COMMAND OF A BATTALION: AN ULTIMATE TEST

This piece is like a Bollywood potboiler with action, emotion, drama and flashbacks galore, it is about being a battalion commander in the modern millennia with the younger generation calling you the proverbial ‘Old Man’ and the older generation branding you as an ‘Young Upstart’ who has donned the mantle with not enough experience, age and service to BE what you are today. The recent standoff in Eastern Ladakh with all its ambiguities and complexities thrown in has been the Litmus Test for the present generation of Commanding Officers (CO).

It was not too far back when doubting Thomases were questioning the reduction of age profile of COs courtesy the ‘lessons learnt’ after OPERATION VIJAY in 1999. Well today those very Thomases must eat crow as these Young Old Men have outperformed their predecessors in a hybrid conflict scenario that nobody had been prepared for in any school of instruction or any of those courses which are mandatory before assuming the mantle of command. Helmuth Von Moltke in the mid-nineteenth century had said the oft quoted euphemism ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’ and this in today’s case must be paraphrased to say; ‘no training manual survives first contact with the enemy’. While all of us at some time in our career have heard; ‘train as you will fight and fight as you have trained’. The behaviors and skills required to command are always multi-dimensional. And yet much, or indeed most, training developed and executed in training institutes are linear in nature. This mismatch between the real world and the training world makes it a certainty that Armed Forces may be wasting their training grant.

There will never be a method that is 100% reliable in terms of its ability to steer organizations away from crisis; realistic education to fight tomorrow’s war and not yesterday’s is the best of what can be offered to address the deficiency. Preparing COs to be effective decision makers in crises, regardless of the magnitude, requires comprehensive and coordinated education. The issue of preparing COs for command as a Professional Military Education (PME) challenge can be to the topic of another treatise and may be some other time. The question more importantly alive and kicking is the role of experience and the colloquial adage of ‘age and service’ to do the JOB. More importantly for officers in the Army of the new millennium, do the battalion commanders have the requisite experience level to meet the demands of the present and future conflicts which are going to be complex and ambiguous. Surprisingly the masters of theoretical warfare, Jomini, Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, insist it is crucial to find an inspired commander whose intuition or, as Clausewitz terms it, coup d’oeil, will ensure the correct application of the principles of war. Clausewitz writes in detail about this, however he defines two distinct qualities, which are indispensable, that a commander must possess in order to be deemed a Military Genius. Clausewitz defines these qualities as “first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hours, retains some glimmering of inner light which leads to truth, and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.”[1] He defines the first of these qualities as coup d’oeil or intuition and the second, determination. The study of a leader’s determination, or his courage, arguably has been done many times over, therefore I shall try and understand the coherence or dissonance between leader’s intuition vis-à-vis age and service.

Military Genius is not irrational; it simply reflects a different mode of rationality in which intuitive decisions can be explained rationally “ex post facto.” Some examples in recent history of a Clausewitzian Military Genius include Rommel, Guderian, Napolean, Manekshaw and Sagat Singh even in their younger days. Inasmuch as no single military leader, to include those mentioned above, can embody all of the qualities necessary to satisfy the demands of war, we can functionally deconstruct the ingredients of what makes up a ‘genius’ (and more appropriately, the intuition part of the genius) to help us define what attributes are necessary. Inquisitiveness is a talent of the mind that closely resembles curiosity. It is the ever-present desire for information and understanding and thus the importance of each commander to be an autodidact. It is the characteristic that prevents intellectual complacency. A leader with an inquiring mind is never satisfied with the simple meaning or cause of events in a confusing situation. The inquiring leader searches for the truth before taking action or risking lives. Fidelity in information and analysis excites an inquiring leader and often frustrates those who cannot keep the same “mental pace”. Calm is a characteristic that is most closely compared with patience. Yet, with calm there is a simple, unexcitable mood in the face of danger and human emotional extremes. The leader must remain almost stoic; while others panic and run for safety. The truly calm leader knows when to become more directive, knows how long to wait before committing a reserve and knows when to exploit success. The calm leader can sort through this array of conditions and apply his mental talent in any situation. Comprehensive is a characteristic rarely used in contemporary leadership lexicon. The term is descriptive. Understanding is a small part of comprehensive. The real meaning is in the depth and breadth with which a leader attends to the smallest details. However, the detail is not as important as the fact that the comprehensive leader is wise enough to consider an array of details across areas relevant to a decision or situation. While the leader is looking at the trees he doesn’t miss the woods for them.

