Close Combat and Learning Infantry Tactics

by Maj Brendan B McBreen

This month the Gazette focuses on the increasing availability and utilization of combat simulations, wargaming, and training devices that are designed to improve Marine Corps warfighting capabilities. These simulations range from individual to small unit tactics, fixed- and rotary-wing training simulations to joint-level wargames and exercises.

Close Combat is a computer combat simulation published by Atomic Games. The focus of the simulation is on infantry combat at the small unit level. The series currently consists of five versions: Close Combat I: Omaha Beach, II: A Bridge Too Far, III: The Russian Front, IV: Battle of the Bulge, and V: Invasion Normandy. The Marine Corps version, Close Combat Marine will soon by released as a training simulation by the Training and Education Command.

I am an infantry major with over 15 years commissioned service, including 7 years with 5th Marines, 2 years in schools, and 3 years as an infantry training officer with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. I have deployed overseas with 2d Battalion, 5th Marines four times. I have commanded two infantry platoons and one rifle company. I have served as a battalion operations officer and regimental operations officer. I am a student of tactics. I have taught infantry tactics to officers and noncommissioned officers. I have participated and led tactical decision training.

None of these activities or learning experiences can match the effective and focused tactical learning that I have experienced through repetitive fighting of the small unit scenarios in Close Combat.

Close Combat permits a player to fight hundreds of scenarios, make thousands of tactical decisions, experiment with different tactics, and learn from his mistakes. I would be a far more qualified platoon commander now than I was 13 years ago. Through fighting the Close Combat simulation, I have internalized significant platoon-level tactical lessons:

* Long, unsupported assaults are deadly. Assault for short distances against a lightly armed or well-suppressed position. A single enemy soldier can destroy a squad across 100 meters of open ground.

* A long, covered approach is always better than a short, open route. Be careful of covered approaches that cannot be covered by an overwatch unit.

* Every unit needs obscuration. Smoke save lives. Every assault and every withdrawal should use smoke.

* Fire and maneuver is the hey tactic. Use the majority of your force to overwhelmingly suppress the enemy and a small assault unit to rapidly close on the objective.

* It’s all about suppression. Fire without maneuver is wasteful and indecisive. Effective suppression is the basis for all infantry tactics.

* Units without mutual support are doomed. Mutually supported units protect each other from being fixed or assaulted.

* Mortars are inherently inaccurate. Area suppression is not destruction. Rounds are limited; use them well. Don’t waste mortars on bunkers or buildings.

* Concentrate your fire. Fire control ensures decisive action. In contact, men will disperse their fire. Sequentially destroying targets with point fire is more effective than distributing ineffective fires.

* Every unit-squad, platoon, and company-needs an antitank capability when facing tanks. An infantry unit with no organic antitank weapon is either retreating or being overrun. Infantry can only fight tanks in close terrain.

* For antitank positions, deep and narrow sectors of fire with defilade on both sides-“dirt on jour cheek”-are best. The best sector of fire allows you to engage only one tank at a time.

* Defensive positions are temporary. All units need multiple positions and the ability to withdraw.

* For machinegun positions, deep and narrow sectors of fire with defilade on both sides are best. Primary and secondary sectors separated by frontal protection are better.

* Cover is life. Move from one covered position to another. Good cover is relative to a single enemy position. Mutually supporting enemy positions can overcome the protection of your cover.

* Use bounding overmatch to move. A squad in contact needs immediate suppression from another unit. The measure of success is the number of units that can immediately bring suppression to bear upon enemy contact.

Good Marine leaders know all of these lessons. They have been taught; they have read; they have trained to do them. But I, and those Marines who have fought Close Combat, know these lessons in our bones. We know the penalty for mistakes, for misreading the situation, for making decisions too late. Hundreds of simulated men have died in botched assaults, poorly laid positions, and as a result of unexpected enemy actions in order to teach these lessons. We have examined the ground, checked the line of sight, positioned the units, and supervised the units in contact so many times that the key tactical principles have become ingrained as second nature.

I have defended 300 road intersections-not just the first step of putting a defensive scheme on paper, but all the way through to initiation of combat, falling back to supplementary positions under pressure, and sometimes being overrun by the enemy because I failed to protect my machinegun positions. I cannot now walk across a street without seeing in my mind the intersection occupied-an antitank weapon tucked into that low position with an oblique field of fire and good defilade, machineguns here and here, one squad forward with an alternate position near the guns, one squad on the corner in case they put infantry down that alley.

The historical methods for teaching tactics-walking the ground, working through the examples in the manuals, tactical decision games, and actual field exercises-are important and must be done by all leaders. Schools and units must focus on real leaders, real units, and real ground.

To augment this practical training, however, leaders need to experience the chaotic challenges of combat hundreds of times. As an inexpensive and easy-to-use tool to teach a Marine leader the dynamics of tactics, the Close Combat simulation is matchless.

* Repetition. In order to understand and identify patterns, Marines need hundreds of simulated examples. In order to internalize lessons, Marines need to fight an active enemy and suffer from their own tactical mistakes. Through repetition the basic lessons become so well-known that advanced tactics and experimentation can be attempted. Only with the experience of fighting through 100 enemy positions can a leader look for weaknesses in a given position and initiate creative ways to exploit that weakness. Reading the subtle aspects of a tactical situation is a learned skill that requires far more practice than is currently available outside of a simulation.

* Efficient use of time. Schools and units schedule training time. Far more time is typically available to individuals in the “gaps.” Weekends, nights, travel time, and dead time can all be used for individual simulation training. This time is usually far more plentiful than that allocated to formal learning environments. In the Operating Forces, especially, opportunities for individualized learning should be maximized.

* Peer competition. Marines can fight each other on a simulated battlefield. These tactical learning experiences, heightened by professional rivalry, can serve as a catalyst for doctrinal discussions, an opportunity to build leader cohesion, and a chance to compare tactics and techniques among professionals. Close Combat simulation is a great tool while deployed either on ship, during an exercise, or overseas.

Close Combat is a valuable training tool. I recommend it to all Marine leaders interested in improving their small unit tactical skills. Fight the scenarios. Fight your peers. Fight to learn to lead.

When Goliath Fell

Reviewed by Col Drew A Bennett

The Bear Over the Mountain was first reviewed in the June 1999 issue of the Gazette. The following review incorporates this book as a reference for new lessons learned from the Soviet-Afghan conflict.

THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan. By Lester W. Grau. Frank Cass Publishers, Portland, OR, 1998, 220 pp., $24.50. (Member $22.00)

THE SOVIET-AFGHAN WAR: How a Superpower Fought and Lost. Translated & edited by Lester W. Grau & Michael A. Gress. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2002, 392 pp., $17.95. (Member $16.16)

Just as many people scrambled to learn about Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War, current operations in Afghanistan have increased the demand for information about this region and its inhabitants. Of significant interest to military professionals is the conduct of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-89). These two books offer a unique Russian perspective on that conflict.

Mr. Grau has studied the Soviet– Afghan war extensively and, in addition to these two books, coauthored The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War. A retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, Mr. Grau uses his Vietnam War experience throughout his books, often comparing the Soviet guerrilla war in Afghanistan to the United States’ experience in Vietnam. The coeditor of The Soviet-Afghan War, Michael Gress, draws on his experience as a former soldier in the Soviet Army and native of Siberia.

The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan is a compilation of tactical vignettes primarily taken from the Russian Frunze Academy, the equivalent of a command and staff college. A drawn map accompanies each vignette and uses graphics to illustrate troop dispositions and actions. Additionally, the editor ends each vignette with comments providing amplifying insights and summarizes the lessons learned in a concluding chapter.

The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost was written by the Russian General Staff. This work almost went unpublished as the Russian Armed Forces lacked the money to print the manuscript, and efforts for a commercial publication could not find backing in the changing marketplace and Chechnyan War– weary public of Russia. As a companion to his other works on the subject, Grau acquired the rights to the manuscript that provides an account of the war from the point of view of the Russian military leadership. However, the final product includes numerous evaluations and comments by the editors that are just as valuable as the Russian text.

Both books use many of the same vignettes covering Soviet-Afghan engagements. Indeed, there are almost two dozen footnotes throughout The Soviet-Afghan War, particularly in the chapter entitled “Combined Arms Tactics,” referencing The Bear Went Over the Mountain and recommending it for a more detailed discussion. While The Bear Went Over the Mountain focuses on motorized rifle and air-assault unit tactics, The Soviet– Afghan War covers tactics and operations, discussing how the various branches fought, including chapters titled “Combat Support” and “Combat Service Support.”

The use of the Vietman War to provide a backdrop for the Soviet experience in Afghanistan is illuminating. First, there are major differences. Afghanistan is five times the size of Vietnam, yet at any one time the Soviets used only a quarter of the number of forces used by the United States. The United States slowly entered the Vietnam War, while the Soviet Union conducted a well-prepared and successful lightning operation to invade Afghanistan and topple the government. The Soviet Union was strongest at the operational level and weakest at the tactical level, while the United States was arguably strongest at the tactical level and weakest at the strategic level. I am reminded of the ecounter between a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) colonel and U.S. Army COL Harry Summers at the end of the Vietnam War. COL Summers declared, “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,” and the NVA colonel replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.”

Then there are the many similarities. Both wars were fought between technologically superior superpowers with an industrial base against guerrilla fighters. The use of mines and rocket propelled grenades is important in both conflicts, although the use of Stinger missiles becomes significant in the latter stages of the Afghan War. A startling revelation of this book is that given the four to one United States to Soviet troop strength, the casualty rates were similar. During the 9 years of the Vietnam War, the United States lost over 211,500 casualties compared to over 63,700 battlefield casualties suffered by the Soviets during their 10year war period. This is almost double the “official” number previously reported. Like Vietnam, the enemy in Afghanistan used “terrorism, sabotage, and the most barbarous methods of war” and the borders of adjacent countries to cover their operations. Both superpowers used conscripts to fight; however, the use of professional noncommissioned officers by the United States was significantly different. Both countries had problems operating with “loyal” host– nation forces that were usually less capable and too often corrupt, incompetent, or infiltrated by the enemy. Soviet and U.S. artillery and airstrikes often alienated the population and forced large numbers of refugees. On these two topics, I was reminded of Neil Sheehans’ book, A Bright Shining Lie.

The Soviet perspective is often amazing. The Soviet Union was completely focused on major armored mechanized operations in Europe. Because of this focus, despite its extensive World War II experience and recent efforts supporting North Vietnam, the Soviet Union did not have detailed training manuals on how to fight a guerrilla war. Far too many Soviet troops were tied up in providing security for base camps, airfields, cities, and supply lines. Too often ground troops in the field were tied to their armored personnel carriers (APCs) and operations during daylight. The Soviets were convinced that their enemy had more organized structure and training than actually existed. Distorted by their Marxism-Leninism philosophy, the Soviets never understood their enemy and could not comprehend a popular uprising against a Communist state. The suppression of the media is almost impossible to comprehend. By the end of 1983, despite having suffered 6,262 killed in action and 9,880 wounded in action, the Soviet press had only reported 6 dead and wounded. Another astounding lesson concerns the Soviets’ lack of medical care and sanitation. Over two– thirds of all Soviet troops fell victim to disease (415,932), and on any given day almost one-third of a unit would be incapacitated by hepatitis, typhus, malaria, dysentery, and meningitis.

