This paper draws on material covered in John Blaxland, The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard (CUP, 2014).[1]
Soldiers of today’s Australian Army draw on the inspiration of their predecessors. Following British tactics and procedures for the first half of the 20th century and beyond, Australian soldiers have fought at the direction of their government in conflicts and places ranging from the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa from 1899 to 1902, to Gallipoli in 1915, Beersheba in 1917 and Amiens in 1918, to Tobruk in 1941 and Kokoda in 1942. After the world wars, Australian soldiers also fought at places such as Kapyong in Korea in 1951 and Long Tan in Vietnam in 1966. Increasingly, they also have shaped their thinking, practices and procedures from the military operations conducted during the post-Cold War years and the conflicts fought since the onset of the so-called Global War on Terror, with growing American influence on concepts and procedures. Along the way, mission-type tactics, which came to be known as ‘mission command’, came into the Army’s vocabulary. Influenced by American precedent and drawing on the German concept of Auftragstaktik, the term came into vogue late in the 1980s. The Australian Army adopted it readily enough in the 1990s, in part because allies had adopted it and because the concept reflected an approach that echoed that taken by Australian military commanders in Australia’s past wars. This article reflects on how and why that happened. Australian forces effectively practised the concept of mission command during the world wars and beyond not because it was a uniquely Australian practice based on its societal culture but because they followed established British command and control doctrine. With technology enabling commanders to reach down from the highest to the lowest levels, a question remains over how much it will be possible to apply in networked coalition conflicts of the future.
Australia’s Military Pedigree Prior to ‘Mission Command’
The fixation on Gallipoli in Australian popular culture has overshadowed Australia’s premier wartime field commander, Lieutenant General (later General) Sir John Monash. Under his command, the Australian Corps in France was instrumental, alongside the Canadian Corps of Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Currie, in some of the greatest feats of arms seen in the First World War.[2] Monash brought his skills as an engineer to an approach to battle that involved precise calculations and timings, and what Monash (and others) described as ‘orchestration’—combining the effects of infantry, artillery, armour and air power, along with supporting engineers, logistics, communications and intelligence—to inflict the Schwartze Tag, or ‘Black Day’, on the Imperial German Army on 8 August 1918. While Monash’s contribution was part of a larger allied offensive involving the British Fourth and French First armies, this set-piece battle was a breakthrough moment that was followed by weeks of some of the most fluid action on the battlefield witnessed since the German onslaught in August 1914. Monash was meticulous in planning; he was both commander and chief of staff. His orders were very prescriptive, leaving nothing to chance. Evidently, he did not embrace decentralised command but kept the reins very tight. In the end, this proved very effective in the context of late 1918.
Nonetheless, British doctrine—which Australian forces largely adhered to—was, as Dr Christopher Pugsley observed, ‘based on a command philosophy of centralised intent and decentralised execution’. In effect, this is not substantively different in intent to contemporary British military doctrine. Pugsley quoted extensively from the various British doctrinal manuals to support his case, showing that the British approach has essentially been what today is termed ‘mission command’.[3]
The German approach to mission-type tactics had stood the Germans in good stead in terms of tactics and operations, but their competence would be matched by such orchestration. In time, the concept of Auftragstaktik would evolve and be formalised in time for the next war.[4]
Meanwhile, the Australian approach to conducting military operations also was influenced by experiences in the Middle East, with desert warfare during both world wars, where extensive battlefield manoeuvre was both feasible and more common. Lieutenant General (later General) Sir Harry Chauvel’s exploits with the Desert Mounted Corps in Egypt and Palestine in 1917 and 1918 were influential. The Battle of Beersheba serves as an appropriate example. In this instance, while the battle had largely been won by British infantry, the committal of the 4th Light Horse Brigade secured the victory and saved the wells from being destroyed. The Battle of Megiddo in 1918 and the pursuit operations following the breakthrough offers an even better example. While the term ‘mission command’ was not in popular usage back then, in effect the concept was put into practice in these battles.
In contrast to the experience of trench warfare in Europe, the legacy of this experience was of a fluid and not just positional form of warfare.[5] The same could be said of the exploits of the Australians who fought over similar terrain a generation later. While not described as mission command, these battles involved the application of mission-type tactics, including the issuance of clear orders and a level of delegated authority for commanders and subordinate unit and sub-unit commanders to operate using their initiative, albeit within clearly demarcated limits. This was manifested in Australia’s Pacific War in what could be described as the corporal’s battle that epitomised close-range jungle warfare. This approach stood in contrast to another model applied by Australian forces in the Pacific: the more orchestrated form of littoral operations. Two different styles of command were needed to perform these types of operations.
