Auftragstaktik: A Case for Decentralized Battle

Abstract

The main question this article attempts to answer is whether the US Army should formally adopt a concept akin to what is called "Auftragstaktik." That this question needs answering may be surprising to many readers, since the much ballyhooed emphasis upon mission orders in the 1982 and 1986 editions of Field Manual 100-5, Operations, has been linked to Auftragstaktik. But the German concept means far more than mission orders. Indeed, it means more even than "task-oriented or mission-oriented tactics," which though certainly a more sophisticated definition is still a rough and imperfect approximation.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1987
Accession Number
ADA509971

Entities

People

  • John T. Nelsen Ii

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Army
  • Attrition
  • Battlefields
  • Battles
  • Command And Control
  • Doctrine
  • Education
  • Human Behavior
  • Leadership
  • Personality
  • Schools
  • Standards
  • Students
  • Thinking
  • Training
  • War
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.