Army - Pasific Unease

The Magazine of the Association of the United States Army
ARMY
May 2016 www.ausa.org $3.00
Pacific
Unease
Perkins on Value
Of Forecasting
Page 36
Europe Demands
Innovative NCOs
Page 28

SUPERIORITY THROUGH PERFORMANCE
ATEC HPW3000

ARMY
The Magazine of the Association of the United States Army
May 2016 www.ausa.org Vol. 66, No. 5
DEPARTMENTS
ON THE COVER
LETTERS....................................................3
SEVEN QUESTIONS ..................................6
WASHINGTON REPORT ...........................8
NEWS CALL ..............................................9
FRONT & CENTER
Budget Indecision Leaves a Restless
Army
By Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, USA Ret.
Page 15
War: Decide First, Then Be Prepared
By Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, USA Ret.
Page 16
We Can’t See the Global Forest for the
Trees
By Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, USA Ret.
Page 17
The Army Is Falling Short in
Developing Creative Leaders
By Col. Eric E. Aslakson
Page 19
With ISIS, ‘Destroy’ Should Be the
Sole Goal
By Donald L. Losman
Page 20
Leaders: Encourage, Acknowledge,
Motivate
By Alexander Amoroso
Page 22
Understand What Makes Our Partners
Tick
By Lt. Col. C. Richard Nelson, USA Ret.
Page 22
War College Graduates Light the Path
Ahead
By Col. Charles D. Allen, USA Ret.
Page 25
THEY’RE THE ARMY...............................27
THE OUTPOST........................................71
SUSTAINING MEMBER PROFILE ...........74
SOLDIER ARMED....................................75
HISTORICALLY SPEAKING.....................77
REVIEWS.................................................81
FINAL SHOT ...........................................88
FEATURES
Five Years After the ‘Pacific Pivot’
By Rick Maze
Just as the U.S. was turning its attention
back to Europe to face the threat posed
by Russian aggression, North Korean
leader Kim Jong Un served up three
reminders why the Asia-Pacific Theater
is just as complex and dangerous as the
rest of the world. Page 44
Cover Photo: A rusty sign in the
Demilitarized Zone marks the border
between North and South Korea.
U.S. Army/Pak Chin-u
AUSA President Sullivan to Retire, Gen. Carter Ham Named Successor
After 18½ years as
president and CEO of the
Association of the U.S.
Army, retired Army Gen.
Gordon R. Sullivan will
step down on July 1. He
will be succeeded as head
of the educational,
nonprofit group by
another retired four-star
officer, Gen. Carter F. Ham.
Page 5
28
Europe Needs
Top-Notch NCOs
By Command Sgt. Maj.
Jessie C. Harris Jr.
NCOs, the backbone of
the Army for more than
240 years, are having
to step up their game
in the multinational,
multifaceted
environment of
modern Europe.
Page 28
May 2016 ■ ARMY 1

Brainstorm: Soliciting Variety
Of Ideas Yields Better Results
By Maj. Wayne Heard, USA Ret.
Brainstorming is a valuable technique
when an organization must develop the
plan for a large-scale or complex project. It
helps generate ideas, solutions and action
steps to inform the venture. Page 32
32
Worthwhile Hiccups in
Tactical Networks
By Claire Heininger and Nancy Jones-Bonbrest
As technology has progressed, the Army’s
view of the tactical network has changed.
So has its fielding approach. The Army
has adopted a new construct known as
capability set fielding, but the process
has had unanticipated
consequences. Page 48
E-Communication and
The Art of Leadership
By Capt. Gary M. Klein and
Capt. Micah J. Klein
With electronic
communication much
more prevalent, leaders
should be aware of its
benefits and drawbacks to
understand the effects on
relationships and
organizations. Page 54
Let’s Get Wet: Take to the Water
For Combined Maritime Maneuvers
By Lt. Col. James J. Brown, USA Ret.
The Army must develop concepts, doctrine
and training and undertake organizational
and equipment modernization actions to
deliver a force that is as competent at
supporting maneuvers on the water as it
is on the land and in the air. Page 59
64
59
Big Picture, Not Details,
Key When Eyeing Future
By Gen. David G. Perkins
The commanding general of the U.S. Army
Training and Doctrine Command says his
team is approaching the task of designing
and preparing the future force in a
disciplined and broad manner. Page 36
A Dose of Complexity Added to
Training for Hybrid Threats
By Maj. William H. Shoemate, Lt. Col. Rafael
Rodriguez and Karen Burke
As futurists continue to analyze and
generate predictions for 2030 and beyond,
Army leadership is striving to accelerate
the rate of innovation through enhanced
war gaming and experimentation. Page 40
40
54
‘Papa Bear’ Didn’t Hibernate
At 73 Easting
By Sgt. 1st Class Brian Hamilton
Through the power of social media, a
public affairs NCO reconnects with the
platoon sergeant who guided and
supported him through the last great tank
battle of the 20th century. Page 56
U.S. Influence Responsible for
S. Korea’s Nurses
By Anne Dressel, Laurie K. Glass, Myunghee
Jun and Jeeyae Choi
Little information exists about an
important mission of the U.S. Army Nurse
Corps: helping develop the nursing
profession in South Korea. Page 64
Divorce, Military Style
By Rebecca Alwine
While the percentage of soldiers who
get divorced each year has been holding
steady at about 3 percent, there remains
a need for easily accessible and reliable
information for those facing this lifechanging
event. Page 68
2 ARMY ■ May 2016

Letters
Infantry Ode Strikes Chord
■ Although I don’t recall the good
fortune of having ever met retired Col.
Keith Nightingale during our careers,
his piece in the March issue of ARMY,
“Bond of Brothers: Infantrymen Stand
Alone but Are Uniquely United,” felt as
though we have been chatting for
decades. His incredible insights about
the infantry soldier and his mesmerizing
writing style are a perfect recipe for a
framed display at the Infantry Museum
at Fort Benning, Ga.
The colonel’s effort was, beyond any
doubt, a clear slice of Army life that is
unique within the larger organization.
He managed to bridge centuries of conflicts
talking to foot soldiers, doughboys,
dogfaces, grunts and GIs of every generation,
all of whom share a similar history
of experiences.
During my 32-year career, following
active duty I spent many years as an individual
mobilization augmentee deployable
Reservist assigned to active units.
When I wasn’t doing public affairs
work—my civilian profession, too—during
interludes of peace, I floated in and
out of infantry outfits depending on the
incoming phone call, circumstance and
conflict. I met hundreds of memorable
people, leaders to privates, doing dozens
of different Army jobs over the long
march.
None, however, comes close to the
never-to-be-forgotten men I soldiered
with in the foxholes, in the mud, in the
sand, in blazing heat and bone-chilling
cold, who could make a feast out of C-
rations or MREs, who seemed fearless
while filled with tension and fear, who
stayed calm and returned fire under the
worst duress anyone can imagine, whose
acts of bravery and valor astonished even
the enemy, who cared for each other and
understood the genuine definition of
“buddy.” They carry those memories for
life. They share those memories only
with the few who proudly wear the
badge of a silver musket on a blue background
wrapped in a wreath.
Nightingale could not have written his
outstanding ode to infantry soldiers if he
didn’t know those things firsthand, in
person, from ample experiences. His essay
is a keeper.
Sgt. Maj. Hal Glassman, USA Ret.
Indian River Shores, Fla.
Not ‘Only’ A Platoon Sergeant
■ During a reunion of a military unit
in which I served as adviser during the
First Gulf War, I happened to engage an
elderly gentleman in conversation and
inquired about his role during World
War II. His reply: “I was only a platoon
sergeant.”
I told him that good, experienced
NCOs were hard to find, and that I personally
considered them “a treasure” and
relied heavily on their knowledge and experience.
I noticed that he wore a Combat
Infantry Badge pin on his lapel and
asked if he led soldiers in direct combat.
He nodded, and I told him that he
should be proud of his service because it
is very difficult to lead soldiers in the
heat of battle.
Upon further reflection, one of the
toughest jobs in the Army is the position
of platoon leader, particularly in
combat arms. Furthermore, the most inexperienced
officer usually occupies this
position. Therefore, it falls on the platoon
sergeant to mentor and develop
this individual. In most cases, a lieutenant
is newly commissioned with his
or her only military experience being
completion of a commissioning program
and the Basic Officer Leader Course.
The platoon sergeant, in contrast, has
years of experience and has both leadership
and practical experience gained by
serving in lower-graded positions in that
particular MOS.
This experience enables the platoon
sergeant to know the strengths and
weaknesses of individual members and
ascertain individual, squad and platoon
training needs to accomplish both peacetime
and wartime missions. Platoon
sergeants also provide stability and continuity
because they remain in that position
longer than platoon leaders, who are
rotated into staff positions for career de-
U.S. Army/Capt. Cody Gallo
Sgt. 1st Class Darren Toedt of the 160th Infantry
Regiment issues commands during a live-fire
exercise at Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 3

Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, USA Ret.
President and CEO, AUSA
Lt. Gen. Guy C. Swan III, USA Ret.
Vice President, Education, AUSA
Rick Maze
Editor-in-Chief
Liz Rathbun Managing Editor
Joseph L. Broderick Art Director
Chuck Vinch Senior Staff Writer
Toni Eugene
Associate Editor
Christopher Wright Production Artist
Laura Stassi Assistant Managing Editor
Thomas B. Spincic Assistant Editor
Contributing Editors
Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, USA Ret.;
Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, USA Ret.; Lt.
Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, USA Ret.; and
Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, USA Ret.
Contributing Writers
Scott R. Gourley and Rebecca Alwine
Lt. Gen. Jerry L. Sinn, USA Ret.
Vice President, Finance and
Administration, AUSA
Desiree Hurlocker
Advertising Production and
Fulfillment Manager
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the United States Army. ■ ARTICLES appearing in
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members of the Council of Trustees of AUSA, or its editors.
Articles are expressions of personal opin ion and should not
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ARMY (ISSN 0004-2455), published monthly. Vol. 66, No. 5.
Publication offices: Association of the United States Army,
2425 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201-3326, 703-841-
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velopment. In today’s Army, the majority
of our platoon sergeants are combat veterans
who deployed for multiple tours.
A newly assigned platoon leader initially
relies heavily on the advice provided
by the platoon sergeant. Eventually,
both will sense when the lieutenant
is fully capable of executing his or her responsibilities
as a leader.
The relationship between these two is
more than a superior-subordinate one.
It is akin to a partnership, with the platoon
leader being the senior partner by
virtue of rank. Both have a vested interest
in the platoon’s performance, especially
during a deployment.
General and field grade officers develop
an overall vision and strategy for
conducting war. On the front lines, however,
a platoon sergeant’s knowledge and
experience can influence the completion
of a mission, which could conceivably affect
the outcome of a battle. Therefore,
this gentleman’s response that he was
“only a platoon sergeant” significantly
downplayed the importance of his role.
Lt. Col. James T. Delisi, USAR Ret.
Morgantown, W.Va.
When Casting Blame, Words Matter
■ Retired Lt. Col. Thomas D. Morgan’s
April Front & Center article (“Improve
Personnel System, Don’t Change
It”) was ostensibly an examination of the
Army’s personnel system. But in his
opening paragraph, he manages to note
that the Iraq War was possibly “illegitimate”;
that its pursuit “scarred the U.S.
economy”; that it was an “oil war” and
was “dressed up as a crusade” by a “clique
ARMY magazine welcomes letters to
the editor. Short letters are more
likely to be published, and all letters
may be edited for reasons of style,
accuracy or space limitations. Letters
should be exclusive to ARMY magazine.
All letters must include the
writer’s full name, address and daytime
telephone num ber. The volume
of letters we receive makes individual
acknowledgment impossible. Please
send letters to The Editor, ARMY magazine,
AUSA, 2425 Wilson Blvd., Arlington,
VA 22201. Letters may also
be faxed to 703-841-3505 or sent via
email to armymag@ausa.org.
of Judeo-Christian, geopolitical neoconservatives
who exploited it in the post
9/11 media frenzy.”
What any of this has to do with the
personnel system is not clarified in the
following paragraphs. But what is clear is
that, despite the insertion of the word
“Christian,” Morgan has joined the ranks
of the lunatic-fringe left and is blaming
the Jews for the Iraq War. This is one of
the older tropes of the anti-Semitic cabal,
and Morgan is not the first to deploy
it. Morgan also dips into his left-wing
bag of accusations to label the right and
proper press coverage of the terrorist attacks
that killed some 3,000 people a
“media frenzy.”
The policy for letters to the editor that
ARMY prints in every issue notes submissions
will be edited for accuracy,
among other things. If that is the policy,
how did Morgan’s first paragraph get
into print?
Col. David G. Epstein, USA Ret.
San Diego
Editor’s Note: Articles in ARMY magazine’s
Front & Center section express the personal
opinion of the author.
Draftees Performed Just as Well
■ Retired Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano
has contributed many interesting articles
to ARMY over the years, but in his
March Front & Center piece, “Draft a
Bad Idea, With or Without Women,” he
makes a statement that does not correspond
to my experience during the days
of the drafted Army. Carafano states:
“Short-service conscripts are not going to
meet the high-performance standards required
of today’s military personnel.”
With no intention to disparage the
high quality of today’s Army, the drafted
Army I knew in airborne, infantry and
artillery units had a great depth of potential
talent drawn from all walks of
American life. These soldiers could put
a bit of a strain on officers and NCOs.
They could be hard to lead, but the
spread of the talent available was sometimes
amazing.
The all-volunteer Army surely has
many virtues, but one is not because
the drafted Army could not meet highperformance
standards.
Maj. C. Alex Brassert, USA Ret.
Paris
4 ARMY ■ May 2016

