Ten Tips for Tactical Commanders

Abstract

Many armies today are learning institutions with outstanding lessons learnt processes that have saved soldiers’ lives on the battlefield. However, the body of intangible, experiential knowledge that combat arms leaders hold is difficult to capture and nearly impossible to pass on in formal courses or training scenarios. This article identifies ten critical command and leadership lessons, from time management to battle staff employment to dealing with casualties, garnered throughout operations in Kandahar province in 2009–10. These ten tips, proven in combat, are suitable for officer and NCO tactical leaders, whether in garrison or deployed on operations.

Canada’s Army today is a learning institution, with a more effective lesson learning and application process than ever before. On-the-spot examination and investigation of incidents and engagements, both in Canada and during deployed operations, have identified and rectified shortfalls in tactics, techniques and procedures, drills, equipment use, movement and application of firepower in the contemporary operating environment. Experienced officers and senior non-commissioned officers (NCOs) from the Army Lessons Learned Centre deploy as part of Canadian task forces, and participate in patrols and operations alongside the soldiers whose lessons they are capturing. It is a system that works extremely effectively and has saved soldiers’ lives on the battlefields of Afghanistan, during humanitarian assistance operations in Haiti, and in peace support operations in Sudan.

However, there is a body of intangible, experiential knowledge that is difficult to quantify and more difficult to capture—combat arms leader knowledge, hard-won only through experience, but nearly impossible to pass on in formal courses or training scenarios. After deployments, key leaders are often posted away from their units and not always able to pass on this knowledge informally. In order to try to capture some of the knowledge and experience that my team gained through two years of force generation, training and deployment, I have distilled lessons from our individual and collective experience into the following ten tips. Many times during operations, leaders say to themselves, ‘I wish someone had told me this before I deployed’. I wish, prior to being privileged enough to command B Squadron, the Royal Canadian Dragoons, an armoured reconnaissance squadron, which later expanded to become a combat team composed of more than 250 soldiers operating in southern Kandahar Province, that someone had offered them to me.

... there is a body of intangible, experiential knowledge that is difficult to quantify and more difficult to capture ...

1. Time Management - Readings, Writing and Wrenches

There is never enough time, particularly while deployed, to read anything for yourself, or write anything that is not urgent and directly related to your deployment. Often any time you start to read something, circumstances, necessities, requirements or the exigencies of service throw a wrench into your plans, leaving your work halffinished while you attend to more urgent duties. The raft of professional development readings, language lessons, counterinsurgency readings, theatre directives, lessons learnt, post operation reports, orders and information packages that will be pushed to you throughout training for deployment are valuable and should be read. However, do not put them off to be read once in theatre; try to finish reading them all before you arrive. Once in theatre, you will be consumed by other things and they will sit unread on a shelf. Make sure to leave enough time to spend with the soldiers, NCOs and junior officers; if all they see is the combat team commander reading and writing, that is all they will think you do. Sit and eat a meal with the soldiers who are not in your headquarters whenever possible, rather than the command post crew, who see you often enough as it is. Make a conscious effort to do this and the time spent will pay off in spades.

2. Division of Labour - Let Your People Help You

Our training system focuses on making the student under assessment, whether a candidate undergoing basic officer training or the Combat Team Commander’s Course, conduct nearly every task himself, knowing and attending to every detail. While this ensures that candidates are familiar with all of their subordinates’ tasks and are capable of accomplishing them, it is an untenable methodology for sustained operations. As a tactical commander, you absolutely cannot do everything yourself. You will burn yourself out and do your soldiers a disservice by becoming fuzzy-minded, overly detail-focused and combat ineffective. While you may want to track, manage and coordinate every single detail, you cannot do this while still commanding effectively. You must maintain some separation, some time and space free from demands of the limited mental bank account of attention and thought in your brain that is free to think, consider, plan and command. You must use the skills, knowledge and considerable ability of your people to help you command your organisation. Lean on your battle staff very hard. The Officer Commanding (OC) commands the company, battery, squadron or combat team, but the supporting lieutenants, captains and NCOs need to run it from minute to minute, handle operational details, maintain the command post and manage the myriad parts and lateral interactions required to keep the organisation operating. The Canadian Army’s division of labour in the Combat Arms has evolved over many years and has proven to be effective across the spectrum of operations, from high intensity combat to garrison training. Use this system to help you, to give you the time and space to think and make the right decision at the right time. Delegating and leaning on them is neither a failing of the tactical commander, nor a burden to subordinates—it is the best way to use collective knowledge and skills to help you accomplish the mission.

You must use the skills, knowledge and considerable ability of your people to help you command your organisation.