The Afghan terrain and road network has changed little since the Soviets left. During the 10-year war the Soviets lost 118 jets, 333 helicopters, 147 tanks, 1,314 APCs, 433 artillery pieces, and 11,369 trucks. However, the more important lesson for us today may be how the Soviets departed Afghanistan. Considered a textbook maneuver, in a two-phased operation Soviet forces successfully withdrew over 100,000 personnel, 500 tanks, 4,000 artillery pieces, and 16,000 trucks.

Providing insight into the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, guerrilla warfare, small unit tactics, and major operations, these books are a valuable addition to the library of any military professional. Officers, especially company grade, will find The Bear Went Over the Mountain an excellent resource for tactical decision games and small unit leader discussions. The Soviet-Afghan War provides a complete history of the Soviet experience and centers more on the operational level. These books are especially appropriate in light of ongoing Operation ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan. Reading them may help us avoid the costly mistakes made by the Soviets.

Combat When Not in War

reviewed by Col James A. Lasswell, USMC(Ret)

SHARKMAN SIX. By Owen West. Simon bi Shuster, New York, 2001, 320 pp., $24.00. (Member $21.60)

When 1stLt Kelly’s reconnaissance platoon swims ashore in Mogadishu, he meets no armed resistance. Instead, he finds the glare of the cameras of the international media undoubtedly tipped off by Pentagon public affairs personnel of the time and place of the American military intervention in Somalia. Before he can adjust fully from being center stage in a media circus, he is informed that his best Marine has killed an armed Somali gunman. His platoon sergeant assures him that it was necessary, but there is conflicting evidence. The Marine involved is a hero from DESERT STORM, so does he warrant the benefit of the doubt? The battalion commander is on his way, and it is only a matter of minutes before the press descends. What now, Lieutenant?

So begins a complex morality play about military operations other than war and the practical and ethical dilemmas involved. For example, if a unit is employed for humanitarian reasons-to stop the dying-do orders that prohibit feeding the starving after dark make sense? How do orders to avoid confrontation with the Somali gunmen apply when murder, rape, and wanton lawlessness take place in their immediate presence?

Again and again lstLt Kelly faces leadership and tactical decisions in which his training and orders appear to conflict with what he believes is the “right” thing to do. Increasingly conflicted and compromised by his own actions, he begins to doubt his moral compass. He feels isolated and alone. In his previous tour during DESERT STORM, he earned the dubious distinction of being the only officer in his battalion to have one of his Marines killed in action and, as a result, his own tactical competence challenged. In contrast, his best friend and role model receives a Bronze Star for action during which he is seriously wounded. Later he finds that his friend was not a hero, but instead shot himself in the knee by accident and that his men lied to protect him from embarrassment. But Marine officers never lie-or do they when they compromise their integrity by recommending or accepting an award that is not earned?

What is “right and wrong” in the context of these kinds of conflicted situations? Owen West, leaves this issue essentially unresolved, much like Somalia was left after U.S. forces were withdrawn. Americans like polar classifications: good versus evil, heroes and villains, winners and losers. However, in the context of peace enforcement interventions, these terms have little relevance. West’s book focuses on this lack of clarity. Lt Kelly is as much an antihero as he is a hero. Winning and losing take on wholly new meanings in the context of DESERT STORM and Somalia where avoiding U.S. casualties and following orders can become the measures of effectiveness rather than defeating an enemy or providing humanitarian support to the inhabitants in a lawless country of bandits.

In the end, the reader is faced with a series of interwoven moral and tactical dilemmas that defy application of the simple “school solution.” Instead, the military reader is asked to consider both “what should Lt Kelly have done?” and “how would I have acted in his place?”

The closest thing to a description of what we have come to think of as a hero is found on the back jacket in describing the author. Though only in his early 30s, West has a resume that sounds like a Dirk Pitt-like character from a Clive Cussler adventure novel. A Harvard graduate and former varsity oarsman, he is commissioned a second lieutenant of Marines upon graduation and commands an infantry platoon, company, reconnaissance platoon, and special operations unit. When no longer able to remain in the Operating Forces, he resigned his commission and sought new challenges. At Stanford Business School he was elected class president. He then became a commodities trader for Goldman Sachs on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In his spare time, he is a world-class athlete competing in five EchoChallenge Adventure races-most recently in Borneo teamed with three Playboy Playmates-and a nearly successful attempt to climb Mount Everest.

West has written a complex novel on several levels. It is a commentary on how modern interventions are not our father’s war, and victory has new measures of effectiveness. It is also a virtual compendium of situations that could be used as tactical decision games or as discussion topics for professional military education classes designed to follow training in law of land warfare and rules of engagement in Marine units preparing for deployment. Yet, even with the deeper issues it addresses, it remains a fast-paced adventure novel.

The language may offend some readers. Marines aren’t saints, and West doesn’t pretend to paint them as such. However, those of us who have had to stifle a grin when pretending not to overhear the conversations of their Marines when talking among themselves will likely feel like they have been returned to the foxhole. For many, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Career-level schools: Fundamental or fundamentally flawed?

By Capt Darryl E Grissom

2000 Chase Prize Essay Contest: Honorable Mention

The dilemma is clear. “What do captains need to know?” This question, recently posed by the director of Command and Control Systems Course (CCSC) is at the heart of a debate throughout Marine Corps University. Currently, the focus of our career-level schools seems to be on tools, techniques, and procedures to train officers for staff work instead of educating leaders for combat situations. The program of instruction (POI), focused around core competencies such as the Marine Corps Planning Process and organization of the Marine Corps airground task force (MAGTF), compels students to study details without analyzing context. Since they breed technicians, not professional decisionmakers with the analytical background to continue their own education, current career-level schools are fundamentally flawed.

An irrefutable core competency of any military professional is the ability to make decisions. In the face of enemy fire, the ability to act and the courage to accept risk is fundamental to combat leadership. Officers of every specialty must be able to make effective decisions in a time-competitive environment.

However, career-level schools do not focus on developing an officer’s decisionmaking skills. For instance, CCSC allots 2 hours for Dr. Gary Klein to present his theory on decisionmaking styles and development. However, that seminar is the only attempt made to develop decisionmaking skills. In fact, more scheduled time is devoted to subjects such as financial management and web page design than to decisionmaking. Additional discussions or exercises designed to develop an officer’s ability are not scheduled.

The only effort to correct this deficiency is being made by one faculty advisor who runs a voluntary tactical decision game (TDG) workshop twice weekly before the first lecture of the day. This workshop allows students to analyze a situation and develop their solutions. It then requires the student to present his solution to the group. Thus, everyone benefits from analyzing the student’s tactical insight. It is a travesty that this workshop is not part of the POI. Except in a resident professional military education (PME) program, where can officers from every specialty learn from other’s decisions? There is not enough time between training cycles in the Operating Forces for officers to participate in TDG seminars.

The same training is missing from Amphibious Warfare School (AWS). AWS students often speak of the requirement for “process” over “product” in their exercises. Instead of focusing on the tactical decisions made, the faculty grades on the level of detail found in the student’s staff work. The POI is simply too full to allow the students to exercise their decisionmaking skills in TDGs.

How can this deficiency be filled? The answer is simple. Every day in any resident school should include a problem requiring students to make a decision and discuss their decision with their classmates and faculty.

Obviously, challenging students in this manner creates new problems for the faculty. However, the student benefits far outweigh the faculty burdens. We must learn to use resources such as interactive computer games to augment traditional TDGs. Time spent preparing these challenges would diminish valuable “PowerPoint slide preparation time.” But, developing the situations should be viewed as a learning opportunity for faculty as well as students.

Another facet of education is helping students develop their own PME programs and goals. This facet is missing from our schools. Students are not challenged to read interactively and think analytically about what they are reading. Instead, they are presented with a stack of publications and instruction manuals. Graded requirements focus on a level of detail beyond the analytical realm.

For instance, during a portion of CCSC, students focused on MAGTF logistics and combat service support. However, in the test, students were asked only to identify details: What is the correct operational graphic for Class IX supplies? A student could score 100 percent on an exam of this sort without actually understanding the significance of logistics to the success and failure of military campaigns. Does this student understand MAGTF logistics? No. He has simply memorized the instructor’s slides.

The ability to think critically about history can only be developed by careful study and reading. While at a resident school, studying history should be the focus. GEN George S. Patton preached:

[T]he memorizing of concrete examples is futile for in battle the mind does not work well enough to make memory trustworthy. One must be so soaked in military lore that he does the military thing automatically. The study of history will produce this result. The study of algebra will not.

For today’s Marines the message is still valid. The study of military history will produce professionals. The study of operational symbols will not.

Releasing officers to attend a resident school is expensive to the undermanned Operating Forces. We must not squander the opportunity. We must design a POI that allows students to develop a personal PME foundation on which to build. When they return to the Operating Forces, the foundation established in school will help them view current issues in a clearer historical context.

Certainly company grade officers must learn details such as composition of the force service support group and the Marine air control squadron. Fortunately, these topics are easily learned through careful employment of nonresident courses such as the AWS nonresident program. The nonresident course requires a student to familiarize himself with the Marine Corps Reference Publications since they are readily available in the Operating Forces. Multiple choice examinations certify that students have learned the material and understand the available resources. Since nonresident courses can teach details, resident courses shouldn’t be burdened with details.

If the goal of resident schools is to educate leaders, the curriculum must change. We must find a better balance between content heavy topics that have grown to be thought of as essential-financial management, grammar, and computer proficiency to name a few-and the timeless hallmarks of leaders-decisionmaking and professional reading. The Marine Corps will never fully realize the potential benefit of resident courses until it finds this balance.

What do captains need to know? They need to know how to make sound decisions in the chaos of battle. Let’s get away from detail-oriented subject matter and get on with the business of educating warriors.

Critical Cohort

Reviewed by LtCol Eric M Walters

PROUD LEGIONS: A Novel of America’s Next War. By John Antal. Presidio Press, Novato, CA, 1999, 356 pp., $24.95. (Member $22.45).

Fans of Harold Coyle’s military novels will immediately like John Antal’s first foray into “traditional” combat novels. Antal has long been known for his “interactive” fiction wherein the reader must make tactical and leadership decisions as an Army platoon or company commander in battle. The story in this latest work focuses on Antal’s last command, 2d Battalion, 27th Armor, at the beginning of a new Korean War. While there are snippets within the narrative that describe other parts of the Korean ground war, Task Force 2-27-the “Dragon Force”-is the “critical cohort” within Proud Legions that defeats the North Korean offensive.

Marines may wonder what this novel, written by an active duty Army Armor Branch lieutenant colonel, can of fer them. This reflects perhaps a larger question-what makes great combat fiction? Why read these nonhistorical military novels at all? Proud Legions does two things as modern warfare fiction: First, it provides ideas having immediate, practical value. Second, it conveys general lessons regarding warfare that transcend a specific place and time.

