platoons would make the right decisions. I unleashed them on the
battlefield to execute with full confidence in their leadership.
Pushing the decision making down to the subordinate, frontline
leaders within the task unit was critical to our success. This
Decentralized Command structure allowed me, as the commander, to
maintain focus on the bigger picture: coordinate friendly assets and
monitor enemy activity. Were I to get embroiled in the details of a
tactical problem, there would be no one else to fill my role and manage
the strategic mission.
The proper understanding and utilization of Decentralized Command
takes time and effort to perfect. For any leader, placing full faith and
trust in junior leaders with less experience and allowing them to manage
their teams is a difficult thing to embrace. It requires tremendous trust
and confidence in those frontline leaders, who must very clearly
understand the strategic mission and ensure that their immediate tactical
decisions ultimately contribute to accomplishing the overarching goals.
Frontline leaders must also have trust and confidence in their senior
leaders to know that they are empowered to make decisions and that
their senior leaders will back them up.
* * *This skill of Decentralized Command had not been magically bestowed
upon Task Unit Bruiser. It had come only through difficult preparation
and training, driven home during the months of effort before we
deployed to Iraq. We learned our greatest lessons in this during MOUT
(military operations, urban terrain) training at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
There, under intense pressure and extremely challenging scenarios, we
learned how to employ this tenet effectively in even the most chaotic