by Marinus

This article is the first in a series we call The Maneuverist Papers, discussing maneuver warfare doctrine in the Marine Corps. Under the leadership of Commandant Gen Alfred M. Gray, the Marine Corps first codified maneuver warfare as Service doctrine with the 1989 publication of Fleet Marine Force Manual 1 (FMFM 1), Warfighting, although the significant intellectual effort that produced the underlying concepts had begun well over a decade earlier. In 1997, Gen Charles C. Krulak oversaw the revision of Warfighting as MCDP 1, which clarified and elaborated on select ideas from the original but did not change the essence of maneuver warfare in any way. Maneuver warfare doctrine has thus served the Marine Corps for over three decades. Much has happened in those years, especially two lengthy wars that saw significant changes in the conduct of warfare. In contrast, during the same period of time, U.S. Army doctrine has evolved from AirLand Battle to Full-Dimensional Operations to Full Spectrum Operations to now Unified Land Operations over a span of nine capstone field manuals. Now the Marine Corps is set to undertake arguably the most dramatic changes to structure and capabilities in over a half century.

This begs the question: Is it time for the Marine Corps to revise its doctrine? Several Gazette articles in recent years have argued so. The aim of The Maneuverist Papers is to energize that conversation. The Maneuverist Papers will continue the discussion begun with “What We Believe About War and Warfare” in the June Gazette by describing the development of and elaborating on key maneuver warfare concepts, providing historical context for the development of Warfighting and the maneuver warfare movement in general, and discussing recent changes to the face of war that may justify a doctrinal revision.

The maneuver warfare movement must be judged an institutional success in that maneuver warfare became Marine Corps doctrine and has remained so for over three decades. Moreover, the movement brought other lasting changes—most notably in the area of professional military education—in full view today. In some areas, such as training, the impact of maneuver warfare, with its emphasis on free-play, force-on-force exercises, arguably has been less enduring. In other areas, such as personnel management, the movement seems to have had little impact at all. A broader issue is operational and tactical success. From Grenada in 1983 through the Gulf War to Afghanistan and Iraq, the historical record has been mixed. But is this an indictment of maneuver warfare itself? Is it a result of the Marine Corps no longer embracing maneuver warfare in practice? Or never having truly embraced it in the first place, as some have argued? Or is the mixed record the result of some completely external factors, such as the growing ineffectiveness of combat as a decisive factor in resolving conflict in general? That is a topic for another debate.

The Historical Context

It is important to understand that the maneuver warfare movement emerged at a particular moment in history. After the Vietnam War, the Marine Corps underwent a period of institutional introspection. The maneuver warfare movement was a response to the institutional and operational dysfunction of the Vietnam experience that sought, among other things, to put the Marine Corps approach to war on a solid historical and theoretical footing.

Gray, of course, was the leading exponent of maneuver warfare, providing impetus and top cover. Retired Air Force Col John Boyd was the movement’s intellectual godfather. Civilian Bill Lind was chief provocateur and proselytizer. But the core was a grass roots movement comprising a combination of Vietnam veterans who had remained on active duty after the war to see things set right and young officers who saw maneuver warfare as empowering. Of the active duty  maneuverists, Col Michael Wyly was the most prominent.  Other early thought leaders included then-Capts Stephen Miller, G.I. Wilson, and William Woods.

The Marine Corps was not alone in reforming.  Each of the Services, and the broader Defense establishment, responded differently to the Vietnam experience. Not surprisingly, the Army and Marine Corps, which bore the brunt of the war and experienced its dysfunction most keenly, eventually enacted the most extensive reforms, although the first reforms actually came out of the Navy, or more precisely the Naval War College, where ADM Stansfield Turner reformed the curriculum almost immediately upon assuming the presidency in 1972.Three curriculum reforms were most significant for our purposes. The first was the reintroduction of strategic thought, which the Services had mostly abrogated to civilian academics by then and which had largely become focused on nuclear strategy. The second was the rediscovery of the great Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz, whose theories at that time had been all but forgotten in favor of the more formulaic and geometric approach of the Swiss military theorist Antoine-Henri Jomini. The rediscovery of Clausewitzian theory, made much more accessible by the Michael Howard and Peter Paret translation of On War in 1976, was foundational to maneuver warfare theory. The third was the revival of the study of military history, which had virtually been removed from military education after the Second World War in favor of operations research and procedural training. This revival also proved important to the maneuver warfare movement.

For the Army, reform meant, among other things, returning to what it considered to be its primary mission: defeating a Soviet invasion of Europe. A new, post-Vietnam edition of the Army’s capstone doctrinal manual, Field Manual 100-5 (FM 100-5), Operations, introduced the doctrine of Active Defense in 1976. Active Defense met with immediate and widespread criticism within the Army as being too defensive and mathematical. A coordinated, Army-wide effort to develop a more offensive doctrine ensued. A new FM 100-5 introduced AirLand Battle doctrine in 1982, and a revision followed in 1986. Neither manual directly mentioned Europe or the Soviets, but it was clear that was the problem space. AirLand Battle was a rigorously reasoned doctrine—arguably more so than any of the Army doctrines that have followed. Never executed against its envisioned enemy, AirLand Battle turned out to be highly effective against the Iraqi army during Operation DESERT STORM in 1991. Moreover, AirLand Battle, elevated to the multi-Service level, became the de facto joint doctrine.

Where the Army undertook a coordinated and methodical effort to develop AirLand Battle, the maneuver warfare movement took on more the character of a back-alley brawl conducted on the pages of the Marine Corps Gazette—which in retrospect is probably appropriate. Col John Greenwood, the editor of the Gazette at the time, deserves a lot of credit for encouraging and managing the debate. Being able to focus on a particular threat in a particular theater allowed the Army to write in more specific and concrete terms. As the Nation’s force-in-readiness in the 1980s, the Marine Corps did not enjoy that luxury, and one consequence is that Warfighting is more abstract and theoretical than the Army capstone manuals have tended to be. It was, as Gray wrote in the foreword, more a “philosophy for action” than a traditional doctrine. Maneuver warfare as described in Warfighting was designed to have very broad utility but required significant judgment in application, which has been a source of frustration for some Marine readers looking for more specific guidance. Conversely, as a result, Warfighting  could be written in more enduring terms, which goes some way in explaining why the Marine Corps has not found the need to update its doctrine as frequently as the Army has.