Marine tankers will have no problem identifying with the practical difficulties that confront LTC Johnny Rodriguez, the Dragon Force commander, and his soldiers. Korea is not considered ideal tank country. Sprinkled throughout the text are training and tactics ideas on how to fight tanks in the dangerously narrow defiles so prevalent in mountainous (and urban) terrain. While Antal lavishes loving attention on the technical advantages of the MlA2 tank in the story, his tactical tricks and tips are useful to any kind of armored vehicle or unit. His techniques of communicating target locations, using visual cues, and “quick draw” gunnery techniques are innovafive. Given the Corps’ commitments to the Korean Peninsula and the chat lenges of fighting tanks in cities, Antal’s ideas are worth a look. Proud Legions may be fiction, but the author’s experi ences as an armor battalion commander lend plausibility to his portrayals of taco cal combat over this kind of ground. Anyone interested in mechanized warfare in close terrain will benefit from the book.

Despite the detailed descriptions of machines and informal discussions of training and procedure that are scat tered throughout the narrative, Proud Legions is ultimately about people-the soldiers who fight the battles. Antal gives his characters their proper due as the makers of defeat and victory. Marine officers and staff noncommissioned officers can easily extract a number of tactical and ethical decision games from the book to teach military judgment and leadership.

Proud Legions also offers a terrifyingly plausible explanation for a resumption of the Korean War, providing a topnotch starting point for Marine exercise designers to develop a Korean “Road to War” scenario. His rationale for the war is so convincing that it will remind Marines they must stay proficient in their conventional warfare skills while they master the technical demands of newer concepts.

Even a casual reading of Proud Legions reveals larger lessons that apply outside the storyline. We are treated to examples of the problems of centralized command and control as a Republic of Korea lieutenant grapples with a decision to detonate a “rock drop” to halt the North Korean advance-without necessary higher headquarters authorization. LTC Rodriguez also finds himself cut off from communications but is able to derive a winning mission for his unit from his commander’s intent. He also has a famous journalist trapped with his unit at the outbreak of war, complicating his task. Themes of asymmetrical approaches–from the strategic level of war to the tactical— abound throughout the story as the keys to victory.

As entertainment, Proud Legions is light and lively; from the start the narrative moves briskly along with the end containing an unexpected twist. Admittedly, the book shares the same weaknesses as other nonhistorical combat fiction; the author focuses on what makes the story interesting and not on the more mundane yet equally necessary matters such as supply. Characterization is also given short shrift in favor of an exciting plot. But these do not detract from a fine storyline and several lessons on warfare.

Proud Legions will invariably be compared to an older book on a hypothetical next Korean War, Larry Bond’s bestseller, Red Phoenix. Antal’s book is more narrowly focused than Bond’s; LTC Johnny Rodriguez’s reinforced armor battalion is unabashedly the centerpiece here. Because of this, Proud Legions is a good deal shorter, moves faster, and is easier to follow. Bond’s book is also showing its age given current events in Korea. Proud Legions is recommended as a fun yet informative read for Marines-what more can one ask from military fiction?

The Strategic Corporal in Kosovo

By Capt Paul C Merida

Kosovo Writing Contest: 5th Place

On one particular afternoon in Kosovo, a Marine corporal, a mortarman by trade, stands post at a checkpoint his platoon has established in order to confiscate weapons and establish a presence in the area. He leads a fire team of four Marines including himself. His post contains a number of obstacles to slow traffic down as well as a sandbag bunker containing a PRC-119 and an M249 squad automatic weapon. It’s hot this day, and they’ve been at this for 3 weeks now with very few problems. In the corporal’s opinion, his biggest challenge has been keeping his Marines focused on the mission. His fire team searches a vehicle and lets it continue when a single shot rings out. The round impacts in the sandbags not 2 feet from one of his Marines. Immediately the corporal acts. He and another Marine return fire at the suspected enemy sniper. He orders another Marine to get on the radio, call the platoon commander, and summon the react force. The two Marines fire a total of eight rounds at the sniper who is at least 400 meters away on a hilltop behind a clump of bushes. The sniper jumps up and dashes over the top of the hill. Within 5 minutes the platoon react force is on the scene, within 30 minutes a nearby light armored vehicle platoon is there as well as a section of AH-1W Cobras. The corporal’s quick thinking enabled the Marines to suppress the sniper fire and bring an overwhelming amount of combat power to the scene within half an hour. No Marines were injured, and under fire for the first time, they demonstrated both poise and tire discipline.

This was just one example of how Marine noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in Kosovo operated and succeeded during Operation JOINT GUARDIAN, June-July 1999. Writing in the January 1969 issue of the Gazette, Gen Charles C. Krulak said: Success or failure will rest, increasingly, with the rifleman and with his ability to make the right decision at the right time at the point of contact.

In Kosovo the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), or 26th MEU(SOC), was tasked with implementing the terms of the Military Technical Agreement signed by the leaders of the Serbian Armed Forces and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The MEU operated in a very large sector that contained an abundance of Serbian, Albanian, and ethnically mixed villages and towns. Battalion Landing Team 3/8, the ground combat element of the 26th MEU(SOC), in an effort to cover as much territory as possible, operated very decentralized. Individual company sectors were much larger than one would expect, and it was common for platoons to be separated by several miles. The method of employment meant that the bulk of the decisionmaking, of necessity, would fall on the shoulders of the fire team leaders, squad leaders, and the staff sergeants and lieutenants that led them. The mission was difficult and often confusing. Violence between Albanians and Serbs was widespread, and Marines found themselves in the middle of dangerous and potentially explosive situations. For NCOs this meant that, as the former Commandant said, success or failure would rest on their shoulders.

My 81 mm mortar platoon was garrisoned in an Albanian town astride the main supply route. Our platoon sector was about 25 kilometers long and included several Serbian and Albanian villages. We operated two permanent traffic control points (vehicle checkpoints) on either end of town and ran constant motorized as well as foot mobile patrols all over our sector 24 hours a day for a month. Obviously my staff noncommissioned officers (SNCOs) and I could not be everywhere all of the time, thus our corporals and sergeants ended up making most of the decisions and were the ones on the scene when most problems arose. During our training workup, we had hardly scratched the surface of these areas. The majority of our time was spent on being mortarmen as well as the primary TRAP (tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel) force for the MEU. The NCOs were forced to develop standing operating procedures for peace enforcement/security operations on the fly, basically making them up as they went along. I provided my input when I thought it necessary and changed things if I thought they were wrong, but their judgment was nearly always sound. Their overall performance was superb.

A month later when we were replaced by the Army and headed back to the boats, it was easy to recognize the impact and difference we had made. The Marine sector was a more peaceful area, hundreds of weapons were confiscated, arrests were made, crimes were solved, property was returned to its rightful owners, and we had established a firm presence in the area-a presence that meant business and didn’t tolerate violation of the rules. Marines were fired on and returned fire when necessary. Marine NCOs were the post commanders and patrol leaders, they were the vehicle commanders and the sniper team leaders. They made decisions, exercised judgment, and got the job done.

How do we as officers and SNCOs develop this caliber of leadership and ensure that our NCOs are truly “Strategic Corporals”? Numerous articles have been written on this question alone, for everyone recognizes the importance of having topnotch small unit leaders. In my opinion, developing decisionmaking within Marines takes practice. Marines don’t pin on corporal and automatically become expert decisionmakers. Their ability needs to be developed, tested, and critiqued. For infantrymen there is no better tool for doing all this than the tactical decision game (TDG). TDGs not only test the decisionmaking ability of those who participate, but in addition, they teach valuable tactical and technical concepts. For example, while on boat in the Adriatic, my NCOs did a TDG every night. They weren’t just learning about maneuver warfare; they were learning to make decisions. They were forced to make decisions. Ethical decision games and wargaming rules of engagement do the same thing. They cultivate the decisionmaking ability of Marines and improve the judgment they use to reach their decisions. This is vital because as Gen Krulak said:

… these missions will require them to confidently make well-reasoned decisions under extreme stress-decisions that will likely be subject to the harsh scrutiny of both the media and the court of public opinion.

We also need to set our young NCOs up for success. We can do this by ensuring they receive the professional and tactical education they deserve and need. Professional military education courses like the Corporal’s Course and Sergeant’s Course, as well as advanced courses like the Squad Leader’s Course and those for machinegunners and mortarmen, are essential for developing proficient, well-educated, and well-rounded NCOs. Nothing breeds confidence and respect like military occupational specialty proficiency.

Lastly, our training both in the field and in garrison needs to support our desire to develop strong NCOs. We must give them the responsibility they desire and rate, and trust them to get the job done. We also, as leaders, need to have the moral courage to accept the fact that things won’t always get done exactly the way we want them to and that people will make mistakes. It goes without saving that a Marine who is afraid to make a mistake will be less likely to make a decision. Its our responsibility to create an atmosphere that promotes decentralized decisionmaking, encourages initiative, and is based on trust. If we do this constantly, both in and out of the field, we will have the NCOs needed to ensure mission accomplishment in a real-world operation. We will have the type of NCOs who are truly “the backbone of the Marine Corps.”

Lessons from Afghanistan

Reviewed by Capt Robert C Fulford

THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan. Edited by Lester W. Grau. Frank Cass Publishers, Portland, OR, 1998, 220 pp., $24.50. (Member $22.00)

In the not so distant future, the preponderance of our Corps’ junior leaders will be products of the postCold War era. Most of the current lieutenants and captains were commissioned after the fall of the “Evil Empire.” The 18- and 19-year-old recruits entering today’s Corps were only 10 or 11 years old when the Soviet Union finally collapsed. While there are many tangible benefits associated with residing in a country serving as the world’s only remaining “superpower,” complacency and arrogance reign as our newfound foes. It is easy to ignore the lessons of the past; especially those learned by our former adversaries. As Bill Lind notes in The Maneuver Warfare Handbook and repeatedly warns us, “Too often, Americans do not pay much attention to what others are doing and learning.” If we are to remain successful and dominant as a society and as a military, we must overcome this arrogant habit.

The reduction in tensions between East and West resulted in a period of relative openness, providing opportunities for the exchange of ideas and lessons learned over nearly 50 years of bitter worldwide competition. The Bear Went Over the Mountain is a product of this period. The History of Military Art Department at the Frunze Combined Arms Academy in Moscow produced a collection of lessons learned titled, Combat Action of Soviet Forces in the Republic of Afghanistan. This book is a product of countless interviews with small unit leaders, battalion commanders, and staff officers in the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan. The Frunze Academy staff compiled these interviews into a series of 47 vignettes, complete with first person narrative and academy staff commentary. Created prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, Combat Action was intended for use within the Soviet military and not for external publication. The result is a very honest appraisal of the successes and failures of Soviet leadership and tactics during the decade long conflict.

