Planning to Fail: Killing Initiative Before Contact
First Lieutenant Robert B. Gortner
Editors’ Note: This article was awarded First Place in the CxFile’s 2025 Writing Competition.
The Marine infantry community is facing a problem: Marines at every echelon are being conditioned to wait.
A platoon commander is waiting to deliver an order because he feels he needs more information about the enemy to properly sequence his scheme of maneuver. He does not assess the battlefield because he has been conditioned to wait for perfect information. A squad leader is waiting for the air panel signalling that an adjacent unit has set the conditions necessary to continue the assault. He does not assess the battlefield in front of him because he has been conditioned to wait for a signal. A grenadier is waiting for his team leader to tell him when to employ his weapon. He does not assess the battlefield in front of him because he has been conditioned to wait for orders. Our Marines are being conditioned to seek positive control and certainty, two elements seldom found on a battlefield against a thinking enemy.
As unit leaders, we must ask ourselves a serious question: how do we want our units to act in combat? Do we want our squad leaders and platoon commanders to rely on centralized control over their units? Do we want them to seek permission and positive communication before acting? Do we want them to think of the battlefield as a linear, scientific process that must be meticulously accounted for and planned? I think that most unit leaders would agree the answer is “no.” The traits we seek to imbue in our infantrymen- a sense of initiative, a feeling of ownership over their mission, and a drive to ruthlessly seek advantage- cannot flourish in the absence of a deliberate effort to foster them.
We need to adjust fire on how we prepare our Marines for combat. I assert that this is only possible by adjusting how we teach them to think about the battlefield, and the first step to changing how we think is changing how we communicate.
In his book Battle Leadership, Captain Adolf von Schell writes of the effect that peacetime schooling processes have on units facing combat operations. He states, “In peace time, [we learn] to write long, beautifully constructed orders… but we must never lose sight of the fact that, in a war of movement, our orders must be brief and simple. There is a tendency in peace time to conduct training by using stereotyped situations which are solved by stereotyped solutions.”
The Marine Corps infantry has fallen into this same pattern repeated by military forces throughout history. We are allowing the orders process utilized by our formal schools–established to develop and evaluate the unit leaders’ thought process–to shape how we communicate in the Fleet. When instead we should be utilizing an orders development process that forges resilient units capable of winning in time-compressed situations rife with uncertainty, fatigue, and danger. It is not uncommon to hear infantrymen returning from the Advanced Infantry Marine Course bragging of squad orders developed for a Field Leadership Evaluation exceeding thirteen pages and taking more than one hour to brief. Similarly, platoon commanders will readily attest to orders developed at the Infantry Officer Course which push north of forty pages and take multiple hours to communicate.
The intent of this practice is understandable. Our formal schools are charged with providing students a strong foundation of knowledge which experience will later build upon. Our squad leaders and platoon commanders should walk away from their schools with a very detailed understanding of the planning process and a true depth of knowledge of squad and platoon operations. Our schools also need a way to evaluate the student’s understanding of the subject material they are being taught. We do not want those who fail to demonstrate mastery of the curriculum to graduate formal schools only to fail their Marines upon returning to their units.
However, the second order effects, left unchecked, threaten to condition our Marines to take the wrong lessons away from their valuable time in schools. First, Marines leave these schools with the impression that the orders process is a mostly academic exercise; something that requires a computer and a free weekend rather than understanding that it is a means to communicate rapidly with subordinate unit leaders on the battlefield. When they arrive at their units, they continue to adhere to the cumbersome orders process they used in school because they believe it is what is expected of them. We currently fail to equip our unit leaders with the tools necessary to deliver effective orders after contact. Second, they leave their schools with a sense that the battlefield is something to be tightly controlled rather than appreciating the lessons of history: that the battlefield is a fluid, dynamic environment in which desperate engagements must be won by enterprising and aggressive NCOs and junior Marines.
