One of the eight elements of combat power, leadership, can turn the tide of the complex battles in simulated combat operations at the National Training Center (NTC). Commanders have been groomed their entire careers with the leadership attributes and competencies to enhance their unit combat effectiveness in this crucible training environment. One important facet of a commander’s leadership are the decisions that he or she makes to best posture the formation. Below are three recommendations that commanders can include in their personal practices observed at NTC to help enable success.
- Plan for decisions through all stages of the operations process
- Incorporate five common decisions early in planning
- Make the decision support template (DST) in fighting products.
Planning for Decisions
The large scale combat operations (LSCO) training scenario at NTC is complex and challenging in order to induce friction that provides units with developmental opportunities. The constant contact with a thinking enemy in a host nation environment along with extended lines of communication compress and interfere with planning timelines. This challenges the battle staff and commanders to find touch points to create shared understanding of the commander’s visualization of the battlefield and the staff’s analysis of the mission. This has produced an outcome where many commanders provide the staff with a singular directed course of action (COA) to save planning time and preserve staff effort for current operations. The result is a singular scheme of maneuver which is not flexible enough to account for changes in the enemy or the environment. Figure one depicts the decisions that will occur during an operation in order to reach the commanders desired end state.
Figure 1: Execution and Adjustment Decisions help redirect the fight towards the desired end state
While adjustment decisions occur during the course of an operation due to unforeseen circumstances, execution decisions should be planned to keep the operation on track. When defining the enemy’s plan, Army doctrine discusses an evaluation of the most likely (MLCOA) and most dangerous (MDCOA) courses of action. When a commander directs a singular COA against either the MLCOA or MDCOA, then the formation is at risk when the enemy conducts the opposite. This triggers a hasty adjustment decision, often while in contact, and leaves subordinates little time to change their actions. Developing execution decisions with potential branch plans during the planning and preparation phase will provide the flexibility necessary to achieve success.
A recommendation is to include the decisions that a commander will make much earlier into the military decision-making process (MDMP). Traditionally an output of the COA Analysis wargame, potential decisions should be included in the commander’s visualization, then described to the staff with the commanders planning guidance. Creating a decision point section on the commanders planning guidance template is a helpful method to do this. Following COA Analysis, the staff may still find further decisions and refine the previously directed ones into the decision support matrix. Thinking about decisions earlier will prevent them from being skipped entirely and make them more effective during the course of the operation.
The Five Common Decisions
Including a commander’s potential decisions into the planning process prior to COA development can make the resulting scheme of maneuver much more effective, but this exposes a potential problem wherein the conditions requiring a decision may not yet be fully understood. However, there are five common decisions which have evolved through numerous repetitions of simulated battles and were previously included in both doctrine and professional military education. These common decisions are listed in figure two.
Figure 2: Five Common Decisions
Including these common decisions during the commander’s visualization can help his or her view of the battle and help shape the staff’s development of COAs. Many of these common decisions can be used to produce standard operating procedures (SOPs) to account for the resulting action or a playbook of branch plans with pre-designated subordinate units that are trained and prepared in advance to execute the action. For example, a unit preparing for a movement to contact may develop in their SOP a tactical maneuver formation with branch plan tasks, habitual task organization changes, and boundary change naming conventions which help improve shared understanding of the commander’s decisions in the transition following contact. While these five common decisions may not ultimately be included in the decision support matrix (DSM) nor occur in every operation, they can serve as a solid starting point to begin a commander and staff’s integration of decisions into the plan and better develop COAs which account for threats and opportunities on the battlefield.
The DST As A Fighting Product
The DST is “is a combined intelligence and operations graphic based on the results of wargaming that depicts decision points, timelines associated with movement of forces and the flow of the operation, and other key items of information required to execute a specific friendly course of action”. Consolidating the enemy event template, the DSM, and templating a location of the decision points into a singular fighting product is a highly effective technique to help both commanders and subordinates execute the mission. Observations of task force and company team echelon leaders at the NTC show that very few utilize this tool on their map boards, leaders’ books, or other visual products during the conduct of the operation. In fact, less than 30% of sampled leaders even placed enemy graphics on their fighting products. There is very little red on many graphics. Similarly, in less than 10% of battles at the NTC, did task force level command posts display, or reference a DST, DSM, or decision points on the common operating picture used by the current operations staff.
The use of a DST fighting product further enables decision point tactics (DPT), which the opposing force (OPFOR), 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment employs effectively to include multiple branch plans and sequels into a singular COA. In practice this technique has proved highly effective to allow the OPFOR commanders to “fight the enemy not the plan” and can be employed by all units to more effectively use the commander’s intuitive understanding of the enemy and environment to best employ his or her unit.
Commanders should also ensure that subordinate commanders and leaders possess a shared understanding of the decisions involved through mission orders and rehearsals. Reviewing subordinate fighting products for completeness and accuracy during pre-combat inspections is another method to ensure that the entire unit is synchronized with the plan. This can be executed simply when subordinates are gathered at a rehearsal or while the senior commander is moving throughout their formation. Regardless of the method, the DST is an important tool to allow the commander to make timely and accurate decisions as well as keep the organization focused on the decisions that its leader will make and enable subordinates to execute disciplined initiative within the commander’s intent.
Adjustment and execution decisions are doctrinally part of the operations process and necessary to gain the advantage towards winning on the battlefield. The training scenario at NTC has shown that the ability of the commander to make effective decisions and for their formation to execute them is often challenged with the complex facets of LSCO. However, planning for decisions through all stages of the operations process, incorporating five common decisions early in planning, and including the DST into fighting products will help a unit to best achieve success. Deciding how to employ their unit is one of the most fundamental aspects of a leader’s actions and when applied can amplify the effects of leadership through all of the other elements of combat power.
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This is part of a series of posts focused on Leader Development in Contact. Click HERE for the rest of the series. Footnotes are annotated in the PDF version found on the Series homepage.
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