It is obvious that the Soviets intended this book for the use of small unit leaders, for it focuses solely on the tactical level of operations. Combat Action is very similar to our Infantry In Battle, and provides examples of tactical actions in ambushes, cordon and searches, convoy operations, defensive operations, and attacking a strongpoint. The commentary brings out as common trends the failures in tactical reconnaissance, the results of poor tactical discipline, and the importance and challenge of attaining tactical surprise.

One trend, however, stands out above the rest in its importance-the lack of rapid and sound decisionmaking by small unit leaders. Time and again, the Frunze staff points to this as a prominent factor in the failure of its units. Over the course of this war, the Soviets began to realize that their methodical and centralized philosophy of warfare was not conducive to the current battlefield. Out of necessity, they attempted to develop their small unit leaders’ initiative and decisionmaking skills. With this change came tactical success. Unfortunately, for the Soviets it came too late, as their nation lost the will to sustain the conflict.

LtCol Lester Grau is a retired U.S. Army infantry officer with combat experience in Vietnam. Currently, he is on the staff at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, specializing in Russian studies. Several years ago, he received a copy of the Frunze Academy’s work and deemed it valuable enough for translation into English. To this translation LtCol Grau added his own commentary, as well as two additional vignettes. The result is titled, The Bear Went Over the Mountain. This is not a study in maneuver warfare, nor is it a template for doctrinal change within a military. Additionally, it was not designed as a literary work, but rather as a documentation of lessons learned. These lessons, though, do lend credence to the Marine Corps’ warfighting doctrine, and bear out the importance of the education and development of the small unit leader. It is here that you will find this book the most useful. It is an outstanding source of tactical decision game material, and it will prove extremely useful for small unit level PME.

LtCol Grau provides us with a unique opportunity to look inside the successes and failures of another military; coincidentally, one that our nation’s military organized, trained, and prepared to fight for almost 50 years. When taken in the proper context, the lessons gleaned out of this work will prove to be valuable tools in preparation for future conflicts.

Cultivating Intuitive Decisionmaking

By Gen Charles C Krulak

It is my intent in preparing the force that we account for . . . [the demands of the 21 st century] by creating Marines and their leaders who have superb tactical judgement and are capable of rapid decisionmaking under physical and emotional duress….

-Commandant’s Planning Guidance

Our world is becoming increasingly chaotic. Operations such as those in Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia-where the unique challenges of military operations other than war have been combined with the disparate challenges of midintensity conflict-are becoming commonplace. The tragic experience of U.S. forces in Mogadishu during Operation RESTORE HOPE illustrates well the volatile nature of these contemporary operations.

The Strategic Corporals . . . and Their Leaders

Marines involved in these amorphous conflicts will be confronted by the entire spectrum of tactical challenges in the span of a few hours and, potentially, within the space of three contiguous city blocks. Thus, we refer to this phenomenon as the “three block war.” Success or failure will rest, increasingly, with the individual Marine on the ground-and with his or her ability to make the right decision, at the right time, while under extreme duress. Without direct supervision, young Marines will be required to make rapid, well-reasoned, independent decisions while facing a bewildering array of challenges and threats. These decisions will be subject to the harsh scrutiny of both the media and the court of public opinion. In many cases, the individual Marine will be the most conspicuous symbol of American foreign policy. His or her actions may not only influence the immediate tactical situation, but have operational and strategic implications as well. If we accept the maxim “battles are won and lost [first] in the mind of the commanders,” we can safely assume that the three block war, may very well be won or lost in the minds of our “strategic corporals.”

So the natural question becomes, “How do we develop our strategic corporals’ abilities to make sound and timely decisions in the heat of the three block war?” How do we prepare them to deal decisively with the challenges they are destined to confront on the complex, high-stakes, asymmetrical battlefield of the 21 st century? Further, the chaotic conditions of the next century promise to increasingly tax the individual decisionmaking skills of both commanders and staff officers at all levels. The influx of information into our combat operations and fire support coordination centers is growing at a rate faster than our ability to “process” it. Thus far, advances in information technology have increased, not diminished, the burden on our officers to make the “hard calls.” Marines must rapidly distinguish between information that is useful in making decisions, and that which is not pertinent. Often, they must avoid the natural temptation to delay their decision until more information makes the situation clearer or risk losing the initiative. In all likelihood, once military action is underway, more information will simply further cloud the picture. Our leaders must be able to “feel” the battlefield tempo, discern patterns among the chaos, and make decisions in seconds much like a Wall Street investment trader, but with life threatening consequences. In short, we must ask ourselves, “From the strategic corporal to the Marine expeditionary force (MEF) commander, how do we ensure that each and every Marine has the decisionmaking ability needed to execute his or her responsibilities?”

The Essence of Decisionmaking

In answering this question, we must first gain a fundamental understanding of decisionmaking itself. Decisionmaking is the foremost human factor, indeed unique contribution, involved in warfare. In effect, it is the means for implementing the human will. As long as wars result from two opposing human wills, they will be emotional and chaotic in nature. Technological or scientific solutions alone will not be adequate to resolve these conflicts; nor will they be able to lift “the fog of war.”

Generally, we know that there are two primary models for human decisionmaking-the analytical model and the intuitive, or recognitional, model. Military leaders at all levels are familiar with the analytical model because it is the one historically used in our formal schools. In this model, Marines prepare estimates of the situation that eventually evolve into potential courses of action. Analytical decisionmaking uses a scientific, quantitative approach, and to be effective, it depends on a relatively high level of situational certainty and accuracy. The greater the degree of situational certainty and awareness, the more effective analytical decisionmaking becomes. Unfortunately, the analytical model does not lend itself well to military applications once the enemy is engaged. At that point, military situations most often become very ambiguous, and the leader cannot afford to wait for detailed, quantitative data without risking the initiative. Analytical decisionmaking offers distinct advantages when the situation allows an indefinite amount of time for analysis, such as during prehostility contingency planning, but it rapidly diminishes in usefulness once “you cross the line of departure.”

While analytical decisionmaking is based on a comparison of quantitative options, recognitional decisionmaking depends on a qualitative assessment of the situation based on the decider’s judgment and experience. It does not look for the ideal solution; instead, it seeks the first solution that will work. Research by noted psychologist Dr. Gary Klein indicates that most people use the intuitive model of decisionmaking over 90 percent of the time. Ironically, until recently our formal schools have focused almost exclusively on training Marines in the analytical model. This began to change, however, with a growing acceptance of the ideas presented by the late Col John R. Boyd, USAF(Ret). Boyd demonstrated that a person in the midst of conflict continuously moves through a recognitional decision pattern that he termed the “Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) Loop.” He pointed out that the leader who moves through this OODA cycle the quickest gains a potentially decisive advantage in the conflict by disrupting his enemy’s ability to respond and react. In short, the leader who consistently makes the faster decisions can interfere with his opponent’s decisionmaking process and effectively degrade his ability to inflict his will and continue the struggle. Col Boyd’s ideas, entirely consistent with the Marine Corps’ maneuver warfare philosophy, were incorporated into our doctrine in 1989.

As Col Boyd recognized, the chief advantage of intuitive decisionmaking in military operations is its speed. Numerous military historians and sociologists, including such notables as John Keegan and S.L.A. Marshall, have pointed out that the normal tendency for inexperienced leaders under extremis conditions is to wait for as much information as possible before making a decision. Of course, the longer the decision is delayed, the more opportunities are missed. Initiative can be forfeited to the enemy. For this reason, Sun Tzu noted that, “Speed is the essence of war,” and Patton observed, “A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” History has repeatedly demonstrated that battles have been lost more often by a leader’s failure to make a decision than by his making a poor one.

Napoleon believed that the intuitive ability to rapidly assess the situation on the battlefield and make a sound decision was the most important quality a commander could possess. He referred to this intuition as coup d’oeil, or “the strike of the eye,” and thought that it was a gift of nature. More recently, however, practitioners of the military art have come to believe that while heredity and personality may well have an impact on an individual’s intuitive skills, these skills can also be cultivated and developed. Prior to and during World War II, the Japanese called this skill, ishin denshin, or the “sixth sense,” and they observed that it began to appear after months of intense repetitive training in a cohesive unit. During the same time period, the Germans referred to the capacity to make rapid, intuitive decisions in combat as “character.” They attempted to first identify innate intuition during their recruiting processes, and then cultivate the skill by forcing their officers to repeatedly make tactical decisions under stressful situations throughout their professional schooling. While some might point out that both the Germans and Japanese were on the losing end of World War II, we might be wiser to ask how they were able to achieve such great military successes given their relative size and resource limitations. Napoleon may be correct if he meant that intuition cannot be taught in the traditional sense, but both the Germans and the Japanese were successful in assuming that-through repetition-it could be learned.

How Do We Cultivate Napoleon’s Coup D’Oeil? Character. If we accept that intuitive combat decisionmaking skill will be exceedingly important for all Marines in the 21st century, we must seek to cultivate that ability. Our first step, however, must be to identify an important prerequisite for sound decisionmaking-sound character. As often as not, the really tough issues confronting Marines in the three block war will be ethical/moral quandaries, and they must have the wherewithal to handle them appropriately. We cannot anticipate and train Marines for each situation they may face. All Marines must, therefore, possess a moral consistency to serve as their compass. Making the right ethical decisions must be a thing of habit. This is why we created the Transformation Process where we recruit bold, capable, and intelligent young men and women of character and recast them in the white hot crucible of recruit training. We immerse them in the highest ideals of American society-the time honored values of our Corps-honor, courage, and commitment. We place these values on them in a framework of high institutional standards to which they are held strictly accountable. We further foster the acceptance of these values through the unit cohesion and sustainment phases. The common thread throughout Transformation is an emphasis on the growth of integrity, courage, initiative, decisiveness, mental agility, and personal accountability-the basic skills needed to make timely, accurate, and ethical decisions in the heat of combat.

Repetitive Skills Training. If we know that the effectiveness of intuitive decisionmaking is dependent upon experience, we must seek ways to give our Marines that experience. We should recognize decisionmaking as a vitally important combat skill and promote its development throughout our training curriculum, both in our formal schools’ curriculums and in our local unit training programs. We must face the paradox that our least experienced leaders, those with the least skill in decisionmaking, will face the most demanding decisions on the battlefield. Just as we expect a Marine to employ his weapon under combat duress, we must likewise demand that he employ his mind. Marines need to be comfortable with using their intuition under highly stressful circumstances. In short, we must make intuitive decisionmaking an instinct, and this can only be accomplished through repetition. Training programs and curriculums should routinely make our Marines decide a course of action under cold, wet, noisy conditions while they are tired and hungry and as an instructor continually asks them “what are you going to do now, Marine?”

Unit commanders must scrutinize their training programs to ensure that operational exercises are geared to challenge the intuitive decisionmaking processes of subordinate leaders at every level in their command. Training must account for the role of uncertainty in decisionmaking. We should literally bombard them with information and get them used to making decisions under varied circumstances without complete information and with contradicting or false information. Similarly, we must continually review and revise our formal schools’ curriculums-from the Schools of Infantry to the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Staff Training Program and up to and including the Marine Corps War College-to dramatically increase the number of times we force each Marine to make decisions.