A second aspect of the historical context of maneuver warfare is that it is a product of the Cold War era and implicitly reflects that paradigm. FMFM 1’s default was the classic military force-on-force model. It did not explicitly exclude irregular warfare, but it had nothing specific to say about it either—one of the criticisms of both editions of Warfighting. The 1997 revision acknowledges the possibility of nonstate belligerents but offers no additional insights into nonclassical warfare. It is a credit to the Corps that countless Marines have extrapolated the classic theory of Warfighting to decades of irregular warfare. Arguably, Warfighting reflects a worldview that became dated when the Berlin Wall fell—or, alternatively, possibly one that is just now coming back into relevance.

The Maneuver vs. Attrition Debate

Perhaps the biggest controversy to arise during the development of maneuver warfare was the maneuver warfare vs. attrition warfare debate. The early maneuverists chose to describe maneuver warfare by comparing it with its opposite, which they called attrition warfare. In retrospect, this may have been an operational error that delayed the eventual acceptance of maneuver warfare. The simplistic interpretation of the argument was:  maneuver good, attrition bad. In reality, the problem was partly semantic. All warfare involves attrition—that is, incremental degradation of combat power because of accumulating losses. And all warfare involves relational movement, if only to bring weapons into position to cause more attrition. Maneuver and attrition are not a matter of either/or, but that is how proponents came to frame the issue. The Marine Corps split into two camps: the maneuverists and the attritionists. The maneuverists thought they were simply advancing ideas on a better way to fight, but the attritionists felt (with some justification) that they were being painted as Neanderthals for wanting to kill the enemy. How could attrition inflicted on an enemy possibly be bad? The attritionists thought the maneuverists were unnecessarily complicating what should be a straightforward proposition: find the enemy, destroy the enemy. (Frankly, and unfortunately, part of the attritionists’ motivation also was a reaction to the confrontational Lind, who was closely associated with the maneuver vs. attrition construct. The term “attrition warfare” assumed a pejorative connotation, so naturally some Marines adopted it as a badge of honor to show their opposition.)

The issue was not whether it was better to maneuver or to inflict attrition, because both again are inherent in warfare. In retrospect, the issue is what you choose as the mechanism by which you propose to impose defeat on the enemy. The important concept of defeat mechanism was not explicitly recognized at the time. (A later article will address defeat mechanisms.) The defeat mechanism of attrition warfare was inherent in the name: you inflicted defeat by cumulatively eroding enemy personnel and material strength or psychological resolve until he gave up the fight or eventually was eliminated. The maneuverists pointed out that this tended to be a time-consuming and costly approach. Moreover, it did not work well if there was a marked asymmetry of interests: if one belligerent was fighting merely a war of choice while the other fought a war of survival (read: Vietnam), the odds were significantly stacked.

The defeat mechanism of maneuver warfare was much harder to put your finger on.  It certainly was not inherent in the word maneuver, which many understood narrowly to mean relational movement, but which the maneuverists imbued with deeper meaning that they sometimes struggled to explain.  (A popular attritionist joke was that maneuver warfare sought to win not by defeating the enemy in battle but by “driving in circles and confusing him to death.”)

For some, the “maneuver” in maneuver warfare suggested that the doctrine was defined by the forms of maneuver it employed, namely envelopments, penetrations, and turning movements—basically anything other than a frontal attack, which by implication was considered stupid. This was a gross misunderstanding. Attritionists complained that the maneuverists could not lay exclusive claim to select forms of maneuver, and they resented the implication that they favored only frontal attacks. Others equated maneuver warfare with mechanized warfare, likely based on the tendency to associate maneuver warfare with the German blitzkrieg of the Second World War. (More about the German influence shortly.) The iconic image of Gray in utilities with desert goggles on his helmet probably reinforced the misconception.

We now understand that the defeat mechanism of maneuver warfare is systemic disruption—eliminating the enemy’s ability to operate as a coherent and cohesive whole. According to FMFM 1: “Maneuver warfare is a warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a series of rapid, violent, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which he cannot cope.”  Boyd used to talk about “tearing the enemy apart from the inside.” In other words, where attrition warfare attacks the components of the enemy system to degrade them, maneuver warfare attacks the relationships between those components to break the coherent functioning of the system.

Maneuver warfare is a systemic doctrine, which was a hard sell in 1989. The emergence of complexity theory in the 1990s, with a host of popular books on the subject, greatly enhanced the understanding of complex systems. (It also greatly enhanced the understanding of both Clausewitz and Boyd. Alan Beyerchen’s masterful “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War,” published in International Affairs in 1992, argued convincingly that Clausewitz intuitively understood complex nonlinear dynamics but lacked the language to describe them. Likewise, the language and concepts of complexity theory helped us to realize that Boyd’s thinking had been even farther ahead of its time than we had previously appreciated.) The 1997 revision of Warfighting was much more explicitly systemic in its description. It was still a hard sell.

Finally, complicating the issue was the often-misunderstood annihilation-attrition strategic construct. The German historian Hans Delbruck (1848-1929) posited two basic types of strategy: Ermattungsstrategie and Niederwerfungsstrategie, which were mistakenly translated in English as strategy of attrition and strategy of annihilation. The English terms are problematic because they are practically synonymous. In fact, most American readers were probably introduced to the terms in Russell Weigley’s 1973 classic The American Way of War, in which, the author later acknowledged, he had got the terms confused. The former strategy is probably better termed strategy of exhaustion, which Delbruck argued was a viable option for a weaker belligerent that lacked the ability to defeat the enemy outright and instead sought a limited objective—to raise the enemy’s costs so high that he was willing to settle on your terms rather than continue to fight. The latter is better termed a strategy of incapacitation. (The German literally means “taking-down strategy,” as in a take down in wrestling. It does not require reducing the enemy “to nothing,” the literal meaning of “annihilation” from Latin.) The latter strategy involved the outright defeat of the enemy’s ability to resist, which Delbruck argued involved the adoption of an unlimited military objective and was available only to the stronger belligerent.

The German Influence

Another controversy during the maneuver warfare movement was the German influence. The maneuverists, some more than others, were fond of using German historical examples and terminology. They made two arguments. The first was that the German army had in fact achieved tactical and operational excellence using maneuver warfare and was one of the few modern armies to do so. The second was that the German army was the only modern army to codify its maneuver doctrine. As a result, any primary source documents tended to be German. For the maneuverists, both arguments made the Germans worth studying. The maneuver warfare canon thus was filled with titles like Mellenthin’s Panzer Battles, Guderian’s Panzer Leader, Manstein’s Lost Victories, Rommel’s Attacks, and Schell’s Battle Leadership.

