Getting war right

As the Defense Department looks toward enterprisewide network operations, one high-level official offered his insight for best practices.

“Command and control implies trust – an alien concept today [in the Defense Department]. It shouldn’t be need-to-know, it should be need-to-share," said U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, at the IDGA Network Enabled Operations conference outside Washington, D.C., on Jan. 26. "Feedback is a key mechanism in C2.”

Mattis also stressed the importance of military personnel training on the basic theoretical understanding of war, as well as rewarding young service members for initiative instead of penalizing occasional mistakes. “Accept the imperfections of war. War is nothing but one mistake after another, and then adapting,” Mattis said.