Increasing Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Operational Agility through Mission Command
Abstract
This thesis examines if applying the six principles of the United States Army's mission command philosophy would improve the agility of Joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) at the operational level. The six principles are building cohesive teams through mutual trust, shared understanding, clear commander's intent, mission orders, disciplined initiative, and accepting prudent risk. The study employs a qualitative research design utilizing an inductive logic approach with a meta-analysis research methodology to create a series of increasingly strong and logically cogent inductive arguments. The full body of literature paired with the meta-analysis provides sufficient evidence to support a direct relationship between mission command and ISR agility. Therefore, changes in the amount of mission command within a given environment will likely result in comparable changes within the level of ISR agility. The resulting analysis is applied to a representative operational example within the South Caucuses region in order to discuss mission command's potential in increasing ISR agility in a real-world context. The research concludes with a series of recommendations at the unclassified level regarding the application of mission command philosophy to Joint ISR doctrine in order to improve Joint ISR's agility at the operational level.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 10, 2016
- Accession Number
- AD1020413
Entities
People
- Ryan D Skaggs
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College