.

9. Kurowski, Jump into Hell, 3-9.

10. Kurowski, Jump into Hell, 18-20.

11. Kurowski, Jump into Hell, 23-52.

12. Glantz, The Soviet Airborne Experience, 19-20.

13. The great powers established divisional-sized airborne forces in the

division-sized Corps in 1941); Germany (1938); Italy (1941); UK (1941); USA

(1942); and Japan (1943).

14. TNA WO 208/3858 Japanese Parachute Troops, 1 July 1945; and Gerard Devlin, Paratrooper: The Saga of US Army and Marine Parachute and Glider Combat Troops During World War II (New York: St. Martins, 1979), 81-82.

15. Kurowski, Jump into Hell, 21-22.

16. Kurowski, Jump into Hell, 42-53.

17. Hellmuth Reinhardt et al., Airborne Operations in World War II: A German Appraisal (Bennington: Merriam, 2008 [orig. 1953]), 16-17.

18. Dwight Eisenhower to George Marshall, September 20, 1943, in The

Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Vol. 3 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1970), 

1439-42.

19. Eisenhower to Marshall, 19 February 1944, in The Papers of Dwight

David Eisenhower, Vol. 3, 1736-39.

20. Kurowski, Jump into Hell, 67-71.

21. John Sadler, Operation Mercury: The Battle for Crete, 1941 (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 2007), passim. 

22. Sadler, Operation Mercury: The Battle for Crete, 1941, 183.

23. Hitler cited in Kurowski, Jump into Hell, 166.

24. Student cited in Kurowski, Jump into Hell, 165.

25. Glantz, A History of Soviet Airborne Forces, 78-86.

26. Glantz, A History of Soviet Airborne Forces, 104-227.

27. Glantz, A History of Soviet Airborne Forces, 228-61.
35

28. Glantz, A History of Soviet Airborne Forces, 262-88.

29. TNA WO 208/3858 Japanese Parachute Troops, 1 July 1945.

30. Peter Stainforth, Wings of the Wind (London: Arms and Armour, 1985), 

74-78; and Clay Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers: The American Airborne in World 

War II (New York: Dial, 1985), 66.

31. Galvin, Air Assault, 101-04.

32. Eisenhower to Marshall, September 20, 1943, in The Papers of Dwight

David Eisenhower, Vol. 3, 1439-42.

33. Gordon Harrison, United States Army in World War II: Cross-Channel

Attack (Washington DC: Center of Military History, 1951), 70-79, 183-86.

34. Harrison, United States Army in World War II: Cross-Channel Attack, 

288; and Sergent, Histoire mondiale des parachutistes, 171-72.

35. Harrison, United States Army in World War II: Cross-Channel Attack, 

278-98; and Gregor Ferguson, The Paras, 1940-1984 (London: Osprey, 1984), 

17-19.

36. Harrison, United States Army in World War II: Cross-Channel Attack, 

284, 298.

37. Jeffrey Clark and Robert Smith, United States Army in World War II:

Riviera to the Rhine (Washington DC: Center of Military History, 1993), 101-04;

and A.D. Harvey, Arnhem (London: Cassell, 2001), 31-37, 90-98.

38. The infantry divisions crossing the Rhine suffered only 41 fatalities, 

compared to the airborne force’s 787, suggesting ground forces could have taken 

the airborne objectives with fewer casualties. Stephen Waight, The Last Drop:

Operation Varsity, March 24-25, 1945 (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 2008), 287-

290.

39. John Skates, The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb (Columbia: South Carolina, 1994), 163.

-

the actions of airborne forces or not, where the attacking force suffered over 25%

casualties. Successes occur when operational objectives are seized and attacking 

forces suffered fewer than 25% casualties. 

41. Glantz, The Soviet Airborne Experience, 147-49.

42. Steven Zaloga, M551 Sheridan: US Airmobile Tanks, 1941-2001 (London: Osprey, 2009), passim; and Steven Zaloga, Inside the Blue Berets: A Combat

History of Soviet and Russian Airborne Forces (Novato: Presidio, 1995), 166.

43. James Gavin, Airborne Warfare (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 

1947), 140-86; and Glantz, A History of Soviet Airborne Forces, 336-48.

44. In 1940, armored divisions constituted 6% of German divisions, 7% of

French divisions and 15% of Soviet divisions. 

45. By the 1980s, 16 of 20 US Army divisions were armored or mechanized 

46. Zaloga, M551 Sheridan, 20-21.

47. Rachel Stohl et. al. The Small Arms Trade (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), 

59-128.
36

-

planung während der Suezkrise,” In Bernd Greiner, Christian Müller and Dierk 

Walter, eds., Krisen im Kaltan Krieg (Hamburg: Verlag Hamburger, 2008), 158-

203.

49. Marcel Bigeard, Pour une parcelle de gloire (Paris: Plon, 1975), 274-

75; and SHD 3 K 37 Entretien avec le Général Hugo Geoffrey.

50. K.C. Praval, India’s Paratroopers: A History of the Parachute Regiment

of India (London: Leo Cooper, 1975), 291-98.

51. Branislav Radovic, ed. 

Kriegrberichter Reports (Atglen: Schiffer, 2008), passim; and Pierre Vial, La bataille du Vercors (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1991), 216-25.

52. On “tree jumping” in Malaya, see: TNA WO 216/494 Report on the

Malayan Scouts--Special Air Service Regiment, 22 December 1951.

53. Henri le Mire, Histoire des parachutists Français (Paris: Albin Michel, 

1980), 171-280.

54. Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina 

(Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 1961), passim; and le Mire.

55. Bigeard, 236-37; and Pierre-Louis Garnier, “La guerre d’Algérie et la

consecration de l’Alat,” Revue Historique des Armées 229 (December 2002), 17-

24.

56. Marc R. DeVore, “The United Kingdom’s Last Hot War of the Cold War

(Oman),” Cold War History 11/3 (2011), 457-461.

57. The singular exception was India’s 1971 Tangail Operation, which has

already been discussed. On the other operations, see: Thomas Odom, Dragon 

Operations: Hostage Rescues in the Congo, 1964-1965 (Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute, 1988), passim; and Mathew Paul, Parabat (Johannesburg:

Covos Day, 2001), 2-61.

58. This table was compiled using the many sources cited in the case study 

chapters dedicated to each individual state. Additionally, the United States list

draws heavily from an order of battle for United States airborne forces compiled 

by the US Army’s Combat Studies Institute’s historians. For the United States

order of battle, airborne Rangers are included in the table. Parachute-trained special forces (i.e. Spetznaz, SAS, SEALS, Greeen Berets etc.) are not included in 

the table.

59. On the Folgore Division’s last stand, see: I.S.O. Playfair I.S.O.(2004), 

The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume IV: The Destruction of the Axis

Forces in Africa. History of the Second World War;

Press [1st. pub. HMSO 1966]), 46. For a good account of the German paratroops’

defense of Monte Cassino, see: Frido von Senger und Etterlin, Neither Fear Nor

Hope : The Wartime Career of General Frido Von Senger und Etterlin, Defender

of Cassino (London: Macdonald, 1964).

is epistemologically highly contestable. Nevertheless, several prominent assessments argue that being an airborne unit had no independent impact on unit

effectiveness during World War II. Trevor Dupuy, for example, argues that the
37

88th Infantry Division was statistically the most effective US infantry division in 

Western Europe. Of the German divisions participating in the Italian Campaign 

that Dupuy quantitatively evaluated, the highest ranked parachute division (the

4th Fallschirmjäger Division), only ranked 7th in terms of effectiveness. Peter

Mansoor contends that the veteran US divisions employed during the Normandy 

campaign (the 1st and 9th Infantry Divisions, the 82nd Airborne Division, and the

2nd Armored Division) performed uniformly well. Finally, Keith Bonn highlights

in the Vosges Mountains (1944-45), where the 70th and 45th US Infantry Divisions arguably conducted as tenacious and skillful a defense during the German 

Nordwind Offensive as the 101st Airborne did at Bastogne. See: Trevor Dupuy, 

Numbers, Predictions, and War: Using History to Evaluate Combat Factors and 

Predict the Outcome of Battles (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1979), 106; Peter

Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945 (Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 1999); and Keith Bonn, 

When the Odds Were Even: The Vosges Mountains Campaign, October 1944 – 

January 1945 (New York: Presidio 1994).

61. The difference in personnel quality was particularly acute in the US

Army during the Second World War. Since the Army funneled a disproportionate

number of higher IQ draftees into administrative services and theArmy Air Corps, 

the mean intelligence of personnel assigned to US infantry divisions was below

average. Airborne divisions were considerably better endowed in this regard. An 

ancillary factor that may also have contributed to airborne divisions’ relatively 

stripped out of infantry divisions to provide cadres for new divisions, creating a

continual churning of personnel. Units with more stability in their personnel assignments—including airborne divisions, but also some conventional divisions

(the 88th)—performed better overall. Robert Palmer et al. The Army Ground 

Forces: The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops (Washington 

D.C.: Department of the Army, 1948), 13-22, 492; and John Brown, Draftee Division: The 88th Infantry Division in World War II (Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 1986). 

62. For data on higher IQ infantry outperforming lower IQ infantry, see: Peter Watson, War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology (New

York: Basic Books Inc., 1978), 49-51.

63. During the Second World War great powers differentially allocated 

higher-quality manpower to a range of specialized and elite ground force units, 

including: armored and armored infantry divisions (certain German Wehrmacht, 

SS and even Luftwaffe divisions); airborne units (all great powers); mountain 

divisions (Germany and Italy); and commando units (UK Commandos and USA

Rangers). All of these units, which received preferential personnel allotments, 

generally outperformed line infantry units. 

39

Chapter 3 

The Soviet Union

The post-war evolution of the Soviet Union’s airborne forces demonstrates how strong institutions enable military organizations to remain 

large despite performing poorly in the past and contributing little to the

state’s later security strategies. Having conducted disastrous airborne operations during the Second World War and possessing a military doctrine

oriented until the mid-1960s toward the challenge of great power warfare, 

in rational terms. However, the Soviet Union’s airborne forces did more

than survive; they remained the world’s largest and best-resourced. This

outcome is best explained by the uniquely elevated institutional status accorded Soviet airborne forces prior to the Second World War, which has

permitted them to continually innovate in the (misplaced) hope of rendering large-scale airborne operations viable in major wars. 

