The U.S. Army is in the midst of the most important rethinking of doctrine since the Cold War. Ongoing force design change includes the newly revised manual Mission Command: The Command and Control of Army Forces.[1] The manual is a leap forward. It simplifies and synchronizes the doctrine, providing the best guide to date on how the philosophy should look, taste, and feel.[2] However, it represents a missed opportunity to confront the force’s increasingly detailed command style, which stands in contrast to doctrine. Without confronting these forces, the U.S. Army’s philosophy in execution may yet be decidedly more centralized than intended—unintentionally creating disillusionment and subpar results.

Mission Command is at a Crossroads

Mission command’s place in this larger doctrinal reassessment is critical. It is the U.S. Army’s leadership philosophy of decentralized execution to enable initiative and adaptability. In its purest form, mission command enables leaders at the lowest level to achieve tactical successes that achieve strategic objectives on a battlefield full of uncertainty. Mission command contrasts with the philosophy called detailed command, a more centralized structure of command and control that served as the primary command structure well into the 20th century.[3] U.S. Army culture is yet to fully embrace the philosophy of mission command since its formal introduction in 2012. Critics charge that mission command creates inconsistent doctrine, fuels culture clashes, and under performs in modern environments.[4] Worse, the troubled adoption of mission command exposes visible gaps between the values an organization espouses and practices.[5] Below the surface, institutional push and pull forces corrupt the U.S. Army’s brand of mission command. The U.S. Army is pulled toward increased control by a cultural inclination toward technology and efficiency.[6] It is pushed by an increasing ability to generate stronger situational awareness and decision making at higher authority levels.[7]

To improve future performance, the Army must holistically understand the limitations of its command philosophy and culture in modern environments. This article builds upon Eitan Shamir’s theory of mission command adaptation to understand the forces acting on U.S. Army command culture today, highlighting the effects of degraded internal institutional trust. Three trends in particular involving the philosophy, Army culture, and modern operating environments mold mission command’s outputs and degrade the force’s trust in the philosophy. They represent realities that transform mission command, but are not adequately acknowledged by the Army through any formal means to transparently remediate these pressures. Without change, the Army is unlikely to produce the command culture in practice it envisions in doctrine.

A Philosophy Under Strain

The version of mission command implemented by the U.S. Army today is a function of various institutional pressures. Shamir’s conceptual framework explains the forces that transform mission command in military culture. The U.S. Army’s philosophy derives from German-Prussian Auftragstaktik (“mission orders” or “flexible command”). Auftragstaktik grew over centuries as both a natural extension of independence within the Prussian social structure and as a necessary feature of campaign plans.[8] Gaps form as adopting militaries attempt to inculcate the philosophy over abbreviated timelines to new cultural contexts. Shamir describes two transformational gaps, interpretation and praxis. Interpretation occurs as an adopting organization selects mission command tenets to meet its envisioned culture. The interpretation gap drives different doctrinal interpretations between mission command-inspired militaries. Praxis describes a disconnect between a military’s doctrine and its operational methods. This occurs due to the interplay of institutional factors on a military, altering a force’s practice from the doctrine it espouses.[9] Combined, these transformations alter the version of command in practice not only from the originating military but also within the institution’s intended style.

An additional gap molds Army mission command in practice—trust. The gap occurs due to the breakdown of two complementary levels: unit and institutional trust in the command philosophy. Unit-level trust is a shared confidence gained or lost daily by the interaction of leaders and teams. [10] Unit trust develops cyclically due to environmental changes such as new theater, threat, or personnel requirements. This process greatly improves or diminishes the interaction of people within a given social group—in the military context a unit.[11] Given the same inputs, Army mission command in practice can vary widely from pockets of excellence to inferiority, due to unit trust alone.

The other trust level is institutional. This incorporates the faith of individual soldiers in the U.S. Army to live up to its mission command values. While unit trust reflects a reciprocal faith between commander and a group of subordinates, institutional trust represents the collective confidence that a unit will be permitted to execute missions featuring decentralized initiative. Its influence, although largely unrecognized in U.S. Army doctrine, is staggering. Research suggests institutional trust is the single largest determinant of trust in a given social group.[12]

Institutional trust can be damaging even at high levels. Individuals often do not evaluate their trust in institutions correctly. This misreading can occur when organizations use simple cues to generate trust—something that the general population agrees with but without accompanying explicit action.[13] For example, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff may call for reduced micromanagement to the delight of eager listeners, but tasks delivered through detailed command styles continue. [14] These processes can lead to manipulation, disillusionment, and poor performance.[15] Without acknowledgment, trust deficits magnify the gap between what the organization practices and preaches. The most powerful equipment or concept in the arsenal is diminished without the trust of its users. Army mission command is not exempt from this powerful transformation.

While the new Mission Command is a handbook on how to build unit trust to enable success in battle, the Army does not possess an institutional equivalent. Thus, the force does not have a formal process to acknowledge, signal, and remediate institutional pressures and their effect on trust. Instead, internal and external forces continue to mold Army mission command, thereby delivering uneven and unintended execution during operations.

Philosophy, Culture, and the Future Fight

A recalibrated institutional trust in mission command is necessary to improve operational effectiveness. A healthy trust mitigates the internal and external praxis pressures that alter U.S. Army mission command. This starts by understanding several key trends occurring at the intersection of mission command philosophy, U.S. Army culture, and future fights. They collectively paint a picture of a force that is both uncomfortable balancing risk and reward and uniquely biased toward centralization in the modern environment.

Trend One:  Institutional Biases Restrict Mission Command

The absorption of mission command into a military culture is a nonlinear process. Uneven implementation occurs along the way. This is triggered in a new environment, be it time or place, by the U.S. Army’s cultural biases that both delay and alter the brand of mission command in practice.

U.S. Army reversions typically stem from a recurring bias towards solving problems through technology- and efficiency-based strategies. Cold War doctrine is a prime example. Fluctuations in decentralization occurred in the 1970s and 1980s through multiple doctrinal changes as the U.S. Army relearned how to balance new technological tools with human capacity against the Soviet threat. The force eventually embraced individual initiative over organizational efficiency, and mission command principles over detailed command tenets, to overcome a numerically superior enemy.[16] Similar vacillations occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the U.S. Army used dispersed and decentralized command structures within a mission command framework, its command in practice was centralized in pursuit of near-perfect information access.[17] Environmental triggers extend beyond the battlefield to training as well. The Army struggled to apply mission command principles during periods of budgetary constraints in the 1990s and the 2010s, favoring centralized decision making to plan and execute training.[18] When available resources decreased, the Army turned to technology-driven solutions like digital simulation and efficiency-driven solutions such as centrally mandated pre-deployment training schedules to achieve mission requirements.

Not only does modern technology pull Army leaders away from the mission command the service espouses, but cultural biases push it away.

The brand of mission command inherently varies due to the requirements and resources available in the environment. Over time nonlinearities appear, formed by reversions toward centralization in practice. This is not inherently bad—at times the centralization is essential—but the trend reverberates in a culture. It creates a partial implementation of mission command within a given generation of leaders as the philosophy deviates actual results from intended doctrine. This exemplifies Shamir’s Praxis transformation. These reversions usually trend along with cultural biases. Not only does modern technology pull Army leaders away from the mission command the service espouses, but cultural biases push it away.

Trend Two: Technology Does Not Remove Friction. Technology Transforms It.

Mission command is intended to reduce these battlefield effects of friction, the grey area between intended wartime plans from their uncertain results.[19] However, due to technological changes, friction manifests differently today. The rapid integration of the Internet of Things into the military space proliferates information, enabling the collection, aggregation, and utilization of data. This process naturally increases the quality of information at higher echelons of command.[20]

However, modern technology mutates but does not remove battlefield friction.[21] Unprecedented information access is impeded by the ability to deny and distort the very same decision-making inputs. Distributed denial of service and spoofing operations are indefinite realites in the modern fight.[22] Today’s overreliance on information increases the likelihood that adversaries will use information disruption to achieve surprise.[23]

Friction also stems from the unknown reaction by the enemy and one’s own forces.[24] Information augments but does not replace the need to understand this human dimension. Decentralized control remains key to capturing localized information available only on the periphery of human systems.[25] These structures harness the human dimension to convert data into battlefield innovation.[26] Decentralized human insight will only increase in importance as automation proliferates the battlefield and pushes the limits of human cognitive ability to manage information.[27]

As friction transforms in a world of evolving threats, mission command remains the map and compass, the fallback setting.

While sources of friction change over time, the nature of war does not. As technology raises an optimal level of situation awareness and control, the U.S. Army may not always desire to practice mission command. However, it needs to retain the ability. Leaders must apply discretion and resist the urge to add measures of control just because the methods are available.[28] This maintains the decentralized understanding and willingness to act that will be critical in a multi-domain fight.[29] Technological change exemplifies Shamir’s Praxis transformation, but it cannot occur completely at the expense of trust. As friction transforms in a world of evolving threats, mission command remains the map and compass, the fallback setting.

Trend Three: Mission Command Excels Tactically But Bears Risk Strategically

Without satisfactory control, mission command can simultaneously drive tactical success and strategic failure. This effect extends from the philosophy’s structure. Mission command is designed to identify and exploit opportunity through decentralized decision making. However, mission command also enables the possibility to excel at the tactical level but act within a strategic vacuum.[30] By defaulting to emergent situational awareness at the lowest level, the philosophy can separate tactical and strategic outcomes at decisive points of action.[31] The risk is greatest in environments where learning costs are high. These environments are defined by limited clear communications and political capital.[32]

Imagine a scenario where a subordinate unit attempts to exploit an emergent opportunity. While this secondary action may be in line with original guidance, a unit in a high learning cost environment may not understand changing macro consequences of additional action. This type of decision making is heralded under mission command but can create destructive divergent outcomes.[33] Future battlefields may require careful coordination across multiple commands for a single opportunity to penetrate and exploit a modern enemy defense.[34] In short, the fight may require more discipline than initiative and more detailed command than mission command.

Modern conflict also increasingly ties tactical actions to strategic outcomes. This spans from the strategic corporal in low-intensity conflict to major combat operations in multiple domains.[35] In these environments the best situational awareness, and by extension the best decision making, may reside at higher command echelons. The centralization of awareness is a double-edged sword. While capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan provided unprecedented information access for headquarters, it also provided command echelons the means to suffocate subordinate empowerment via increased control.[36] These measures can rapidly erode trust, corrupting a unit’s ability to execute decentralized operations when needed.

Mission command creates a paradox of risk and reward in modern environments. Commands must retain the flexibility to use increased control given technological advancement and the prospect of large-scale operations. However, they must also balance the necessity for increased control with a force’s trust and tactical effectiveness. Risk entails opportunity and reward. Detailed command is not a permanent means to mitigate risk, nor is mission command the sole way to exploit opportunity. A force that understands this reality at its lowest levels can build institutional and unit trust around transparent and targeted controls oriented on strategic risk, posturing the force to exploit opportunity.

Paying The Trust Bill

The U.S. Army’s ongoing force design change necessitates a reexamination of its underlying command philosophy. This assessment should be informed by the confluence of the philosophy, the culture, and the environment that continue to shape mission command’s results. The U.S. Army carries a tactically-oriented philosophy, not yet culturally inculcated, into a modern environment of increasing strategic consequence and changing battlefield friction. Mission command is the philosophy the Army still needs, but against which it is still biased. There is an exceedingly high cost for any organization to deviate from its espoused values for an extended time, and the only currency is trust. Army mission command is running a large deficit.

In 2012, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey initiated the doctrinal roll-out of mission command with a white paper, acknowledging the force’s challenges in adopting a new command philosophy.[37] General Dempsey’s white paper offered a transparent institutional vehicle to discuss the way forward. The force is in need of an updated institutional concept to support mission command. Concepts parallel doctrinal reform by presenting a future vision and driving institutional change. Today, the U.S. Army applies a similar means to understand and direct its evolving Multi-Domain Operations framework and modernization. The U.S. Army can apply a similar methodology to mission command. Such a concept could recognize the pressures and shortfalls of Army mission command in the modern age—in addition to its benefits. It could prompt professional discussions across the force that recalibrate institutional trust, and ultimately the version of command in practice.

The fundamental challenge will be how the organization balances increasing possibilities of control within a culture of trust. Without transparent institutional action to counteract these forces, unit-level leaders will continue to face the burden alone, reducing trust in the philosophy and by extension, operational effectiveness. The U.S. Army’s new mission command manual is a necessary but insufficient step. Trust is key. It is time for the Army to pay it forward again.

Ryan Orsini is a U.S. Army officer. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.

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Header Image: U.S. Soldiers assigned to Bandit Troop, 1st Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment and deployed in support of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq, Oct. 31, 2018. (1Lt Leland White/USANG Photo)

Notes:

[1] Stephen Townsend, Douglas Crissman, and Kelly McCoy, “Reinvigorating The Army’s Approach To Mission Command: It’s Okay To Run With Scissors (Part 1),” Military Review, (May-June 2019),  7.

[2] Ted Crisco and Randi Stenson, “Combined Arms Center Launches New Mission Command Doctrine,” U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, August 1, 2019.  https://www.army.mil/article/225414/combined_arms_center_launches_new_mission_command_doctrine.

[3] U.S. Army, Mission Command, ADP 6-0 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2012), v; Shufelt, Hugh D, “Organizational Systems Theory And Command And Control Concepts,” U.S. Army War College, March 1, 2013. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a589438.pdf, 3-4.

[4] Higginbotham, Michael, “The Water Principle For Accepting Risk,” in Mission Command In the 21st Century, edited by Nathan Finney and Jonathan Klug (Fort Leavenworth: The Army Press, 2016), 78; Amos C. Fox, “Cutting Our Feet to Fit The Shoes: An Analysis of Mission Command In The U.S. Army,” Military Review (January-February 2017), 52; Conrad Crane, “Mission Command and Multi-Domain Battle Don’t Mix,” War On The Rocks, August 23, 2017. https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/mission-command-and-multi-domain-battle-dont-mix/.

[5] Josh Suthoff, “What’s Really Wrong With Mission Command,” From The Green Notebook, https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2019/02/11/whats-really-wrong-with-mission-command/.

[6] Eitan Shamir, Transforming Command: The Pursuit Of Mission Command In The U.S., British, and Israeli Armies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 167.

[7] Andrew Hill and Heath Niemi, “The Trouble With Mission Command: Flexible Command And The Future Of Command And Control.” Joint Force Quarterly 86 (July 2017): 95.

[8] Robert Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War To The Third Reich (Lawrence, Kansas University Press, 2005), 306-308.

[9] Shamir, 6-7.

[10] U.S. Army, Mission Command: The Command And Control Of Army Forces, ADP 6-0 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2019), 1-7.

[11] Peter Dinsen and Kim Sonderskov, “Trusting The State, Trusting Each Other? The Effect of Institutional Trust On Social Trust,” Political Behavior 38.1 (2016), 180.

[12] Peter Dinsen and Kim Sonderskov, 179.

[13] T.M.S. Neal and E. Shockley, “The ‘Dark Side’ Of Institutional Trust,” Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Trust: Towards Theoretical And Methodological Integration (Springer International Publishing, 2016),  179.`

[14] David Barno and Nora Bensahel, “Three Things The Army Chief Of Staff Wants You To Know,” War On The Rocks. May 23, 2017. https://warontherocks.com/2017/05/three-things-the-army-chief-of-staff-wants-you-to-know/.

[15] T.M.S. Neal and E. Shockley, 181.

[16] Cinton Ackner, “The Evolution of Mission Command in US Army Doctrine, 1905 to the Present,” Military Review (March-April 2013), 46-47.

[17] Fox, 54. 

[18] Donald Vandergriff, “The U.S. Army Culture Is French!” Small Wars Journal, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/us-army-culture-french; Stephen Townsend, Douglas Crissman, and Kelly McCoy, Reinvigorating The Army’s Approach To Mission Command (Part 1), 6.

[19] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Translated by Michael E. Howard and Peter Paret. Vol. 1.  (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984),  119.

[20] Hill and Niemi, 98.

[21] Barry D. Watts, “Clausewitzian Friction and Future War: Revised Edition,” Institute For National Strategic Studies McNair Paper 68 (2004), 83.

[22] Michael O’Hanlon, The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War Over Small Stakes (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2019), 61.

[23] John James, “Future OE Mission Command and Future OE Decision Cycles,” Mad Scientist Blog, May 16, 2019. https://madsciblog.tradoc.army.mil/145-future-oe-mission-command-and-future-oe-decision-cycles/.

[24] Watts, 21.

[25] Dan G. Cox, “Mission Command And Complexity On the Battlefield,” in Mission Command In the 21st Century, edited by Nathan Finney and Jonathan Klug (Fort Leavenworth: The Army Press, 2016); 44-46.

[26] Watts, 47.

[27] Wendy Anderson and August Cole. “The Secretary Of Hyperwar,” Proceedings, August 1, 2019. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019/august/secretary-hyperwar.

[28] Stephen Townsend, Douglas Crissman, and Kelly McCoy, “Reinvigorating The Army’s Approach To Mission Command: Leading By Mission Command (Part 2),” Military Review, (July-August 2019),  7.

[29] Kevin Benson, “Tactical Risk In Multi-Domain Operations,” Modern Warfare Institute. April 25, 2019. https://mwi.usma.edu/tactical-risk-multi-domain-operations/.

[30] Gerry Long, “Auftragstaktik: A Case Study, France 1940,” in Mission Command: The Who, What, Where, When, and Why, edited by Donald Vandergriff and Stephen Webber (2017),  Long, 77-78.

[31] Ibid, 77-78.

[32] Hill and Niemi, 99-100.

[33] Hill and Niemi, 97.

[34] Robert Brown and David Perkins, “Multi-Domain Battle: Tonight, Tomorrow, And The Future Fight,” War On The Rocks. August 18, 2017. https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/multi-domain-battle-tonight-tomorrow-and-the-future-fight/

[35] Charles Krulak, “The Strategic Corporal: Leadership In The Three Block War,” Leatherneck 96, Iss. 4 (April 2013): 18-23; U.S. Army, The U.S. Army Multi-Domain Operations 2028, Pamphlet 525-3-1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2018), vi.

[36] Fox, 51.

[37] Martin Dempsey, Mission Command White Paper, Department of the Army (Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 2012), 6.