Military command process in tactical operations

Abstract

In the literature, one can find various approaches to the process of commanding troops at the tactical level. It concerns doctrines developed in both the Polish Armed Forces and NATO. These processes differ in phases and stages implemented by command authorities and in tasks they perform and methods used, for example, in the decision-making process. Based on modern theories of managing hierarchical organizations such as the armed forces, the authors of this article propose their solutions to standardize the process of command of troops at the tactical level, from battalion upwards. The process should follow four phases: planning, organizing, controlling, evaluating. In contrast to the command process functioning in NATO, there is no execution phase, which, in the authors’ opinion, refers to the stage (sequence) of actions and not to the command function. Hence, in the command process used by NATO, we deal both with command functions and military operation stages.