The Australian experience in the Second World War also featured the exercise of discretion and initiative, of mission-type tactics at unit and sub-unit level, with fighting in the jungles and islands to the north of Australia. There, amphibious operations, light forces, limited availability of artillery (with a concomitant increased reliance on air support) and small-team actions, including assertive patrolling, featured prominently. Tanks also proved to be remarkably effective in this environment when operating dispersed and directly in support of advancing infantry—much as they had been used a generation earlier under General Monash in France. At the war’s height, the Australian Army learnt to master combined-arms warfare in the New Guinea campaign from 1943 and conducted division-level amphibious operations in New Guinea in 1944 and Borneo in 1945.[6]
Arguably, Australia’s overly romantic focus on the trials of the battle of Kokoda has masked the significant success in combined arms and joint warfare as the Second World War progressed. For much of the time, the tactics employed were driven by equipment shortages and limited numbers of adequately trained personnel as much as by the inaccessibility of the battlefields. This combination led to a strong emphasis on battle cunning and initiative based on mastering local conditions. These are characteristics that would come to be associated with the notion of mission command.
When the Australian Army began publishing its own doctrine in the 1950s and 1960s the concepts expressed in today’s ‘mission command’ were evident,[7] although it is more restrictive in its intent than the previous British doctrine the army operated under. This indicates that the Australian Army doctrine was more prescriptive than that previously practised under British doctrine, and challenges the much-believed myth that the Australian Army showed a greater flair for initiative than the British Army.
During the Confrontation in Borneo, Australia’s approach to warfighting sought to empower local commanders to use their initiative and minimise their own casualties. They did this using stealthy patrols. Indeed, infantry section and platoon-sized teams had conducted sensitive cross-border ‘Claret’ patrols in Indonesian Borneo, demonstrating versatility and prowess with minimal casualties. This approach would largely be echoed during Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War.[8]
Vietnam War Experience
With the Army focused on Vietnam, counterinsurgency operations were emphasised for the following decade. The flow-on effect of the British ‘centralised intent and decentralised execution’ was practised in Vietnam, and afterwards in postwar exercises and training. Initially, in 1965, Australia committed an infantry battalion to fight as part of the 173rd US Airborne Brigade (Separate) in Bien Hoa province, north-east of Saigon. But Australians found US Army tactics inappropriate for them. Working closely with US forces at the tactical level disturbed Australian commanders. The American approach relied on drawing out the enemy and then retaliating with superior firepower, but this was costly in terms of their own casualties. Australian commanders sought to minimise casualties and to operate separately to implement more effectively British-influenced Australian tactics of stealthy jungle patrols, frugal use of force and carefully targeted ambushing. The Australian Government felt the best way to bolster further alliance credentials while enabling their troops to operate according to their own procedures was to increase the force size and take responsibility for a discrete area. By 1966, therefore, Australia increased its land force commitment in Vietnam to a combined-arms (light infantry based) brigade-sized force called the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF). 1ATF was tasked with operating principally in its own distinct province, Phuoc Tuy, south-east of Saigon. In addition, separate air and naval contributions were made alongside American counterparts, largely on a single-service basis.[9]
The battle of Long Tan in August 1966 provides an example of the kind of mission-type tactics Australian soldiers were trained to undertake. In this instance, an infantry company on patrol a few kilometres away from the main base for 1ATF at Nui Dat encountered a regimental-sized enemy force in a rubber plantation. The company commander and the platoon commanders responded to the encounter with discipline and remarkable effectiveness, drawing on support from the rest of the task force to dominate on the battlefield.[10] Critics may contend that Long Tan had nothing to do with mission command. D Company, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment was tasked to search for the Viet Cong mortar base plates’ positions, following a mortar attack on the 1ATF base. What eventuated was an unexpected encounter battle and the men of D Company fighting for their lives in a desperate defensive action, in which the artillery played a major role in saving them. Nonetheless, the initiative and trusted teamwork of those on the ground and providing support from the rear reflected a recognition of the limits of one’s own resources, and the criticality of drawing in the combined-arms effects to achieve success.