Our Warfighting Lab has led the way in developing practical tools to support this type of instruction with the computer assisted training simulation known as the Combat Decisionmaking Range (CDR). The CDR puts the squad leader square in the middle of the three block war and requires him to make decisions across the spectrum of conflict, from humanitarian relief to midintensity firefights, with the media watching. During a single 30- to 45-minute CDR training scenario, a Marine squad leader must make 15 to 30 urgent, life or death decisions while land navigating and communicating both up and down the chain of command. The results of experimentation with the CDR indicate that we are on the right course. Squad leaders who routinely exercise in the CDR gain confidence in their intuitive abilities and make sound decisions more rapidly.

Initiatives similar to the CDR should be pursued in all of our professional schools and in our operational units. At each level, from young, aspiring noncommissioned officers to our MEF commanders, our training should be geared to putting the Marine in the appropriate stressful environment for his or her grade, and forcing them to make timely decisions. Initially, it is important that the correctness of the decision not be an issue. The “right” decision is any decision as long as it is timely. After all, in combat situations there are rarely any right or wrong answers. As the conditioning proceeds, appropriate postexercise critiques and debriefs will begin to identify in the participant’s mind the credibility of various decisions (or “solutions”) in relative terms. Through this process, they will begin to develop an intellectual framework for making time-critical decisions in their billet.

Self-Study. A personal commitment must be made by each Marine to focus on developing his or her own decisionmaking abilities. This means self-study; but simply reading history is not enough. We need to read it with an eye toward examining the relevant decisionmaking processes that took place during the particular event. Why did the commander make this decision? What information did he have when he made it? What information did he not have? Was it timely? What subsequent decisions did he make and why? What were the resuits? Personal study of history and the military art in this manner promotes an ability to recognize patterns and later, to exploit them. While it is no substitute for personal experience, the dedicated study of conflict and warfare complements tactical decision games, simulations, and exercises in establishing a mental framework for making time-sensitive decisions.

Command Climate. While the most realistic training in the world may never be able to replicate the stresses associated with making decisions in combat, we must actively pursue means of conditioning a willingness among our Marines to make those decisions. We should literally inculcate a “culture” of intuitive decisionmaking throughout the Corps. To do so requires that commanders at all levels create within their units an atmosphere that encourages, not inhibits, their subordinates to make decisions. Subordinates must be assured that their leaders will back them up when they make a poor tactical decision. Debriefs and critiques must challenge the subordinate’s rationale, but not threaten his or her pride or dignity. This, of course, is not possible in a command where micromanagement or a “zero-defects mentality” is prevalent.

Continuing to March

The Marine Corps Combat Development Command will dedicate itself to identifying, developing, and cultivating appropriate intuitive combat decisionmaking skills at all levels. Our Warfighting Lab will continue to take the lead with initiatives such as the Traders Games with the New York Mercantile Exchange, concepts and ideas exchanges with the New York City Fire Department, and the Dynamic Decisionmaking Wargame involving traders, firefighters, police officers, air traffic controllers, and other professionals. The Lab should eventually expand their experimentation efforts in this area beyond the training realm. They should seek to answer such questions as: Can certain personality types develop intuitive skills more readily than others? Is there a means for testing this? Do different billets, assignments, and military occupational specialties require different types of intuition? Should our manpower processes-recruiting, promotion, billet assignment, command selection, etc.-consider these factors? Answering questions such as these will help us field leaders at all levels with the decisionmaking skills they will need to fight and win the three block war.

Summary

Our warfighting philosophy, both now and with the growth of operational maneuver from the sea, is one of maneuver. Maneuver doctrine, to be successful, demands high tempo in order to retain the initiative and impact the enemy’s will to fight. Without leaders who can make timely decisions under extreme duress, this doctrine simply cannot succeed. These leaders cannot rely on the traditional, analytical approach to decisionmaking. Advances in information technology will never clear Clausewitz’s “fog of war” to the point where the analytical model is timely enough to guarantee victory. Marine Corps leaders, therefore, need to develop confidence in their own intuition-an intuition rooted firmly in solid character. We must actively seek out means for cultivating intuitive decisionmaking skills among our leaders at all levels from the strategic corporal to the MEF commander. Since these intuitive skills result from experience, we must include repetitive decisionmaking drills and exercises in all of our formal schools’ curriculums and in the training programs of our operational units. Finally, our commanders must foster a climate within their units that is supportive of intuitive skill development. Doing these things will cultivate coup d’oeil and guarantee our success on the 21st century battlefield.

Foundations for teaching: A philosophy for the Marine Corps University

By LtCol Philip Anderson

MCU’s focus on combat decisionmaking is unique to its academic environment. Unlike other universities in which students possess a wide variety of goals and pursue numerous educational disciplines, the audience and subject matter at MCU are fixed and representative of the Marine Corps’ unique military society where students are . . . focused on improving their ability to succeed in battle.

During the 1930s, as the assistant commandant of the United States Army Infantry School, GEN George C. Marshall (then a colonel) put together a faculty of proven officers. Together they set about teaching students to think clearly about the battlefield. This faculty, through the use of some simple and practical teaching methods, realized great success. The purpose of this article is to offer some suggestions for teaching this generation of Marines. Much of what will be presented here is not new and may seem obvious to some readers familiar with history and/or educational theory and practice. However, the objective is not to restate what has already been written, but rather to assemble the aspects of the conventional wisdom most appropriate for promoting effective teaching among faculty in the Marine Corps University (MCU) environment.

Teaching has been defined throughout history as both an art and a science. Many modern educators define teaching simply as the means by which we educate or through which knowledge is imparted to students. The fact of the matter is that teaching at MCU must be more significant. The end result of effective teaching and the object of professional military education (PME) should be to unify the efforts of the faculty toward providing a foundation or framework from which students can develop their ability to make effective decisions in all situations up to and including combat. This differs from other applications in its audience and subject matter. MCU’s focus on combat decisionmaking is unique to its academic environment. Unlike other universities in which students possess a wide variety of goals and pursue numerous educational disciplines, the audience and subject matter at MCU are fixed and representative of the Marine Corps’ unique military society where students are focused on improving their ability to succeed in battle.

In the Marine Corps our warfighting philosophy is based on our understanding of the problems of uncertainty and friction on the battlefield. At the heart of our warfighting philosophy is the fact that decisionmaking in this environment, under trying conditions, is most often affected by intangible or imprecise factors. In this regard, PME should create a climate conducive to addressing the intangible subjective aspects of combat decisionmaking. Under Marshall, students were often issued foreign or outdated maps, provided incomplete intelligence information, compelled to operate without communications, given little time to plan and routinely made to contend with the unexpected. His faculty emphasized ingenuity and imagination. One of Marshall’s first orders was that any student’s solution that ran counter to the approved school solution and yet showed independent creative thinking would be published to the class.’

Education Versus Training

The debate continues regarding how to differentiate between technical ability generally acquired through “training” and the intangible human qualities generally developed through “education.” Nonetheless, it is important to possess a clear understanding of how each interrelates.

Training and education have often been looked upon synonymously, but they are very different concepts. Each complements the other, but each leads to distinctly different outcomes. Training is the acquisition of concrete skills that permits one to perform to standard. Therefore, training may be defined as an experience, discipline, or a regimen that causes people to acquire new predetermined behaviors.2 Training is the building-in of preset information and procedures-the technical aspect-oriented toward providing the mechanical wherewithal necessary to perform a particular task, the product of which is skill development and proficiency. An example of an outcome associated with training is the mechanical ability required to assemble and disassemble an M-16 rifle.

Education on the other hand, is that which is oriented toward developing leaders and decisionmakers. Education is the drawing out of students’ creative ability-the intangible human aspect-oriented toward providing the abstract ability to make decisions, the product of which is a creative mind. Where training deals with one correct way of performing a particular task, education addresses the internal nature of a problem to be solved, dealing with numerous possibilities rather than one correct answer. An example of an outcome associated with education is the creative judgment necessary for a leader to make a decision on the battlefield regarding the appropriate time or place to engage the enemy.

In practice it is not always easy to make a distinction between or to separate training from education since the ability to employ creative judgment requires technical expertise. MCU faculty should understand that training and education do not operate independently of one another. In fact training can best be viewed as a subset of education.3 Everything that is training is also education, but education also goes further. It attempts to get at the student’s creative aspect. Most often, the early stages of a Marine’s career should be weighted more heavily toward training since he or she more frequently will be engaged in operating a specific weapons system. Accordingly, the later stages of a Marine’s career should be dominated by education when that Marine is more likely to be in a leadership role.

Although the University should focus more heavily on education, it is clear that it is responsible for training as well. An appropriate balance must be maintained based on the nature of the desired outcome or impact on the student. Obviously a greater emphasis should be placed on training at The Basic School than at Command and Staff College. However, at both schools the requirement to address the intangible human ability related to combat decisionmaking, albeit at different levels, should be a priority.

Producing Combat Decisionmakers

During the 1930s, the leaders of the German Kriegsakademie (War College) absolutely believed that the capacity to make a decision in combat was the highest quality an officer could possess. The Germans called it “character,” and recruited their officers for its presence in their personalities and, thereafter, educated them to cultivate that capability.4 The requirement for character and decisiveness in combat is obvious. Developing the student’s character should be the preeminent purpose and the focus of effort for each member of the faculty at MCU.

The previous discussion of the differences between training and education demonstrates that a military decision is not just a mathematical computation. Decisionmaking requires both intuitive skill to recognize and analyze the essence of a given problem and the creative ability to devise a practical solution.5 There are several important yet somewhat intangible factors, identified in MCDP 1, that are both intuitive and creative in nature. When taken together the following factors form the essence of combat decisionmaking: (1) An understanding of the impact of uncertainty on the battlefield; (2) the ability to accept risk and act quickly; and (3) an understanding of the human dimension in war. Developing these abilities in students is no easy task. Combat decisionmaking should be viewed as a dynamic intellectual process which can in fact be created and shaped.

An understanding of the impact of uncertainty on the battlefield can be developed by ensuring that students do not always receive complete information. Situations should be created that by their nature are tentative and vague. Although this may result in student discomfort due to the lack of information, students should be forced to make decisions with incomplete information just as they would in combat. With incomplete information comes risk. The ability to accept risk can be developed by forcing students to make decisions and recognize the probable outcomes of their actions.

A commander should not only know how to arrive at a decision, but also when. It is better to render a partly faulty decision at the right time, than to ponder for hours over various changes in the situation and finally evolve a perfect decision-too late for execution.6 Since speed is a critical element of effective combat decisionmaking, the ability to apply quick recognition is a significant skill that should be practiced. To develop students’ ability to act quickly, situations have to be created that force students to convey their decisions quickly and in such a way that they can be understood and responded to effectively.

As stated in MCDP 1:

Because war is a clash between opposing human wills, the human dimension will always be central in war. The human dimension infuses war with its intangible moral factors and since war is an act of violence based on irreconcilable disagreement, it will invariably inflame and be shaped by human emotions. Unfortunately it is not feasible in an academic environment to realistically duplicate effects of danger, fear, exhaustion, and privation on students. Therefore, to develop in students an understanding of the human dimension in war, situations have to be created that emphasize historical examples of the intangible moral factors and emotions, as well as the human frailty and fallibility that shape combat.

