SAG-U Commander's Action Group

WEBVTT
1
00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:23.000
This is the Spear, the Story of the Profession of Arms, a production of the Modern War Institute at West Point, brought to you by the west point class of 1984. Welcome back to the Spear, the story of the profession of arms. I'm Dr. Charlie Feint, your host and today's guest is Colonel Mike Rosel, who is here today to talk to us about heading the Commander's Action Group at Security Assistance Group Ukraine. Mike, welcome to the show.
2
00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:24.000
Thanks, Charlie.
3
00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:36.000
Mike, there was a lot that went into your experience before you became the CAG Director at Sagu. So let's start there. Can you give us a little bit of an origin story, starting with why did you choose to join the army? And why did you come to West Point?
4
00:00:36.000 --> 00:02:30.000
Yeah, I think the choosing to join the army thing was something I was pretty young when I decided was what I wanted to do. I think I decided on West Point around end of sixth, beginning of seventh grade. I did not come from a family with a lot of military experience. Really. The only military experience was a grandfather who served in Vietnam, grandfather who served in World War II. And he was kind of the classic citizen soldier. He went over, he served. He left the army as a specialist, had no aspiration of any rank or doing anything more than that. He felt like he did his duty. Draft was over, war was over and came home. But I got really interested in the war, really interested in military history. And the more I read, the more interested I got, the more I thought, this is a way that I could contribute. This is a way that I could give back to my country. And so I know that sounds like kind of cheesy patriotism. That's what it was. And then the more military history I read, the more I started looking at these figures that I was really interested and admired. And where did they go to school? What did they do? What was their kind of origin story? And kept seeing West Point come up over and over again. And so I knew I wanted to go into the Army. I knew I wanted to be an officer. And if I could do it through West Point, that's the way I wanted to do it. And when I went through the West Point application process and my congressional staffer asked me, well, would you take a appointment to the Air Force or Naval Academy? I said, no, absolutely not. I'll do West Point or rotc, but I want to go to the Army. That seems like the service that's most focused on leading people, human beings. That's what I want to do. And I didn't get in my first Attempt. My first attempt to get into West Point, I got the nomination. My overhead basketball throw was not strong enough. So I took a year, did ROTC at Michigan State and practiced throwing a basketball over my head from a kneeling position. And I got in in the next group for the class of 2001.
5
00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:58.000
Yeah, that cadet fitness assessment is no joke. And I didn't go to school here, so I'm fascinated by the things that they make you do to get in and to. So you mentioned the kneeling basketball that people probably have never done if they weren't trying out for this. And then when you came here, you had to do the indoor obstacle course test, which involves partly jumping feet first through a suspended tire, which you do 27 years in the army and never had to do that particular skill.
6
00:02:58.000 --> 00:02:59.000
Yes.
7
00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:03.000
All right, so eventually you got in. And what did you study when you were here?
8
00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:40.000
So I did a double major in history with a focus on European history and philosophy. While I was here. I knew social science, humanities area was my strong interest. I liked the normative aspect of philosophy. I'm really interested in questions of right and wrong and thinking through them in methodological, rigorous ways. And then I liked history because I thought history gave kind of the concrete. And I was really interested in political theory, political philosophy. And so that was a nice overlap to both do the theoretical, but then also see how it played out in diplomatic, in real history.
9
00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:45.000
And eventually you graduated from West Point and you went into the armor branch. What was the tracks about armor?
10
00:03:45.000 --> 00:04:36.000
I think I knew from the time I got to West Point that I wanted to go armor branch. I like the combination of the combat arms nature of armor branch that you. You are actively closing with and destroying the enemy, but you're also doing it at a speed, at a pace that I think is unique. So I wanted maneuver, but I wanted maneuver with that sort of pace and speed. And, you know, I was probably also influenced by this is 1996 when I'm in as a cadet. The Gulf War is a much more vivid, real memory for people than it is today. And that was very much an armor. An armor war. There was a short period, maybe my second year at West Point, where I flirted with infantry, and then from the rest of the time, infantry was always the second choice. Armor was the first choice, and then everything below that kind of. I knew I wanted to do one of those two things.
11
00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:43.000
After you commissioned, what was your path into the operational army? What was your first assignment? What were your earlier experiences like?
12
00:04:43.000 --> 00:06:02.000
Yeah, so my first assignment was three. A Cav and 1st Cavalry Division. And when I got there, when I went to the basic course, you know, this is graduating in 2001, but pre 9 11. And so when I kind of found out what unit I was going to, we thought we were going to have Bosnia, Kosovo rotations. And that was what was on the schedule for us. And so I'm thinking in my mind about how do you do that sort of peacekeeping mission? What does that mean in an armor unit that may or may not be able to bring its tanks? And then 911 happened while I was in the career course. And I think like everyone else, I distinctly remember that day. I remember hearing the first plane crashed, and we thought, well, maybe this was an accident. Then we turned the television on, the news on the second plane crashed. We knew it was a terrorist attack. And that obviously changed everything. So I get to 38 Cav. They had been doing a series of Kuwait rotations before that. And so half the battalion was deploying to Kuwait when I got there, not for 9 11, but because we constantly kept an armored mech brigade in Kuwait from Desert Storm through OIF Operation Iraqi Freedom. I didn't go on that first deployment with them, but then I did go on the OIF2 deployment with them. And we went. The whole battalion went to Baghdad, and we were in central Baghdad around the Green Zone.
13
00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:14.000
So you were at. You graduated from West Point before 911 happened. And thinking back to that time in America, the Bosnia mission was kind of like the big thing. Right. So you guys were gearing up for that, getting ready to go out, and then you got diverted.
14
00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:36.000
Yeah, mentally, that's where we were gearing up. And that's where people had told me before I got to Hood, that was going to be probably the mission for our unit. And then, you know, very quickly after 911 that changed and we realized it was going to change. But yeah, that was where my head was. And you know, even as a cadet, I think third and fourth year as a cadet, that's where my head was, because that's what we thought the real world mission was for us.
15
00:06:36.000 --> 00:07:17.000
That's right. Back then we were even running the Pull the Gap scenario to fight the Soviet hordes, the Russian military after that. Yeah, and you brought up a really great point about 9 11. I was in the 2nd Infantry Division. I was a captain when that happened. And you're absolutely right. We just assumed it was an accident because that was our frame of reference. There's no way someone's going to be able to kidnap a bunch of people Take a plane hostage and crash it. But after the second one, yeah, we kind of knew eventually that it was a terrorist attack. So you went to OIF2. That's very early in the war. That, that last for a while. So that was pretty kinetic period. What were you and your troops doing in that period?
16
00:07:17.000 --> 00:08:39.000
Yeah, so we were in the Green Zone for that period. So there was a bit of fixed site security, which is not exciting. It's not what everybody wants to do. You know, nobody's excited to find out that you're going to do two checkpoints to the Green Zone, which is what our company owned. It was the two southern checkpoints to the Green Zone. So there was a, there was a truck checkpoint where all the heavy freight came in and there was another southern checkpoint into the Green Zone. But then we also own some battle space between the Green Zone and Route Irish, which was the primary route up to, to Baghdad. I. I'm sorry, to Baghdad International Airport. And so it was a combination of kind of the standard patrols that we were doing at that point in time and those fixed sites. The fixed site is not exciting. It's not what anyone, it's not what an armor officer who wants to do like blitzkrieg and maneuver wants to do. But it was, I mean, it was a taxing mission in the sense that VBIED attacks were fairly frequent at those checkpoints. I mean, at one point we lost the rotating president of Iraq because he was in the line to get through the checkpoint VBIED hit and it was an assassination attempt on him. But there were a good number on all of our checkpoints because our battalion owned all of them. Good number of VBIED attacks over the course of the year. And these are 500 pound, 800 bombs in the back of vehicles. So they're not light.
17
00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:59.000
Yeah, those vehicle worn explosive improvised explosive devices are pretty brutal. I was a big threat over there, especially because you're kind of sitting targets. It's hard to tell what a V bit is until it gets right up on you and blows up. So what did your troops think about those details, those the responsibility when you're over there, about main in those checkpoints?
18
00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:47.000
I think we did a pretty good job of staying alert. I think with that type of job, one of the real challenges is, especially if you're doing it day after day, month after month and nothing happens. You know, how do you actually stay engaged and alert if you go a month or two without Aviva in your first couple months there? It's easy to get complacent I think we were pretty good though at understanding the threat. And then once the threat started actually happening, once they started blowing up, you were on edge the whole time you were out there. And if you were working a 12 hour shift on a checkpoint, you had a certain level of being on edge for that whole 12 hours before you kind of came down. Obviously, when you're on a mobile patrol, you're on edge and you've kind of got that spidey sense going on. But I also think the stationary stuff, you were too.
