There are not enough special operations forces (SOF). They do not have the fiscal assets to acquire all the equipment they need. The SOF’s ops tempo will not slow for the foreseeable future. These are the realities of SOF’s operating environment. However, they still continue to execute America’s bidding. After analyzing the author’s personal experiences from the last ten years, he realized the way SOF does this is through the key attributes of “Understanding”, “Intent” and “Trust” within “Mission Command” (Dempsey, 2012, pp. 5-6). The purpose of this paper is to prove the successes of “Mission Command” by first giving an example of how the author’s commander utilized “Intent” to steer his organization …show more content…
5). In 2013, the author’s unit received a tasking to perform a six-month MTT to train 18 partner nation (PN) Airmen ("Mobile Training Team," 2016, para. 1). This MTT was extremely important to the author’s unit and his commander fully understood the “Intent” behind the tasking. Before the author’s team started to plan for the MTT, their commander held a meeting with them (Dempsey, 2012, p. 5). During the meeting, the team’s commander skillfully articulated the level of training the PN would receive and to what level of proficiency they would reach. He also depicted the missions the PN would execute after the training and how that would positively impact U.S. SOF’s strategic position. By doing this, the team was very clear on the “Intent” of the MTT. Therefore, they were able to effectively plan and execute training objectives. This resulted in achievement of the desired military end-state set out from the tasking. “Intent” is an excellent key attribute of “Mission Command”, but there is another that can equally contribute to mission success (Dempsey, 2012, p. …show more content…
5-6). The purpose of this paper is to prove this point by first giving an example of how a commander utilized “Intent” to steer the author’s organization toward the desired end-state of a mobile training team (MTT) in 2013 (Dempsey, 2012, p. 5). Then, the author gave another example when an MC used “Understanding” to alleviate numerous mission challenges in 2014. Based off the past, the author is certain there will be many more organizational successes in his future based off the use of effective “Mission Command” (Dempsey, 2012, pp.