Of all great powers, the Soviet Union’s record of wartime airborne

operations was so disastrous that rational calculations should have led 

the High Command to abolish airborne forces. Having begun the Second 

World War with the world’s largest (10 divisions) airborne force, Soviet

generals naturally expected paratroopers to contribute substantially to Red 

Army operations. However, as Figure 4 illustrates, Soviet airborne operations were particularly unsuccessful.

All of the Soviet Union’s three large-scale operations failed catastrophically and the vast majority (75 percent) of participating paratroopers were either killed or wounded.1

in vain as the Viazma and Demiansk operations merely annoyed the German High Command, while the Dnepr operation failed to accomplish even 

that. When the Medyn disaster is added to these catastrophes, it is easy to 

comprehend why the Soviet leadership imposed a moratorium on airborne

operations during the remainder of the war. 

The failure of the Soviet Union’s own airborne operations were not

compensated for by positive assessments of what other states had accomplished. In fact, the Soviet post-war assessment of airborne operations

concluded that, “with the exception of the German use of paratroopers

in Holland and Belgium in 1940, [all] wartime airborne operations were

either failures or had no impact on the conduct of army operations.”2 Thus, 

Soviet airborne forces survived despite, rather than because of, assessments of their utility.
40

If Soviet airborne forces did not survive because of rational expectaby unique operational requirements. As we have seen, evolving military 

technologies meant that airborne forces retained value in regions increasingly peripheral to the Cold War stand-off in Europe. As such, logic suggests that airborne forces should have survived in states whose armed 

forces were oriented towards Third World interventions. 

-

cades despite the Soviet Union’s concentration on “continental” or “Eurasian” affairs.

3 Moreover, Soviet airborne planners did not prepare for

equipment for use against NATO in Europe. From this point-of-view, the

survival of Soviet airborne forces cannot be explained by unique threats

or areas of operation. 

The best explanation for the survival and continuing strength of Soviet airborne forces lies in how these forces were institutionalized prior to 

Figure 4. Soviet Airborne Operations of World War II.
41

the Second World War. Because of the critical role that pre-war planners

hoped paratroops would play, they endowed airborne forces with a special

airborne administration, known as the Vozdushno-Desantnaya Voyska or

VDV.

4 Subordinated directly to the Soviet High Command, the VDV enjoyed the status of a separate service, rather than a mere branch of the army 

or air force. In every respect, the VDV’s institutional power exceeded that

of any foreign airborne force and compared favorably with the Marines’

status in the United States.

5

 

To reinforce its special status, the VDV developed a substantial ad-

-

chutists. The Ryazan Higher Airborne School was established to train 

in specialized skills required by airborne units.

6 The VDV also possessed 

an institutionally independent and higher quality supply of recruits than 

the rest of the armed forces. Whereas the other armed services received 

personnel allocations based on standardized tests, the VDV recruited directly from the communist youth organization, the Komsomol, and its

aerial sports organization, Osoaviakhim. As a consequence, the VDV had 

its pick of athletic, motivated, and ideologically-reliable Soviet youth.7

Despite the failure of its Second World War operations, the VDV’s

institutional power permitted it to thrive in the post-war environment. Perhaps the greatest indication of the VDV’s institutional strength is the fact

that by the mid-1950s the organization was bigger than it had been prior to 

the war and larger than the rest of the world’s airborne forces combined.8

After the war, the VDV strove to perfect its pre-war doctrine of parachuting large airborne units deep behind enemy lines where they would collaborate with advancing mechanized units to encircle enemy forces.

9

-

nization’s prewar role in the Soviet Union’s post-1945 military doctrine.

10

Within this context, Soviet airborne forces’ primary mission during the

Cold War was to conduct paratroop assaults of up to divisional size deep 

behind NATO’s forces’ front line.

11 In keeping with the Soviet doctrine

of “deep battle,” the simultaneous combination of deep airborne operations, mechanized assaults, and commando operations would administer

a pervasive operational shock to their opponent’s command and control

system, leading to the swift disaggregation of their front line forces.

12 Airbridges, headquarters facilities, and nuclear weapons depots. From the

during the Second World War because of resource constraints overcome
42

in the postwar era, and because earlier airborne forces lacked heavy weaponry. Therefore, the VDV directed its institutional energy and resources to 

seeking technological solutions that would render the organization’s failed 

pre-war doctrine viable for the Cold War. Overall, this effort was directed 

at the two-fold objective of enhancing air transport capabilities and augbombers and civilian airliners. As a consequence, paratroopers could only 

exit aircraft slowly, which increased dispersion upon landing and added to 

the number of serials needed to deliver paratroopers to their targets. After

the war, the VDV blamed its wartime failures on these inadequate transport arrangements and lobbied for specialized airborne transport aircraft, 

whose size and spacious rear exits would facilitate rapid mass paratroop 

drops. 

The VDV’s relationship with the High Command and partnership 

with the Air Force’s Military Transport Aviation branch ensured that airborne considerations shaped the design of future transport aircraft. As a

consequence, improved transport aircraft entered service beginning in the

mid-1950s, with the AN-8 (1956), AN-12 (1959), AN-22 (1967) and Il-76 

(1974) each incrementally enhancing the VDV’s capabilities.

13

In addition to improving airborne transport aircraft, the other form

mobility of paratroopers. Throughout the Second World War, the VDV’s

paratroopers had suffered because they lacked easily-deployable and effective anti-armor defensive weaponry. Meanwhile, the war highlighted 

the importance of armored vehicles for offensive warfare. As a consequence, the VDV concluded that paratroop units needed armored vehicles

that could be parachuted behind enemy lines.

Limited by the carrying capacity of its transport aircraft, the VDV

was obliged to start modestly by endowing airborne divisions with small

-

mored vehicle, the ASU-57, entered production in 1951 and weighed three

tons.

14 A successor, the ASU-85, entered service in 1961 and weighed 14 

tons.

15

Soviet airborne divisions, the strengthened airborne divisions remained 

outgunned by NATO’s infantry and armored divisions, whose allotments

of tanks, armored personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery continually increased.16

To remedy this mismatch, the Soviets embarked upon a costly program of mechanizing all their airborne forces. The ultimate goal, achieved 

gradually between the 1960s and 1980s, was equipping each airborne di-
43

vision with nearly 500 armored vehicles.

17 The cornerstone of this project was a revolutionary new vehicle, the BMD-1, which was designed to 

-

ing vehicles, weighing over 14 tons, into an air-droppable 7-ton unit. At

considerable cost, the BMD-1 entered production in the mid-1970s and 

equipped all eight paratroop divisions by the 1980s.

18 To round out the capabilities of Soviet airborne divisions, parachutable command, anti-tank, 

and artillery vehicles were also produced. 

Thus, by the late-1980s, the VDV had evolved into a substantially 

more powerful force, unique in airborne history, with over 4,000 airborne

armored vehicles organized into eight airborne divisions. However, the

VDV’s long-term approach of strengthening airborne forces for highintensity warfare was fundamentally unsound because each move to 

-

ties of transporting them. For example, the most numerous Soviet transport

aircraft, the AN-12, could only carry one BMD, while the largest aircraft, 

the AN-22, could only manage three. With each division possessing 7,000 

men and 500 armored vehicles, all of the Soviet Union’s airlift would have

been necessary to deliver one division (out of eight).

19

In principle, Soviet strategists could have compensated for their inadequate air transport capabilities by serially dropping its airborne forces (i.e. in multiple waves). However, such an undertaking would have

been hazardous in the extreme and unlikely to succeed. Large numbers

of lumbering transports typically associated with airborne operations are

directed gun systems. Similar considerations led other states and most independent experts to argue that contemporary air defenses precluded the

use of airborne forces.

20 Soviet planners recognized this danger and argued 

NATO air defenses along the transport aircrafts’ approach routes and if

airborne forces achieved operational surprise by attacking at a time and 21

Achieving both of these conditions for an initial Soviet airborne drop 

-

tained a qualitative edge throughout the Cold War.

22 NATO air defenses

also continued to evolve, with integrated radar systems (the NATO AirDefense Ground Environment or NADGE) and airborne early warning 

aircraft (AWACS) rendering a surprise Soviet airborne drop unlikely to 

succeed.23 To make matters worse, the Soviet Union lagged behind other

great powers (the United States, Britain, France, and even Israel) in developing precision-guided and anti-radiation missiles for suppressing enemy 
44

air defenses.

24 Even if, against the odds, an initial Soviet drop succeeded, 

the drop’s location would alert NATO planners as to the likely ingress

routes of further waves of transport aircraft and enable them to concentrate

air assets to destroy them. In such an eventuality, high attrition rates would 

-

portion of the VDV was dropped. 

Assuming that Soviet airborne forces succeeded in landing behind 

-

equate. The need to render BMD’s compact and light enough to be carried 

by Soviet transport aircraft obliged designers to make numerous design 

compromises. Such compromises as the elimination of heavy armor, the

-

sion system, compromised the vehicle’s combat value. Thus, during their

only combat deployment, BMDs were withdrawn from service in Afghanand machineguns.

25

Unable to airdrop more than a single division and probably incapable of penetrating NATO airspace, Soviet airborne operations were even 

less feasible in the 1980s than they had been prior to the VDV’s creation 

but ignored the broader issue of whether mass paratroop combat drops

were even possible in high-intensity wars. In this context, the institutional autonomy accorded the VDV produced a sort of bounded rationality 

whereby the strength and inventiveness of airborne forces was maximized, 

but the transcendent question of what role these forces would play lay 

unexamined. As a failed innovation, airborne forces not only soldiered on, 

but innovatively pursued their organizational essence at great cost to the

Soviet Union and the rest of its armed forces. 
45

Notes

1. Zaloga, Inside the Blue Berets, 69, 109; and Glantz, A History of Soviet

Airborne Forces, 260-61.

2. Zaloga, Soviet Bloc Elite Forces (London: Osprey, 1985), 7.

3. A new Soviet doctrine was publicly articulated at the 1966 XXIIIth Soviet Communist Party Congress. Georges-Henri Soutou. La guerre de Cinquante

Ans: Les relations Est-Ouest, 1943-1990 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 448.

4. Glantz, A History of Soviet Airborne Forces, 44.

5. Prior to the Second World War, the Marine Corps had not yet obtained its

current de facto status as the fourth armed service and its commandant was not yet

a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Even today, the Marines lack an independent service academy equivalent to the Ryazan School. 