19
00:09:47.000 --> 00:10:03.000
Early in the war in Iraq, we still didn't really understand what type of warfare we were going to be fighting, but we knew it was going to be very different than what we were probably preparing for. Did you or your unit do any special or interesting training prior to deployment that you thought was more helpful?
20
00:10:03.000 --> 00:12:50.000
Yeah, I think there were a few things in knowing kind of what we were going into, but not having a full sense. Because in OIF1, after the initial fight north, it wasn't entirely clear how much of this was kind of a peacekeeping fight versus a real counterinsurgency fight. If you remember fairly early on, Secretary Rumsfeld was saying, there is no insurgency here, there is no insurgency. He and General Abizaid were kind of at odds when Abizaid took command and said, there's an active insurgency going on. There were some pretty innovative train up things that I think First Cav did. And you know, as a lieutenant, I never really saw my division commander regularly, but General Corelli did some stuff that I don't think anyone else was thinking about. So one thing he did is he said, look, we're going to be multinational division Baghdad. That means we're going to have to manage and govern and occupy Baghdad. Which means running sewers and running wastewater treatment and running electricity and power grid distribution and running trash pickup. And we don't know how to do that as an army. So he partnered with the city of Austin and he took his whole division staff down to the city of Austin to learn exactly how you run a big city. Now, I wasn't doing that as a young lieutenant, but I thought that was really innovative and set atone. The other thing he did was he brought British officers and NCOs over who had served in Northern Ireland. And he said that's a very different type of insurgency, but it is an insurgency and there are things we can learn about how they patrolled. And he did exercises where they were kind of coaches and mentors for us, teaching us what they had learned in Northern Ireland again, I thought was pretty innovative, wasn't something everyone was thinking about. And there were some fights that I think we lost as a division that he lost initially. He wanted to take our tanks over with us and he argued we shouldn't be on the tanks most of the time. You can't do good counterinsurgency if you're on a 70 ton tank and you can't engage with the population. But he said there's still a kinetic fight going on. Initially we weren't allowed to take our tanks during the right seat, left seat ride with 1st Armor Division that General Dempsey was commanding at the time Solder City blew up. We were not in Solder City. That was the other side of the river from our unit. But there was this recognition after Solder City blew up that we also needed to be able to fight a conventional fight or a somewhat conventional fight. And so his plea to bring our tanks over was eventually answered. And these poor guys on rear D had to send half a battalion of tanks over for every battalion and package them and get them on the railhead. And so in the lead up, I think those were kind of trying to figure out how to balance not knowing the type of fight we were walking into.
21
00:12:50.000 --> 00:13:00.000
That seems very early on in the fight to be thinking that you're going to have to run an entire city, which is something we're not prepared for. It seemed like General Corelli was really thinking ahead on that.
22
00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:09.000
Yeah, I think he was the type of person that just strategically saw the strategic and political big picture well ahead of time.
23
00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:11.000
What rank were you when you got there?
24
00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:46.000
I was a lieutenant when I got there. I think I probably would have been a first lieutenant when I got there. Did time as a tank platoon leader and then deployed as a tank company XO did about half that deployment as a tank company XO and then switched over to be a forward support company xo, which was a great learning experience too. You know, very different learning experience. But that was after the support platoon leader positions were no longer available to combat arms officers. But it was a very similar experience to, I think, what you would learn being a support platoon leader about supply logistics, log forecasting into the future.
25
00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:48.000
Those are all important skills to have for sure.
26
00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:49.000
Yeah.
27
00:13:49.000 --> 00:14:04.000
At that stage in your career, a company commander can often have an outsized influence on a junior leader, especially a lieutenant, especially first rate first deployment downrange. What kind of relationship did you have with your first company commander when you got over?
28
00:14:04.000 --> 00:16:44.000
So my first company commander and my third company commander both while I was a lieutenant were probably two of the greatest leaders that I've worked for in the Army. My first one was not during deployment because we did not go to OIF1, but just phenomenal. Charismatic, smart, saw ahead, thought really carefully about developing his people. So he would do things like petty little things like you think about all the additional duties that you have as a lieutenant. And his approach was, I'm going to move you into two or three or four additional duties over the course of your platoon leader time. It will create inefficiency for the company that you're only the supply room officer for six months and then you're the arms room officer, then you're the. But what I'm doing is building institutional knowledge for the army so that when you're a company commander, you know all of those things and have a grasp of all of those things. He was also just one of those people who was good at absolutely everything. At pt, at rifle marksmanship, at everything that you just looked at as a God. And then my third company commander, who I deployed with, really phenomenal leader was the model of calmness under crisis, under pressure, under anything. Like there is nothing that fazed Bull Smith and other people would be running around in a panic and Bull like, it's all going to be okay. Just calm down, take a breath. We're just going to work through this. And I think the other thing he taught me about taking care of people was I was kind of this hot headed lieutenant who thought upholding the standard also means you slam everyone down who doesn't meet the standard. And there is something to be said for discipline. But what Bull understood was, sit back for a minute, xo. Sit back and look at what their capabilities are and how do you maximize the capabilities this person has? And hey, maybe they're not doing a very good job at this thing. But. But that may not be where their strengths and capabilities lie. So let's move them somewhere else. I can think of a case where I wanted a chapter soldier out of the army. And his response to me was one, you're not taking care of that soldier because if you do, he has nothing other than the army. And two, I can put him in positions where he is not a risk or a danger to anyone and can be an asset to the union. And that doesn't mean we're going to reenlist him, but it does mean we're going to figure out where he can be productive in a way that takes care of him. Not just in the army, but in the long term. And it kind of cooled my heels as a hot headed lieutenant to sit back a little and be a little bit more thoughtful.
29
00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:57.000
That seemed like a very mature position for a young leader to have because company commanders don't have a lot more time in the army than that lieutenant does. It seems like he learned early on kind of what was important and how to take care of troops.
30
00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:06.000
Yeah, I think he did. And I think people paid him back with loyalty. Like I think with both of those two commanders, you didn't want to let them down.
31
00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:07.000
Right.
32
00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:13.000
Like failure was not just I failed at the task, failure was. I feel like I've disappointed you, Mike.
33
00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:17.000
Does anything else stand out to you about that first deployment when you were there with first Kev?
34
00:17:17.000 --> 00:18:22.000
I think the only other thing is, you know, I highlighted these two folks who were amazing leaders. I also had some folks, both office and I had some amazing NCOs there too. I am the stereotype that we tell cadets about where you get that platoon sergeant who is just absolutely phenomenal at everything. I had a platoon sergeant and a first sergeant who were just off the charts amazing. And I do worry that sometimes we give the cadets the impression, your company commander, your first sergeant, platoon sergeant are all going to be great and sometimes they're not. I also saw some really bad leadership that provided for really good learning experiences. And I was fortunate to be able to contrast the two. And then I also realized most people are somewhere in the middle. Like, we've all got basic fundamental flaws and fundamental strengths. And recognizing that you can't do a dichotomy of you're either George Patton, George Marshall, or you're a dirtbag. But most of us are somewhere in between in our capabilities. And how do you manage to develop the capabilities that aren't there and get the most out of what people have?
35
00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:54.000
Mike had a similar experience. My first platoon sergeant Sergeant First Class Hillary Edwards was literally the honor grad in his Ranger school and that carried on in everything he did. He was so awesome. So I empathize with that. However, I had a total of five platoon sergeants over the time. I was the platoon leader 101st because I was in that company for a long time and they weren't all great. So I think that is an important lesson to learn that yes, we do have really good officers, NCOs, we have some bad ones, but most of us, and most of them really are in the middle.
36
00:18:54.000 --> 00:19:38.000
Yeah. And one of the things I found useful when someone isn't great is kind of the diagnosis of Is it a competence issue or a character issue? You know, we talk about, and there's a famous Norm Schwarzkopf speech he gives at West Point about the two things you have as an officer are competence and character. And what always struck me was, if it's a competence issue, at least to a certain capability, we can develop that in ourselves and other people. Character is much tougher. If you don't have the character by the time you're in your 20s or 30s, it's much tougher to develop that. But knowing which the problem is as a leader, when you're looking at someone who's underperforming, I think is really important.
