LTG Perkins - Understanding Mission Command

mission command is both a philosophy and a warfighting function that supports the Army's operational concept unified land operations as a philosophy mission command is the exercise of authority and direction by the commander using mission orders to enable disciplined initiative within the commander's intent to empower agile and adaptive leaders in the conduct of unified land operation the mission command warfighting function consists of the related tasks and a mission command system that supports the exercise of authority and direction by the commander General Sullivan said so and we had this discussion before we just came in here about this challenge we have and going solo from theory to application and as the sort of doctrine Meister the army what I thought I'd do is get us all on a common understanding you'll see why I use that term as I describe as succinctly as possible mission command and I and I will try to preempt a lot of the questions or or clarify some of the misunderstanding that I commonly get as I go around to all of our joint partners as I go around to non-military folks last week I was in Europe going around talking amongst other things about mission Kabam and I think one of the reasons why we haven't necessarily although great strides have been made completely you know cross that gap is because there is some significant misunderstanding or lack of complete understanding of first of all why we even have mission command why do we have it and what does it really mean now I am a little partial to it because a tp6 old mission command was the first manual we put out after I got to CAC so there is sort of some personal ownership and I'll try to set that aside and usually the first question I get is hey Dave why did you replace command and control with mission command did you need a oer support form bullet or something like that and and that's why i'm and i'll try to answer that here as easily as I can first of all we did not replace it but why it is actually indispensable in command and control is inadequate and so command and control itself is inadequate and therefore systems to design that are designed to only command and control will be inadequate and so I'll start at the top if you look at all of our ATP's that are out there only 10 or 12 pages and the first page is always a picture so since we've taken dr. down to 300 from 300 pages down to 10 pages and there's always a picture to start going off it starts to become clear why there's a former armor officer attacked because we've tried to use less words and less sentences and what this first page and our doctrine is always a logic map where is this piece of doctrine you're talking about fit within all the logic of doctrine so this is from ATP 6o which is mission command but it says where are you within the higher piece of doctrine a concept which is unified land operations ATP 300 which is the Army's part of unified action and always tell folks whether you're an individual or an organization you have to the first thing you have to do before you determine what you are going to do is you have to figure out what you are for what is your purpose what do you for what do you uniquely do what value-added do you add and then that lets you know what lists of tasks to do if you understand your purpose and what unified land operations does is try to come to grips with what the army is for what is our purpose and you can see it's really only one sentence there I'll start off you can see at the top is the army seizes is to receives retain and exploit the initiative it's not sees a high ground it's not sees a bridge crossing it is sees the initiative but it's not just retaining cease and retain you have to exploit the initiative so as I tell folks if you're a battalion commander and alpha six calls up says hey sir down here in Alpha Company we we have sea that we are continuing to retain the initiative the appropriate responses alpha six once again you have failed me because you are not exploiting the initiative it's a big difference between seizing the initiative and exploiting the initiative but why why do we exploit it we're saying the reason you exploited it is to gain to maintain a position of relative advantage gained and maintain a position of relative advantage why did you put the word relative in there I thought you're trying to go for 300 pages to 10 pages wouldn't you take out all superfluous words yes the reason the word relative is in there is because we have come to grips with a position of advantage is at best temporary well I have found that war is a series of temporary conditions and what land power tries to do is John Solomon said is make permit what would otherwise be a temporary effect of ammunition or a battle that is what land power could do almost uniquely is tend to extend the effect of a munition or a battle to get it to a position of relative advantage knowing that it is relative because what is a position of advantage today could become a position of disadvantage tomorrow sometimes by no act of our own so if I use a terrestrial based example I'm on this piece of high ground here and the enemy's down here I'm in a position of advantage today but even if I don't move in the enemy I am now at a position of disadvantage and I didn't do anything what happened was the world changed and I didn't see it and I didn't do anything about it why because I was not exploiting the initiative so what we are saying is we want in this doctor doesn't say here's the doctrine from e1 to e5 and then here's ATP 6.1 from a 5-2 Bastar than ATP 6.2 for up to captain czuv kernels this is for you know private Perkins and general Perkins we're saying every soldier every unit we want you to seize retain and exploit the initiative to be a position of constant relative advantage now that could be relative advantage to the Taliban it could be a position of relative advantage to Hurricane Katrina if you do in humanitarian operations and so now when you think about that that becomes a pretty significantly challenging thing that everybody has to kind of be seeing everything in a three dimensional perspective they have to determine what is a position of relative advantage and then they have to constantly be exploring the initiative to get there and you could do it on all s Lon's simultaneously