            Schwerpunkt (main effort or center of gravity), Auftragstaktik (mission tactics), Flaechen und Luekentaktik (tactics of surfaces and gaps), aufrollen (rolling up enemy forces from the flank after a penetration), and Fingerspitzengefuhl (literally “finger tips feeling,” meaning intuitive flair or instinct) found their way into the discussion, often getting mangled in pronunciation in the process.

Fueling the debate was the 1982 publication of Martin van Creveld’s Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945 (although it was available several years earlier as a DOD-funded study). Van Creveld did an extensive statistical analysis of 87 engagements between U.S. Army and German forces in the Second World War and concluded that German ground forces were tactically and operationally superior to U.S. forces. The oversimplified lesson that some took from Fighting Power was that German troops were 1.5 to 2.0 times better than their American counterparts, which did not sit well with many American readers and may have helped to push some into the attritionist camp. Last, but not least, the controversial Lind was an unabashed Germanophile (Prussophile is probably more accurate), and this alone produced antibodies.

In the end, Warfighting intentionally avoided the use of German terminology. Thirty years of subsequent experience has reduced the need to rely on German examples, and the controversy has largely blown over.

Why the Maneuver Warfare Movement Succeeded

There are several reasons for maneuver warfare’s institutional success, and those may provide lessons for today’s situation.

• The maneuver warfare movement came from a point of real institutional pain. The origin and motivation of the maneuver warfare movement, as mentioned, was the pain caused by the dysfunctional experience of the Vietnam War.  It was this motivation that sustained the movement.  Maneuver warfare was not merely an intellectual exercise, although clearly it contained an intellectual element.  In contrast, many capability development initiatives today seem like purely intellectual exercises not motivated by any institutional pain.  They appear to be change for change’s sake.
• The discourse was extensive, open, and transparent—and frequently messy. This was critical. The argument took place in the open over more than a decade. It got ugly at times, but this forced the maneuverists to strengthen their case and in the end helped garner widespread support for the doctrine. Maneuver warfare was not developed in secret by some high-level “working group” and then imposed on the rest of the institution. In today’s parlance, we might say it was crowd sourced. The open discourse went a long way toward socializing, strengthening, and eventually vetting maneuver doctrine.
• The movement operated as a classic insurgency. While the discourse took place in the open, the maneuver warfare movement itself operated like a classic insurgency, employing an inkblot strategy to gradually expand its influence over time, increasing its profile as it grew stronger. The maneuverists thought of themselves as insurgents, working to subvert the existing order. Maneuverist cells popped up spontaneously around the Marine Corps. With Gray’s succession to the Commandancy, the insurgency became the regime.
• The movement enjoyed a combination of strong visionary leadership and bottom-up, grass-roots commitment. Gray provided a compelling and unifying vision as well as critical top-cover for the insurgents. Meanwhile, Lind drew most of the attritionists’ fire, providing additional cover for the rest of the movement. But the ultimate driving force was the growing number of Marines who supported the new concepts. Maneuver warfare would not have succeeded to the extent it did without both the top-down and bottom-up dynamics.
• Maneuver warfare had strong historical and theoretical foundations. A key attribute of the maneuver warfare movement was the strength of its intellectual foundation. The maneuverists did their homework. People might have bemoaned the number of German historical examples, but there was no shortage of examples. Meanwhile, maneuver doctrine rested on a solid philosophical foundation of Sunzian, Clausewitzian, and Boydian theories. (One of the early criticisms of Warfighting was that there was “nothing new” in it. LtGen P.K. Van Riper used to respond that that was true: there was nothing in Warfighting that wasn’t in Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, or Boyd. The trick of Warfighting was that it managed to synthesize those three disparate theories into a coherent whole.) In contrast, too many contemporary warfighting concepts appear to be no more than PowerPoint deep. Moreover, many seem to be anti-historical, implying or openly asserting that some technological or other innovation has so “changed the fundamental nature of war” that there is nothing to be learned from the past.
• The process involved significant experimentation. Long before there was a Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, Second Marine Division became a maneuver warfare laboratory when Gray took command in 1981 and declared at an all-officers call at the base theater that maneuver warfare was the division’s official doctrine. The pinnacle of experimentation was the annual Combined Arms Operation at Fort Pickett, VA, a completely free-play, force-on-force exercise pitting some combination of battalions against each other. At ENDEX each day, all officers and staff NCOs would drive back to the base theater at mainside for an extensive hotwash moderated personally by Gray, with Lind in attendance like a Prussian Nestor. The Combined Arms Operation and similar exercises went a long way toward creating additional maneuverists.

Conclusion

To understand where you are and where you are going, it is important to know where you have been. The future evolves from the past. This short history of the development of maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps may illuminate some worthwhile questions for the Marine Corps today as it faces yet another transition after long period of war: Is there institutional pain today sufficient to drive doctrinal and other reform? Is that pain even a necessary ingredient now as it was then? (Arguably, the effort that led to the initial development of amphibious doctrine in the 1930s was not based on institutional pain but simply on a clear-eyed assessment of the future security environment.) Must any successful reform involve a bottom-up grass roots movement, and must it too take the form of an institutional insurgency? Will there need to emerge another Gray, Boyd, Wyly, or Lind? Should or how should maneuver warfare adapt to recent and emerging changes in warfare? Or, more fundamentally, has warfare changed sufficiently that the Marine Corps should reconsider its basic doctrine? Most Marines would instinctively and emphatically say, “No!”—but does that mean the question should not be asked?

by MajGen William F. Mullen III

With the publication of Fleet Marine Force Manual 1, Warfighting, our 29th Commandant, Gen Alfred M. Gray, cemented maneuver warfare not only as the Service doctrine, but as a warfighting philosophy to guide all Marine Corps actions. It excelled at shaping how the Marine Corps prepared and pursued war as evidenced by the successes achieved during the Gulf War and beyond. Unfortunately, our ability to think and act as maneuver warfare adherents diminished during the steady state operational periods of the subsequent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and caused our 37th Commandant, Gen Robert B. Neller, to ask, “How do we reinvigorate Maneuver warfare?” This question caused me to think long and hard, and the result was the conclusion that our Marine Corps needs to fundamentally change how it educates, mans, trains, equips, and even perceives its close combat forces. Before we get to those recommended changes though, we need to describe how we arrived at this point.

