Marines are about to revolutionize infantry training, more than doubling the length of initial training for enlisted infantry Marines and weighing consolidation of its core grunt specialties into a single, all-around infantry warfighter. 

The transition – which aims to build Marines adept in ground weaponry that can tackle the higher-end threats they will face on the dispersed battlefields of the future – will focus as much on smarts as on being Tough.
 
Battalion officials took a deep dive into infantry training and how it should develop Marines who have a broad array of combat skills they’ll need in future battlefields likely spread out and far from higher-level commanders. The existing course creates “an automation who has some finite skills that they can use in very specific environments, in specific times – so it’s not an all-around player.”
 
“Currently, we train a Marine that is automatic. What we are looking to do is deliver a Marine who is autonomous,”
 
“We understand this is a novel approach, that this is different than what the fleet is used to getting. This is different than what the Marines are used to seeing,” The changes may meet some initial skepticism. But the Fleet Marine Force will get Marines “that are better trained, better prepared, better equipped – and they’ve been taught to think through this entire process.”
 
A Fundamental Shift in Training 

Battalion leaders and course instructors considered: What kind of infantry Marine should the training produce? They tasked an out-of-cycle training company to “come up with any idea that you have.”Just lengthening the existing course wouldn’t add significant value by itself. “We identified that just getting more training in the field is not the solution to the problem.  Marines are trained to operate “in any place, anytime, but the kind of automation training was insufficient. We also have to have the ability to learn, as well.”
 
Students at the Infantry Officers Course “are incentivized to learn They are given problems, they are given tactical decision games…where the officer is presented a problem, a mission-type order, and then what he or she is required to do is look at our own techniques to be able to analyze a problem. Our enlisted marines are not trained that way.  But “in distributed operation, that may cost us time – time that we may need to make a valuable decision.”
 
Training isn’t just about telling Marines to “think more” but, rather, to engage them in ways where they can exercise their creativity with a warfighting mindset, This is just a different way for them to train their brains, which they’re pretty much not asked to do – up until this point.”
 
Wargames are a vehicle to allow Marines permission to learn. “The object here is to look at the battlefield in a number of different ways. So what we want the Marines to do – our end state – is to effectively understand where the Marine exists, where he or she can understand themselves in an environment with complex rules and within a complex scenario, where they understand their actions affect others, and how the enemy’s actions affect Marines.
 
In those potential scenarios Marines need to be able to understand the mission type order, and based off the commander’s intent and resources along, continue to execute their mission.”
 
With a modern Marine learning model, the course better reflects how today’s high-tech generation learns develop infantry Marines skilled in weaponry but also skilled cognitively will better position them for future operations, since Marines in the future might have to make decisions when geographically apart from their higher commands or if the adversary disrupts communications
.
The new approach is rooted on the commandant’s broader vision outlined in recent articles and the Commandant’s Planning Guidance, Force Design 2030, and Learning, the Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 7. “The effective message to the commandant is: We are listening. We hear you loud and clear.
 
“What we’re doing is we are taking a fundamental shift in our learning ideology of how we’re going to shape the Marine of the future, and wargames are one of many revolutionary changes we are making within the infantry curriculum.”
 
Wargames allow “the Marines to contextually understand where he or she exists in battlespace,  and by introducing it early in the training, they learn to think and become conditioned to make decisions. “If Marines don’t  understand the fundamentals of wargames  we will teach them. We are not interested in teaching them rote memorization anymore. … We want free play. We want freedom of thought.”
 
Small-unit infantry leaders “are going to have to make decisions that are outside of their pay grade, and we want them to be comfortable in understanding that they can make those decisions.”
 
Wargames
 
“Anybody can play this wargame at any time from any position. You walk by it and you recognize whether Blue is on top or Red is on top, and that is the next person to move. You may have to shift sides, requiring a new strategy.
 
“What this says is, you don’t get to execute your own plan. “You have to assess the battlefield as it is, identify strengths and weaknesses – and you sometimes have to abandon your own plan because now you’re working against what your initial onset was.”
 
Instructors will teach those unfamiliar with the game, and with incentives they hope to “make it make it interesting by challenging instructors “in not only a pull-up or a run competition but also a wargame.” By playing, it’s making smart Marines who can make decisions faster than their opponent or see deeper into several moves down the road.”
 
Among the ideas is Fire Team version, students one-by-one make their moves against another fireteam but under a time constraint. In another version, each fireteam member controls specific board pieces, “so now they have to be able to battle track one another,” And “they don’t have the opportunity to execute their own plan. They have to talk as a group” while under a time constraint, all while the “enemy” is there to hear and watch them.
 
“So it allows for nuanced communication, non-verbal cues, figuring out your own method to be able to move the piece when your enemy can sense what you’re doing and, in real time, react to it.
 
Instructors are looking at taking game boards to the field so Marines can talk about tactics, they can talk about shooting manipulations, patrolling formations. … So we’re exercising their mind as much as we’re exercising their bodies.”
 
Success in wargames comes with experience but also some luck. “You could only become better by exercising your mind.  “So anyone is capable of beating anybody with their own skill.”
 
If Marines haven’t played the game, unlike some instructors in the battalion, it can be rough going initially. For example a battalion gunner is used to being the person who is the end-all, be-all with infantry, but sometimes they got routed several times by a sergeant.
 
Pieces on the board can represent tactical components more familiar to infantry Marines, like a combined-arms ground force: direct-fire weapons. enfilade fire that can shoot at an angle, indirect fire weapons, since they can jump over other pieces and aren’t limited to specific boundaries. There’s also light infantry that can block, defend and envelop with supporting arms and, if used effectively, can become more powerful if they reach enemy territory. Some pieces that are more powerful and limited in number can represent special operations, since they are few but move most freely. Then there is the piece that is your commander.
 
Marines leaned quickly that you want to keep indirect-fire assets as along as possible, even though they might be worth the same amount of points as something else. A different piece might be more valuable because with indirect fire you can attack the commander, where maybe another piece, through a direct-fire line of infantrymen, you may not be able to penetrate.”
 
All that might very well become more relevant in the new course as students train toward a single, multi-discipline infantry specialty, which according to a Marine Corps Training and Education Command is yet to be finalized.
 
In the wargame, the Marine has to decide which weapon will create the needed effect. So instead of just focusing on a machine gun, for example, a newly-graduated infantry Marines will have to think about machine guns but also mortars, rifles, rockets and other weapons systems. “Wargames allow, since the pieces are all complex … to think about how your actions combine the effects of these pieces to achieve an overall effect.”
 
Changes were instituted to the learning atmosphere and culture at infantry training. Students won’t be marched together around camp but will be expected to manage their time and figure out where to go on their own.
 
“We wanted to take away the restrictions we have on Marines and get rid of them and actually have them think on their own. It came up as we are erasing, in almost its entirety, the whole program. “This could fail massively, but “we don’t just want to keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing.”
 
There’s a general excitement around the School of Infantry. Instructors recognize they are at the forefront of this entire thing. They recognize that this is their course and that we are the advocates for them and we trust them.
 
Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 7 Learning MCDP 7 has established a doctrine on learning for the Marine Corps. MCDP 7 has much to offer Marines. For example, it addresses current issues found within Training and Education Command, such as the obsolete “training versus education” argument, and it reinforces principles found in other Marine Corps publications.

It took courage and a lot of effort to be sure, for Marine Corps leaders to produce this doctrine. It signifies the first steps toward establishing a valid representation of learning. The application of MCDP 7 will permeate through all that the Marine Corps and Marines do.

Many others would like the chance to contribute to this new vision and suggest additions to the MCDP7 conceptual framework like focus on developing the professional competence and capacity of Marines and their ability to learn through the complexity and uncertainty of today.

Possible additional contributions to the Marines valiant effort is to propose a framework of 21st Century maneuver warfare, a topic that is much in need of updating based on new threats Marines will face in the future. MCDP7 is a great start, but much remains to be done.

Most important, MCDP 7 validates the need for and value of a learning construct. MCDP 7 can be improved. Indeed, MCDP 7 delivers only a partial construct of learning. Therefore, we offer the following critique in the hope that it moves the Marine Corps to develop a more complete learning construct and revise MCDP 7.

Stated goal of manual is to “describe the Marine Corps’ learning philosophy and explain why learning is critically important to the profession of arms.” But critics say MCDP 7 stops short of delivering on that promise, because it lacks the applied science, research, and philosophy of the field of professional learning. And there are more than 40 years’ worth of research in  learning research fields that could provide Marines with the tools to think through problems encountered in the profession of arms.

MCDP 7 identifies its purpose as creating “a culture of continuous learning and professional competence that yields adaptive leaders capable of successfully conducting maneuver warfare in complex, uncertain, and chaotic environments.”

This is a strong justification for the creation of such a doctrinal publication. But in the succeeding pages, critics say MCDP 7 does not provide convincing arguments to support or achieve its purpose of preparing Marines to fight. The manual should provide Marines with a framework—beyond previous conceptions of learning—that allows them to apply it to their context in preparing themselves and others for military operations.

MCDP 7 spends much of its time on areas encouraging Marines to remember things because circumstances may not always allow them to digitally search for information. This is a prudent warning, but MCDP 7 misses an opportunity to provide Marines with insight into cognition and memory or resources for empowering themselves to recall information in action.

MCDP 7 offers other tips, concepts, and discussions on learning, but less time is spent on providing Marines with concepts of how they can develop their capacity to practice warfare in complex, uncertain, and chaotic environments.

Marine Corps doctrine should provide every Marine, from the newest private to the most senior general, with a practical learning construct they can draw on in war and peace. It should challenge Marines to practice and embody its concepts throughout their lives, in and out of uniform.

In many areas, MCDP 7 lacks the depth to do this. For instance, it contains dangerously few definitions for the concepts it introduces, which severely handicaps any discussions on learning.

Why is this dangerous? Because the lack of clarity in the definitions confuses Marines, it is not creating a foundation from which to build themselves as lifelong learners. Marines are already referencing MCDP 7 as the Marine Corps’ central authority on learning; however, some shortfalls could be improved.

There are some questionable parts of MCDP 7, given that a lot of people have identified that individuals and teams have differences in the way they learn, with varying sensory preferences for learning, competencies, and strengths. These differences are essential components of the learning process and can be useful knowledge for structuring or engaging in learning events to that learning is more effective.

The passage refers to learning styles. In one of the rare times MCDP 7 cites existing research on learning, some critics have stated that cited article actually contradicts the passage in question. According to research, tailoring one’s teaching to a trainees preferred learning style does not make learning more effective. In fairness to MCDP7, this conclusion about learning styles is not limited to MCDP 7, others have also come to that conclusion.
But even some Marine instructors who have investigated the topic have reacted with “shock” and “disbelief” because they find that much of existing practice rests on false premises.

MCDP7 defines critical thinking as “the reflective part of . . . reasoning. Critical thinking skills include inference, evaluation, interpretation, and explanation.” This is oversimplified. It leaves a false sense of a person’s capacity to think clearly when instead most thinking instead remains biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or even prejudiced.

Many organisations have tried and failed to teach critical thinking and instructors tell Marines to think critically without providing a measure of what thinking critically actually means. Critical thinking has seemingly devolved to mean novel, creative, or just plain good thinking, but critical thinking is anything but a natural or innate ability.

MCDP 7 asserts that the “most effective instructors use the coach-teach-mentor approach to provide learners with constructive feedback.” This implies that the best instructors simultaneously exercise three distinct roles with their learners. But, in fact, each of these functions vary in activity, effort, time, and outcome in relation to the organization and learner.

MCDP 7 makes no meaningful distinction among the roles, and—to complicate things further—the other Marine Corps publication that discusses these roles, Marine Corps Training Publication 6-10B Marine Corps Values, misrepresents coaching as a subskill of mentoring.

Critics also say that MCDP7 simplistically defines experiential learning as to learn by doing. If it was stated that the concept of maneuver warfare requires practitioners to always avoid surfaces and seek out gaps, that would be a similar oversimplification. A well-known, better definition describes experiential learning as a process of making meaning from or grasping and transforming experience. That is, learning occurs not from the doing, but in the reflection on that experience.

As with the complex topic of maneuver warfare, there has been much debate and different definitions created for experiential learning. Marines must ask the questions: How do we know learning actually occurred from our experiences, and was it the right learning?

MCDP 7 frequently references “self-directed learning.” However, the extrinsic motivation of “encouraging and holding Marines accountable for it” may not directly result in or sustain professional curiosity about it among Marines.

MCDP 7 should be able to refine its definition to mean either 1) a goal of instruction to instill in learners, 2) a process for a learner to follow, or 3) a characteristic of the learner that one could measure. Developing lifelong learners through extrinsic means seems similar to teaching fitness and nutrition by providing people with personal trainers and private chefs and then wondering why the individuals did not continue the regimen after the trainers and cooks departed.

MCDP7 insists that “leaders also recognize that we are not an expert in every topic i.e., self-assessment. ”Although this appropriately warns Marines about being overconfident, the self-assessment example misses a crucial point, in that it fails to make Marines aware of potential cognitive bias that leads to difficulties in recognizing our own shortcomings, that is, the less expert you are at something, the harder it is for you to recognize that you are not an expert.

MCDP 7 also compounds issues with outside critics by stating that when “a Marine begins to feel more confident, it is because he or she is closing the gaps between their goals and their actual capabilities.” But sometimes confidence indicates that the individual remains a novice, while genuine experts recognize their own shortcomings and deficiencies.

Marines may unintentionally leave MCDP 7 with the lesson that they should study topics only directly related to their profession. The overuse of the word “profession” and its related forms—“professional,” “professionally,” or “professionalism”—sends the wrong message, since the document doesn’t really define or use the concept of the professional consistently.

As a result, MCDP 7 encourages Marines to narrowly view professional content and learning opportunities. It fails to provide a complete picture of what professional curiosity and development should look like, and how Marines and the Marine Corps would benefit from more diversity of thought, study, and practice.

If  Marines develop “hyper focus” on narrowly, or undefined, professional learning over the cultivation of curiosity could lead to “cloning,” the tendency toward seeking new leaders identical to old ones, a danger that organizations are susceptible to without concerted efforts.
 
1. Leadership
 
Process of influencing others to accomplish the mission by providing purpose, direction, and motivation. Command is the authority a person in the military service exercises over subordinates by virtue of his rank and assignment or position.
 
2. Understanding
 
Process related to an object, such as a person, situation, or message where military commanders are able to consider the object and use concepts to deal adequately with that object; implies abilities and dispositions with respect to an object of knowledge that are sufficient to support intelligent behavior
 
3. Decision Making
 
Knowing if to decide, then when and what to decide. Includes understanding the consequence of decisions. Decisions are the means by which the commander translates his vision of the end state into action.
 
4. Vision
 
Provides direction and describes what the commander wants the organization to achieve in the future; it’s more about the “what” of the organization. It is different from a mission statement, which describes the purpose of an organization and more about the “how” of the organization.
 
5. Intellect
 
Capacity for higher forms of knowledge, as distinguished from the power to perceive objects in their relations. power to judge and comprehend; aptitude, understanding, potential to do certain kinds of work whether developed or undeveloped.
 
6. Initiative
 
Going the extra mile or going above and beyond your normal job responsibilities to make things happen; ability to see something that needs to be done and deciding to do it out of your own free will without someone else telling you to do it.
 
7. Judgement
 
Being able to weigh your options accurately and plan what works; result of analyzing multiple solutions, identifying what is wrong with a solution and changing what does not work.
 
8. Building Relationships
 
Setting expectations to help avoid complications and disagreements over which partner should handle what; taking time to iron out issues where potential for overlap and other conflicts is substantial; establish capability to share resources and adapt over time.
 
9. The Ability to Communicate
 
Creation and exchange of meanings from one entity or group to another;  process of assigning symbols in an attempt to create shared understanding through verbal or nonverbal means, including speech or oral communication;  writing and graphical representations, behavior.
 
