How to Navigate Into Enemy Territory

the patrol crossed a difficult obstacle and moved rapidly deep into hostile territory where the enemy situation was obscure so start this whole this whole thing you start off by going into enemy territory and in order to get into enemy territory you’re going across a freaking river we better have a damn good plan we don’t know what the enemy situation is up there and how deep are we going to go like you know what you do in a situation like that equity you put really good fire support on one side of the river and say all right guys you’re gonna go go across go ahead if something happens we got you we got mortars we got heavy machine guns that will be able to get you back and by the way we’re gonna put a rope around the first guy so when you go across the river something happens we’re gonna pull you right back that’s covered move by the way and then you don’t go on a lengthy patrol without good support there was apparently very little reconnaissance on the part of the patrol and it was unaware of the enemy strength in the immediate vicinity the patrol was of sufficient strength to fight its way out against the superior number of enemy but when control was lost and the patrol was disorganized and split up it was susceptible to defeat in detail and just check this out if you were on patrol with me and you saw me give you a hand signal like to go out set up a push out a little bit further and you saw another hand signal with me from me there would be no part of your brain that would be thinking i would be telling you to split forces and go back to base no part of your brain would think that you would know that i would that i would want to stick together you would know that everyone would know that everyone on the team would think hey the only way we’re splitting forces if jocko comes over and looks at me and says hey we’re splitting forces here’s the new plan other than that we’re sticking together that’s like an implied commander’s intent from me always we are sticking together we will cover and move for each other for sure but we’re not going to get separated where we can’t mutually support each other that’s not that’s not a good thing ever so what kind of implied intent do you have with your team in your organization that people know what to do and they won’t make mistakes like this so essentially are you saying like with your example where that’s such a rigid rule that you have because and it’s a stat it would be established like established like that’s kind of the ether like like if if life heard me on the radio say like split for sure he wouldn’t be like hey jock would just told me to split force he back wait something something’s wrong yeah he wouldn’t make sense to him he’d be like okay hey jocko say again hey jocko i’m going to come and talk to you because if you’re you’ve never remotely said anything like hey let’s split up and see how we do right right let’s get to for me to say hey set up a good cover position cool all day long provide cover move to high ground any of those things but to say split forces it would be he would need to he would ask questions right and you’re saying that’s because there are certain things that are when you say you said implied right but there’s certain things that are just this is what we’re starting let me tell you what one of them is cover and move yeah if you get covered move is what i live by it’s a first law of combat right first off combat is cover move if i’m telling you to go away from me we can’t cover and move anymore and lay fears then go wait a second jocko doesn’t want me to cover move that’s crazy something’s going on that i need to understand or it’s a miscommunication he’s not like oh cool later no it violates one of the principles of combat leadership and it’s not going to happen so what are those principles inside your organization do you have them established correctly that people know what to do and if a weird signal comes through they go wait a second what are you talking about this doesn’t make any sense you know like uh dave burke gets a request from a client yeah yeah you know and i say don’t give the client any support like he would be he’d say wait a second no something’s going on here yeah you know something’s not clear there’s a miscommunication because we’re here to support our clients we’re here to teach them leadership we’re to give them all the leadership tools that we can so and and dave knows that implicitly so if all of a sudden say don’t give them any support he’d be wait a second i gotta go talk to jacob about there’s something going on yeah kind of like if you lost your temper on somebody it would be like something would be confused it wouldn’t come yeah it wouldn’t compete right really you’d be like oh that must be like a demonstration or something you know check uh before we jump to this next section that section right there was the section that i kind of wanted to that that kind of caught me because it’s a very good debrief of a little you know you know you read about big battles and we’ve covered many big battles and of course we get we get the gist of the battle or we get the experience of battle from one man’s vision but to get an after-action debrief like that and you can imagine how this is this is just one little tiny example one little tiny example and and that’s why when i when i started this thing off and i said you know why do i cover these because i never heard these lessons every freaking military leaders should read that after action report where a bunch of guys get killed a bunch of guys get wounded and why does it happen it’s so clear why it happens they give you the reasons you have multiple chains of command you have guys splitting forces there’s unclear communication like you should know these things you should get taught these things and look what else you’re facing out there you got your enemy right what else you got uh the river the river oh that doesn’t sound like a big deal but people drowned yeah this is not this isn’t this ain’t like a little stream this is a river where people drowned yeah and yeah and that’s the kind of the the assumption for us outsiders where you know we think of okay they got you know they got this many guys on their side and we got this many guys but we got this and we got that like we have these tanks so we got you know it’s like kind of nuts against nuts kind of a thing but you consider no no there’s there’s like we need food we need to get across that river yeah they’re all this stuff that’s kind of like the jungle i mean just the jungle just getting through there yeah just what about our weapons or they’re getting you know sand in them they’re getting watered in them it’s raining yeah we’re where our feet are rotting we’re starving by the way we need water we have dysentery like what is going on yes and by the way there’s a bunch of japanese suicidal fighters that want to kill us all yeah yeah remember saving private ryan right where they kind of you know they they uh they come up on the beach and you know everyone guys are jumping in the water or whatever um and then a couple guys they just drowned like it’s like you know when you you see that opening shot and you consider it in real life or whatever it’s kind of like okay what are we about to get into this is going to be scary machine guns um you know freaking germans bombs all this stuff right but then oh wait a second what about the actual water we have to go through like that’s going to kill some of us and imagine this you go and you make a movie and you actually go into the horror and panic of each individual that jumps into the water with 64 pounds of gear they’re not a great swimmer they go to the bottom panicking fighting and drowning and dying a horrible death and that’s happening all over the place on that day and then meanwhile if you survive if you somehow get your [ __ ] together and get your gear off and now you get to the beach you’re getting freaking s strafed by enemy elevated bunkered machine gun positions