AUSA President Sullivan to Retire,
Gen. Carter Ham Named Successor
After 18½ years as president
and CEO of the Association
of the U.S. Army, retired
Army Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan
will step down on July 1. He
will be succeeded as head of the
educational, nonprofit group by
another retired four-star officer,
Gen. Carter F. Ham.
Ham, 64, will be AUSA’s 19th
president since the association
was formed in 1950, under a decision
announced by the association’s
Council of Trustees.
The 78-year-old Sullivan, a
native of Boston, is a retired armor
officer who rose to become
the 32nd Army chief of staff before
his retirement from active
duty in 1995. A Vietnam veteran,
Sullivan guided the Army during
Retired Army Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan
Retired Army Gen. Carter F. Ham
the post-Cold War drawdown and has the rare distinction of
briefly having served as both the Army’s top uniformed member
and as acting secretary of the Army.
An ROTC graduate from Norwich University, a private
military college in Northfield, Vt., the undergraduate degree
he received in history became a valuable commodity. He applied
lessons from the past as he rose through the Army ranks;
these also helped shape his leadership at AUSA, an association
dedicated to professional development and education.
Sullivan described the mission of AUSA as being a voice for
the Army, a vital role and one of the reasons he stayed in charge
for so long. “We strongly believe in our soldiers and are steadfast
in support of the all-volunteer force,” he said. “We believe soldiers
need to grow while in the Army, and we help this growth
by providing valuable professional development opportunities.”
“We believe in fighting for soldiers and their families to receive
their rightfully earned compensation,” Sullivan said. “We
believe in working with industry to make certain our soldiers
are the best-equipped in the world.”
As Army chief of staff in 1991 and facing a 40 percent
reduction in the size of the force, Sullivan spoke of looking
for historical parallels to put the post-Cold War drawdown
into perspective. “The Army has faced similar challenges before,”
he said in an address at the Association of the U.S.
Army’s annual meeting. “After every major conflict in our
history all the way back to the Revolutionary War, pressures
on the Army to decrease size have also resulted in decreases in
effectiveness. The result has been tragic defeats when the
Army was not ready for the next war.”
said he was “more concerned about America’s Army today than
at any time since I first became a soldier in 1955.”
The problem is more than troop cuts, Sullivan said. “Our
Army has a flat budget and continues to make force structure
reductions while facing expanding global operations, a combination
that makes the goal of improving combat readiness
dangerously out of reach,” he said. “Instead, the Army faces a
death spiral in which it consumes readiness faster than it can
be restored, a situation that needs immediate attention from
our nation’s political leaders.”
Ham, AUSA’s new leader, is a veteran of Operations Desert
Storm, Able Sentry and Odyssey Dawn. He commanded the
U.S. Africa Command from March 2011 until April 2013, his
final military assignment. He previously was commanding
general of the 1st Infantry Division, was director for operations
on the Joint Staff and commander of U.S. Army Europe.
Ham was chairman of the National Commission on the Future
of the Army, which was established in December 2014
and released its findings in January.
Like Sullivan, Ham received his commission through
ROTC, attending John Carroll University in Cleveland. In a
speech last year, he talked about how the Army helps soldiers
maximize their potential.
“Excellence results from a concerted effort to develop leaders,”
Ham said. “To be sure, the stuff that young people bring
with them to the Army matters: family, school, sports, faith.
All of those things contribute to the character of a soldier. But
what the Army does so well—in my admittedly prejudiced
opinion—is maximize the potential that each of us brings
In February, watching a new postwar drawdown, Sullivan when we don the uniform.”
✭
May 2016 ■ ARMY 5

Seven Questions
Documentarian Carried Camera on Battlefield
Former Capt. Justin Roberts, who joined the Army Reserve in
2002 and then served on active duty as a chaplain from 2009 to
2015, has directed and produced a documentary, No Greater Love,
about his yearlong deployment to Kunar Province, Afghanistan,
with the 101st Airborne Division in 2010. The trailer can be
viewed at http://nglfilm.com.
1. Why did you make the documentary?
I wanted to capture these stories and not let them be forgotten.
Chaplains are not allowed to carry weapons on the
battlefield, so I carried a camera. My second
master’s degree is in media arts and
communication, so I know how to tell a
story.
I named the film after a Scripture: No
greater love has any man than this, that he
should lay down his life for his friend. No
greater love—before the deployment, this
was just a theological idea to me. My soldiers
showed me the meaning of that
Scripture in flesh and blood.
2. How did you make the documentary?
I filmed the majority of it. I had to ration
my battery power and memory card
space as best I could. We also had some
headcams that the guys carried, and some
of them sent me footage as well. Films are
a collaborative effort.
When I returned from deployment, we
did 30-plus interviews over the course of several years. I had a
year’s worth of combat footage and photos, so it was a heavy
undertaking on the post-production side. The average documentary
can take five years to complete. Sadly, we were no
different.
3. What were your days in Afghanistan like?
One of my mentors told me, “If you want to connect with
the guys, go out with every platoon on a mission at least once.”
That became my goal as a chaplain. My soldiers were airlifted
straight from the battlefield if wounded or killed, so it also
made sense for me to provide pastoral care in the worst of moments.
There is a Bible verse that says: “I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” My goal
was to be the best shepherd I could be. But I don’t really think
of my soldiers as sheep. They are more like lions. So I wanted
to be the best shepherd of lions that I could be.
4. What challenges did you face during filming?
Well, the Taliban kept shooting at us. I asked them to stop,
but they politely declined my request. All joking aside, there
Former Capt. Justin Roberts
was no way to objectively approach this subject for me. I
wasn’t a director making a film about a subject. I was a chaplain
making a film about my soldiers, my friends, my brothers.
This makes it very difficult on the cutting room floor, because
then your decisions are not just artistic but very personal and
connected to relationships you hold dear. And not every story
can be told in a 90-minute documentary.
The Hindu Kush mountains are beautiful. It’s ironic that
such a beautiful place has known nothing but war for a generation.
There was one time I was in the middle of a firefight
and just behind a soldier I was filming was
a little waterfall. Then, at that moment, a
group of butterflies flew right past him.
You don’t expect Disney moments like
that in combat.
5. How did you fund the documentary,
and when will it be released?
I funded it through private investors,
mostly family and friends. It still hasn’t
had its theatrical release yet, but we are
projecting a release in late summer to early
fall of this year. It premiered at the Boston
Film Festival in 2015, where it won Best
Documentary and the Mass Impact
Award. It has won several other film festival
awards, and we screened it at the U.S.
Capitol before members of Congress and
invited guests in February. We are currently
partnering with multiple veteran
charities in what will be called the Welcome Home Campaign.
Our goal is to use the film to help spread awareness and
direct support for veterans.
6. What advice do you have for soldiers who are struggling?
I would ask them what advice they would give to someone
they cared about going through a similar struggle. If you truly
love them, what would you want them to do, and how would
you want them to care for themselves? Crawling into a bottle
or fleeing from your troubles isn’t a step toward healing.
Counseling has negative connotations for some, but the
only thing that word really means is talking about your problems
and facing them. As human beings, that is how we
process things. So whether it be with friends, family or counselors,
you need to face your issues and work through them.
Otherwise, like an untreated wound, it will infect you.
7. What are you doing now?
I am a film director/producer, father, husband and still for
some, “Chappy.” I live in Lake Charles, La., and I’m developing
a few other projects.
—Staff Report
Courtesy Justin Roberts
6 ARMY ■ May 2016

2016 AUSA
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Washington Report
Army Budget Puts Focus on Readiness
The Army is maintaining a heavy focus on shoring up
near-term readiness in a time of flat budgets, brisk operations
tempo and the potential return of sequestration, officials told
lawmakers in the initial wave of congressional hearings on the
service’s fiscal year 2017 spending priorities.
“Readiness wins wars,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A.
Milley said at a February Senate hearing. “We have to cut
everything that does not contribute to
our core combat task. We train like we
fight, and our Army must always be
ready to fight tonight.”
The Army is seeking a base budget of
just under $123 billion in fiscal year
(FY) 2017, a slight cut from $123.3 billion
in this fiscal year. Overseas contingency
operations spending would rise to
slightly more than $25 billion, up from
$23.7 billion in this fiscal year.
The Regular Army would receive
$35.4 billion, an increase of $1.2 billion. That would support
30 brigade combat teams and the conversion of one Stryker
brigade into an infantry brigade. The Army National Guard
would receive $6.9 billion for readiness in FY 2017, up $300
million. The Army Reserve would receive $2.7 billion, about
the same as this year. Operations and maintenance funding
would rise from $43.8 billion this fiscal year to $45.2 billion
in fiscal 2017.
An important aspect of the Army’s ongoing push to prioritize
readiness is ensuring that combat units get multiple,
repetitive training opportunities, Vice Chief of Staff Gen.
Daniel B. Allyn said during a February House hearing. The
Regular Army base budget request would fund 19 combat
training center rotations, which Allyn said are critical to
maintaining the service’s ability to fight and win the nation’s
wars at a time when “we are consuming readiness as fast as we
are building it.”
“Training is the bedrock of readiness,” he said. “Realistic
training demands predictable and sustained resources in time
and money.”
Noting that training readiness is quick to erode and difficult
to regain once lost, Allyn said the Army wants to “build
decisive action proficiency through repeated, high-quality
training iterations at home station before units attend” combat
training center rotations, “while sustaining the readiness
of our remaining forces.”
The focus on readiness is fueled by what Army officials call
a rising “velocity of instability” around the world. But they acknowledge
that protecting readiness requires a tradeoff at the
expense of weapons procurement, mainly aircraft procurement.
The Army’s proposed procurement budget would total
$22.6 billion in the next fiscal year, a drop of $1.3 billion.
That is largely reflected in a proposed 35 percent cut in funding
for aviation procurement, down to a total of $3.6 billion.
“Wars are won on the ground,” Milley told members of the
House Appropriations Committee in March. “Aviation took
the biggest cut because it’s the most expensive part of the
force. … We’re given ‘X’ amount of
dollars. I want that Ferrari, but I can
only afford the Volkswagen. We’re buying
a minimally sufficient Army that
has a whole lot of risk associated with
it.”
Acting Army Secretary Patrick Murphy
acknowledged that no major new
modernization programs are on tap for
the rest of this decade and that activeduty
end strength remains on a downward
curve to 450,000 active-duty soldiers
in 2018, from the current 475,000.
The challenge facing planners is to make “ruthless decisions”
in a quest to avoid “mortgaging future readiness,” Murphy said.
“I am going through the budget like a bulldog on a bone to
make sure we have the combat capability to fight and win our
nation’s wars,” he said, with an emphasis on “large-scale,
high-end ground combat.”
Looking slightly further down the road, the Army’s carefully
crafted plans to safeguard and enhance combat readiness
could falter if Congress and the White House cannot agree
on spending priorities and the automatic budget-cutting
mechanism known as sequestration makes an unwelcome
comeback in FY 2018 after a two-year hiatus.
If that happens, experts warn that active-duty end strength
could fall by as much as 30,000 soldiers below the current target
floor of 450,000, which the National Commission on the
Future of the Army said is the absolute minimum required to
meet national security commitments. In January, the commission
flatly declared a force of 420,000 active-duty soldiers
to be “inadequate to meet the nation’s requirements at acceptable
levels of risk.”
The warnings from Army officials and the commission
about current readiness challenges are finding some sympathetic
ears on Capitol Hill.
“Put simply, our ground force is not in balance,” Sen. John
McCain, R-Ariz., Senate Armed Services Committee chairman,
said at a recent hearing. “We’re not sized with the adequate
capacity or with key capabilities to give our soldiers what
they need to win decisively. We can and must do better.”
—Chuck Vinch
8 ARMY ■ May 2016

News Call
Expert: Skills in Combat Medicine Are Fading
The Army should put more focus on
retaining combat medical trauma specialists,
“specifically … providers who
have firsthand experience treating combat
casualties,” one trauma expert says.
That should include not only surgeons
but also wound-care nurses, therapists,
prosthetic specialists and others “who
form the chain between the point of injury
and the final return to function,” said
Lt. Col. Jean-Claude D’Alleyrand, chief
of orthopaedic traumatology service at
the Walter Reed National Military Medical
Center in Bethesda, Md., during a
recent House Armed Services Committee
hearing.
A stronger focus on retention is needed
in light of the slowing pace of combat
operations in recent years and the resulting
decline of serious injuries among
U.S. service members. This good news is
eroding the combat trauma capabilities
that the military medical community has
honed since the 2003 Iraq War, D’Alleyrand
said.
“It’s been only three years since the
casualty flow slowed to a trickle and already,
many—if not most—of the providers
that I worked with during the
peak of the war are gone,” he said. “Senior
surgeons with experience in combat
injuries may no longer be in the military
by the time the next conflict arises. And
those that remain have most likely been
struggling to maintain their skills in a
peacetime environment.”
Combat-related trauma cases are
unique and can’t be replicated in peacetime,
he said. “Injuries from explosions
or machine guns are, thankfully, almost
nonexistent in our society.”
D’Alleyrand said the military has a
duty to send severely wounded troops to
the best possible trauma specialists.
“Our combat wounded deserve A-plus
trauma specialists, and we’re morally
obligated to provide them,” he said. “To
do so, we need to maximize our trauma
specialist experience and education, and
retain those who have already been to
the steep learning curve that we all face
when we first learned to care for combat
wounded.”
D’Alleyrand, who recently returned
from a deployment to East Africa, said
he has been struggling “for a number of
years now” to maintain his own combat
trauma skills.
“I do a number of things in order to
maintain what I consider being acceptable
level of proficiency,” he said. “I
spend two weekends a month moonlighting
at local trauma centers. I pay my
own way to go to trauma courses. I teach
trauma courses. I basically do everything
I can.”
He suggested that one way to help
military combat trauma specialists keep
their skills sharp would be to integrate
Walter Reed into the civilian community
medical system as a receiving facility for
civilian trauma patients.
“If you look at any job, any skill that
you can think of—a musician, a professional
athlete, etc.—you will never be
considered excellent in a field by dabbling
in that field. A weekend athlete is,
by definition, a weekend athlete.”
Army Seeks 62,000 Recruits
Despite Involuntary Separations
The Army is getting smaller and even
using involuntary separations to trim the
career force, but its recruiting mission is
both growing and becoming more difficult,
according to budget documents.
The Army recruited more than 59,000
people in fiscal year (FY) 2015, a year
when its delayed entry pool of enlistees
waiting to begin basic training was at its
lowest level in six years. For this year and
fiscal 2017, the Army plans to recruit
more than 62,000 people annually, although
officials warn that “improving
economic conditions, reduced incentives
and tightened policy restrictions are
proving to be significant challenges to
meeting mission goals.”
Still, officials are optimistic, saying
they expect to meet their goals for this
U.S. Army/Capt. Charles An
Orthopedic surgeon Maj. Chad Hampton, left,
of the 30th Medical Brigade, repairs a broken
femur during a medical readiness training
exercise in Ghana.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 9