The Decline of Maneuver warfare

I believe Gen Neller asked the question regarding reinvigorating maneuver warfare for three primary reasons. First, the changes we have seen in the Fleet Marine Forces over the past eighteen years of involvement in Operations ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM. After the successful maneuver warfare centric invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, counterinsurgency operations required Marines to “fight” from largely static positions. While small units employed maneuver warfare to gain positions of advantage during firefights, large-scale maneuvering was not required, which caused our skills to atrophy overall. These changes were compounded by the increased operational tempo, a great deal more prescription with training requirements, and less time between deployments. The result over time has generated small unit leaders who are less engaged with their subordinate unit leaders and leaders, in general, being more directive because of a lack of trust. These factors also engendered the belief on the part of many of our leaders that they had little to no control over the training in preparation for deployment, so they did not take ownership as much as they should. These factors have also led to a decrease in subordinate initiative where we have subordinate leaders thinking it is acceptable to merely wait for orders instead of taking intelligent initiative based on intent.

The second reason is the growth of technology that enables seniors to reach well down into the lowest tactical levels to direct actions they deem appropriate, as well as the extensive reporting requirements that only seem to grow from year to year. The ability to rapidly communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time is a tremendous temptation that can, and often does, lead to overreach for non-essential and seemingly spurious reasons. Rather than increasing our speed, it causes hesitation and, in some cases, paralysis on the part of subordinates. Reporting is a major factor in this since control from above—real or perceived—inhibits subordinate confidence resulting in a reluctance to take the initiative and act on intent. The growth in both directive control and reporting requirements leads subordinates to feel they are not trusted, and this further undermines our maneuver warfare philosophy because these things lead to the perception that the leaders of our institution do not understand our own philosophy and that our institution itself does not act as if our philosophy matters.

The third reason is that, over the past few decades, our Corps has increasingly allowed a focus on expensive acquisition programs to dominate our thinking, investment priorities, and even worse, to define who we are in our dialogue with Congress and the American people. While driven by the demands of the planning, programming, budgeting, and executing process and understandable to a point, none of these programs define the Marine Corps. Our Marines define the Marine Corps. Even if we had none of these programs, our ethos would enable us to find a way to get the mission accomplished. By allowing the planning, programming, budgeting, and executing agenda to drive our narrative, our internal audience—our Marines—have focused more on the material things they believe they need instead of the requirement for personal professional development of our leaders and the pursuit of tactical competence across our units.

The three reasons mentioned above have also combined with an institutional obstacle that currently stands in the way of enabling maneuver warfare. This institutional obstacle is the way we man units that inhibits the timely building of cohesive teams. The “business rules” approach to manning almost guarantees a lack of available time to form a cohesive unit and build the trust that is essential to the conduct of maneuver warfare. Based on our strategic guidance, the units that need to adhere to our warfighting policy the most are our close combat units, but they consistently seem to be the lowest priority for ensuring the best quality leadership at every level, particularly at the small unit level. We spend a great deal of time and effort selecting lieutenant colonel-level commanders and sergeants major, while spending little to no time ensuring that they have a fully manned and qualified command team all the way down to perhaps the most important point—the squad level.

The challenge with all that has been stated above is that there is perceived to be a “say-do” gap in that we profess to believe in our maneuver warfare philosophy, but, in practice, we are doing things that undermine our ability to adhere to that philosophy for a variety of reasons. This say-do gap creates dissonance within our ranks while undermining the credibility of senior leaders and belief in the institution overall.

Maneuver Warfare’s Essential Ingredients

Our philosophy of maneuver warfare can only exist when essential ingredients are present. The first, most important, ingredient in maneuver warfare is having leaders who possess maturity, intelligence, and a coach/teach/mentor mentality. Also, these leaders must understand our philosophy thoroughly and possesses the ability to inculcate every aspect of it in their units. The lack of such leaders inhibits getting to even the rudiments of our philosophy because if the leader is not interested or does not understand it, no one else in the unit will care. As with just about everything else, it has to start with the unit commanding officer, and since we seem to be suffering from anti-intellectualism where so many of our leaders do not read and study their profession anywhere near enough, many leaders today too often lack the required level of understanding.

The second ingredient is unit cohesion. It comes from a team having all its key leadership positions filled and stable for the entire duration of its training, deployment, and recovery period. It also comes from a solid and challenging training regimen—based on a clearly understood higher purpose—that demonstrates to all on the team that each member can be counted on and assists all leaders in understanding the capabilities and the limitations of their seniors and subordinates. Sun Tzu told us to know ourselves, and this is what cohesion enables. Without knowing ourselves and coming together as a team, we would merely be lucky to beat any opponent.

The third ingredient is competence. Competence on the part of seniors and subordinates needs to come both upon their arrival with a solid base of knowledge regarding the billet they will hold, as well as participating as part of the team during the training period that demonstrates the competence of all the unit’s leaders. This demonstration of competence further enables cohesion. Without competence in the senior leader, subordinates doubt the capacity of the unit to accomplish any mission, and the effect is corrosive in the extreme. Without competent subordinates, leaders distrust their subordinates’ ability to fulfill their intent in an effective way. In both cases, units experience difficulty in building cohesion, and their poor performance reflects this condition during training, or worse, in combat.

When you combine the ingredients above, you gain the trust between seniors and subordinates that is absolutely critical and which enables them to operate as a team with little more than intent to go by as the guiding premise. This trust enables seniors to know that their subordinates will take their intent and accomplish the mission in the best manner possible, regardless of changing conditions, and require little more in the way of guidance unless the intent needs to change. It also enables subordinates to trust that their seniors will not micro-manage them or pull the rug out from under them when they take whatever action is required to accomplish the intent provided. There is a reason why people refer to the speed of trust—when you have it, you need less communication, and it provides for a great deal more initiative which results in greater agility across the organization. Without it, you have leaders hesitant to make decisions and more oriented on protecting themselves than in accomplishing the mission as quickly and effectively as possible.

What is described above can best be stated as the maneuver warfare equation: Quality Leaders + Extended Cohesion + Core Competence = TRUST. This trust is essential to action maneuver warfare. Without trust, there can be no mission command. Without trust, combined arms is dangerous at worst, ineffective at best. Trust is the fundamental fuel that is needed for the future fight. Our Corps’ challenge is that almost every institutional process we utilize works against this equation, and when coupled with a high operational tempo, we will always fall short. With that said though, we do achieve this ideal in some cases with the commanders who “get it” and work to achieve this in the units they command. Absent the institutional processes that standardize and enable the equation above, we will fail to achieve consistent and predictable outcomes. In order to reinvigorate maneuver warfare, we have to change the way we educate, man, train, and equip our close combat forces, which is where we need this capability the most.