Throughout the rest of the time Australian forces operated in Vietnam, mission command was regularly practised in that company commanders were given an area of operations, tasked with a mission and allowed to conduct it the best way they saw fit. This was all before ‘mission command’ was in the Army’s lexicon.
The practice of dealing with US tactics and equipment forced the Australian Army to reconsider its British-derived approach to warfighting. As one writer observed, the developments in tactics and doctrine of the Vietnam War period marked a substantial step in the process of developing Australian Army doctrine. It is little wonder, therefore, that when the concept of mission command came into vogue in US military circles after the Vietnam War, it would not be long before the term would come into usage in Australia as well.
1970s to 1990s: Exercises, Exchanges and Mission-Type Tactics
The Kangaroo exercises of the 1970s through to the late 1990s were predicated on the direct defence of continental Australia. These scenarios often involved deployment of small force elements widely dispersed with broad directives. These allowed for a significant level of local initiative, effectively (if not formally) involving mission-type tactics to be exercised by those involved.[11]
The Australian Army also would conduct a wide range of exercises and exchanges with the US Army and Marine Corps in the decades following the Vietnam War. These would facilitate a significant level of cross-pollination and awareness of conceptual developments in the US military—including the concept of mission command. The first exchange exercise in continental USA involved 165 Australians from armoured and infantry units undergoing ‘intensive familiarisation training’ at Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1976.
Another popular activity was Exercise Long Look. This provided an opportunity for soldiers to exchange places with counterparts in the British Army in the United Kingdom and West Germany. This was initiated in 1976 as a three-month personnel exchange rather than an exercise per se. It enabled 60 to 90 soldiers each year to broaden their knowledge and experience with the British Army. The arrangement providing participating soldiers with a wider understanding and enhanced cooperation between the two armies. It also provided excellent exposure to the challenges faced in preparing for a major power threat such as NATO faced in northern Europe, where the concept of mission command was gaining greater acceptance in the 1970s. In the case of the British Army, it was adopted formally in 1987.[12]
This practical experience, and the theoretical lessons to be learned from it, was impossible to replicate in Australia. It also exposed Australian soldiers to the emerging thinking about mission command. Much of this was exposure informed by increasingly frequent and popular reflections on the German concept of Auftragstaktik, which American and British senior commanders, staff college staff and strategists were absorbing in the wake of the evident failure in Vietnam.
In addition, Australia sent individual exchange students to institutions such as the German Army staff college, who were exposed to Auftragstaktik and returned to Australia with an almost missionary zeal to raise awareness of this conceptual work.[13] Beyond exchange students, combat-experienced Americans and Brits posted on exchange to Australia were also key. They helped not only to raise awareness but to shape the thinking of Army leadership about the efficacy of adopting mission command as an appropriate concept for the Australian Army.
In reflecting on the corporate memory and sense of perspective of Australian army commanders in the years following the Korean War, it is worth noting that the Australian Army had not been involved in combat operations above company level, with the exception of the fighting during the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Even though battalions deployed to a theatre of operations, in most instances, from Malaya to Afghanistan, the operations undertaken were largely at company level. Additionally, as an army that largely eschewed the study of military history, and with an unhealthy dose of parochial nationalism, hubris and anti-British history, its officers arguably had lost sight of its roots in command and control practices—British Army doctrine. Hence, when the idea of mission command was floated as a new concept based on German Auftragstaktik and discovered during the 1980s, one could easily come to believe that the concept was entirely novel and without precedent in the experience of the Australian Army. Nonetheless, with the allure of American doctrinal trends, the idea would be catapulted further in the years following the end of the Cold War.
Gulf War Catalyst?
The convincing and rapid defeat of Iraqi forces during the 1991 Gulf War displayed the effects on American and allied military capability arising from a revolution in information technology. Spectacular demonstrations of high technology for modern warfare popularised the notion of a ‘revolution in military affairs’, or RMA. The ‘revolutionary’ aspect was that advanced military technology appeared to portend a dramatic shift in the balance of power, favouring technologically superior forces over others.[14]
After the Gulf War in 1991 the author sensed that among his peers as junior officers there was a feeling that allied doctrine and methods had left Australia far behind as well. And by the late 1990s, considerable informal conceptual development was taking place within Army circles. To most thinkers within the Army, that understanding was encapsulated in a ‘manoeuvre warfare’ framework—avoiding hard spots and attacking through soft spots or ‘gaps’ to achieve a mission—where speedy and informed decision-making was considered critical to maximise fighting power and minimise casualties. The adoption of manoeuvre theory and mission command had been either driven from the bottom up (with manoeuvre theory) or at least grasped more fully there (with mission command). This was captured in the work of military scholars including William Lind in his Maneuver Warfare Handbook (1985) and Robert Leonhard in The Art of Maneuver (1994).[15] Their thought-provoking books helped stimulate conceptual development at a formative time. This predisposition to innovate and to challenge the bounds of guidance was more important than the hardware that came from the RMA and networked warfare.