The long, detailed, meticulous orders process taught in our formal schools stunts the development of the very traits we seek to foster in our unit leaders. Detailed, precisely written schemes of maneuver suppress the development of initiative as Marines are treated like chess pieces, prescribed exactly what to do, part by part, without much focus given to the end state. Then, they are hand-held through the scheme of maneuver, where the sense of ownership is reduced as they learn that their engagement with the plan is not necessary and what is expected of them is rigid obedience. In execution, the drive to seek and exploit fleeting opportunities is lost as unit leaders become more focused on tracking friendly signals and figuring out which part of the plan they are in than they are on assessing the enemy on the battlefield before them.
To correct the first training scar–that the orders process is necessarily long and time intensive–we must address the purpose of orders with our Marines and redefine the characteristics of a “good order.” In their publication Orders: A User’s Guide (Orders), authors LtCol Brendan McBreen and Gunner Chad Skaggs argue that the true measure of a successful order is the one which is, “understood by the most people.” This is how we must view the orders process: as a means to rapidly and clearly communicate a simple plan which solves the current problem. When we view orders in this regard, we see that less is more. The tenants of simplicity, brevity, and clarity rise to the top, while superfluous language and meticulous planning fall to the wayside.
The most lenient standard for company orders and below, as defined in Orders, is an order written on one piece of paper, developed in 30 minutes, delivered in 15 minutes, where subordinate units receive one task in one order. At its most stringent however, Orders calls for the gold standard of “three sentences, in thirty seconds, while under fire.” Orders within these constraints facilitate rapid adjustments and adaptation to a dynamic situation, much like a defensive coordinator making adjustments during a football game. His team may have started the game with a defensive scheme based on previous information, but his play-by-play orders take relevant information and apply it in real time to solve the current problem.
To meet these standards, we must accept that we will have to choose which information is important enough to make it into our order and which information can be left on the cutting room floor. The five-paragraph order is a great foundation and logically packages the information that our subordinate leaders are interested in: Where are we? What’s the problem? What are we going to do? How are we going to do it? What do you need me to do? However, the format which was first developed in 1897, has suffered from such severe scope creep that it requires a glossary of acronyms to even remember what to write: SALUTE, DRAW-D, CV/CG analysis, KOCOA, METT-TC, etc. Company-level unit leaders will not successfully communicate their intent to their subordinates within the fifteen-minute goal if they seek to include the level of meticulous detail that they were taught in their schools.
In Orders, the authors suggest cutting information which is unnecessary and focus only what the subordinate needs to accomplish his mission and nothing more.
Orientation: Identify only the terrain and weather relevant to the operation.
Situation: Deliver an assessment of the enemy and the task and purpose for HHQ and adjacent units.
Mission: Task and purpose.
Execution: Remove Commander’s Intent; Develop a COA graphic; Single task and purpose per unit; Identify Coordinating Instructions only when they deviate from unit SOP.
Administration, Logistics, Command, and Signal: Only include information that is necessary for unit coordination and/or deviates from SOP.
Our formations currently fail to execute to this standard. Instead, it is more common to find companies, platoons, and squads treating the battlefield not like a football game, but like an orchestra. In this “orchestra mindset,” the battlefield is thought of linearly. Plans are made meticulously and seek to prescribe detailed instructions to subordinate units in an effort to harmonize their actions in a tightly coupled, “parts-based” scheme of maneuver to achieve their end state.
In the 1999 publication, Plans That Survive First Contact by Major John Garrett, he asserts that the “plans that survive first contact are those that do not try to predict the future. Plans that survive first contact focus on the objectives and the interrelationships of the subordinates to the aim.” This publication, which analyzes the evolution of the Army orders process during the Second World War, concludes that a peace-time obsession with tight coordination, detailed sequencing, and centralized control is doomed to failure when fighting units interact with a willful enemy force in a life-or-death struggle for the first time. Major Garrett instead found that as Army unit leaders gained experience fighting in Europe, they began to grow more comfortable with ambiguity. They began to focus their orders on clearly defining the desired end state and properly resourcing their subordinate units to remain flexible in a changing situation. Their orders did not seek to create “the perfect plan” which, if only adhered to, would sweep the enemy aside in one fell stroke. Instead, their orders simply sought to establish a good opening move, posturing forces for success by enabling subordinate unit leaders to make game-time decisions as the battle unfolded before them. Their orders forced unit leaders to assess what was in front of them and to work with their adjacent units to succeed.
