Digital Battlespace 
AUSA Winter 2010: US Army to create ?Mission Command? Center of Excellence
Acknowledging that “Battle Command” is not broad enough to encompass the challenges and realities of modern combat environments, planners at the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) have begun to employ a broader “Mission Command” terminology.
Moreover, the Army will soon establish a new “Mission Command Center of Excellence” to help explore and exploit the implications behind the new terminology.
Speaking to The Shephard Group at this week’s Association of the US Army (AUSA) Winter Meeting and Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Lieutenant General David P. Valcourt, Deputy Commanding General, TRADOC emphasized “the complexities” of the modern battlefield, acknowledging, “The Army’s old MDMP [military decision making process] is not sufficient anymore.”
“You may solve ‘the wrong problem,’” he said. “MDMP is for accomplishing a mission when there is certainty.”
Valcourt characterized the relatively new Army doctrinal concept of “Design,” which seeks to develop a commander’s “artful understanding,” coupled with MDMP, as “the way ahead.”
“So there is that understanding, trying to peel away some of the uncertainty and some of the complexity so that the problem that you are trying to solve can be understood, and then attempting to go and resolve it, but being open minded to continue to re-frame it in case you didn’t quite get it right,” he said.
One part of the process involves establishment of a new organizational structure.
“We are looking to establish a Mission Command Center of Excellence at Fort Leavenworth,” Valcourt explained. “And General Dempsey’s [Commanding General, TRADOC] concept with that is we take the new inbound CAC [Combined Arms Center] Commander, Major General Promotable Bob Caslen, coming out of the 25th Division, who is going to assume command of CAC, and one of the hats that he is going to wear will be as Commander of the Mission Command Center of Excellence.”
“Mission Command, formerly Battle Command, is probably the only warfighting function that didn’t have a Center of Excellence,” he said. “So, we are putting a seasoned warfighter, a former division commander, at the head of that, and then in a collaborative community of purpose, including under that the Intel Center at Fort Huachuca and the Signal Center at Fort Gordon. And again this is the ‘fuzzier’ part, but we are wrestling with how we also account for these new emergent dimensions of IO [Information Operations], EW, and Cyber.”
“And when you put all that meat is that grinder it’s called the Mission Command Center of Excellence,” he said.
By Scott R. Gourley, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
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