Teaching Considerations

Schools like MCU develop new ideas and pioneer new methods. They encourage vision, imagination, and originality, as well as instilling a knowledge of the difference between a calculated risk and a gamble. In this environment, teachers and students alike are obliged to think about war and its conduct and to transmit their thoughts in articulate and comprehensive ways.7

Effective teaching for developing combat decisionmakers is different from that which most students have previously experienced. The majority of students have been educated through the use of “passive” teaching strategies. This technique is most often described as the traditional approach to teaching. It can be characterized by teachers delivering lectures and students passively listening. Basically, this is how most Marines have been taught in high school and college as well as during entry level training.8

Passive evaluations are short answer or multiple choice/fill-in-the-blank types of objective examinations. This is the standard military approach applied in training. The focus is content-based with a corresponding right answer or approved school solution. Implicit in this approach is the student’s dependence on the teacher to provide the information or content, preparation,9 and classic school solution. For example, in many Marine Corps academic environments, students have little choice about what they must do. Students must perform the prescribed task at a level acceptable to someone else, or fail.

The development of combat decisionmakers, however, should emphasize “active” teaching strategies. Active teaching strategies are problem centered rather than content centered. They encourage students to introduce past experiences into the process to reexamine that experience in light of new data or new problems. They suggest a climate of learning that is collaborative (teacher to student and student to student) as opposed to authoritative (one-way) oriented.lo These teaching strategies are characterized by active participation of students. This approach is more commonly applied to education. In the active approach the burden is on students to prepare, analyze, and present their views.11

Active learning evaluations are characterized by analyzing student performance in decisionmaking exercises under realistic conditions where there is incomplete information and realtime constraints. There may be more than one correct answer. In the active environment, the “school solution” is not as important as the process whereby students arrive at a given solution. The focus should be on the process of how to think, not only what to think.12

Establishing a Positive Learning Environment

The will to learn is an intrinsic motive, one that finds both its source and its reward in its own exercise. Studies have shown that the will to learn becomes a problem only under specialized circumstances where students are confined and a path is fixed.13 Establishing a learning environment at MCU conducive to developing students’ ability to think on their own is critically important.

The size of an instructional group is one significant determinant of the environment in which learning occurs. In some cases, positive teacher-to-student interaction is more readily attained with small groups, and in some cases with large. Possibly even more important than teacher-to-student interaction is a learning environment in which significant student-to-student interaction can be established to enhance learning.

MCU uses various sized instructional groups and a wide variety of educational methodologies to facilitate learning. These include lectures that might contain as many as 200 students, and small discussion or practical exercise groups that might contain as few as 5 and as many as 30 students. The obvious difference in the size of instructional groups can be seen in the difference between the large lecture format and the small group format. The opportunity for student-to-student and teacher-to-student interaction in large instructional groups of 100 or more students is significantly less than in smaller instructional groups of 10 to 15 students. For some students the large group may frequently be more comfortable since the requirement and opportunity to participate is far less than in a small group setting. In simple terms, there just is no place to hide in a smaller group. Additionally, in a small group environment students are more compelled to become actively involved in their own education, rather than in simply absorbing information.

Teaching Strategies for Developing Combat Decisionmakers

Confucius is attributed with having said, “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.”14 This is a well-respected assertion often repeated in American culture-students learn by doing. There is appropriate basis in fact if this assertion is properly explained: ( 1) Students learn to do better if they make an attempt; (2) evaluate that effort; and (3) modify their consequent efforts in ways that increase their effectiveness. ” This approach can most aptly be described as getting students involved in the learning process.

Teaching students to make decisions can be far more effective when students are required to evaluate their own performance. Using this approach, students are presented with realistic problems requiring a decision. Having been given opportunities to make decisions, they then should analyze the process by which they reached a particular decision. This may include teacher development of feedback for a specific decision, followed by a student response, and subsequent discussion of teacher and student perceptions on how the decision was formulated. This process culminates in understanding how the initial decision was made.lb Teachers can most effectively develop student ability to make decisions by fostering an academic environment that provides guidance to students on how to monitor and improve their own decisionmaking behavior. This guidance should come in the form of practice with immediate feedback and discussion to facilitate improvement.

What specifically can faculty do to help students monitor and improve their ability to make decisions? While much remains to be learned about how to influence combat decisionmaking ability, one effective teaching strategy involves allowing students to discover effective decisions through trial and error. “Discovery” can occur through direct experience, in which students reach appropriate decisions by simply trying to do it. It can also occur through vicarious experience, in which students develop their understanding of combat decisionmaking by thinking about a fictional case study presented by the teacher. Last, discovery can occur by analyzing historical examples in which students examine real events. In any of these cases, guidance by asking effective leading questions has been proven to greatly decrease the time required to discover and fully absorb decisionmaking skills. Of course after skills have been discovered, students should receive feedback as to the probable outcome of their decision in comparison to others they could have discovered.17

For discovery to be an effective teaching strategy, faculty should use real life feedback as much as possible. What would the real consequences have been, good or bad, of a particular decision? How do students react to these consequences? For example, teachers should allow students to observe, albeit through artificial means (map exercises, terrain models, or computer simulations), the results of their actions. In other words, students should be able to visualize the results of a particular decision: what it would have looked like; what the likely outcomes would have been-both positive and negative.

Additionally, for discovery to be an effective teaching strategy, faculty should allow students to make mistakes. Students should always be given another opportunity to act if their initial response is inappropriate. Continuous opportunities for active practice will enhance success. Teachers should provide feedback that suggests, rather than dictates to students. Although this feedback should inform students of the correctness or incorrectness of their thinking, it should never point to the school solution. This is not to say that providing a recommended solution is inappropriate; simply that, if provided, a school solution should be presented as a “possible solution,” one among many possible solutions not necessarily as the best solution. Feedback from teachers in this regard should provide suggestions that help students to discover a better way by emphasizing that which they already understand.

Another effective teaching strategy involves the use of simulations. A “simulation” replicates as much as possible the requirements and conditions that will be imposed on students in real combat situations. One familiar example of a simulation is the “tactical decision game.” Tactical decision games can be used to simulate problems not just at the tactical level but at the operational and strategic levels as well. Depending on the level which is addressed in the simulation, students are provided with an appropriate tentative intelligence situation, provided a fragmentary order or appropriate guidance, and asked, “What would you do?” Students provide an initial response and the teacher provides an intelligence update that requires them to further analyze a developing situation. Students are once again asked, “What would you do?” and again students should provide a response. This can continue until the teacher is comfortable with the individual student’s thought processes. If students make ineffective decisions they will get immediate feedback from the teacher including the probable results of the decision. Using this approach, the individual thought processes whereby students reached a decision can be examined in depth. This approach can be used in any type of simulation from simple tactical level decisionmaking games to very elaborate strategic level war games. In any case, the format is not as important as the teaching strategy. The strategy employed in simulations allows students to get immediate feedback on the likely results of their actions that allows them to closely examine their thinking.

“Cooperative learning” is yet another effective teaching strategy that can be used to influence the development of effective combat decisionmakers. This approach is based on the fact that each student brings to a particular group a unique set of experiences and knowledge. The success of this strategy depends on creating a learning environment in which significant interaction occurs between students. The opportunity to work together in different groups exposes students to a wide variety of individual knowledge and experience. This interaction provides: ( 1 ) Additional feedback for students; (2) opportunities for students to observe how their contemporaries draw conclusions and reach solutions; and (3) opportunities for students to explore and seek out alternative approaches to combat decisionmaking through the close examination of other student perspectives on the same problem. Each student con tributes to, and draws from, the experience of others through student-to-student interchanges. The group can provide a highly stimulating environment where each participant realizes the potential of a higher level of performance.18

The Nature of the Teacher-Student Relationship

There are many factors that contribute to successful teaching. Many of these have already been addressed. Yet another important factor affecting teaching success is the relationship established between the teacher and the student. The quality of this relationship works hand in hand with the learning environment to shape the attitude students develop toward the University’s educational philosophy and, in large part, determines students’ motivation to learn.

The relationship between student and teacher should promote trust and shared responsibility and foster an equal partnership between the student and the school. This relationship is very different from the traditional concept of the dominant teacher and dependent learner. It features reciprocity between the teacher and student. In other words, the teacher and student must be equally active.19 For example, students should not be allowed to withdraw, to be passive, untalkative, or to expect the teacher to do all the work. Conversely, teachers must recognize that students, under the proper conditions, can be highly motivated and capable of directing their own learning if given the opportunity.

The teacher’s prime responsibility may well be to reduce his importance to help learners arrive at their own freedom to learn.20 For example, by simply avoiding the desire to provide students with immediate solutions or feedback, teachers can encourage students to further pursue their own experiences and knowledge-thereby allowing them to further develop their own ability to learn and make decisions. This involves empowering or permitting students to make responsible choices about the direction of their learning and to assume responsibility for those choices: the mistaken as well as the correct choices. To empower students is to enable those who would have otherwise been silent to speak.21

The Development of the Faculty in the Field of Teaching

It is incumbent upon MCU to develop in its faculty the abilities its members need to become effective teachers. Effective faculty are those who are well versed in their roles, as facilitators, as mentors, and as coaches to develop students who will be effective combat decisionmakers. If faculty are to become more successful in the field of teaching, a workable approach to faculty development should be instituted.

Faculty members need some release from being teachers and some stimulation which derives from being learners. Deep down, most people know that they do not know very much in the totality of life; most still seek significant learnings.22 It is important that faculty at MCU understand that they are all students and that they continue to learn each day. Some of this energy should be expended in helping faculty to fulfill their most important responsibility: teaching the future leadership of the Marine Corps.

Notes

1. Richardson, General W.R. (1984, p.26). Kermit Roosevelt Lecture: Officer Training and Education. Military Review. No. 10, October.

2. Laird, D. (1985, p.ll). Approaches to Training and Development. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

3. Nadler (1982, p.7). Designing Training Programs: The Critical Events Model. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley.

4. Wedemeyer, Capt A.C. (1938, p.5). G-2 Report, Subject: German General Staff School. Berlin, Germany: Report 15, 999, July 11, 1938. Library of Congress.

5. United States Marine Corps. (1989). Fleet Marine Force Manual 1 (FMFM-1 (1989, p.69). Warfighting. Washington. D.C.

6. Wedemeyer, Capt A.C. (1938, p.l5). G-2 Report, Subject: German General Staff School. Berlin, Germany: Report 15, 999, July 11, 1938. Library of Congress.

7. Richardson, General W.R. (1984, p. 26).

8. U.S. House of Representatives. (1989, p.158). Committee on Armed Services, Report of the Panel on Military Education. Washington, D.C.: 101st Congress, Ist session, Apr. 11-21, Committee print, Number 4.