 
10. Learning from Experience
 
Reframe your mistake as an opportunity to learn and develop. Review what went wrong, to understand and learn from your mistake. Identify the skills, knowledge, resources, or tools that will keep you from repeating the error. 

Marine leaders are directing commands to go faster and equip warfighters with the tools they require to fight and win in a more timely manner.
 
The Marines largely did away with large service-level experiments that focus on new ideas or concepts, but recently brought them back as a means of out innovating adversaries.
 
The acquisition community is now leveraging experiments such as Sea Dragon and the recent generate requirements and feed mature systems into programs of record.
 
Following the S2ME2 ANTX, Marines were able to put some contracts in place after identifying some systems worth pursuing.
 
For other technologies and experiments, the service might be able to buy some systems that are ready for fielding or use what was learned through that experimentation to feed into requirements generation.
 
Marines are working to generate rapid requirements, then buy a few capabilities, put them in the experiment and then use that to take a concept of operations and inform requirements fed back into the process and eventually into a program of record.
 
Marines have opportunity for engineers to take technologies from mature experiments and put them in the hands of Marines.
 
“When we put it in their hands, they figure out how to use it and they come back and tell us this is how we need to use this thing, this is how we to develop the concepts of operations and the concepts of employment and the tactics, techniques and procedures to put it out there and field it.”
 
“It’s up to us as the headquarters to say OK, got it. We’re going to figure out how field it to you and get it to you.”
 
 
The Marine Corps is looking at ways to insert new technology into its forces earlier in order to prepare for future battles. Key to this effort is experimentation.

Last year, the service introduced a new operating concept called, “How an Expeditionary Force Operates in the 21st Century.” The document — which focused on how Marines will fight in 2025 — put an emphasis on the need for the service to return to its seafaring roots, conduct maneuver warfare and fight as a combined arms force.

“We have a campaign of Marine Corps Force 2025 and within that campaign we have a Sea Dragon 2025 experimental process.  The goal is “to get our force postured for 2025, to be agile, lethal, naval and expeditionary, and we found that as we go through the experiment process, we’re building closer and closer relationships with the research-and-development enterprises.”

Testing new technologies with Marines in live experiments allows the service to realistically see if a particular system is fit for the battlefield.

“We understand that warfare is inherently, despite all of the technologies, … a human endeavor.  “We want to recreate the uncertainty and fear and the danger associated with that so that we can get the best picture.”

The first phase of the experiment concluded in the fall of 2017 when the service took an infantry battalion and established it as an experimental force.

“We put them in the construct of a sea-based Marine Air Ground Task Force and we reorganised them, changed some of their training, their equipment, and over 18 months we conducted a series of operations and experiments before operationally deploying them in this configuration.

Much thought went into creating an adaptive enemy red team that reflected not what today’s threats look like, but what tomorrow’s would resemble based on how fast U.S. adversaries are adopting new technologies.

“Our experiment force could lose and could lose repeatedly during our experiments and we could learn from those losses.

The service looked at the size of squads, contemplated how to incorporate manned-unmanned teaming and examined mobility issues.

History shows that mobility often is key to determining whether a unit will accomplish their mission or not, he said. Forces with the greater tactical and operational capability have an advantage.

One of the biggest takeaways from the experiment was that the individual Marine is a “tremendous innovation engine.

“The creativity of our Marines and small teams gives us a significant advantage.
“The Marine that grows up with access to the education we have, when compared to the rest of the world … is a factory for good ideas.”

When exposed to new tools developed by industry and other research-and-development partners, Marines often find unique ways to employ the technology in a way that has a strategic effect.

Other efforts the service embarked on recently include its first advanced naval technical exercise experiment, where it asked industry to develop new ways to move Marines from the ship to the shore in contested environments.

How these innovations would be implemented was open for debate. “We won’t necessarily do it the way we did it in the past. We’ll take your ideas and try them out.”

The service built a “playground,” where industry had access to sailors and Marines from the amphibious force.

“What we ended up having was a playground with young Marines, young officers and a lot of industry engineers and scientists … solving the problem.

The Marine Corps benefits from bringing warfighters and industry together.
“There’s something special when the engineer and the young Marine put their resources together and come out with a better product right on the spot.


Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental, better known as DIUx, is pushing forward new technology that will give the service added capability by focusing on several technology areas including autonomy, artificial intelligence and machine learning, information technology and human systems.

The unit is meant to cut through the Pentagon’s red tape and make it easier for firms in tech hubs to do business with the Marines. Officials hope the outfit will speed the acquisition of cutting-edge warfighting tools.

DIUx has been working on a number of technologies that can be used by the service,
“We’re really quite satisfied with what’s going on there for the Marine Corps. The service pushes for “projects that tend to be more practical, more physical. One promising program is known as the electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, or EVOTL platform.
 
The platform will be able to travel 200 nautical miles at 200 knots and carry four passengers or 800 pounds of payload.  The system uses six rotors to fly. It takes off vertically and is able to immediately transition to forward flight and take a Marine company landing team and break them into smaller, four-man teams and put them ashore in separate aircraft.

“That enhances your mobility, it lets you surprise the enemy … and it really de-risks the force because instead of six aircraft you can now have 35 aircraft,” which makes the invading troops harder to target.

The organisation is also working on giving the system autonomous capabilities. “Initially it will be piloted, but we’re paying to get the autonomy developed.

For now, the company is “living on the DIUx dime” because it doesn’t have commercial customers. They will eventually, but this is a great example of someone who is reliant on us.”
 
The Marine Corps turns to its Warfighting Laboratory to help counter threats. The lab’s divisions—Futures Assessment, Concepts and Plans, Wargaming, S&T, and Experiment—all play a role in shaping future needs, trends and technologies as well as the operating environment the Marines will face. “We are the headlights of the Marine Corps modernisation effort. We are looking out a little further than other Marine Corps offices.”
 
The warfighting lab is currently looking into autonomous systems and robotics; artificial intelligence; counter-unmanned aerial system capabilities; lasers; electronic warfare; and systems coordination, among other technologies. The lab considers size, weight and power issues “in everything they do to support a mobile, agile Marine Corps.
 
The warfighting lab has been looking at autonomous systems and robotics for quite some time now. “We’ve always recognized that autonomous systems, whether they are in the air, on the ground or at the surface, are going to play a role in the future landscape and future warfighting environment.
 
The big question is how best to incorporate the technology so that it becomes a force multiplier rather than a burden. Naturally, the service wants to avoid robotic technologies without the capabilities it needs to perform specific missions.
 
Unlike robotics and autonomous systems, AI is an area the lab is just starting to explore. We don’t fully understand yet what AI could mean or what it will mean in the future. We do have smart people looking into it, and we do recognize it as an emerging capability that we need to take advantage of it.”
 
Technologies are especially needed to counter the proliferation of what the Marines are calling “U-Excess,” unmanned aerial, ground, surface and subsurface systems. “We now are living every day with the fact that unmanned aerial systems are flying pretty much everywhere.
 
We are predicting a quick migration to enemy use of unmanned ground systems, surface systems and subsurface systems.
 
“Envision a future where you have a patrol that is looking for an aerial system, and instead a ground system comes up or is sitting along a trail. It could be in a sleep mode and camouflaged and then activates based on vibration or voices. Then it does what it is designed to do, which could be a collector to listen to discussions and stay quiet, or it could become basically an improvised weapon.
 
To combat this risk, the warfighting lab is broadening its work in unmanned systems. “Based on our experience from the counter-IED fight, we recognise that as we start to develop capabilities to counter air systems, it is only logical that the enemy will start to look at other capabilities. Our goal is to stay one step ahead and anticipate what is coming.”
 
New tech will allow the Marines, for example, to walk into a operational theatre and already know where the hot spots are, potentially shuting down these connections in advance and turn them back on when they leave. “It is important for that tactical unit to be able to have immediate effects as they are experiencing them.
 
The warfighting lab will take fast growing technologies and put them to the test in several experiments,, including smaller events called “limited object assessments as well as larger events, giving Marines opportunities to put technologies into the hands of operators in the field, along with other lab partners, to gain a common understanding of potential capabilities and technologies.
 
“These experiments are crucial in sorting out useful technologies and capabilities.”
 
The technological renaissance is providing a lot of options, and with all the technologies you could make a case for each one. But they cannot all be pursued. “The problem is that we can’t afford to buy everything so we have to make an assessment of capabilities and to make recommendations on capabilities that will have the greatest return on our investments.”
 
The lab has developed processes that allow senior leaders to make smart decisions about the technologies they need for programs of record, the technologies they do not need and the technologies that may be obsolete in three to five years. But making choices can be challenging, he says, because people are swayed by technology and the “bright, shiny new object.
 
“The hardest part is trying to make sure that the people who are in love with their technologies understand what it is that they are in love with. It is difficult to convince people that, ‘Yes, it is a great capability, but is it greater than this other capability over here?’
 
“Everything we consider has to get a fair shake. There have been technologies that nobody liked that turned out to be pretty effective.” And at the end of the day, when the Marines are kicking in the door, those technologies could make all the difference.
 
 
Innovative ideas from all levels are helping to reshape and modernise the force. “No rank has a monopoly on good ideas”.  You don’t need to develop a ground-breaking new project to channel an innovator’s idea process. Continuous improvement or incremental change contributes equally as transformational change. Let’s focus on how you can bring innovation into your everyday work, and foster a culture of creativity in your team.
 
 
Generate your idea and link to innovation cell strategy. Identify the problem statement and the expected benefits of implementing a change. Identify if the idea is in the category of: 1) Just Do It (problem is known and the solution can be implemented with extant resources); 2) Continuous Improvement Initiative (an improvement activity where the solution is not known and the problem requires further analysis); or 3) Project (more complex and affects multiple units or Groups). To gain momentum and sponsorship, link the initiative to innovation cell strategy at the capstone or individual unit level depending on the scale of the proposal.
 
Seek out your champions. Engage your mentors, sponsors, and champions to help refine your concept and give your draft pitch a sense of urgency. Clarify how the future will be different from the past if the innovation cell embraces your idea, and how you can make this future a reality.

Choose a methodology and design your plan. There are a number of tools available for working out your concept and planning your strategy. Small projects just require sound judgement, but success in selling your idea still depends on the background knowledge of a structured approach.

Pitch your idea.  Make sure your vision and strategy is clear and refined prior to pitching to your chain of command. Remove as many barriers as you can to make it easy for them to support your idea. With your chain of command’s approval, consider a trial of your proposed new process or source a prototype of your capability idea early in the innovation stage to demonstrate how it could benefit Marines.

Move at the speed of change. Operational Tempo will only move faster; so this is the time to inspire your team and direct their mindset to identifying opportunities for change. Change management is complicated, and cultural reform at an organisational level even more so. As a leader you can foster an innovative culture.

Know your team dynamics. If you understand the unique knowledge, skills and attributes of your team members, then you can leverage them to get better outcomes. An innovative team with strong leadership can be invincible. Host a brainstorming session with your team to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, and discuss how you can apply these together to the opportunities and challenges for the upcoming year. Look beyond rank or assumed skill sets. Create a sense of healthy competition for innovative ideas and ways to do business better.

Incentivise and reward innovative behaviour. Include goals relating to improvement initiatives when drafting performance reporting expectations. Highlight these in the end of year reports. Bid for extra training funding for courses that help your team develop critical thinking skills, apply change management methodology etc. And most importantly, ensure that credit for innovative ideas is attributed to the individual or team that created them, not to yourself.

Create the space your team needs to innovate. Communicate to your team the ways in which you can support them with their ideas. Follow through by continuing to assist them in developing concepts, committing resources within your remit and using your own networks to help reach champions.

Ensure they’re not spending their own money in the development of the concept as they get more invested in the success of their idea. And most importantly, avoid crowding them through the process, just empower them to develop their own ideas and offer them the time for creative thinking.

Good ideas are only the start point of innovation. Passion, drive, utilisation of networks and some savvy business acumen are essential to ‘challenging the status quo’ and getting your innovation off the ground. The execution is what matters – and the journey can be risky and frustrating. But by focusing on ideas within your sphere of influence you can develop innovation skills to generate positive change, as well as build your reputation as a valuable forward thinker.
 
Engage innovators in their areas of expertise. You’ll see world leading results in rapid time. By engaging them as a team, you will see world leading capability. Creating change in a large, capability-driven organisation like the innovation cell can be overwhelming and will always come with a level of risk. Embracing innovation is vital in ensuring the innovation cell evolves faster and smarter than its adversaries and overcomes the challenges ahead.
 
Stimulate both top-down and bottom-up approaches to innovation. By focusing on the command post, you can provide top-down direction against a key problem your command could solve. Then, harness the innate, bottom-up ingenuity of Marines, through venues like open-mic nights, against their everyday problems.
 
Build units’ efforts by telling the world what they learned. Despite this clear call, pinning down a definition of military innovation is tough. One definition has been promoted as “development of new warfighting concepts and/or new means of integrating technology.” Crucially, this definition captures that innovation takes forms beyond technology.
 
From this broad definition, two axes of innovation emerge. Much discussion around innovation focuses on the disruptive or revolutionary type, which typically relates to the integration of new technologies. Sometimes the Department of Defense deliberately develops these technologies, but other times they emerge independently.
 
Less discussion focuses on innovation at the tactical level, where innovation is more typically evolutionary. Evolutionary innovation seeks improvements from existing concepts. The  quest for innovation may merely involve “clear thinking about how to leverage the creativity and expertise of those already in the system.”
 
Tactical innovation leverages expert warfighters in combat units to experiment. While external actors promote a culture of innovation in national security it does little to directly help tactical units solve their most pressing problems.
 
Tactical innovation initiatives must both provide direction and connect experts in uniform with free time and other resources. Squadron innovation funds,” exist “so commanders can tackle their most pressing readiness and national-security challenges.
 
If you seek to start an innovation initiative, chances are good that you have some problems in mind. If not, consider tools like Design Generator to help better understand your desired endstate. Even if you aren’t sure which problems to tackle right away, consider unleashing your subordinates against the problems that often trip them up. Invite their bottom-up refinement and earn their trust. Early wins on problems your soldiers care about will help build your innovative culture—and may even bubble disruptive innovations to the top.
 
Combine Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches. We harness our battalion’s innovative potential through a top-down focus against our pressing operational problems, while stimulating bottom-up innovation by connecting innovative makers with time and money. Organizations that successfully innovate combine top-down efforts, which align innovation with the organization’s goals, and bottom-up efforts that engage the organization’s lowest level.
 
Our top-down efforts aim for revolutionary or disruptive innovation against problems our unit anticipates. In our battalion, we assign responsibility for each of our innovation areas to a subordinate company, but do not fence it off.
 
Instead, each company commander develops an understanding of the problem and designs a plan to solve the problem or better understand it. Generally, that commander will launch his detachments against related exercises or events. However, the commander might also identify opportunities suitable to other units and offer them up.
 
While commanders drive innovation forward toward their defined problems, we also recommend stimulating innovative potential at the lowest level. Soldiers know which kit works—and which does not. Harness the knowledge and interest of the lowest level solve problems that make their lives easier or advance our work toward the command-directed priorities.
 
Innovation comes from connecting soldiers with time and resources. A “micro-purchase” program could do this for your unit. On a regular basis solicit, review, and fund the best proposals at levels authorized for our command. Leveraging sustainment funds and purchase cards, we acquire equipment and services necessary for innovation. Once we approve a proposal, we prioritize purchases with the goal of delivering in time.
 
Our Company experimented with micro-purchases which helped the command see new gaps across the company. When one motivated detachment requested funding to experiment with an off-the-shelf drone, the company’s leaders re-assigned a similar drone to that detachment. This cost-free reallocation of equipment demonstrates how sensitizing your unit to a demand for innovation improves outcomes at low cost.
 