A key document to emerge from the intellectual ferment aroused in the mid-to-late 1990s under Lieutenant General Frank Hickling’s tenure as Chief of Army was Land Warfare Doctrine 1: The Fundamentals of Land Warfare, written by a team from both Future Land Warfare and the Land Warfare Studies Centre and published by the Combined Arms Training and Development Centre in 1998. This forward-looking work was intended as a guide for the development of all Army doctrine. It saw mission command come into prominence in capstone Army doctrine—a place it would retain in subsequent iterations of the capstone document.[16]
In the years that followed, from 1999 onwards, the Australian Army faced a range of challenges, often enough where solider-level and junior commander initiative was critical to the avoidance of unnecessary escalation and the effective management of challenges on operations far from Australia’s shores. Informed by such challenges, and with a wealth of experience to draw on from recent operations, the Australian Army refined its conceptualisation of its likely operational environment. As a result, in 2004 the Army published a seminal paper entitled ‘Complex Warfighting’, which sought holistically to address the subject of warfare for the Australian Army. The paper described war as a fundamentally human, societal activity rather than a technical or engineering one. ‘Complex Warfighting’ articulated a comprehensive overview of the nature of warfare in the early 21st century and outlined an appropriate posture for modern armies. That paper sparked considerable debate. Dr (then Lieutenant Colonel) David Kilcullen was the lead author for this original and innovative exposition on the nature of modern war. Yet to many Australian military officers, Kilcullen‘s work was surprisingly uncontroversial. Perhaps this was because he managed to articulate what was a deeply ingrained part of the Australian Army’s culture. This, in part at least, was due to the fact that his writing echoed the Australian experience of warfighting in Vietnam and the approach to mission-type tactics which the Australian Army would come to know as mission command.
In December 2005 the Hardened and Networked Army (HNA) initiative was endorsed as part of the launch of the Strategic Update 2005. This and other initiatives reflected the concerns raised by the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, who argued that the Army needed to be hardened to be able to survive in an environment where every potential adversary had access to highly lethal hand-held anti-armour weapons. This expansion and modernisation built on the mission command mindset instilled in the Australian Army; it would permit the Army to deploy small, agile combined-arms teams mounted behind armour and with access to an array of joint direct and indirect fires. The ideal was that ultimately each soldier would be a ‘node in a seamless network of sensors and shooters’.[17]
In 2007 the Army identified nine ‘core behaviours’ that were intended, in part at least, to reinforce a learning disposition. They were used as the basis of the ‘I’m an Australian Soldier’ initiative, which stated that every soldier: (1) is an expert in close combat, (2) is a leader, (3) is physically tough, (4) is mentally prepared, (5) is committed to continuous learning and self-development, (6) is courageous, (7) takes the initiative, (8) works for the team and (9) demonstrates compassion.[18] The tabulation of these traits reflects the characteristics which make the application of mission command viable, down to the lowest tactical levels.
Mission Command and Five Reasons for Prowess
In The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard, I argued there are five reasons for the prowess of the Australian Army. These reasons help explain how the concept of mission command came to be practised under various guises in the Australian context. The first is the creation of common individual training and education institutions. These institutions reinforced the understanding of the Army’s various components as part of a trusted and collaborative combined-arms team. This is foundational for effective delegation of authority and confidence in subordinates’ abilities to carry out assigned tasks with limited additional direction.
The second reason for prowess was the emphasis on collective field training exercises and ‘battle evaluation’. Collective training brought together individual skills to amount to more than the sum of the parts. The ability to plan and undertake multifaceted combat exercises was a sign of a first-order army that could deploy from the barracks, simulating an operational deployment far from its home base. This adds to the confidence and the trust required for mission command to work. That practised trust and the confidence of knowing the fundamentals are also critical for effective and efficient exercise of mission command.