6. David Isby, Ten Million Bayonets: Inside the Armies of the Soviet Union 

(London: Arms and Armour, 1988), 69-93.

7. Isby, Ten Million Bayonets, 113-14; and Sergent, Histoire mondiale des

parachutistes, 48-52. 

8. Zaloga, Inside the Blue Berets, 26-27, 118-19.

9. Glantz, A History of Soviet Airborne Forces, 322-35.

10. Scholars generally argue that Soviet military doctrine was characterized 

by a high degree of continuity between the 1920s and 1980s. The seminal early 

work positing the Soviet belief that large fast-moving ‘deep’ operations could lead 

1929 The Nature of the Operations of Modern Armies. In many respects, Soviet doctrine post-1945 sought to leverage new technologies to achieve this goal. 

The Nature of the Operations of Modern Armies (London: Routledge, 1994); and David Glantz, Soviet Military Art: In Pursuit of Deep 

Battle (Milton Park: Frank Cass, 1991).

11. Glantz, The Soviet Airborne Experience, 147-57.

12. Richard Simpkin, Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century

Warfare (London: Brassey’s 1985), 141-57; and Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of

Military Excellence: The Evolution of Operational Theory (Milton Park: Frank 

Cass, 1997), 164-216.

13. Zaloga, Inside the Blue Berets, 148-49.

14. Isby, Ten Million Bayonets, 55-56; and Zaloga, Inside the Blue Berets, 

126-29.

15. David Isby, Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army (London: Jane’s, 

1981), 155-56, 292-94; and Andrew Hull et al. Soviet/Russian Armor and Artillery Design Practices: 1945 to Present (Darlington: Darlington Productions, 

1999), 291-92.

16. Hull et al., Soviet/Russian Armor and Artillery Design Practices, 288-

92.

17. Glantz, A History of Soviet Airborne Forces, 383.

18. Isby, Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army, 295.

-
46

kin argues that one regiment represents the maximum force that could have been 

dropped. Isby, 56; Kenneth Waltz, A Strategy for the Rapid Deployment Force 5/4 

(Spring 1981), 60; and Simpkin, 155.

20. “Parachute Assault” International Defense Review (April 1989), 414-

15; John Mearshimer, “Correspondence: Reassessing Net Assessment,” International Security 13/4 (Spring 1989), 138; Joshua Epstein, “Soviet Vulnerabilities in 

Iran and the RDF Deterrent,” International Security 6/2 (Autumn 1981), 149-52;

and Simpkin, 156.

21. Glantz, The Soviet Airborne Experience, 146-47.

22. Sophisticated analyses of this issue include: Joshua Epstein, Measuring Military Power: The Soviet Air Threat to Europe (Princeton: Princeton University, 1984); and Barry Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and 

Nuclear Risks (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 28-67. 

23. Mike Hirst, Airborne Early Warning: Design, development and operations (London: Osprey, 1983), 7-125, 145-52.

24. On the United States’ continuous air defense suppression efforts, see:

Alfred Price, War in the Fourth Dimension: US Electronic Warfare from the Vietnam War to the Present (London: Greenhill); James Brungess, Setting the Context: Suppression of Enemy Air Defense and Joint War Fighting in an Uncertain 

World (Maxwell: Air University Press, 1994); and Anthony Thornborough and 

Frank Mormillo, Iron Hand: Smashing the Enemy’s Air Defences (Somerset: Patrick Stephens, 2002). As of the 2008 Georgia War, Russia still lacked aroundthe-clock suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) capabilities and, in fact, 

conducted no SEAD missions (losing several combat aircraft). On poor Soviet/

Russian air defense suppression capabilities, see: TNA DSIR 23/28528 Squadron 

Leader I.A.N. Worby, The Main Options Open to the Warsaw Pact Air Forces in 

Conventional Operations in Central Europe in 1970, -

don, Soviet/Russian Aircraft Weapons Since World War Two (Hinckley: Midland, 

2004), 71-138; and Roger Mcdermott, “Russia’s Conventional Armed Forces and 

the Georgian War,” Parameters (Spring 2009), 65-80.

25. Zaloga, Inside the Blue Berets, 241.
47

Chapter 4 

The United Kingdom

If the Soviet Union’s paratroop forces constitute an extreme case

of organizational autonomy, the United Kingdom’s airborne forces lie at

the opposite end of the spectrum. Possessing comparatively little organizational autonomy within the British Army, the United Kingdom’s airborne forces were not as persistent or innovative after the war as either

their Soviet or American equivalents. As a consequence, British airborne

forces rapidly shrank from a wartime peak of two airborne divisions to 

three vestigial battalions, of which only one remains parachute-capable

today. While this evolution paralleled the decreasing utility of airborne

forces, it is nevertheless best explained by institutional factors, because

rational considerations alone should have generated post-war British airborne forces comparatively larger, in proportional terms, than their foreign 

equivalents.

 The United Kingdom’srecord of airborne operations during the Second World War is incapable in itself of explaining the rapid decline of British airborne forces in the post-war period. As can be observed in Figure 5, 

British operations were more successful than their Soviet equivalents and 

equivalent (arguably superior) to those of their American counterparts.

Based on these considerations, a rational analysis of wartime airborne operations should lead one to predict that Britain’s postwar airborne

forces would remain proportionally larger than their Soviet counterparts

and comparable to their American equivalents. However, the reverse occurred, with British airborne forces declining more rapidly than their foreign counterparts. 

If British airborne forces’ comparatively successful record belies

their post-war fate, so too does the overall thrust of British post-war grand 

strategy. Since post-war airborne forces remained comparatively more

useful in low-intensity environments than high-intensity wars, one would 

expect airborne forces to remain comparatively large in states committed 

War, the United Kingdom’s armed forces exercised military power in the

world’s lesser-developed regions and against technologically unsophisticated opponents. This global military role survived the United Kingdom’s

renunciation of imperial commitments east of the Suez Canal (1967) and 

has endured to the present day.1 Thus, the United Kingdom’s airborne

forces declined after the Second World War despite expanded commit-
48

ments to low-intensity operations and power projection, which could have

While rational strategic considerations are incapable of accounting 

for the post-war decline of British airborne forces, an institutional analysis

provides better insights into this evolution. Compared to their Soviet and 

American counterparts, British airborne forces were constituted on a fragile institutional basis. Rather than being accorded independent status or

at least recognition as a co-equal branch within the ground forces, British 

airborne forces remained just one infantry regiment amongst the 71 comFigure 5. British Airborne Operations of World War II.
49

prising the British Army.2 This comparatively low degree of institutionalization can be traced back to the origins of British airborne forces and 

continued to impede these same forces as they fought to maintain a large

force structure after the Second World War.

Although Churchill was among the original proponents of airborne

operations during the First World War, the British High Command long 

opposed the idea. From the Army’s point of view, Britain’s defensive military doctrine prior to 1940 rendered airborne forces of doubtful utility 

and would divert high-quality manpower away from conventional British 

ground forces. Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force (RAF) opposed airborne

forces because it feared that constructing transport aircraft would absorb 

resources needed for bomber production.3

For the above reasons, the United Kingdom’s armed forces showed 

little enthusiasm for airborne forces until 5 June 1940, when Churchill

pushed for the creation of a 5,000 man airborne force.

4 However, even the

Prime Minister’s direct intervention (reiterated on 22 June) failed to elicit

the anticipated degree of support for airborne units. Rather than embrace

the Prime Minister’s bold call for a large airborne unit, the High Command 

set in motion plans for a force only a tenth the size Churchill had proposed 

and attached airborne forces administratively to the Army’s Commando 

program.

By attaching airborne forces to the Commandos, the High Command 

limited the institutional resources at their disposal. Commando units were

themselves a recent development, also created at Churchill’s behest. As

such, Commando battalions lacked organic administrative facilities and 

Commando service was considered a temporary detachment from soldiers’

parent regiments.

5 As if to highlight the low priority accorded airborne

forces, both the RAF and Army assigned to the unit comparatively junior

-

stacles raised by their respective hierarchies. The RAF proved particularly 

obstructive as it starved airborne forces of the minimum amount of equipment needed to train paratroops and refused to develop dedicated transport

aircraft, instead arguing that airborne forces should rely on bombers for 6

The upshot of airborne forces’ weak institutionalization was the glacial pace of their development. A year after Churchill ordered military 

commanders to establish a 5000-man force, the ranks of the “Paras” numbered only 500—and they were but partially-trained and ill-equipped. Bureaucratic opposition to his airborne directive upset Churchill, who wrote, 

“I feel myself greatly to blame for allowing myself to be overborne by 

the resistance which was offered.”7 Beginning in June 1941, Churchill
50

overcame resistance to airborne forces by directly pressuring the Chiefs

of Staff Committee to expand, protect, and provide greater resources to 

them.

8

Churchill’s interventions yielded results and British airborne forces

received adequate resources in the second half of 1941. Thus, British airborne forces expanded to brigade size by the end of the year and, in 1942 

were granted a more stable administrative infrastructure than their former

Commando attachment had provided. Cementing of airborne forces’ new

status came with receipt of the institutional perquisites of a regiment (the

Parachute Regiment), which institutionalized airborne forces on a par with 

the United Kingdom’s 71 existing infantry regiments and offered them

the prospect of surviving postwar reductions.

9 Nevertheless, this organizational status paled in comparison to that granted American or Soviet airborne forces, as it left few resources for developing independent doctrine

or equipment.

During the Second World War their relatively lowly institutional status had little impact on the performance of British airborne forces because

Churchill’s patronage overcame many of the bureaucratic obstacles that

would otherwise have stunted their growth.10 After 1941, British airborne

forces expanded to the size of two divisions of 16 parachute infantry battalions, which were all attached to the Parachute Regiment.

11 Britain’s lack 

of suitable aircraft was meanwhile fortuitously resolved by the United 

States providing large numbers of C-47 transports.

12 And high-level political intervention even led the United Kingdom to embark on an ambitious

project to support airborne forces with tanks carried by gliders.

13 With 

these resources, the United Kingdom’s airborne forces went on to conduct

airborne operations on a scale and with results exceeded by no other state. 

While weak institutionalization did not prevent the United Kingdom

from developing large airborne forces during the Second World War, it

rendered airborne forces vulnerable after the war. As Britain retrenched, 

airborne forces became a target for other branches and services intent on 

preserving themselves. Although one of the two airborne divisions was

dissolved in 1945, vested interests sought to reduce British airborne forces

further. 

