The military desperately needs smart people, but they only begrudgingly allow them to exist.
That's not been my experience in the Army (British, but I've worked with Americans).
The Army fights hard to get soldiers to think intelligently and independently. One of the foundation stones of how the Army does things is 'mission command' (which the US uses as well) that is designed to make sure junior soldiers can think and act independently and that commanders allow them to do this and do not over-control them.
One of the major lessons you learn as a leader in the Army is to decide what you want your soldiers to achieve, and then to give them the time and space to achieve that without excess control or direction.
In fact I think the Army is uniquely good in society at developing young people to able to make their own confident decisions. The biggest difference I see between soldiers and civilians is that soldiers are able to make a decision and come up with a plan in any kind of chaos, and it's the Army that develops that.
Junior soldiers who show potential are mentored and nurtured, up to the point of plucking them out of the ranks and commissioning them if they show enough potential, no matter what their background is.
Another thing to consider is that when any nation does a joint excercise with another country, their primary objective is to make a good impression.
That's so totally inconsistent with everything I know about Army doctrine, people in the Army, the approach to training western militaries use, and ROTC, that I'm honestly not sure to believe you (but I'm sure you're telling the truth if that's what you say).
When you deliver orders do your crib cards not include a massive highlighted block that says to at this point ask for questions from the subordinates and answer them?
Don't you do that thing of keeping taking questions and then when they run out turning it around and asking them questions back to check they really asked about everything they weren't sure about?
Doesn't the US Army have a sort of little ceremonial tick that after every point of instruction the instructor pauses to ask 'do you understand that?'
If there's one group that I know that does 'there's no such thing as a stupid question' it's the Army.
There are undoubtedly a number of good officers and enlisted in the military by sheer virtue of their numbers, and I'm sure many of them helped write those forward looking doctrines. The reality of the actual situation inside the military is a morass of waste, micro managing and simultaneously not giving enough instructions, and politics.
The meritocracy of the military only comes into play when it is facing a mortal enemy and the people who do their jobs poorly actually are removed by dieing. When you are in the situation that US military is where it outclasses every enemy it's fought for decades by orders of magnitude then incompetence is covered over just by the momentum of the entire system.
Just look at the waste and turmoil over uniforms[0] When I was in the program it became apparent through scuttlebutt from the officers that most changes or cancellations in programs like this lined up 1 for 1 with people being promoted into positions and deciding to clear out their predecessors work so they could make their own mark. A common complaint about new second lieutenants as well, was that they were always making up some new work or replacing working processes so that they could point towards their accomplishments when going for a promotion. Those are all the hallmarks of a system dominated by politics, not meritocracy and if it's happening at the junior level those same officers are going to bring those habits with them when they promoted to higher ranks
Edit: They had the "do you understand that" pauses when I was in the program as well. After indicating that I did not understand I was taken aside and told that if I planned on continuing in the military then I should not be voicing any doubt. It was not told to me as a threat but as career advice, and they coupled it with techniques for finding out what needs to be done when you don't have information such as nodding politely and saluting your commanding officer, immediately forgetting what they said, and then finding a seargant to ask what should really be done. My school's program may have been an outlier but I heard the same stories and advice from the upperclassmen, the teachers who we're actual officers and enlisted, and enlisted members we met on base visits
[0]https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/29/politics/military-uniform-red...
I did poorly in highschool and I agree it was largely due to self-control. Once I was doing something that I wanted (working), I suddenly became a good performwr. Once I grew up a bit, I became interested in getting an education and did pretty well in college.
Flexibility means needing intelligent soldiers, not cannon fodder.
The article seems to be talking about the almost dumbest of the dumb "Category IV" recruits, not the merely dumb. Prior to the Iraq war (when this article was written), the military more or less kept this category out:
> on Sept. 20, 2005, the Defense Department released DoD Instruction 1145.01, which allows 4 percent of each year's recruits to be Category IV applicants—up from the 2 percent limit that had been in place since the mid-1980s [emphasis mine].
> Independent thought,or intelligence in general, are strongly discouraged unless you're lucky enough to be in one of the tiny,incredibly rare units that does something interesting.
Are you sure you're talking about intelligence? It sounds like your really talking more about independence of thought and obedience.
I could totally see the Army valuing obedience over intelligence, while still highly valuing intelligence (e.g. intelligence applied to fulfilling orders rather than questioning them).