Mission Command Principles Attributed to the Success

Mission Command Principles Attributed to the Success
Introduction
Among the Afghan wars, Operation Anaconda remains one of the most prominent mainly because it lasted only seventeen days. In this operation, the United States (U.S) Army drove the Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants from their bases using a joint force of the American and multinational military contingents, thus successfully defeating the aggressors from the Shah-i-Khot Valley, Zhawar. To address the rising security threats due to the aggressors mentioned above, the U.S. Army and U.S. Government (USG hereafter) advisors formed the triumphant group called the Advanced Force Operations (AFO) under Lieutenant Colonel Pete Blaber’s command. Mission Command was preferably induced in the 1980s as an authoritative direction by commanding officers to effectively incorporate mission orders to offer disciplined initiatives. In this context, the success of the battle was highly attributed to the warfighting functions as well as the capacity to implement the mission command principle in the military operation. The mission command principles employed by the U.S. military to succeed in operation Anaconda included building mutually cohesive teams, constructing shared understanding, negating a clear commander’s intent, applying disciplined initiative, incorporating mission commands, and accepting prudent or strategic threats.
Mission Command Principles Attributed to the Success
Mutual trust can be theorized as the aspect of shared confidence that runs through the military chain of command. Based on this military canon, subordinates are expected to trust their commanding officers, demonstrating competence through training, combats, and garrison (Savoy, 2021). According to Scott (2020), Operation Anaconda was the first large Afghan war after the 2001 Torah war. Under this principle, the U.S. military relied on individual willingness to fight, heroic acts, self-confidence, and moral systems. After the end of the battle, the Americans realized they survived due to their bravery and continuous and relevant guidelines by their commanders. The U.S. attributed the desired outcomes to the capacity to build increasingly cohesive teams during Operation Anaconda.
The second canon entails creating shared understanding. It must be noted that fording a shared understanding constitutes one of the significant challenges commanders face on the battlefields. Once the commanders established cohesive teams in the Afghan war, they presented outlined objectives that were to be adhered to during the operation in its entirety. There were battlespace challenges, especially after the lash-up of the Special Operation Forces and Tactical Air Control System. The military leaders had to step up and adopt a robust and personnel-characterized development termed the Air Control Element (ACE) to manage the distinct forces (Caruso, 2019). It must be acknowledged that inadequate support systems and battlefield resources challenged the U.S. soldiers’ capacity to accomplish the operation mission. Without a shared understanding of the commanders, active implementation of segregation would have been impossible. The commanders efficiently restored trust between teams to share intelligence information ...