I wish we never became so bureaucratized that we become ineffective. We need to faithfully apply mission command. And mission command, to be properly applied, means zero error tolerance must go away. If you don’t have tolerance for errors with your subordinates, you cannot possibly have a successful mission command concept… Admiral Nimitz, Admiral King, Admiral Spruance, they were all people who were not micromanaging subordinates. They had great trust in subordinate commanders. They were effective. We can go back to that, but it will take a long time.
… We really don’t understand the true meaning of mission command. We use the buzzwords, but mission command takes a lot of things to be in place to be effective… We have this obsession that somehow because of information technology, someone in central command or wherever knows more than the person in the caves in Afghanistan. That’s just not true. You have to trust your person on the scene who should know better than anyone else. During the war of German unification, von Moltke knew that even with telegraph, he couldn’t possibly know more about the war situation than an army corps commander far away.
That was Milan Vego, instructor at the Naval War College, on the Sea Command podcast. Of course, I advocate for the equivalent view of mission command to be used throughout the acquisition system as well. The business and operations of national security should move together on this front, and can support each other along the way.
Here’s a really good point on risk:
… When we develop courses of action, we have steps where we test each course of action and one of the steps is risk factor. But there is no need for commander’s intent to have risk. When you put risk into commander’s intent, you essentially water it down with your intent. You are overly concerned with things that might happen, but risk is also an opportunity. If you take something prudent and high risk, you may also have high gain. Risk isn’t only a source of danger, but a source of opportunity.
I think the same thing is going on when talking about managing risk in acquisition programs. People constantly fear risk, and seek to reduce risk endlessly before committing to a program. But in reality, risk is not something to be avoided but resolved. Quantitative analysis cannot make such decisions on behalf of the commander or project leader who knows the most about the situation.
And finally, a small bit on a balanced force:
Some people say ‘we don’t need smaller ships, we’re a blue water navy and we can rely on our allies.’ But you cannot always rely on your allies. You need your own capabilities. Anytime you have a war, there’s always a shortage of smaller ships. Always. Especially for defense of transportation shipping. We don’t have it. And it cannot be some helicopters, airships, UAVs.
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