37
00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:59.000
That's absolutely right. If you look at the reason that most officers get fired from jobs, lieutenants all the way up to G O. S, it's a character issue. It's rarely an issue of competence, largely because we can mitigate it, like you were saying. And also, sometimes if someone's not doing well in job A, you take them out of that job, put them in job B, and they're actually really good, I think.
38
00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:01.000
Yeah.
39
00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:12.000
So, Mike, you did this deployment. You came back, it looks like, with everything you left with all your parts and everything like that. That's good. That's good. That's a successful deployment. But that wasn't your only trip to Iraq.
40
00:20:12.000 --> 00:21:26.000
No, I went back to Iraq two more times. So get done with first Cav, Go to the career course. My branch manager asks me what I want to do next, and I said, you know, I really enjoy being a tanker. I enjoyed being on the very heavy side of the armor branch, but I want to learn something new. And it really was a, hey, I'll be a better officer if I can learn to do different things. And eventually, when I'm a field grade, the more I've done as a company grade, the better. So I said, can you get me that slot in the 82nd Airborne? As they were standing up the reconnaissance squadrons in the 82nd Airborne Division, and they were restanding up the 73rd Cavs. So the old 373 armor had been the old Sheridan unit in the 82nd, and it was an actual tank unit that jumped airborne tanks. They were re standing up 73rd Cav. And there was going to be a squadron in each brigade that was a reconnaissance cavalry reconnaissance squadron. And they said, that's where I wanted to go, and that's where I ended up. And so we did two deployments there. One to the south of Iraq and Babylon Diwaniya, and then one in Western Iraq, where we started in Anbar and then eventually worked our way up to Nineveh. But when I got there, it was a brand new unit. Like, I was one of the first 30 people in the battalion.
41
00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:27.000
Wow.
42
00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:28.000
Or squadron.
43
00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:30.000
Anbar was kind of hot. That's where Fallujah is, right?
44
00:21:30.000 --> 00:22:12.000
Yeah. Interestingly, Anbar was, frankly, not that hot when we went there because that was the second deployment. It was late enough that, you know, God bless the Marines who were there before us. They did the heavy lifting. And our brigade was the first army brigade to take Anbar from the Marines. So the area we were in at the beginning of the deployment there, that was on the border. It was Husaiba, which was a border crossing point. And the Marines a few years before had done a major operation to take that city. That was a really ugly operation. By the time we got there, things had calmed significantly.
45
00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:36.000
Well, Mike, I don't want to gloss over what you were saying about going to the 82nd Airborne. That's an elite infantry division. You came from kind of the prototypical armor division, 1st Cav. There's a stereotype in the army about tankers. And here you are going to the. In my opinion, probably the least tanky outfit you go to. What was that like for you, going from 1st Cav, 8 and 2nd?
46
00:22:36.000 --> 00:24:08.000
I think there was. There is definitely a cultural difference. I laughed because I took my uniform in to get my first calf patch taken off and get my 82nd patch put on in Fayetteville. And the old man who was sewing my uniforms looked up at me and said, I'm really sorry for you. And I said, what do you mean? He said, you're going from one unit that thinks it's God's gift to the army to the other one. You know, there was, I think, a little bit of pushback with some folks about, who are these guys walking around wearing Stetson? Do they really belong here? But that also became a point of pride that you wanted to embrace and kind of drink the Kool Aid and all the things that went with being in an airborne unit. But you also wanted to embrace and drink the Kool Aid and all the things that go along with being in a Cav unit. And when those two things clashed, you could kind of look at both communities and define yourself by being a little bit different. And in your mind, tell yourself you are a little bit better. Are you a little bit better? No, not really. But it's kind of one of those. I used to tell my folks, when you put a maroon beret on or you put a Stetson on, there's absolutely nothing about that that makes you better. And if you walk around thinking you're better because you have a Stetson or a maroon beret, you're actually going to be subpar. But what you should do is when you put that maroon beret on or that Stetson on, you should think that calls me to be better because other people are looking at me, that I have a higher burden to meet than other people.
47
00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:21.000
That's a great point. I never heard it explained like that before. Also, Mike, I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier. You talked about being one of the few people in a new unit that you were standing up up, it sounds like in combat. Can you talk to us about that?
48
00:24:21.000 --> 00:26:16.000
Yeah. So I got there, we had about a year before we deployed, but I got there and the 82nd decided to stand up the Cav squadrons earlier than the army had planned to have them stand them up. Buddy and I went to Ranger school together. He got done a little bit sooner. I get both of us going to 373. I give Nate a call and say, hey, when I finish Ranger school, what should I expect? And he said, well, we've got a pre command captain who's on assumption of command orders is the battalion commander commander. I'm the three in the XO because I'm the next officer who showed up. And the brigade commander said, when you show up, you're going to be the four. And he said, and oh by the way, once a major shows up, they're going to move me out of the three. You're probably going to stay the four for the next year. I showed up with about 30 people there and no equipment at all. And it was a challenge trying to figure out how to field all that equipment. Getting the call at 16:30 or 17:00 clock at night. Hey, we've got these new RADIAC sets that we need you to pick up tomorrow morning at 6:30 and responding. How am I going to pick anything up? You haven't issued me Humvees or LMTVs or vehicles yet. I can't put that in my car. So how do you think I'm picking? Well, get with one of your sister battalions because they can sign you over a vehicle. It's 1700. They've all gone home for the day. They're not going to dispatch a vehicle out to me for 6:30 tomorrow morning when they're doing PT. And so it was a really fun but interesting and challenging struggle to start that unit from scratch. It also though meant that all of that early generation of people in that unit could have a real impact on what they sent for the long term standards and SOPs and precedents for the unit. And thankfully had some really initially great feel great officers there in terms of the first xo, the first three and the first battalion commander.
49
00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:26.000
That is interesting though that you had to basically beg, borrow and steel to get this thing stood up before you took it downrange. So how did this new unit perform when you eventually did go to combat in Iraq?
50
00:26:26.000 --> 00:27:54.000
I think, and I'm obviously biased, I think we performed well and I think we had a battalion leadership team among our field grades and our battalion commander who could see a little bit more of the big picture. So we in that first deployment deployed to Convoy Support Center Scania. And that was kind of the truck stop halfway between Kuwait and Baghdad. So it's where all the logistics convoy stops for the night and the two day trip up. And our responsibility was securing the lines of communication around Route Tampa, the actual route, the main supply route that went up there from south to north. And what our battalion commander realized was you can't just secure the route by doing route recon and fixed site security on the route. And so he pretty dramatically expanded our area of operations and said, we are going to do full spectrum counterinsurgency and we are going to go after what in that area was largely the Jaishal Mahdi insurgent threat, well off the MSR and well into Diwania and Hilla provinces. And so he took a very active patrolling and very active go after the insurgent network approach. Mainly jam a little bit of battercore. But Battercore I think generally at that point was leaving us alone and was more concerned with fighting Jai Shou Mahdi.
51
00:27:54.000 --> 00:28:08.000
So Jaishal Mahdi Mahdi Militia, the organization that headed up by Maqtad Al Saudr, that was a pretty competent force. Yes, if I remember correctly, that is the force that when the violence broke out so badly in Solder City, that was kind of behind all that.
52
00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:10.000
Yeah, absolutely.
53
00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:54.000
All right, so you were facing Jai Shoumadi, all the other sundry organizations down there that were getting after American forces, in my opinion. I served in Iraq three times as well. The kind of things that you were doing, the route security, route clearing on MSR Tampa was probably the most dangerous thing you could be doing in Iraq at the time. At Balad, where the special operations compound was directly adjacent to it, we had the vehicle boneyard and it just kept getting bigger and Bigger with all those vehicles. Did you have any experiences related to those that convoy support that route clearance that you thought would be interesting to share?
54
00:28:54.000 --> 00:30:11.000
I think we were fortunate in that our troop never really got hit when we were doing the route clearance mission. But there were definitely convoys that got hit going north and south. And all the traveling was at night. You can clear the route, but two or three hours later know it can be reseated. And so there was a good amount of QRF response to the guys who did get hit to go out there, secure them, do evac for them. Most of our losses on that deployment actually came from either the patrolling off the route. So my sister company EFPs were a thing then explosively formed penetrators. So these were the disks that they would build into the IEDs that would mold into penetrators that could penetrate our armor. A lot of them came from Iran at the time. And then the other other losses were we had indirect fire attacks on the forward operating base too. And much like the IEDs and that VBIEDs in that first rotation, you know, that's a frustrating fight to fight because you can't see the people shooting at you. You can't predict people shooting at you. You try to do the predictive analysis. You try to go to the launch points and have people there, but it's not direct fire. It's not you seeing right away as it's happening.