Build an Innovative Culture. With both top-down and bottom-up programs in place, you must build a culture that supports innovation. Soldiers are unlikely to trust any new initiative until they understand the intent, see sustained command engagement, and are rewarded for their efforts. To educate the battalion, we plan to organize a significant launch event, host regular “collaborate and innovate” sessions, and dispatch battalion “makers” to innovation hubs.
 
Our collaborate and innovate sessions will to educate our soldiers about innovation generally, the battalion’s focus areas, and resources available. These sessions should be personally rewarding and avoid conflicts with training. We aim to bring in a mix of speakers from the military, industry, and elsewhere.
 
As an innovation culture gains traction, a transition to sessions led by internal innovators updating the unit on what they have learned should be made. This will reduce the burden on a unit’s busy staff and knock down innovation silos between units. But building an innovative culture is more than just education.
 
Troops are naturally skeptical of new initiatives, as commanders change frequently and sometimes are overcome by events. Commanders must demonstrate sustained engagement to a variety of audiences: the staff, subordinate leaders, and Marines on the line. Every unit is different, but we include micro-purchase statuses during command and staff briefings, while company command teams brief innovation updates at training briefs. The battalion commander also discusses innovation when they visit the teams, especially when an innovative system is at play.
 
For an innovative culture to take hold, it is imperative to highlight success. At regular “innovation convocations,” commanders can update interested stakeholders on their progress, micro-purchase winners highlight their successes and lessons learned, and outsiders can learn about what is feasible at the tactical level. Special focus on rewarding Marines willing to engage is important. Though internal motivation drives Marines, they often view new programs with suspicion. Leaders must set incentives properly to reward innovation.
 
Avoid Groupthink by Seeking Diverse Viewpoints. Bringing in diverse, external viewpoints will help your unit avoid groupthink. In our battalion, we plan to launch an innovation council chaired by our battalion commander. The council aims to provide an outside perspective while informing the battalion’s leaders of developments in innovation. The board will regularly in conjunction with the battalion’s innovation groups. While the ideal composition of your innovation board may differ, drawing in people with different viewpoints and careers may challenge your internal assumptions and improve your program.
 
Share What You Learned. Innovators in our ranks must share their progress and lessons learned. Consider the right ways to share lessons learned internally to adjacent units and externally to the broader community of defense innovators. Connect with doctrine writers. Write blog posts and post videos on your unit’s boards. However you do it, sharing of successful and unsuccessful efforts builds a broad-based innovative Marine Force.
 
Invigorate both top-down and bottom-up approaches to innovation. Build a culture of innovation through education, emphasis, and rewarding innovators. Solicit outside feedback as goal checks. Your unit and our Military will be better for it.
 

1. Action. Ability to act quickly upon an idea in uncertain or unclear situations includes risk-tolerance
2. Problem definition Asking the right questions and solution brainstorming mapping out a set of potential solution
3. Ownership. Mindset and habit of taking responsibility for individual and team outcomes includes being proactive and results/solution-oriented.
4. Prototyping.. Ability to turn abstract concepts into tangible and testable artifacts. This includes the instinct to and skill of rapid prototyping.
5. Goal-Setting. Ability to think ahead to a future point and set ambitious but attainable goals.
6. Task Management. Ability to break complex projects into smaller, interdependent and sequential tasks with deadlines done on schedule
7. Prioritization. Ability to determine the most important / valuable work and focus on it until completion.
8. Feedback. Ability to give and receive feedback in a way that promotes growth includes avoiding conflicts and effectiveness in difficult conversations to resolve conflict.
9. Intent: Discipline of working deliberately/independently towards a goal
10. Motivation: Possessing the ambition, curiosity and determination motor behind self-directedness and perseverance.

 

As Digital Tools have taken over the future of military operations, there are no more “tech” and “non-tech” companies. Instead, there are organizations that leverage data and automation, and organizations that fade into irrelevance. The Services risk irrelevance if it does not address its digital talent crisis: It does not have enough digital talent and it does not manage its digital workforce well.

DoD recognizes that it needs modern tools like AI and data analytics to succeed at multidomain operations, its strategy to fight and win across land, air, sea, and other domains on 21st-century battlefields.

Creating these capabilities requires a digital workforce: developers, systems engineers, product managers, data scientists, user experience engineers, technical program managers, and other roles.

The recent creation of the Digital Innovation Factory is a positive step to address the digital talent gap, but the DoD should be bold and create a “Digital Corps” to manage its growing digital workforce.

DoD has made some small, disparate efforts to harness uniformed digital talent through the Digital Service, AI Task Force and Enterprise Network Management Office. But enterprise-wide change cannot be sustained through piecemeal efforts.

Furthermore, “upskilling” or providing mid-career training to these servicemembers without changing their personnel management systems will create digital islands — skilled servicemembers with no career track and no institutional protection.

It is not enough to focus on putting the right people in the right places at the right time. DoD must develop new strategies for empowering administrators critical to the functioning of military specialties, but don’t fit within the traditional talent management system.

DoD must manage personnel policy, promotions, training, and certification of digital personnel in a way that the regular status quo could not hope to.

To understand where and why the Digital Corps fits within the talent management system, we should understand the other talent models: traditional, specialist, and professional.

The traditional model manages personnel in the core fields of the Services— infantry, armor, engineers, and artillery. These fields are unique to the Services and require training only within the branches.

Recruits are not required to have particular skills to enter and pick branches mostly on preference. Since the skill requirements for these fields are well-known and for the most part static, well-established recruiters treat personnel and roles as interchangeable parts. A job in these fields merely requires a person of a certain career field and pay grade, such as an infantry captain — any will do.

Personnel — both officer and enlisted — in traditional fields move between leadership, staff, and developmental assignments as their careers progress, grooming them for the broad needs of “generalship.”

Indeed, most of the generals in the Marines come from, value, and select these traditional fields and skill sets for promotion. Military planners have had decades to learn how to properly assign people and resources to traditional units.

The resulting system is an assembly line that moves traditional personnel from one established billet to another, treating them as items to assign to a unit, where the goal is filling vacancies, rather than a personalized approach to talent management where the goal is to align skills to teams and missions, but DoD has struggled since inception to retain Digital Innovation talent.

Specialist fields like aviation and special operations forces are somewhat similar in that they are also unique to the Services — though there are contractor helicopter pilots, few shoot Hellfire missiles or get shot at.

Specialist fields also have an established Service training pipeline. These branches differ from infantry, armor, engineers, and artillery in two key attributes: They require a certain level of assessed proficiency — either the Flight Aptitude Screening Test or special operations forces assessment and selection for entrance, and they have well-known but highly technical skill sets that atrophy quickly.

The military recognizes that pilots lose proficiency in flying quickly, so time in the cockpit is prioritized. Unlike traditional branches, aviation is heavily staffed with warrant officers due to technical expertise requirements.

Putting aviation officers into desk jobs actively deteriorates their skills — they get better at flying by flying a lot. Aviation officers also have many specialization options based on aircraft variants and special training courses, so the branch has many occupational specialties and additional skill identifiers to track and manage its talent pool within the same industrial-era framework that traditional branches use.

Finally, the military professional corps functions differently from traditional branches. These roles are not unique to the armed services and have contractor training and accreditation pipelines, generally require expertise prior to entering the DoD, and require specialized skills not needed within the traditional Service Structure.

In the professional corps the services delineate between technical experts and administrators. This model allows officers who are highly skilled experts to practice their professional skills rather than serve in traditional leadership roles as platoon, company, and battalion commanders or as staff officers, although they can.

This model — allowing personnel to serve a career promotion track while remaining with skills — is similar to how technology firms delineate between technical experts, ie, digital engineers, data scientists, technical program managers and operations roles, ie marketing, logistics, account managers while allowing for technical experts to be promoted in non-managerial positions to focus more deeply on their area of expertise.

DoD recognizes the importance of specialist labels in lieu of an over-generalized label. Instead of the “any infantryman will do” mentality, these professional corps have a variety of technical specialty and skill codes to more precisely define areas and levels of expertise. Assignments managers work closely with each person to account for unique roles and skills not tracked in the system, for example, personnel who also do research.

None of these models is perfect for managing the unique challenges of the digital workforce, but all have something to offer in shaping the new Digital Corps.

The traditional model works well for a force that needs to scale across hundreds of thousands of people but fails for people with specialized skillsets. The specialist model prevents skill atrophy and prizes specialization but struggles to account for the expertise required in accessions and dynamic changes in required skills. The professional model comes closest in guiding highly skilled individuals within the Services’ talent system, but still requires tailoring to fit the needs of the digital force.

Unfortunately, there will always be some uncertainty or gap around military force planning for emerging technologies. No model can project what talent is required to man future technology force structures with the precision needed to fit within existing Marine Resources Command manning structures.

The need for a comprehensive understanding of both talent development and assignment requires a model that communicates the full personnel lifecycle. Said differently, the Services needs an even more flexible model.

Rather than adopt an existing “professional” model lock, stock, and barrel, we will evaluate digital talent management through a Marine Innovation/Learning Strategy. The strategy is built on four pillars that comprise a Marine’s entire service experience: acquire (recruit, screen, hire), develop (train), employ (assign), and retain (evaluate, promote).

Acquire

Step one in building a digital force is acquiring digital talent — identifying, recruiting, screening, and hiring candidates. Despite arguments over the merits of technologists in uniform, the Marines decision to invest in AI experts and developers signals that they clearly recognize that making digital skills the exclusive domain of civilians and contractors creates a dangerous condition where the Services don’t understand how its core digital information technology systems function.

This lack of awareness invites future strategic risks as key leaders are unable to make rapid and effective decisions about employing or developing digital capabilities.

Since digital skills and best practices are more prevalent in industry, so Marines need to leverage a blend of all relevant ways to acquire talent. These include Digital Excepted Service authorities, and effort to hire skilled digital professionals. Direct Commissioning authorities enable skilled civilian technologists to serve in uniform at senior ranks and future investment in lower echelons.

First, DoD should look to traditional commissioning sources like the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps focused on digital skills. Digital skills like networks development and artificial intelligence have been identified in recent National Defense Authorization Acts, so DoD needs to respond by increasing the supply of digital officers. The new applied Digital Corps  program is a start, but the efforts should not stop there given the unfilled need for AI designers, innovators, developers, architects, and other skills.

Investing in traditional pipelines should be complemented by leveraging direct commissioning authorities, but there are risks associated with relying heavily on direct commissioning for the Digital Corps — especially now as the culture is forming. The shortened training program that direct commissioning entails is a clear trade-off in the service contract:

The Services accepts risk of less military training, decreased indoctrination, and higher projected turnover rates in exchange for commissioning contractors who already have special expertise. Filling the new Digital Corps with “outsiders” who don’t understand military culture and norms will erode trust and potentially create a culture of “technologists who happen to wear a uniform” instead of “soldiers who happen to code.”

In addition to creating an increased supply of digital officers, DoD should create the relevant assignments for these leaders to fill. While some junior leaders have been placed into digital transformation roles, many other emerging technologists have been blocked due to the lack of direct sponsorship from a general officer constraints like their professional timelines or professional education requirements.

Develop

Until the Services have a robust digital personnel acquisition pipeline it should focus on developing digital talent from the personnel it has. It is important to distinguish familiarity from expertise. Although creating a “digitally literate” force is necessary in the digital world, it is no replacement for digital experts.

For example, Marines are taught battlefield first-aid, because Services would never rely on artillery officers training in combat lifesaving in lieu of the Digital Corps. Coding boot camps and entry-level certifications create familiarity, but will not yield the full transformative value of digital skills. The military will need to rely on experts who can see through hype and evaluate expensive training programs honestly.

Developing talent can again rely on existing programs developed by contractors  in industry. For members of the Digital Corps, encouraging extensive use of the Pentagon’s Training With Industry program would be an invaluable broadening assignment rather than merely a “nice-to-have” and could be considered a requirement for promotion to high ranks.

Lastly, there is no centralized accreditation board for digital tech expertise. There are many certifications, but not a true credential. Degrees in computer science, electrical engineering, and information technology are strong proxies, but some candidates are self-taught and learned by doing.

Employ

Digital problems require certain expertise to fix, so digital experts cannot be treated as interchangeable parts. A machine learning expert may know little about website design, so the Digital Corps will need a detailed and evolving system of digital skills.

DoD Talent Management Task Force has been working on developing a structure for knowledge, skills, and behaviors, and is working to build a digital talent marketplace that helps candidates choose jobs and jobs choose candidates based on skill supply and demand.

Once these roles are created, innovative digital talent should be flexibly managed to ensure that they are assigned to teams that can best use their capabilities. If commanders had to compete for talent by pitching their projects and problems to technically talented servicemembers capable of building digital solutions, commanders might be less likely to relegate those hard-won technologists to PowerPoint slide-making.

The need for a centrally managed talent pool was a core part of the Defense Innovation Board’s Workforce Now recommendations, and should be included in the Digital Corps.

Retain

Once employed, retaining talent is a two-part challenge: The Services can choose to show people the door (involuntary) or people can choose to leave (voluntary). Bleeding talent in either way is costly.

Involuntary attrition occurs most frequently when a service member is passed over for promotion, reaches a mandatory retirement date, or fails to meet fitness standards. During promotion boards, officers are grouped by specialty into competitive categories.

Competitive categories collect specialties that can compete against each other for promotion. Creating a competitive category for digital technologists will likely improve officer promotion rates and may strengthen bonds between existing functional areas in technology areas by providing a collective sense of purpose and identity.

Furthermore, having technologists evaluate other technologists may help to focus the leaders on technologists’ contributions, whereas it’s plausible that non-technical administrators rating technologists may emphasize administrative minutiae or physical fitness over digital skills.

Two often cited risks for voluntary separation are pay and frustration. Like involuntary separation risks, pay is addressable within the DoD current structure. The military already pays for special skills — technical skills should be immediately added.

Frustration is likely to be a larger factor and is harder to fix. What happens when a highly skilled developer is not given the right tools to create digital innovative constructs? Do they need to jump bureaucratic hurdles to do a basic job, or leave the field of expertise for several years to check a box for a broadening assignment? These are harder problems. The last, however, is a talent management issue that can and should be solved with the Digital Corps model.

Let’s assume that the services commit to creating a Digital Corps. What happens next? What outliers will they need to confront? Organizational change often fails when leaders fail to consider second-order effects or edge cases.

Candidates who complete digital training are the top candidates for the initial Digital Corps billets, in addition to anyone who applies directly based on existing skills. This will give leadership time and space to maneuver and address the larger challenges.

The Services should understand their mid-term roadmap for civilians and contractors, but also work to avoid losing uniformed talent to become contractors due to pay or removing them from roles where they get to use their digital skills. Perhaps just as importantly, these personnel should be provided with unique leadership and cultural structures to flourish, which are distinct from the command and control concepts found in traditional military hierarchies.

Lastly, there are already existing specialties with overlapping skills, and service leadership should sort out equities. Operations research specialists are similar to data scientists but may need further training, while network operations could get pulled into the Digital Corps directly. The services should also create a path to upskill selected candidates from existing branches — the leader of the AI  factory could be a helicopter pilot after all.

The questions presented here show  managing digital tech talent is a “right now” problem for the Military and must build tools that are in the hands of users in contact with the battlefield every day.

It’s easy to try to fit digital tech talent into industrial-era models, but following the traditional branches will inevitably lead to the same mismanagement and attrition that is fueling current calls for reform. Talent management is an investment, not a cost, and the effort to execute a bold vision for uniformed technologists will pay off over the long term.

The military of the future will not merely shoot slightly further and move marginally faster. By creating digital innovation factories, and the talent factories that sustain them, the Services must clearly recognize the character of conflict is changing — just as it did during previous industrial revolutions.

If the Marines want to remain a dominant force the Service to keep adversaries at bay, ow better to demonstrate the characteristics of offense — surprise, concentration, audacity, and tempo — in the current security environment than by seizing the opportunity to build a digital force built for the information age?