The third reason concerns the Army’s various regimental or corps identities. In many ways these have echoed the experience of other Commonwealth armies, notably the British, Canadian and New Zealand forces. The identity concerned internal specialisation, whereby relatively tight-knit communities of experts in the component arms and services of the Army (the regiments and corps) have developed family-like bonds of trust and friendship. The Army’s small size has contributed to the degree of familiarity and confidence achieved within a corps grouping. In this context, excellence can be fostered, enabling the niche areas to work together. The aggregate has come to be known as the ‘combined arms team’, which built and relied on a high level of trust in respective specialisations. The concept of mission command depends on the combined-arms team components working in a trusted and complementary way.
The fourth reason for prowess relates to Australia’s historic and enduring connection with great and powerful friends and significant regional partners. Personnel exchanges and interaction with counterparts from ABCANZ partner armies (America, Britain, Canada and New Zealand) have provided critical infusions of experience and innovation. There are many notable soldiers who have served on such exchanges and gained considerable professional benefit which they brought back with them to Australia. Indeed, the earlier manifestations of the mission command ethos stem from connections with the British army and the more recent manifestations draw on writings emanating from US military circles.
The fifth and most significant reason for the Army’s prowess concerns its links into society and Australian society’s links into its Army. There has long been a strong sense of Australian national identity linked to the Army, which has enabled it to attract high-calibre candidates as recruits, both as officers and as enlisted personnel. Lieutenant General (Retd) Peter Leahy saw the links into society as pivotal: ‘To me this is the strength of the Army—the citizen soldiers who bring community values with them, keep them in the Army and then go back to their communities.’[19] In addition, the Army’s recruiting system selected only those with physical prowess, agility and mental acumen. The Army’s links into society were reinforced by its sense of identity and values which reflected Australian culture. These values stressed promotion on merit as the principal consideration. They also draw on an educated core of people who can be assigned challenging, complicated tasks with confidence that only limited direction is required. In essence, it is about the educational and cultural predisposition to use one’s initiative; it is about the cognitive domain—what is between the ears.
The five reasons for prowess have helped create what, in a limited sphere at least, became a world-class military force with its own unique culture and distinct values. These factors were responsible for the Australian Army’s international reputation and regional edge. The Army demonstrated its capabilities for stability operations (such as counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief) as part of a ‘joint’ capability: that is, supported by air force, navy, intelligence, logistics, and command and control enabling components—admittedly often provided by allies. That joint capability enabled the Army to operate more effectively as part of a wider ‘interagency’ team, drawing on diplomatic, police and aid agency resources from across the arms of government. The development of this interagency approach, whereby mission-type tactics were employed, was demonstrated on operations in Bougainville, East Timor, Solomon Islands and elsewhere. While the terminology had changed, this reflected more continuity than change in the Australian Army’s organisational culture going back for more than a century.
Mission Command Crimped?
The years from 2005 to 2014 saw the peak of Australia’s military contribution to coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though Australian Army personnel continued to serve on operations in the years that followed. But these operations saw a succession of task groups deploy with tightly constrained mission directives and scope for initiative by local commanders. In part this reflected that these conflicts were far away from Australia’s shores, and Australia’s contributions were carefully calibrated to make a political and modest substantive contribution to the outcome of the conflicts.
This led to the sort of criticism levelled in 2008 at the senior ranks by then Major Jim Hammet, who wrote a piece for the Australian Army Journal entitled ‘We Were Soldiers Once’.[20] This provocative article outlined how infantry soldiers were feeling frustrated, noting that they were not being employed to their full potential. To Hammett, ‘the restrictions placed on deployed elements as a result of force protection and national policies have, at times, made Infantrymen ashamed of wearing their Australian uniform and regimental hat badge’. The Al-Muthanna Task Group (AMTG) which deployed in southern Iraq was a case in point. At least one AMTG commander complained that they had been sent on operations without a strategy and this significantly constrained their freedom of action and affected morale.
