Publisher's Synopsis
President Karzai, in his February 2011 speech to the Munich Security Conference, argued that the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) have performed below expectations due to conflicts in goals and coordination among the various organizations, specifically among parallel PRT command and control structures. These parallel command and control structures resulted in major command and control issues. The issues were a lack of flexibility and coordination, which counter the two command and control tenets of timeliness and coordination. The doctrine on positive control however, stressed the flexibility and coordination benefits of this method. The apparent failure of the PRT control method (positive control) to correct these command and control issues raised questions about the effectiveness of the positive control method. The ballistic missile defense (BMD) structure used the other control method (procedural control) to resolve issues associated with parallel command and control structures. The BMD structure used this method to provide flexibility to react to multiple priorities and provide seamless coordination during changes in these priorities. Since the ballistic missile defense structure also has parallel command structures, yet inflexibility and lack of coordination do not appear prevalent in this structure, can the ballistic missile defense control method (procedural control) be used to correct some of the PRT command and control issues? The study concluded that the use of procedural control (BMD) may successfully resolve the PRT's command and control issues of flexibility and coordination. These two issues were not solved by the use of positive control (PRT), as discovered by the analysis of successful command and control tenets. The prescriptive nature of positive control (PRT) hindered the flexibility and coordination necessary to overcome these issues. The descriptive nature of procedural control (BMD), on the other hand, minimized the effect of these issues and proved capable of resolving these issues within its parallel structure. In order to understand the scope of the problem, it was necessary to examine the PRT and BMD structure. The PRT review focused on the command and control structure and described the parallel structure of the PRT. Since the flexibility and coordination issues noted within the PRT's command and control structure appeared to counter the two command and control tenets, the criteria of "flexibility" and "coordination" were used to evaluate the control performance. To support the comparison, these two criteria focused the review of the BMD command and control structure on flexibility and coordination among partners. This study compared the critical findings from the PRT section and the BMD section to determine whether the use of procedural control (BMD) improved the command and control issues experienced by the PRTs. Based on this conclusion, procedural control (BMD) should be the preferred method to direct future PRTs. If this type of control had been used in directing the PRTs in Afghanistan, the PRTs would have had greater success. This finding is important to senior leaders because it provides an option when dealing with parallel structures. Simplifying these structures may not always be feasible, so it is important to value procedural control as a method that improves command and control flexibility and coordination in complex environments.