No matter the type or their niche, there’s a common set of recruiting skills that every good recruiter needs to have to do their job well. Here are some of them and how you can spot them in a good digital corps recruiter.

1. Attention to detail.  Attention to detail is vital for recruiters so work can be done with a relatively small talent pool,

2. Marketing skills. Finding top talent in today’s market is extremely hard. The number of open positions is much higher than the number of applicants and candidates won’t rush to any company out there.

3. Communication skills. No matter the position they’re trying to fill, the recruiter is the key link between a company and a candidate. Depending on the impression they make, they can either attract or discourage the candidate for applying.

4. Relationship building skills. Great recruiters think of recruitment as a relationship between a candidate and a company. Similar to a sales process, it takes much more than a single touchpoint to make a sale, or in this case, fill a position
.
5. Multitasking skills. Hiring is a lengthy process, and there’s quite a lot between posting a job  and filling an open position. Recruiters need to, screen applicants, conduct interviews, etc. multiple things at once and excell in each of them.

6. Time management skills. With multitasking comes time management, as there’s only a certain amount of hours in a day and sometimes, companies need a position filled very quickly.

7. Patience. A successful recruiter needs to have a great amount of patience, as they deal with both candidates and companies. A simple task such as setting up a job interview can require quite a lot of patience from the recruiter’s end, as they often won’t be able to find a term that suits everyone.

8. Listening skills. Besides listening to the companies they’re hiring for, recruiters need to listen to applicants with great attention. Applicants, in particular, are very important because their feedback is crucial to placing them in a position that suits both them and their future unit.

9. Teamwork skills. Whether working externally or internally, recruiters need to function within a team to find the best employees for an organization.

10. Digital skills.  Basic understanding of Digital skills can go a long way for a recruiter’s success. Proficiency in digital programming, design, system administration, etc. can help find the best candidates in these fields.

Challenges facing commanders to make solid decisions based on identifying operational risk is not for lack of directives: Long lists of Defense leaders have urged the Department’s people to innovate, to take risks. Successful combat leaders have come to realize that part of the problem is: they don’t know how.

Making good judgments in the face of risk is hard. It involves a complex web of decisions, actions and counteractions that often spiral well beyond the scope of the original task. The higher the stakes, the tougher risk management becomes.

The same is true of combat — which is exactly why the military insists that its combat leaders train and study and review and practice, over and over again, in ever-more complex scenarios, so that they are as ready as possible to make decisions based on real risk.

Take the example of a Task Force, several hundred soldiers equipped with tanks and other equipment — charged with breaching the defenses an area of interest and clear debris.

An operations officer, an experienced tactician and planner, proposed to focus on two breach points. This was a tactically and doctrinally sound approach, yet the plan was changed to focus on a single point. Why?

Four reasons: First, our task force, assembled in the past 72 hours from unfamiliar units, would be working in close proximity, at night, with another organization from a sister service with whom we had never fought. The risk of losing our own in this complex environment was very, very high; a simpler plan was safer.

Second, we knew the terrain and enemy positions solely from satellite imagery, often weeks old. None of us had actually seen the ground or the places we intended to force our way through.

Third, while some leaders had spent years at Regiment Training for high-intensity combat, the same was not true of many subordinate leaders. Most of them had experienced some combat in the area we were tasked with securing, but had generally spent their recent years in a lower grade compared to full-out combat. Fewer still had participated in a company-level Combined Arms Live Fire, a maneuver exercise featuring live ammunition of multiple types.

And fourth, it was uncertain our unit’s leaders, inexperienced in this type of operation, would be unable to capitalize on a successful breach and avoid a long and costly fight. 

Commanders decisions weren’t based on a whim or their gut. They were made based on best judgment backed by the confidence that comes from learning why I “was defeated” on lots of mock simulated practice battlefields. 
A minefield got me the first time I led a company toward a mock breach point at the Combat Maneuver Training Center Later that week, I got beat again—in an artillery barrage that caught me behind a mud-mired vehicle in the breach lane. 

 A few days later, I was “targeted” again   by a well-camouflaged tank that my lead unit rolled past, unawares.
Years later I watched my tactically perfect plans unravel as small units got lost and key equipment broke. In subsequent rotations at the training center I got hit by friendly fire: an Apache helicopter that misidentified my vehicle, an unmarked friendly minefield that we drove into.

As the years passed, I got beat again and again and again in payment for my personal mistakes, poor planning assumptions, and for things out of my control.

Each of these training “defeats” was immediately followed by exhaustive after-action review sessions designed to highlight the events that led to our failures and help us learn the complex calculus that would enable us to accept and mitigate risk on real battlefields.

All this allowed me to recognize, as I weighed options for the current assault, that halving the number of breach points created some new risks — principally, that a failure at our single point of attack would leave the Marines to our right alone and unprotected. But my training also helped me understand how to mitigate this and other risks.

With less than 72 hours to prepare for the attack, we chose to keep the plan simple and focus our time on rehearsing it at every level. We built a massive mock-up of the battle theatre and walked everyone, down to the most junior leader, through their part of the first 24 hours of the attack.

We did this to ensure that everyone knew who was to their left, right, front, and rear; that they understood where they were moving to; and that they knew the control measures that would keep us from hitting our own people. 

Based on these rehearsals, we made adjustments. The night before the attack, we staged a full-up rehearsal, and made more adjustments. We timed our movement to the breach point and rehearsed the timing of our artillery fires. We surveyed the ground between our force and the defense; the commander walked up, then crawled further, to see it first-hand.

Based on what the company commander leading the breach force learned from his recon, we shifted the breach point 200 meters to take a cleaner, more protected approach. 

Then came the action, and we breached the complex minefields guarding the approach into and entered the battle zone on schedule. 

Things didn't go as well for the Marine task force to our right flank. “For five hours, 1/3 Marines attempted to create a lane into the , onto the conflict stage, only to be thwarted by the insurgents’ defensive positions and the railroad track.”

 “The 1-3 Marines were supposed to blow a path across train tracks, but they were well built and didn’t break the first time. Then an armored bulldozer got stuck in the breach…With no radio and poor night-vision goggles, the backup bulldozer couldn’t find the breach…The delay meant that several vehicles came together near the breach point. Insurgents took advantage, launching three mortars, wounding four as they struck two tanks and an armored troop carrier.”

For all our planning, this was a risk we had not anticipated or planned for. Unprotected on our right flank, alone in a city of enemies, our Task Force fought on its own for hours. There were losses.

A few days later, we were faced with an even tougher decision. Recognizing an opportunity to bring a quick end to the fight, we coordinated a plan to finish clearing our portion of the battlespace and that of the Marine unit to our right.

But as we began to move units into position the next morning, the company commander of our lead element got hit. The loss of a leader is tough for any unit to handle, but most have an executive officer, a “second in charge,” ready to step in and assume command. In our case, the unit’s had been hit the day before. Normally, the loss of two of the three senior leaders in a small unit would cause you to delay the attack or replace the unit. Unfortunately, we had no replacement available.  

Delaying the attack, which the Marine leaders offered as an option, would have enabled a fanatical and deeply entrenched enemy to reorganize, rest up, and burrow more deeply into the scene. Mitigating our own risk, therefore, would increase the risk to other units. Ultimately, we decided to press on with the attack. What ensued was a long, difficult night, but when the sun came up the next morning there was no fight left in the city, and we didn’t lose anyone else.

Many battlefield leaders such as these have little practical experience with business-based risk, but quickly found that my experience on mock, simulated battlefields gave me — and the people I trained — an edge.

Several things stood out. First, the skill that enables an individual to judge risk in complex situations is borne of repetitions of a challenge in varying conditions. Years of conditioning and multiple training exercises at Combat Training Centers gave me the experience to make the right decisions

The many rehearsals we executed before the attack ensured that my subordinate leaders understood my intent and could rise above the risk. We’ve adopted that strategy as creating accelerators at key installations that are now centers for training another generation of leaders in industry and DoD.

Second, no individual can properly understand all the risks in a complex situation. The chance of success is increased when a diverse group of leaders with different backgrounds work in concert with one another. Professional silos are the opposite of successful risk management.

Third, leaders who fail to find a way ahead despite risks don’t solve problems; they simply transfer the risk elsewhere. Often, it is transferred to lower-level leaders who lack the practice, training, experience, and resources to handle the risk — or even recognize it.

In the Pentagon, our acquisition and contracting rules and procedures seek, above all else, to reduce operational losses. But this has cost us countless opportunities to build the best possible combat force. In today’s fast-moving era, the ability to spot and seize on an opportunity may determine the success or failure of a company — or a military.

Pentagon Leaders must move past empty calls for more risk, past efforts to exactly copy industry best practices for innovation, and past a focus on technology scouting and venture capital.

These will not grow an acquisition force capable of taking the kind of risks that reduce the risks on the battlefield. Instead, we must apply what the military has long known about developing its leaders to use Mission Command Decision Making Models to issue orders.
 
Mission command: how to empower troops to act fast in a crisis
 
The ability of commanders to respond almost instantaneously to a crisis or potential crisis affects whether the event is manageable or escalates into something more serious.
 
Investigating how a mission command approach can help organizations create a crisis management system that is fit for the digital era where swift decision-making by effectively empowered people is vital.
 
What is mission command?
 
Mission command. In its military context it is a decentralised style of command that relies on initiative, the acceptance of responsibility and mutual trust. This approach empowers employees to use initiative and promotes freedom and speed of action through the establishment of clear intent and constraints e.g resources by senior managers or commanders.
 
Mission command has one guiding principle – the absolute responsibility to act and achieve the superior’s intent. It also has five further principles:

Unity of effort: Unity of effort stems from the setting of a clear intent, the use of common language, terminology and tactics, a high standard of collective training and the designation of priorities and a main effort for the mission or task.
 
Freedom of action: Troops must be able to exercise freedom of action within specified and implied constraints to act as they see fit to ensure the achievement of the superior’s intent without fear of repercussion.
 
Trust: Trust is a prerequisite at all levels. Trust improves speed of decision making and therefore improves the tempo of the operation. Trust must be earned not demanded, however the default must be for all levels of the organization to trust both their superiors and subordinates. In particular superiors must trust their employees to sensibly interpret their intent and persevere to achieve it.
 
Mutual understanding: Mutual understanding is developed over time through common doctrine and concepts.
Timely and effective decision making: Successful command requires timely and effective decision making at all levels. Despite the increasing availability and speed of information it remains essential for commanders to make decisions on the basis of incomplete and imperfect understanding. This can seem risky, and good judgement is required to decide when is the right time to act or not to act.
 
How can a mission command approach improve an organization’s crisis management capability?
 
There is a model in crisis management called ‘the golden hour’ which states that your response within the first hour of the crisis affects whether the event is manageable or escalates into something more serious.
 
But in the modern era of digitally connected operations, the reality is that the golden hour has been compressed into the golden few minutes, during which an organization’s initial response to a potential crisis affects whether the event is manageable or escalates into something more serious.
 
Organizations serious about their crisis preparedness have recognised this and are now searching for a means to enable this rapid, almost instantaneous strategic crisis response to happen. The application of a mission command approach in an organization’s crisis management system can help it achieve just that.
 
Most crises are dynamic, rapidly evolving and unpredictable and have extraordinary strategic implications. A mission command system allows troops to rapidly respond to a changing situation and seize opportunities by using their initiative, experience and ability to ensure that the commanders  intent and the organization’s response priorities are met. It also facilitates a rapid initial response to a crisis, prior to the activation through traditional means of the crisis management team(s) across the organization.
 
How can the key principles of mission command be applied to an organization’s crisis management system?
 
When an organization is experiencing a crisis its crisis management system needs to facilitate the creation of unity of effort within the response. It should establish the intent of senior officers this can be demonstrated through the documentation of:
 
Response priorities where it is common for organizations to use 1. People, 2. Environment, 3. Assets, 4. Reputation as their response priorities
 
Response approach – In its simplest form, an approach of prudent over reaction to a crisis or potential crisis empowers troops to act swiftly and decisively.
 
Management principles – these provide a guideline of how the organization will develop and deliver its response.
 
Definition of a crisis – A clear and concise definition of what constitutes a crisis
 
If Troops have this guiding methodology which explains the commanders  intent it empowers them to act, which supports freedom of action. The successful implementation of a crisis response requires investment from senior officers in a sustained competency development programme.
 
Developing troop competency in crisis response is essential, it develops confidence in the organization’s response system and their own capability to manage a crisis. A trained crisis management team has a far better chance of successfully managing a crisis than an untrained one, it will respond faster and work more efficiently as the response progresses. This in turn develops unity of effort across the response system and establishes a template for mutual understanding and trust to be developed across the organization.
 
Exercises also provide the basis for development of the crisis management system through a process of continuous improvement. Trust is gained in the crisis management system if responders know that their feedback, and any learnings identified in post exercise reports, are reviewed and any improvements are implemented.
 
Successful crisis response requires timely and effective decision making. By creating a crisis management system that adheres to a mission command philosophy, organizations can greatly improve the speed at which they respond to a crisis. This is achieved through unity of effort in the crisis response, mutual understanding and trust held by all members of the response structure, trust in the crisis management process and policy, and the freedom of action for troops to act using their best judgement and expertise within defined constraints, in line with the intent of commanders.
 
Summary
 
We have used best practices in crisis and incident management to be used as a benchmark to review how mission command approaches relate to, and can help organizations become better prepared to deal, with a crisis in the modern digital era.
 
It is clear that although mission command’s terminology is different, it is complimentary to the preparedness guidance presented in best practice. By using the guiding principle of mission command which is the absolute responsibility to act and achieve the superior’s intent, and the five key principles; unity of effort, freedom of action, trust, mutual understanding and timely and effective decision-making.
 
Organization equipped with a solid decision making model can create a crisis management system that aligns with best practices and allows it to respond quickly and effectively through the empowerment of troops to make swift decisions, which have the potential to minimise the impact of the crisis during the critical first few minutes. This increases organizational resilience.

Commanders seek to initiate combat on the most favorable terms. Doing so allows the massing of effects against selected enemy units in vulnerable locations. Maintaining the initiative allows a commander to shift the decisive operation to make good decisions so opportunities can be exploited as they arise. Commanders seize, retain, and exploit the initiative by--

1. Defining types of operations, forms of maneuver, and tactical mission tasks.
2. Organization tasks of available forces and allocation of resources.
   
3. Arrangement and choice of control measures impact operational tempo
4. Gaining a position of relative advantage-- physical/temporal by rapid maneuver
   
5. Employing firepower to destroy critical enemy capabilities and systems.
6. Conducting information operations to isolate and degrade enemy decision-making abilities.
   
7. Denying enemy forces what they require for success, example terrain/airspace
8. Sustaining and protecting subordinate forces before, during, and after battles.
   
9. Planning beyond the initial operation and anticipating its branches or sequels.
   
10. Consolidating gains to defeat all forms of enemy resistance.

Persistent issue of “garrison bureaucracy is often at odds with Army’s mission command doctrine.” Mission command must be practiced daily, “whether in garrison, during training, or while deployed for operations around the world, and solid decision-making models are critical to every operation.
 
But is updating the doctrine sufficient to answer its critics? Persistent execution challenges may go beyond what any doctrine can address. These challenges include a lack of trust and risk aversion engendered by bureaucracy, which hinder the application of mission command principles by Army leaders in garrison environments. Resolving these issues could allow the Army to make mission command something substantially valued by the force.
 
According to ADP 6-0, “Mission command is the Army’s approach to command and control that empowers subordinate decision making and decentralized execution appropriate to the situation.
 
Mission command supports the Army’s operational concept of unified land operations and its emphasis on seizing, retaining, and exploiting the initiative.” Compare this to the previous definition from the 2012 version: “Mission command is the exercise of authority and direction by the commander using mission orders to enable disciplined initiative within the commander’s intent to empower agile and adaptive leaders in the conduct of unified land operations.”
 