Reinvigorating Maneuver Warfare in the 21st Century

To alleviate the challenges mentioned above and thereby enable the Corps to return to fulfilling our maneuver warfare philosophy, we need to treat the close combat forces of the Marine Corps differently. Given our strategic guidance, these forces are our Corps’ direct bid for success when executing daily tasks in the current and future operating environments. As our strategic guidance specifically directs, these close combat units must be educated, manned, trained, and equipped differently from the rest of the Marine Corps. An analogy would be a NFL team. Everyone in the organization is a member of the team, but those who go out onto the field to engage with the opposing team directly are the ones who get the most focus, so they are treated differently from everyone else. They are the team’s bid for success—they win the game through their actions on the field. It is the same for our close combat units, so they must be treated differently also. The changes recommended below apply across the Marine Corps in some cases, but apply to our close combat force in particular:

Education. We need to establish career length PME continuums for our officers and SNCOs, with progress in them tied to promotion and strictly enforced. It has to be more than just attending a formal PME course or accomplishing it through distance education. All of our leaders need to understand that they have joined a profession and that there are career length continuing education requirements that must be accomplished to continue to be a member of the profession of arms. We are currently working on proposals for these continuums, which, if adopted, need to be sustained and enforced across the Marine Corps. We must have more intelligent leaders at every level who truly understand our philosophy and what is required to make it work. This becomes even more imperative as we increase in rank and responsibility. As former Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis once said, “the price of a lack of competence in our profession is filling body bags until we figure it out.” This has never been acceptable, but as the pace of change in the operating environment gets faster and the challenges get more complex, his statement is truer now than ever.

Manning. We need to prioritize stability and cohesion over a longer term in our close combat forces much more than we do now. As soon as a close combat unit returns from post-deployment leave, all of the new members they are going to get should be standing by and ready to join to enable the team to cohere and train throughout the entire work up period. This in particular means leaders at their normal table of organization rank with the training they need to set them up for success accomplished before they arrive at their unit.

Each leader in a close combat formation needs to be periodically evaluated, to include 360-degree evaluations, to eradicate toxic leadership. These evaluations can be used with more junior leaders to influence them to be better leaders if there is a challenge, but as leaders become more senior, they get less of a chance for remediation, especially if they have been counseled earlier in their career for the lack of appropriate leadership. Our Marines deserve only the best, most committed leaders we can provide, and we need to be ruthless in the pursuit of that objective. Again, leaders in close combat units have to be treated differently. We try as an institution to enable stringent screening of commanders, but we continue to see evidence that we still have room to improve.

We need to ensure our small unit leaders are competent and have something that sets them apart from the junior Marines they are leading. We can do this by making the advanced infantry training courses provided by the Schools of Infantry both required and “Ranger School-like” experiences for our junior leaders. This will cause them to realize that before they go, they need to be well prepared, and when they return, they are a different person from the Marine they were previously. The more junior courses should be a requirement for promotion to the next grade with the honor graduate promoted two ranks. This will generate a much better sense of confidence in our junior leaders and will enable the Marines they lead to truly look up to them as someone they can aspire to be—they will also be more likely to be the role model leaders that we need given the guidance we have received. The Squad Leader Development Program is a step in the right direction, but it is not nearly enough.

We need to raise the required GT score as well as the lower age limit for membership in our close combat units so that we get the smarter, more mature Marines we need. The Information Age we are in has generated a sense of transparency through increased access to information which means that more people, to include our Marines, are “influence-able” by the dissemination of disinformation. This is especially true since many of our young Marines are not inclined to dig deeply or think critically about what they are mentally absorbing. If it rhymes with what they want to believe, they are inclined to accept it as fact. As we pursue our national interests across the globe, our Marines must understand the impact of their every action, or inaction, or we will continue to experience challenges in the operational environment. Whether willful or not, ignorance threatens our ability to accomplish our assigned missions, undermines public confidence in our institution, and erodes trust within our ranks.

An adjunct to what was stated above is that the more junior members of our close combat units need to understand that they are not entitled to be there. They should have to earn their spot on the team, and keep it over time, through demonstrated performance in all aspects of training and being a Marine 24/7. Failure to comply means being warned and counseled at first then cut from the close combat team for failure to adjust. When cut, they should be placed in a pool of Marines who have also failed to comply. These Marines will continue to train in order to try and earn a spot in a different unit (as long as there are no legal or behavioral issues) and will have one more chance to be a part of a close combat unit if they are recommended for that chance by the leadership of the training pool. If they fail again, they are given another MOS or a job elsewhere supporting the fleet. This effort is designed to get at the “need to belong” that Dick Couch speaks of in his book A Tactical Ethic (NEED COMPLETE INFORMATION). If Marines know they will have to earn their spot, then protect what they have earned through continuous performance, just like on a football team, most will rise to the occasion with a corresponding rise in the competence and cohesion of our close combat units. Once they realize that they can lose their spot, they will work a great deal harder to stay there and the training pools will not be as large as some might think.

Training. Our close combat units deploy for different reasons and their training is, and should continue to be, oriented on the challenges they will face once deployed. That said, there still needs to be a culminating event that everyone recognizes will likely be more difficult than what they will face when deployed. Whether this is a Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation or an Service-level training exercise, it needs to be standardized from the standpoint that the evaluators see many different units and can best judge the unit they are currently looking at by direct comparison. It also needs to be fully instrumented to enable the collection of every aspect of the exercise. This will enable data analysis for identification of trends that need to be fixed across the force. They should also train against a live, thinking enemy, and train to failure at every opportunity—with each event reviewed in the after-action review process and reset to be run again if needed to cement in the lessons that need to be learned.

The physical training for close combat units also needs to be different from the rest of the Marine Corps. To get to the warrior athletes we need, the regimen needs to include aspects of functional fitness as well as hiking and combat endurance courses as part of a regular routine for these forces. It should also include nutrition counseling and the involvement of athletic trainers to prevent injury and help with recovery when injury occurs. We have made a start in this area but need to do more. There should also be a different Combat Fitness Test for close combat units that involves some challenges and tactical tasks coupled with hiking and speed marching to ensure that every member of the team is in peak physical condition and able to keep up under combat conditions. Once again, different rules for the close combat units that are our bid for success on the battlefield.

Equipping. The way we spend money has to demonstrate what is most important to us and that means we should be spending a great deal more on our close combat units. By several estimates that were validated by the Office of the Secretary of Defense continuing and professional education as well as listed in our strategic guidance, these close combat units take 90 percent of the casualties in combat, yet form the smallest percentage of our Marine Corps overall. An accelerated acquisition process coupled with prioritizing close combat units will enable them, and only them, to get the best equipment and technology available in the shortest amount of time. This focus on our close combat units will significantly enhance our chances of winning in combat, but it will also demonstrate to the members of those units that they are indeed our main focus. Special operations forces already have this focus, and the more we can approach what they do for their teams, the better. This is not to make our close combat units a close replica of special operations forces, but to give them more confidence in what they are using in combat and more confidence in themselves as a team. We have to ensure that any fight we engage in with our close combat units is not a fair fight in any way. We have to dominate and win every fight, or we will have lost in everyone else’s eyes. The confidence that comes from clear dominance is priceless.

