'The General Mattis collection: a mixture

[slapout9]

OK but.....

I like General Mattis. He's on my tick list, but I'm not sure about this. "Turn the radios off" is a tad simplistic, and so-called "mission command" is not enabled just by switching off radios. - also there are very many differing types of "mission command."

Sure, use the radios less. Practice pro-longed radio silence, but that did not mean switching them off - and as the entire command system of the US Army is essentially digital, I'm more than curious to know how this gets put into practice.

Wilf, you may not like this and I could be wrong but I think he means to use the Prime Tenets of Maneuver Warfare. The Mission....The Main Effort....Surfaces and Gaps. Per the OODA loop. Turn the radio off.... Observe(visually see) Surfaces and Gaps. Orient on the Main effort. Decide how you can support the Mission (commanders Intent) then Act on your decision. Adjust as necessary based upon what you see ....not the chatter over the radio. Just my interpretation anyway.

[Steve Blair]

Wilf, you may not like this and I could be wrong but I think he means to use the Prime Tenets of Maneuver Warfare. The Mission....The Main Effort....Surfaces and Gaps. Per the OODA loop. Turn the radio off.... Observe(visually see) Surfaces and Gaps. Orient on the Main effort. Decide how you can support the Mission (commanders Intent) then Act on your decision. Adjust as necessary based upon what you see ....not the chatter over the radio. Just my interpretation anyway.

Slap, have you considered going to a Warden recovery clinic?

I think you're at least partway right, although I'd slim it down to seeing what the commanders at all levels can do when they don't have someone looking over their collective shoulders. At the very least it would be a start toward weeding out the sitters from the doers, and might even allow something like (gasp) actual learning, training, and safe (as in non-combat) tactical mistakes to be made and learned from.

[slapout9]

Slap, have you considered going to a Warden recovery clinic?

They wouldn't take me....said it was a pre-existing condition

[Entropy]

One can never know when technology will fail you - only that it is sure to fail at some point.

For a time I was in charge of training the new intel people that came to the unit directly from Intel schoolhouse. At first I had them prepare a brief on some topic and in the middle of delivering their brief I would turn off the computer running their powerpoint slides. I had them finish the briefing and, unfortunately, they usually didn't do too well. Next I would have them develop a briefing on a topic without the use of the SIPRnet or JWICs for research which got them acquainted with the pub library.

Technology can be a monkey on your back if you let it.

[J Wolfsberger]

One can never know when technology will fail you - only that it is sure to fail at some point.
...

Technology can be a monkey on your back if you let it.

I may have read more into Gen. Mattis quoted comments than was actually present in his speech, but this is my take away from his comments. I remember the level of resources an erstwhile adversary invested in Radio Electronic Combat (REC). If the force is reliant on all the high tech networking and commo, what happens when a dedicated opponent takes them away? Are our leaders fully prepared to effectively prosecute their mission when that happens?

I may also be mistaken (observer bias), but I assumed his term "mission command" meant Auftragstaktik. Which, as Wilf points out, "...is not enabled just by switching off radios."

[Ken White]

..."mission command"...Which, as Wilf points out, "...is not enabled just by switching off radios."

It is not. It is enabled by decent training. However, given even marginal training, a Commander with enough testicular fortitude to turn off the radios forces his subordinate commanders to perform -- whether they want to or not.

You'd be surprised (or maybe not...) by the number of folks who take an entirely too great amount of comfort in being told what to do by a Staff or a Commander miles away instead of making decisions on their own. That forcing effort is beneficial as it pushes the marginal types to become better. Or be pushed off the cart...

[Fuchs]

Mission command can also be enforced the other way - by subordinates turning off their radios and acting on the last "commander's intent" they liked. This has been done up to Army HQ level, and very often at division and regiment level.

This part of Auftragstaktik - to violate orders when one thinks it's better like that is at the root of the whole system and pretty much ignored in U.S. writings. It was also a critical component of the birth of Blitzkrieg, and the greatest mistake of the Fall Gelb campaign in France 1940 happened when generals obeyed an order even though they knew it was wrong..

Auftragstaktik has its roots in the 18th century, and I can recount an interesting anecdote (albeit not accurately; merely out of the memory):

A major had followed his orders during the seven Years War and done something very stupid because the orders were outdated. A prince arrives and questions the man why he had done something that stupid. The major answered that this had been his order.
The prince replied "His majesty made you a major because he believed you would know when NOT to follow orders!"

[William F. Owen]

Wilf, you may not like this and I could be wrong but I think he means to use the Prime Tenets of Maneuver Warfare.

Well you're right about not liking it!!

So called "Mission Command" is not a tennet of so called MW. Foch writes very clearly about the "ability to understand your commander" in 1911. Moltke even earlier, but I am less familiar with his work.
I strongly believe in:

a.) "doing your utmost to fulfil your commanders intent."
b.) especially when the situation changes significantly from the one he issues the orders to cover.

..... but you cannot do a Formation crossing of the Suez Canal, using "mission command" and with no radios. It is very context specific.

Surfaces and Gaps? OK, as long as you know that the gaps are the entrances to ambushes, - especially if you've run into North Korean, Chinese, Japanese, or Soviet Fortified region, or prepared defensive position. ... but I digress.

[Fuchs]

Guderian crossed the Meuse at Sedan using the normal German leadership methods.
He had trained the troops very well for that particular action before the campaign, though.

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

It is as much about the commander clearly explaining his intent and plan as it is for the subordinate to carry it out with minimal further direction. But as it is said even the best plan rarely survives contact.

I agree that “turning off the radios” is a bit much plus our over reliance on technology is not so much radios as it is those things that replace solid field craft, like GPS. While GPS is a great thing the art of map reading and navigation using the compass are falling by the wayside. That is an over-reliance on technology. Comms are comms and short of wig wag and heliograph there's not much else you can do to replicate them.

[Ken White]

wearing a war suit...

I really do post date the Smoke Signals and even the Telegraph and Heliograph.

...Barely...

However, I'm old enough that radio was the primary comm means and we did back then turn 'em off for training and for real when our emissions might have been a problem.

There was no replicate to it, the idea was not to find alternatives or substitutes, it was to do the job without using them at all. Hard as it is to believe with all the modern gee whiz stuff, GPS, BFT, etc. (those are just aids -- and that's all they are, aids, they are not imperatives) and amazing as it may seem that units were trusted to the extent that they were released from view and 'positive control' to perform actual combat missions in a fairly active war or two, it was done. You can really do that...

One would be remiss to not understand that even if non use of comm and the other aids was not intentional it did, does and can happen due to both technological and logistic problems -- and even more frequently as a result enemy or combat action. Combat is hard on equipment...

The problem is that we are not using our aids as aids-- they are too often being used as substitutes for a lack of training. They have ceased being a cane and have become a Walker (or even a Wheelchair in some cases...) That's what Mattis is warning against...