"By the way, does the military following any type of engagement do some form of formal performance assessment? <Not to lay blame, but to improve performance…>"
The Army, at least, has a process called the AAR (After Action Review). This is a post action critique, supposedly non-judgemental, as one Captain put it "this is to learn, not a sh*t slinging contest". My experience is that this occaisonally produces truly valuable learning points, and is usually a positive experienced.