"Auftragstaktik Leads to Decisive Action" Topic

The German military recognized that subordinates' ability to exercise initiative—guided by commander's intent—is critical to success in combat.

Proceedings Magazine: link

Interesting article, Bill. I wish the author had gone further into the cultural factors he mentions, though. It would allow us to better evaluate how well the concept could apply to other countries.

Grelber

For further reading: The German Way of War by Jaap Jan Brouwer

Mission Directed Tactics is something which has been dissected to death over the decades. Many armies attempt to practice it, and it often founders on the the general issue of micromanagement. Same applies to agile teams in a business context.

I sat and watched as our highest performing decentralised team was completely destroyed by a senior exec who decided they knew best what work they should be doing and in what order.

Once the war turned against the, Hitler wasn't overly keen on discretion in decision making, whereas Uncle Joe proved surprisingly effective at giving his subordinates a lot of latitude within a strategic framework – as long as they kept winning, and not by too much.

I watched a video on Case Blue where the point was made that Stalingrad was the point when Hitler stopped trusting his generals and Stalin began trusting his.

As Martin has observed the biggest enemy of decentralisation is the ego's of higher authority; I'd suggest that the second is inadequate education of the lower levels, which explains why historically it is quite uncommon in the military.

I think "the German way of war" was pretty much adopted as "the Western way of war" following WWII, specifically for peer/near peer war (or "high intensity conflict" as they used to call it), with some room for debate as to whether it drove the creation of professional militaries or the creation of professional militaries demanded it. Our particular version in the US (well, at least Marine Corps, perhaps the Army calls it something different?) is known as "Maneuver Warfare," driven by "commander's intent" and "mission-type orders" (Auftragstaktik) and "center(s) of gravity" (Schwerpunkt).

I joined the Marine Corps in 1994 and found it to be deeply ingrained into our ethos (with the tenets of orders and mission planning (SMEAC, BAMCIS) being taught to every enlisted Marine and officer in initial training (Boot Camp and TBS), with resident PME included at every enlisted grade once you became an NCO. I even saw it pushed into "Low-Intensity Conflict" and Phase 4/Stabilization Operations with initiatives such as "The Three-Block War" and "The Strategic Corporal."

Everything seemed to be moving along swimmingly (including my tour in Afghanistan, Dec 01-May 02) until I got to Iraq for OIF2 (Mar 04-Sep 04), at which point everything seemed broken (at least in RCT-7). I don't know why or how, I just know that all of a sudden it was no longer an intelligence-driven, fast paced, ‘get inside their OODA-loop' (yes, even terrorists/insurgents have an OODA loop-type of fight. Now it was an ops-driven, bean counting, targets have to go all the way to regiment for approval-type fight, with higher HQ making immediate and constant demands on small unit leaders for SITREPs while gunfights are occurring, etc…

I left the Marine Corps shortly thereafter so I don't know, but hopefully we got back to how things were supposed to be done (or perhaps it wasn't as universal an issue as it seemed, though discussions with peers/buddies seem to substantiate that it was larger then just my regiment, and continued after I got out).

"… the second is inadequate education of the lower levels…"
Oh my. I can't say that I ever experienced that as a reason that Maneuver Warfare couldn't be carried out on the battlefield, but maybe I just wasn't smart enough to recognize ;)

V/R,
Jack

As Jack said, getting inside your opponent's OODA Loop is vital. Allowing your FEBA units to exercise their initiative rather than asking permission up the chain of command is how to do it. You seize the initiative while your opponent is frozen in inaction. Alexander the Great and others led from the front to shorten the Loop.

From my experience in a Marine Rifle Company in the early 1970s, some had it and some didn't. City boys with no competitive physical activity experience struggled to get the idea.

We southern boys were brought up playing competitive physical sports and hunting in the forests, me in the Everglades. Field craft and playing as part of a team are second nature. I saw a few city boys scared of the dark in the woods of Camp Lejeune but some were very good.

The Marines teach aggressiveness and leadership from the lowest levels, starting from Boot Camp. At Iwo Jima, the three divisions that landed were newly formed with a cadre from veteran Raider and Para units. For most of the lower enlisted, it was their first combat. 11 of the 22 Marines awarded the MOH were E4 and below but also made up the bulk of the Marines doing the fighting.

A kid I coached on the juniors AR-15 national championship team and Rugby joined the Marines, doing SigInt EW work for one enlistment. He told me he wanted to go to Ukraine in June 2022, and I put him in touch with some of the right people I knew over there.