year and next while facing “significant
challenges due to lower entry pools and a
more competitive recruiting environment.”
The Army Reserve’s accession goal is
declining. The goal of more than 31,000
soldiers in fiscal 2015 fell to 29,200 this
year and will decline further, to 28,600,
for FY 2017.
The Army National Guard’s FY 2015
recruiting goal of 56,000 dropped to
51,700 for this fiscal year. For fiscal 2017,
the goal is to recruit 52,300 people.
Army leaders acknowledged the problem
in a posture statement on the FY
2017 budget. “Unlike other services that
derive power from advanced platforms,
the collective strength of the Army is in
people,” said acting Army Secretary
Patrick J. Murphy and Chief of Staff
Gen. Mark A. Milley in their joint
statement to the Senate Appropriations
Committee. “America’s Army must recruit
resilient, fit people of character and
develop them into quality soldiers.”
They acknowledge the unusual situation
of the Army dropping in overall
troop levels and involuntarily separating
thousands of midcareer soldiers while
continuing to recruit new people. That
apparent dichotomy is part of the process
of getting the right force mix of new and
career soldiers while also accounting for
voluntary separations and retirements.
Budget documents show the Regular
Army expects to spend $74 million on
enlistment bonuses this fiscal year and
$76 million in 2017, a significant increase
over the $54 million that was spent in FY
2015.
Thomas Lamont, a former assistant
secretary of the Army for manpower and
reserve affairs who served on the National
Commission on the Future of the
Army, told the Senate Armed Services
Committee in February that only about
25 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds meet
enlistment standards. And that small
slice of the nation’s youth is “narrowing,
particularly as our economy may continue
to grow and they may have other opportunities
outside of the military,” he said.
Recreational use of marijuana is also a
factor knocking many youths out of consideration
for Army service, Lamont
said, because while it may be legal in
some states, federal law prohibits it.
These various factors are slowly erod-
SoldierSpeak
On Competing
“I’m a platoon sergeant, and I wanted to show them that being a Reservist and being
in the reserves doesn’t mean that you can’t compete at a high level,” said the
winner of the 2015 NCO of the Year competition, Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Fink.
Fink is a medic with the 409th Area Support Medical Company, 307th Medical
Brigade, 807th Medical Command, Madison, Wis.
On Obtaining U.S. Citizenship
“Like my mom used to say, you can’t start climbing a tree from the top. You have to
start from the bottom,” said Spc. Mark David Onomeyovwe, an infantryman
with the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
Onomeyovwe joined the Army, which expedited his U.S. citizenship, after leaving
his native Nigeria to pursue a master’s degree.
On Preserving History
“There’s a lot of history here that people don’t remember. We tend to forget with
units transitioning so fast and soldiers moving in and out,” said Staff Sgt. Sean
Sandlin, an infantryman with the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry
Division, Fort Stewart, Ga. He spends his spare time painstakingly restoring
historical photos, newspaper clippings, books and other memorabilia about his unit.
On Hybrid Power
“Not only will we gain a sustainable energy source, supplying nearly half of our energy
needs, but it will be at a lower price than the power generated by fossil fuels,”
Maj. Gen. John Uberti, III Corps and Fort Hood deputy commanding general,
said about the Army’s first hybrid solar and wind power project at the post.
On Single Parenting
“I didn’t want to tell anybody about it at first. I believed it was my problem; I
shouldn’t need anyone’s help,” said single father Sgt. 1st Class David Franklin, installation
equality opportunity adviser for Combined Arms Support Command,
Fort Lee, Va. Franklin advises other single parents to “seek out help and utilize
every resource available. Just don’t abuse it. Get back on your feet and then
attempt to stay standing.”
On Army Talent
“When you think about the services, the Navy is ships; the Air Force, planes; and the
Army is people. … You’re in the people business, and you’re about bringing the talent
in,” Lt. Gen. James C. McConville, U.S. Army deputy chief of staff, G-1, told
Army Recruiting Command leaders during an annual conference at Fort Knox, Ky.
On Staying Power
“We have a very good reputation for going places and staying,” said Col. Mark
Vande Hei of the NASA detachment of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense
Command/Army Forces Strategic Command. He’s scheduled to make his first space
flight in March 2017 for a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
On Doing the Right Thing
“I can’t say enough how important it is for command leadership and leaders at all levels
to do the right thing: Be accountable for your soldiers,” said Command Sgt. Maj.
Tomeka O’Neal of the U.S. Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command,
talking about the Army’s new NCO evaluation system that launched this year.
On Conservation Recognition
“It’s a testament to all the great things happening at Fort Hood Recycle. It’s nice to
be recognized for all the hard work our people do every day,” said Mike Bush, recycling
manager of Fort Hood, Texas, upon receiving Keep America Beautiful’s 2015
National Community Improvement Award for Recycling and Waste Reduction.
10 ARMY ■ May 2016

ing the Army’s ability to maintain a robust
delayed-entry pool. “Two years ago,
we were roughly at 32,000 waiting to
come in when the opportunity and the
spaces became available,” Lamont said.
“We’re roughly around 10,000 now,
which is considered very much a floor of
where we need to be.”
Lamont said one idea under consideration
is a “universal recruiter” concept
that might help integrate and coordinate
recruiting among the active, Reserve and
National Guard components. The National
Commission on the Future of the
Army recommended this policy change,
which is now under review by the Army.
“They’re all competitive,” Lamont said.
“The Army recruits for itself. The National
Guard recruits for itself. The
Army Reserve recruits for itself. That
competition for that same eligible person
is there, but we’ve got to bring them
together so we can all recruit. It’s not
going to be easy. ... But we have to make
an effort.”
Briefs
Dailey: ‘Chipping Away’ at
Benefits Hurts Soldier Morale
The Army’s senior enlisted soldier
warns that there are limits to trimming
military compensation and benefits. Sgt.
Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey, testifying
before Congress about quality-oflife
issues, said he’s concerned about the
cumulative effect of budget cuts on soldier
morale.
“Fiscal conservation is our duty as
Joint Light Tactical Vehicle
leaders in public service, but it’s hard to
explain program and compensation cuts
to a young soldier and his or her family,”
he said. “Whether actual or perceived,
these things affect how they view our decisions.”
Dailey said the topic frequently comes
up when he’s in the field seeing soldiers.
“I’ve visited dozens of installations
throughout the last year. And I’ve spoken
to thousands of our soldiers and
their families, and they ask me: ‘Why?’
We have to ask ourselves, is the value of
these cuts worth the potential impact to
our soldiers and their families?”
“Chipping away” at soldiers’ pay and
benefits at a time when deployments and
family separations are still common
“could violate the trust the soldier has in
us,” he warned. “Being good stewards of
our nation’s fiscal resources does not
SENIOR EXECUTIVE SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS
Photographs currently unavailable.
Tier 3: S. Easter from Exec. Dir., F-35, Joint Program Office, Washington, D.C., to Principal Dep. ASA (ALT),
OASA (ALT), Washington, D.C.
Tier 2: D. Bryce from Dep. Jt. PEO, Chem. and Bio. Defense, OASA (ALT), APG, Md., to Joint Program Exec. Dir.,
Chem. and Bio. Defense, OASA (ALT), APG; A. Morgan from Dir., Bus. Integration, OUSD (Comptroller), Washington,
D.C., to Dep. ASA (Financial Info. Mgmt.), OASA (FM&C), Washington, D.C.; T. Steffens from Dir.,
Accountability and Audit Readiness, OASA (FM&C), Washington, D.C., to Dir., Resource Mgmt., HQ, USACE,
Washington, D.C.; M. Williams from Dir., Supply Policy, Programs and Processes, ODCS, G-4, Washington,
D.C., to Pres., ALU, CASCOM/SCoE, TRADOC, Fort Lee, Va.; D. Wiltsie from PEO, Enterprise Info. Systems,
OASA (ALT), Fort Belvoir, Va., to Exec. Dir., Systems of Systems Engineering and Integration Directorate,
OASA (ALT), Washington, D.C.
Tier 1: R. DeFatta from Dir., Emerging Technology, SMDC, Huntsville, Ala., to Dir., Capability Development
Integration Directorate, SMDC, Huntsville.
■ ALT—Acquisition, Logistics and Technology; ALU—Army Logistics University; APG—Aberdeen Proving
Ground; ASA—Assistant Secretary of the Army; CASCOM/SCoE—U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Cmd./Sustainment
Ctr. of Excellence; CCoE—Cyber Ctr. of Excellence; FM&C—Financial Mgmt. and Comptroller; HQ—
Headquarters; OASA—Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army; ODCS—Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff;
OUSD—Office of the Under Secretary of Defense; PEO—Program Executive Officer; SMDC—U.S. Army Space and
Missile Defense Cmd.; TRADOC—U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Cmd.; USACE—U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
mean that we should do so at the expense
of our soldiers. We are asking
them to give their all. We have to keep
faith with the men and women who
make up our total Army family.”
Army Places Order for JLTVs
Oshkosh Corp.’s recent announcement
of an Army contract worth more
than $243 million for the Joint Light
Tactical Vehicle program secures 657 of
the lightweight armored vehicles for the
Army and Marines that will replace the
ubiquitous Humvee.
The Army plans to eventually acquire
about 50,000 of the vehicles, with the
Marine Corps acquiring 5,500. Oshkosh
will deliver 17,000 JLTVs along with additional
armor kits and services over a
period of eight years, with first fielding
of the vehicle slated for October.
The JLTV is billed as the centerpiece
of the Army’s tactical wheeled vehicle
modernization strategy. Like the MRAP,
which was developed to withstand roadside
bombs, the JLTV is armored. Additional
armor is available in a kit. The
JLTV is one-third smaller and one-third
lighter than the MRAP all-terrain vehicle,
is highly maneuverable and versatile,
and can be transported by helicopter. It
comes in two-seat and four-seat models,
and there is a companion trailer.
The contract caps several months of
resistance from competitor Lockheed
Martin, which protested the Government
Accountability Office’s August
production award to Oshkosh and then
filed a lawsuit. Oshkosh continued pro-
Oshkosh Corp.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 11

