How fighter pilots plan combat missions
Hasard Lee | February 10, 2022
Changing a plan at the last minute is one of the surest ways to create confusion and cause a mission to fail. Before I became a fighter pilot, I didn’t realize how much time and effort went into mission planning. It’s meant to be a joke, but it’s surprisingly accurate that mission planning takes as long as you have.
Often, during large force exercises, we’ll be flying with upwards of a hundred aircraft. Because no plan survives first contact with the enemy, the mission commander is almost always a fighter pilot, on the leading edge, ready to adjust the plan as the mission develops. The commander is also in charge of organizing and leading the planning in the days before the mission.
The “stick and rudder” traits required to dogfight—prioritization, decisiveness, confidence—carry over to mission planning, however the hard skills required to lead hundreds of people through the mission planning process are technical and must be practiced.
Similar to managing projects in the civilian world, we must refine objectives, develop a plan with limited resources, and execute it in a dynamic environment. Over the years we’ve developed hundreds of best practices to make the process as smooth and efficient and possible. One of them is the GICL, or Good Idea Cut-off Line.
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/the-good-idea-cut-off-line-how-to-plan-like-a-fighter-pilot/