Enabling and Sustaining

Bureaucracies follow certain predictable behaviors regardless of the requirements levied upon them. As a large, bureaucratic institution we struggle against organizational friction to enact lasting change —the recommendations contained in this article are no exception. Making some or all of the changes recommended in this article has the potential to reinvigorate maneuver warfare, but change of this nature also takes more time than most think—it is a generational shift that must be sustained over time. When we get distracted by a high operational tempo, we tend to lose focus. To prevent this, we should establish maneuver warfare tactical contact teams consisting of recognized experts who visit exercises, talk to the participants, observe operations, and provide relevant lessons learned to all concerned. These contact teams should be the conduit through which lessons are disseminated in all directions and can be the “directed telescope” for the Commandant to be able to measure and influence progress toward enabling the maneuver warfare culture throughout the Marine Corps, but in particular, in our close combat units where it is essential to success.

All of this is a great deal to ask, but so is combat, especially when data indicates that the units we are talking about take the overwhelming percentage of casualties in any fight. Becoming a part of one of these units, as well as continuing to maintain one’s position or move up in one of them has to be something different from the average Marine experience. There are those who will call these changes unfair but so is taking 90 percent of the casualties in any fight. Institutionalizing the measures required to reinvigorate and maintain a culture of maneuver warfare are vitally necessary to ensure that the next close combat fight we engage in is a crushing and thoroughly demoralizing experience for anyone who chooses to be our opponent in that fight.

by Capts Alexander Irion & Robert Callison

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”

-GEN George S. Patton

During an October 2019 Lecture Series entitled Developing Leaders for Maneuver Warfare at Marine Corps University, former Secretary of Defense, James N. Mattis, was asked what he thought was the biggest threat to the preservation of democracy in the United States.1 His response included a thoughtful analysis of likely threats to democracy at home and abroad and how they would be mitigated in a future contested environment—through vicious harmony enabled by the human interface at all levels of command.2 He described the human interface as a system of feedback loops informed by intent and capable of learning and adapting.3 Echoing pages of MCDP 1, Warfighting, Secretary Mattis’ sentiments demonstrate how, through the integration of commander’s intent and the human interface, leaders can build trust, open lines of communication within their organization, and promote concepts of maneuver warfare—like mission command.

Threats to the United States’ command and control architecture reinforce an important principle regarding the effective application of commander’s intent: the greater the probability of conducting operations in distributed or communications-degraded environments, the greater the responsibility of our Nation’s commanders to skillfully issue clear and concise intent.4 The ability of our naval forces to persistently operate in contested, anti-access environments will require simple commander’s intent to promote intelligent initiative.5 Simplicity in orders and intent will clarify end states, increase speed in decision making, and generate trust in subordinate execution of operations in an anticipated communications-degraded environment.6

As LtGen Steven Boutelle points out in The Art of Command, “The effectiveness of today’s armed forces leadership will define the future of the nation.”7 To emphasize the importance of simple commander’s intent supporting future U.S. naval operations, this article examines ADM Lord Viscount Horatio Nelson’s use of commander’s intent at The Battle of Trafalgar and Field Marshal William Slim’s use of simple orders to unify the British 14th Army during World War II.

Commander’s Intent and the Human Interface

Emphasizing the role of individual behavior within the naval Services through organizing principles like commander’s intent can foster a culture of intelligent initiative. Studies of multi-domain battles throughout history highlight the importance of incorporating simple commander’s intent in future concepts of operations.8 The tactical art of ADM Nelson sheds light on the effectiveness of simple commander’s intent when combating a numerically superior naval force.

On 21 October 1805, ADM Nelson defeated the combined fleets of the French and Spanish navies during the Battle of Trafalgar off the coast of Spain.9 The victory concluded with all British vessels intact, 22 ships from the combined French and Spanish fleets destroyed, and French ADM Pierre-Charles Villeneuve taken prisoner aboard his flagship. It was described as, “The most decisive naval battle of the [Napoleonic Wars], conclusively ending French plans to invade England.”10 The victory was achieved through ADM Nelson’s belief in the value of commander’s intent and his deviation from formal ship-of-the-line warfare typical to 18th century fighting sail tactics.11

At the time, the British practice was for commanders to centralize control of the fleet under a single commander using line-ahead battle formations.12 Conventional line-ahead battle formations organized fleets in parallel lines that were good for communication but limited their dispersion.13 At the Battle of Trafalgar, ADM Nelson arranged his ships in columns, directing, “The Order of Sailing is to be the Order of Battle.”14 His unconventional use of column formations facilitated speed and independent maneuver of British ships—and allowed his fleet to approach ADM Villeneuve’s linear formation perpendicularly. Shaping actions afforded by his maneuvers created additional fields of fire for his broadside-mounted 24-pounder long guns, which supported feints and ultimately broke ADM Villeneuve’s lines.15

ADM Nelson unified the actions of his captains through commander’s intent, effectively overcoming anticipated degradations in communications through his use of a column formation.16 In his personal journal, ADM Nelson referred to his unorthodox methods of decentralizing authority as “the Nelson touch,” writing, “I am anxious to join the Fleet, for it would add to my grief if any other man was to give them the Nelson touch, which we say is warranted never to fail.”17 Prior to the battle, he created a common understanding of his objectives, enabling decisive actions at the captain level.

ADM Nelson organized the actions of his subordinates through simple guiding principles like, “No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.” He decentralized authority to open fire down to his fleet’s captains and emphasized the importance of attacking effectively first.18 One recollection said, “If signals could not be seen from the flagship, [captains] had complete autonomy to engage the enemy as they saw fit.”19 On the morning of battle, ADM Nelson signaled to his captains: “Engage the enemy more closely.”20 The control of the battle was effectively handed off to his captains, bringing unmatched speed and decisiveness to the fight. ADM Nelson’s use of commander’s intent built trust and unleashed intelligent initiative by emphasizing short and concise guidance.