Gen. C.M.
Scaparrotti from
Cmdr., UNC/CFC/
USFK, ROK, to NATO
SACEUR and Cmdr.,
EUCOM, Germany.
Maj. Gen. P.C.
Combs from CG, US-
ACC and Fort Knox,
Ky., to CoS, NORTH-
COM, Peterson AFB,
Colo.
Maj. Gen. C.P.
Hughes from CoS,
USARPAC, Fort
Shafter, to CG, US-
ACC and Fort Knox.
Maj. Gen. B.J.
McKiernan from CG,
First Army Division
East, Fort Meade,
Md., to CG, FCoE and
Fort Sill, Okla.
Maj. Gen. P.A.
Ostrowski from
Dep., Acquisition
and Systems Mgmt.,
OASA (ALT), Washington,
D.C., to Dep.
CG, Spt., CSTC-A,
OFS, Afghanistan.
GENERAL OFFICER CHANGES*
Maj. Gen. J.W.
Baker from CG, 7th
Signal Cmd. (T), Fort
Gordon, Ga., to CG,
NETCOM and Dep.
CG, Second Army,
Fort Huachuca, Ariz.
Maj. Gen. E.F. Dorman
III from CG,
8th TSC, Fort
Shafter, Hawaii, to
Dir., Logistics, J-4,
CENTCOM, MacDill
AFB, Fla.
Maj. Gen. P.J.
LaCamera from
Chief, OSC-I, CENT-
COM, Iraq, to Dep.
CG, XVIII Abn. Corps,
Fort Bragg, N.C.
Maj. Gen. J.B.
Morrison Jr. from
CG, NETCOM and
Dep. CG, Second
Army, Fort Huachuca,
to CG, CyberCoE and
Fort Gordon.
Maj. Gen. S.A.
Shapiro from Asst.
DCoS, G-4, USA,
Washington, D.C., to
DCoS, Logistics and
Ops., AMC, RA, Ala.
Maj. Gen. C.S.
Ballard from Dep.
Asst. CoS, C/J-2,
UNC/CNC/USFK,
ROK, to CG, INSCOM,
Fort Belvoir, Va.
Maj. Gen. C.A.
Flynn from CG, 25th
Infantry Div.,
Schofield Barracks,
Hawaii, to Dep. CG,
USARPAC, Fort
Shafter.
Maj. Gen. T.B.
McCaffrey from
Dep. CG, USARPAC,
Fort Shafter, to CG,
First Army Div. East,
Fort Knox.
Maj. Gen. M.J.
O’Neil from Dep.
CG, CAC, TRADOC,
Fort Leavenworth,
Kan., to CoS, US-
ARPAC, Fort Shafter.
Maj. Gen. M.A.
Stammer from
Cmdr., CJTF-HOA,
OEF-HOA, Djibouti,
to Dep. CG, I Corps,
JB Lewis-McChord,
Wash.
Brigadier Generals: A.A. Aguto from Dep. CG, Ops, 7th Infantry Div. and Cmdr., TAAC-S, RSM,
Afghanistan, to CG, JMTC, USAREUR, Germany; M.B. Barrett from Dep. Cmdr., Ops., CNMF, CY-
BERCOM, Fort Meade, to Dep. CG, JFHQ-C, ARCYBER, Fort Gordon; J.D. Broadwater from Dep.
CG, 1st Armored Div., Fort Bliss, Texas, to Dir., CJ-35, RSM, NATO, OFS, Afghanistan; W. Chase
Jr. from Dir., J-6, Cyber, C-4, EUCOM, Germany, to CG, 7th Signal Cmd. (T), Fort Gordon; W.E.
Cole, Dep. PEO, Missiles and Space, RA, Ala., to PEO, Simulations, Training and Instrumentation,
Orlando, Fla.; R.B. Dix from Cmdr., DLA, Distribution, DLA, New Cumberland, Pa., to CG,
JM&L LCMC, JMC, RIA, Ill.; J.W. Drushal from Dep. Asst. CoS, C-4/J-4, UNC/CFC/USFK, ROK, to
Chief, Transportation and Cmdt., USATSCH, Fort Lee, Va.; R.E. Escribano from Vice Dir., Intel., J-
2, Jt. Staff, DIA, Washington, D.C., to Dep. Asst. CoS, C/J-2, UNC/CFC/USFK, ROK; S.E. Farmen
from CG, JM&L LCMC, JMC, RIA, to CG, USASAC, RA; R.D. Fogg from CG, 13th Sustainment
Cmd. (E), Fort Hood, Texas, to Cmdt., QMS, Fort Lee; P.A. Frost from Dep. CG, Ops., ARCYBER,
Fort Belvoir, to Dir., Cyber, ODCS, G-3/5/7, USA, Washington, D.C.; S.A. Gainey from Dep. CG,
USACC, Fort Knox, to CG, 94th AAMDC, Fort Shafter; P.A. Gallagher from Dir., J-6, CENTCOM,
MacDill AFB, to Dir., Architecture, Ops., Networks and Space, OCIO, G-6, USA, Washington, D.C.;
J.A. George from Dir., RID, ARCIC, TRADOC, JB Langley-Eustis, Va., to Dir., Force Development,
ODCS, G-8, USA, Washington, D.C.; R.A. George from Dir., Force Mgmt., ODCS, G-3/5/7, USA,
Washington, D.C., to Dep. Dir., Regional Ops. and Force Mgmt., J-35, Jt. Staff, Washington, D.C.;
D.P. Glaser from CoS, USARCENT, Shaw AFB, S.C., to CG, ACC and Dep. Cmdr., CID, Arlington,
Va.; D.T. Isaacson from Dep. CG, NETCOM, Fort Huachuca, to Dep. CoS, G-6, FORSCOM, Fort
Bragg; J.P. Johnson from Dir., Training, ODCS, G-3/5/7, USA, Washington, D.C., to CG, Army
Training Ctr. and Fort Jackson, S.C.; G.W. Johnston from Dep. CG, INSCOM, Fort Belvoir; to Dir.,
Intel., J-2, USSOCOM, MacDill AFB; M.L. Kilgo from DCoS, G-6, FORSCOM, Fort Bragg, to Dir., J-
6, CENTCOM, MacDill AFB; R.C. Kim from Dir., CJ-35, RSM, NATO, OFS, Afghanistan, to Dep.
Dir., Program Analysis and Evaluation, ODCS, G-8, USA, Washington, D.C.; R. Kirklin from
Cmdt., QMS, Fort Lee, to Asst. DCoS G-4, USA, Washington, D.C; J.S. Kolasheski from Dep. CG,
Maneuver, 1st Inf. Div., Fort Riley, Kan., to Cmdt., USAAS, MCoE, Fort Benning, Ga.; D.P. Komar
from Dir., Business Ops., OBT, OUSA, Washington, D.C., to Dir., RID, ARCIC, TRADOC, JB Langley-Eustis;
V.X. Luong from Dir., Jt. and Integration, ODCS, G-8, USA, Washington, D.C., to CoS,
USARCENT, Shaw AFB; P.E. Matlock from Dep. CG, Spt., 25th Infantry Division, Schofield Barracks,
to Dir., Training, ODCS, G-3/5/7, USA, Washington, D.C.; R.A. McIntire from Dep. Dir.,
Strategy, Plans and Policy, ODCS, G-3/5/7, USA, Washington, D.C., to Cmdt., ADA School, FCoE,
Fort Sill; B.J. Mennes from Dep. CG, Maneuver, 2nd Inf. Div., Combined, Eighth Army, ROK, to
Dir., Jt. and Integration, ODCS, G-8, USA, Washington, D.C.; D.G. Mitchell from Dep. CG, Spt.,
IMCOM, JB San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, to Dep. CG, Ops., CoS, IMCOM, JB San Antonio;
M.W. Odom from Dep. CG, Ops., 82nd Abn. Div., Fort Bragg, to Dir., Concept Development
and Learning, ARCIC, TRADOC, JB Langley-Eustis; T.A. Pugh from Cmdt., U.S. Army Signal
School, Fort Gordon, to Dir., J-6, Cyber/C-4, EUCOM, Germany; L.A. Quintas Jr. from Dir., Concept
Development and Learning, ARCIC, TRADOC, JB Langley-Eustis, to DCoS, G-3/5/7,
FORSCOM, Fort Bragg; M.M. Russell Sr. from Chief of Transportation and Cmdt., USATSCH,
Fort Lee, to Dep. Asst. CoS, C-4/J-4, UNC/CFC/USFK, ROK; K.J. Ryan from Cmdt., U.S. Army Ordnance
School, SCoE, Fort Lee, to CG, SDDC, Scott AFB, Ill.; E.L. Sanchez from CG, 94th AAMDC,
Fort Shafter, to CG, WSMR, N.M.; W.A. Shoffner Jr. from DCoS, Communications, RSM, NATO,
Afghanistan, to Dir., Talent Mgmt. Task Force, ODCS, G-1, USA, Washington, D.C.; C.L. Spillman
from Cmdt., ADA School, FCoE, Fort Sill, to CG, 32nd AAMDC, Fort Bliss; W.A. Turner
from Cmdt., FA School, FCoE, Fort Sill, to Dep. CG, 1st Inf. Div., Fort Riley; J.K. Tyler from Dir.,
Ops., CJTF, OIR, Kuwait, to Dep. CG, 1st Armored Div., Fort Bliss; D.R. Walrath from Dep. CG,
Maneuver, 1st Armored Div. and Dir., CCF-J, Operation Spartan Shield, Jordan, to Dir., Materiel,
ODCS, G-8, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C.; E.J. Wesley from Dep. Dir., Program Analysis and
Evaluation, G-8, Washington, D.C., to CG, MCoE and Fort Benning.
■ AAMDC—Air and Missile Defense Cmd.; Abn.—Airborne; ACC—U.S. Army Corrections Cmd.;
ADA—Air Defense Artillery; AFB—Air Force Base; AMC—U.S. Army Materiel Cmd.; ARCIC—Army
Capabilities Integration Ctr.; ARCYBER—U.S. Army Cyber Cmd.; CAC—U.S. Army Combined Arms
Ctr.; CCF-J—Central Cmd. Forward-Jordan; CENTCOM—U.S. Central Cmd.; CG—Commanding
General; CID—U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Cmd.; CJTF—Combined Joint Task Force;
CNMF—Cyber National Mission Force; CoS—Chief of Staff; CSTC-A—Combined Security Transition
Cmd.-Afghanistan; CyberCoE—Army Cyber Cmd. Ctr. of Excellence; CYBERCOM—U.S. Cyber
Cmd.; DCoS—Deputy Chief of Staff; DIA—Defense Intelligence Agency; DLA—Defense Logistics
Agency; E—Expeditionary; EUCOM—U.S. European Cmd.; FA—Field Artillery; FCoE—U.S. Army
Fires Ctr. of Excellence; FORSCOM—U.S. Army Forces Cmd.; HOA—Horn of Africa; IMCOM—U.S.
Army Installation Management Cmd.; INSCOM—U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Cmd.; JB—
Joint Base; JFHQ-C—Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber; JMC—Jt. Munitions Cmd.; JM&L LCMC—
Jt. Munitions and Lethality Life Cycle Management Cmd.; JMTC—Jt. Multinational Training Ctr.;
MCoE—Maneuver Ctr. of Excellence; NETCOM—Network Enterprise Technology Cmd.; NORTH-
COM—U.S. Northern Cmd.; OASA (ALT)—Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition,
Logistics and Technology); OBT—Office of Business Transformation; OCIO—Office of the
Chief Intel. Officer; ODCS—Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff; OEF—Operation Enduring Freedom;
OFS—Operation Freedom’s Sentinel; OIR—Operation Inherent Resolve; Ops.—Operations; OSC-
I—Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq; OUSA—Office of the Undersecretary of the Army; PEO—
Program Executive Officer; QMS—U.S. Army Quartermaster School; RA—Redstone Arsenal; RIA—
Rock Island Arsenal; RID—Requirements Integration Directorate; ROK—Republic of Korea;
RSM—Resolute Support Mission; SACEUR—Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; SCoE—Sustainment
Ctr. of Excellence; SDDC—Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Cmd.; Spt.—
Support; T—Theater; TAAC-S—Train Advise and Assist Cmd.-South; TRADOC—U.S. Army Training
and Doctrine Cmd.; TSC—Theater Sustainment Cmd.; UNC/CFC/USFK—United Nations
Cmd./Combined Forces Cmd./U.S. Forces Korea; USA—U.S. Army; USAAS—U.S. Army Armor
School; USACC—U.S. Army Cadet Cmd.; USARCENT—U.S. Army Central; USAREUR—U.S. Army
Europe; USARPAC—U.S. Army Pacific; USASAC—U.S. Army Security Assistance Cmd.; US-
ATSCH—U.S. Army Transportation School; USSOCOM—U.S. Special Operations Cmd.; WSMR—
White Sands Missile Range.
*Assignments to general officer slots announced by the General Officer Management Office, Department
of the Army. Some officers are listed at the grade to which they are nominated, promotable
or eligible to be frocked. The reporting dates for some officers may not yet be determined.
12 ARMY ■ May 2016

COMMAND SERGEANTS MAJOR and SERGEANTS MAJOR CHANGES*
Command Sgt.
Maj. A. Alvarezmorales
from 7th
Special Forces
Group (Abn.), Eglin
AFB, Fla., to Senior
Enlisted Leader,
SOCSOUTH, Homestead
AFB, Fla.
Sgt. Maj. A. Delgado
from AMC,
G-3/4, RA, Ala., to
Command Sgt.
Maj., 21st TSC,
USAREUR, Kaiserslautern,
Germany.
Command Sgt.
Maj. F. Dodson
from 94th
AAMDC, JB Pearl
Harbor-Hickam,
Hawaii, to ADA
School, Fort Sill,
Okla.
Sgt. Maj. T.A.
Gavia from RHC-P,
Schofield Barracks,
Hawaii, to Command
Sgt. Maj.,
RHC-C, Joint Base
San Antonio-Fort
Sam Houston.
Command Sgt.
Maj. K.J. Kraus
from U.S. Army
CBRN School, Fort
Leonard Wood,
Mo., to USACC,
Fort Knox, Ky.
Sgt. Maj. S.L.
Payton from ODCS,
G-3/5/7, Washington,
D.C., to Command
Sgt. Maj.,
USFK, Yongsan,
ROK.
Command Sgt.
Maj. J.M. Ulloth
from USAEC, Joint
Base San Antonio-
Fort Sam Houston,
to 19th ESC, Camp
Henry, Korea.
■ AAMDC—Army Air and Missile Defense Cmd.; ADA—Air Defense Artillery; AFB—Air Force Base; AMC—U.S. Army Materiel Cmd.; CBRN—Chemical, Biological, Radiological
and Nuclear; ESC—Expeditionary Sustainment Cmd.; ODCS—Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff; RA—Redstone Arsenal; RHC-C—Regional Health Cmd.-Central; RHC-P—
Regional Health Cmd.-Pacific; ROK—Republic of Korea; SOCSOUTH—Special Ops. Cmd.-South; TSC—Theater Sustainment Cmd.; USACC—U.S. Army Cadet Cmd.; USAEC—
U.S. Army Environmental Cmd.; USAREUR—U.S. Army Europe; USFK—U.S. Forces Korea.
*Command sergeants major and sergeants major positions assigned to general officer commands.
duction during that period, and Lockheed
withdrew the suit in February.
Combat Boots in Space
Soldiers, who have played an integral
part in the U.S. space program since
1979, are guaranteed a role in NASA
missions for the next two years.
Astronaut Tim Kopra, a retired Army
colonel, was launched into space in December
and remains commander of the
International Space Station until he returns
to Earth next month. In March,
Kopra was joined by retired Col. Jeff
Williams. Williams will orbit until September,
when retired Col. Shane Kimbrough
is scheduled to launch. Williams
is the first three-time long-term resident
of the International Space Station.
Active Army officers are keeping the
“space soldier” tradition alive. Col. Mark
T. Vande Hei, who began his Army career
as a combat engineer, was an assistant
professor of physics at the U.S. Military
Academy and deployed to Iraq for a
year during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He completed astronaut training in
2011. His first flight will take place in
March 2017, when he takes his seat in
the space station.
Maj. Anne C. McClain and Lt. Col.
Andrew R. Morgan are members of the
eight-member 21st NASA astronaut
class and completed training in July.
Obesity Impacts Readiness
The Army’s reason for existence is to
be ever ready to vault into high-speed
combat at a moment’s notice—which is
why leadership at all levels maintains a
relentless focus on physical fitness training.
So it’s a bit jarring to learn that
about 13 percent of soldiers in 2014 met
the clinical definition of “obese” under
the body mass index calculations taken
during PT tests.
The obesity rate across installations
ranged from 9 percent to 18 percent,
with more prevalence among men, at 13
percent, than women, at 8 percent. By
age group, the highest obesity rate was
among 35- to 44-year-old men, at more
than 24 percent.
The Army’s “Health of the Force” report,
released in November, noted that
obesity is a readiness issue not only because
it slows an individual down, but also
NASA
Retired Army Col. Tim Kopra works outside the International Space Station; inside, he takes a cognitive test.
NASA
May 2016 ■ ARMY 13