9. Whitley, MA. Jr. (1989, p.6). Critical Requirements for Army War College Faculty Instructors. Military Studies Program Paper, Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 16 April.

10. Laird, D. (1985, p.125).

11. Eble, K.E. (1990, p.4). The Craft of Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

12. Richardson, General W.R. (1984, p.33).

13. Bruner,J.S. (1966, p.127). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

14. Sheets, T.E. (1992, p.1). Training and Educating Marine Corps Officers for the Future. U.S. Army War College Military Studies Program Paper: Carlisle, PA.

15. Patton B.R., Giffin, K., and Patton, E.N. (1989, p.l57). Decision Making Group Interaction. New York: Harper and Row.

16. Leshin, C.B., Pollock, J., and Reigeluth. (1992, p.231). Instructional Design Strategies and Tactics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

17. Leshin, C.B., Pollock, J., and Reigeluth. (1992, p.234).

18. Patton, B.R. Giffin, K., and Patton, E.N. (1989, p. 158).

19. Nadler, L. (1982, p. 150).

20. Eble, K.E. (1990 p.9).

21. Simon, R. (1987, p.374). Empowerment as a Pedagogy of Possibility. Language Arts. No. 64.

22. Ducharme, E.R. (1981, p.33). Faculty Development in Schools, Colleges, and Departments of Education. Journal of Teacher Education, Number 5, Sept-Oct.

Building Decisionmakers

By Capt Arthur L Glasgow

The Marine Corps has made great strides in implementing the doctrine of maneuver warfare. It has become accepted that the core of maneuver warfare rests in a mindset characterized by rapid decisionmaking, acceptance of risk, and bold initiative at the lowest level.

While maneuver warfare has been touted at the highest levels of our Corps, it clearly has not received the attention it deserves at the level that matters most-the Marine noncommissioned officer (NCO). Ask any infantry corporal or sergeant what the combat “bible” is and the answer you will most likely receive is FMFM 6-5 The Marine Rifle Squad. While this is a useful document based on sound tactical experience, it should be taken for what it is-a reference tool of techniques.

It does not address combat decisionmaking. If this is the source document by which we are training our small-unit leaders, then we are missing the boat. Rather than limit ourselves to a cribsheet of techniques, we must develop small unit leaders who are capable of thinking “outside the box,” leaders who understand that the decision is what is most important, not the technique. The goal is to train leaders capable of employing these time-tested techniques in innovative ways and at unexpected times.

The need for our Corps to be led by such men is critical considering the modern battlefield. Technological advances as well as the current world situation have dissolved the nature of war as we know it. The modern battlefield proves to be a nonlinear, high-tempo arena with combat and support areas intermixed. Actions will be dominated by small units operating in relative isolation, led by junior leaders taking advantage of fleeting moments of opportunity. It is paramount that we prepare our NCOs to win on this modern battlefield.

In order to produce this type of decisionmaker the Marine Corps must adopt a new attitude towards the way it trains NCOs. Capt Michael F. McNamara addressed the first step in his article, “The Price of Remaining Amateurs in the Field of Education.” (MCG, Feb94) Combat decisionmaking must be instituted at every formal school in our Corps.

This is necessary to ingrain the mechanisms of decisionmaking and standardize the language by which we define it at every stage of a Marine’s education. While these initiatives will take time and effort to implement, this article will address what can be done now, at the company and platoon levels, in order to better train our small-unit leaders as combat decisionmakers. The topics discussed are not meant to be an all inclusive formula, but rather an attempt to create an atmosphere and effect a change of attitude.

Creating the Image

It is vital that the newly promoted corporal be viewed in a different light by both himself and those around him. Every leader must maintain an image or position that lends credibility to his actions and decisions. This is especially important to the individual who finds himself suddenly transformed from being a Marine into a Marine leader. This, the hardest of all adjustments, must he aided bv the command, allowing the CO time to attune to his new anthority and responsibility. From moving him into an all-NCO room to a personal talk with the commander welcoming him into the ranks of Marine leaders, every effort must be made to instill within the new corporal an understanding of the gravity of his new position. The authority and responsibility he now holds must be as tangible to him as the rewards for attaining his new position of leadership.

All Marine leaders should be active in the study of our Corps’ history and all things military. The Marine NCO is no exception. The Marine Corps has defined professional military education (PME) requirements by grade to include the corporal. Outside of formal schooling, it is our duty as SNCOs and officers to ensure that the new NCO catches the “bug” of self`education; that he becomes fascinated with his profession. He must understand that every printed word he assimilates will better prepare him for the day he must lead men into combat. This means that a strong, relevant, and workable NCO PME program must be instituted at the company and battery level throughout the Marine Corps.

Throughout the first few months after pinning on his second chevron, the new NCO will be struggling to find his own niche in the unit’s leadership and develop his own personal style and priorities. This effort must be aided bv command attention through open displays of support and accountability. The NCO must be comfortable with the fact that when he speaks, he does so with a certain level of command authority and will be backed up. He must tinderstand completely that his realm of responsibility has expanded to more than just himself and that he will be held accountable for his Marines.

Establishing an “image” for the new NCO is crucial in lending credibility to his decisions. Before we can expect him to make sound decisions, we must first create the atmosphere that will allow him to do so. Once this is accomplished, we can begin to train the NCO, and help him train himself, to become a combat decisionmaker.

Making the Decision

The crux of maneuver warfare rests in the rapid decision made at the lowest level and the willingness and initiative to act on that decision. Contrary to what we may like to believe, the current atmosphere in our Corps today at the junior NCO level is not conducive to bold decisionmaking. Time dependent training schedules, the willingness of junior officers and SNCOs to do an NCO’s job, and the still present zero defects mentality are just a few of the factors that undercut the NCO initiative so necessary for maneuver warfare.

The first step in creating NCOs who are comfortable with decisionmaking is to force them to make decisions often and on demand. This can be accomplished within a semiformal structure regardless of the merit of the decision. The goal is not so much to induce sound decisions initially as it is to simply produce rapid decisions. When the process of making a decision begins to become a reflexive traiL, the ability to produce sound decisions can be taught. As an example, implementing a “tactical decision game a day” program within the platoon only takes a minimal amount of time to accomplish and sets the tone that some sort of tactical decision is expected of Marine leaders every day. Additionally, exposing our small-unit leaders to a steady diet of tactical scenarios will aid in building their ability to produce sound, recognition-primed decisions. Recognition-primed decisionmaking, vice analytical, is the fastest process by which the human mind assimilates and evaluates data. The ability to operate in this manner at the lowest level is central to successful implementation of maneuver warfare. The vast majority of decisions at the point of impact must be recognition-primed because of the time factors involved. There will seldom be time for analytical, stafftype decisions. And herein lies the dilemma, for the ability to derive a sound, recognition-primed decision rests in extensive personal experience or an educational regimen oriented towards producing such decisions. Newly promoted N(COs have neither the experience nor the luxury of this type of formal education. In the absence of either, the responsibility for building proper habits of decisionmaking rests almost entirely with the unit.

The next step is to allow the NCO more leeway in the training of his Marines, forcing him to plan and supervise properly. Look at your unit’s training schedule; chances are that every minute of every day is accounted for. This prevents initiative at the instructor (NCO) level. Adopting a mission order training schedule, whereby we set goals, objectives, and standards, allows the NCO to train to standard instead of time. He must make the decision whether remediation is needed. Hc must determine when his Marines are ready to be evaluated. As an example, instead of dictating 1.5 hours of weapons maintenance time, allow the squad leader to determine when his weapons have met standard. Rather than dictate 0530 reveille, let the NCO determine when he needs to wake his people in order to have them ready for the day’s training. This approach places the responsibility for planning and time management on the shoulders of the NCO and he must decide the appropriate method to accomplish the mission as well as validate his own instruction. It also makes it clear to the lance corporal and below that it is the Marine corporal who will have the most direct impact on their lives in garrison or combat. The cynic will say this approach will result in short work days, incompletely trained units, and general chaos. The trusting leader will see that if officers plan and set proper standards, and employ the SN(COs correctly, the result will be a more productive workday, better trained units, and a small-unit leader comfortable with responsibility and capable of making sound, timely decisions.

Conclusion

Finally, in order to make this work, we as officers must understand our role in the training process. There is a great moral commitment in maneuver warfare. Pushing authority and responsibility down increases the chance of failure. Senior leaders must see that although we can be, we are not the trainers. We set the standards, evaluate, and facilitate the training. Individual training standard (ITS) level training is the responsibility of the NCO with the SNCO providing guidance, direction, and reinforcement. It should be considered unacceptable for a junior officer to stand on the platform in front of his Marines and teach an individual or small-unit skills class. The challenge for us is not to teach these skills, but rather to teach the NCO how to instruct them. The reasoning behind this is clear. When the call comes to protect our country, we will go whether or not our NCOs have been prepared to succeed. If our small-unit leaders have not been educated in peace to employ our doctrine, how can we expect them to do so amidst the horror and carnage of` war? When the rounds begin to fly and the young Marine at the point is filled with fear and doubt, he will naturally turn for direction and reassurance to the individual who has guided him through training. When he turns to find that man, it will not be the lieutenant or the staff sergeant behind him. That spot is reserved for the Marine corporal.

Response to ‘Improving Marine Commanders’ Intuitive Decisionmaking Skills’

by Maj John F. Schmitt, USMCR

LtCol W. Frank Ball and Morgan D. Jones based their article, “Improving Marine Commanders’ Intuitive Decisionmaking Skills” (MCG, Jan96), on my article, “How We Decide” (MCG, Oct95). They misconstrue my meaning so badly that it is necessary to respond. They apparently missed my basic point that there are times when methodical analysis is preferred, and I discussed those situations in my October 1995 article. My main point was that intuitive decisionmaking is superior in the vast majority of typically fluid, uncertain, highstress tactical situations.

My argument with Ball and Jones is that they try to extend analytical decisionmaking to those situations that call for intuition. They start out by supporting my argument that (in their words) “intuitive decisionmaking is usually all that battlefield conditions allow,” but then they promptly proceed to make the old argument for the analytical model. They actually warn against relying on intuition and instead argue in favor of generating multiple courses of action for every situation, comparing the courses concurrently according to some set of criteria (in this case, a series of predetermined questions), and picking the optimal solution. This concurrent comparison of multiple options (known in the field as multiattribute utility analysis (MAUA)) is precisely the core of the classical, analytical decisionmaking method and precisely the same basic method, although less formalized, as used in FMFM 3-1’s command and staff action sequence. It is fundamentally different than what I described as intuitive decisionmaking.

The rationale for their argument is the typical one: that (1) intuition cannot be trusted and (2) an analytical approach will lead to the optimal decision. It is important to deal with both of these points, because they are wrong. On the first point, as I mentioned in my original article, intuition scares many people because it cannot be easily documented, quantified, or reduced to a procedure. The process is, as the name indicates, intuitive, and for many people a process that cannot be reduced into methodical steps cannot be trusted. But my main point was that, given an experienced commander, intuitive decisionmaking does work-in fact, in the typically uncertain, time-competitive, friction-filled, high-stress environment of combat, it generally works better than MAUA.

