Sound Military Decision

Name: Sound Military Decision
Author: Naval War College

by Naval War College

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Language: en5,099 downloads on Project Gutenberg

Subjects

Naval strategy -- Decision making

In: History - Warfare

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #28178.

About this book

Sound Military Decision is a formal treatise produced by the United States Naval War College, first issued in 1936 and revised in a 1942 edition. The work opens with a transcriber’s note about typographical quirks, then presents a foreword that frames warfare as a science to be studied through systematic analysis, hypothesis, and testing. From there the book outlines its purpose: to provide a concise yet comprehensive guide to the fundamentals of the military profession, especially naval operations, by emphasizing mental processes, professional judgment, and the “Fundamental Military Principle.” It is organized into three parts, professional judgment, planning, and execution, each broken into detailed chapters that map the steps from estimating a situation to supervising a plan, supported by extensive indexes and appendices.

The text reflects the didactic, analytical style of mid‑twentieth‑century military education, written in formal prose and dense with technical terminology. Its voice is that of senior naval officers and scholars intent on training officers to think scientifically about war rather than rely on intuition or heroic genius. Readers with an interest in naval strategy, military history, or the evolution of professional decision‑making, particularly students of war studies, historians, or officers seeking a historical perspective on operational planning, will find the book’s systematic approach and period‑specific language both informative and engaging.

The opening · free to read

November 30, 1941

SOUND MILITARY DECISION was first published at the Naval War College in 1936. It included the essential features of THE ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION which, since 1910, had been issued at intervals in a series of revised editions. The new material that was added in 1936 was intended to assist in enlarging the viewpoint and in broadening the basis of professional judgment.

Primarily intended for the purposes of the Naval War College, this work is the cumulative result of years of untiring and loyal effort on the part of the College staff and student body. Equally important have been the advice and assistance contributed by other officers of wide professional experience and attainment.

The objective has been a brief but inclusive treatment of the fundamentals of the military profession, i.e., the profession of arms. The emphasis, naturally, is on the exercise of mental effort in the solution of military problems, more especially in our Navy. An enormous literature has been consulted, and research has included all available and pertinent military writings. Care has also been taken to include, from civil sources, the findings of those authoritative works which deal with related matters and with the applicable underlying truths.

In a work of this type and scope, it is manifestly not possible to illustrate the abstract text by historical examples and analogies. These are complementary features of the War College resident and correspondence courses; provision for the necessary historical background is otherwise the concern of the individual student.

In this edition of SOUND MILITARY DECISION no radical changes have been made; the revision has been confined to rearrangement and amplification of the subject matter.

E.C. KALBFUS, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy, President.