Mission Command: The Need for Disciplined Initiative

United States' adversaries seek to achieve their strategic aims through the use of layered standoff by leveraging all instruments of national power to separate the United States from its partners. To counter this threat, TRADOC PAM 525-3-1, The US Army in Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) 2028, states, "the Army must evolve the force around calibrated force posture, multi-domain formations, and convergence. Underpinning these tenets are mission command." Mission command, however, is identified as an Army Warfighting Challenge and, therefore, must be addressed. Army leaders do not have a shared understanding on the mission command concept and often misconstrue it with "good leadership." To address this confusion, TRADOC recently refined ADP 6-0 Mission Command doctrine. Mission command is not just "good leadership" and to succeed in MDO 2028, the Army needs to refocus leader development, education, and training. The Army requires agile, adaptive, independent thinking leaders that apply all seven principles of mission command. The time is now to exercise disciplined initiative and prioritize the education, training, assessment, and validation of its leaders on the newly revised mission command doctrine at every echelon if they are to win. Winning requires "good leaders" who effectively use mission command in their formations.