He hooked up with a group of Special Ops Westerners and built his own SigInt equipment using COTS products, which was a force multiplier for the team, enabling them to operate deeper into the gray zone in the Kharkov AO. No one else was doing this at the time. The team got hold of some drones which he implemented to augment his SiGInt equipment. No one told him to do this.

His intl gathering helped his team formulate and sell a plan to GUR (Ukie military intelligence) that resulted in the Kharkiv Offensive in Sept 2022, the largest of the war.

He was called back to Kyiv to form his own team, which he could hand-pick. His orders were to go back to the Kharkiv AO at Bakhmut, find Russians, and help the Ukrainians kill them, doing ISR and arty FO with drones. No direct supervision was given.

He reported directly to General Budanov, the head of GUR. Western Spec Ops teams operate independently and are not in the normal or Legion chain of command. They have to develop a trusting relationship with the local Ukie units because technically, he is a rank of Private.

At night in their safe house outside Bakhmut, he would meet with the local Ukie arty and infantry commanders to go over ISR and satellite photos of Russian units and their intentions to plan out their next day's activities and assign assets. If they had sent the plan up the chain of command to Kyiv, it would have been too late to stop the Russians.

He led the Ukies in counterattacks to take back buildings and clear trenches, whatever needed to be done.

He's back in the US now with a good job and consulting with a 3-star Marine General at Weapons Training Battalion in Quantico on how to implement and use drones without getting your operators killed. Not bad for a Corporal. He attributes his success to his Marine training and playing the Rome Total War video game.

The future of warfare appears to be small light infantry units operating autonomously with drones and EW assets. The US is not ready for this. Radio communications give away your position, so upper command will be mostly out of the loop. It appears many of the Russian units are doing the same thing, too.

Wolfhag

@ Just Jack, Re "inadequate education of the lower levels" I'm pleased to hear that you were well educated, but I was speaking both historically and sadly i'm sure about other forces than the USMC [they do exist you know ;-)]

"The future of warfare appears to be small light infantry units operating autonomously with drones and EW assets. The US is not ready for this. Radio communications give away your position, so upper command will be mostly out of the loop."

I'm sure a lot of penny pinching civil servants will be very pleased to hear this, also VSO's who want a large army so they can have lots of VSO's; but is it the case that the Ukrainians aren't using heavy armour because it's no good, or simply because they don't have much.

I'm sure a lot of penny pinching civil servants will be very pleased to hear this, also VSO's who want a large army so they can have lots of VSO's; but is it the case that the Ukrainians aren't using heavy armour because it's no good, or simply because they don't have much.

Don't be so sure about that. The Marines have retired a number of combat arms units and tanks in exchange for additional Com, EW, drones, littoral units, and precision fire artillery. Their budget for 2025 increased $200 USDm, which is about a 5% increase.

Wolfhag

This sort of thing relies on Trust and Mutual Confidence which may of may not exist depending on the country, arm, or formation level.

The Nazi army had few officers and those they had had large spans of control – compared to the Allies, also the senior NCOs had higher level responsibilities.

At tactical levels this reduced the scope of micro-management – the hauptmanns had to trust their feldwebels.

The allies had officers galore – quite on purpose – resulting in micro-management – especially feeding everything up to Brigade.

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The important thing when engaging the Hun is to prepare for their trigger-action counter-attack. This is the time to mow the b@stards down with your vickers and mortars. Lots of Hun leadership wasted on slavish adherance to counter-attack doctrine.

This sort of thing relies on Trust and Mutual Confidence which may of may not exist depending on the country, arm, or formation level.

When I checked into the 8th Marine Regiment's headquarters at Camp Geiger, the regimental colors were by the desk. The battle ribbons include Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian. These were all battles I had read about. The immediate thought that went through my mind was that I hope I could live up to the reputation without screwing up.

I think the more the squad trains and lives together the better they'll be as a cohesive unit and do the right thing. Ideally, you fall back on your training with minimal supervision.

Wolfhag

The accent put on Auftragtaktiks by the German Army is, IMO, one of the causes for the strategical ineptitude of the German High Command in both World Wars. I mean, there was hardly a strategical direction, the various commanders being left to exploit whatever tactical successes were happening on the battlefield. This was never corrected and indeed, became irrelevant at the end of the war as the catastrophic succession of defeats left Germany no latitude in strategical decisions. By contrast, the Russians' operative art proceeded from a clear strategical direction, and gave them the time to improve small units tactics at the same time training levels were plummeting in the Wehrmacht.