By Ann Roosevelt
FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla.–The Army this week released the first change to the 2008 Field Manual (FM) 3.0 Operations, reflecting the increased complexity of today’s operations, said the commander of the Combined Arms Center and Ft. Leavenworth, a component of Army Training and Doctrine Command.
Dropping from the Army lexicon are the phrases “command and control” and “battle command.” The change puts the human in charge, not technology.
“Mission command is more encompassing, the other (phrases are) inadequate to describe what’s going on today,” Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, said at the Association of the United States Army winter symposium here yesterday.
Command is no longer solely about massing combat power, but about building teams and understanding a complex and changing environment, and continually reassessing the operational solution, he said.
This recognizes what Army commanders at all levels have learned in nine years of war. The change puts the commander at the center of understanding the environment, or the problem, and finding solutions, called mission command.
Change 1 is designed around the emergence of the hybrid threat, expected in the future, a threat that is “an enemy that has the capability of irregular warfare with asymmetrical means and conventional warfare with conventional means and criminal aspects all together and often simultaneously,” the change reads.
In 2006, this was the threat posed by Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel.
This threat requires the Army operate not only as it has in the last nine years, in wide-area security, but also simultaneously conducting combined arms maneuvers in operations similar to the 3rd Infantry Div. and Marines Operation from the berms of Kuwait all the way up to Baghdad, Caslen said in a previous interview.
Commanders must develop the interpersonal skills to build teams to achieve success, Caslen said, within his or her Army formations, coalition members, Iraqis or Afghans most recently.
Successful mission command should result in “operational adaptability to be able to continuously move between fundamentally different operations,” FM 3.0 now says. Full spectrum operations in Change 1 removes all the intermediate steps, or defined kinds of conflict along that spectrum of operations.
“Understanding people, and influencing humans to achieve success to achieve success in complex operations is fundamental to how the commander exercises the art of command,” the first change says.
While mission command drives the operational process, the staff is to facilitate the understanding and implementation of orders.
To help commanders understand the complex environment, Change 1 incorporates a tool called design that the Army has developed pre-existing concepts and adapted after examining it in war games and issuing a pamphlet.
As part of the commander-focused effort, it’s important that commanders be more open and transparent, a different way of thinking that some are not all that comfortable with, Caslen said.
West Point did a study on the most effective leaders, he said. “They’re not necessarily the ones that are the most charismatic or the ones that really have the Pied Piper following. They’re the ones that are very transparent, very open, operate with a strong set of ethical, moral values” and have good relationships with subordinates.
“That’s what mission command is, when you empower subordinates to those particular levels and when these subordinates are operating in independent operations, small unit operations, you get tremendous bonds of trust that form,” Caslen said.
Change 1 also incorporates discussions of risk. FM-3.0 recognizes “risk, uncertainty and chance” are all inherent in military operations. Where commanders accept risk they create opportunities–often it can expose enemy weakness, the change states.
“Understanding risk requires calculated assessments coupled with boldness and imagination,” FM 3.0 said. Successful commanders assess and mitigate risk continuously.
The other side of the coin is that inadequate planning and preparation risks forces. Risks also are incurred if there are delays while waiting for ‘perfect’ intelligence.
“Experienced commanders balance audacity and imagination with risk and uncertainty to strike at a time and place and in a manner wholly unexpected by enemy forces–this is the essence of surprise,” it said.
Caslen said “what we want to do now, is take lessons from theater that address risk and bring them to the classroom and quickly.
“One of the critical things in all these operations, particularly when you’re distributed and decentralized is to recognize where risk occurs.
Another critical point is the need to recognize where risk is going to be addressed-is it at Division level, or elsewhere.
Another key part of mission command is “accepting risks to create opportunities,” the Change 1 FM 3.0 said. Mission command identifies risks deciding how much risk to take and then minimizing effects of the accepted risk by setting up controls o mitigate those risks. The staff helps the commander identify risks and offers mitigation recommendations.
Change 1 also sweeps away a chapter on Information Superiority. Five former information tasks have been replaced by inform-and-influence and cyber/electromagnetic activities and incorporated into a new chapter, The Science of Control.
Also gone is the term “psychological operations,” replaced by “military information support operations.”