The chain works. You get the mission brief and once engaged with the enemy, your leadership may be somewhere else engaged in fighting their own fight.
When it comes down to it, each engagement is a solo effort (maybe backed up by your peers). That means you execute the mission and like it’s been said, “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” You adjust and change to kill and remain in the fight.
What also is well known, ““A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.” – Soviet observation during the Cold War.
That means we flex and change and are not rigidly following doctrine/orders, unlike the Soviets/Russians or China and Koreans.
Those countries are subservient all the way. Side bar: when I was talking to an Egyptian colonel that flew in the 7-day War, he said he had an Israeli jet on his tail and shooting the beejesus out of him BUT he was so subserviant that he had to call his boss and ask for permission to eject.
An American general summed it up in a pithier manner: "If we don't know what the hell we're doing, how is the enemy going to figure it out?"