U.S. Army/David Kamm
A Dome for Your Dome
A virtual-reality dome at the Natick Soldier Research,
Development and Engineering Center,
Mass., studies how soldiers think and react by
putting them in tightly controlled but realistic
operational situations. Added wind and vibration
help measure cognitive abilities.
because heavier weight significantly raises
potential injury risk. The report noted
that obese soldiers assessed in one brigade
in Afghanistan were 40 percent more
likely to experience an injury than those
with a healthy weight, and slower runners
were 49 percent more likely to be injured.
Leadership Changes Announced
Amid Increasing Global Tensions
As tensions mount in Afghanistan,
Iraq, North Korea and the Baltic states,
top U.S. leadership grows ever more critical.
Three recent changes were recently
effected.
Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti succeeds Air
Force Gen. Philip Breedlove as NATO’s
Supreme Allied Commander Europe
and commander of the U.S. European
Command. Scaparrotti, commander of
U.N. Command/Combined Forces Command/U.S.
Forces Korea since August
2013, brings multinational experience
that is particularly valuable as the U.S.
works to reassure Europe of its support
and prepares to mobilize quickly against
threats.
The U.S. presence in Europe has increased
in importance since Russia invaded
Ukraine in 2014. U.S. Army Europe
commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges
has commented on having to do more
with fewer troops and materiel there.
Hodges said Scaparrotti “is well accustomed
to very difficult situations, huge
challenges.” President Barack Obama
plans to nominate Gen. Vincent K.
Brooks, commander of U.S. Army Pacific
since July 2013, to succeed Scaparrotti.
Leaders of U.S. Central Command
and Special Operations Command also
have changed. Gen. Joseph Votel, commander
of U.S. Special Operations Command
since August 2014, takes over U.S.
Central Command upon the retirement
of Gen. Lloyd Austin III. Lt. Gen. Raymond
A. Thomas III, commander of
Joint Special Operations Command,
succeeds Votel.
Pentagon Programs Attract
Hackers and Hobbyists
In line with goals of being more creative
as well as more cost-conscious, the
Pentagon has instituted two programs
that call on the public for expertise.
A “Hack the Pentagon” security initiative,
based on similar “bug bounty” programs
in the private sector, invites civilian
hackers and techies to attack DoD
Web pages, exposing vulnerabilities that
can then be fixed. Participation is limited
to those willing to undergo a background
check; officials are firming up eligibility
rules and requirements.
Recognizing that not all good ideas
have to be high-tech, the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency is offering
cash prizes to hobbyists and inventors
who create weapons and systems
from off-the-shelf technologies and
everyday objects—think bombs made of
toasters, and drones made of plastic.
Anything goes; inventors can reconfigure
and repurpose things “in any way
within the bounds of local, state and federal
laws and regulations,” according to a
press release.
It’s not easy to get in on the deal,
though. First, entrants must submit a
plan of a prototype that the Pentagon
deems worthy. Selected participants will
receive $40,000 and advance to the next
stage: building the machine or system
with up to $70,000 more in financing.
DoD will further analyze the top projects
in that phase, and those will move on to
demonstrations.
Around-the-World Deployments
Despite requirements to cut personnel
and make do with less, the Army continues
to deploy around the globe. Units
from New York to Texas began deploying
in April, when 400 soldiers from the
1st Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment,
10th Combat Aviation Brigade, 10th
Mountain Division, left Fort Drum,
N.Y., for Iraq and Kuwait to support
Operation Inherent Resolve.
The second phase of this military intervention
in Iraq and Syria is focused on
the recapture of the city of Mosul, Iraq,
from the Islamic State group. Another
4,000 soldiers of the 3rd Brigade Combat
Team, 1st Armored Division, were
scheduled to deploy to Kuwait.
About 700 soldiers from the 1st Armored
Division Combat Aviation Brigade
were to deploy this month from
Fort Bliss, Texas, to support Operation
Atlantic Resolve, the ongoing demonstration
of U.S. commitment to sustaining
security in NATO nations and allies
in Europe against possible Russian aggression.
Also this month, about 1,000 3rd Cavalry
Regiment soldiers deploy from Fort
Hood, Texas, to support Operation Freedom’s
Sentinel in Afghanistan.
This summer, about 500 1st Cavalry
Division Headquarters and Sustainment
Brigade soldiers will deploy from Fort
Hood to succeed the 10th Mountain
Headquarters as the National Support Element
in Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.
Approximately 450 headquarters soldiers
from the XVIII Airborne Corps will succeed
III Corps soldiers as the headquarters
unit of Inherent Resolve.
Also, about 400 soldiers with the 1st
Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment, 82nd
Combat Aviation Brigade, 82nd Airborne
Division—the Army’s last Kiowa
squadron—will leave Fort Bragg, N.C.,
for a rotational deployment to South
Korea.
—Stories by Toni Eugene and Chuck Vinch
14 ARMY ■ May 2016

Front & Center
Budget Indecision Leaves a Restless Army
By Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, U.S. Army retired
Our nation’s security and the lives of
our soldiers are being put at risk by
clinging to the notion that playing political
games with military spending is a
harmless game of chicken. Our Army is
holding on, hoping for a better day, and
our troops are restless for a solution.
Because of outdated defense spending
limits and the returning threat of sequestration,
America’s Army is engaged in
budgetary triage, attempting to increase
combat readiness while facing inadequate
budgets. Instead of having the
best-prepared, best-trained and bestequipped
fighting force in the world, our
Army is finding ways to generate improved
combat capabilities that seem to
be barely enough to meet immediate demands,
with little hope of significant
Total Force improvements in the near
future.
This “just in time readiness” works
only if demands for forces remain modest.
But an increasingly perilous world
has an expanding number of hot spots
that would require immediate and sustained
response using Army forces and
capabilities, although these assets will be
diminished by budget-driven shortfalls
in training, staffing and equipment.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and it
shouldn’t be this way if our nation’s security
truly is our highest priority.
Sequestration—automatic budget cuts
taking effect if there is no political agreement
on spending—was a flawed idea
from the beginning. First, it was a mistake
to believe the threat of cutting federal
spending would be enough to overcome
the deep political divide over our
nation’s priorities. Second, putting defense
spending at risk created a situation
where our troops are hurt and our potential
adversaries helped by political inaction.
In what amounts to a game of budgetary
chicken, our Army and the rest of
our nation’s national security elements
should never have been put on the table.
While budget caps on defense spending
were slightly relaxed for two years,
this is temporary. We return in 2018 to a
situation where we face a world of unrest
and increasing deployments with a budget
that handcuffs our military and an
Army that keeps getting smaller.
We cannot kid ourselves about the
impact of a constant downward trend on
the ability of any military formation to
perform their tasks at maximum effectiveness.
Further reductions make for
more risk. If faced with multiple crises,
an overtaxed Army could face the difficult
requirement of disengaging from
one commitment to respond to another.
Improving readiness remains difficult
because of the combination of declining
troop strength and increased operational
deployments, but troop morale also is a
major factor because having a ready
Army requires more than just weapons
and training. For that reason, we should
tread carefully when taking any steps to
reduce that quality of life and the compensation
package of our soldiers and
their families.
It may be unrealistic to hope for quick
and clear budget decisions that could free
the Army to chart the right course to reduce
national security threats. The best
we might hope for is to at least not do
anything that makes things even worse.
The Army and our nation will be best
served by slowing or even stopping further
reductions in troop levels until a
new national security assessment is done
that takes into account the increasing
risks we face, and by providing as much
money as possible so the Army can accelerate
efforts to restore readiness across
all components.
The downward manpower trend, combined
with scarce dollars for training,
make the Army less effective—a simple
equation that cannot be denied. Political
unwillingness to face up to the real and
immediate national security needs of our
nation does not diminish the threats. It
only puts us all at greater risk. ■
Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, USA Ret., is
president and CEO of the Association of
the U.S. Army, a position he has held
since 1998. Commissioned a second lieutenant
of armor in 1959, he retired from
active duty in 1995. He culminated his
36 years of service in uniform as the 32nd
chief of staff—the senior general officer in
the Army—and a member of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. He holds a bachelor’s degree
in history from Norwich University
and a master’s degree in political science
from the University of New Hampshire.
U.S. Army/Sgt. 1st Class John Gonzalez
May 2016 ■ ARMY 15

War: Decide First, Then Be Prepared
By Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, U.S. Army retired
War is a serious undertaking. It has
been one of the most fundamental
influences on human relationships
throughout history, perhaps rivaled only
by the world’s religions. For the most
part, wars of history were wars of conquest,
first as one tribe drove another
out of a favorite hunting or fishing
ground, later as kings or potentates
sought to expand their realms.
Alexander the Great almost perfected
the practice before Rome became even
more effective and longer-lasting. Subsequent
attempts to conquer and control
vast stretches of the world and great segments
of populations were launched by
Charlemagne, Genghis Khan and many
others down through the centuries to
World War II when Adolf Hitler, Josef
Stalin and the Japanese warlords pursued
their dreams of world domination.
Some enjoyed great success for long periods;
others flared only temporarily.
The aim of conquest is always to capture
territory and dominate the people
to a degree that establishes the conqueror’s
governmental control or organizes
a native government subservient to
the new masters. The U.S. engaged in
conquest as we expanded westward at
the expense of American Indians and
Hispanic settlements there. We also
turned to conquest when we established
“unconditional surrender” as the objective
sought to end World War II.
Since that time, our wars have
changed dramatically as conquest has
been replaced by limited wars in which
the objectives have been to halt certain
practices, punish some behavior, or extract
agreement by an enemy to mend
its ways. Much of the war of the past
century has been fought indecisively because
of a willingness to settle for less
than conquest.
In World War II, a clear and conclusive
objective was established when President
Franklin D. Roosevelt and British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill prescribed
the unconditional surrender ultimatum.
Thereafter, our military and industrial
leaders built the forces and the
“arsenal of democracy” needed to achieve
that end. Two years of losing battles and
In neither case did we establish a clear, attainable objective…
engaging in secondary campaigns were
necessary to prevent losing before we had
developed the capabilities needed for final
success. The result was complete
conquest and a long-term beneficial outcome
as the German and Japanese people
and governments completed a conversion
to lasting democracy.
That pattern was followed in the successful
campaigns in Grenada and
Panama, and the liberation of Kuwait;
clear objectives for which adequate
forces were organized and committed,
and success then quickly achieved. Korea
was a similar campaign but the objective
was not clear initially, and the
force requirements were not available
for many months after combat was initiated.
Final settlement was a compromise
of earlier intent. None of these was
a war of conquest; we restored existing
governments, withdrew our forces and
relinquished control.
Our campaigns in Vietnam, Iraq and
Afghanistan, in contrast, have given rise
to the charge of indecisiveness because
none followed the pattern of our successes.
In Vietnam, we never had a clear
definition of our objectives. We built
and committed our forces in piecemeal
fashion, denying the mobilization of the
total effort needed.
Then, after three years of combat, we
decided upon “Vietnamization,” coupled
with a too rapid withdrawal of our forces
and abandonment of our promised support
of the Army of South Vietnam. It
was a successful plan initially, as the
South Vietnamese army, with U.S. air
support, defeated North Vietnam’s
Easter offensive in 1972. But it was a
failure in the longer term as we negotiated
a losing agreement and failed to
support the defense when the next attack
was launched by the North.
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks,
we engaged in combat campaigns in
Afghanistan and Iraq. In neither case did
we establish a clear, attainable objective
or build the forces and the sustaining effort
that were needed for success. For the
first time in our history, we relied on a
“come as you are” force to go to war.
There was no expansion of our forces, no
determination of long-term force and
support requirements. We overcommitted
existing forces, both active and reserve;
augmented the too-small force
with civilian contracts at exorbitant costs;
and engaged again in too-soon withdrawals
that compromised our efforts.
We are now engaged in what may be
a generational war with a terrorist complex
that is gaining power and influence
and obtaining support from sources unfriendly
to us. We have yet to decide on
our own objectives, other than peace.
We also are engaged in an election campaign
that will change the leadership of
our government. So far, no candidate for
the office of president has exhibited an
understanding of both the need for objectives
that will settle this war and the
development of the forces needed to
achieve them, especially the need for allies
seeking the same resolution.
Many centuries ago, Chinese military
strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu wrote:
“Victorious warriors win first and then
go to war, while defeated warriors go to
war first and then seek to win.” It is an
observation as pertinent today as the
day he wrote it. Decide what has to be
done, build the force to do it, then commit
for as long as it takes to achieve the
desired end—the past century provides
continuing validation to the wisdom of
that quotation.
We got away with not being ready in
both World War II and Korea, each
time suffering disastrous costs. We may
not have time to risk another crisis demanding
military action for which we
are unready.
■
Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, USA Ret., formerly
served as vice chief of staff of the
U.S. Army and commander in chief of
U.S. Army Europe. He is a senior fellow
of AUSA’s Institute of Land Warfare.
16 ARMY ■ May 2016