Fig-1: Core Characteristics[2]

As an officer progresses, both in level of responsibility and time in the service, we expect his level of experience to grow. In the same light, we can expect his level of intuition to also expand. These functions normally are all held in relation to time. We go wrong often when the level of experience is misunderstood. Just because an officer remains in the service does not mean that he possesses that level of intuition necessary to make the decisions required of a CO. His experience, as defined above, must be accurately measured. Experiential learning can be enhanced by the efforts of the individual and the organization in concert with each other. To meet the requirements of the modern day battlefield and deal with its challenges, COs must possess special characteristics. COs must first, be able to assess the situation and from that assessment, form battlefield vision. Second, COs must possess a high tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. Finally, they must have an innate capability to learn rapidly and possess the ability to counter the “free will of the opponent which invariably will ensure that most situations and circumstances appear different from what is expected.

Going back to the situation in Eastern Ladakh, the COs are exceeding their mandate as the challenges thrown at them are unexpected and have no quick fix readymade solutions. The ‘face offs’ with the adversary surely must have been nerve wracking and to be able to show restraint and calmness literally in ‘face of the enemy’ who stood fifty meters away takes all the guts and gumption which I must confess I may not have. To fire and go kinetic is a ‘no brainer’ however to not fire while the adversary’s tank is in the cross wire of your sight and exercise fire control of such magnitude speaks volumes of the coup d’oeil the COs have displayed and not to forget the vagaries of weather, lack of rest and relentless movement from one place to another while others may have grabbed a ‘cat nap’ the CO would have been restless and his thinking faculties in overdrive.

From the situation in Eastern Ladakh one key ‘take away’ is of complexity in battalion command, it is considerably more complex today than it was in the 1990’s. The logical conclusion that can be drawn from this is that this trend towards increasing complexity will only continue in the future. As weapons become even more complex and battalion battle space expands in time and space, the ability of a CO to command and control his battalions will become much more difficult. “Versatility” factor, will become even more important in times to come where in even during combat he wouldn’t be able to wear a single helmet but be multi-hatted taking over the role of kinetic force commander for one moment and then transcending to a military diplomatic negotiator the very next moment. However, there is a belief that future technology will enable a CO to have more access to information and thus limit the difficulty of the duties of command and control. Despite the evidence of increasing complexity, the development of officers prior to unit command has not significantly changed, and the emphasis on ticking the boxes of the right nature has persisted. A review of the selection process for COs has been undertaken by the US Army and may be a good idea to analyse it for incorporation by our MS Branch. After all the combat experience of US Armed Forces in hybrid conflicts over last two decades must have taught them a lesson or two and a wise man is the one who learns from other people’s mistake rather than learning it the hard way.

Under our legacy system, a promotion board would spend one to two minutes reviewing each officer’s file before they assign ‘FIT’ or otherwise to each file and move on. US Army has initiated the new Battalion Commander Assessment Program (BCAP). Candidates undergo a five-day assessment by completing a series of non-cognitive, written, verbal, psychological and physical assessments. With the BCAP, the US Army now has an opportunity to identify key strengths and behaviors that should be present throughout the officer corps. The flak I am likely to face for saying this is to question ‘why fix something which is not broken’, while there is merit but what is the guarantee that it may not break in the future and hence a proactive organization must take corrective measures today to ruggedize and strengthen the system to be be able to withstand the vagaries of future conflicts and scenarios. To sum it all up, the key pointers which emerge are, COs are doing their job so let them do it, second, experience is not in terms of age and service but the multitude and multimodality of experiences which counts, thirdly intuitive leaders must be encouraged and last but not the least the sys of selection of COs needs a review for meeting future requirements.

[1] Carl von Clausewitz, On War edited by Michael Eliot Howard and Peter Paret , Princeton University Press ,June 1989, pg 102.

[2] Major Dominic J. Caraccilo and Major John L. Pothin, The Commander’s Intuition in Clausewitzian Terms, pg 5. https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Chronicles/Caraccilo2.pdf accessed on 14 Sep 2020.