For the past several months, I have been inundated with the concept of maneuver warfare. Selected readings from Lord Nelson, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and others have added new light to the conduct of war. After devouring these readings, I see two major points:
- Maneuver warfare is not a new concept, but has been around as long as war itself.
- If maneuver warfare is not accepted and practiced by the entire chain of command, it will not work.
What disturbs me most about what I've read on maneuver warfare is the lack of application inside the lifelines. Grandiose prose extolling the virtues of maneuver warfare has been written, it seems, exclusively by and for academia and upper-echelon military officers. It concentrates primarily on large-scale battle group efforts, rather than efforts inside the lifelines—a key to the success of maneuver warfare.
But maneuver warfare must begin inside the lifelines. Decentralization and command by negation must be the rule, not the exception. Work must be pushed down to the lowest level of competence. Do not confuse this with work being done by incompetent people. We need to ensure that all sailors are competent, independent thinkers. Every person's ideas count. The crew needs to be required to think and to act. A decision, any decision, acted on in good faith is good. The most egregious sin is to do nothing. If nothing is broken and no one is hurt then it is a learning experience, so long as the action taken was based on a firm commitment to the betterment of the command.
This does not mean having sailors running pell-mell around the ship acting and doing as they wish. To the contrary, the entire command must be focused and pointed in the same direction by clear and concise guidance from the commanding officer. The tenets of the commanding officer's intentions should be ensconced in the Navy's core values, and outlined in a "frame of reference," written by the commanding officer and given to the entire crew. It delineates what he expects of the crew, and what it in return can expect of him.
The complexities of war require quick, decisive action if we are to seize the initiative. Quick, decisive action on the part of the captain does not automatically translate into action by the crew. The crew must be trained to think, decide, and act instinctively. If fear of retribution exists, instinctive action will not occur. A command-by-direction environment causes hesitation, and leads to loss of initiative, both individual and—worse—tactical.
We are warriors and must be trained as such. If we are tactically trained to wait for permission to act, be that firing a missile, turning the ship, or filling out a muster report, when the time to act arrives, we will wait. This requires the command to (dare I say it) nurture the crew. We leaders must become mentors. We must meticulously balance control, direction, and restraint with decentralization. This is command by negation, and it requires training and trust.
For too many years we have trained ourselves into a check-sheet, wait-forpermission Navy. We have arrived at the point that no matter how brilliant the outcome of any evolution, if "Step 17" is missed or done out of sequence, we have not performed in a satisfactory way. How many ideas have been squashed, both internally and externally, by fear of retribution, fear of reprisal, or fear of jeopardizing one's career? We have trained ourselves into this box, and we must train ourselves out of it. We console ourselves falsely with the "peacetime Navy" adage. This attitude is fine if you know the exact time and place the next conflict will erupt. But until we can do that, we warriors must train to our profession; get outside the box, and train until tactics are intuitive.
The captain must trust his crew of professional warriors to act instinctively and without hesitating. Conversely, the crew must trust the captain to take the ship into battle when necessary, seize the initiative, and if required, make sacrifice for the needs of the Navy, because there is no other choice.
The entire crew must provide the captain with an unparalleled commitment to the mission as outlined in his intentions. This requires unyielding support up, down, and across the chain of command. Support is tenuous at best when centralization, command by direction, and zero-defects thinking are the rule, and original thought is the exception. Of course a captain can, by virtue of his position, ensure our loyalty. But iron hand begets mind-numbed automatons, able to act only when given clear and concise guidance.
The first two years of World War II were disastrous for the U.S. Navy because it entered the conflict with a peacetime mindset. Two years and countless lives were lost because it lost its warrior culture. We must never let that happen again! If we do not practice and live maneuver warfare inside the lifelines, we will never be able to execute it outside the lifelines in a battle-group setting.
Senior Chief Southwell is the Leading Chief Petty Officer on The Sullivans (DDG-68) and the former training coordinator for Regional Support Group, Mayport, FL.