all the time and has to be done in accordance with commander's intent and so you can see why the old war fighting folks you call cabana control is inadequate because you cannot really control control exploitation of initiative you empower exploitation of initiative so we still have command and control as general Dempsey said what we are involved in now is a balancing of cabana control what cabana control is in essence is issuing orders and ensuring compliance issue orders command ensure compliance control and so the control is for the sake of compliance what we're saying Bishop command is what we're trying to do is empower our subordinates to exploit the initiative to act within commander's intent using disciplined initiative and so we are controlling for the sake of empowerment not controlling for the sake of compliance so there is one of the first big misunderstandings is that mission command is the same as command control very much different because what mission command does is explains why you command control you command and control for the sake of empowerment so that you can exploit the initiative so you're always at a position of relative advantage but you have to command and control one of the big push backs I get as well you know I'm not we're not into this mission command because that's sort of everyone just crossed the line departure and then self actualizes and does whatever they want and you know you can't run a war like that my response is that's absolutely a bad misunderstanding of in other words if I have two brigades side by side and first Brigade is a main effort I want them to go forward and seize the initiative relative advantage I'm going to say in oh by the way second Brigade you just can't randomly drive in front of first Brigade because that will mess up their visualization Excel like that so I have to control second Brigade so that I can empower first Brigade so this is this balancing of command and control now if you say well how are you going to do that how ok that that this actually starts to sound pretty complicate your going to you're going to do this sort of three dimensional kind of thing at all s Lon's well you can see a lot of the words here but but I'll pick out a couple of blocks to focus in every month we have the pre command course of Fort Leavenworth when you bring all the battalion and Brigade command teams together before they cross the line of departure into command and I say look if you're a commander or I would say leader because it could be a staff section or whatever we have a block for you with commanders tasks and there are actually only three of them with regards to mission commands so I said no more complaining about how hard it is to be commander I said it's not hard like you know when a bunch of us in this room we're battalion brigade commanders when you had to do a lot of things it was real hard back then it's very simple now to command wheel you don't have to do three things and we even have it listed and highlight it in a block so no more whining about the burdens of command the first one says dried the operations process and I see as compared to a ten the operations process some of us have worked for commanders who attended the process but maybe didn't drive the process what we're saying is if you are the commit that I will tell you mission command is a very commander centric philosophy you drive the operations postures well sir how do I do that well again we've made life simple for you so if there are six subtasks here and they kinda have to be done this in this manner understand visualize and describe and then direct lead and assess but what we're saying is you have to do those first three first understand visualize and describe understand the problem visualize how you are going to go about solving it and then describe it to people describe it either through visual visualization products describe it you know person a person or whatever but you have to describe it in a way that creates a common visualization to everyone you're talking to that results in a common understanding of the problem you notice the doctor does not say understand visualize and tell okay if I said understand visualize and tell a lot of people tell people stuff they give Intel tends to revolve around data and that disguise here this guy's here this guy's here yeah but describe that to me describe while they're there describe the environment in describe the problems that don't just tell me data describe it such as it creates a visualization and if you're working with the State Department our great partners out there in the interagency you probably have to describe it differently than you describe it to second brigade because if you want second brigade in the state department to have the common visualization those are two different methods of description and they have different ways of visualizing sort of life in the area they work in and then once you have a common understanding in a visualization solution then you direct lead and assess but here's the other part of it under sort of command and control sunder the command and control paradigm we generally would assess our compliance with the plan so if you walk into any talk they kind of have the plan laid out and you know by Thursday were supposed to be here Saturday was supposed to be here sort of like that and was this her everything is going according to plan as a matter of fact where I had a plan we were supposed to be here on Friday as Thursday we're here everything is according to plan when I tell folks what is more important is don't assess compliance to the plan which command and control leads you down but you need to assess the adequacy of the plan itself and that's what mission command is in other words let's assess the plan it is our prior visualization of the solution still pertinent or do we have a misunderstanding standing of the problem and has the world changed because our old plan was taking us to objective a but the trouble is things have changed an objective a is no longer a position of advantage so what we really have to assess is the adequacy of the plan and assess the adequacy of our understanding of the current problem in the future problem not with the plan because what we're always trying to figure out is is what we are doing actually going to allow us to exploit