I've long worried that the Army is too focused on top-down micro-managed control of a battle. We got away with that in the rapid armored offensive in Desert Storm against an inferior enemy and during slower paced counter-insurgency campaigns of the last two decades. In an era of great power conventional warfare, America can't afford that weakness. If we don't fix it, American forces could be defeated even as our senior leaders view PowerPoint presentations on how we will surely win.
The lawyers have too much power over American use of firepower. But that's just a symptom of the centralized warfighting America has gotten used to. Our doctrine calls for "mission command"--where junior officers understand the mission and the commanders intent, and have the authority to act to achieve both without direct orders. But we don't practice it.
Instead of mission command we have, as the article is primarily focused
on, an overly centralized decision-making process that evolved
during the slow-paced COIN and counter-terrorism campaigns over the last
two decades. Yes, I agree that it goes back farther than that. But to me it seems
much worse now than during the Cold War. That tendency must be fought:
There is no shortage of talent in the US military. However – even the majority of officers who exemplify the boldness and aggression expected of our profession, are subsumed by a culture that encourages them to follow procedures and the letter of the law rather than their own experiential judgment, professional ethics, and a sound understanding of the balance between mission and risk.
Until the institution rewards behavior that aligns with its own doctrine, and sanctions that which does not, mission command will never gain traction in the US military. And that should matter a great deal to all of us – not just the doctrinal purists. But it will require a complete overhaul of selection, training, and personnel management to close the current gap. It will take cultural transformation.
While attending a conference in Quantico shortly before my retirement, I came across a rhetorical question scrawled on a white board. The author was anonymous, but his words continue to resonate: “Has there ever been a military leadership philosophy that has been so loudly lauded, so convincingly defined, so battle proven and so routinely unapplied as mission command?” Now is the time to reverse this trend.
The practice of denying lower-level commanders freedom of action within the concept of the operation and the commander's intent will lead to disaster against an enemy that doesn't cripple its own troops with that kind of control.
Once upon a time we counted on that kind of centralized control by
Soviet higher commands to allow our Army to fight and win outnumbered. Can our enemies today rely on our forces being crippled by the same thing?
This is separate from the decimation we need to inflict on our senior military leadership. But the decimation would help.
Do read it all.
