Mission Contract

Mission Orders are contracts / Netwar First Raw Efforts

MISSION CONTRACT: Use Mission Orders

The mission order should be referred to as Mission Contract. The Mission is the Contract between element issuing the Contract with requirements, and the element carrying out the Contract.

What I need you to do with specific requirements, and what do you need from me?

This isn't your fathers and Grandfathers OPORD. For instance, Scheme of Maneuver would normally be omitted. There's not going to be an S-3 Operations giving you your Azimuths and Timetables, other than perhaps Logistics. We're breaking the WW1 French System and Micro-management whether you like it or not, and many won't. Among many defects it stifles something usually given lip service called initiative. The American Military honors sacred Initiative exclusively in the breach. In reality it relieves you as soon as possible when it detects it's actually present.

Contract for a Mission: The nominally subordinate element is given a mission and what is stipulated and specified, this is the contracted party but figures out how and when on their own, free to modify in line with the overall intent or objective. The Contracting or nominally superior element is the Contracting party and asks what is needed from them. This may be either temporary or ad hoc, but of course there should be regularly established relationships of "worked together before" at least, not to mention normal unit relationships as time and circumstance [and success] sort matters out.

Contract was how the Germans conceived and executed missions, when they were allowed - Per Hermann Balck, their best maneuver Commander. It had a fantastic success rate. Micro-management from above is the reason the Germans lost the Eastern Front and hence WW2. For that matter it's how they lost France in 1944.

[See John Boyd -Conflict, Balck et al]. See German Mission Type Orders -Aufragastrik].