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Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf
If there's no plan, you might as well curl up and die.  There's always a plan. Whether it is well-articulated and well-executed, though, is another matter. |
What I meant was : just give the objective, and by when. Those people working in special forces, for some reason, prefer it this way - an old bird once told me that since nobody knows anything, the special forces are sent in first, either as reconnaisance, or to buy time while commanders figure out what to do.
Usually the objective always include "Return safely" at the end; if a SOF team doesn't return, usually everyone else back home is fcked.
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It's here that the Japanese made a fatal error in judgment, partly because of their different doctrine, and partly because of sheer arrogance.
The truth is that simple plans are the best, because they are easy to explain, easy to execute and, most importantly, easy to adapt on the fly.
I speak from personal experience: first as a gawky cadet planning and executing my first mission (major fail; mission plan was so complicated and garbled I couldn't even remember parts of it en route to objective) and subsequently, many years later, as an older, more experienced reservist officer (conduct 'O' group, give mission statement, identify key objectives, lay out plans of action, obtain buy in [critical]).
The non-commissioned ranks don't need the "bigger picture". They just need the objective and the timings, which an officer is supposed to provide. Smooth execution will depend on pre-rehearsed drills, but within the framework of the plan, there should be enough room for each soldier, or at the very least the section leaders, to exercise initiative. The mission is supposed to be carried out through familiar routines in the first place. If it doesn't even start that way, something is seriously wrong.
That's the ideal situation. How close any unit is to the ideal depends, of course, on individual personalities. American doctrine can't be very different.
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I admit, I have little or no idea how infantry command and tactics work other than the standard combat drills conducted by grunts. Though the way the Japanese snipers operate gave me the impression that they are horrendous at ground-level intelligence operations - the operator must first return in order to be able inform, and secondly, tying themselves to the top of the tree breaks the entire predator-prey cycle - which is the primary operating rationale for sniper/recon forces. It is about maintaining the predator position as many times during the engagement as possible - when the enemy starts looking, you are the prey; and the prey always gets eaten by the predator.
For QRF/SO side, planning is like debugging a complex program - 1 objective, then lots of boolean operators thrown in on the fly as things keep going wrong. OFC, being the first to go in, what
can't go wrong?