3. Battle Procedure - Who Does What?

After receiving a warning order, give your command support team some early planning guidance based on a very general effect to be achieved and the timeline required as soon as possible. As the commander, you have the right to change elements of any plan as your estimate progresses. However, your subordinates would prefer to have partial information sooner to let them start concurrent activity on your behalf, rather than full detail at a time that will leave them scrambling to set conditions for your success. Always try to give as much notice, as early as possible, in as much detail as possible, as far as possible down the chain, often through detailed radio warning orders—it has always paid dividends. During deployment to southern Kandahar Province, depending on time and distance, the captains in my combat team started looking into planning, linking with the appropriate higher-level staff as required and concurrently with looking at resources, immediately after I passed them very general and very fragmented warning orders. 

After conducting mission analysis, clarify planning direction based on time, space and effects, then sit down with your command support team, supporting arms/enabler advisers and experts to plan collectively. Whenever possible, bring the sergeant major in to look at sustainment and replenishment, see what is achievable and offer a sober second look. Even in a small combat team, there are so many moving parts that the combat team commander can rarely track vehicles or maintenance states from minute to minute—the command post staff, maintenance NCO, operations warrant officer and captains can and must. Once the estimate is completed, usually done collectively with input from the captains and specialist advisers, a Scheme of Manoeuvre is roughed out and a plan is formed, finish the written order if time permits or radio/overlay order if time is short. For written orders, the captains should assist your orders preparation by writing and verifying groupings and tasks, coordinating instructions and most of command and signals. 

In Canada’s Armour Corps, the squadron sergeant major’s input forms most of the service support paragraph and critical coordinating instructions such as detainee handling details or actions on breakdown; other arms may differ. When I issued formal orders, one of the captains (normally the battle captain, my squadron operations officer or S3 in US terms), issued the groupings and tasks, most coordinating instructions and the sergeant major issued service support instructions. I cannot stress enough the need to lean on your team throughout battle procedure and plan development so that you have the time and space to think, to ensure all the appropriate lateral coordination gets done and then review your orders properly before issuing them. To support this process, your headquarters must be a self-running organisation with workable and detailed standard operating procedures and a strong battle rhythm that manages key staff time and tasks. If the combat team headquarters is not tight and well managed, where everyone understands ‘who does what, when and where’, it will waste effort and burn out, which will cause the whole sub-unit to suffer.

... your headquarters must be a self-running organisation with workable and detailed standard operating procedure ...

4. Take Time to Soldier

Remember, you are a soldier first, who also happens to be an officer; young soldiers will deploy without complaint and follow your orders without fail, so you need to demonstrate the same skills, abilities, determination and endurance that they do. This is a simple principle, often easily said in garrison and training, but difficult to do during operations, given the demands on your time. Take the time to deploy out with the different elements of your organisation, particularly new attachments, to learn as much as you can about them, their personalities, confidences, doubts and motivations. Sit down with soldiers and clean weapons, take your Tactical Movement Group (commonly called the OC’s Tac Group in Canada’s army) out as a fighting element and fulfil some of your own Commander’s Critical Information Requirements or complete other tactical tasks. It will ground you, remind you of the difficulties and dangers of the terrain in which your people operate, and keep you in touch with what they do and how they do it, so your decisions will be made from a position of credibility, knowledge and experience, not from a command post divorced from the battle.

5. Leader Movement

In Afghanistan, commanders cannot flit about the battlespace at will. Every move is a deliberate operation that saps combat power from the rest of the team and puts the soldiers in your vehicle crew and OC’s Tac Group at risk.¹ To support you commanding forward, your vehicle crew must be well versed in all command post duties and be ready to conduct local defence, communications troubleshooting, map preparation and other command support duties in austere forward locations, often from the back of your vehicle, in the middle of the night with red flashlights. They must also be capable of independent action, understanding the big picture and the next steps of ongoing operations, keeping the vehicle ready to move at a moment’s notice and using their initiative to resolve uncertain situations when time and rest are at a premium. Try to plan moves well in advance and link them with sustainment runs, existing patrols, route clearance packages, combat logistics patrols, movements by flanking sub-units or any other elements moving in the battlespace whenever possible. Yes, your movement will be hampered, but you have no choice. If you have to move, pull from the rest of the combat team as needed to support your requirement to command forward, but be aware of the effect it will have. Ensure to plan return moves in as much detail as movements out, so as to prevent being stuck in a location with only one vehicle and unable to return to the rest of your sub-unit in a timely manner. While maximising the use of other moving parts in the battlespace is good, having the combat team commander stuck in a forward location with no way to retrieve him is bad—let your team help you make the decision to rely on another element or use your own teams, despite the drain on combat power it entails.