55
00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:27.000
Yeah, those copper phased explosively foreign penetrators were pretty bad. And Jaishal Mahdi, being primarily Shiite, were in bed with the Iranians. And the Iranians, the Quds force in particular, really made them even more capable as guiders.
56
00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:29.000
Absolutely.
57
00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:36.000
Okay, so Mike, this is deployment two and three for you in Iraq. What did you do after that?
58
00:30:36.000 --> 00:31:30.000
So I known for a while I thought I wanted to come back to West Point and teach. And so I applied to a few different departments at West Point, Ended up deciding to go to the department of Social Sciences, which is the department that house both political science and economics. So it's the department that teaches international relations, comparative politics, American politics and econ. And so did grad school. And then, you know, the department of Social science is often referred to as society sosh, even though that doesn't actually match anything. We can talk later about why that acronym became the acronym. It's a little dated, but. And so I looked at those two experiences, kind of one big combined experience. Two years of grad school at the University of Chicago and then three years in the Department of Social Sciences, teaching international Relations, teaching National security, decision making.
59
00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:33.000
But that wasn't your department at West Point.
60
00:31:33.000 --> 00:32:04.000
It was not, No. I was a history and and philosophy undergrad. I applied to all three departments. Two of the three accepted me and I decided social sciences is where I wanted to go and given kind of that historical empirical interest and that theoretical interest. Political science was a nice balance because it was a discipline that built theory but then tested the theory on the real empirical world. And it kind of let me bring those two interests together.
61
00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:09.000
And you were at West Point for about three years on that tour. And what did you do after that?
62
00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:37.000
After that, while I was at West Point, I made the decision to switch over to become an army strategist. And then after that I did six months in Afghanistan on the Commander's Action Group at ISAF Joint Command. So ISAF was the four star headquarters responsible for all of Afghanistan. ISAF Joint Command IJC was the three star operational level headquarters that was responsible for operations in Afghanistan.
63
00:32:37.000 --> 00:32:56.000
Mike, we actually met through the Department of Social. Yes, you were actually one of my instructors at new instructor training. You taught me everything I knew about international relations and the one true IR religion of realism. So what attracted you to going back to teach? Did you think that was a good thing for you career wise?
64
00:32:56.000 --> 00:34:11.000
Yeah, I absolutely do think it's a useful tool. I think that there is an impression in the army that is a bad thing for you career wise. And my branch manager staff sat down and counseled me and told me, you understand that you're taking timeline risk because you're going to be out of the force for this five years and you know, do you really want to do this? But I think you have to have one, a junior officer corps who is thoughtful, not just well trained but well educated, can think critically, can think rationally, you can think about new situations. Training is really good for learning battle drills and knowing that when you make contact this is the sequence of events you're going to go through. Education prepares you to deal with uncertainty and you have to have that in junior officers. I think what the Department of Social Sciences and some of the other departments at West Point have also taken pride in is what they call the second graduating class, those senior officers or those mid career officers, those field grade officers that go through that process of a rigorous grad school and then thinking, writing, researching and teaching and go out as back, better, more thoughtful field grade officers.
65
00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:22.000
And there's a long history of some very successful field grade officers and general officers who spent some time in soc and you're sitting across from me wearing.06 ranks. So I guess it worked out okay.
66
00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:35.000
It worked out okay for me. And we've crunched the numbers. Our officers get promoted and get command at higher rates than the average for the Army. So it's not like you're killing your career by doing it.
67
00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:43.000
Mike, you mentioned that there's a story about how SOC got his name and why it's S O, S, H. I'm actually unfamiliar with this floor. Can you educate me?
68
00:34:43.000 --> 00:35:06.000
It used to be that history, economics and Political science were all part of the same department. And so like the USMA code, the abbreviation code, I believe the H, as I understand it, was for history. Eventually they broke those departments apart, hurt. But everybody just kept the SOCH abbreviation or the SOCH kind of moniker.
69
00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:23.000
Oh, I love it. Well, let's talk about your experiences in Afghanistan, because this is. You had a pretty special assignment. You were with the Commander's Action Group there, which, yeah, it seems to be a recurring trend throughout your career. So let's talk about what does the Commander's Action Group do and what was your role in it when you were in Afghanistan?
70
00:35:23.000 --> 00:37:04.000
Yeah. So I think what a Commander's Action Group does will vary greatly based on the general officer. It is a small part of the staff that works directly on the personal staff of the general officers in his front or outer office. But how he chooses to use that organization, I think is going to vary based on what he thinks his needs are. And you'll sometimes hear it referred to as a Commander's Action Group, a cag, or as a Commander's Initiative Group, a sig. General Anderson in Afghanistan referred to it as a sig. Later, General Buzzard in Security Assistance Group, Ukraine had a cag, basically the same type of thing in Afghanistan. What largely General Anderson used us for was external communications. So we would do his draft for his weekly reports up to the ISAF commander, to SACER and the secdath. Because if you think about ijc, you really were a dual command. You were, you had one four star boss in CENTCOM because you were a CENTCOM organization as an army organization, but as a NATO organization, you reported up to sakyur. So we would do those. We would do his correspondence when he'd get congressional inquiries, and then we would do his travel with him. When he would meet with Afghan Corps commanders. When he would meet with the Deputy Minister of Defense, we would do all that sort of travel with him. Some of the prep, although he was a guy who knew exactly what he wanted to say there wasn't a lot of talking point prep for him. And then we would also do the. What are the summaries afterwards that come out and distribute those across the command. And then we also working with the pao helped prep him for like his Pentagon press conference.
71
00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:08.000
That sounds like a pretty important assignment. How did you get picked for that job?
72
00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:25.000
General Anderson reached down to West Point in the Department of Social Sciences and said, I'd like to have someone. If you had someone who wanted to volunteer for this. The department head came to me and said, you as a new 59, I think this would be a great experience. Would you like to go down do.
73
00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:49.000
Seems like there is a trend of senior military leaders reaching into SOC that goes back a long time. I'm thinking just an experience of people that were in SOC when you and I were there. Brian Forrester was in the CAG and at User Pack and I think Brian Babcock Loomis worked on Joe Petraeus. Very similar role during the surge. Is that something that's common at the academy or specific to soc? What's going on?
74
00:37:49.000 --> 00:40:11.000
I don't know how common it is across the academy, but I think there is a degree to which it's a place where the operational army can reach in and probably could do even more reaching in. I do think it's been common to the history of soch and you know, the listeners may not know, you know, kind of the. The General Lincoln story. So General Lincoln was the one of the chief strategic planners for General Marshall in World War II. One star for most of the war war and the wartime army makes two star by the end of the war. And he wanted a field command. But much like Marshall's relationship with Roosevelt, Marshall told Lincoln, you're too valuable to me here. I have to have you here. So he did a lot of the D Day planning back in the States. He did the initial planning for the invasion of Japan if it was supposed to happen. And when the war was over, Marshall went to Lincoln and said, you know, you've done everything I've asked, what do you want as your next job? Job basically gave him carte blanche to have anything. And General Lincoln said, I think the great challenge facing our officers in this post World War II world is that they will have to understand economics, history and politics in a way that officers did not before and were not trained to understand. And I want to contribute to that. And so he said, I want to go and be the deputy in the Department of Social Sciences eventually to be the Department of Social Sciences head. And what that required from him is that he took a two rank deduction and had to go down and revert back to being a colonel. But to him it was so important the army developed these skills in their officers and educated their officers in these fields. He was willing to revert from a two star to a colonel to do it. And then what he did was he brought in all the Rhodes Scholars, all of the accomplishments, most accomplished officers in the army, pushed them through the Department of Social Sciences and then built out a network in the army so that when a general officer had a difficult strategic question, he'd call back to General Lincoln and say, can you recommend someone to work on this for me? And that group became known as the Lincoln Brigade, kind of as a play on the Lincoln Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. But whereas they were the Communist Lincoln Brigades, this was the antidote to that. The exact opposite of that and the, the Cold War.
75
00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:18.000
That's some pretty extreme dedication to take a toupee grade bump to come back to West Point. It sounds like a really incredible guy.
76
00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:20.000
Yeah.