Modern applications of commander’s intent—shaped by LtGen John A. Lejeune’s 1920 philosophy of the relationship between officers and men, Gen Alfred M. Gray’s 1989 model of teacher-student relationships, and Gen David H. Berger’s 2019 emphasis on measuring the effectiveness of planning processes by the quality of their intent—continue to demonstrate the importance of enabling vicious harmony by promoting subordinate initiative.21 Through simple guidance based on a common understanding of objectives and decentralized decision making, our naval forces will continue to confirm the value ADM Nelson placed on intent by allowing decentralized operations to thrive in distributed and communications-degraded environments.

Defeating the Undefeated

Enhancing the lethality of the U.S. naval Services through proposed complex force packages will require organizing principles to endow a shared sense of responsibility across a large number of distributed military platforms.22 Harmonizing the actions of a large number of distributed military platforms can be accomplished through simple unified intent, as demonstrated by historical examples such as then-LTG Slim in his defeat of the Japanese 15th Army during World War II.23

In his memoir, Defeat into Victory, Field Marshal Slim highlighted the effectiveness of commander’s intent in leading the British 14th Army to victory over formidable Japanese forces during World War II.24 From 1942 to 1943, LTG Slim commanded the Burma Corps and the XV Corps, both of which faced critical defeats against Japanese forces during the Burma Campaign.25 Widely renowned in the Asiatic-Pacific theater for their training and discipline, LTG Ren’ya Mutaguchi’s Japanese 15th Army prioritized speed in tactics to exploit gaps in allied defensive positions, allowing them to beat back the British forces from Burma into India during the Arakan Campaign in 1943.26

Following the 1943 Japanese defeat of the British XV Corps in the Arakan Campaign, LTG Slim was assigned to command the British 14th Army and given orders to prevent Japanese seizure of British India.27 Upon assuming command, he identified many struggles his soldiers would have to overcome—from correcting a notably poor supply chain to altering his troop’s mindset that Mutaguchi’s forces were unable to be beaten. Most important to LTG Slim was his need to organize the British 14th Army—which comprised British, Gurkha, Burmese, African, American, and Chinese troops—into simple chains of command.28

Soldiers from the British 14th Army were collectively characterized by a vast medley of cultures, languages, and religions. LTG Slim unified this disparate force by establishing three transparent priorities for the British 14th Army which he nested in subordinate priorities in every level of his command: build a cohesive army, prioritize small-unit defeats of Japanese forces, and leverage coalition force capabilities.29  LTG Slim emphasized the importance of his priorities at the tactical level to support the achievement of his strategic objectives in Burma.30

To build a cohesive army, he reinforced the three aforementioned priorities by “speaking tirelessly to his men and [explaining] to them how each man’s contribution [to his priorities] played an important part in the overall result.”31 He regularly visited the front lines and delivered intent to his subordinate commanders in their own language, using interpreters when he was unable to do it himself. He decentralized control of his distribution network to ground maneuver forces to keep supply lines moving during Japanese attacks.32 Furthermore, considering the feedback he received regarding the needs of his troops, LTG Slim exploited his robust logistical network to provide culturally appropriate meals to his troops with religious dietary restrictions.33

Transparency in goals and decentralization of authority to competent subordinates generated quick wins at the small-unit level, allowing the British 14th Army to overcome the mindset that the Japanese were supermen and unbeatable. Deliberately limiting the size and scope of his tactical objectives, he emphasized the conduct of small patrols to build confidence in his troops’ abilities to move and fight in the Burmese jungle.34 The success of the British 14th Army from 1943-1945 during the Burma Campaign was the result of  LTG Slim’s simple orders and organizing principles, ability to transform the army into a winning team, and unifying principles around a common cause.35 Utilizing the momentum of small-unit victories, LTG Slim adhered to the leadership advice he received as a young cadet: “Hit the other fellow, as quick as you can, and as hard as you can, where it hurts him the most, when he ain’t lookin!”36

With coalition support from American LTG Joseph Stilwell, USA, commanding Chinese forces and British American GEN Orde Wingate commanding Chindit forces, the Allied forces disrupted Japanese supply lines, limited Japanese freedom of maneuver, and stunted Mutaguchi’s ability to reinforce the Japanese 15th Army. Accordingly, “in March 1945, the British 14th Army took Mandalay and the Japanese stronghold of Meiktila.”37 By May 1945, the remaining Japanese 15th Army forces were successfully repelled from Burma and unable to seize British India, allowing Allied forces to establish critical supply lines into China.38

LTG Slim understood that true leaders do not inspire through writing or dictating their orders, but through leading their people and being with them.39  He built a leadership team where his army operated more from his commander’s intent than written orders, and he developed strong relationships that imparted trust in his leaders and earned trust in return. In a post-career analysis of his application of orders to his maneuver warfare mindset which contributed to victory in Burma, Field Marshal Slim notes,

I suppose dozens of operation orders have gone out in my name, but I never actually wrote one myself. I always had someone who could do that better than I could. One part of the order I did, however, draft myself—the intention … it is always the most important.”40

LTG Slim’s use of simple priorities provides a relevant example of how to establish command and control systems that are flexible, adaptable, and resilient.41 The anticipated speed of a future conflict reinforces the importance of decentralizing authority to the lowest competent authority.42 Emphasizing speed in decision making through simple priorities promotes certainty in uncertain environments and generates the bottom-up initiative necessary to maintain tempo in the absence of direct communications.43 Simple priorities nested in every level of command exploit the full potential of the U.S. naval Services’ junior enlisted and officers, and will no doubt enable success in a future contested environment.

Unleashing Intelligent Initiative

Maintaining the United States’ strategic advantage in the emerging operational environment will require tactical decision makers to intelligently respond to evolving threats impacting the U.S. naval forces’ operational and strategic objectives.44 Historical military operations during the Napoleonic Wars and World War II, modern guidance like Gen Berger’s Commandant’s Planning Guidance, and even industry best-practices highlight the effective use of commander’s intent as an asymmetric advantage critical to supporting distributed and complex force packages.

FedEx chief executive officer and Marine veteran Fred Smith’s simple guidance to his employees integrates speed with control for a complex and distributed organization responsible for more than fifteen million shipments per day: “get all packages to their destination free of damage, in a cost-effective manner, and within the shipment period specified by the customer.”45 Smith’s use of simple intent promotes intelligent initiative for more than 450,000 FedEx employees worldwide and harmonizes subordinate execution of the FedEx mission in line with his priorities.