This new definition has removed the term “commander” from its original definition, yet the heart of mission command is still command-centric. The new definition retains the term “unified land operations,” which undermines the acceptance of mission command in a garrison environment. Too many leaders interpret mission command as principally applicable in combat, with little relevance to garrison environments.
 
Command-Centric
 
The updated language of ADP 6-0 still focuses the construct of mission command on the commander, who exercises formal leadership over his or her organization as expressed in Army Command Policy. The commander gives guidance, orders, and directs the staff. Yet, leaders in non-command positions, such as other officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) do the same.
 
The Army’s leader development process for officers and NCOs prepares them to assume leadership positions in troop and staff assignments alike, including leading and directing subordinates to execute missions.
 
The principles of mission command from ADP 6-0 (e.g., Competence; Mutual Trust; Shared Understanding; Commander’s Intent; Mission Orders; Disciplined Initiative; and Risk Acceptance) prescribe the ways commanders can most effectively accomplish the mission at all echelons from company/battery levels, to the enterprise level. Yet, these same principles also prescribe ways leaders who are not commanders can lead effectively.
 
Unified Land Operations
 
The Army conducts prompt and sustained land combat as part of the joint force. Accordingly, the priorities of mission command are accomplishing a tactical and operational mission while deployed and preparing for missions during home station training or during maneuver Combat Training Center rotations.
 
Each environment is critical to developing and sharpening the application of mission command principles, yet leaders tends to ignore or not use important principles in garrison environments.
 
Using mission command in the operational environment rather than in garrison is not an either-or scenario; it is required in both. Embedding the principles of mission command within the garrison environment will yield dividends, as soldiers learn to expect mission command as part of the Army culture — as they operate in the tactical through strategic/enterprise levels.
 
So why is it so difficult for the Army to implement the principles of mission command in a garrison environment?
 
Lack of Trust and Risk Aversion
 
The Army does not fully embrace mission command in garrison (or elsewhere) because leaders are risk averse and lack trust in their subordinates, and these problems only increase in garrison environments.
 
A leader’s tolerance for risk decreases in a non-tactical environment. Why is this? Risk tolerance is related to control and judgement. The Army’s culture is heavily reliant on, and influenced by, control or the use of “…organizational procedures (policies and regulations) … for the common and greater good.” Typically, this interpretation of the greater good leans on the side of centralization and rigidity, and it lowers a leader’s risk.
 
But when ‘bad’ things happen under mission command, will we feel the need to control the outcomes better by increasing the approval level on a particular issue?”
 
The answer is unequivocally yes. When things go wrong, the Army’s instinct is to exert control, create a checklist, and make the entire chain of command approve similar issues. When opportunities to empower subordinates exist, leaders often prefer, or default to, retaining more control, creating systems and policies to address risk or leadership failures.
 
But these systems and policies often limit or impede initiative and foment risk aversion, as leaders become more concerned with the negative consequences of noncompliance. The updated ADP 6-0 addresses this issue: “Employing the mission command approach during all garrison activities and training events is essential to creating the cultural foundation for its employment in high-risk environments.”
 
So how are we to fix this problem?
 
Interpreting mission command as principally applicable in combat, with little relevance to garrison environments means perceptions about subordinates’ competence can further erode trust between leaders and subordinates.
Focus group interviews revealed a perceived lack of trust and confidence in subordinate leaders’ expertise (knowledge, skills, and abilities) for garrison (home station) operations. These leaders cited a lack of experience among midgrade officers and noncommissioned officers required for competence in home station training.
 
ADP 6-0 addresses the need for the commander to “continually assess the competence of their subordinates and their organizations. This assessment informs the degree of trust commanders have in their subordinates’ ability to execute mission orders in a decentralized fashion at acceptable levels of risk.
 
”These perceptions combined with rigid and bureaucratic policies and regulations cause many senior leaders to micromanage routine garrison tasks, as opposed to enabling disciplined initiative and empowering subordinates. The root cause may be attributed to the ever present but often unspoken risk to career.
 
For mission command to be successful, leaders must be comfortable letting go. In the field, this may be relatively simple, as leaders find it difficult to micromanage formations spread out across kilometers of battlespace. In garrison, however, where missions and people are more centralized, the tendency to over control is significant.
 
 If a leader is concerned that their subordinates’ failure will reflect badly on them, they may fall prey to this pattern. Leaders must fight this urge. This “consciously abdicating the responsibility of the outcome to subordinates.”
 
Things will always go wrong. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy” and if we are serious about implementing mission command, senior leaders must not crush subordinates when bad things happen. Of course, leaders must do the right thing, and negligence should neither be accepted nor overlooked. But the garrison environment should enable leaders at all levels to practice and encourage mission command.
 
The difference between the Army’s application of mission command in the field and in garrison is striking, and it is a problem. In the field, leaders are given wide latitude to make decisions, while in garrison, leaders rely on bureaucracy and managing systems. Consider the constraints on leaders to run a weapons range at home station, with the mandate that they complete a worksheet before action.
 
Mission command must become a 24-hour, 365-day mindset in the Army. Every leader must commit to executing mission command in the field, in training, and in garrison, and whether they are in command or not. Leaders must not “put on” mission command only when signing their weapon out of the arms room. . Using a mission command approach must be second nature.
 
Good leaders practice mission command daily, continuously applying its principles during everything their units do in order to maximize the repetitions essential for making the principles second nature to everyone on the team.”
 
While leaders apply mission command across the Army in different units and formations, the amount of control shifts, based on the level of training, experience, and competence of leaders, soldiers, and staff.
 
Imagine two infantry companies. Both company commanders rely on mission command, but one commander encourages autonomy among his subordinate leaders and their platoons due to their experience and competence. The second company commander maintains greater control because subordinate leaders lack experience and there are some doubts about their competence due to the complexity of the mission.
 
This difference is OK. It wouldn’t be mission command if every situation demanded the same judgement. Each leader, however, must communicate with their subordinates on the “why” to create shared understanding and to build trust.
 
In any environment, senior leaders must empower their subordinates and model the principles of mission command. They must ruthlessly eliminate over-control or micro-management from their behavior. And if centralization is required, they must explain why.
 
Changes to mission command will mean soldiers taking risks and taking charge on complex battlefields There’s too much top down direction, too much of a compliance climate in mission command.” Just as important as shared understanding and empowerment is trust.
 
Trust is the basis of all cohesion in the Army and successful mission command. “Subordinates are more willing to exercise initiative when they believe their commander trusts them. They will also be more willing to exercise initiative if they believe their commander will accept and support the outcome of their decisions.
 
 Likewise, commanders delegate greater authority to subordinates who have demonstrated tactical and technical competency and whose judgment they trust.” If the goal is to truly to build cohesive teams through mutual trust, all leaders, not just commanders, must actively embrace using the principles of mission command.
 
By using the principles of mission command in the garrison environment, leaders will reinforce its use and inculcate it in all the Army does. Whatever the doctrine in field manual command and control stated in doctrine, commanders have always and will always evaluate their units and subordinates based on how much they trust them to make sound decisions through the folowing process”
 
The military decision-making process (MDMP) has not been updated to reflect the current operating conditions, the training and competencies of its practitioners, and the character of multi-domain operations it must now guide.

FM 6-0, Commander and Staff Organization and Operations, the proponent field manual for MDMP, has not been updated since 2014. For the most part, it remains an effective process for developing plans, courses of actions, and solutions to problems.

MDMP has not paralleled the changes to the battlefield conditions in that it will be utilized. Surely, many Soldiers have considered, “how can we make this better?” These steps are an articulation of just that: notes taken in a field notebook and questions regarding the improvement of a process which is central to organizational success.

Eventually, just as there was a decision making process before the MDMP, there will be one after. For now, at least, our current planning process must enable functionally integrated decision-making to avoid becoming obsolete in a dynamically complex world.  

As with any process, there are limitations, gaps, and shortfalls. Several updates have been recommended to strengthen the logistics underpinning some of the steps.

1. Change the first step of MDMP from receipt of mission to initiate planning.

FM 6-0 clearly articulates the inputs and outputs for each step of the MDMP. In the first step, the key input is “higher headquarters’ plan or order or a new mission anticipated by commanders. Since the step’s title frames the action, units often do not conduct MDMP unless they have received a mission.
In complex conditions or circumstances, units cannot afford to await orders from higher command, so field commanders and staffs should initiate MDMP whenever they believe it necessary to be successful. So MDMP should mirror the Joint Planning Process, and change the first step to initiate planning

2. Add a subtask to the first step: determine the battle rhythm. Most units apply a pre-existing battle rhythm, probably contained within an Standard Operating Procedure, and attempt to apply it to their current circumstances. Units insist on ensuring the commander’s decision-making cycle remains comfortably the same. Often, this prevents or prolongs seizing the initiative in emergent conditions Making this step explicit facilitates the functional integration of plans for an organization and enables the commander to immediately adjust his decision-making cycle to the environment. Finally, determining the battle rhythm expedites the commander’s and staff’s employment and integration of the targeting process – which is vital to success during emergent large-scale multi-domain conflict.

3. Articulate integration required of mission analysis and determine what needs to be done to manage operational risk  According to FM 6-0, “Commanders – supported by their staffs – gather, analyze, and synthesize information to orient themselves on the current conditions of the operational environment.”
When, then, and how do staffs integrate the information? Even the most seasoned field grade officers fail to integrate the information gathered from mission analysis, delaying the understanding sought after by both staffs and commanders.

It’s more than the “so what and therefore” that staffs often convey to their commanders. A process that puts together information requires that the staff explain what the risk relationship is between the pertinent facts, pertinent assumptions, known constraints, limitations, and known dependencies.

4. Highlight Planning/Execution Dependencies There are facts at the time of planning that are a critical condition or precursor necessary for successful execution of succeeding successor task. There will be planning assumptions and execution dependencies: an assumption would be, “we assume fuel will be available,” while a dependency would be, “our execution will depend on fuel.” Clarifying dependencies in multi-domain operations, during which multiple organizations depend on each other for effects and support, is critically important.

5. Begin risk management after getting tasks, facts, assumptions, limitations, dependencies, and constraints Every task, whether specified, implied, or essential, exists within real circumstances characterized as either facts, assumptions, dependencies, limitations, and/or constraints. While mission analysis does not require staffs to perform its sub-steps in any designated order, there is a reason why you should start assessing risk management occurs after tasks, facts, assumptions, limitations, and constraints are gathered. The management of risk requires staffs to sum up the relationship of these factors to explain to the commander the risk associated with conducting a task, specified or otherwise.
 
Risk is defined differently in the process of risk management and as an element of operational art. In the context of risk management, In one definition, controls and actions are taken to eliminate a hazard or to reduce its risk. Or, Commanders accept risks to create and maintain conditions necessary to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. The willingness to incur risk is often the key to exposing enemy weaknesses that an enemy considers beyond friendly reach.

Experienced commanders balance audacity and imagination against risk and uncertainty to strike at a time, place, and manner unexpected by enemy forces. It can be a mistake to view tasks and hazards as the same, rather than to view hazards as accompanying tasks, which steers organizations to avoid risk rather than to smartly embrace it.

6. Make Staffs responsible for identifying where the commander might make decisions with risk The relationship between facts and assumptions is clear: staffs should seek to either confirm assumptions as facts, or disconfirm facts as being untrue. It then follows that the more facts and fewer assumptions a task has associated with it, the less risky the task is.

If a task has few facts, and many assumptions, while also having many limitations, dependencies, and constraints, the more risk the task represents. Integrating the information in this manner helps the commander make a risk decision, which is a commander’s determination to accept or not accept the risks associated with taking what action.

7. Delineate planning/execution types of priority intelligence requirements. According to FM 6-0, “A priority intelligence requirement is an intelligence requirement, stated as a priority for intelligence support that the commander and staff need to understand the adversary or other aspects of the operational environment.

Reconnaissance and Security Operations Manual defines a PIR as “an intelligence requirement, stated as a priority for reconnaissance and security tasks and intelligence collection that the commander needs to understand about a threat, enemy, or adversary or about the operational environment.

The MDMP requires consideration as an output of course of action approval but does not describe what these considerations entail. In the early stages of the planning process, when neither the staff nor the commander fully understand the operating environment, the PIRs should focus on gathering information to assist planners in the development of a plan.

As the mission progresses, and the planning horizon collapses, the PIRs should focus on decision-making during execution. At the battalion level, this may be tricky given the limited number and capability of organic collection assets. However, at the brigade and division level, this is more easily achieved based on the varying echelons and capabilities of information collection platforms and reach back capability. Articulating this delineation would force staffs to truly consider PIR throughout the operations process.

8. Change and reorganize the steps of course of action development. A review of subtasks Assess Relative Combat Power and Array Initial Forces illustrates that both contain the words relative and ratio so much that their definitions and outputs are nearly the same, and are often abbreviated, if not omitted. When staffs assess combat power, they are brainstorming which friendly and enemy elements of combat power to avoid and exploit. Both the sub-steps result in the comparison of forces as it relates to either’s task. Combining these subtasks will make the outputs better and encourage their utility and execution.

9. Change Assign Headquarters to Determine Task Organization and Command Support Relationships. Articulating the output of the subtask will contribute to the full and more effective completion of the task. Asking and answering how the unit will organize to accomplish assigned tasks is task organizing and determining command support relationships during this subtask will ensure this important step is not omitted. Currently, command support relationships are not mentioned in MDMP itself.

​10. Change Sketch Note to Effects Note. Changing the name of this rarely utilized tool will help staffs simultaneously employ multiple defeat mechanisms to present multiple dilemmas to enemy decision-makers thus enabling the unit to impose its will, in the form of physical, temporal, and behavioral effects. The sketch note tool focuses on linking units’ actions by time, space, and purpose while the Effects Note focuses only on units’ effects on the enemy by time, space, and purpose. Finally, the use of both wargaming tools facilitates the staff’s comprehension of the plan.   

Digital Mission Command Systems MCS present themselves as tools to enhance situational awareness, they too often produce the opposite: a fictional picture that inhibits subordinate initiative as leaders fixate on systems rather than operations, expending precious time and energy in the management of larger than necessary Command Posts (CPs).
 
These systems are robust, rugged, and relatively simple, requiring only minimal operator training. Radios remain the backbone of tactical communications though they are relatively slower and prone to net congestion.
 
 
The Battalion-sized Opposing Force (OPFOR) habitually defeats formations four to six times larger. Units consistently fail to manage transitions, often completely losing control of subordinate units as they struggle to maintain both analog and digital systems, often while moving.
 
In operations where Design of Digital Systems has not been executed well, Digital MCS exacerbate the challenge. Because they are promoted as being so convenient, units fail to back up the digital COP with an analog system, losing all sense of the battlefield while moving.
 
Moreover, poorly designed Digital systems incentivize bad habits by playing to our biases, telling us that we have "situational awareness" when in fact we only have a small picture of our own forces and virtually none of the enemy Icons convey authority, allowing CPs to declare "Situational Awareness" when we only know the positions of our own forces (and then only platforms, not people). As a result, “units may not report critical information such as friendly locations and enemy actions via the radio. Consequently, the digital COP gives a false sense of security when clearing ground for fire Digital MCS used outside after a tent collapse at JRTC.
 
 
Even if achievable, Information Dominance was always a misleading goal because merely possessing information “is not actually an indication of superiority over an adversary; information is not so much an end in itself as one means among others.” Developing a battlefield picture is fundamentally inductive: we see only bits of the enemy. We must synthesize the enemy’s intentions from composite pieces or actions, working out the details. Digital MCS, on the contrary, shows a deductive world, with a simple picture. This framing restricts our conceptual ability to understand the enemy’s capacity and intentions.
 