77
00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:35.000
So you were there doing the, the Commander's initiatives group work in Afghanistan. Did you think that anything that you, you were, you were taught, that you learned is social, that you experienced early in your career was particularly useful in that, in that assignment?
78
00:40:35.000 --> 00:41:14.000
Yeah. I think getting that broad kind of operational to strategic to political education that you got both in graduate school and that you got in soc was really useful. Sitting in a high or an operational level headquarters, which is what we thought of ourselves as is. I think we can get into a debate about is a core high tactical, is it operational? But in that context it was clearly an operational level headquarters, whatever doctrine says. And I think that was really useful to be able to see then how the operational things you, you did. We're going to have strategic and political effects and think through those relationships, which I don't know that we're always very good at doing.
79
00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:21.000
Sure seems that way sometimes. Yeah. So you wrapped up at Afghanistan and what did you do after that?
80
00:41:21.000 --> 00:42:22.000
Wrapped up in Afghanistan and actually went to Joint Task Force north after that. So Joint Task Force north has since changed names. I believe it is now Joint Interagency Task Force Counter Cartel now. But what Joint Task Force north was, was it was the Department of Defense organization that supported domestic law enforcement for countertransnational organized crime and for counter drug. And there are actually initially three joint task forces. Two of them became Joint Interagency Task Forces. Joint Task Force north was responsible for the homeland JAD of South is responsible for the Caribbean and Central and South Americ and JADA west is responsible for Asia and doing counter drug, counter transnational crime support. And so it was a very interagency job. This was a job where we as Department of Defense were very much in support of Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice.
81
00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:24.000
What was your role in that organization?
82
00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:26.000
I was a Planner in the J5.
83
00:42:26.000 --> 00:42:33.000
So doing what is now counter cartel work sounds pretty sexy. Did you find that kind of work?
84
00:42:33.000 --> 00:45:23.000
I think it was fulfilling. There are frustrations there because, you know, you're not the Department of Defense's main effort. You know, you're a side effort. I think what was a great learning experience and that's really what made it fulfilling, was getting a sense of working in an interagency environment. And I think you learn some basic principles. One is that any room you walk into in the military, you're the thousand pound gorilla in the room because you just have more resources than everyone else. And so sometimes you have to make a concerted eff to sit back and not be that thousand pound gorilla. You know, I think the second thing I learned was if these other agencies are doing things differently than you would do them, it's probably not because they're wrong. They've been doing this longer than you. They have more experience. Sit back, take some time and learn from that. I think the third thing I kind of learned was related to that understanding different organizational cultures, that each of these organizations had a different culture culture and that often that culture was driven by their organizational incentives. And so if you think about kind of the transnational organized crime and counter drug world, if you're border patrol, you're really evaluated by your political leaders, by interdictions, and how many pounds of drugs in the drug world you put on the table, right? If your Homeland Security investigations or your Department of Justice, this you're evaluated by how many high level inter, how many high level indictments you get against drug kingpins. Those are two very different incentives that drive different types of action. And sometimes as the DoD kind of third party that didn't have an incentive towards either of those, you could kind of play the mediator in the room and say, hey, you know, you have really good information that I happen to know this other organization could really use, you'd be willing to share it with them. And so I think figuring out when you work in the interagency, what are the incentives and what types of organizational culture does that drive was a really important lesson. And then again, just recognizing they may know more than you. It might not be the way you do it. And a lot of other agencies don't have the planning advantage we do. We as the army sit around most of the time when we're not at war, planning for war or man. If you're in a law enforcement agency, and I think this also transfers to other agencies like the State Department, you're doing your job every day, day after day. And it's great to try to impose our planning processes MDMP or on them, but you have to understand they don't have devoted planners to the degree that we do. They have them, but not like us.
85
00:45:23.000 --> 00:46:06.000
I think you brought up some really good points there. We have so many resources and there's so many things that we take for granted just being in the military life, like the sense of collaboration, which in my experience working in an agency doesn't exist. The natural tendency to break through stovepipes and to crush bureaucracy in order to get the job done. And then just that natural collaboration that we have and that we help impose and that planning and leadership and everything else. I can see that you would add a lot in the interagency environment. But I also like the point that you raised that we learn a lot from them as well, which is why we. We at the big levels, we have so many interagency partners in DoD organizations.
86
00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:08.000
Yeah, I think that's right.
87
00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:14.000
Well, Mike, you're back at West Point now, so is that where you came after wrapped up with.
88
00:46:14.000 --> 00:46:51.000
Yeah, I did. So I finished up at Joint Task Force North. While I was there, one of the permanent faculty positions, one of the academy professor positions opened up. So I applied to the position. I was fortunate enough to get selected. And I feel very fortunate knowing some of the people who applied for that position did one more year of graduate school at Chicago to write the dissertation and finish the PhD and then came to West Point after that and did a year running the American Politics program and then did several years running the International affairs program, which is our combination of international relations and comparative politics.
89
00:46:51.000 --> 00:47:00.000
And during that time period, you got asked to go to Germany to help support the Security Assistance Group Ukraine, Is that correct?
90
00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:01.000
Yeah. Yes. Yes.
91
00:47:01.000 --> 00:47:06.000
So let's talk about SAG U a little bit. Can you explain to our audience what that is and what that organization does?
92
00:47:06.000 --> 00:48:36.000
Yeah. So Security Assistance Group Ukraine is the primary organization that synchronizes and provides U.S. support to Ukraine in its current war with Russia. And it is now one of two organizations that are dual headed by the same commander. So Security Assistance Group Ukraine is the American organization, and statu, which is NATO Security Assistance and training for Ukraine, is the NATO organization. And they're both on the same facility on Clay Caserne in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is the same three star who commands both. And the way our commander treated the two organizations is they're distinct, separate organizations, but they would have a unified strategic plan, they would have a unified command strategy and unified lines of effort with different lines being led by different organization and the other in support. And in satu, what in SATU does is resources, training, and material support for Ukraine. And when I say resources, they're not doing the training. They are finding allies and partners to conduct the training. And so they may determine that the Americans have a particular skill at training something, or the Italians do that the Ukrainians need, and maybe the Poles have space and territory to do the training. And so they do the facilitation and then again the facilitation of all of the material, weapons, equipment, vehicle support to Ukraine.
93
00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:39.000
And at the time that you were there, that was commanded by Lt. Gen. Buzzard.
94
00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:40.000
Yes.
95
00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:55.000
Who used to be the Commandant here. Yes, Very interesting connection. Well, you mentioned earlier that the cag, the sig, they have a. They could have a different role depending on who the general they're supporting was. So what did General Buzzard have you and your CAC doing?
96
00:48:55.000 --> 00:51:44.000
So, in large part, General Buzzard used us to manage his communications, and that was really to multiple different audiences. So whenever he would go into Ukraine and he would spend at least one, sometimes two weeks a month in Ukraine, he tried to spend as much time in country as he could, even though the headquarters was in Germany. We would help prep his engagements with all of the senior Ukrainian leaders he would meet with. You know, we would give him his read aheads, we would give him his talking points after the engagements. We would, we would write the summaries of the engagements and distribute them to the headquarters and to the staff as appropriate, and then use them to build the next engagement. And one of my CAG members would usually travel with him to those engagements. Usually it was one of my majors or I had a great civilian who was a retired field Artillery battalion commander, and those would be the people who would travel with him. The second piece was the engagements across the alliance, across NATO. And I had two phenomenal British Royal Air Force officers, two squadron leaders from the raf, and they were my lead for all of those engagements. And so thinking through both in his SAGYU and his in SATU role, as we recognize particular needs, the Ukrainians have what is the strategy for engaging to fill those needs? You know, if they need interceptor missiles, missiles, what is the strategy for determining who has the interceptor missiles? Who is in a position to possibly donate the interceptor missiles? Who do we engage to make that happen? And sometimes those were engagements above our level for some of these things. They were engagements that we would then engage SACEUR or the Secretary General or the Assistant Secretary General to help them engage for us. But we did those European engagements, and then the third piece was the domestic engagements at home. So, for instance, when he went to brief the Senate Armed Services Committee, prepping him to do that, and I think one of the challenges there was there were so many people who wanted to come out and see SAG you senior US And European leaders. We also had partners in the Pacific. Australia was a good partner. Japan had become a partner by the time I was leaving. But senior civil and military leaders all want to come see sag, you all want to come see in satu, sometimes it was difficult to get ahead of the prepping for tomorrow's engagement to build a coherent comprehensive engagement strategy. But that was the goal and worked very closely with insatu, with the NATO command to do that with them, particularly their Force Development Branch and one of their 1 stars there who was absolutely brilliant at thinking through these things. Things.