We Can’t See the Global Forest for the Trees
By Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, U.S. Army retired
The international order that the U.S. jihadi extremists; the threat to the European
system and America’s ties to Eu-
worked hard to establish after World
War II is under a lot of pressure. During rope; and actions by China and North
the Cold War, that order was under Korea in the Pacific. Each of these
near-constant pressure too, but order threats alone is significant. The three together
may rise to create a security crisis
was kept by vigilance and ongoing decisions
and actions that kept the contending
powers in relative balance.
Some have tried to characterize the
that we simply cannot ignore.
From the end of World War II war we’re in as a matter of law enforcement.
Al-Qaida, the Islamic State and
through the Cold War period, leaders in
the U.S.—whether civilian or military, the other jihadi extremists do use criminal
activities to advance their cause, but
Democrat or Republican—overwhelmingly
agreed that containing and deterring
mattered. More recently, it appears The goals they seek to achieve are politi-
they are far more than mere criminals.
as if political and military leaders and citizens
alike either take that order for Though they differ as to how and
cal and transnational.
granted, or they don’t believe the U.S. when, these groups want to re-establish a
needs to be involved in maintaining it. caliphate along the lines of the Ottoman
There are at least three significant developments
today that demonstrate nei-
governments by eroding them from the
Empire. They aim to depose apostate
ther approach is working. Putting international
order at risk are the global Islamic form of government. In raw
inside and replacing them with a “true”
revolutionary war being waged by al- terms, they are using force to eliminate
Qaida, the Islamic State group and other current governments and national borders
and then establish their own form of
Islamic governance. Theirs is a revolutionary
war, a form of global insurgency.
They are using the global commons—
for example, the information sphere and
transportation and financial systems—to
recruit and radicalize, train and educate,
coordinate support and operations, and
arm and equip themselves. To advance
their cause, they operate in the space between
crime and war and take advantage
of the power vacuums and local grievances
in ungoverned and weakly governed
geographic areas, the loosening of
national sovereignty that has resulted
from globalization and developments in
the Information Age, and the slow-reacting
bureaucracies of developed nations.
Some may be uncomfortable calling
this a revolutionary war or a form of
global insurgency, but that’s what it is.
These political aims are inimical to the
kind of international order that our predecessors
put in place after World War
May 2016 ■ ARMY 17

II and then worked and fought to keep
in place. We cannot ignore the reality of
what the jihadi extremists are doing by
casting their actions as “merely” criminal
or terrorist. They are acting intentionally
to reverse the current international order.
If they are only partially successful, that
means the security and prosperity of the
U.S.—one of the main beneficiaries of
the current order—is at stake.
A growingly integrated Europe tied to
its American trans-Atlantic partner has
been one of the important cornerstones of
the post-World War II international order.
That cornerstone is also under immense
pressure—and has been for a while.
Following decades of defense self-erosion
that started when the Berlin Wall
came down and combined with still-recovering
economies, Europe now finds
itself facing a refugee crisis that has
physical, financial, political and moral
implications. In the face of masses of
refugees, each nation in Europe as well
as the continent as a whole is asking,
“What do we stand for? What kind of
nation or community are we?” As this
national and communal discussion takes
place, relationships fray and bills stack
up, as do the refugees banging at Europe’s
door.
After the Cold War ended, “Whither
Europe?” and “Whither NATO?” became
commonplace questions. Many
diplomats, political leaders and senior
military leaders worked very hard to keep
NATO together and help turn the alliance
from its focus on the Warsaw Pact
to a broader defensive mission. But other
forces worked in opposition.
Many European nations cut defense
capabilities to the bone—and beyond—
and the U.S. all but withdrew its forces
and its interest. At one point in 2003,
for example, the British newspaper The
Guardian reported that trans-Atlantic
differences over Iraq “turned bitterly personal
… as political leaders in France
and Germany hit back” at then-Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “dismissal
of their cherished alliance as representing
‘old Europe.’” Such actions and
statements provide evidence that America’s
concern with the trans-Atlantic ties
that so influenced post-World War II
institutional decisions had waned.
Now, in addition to the refugee crisis,
an emergent, aggressive Russia has taken
over Crimea, divided Ukraine and, according
to some reports, is beginning to
foment dissent in one or more of the
Baltic countries so as to create the “necessity”
of intervening on behalf of oppressed
Russian minorities. In response, the U.S.
is returning one armor brigade to Europe
and has begun a new series of training exercises
with our NATO partners. But
there has been no corresponding increase
in Europe’s military capacity, and no sufficiently
comprehensive diplomatic action.
Neither the American nor the European
response matches the threat.
The American diplomats and political
and military leaders who put the
post-World War II order in place understood
that the security and prosperity of
the U.S. was a function of an integrated
Europe with an engaged trans-Atlantic
partner. And the European diplomats
and political and military leaders also
knew their future security and prosperity
rested on more unity among themselves
and continued U.S. involvement. Economic
difficulties, the flood of refugees,
an aggressive Russia and waning American
interest—all combine to place the
cornerstone of the post-World War II
order at risk.
In the Pacific, an emergent China is
testing international resolve by asserting
national sovereignty over a made-in-
China island in international waters.
This action, like the border-erasing actions
of Russia and the jihadi extremists,
is another form of pressure on the
international order. Further, North Korea—ever
unstable and unpredictable—
seems to be increasingly agitated. It has
tested a nuclear weapon, launched longrange
missiles into the Sea of Japan, and
now openly talks of “pre-emptive nuclear
strikes.”
Chinese and North Korean actions—
like those of Russia and the set of jihadi
extremists—are direct threats to the international
order. These threats have not
yet risen to the level of war, but America
needs leaders who are clear-eyed realists,
not bumper-sticker ideologues. We are
living through a time of significant
risk—not unparalleled, but significant
nonetheless.
On one hand, the U.S. continues to
have important treaty obligations, remains
a nation at war whose enemies are
expanding, and is facing a complex and
dangerous set of global challenges. On
the other hand, American military capacity
is significantly diminished compared
to that of just a decade ago, and
sequestration ensures continued erosion.
Our credibility with both allies and
enemies is low, and our political decisionmaking
bodies are floundering. This
is not a time for bombast or retrenchment;
the situation is too delicate, and
the stakes are too high.
About 30 years ago, two major historical
trends combined: the end of the Cold
War and the beginning of the Information
Age. The stability of the bipolar
strategic environment of the Cold War
evaporated in the blink of the historical
eye. Nothing has yet emerged to replace it.
The result is what we see: State and
nonstate actors vying to fill the vacuum.
Some posited that a multipolar world
would emerge; others thought a unipolar
world of the U.S. as lone superpower
would reign. Neither of these projections
filled the strategic vacuum in which we
are still living.
Intentional diplomatic and military
decisions and actions built and sustained
the post-World War II order. Now, intentional
diplomatic and military decisions
are eroding that order. We have yet
to figure out what the post-Cold War
international order should be, so it’s no
surprise no new order has been built.
The longer American and European
leadership languishes, the longer the vacuum
presents opportunities to those with
interests antithetical to our own.
The Information Age has been replacing
the Industrial Age for about 50
years. The last time such a historical
trend occurred—the end of the Agricultural
Age—the world experienced more
than 100 years of change. Families, religions,
work, money, economies, governments,
militaries and war itself all
looked substantially different in the
mid-20th century, the height of the Industrial
Age, than they looked in the
mid-18th century, the start of the age. If
history is any indicator, we have another
50 to 75 years of change yet to come.
How much different will be the world of
the late 21st century?
We may be seeing the trees but not the
forest in our approaches to the pressures
on the current international order. After
18 ARMY ■ May 2016

The Army Is Falling Short in
Developing Creative Leaders
By Col. Eric E. Aslakson
The Army is mildly obsessed with
innovative leadership, as reflected
throughout strategic documents such as
the Army Operating Concept and the
Army Vision, and leadership doctrine.
For example, the Army’s leadership
manual extols the necessity of innovative
and creative leadership and its associated
approaches, solutions, ideas and
thinking more than 50 times in just
over 100 pages.
Given that level of emphasis, one
would assume a corresponding Army focus
on the process of developing innovative
leaders. Unfortunately, that assumption
would be largely wrong.
Army senior leadership has beaten the
innovation drum for more than 15 years,
coinciding with the wave of business innovation
books in the late ’90s such as
Tom Peters’ The Circle of Innovation and
Clayton Christensen’s original The Innovator’s
Dilemma. However, the Army has
failed to create and foster in doctrine and
practice a culture of innovative leadership
in our ranks.
With respect to doctrine, the Army
relies mainly on circular definitions to
describe innovation and creativity. For
example, Army Doctrine Reference
Publication 6-22 Army Leadership states
that “creative thinking involves thinking
World War II, American leaders saw the
world as a coherent whole and set in
place policies, strategies and organizations
to help move the world from where
it was to the future they envisioned.
Without a doubt, they made missteps.
But equally without doubt,
they led. In taking iterative, practical
steps, they gradually translated their vision
into reality. They saw the threats
and challenges in front of them, but
they looked beyond these “trees” to the
“forest” they wanted to create—not just
because of altruism, but also because
they saw that, in the words of National
Security Council Report 68, the best
overall policy for the U.S. was “one designed
to foster a world environment in
which the American system can survive
and flourish.”
That environment is under severe
pressure right now. It needs to be recreated
in light of today’s and tomorrow’s
realities.
■
Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, USA Ret.,
Ph.D., is a former commander of Multi-
National Security Transition Command-
Iraq and is a senior fellow of AUSA’s
Institute of Land Warfare. He has a
bachelor’s degree from Gannon University;
a master’s degree from the U.S.
Army Command and General Staff College;
and a master’s degree and Ph.D.
from Johns Hopkins University.
in innovative ways while capitalizing on
imagination, insight and novel ideas.”
Similarly, Department of the Army
Pamphlet 600-3 Commissioned Officer
Professional Development and Career
Management affirms that “the goal of
Army leader development is to … produce
agile, innovative and adaptive
leaders,” but simplistically states that an
innovative officer is one “who is creative,
inquisitive and insightful, and
who easily identifies new solutions and
catalyzes change.” Unfortunately, neither
adequately describes the actual
process of being innovative or developing
innovative Army leaders.
Absent a doctrinal model for developing
and fostering innovative leadership,
we can again look to Christensen for insight.
In his 2011 book The Innovator’s
DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive
Innovators, he provides a broad
framework for developing and fostering
innovation. First, citing several studies
on creativity and genetics, he asserts that
only one-third of creativity and innovation
stems from genetic predisposition—
meaning, nearly two-thirds of innovation
is the result of learned skills that can be
practiced and ultimately mastered.
This critical insight is not adequately
recognized in the Army. Contrary to
Army leadership doctrine, which considers
innovation a conceptual component
of the intellect attribute, or what a leader
is, it rightly belongs as a core competency—what
a leader does—that can be
developed through schooling, training,
experience and progressive leader development
programs.
Christensen describes five discovery
skills common to innovative leaders.
First is the cognitive skill of associating:
synthesizing and making diverse connections
across unrelated fields. Next is a
batch of four supporting behavior skills:
questioning, or challenging the status
quo; observing, or intense observation to
gain insight; networking, defined as actively
searching for new ideas by engaging
those with radically different viewpoints;
and experimenting, or intellectual
and experiential exploration and testing.
According to Christensen, practicing
the behavior skills of questioning, observing,
networking and experimenting
triggers the cognitive skill of associating.
Elements of this model are successfully,
albeit selectively, used in the Army right
now; an equivalent process of innovation
needs to be refined and cultivated.
The second and more important area
of concern is innovative leadership in
practice. Of particular concern is innovation
at the organizational and direct level
of leadership, where the most impactful
leader development occurs. Referring
back to Christensen’s four behavior skills,
do our senior Army leaders actively and
consistently call on their teams to critically
question and challenge the status
quo? Do they encourage their teams to
observe people and processes in different
environments to discover workarounds,
surprises and anomalies? Do they foster
networking across diverse organizations,
individuals and perspectives? Do they
cultivate an environment of experimentation
in which their teams try new experiences,
take apart processes and ideas, and
then test these new ideas outside the confines
of scheduled exercises?
As a senior officer who has served
throughout the highest levels of the military,
I have found that the answer to
each of these questions is usually “no.”
The Army largely fails to actively and
consistently foster an innovative leadership
mindset. For example, when resources
are constrained or challenged,
May 2016 ■ ARMY 19

President Barack Obama has gone
from calling the Islamic State a junior
varsity team to announcing we must degrade
it and, most recently, degrade and
destroy. Alas, for too long we have outsourced
the ground war, to witness perhaps
a 10 percent shrinkage in Islamic
State-held Syrian territory but also a loss
of weapons.
“Destroy” is the only sensible goal. Yet
our alleged “new” strategy continues to
outsource the ground war, amalgamating
inexperienced Arab troops from states
that do not trust one another, adding
more U.S. military advisers as the guides
and glue to hold them together. While
arming the Kurdish peshmerga, an effective
military force, is a good decision,
many of their fighters have not been paid
since last September—a serious offset to
the coalition we are hoping to build.
Further, cooperation between Arabs and
Kurds is always tenuous and tricky.
While bombing has indeed been effective,
it does not substitute for a lethal
ground assault. Bombing will and has
weakened the so-called caliphate finanparochialism
often prevails. When junior
leaders seek diversified assignments, they
are warned about “falling off the radar.”
We espouse the great value of coalitions
but do not integrate our staffs until
forced through headquarters-driven personnel
reductions.
Despite its unique opportunities for
joint, interagency and private sector interaction,
Washington, D.C., is avoided
as a point of pride. Advanced Civil
Schooling is used as a retention tool,
not a method of directed talent management.
Exercises are designed to support
training objectives, not to stress
systems and expose failure—particularly
for enablers. A profusion of mandatory
training requirements and additional
duty assignments limits time and flexibility,
and fosters administrative risk
aversion. Our organizational structures
are hemmed by bureaucracy and hidebound
by tradition, where reversing
modularity is a surrogate for innovative
force structure design. And unfortunately,
questioning your higher headquarters
is often considered a demonstration
of disloyalty, not discovery.
In short, our young officers and NCOs
are generally not encouraged to actively
question, observe, network and experiment
across a broad diversity of organizations
and environments—joint, interagency,
coalition and corporate—so they
are not positioned to make the critical
associations that drive innovation across
all endeavors.
Obviously, these observations are not
applicable throughout the Army. We
have real bright spots of innovation, including
leveraging commercial technological
innovation to better secure our
networks; analyzing and adapting to violent
extremist organizations through new
operational doctrine and intelligencesharing
processes; and continuing to
heavily invest in research and development
and professional military education.
But given the challenges and opportunities
of the future security environment
and projected future funding
constraints, now is the time to fully embrace
the charge of the 2015 National
Military Strategy to improve on our
greatest advantage: innovation among
our people.
Innovation cannot be a part-time endeavor.
It must be an underlying mindset
nurtured by senior leaders and permeating
day-to-day operations—train as you
fight. The Army must support its own
call for innovative leadership with innovative
doctrinal and policy changes that
actively support a real and deep culture
of innovative thinking in the Army. ■
Col. Eric E. Aslakson is a student at the
Naval War College, Newport, R.I. His
most recent assignment was with U.S.
Cyber Command, where he served as the
operational adviser to the Department of
Homeland Security. He holds a bachelor’s
degree from St. Cloud State University,
Minn.
With ISIS, ‘Destroy’ Should Be the Sole Goal
By Donald L. Losman
Haven’t we had enough? Beheadings
of adults and children, a pilot set
aflame in a cage, mass murders, ethnic
cleansing, suicide bombings, prisoner
executions so as to sell body organs, destruction
of holy sites—Americans have
become relatively desensitized to these
horrific tragedies. Outrage is momentary
until the next attack here or overseas,
then fades in a repetitively numbing
process. American leadership has refused
to say, “Enough is enough.” Alas,
more terror is most certainly coming.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been
an estimated 22,000 global attacks by
Islamic terrorists, killing more than
125,000 people, injuring triple that
number and often targeting American
tourists. In the U.S., death estimates
vary from as low as 25 to a high of 89.
Nonetheless, a newly elected president
dropped his predecessor’s global war on
terrorism battle cry and attempted to
defang killer bees with honey.
The results have been disastrous. This
year began with an American-born gunman
shooting a Philadelphia police officer
in the name of the Islamic State
group, also known as ISIS, and Islam. In
December, 16 died in San Bernardino,
Calif.; in November, in Merced, Calif.,
two college students and two staffers
were stabbed by an attacker carrying a
copy of the Islamic State flag. Last July, a
suicide attack killed five in Chattanooga,
Tenn. A 10th Minnesota man was recently
charged with conspiracy to provide
material support to the Islamic
State, as were a former N.J. resident and
a man in Aurora, Ill. And who can forget
the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing?
This lengthy list would be even more
shocking if the public knew of the many
foiled plots that never made it to the news.
So it is not just faraway cities such as
Paris, Istanbul and Moscow; or countries
including Nigeria, India and Pakistan. Director
of National Intelligence James
Clapper recently noted that homegrown
terrorism is among our biggest threats.
CIA Director John Brennan has expressed
the same theme. To paraphrase a movie
advertisement, terrorist violence may be
“coming to your neighborhood soon.”
20 ARMY ■ May 2016