Every move is a deliberate operation that saps combat power from the rest of the team ...

6. Resource Management

During deployed operations, the leave plan, which will at times see large numbers of personnel unavailable for operations, will cause such havoc that at times you may have to centrally manage and allot vehicles and crew members. Often in preparation for large scale deliberate operations, the captains and sergeant major had to chess-piece out individual vehicle crewing and patrol make-up. While every attempt is made to give troop and platoon-level leaders and their NCOs maximum latitude, this planning often cannot be pushed to them, as they would spend so much time gathering combat power, coordinating, planning and linking laterally to exchange personnel and vehicles that they would have no time to lead their troops. While planning in such detail, driven from the combat team headquarters, is painful and something never encountered during training, it is a reality that cannot be escaped. In this instance, egos must be set aside to permit the whole sub-unit to function effectively. All leaders must understand that Combat Team readiness takes precedence over platoon-level cohesion. In training, platoons must practice operating with each other and practice operating with sections from different troops and platoons meshed together for tasks.

7. Know and Understand Attachments and Enablers

In the modern battlespace, everything is a combined arms effort. However, the breadth of attachments and enablers used in practice far exceed those typically covered in training. B Squadron, the Royal Canadian Dragoons, deployed to Afghanistan in Fall 2009 as a squadron of less than one hundred personnel. However, for most of its deployment, it had upwards of two hundred Canadian personnel, mostly comprised of attachments over and above those normally found in a combat team such as engineers, artillery forward observation officer parties and additional infantry. The B Squadron combat team had attached civil-miltary cooperation teams, construction management organisation teams, police operational mentor liaison teams, medics, a national support element logistics detachment, a number of civilian contracted K-9 patrol dog teams and from time to time, psychological operations and explosive ordinance disposal teams. The combat team also worked closely with whole of government partners in the form of Canadian International Development Agency civilian stabilisation officers and civilian police officers. For all deliberate and most routine operations it also partnered with an Afghan National Police element. Take the time to sit down and learn what your partners, attachments and enablers can offer you, how they work and any restrictions they may have with regards to their employment. Often the perceptions you have may differ from reality on the ground; learning about them as soon as possible will not only offer you the best understanding on how to employ them, it will let the attachments know that you have taken the time to understand them and see them as part of your team, not just resources to be exploited. Finally, attachments may be drawn from the Air Force or Navy; they may not understand very much about combat arms operations whatsoever, so be prepared to educate them and look after them as you would your own.

Take the time to sit down and learn what your partners, attachments and enablers can offer you ...

8. Tactical Patience

In operations, things happen that will throw timings and plans out the window at a moment’s notice. Every time you roll out, you may not be back for days, depending on events beyond your control. A defensive measure or radio failure in the wrong place may make a thirty-minute road move from one position to another into a three-day event. Planned H-hours may be pushed off endlessly by enablers, or lack thereof, Special Operations Forces operations or the other frictions of war. As a leader, you must stay patient and always let subordinates work laterally, feed you situation reports and suggestions, and offer a work-around to challenges that arise. Frequently, particularly when you are deployed forward, your command post will have a better grasp of detail than you do, so should be offering you contingency plans which will give you time and space to look at the big picture and add minor steering corrections as needed. Plan ahead and remember that things beyond your control do not mean your plans are ineffective or that you have failed as a leader; stay patient, stay focused and work within, rather than against, the situation.

9. Never Stop Training

Keep your own skills sharp and keep pushing your subordinates to do the same. This is part of leadership by example; the combat team commander should never be ‘too busy’ to train on critical skills, particularly in lulls between major operations. While it may seem like mothering or an unnecessary distraction during war, refreshing simple skills like weapons handling, mine detector operation, first aid or communications equipment will prevent skill fade and save lives. In large combat teams, not all attachments may be as familiar or used to handling weapons or equipment; they must also be included in refresher training if they are under your command.

10. Casualties

They will happen. Prepare for it. Be aware of your own reaction. There will be times when things explode, bullets fly, soldiers, comrades and close friends may be hurt or killed and there is nothing you can do about it. Find a way to deal with it and lean on your sergeant major. Keep your team informed as soon as possible about casualties from other units and your Afghan security partners—you may not know them, but they may be close comrades of your attachments. Take the time to publicly commemorate and respect the fallen, but remember that you can no longer help them. Stay focused—the living still need your attention and efforts. You may also be injured, but must continue to lead, and lead well, despite injury. When all is going bad, you and the sergeant major, of all people, must be calm, collected and continue to lead the organisation.