Conversely, there were others who felt that they had considerable freedom of action in how to conduct operations in Afghanistan—within the guidance provided from national and regional commanders. In reflecting on his experiences as commander of the Reconstruction Task Force (RTF) in Uruzgan province, then Lieutenant Colonel Mick Ryan observed that the Australian Army, and Headquarters Joint Operations Command charged with conducting operations, provided him and the RTF with a robust support infrastructure. Ryan’s Australian boss, the Baghdad-based national commander Brigadier Mick Crane (who had commanded forces in Oecussi in East Timor in 1999), exercised ‘mission command’. As Ryan explained, this meant that ‘once confident he knew I understood the strategic intent, he let me run RTF operations with the Dutch forces. I didn’t have to ask, I just did it’. [21]
Other constraints included bifurcated command channels with operational and national command managed separately. In Iraq and Afghanistan, deployed task groups operated to a local regional command chain in addition to the separate national command chain to a senior officer hundreds of kilometres away. As one veteran of multiple deployments observed, ‘it’s hard to work for two bosses’.[22] Indeed, mission command is more challenging to implement in a coalition or multi-agency setting, where arguably there are too many cultural variations to enable the high levels of trust required to make it work well in a crisis.
Another challenge in making mission command workable is ensuring a high degree of trust between commanders up and down the command chain. The Australian Army works hard to maintain standards and networks of collegiality and mutual respect and, by and large, it has been successful. But there are concerns that, notwithstanding the reasons for the Army’s prowess, the high rate of turnover of key appointments (usually in a command appointment for up to only 24 months) makes it difficult to build high levels of trust—something which is so important for mission command to be effectively implemented. One retired senior officer and veteran of several operations declared, ‘I’m not convinced we are helping to develop trust within our units by changing personalities yearly with posting cycles’.[23]
Further limitations to the freedom of commanders to exercise mission command are emerging from the proliferation of communications devices and reporting expectations. Commanders are likely to find it even more challenging, if not impossible, to exercise mission command—that is, to specify a task to a subordinate commander, assign resources and let the subordinate get on with the job without undue scrutiny and intrusion. The onset of the fourth industrial revolution and the emergence of increasingly network-centric work models, relying increasingly on artificial intelligence, are a game changer.
The prospect of mission command being exercised in future is further challenged when coupled with greater demands for information, more frequent reporting intervals and greater access for senior commanders. This includes those at multiple echelons above the assigned task force, enabled to monitor and intervene in the execution of a mission if they so wish. With the added information, senior commanders struggle to resist the impulse to claim greater insight and to offer their unsolicited wisdom. This has been described as the ‘strategic screwdriver’ effect.
Final Thoughts
Mission command, as a term, has a relatively short pedigree in the Australian Army, but in a force intent on capitalising on the strengths and individual initiative of the Australian soldier, mission command has turned out to be a fairly easy fit, drawing on a pedigree that pre-dates the introduction of the term into the Army’s lexicon. The challenge remains for commanders to trust their subordinates and to look to capitalise on the available advancing technology without its imposing a stultifying effect on initiative and élan among the soldiers of today’s and tomorrow’s Australian Army. Indeed, a question remains over how much it will be possible to apply in networked coalition conflicts that the Australian Army may be involved with in the future.
Mission command is a cultural matter, and its implementation is very much governed by personalities, especially of those in superior command positions. Thus, embedding the mission command terminology and concept within the Australian Army should be addressed as a cultural education program.
Mission command is also founded on trust up and down the chain of command. It involves a readiness to delegate, an acceptance of responsibility and accountability, and superiors not interfering in the execution of the task unless it becomes necessary to do so. It is not simply a matter of espousing mission command as doctrine. Officers must be educated and regularly practised in undertaking it in simulated exercises that are designed to reinforce the doctrine. Similarly, subordinates must be allowed to make mistakes and wrong decisions. They are the best means of learning and making better decisions under pressure. This also builds confidence in exercising mission command.
Enabling subordinates to exercise mission command relies on superiors who have a thorough professional military education, are technically competent and are confident in their own ability. Less technically proficient officers who lack confidence in themselves are inclined to micromanage their subordinates and restrict the practice of mission command.
The advent of real-time communications from Defence Headquarters all the way down to the combat units in the field—the 3,000-mile screwdriver—gives very senior commanders the ability to interfere and direct operations on the ground from armchairs in Canberra and Bungendore. In effect, today this is one of the biggest challenges to implementing mission command in the Army.