 
When aggregated, small frustrations and faulty processes mean Digital MCS inhibit the Art of Mission Command. Simpler is better. A well-constructed mission order, developed to echo the commander's intent, remains the best method to coordinate unit actions. A CPOF briefing is hardly better than a PowerPoint slide deck; it is often worse.

Counter-intuitively, simpler systems and processes are not necessarily easier. It takes substantial effort and training to write concise orders with clear guidance and graphics. Poorly designed Digital systems confound this effort by introducing extra friction; units become focused on the system and not the problem.
 
JRTC Observer/Controller-Trailers report that “mission briefs take several hours to build… The focus becomes updating slides instead of developing executable plans that consider contingencies and include rehearsals. ”Rather than the mission at hand; we end up fighting our systems rather than the problem or enemy, “cutting our feet to fit the shoes” of mandatory systems.
 
The real discipline required in Mission Command is for leaders to resist the urge to reach down and, instead, focus on making good decisions when the next event is encountered. Without substantial patience and discipline, Digital MCS can foster a culture of micromanagement. It falls to training, teamwork, and leadership to create resilient organizations ready for battlefield stress.
 
Continuing to force units to use systems at odds with Mission Command principles without Solid Design of Digital Systems can be problematic. Well-trained units discipline their use of systems to protect the initiative of soldiers closest to the problem to avoid the temptation of unnecessarily applying increase control of ‘reaching down’ just because they have the tools to do so.
 
How do we respond to a battlefield where human error and uncertainty combine with non-linear, complex systems to create chaos? the answer lies in the principles of Mission Command, particularly “building teams through mutual trust” and “creating shared understanding.”
 
Mission Command relies on acceptance of an imperfect, unclear world and trust between and within units Computers cannot replicate this implicit trust — and may often destroy it.
 
We must acknowledge the reality of chaotic battlefields. Training must require leaders to build teams and give clear guidance to enable subordinate action. In designing solid future Digital Systems, we must continually “rematch our behavioral/physical orientation with the changing world so that we can continue to thrive and grow in it.”
 
It’s important for leaders examine a “problem in depth, from multiple points of view,” Without using a valid decision-making process, you will likely fall into the trap of deciding on first answer that comes to mind.
 
“If you take good people and good ideas and match them with bad processes, the bad processes will win 9 out of 10 times.”
 
Training must include complex environments which will force leaders to make choices with imperfect information and vague instructions, a common result unless the Digital Systems Design has demonstrated capability to improve Mission Command.
 
Practically, units cannot expect to use one system in garrison and another in the field. The daily methods, routines, and norms of communication and staff work should not change drastically when during field training.
 
Creating this “Digital System” of standardized actions and communication must be the primary focus on commanders and staffs. Commanders create and sustain shared understanding through collaboration and dialogue within their organizations to facilitate good decision-making and unity of effort.
 
Sometimes it a good idea to use digital systems to augment, not replace this process.
 
Historically units developed situational awareness through effective staff work (collecting information and projecting requirements), battlefield reports (to see things first-hand, convey guidance, and receive feedback from subordinates), and high-quality liaison officers.
 
By embracing Mission Command Principles, and not relying only on Digital Systems, the Services can relearn this method of command, enabling units to better see themselves and the enemy.
 
Different views on command doctrine include command by direction, command by planning, and command by influence. Command by direction entails a commander present on the battlefield directing action. The downside is the commander must make all decisions personally. Command by planning, conversely, requires diligent foresight in preparation and rigorous discipline in execution, as command is mostly exercised through written orders.

The downside here is that plans can frequently be inflexible — and none will survive the first shot. Command by influence occurs where a commander sets a command climate and then trains and selects subordinates, whom the commander trusts to act on their own. This leaves the commander to determine priorities and establish intent, delineating the context within which subordinates are empowered to act.

The drawback to command by influence is that subordinates may or may not live up to expectations, either through negligence or accident, and the commander cedes direct or predetermined control. Mission command, however, is a construct combining aspects of each of these types: providing just enough direction, ceding just enough control, and building flexibility into plans.
 
The military defines command and control in several different ways. To take one example, a directive defines command as “the exercise of authority,” but stipulates dynamics inherent in control as “feedback about the effects of the action taken.” Excepting limited cases, command and control for majority of the military should be thought of as “command and feedback.” This definition is particularly useful for the military as it adopts mission command since it reflects the preexisting mission command tradition within the force.
 
Mission Command, Command and Control, and Command and Feedback
 
Mission command is not command and control. Mission command is a construct about how command and control should be accomplished. It was developed over centuries to enable the commander to command his or her forces while preserving the ability of subordinate commanders to react to unforeseen circumstances induced by the chaos of war, all while gaining and maintaining tempo. It rests on two pillars: mission-type orders and commander’s intent. Mission-type orders tell a subordinate what to do but allow the subordinate space to decide how to do it. Commander’s intent informs the subordinate about the desired end state so that, when decisions are made about how to accomplish the mission, the subordinate can align his or her actions within or with the bigger picture.
 
Mission command’s flexibility of action during execution accounts for complexity and uncertainty while preventing the commander from being overloaded with constant decision-making. Subordinate commanders react to immediate opportunities or threats — such as fires being extinguished — without having to wait for decisions from on high. Lastly, it is more resilient: If communications are disrupted or key personnel are unavailable, commanders have enough information to act without the need to wait for reestablished communications.

Military has been pursuing the institutionalization of this construct across the services. This construct explains that the purpose of adopting mission command is to generate advantageous speed relative to opposing forces, which is tempo. But the execution of effective mission command also rests on problems of knowledge.

The commander must understand the problem … constantly assess the process … [and] understand the intent of the mission given to him.” That understanding must be communicated to subordinates to create a “shared context and understanding implicit and intuitive between hierarchical and lateral echelons of command, enabling decentralized and distributed formations to perform as if they were centrally coordinated.”

While the purpose is to generate a higher operational tempo than the opponent, the core of the problem is organizational: How does the military understand the situation and share that understanding across time, space, and its forces? This is the “feedback” portion of command and control.
 
Mission command is a derivative of mission tactics, but is not a kind of “disciplined disobedience,” complete unbounded freedom of action, nor another name for centralized planning and decentralized execution, though it may be a component thereof. The commander’s intent establishes the context, delimiting what is and is not within the bounds of possible actions, therefore acting as both a limitation and an enabler. Mission command fosters the “command and feedback” of the definition above, as opposed to control measures typified by formulaic report formats, and constant requests for updates from subordinate commanders.
 
Properly executed, mission command is a combination of both command by direction and command by influence, with command by planning reserved for preparation. It does not seek to eliminate uncertainty — an attempt given that warfare is complex, with adequate friction, and encumbered by disorder. Instead, it seeks to reduce the need for certainty. As a behaviour of violent competition, warfare is a matter of probabilities and subjectivity rather than hard facts and figures, making it inherently uncertain.
 
Different Situations Call for Different Command Constructs
 
Each type of command requires a different kind of knowledge. Command by planning suffers from the fallibility of predictions, bureaucratic limits to revision, and the fragility of systematic and operational design in the face of necessarily unforeseen circumstances. Command by influence, however, embraces uncertainty. Rather than seeking to direct within or plan beyond what is unknown and unknowable, mission command, as a “more explicit narrative of the virtues and value of command by influence,” is a decision to thrive within uncertainty. “Shared consciousness and empowered execution” is nothing more than mission command: Mission-type orders empower execution; commander’s intent is a way to generate shared consciousness.
 
Commanders, policymakers, technologists, and staffers of the Defense Department should know under which type of command they or the forces they support predominately operate — and where, and to what degree. A small close-combat unit operating in a distributed fashion is best thought of as operating under mission command and thereby mostly command by influence..

Conducting a vast array of missions: commerce raiding, direct engagement with enemy ships, and amphibious raiding all necessitated “anticipatory decision-making,” a key element of command by planning. Importantly, ’command by direction and by planning were situated within the larger context of command by influence.

A mixture of command types at different levels and scales harnesses the value of each type while mitigating their drawbacks. Mission command is the most resilient to uncertain shocks and disrupted communications, exploiting the inherent flexibility of command by influence, without dismissing the value of explicit direction or detailed plans necessary to orchestrate the overall mission.
 
For department-wide implementation of mission command to be successful, mission command must be adequate for day-to-day operations of every unit at every level. It must be matched by an understanding of a unit’s time horizon, which may vary depending on level and circumstance. A unit’s time horizon refers to where the attention of the commander and staff is focused in time. A division should focus its attention beyond the current operations of its subordinate units — for instance, a week out.

. Only the battalion and company levels should be operating within a current, likely 24-hour, time horizon unless they need to reach upward for support. Mission command depends on such an understanding of time and space to focus activities. Higher-level commanders may have to violate their unit’s typical time horizon in extreme circumstances; in such cases, commanders would dictate subordinate actions in closer temporal proximity than what their level typically focuses on, but these occasions should be exceedingly rare.
 
Leaders must train to the mission command standard and receive training to foster it, especially as the military introduces more technology-driven Digital Systems to manage — though not eliminate — uncertainty and mitigate friction. “The advantage which a commander thinks he can attain through continued personal intervention can be largely false. By engaging in it he assumes a task which really belongs to others, whose effectiveness can be destroyed. The commander also multiplies his own tasks to a point where he can no longer fulfill the whole of them.”
 
Why Clarity Matters
 
Clarifying command is more than just nitpicking. Clarity about what kind of command is in use — or should be used — can inform better decisions about force modernization, training, what kind of technology to acquire, personnel management, and what changes are needed to implement mission command. Additionally, potential adversaries, view  command and control as a critical vulnerability and intend to attack if hostilities should commence.

Given the rampant confusion about command and control across the military, it is difficult to disagree with this assessment. To protect against such attacks requires more than a technical capacity. Command and control resiliency can also take the form of the command and control construct employed. Though sufficient technological capability is required, it is only half the equation. The other half is the type of command exercised, the command construct.
 
The Services should be more comfortable with mission command, rather than leaning too far into any one type of command. It should also preserve its ability to function should adversary action affect communications and reduce or eliminate other forms of command and control. That said, command by direction and command by planning still have their place and uses.
Decision Makers need a logical combination of these constructs to mitigate uncertainty, manage friction, foster effective and timely decision-making, and enable commanders to prevent surprise, generate tempo, and seize opportunities.
 

1. Complexity and competition make all war plans provisional
2. Effective adaptation is required.  
3. Decision-speed requirements of modern warfare make both the quality and the speed of decisions crucial to successful adaptation.
   
4. Situational Awareness is inevitably reduced from the tactical to the strategic level, and prevents sufficient local understanding at higher levels.  
5. Mission command is necessary to focus and delegate commander thinking and guidance.
   
6. Fidelity of communications refers to the accuracy with which a given fact is represented to the receiver of a message. A message that says “yes” when the sender said “no” has low fidelity.  
7. Granularity of communications refers to the amount of relevant and necessary detail captured in a message. A radio broadcast has less granularity than a video broadcast. 
   
8. Timeliness of communications refers to their composition and delivery within a timeframe that affects the outcome.  
9. Cost of the communications environment clearly affects the optimal level of control for commanders.
10. What are implications of the decision cycle and strategic failure?

 

Navy is having trouble getting on track with maintenance and leaders have said it’s impossible to keep the fleet in good running order with compounding delays. Ships just aren’t getting out in time..We can’t sustain the fleet with that kind of track record.”

Chief among the factors that have raised questions about the effectiveness of Optimized Fleet Response Plan OFRP is the Navy’s inability to plan and execute maintenance in a way that will get all the ships in a carrier strike group to both start and finish their maintenance cycles simultaneously, a critical assumption built into OFRP.

To ease pressure on the maintenance yards while they recover and to save surge forces for in case they are truly needed for a wartime scenario, Navy is taking a hard look at how it generates and employs ready forces.

While the OFRP promised more reliability in how ships deployed, the Navy has been unable to meet its maintenance or readiness targets set out by the plan. The Navy has started evaluating the effectiveness of OFRP to see if the system needed changing,

It is critical for the Navy to have ability to rotate the force, surge the force, maintain and modernize the force and then be able to reset in stride – all in a system that acknowledges you have to have the proper command and control that is disciplined, repeatable, predictable, yet agile, and that gives options to command.

OFRP had several key assumptions that proved themselves wrong including set maintenance time frames, Deployment manning levels at start of Basic Phase and equipment configuration control within the carrier strike group to name a few.

Maintenance has been a big thorn in the side of OFRP. “We may flex and adjust to reflect the realities, and it’s fair to say maintenance is the number one driver of that.”

Delays in maintenance for carriers have prevented the OFRP model to be used effectively. The OFRP studies come as the service has struggled to keep to maintenance schedules of its carrier force, leaving some regions particular short of deployable ships.

“Maintenance is the number-one driver of that. It’s the number-one pressurizing driver of the efficacy of OFRP.
 
In accordance with the Fiscal Year 2020 defense policy bill, GAO evaluated a Navy report that was published in July that sought to assess the causes of ship maintenance delays.
 
The Navy report on ship maintenance looked at how factors like yard capacity affect on-time ship repairs but GAO said the Navy didn’t consider more operational factors such as how well a ship’s crew can contribute to the maintenance work.
 
While GAO concluded that the Navy analyzed how it oversees ship depot maintenance when seeking to understand its maintenance delays, GAO claims the service did not evaluate other relevant aspects.
 
“We found that the Navy’s July 2020 report identified two key causes and several contributing factors of maintenance delays for aircraft carriers, surface ships, and submarines. However, the Navy’s report focused only on causes and factors of delays related to the management of depot-level maintenance at the public and private shipyards, rather than also considering causes and factors originating in the acquisition process or as a consequence of operational decisions,” concluded GAO.
 
“Specifically, for public shipyards, the July 2020 report identified the key cause of maintenance delays as insufficient public shipyard capacity relative to growing maintenance requirements. “The July 2020 report also identified various contributing factors related to this key cause, including understated workload requirements, a diminishing vendor base for replacement parts, and overly optimistic maintenance assumptions, among others.”
 
 
While the Navy report concluded that growth work after issuing contracts caused delays in the private yards, GAO noted that other choices the Navy makes related to these availabilities weren’t assessed in the service’s report.
 
“The July 2020 report also identified contributing factors, including challenges in starting maintenance periods on time, imprecise estimates of the duration of maintenance periods, insufficient visibility by the Navy into the capacity of private shipyards, and the limitations associated with the single-year duration of the Navy’s operations and maintenance appropriations,” GAO writes of the Navy’s assessment of delays at the private yards.
 
“We found that these key causes and contributing factors generally align with depot-level factors that contribute to maintenance delays we had previously identified,” it continues. “However, the July 2020 report did not describe key causes or contributing factors that arise from decisions made in acquisition and operations, such as optimistic sustainment assumptions, insufficient technical data, ships’ crew levels, performance and deferred maintenance during operational deployments.”
 
Officials have said the Navy had previously addressed the effects of acquisition and operational choices in a prior report.
 
Navy is moving into the next phase of a wholesale revision of its ship maintenance infrastructure. The service has announced it had started to digitally map the layout of its centuries-old Norfolk Naval Shipyard as it seeks to bring new technology and a more efficient workflow to the public yards.
 
While service officials have pointed to the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan (SIOP) as a way the Navy is pushing for modernization and efficiency in its yards and facilities to enhance throughput and readiness, some lawmakers have voiced concerns about the plan’s timeline.
 
As the Navy continues work on the SIOP, it has now started the modeling needed to produce a digital twin of the Virginia yard.
 
The Navy previously conducted a pilot program for modeling at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility to assess various yard layouts and simulate potential designs.
 
“With these digital models, we can set the stage for NNSY and the other public shipyards to become a smarter and more predictive shipyard. We can track the flow of the shipyard and see where we need to make adjustments, especially on the waterfront where the workforce works each and every day to maintain our nation’s assets.
 
“For example, at Pearl Harbor we tracked a valve going from shop to shop for repair. At its current layout, the valve bounced around from place to place and it was overall not set up for success.
 
