Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

coordinate plans and be ready to support each other. Here the constant
threat from a large-scale enemy attack, with the potential to overwhelm
and annihilate a small group of U.S. troops, was very real. That meant
everyone had to share operational details of plans as much as they could
in order to ensure synchronized efforts. From large battalion-size
operations to simple logistics convoys, it was essential to coordinate and
keep other units informed in order to give everyone the greatest chance
of survival and prevent fratricide. Yet, when planning their missions,
this new unit working in 1/506th battlespace refused to disclose their
plans, locations, timelines, or other operational details. They didn’t think
they needed to inform the colonel of their plans. This meant they
intended to go out into the colonel’s battlespace, among his units, rely on
his support when things went sideways, and conduct operations without
fully coordinating. When the 1/506th battalion operations officer
confronted them and asked for the plan detailing their first mission, the
new unit’s leader told him, “We’ll tell you later on a need-to-know
basis.”
When the 1/506th tactical operations center (TOC) inquired about the
unit’s specific planned location for a mission, (a standard practice to
prevent friendly units operating in the area from accidently engaging
them, and enabling the 1/506th TOC to send help to their location when
needed) the unit’s leader provided a four-digit grid (from the military
grid reference system). This meant that the unit’s troops could be located
anywhere within a thousand-meter grid square—all but worthless to the
1/506th TOC. Earlier, we had learned some tough lessons in information
sharing, or lack thereof, that had resulted in fratricide. In such a
dangerous operating environment with large numbers of well-armed
enemy fighters and multiple friendly units maneuvering in the same