Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 32
seat to mission command systems, technologies,
and processes. Addressing this concern now will
go further to instill the philosophy and the practice
within leaders at all levels, while minimizing the
risks in implementation. Given the present abundance of complex mission command systems, and
the future growth of mission command enablers such
as cyber, we could alleviate unnecessary complexity
by minimizing the degree of control to that which is
essential. This is especially true when we continue to
field systems that require us to stop everything while
small armies of contract field service representatives
fix our systems. If commanders establish the minimum necessary control, it forces them to rely upon
or trust the teams they trained in order to accomplish
their mission. This is a good thing. After all, mission
command as a philosophy recognizes that war and
conflict are chaotic; the more complexity one adds
to a mission, the more likely it is to fail.
As we consider how best to answer these questions
and wrestle with making mission command a reality,
let us close by reflecting on these words from Gen.
Cone. “When faced with unforeseen situations, we
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