Improving the Decision Making Abilities of Small Unit Leaders (2012) / Chapter Skim
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Distributed operations are practiced by general-purpose Marine Corps forces composed of small and "highly capable units spread across a large area of operations," operating with deliberate dispersion while separated beyond the limits of mutual support.3 This type of operation 1 U.S. Government Accountability Office.
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Because of the need for small units to operate semiautonomously over long periods of time, their responsibilities typically go far beyond what has been traditionally expected of a small unit tightly integrated into a larger-sized organi zation and may include the coordination of supporting arms, logistics planning, intelligence interpretation, and even civil affairs. The complex environments in which Marines have had to operate have also added the demand that small unit leaders possess skills heretofore not considered critical to the traditional expeditionary warfare mission of the Marine Corps.
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However, U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations."11 Moreover, the strategic guidance continues, counterinsurgency remains important although its emphasis appears to be shifting; however, the complexity of environments in which Marines are likely to find themselves will remain, and improving the decision making abilities of small unit leaders is a long-term proposition regardless of the mission emphasis.12 FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The number and type of decisions called for from a small unit leader in today's operational environment vary from routine matters of logistics and administration to life-and-death decisions involving force protection, noncomba tant status, and tactical movement.
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Here, the committee has endeavored to identity the major challenges facing small unit leaders and the Marine Corps, and trusts that its recommendations offer some useful solutions to addressing these challenges. The committee realizes that some of its findings and recommendations are beyond the purview of the Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Devel 13 This study's terms of reference are provided in the Preface.
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Training FINDING 2: The Marine Corps has invested in a number of novel approaches to training and education, such as Mojave-Viper, Combat Hunter, the Future Immersive Training Environment (FITE) of the Infantry Immersion Trainer facil ity, and the Center for Advanced Operational Culture and Learning.
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RECOMMENDATION 2: Continue to develop and implement in-garrison and predeployment team training techniques and opportunities to increase the sensitivity and timeliness of small unit training with respect to rapidly evolving hybrid warfare issues. Specifically: • Identify a responsible organization to ensure that training and education programs are properly developed, staffed, operated, and evaluated; • Continue to expand and develop training for squad leaders; • Support an increase in the availability and realism of individual and team immersive training, with learning objectives similar to programs such as MojaveViper and FITE; • Adopt proven team training techniques to foster unit cohesion and continuous improvement; • Develop training systems that respond to field experience in order to incorporate and convey lessons learned more quickly; and • Explore the use of social media to capture and share insights of small unit leaders as a next-generation lessons learned program.
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make it difficult for deployed units to benefit from the recent experiences of other Marines. RECOMMENDATION 5: Provide technical and engineering solutions to support the small unit leader through well-tailored human-centric products for supplementing limited manpower in order to improve connectivity, information integration, and aids to decision making.
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Without mechanisms to capture and build on the unique experiential knowledge of small unit leaders, the Marine Corps could easily lose this tremendous resource. RECOMMENDATION 6: Consider ways to engage experienced junior enlisted leaders so that they can continue in a leadership role and the Marine Corps can benefit from their leadership expertise.
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for smartphones and tablets to support sensor collection management, sensor signal processing, situ ational assessment and forecasting, and TDAs in planning and course-of-action evaluation. • In the midterm, develop and implement the following: -- Team training and leadership training, applying the principles of resilience engineering as described in Chapter 3 of this report, in order to build small units and small unit leaders that are more resilient; -- Deployable training simulators that can be used in-theater and that can be modified by Marines, not programmers, to adapt to their current situation; and -- Training and mission-rehearsal systems, visualization aids, and TDAs for nonkinetic operations that build on current applied research in the DOD's program in Human Social Cultural Behavior.
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