With this digital model, we can simulate new ways to layout our shipyards to help save man-days and decrease duration – and overall make our shipyards more efficient and modernized.”
 
While the Navy has struggled with performing on-time ship maintenance over the years, the service is working to burn down the number of days it loses to maintenance delays, going from losing 7,000 days in Fiscal Year 2019 to 1,100 in FY 2020.
 
The Navy expects the SIOP to cost $21 billion over the next 20 years across its four public shipyards. Though service officials have pointed to incremental work like modeling the yards as examples of success, some members of Congress have suggested the Navy’s approach could face challenges.
 
Critics say the Navy’s 20-year timeline for the SIOP program is too lengthy to effectively improve the yards and that the plan fails to factor in the modernization needed for future platforms, like unmanned systems, that will enter the fleet.
 
“You might not have 20 years in order to recapitalize these shipyards because things are going to change. In the meantime, as you’re doing this, you’re going to have new lightly manned and unmanned systems coming onboard, so you’re going to have a lot of modernization in the fleet and you’re going to take 20 years to modernize your ship maintenance yards?”
 
Congress pointed to the dated facilities and machinery in Norfolk that make it hard to recruit and retain employees, as well as an ineffective yard layout, as items the service needs to fix in its yard improvement effort.
 
“If you walk into these shipyards and you look at the machine shops, if you look at the buildings, if you look at the things that are in there, you feel like you’ve walked into World War II shipyards because they’re old. The floors are cracking. They’re old steel buildings. They’re not climate controlled. The machining systems in there are old. These are not modern workplaces.”
 
The congressional criticism continues:
 
“And because of that, that translates over to the workforce. Now you have problems with workforce because you don’t have the proper number of people, so when you don’t have the proper number of people and you try to get this work out – and by the way they’re not even successful with that, only 75 percent of the work is getting out of the yard on time, and the reason is because they just don’t have shipyard workers. “And they’re now taking the shipyard workers they have and working massive amounts of overtime, which just burns out the workers that you have, so you further exacerbate the problem.”
 
When first launching the SIOP efforts in 2018, Navy cited the yard layout, in addition to flooding problems at the dry docks, as objectives the service hoped to rectify at Norfolk with the infrastructure modernization push.
 
The latest work in Norfolk on the SIOP comes in concert with increased shipbuilding budget so the Navy can build a fleet of more than 500 ships that would include both manned and unmanned platforms. The effort – dubbed Battle Force 2045 – specifically calls on the service to grow its number of attack submarines from the current 66-submarine goal to 70 to 80 SSNs, and to construct three Virginia-class boats each year.
 
Navy has plans to refuel seven Los Angeles-class submarines, an increase from the five to six boats the Navy considered refueling. This refueling work is typically performed in the public shipyards.
 
Congress says Pentagon’s focus on building up the submarine fleet is long overdue but that it would take time for the Navy to grow its number of attack boats.
 
“There at least now seems to be no debate about whether submarines are place the country has to invest in more. “How you do that - you need to do a lot more [facilitation] if you’re going to get above 66 [attack submarines] in any time in the near future. And you’re probably going to have to do some service life extensions for the Los Angeles-class subs, which that takes you right back to the public shipyards because that’s where all that work gets done.”
 
It's great to have a focus on shipbuilding and growing the fleet but an increased number of ships means the Navy will need additional funding for maintenance and military construction.
 
 ‘Well if we’re going to increase shipbuilding, we ought to increase not only the ship maintenance budget — which is the nuts and bolts of getting ships maintained — but also the infrastructure and capital budgets on the construction side to make sure the capacity’s there.”
 
 “Because you can devote all kinds of money to repairing ships, but if your yards don’t have the capacity to do that, you’re going to find yourself again stacked up in the yards.”
 
For example, USS Boise, a Los Angeles-class submarine couldn’t dive for years because it was waiting for a maintenance availability, evidence of the logjam that can happen at the yards. Boise moved to Newport News Shipbuilding’s dry dock in Virginia after waiting several years for an availability at Norfolk.
 
“You cannot have ships that are available to go to sea on deployment if you can’t maintain them. And you see just an accordion effect where one maintenance availability backs up and then another, and then another, and then another.”
 
Congress said that any blueprint for modernizing the yards is a step in the right direction and there is agreement that saying the SIOP does not go far enough is “totally legitimate.”
 
“Because again, the horror stories of repairs and availability delays is … responsible for the lack of deployments and … demand signal that’s coming out from places. The stories, particularly the Los Angeles-class submarines and Seawolf-class submarines, are pretty bad.
 
Some outside reports have expressed concern that the SIOP only takes the size and composition of today’s fleet into consideration and does not factor in future needs.
 
DoD has rolled out the plan to grow the Navy to more than 500 ships based on a new fleet architecture, but there has not been an accompanying plan outlining how the Navy and its public and private shipyards would maintain that larger fleet.
 
“Ultimately, the SIOP should to be considered in light of what it is: a plan to make the four current Navy shipyards effective in meeting the needs of the current fleet as outlined in the 2016 force structure assessment.
 
 “Navy leadership also needs to think critically about the future of Navy shipyards in light of a potentially changing Navy force structure as the U.S. returns to an era of great-power competition.”
 
In addition to Norfolk, the SIOP is slated to revamp Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Hawaii, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and IMF in Washington.
 
While Congress has yet to unveil the final version of the FY 2021 defense policy bill, lawmakers during the markup process took steps aimed at implementing oversight of the Navy’s SIOP efforts.
 
Congress wants to mandate the Navy submit a briefing twice per year on SIOP from mid-2020 through mid-2025 to address several topics, like a line item for the SIOP in the future years defense program, a blueprint for how the Navy plans to improve its infrastructure and military construction projects, and an evaluation strategy and metrics for execution. The updates should also feature “a workload management plan that includes synchronization requirements for each shipyard and ship class.”
 
Congress pointed to the Navy’s modeling work and predictive maintenance as a way the service can plan for and improve executing availabilities on time. The service needs to take advantage of the data it can obtain from ships.
 
“On the maintenance side,  if they will advocate an increase in the military construction budget and an increase in the ship maintenance budget to make sure that we address these backlogs –within the Navy they’re looking at doing everything they can to make the maintenance framework more efficient.”
 
“And where the Navy has to do a better job is they have to do a better job on the planning side, because we still see delays when they bring a ship into the yard and they unzip it and they look at it and say, ‘Well, guys, we didn’t expect to have to replace this valve but we have to replace it.  “Or they open up a tank and they go, ‘Wow, there’s more corrosion in this tank than what we thought there was.’ So they have to do better.”
 
1. Availability of Workload and Cost Data Hampered Most Early Studies

2. Recent Studies Have More Data, but Cost Analyses Have faced difficulty with changing Accounting Practices

3. Some Studies Have Focused More Heavily on Workload Data

4. Workload Studies Consistently Found Growth at Base and Depot

5. On-Engine Overhaul Workloads Grow as Engines Age

6. Few Analyses Have Addressed Aging Components

7. Material Consumption May Increase with Workload

8. Modification Age-Related Cost Patterns Have Not Been Analyzed

9. Budgeting for Modification Life-Cycle Patterns
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10. How Maintenance Workloads May Increase as Fleets Age

High operational tempo has reduced the predictability of ship deployments for sailors and for the industrial base that supports ship repair and maintenance.

Increased carrier strike group deployment lengths have resulted in declining ship conditions and materiel readiness, and in a maintenance backlog that has not been fully identified or resourced. The declining condition of ships has increased the duration of time that ships spend undergoing maintenance in the shipyards, which in turn compresses the time available in the schedule for training and operations.

The shipyards face several challenges in completing maintenance on time, such as unanticipated requirements, workforce inexperience, and workload fluctuations. The Navy has been struggling to accurately define maintenance requirements—a key step to completing maintenance on time. Furthermore, private shipyard officials say they may also face challenges as the Navy implements a new contracting strategy.

Navy documents show that aligning ships’ command and control under the OFRP contributes to wide swings in port workload, which in turn can have a negative effect on the private-sector industrial base.

According to industry officials, these cycles result in unsustainable lows followed by potentially unmanageable highs in workload that they expect will eventually erode the ship repair industrial base’s skilled workforce. Additionally, Navy officials stated that wide fluctuations in port loading adversely affect private industry’s ability to support public shipyard maintenance work.

Navy has begun to take steps to ensure that ships being aligned under a carrier strike group have staggered maintenance start and stop timelines, and that they are studying the effects of OFRP ship alignment on the ship repair industrial base.

But while leaders admit OFRP may need to change, it’s worth noting that Fleet Forces Command was thoroughly warned that getting several ships in and out of maintenance at the same time could prove unworkable.

Getting the ships to come out of the yards simultaneously is difficult.“The challenge is lets say you want four destroyers in a battle group, all to come out at the same time in one port? That’s a real challenge, particularly in places with less infrastructure.

“Your big rub there is, the challenge of OFRP is … all those ships [in a carrier strike group], they go through maintenance together, they go through training together and they deploy together.” “So, what our challenge is, is to be able to take all that work from all those ships and try to schedule it for roughly about the same time, and to get all that work done on time. So that’s our challenge.

“Now, in big shipyards, a lot of people, a lot of ships, you can kind of absorb that type of workload. When you go to a smaller shipyard, they typically cannot work on more than one or two destroyers at a time.

Fleet Forces would have to be responsive to the shipyards because at least that way they could plan for delays.
“They know if they give us all this work at one time, it’s going to go long anyway,” “So they’d rather be able to plan that and at least know when they’re getting the ship back, as opposed to, ‘nope, we’re not going to talk to you, you’ve got to go do it,’ and then the ships go long because we don’t have enough people to do the work.”
 
The ideal situation for the maintenance community would be to have a steady flow of ships come through public and private yards for maintenance and modernization.

However, under OFRP all the ships of a CSG must be through maintenance and basic training and ready to start integrated training by an exact date. These opposing needs are being worked out in the OFRP Cross-Functional Team and have already led to some gives and takes.

The ships may need to split up and go to different yards to avoid overloading a single shipyard. A ship that requires a longer maintenance period may need to cut into basic training and compress that schedule, while still being ready to start integrated training on the I-date.

If maintainers know in advance that a ship needs major repair work during its availability, or will be stuck in dock longer to accommodate a system modernization effort, they can tell the training community well in advance and work together to find a mutually acceptable solution.

We could have done a better job of ensuring we had all the pieces and parts to that before we got started. The program executive offices, maintainers, trainers and others were all involved in the effort to field components but didn’t effectively synchronize their schedules.

The chief of naval operations threw down an aggressive goal for surface ship maintenance: zero days lost to maintenance delays by the end of Fiscal Year 2021.

For a navy and an industrial base that just two years ago delivered just 29 percent of ships out of maintenance on time, that seemed like a heavy lift.

Yet, the Navy had gone from more than 7,000 lost days in FY 2019 to just 1,100 in FY 2020 due to maintenance overruns and was on track to continue lowering that closer to zero, as a result of several ongoing initiatives at the private and public yards to do better maintenance more efficiently.
 
GAO noted that, while the Navy in its report said it’s aiming to cut the number of maintenance delay days by 80 percent between FY 2019 and FY 2020 and altogether eradicate maintenance delay days by FY 2021, the service has not achieved the 80-percent benchmark.
 
“NAVSEA officials said they still hope to meet the 80 percent reduction in days of maintenance delay by the end of fiscal year 2020 for both private surface ship maintenance and maintenance at public shipyards. However, our analysis of Navy data showed that the Navy had already incurred significantly more days of maintenance delay than would allow it to meet this goal according to GAO.
 
“Specifically, the Navy incurred 3,096 days of maintenance delay through June of fiscal year 2020 on surface ships—more than twice the 1,419 days or fewer that would have allowed it to achieve an 80 percent reduction,” it continues. “Likewise, the Navy incurred 730 days of maintenance delay through June of fiscal year 2020 on aircraft carriers and submarines at public shipyards, more than the 430 days or fewer that would have allowed it to achieve an 80 percent reduction.”
 
Navy took issue with how GAO assessed the Navy’s objectives and said the 80-percent benchmark for cutting maintenance delay days was a “stretch goal,” but GAO said that, “none of the Navy’s comments demonstrated that our characterization was inaccurate.”
 
Naval Sea Systems Command told GAO that the service is not on track to eradicate maintenance delay days in FY 2021 as planned.
 
“According to these officials, it is already apparent that there will be delays in fiscal year 2021 because delays in fiscal year 2020 pushed back the start dates for some fiscal year 2021 maintenance periods,” the report reads. “Pressure on shipyard workforce capacity have been a major cause for the delays, in addition to the other factors contributing to delays identified in the July 2020 report.”
 
Navy also pointed out that the Navy and GAO use different approaches to determine the number of maintenance delay days and that the service has altered its baseline maintenance timelines recently. Still, GAO argued its approach is “more appropriate” for quantifying the number of delay days.
 
“The Navy stated that it was able to reduce such delays by nearly 80 percent in fiscal year 2020 from the prior year. However, the Navy also acknowledged that its method included adjusting the baselines—the expected durations of the maintenance periods—for fiscal year 2020 maintenance periods,” GAO wrote.
 
“The Navy stated that it made these adjustments to align work with available shipyard capacity and improvements in planning and directed maintenance. Our calculations did not include such adjustments to baselines, and instead measured the days that a maintenance period extended past its original planned end date. We believe this is a more appropriate method for measuring days of delay during any given maintenance period, rather than adjusting the baseline.”
 
Three main focus areas for the Navy have been on-time delivery of ships in construction and maintenance; improving material availability to support maintenance activities; and increasing capacity to do work by creating more efficiency and better flow within public and private repair yards.

Among the main ongoing efforts is Perform to Plan (P2P), which has several iterations – including one for the surface ship enterprise, one for the undersea enterprise and one for public yards.

P2P is “a data-driven detailed analysis of the processes that we use and really looking to identify the drivers in terms of maintenance delays and how we improve our performance outcomes.” P2P has generated a number of focused improvement initiatives, and the three most likely to continue driving down ship maintenance delays deal with planning, materials and change management.

On the planning improvement initiative,  P2P helped look at everything that goes into making a plan for maintenance and getting ready to execute it: developing a work package that includes modernization work, directed maintenance derived from class maintenance plans, and fleet maintenance work that’s based on what’s broken or worn down on a particular ship; drawing up an execution plan, where the lead maintenance activity takes the work package and maps out how many tradesmen are needed at a certain time.

Must determine what work can be done simultaneously and what must be done in sequence, what testing will have to take place on the back end and more; and creating an integrated master schedule that lines out not only what the yard will be doing but also how subcontractors, ship’s crew and other Navy installation teams will all work around each other.

For surface ship maintenance at private yards, this planning can’t happen until a contract is awarded, which is why the service is trying to get all contracts awarded 120 days before the start of the availability.

And that unplanned work is a main driver of availabilities going long, which means that good planning – which includes scheduling activities most likely to lead to growth work, such as tank inspections and repairs, early in the schedule – can anticipate and mitigate areas where growth work typically occurs.

 The contracting improvement initiative looks not only at these issues but also recommends “best value” types of contracts that allow the Navy to take factors other than price – such as smoother port loading – into consideration when awarding a repair contract.

On the materials improvement side, NAVSEA’s goal is to have all material at a shipyard by the day the availability starts, and the command stood up a Material Management Group within the SEA 21 surface ship lifecycle management organization to help track material that has a history of being tied to execution problems and ensuring sufficient material is on hand at the start of work. “The metrics show we’re moving that in the right direction.”

These are all pretty standard best practices: doing detailed planning early on, having the right people and material on hand, and knowing the condition of the ship well enough to avoid unexpected growth work that will throw off the plan.

What P2P has done here, is take a data collection and analysis approach to making sure that good ideas are being applied and executed in the right ways, and suggesting ways where the data show there’s room for improvement.

