wm asks:

What keeps this from becoming a series of piecemeal attacks that get defeated in detail? By the time the formation commander has enough situational awareness to "command 'by negation,'" things may have gone too far to extract some or all of the committed elements that got the commander's intent wrong, misread the situation, or just plain got surrounded by "Indians at the end of that box canyon they stormed into" because the bad guys reacted/acted faster than our own forces did.
That indeed is the difficulty with the concept--a good intent, a common understanding between element leaders of who or what the main effort is, and strong lateral communications are an absolute must to prevent this from happening. Many believe that establishing this is just too hard to rely upon. But we've got plenty of cases to show how it can work and why. I'll get into the cases later about when it doesn't. Certainly the Soviets felt much the same way as you do--and Leonhard (and I) would also agree that the United States ground forces often feel the same way as well. The question is whether we'll ever do better. The Marines are trying--thus their adoption of "German School MW" as doctrine.