97
00:51:44.000 --> 00:52:14.000
Well, it's interesting you mentioned how everyone wanted to come out and see SAG you in a satu, and here at Von wars ii, we're certainly guilty of that. Lieutenant General Mother, as you know, invited us out two summers ago to come to Wiesbaden and then Poland and actually into Ukraine to see what it was all about was very impressive and you helped facilitate that for us. So what were some of the other challenges you faced as member of the cag offering operating in this joint combined environment that is so high stress and hosts so high stakes.
98
00:52:14.000 --> 00:53:26.000
Yeah, I think one challenge was just the pace and the op tempo. I mean, it is not the op tempo of being at war where people are directly shooting direct fire at you all the time. And would never claim that compared to what our Ukrainian partners were doing, but it was a pretty high op tempo. I think another one and you coming out there speaks to this exactly for very good reason. General Buzzard made one of his top priorities after the first priority of assisting Ukraine, capturing lessons learned from this war, because he said, if we don't actively do this, nobody is going to do it for both the US Military and for our allies and partners. But we had no resourcing to do that. Anything we did to do lessons learned was pulled completely out of Hyde from people who were already designated to do other things. And he that a major priority for the command. And I think, you know, our Chief of Staff took on our Deputy Chief of Staff who then became our Chief of Staff, took on that role as the lead for that and did a pretty phenomenal job of it. But it was a major effort to be able to figure out how to do that while you're still trying to help your partner fight a war.
99
00:53:26.000 --> 00:54:15.000
Well, I think this is a good place for me to inject a plug for some of MWI's products. Anyone interested in hearing more about Lt. Gen. Buzzard and SAG, you should check check out the interview we did on five questions for a general with Lt. Gen. Buzzard and Maj. Gen. Herbachuk from the Ukrainian military. Also, one of MWI's officers, Maj. Rob Rose, put together Ukraine Papers, which as you were describing, Mike, is a collection of lessons learned from all the stuff that we publish, including things that we learned from that trip out to SAG U. So Mike, you wrapped up the time there in and SAG you. What were some of your big lessons learned over that experience? You were there a long time, you operated at a strategic level. What kind of things do you think that should be the big takeaways from that experience?
100
00:54:15.000 --> 00:55:24.000
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about that and trying to figure out how to capture some of those in writing, which I need to do. And as I kind of group them and there's lots of overlap in these groupings, I think there's institutional, there's technological, there's tactical, practical, and then there are lessons about education and military culture. I think the institutional lessons, when you look at what Ukraine did and the rapid speed at which they built out a force from a very small military to the largest military in Europe outside of Russia's, it's a phenomenal endeavor that they've undertaken and they've undertaken it under fire. This was not we were building out the army before World War I, knowing the war was going to come. This was we built out the army after we were attacked. And I think there are probably lots of lessons we need to look at there. I know we're very different and we're different military, but how would you build and maintain a large army under sustained combat, under sustained high intensity conflict?
101
00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:25.000
No.
102
00:55:25.000 --> 00:58:44.000
Knowing that eventually you're going to sustain casualties and the people that are going to move into senior leadership positions aren't going to be able to draw on the advantages people like you and I have had of lots of professional military education, lots of experience at lower ranks. Imagine Ukraine about two years ago, year and a half ago, decided they were going to establish a core system to look a little bit more like the west, like NATO. Imagine you're being told you're a core J3 chief of operations, and a year and a half ago you were a company commander matter. And oh, by the way, we're not sending you to cgsc. We're not sending you to Sam's. Go figure it out. I know we did a little of that in World War II. I don't know that we've thought about how to do that. And I know you had Tiffany Bilder back on earlier and you know she did a lot of that work to lay out. How do we do a one to two week core training program for people who have never done this before. But I think there are institutional lessons there about how you expand a force and how you maintain that force. I think the institutional ties into the technological and the obvious thing everybody's looking at there is uncrewed systems and the rise of uncrewed systems and the fact that this is a fight that is largely being conducted. We think 80% of Russian casualties are from unmanned systems. This is not a war where direct fire is the number one killer. By far. Uncrewed systems is number one and number two is indirect direct fires and artillery, which are both forms of fires. And so I think we need to think about uncrewed systems as both reconnaissance and as fires. But the degree to which they rapidly innovate, the degree to which a drone system they're using now is not the system they're going to use in six months or a year. You're talking two to four weeks before the software has to be updated. You're talking talking entire systems being phased out in six months to a year and a defense industrial base that can support that. And that's not the way our defense industrial base is set up with our primes and subprimes. And so I think we need to think really hard about how do we innovate that quickly in a war? Because if we don't, our opponents will. Our opponents are learning from this. And it's not just our great power opponents, though. I think it's them. I think there's lots of evidence the Chinese, Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans are learning from this. But these are cheap technologies that are going to proliferate after this war. And even small powers, small states, non State actors are going to get these cheap technologies. And so thinking about how do you build a force and a defense industrial base that can do that rapid innovation and that can change quickly and that can do that base basic cost trade off. So if you think about the fact that we shot down Iranian shaheds, Iranian shahed drones with Patriot missiles, a shahed drone is about a 30 to 60 thousand dollars according to Open source system. A Patriot missile in open source is somewhere between three and four million dollars depending on the type of Patriot. That in the long term is not a sustainable trade off.
103
00:58:44.000 --> 00:58:45.000
Off.
104
00:58:45.000 --> 00:59:22.000
Now the Ukrainians are shooting down shahed drones with $5,000 counter drone drones. But I think we've got to think hard about what does our force structure look like. And you know, maybe this is right for us, maybe this is not right for us, but the Ukrainians have gone to both an independent unmanned systems force that is a separate branch of service and integrating unmanned systems into their army and navy. Their navy is really entirely almost unmanned systems, but integrating them in from the squad level all the way up to the corps and grouping of forces level. I think we still have work to do to think about how we're integrating those unmanned systems into our force.
105
00:59:22.000 --> 00:59:40.000
Mike, one of the big takeaways for me from our visit to SAG U was that separation you mentioned between kind of their strategic drone force and the tactical level stuff. And it seemed to me that there might be some level of natural disconnect and the incentive structure is partially based on the point system.
106
00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:41.000
Yes.
107
00:59:41.000 --> 00:59:43.000
Can you explain that to Rod?
108
00:59:43.000 --> 01:03:07.000
Yeah. So this is, it's really interesting the way they have done this. The Ukrainians have created this point system and it's essentially gamified the forward line of troops, the flot. And so your unit gets a set number of baseline drones. You can earn drones by earning more points. You earn more points based on what you kill. And different targets are worth different numbers of points. And so I notionally, I don't know the exact point distribution, but maybe killing an infantryman on the ground is worth one point and killing a wheeled vehicle is five points and killing a tank is 20 points. And so there's good and bad to this point system. I think the bad is it can create some perverse incentives because if I'm a commander on the ground and I'm getting overrun by dismounted infantry, I may want those drones to focus on the folks overrunning me. But if there's a BMP or a vehicle that dropped those, those infantrymen off a mile back, hey, if the BMP is worth more points, three or four of the drones might be circling the BMP trying to get the credit for the BMP kill to get more points. And so I think that's the potential perverse instead of incentive. I think the benefits of the system, it pushes competition, it pushes innovation, but the other thing it does is it pushes data collection. Because to get credit for your kills for first person view drones, you have to download the actual impacts, the hits. Now you don't actually see the thing explode because when the drone explodes, it ceases to exist. But what you do get is the 10 to 15 seconds before the drone impacts the target that actually gets uploaded into a data system. And that is an incredible amount of data. If you think about the number of impacts and what you could do with that data, running it through AI systems for things like vehicle recognition and trends, it's really, really powerful. And the Ukrainians have made a decision on their data and sharing their data across lost their force. Then the balance between security and rapid dissemination of data, they will side with rapid dissemination of data. It's not that they're insecure in their processes, but they are far less concerned about security than we are. And their argument is one, the data has a very short shelf life of being useful, so we need to get it out there. And two, because it has a short shelf life of being useful, we can take some risk. Risks, because if the enemy does get it, hey, if something's only good for 90 minutes, by the time they get it, it's probably outdated and not you. So. And they have also set their rules up. So if I'm going to sell you a drone in Ukraine, it can't be proprietary. The data from my drone has to be able to go into a central system. So I can see in their system every drone that's flying anywhere in the country. And if you go to the Unmanned Systems Force website site, each one of the drone units in the Unmanned Systems Force has a subordinate page and you can see every day there's kill list of everything they've killed and they updated every three minutes. And that's open source. Any of your listeners can go to it.