For example, P2P – the data showed that the Navy was cramming a lot of work into surface ship maintenance availabilities but holding private yards to too short a timeline, leading to inevitable delays – not because of poor workmanship at the yards, but because the critical work that has to get done end-to-end in sequence just didn’t add up to the timelines the Navy was asking of the repair yards.

Between FY 2019 and 2020, the service used this data to reassess surface ship availability durations and created an Availability Duration Scorecard 3.0 that reflected the data collection and analysis.

The FY 2020 maintenance availabilities were given new end dates based on the updated scorecard, and “so right now coming out of FY ‘20 we’re tracking just over 1,100 days of maintenance delays. Now that’s a pretty significant decrease. Part of that was attributed to that avail duration adjustment … but the other is some of these other initiatives taking hold.”

“We’ve got an effort going on right now to really get into the project teams on the waterfront – so this is both the Navy and the shipyard project teams managing those availabilities – to really assess how effectively we are implementing some of these process improvement initiatives we put forward.

So that’s going to give us some more indications” of maintenance availabilities increasingly ending on time. The efforts that have been developed over the last couple years are going to give us an opportunity to see how effective we are in driving that change right down to the waterfront, to the individual ship availability level.

We are seeing a good decrease in the days of maintenance delays from 2019 to 2020. And the only caveat to be put on that is a portion of that has to do with the reset of the durations.”

Seeing what a difference the P2P analysis and the availability duration scorecard overhaul has had in creating more predictability and ability to stick to the plan on the surface ship side, and a similar effort is happening on the aircraft carrier and submarine maintenance side at the public yards, with analysis taking place now to inform new duration guidelines.

Navy is “seeing some things in their model that we weren’t effectively picking up in the way we plan avail durations. So we’re going through the process to maybe look at that. We went through that on the surface side probably a year, maybe 18 months ago, where … we just found that there was so much work going into these availabilities we had not properly set the duration of these availabilities that we were giving the shipyards to go do the work. We’re looking at that right now in the public sector. So that’s going to be one of the outcomes coming out of this.”

Another effort on the public yard side is Naval Sustainment System – Shipyard, which follows the NSS Aviation effort that helped the service achieve 80-percent mission capable rates in the fighter fleet that just years before had been hovering in the 40- to 50-percent range. NSS-Shipyard, like its aviation predecessor, will involve a third party coming in to look at processes and efficiency at the shop level all the way up through the yard level, seeing how work flows and suggesting improvements.

The notion that ship maintenance work should be done efficiently and on time isn’t new, but it holds a new importance sine the new plan is to grow the fleet by 66 percent in the next 25 years – from today’s 296 to about 500 by 2045. Though the first question many have asked since the announcement is, how will the Navy afford to buy 200 more ships in the next two decades, a reasonable follow-up question is, how will the Navy maintain them all?

“When you look at capacity, we see two levers, two opportunities  to increase capacity. One is to improve your efficiency of the work you’re already doing. You do it for less man days, less man hours than what you’re doing today. So that will buy back some of that capacity. And that’s what we’re going after in the public shipyards, the efficiency gains .”

Under the new plan, the Navy would have the same number or slightly fewer aircraft carriers that are maintained at these public yards, but the service would have 70 or 80 attack submarines – plus a dozen ballistic missile submarines as part of the national nuclear deterrence triad – compared to the 50 attack subs in the inventory today. Since the Navy doesn’t have the option to build another public yard right now, increasing the throughput at the current yards is important.

“The second part is, frankly, just bringing in more shipyards. More new capacity as it relates to surface ship maintenance – where the new plan would double the size of today’s small combatant fleet and add 140 and 240 unmanned and optionally manned ships that the Navy hasn’t even had to think about maintaining to this point. “There are opportunities. As you at the industrial base around the country, there are shipyards out there we can tap into to add more capacity than what we have today.
 
1. Material Consumption May Grow Differently Than Maintenance Workload

2. Generalizing Across Fleets Will Enable Forecasting of Newer Fleets’ Workloads

3. Effects of Calendar and Organizational Transitions Can Be Mistaken for Age

4. Modification Life-Cycle Patterns May Differ from Maintenance Patterns

5. Designers’ Horizons Limit the Operational Usefulness and Supportability of Original Designs

6. Changing Operational Requirements May Cause Episodic  Maintenance Workloads

7. Material Consumption Were Categorized According to Work Content and Maintenance Echelon

8. Most Maintenance Workloads Grow as Fleets Age, Although at Varying Rates

9. Material Consumption Growth Decelerates as Fleets Age
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10. How Aging May Relate to Safety, Availability, and Support Costs

Navy’s aging surface fleet is getting harder to maintain, and overall is showing declining condition in several key areas, such as its main propulsion systems, electrical systems and Aegis combat systems.
 
Navy ships routinely undergo depot-level maintenance, which includes major repair, overhaul, or complete rebuilding of weapon systems needed for ships to reach their expected service life. These scheduled periods of ship maintenance and modernization are referred to as maintenance availabilities.

Under the Optimized Fleet Response Plan: PIA - Planned Incremental Availability - is a 6-month availability in which ship maintenance and modernization are performed. DPIA - Docking Planned Incremental Availability - is a 16-month dry-docking availability in which ship maintenance and modernization are performed. RCOH - Refuelling and Complex Overhaul - is a 44-month availability in which the ship’s two nuclear reactors are refueled and a significant amount of maintenance and modernization is performed.

Maintenance availabilities for the nuclear elements of the fleet (i.e., aircraft carriers and submarines) are performed at the four Naval shipyards, with support from private shipyards. Maintenance availabilities for the conventional elements of the fleet (e.g., cruisers, destroyers, amphibious assault ships, and Military Sealift Command ships) are performed at private shipyards.

For each maintenance availability, the Navy identifies the technical and engineering requirements that are provided to the shipyard for execution. The maintenance timeframes established under the OFRP are adequate and based on technical and engineering requirements, according to Navy officials responsible for ship maintenance and engineering planning.
 
In addition to not factoring in acquisition and operational components, GAO found that the Navy’s maintenance report did not feature “all elements of results-oriented management” in accordance with the legislative mandate from Congress.
 
“The Navy’s July 2020 report described the Navy’s actions to address the causes of depot-level maintenance delays it had identified, but it did not incorporate all elements of results-oriented management that were required by the conference report, including analytically based goals; results-oriented metrics to measure progress; and required resources, risks, and stakeholders to achieve those goals,” GAO writes.
 
“Specifically, we found that the July 2020 report identified stakeholders needed to implement and oversee its plan of action,” it continues. “However, we found that the Navy did not include an achievable goal in the report, is still developing metrics to measure progress, and did not fully describe the resources needed and risks involved.”
 
The so-called INSURV inspections found that over five years, the surface fleet found big dips in the main propulsion systems — the plants that produce the power to push the ship through the water — as well as in the electrical systems and aviation systems. The Aegis systems, a collection of sensors and software that protects the ship primarily from air threats, has also shown some signs of slipping over the last half-decade.
 
The declining trend comes after years of intense focus on readiness inside the Defense Department, but the Navy says that recent changes to how the Navy conducts the notoriously intrusive INSURV inspections are making the fleet more ready. Still, the slipping scores do raise questions about whether the Navy’s much-in-demand surface combatants are getting adequate time in maintenance.
 
For INSURV, ships are graded across a wide variety of systems, with scores adding up to a “figure of merit” where perfect equals 1.0. Over more than 30 surface ship inspections in 2019, the Navy tracked a 20 percent drop in scores between 2014 and 2019 in the main propulsion plant and another 20 percent drop in scores for the ships’ electrical systems.
 
Aegis, which is the beating heart of the combat systems on cruisers and destroyers, saw a slight but concerning drop from a figure of merit of 0.88 in 2017 to 0.77 in 2019. Aviation systems, the systems concerned with launching and recovering rotary wing aircraft, dropped from 0.77 in 2014 to 0.68 in 2019.
 
By contrast, scores from submarine main propulsion — governed by strict Naval Reactors guidelines and inspections — scored figures of merit of 0.94, submarine electrical systems scored 0.90, and submarine combat systems scored a 0.84.
 
Overall, the Navy’s surface fleet got high marks in navigation systems and anti-submarine warfare systems.
 
The Navy accounts for its drop in scores by pointing to a recent change in how the service conducts the inspections. In 2019, the chief of naval operations ordered that INSURV be conducted once every three years, the length of one deployment readiness cycle where the ship is maintained, the crew is trained, and the ship deploys. The inspections were also changed from an event that is planned for well in advance, to an event that comes with little notice, and requests for delays to the inspection were prohibited.
 
The short-notice INSURV inspections are designed to get a more accurate picture of ships' readiness, instead of allowing sailors ample time to borrow parts from other ships and make temporary fixes that can boost the overall score on the inspection.
 
“Because ships knew exactly when the inspection would occur, they were able to put their best foot forward during the exam. "Over time, it became clear the consistently good INSURV scores ships were receiving did not accurately capture the material condition of the surface fleet.
 
“As a result, Navy leadership directed that future INSURV inspections be performed at any time during a ship’s deployment cycle, and with minimal notice.
 
At the same time, the Board of Inspection and Survey eliminated the possibility of ships receiving a delay to their inspection date due to a late occurring equipment casualty. The inspection is therefore more ‘come as you are’ than it has been in the past.”
 
SURFOR has also directed that ships conduct more rigorous and regular shake-out tests, such as directing the ships to max out their propulsion system in what’s known as a “full power run,” and has increased the frequency of inspections of the ship’s transmission, known as the main reduction gear, and monitoring of the health of the ships' SPY-1 radar system.
 
The surface fleet has made investments in increasing self-sufficiency of sailors so they can fix their own gear and made sure they have the right spares on board their ships to make sure they can fix broken gear.  The goal is to make sure the fleet gets away from relying too heavily on technical experts employed by the companies who make the gear on ships.
 
“While we have the funding and availability of technical representatives we will continue to ensure that ships are able to maintain most if not all of their equipment should technical assistance not be immediately available,”
 
Part of the issue, of course, is that the Navy’s surface fleet is getting older. The cruisers are all closing in on their expected 35-year expected hull lives, and the first 27 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are not far behind them. Keeping the radars going in earliest ships has been a particular challenge, as has maintaining the aging engineering plants.
 
There remain questions, however, about how much the roughly 10-to-20 percent drop in scores across critical areas inspected by INSURV is attributable to the change in the inspection regime that SURFOR points to.
 
“Probably part of that 10-20 percent is a function of just not being able to prepare as much as you would in the past. The way you’d do it in the past is you’d see you had INSURV coming up and you’d have a bunch of preventive maintenance checks you’d perform to make sure the equipment they were going to test was in working order. You’d go run things that are almost never run and see, ‘Oh, I need to go fix that.’
 
“So, really the old system was to both test the ship as well as force the ship to make sure all of its systems were working at the right level of capability. Now it’s much more of a test where they come on board, test a bunch of stuff and they see if it works or not.”
 
But given that the downward trends go back so far, it’s also likely that the high demands placed on the force continue to degrade the material condition of the ships without adequate time for maintenance.
 
“Part of it has to be that the Navy continues to struggle to put the time and money into maintenance availabilities that they need to. “Particularly in the surface fleet, the ships' schedules have just not been able to be freed up they way they need to be, and in some cases they’ve had to manage costs and growth, which meant they couldn’t do all the maintenance they needed to.”
 
The move to schedule more INSURV inspections will likely yield good results over the long term, but the whole outlook on how the Navy deploys must change if any significant progress is to be made.
 
“Doing INSURV more frequently is a good time, especially since it is pretty much the most comprehensive inspection your ship is going to get. "You test things that you use infrequently so that you don’t need to find out they don’t work.
 
“But has the Navy really has taken a turn on readiness?  They’ve put more money into it due to supplemental funding. They’ve done a much better job managing availabilities. But Navy-wide, you need to complement that with a supply-based model where you tell combatant commanders ‘We just can’t get you the forces you want because they need to go into maintenance and they have to be there for as long as they need to be there.’”
 
INSURV, which conducts acceptance trials for new ships, found that DDG-117 had the lowest overall score of any of the five previous destroyers built at the shipyard since the program restarted. And issues with the America-class amphibious assault ship in 2018 set the service’s acceptance of the new ship back a whole year.

Both contractors and Navy say all issues discovered on ships during acceptance trials are handled prior to delivery, and that the ships have performed well recently. But the issues in 2018 and 2019 raise concerns about a shipyard the Navy depends heavily on as it tries to expand its fleet.

According to the annual unclassified INSURV report sent to Congress, the America class LHA, Arleigh Burke class DDG, and the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock (LPD) all showed issues in multiple areas in recent years.

On the destroyer inspectors found four of what’s known as “starred deficiencies,” which the Navy’s INSURV instruction defines as a deficiency that significantly degrades the ships ability to perform a primary or secondary mission, or impacts the safety of the ship. Starred deficiencies must be corrected before delivery.

Starred deficiencies included shortcoming in aviation systems, intelligence collection systems and command and control systems. Other issues were discovered in the ship’s air intakes, generators, high-pressure air system and steering systems.

On Tripoli, the INSURV report says that failures in the propulsion and anchoring systems, as well as production delays, pushed the acceptance trial back a whole year. On LPD-27, , the ship scored lower than any of the previous four ships over the past five years, with deficiencies in main engines, aviation, small boat handling, anchoring, generators and air search radar systems.

Contractors pointed to increasing standards for ship acceptance on the part of INSURV, and are committed to fixing any issues that arise prior to delivery and delivering quality ships to our Navy customer. An important part of this process involves INSURV providing the shipbuilder with a thorough inspection that sets and continues to raise the evaluation criteria to ensure the material readiness of the fleet.

“If there are system issues uncovered during the testing of ships, it is our responsibility to use our experience and shipbuilding expertise to create solutions that ensure that each ship performs its missions in a safe and reliable manner. We quickly respond to all deficiencies cited during ship inspections and those are corrected or resolved prior to delivery as we are dedicated to providing fully capable and operational ships to the Navy.”

Navy is saying the contractors worked hard to fix deficiencies in a timely manner and also said the issue on Tripoli was largely driven by a new electric anchoring system that took time to get right.

“The Navy’s ship delivery policy does not facilitate a process that provides complete and quality ships to the fleet and practices do not comport with policy a watchdog report said. "The policy emphasizes that ships should be defect-free and mission-capable, but lacks clarity regarding what defects should be corrected and by when.

“Without a clear policy, Navy program offices define their own standards of quality and completeness, which are not always consistent.”

For example,  25 of the 58 systems required to be certified for deployment on LPD-25 were incomplete at the time of the ship’s delivery, and 14 were still incomplete when the ship was transferred to the fleet. Multiple systems were found deficient while the ship was in the fleet, including an advanced electronics system that “controls nearly all systems and equipment on the ship.”

“The system has experienced widespread performance failures and the Navy has been unable to repair the ship efficiently, including during the post-delivery period and after the ship was provided to the fleet.  “As a result, the Navy is in the process of looking at incorporating a new system.”
 
1. Different Maintenance Workloads May Exhibit Different Patterns as Fleets Age

2. Evolving System Requirements Trigger Episodic Modification Actions as Fleets Age

3. Fleet Modifications May Fluctuate Widely as Fleets Age

4. On-Equipment Workloads Vary Widely for Reasons Other Than Age

5. On-Equipment Workloads Vary Widely, but the Age Effect Is More Apparent

6. Prediction Uncertainties for Contractor Logistics Support

7. Asset Purchases Experience a Sharp Initial Peak, Followed by a Steady Growth as Fleets Age

8. Modernization Costs May Stabilize or Even Decline at Very High Ages

9. Workloads Stabilize After an Initial Unstable Period, Then Surge later in Service Life
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10. Workloads Are Less Predictable in Both Early-Life and Late-Life Periods