Resentful of having to divert aircraft and pilots, the RAF argued in 

1946 that, “There has never been a really properly thought out appreciation of the airborne forces problem...if such an appreciation were made really honestly and objectively, the conclusion would be that airborne forces

are not worth it in a major war.”14 Meanwhile, airborne forces were singled 

out for attack by traditional British infantry regiments, which hoped the

abolition of airborne forces would strengthen chances for their own sur-
51

vival. Arguing to abolish the Parachute Regiment, Britain’s Director of

Infantry framed the issue in organizational terms by stating, “In its baldest

terms, the question...is whether it is in the interests of the Service that the

Parachute Regiment shall be disbanded in order to preserve the 64 Infantry 

Regiments of the Line.”15 

-

fending the existence of nine parachute battalions, while older infantry 

regiments of just two or three battalions were being dissolved. Nevertheless, the complete abolition of the Parachute Regiment was obviated by a

combination of its regimental status, a reputation for toughness developed 

during the Second World War, and an active veterans lobby with 14,000 

members.

16 As a result, while the Parachute Regiment survived, the United 

Kingdom’s remaining airborne division was reduced to brigade size upon 

its return from Palestine in February 1948.17

Even this surviving brigade had trouble commanding the resources

needed to remain credible in an airborne role. The Parachute Regiment

failed to persuade the RAF to design transports with rear-loading doors

-

resources to procure specialized airborne equipment.

18 As a consequence, 

the aptitude of Britain’s remaining parachute brigade to conduct an airborne operation deteriorated. When ordered to parachute into Egypt in 

1956, British paratroops were obliged to scour museums for Second World 

War-vintage airborne equipment and only succeeded in achieving their 19 

While Suez highlighted the neglect of British airborne forces, it in no 

way constituted their nadir. Consequently, although British special operations forces had deployed by parachute during the Malayan Emergency, 

helicopters had entirely replaced parachutes by the time Britain engaged 

in its next counterinsurgency campaign in Oman in 1965-75.20 Within this

context, further budgetary pressures and an increasing appreciation of the

vulnerability of airborne forces led the United Kingdom to dissolve its

parachute brigade in 1977.21 Fundamentally, this development marked the

end of a British capacity to conduct large-scale airborne operations. 

Although three parachute battalions remain, they lack specialized 

support services and only one parachute battalion remains actively quali- 22 While they have fought in numerous campaigns, including Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, they have not parachuted into battle since 1956. Indeed, weak 

institutional resources have even left British airborne forces comparatively ill-equipped to lobby for the type of prestigious non-airborne missions
52

that their American and French counterparts have regularly obtained.23 To 

the extent they have survived, British airborne forces perform the duties

of normal infantry and justify their existence by a reputation for esprit de

corps.

24

By way of conclusion, British airborne forces’ institutional weaknesses rendered them vulnerable to attacks from other interests groups

within the armed forces following the Second World War. Although over-

-

parably favorable operational record provided reasons for believing that

airborne operations could still succeed, the Parachute Regiment’s dearth 

of clout and resources prevented it from developing doctrine or pursuing 

innovations that could have revitalized the airborne concept. As a consequence, the decline of British airborne forces paralleled the increasingly 

marginal status of paratroopers as a means of waging war. Given the global decline in airborne operations, the fact that weak institutions permitted 

the United Kingdom to dispense with this type of military capability must

be viewed in a positive light. 
53

Notes

1. On British defense policy, see Michael Dockrill, British Defence since

1945 (London: Basil Blackwell, 1988), passim; William Jackson, Britain’s Defence Dilemma: An Inside View (London: B.T. Batsford, 1990), passim; and Dwin 

Bramall and Bill Jackson, The Chiefs: The Story of the United Kingdom Chiefs of

Staff (London: Brassey’s, 1992), 261-451. 

2. TNAWO 163/318 Memorandum by D.Inf., Sub-Committee on Future of

Parachute Regiment, 17 July 1947.

3. William Buckingham, Paras: The Untold Story of the Birth of the British 

Airborne Forces (Chalford: Tempus, 2008), 11-33.

4. TNA CAB 140/414 Prime Minister to Hastings Ismay, 5 June 1940.

5. Buckingham, Paras, 73-77.

6. Buckingham, Paras, 77-79, 96-112.

7. TNA CAB 120/262 Prime Minister to Hastings Ismay, 27 May 1941.

8. Frank Hilton, The Paras (London: BBC, 1983), 126.

9. Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford: Clarendon, 

1997), 195-233.

10. The RAF nevertheless continued to starve airborne forces of resources. 

TNAAIR 2/7913 Despatch Review No. 6, Airborne Assault Operations, February 

1946. 

11. The Parachute Regiment, “History.” http://www.army.mod.uk/infantry/

regiments/parachute/24055.aspx (accessed 9 June 2015).

12. Buckingham, Paras, 161.

13. TNA AVIA 22/1572 Major-General F.A. Browning to Brigadier R.N. 

Gale, 5 July 1942; and TNA AVIA 22/1572 Note on Airborne A.F.V.s, March 6, 

1942.

14. TNAAIR 2/7913 A.M.P to D.S.D., March 6, 1947. 

15. TNA WO 163/318 Memorandum by D.Inf., Sub-Committee on Future

of Parachute Regiment, 17 July 1947.

16. TNA WO 163/318 Memorandum by D.I./A.W., Sub-Committee on Future of Parachute Regiment, 17 July 1947.

17. TNA WO 163/318 Standing Committee on Army Post-War Problems, 

Sub-Committee on the Future of the Parachute Regiment, 12 September 1947;

and Ferguson, The Paras, 34.

18. Robert Jackson, Suez: The Forgotten Invasion (Shrewsbury, England:

Airlife, 1996), 82. 

19. LHA, Stockwell Papers, 8/2/2, Report by Commander 2 (Br) Corps on 

Operation “Musketeer,” 1 February 1957.

20. Marc R. DeVore, “A More Complex and Conventional Victory: Revisiting the Dhofar Counterinsurgency, 1963-75,” Small Wars and Insurgencies

23/1 (2012), 141-170.

21. “Parachute Assault” International Defense Review (April 1989), 414.

22. Ferguson, The Paras, 41-45.

23. For example, whereas the United States’ 82d Airborne Division partici-
54

pated in the 1991 Gulf War as motorized infantry and France’s military contingent

in that war was commanded by an airborne general (Michel Roquejoeffre) who 

lobbied heavily for the deployment of an airborne brigade, British airborne forces

had no institutional pull within British decision-making. See Marc R. DeVore, 

“Armed Forces, States and Threats: Civil-Military Institutions and Military Power in Modern Democracies,” Comparative Strategy 31/1 (2012), 56-83.

24. Strachan, The Politics of the British Army, 223-24.
55

Chapter 5 

The United States

The evolution of American airborne forces since the Second World 

War offers additional insights into how institutional factors shape military 

forces. Whereas a high degree of institutionalization enabled Soviet airborne forces to resist cutbacks, and a low-level of institutional strength 

condemned British airborne forces to gradual decline, the medium degree

of institutionalization characterizing the United States’ airborne forces

obliged American paratroopers to bureaucratically struggle to assure their

continued existence. As a result, American airborne forces succeeded in 

defending a large force structure, but not to the same degree as their So-

-

selves in terms of changing strategic priorities. This result can best be

accounted for by institutional, as opposed to rational factors. 

The United States’ historic record of airborne operations is incapable

in itself of rationally explaining the retention of large airborne forces. Although more successful than some foreign counterparts, less than half of

American airborne missions, as illustrated by Figure 6, can be unreservedly characterized as successes.

1

The early disasters suffered by US airborne formations in North 

Africa, Sicily, and Italy created such a negative opinion in the minds of

American commanders that many policymakers favored dismantling large

airborne forces.

2 Although later operations proved more successful, the

heavy casualties endured during even such well-planned operations as

Neptune (Normandy), Market Garden, and Varsity (The Rhine) convinced 

American planners not to include an airborne component in plans to invade Japan’s home islands.

3 Thus, while several operations achieved their

objectives, the failure of others devalued airborne forces in the eyes of

American commanders.

The inability of a mixed wartime record to explain the postwar survival of American airborne forces becomes particularly evident when the

relationship between the institutional performance and survival of airborne

forces is compared to that of other novel American forces. The early experiences of the Army’s paratroops proved so disappointing that the Marine

Corps abolished its airborne regiment in 1943.4 Moreover, other specialized American military units, such as the Rangers, Merrill’s Marauders, 

1st Special Service Force, and Galahad Force, enjoyed combat records

equally or more distinguished than the paratroops, yet faced institutional

extinction after the war.

5
56

If the resilience of American airborne forces cannot be explained 

by wartime performance, neither can it be accounted for by unique operational requirements. American airborne forces, contrary to their Soviet

-

6

-

However, airborne forces remained strong both when American defense policy focused on high-intensity operations in Europe (the 1950s

and 1970s) and when it gave greater emphasis to lower-intensity operaFigure 6. American Airborne Operations of World War II.
57

tions against less sophisticated adversaries (the 1960s and 1980s). Another

problem with attributing the retention of airborne forces to exterior interventions can be found in the unsuitability of such forces in all but the least

threatening environments. In fact, despite retaining large airborne forces, 

the United States conducted forced-entry airborne operations only against

Grenada and Panama within the last thirty years, and did not do so in Iraq, 

Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, or Afghanistan.7 

Contrary to rational explanations, institutional factors best explain 

the evolution of American airborne forces. Convinced of the future value of airborne operations, American military leaders endowed airborne

forces with robust institutions between 1940 and 1943. Less powerful and 

autonomous than their Soviet equivalents but more thoroughly institutionalized than their British counterparts, the medium degree of institutionalization characterizing American airborne forces provided them with the

organizational resources needed to innovate in the search of new roles and 

missions after World War II. 

Although the United States was comparatively late in embracing the

airborne concept, the German successes of 1940 prompted American commanders to devote considerable efforts to developing a viable airborne

force.

8 Impressed by the German invasion of Crete, Army Chief of Staff

General George Marshall became convinced that, “in the proper develop-

-

nity and capability to get ahead of the enemy.”9 In keeping with Marshall’s

vision, the United States’ 1942 “Victory Program” anticipated the creation 

of a massive airborne force consisting of ten divisions (out of a 98 division 

Army).

