BY B.A. FRIEDMAN
It’s widely understood that warfare evolves with the technology available to combatants. But it’s often forgotten that tactical leadership—the art of command in battle—likewise evolves. For centuries, fighting generals such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Hannibal, and Saladin exemplified tactical leadership, creating great reputations in the process. Today, however, lieutenants and corporals play the battlefield roles once held by these famous leaders. The U.S. military uses the term “strategic corporal” as shorthand to capture the growing battlefield responsibility held by leaders of junior rank. That responsibility has become both immense and increasingly routine. For years now, corporals and lieutenants as young as 20 years old fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have regularly made split-second, life-altering decisions with staggering amounts of firepower at their disposal and have been expected to do so in accordance with the national interests, policies, and strategy of the United States.
This shift has also changed the role of these troops’ military superiors. Consider Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg during the U.S. Civil War. On July 3, 1863, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee ordered three of his subordinate generals to execute a direct attack on Union forces. Lee was steeped in Napoleonic tactics that emphasized the advantages of a direct attack. But given the advances in firepower since Napoleon’s time, Lee’s plan was obsolete in ways he didn’t fully understand; the charge failed, and the Confederates suffered a disastrous 6,000 casualties. The outcome of the battle may well have been different if the Confederacy’s tactical decisions were made closer to the front lines.
Military disasters on the scale of Pickett’s Charge are an anachronism today, in part because generals no longer enjoy the tactical authority they once did. Today, the decision to attack, and how, is usually made by lieutenants, sergeants, corporals, and sometimes even more junior soldiers, who have quietly become the military’s most important battlefield leaders. As for the fighting general, if he isn’t yet dead, he may be fatally wounded.
The destructive force of armies has always been forged from the collective potential of individuals. Prior to the development of gunpowder, it took the combined muscle power of thousands of soldiers to muster meaningful force. Troops fought in mass formations alongside others with similar weapons: spearmen with spearmen, archers with archers, cavalry with cavalry. Each of these units was obliged to fight in coordination with others to leverage their capacity for violence to the fullest. A single general, or monarch, led each ancient army, with unchallenged responsibility for devising tactics and issuing orders.
With the advent of firepower, however, individual soldiers suddenly attained much more destructive potential. And as that capacity for individual violence grew, leadership could, and did, devolve closer to the individual level. Over time, the general was joined by subordinate generals, brigadiers, and an ever more professional officer corps, including captains and lieutenants. In the early 19th century, Napoleon divided his armies into corps that could maneuver and fight completely independently, a decision critical to his unprecedented victories.
The development of artillery, and the refinement of rifled firearms, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries allowed division commanders to assume ever more tactical leadership. In World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower typified the trend; he oversaw the planning of the invasion of France while allowing specific attacks to be run by officers as junior as captains. While large battles still occurred during Vietnam, most of the day-to-day combat was conducted by platoons of around 40 soldiers deployed independently, with the platoon commander (usually a lieutenant in his early 20s) making the tactical decisions.
Today, most of the combat undertaken by the U.S. military happens at the squad level, involving just 14 soldiers or fewer. Officers have been displaced almost entirely from tactical leadership, in favor of enlisted service members—staff noncommissioned officers (SNCOs) and noncommissioned officers (NCOs). This trend isn’t necessarily bad. Officers, by virtue of having acquired a college degree, typically have a broader range of knowledge and skills that allows them to evaluate the big picture; they also have relatively less military experience. By contrast, NCOs (corporals and sergeants) and especially the more senior SNCOs (staff sergeants and above) have deep experience in their roles and are better equipped for practical, detailed execution.
It is precisely the fact that the U.S. military has such a highly skilled and dependable NCO corps that it’s able to operate so effectively in small units. This is to its great benefit on the battlefield. Smaller units move faster and are more likely to avoid detection by enemy forces. And if a squad is detected and neutralized, the loss is less disastrous for the army as a whole.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower gives orders to paratroopers in England before D-Day in June 1944. (Library of Congress)
As authority moves down the military’s chain of command, what happens to those at the top?
Many generals still consider themselves warriors above all else and attempt to micromanage tactical units in battle. As the analyst Peter W. Singer has documented, this temptation is encouraged by communications technologies that can deliver real-time access to the battlefield anywhere in the world. It has never been easier for a general to intervene in tactical decisions.
Even as such involvement has gotten easier, however, it has also become more disruptive. No major military is designed to be led solely by generals. The U.S. Army is structured to fight in brigades (made up of about 3,000 soldiers, although the size varies) commanded by a colonel, while the Marine Corps usually deploys battalions (around 500 Marines) commanded by a lieutenant colonel or colonel. Both services can fight in larger units, such as divisions (roughly 12,000 troops), should war break out against a major power. But even if brigades and larger units do enter combat these days, smaller units will likely retain battlefield authority because of the devastating power and pinpoint accuracy delivered by adversaries’ modern artillery and airstrikes. In the combat zones of eastern Ukraine today, for instance, the Ukrainian army’s movements are typically carried out by units composed of just a few soldiers. Anything larger invites crushing artillery strikes.
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