The practice of mission command is a central issue in all western armed forces conducting manoeuvre warfare. Mission command is a command philosophy based on decentralized execution of missions. This requires initiative, mutual understanding and trust from commanders in all levels.The practice is sad to be all-encompassing, but few studies has been made on how the practice is expressed or compatible to support functions within armed brigades.
The purpose of this essay is to examine how a Swedish brigades signals company performs missioncommand. To this end, six qualitative interviews with commander on different levels and positions has been executed and analysed through Nilssons (2020) theoretical framework about the enablers of mission command.
The results show that decentralized mission command is used but with restrains depending on if it effects the operation of communications systems or not. The operation of communication systems is highly regulated with directive orders. But in all other activity outside the restrains of communication systems, subordinates have the freedom to plan and execute order after their own plan. Since there is both a centralized and decentralized command structure at work simultaneously these seem to influence the subordinate´s willingness to take initiative and decisive decision making.