Strategy KDF Bosses Use to Select Soldiers Before War

When it comes to matters to do the deployment of soldiers charged with the country's national security, the Kenya Defence Forces take no chances, as a senior official at the Kenya Airforce made clear.

Speaking to Kenyans.co.ke on Tuesday, November 19, the KDF source intimated that senior officials in the military use a strategy that they loosely refer to as 'cascading downwards' to decide on the troops to be deployed to a war zone at any one time.

Goal cas­cad­ing, or objec­tive cas­cad­ing, is defined as the process of com­mu­ni­cat­ing and assign­ing goals down­wards through the organ­i­za­tion­al hier­ar­chy.

The sys­tem starts with the selection of senior-most officers set to lead the mission, who are then briefed on the goals and objec­tives that the operation aims to achieve.

These orders are then cas­cad­ed down to the next lev­el of command and then all the way down until the soldiers' indi­vid­ual objec­tives are final­ly set.

"The bosses may decide in a very specific manner that they need one person to play a particular role and another to play a different one depending on the case. That is where they begin to pick the manpower needed until they get to the last individual," the source revealed.

The selection would depend on a number of factors, taking into consideration the enemy they are going to face, the objective of the mission and the terrain they would be forced into at the warzone.

"If you are going to Somalia, you might need a fighter jet, which means that you might need a pilot and aircraft engineers to accompany the plane. The same cannot be said for a mission to a part of the country that might not require such logistics. In both cases, the individuals deployed will be varied," he revealed.

Each of the soldiers is given a clearly defined role that he or she is supposed to stick to until the end of the mission or until otherwise stated by those in command.

The source also intimated that a soldier's deployment would sometimes depend on the kind of study that the soldier has pursued at the military academy.

"Some soldiers might be skilled in aircraft mechanical engineering, others in forensic science investigation and others in military geography. Depending on the zone where one is headed and the skill that would be needed, deployment can at times depend on the knowledge factor," he explained.