10 If enacted, this program would have rendered American airborne

forces equal in size to their Soviet equivalents and proportionally the largest in the world. 

Creating such a large force in so little time demanded the establishment of special institutions. The cornerstone of these institutions was the

Airborne Command, whose creation in March 1942 rendered airborne

forces a quasi-branch of the Army, possessing an institutional status only 

marginally inferior to that of the traditional branches (infantry, cavalry, and 

artillery).

11 Although commanded by major generals, the Airborne Command enjoyed a degree of administrative freedom on par with that of traditional branches as it answered directly to the Army Ground Forces’ Lieutenant General Leslie J. McNair.

12 As an institution, Airborne Command 

was tasked with elaborating airborne doctrine, training airborne units, and 

developing specialized equipment. To achieve these objectives, Airborne

Command was endowed with a Parachute School to train personnel in 

both parachuting and technical subjects relevant to airborne operations.

13
58

Airborne Command was also given privileged access to high quality recruits. Empowered to induct only volunteers, paratroopers earned 

an extra $50 a month compared to ordinary soldiers.

14 Because of greater

prestige and higher pay, airborne forces attracted the Army’s most intelli-

-

forces’retention of excessive numbers of recruits of a higher-than-average

intellectual aptitude.

15

Thanks to the organizational resources at its disposal, Airborne

Command activated two airborne divisions in August 1942 and developed 

specialized equipment, including gliders, lightweight howitzers, and an 

airborne tank.16

in North Africa and Italy proved disastrous. These failures extinguished 

much of the early enthusiasm for airborne operations. In fact, Secretary of

War Henry L. Stimson, the Commander of Army Ground Forces General

McNair, and Allied Forces commander General Dwight Eisenhower all argued that large airborne forces should be abolished.17 However, Airborne

Command now represented a powerful interest group and its commanders

successfully defended large-scale airborne operations.

18

In the aftermath of this debate, the United States scaled back its plans

to create future airborne forces from the ten divisions of the “Victory Pro- 19 Moreover, theater commanders became more cautious in approving airborne operations and rejected bold proposals for operations against Rome, the Evreux-Dreux area

(Normandy), and Japan.20 Although several more conservative operations

succeeded, many entailed heavy casualties. 

meager results of many wartime airborne operations should have rendered 

the post-war survival of American airborne forces unlikely. However, 

airborne forces’ high degree of wartime institutionalization provided its

leaders with the resources needed to secure the future survival of their

strategy. On the one hand, they sought, through innovation and reorganization, to adapt America’s airborne forces for the roles and missions

prioritized by political leaders. On the other hand, because a good combat

record is an important criterion for institutional survival, airborne forces

lobbied hard for a role in the United States’ national defense strategy. 

American airborne forces were aided in their post-war struggle for

survival by their privileged status. Because Airborne Command had been 

accorded elite status and substantial resources, it attracted the Army’s
59

-

tion. As a consequence, many former paratroopers rose to senior leader-

-

ence of this informal group, known as the “Airborne Club,” facilitated 

airborne forces’ ability to pursue innovations and acquire new missions.

21 

a disproportionate role for airborne forces in the immediate post-war force

structure. Although airborne forces would naturally be cut as the Army 

downsized from 89 divisions to 11, Airborne Command succeeded in preserving the two airborne divisions. Thus, while airborne forces shrunk in 

absolute terms, they grew as a percentage of American ground forces.

22 

-

ly sought to re-package and renovate airborne forces to correspond to the

military priorities annunciated by American political leaders. For example, 

when President Eisenhower articulated a national military doctrine based 

despite airborne forces’ being particularly unsuited to tactical nuclear warfare.

23 Given that high levels of tactical mobility and vehicles equipped 

with overpressure systems provide land forces personnel with their best

chances of survival in environments where tactical nuclear detonations

in these regards constituted a fatal handicap.24 Nevertheless, airborne lobbying succeeded in securing an airborne unit’s designation as the United 

When John Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower as President, the government’s strategic priorities shifted from deterrence in Europe to prothis situation, airborne partisans advertised their ability to provide the

new administration the capabilities it sought. They were assisted in this

endeavor by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell

Taylor and the Chief of Army Plans, Research, and Development General

James Gavin, both former airborne division commanders. 

-

sponse forces, formations that would be the leading edge of any American contingency operation because of their high mobility and forced-entry 

capability. Accepting this argument, the Kennedy Administration created 

two new independent airborne brigades for Asia and Europe, and small-
60

er battalion-sized forces for Alaska and Latin America.

25 Because of the

airborne community’s responsiveness to the new national strategy, they 

played a prominent role in the era’s military interventions by providing the

Dominican Republic and South Vietnam in 1965.26

units, they also explored revolutionary alternatives for delivering soldiers

by air. As early as 1947, General Gavin had extolled the helicopter’s potential value.

27 The United States Marines provided further evidence of how

this new vehicle could move infantrymen when they employed helicopters

to reposition a battalion in 1951, during the Korean War.

28 Nevertheless, 

the airborne community only began to seriously investigate helicopters as

a substitute for parachutes after the Kennedy Administration articulated its 29 

Once this occurred, the airborne community led the way in develop-

-

ilton Howze, led the group that recommended the creation of an airmobile

division in 1962. To explore how such a unit might function, Howze employed a battle group from the 82d Airborne Division to conduct a battery 30 Then, when the Army created a special-purpose experimental unit, it was given an airborne designation and entrusted to another

former paratrooper, General H.W.O. Kinnard.31 

However, the airmobile concept proved of ambiguous value to the

airborne community. While helicopters provided a new and more-dependable means for accomplishing traditional airborne missions, they challenged the institutional ethos of airborne forces because they required 

elite status. In fact, because any ordinary unit could be converted to airmobile status, the Army’s chief of staff gave his own branch, the cavalry, 32 Thus, although the

airborne community pioneered airmobile warfare, they temporarily lost

ownership of the concept. 

The vicissitudes of the Vietnam War, however, permitted airborne

forces to gradually re-appropriate the airmobile role. Upon its deployment

to Vietnam, the 173d Airborne Brigade began extensively using helicopters despite its lacking an airmobile designation.33 Then, once the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division had proven the value of airmobile forces, the

Army approved the creation of a second airmobile division, the privilege

of providing which went to the airborne community’s 101st Airborne Division.34 This expansion of the airborne community was due, in part at
61

command and staff positions during this period.35 Nevertheless, the exigencies of the Vietnam War and irrelevance of airborne training to ongoing military operations led the 101st Airborne Division to curtail training 

for airborne jumps in 1968.

When the end of the Vietnam War heralded a decline in the United 

States’ need for airmobile forces, the airborne community became the

sole proprietor of the airmobile role. While the cavalry and airborne communities had fought over the airmobile mission prior to Vietnam, the Army’s post-Vietnam focus on high-intensity warfare stimulated the Army 

to transform the 1st Cavalry Division into an armored force. Bereft of a

credible high-intensity role, the airborne community clung to airmobility, 

maintaining the 101st as the United States’ only airmobile division.36

Although post-Vietnam cutbacks led to the abolition of most of the

independent airborne brigades and battalions created in the 1960s, the airborne community successfully lobbied for the creation of two (Airborne)

Ranger battalions in 1973 as elite unit showcasing the Army’s efforts to 

reinvent itself as an all-volunteer force. This force was later expanded into 

the Ranger Regiment in 1984 with the addition of a third battalion and 

the creation of a dedicated headquarters company.37 Then, when American 

policymakers became alarmed at the prospect of a Soviet invasion of Iran 

following the Soviet 1979 intervention in Afghanistan, the airborne community offered the 82d Airborne Division as the ideal force for responding 

to such a contingency, arguing that one of its brigades should constantly 

be maintained at a higher state of readiness.

38

Concomitant with its search for new roles and missions, the airborne

community lobbied for airborne operations whenever America intervened. 

Despite the superiority of airmobile forces, the airborne community convinced America’s commander in Vietnam, General William Westmore39

Although the unsatisfactory results of this operation precluded further operations in Vietnam, the United States’ invasions of Grenada (1983) and 

Panama (1989) featured the sort of ill-equipped and poorly-organized opponents against which airborne assaults could still be conducted. In neither case were airborne forces absolutely necessary, and in Grenada the

Marines actually lobbied to take the airborne objective via an amphibious assault.

40 Nevertheless, adroit lobbying ensured that both invasions

included airborne components.

Subsequent American interventions have proven less conducive to 

airborne operations. Despite active lobbying, America’s military leaders

considered Iraqi defenses too formidable for an airborne operation during 

the 1991 Gulf War.

41 Although the 2003 Iraq War was equally unsuitable
62

for airborne operations, the airborne community’s lobbying earned them

the right to conduct an airborne operation behind friendly lines, whereAmerican special forces.

42 Although the airborne community had actively 

that troops could be delivered faster by parachute than by landing them.

43

In light of their infrequent employment in an age of frequent United 

States military interventions, it may appear paradoxical that the size of

American airborne forces has actually grown. Indeed, two battalions expanded to brigade size between 2000 and 2006. The United States Army 44 Consequently, the

United States’ airborne forces are larger today in absolute times than they 

have been at any time since 1968. Moreover, considering that the United 

States Army’s overall order of battle has shrunk from 20 active divisions

to ten since the end of the Cold War, the recent expansion in airborne

any of the United States’ airborne operations since the Korean War, the

occasional conduct of such operations in benign environments has fostered the illusion that airborne forces still have an important role to play 

in modern warfare. Nevertheless, the ability of American airborne forces

grand strategy proved more fundamental to their survival. Indeed, Ameri-

-

pable of responding to the challenge posed by Chinese anti-access/area

denial capabilities must be viewed in this broader context.

45 

The key to this dynamic lies in the medium degree of institutionalization conferred on American airborne forces when they were created 

during the Second World War. Unable to count on superior institutional

strength to blindly pursue their organizational essence, as the Soviet VDV

to maintain a large force structure provided they adapted to the perceived 

needs of changing political administrations. 
63

Notes

whereas it is considered a failure elsewhere in this article. The reason for this

is that although the overall operation failed when its British component, the 1st

Airborne Division at Arnhem, was overrun and annihilated, the American component of the mission succeeded in seizing and holding its objectives, albeit at

heavy cost.

 2. Eisenhower to Marshall, September 20, 1943, in The Papers of Dwight

David Eisenhower, Vol. 3, 1439-42; and Thomas Sheehan, World War II Vertical

(MA Thesis: US Army Command and General Staff College), 68-70.

