Abstract
Modern military forces experience a wide variety of accidents, including explosions, collisions, fratricide, and “friendly fire.” These accidents are examined as a problem of organizational structure by applying Perrow's theory of normal accidents to modern military operations. Modern combat operations score so highly on complexity and interdependence that they can be expected to trigger structurally induced normal accidents. As military operations become more tightly coupled and more complicated, system accidents may become more frequent. Some military technologies are sufficiently complex and tightly coupled for system accidents to be “normal,” that is, inevitable.
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