Sound Military Decision

by Naval War College

(Purpose) in order to ensure envisaged prosperity and essential security for the social system which is the fundamental basis of the community.

A national estimate of the situation, by the highest authority of the State, to determine the effect to be attained for the accomplishment of the foregoing mission, takes account of the possibilities of accomplishment through psychological, political, economic, or military pressure, or by combinations thereof. As a result of this accounting, the State adopts a national Decision which indicates the best way of accomplishing its mission.

To carry out this Decision, each of the primary subdivisions of the State's organization is assigned a specific task or tasks, whose total effect is designed to achieve the result embodied in the national Decision. The task of each such primary subdivision is linked to a purpose which is the attainment of the objective indicated in the national Decision.

In like manner, each organization of the national armed forces is governed in its action by a task assigned to it as a result of a Decision made by the proper authority on the next higher echelon. Each commander is thus provided with a mission which consists of an assigned task and of a purpose as indicated by the general objective decided upon by his immediate superior.

The Second Step

The second step, that of resolving the required action into detailed military operations, may now be undertaken unless the Decision reached in the first step is intended for future reference only. During the second step the commander, if he carries the procedure through to its logical end, visualizes his proposed operations as tasks, in order to ensure their proper formulation. He may, if it is his intent to issue a directive or directives for the execution of his plan of operation, or a part thereof, arrange his procedure so as to facilitate the third step.

The common characteristic of problems of the second step is that they deal with matters pertaining to the support of the action decided upon in the first step, and that they are properly problems for the commander who made that Decision, and not for his subordinates, to solve. Such problems are appropriately termed subsidiary problems. Their full solution involves subsidiary estimates, subsidiary decisions, and, not infrequently, distinct subsidiary plans and subsidiary directives.

Each detailed operation derived, during the second step, from the outlined plan of operations (as embodied in the basic Decision) is determined upon the basis of an estimate procedure essentially similar to the basic estimate. There is thus a series of subsidiary estimates for this purpose. Such estimates tend to be abbreviated and informal, since the necessary data, and often much of the consideration as to the subsidiary courses of action, may be available from the basic estimate.

Unless the detailed operations are of such a character as to require development into subsidiary plans as a basis for subsidiary directives, such operations are merely embodied, in the form of tasks or otherwise as may be appropriate, in the basic plan. In the excepted cases, where subsidiary plans, in detailed form, are necessary or desirable, such a plan may be the result of a more formal and specialized subsidiary estimate.

Chapter VII is devoted to a discussion of the second step.