3. Skates, The Invasion of Japan, 163.

4. Devlin, 275-77.

5. Scott McMichael, A Historical Perspective on Light Infantry (Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute, 1987), passim; and Michael King, Rangers:

Selected Combat Operations in World War II (Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies

Institute, 1985), passim.

6. Maxwell Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York: Da Capo, 1972), 

passim; and Edward Gavin, (Fort

Leavenworth: School of Advanced Military Studies Monograph, 2012), passim.

conducted in territory controlled by friendly Kurdish paramilitary forces, who had 

a good working relationship with US Special Forces already deployed in the area.

8. Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 30.

9. Eisenhower to Marshall, 19 February 1944, in The Papers of Dwight

David Eisenhower, Vol. 3, 1736-40.

10. Eisenhower to Harold Roe Bull, Memorandum for General Bull, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3, April 4, 1942, in The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Vol. 1, 226-27.

he Army Ground Forces: The Organization of

Ground Combat Forces (Washington D.C.: Department of the Army, 1947), 396-

416.

12. James Huston, Out of the Blue: U. S. Army Airborne Operations in 

World War II (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1998), 66-69.

13. Palmer et al., The Army Ground Forces, 258.

14. Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 32.

15. Palmer et al., The Army Ground Forces, 20.

16. Janet Bednarek, “Damned Fool Idea: The American Combat Glider Program, 1941-1947,” Air Power History (Winter 1996), 44-47; R.M. Ogorkiewicz, 

Design and Development of Fighting Vehicles (New York: Doubleday, 1968), 52;

and Sheehan, World War II Vertical Envelopment, 49-54.

17. Sheehan, World War II Vertical Envelopment, 68-69.

18. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 52; and Blair, Ridgeway’s Paratroop-
64

ers, 173-75.

19. Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers 34.

20. Eisenhower to Pietro Badoglio, September 8, 1943, in The Papers of

Dwight David Eisenhower, Vol. 3, 1402-04; and Harrison, United States Army in 

World War II: Cross-Channel Attack, 184-86.

21. A. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The US Army Between Korea and Vietnam (Washington D.C.: National Defense University, 1986), 106; and Richard 

Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen and Cold War Crises (New York: Columbia, 1991), 

134.

22. Gordon Rottman. US Army Airborne, 1940-90 (London: Osprey, 1990), 

19. 

23. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era, 103-27.

24. Albert Mauroni, America’s Struggle with Chemical-Biological Warfare

(Westport: Praeger, 2000), 124.

25. Rottman., US Army Airborne, 1940-90, 33-50.

26. Airborne forces were assigned to the intervention in the Dominican 

Republic because it was originally anticipated that they would have to conduct

-

be sent to a crisis zone. Moreover, the highly publicized deployment of Marines

created pressures for the Army to respond with an equally dramatic entrée into 

South Vietnam—one provided by elite airborne forces. Finally, the fact that the

US commander in Vietnam, General William Westmorland, was himself an airborne veteran contributed to calls for this particular type of unit. See: Lawrence

Yates, Power Pack: US Intervention in the Dominican Republic 1965-1966 (Fort

Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute, 1988), 68-70. 

27. John Tolson, Vietnam Studies: Air Mobility, 1961-1971 (Washington 

DC: Department of the Army, 1973), 3-5; and Gavin, 150-51.

28. Galvin, Air Assault, 261-63.

29. Mark Olinger, Conceptual Underpinnings of the Air Assault Concept:

The Hogaboom, Rogers and Howze Boards (Arlington: Institute for Land Warfare, 2006), 6.

30. Galvin, Air Assault, 274-79.

31. Shelby Stanton, The 1stt Cav in Vietnam: Anatomy of a Division (Novato: Presidio, 1987), 25.

32. Stanton, The 1st Cav in Vietnam, 36.

33. Tolson, Vietnam Studies: Air Mobility, 63-67.

34. Tolson, Vietnam Studies: Air Mobility, 195-99.

Douglas Kinnard, 

(New York: Da Capo, 1991 [orig. 1971]), 114-15.

36. Stanton, The 1st Cav in Vietnam, 249-51.

37. David Hogan, Raiders or Elite Infantry?: The Changing Role of the US 
65

Army Rangers from Dieppe to Grenada (Westport: Greenwood, 1992), 195-210.

38. Rottman, US Army Airborne, 1940-90, 53.

39. Tolson, Vietnam Studies: Air Mobility, 126-41.

40. Mark Adkin, Urgent Fury: The Battle For Grenada (Lexington: Lexington, 1989), 131-39.

41. Bernard Trainor and Michael Gordon, The General’s War: The Inside

(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), 157.

42. Matthew Konz, “Operational Employment of the Airborne Brigade

Combat Team: The 503d Parachute Infantry Regiment as a Case Study” (Fort

Leavenworth: School of Advanced Military Studies, 2009), 37-55.

43. Gregory Fontenot, E.J. Degen and David Tohn, On Point: The United 

States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat

Studies Institute, 2004), 227.

44. In 2000, the 173rd Airborne Brigade was reactivated as an independent

brigade. In 2005, the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) / 25th Division was

created employing, in parts, personnel taken from the 1-501 independent airborne

infantry battalion. From 2006 to 2014, the 82d Airborne Division was reorganized, transforming it from a three brigade structure to a four brigade structure. 

(AC/AD) challenge, see: 2013 Army Strategic Planning Guidance. For an examsee: Charles Flynn and Joshua Richardson, “Joint Operational Access and the

Military Review (July-August

2013), 38-44.

67

Chapter 6 

Conclusions and Implications for the US Army

Institutional Design and Military Performance

As this study demonstrates, institutional status plays a decisive role

in shaping the destinies of military organizations. Early in organizations’

existence, a high degree of institutionalization is critical to military innovation. Indeed, military organizations will rarely succeed at exploiting 

their core tactics and technologies unless they possess a high level of au-

-

ical and tactical developments later challenge the viability of a military organization’s central mission, institutional strength plays the opposite role

of enabling obsolescent military organizations to resist necessary reforms. 

Consequently, it is those organizations that possess the greatest levels of

autonomy and the most institutional resources that are both the most likely 

to survive and the least likely to critically reappraise themselves when 

outside developments undermine their original raison d’être. 

The converse of what has just been said about strong organizations

applies to weaker ones. Military organizations with little autonomy and 

they are created with the express purpose of doing so. However, a low

degree of institutionalization becomes an asset once the technologies and 

tactics central to a military organization become obsolete. Within this context, a state’s leaders can more easily abolish military organizations that

have outlived their usefulness when those organizations are themselves

weakly institutionalized. 

Each of the three cases examined bears out the overriding impact of

institutional factors in determining how military organizations evolved. 

In the Soviet case, strong institutions enabled airborne forces to develop swiftly prior to the Second World War and remain at the forefront of

airborne innovation. However, the wartime performance of Soviet airborne

forces fell far short of pre-war expectations, partly due to Premier Joseph 

-

less, Soviet airborne forces possessed the institutional resources needed to 

preserve their size and mission after the Second World War because they 

had originally been institutionalized in the strongest possible way—as an 

independent military service—prior to that war. Soviet airborne forces

were therefore able to mobilize vast human and technical resources in the
68

ultimately futile endeavor of developing technologies and tactics to reinvigorate the airborne forces’ preferred strategic mission. Even though the

Soviets created innovative airborne armored vehicles, developed mammoth transport aircraft, and practiced massive assaults, these measures

could not redress airborne forces’ fundamental vulnerabilities in an age of

armored vehicles and surface-to-air missiles.

Contrary to the Soviet example, British airborne forces’ evolution 

was marked by their extremely weak institutionalization. Having been ini-

-

culty acquiring the equipment and personnel needed to develop a credible

airborne capability. Indeed, only Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s repeated personal interventions procured for the United Kingdom’s airborne

the Second World War. Surprisingly in light of their slow gestation, British 

airborne forces performed well later in the war. Nevertheless, neither their

successful wartime performance nor the United Kingdom’s vast overseas

commitments saved British airborne forces after the war. Indeed, having 

only been institutionalized as a single regiment, British airborne forces

lacked the resources to either defend their original mission or adapt themselves for a new one. Consequently, airborne forces’ utility was ruthlessly 

reappraised and their size was rapidly reduced, with a vestigial force being 

retained on the grounds of the regiment’s elite status.

Finally, the United States’ airborne forces’ development has been 

shaped by the median level of institutionalization they were originally 

accorded. Having been established as a powerful community within the

United States Army, American airborne forces possessed fewer institutional resources than their Soviet counterparts, but more than their British 

compatriots. Lacking the sheer scale of resources needed to protect airborne forces’ original mission—large-scale, high-intensity airborne operations—in the face of technological developments, the American airborne

community continuously sought new roles that would justify their size and 

autonomy. Consequently, they embraced such concepts as the Pentomic

division, heliborne operations, and high readiness rapid response force

(the so-called “ready brigade”). To the extent that the American commuUnited States’ need for “parachute infantry” would suggest. 

The Failure of Rationality

When examined as an ensemble, it is striking both how important

institutional factors were in shaping airborne forces’ evolution and how
69

often rational explanations fail to account for how airborne forces developed. Traditional histories of military units typically suggest that a major

factor in organizations’ survival after wars is their military performance

that were successful in wartime capitalize on their accomplishments to 

achieve an exalted peacetime status, while units that were unsuccessful

at war would suffer severe cutbacks in peacetime. However, the airborne

forces examined in this study exhibit the contrary tendency. 

For example, the Soviet Union’s airborne forces, which suffered repeated defeats and were a cause for disappointment every time that they 

were used, were best able to preserve their size, resources and mission 

after the war. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s airborne forces, which 

their size and resources. Finally, although the British and American airborne forces enjoyed nearly comparable wartime experiences, serving 

side-by-side in the largest operations, American airborne forces remained 

comparatively large and well-resourced, while their British counterparts

declined to symbolic proportions. 

Thus, the issue of whether military units actually succeeded at their

wartime tasks was wholly irrelevant in determining their postwar tasks. 

The reason why wartime performance had so little impact on post-war

policy outcomes lies in the ambiguous nature of after-action assessments

and the role of institutional factors in determining what lessons were offailure of individual operations. Moreover, even when the determinants of

success or failure were understood, they could be interpreted in multiple

ways. 

