Conventional wisdom has long held that if you man your headquarters with studs, then you make life easier for subordinate units. There is a lot of merit in this idea. I do not dispute it. However, I think it is a concept that needs to be put on the shelf for the time being.

Back when we focused on combined arms, large scale operations (like Mar/Apr 2003 or CTC rotations prior to 2003), having a smooth-running headquarters was a challenge and true necessity. The headquarters section was the essential link that ensured leaders could communicate, supplies were pushed where needed, maintenance and recovery operations occurred, and medical support provided, just to name a few. The roles of platoons and squads were obviously important, but even great small units could have their potential wasted if their actions were not properly coordinated or supported.

Today, our operations are largely small unit in nature. Company level operations, or higher, are the exception. Patrolling most often occurs at platoon or squad level. Speaking from personal experience, we often flooded our AO with team-sized elements for surveillance, counter-IED, and counter-mortar purposes. I have encountered situations when the company CP gets a garbled transmission stating a call sign and “heavy enemy contact” with gunfire audible in the background – and that’s it. QRF races to the location and finds three Soldiers running low on ammunition. Sergeants and Staff Sergeants often found themselves in charge of situations with multiple casualties, enemy fire from multiple locations, very little information, and a long wait before any reinforcement would arrive. In situations like these, it is the small unit leader on the ground whose competence is critical. Put a weak leader in that situation and it will not matter how good your headquarters personnel are. The leader on the ground determines the fate of the patrol.

Obviously, the headquarters remains important. It is still a critical node through which coordination among adjacent or between subordinate-superior occurs. However, command posts of today tend to be fixed sites where procedures become routine. Radio communication is more reliable because the antennas never move and connections are never altered. Maps, charts, and other aids rarely move or change because you are operating on the same piece of ground. Far different from the drills of establishing, tearing down, and relocating a command post or aiding in command and control from a HMMWV bouncing along across the desert, operating a command post is now a very clean, streamlined, and standardized effort, more similar to working in an office. In short, it does not demand as much creativity or flexibility as a command post in combined arms maneuver.

Small unit leaders are now expected to make more independent decisions. Rather than continually taking orders as a fast-paced fight unfolds, the small unit leader is now expected to operate for long periods of time with no explicit instructions. He is given a broad mission and intent and expected to push information, rather than awaiting instructions. The impact of a less-than-stellar headquarters command post is less pronounced upon the independent small unit patrol than it is upon the small unit that must closely coordinate its actions with adjacent units. The small unit leader position needs to be manned with the best leaders available.

A lot of people will instinctively resist this idea. Leadership is important, but we have long been taught that manning the headquarters with your top performers will have a cascading effect of smooth performance down to subordinate units. Trickle-down leadership, I guess? That assumption works in centralized operations that require significant and frequent coordination. When your operations are decentralized, coordination becomes less critical. Manning the command post responsible for that coordination should also become a lesser priority.

I would go so far as to assert that headquarters should deliberately take in the NCOs who demonstrate that they are the least capable of being squad and team leaders. If it turns out that these NCOs are genuinely all-around poor performers, then that is a challenge for the Executive Officer. The XO is more experienced than the Platoon Leaders. He has fewer personnel to manage. Half of his personnel specialize in their function (communications, supply, NBC, armorer, mechanics, medics) and require less guidance than an infantryman who has shifted from the familiar role of rifleman to the less familiar role of driver or Bradley gunner. He also usually has an E-6 or senior NCO who is on the verge of assuming a Platoon Sergeant position. The First Sergeant is also usually in tune with the headquarters. There is no excuse for the XO to not find a way to make headquarters function properly.

I would also add that good squad and team leaders and a competent headquarters are not mutually exclusive. One thing that I noticed – and that one of my SGMs routinely preached – was that many NCOs who were not cut out for leadership happened to be very good staff material. A weak squad leader might have an analytic mind that is ideal for tracking grid coordinates, doing clearance of fires, adjusting timelines, and wrapping his brain around all of the call signs and different nets being used. In such a case, you may be removing him from a more prestigious slot, but it is a win-win in terms of the squad’s capability and the capability of the headquarters.

As always, please feel free to critique.