When we take away the constraining detail found in predictive orders and reframe how we communicate with a more flexible process like the one suggested in Orders, we force our unit leaders to assess the situation and lead their formations toward the desired end state.
However, we must be careful in the implementation of such an orders process. In Orders, the authors also establish that the prerequisites for this more dynamic orders process are high. For the short, simple, verbal orders that will be necessary to succeed in combat to work, an infantry unit needs “competent leaders, a common language, and well-trained units.” We cannot expect Marines arriving from their formal schools or units that have not had time to train together to immediately demonstrate proficiency with a process that is predicated on trust, implicit communication, and established operating procedures. Instead, we should focus our efforts on ensuring a progression from the school house, through the runway of the work up, and into flight by the time of deployment.
For such an orders process to succeed, units must place a premium on the development of their unit leaders. Squad leaders, platoon commanders, and company commanders must all routinely practice developing and executing such orders. They must identify the shortfalls in their SOPs and continuously refine them until they can meet the standards set forth in Orders. Simple, repetitive, low bandwidth exercises such as Tactical Decision Games (TDGs) pay dividends in the development of implicit communication. When leaders train together and discuss their thought processes, they generate the trust in one another required to successfully execute the short, simple orders that have been proven to make the difference in combat.
The leadership of the 1st Marine Division demonstrated the importance of trust on the battlefield during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. In The Plan and First Contact: Command in the 1st Marine Division, Iraq 2003, by Cole Petersen, the author examines how the 1st Marine Division was able to succeed during the invasion of Iraq by utilizing concise, direct orders delivered verbally between Marines who trusted each other. In the span of twenty-four days, the 1st Marine Division advanced over eight hundred kilometers, defeating several Iraqi divisions and assisting in the seizure of Baghdad all while consistently adapting to the situation as it unfolded. Petersen states, “At the RCT (Regimental Combat Team) level and below, officers interviewed did not recall many written products being issued after crossing the line of departure: direction was verbal based on a disciplined use of shorthand orders delivery.”
The 1st Marine Division did not execute the invasion of Iraq with a carefully orchestrated master plan dependent on prescribed rates of movement, synchronization or timelines. The Marines instead crossed the line of departure with a “common visualization of the battlespace,” an understanding of the division’s course of action, and laser focus on what their commander, then Major General James Mattis, intended to achieve.
Three days into the invasion on the 24th of March, 2003, the 1st Marine Division found themselves running into unexpected resistance at the city of An Nasiriyah, where the vital river crossing of the Euphrates was planned. The division’s lead element, the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion (3rd LAR), had been badly battered in an ambush the previous night by an enemy battalion. In an effort to maintain momentum, General Mattis tasked Colonel Joseph Dunford, commander of RCT-5, to pass through 3rd LAR and continue the division’s advance.
Colonel Dunford issued the following order to his battalion commanders over the radio at 0730 that morning:
Petersen notes, “With eighty-one words in nine sentences, Dunford launched a force of more than 5,000 Marines and 1,000 vehicles through a friendly position and onto the offensive.”
The orders we issue to our Marines cannot be treated as an academic exercise or be designed to simply look good for an observing audience. The orders we issue trigger Marines to action. Based on the instructions we deliver; junior Marines and NCOs will execute violence and necessarily place themselves in harm’s way. These kinds of orders accept the fact that the battlefield is not something that can be tightly controlled or that is easily manipulated. These orders acknowledge that throughout military history the battlefield has proven itself a fluid and dynamic environment; that it is a collection of desperate individual struggles. We must ensure that our unit leaders understand how to translate their assessment of the battlefield and their vision of the end state into words; words which will trigger an enterprising NCO to rally a small unit to violently execute their given task.