For example, when Soviet strategists evaluated the disastrous Dnepr

(1943) airborne operation, they had to decide whether the operation failed 

failed because of other factors, such as paratroops being inadequately 

equipped or Soviet armored forces being too slow in breaking through the

German front line. Likewise, when British planners evaluated the success

-

mine whether the operations contributed in their own right to the overall

campaign or whether their success was itself dependent on assistance from

-

phibious units. 

The nature of the lessons that each state drew from its experiences

was shaped by airborne forces’ institutional roles within their respective
70

military high commands. Where airborne forces possessed a great deal of

institutional clout, such as in the Soviet Union, they succeeded at determining how wartime experience was interpreted. This meant, in the Soviet

case, that the airborne assault mission itself remained sacrosanct and that

wartime failures were attributed to inadequate equipment and training. Ingreater resources in peacetime. 

In sharp contrast to the lessons drawn in the Soviet Union, the institutionally weak position of British airborne forces meant that their utility 

was continually questioned despite their better wartime performance. The

singular failure of Operation Market Garden (1944), for example, was exploited ruthlessly by airborne forces’ opponents to argue that they were

no longer a worthwhile combat arm for large scale warfare. Thus, as demonstrated by these examples, wartime experience has little independent

bearing on post-war policy outcomes because military organizations use

whatever institutional power they possess to instrumentalize the wartime

record to their own ends.

Perhaps even more astonishing than the irrelevance of wartime experience is the limited impact that national strategies had on how airborne

forces evolved in each state. As argued earlier, wartime experience and 

post-war technological developments demonstrate that the only valid mission for airborne forces, beginning in the Cold War, was long-range inexpect airborne forces to prosper in states where this long-range, lowintensity mission was considered vital, and decline in ones where it was

not a priority. 

However, such was not the case and airborne forces’ evolution appears to have been unaffected by changing national strategies. Thus, while

the Soviet airborne forces remained large throughout a period (until 1966)

when the armed forces’ sole combat mission was large-scale high intensity warfare, the United Kingdom’s airborne forces suffered most of the

cutbacks they endured during the period (before 1968) when the state was

States, where airborne forces were obliged to continually seek new roles

and missions, did changes in airborne forces’size occasionally correspond 

to changes in national strategy, such as the increased emphasis on lowintensity contingencies during President John Kennedy’s administration. 

Insights for Policymakers

Thus, issues of institutional design systematically trumped rational

calculations in determining how the airborne forces of each state devel-
71

oped. Considering that institutional factors, rather than rational ones, drove

the development of military capabilities in this case, it might be asked 

what lessons decision-makers should draw when it comes to formulating 

defense policies. To answer this question it is necessary to examine what

factors decision-makers should take into account in designing institutions.

Perhaps the greatest lesson that decision-makers should draw is that

-

puts those organizations will produce. If decision-makers aim to foster

-

nizations that possess enough autonomy to successfully pursue the innoof innovation achieved, they may remedy the situation by institutionally 

strengthening the organization dedicated to the technology or tactic they 

consider promising. For example, as was discussed in Chapter 1, having 

capabilities, Congress strengthened the institutional design of American 

special operations forces by writing the creation of the Joint Special Operations Command into the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act.

While institutional design is a factor in military innovation, it is also 

a determinant of organizational inertia. Within this context, decision-makers must recognize that institutionally strong military organizations rarely 

engage in critical reappraisals of their utility and are often successful at

preserving themselves long after their core missions have become obsolete. However, there is no point in blaming the individual members of

such organizations for this state of affairs. The biases that cloud individual

members’ judgments are a natural by-product of military organizations’

efforts to develop esprit de corps

careers. Consequently, military organizations cannot be expected to objectively evaluate the feasibility of their own doctrines at all times.

As a result, military commanders and civilian policymakers responsible for crafting defense policy must critically evaluate the claims

advanced by military organizations. To succeed, they must also actively 

seek alternative perspectives, ask probing questions of such organizations, 

and demand that military organization’s core doctrines be examined in as

objective and neutral a fashion as possible. Moreover, since no military 

organization is ever likely to admit that its utility has come to an end, 

such critical evaluations must come from outside of the organization itself, 

either from other military services, civilian analysts, or think-tanks. 

To this end, the great German military historian Hans Delbrück 

-

-
72

ter face too many pressures to justify or otherwise defend the high command’s doctrines.

1 In the 1960s, operational research, drawing heavily on 

statistical analysis, was championed as a superior means for objectively 

evaluating military doctrines and force postures.

2 More recently, certain 

scholars have argued that inter-service rivalry plays a key role in exposing 

the shortcomings of military organizations, as military organizations are

better at critically evaluating their rivals than themselves.

3 Other scholars have, meanwhile, suggested that the military policymaking process

should be systematically broadened by including experts from think tanks

in doctrinal debates.

4 While none of the above approaches is foolproof, 

in combination they can provide decision-makers with better information 

upon which to base their policies.

When the weight of evidence suggests that a military organization’s

core mission is obsolete, decision-makers should intervene to abolish or

redesign the organization. Such measures are necessary because organizational insiders have deeply-seated interests and emotional reasons for

protecting the organizations they serve; meaning that they are rarely willdue to the long-overdue actions of organizational outsiders that the United 

Air Defense Forces were dissolved in 1998.5

is the defense community as a whole—including elected leaders, members

of rival military organizations and civilian analysts—that bears the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the components of a nations’ armed 

forces are all capable and necessary. 

Implications for Current US Army Airborne Forces

Although the focus of this study was demonstrating the role institutional designs play in shaping organizations’ destinies, it is worthwhile

-

ed States defense policy and the implications of this study’s conclusions

on those forces. Because the United States’ airborne forces continually 

sought new roles and missions to justify their existence, American forces

are less self-evidently obsolete than their Russian counterparts, which remain committed to their original mission of conducting large-scale paratroop drops in support of high-intensity operations. Therefore, to evaluate

the utility of United States airborne forces it is necessary to examine both 

their force structure and the missions that justify that structure.

forces are today the second largest (still behind Russia) and best equipped 

in the world.6 Moreover, American airborne forces can draw on a larger
73

frequently lack the airlift capability to airdrop even a miniscule proportion 

of their paratroop units.

7

airborne forces of this magnitude. These missions are the parachute-delivered forced-entry into hostile territory and the rapid deployment of troops 8 Because these two missions are

so central to American airborne forces’ current size, it is worth examining 

whether the missions are realistic and whether the current force structure

The forced-entry mission’s requirement—to be able airdrop an airborne brigade at short notice to a location on the other side of the globe— 9 However, 

since only three brigades are needed to maintain one on alert, the strate10

Moreover, the United States would likely be unable to conduct a larger

strategic drop if the situation arose because it lacks the C-17 transport

aircraft necessary drop more than one brigade at a time. Consequently, the

United States currently possesses more airborne troops than it can usefully 

employ in this role.

11 

More fundamentally, however, the likelihood of even a brigade-size

airborne operation is open to serious doubts. As was shown in Chapter 2, 

the spread of surface-to-air missiles and armored vehicles has rendered airborne operations extremely hazardous unless they are conducted against

the least sophisticated opponents. For this reason, the only airborne operations conducted since the 1956 Suez Campaign have been against extremely weak enemies, including Congolese rebels (Belgian operations in 

1964-65 and the French operation in 1978), Namibian rebels (by South 

Africa in 1978), Grenada’s armed forces (by the United States in 1983), 

and the Panamanian Defense Forces (by the United States in 1989). 

The United States and other military powers have been unanimous

in considering the use of airborne forces to be risky and uncertain when 

they have fought marginally more competent opponents than those discussed above. Consequently, airborne operations were noticeably absent

from the contemporary epoch’s major wars, including the Gulf Wars, the

(post-1956) Arab-Israeli Wars, the Wars of Yugoslavian Secession, the

Falklands War, and the post-Soviet wars in the Caucasus.

12 With so many 

Moreover, when forced-entry missions were required, states routinely favored the alternatives offered by amphibious or heliborne forces. 
74

Amphibious forces were employed by Egypt for its surprise assault across

the Great Bitter Lake (1973), Turkey for its invasion of Cyprus (1974), the

British for their re-conquest of the Falklands (1982), and the United States

in multiple operations (Lebanon, Grenada, and Somalia). Heliborne operations have also been used extensively, with the United States employing 

them massively during the 1991 Gulf War, the 1994 intervention in Haiti, 

and its counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan.13

Given this persistent record of non-use, except under the most favorable circumstances, it is doubtful that the United States needs the ability 

to conduct brigade-size airborne drops. Indeed, if airborne drops are only 

likely to be conducted against poorly-equipped adversaries in countries

that are extremely far away, then a single battalion at a high state of readineeds. Indeed, a single battalion was enough to secure success in all of the

airborne operations that have been conducted since 1956, with the singular

exception of the United States’ invasion of Panama. In each case, forces

-

If the ability to conduct a brigade size airdrop appears of doubtful

necessity, the same cannot be said of the need to be able to rapidly airlift

troops in the event of crises. Indeed, the ability to airlift high-readiness

forces in the event of crises has proven invaluable in circumstances ranging from the preventative deployment of Soviet troops to Damascus in 

1973 to the United States defensive deployment in Saudi Arabia in 1990. 

deployment role, there is no functional reason why rapid deployment units

It may be countered that providing airborne training for these units

is comparatively inexpensive—at least within the context of the United 

States’ national defense budget—considering that the United States al-

-

es.

14 Furthermore, it is frequently argued that airborne training is particularly effective at instilling in soldiers virtues such as self-reliance and 

physical toughness. While both these economic and training arguments are

valid to a degree, any accurate analysis of the United States’ airborne force

in the airborne role. Ultimately, the time infantry units spend training and 

qualifying for the airborne mission is time they do not spend preparing for

alternative missions. Considering the rarity of airborne operations, might
75

it not be better to have elite infantry units specialize in equally demanding, 

yet more likely forms of warfare?

Whereas the last airborne operations that were conducted out of

necessity date back to the late 1970s, warfare has become much more

frequent in mountainous and urban environments. From the Balkans to 

the past three decades have occurred in Eurasia’s mountainous regions. 

Moreover, long experience demonstrates the utility of specialized training 

the gathering pace of urbanization has inexorably resulted in more and 

more battles occurring in cities, as evidenced by the contemporary struggles for Mogadishu, Sarajevo, Grozny, Fallujah, Baghdad, and Aleppo. 