cially and geographically, but most certainly
will encourage more lone-wolf
attacks as well as Islamic State-orchestrated
atrocities globally.
Importantly, the longer this group
exists, the greater will be its indoctrination
of local children and its luster to
the world’s pathological discontents.
The Islamic State has the support of 34
militant groups around the world, according
to U.N. Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon. It has a “winner” aura and attracts
adherents globally.
Indeed, in late January, the FBI arrested
Samy Mohamed Hamzeh, a Milwaukee
man plotting to attack a Masonic
temple. Also in January, refugees from
Iraq—one in California, and the other
in Texas—were jailed for planning
similar actions. Since April 2013, about
80 people have been charged under
federal law for plotting Islamic Stateinspired
attacks.
The new U.S. strategy is too slow,
leaving Americans and others in a prolonged
sitting-duck posture. The Iraqi
government recently claimed that it
would recover all its land by the end of
2016. Don’t bet on it. And even if it were
to do so, the Islamic State is still in Syria.
Again, the group is not somewhere out
there—its venomous reach is here as well.
Finally, it recently was announced
that missing radioactive material in
southern Iraq may now be in Islamic
State possession. In February, a senior
Iraqi official stated that the group could
use that material to make a dirty bomb.
Time is of the essence.
After the Paris bombings, French
President Francois Hollande visited the
White House. That was the perfect time
for Obama to forcefully suggest a
NATO-out-of-area ground assault in
addition to the bombing campaign. Unlike
many terrorist gangs, the Islamic
State has a known territory. Its fighters
are no match for NATO’s military professionals,
a much quicker effort than
unseating Saddam’s large, vaunted Iraqi
forces. Indeed, last November, a former
American ambassador to Iraq publicly
stressed that the U.S. “urgently needs to
use real military force.”
Haven’t we had enough? All terrorism
will not be ended, but the speedy crushing
of the Islamic State will make their
caliphate and its ilk look like the losers
they really are. This will greatly dampen
the enticement of new recruits, relieve
human suffering, and stem the flow of
refugees. It may also meaningfully reduce
the rise of Western Islamophobia,
a hatred generated by the unspeakable
behavior of people who claim to be the
only true Muslims.
The goal is to excise a growing cancer,
not to bring democracy. In six to 12
months, a U.N.-supervised plebiscite
would allow the subjected peoples to
live under a flag of their choice. Then
we leave, and the world is a safer place.
Of course, not all Middle East states
will like that but that is their problem,
not ours.
■
Donald L. Losman, Ph.D., is a lecturer in
international affairs at George Washington
University. Author-editor of four
books and over 70 scholarly essays, he has
been quoted in The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal, The Economist
and numerous other media outlets.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 21

Leaders: Encourage, Acknowledge, Motivate
By Alexander Amoroso
Ihave always believed that encouragement
and acknowledgment are excellent
forms of motivation in any profession.
So when my Army ROTC mentor
made it a point to acknowledge the work
I was doing, I felt proud and inspired to
not only continue to do good work, but
also to go above and beyond what was
required. Since that interaction, I have
desired nothing more than for the people
around me to experience the excitement
that comes from being acknowledged
and encouraged.
As a future Army officer who currently
holds positions of authority over
my fellow cadets, I care deeply about
my subordinates’ well-being and work
progress. Their output directly affects
me, their leader. One example from my
ROTC experience was getting a cadet
in my squad up to par in PT. His repeated
failures were making him look
bad, making the rest of the squad look
bad, and also reflecting poorly on me, his
leader. I worked with him, encouraged
him, and acknowledged the progress he
was making. He finally caught up in PT
and became successful—which meant
the entire squad also became successful.
Engaging subordinates on issues they
are passionate about, regardless of whether
you agree with them, will lead them to
understand their leader cares enough to
acknowledge their feelings. An example
of this is when I engaged a subordinate
cadet, acknowledged what he was passionate
about and what he was good at,
and encouraged him to apply these interests
and skills to Army ROTC work.
He has been going above and beyond
ever since.
When encouragement and acknowledgment
are applied throughout the entire
organization, results are achieved at
a much higher capacity than in an organization
dedicated to the advancement
of just one person or a select group of
people.
Worthy behavior deserves all of the
acknowledgment and encouragement a
leader can muster. If you are nothing
but negative with subordinates who
need improving, those subordinates
will hate their job and hate their life.
They will find no point in putting in
the extra effort for their leadership if
they consistently get reprimanded. In
contrast, if you give nothing but constant
positive feedback to select individuals,
they may become arrogant and
negatively affect the workability of the
team or unit.
Also, it is important that leaders focus
on the positive outputs of the general
By Lt. Col. C. Richard Nelson, U.S. Army retired
In the mid-1990s, the editor of a leading
newspaper in Panama commented, manders supported the development of
tor of Panama. A succession of U.S. com-
“The problem with you American military
leaders is that you assume your counerations
forces that under Noriega also
local military intelligence and special opterparts
in uniform are just like you.” had ties to drug networks and worked to
Over several decades, this editor had undermine the development of democratic
institutions in Panama.
personally known every commander in
chief and many staff officers of the U.S. That was not a unique case. Our
Southern Command. I interviewed him record of understanding our partners is
as part of an Army study on the prospects
for transferring the Panama Canal four stars or captain’s bars, we should
poor. Whether our counterparts wear
and adjacent military facilities. The success
of that transfer depended ultimately ners are likely to have different agendas.
not assume they think like us. Our part-
on the Panamanian political regime. In some cases, they are as much a part
Of course, the editor was referring to of the problem as they are a necessary
Gen. Manuel Noriega, the former dicta-
part of the solution.
team. I am not suggesting every time a
subordinate does well you give him or
her praise. I am suggesting to acknowledge
openly and equally the behaviors of
subordinates. You will be seen as a fair
leader rather than a pushover or a tyrant.
Ibelieve the most successful leaders and
soldiers in history are those who took
the time to acknowledge and encourage
their subordinates. When my mentor and
my superior cadets have acknowledged
the good work I was already doing and
encouraged me to keep it up, it pushed
me to do even better.
By practicing the same leadership
strategy, I have achieved similar results
with my subordinates. Acknowledgment
and encouragement make leaders ready
to take responsibility as teachers and
caretakers of their people, especially in
times of war.
■
Alexander Amoroso is a U.S. Army ROTC
cadet at Santa Clara University in
California. He is the recipient of a history
scholarship and an award from the
Veterans of Foreign Wars. He has been
published in the webzines Thought
Notebook and Ash & Bones, and is
an associate member in the Military
Writers Guild.
Understand What Makes Our Partners Tick
Even our closest allies have different
goals and priorities. At times, they take
steps to deliberately deceive us at the
highest levels.
For example, during the 1956 Suez
Canal Crisis, Britain, France and Israel
successfully deceived the U.S. before
their invasion of Egypt following Egyptian
President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s
nationalization of the canal. President
Dwight D. Eisenhower was aware of
the military buildup, but he had been
assured by the allies that this was just a
contingency in the event negotiations
failed. The allies timed their attack to
occur immediately before the U.S. pres-
22 ARMY ■ May 2016

idential election, assuming that the
president, faced with a fait accompli,
would not take steps to force the allies
out of Egypt.
They were wrong. Eisenhower was
incensed, felt personally betrayed, and
judged the invasion a huge mistake. He
reasoned that the allies had no longterm
plan to resolve the situation and
that their efforts to re-establish control
by force would not succeed. Eisenhower
moved quickly and quietly to threaten
the fragile British economy and secured
an immediate cease-fire and agreement
to withdraw allied forces. Given such
cases, recent revelations that we spy on
close allies should be more comforting
than alarming.
All of this is not to say that we should
assume our partners are malevolent or
manipulative. Indeed, in many cases they
may be wiser; we can learn much from
them and their practices. Besides, we
need partners generally. There is no substitute
for local knowledge, and our
chances of success often depend on reliable
partners.
Working with partners has become
standard practice. In World War II,
there were about 23 partners on the Allied
side; in Korea, approximately 27;
Vietnam, 14; Operation Desert Storm,
38; Multi-National Force-Iraq, as many
as 49; International Security Assistance
Force Afghanistan, 49; and in the anti-Islamic
State group effort, 59 in addition to
the European Union and Arab League.
These contributions varied widely, but
each provided something of value to the
collective effort even if only lending political
legitimacy.
With seven decades of experience,
NATO provides a useful model of partnership
for multinational military operations
with significant levels of standardization
and interoperability.
NATO also highlights the difficulties
and frustrations in dealing with coalitions.
Consensus decisionmaking often
results in less than optimal solutions
from the U.S. perspective.
Troop contributions almost always are
accompanied by caveats. For example,
national chains of command can dictate
different rules of engagement and other
limitations on respective force use. The
challenge is to find ways to use all partners
effectively.
From left: then-Lt. Col. Mark Purdy of the 82nd Airborne Division with British Royal Marine then-Lt.
Gen. Gordon K. Messenger and a Royal Netherlands Army soldier
In addition to different agendas and
priorities, coalitions must address the
issue of burden-sharing. The American
people question underwriting long-term
security arrangements where the costs
seem inequitable. Congress, faced with
annual defense budgets of about $600
billion consuming nearly 4.4 percent of
gross domestic product (GDP) and contributing
to deficits and a huge national
debt, increasingly expects partners to
shoulder greater shares of these burdens.
Similarly, partner governments face
similar budget problems, particularly in
difficult economic times. As a result,
many have reduced military spending.
Our NATO allies, for example, cut defense
spending following the end of the
Cold War to as little as 1.6 percent of
GDP, although they agreed on a goal of
2 percent at a recent NATO Summit.
Thus, a major ongoing challenge in all
of our partnership arrangements is to
determine who pays, how much, and in
what form.
Current security arrangements involve
a U.S. force posture that includes about
175,000 troops deployed abroad with
about 80,000 in the Pacific, 65,000 in
Europe, and 30,000 in the Middle East.
At the same time, U.S. forces overall are
being reduced, suggesting a potential
mismatch between strategy/operations
and resources. We cannot simply expect
our troops to do more with less. This situation
points to the need for building
partner capabilities. To build these capabilities
well, we need to better understand
our partners.
With its leading role influencing the
human domain, a top priority for the
Army is building partner capabilities.
This requires the entire Army team to
take long-term responsibility on both individual
and institutional levels. Everyone
has a role to play in different ways
throughout their careers. The challenge
does not begin and end with a single
overseas tour.
Building partner capacity first requires
understanding ourselves better. Too often,
various U.S. government efforts may
work at cross-purposes. In addition to
public policy statements, what is the U.S.
hoping to achieve politically, militarily,
economically and covertly in the short
and longer terms?
Furthermore, short tours predispose us
to more limited time horizons; eventually,
we will be leaving while our partners
must stay.
Few partners can afford the costs of
our style of operations, so security operations
must eventually be scaled to what
can be sustained locally.
To meet the challenge of building
partner capacity also requires a comprehensive
understanding of each partner.
One of the more important ways
to increase this understanding is lan-
U.S. Army/Sgt. Kissta DiGregorio
May 2016 ■ ARMY 23

guage training. The Defense Language
Institute Foreign Language Center has
become a national treasure that pays
countless dividends beyond immediate
benefits. The investment also points to
the need for repetitive tours in a language
area.
In addition, attending foreign military
schools has provided valuable opportunities
to develop our understanding of
partners. Such time-consuming personal
investments can pay enormous dividends
although at some risk to promotion potential.
Nevertheless, lifelong personal
relationships are often developed that are
mutually beneficial.
Similarly, NATO provides opportunities
to learn how to better understand
partners. Each member and partner
brings a different perspective and capabilities.
As a result, one can gain experience
in the many ways nations deal with
problems. For example, note the substantial
differences in Provincial Reconstruction
Teams in Afghanistan.
To better understand our diverse partners
at each level of command, we also
need to ask questions. What issues are
most important to our partners? What
are our partners’ strengths, weaknesses,
and abilities to influence events? What
do they expect from us?
We should build our understanding
of partners on three levels: personal,
institutional and international. At
each level, we should think about how
our interests coincide and how they differ.
At the personal level, we should understand
how our counterparts came to
be in their current positions. At the institutional
level, we should understand
how the roles of our partner armies differ
from our own, particularly in political
and economic ways. At the national
level, we should know the priorities of
our partners, their level of commitment
to common goals, and the prospects for
sustaining such commitments.
Armed with this knowledge of our
partners, we need to frame our daily operational
focus within a broader context:
the bigger picture. Sustaining partnerships
requires a long view often at odds
with our tendency to think short-term,
driven in part by one-year tours.
Within this broad, long-term context,
the security environment, both locally
and internationally, is constantly changing.
We should anticipate how various
developments may change relationships,
and look for indicators that events may
be moving in a different direction than
we intend. This may enable us to anticipate
key developments and adapt accordingly
rather than reacting belatedly
to changes.
Taken together, this comprehensive
understanding of our partners, placed in
the broader context, will help us better
coordinate our collective efforts in bilateral
relations and multinational coalitions.
Lacking such coordination, we are
likely to fall short of realizing the full potential
of partnerships.
■
Lt. Col. C. Richard Nelson, USA Ret.,
Ph.D., served in Vietnam and on the
Army Staff, and taught at the U.S. Army
Command and General Staff College. A
graduate of the U.S. Military Academy,
he holds a master’s degree from the University
of Michigan and a Ph.D. from
the University of Kansas.
24 ARMY ■ May 2016

