Military Command Structures

Acoup (acoup.blog) has a few really nice posts about this topic (in relation with current Ukraine conflict no less.)Basic takeaway is this - yes, everyone wants to run their army using (googlable keyword) Auftragstaktik. But that's very similar to saying that everyone in software business wants to run their software company like Netflix, Apple or Google at it's best - with responsible senior engineers that own their mistakes, show initiative, are skilled and don't let performan

The military operates that way with 99% of their personnel, who are grunts, expected to only ever follow orders, to never think for themselves. They're expendable cannon fodder - think of them as pieces of hardware in a software company. But with the 1% at the very top (basically just generals), I'd say the bus factor comes into play, same as in any other organisation - certain individuals have all the knowledge of certain domains, and if enough of those individuals are taken out, the

Look at how military units are set up

Big corps like IBM share surprisingly similar traits as an military army. The general in charge of the army commonly only deals with the grand strategies and communicates with a few of his high-rank colonels. He has no idea who is the most skilled soldier or lieutenant, or captain. To him, they are only a number, a faceless expendable resource. Throughout the long history of wars, a lot of times low level heroic soldiers managed to win some battles but the army still lost the war simply due to

Reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) story about the military officer test that asks "How do you dig up a ditch?" where most candidates answer with detailed instructions about how dig it, when the "correct" answer is something like "I say, 'Private, dig me a ditch!'"The point being that, at that level, it's more important to know how to deploy your soldiers toward a goal as opposed to the low-level details of every individual task.

This is a problem which is commen in the US-Military. As I know a dozen Soldiers - mainly Army - of the Bundeswehr, they all recall their trainings against US-Army units stationed in Germany. They all said: "Take out the higher ranking officers, then they are done." Even though the German Units were completely inferior in the main strength of the US, their superior quality material-based approach, they mostly managed to rip them to shreds with a high degree of flexibility. Practice in

>> The soldiers on the front lines spent years being trained to obey orders first, ask questions later.I think you have the wrong impression of the army. Decentralized command is one of the central tenants of American military doctrine. Trying to route everything through layers of leadership leads to an incompetent fighting unit. Unfortunately, this stereotype is hard to shake.As a result the soldier must understand the broader objective and actively question the tactics used to ach

there is a term in use in today's US military - "centralized command, decentralized execution" that mostly captures this sentiment

Bold assumption that the other big militaries have top notch high commands.

Almost - it's called "mission command" and the core idea is to prioritize initiative, flexibility, and independent judgment over strict adherence to orders’ exact wording.https://www.army.mil/article/106872/understanding_mission_co...