Since urban environments pose distinct challenges to infantrymen, such 

as the clearing of buildings and neutralization of snipers, it may also be

useful to develop large infantry units specialized in taking, holding, and 

controlling cities.

Cities and mountains are but two of the environments that challenge

contemporary infantrymen, with tropic jungles, arctic wastes, and deserts

of airborne forces, would it not make sense to convert some of its airborne

brigades into light infantry units specializing in these distinctive forms

-

tinct environments led units to develop an ethos rivaling that of contemporary airborne forces. For example, the birth of modern “elite” military 

units can arguably be traced to European armies’ creation in the late 19th 

Alpini, the French Chasseurs Alpins, and the Austro-Hungarian Tyrolean 

Kaiserjägers.

15 The creation during the Second World War of specialized 

jungle units, such as Merrill’s Marauders and Wingate’s Chindits, arguably spawned some of that war’s most distinguished formations and contributed greatly to the Allied military effort in Burma. 

After examining these examples, it is worth asking whether the

United States would not be better served by a wider variety of specialThe United States pursued a policy along some of these lines in 1985-86, 

when it designated four divisions as “light infantry” and tasked them with 

training for jungle, mountain, and winter warfare.

16 However, unlike successful specialist infantry units of the past, the light divisions of the 1980s

were never accorded an elite status, given preferential access to higherthan-average-quality personnel, or provided with resources to develop 17 Moreover, these units were expected to 
76

cross-train for operations in three radically different environments, rather

than specialize.

18 As a result of their comparatively meager institutional resources, the light infantry divisions fell victim—during a period of broad 

post-Cold War defense cuts—to competing claims for resources from the

Army’s dominant heavy community and well-connected airborne community.19 Consequently, two light divisions were inactivated after the 1991 

Gulf War and the two others lost their “light” designation at this time. 

Retrospectively, challenges experienced during years of operations in the

Balkans and Afghanistan, following the light divisions’ abolition, suggest

that specialized infantry capabilities might be of great value and could be

obtained by converting some of the Army’s elite airborne brigades to other

missions. 

Thus, although the purpose of this study has been to demonstrate

that long forgotten decisions about institutional design shaped the fate of

military organizations throughout their existences, it also highlights the

dynamics that have shaped the United States’ airborne force. Having been 

institutionalized as a powerful community within the United States Army 

during the Second World War, American airborne forces preserved their

size and autonomy by adapting themselves to accomplish new missions

considered vital to national security. Today, as noted earlier, its two main 

missions are forced-entry (i.e. the strategic brigade drop) and rapid deployment (i.e. the “ready brigade”). 

While these missions theoretically support the United States’ nation-

-

rent size of its airborne force, since airborne forced-entry operations are

likely to be small (battalion rather than brigade size) and airborne training is unnecessary for rapid deployments. Within this context, the current

composition of the United States’ airborne forces appears more a product

of the airborne community’s lobbying efforts in favor of their own size

and autonomy than cold calculations about national interest or military 

requirements. However, the United States’ airborne community should not

be faulted for this state of affairs since they have acted identically to other

organizations facing similar circumstances insofar as they merely employed the institutional resources at their disposal to preserve themselves

in the face of inevitable technological and tactical developments. Having 

acknowledged this, is it time for the US Army to reassess its Airborne

forces and their mission?
77

Notes

1. Peter Paret, “Hans Delbruck on Military Critics and Military Historians,”

Military Affairs, 30/3 (1966), 148-152.

 2. Alain Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? Shaping 

The Defense Program, 1961–1969 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), passim.

 3. Owen Coté, The Politics of Innovative Military Doctrine: The US Navy

and Fleet Ballistic Missiles (Ph.D.dissertation, Department of Political Science, 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996), passim.

 4. Kimberly Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet

Military Innovation, 1955-1991 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 

passim. 

 5. The term outsider here connotes individuals outside the military organization itself. Many of the outsiders were in the armed forces, but represented 

competing branches and services.

 6. Russia possesses four airborne divisions and one independent airborne

brigade. China’s airborne force is, on paper, larger than the US force with three

divisions. However, the aggregate size of the force is only 35,000, meaning that

it is, in practice, smaller. 

 7. According to one calculation, a minimum of 96 C-17 aircraft are needed 

to conduct a strategic brigade combat drop. Based on these calculations, the Unitneeds and other missions), little more than one brigade can likely be dropped at

a time. The United States also has a large force of C-130 aircraft (151 aircraft

in the active Air Force inventory), which lack the range for the strategic airdrop 

requirement, but could theoretically be used in certain scenarios. Since it has been 

calculated that 111 C-130 aircraft are needed to conduct a combined airdrop/

(factoring-in aircraft unavailable due to maintenance). Therefore, for short range

operations and assuming a high availability of aircraft, the United States could 

theoretically drop two airborne brigades. However, these calculations are highly 

theoretical as it would probably be impossible to concentrate virtually all of the

United States’ airlift force for a single operation. See Rowayne Schatz, “Airborne

Forcible Entry Operations: USAF Airlift Requirements” (MA Thesis, US Army 

Command and General Staff College, 1994), 90-100; Richard Klumpp, “Strategic

Brigade Airdrop: Past. Present. Future?” (MA Thesis, Graduate School of Logistics and Acquisition Management, Air Education and Training Command, 1996), 

31-40; and Douglas DeLancey, “The 82nd Airborne Division in Transformation:

Brigade and Reduce Deployment Sorties Using Current, Fielded Technology?”

(Monograph: School of Advanced Military Studies, 2001), passim.

 8. I have consolidated under two missions a variety of activities that are

aggregated and disaggregated in distinct ways in different planning documents. 

According to the 2013 Army Strategic Planning Guidance, the primary mission 
78

assigned airborne forces is to be sought in one of the 11 missions listed for the

Army—projecting power despite Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenges. Accord-

-

panding a lodgement. FM 3- 90.6 Brigade Combat Team (US Army, 2010), 1-10.

 9. Given normal rotation, training and leave procedures, three brigades are

generally needed to ensure that one can be held at a high state of readiness at a

time. 

 10. Rapid reaction forces in Western democracies are typically organized 

so that one unit out of three is available for operations at short notice. In general, 

one unit is on mission cycle, ready to respond to any contingency. Another unit is

prepares vehicles and equipment for deployment, and supports the other units’

activities. When the 82nd Airborne Division was organized with three brigades

(it was reorganized into four brigades in 2006), one of the three was nominally 

available for deployment with 18 hours’ prior notice.

 11. See footnote 7 above, for more detailed information on the United States’

airlift potential. To conduct a simultaneous two-brigade drop would require using 

range of C-130s means that such an operation can only be conducted relatively 

conducting paratroop drops was accorded an exclusive priority by the Joint Chiefs

of Staff. Such is especially the case in international crises, when transport aircraft

will be called upon to preventatively deploy troops, move urgently-needed equipwere used, the second would likely have to be dropped serially, in a second sortie

-

tion of jumping into the midst of an alert enemy, while a portion of the transport

airborne drops. Thus, the United States’ ability to operationally use two airborne

brigades seems quite limited.

 12. Although airborne units were deployed during many of these operations, they were employed in a conventional infantry capacity. No combat para-

 13. Also of note, the United Kingdom preferred to use heliborne, rather

than airborne forces, for their 2000 operation against the West Side Boys militia

in Sierra Leone. On paper, this operation should have been a text book case for a

paratroop drop as the opponent was ill-equipped, the theater of operations was far

away and the intervening forces (1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment and the

to the hazards of an airborne operation. See Richard Connaughton, “Operation 
79

‘Barass’,” Small Wars & Insurgencies, 12/2 (2001), 110-119.

 14. Claiming that the airlift capacity needed to strategically employ airborne forces is cost free is somewhat fallacious. When the United States governpower projection requirement (i.e. a set need to lift a certain quantity of materiel a given distance), three options were debated. The option adopted, that of

examined. The most economical option was one that involved a mixture of C-33s

(a proposed militarized version of the Boeing 747-400) and C-17s). This option 

was rejected because of the C-33’s inability to handled over-sized loads, conduct

airborne drops, or employ short runways. The second most economical option 

This option was rejected because the C-5 is ill-suited for airborne operations and 

cannot employ short runways. Therefore, by a process of elimination, the most

stringent requirements for being able to conduct paratroop drops and operate from

short runways resulted in the United States purchasing a much more expensive

combination of strategic transport aircraft. See United States General Accounting 

Military Airlift: Options Exist for Meeting Requirements While Acquiring 

Fewer C-17s (Washington D.C.: GAO, 1997), passim.

 15. See Enzo Berrafato, Laurent Berrafato and Jean-Pierre Verney, L’Italie

en Guerre, 1915-1918 (Paris: 14-18 Éditions, 2006), 131-40; and Christian 

Haager et al., Die Tiroler Kaiserjäger: Die Geschichte der Tiroler Eliteregimenter

(Cremona, Italy: Perisco, 2001), passim.

 16. For these divisions’ rationale, see: John Wickham, Jr., United States

Army Chief of Staff, White Paper, 1984: Light Infantry Divisions, (Washington 

DC: US Army, 1984).

 17. Kevin Stringer, The Light Infantry Division: Cold War Chimera (Lexington: Adams Center, Virginia Military Institute, 2009) available at: www.vmi.

edu/uploadedFiles/Archives/Adams_Center/EssayContest/20082009/AdamsCenterEssay_StringerKD.pdf (accessed June 2014).

 18. McMichael, passim.

 19. Timothy A. Wray, The Army’s Light Infantry Divisions: An Analysis Of

Advocacy And Opposition (Washington D.C.: National War College, 2005).

81

About the Author

Marc DeVore is a lecturer in the School of International Relations at

the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He holds a Ph.D. in political

science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Between 

2011 and 2013, Dr. DeVore was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European 

University Institute, Florence. His research has been sponsored by Harvard’s Center for European Studies, Columbia’s Center for European 

Studies, and the French government. He has also been a recipient of Fulbright and Truman scholarships. 

Dr. DeVore’s current research deals with the political economy of

the arms trade, civil-military relations and violent non-state actors. His

past and upcoming articles have been featured in: Review of International

Political Economy, Security Studies, European Security, Cold War History, The Swiss Political Science Review, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 

Defense and Peace Economics, Comparative Strategy and Defense and 

Security Analysis. 


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