Irregular Warfare and Adaptive Leadership
Irregular Warfare and Adaptive Leadership
by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling, Small Wars Journal
Irregular Warfare and Adaptive Leadership (Full PDF Article)
First, I’d like to thank the leadership and staff of the Command and General Staff College for putting this event together. It’s an honor to speak to this class; I’m told that 78% of you are veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before going further, I’d like to thank you for your service to our country and acknowledge the sacrifices your families have endured to make that service possible. I’d also like to acknowledge that your class is broadly representative of the war effort itself, including every service in the Department of Defense, as well as our allies and our interagency partners. I’ll keep my comments short; given your experiences, your questions comments are likely to be far better than my responses.
I’d like to open our dialogue today on the subjects of irregular warfare and adaptive leadership. When I was a battalion XO in Iraq in 2003, I served with a company commander whose vehicle was struck by an early version of an IED. The fragmentation shattered his windshield and severed his antennas, the smoke and dust obscured his vision and the blast temporarily deafened him. In the first critical seconds after the blast, the commander saw the ubiquitous white pickup leaving the blast area, but didn’t pursue it. His battalion commander was furious, and later harangued the captain for his failure to act. The company commander was crushed; he felt the battalion commander was questioning his courage, and in fact he was.
The battalion commander later complained to me about his company commander’s inaction. He was right on the tactics — in those rare moments when we make contact with insurgents, if indeed this truck contained insurgents — we must capture or kill them. I was less certain about his methods of leader development, so I asked about the company commander’s preparations for deployment. For example, prior to deployment, who had the authority to cancel PT in the event of an electrical storm? He answered, ‘the brigade commander had that authority.’ I then asked him, who had the authority to change the PT uniform, if for example it was warmer than expected? That decision was at the battalion level. This company commander, who only a few months ago lacked the authority to tell his troops to come in out of the rain or take off their hats, was now expected to pursue the enemy unto death.
Officers conditioned to conformity in peacetime cannot be expected to behave boldly and flexibly in combat. This phenomenon is not new.
Irregular Warfare and Adaptive Leadership (Full PDF Article)
