 Welcome back to our Doctrine Education video series. Our video today will talk about mission command. In 2021, the US Air Force identified mission command as a key tenet of air power. Mission command is an approach to command and control that empowers subordinate decision-making for flexibility, initiative, and responsiveness in the accomplishment of the commander's intent. This doctrinal change is vital to prevail in contested environments to enable speed, agility, and decisiveness at every echelon, especially as we pursue concepts like agile combat employment. Mission command provides airmen operating in environments of increasing uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change with the freedom of action needed to exploit emergent opportunities and accomplish the mission. The core principles which enable mission command to succeed are mutual trust up and down the chain, shared understanding of the operating environment, a clear commander's intent and desired outcomes, mission type orders when appropriate, disciplined initiative, and accepting prudent risk. Airmen execute mission command through centralized command, distributed control, and decentralized execution. Centralized command gives the commander the responsibility and authority for planning, directing, and coordinating a military operation. Distributed control enables commanders to delegate planning and coordination activities to disperse locations or subordinate echelons in order to achieve an effective span of control while at the same time allowing subordinate commanders to respond to changes in the operational environment and take advantage of fleeting opportunities. Decentralized execution is the delegation of authority to foster disciplined initiative at the tactical level to operate at the speed of the problem. The hallmark feature of the Air Force's new approach to command and control is distributed control. In future operating environments, airmen should be capable of operating within varying degrees of centralization, distribution, and decentralization, and be able to balance among them as the situation demands. Centralized control optimizes the efficient employment of airpower as a high-demand, low-density resource, and enables force integration and mass for theater-wide effects. However, in contested environments, the technology that enables control may be vulnerable to attack. In contested environments against peer and near-peer adversaries, distributed control enhances the resiliency and survivability of command and control. Additionally, it encourages tactical initiative when a clearly communicated commander's intent guides subordinate actions. However, this approach complicates the theater-wide integration of effects and requires careful management of resources. The degree to which command and control is centralized or distributed will vary throughout a conflict and depend upon mission dictates and changes in the operational environment. In the Air Force, fully embracing mission command will require continued development across three doctrinal areas, culture, organization of forces, and orders processes. A mission command culture encourages airmen to operate at the speed of relevance through clear guidance, intent, and empowerment. This requires trust, continuous dialogue, and shared understanding. Without this relationship-focused foundation, mission command is not executable. Future organization designs should ensure a balanced span of control across new distributed control nodes. Appropriate organizational structures are key to minimizing operational friction and should be resourced to perform planning and coordination functions. These structures will also depend on resource redundancy to include forward-based logistics, maintenance, and expendables. Orders processes should permit a graceful transition between those optimized to promote efficiency in resources like the air-tasking order and those aimed at strengthening flexibility and resiliency, like mission-type orders. These processes should also leverage conditions-based authorities to enable adaptation during crises. Thank you for watching. We hope this information on mission command was informative. Please check out all our doctrine publications and doctrine notes on our website.