the initiative and move to a position of relative advantage and I think we all have experienced in some ways the larger the exelon you go there are such momentum and the plan in a common understanding and it took so long to get there that it is very hard to change quickly and if you can't adapt to the world quickly what happens is you become quickly outmaneuvered either intellectually or physically and the and so when you start to understand the huge difference between mission command and command and control was what it starts to let you do is give some insight into all the other aspects of sort of dot mil P F so for saying this is our doctrine and the reason it's our doctorate it's not because I needed to OE our support form is because we're saying you know what you cannot execute command and control and get unified land operations you're going to have to come up with something different and that's called mission command so we execute mission command in order to conduct unified land operations and so how do you develop leaders so they can operate like this this is what commanders do and this that staff of course supports the commander doing this so how do you develop leaders how do you train how do you set up in nie John Charlton's over there we had a long discussion last night what does nie do to facilities from a training point of view what did we do a command General Staff College captain's career course War College to develop leaders to be able to execute mission command what kind of material do we buy because you'll see right here we have mission command systems and again not by mistake is this hierarchy their unified land operations gain maintain and exploit the initiative get a position of relative advantage how do you do that you do mission command how do you do that commanders through this staffs through this what helps them do this the systems there's a reason the systems are down here at the bottom not because you're unimportant but these systems are subordinate to their requirements to this philosophy to this mission and if these systems don't let the command or understand visualize and describe they are not enabling him if the systems do not allow you to exploit initiative to get to a position of relative advantage that system is not allowing the conduct of unified land operations and so if you have a system that when you are moving requires multiple hours to task reorganize while the enemy is doing it right before your very eyes you have now put yourself at a position of disadvantage because you cannot react you cannot exploit the initiative because your system cannot act quicker than the enemy so that's the metrics by which you sort of grade the system is you know what this system is not giving me any advantage over the enemy this system is not allowing me to exploit the initiative this system does not give a good visualization to the commander so that he or she can understand the problem this system does not allow me to assess the adequacy of the plan it allows me to assess the status of that system but it doesn't allow me to assess my adequacy of understanding of the plan and so out of this sort of one logic map here you kind of hopefully have tried to add a little clarity to what the huge difference is between mission command and command and control there is a big element of command and control of mission command but only in that it allows you to conduct unified land operations in the problem is if you don't understand the difference between mission command and command and control what happens is you build command and control systems you don't build mission command systems if you don't understand the difference you train leaders to command and control you don't train them to execute mission command you develop commanders who are good at giving orders ensuring compliance but not articulating their visualization of their understanding of the problem and getting on the same sheet of music because again a lot of people go wow this whole mission command thing it's it's an you are giving up control you it's a lack of control because you know you've done away with command control I say actually it is the ultimate type of control because under the control we grew up in the people refer to under control systems like you know an overlay okay here's an overlay here's graphic control measures but but they're somewhat superficial you know you can lose the overlay it rains it wipes off or the enemy moves so now that graphic control measure is no longer adequate so our old sense of control was a false sense of security that we had control because it was something we could see do I tell folks on a mission command which if you have everybody with the same understanding of the problem and the same visualization that will transcend the the overlay falling down that will transcend the enemy changing which they are going to do because you understand the ultimate commander's intent and the visualization of how you're going to get there and so what you really have is the ultimate form of control which is mind control you know not I don't know if that's the bumper sticker the army doctor is now into mind control but but that's what this really is what mission command is is getting everyone to think about the problem in the solution the same way so that no matter what happens we're on the same wavelength of commander's intent that's much better and that's much more powerful than an overlay or a sea path or anything like that so really I've used up more than my time on this but I've sort of stole so my time I won't have any opening statement on this here but I just kind want to lay this out to clearly differentiate mission command from command and control some of the misunderstandings are out there and what we're trying to do and when you understand that you say you know what pretty high bar for the army because we want every private every major every First Sergeant every general officer to understand all this train their units to do that develop leaders to do this and then enable and use their systems for that you

Channel: Combined Arms Center Fort Leavenworth

Views: 63,340

Rating: 4.8778625 out of 5

Keywords: Mission Command, Lt. Gen. David G. Perkins, Combined Arms Center

Id: Rw6lcaqA5MM

Length: 20min 40sec (1240 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2013