As a Weapons and Tactics Instructor, I’ve spent a lot, and I mean a lot, of time instructing new mission commanders in the E-2 Hawkeye. The role of the mission commander is to essentially be in charge of all tactical command and control in the battlespace vis-à-vis a crew of 5 in an E-2 Hawkeye. They need to partition tasks amongst the crew while acting as a central node receiving and transmitting information and tasking vertically and horizontally within the command structure. It’s a lot to handle and take in as a prospective Mission Commander. They have to juggle talking to warfare commanders while managing air intercept controllers sitting next to them and ensuring their aircraft is optimally positioned and configured with an array of weapons systems.

Prior to being a prospective Mission Commander, these aircrew were controllers. As controllers, they had their specific tasks and assets. They only needed to be responsible to the aircraft under their control and to their Mission Commander.

So it’s a big leap into the “center seat” as a Mission Commander.

The biggest issue I see among new Mission Commanders, whether they be naturally talented, or struggling, is that they have an extreme tendency to want to do everything on their own.

That would be fine, if they were actually capable of doing everything on their own, but they’re not! I’m not! That’s why they have other crewmembers.

As a big, central Command and Control node, one of the worst things that can happen in the E-2 is trapped information. For example, an FA-18 reports an important piece of information that needs to be relayed to the warfare commander. Sometimes that information never gets to the warfare commander because the E-2 crew was, for whatever reason, task saturated. This happens all the time.

As such, the Mission Commander needs to retain a certain level of inactivity so that they can ensure processes inside the aircraft are moving smoothly and to maintain situational awareness to the battlespace and the aircraft processes.

I use the “Bucket Analogy” to get this across to my instructees.

Imagine this: there are three buckets, Bucket A, Bucket B, and Bucket C. Bucket A can catch overflow from Buckets B and C. Bucket B and Bucket C might catch overflow from Bucket A, but you can’t count on it. Which buckets do you fill first?

Bucket A is the Mission Command and Buckets B and C are their controllers. The reason Mission Commanders need to first fill the buckets of their controllers via task allocation is that the Mission Commander can never count on their controllers to catch anything that spills out of their own bucket of responsibilities.

There will always be unforeseeable challenges or events. If the Mission Commander doesn’t retain enough personal bandwidth to be able to recognize these new challenges and then dynamically reallocate crew task allocations, they are doomed to failure.

Some things to think about:

• What is an example where you felt your bucket was too full as a leader? What did you do about it?
• What is an example of when you felt like your bucket was too full as a subordinate? Did your leader catch the overflow? Why or why not?
• How can managers or leaders ensure they retain enough empty space in their bucket without being seen as lazy or needless by both their leaders and subordinates?
• As a manager or team leader, what ways can you build capacity in your subordinates buckets?