In The Yompers: With 45 Commando in the Falklands War by Ian Gardiner, the Officer Commanding of X-Ray Company, 45 Commando writes of his unit’s struggle to wrest control of the “Two Sisters Mountain” from Argentine forces. In describing his own orders process prior to the battle, Gardiner writes, “Success would depend upon each man knowing what our mission was, and playing his part in support of that mission, without necessarily referring to his boss. They were each going to have to make many decisions that night in my name.”
As X-Ray Company climbed the mountain and approached the fortified Argentine positions in the dead of night the terrain constricted the company to a narrow frontage which only one platoon could occupy. Suddenly, Argentine medium and heavy machineguns pinned the assaulting Marine Commandos behind what little cover they could scrape out for themselves in the rocky crags. The battle that had been planned quickly deteriorated into a violent stalemate. Medium machineguns and rockets in an adjacent unit could not engage the enemy for fear of hitting friendly troops. Yankee and Zulu companies, sister units assaulting other parts of the mountain, were similarly stalled. Artillery support was unreliable. The assaulting platoon of X-Ray Company was on their own.
Gardiner writes, “The stalemate was eventually broken by Marine O’Connor and Marine Alex Gibb… O’Connor, an experienced and skilled machine gunner, took his GPMG to an exposed position and, with Gibb dueled it out with an Argentine machine gunner. O’Connor won. At the same time, Marine Nick Taylor took advantage of the distraction to fire a 66mm, hand-held anti-tank weapon at the machine-gun position…the machine gun stopped long enough for the men of 2 Troop to sprint across the remaining 150 yards and get in… beneath the machine gun’s field of fire… three [Marine Commandos] sprinted the last 70 meters to the gun position. Alex Gibb fired off a magazine of the LMG and Caröe followed that with a grenade.”
In this example, a battalion’s stalled offensive was ultimately successful because of the individual actions of a few junior Marine Commandos. We must ask ourselves if we are equipping our own unit leaders to succeed in a similar action. We must examine if we are preparing our own junior Marines to confidently act in accordance with our intent of their own volition. If we conclude that our unit leaders do not grasp the end state or our Marines do not understand our intent, then we are failing.
At Range 410A and Range 400 at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center for example, we must ensure that our Marines understand those training evolutions for what they are (excellent opportunities to demonstrate procedural and technical proficiency) while seeking to reinforce good tactical habits with our orders. When unit leaders brief extensive, meticulously planned, multi-part orders at these ranges, they are failing their Marines. They are using the “stereotyped solution.” We owe it to our Marines to take advantage of every opportunity to practice orders as we know we will have to in combat. We owe it to our Marines to conduct live-fire ranges under conditions that mirror combat as closely as possible, including the way we issue orders.
There is a reason the school house orders process is analytical, time consuming, and exhaustively thorough. It is the most comprehensive starting point we can imagine for a junior tactician. But through intentional and deliberate practice, supervised by experienced leaders, and set amongst increasingly challenging problem sets, these junior tacticians should progressively shed analytical rigor for intuitive understanding. And as the leader progresses toward increasing capability with simple, flexible orders and plans, so will their unit progress toward the sense of ownership, initiative and ruthless opportunism we seek to imbue in every Marine. This approach must be historically informed and carefully informed by the future and anticipated operating environment we will face. Consequently, we will deploy small unit leaders with coup de oeil and junior Marines prone to violence of action.
If we do not train to the standard which has been written and rewritten in our own history, then we are simply planning to fail.
First Lieutenant Robert B. Gortner is a platoon commander with Animal Company, 1st Battalion, Seventh Marines. He can be reached at robert.gortner@usmc.mil.
Just wait the Change Agent always comes;
The Enemy.
Well written, well thought out. This is a great piece that we should take in mind from TBS to IOC to the fleet.