The past decade of war has eroded the decision-making confidence of young leaders, Army general...

I'm not familiar with the trips assessments but I've googled it just a second ago. Would I be correct to assume that the weekend safety briefing has now been supplemented by some sort of POV inspection regime?

Sir, I would not at all try to compare my timeline of experience to yours. I also respect the fact you would like for the general army to have a better respect for the officer corps. It has always been my experience to respect the rank; however, new LTs have to learn the confidence and knowledge to lead. How better to learn that confidence but by a knowledgeable and experienced SSG or SFC! It is a foolish notion to expect a private, day 1 out of AIT to have the tools necessary to be successful. Likewise, that fresh 2LT. I believe a better topic to this would be, “New Army Program strengthens the Coaching, Counseling, and Mentoring pillars of Leadership.” Another point you made concerning the backbone of the Army, “we do not need an attitude to continue that they are better than the officers.” Agreed, but who’s going to setup the S-3 tent, Sir? Not saying that is justifiable for the attitude. There are multiple reasons the enlisted think we are better. One of many examples, who trains new officers? Who trains new privates? Who advises the decision makers? Who stays when the officers leave? Who has to receive at least a Master’s degree in order to be competitive for SGM/CSM. Meanwhile, all you would need to become an officer is a Bachelor’s? Many times have I seen a SSG/SFC train, lead, and mentor Soldiers and LTs alike during a deployment, at the end of the tour the 1LT receives a bronze star and the SSG/SFC receive an ARCOM/AAM and are told these awards are based on rank. Not implying that this happens everywhere, but if you see a duck it’s not going to bark. These examples may not be from your experiences back in the day. But they surely are the experiences of the New Age Army today! I really do think that every generation has their bad as well as their good. Its the fact that all of our bad in this generation, is broadcasted either through Social Media platforms or through the media in general. The general of whom spoke in this article, I’m sure has 30 plus years in the military. His views of how things should operate have become biased in my opinion. Technology has crippled critical thinking at every level. Education, experience and mentorship are the driving tools in which will propel this Army to the true fighting force that it should be. What works for the “dinosaurs” will not work for the ‘thumb suckers’. Everything that your generation did wasn’t perfect and neither will ours be. Just like the generation before you didn’t feel that the torch would burn as bright as it did in their generation being passed down to you, give us the opportunity to prove you wrong just like you did them! Happy Retirement, Sir! This We’ll Defend!!!

Respectfully,
SSG(P) Christopher Boson

I remember reading about this. Could open up a whole new threat of discussion on the limits to realpolitik and Machiavelli and practicality, (which are two things or maybe one thing that I generally agree with), as that story which you cite provides an example of what happens when the values we take for granted in western civilization are found to be absent in the institutionally-corrupt government of a developing state. To be briefed on a complicated problem, he's right to say that he was wrong to have struck the guy in light of professional and operational considerations; our government however is wrong both legally and morally to ignore reports of such systemic atrocities committed by host nation forces. Furthermore our government is wrong when it fails to support a soldier that reports such atrocities; failure to support that soldier was obviously a major contributing factor in the incident in question.

But on the subject of the article, the actual proper noun mission command is not something I encountered is an E5 in the army however I did encounter the concept of commander's intent when studying OPORDs. I encountered mission command, as a proper noun in concept, as a contractor later working with interactive training. It does seem to be and evolution of auftragstaktik (BTW, Google speech recognition actually recognized the word auftragstaktik), as mentioned in the article. Mission command and self synchronization based on commander's intent are critically important. One of the requirements for using that however, is that you trust your subordinates to do the self synchronization. another requirement is that your subordinates have the confidence to do the self synchronization. Without that two-way relationship it cannot work. Without the freedom to do self synchronization you end up with a soviet-style paralysis. I remember reading a book about the 1973 war in Israel in which Syrian troops simply stopped because they weren't allowed to act upon opportunity. That worked out great for the good guys, but militarily it was pretty stupid.