109
01:03:07.000 --> 01:03:14.000
Well, Mike, even as an intel guy, that makes sense to me because these are drones that are targeting Russian forces and presumably Russia knows where they know
110
01:03:14.000 --> 01:03:15.000
where they're being killed. Yes.
111
01:03:15.000 --> 01:03:48.000
So I don't see any reason why you wouldn't advertise that. What's also interesting, this new kind of war with these first person view drones. Drones regularly on my feed On Facebook I see TikTok reels of dudes getting chased with. Oh man, of course it, it zeros out right before it blows up, like you were saying. But that's got to be terrible for the morale of the Russians because these, these young drone pods are literally leveling up on killing you. You're going to be out there and there'll be the last thing your mother's going to see is a close up phase. That drone blows up.
112
01:03:48.000 --> 01:05:54.000
Yeah. And the videos on both sides are absolutely terrifying. They are absolutely, absolutely terrifying. And any sort of dying in combat seems terrifying. But much like that IED that you didn't see, that you had no way of knowing was there until it went off. It's very similar in that you see these images of guys in the back of a vehicle who are asleep, who have no idea this thing is coming in and kills everyone in the vehicle. I think the kind of tactical to operational thing we've got to deal with because of this is you now have persistent surveillance everywhere and you have a recon strike complex. And what I mean by that is the recon being able to identify the enemy target and then the strike complex of immediately, very quickly being able to strike it after you've identified it. And you know, even old Soviet daken from the 70s talked about, about how do we use technology to get a recon strike complex. And we try to do some of that in the 80s and you see it in Desert Storm, but it's done with very high end, exquisite technology. You now have compressed this recon strike complex, paired it with persistent surveillance and you've done it with very cheap systems, systems that people are getting off the shelf in Russia and Ukraine. What does that mean for fighting offensive work warfare? Because you can no longer achieve the mass that in our doctrine you need to go on the offensive. Because as soon as you mass, you're seen and you're destroyed. And I know we like to say we would fight differently. They're fighting a defensive war because they're defending their homeland. We have an offensive doctrine. We have more exquisite technologies than they do. We'll establish air dominance. It's not clear to me that we've solved that problem. And I don't think we can hand wave it and just say, well, our doctrine's different, we're offensive. Well, how do you do the offense in these new conditions?
113
01:05:54.000 --> 01:06:08.000
I think it goes back to what you're saying about the lessons learned in order to make them something more than lessons observed. Yes, we need to capture that and practice It. There's one of the organizations here at West Point that you might be familiar with. It's called Vanguard.
114
01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:09.000
Yes.
115
01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:15.000
Advanced Military Skills Development Program. One of the platoons here is fast, the Future Applied Systems Team. Have you seen any of their work?
116
01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:17.000
I have not. I'd like to, though.
117
01:06:17.000 --> 01:06:39.000
I'll arrange that for you, Mike. They're. They're brilliant. They're doing a lot of great work. Even from the starting with, like, the creepy dog drones that you can mount a gun or a rocket launcher on to some really sophisticated things with the unmanned systems. I think that they're doing great work and they're applying some of these lessons that were described. And it takes anticipation of future warfare, the type that we're going to probably fight.
118
01:06:39.000 --> 01:07:44.000
Yeah, no, I think that's great. Charlie and I have heard, including in some cases, someone who's no longer in service, but a senior leader who said, well, we have nothing to learn from two bad armies fighting each other. And I think that's a really dangerous thing to say. It reminds me of, and this is apocryphal. We don't know if he really said this, but there's an old legend that von Moltke, when he was chief of the Prussian General Staff, said there was nothing to learn from the American, American Civil War because these were two armed mobs chasing each other around the country. And yet we see in the American Civil War the precursor to mass industrial warfare and mobilizing not just people in the levee en masse, but also the economy. We see at the end of the American Civil War the beginning of trench warfare around Vicksburg and Petersburg. We see in the American Civil War the importance of the railroad and the telegraph that becomes central to World War I. Like all of those lessons were there, but we just, the leaders of the time, just missed it. I hope we're not doing that with this fight.
119
01:07:44.000 --> 01:08:17.000
Well, Mike, when you said that, it reminded me of another quote that I've heard from BH Liddell Hart, and I'm sure you're familiar with this as well. It's something along the lines that the only thing harder than getting a new idea into a military mind is getting an old idea out of a military mind. We've got to do both in order to. To be successful in the future. So, Mike, you mentioned the casualties and how much that drones are inflicting on the other side. I've seen a lot of news reports touting something like 20,000 casualties a month from Russians on the unclassified side. Does that seem Reasonable to you for what you guys.
120
01:08:17.000 --> 01:08:34.000
I think, I think from what I've read in open source, that seems reasonable. I mean, these are phenomenally high casualty rates. I think our estimates are probably better actually of the Russians than of the UK Ukrainians. But these are. This is a different type of warfare that we haven't fought in a long time.
121
01:08:34.000 --> 01:08:39.000
And this war has been going on for years. So the number of casualties that Russia's been taking must be astronomical.
122
01:08:39.000 --> 01:08:59.000
Yeah, I think when we're talking casualties, not killed, but casualties, you know, it was a while ago that we hit the million mark and then the 1.2 million and the. I mean, these are astounding numbers. And that raises all sorts of questions also when you think about this type of warfare, what is the domestic political will in any country to take these casualties?
123
01:08:59.000 --> 01:09:11.000
Mike, from your personal standpoint, being someone who was at sacu, someone who teaches international relations, do you want to hazard a guess on what's going to happen in Ukraine long term?
124
01:09:11.000 --> 01:10:50.000
I'm hesitant to hazard a guess. And the reason I'm hesitant to hazard a guess is it is very difficult for me to imagine any sort of settlement at this point that both sides could agree to. I think you have credible commitment problems on both sides. Neither side will trust the other. Think the Ukrainians see this fight as absolutely existential. And I don't think it is just an exchange for terrain. On Putin's side. It's not just that he wants to seize land. I don't think he necessarily wants to occupy and conquer and rule all of Ukraine directly, but he certainly wants a non Western aligned, non NATO friendly government in Kyiv, which from the Ukrainian perspective, that is taking away their sovereignty and autonomy. That is existential. Existential. I sometimes hear people say Putin can stop this war anytime he wants. And that's the difference. The Ukrainians are fighting for their lives. Putin could stop tomorrow if he wanted. I think that is probably true for Russia as a state. I don't think this is an existential war for Russia as a state. I do think it might be an existential war for Putin's regime. And I think that there are people who are better Russia scholars than me who I think debate this and are on both sides of it. But I don't know if it is easy for Putin to walk away from this and preserve the regime. So the guy who's making the decisions I think probably sees this as existential for him. And I don't know how you resolve that. And so I think you are in this long standing War of attrition.
125
01:10:50.000 --> 01:11:11.000
Because of that, I think that's a very thoughtful answer and I think we'll leave it at that. Mike, is there anything else that you want to highlight throughout your experiences or especially about your time at Sagu that you think is particularly poignant and relevant before I ask you for some advice for young leaders?
126
01:11:11.000 --> 01:13:06.000
Yeah, I think as I think about that, one thing we saw that I think is telling in terms of why the Ukrainians have been able to last this long. One thing is just the power of nationalism. Nationalism is a really, really powerful force that can sustain people. But I think the other piece is this is a people and a military that is incredibly adaptive, incredibly willing to question, incredibly willing to have open debates and dialogue. And we talk about kind of some of us. There are really kind of three cultures going on in the Ukrainian military at once. There's this kind of old school Soviet mindset that's very top down. There is this Western mindset that is, you know, NATO mission command. What we think of in the west is kind of how you run a military organization. And then there was this like Silicon Valley mindset. And a lot of those folks are civilians. They're folks without any military experience. The head of the Unmanned Systems Force is a major running an independent branch of service who before this war had no rank at all. He was a grain trader. He looks like a guy who walked off Duck Dynasty. General Buzzard always likes to make that point. Got a big beard, baseball cap and sweats, sweatpants and sweatshirt. But there is this openness to discussion, to innovation, to arguing about how they're fighting. And there's an openness. They have recruiting problems and they have training problems. There's no doubt about that. But compared to the Russians, I think there is much more openness to real education, real training and real debate and innovation. Whereas Russia is willing to take someone, give them one to two weeks of basic training, throw them out as cannon fodder. And I think there are lessons to be learned about how you run a military force where you let those discussions and that innovation happen.
