The Pentagon’s current management of operations is leading it toward strategic insolvency and increasing risks to warfighters in the event of great-power war. A slow but steady accumulation of mission and aggregating risk has depleted the United States’ margins of military power.
This condition is both dangerous and insidious, and the administrative management of operations—through execute orders (EXORDs)—contributes to part of the problem. EXORDs are the instrument to capture the president’s direction, as commander-in-chief, to use military forces and effects. As the geopolitical environment changes, the Department of Defense (DoD) must take actions to calibrate, prioritize, and align the military element of power to serve strategic aims of policy.
An area ripe for greater examination is how currently assigned missions are assessed against future needs. Competition for resources and growing threats demand regular and comprehensive validation of strategic risk, as well as explicit understanding of how those risks are assumed and transferred across missions, geography, and time. The absence of such clarity and codification can inhibit commanders and lower echelons from taking deliberate, risk-informed initiative. Moreover, it impedes the assessment, adaptation, and oversight necessary to oversee the employment of forces and effects to achieve strategic aims at acceptable costs. Despite progress, this report argues that a renewed focus on EXORDs could serve as part of the solution to better position the DoD for the precarious global security environment ahead.
The Full Reporter : Here