Endnotes
[1] The author wishes to acknowledge the constructive feedback from the blind reviewers. Readers interested in exploring this issue further should also examine the contributions by a range of authors in Russel Glenn (ed.) Trust and Leadership: The Australian Army Approach to Mission Command (University of North Georgia Press, 2020). This includes contributions by Russell Glenn (mission command overview), Peter Pedersen (AIF), Peter Dean (Pacific War), Meghan Fitzpatrick (Korean War), Bob Hall (Vietnam War), John Caligari (1 RAR Group in Somalia), John Blaxland (East Timor in 1999), John Frewen (Solomon Islands in 2003), Ian Langford (Special Forces) and Chris Field (Queensland national emergency in 2010–11). See also Russell Glenn, ‘Mission Command in the Australian Army: A Contrast in Detail’, Parameters: The US Army War College Quarterly 47, no. 1 (2017), DOI:10.55540/0031-1723.2833.
[2] The comparison is found in John Blaxland, Strategic Cousins: Australian and Canadian Expeditionary Forces and the British and American Empires (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), pp. 34–41.
[3] Christopher Pugsley, We Have Been Here Before: The Evolution of the Doctrine of Decentralised Command in the British Army 1905–1989, Sandhurst Occasional Papers No. 9 (Central Library, RMA Sandhurst, 2011), p. 5
[4] The author’s views on this were shaped as a junior officer by reading Robert R Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver Warfare Theory and Airland Battle (New York: Random House, 1994).
[5] The author’s favourite overarching account of Australia in the First World war remains CEW Bean, Anzac to Amiens (Sydney: Penguin, 1993 [originally Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1946]).
[6] The author’s favourite overviews of Australia in the Second World War include Gavin Long, The Six Years War: A Concise History of Australia in the 1939–45 War (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1973). There are some other excellent ones including David Horner, High Command: Australia’s Struggle for an Independent War Strategy (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1982); Peter Dean, MacArthur’s Coalition: US and Australian Military Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area, 1942–1945 (Lawrence KS: University Press of Kansas, 2018); Garth Pratten, Australian Battalion Commanders in the Second World War (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
[7] For example, The Division in Battle—Pamphlet 1, Organization and Tactics (1965), Chapter 6, ‘Command and Control’, has a section titled ‘Departure from Orders’ which outlines the situations in which a junior officer may depart from his given orders.
[8] See David Horner, Phantoms of War: A History of the Australian Special Air Service (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989 [originally published as Phantoms of the Jungle]). See also David Horner and Jean Bou (eds), Duty First: A History of the Royal Australian Regiment, 2nd edition (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2008),
[9] See, for instance, Bob Breen, First to Fight: Australian Diggers, N.Z. Kiwis and U.S. Paratroopers in Vietnam, 1965–66 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988); Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987); Peter Edwards, Australia in the Vietnam War (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2014).
[10] See Ian McNeill, To Long Tan: The Australian Army and the Vietnam War, 1950–1966 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993).
[11] See Blaxland, The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard, pp. 26–124.
[12] Major Jim Storr, ‘A Command Philosophy for the Information Age: The Continuing Relevance of Mission Command’, Defence Studies 3, no. 3 (2003): 119–129, DOI: 10.1080/14702430320000214421.
[13] The author was an instructor in the early 1990s when one of the senior instructors, who was a graduate of the German Army Staff College, then Major Ross Parrott, CSC, was involved in shaping Army training and thinking about adopting a mission command approach to training for operations.
[14] A concise overview of the RMA can be found in Elinor C Sloan, The Revolution in Military Affairs (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002).
[15] William S Lind, Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Westview Press,1985); Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver.
[16] See Land Warfare Doctrine 1—The Fundamentals of Land Power (2017), at: https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/sites/default/files/lwd_1_the_fundamentals_of_land_power_full_july_2017.pdf.
[17] Peter Leahy, speech to the Royal United Services Institute, Hobart, 15 September 2005; MINDEF 157/06.
[18] ‘I’m An Australian Soldier’, Army: The Soldiers’ Newspaper, 3 May, 2007, p. 16.
[19] Cited in Blaxland, The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard, pp. 13–14.
[20] Major Jim Hammett, ‘We Were Soldiers Once … The Decline of the Royal Australian Infantry Corps?’, Australian Army Journal V, no. 1 (2008): 39–50, at: https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/sites/default/files/aaj_2008_1.pdf.
[21] Cited in Blaxland, The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard, p. 261.
[22] This point is explored by contributing authors in several of the chapters in Niche Wars: Australia in Afghanistan and Iraq (ANU Press, 2020), at: https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/niche-wars.
[23] Colonel Marcus Fielding (Retd), correspondence with author, January 2025.