As to the second point, Ball and Jones mistakenly suggest that I criticized intuitive decisionmaking because it does not aim to reach the optimal decision. Actually, I argued that given the complexity, uncertainty, fluidity, and friction of most tactical situations, there is no such thing as a perfect decision. Whereas MAUA seeks to optimize, intuitive decisionmaking seeks to “satisfice”-to find the first solution that satisfactorily solves the problem. My position is that it is generally better to reach and execute a good decision quickly than to waste time agonizing over an optimal decision, which generally doesn’t exist. As Gen George Patton said, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” Analytical decisionmaking may seek to optimize, but it will invariably fall short. Again, contrary to Ball and Jones’ interpretation, my point was that in most tactical situations, given an experienced and skilled decisionmaker, intuition works.

Indicative of their misunderstanding, Ball and Jones write:

Most of the time intuition gives us decisions that are, as Maj Schmitt says, ‘good enough,’ because the problems we normally face are not momentous. But on those occasions when our decisions have critical consequences, we run heavy risks if we rely on intuition. The reason is that the unconscious mind can easily mislead us . . . as it does, for example, to the quarterback who misreads a blitz and gets sacked, or to a leader in combat whose misreading of a battlefield situation results in excessive casualties and failure of the mission.

Whether a decision is good enough has nothing to do with the seriousness of the consequences. Either the decision is good enough or it isn’t. If the decision gets the jobs done, it gets the job done no matter how serious the potential consequences. And do Ball and Jones mean to suggest that a quarterback in the pocket should not rely on intuition born of experience but should instead deliberately analyze the defensive scheme as the play unfolds? I can pretty much guarantee that he will get sacked if he does that because he will quickly be overcome by events. Their own example of the quarterback under the pressure of a blitz illustrates just why intuition is essential. Why is it that rookie quarterbacks seem to get intercepted and sacked so frequently? It is precisely because they lack the intuitive pattern-recognition skills that their experienced counterparts have developed over time.

Ball and Jones imply that intuition is impulsive and unprofessional and has “an insidious downside.” On the contrary, in a skilled commander there is nothing impulsive about intuition; it is a highly developed and sensitive skill. It can demonstrate a degree of perception and insight that no series of pre-established questions (or any other MAUA process) can capture. In my opinion, highly developed intuition is precisely what professionalism in this context is all about. It is what separates the true master from the mediocre commander. To go back to the authors’ quarterback example, it is exactly this highly developed intuitive pattern-recognition skill that made the physically unexceptional Joe Montana arguably the greatest quarterback ever to play the game of football.

Ball and Jones write that “probably no other human mental trait has led to more needless combat casualties and military defeats.” There is no empirical basis for that statement. Maybe poor decisions have, but those are a function of bad decisionmaking and not necessarily of the decisionmaking method. Analytical decisionmaking is certainly slower and more methodical than intuitive decisionmaking, but there is not evidence whatsoever to support their claim that it is any more likely to guarantee a good decision.

In stating that analytical decisionmaking is by far “more comforting,” Ball and Jones betray the real reasons behind their preference-by providing a veneer of rational, scientific process, analytical decisionmaking lets us convince ourselves that we are making better decisions. These two authors are not alone in this desire for comfort. War, as Clausewitz wrote in On War, is characterized by high levels of friction, uncertainty, disorder, and stress. The common appeal of the analytical method is that it allows us to deceive ourselves into thinking we have more control over what happens than we really have.

I do not suggest that intuitive decisionmaking is not subject to human biases or that those biases may not lead to misperceptions and errors in judgment. Research shows, however, that given an experienced and skilled commander the likely result will be effective decisionmaking. Moreover, biases, preconceptions and lock-in can just as likely find their way into an analytical process. We have certainly seen it happen with the command and staff action sequence. In fact, recent observations in a Marine Corps-sponsored study suggest that experienced commanders reach effective (and often better) decisions faster using intuition than their staffs can generate courses of action by following staff planning models.

The simplistic example that Ball and Jones provide to support their argument instead reveals the considerable practical problems with their approach. They describe a company commander who must decide how to take out an enemy machinegun position, and they depict him discussing the problem with his executive officer according to a series of predetermined questions. First, I think they seriously underestimate the time (25 seconds by their calculations) and effort it will take to hold this conversation in the middle of a firefight. Second, they describe the decision essentially as a multiple-choice test asking which of three choices to use to destroy the machinegun position. But most tactical decisions are not a simple matter of selecting from among a few well-defined existing options: Most tactical situations require the creation of a unique practical solution to a unique set of circumstances. Third, the example shows the company commander asking three questions for which the same option is clearly the preferred answer. But what happens when the answers are inconclusive or when there is a split decision-when the questions solicit different preferred solutions? Do the authors propose some sort of tie-breaker rule? Fourth, the example shows what amounts to a technical decision about which weapons to use against a particular target. The proposed method will have much less utility in dealing with the less tangible factors that usually influence tactical decisionmaking. When it comes to considerations like morale, the element of surprise, or deciding on a scheme of maneuver, the simplistic types of questions Ball and Jones propose will offer little insight. And a more complicated set of questions would actually risk becoming an impediment by making the decisionmaking process unduly cumbersome. In summary of the above points, I think Ball and Jones have seriously underestimated the natural complexity and difficulty of tactical decisionmaking, even at the lowest levels. Finally, the example illustrates just the kinds of decisions that should be made intuitively. Any company commander who has to deliberately analyze how to respond to the scenario described does not deserve to be responsible for the lives of a company of Marines.

It concerns me significantly when Ball and Jones suggest that “the Marine Corps can easily formulate a standard systematic sequence of questions for battlefield situations.” Presumably, if the questions are to have any utility at all, different sets of contingent questions will have to be developed for a huge variety of situations. The result will be that instead of providing actual experience in decisionmaking, which is essential to developing requisite pattern-recognition skills, training will focus on memorizing numerous lists of pre-established questions for a broad number of situations. Any professional worth his or her pay check will rebel at the idea of having to make tactical decisions by referring to a list of proforma questions.

All this having been said, however, there is some utility to Ball and Jones’ suggestions. But the value is in critiques during training and education rather than in actual decisionmaking situations. I think the idea of systematically questioning decisions after the fact is an excellent way of accelerating the learning process. Likewise, raising and discussing alternative courses of action is a valuable after-action technique in educational situations. Vigorously questioning decisions to uncover key assumptions, considerations and thought processes is precisely the technique we have used in tactical decision game seminars for the last 6 years. But I would prefer to see the questions based on judgment and the understanding of a particular situation rather than on a predetermined format.

Ball and Jones have got it precisely wrong when they submit that their techniques are “needed to overcome a lifetime of our relying on unchallenged intuition.” A lifetime of unchallenged intuition? Hardly. What has gone unchallenged over the years is the denial of intuition as an acceptable decisionmaking source and the misguided belief that the blind adherence to mechanical processes will lead us to better tactical decisions.

By Gary Klein

I was disappointed with the article by Ball and Jones (“Improving Marine Commanders’ intuitive Decisionmaking Skills,” MCG, Jan96) that attempted to refute the ideas presented by Schmitt (“How We Decide,” MCG, Oct95). The article by Ball and Jones relies on flawed reasoning to support its advocacy for more analytical decisionmaking.

Schmitt has argued that the Marine Corps is best served by acknowledging that commanders use intuitive decision strategies most of the time, particularly in the face of time pressure and uncertainty, because it is impractical to rely on analytical methods under those circumstances. Research findings indicate that analytical methods offer no advantages when there is less than a minute to make a decision, and that in naturalistic settings, intuitive decisions can be superior in quality to analytical ones. Therefore, “why persist in teaching an analyrical strategy that will not be used and confers no advantages? Instead, Schmitt suggests that we focus our efforts on building commanders’ experience base so that they can make better intuitive decisions.

Ball and Jones are unnerved by this position. They see commanders, and all of us; as inherently biased in the way we size up situations. No amount of experience can overcome these biases that lurk beneath our consciousness. Therefore, according to Ball and Jones, it is too risky to let commanders make their own judgments. They should be following analytical procedures to ward off these biases.

The difficulty here is that Ball and Jones are citing research that goes back more than 20 years (for instance, see A. Tversky and D. Kahneman’s, “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science, no. 185, 1974, pp. 1124-1131), as well as misinterpreting that research. The original studies on decision biases were designed to show that people relied on heuristics or problem solving techniques. In order to demonstrate these techniques, the researchers developed conditions under which the heuristics would get in the way, resulting in a poor performance. The fact that subjects in experiments (usually college students) persisted in using the heuristics showed how powerful those heuristics were. Researchers themselves, however, have made clear that these were special conditions not representative of the real world. The heuristics are valuable tools for handling complicated tasks. Sometimes they can lead to poor performance, but for the great majority of cases we would be lost without them. Decision researchers have found that experienced decisionmakers working in naturalistic settings show no indications of the decision biases that were detected in the laboratory. Therefore, Ball and Jones are mistaken in their warnings about the pervasive dangers of decision biases.

Ball and Jones also attack Schmitt for advocating that commanders “blindly obey [their] intuitive impulses.” The problem here is that Schmitt never advocated such a strategy. In fact, Schmitt presents an example of someone considering a succession of responses and mentally simulating each one in order to evaluate whether it would work. This is the strategy I have observed in my own work on decisionmaking “Strategies of Decision Making” (Military Review, 1989). It is anything but “blindly obeying intuitive impulses.”

Now let’s consider the analytical strategy Ball and Jones are advocating. They describe a scenario in which an infantry company is pinned down by machinegun fire. The company commander and the executive officer manage to carry out a dialog in which three options are generated in less than 10 seconds and evaluated in another 15 seconds. This dialog is important because Ball and Jones don’t even trust individuals to use analytical methods. Instead, these methods have to be used in conceit with another person.

I find this entire line of reasoning bizarre. The image of a 25-second dialog seems like something a person would use to satirize the analytical position, rather than a plausible example of how analysis could be used. Furthermore, research at least as early as 1984 (by D. Zakay & & S. Wooler, in their article “Time Pressure, Training, and Decision Effectiveness” Ergonomics, no. 27, pp. 273-284) indicates that useful analyses cannot be performed in less than a minute, even without any dialog. Additionally, I am not aware of any evidence that a minimum of two people are needed to perform a useful analysis. If this is true, it is yet another reason why analyses cannot be used in field settings.

Ball and Jones conclude that their analytical strategy will augment intuitive decisionmaking. It does nothing of the kind. It distorts intuitive decisionmaking in a way that is impractical and ineffective. Schmitt has taken the much more reasonable position that we prepare officers to work effectively using both types of strategies.

The bottom line is how the Marine Corps should train its officers. Schmitt argues that training should be geared to building up expertise by providing a large experience base. I don’t think Ball and Jones would disagree. The difference is that Ball and Jones also want intensive training to program in an analytical strategy so that it becomes a reflex. Here I believe we need to see some clear evidence that this is practical and useful, because there are strong reasons for doubting the wisdom of such a program.