127
01:13:06.000 --> 01:13:26.000
Mike, you spent a lot of time in uniform. You had some very interesting experiences, and we didn't even get a chance to get to all of them today. But I would like to turn the microphone over to you for some final thoughts. What is some advice that you would have for young leaders listening to the show, whether they want to follow the path that you and I it in uniform or want to serve their country in other ways?
128
01:13:26.000 --> 01:14:22.000
I think one is to be intellectually Curious to constantly be asking questions, to take nothing at face value, which doesn't mean being disloyal or disobedient, that you're asking questions, but constantly rethinking, reexamining, reading about your profession, reading about your craft. And that's at all levels of warfare, from the very tactical all the way up to the political, strategic, and doing that from a very young age. I remember someone asking me, they said, you teach grand strategy at West Point. Isn't that a waste of time for cadets? They're going to be platoon leaders. And the response back was, we don't expect cadets to be grand strategists, but we also don't believe that you can suddenly turn those skills on as an 06 or 07 from when you're at the War College. That's a lifetime engagement with difficulty, difficult problems, and difficult questions. And so I think being intellectually curious about your profession and your trade would be the first thing I would offer.
129
01:14:22.000 --> 01:14:55.000
I want to stop right there, Mike, because I think you've made such a good point about the way that we train cadets here and especially at West Point. But in the rest of the army, when it comes to things like seeing the big picture, I think that grand strategy and mission command at the tactical level are not at odds because one of the fundamental tenets of mission command is leadership intent. And if you understand the big picture program perspective, then you can help meet the intent. Even at the lieutenant level, I'm sure you've experienced similar to what I have. Soldiers always want to know why. Why?
130
01:14:55.000 --> 01:14:56.000
Yes.
131
01:14:55.000 --> 01:15:05.000
Why am I in Iraq? Why am I in Afghanistan? Well, I'm so glad you asked me that question. And because I took Colonel Roswell's class at West Point on grand strategy, I can unpack that for you. It does happen.
132
01:15:05.000 --> 01:15:56.000
Yeah. And sometimes I think when you tell cadets your soldiers are going to ask you why, they kind of. Sure, you tell me that. You have to tell me that because you're teaching me this class. But we had questions and discussions on the front slope of the tank training at Fort Hood about why are we going to Iraq. And I felt pretty good about explaining the reasons. And I had some soldiers who didn't like the reasons. They said, I don't agree with that policy. I would not do this. I would not commit to this war. I had others who were completely behind it. They were able to have those discussions and still say, I've got orders and I'm going to execute and I accept civil authority told me I should do this. I'M going to do it to the best of my ability while still holding different opinions about whether I thought this was a wise choice or not. But the very fact that they could have those discussions and know the arguments, I think made them better.
133
01:15:56.000 --> 01:16:00.000
I agree, but I cut you off. You were talking about critical thinking.
134
01:16:00.000 --> 01:18:12.000
Yeah. I think the other piece that goes with it, and it's hard, is actually having intellectual courage. And that means sometimes without being disloyal or disobedient, having those hard discussions, raising those hard issues. You know, we didn't talk a lot here about my time in grad school at the Department of Social Sciences, but that was a time of really active debate in the Army. I'd encourage some of your younger listeners go back and look at an article by then Lieutenant Colonel, Junior Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling called the Failure of General Generalship. Things were not going well in Iraq in 2007. Yingling writes this article in Armed Forces Journal, and he says, look, we are losing Iraq. We lost Vietnam. These are two losses in a generation. That's not an off case. That's a systemic problem. And he laid out what he thought the causes of the problem were, and he took a shot at the general officer corps. There are parts of Paul Yingling's article I really agree with. There are parts I don't think he got quite right in his analysis. But it started a debate about what we were doing in Iraq. That's a Profiles encouraged to be a junior lieutenant colonel publishing an article like that. And there were people who did not respond well in the army to it. But I think he moved the debate forward. And you had people like him and John Nagel who were arguing to change our strategy and eventually helped push a change. Change. You also had people like Gian Gentile, who was a colonel here at West Point in the History Department, who were making the counterargument, saying we were abandoning our basic war fighting skills in conventional warfare and that our COIN strategy and Gentile made these arguments after the COIN manual was published. Our COIN strategy was fundamentally flawed. And my point isn't you need to be on Gentile's side or on Nagel or Yingling's side. But those debates made us better as an army because those people had the intellectual courage to have those debates out in the open. And I think when we can't do that, it will hurt our ability to have sound doctrine and sound strategy.
135
01:18:12.000 --> 01:18:35.000
I think that's another important point, because disagreement is not disobedience. It's not disloyalty. No in fact, one of my primary fo. One of my primary roles being an intel officer was to lead the red teaming, to be that voice in there saying, well, actually, actually this plan that we got is not going to work because of xyz. I think that's super important. And I met John. I'd never met Paul.
136
01:18:35.000 --> 01:18:40.000
I don't know John, but what you
137
01:18:40.000 --> 01:19:01.000
were talking about there, that I think in many ways takes more courage. I was never personally scared on any of my seven deployments, so I never felt courage because I never felt fear. But I would feel extremely fearful to engage in the type of moral courage that these guys. Guys that are engaging that you described.
138
01:19:01.000 --> 01:19:58.000
Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. And I think the other key is these aren't personal. And so I think two years ago I saw Paul Yuengling and mentioned to him those days and those debates, and he had very positive things to say about the people that were arguing against him, as, hey, these are friends of mine and these are people who were interested in the best for national defense, for our country, for the Army. They had different perspectives. We needed to bring that analysis together. And I do think the thing that he benefited from was senior leaders. You know, I mentioned General Corelli earlier. General Corelli gave. After the Yingling article came out, General Corelli gave a very noted speech at the War College where everybody knew it was Yingling he was talking about, even though he didn't say the name. And he basically said, you as the senior leaders here at the War College should be embracing and welcoming your subordinates, having these discussions.
139
01:19:58.000 --> 01:19:59.000
Wow.
140
01:19:58.000 --> 01:20:09.000
And if you're in and. And made very clear you do not punish people for this, you. You should support this in the force. We need these debates.
141
01:20:09.000 --> 01:20:23.000
So everything I've heard about General Crowley just kind of reinforces the things that you were talking about. Now, I've never met the guy, but I think I'm going to hit him up to go on the five Questions podcast. So thanks for that lead, Mike. Mike, anything else that you would like to highlight? Highlight?
142
01:20:23.000 --> 01:20:44.000
I don't think so. I think I just appreciate you doing this and bringing people on. It's been great to listen to some of the folks having the chance to listen to the J5 that I worked with for a year, but then also having a chance to listen to my old West Point squad mate, John Fonts.
143
01:20:44.000 --> 01:21:04.000
Both of those were great. Couldn't you go to that? John Fonts? I got to know Tiffany just remotely through you, what a great, great job she had and a great job she did articulating it. And then John Fonts, I think he came to us through a connection through Team Red, White and Blue. And what a great human being. What a great story.
144
01:21:04.000 --> 01:21:15.000
Absolutely. Like, John is just one of the finest people that I know, and we don't see each other that often, but then there'll be a reunion. We haven't seen each other in 10 years and it's like nothing's changed.
145
01:21:15.000 --> 01:21:37.000
Well, that's great, because next time you and Tiffany and John together, you can compare notes on the Sphere podcast. Well, Mike, thank you for your time today. I know it's Friday and I want to keep you from your weekend activities, but I did want to say on behalf of KPAT Sullivan, the director of Modern War Institute, I appreciate your time today and it's my pleasure to present you with this rare and coveted Modern War Institute coin. Thanks.
146
01:21:37.000 --> 01:21:41.000
Thank you. I appreciate that, Charlie. And thank you for doing this and for all that you do at mwi.
147
01:21:41.000 --> 01:21:57.000
Appreciate it, Mike.
148
01:21:57.000 --> 01:22:30.000
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Spear. The Spear is produced by the Modern War Institute at West Point. What you hear in each episode are the views of the participants and don't represent the position of West Point, the Army, or the US Government. Be sure you're subscribed to the Spear on Apple Podcasts Stitcher or your favorite podcast app, where you can also give the podcast a rating or leave a review which helps us reach new listeners. And if you aren't yet following MWI on social media, please find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening.