Mission-type Tactics - Characteristics

Characteristics

For mission-focussed command to succeed, it is crucial that subordinate leaders:

• understand the intent of their orders,
• are given proper guidance and
• are trained to act independently.

The obverse of this, is the implicit requirement imposed on superior commanders:

• to give their subordinates no more orders than are essential (every order given is regarded as an additional constraint upon its recipient), and:
• to be extremely rigorous, absolutely clear, and very succinct in the expression of their commands.

The success of the doctrine rests upon the receiver of orders understanding the intent of whoever issues the orders and acting to achieve their goal even if their actions violate other guidance or orders they had received. Mission type tactics assume the possibility of violating other, previously expressed limitations as a step to achieving a mission and is a concept most easily sustained in a decentralised command culture. This is quite alien to any organisation in which, at every level, a subordinate commander is only expected (and, therefore, trained) to follow detailed orders.

This has significant implications for any Army considering the adoption of Auftragstaktik. To clarify, the classic German approach called for every commander to be trained to function effectively at 2 levels of command above his appointment (a platoon commander would be expected to control Battalion actions, if need be - and platoon commander was - and is - an NCO appointment in the German Army).

Some would say that today, such a culture is associated only with elite units and not a whole army. Certainly few armies seem to have mastered the approach. The Wehrmacht are perhaps the most perfect example - a degree of competence achieved only after rigorous training under Hans von Seeckt between 1919 and 1935. Ironically, since WW2, only the Israeli Defence Force seem to have come close to matching the Wehrmacht of WW2 in the exercise of command in this style: partly due to a conscious decision on the part of Moshe Dayan, who fought under British command in WW2, and who attended a British Army Staff training course which - according to his memoirs - disappointed him, to put it mildly.

This style of command originates in a state (Prussia) which perceived itself as small, surrounded by enemies, and in imminent danger of destruction. The same may perhaps be said of Israel. The failure of other equally (or more) developed armies to adopt this way of exercising command (the British Army in 1987 announced an intention to adopt 'Mission Command' yet an internal 2004 British Army review of command and control in the Iraq War in 2003 clearly shows that they had achieved the reverse: British orders were substantially more detailed, and subordinates generally more constrained (than twenty years earlier) indicating that there is more to Auftragstaktik than process.