milley-in-future-wars-creature-comforts-are-out-and-disobeying-orders-is-in

LTC (Join to see) Sir, the best commanding officers just provide the end objective, and then let their subordinate leaders execute the plan as conditions permit. Plans are great, but never is a plan followed to the letter. In Vietnam, we had few of these creature comforts, and a little time back at the combat base, and you were ready to go back to the bush.

Wow, that is the way we were trained in my combat units, give the objective and get out of the way. let the line leadership make the calls and trust them to adjust according to what is actually on the ground. There may be times to take that certain hill (to use the Gen's example) and you already know it is not the hill occupied, make sure the troops leadership knows that reason or at least that there is a reason, but otherwise start with the first hill and then movement to contact and take the one where the enemy is actually at. We used to train a decentralized fighters, and unless you are fighting Napoleonic style, is the ONLY way to actually fight if your goal is to actually win the war.

I don't believe this is so much disobeying orders - as much as it is assessing your tactical position and taking initiative. This is what soldiers did in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam - before command was centralized - and it took precious tens of minutes to launch a gunship or dustoff mission. We launched on three minute warning - picked up coords and tacintel along the way. Warmest Regards, Sandy :)