Direction, Organization & Authority: QMN043

Operational Control (OPCON) and Tactical Control (TACON) govern what leaders can do with attached groups overseas - and the regs are set in place to maintain the integrity of trained fighting units.

DIRECTION, ORGANIZATION AND AUTHORITY (Today’s report is a 5 minute read)

BLUF: Combatant Command (COCOM), Operational Control (OPCON) and Tactical Control (TACON) govern what leaders can do with attached groups overseas - and the regs are set in place to maintain the integrity of trained fighting units. Frontline leaders in combat should be allowed therein to do what's necessary to accomplish the mission.

Brady here. It seems just about every large organization today is matrixed to death. A consultant falls under a specific practice area that governs his skillset, but serves a specific market with specific processes and technologies. Further narrowing his focus, he's assigned to specific projects at individual customers. But he's rated, paid and administered geographically - often by continent. Good luck having any of that align so that his skills, pay and assessments line up with what he's doing every day for the customer without an extreme amount of pain. The risk is that with all these crossing lines of authority and responsibility our most capable performers will be cut off from their teams and be reduced to individual contributors without a team to back them up. Multiply that across your organization and you've got a real problem. 

U.S. Army Green Berets assigned to 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Colorado Army National Guard, conduct a Military Freefall operation over Călărași, Romania June 11, 2019 as part of U.S. Special Operations Command Europe’s Trojan Footprint 19 exercise. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Ashley Low.

One major feature of the conflicts of the past 18 years has been the management of many different kinds of forces, in a foreign environment, over time. US forces deploy overseas on a continuous basis- some for as few as four months at a time and others for as many as 15 months per trip. When they arrive in the country where they’ll be operating, these forces fall under what's known as a “geographic combatant command” whose job it is to command and control all US forces in that region, and who hold responsibility for that mission’s accomplishment. For instance, if parts of the 82nd Airborne Division deploy to Djibouti, they’ll fall under Africa Command (AFRICOM) - and likely be part of Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). There are laws and regulations that govern what AFRICOM and thereby CJTF-HOA can do with these 82nd soldiers - and it's delineated by three terms: Combatant Command (COCOM), Operational Control (OPCON) and Tactical Control (TACON).

The US Department of Defense governs all it's actions with doctrine- the core of which is known as Joint Publication 1 (JP 1). This document says that COCOM gives the combatant commander the authority for “organizing and employing commands and forces; assigning tasks; designating objectives; and giving authoritative direction over all aspects of military operations, joint training . . . and logistics necessary to accomplish the missions assigned to the command.” Essentially a combatant commander can use the forces assigned to him to do whatever’s necessary to accomplish the mission. It's a very broad set of authorities.

Now here’s where the management part comes in - a combatant commander can delegate a lot of those authorities to the leaders that get put under him during deployment, but as Charles Berry lays out for Army leaders it has to be done so explicitly. 

The commander of CJTF-HOA may get OPCON of a company of 82nd Airborne soldiers for operations across a few months - but that’s limited to “organizing and employing commands and forces, assigning tasks, designating objectives, and giving authoritative direction necessary to accomplish the mission.” This means that the CJTF-HOA commander can tell the 82nd company where to go and what to do - but he can't break up the company and reorganize its sub-units unless the geographic combatant commander says explicitly that he can reorganize it for different tasks. 

The inherent value in this system here is that it ensures that teams keep a certain level of coherence and organizational effectiveness unless it's absolutely necessary to break that up for mission accomplishment. Most military leaders know that teams and their shared culture and relationships make them more effective than just groups of individuals, and this system of limitations helps maintain that feature of military teams.

Does all of this get messy in combat? You bet. Many frontline leaders technically only have tactical control (TACON) of the troops they're leading in firefights - meaning they're “limited to the detailed direction and control of movements or maneuvers within the operational area necessary to accomplish missions or tasks assigned.” But they often have to make on-the-spot decisions about organization and control that govern life and death, but which violate some of the limitations above. Good units give them the authority and leeway necessary to accomplish the mission and minimize loss of American life. The COCOM/OPCON/TACON argument goes on regardless, but mission accomplishment is the ultimate goal. (BJM)

GENERALISM, WORK AND EMERGING TECH: At Work, Expertise Is Falling Out of Favor (23 min) “The ship’s most futuristic aspect, though, is its crew. The LCS was the first class of Navy ship that, because of technological change and the high cost of personnel, turned away from specialists in favor of “hybrid sailors” who have the ability to acquire skills rapidly. It was designed to operate with a mere 40 souls on board—one-fifth the number aboard comparably sized “legacy” ships and a far cry from the 350 aboard a World War II destroyer. The small size of the crew means that each sailor must be like the ship itself: a jack of many trades and not, as 240 years of tradition have prescribed, a master of just one.” (BJM)

TOO MANY CHIEFS: Our army’s bloat of officers is one reason it can’t win wars (6 min) “Since Korea, our military has proven itself unable to win wars. We cannot win even against foes with little training and less equipment. We cannot win even when the US fields large armies fueled with almost unlimited funds against foes having neither. As we walk on the verge of war with Iran, we must ask “why?” There are a thousand and one answers. But we should look first at our leaders, often the difference between victory and defeat.” (BJM)

ITS ABOUT TIME: Ingenious Parody Video Shows Boston Dynamics-Type Robot Fighting Human Handlers (2 min) “If you've ever fantasized about seeing one of those faceless DARPA-funded robots go berzerk, well, look no further. The geniuses at Corridor Digital, a Los Angeles-based digital video effects company, have produced a parody video for "Bosstown Dynamics" showing what might happen if a robot got sick of performing tedious, repetitive tasks or having to do backflips all day long. If science fiction has taught us anything, it's that disaffected robots are not conducive to safe, productive workplaces.” (KSA)

Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.

KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)