Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 7

R E G I O N A L LY A L I G N E D F O R C E
we lose relevance and our partners will be less willing to engage us.
To keep our hands on the problem, our team
applied the tenants of mission command to our
staff and unit activities. Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 6-0, Mission Command, defines
mission command as both a philosophy and
as a warfighting function. Embracing mission
command as a philosophy required a change in
mindset more than anything else we did. Organizational change is difficult, and moving a large
team requires a “big idea.” In this case, that idea
was retaining a forward footing. In 1st Armored
Division, the staff had to buy into the idea that we
must look forward to help us better manage transitions and add value to our supported combatant
commander from day one. In exercising mission
command as a warfighting function, the division
staff has repeatedly honed its skills, including
conducting the operations process, conducting
inform and influence activities, and conducting
knowledge and information management.
As part of supporting the combatant commander
with what he requires, the division has built and
fine-tuned what we call a tailored command post.
In developing this concept, the division conducted
multiple command post exercise iterations. These
included a rotation at the National Training Center
in July and August 2012, which was the first time
in almost five years that a division level tactical
command post deployed to the National Training
Center and integrated into the rotation.
A typical pattern for a headquarters is to surge
through a command post training event, gain a
high level of staff proficiency during execution,
but then return to the headquarters, recover equipment, and resume work in cubicles. Facilities are an
important component to mission command, and the
typical “cubicle farm” works against the principles
of mission command. Such cubicles are neither
truly private nor open, with high gray walls that
discourage collaboration and hinder the building
of teams and trust. Other organizational enemies
include stove-piping of information in isolated staff
sections and staff muscle atrophy—the erosion of
individual and collective staff task proficiencies.
Our current global operating environment is so
complex, changing, and ambiguous that we cannot
afford to conduct business this way anymore.
MILITARY REVIEW

• November-December 2013

Rather than viewing command post training as a
series of discrete events, the 1st Armored Division
approach has been to create an environment at home
station that allows us to train and operate in our
command post every day. Our goal is to connect to
the network using our digital systems and allow our
soldiers’ daily repetitions to create a level of familiarity and understanding that makes us easily conversant
about problems in our aligned region. In that command post—our division operations center—our
headquarters links into CENTCOM and ARCENT
battle rhythm events such as battle updates. If done
right, approaches such as this can mitigate the problem of “the first 100 days”—that time when units are
transitioning and there is great risk due to decreased
situational understanding. Staying connected in this
way means deploying with a staff that has at least a
basic understanding of the operating environment.
The scope of a geographic combatant command’s
area of responsibility is well beyond that which one
division, or even corps, could successfully attempt
to understand completely. The commander should
designate an area of interest on which to focus the
regionally aligned force. For 1st Armored Division,
this CENTCOM-directed focus has been largely
on the Levant, which includes Syria, Jordan, and
Lebanon. While not every geographic command
will have a similar hotspot, it should still focus the
division or corps on a particular portion of the area
of responsibility.

You cannot get there from a “cold
start”; being of value as