The gradual erosion of American technological advantages demonstrates the need to emphasize commander’s intent at the tactical level, in order to increase effectiveness during distributed operations.46 A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Version 2.0, highlights the importance of decentralized authority as a priority to maintain strategic advantage within a contested maritime domain.47 Achieving strategic victories in the emerging operational environment will require execution of intelligent tactical initiatives through quality commander’s intent because as Alfred Mahan noted, “[Subordinate] action by the various great divisions of the fleet [have their] own part contributory to the general whole.”48

As anticipated in Gen Berger’s planning guidance, the application of maneuver warfare philosophy will increase as we divest of legacy systems that no longer support the speed of our operational requirements.49 Leadership in the high speed and distributed operations of a future contested environment will require skillful judgement in the application of maneuver warfare through the use of succinct, effective, and easily-disseminated commander’s intent to promote the same intelligent initiative demonstrated by ADM Nelson off the coast of Spain and by LTG Slim in Burma.

Notes

1. Gen James N. Mattis, “Developing Leaders for Maneuver Warfare: General Mattis on Leadership,” (lecture, Quantico, VA, October 2019).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. James Acton, “Command and Control in the Nuclear Posture Review: Right Problem Wrong Solution,” War on the Rocks, (February 2018), available at https://warontherocks.com; and Jeffrey Reilley, “Multidomain Operations: A Subtle but Significant Transition in Military Thought,” Air & Space Power Journal, (Maxwell AFB, AL:Air University Press, 2016).
5. Gen David H. Berger, Commandant’s Planning Guidance, (Washington, DC: 2019).
6. Anthony Piscitelli, The Marine Corps Way of War: The Evolution of the U.S. Marine Corps from Attrition to Maneuver Warfare in the Post-Vietnam Era, (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2017); Liang, Qiao and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999); and “Multidomain Operations: A Subtle but Significant Transition in Military Thought.”
7. Harry S. Laver, The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell, (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2010).
8. James Lacey, “An Historical Look at the Future,” (lecture, Quantico, VA, August).
9. John B. Hattendorf, Trafalgar and Nelson, (Newport, RI: The Naval War College Museum, 2006).
10. Dan Fogel, “Lord Nelson Can Teach us Lots About Strategy,” SP3, (May 2019), available at http://www.spthree.com.
11. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Ship-of-the-line Warfare,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, (August 2010), available at https://www.britannica.com. See also Trafalgar and Nelson.
12. “Lord Nelson Can Teach Us Lots About Strategy.” See also “Ship-of-the-line Warfare.”
13. Staff, “Battle of Trafalgar: Napoleonic Wars,” Learning History, available at https://www.learning-history.com.
14. Horatio Nelson, Victory, off Cadiz, 9th October 1805, (October1805), available at https://www.bl.uk.
15. Trafalgar and Nelson.
16. “Ship-of-the-line Warfare.”
17. Oliver Warner, Nelson’s Last Diary and the Prayer before Trafalgar, (London, UK: Seeley, Service & Co., 1971).
18. Wayne P. Hughes and Robert Girrier. Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations, Third Edition. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018).
19. Christopher Gabel, Christopher Willbanks, and James Willbanks, Great Commanders, (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2014)
20. Ibid.
21. John A. Lejeune, Relations between Officers and Men. Marine Corps Order No. 29. 1920; See also Headquarters Marine Corps, MCDP 1, Warfighting, (Washington, DC: 1997); and the Commandant’s Planning Guidance
22. John Paschkewitz, “Mosaic Warfare,” (lecture, Quantico, VA:, August 2019); DARPA, “DARPA Tiles Together a Vision of Mosaic Warfare,” available at https://www.darpa.mil; and Benjamin Jensen, “Innovation: Myths and Meaning,” (lecture, Quantico, VA: August 2019).
23. “DARPA Tiles Together a Vision of Mosaic Warfare.”
24. William Slim, Defeat into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1943-1945, (New York, NY: Cooper Square Press, 2000).
25. David Cotter, “Field Marshal William Slim,” (lecture, Fort Leavenworth, KS, January 2019.
26. Maj N. R. M. Borton, British Army, “The 14th Army in Burma: A Case Study in Delivering Fighting Power,” Defence Studies, (Milton Park, UK: Taylor & Francis, 2002).
27. “Field Marshal William Slim.” See also Thomas M. Jordan, The Operational Commander’s Role in Planning and Executing a Successful Campaign, (Fort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, 1992).
28. Owen Connelly, On War and Leadership: The Words of Combat Commanders from Frederick the Great to Norman Schwarzkopf, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
29. “Field Marshal William Slim.”
30. Ibid.
31. Thomas Jordan, The Operational Commander’s Role in Planning and Executing a Successful Campaign, (Fort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, 1992).
32. Defeat into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1943-1945.
33. Ibid.
34. Andrew Knighton, “Bill Slim and WWII’s Forgotten Army—One of The Most Successful Commanders of the War,” War History Online, (December 2017), available at https://www.warhistoryonline.com.
35. Aivars Purins, “Uncle Bill of the Forgotten Army or the Leadership of Field-Marshal Lord Slim.” Baltic Security & Defence Review, (Tartu, EE: Baltic Defence College, 2008).
36. Defeat into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1943-1945.
37. “Bill Slim and WWII’s Forgotten Army—One of The Most Successful Commanders of the War.”
38. “Field Marshal William Slim.”
39. Defeat into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1943-1945.
40. Ibid.
41. James N. Mattis and Bing West. Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, (New York, NY: Random House, 2019); See also Commandant’s Planning Guidance.
42. “Developing Leaders for Maneuver Warfare: General Mattis on Leadership.”
43. MCDP 1, Warfighting.
44. Rob Wittman, “Backing the Corps: Ensuring the Future of the Amphibious Force,” War on the Rocks, (October 2018), available at https://warontherocks.com.
45. Chad Storlie, “Manage Uncertainty with Commander’s Intent,” Harvard Business Review, (November 2010), available at https://hbr.org. See also FedEx Corporation, “Corporate Fact Sheet,” FedEx, available at https://about.van.fedex.com.
46. John Kroger, “Charting the Future of Education for the Navy-Marine Corps Team,” War on the Rocks, (November 2019), available at https://warontherocks.com.
47. United States Navy, A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Version 2.0, (Washington, DC: 2018); see also United States Navy, Navy Leader Development Framework, Version 3.0, (Washington, DC: 2019).
48. Alfred T. Mahan, Types of Naval Officers Drawn from the History of the British Navy, (London, UK: S. Low, 1902). See also Williamson Murray, “MCDP 7,” Marine Corps Gazette, (Quantico, VA: November 2019).
49. Adam Elkus, “Man, the Machine, and War.” War on the Rocks, (November 2015), available at https://warontherocks.com. See also Commandant’s Planning Guidance.