Mission command is central to the Swedish Armed Forces, yet officers understand it in different ways. This phenomenographic study explores those variations through interviews with twelve Swedish officers representing all modern military educational systems. Data were analyzed through a ten-step phenomenographic procedure, producing an outcome space of four qualitatively distinct understandings of mission command: (1) a way of writing orders, (2) a method for distributing decision-making authority, (3) a comprehensive leadership and organizational philosophy, and (4) a mindset for coping with uncertainty. Across these categories six critical aspects were discerned: goal and purpose, placement of mandate, trust, acceptance of mistakes, education and experience, and view on detailed control. The outcome highlights a persisting gap between understandings and suggest that education could use the findings to address these differences to build a shared mental model. Future research could relate positions in the outcome space to observable behavior during operations and training.