War College Graduates Light the Path Ahead
By Col. Charles D. Allen, U.S. Army retired
U
.S. Army War College students have
happily entered the last block of the
core curriculum. Their sights are set on
June graduation.
Our Defense Management course is
commonly referred to as “DM.” One of
my seminar students redesignated the
acronym to represent “doom and malfeasance”
after the opening lessons of the
course as we examined the statutory authorities,
functions and organization of
DoD and the armed services.
As we set this context, students learned
that DoD is second only to the Social Security
Administration as the most heavily
resourced entity of the U.S. government.
Accordingly, DoD consumes over
half of the discretionary portion of the
annual federal budget. For fiscal year
2016, DoD was appropriated approximately
$573 billion of the nearly $4 trillion
spending budget. More eye-opening
is the daunting resource competition of
defense with the mandatory portions of
the federal budget—to say nothing of
the specter of the $19 trillion national
debt and the looming “fiscal train wreck”
that has motivated debt-reduction measures.
The “bullets and beans vs. bread
and butter” debate is now accentuated by
a “bills past due” discussion.
So our students are eager to understand
the Budget Control Act of 2011,
which has been twice modified by the Bipartisan
Budget Acts of 2013 and 2015
to avoid another round of mandated “sequestration”
cuts. They have heard senior
defense leaders issue warnings as
these leaders itemize the risks to current
missions if sequestration measures are
enacted once again.
Our students are reminded that the
military serves two masters: the president
as its commander in chief and as the
chief executive of the nation who provides
direction; and Congress, whose
members provide oversight and authorize
spending for defense activities. We
hear projections of doom in response to
the fiscal challenges and get the foreboding
sense that the polarization within
Congress is unlikely to result in compromise
and resolution.
As we study the calls for defense reform
30 years after the Goldwater-Nichols
Department of Defense Reorganization
Act of 1986, current congressional and
think-tank assessments reveal that problems
persist in building and maintaining
a force to protect our national security
interests. We have not solved the post-
World War II problems of determining,
developing and delivering capabilities in
the form of ready and relevant forces.
While “malfeasance” may be too strong,
challenges in effectively managing DoD
acquisition programs for weapons systems
and contracted services as well as
navigating the Byzantine planning, programming,
budgeting and execution
process are not for the faint of heart. Defense
leaders struggle to make a compelling
case for balancing our force structure
of people and units, our readiness to
sustain current missions, and modernization
of the force to address future requirements.
Within DoD, there is inherent competition
among the armed services for
missions, priorities and resourcing. Recent
debates about U.S. military strategic
concepts like AirSea Battle and the role
of strategic land power illustrate the interservice
rivalry for funding and relevance
among military professionals.
While operations conducted by a joint
force have been a necessity in the war on
terror, current fiscal realities threaten to
revive service parochialism as well as the
active and reserve component divide. Indeed,
our military leaders are challenged
to provide ready and relevant forces to
combatant commands while executing
the services’ Title 10 responsibilities to
develop, staff, organize, train and equip
the force of the future.
The Army War College curriculum
includes an introduction on U.S. policymaking.
It is important for our students
to acknowledge and understand the relationships
among the elements of the
“Iron Triangle” comprised of Congress,
the Pentagon bureaucracy and myriad
interest groups—each seeking to advance
the goals of their constituent members.
It is easy to fall prey to cynicism when
watching the policy “sausage” being
made by the military-industrial—and
congressional—complex that President
Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about
in his 1961 farewell address.
U.S. Army War College students learn
about the costs as well as the perils of neglecting
domestic needs and of excessive
defense spending. While we adhere to
the principle that military members must
remain nonpartisan and apolitical, it is
important that our students understand
the political tensions that are inherent in
our form of government.
Spring is a time of renewal and hope.
Upon graduation, our students join the
ranks of senior military professionals
charged with tremendous responsibilities.
In the face of perceived fiscal doom
and intimations of malfeasance, they are
preparing to provide the advice, management
and leadership to light the path
ahead.
■
Col. Charles D. Allen, USA Ret., is professor
of leadership and cultural studies in
the Department of Command, Leadership
and Management at the U.S. Army
War College. The views expressed in this
article are the author’s own and do not
necessarily reflect the official policy of the
Army, DoD or the U.S. government.
U.S. Army/Carol Kerr
May 2016 ■ ARMY 25

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They’re the Army
Six Soldiers Team on the Fly to Stop Crime
ANew Jersey teenager made two mistakes on a Saturday
morning in December. He robbed a CVS Pharmacy in
Pemberton Township, N.J., and he did it after a van filled
with six Army Reserve soldiers—five of whom were military
police—had pulled into the parking lot. After a foot and van
chase through streets, alleys and parking lots, the robber was
captured and turned over to the local police.
For the MPs, especially the two who are also civilian police
officers and knew from experience a crime was about to occur,
apprehending a criminal might not be such a big deal. But van
driver Sgt. Sean McCarthy of Martinsburg, W.Va.—who is a
signal soldier and not an MP—described the incident as one
of the best days of his life.
“This was a lot of fun,” McCarthy said. “It was a real thrill.
For me, at least, this was pretty interesting.”
People started referring to the soldiers, all members of the
372nd Military Police Company from Cumberland, Md., as
the Stupendous Six, and talking about the realism they were
bringing to reserve training.
“This was a welcome change from our usual training,” said
Sgt. Regginald Brown of Clifton, N.J., a credit union manager
in civilian life who was part of the foot chase.
The six soldiers were at the CVS because a couple of them
needed to fill prescriptions on their second-to-last day of
training at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. There were a
lot of sick people on base, so they decided to get their medications
at a retail pharmacy.
It was the two soldiers who are also civilian police officers—Sgt.
Eric Blake of the Anne Arundel County, Md.,
Police Department, and Cpl. Aaron Dabney of the District of
Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department—who spotted
the teenager while in the store. They returned to the van to
call 911, telling the other four soldiers that it looked like a
robbery was about to happen, McCarthy recalled. “We were
ready to act. We were getting out of the van and saying, ‘Let’s
go,’” he said.
Brown said he was uncertain whether to believe them. “We
joke around a lot so I wasn’t sure,” he said, “but they said they
saw the suspect with a knife in his hand and watched as he
pulled a bandana over his face.”
Brown said he knew they were serious when Blake, who was
on the phone to police, and Dabney took off running as the
teenager ran out of the store.
Brown said the teenager might have had complete tunnel
vision to rob a store after looking two soldiers right in the eye.
Crime stoppers of the 372nd Military Police Company, front from left: Sgt.
Jonah Rock and Cpl. Aaron Dabney; back: Sgts. Sean McCarthy, Regginald
Brown and Eric Blake. Sgt. Kori Leopoldo is not pictured.
“He didn’t see them, or maybe he thought they were leaving
and wouldn’t be any problem,” Brown said.
McCarthy said the teenager just didn’t have respect for soldiers
in uniform. “He should have known we were not going
to stand by and let him get away,” McCarthy said. “I told
them to go get him, and I’ll follow in the van.”
Three soldiers—Blake, Dabney and Brown—pursued the
suspect on foot. McCarthy drove the van behind them, accompanied
by Sgt. Jonah Rock of Hagerstown, Md., and Sgt.
Kori Leopoldo of Baldwin Park, Calif. Rock and Leopoldo
jumped out to stand watch over the knife and bag of money
dropped by the suspect as the short chase continued.
“The chase lasted only about three blocks,” Brown said,
passing through a busy intersection where all traffic stopped to
watch the soldiers—and their white van—chasing the suspect.
Apparently sensing the soldiers were gaining ground and he
wasn’t going to get away, the teenager stopped running,
Brown said. “He laid down in the parking lot on his stomach,
and put his arms behind his back. I think he just gave up.”
Local police arrived shortly after the teenager surrendered to
take him into custody.
“I never had a day like this before in the Army,” McCarthy
said. “It was a great display of teamwork. There wasn’t a lot of
talking about who was going to do what, and never any doubt
we were going to catch him. We were just worried about public
safety and about doing the right thing.”
—Staff Report
U.S. Army Reserve/Sgt. 1st Class Jacob Boyer
May 2016 ■ ARMY 27

U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Michael Behlin
28 ARMY ■ May 2016

Europe
Needs
Top-Notch
NCOs
By Command Sgt. Maj. Jessie C. Harris Jr.
NCOs, the backbone of the Army for more than 240
years, are having to step up the game in the multinational,
multifaceted environment of modern Europe.
In addition to their core responsibilities of
training, preparing and leading soldiers, NCOs need to be innovative
thinkers, creative leaders, skilled diplomats, and jugglers
able to balance competing requirements.
There is no doubt they can do it. From the cold winters of
Valley Forge, Pa., to the beaches of Normandy, France; and
from the fields of Vietnam to the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan,
NCOs have trained and prepared soldiers to fight, win
and survive in some of the most difficult and unique combat
situations imaginable.
The role of the NCO has continually evolved. Today,
nowhere is that evolution more clearly seen than in their support
of America’s NATO allies in Europe who face new, complex
threats ranging from a resurgent Russia to asymmetrical
conflicts to terrorism.
For NCOs accustomed to fulfilling a variety of roles, European
assignments now routinely include responsibilities for
validating equipment interoperability and strengthening readiness
among the militaries of alliance members as well as developing
junior leaders. These endeavors require our NCOs in
U.S. Army Europe to hone a fair degree of diplomatic skills
along the way.
Against that backdrop, today’s NCOs in Europe must be
more agile, innovative, balanced and creative than ever, particularly
at a time when external pressure to reduce the size of the
Army remains quite heavy. As Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commanding
general of U.S. Army Europe (Seventh Army), has
Sgt. Robert Snyder of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment directs Pfc. Bing Stewart
during an exercise in Lithuania.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 29

Sgt. Michael Gutierrez, left, with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, talks with
Italian soldiers during training at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center,
Hohenfels, Germany.
said, we must make 30,000 soldiers continue to look and feel
like 300,000 soldiers. NCOs in Europe, who are advising senior
defense officials and briefing U.S. and foreign dignitaries
while simultaneously fulfilling their primary role as trainers,
play a vital role in that mission.
Interoperability Is Key
Interoperability is basically defined as systems, units or
forces providing services to and accepting services from other
systems, units or forces, and using those exchanged services to
enable effective operations. In the European theater, these
types of exchanges happen on a daily basis under the watchful
eyes of our Army NCOs.
For example, our logisticians conduct exchanges of palletized
load system flatracks with Lithuanian and British
forces. Also, ongoing compatibility tests of heavy equipment
transporters continue to be a highlight of armored vehicle
movements in the multinational environment.
Last fall’s Exercise Trident Juncture, the largest NATO and
partner exercise in a decade, showed the multinational flavor
of operations. The U.S. Army’s 515th Transportation Company,
U.S. Army Europe’s only bulk fuel company, used
NATO adapters on bulk petroleum equipment to smooth the
way for the successful transfer of petroleum products from
U.S. to Polish, French, German, Spanish and British forces.
The enhanced interoperability among those six nations helped
reduce the NATO “tooth-to-tail” ratio in that exercise. There
is simply no reason for a multinational force to utilize its own
fuel systems when one or two nations can take the lead on fuel
operations for all participating nations.
U.S. Army NCOs in Europe understand unified land operations,
ensuring forces are integrated and utilized in the most
efficient and effective manner possible. Training with our
NATO allies and partner nations develops trust as well as unified
action. Joint Publication 1-02 Training Units and Developing
Leaders defines the latter as “the synchronization, coordination
and/or integration of the activities of governmental and
nongovernmental entities with military operations to achieve
unity of effort.”
The contributions of Army NCOs during exercises Combined
Resolve, Swift Response and Saber Strike, for example,
are invaluable to the linkage of progressive and sequential
training needed to continue building interoperability.
Training Mission Enhancement
Fostering interoperability in training is another key mission
for Army NCOs in Europe. At the squad level, they oversee
multinational training on a daily basis. Training interoperability
prepares our forces to operate seamlessly as we move, communicate,
support and sustain U.S., NATO and partner-nation
forces no matter where they deploy in the operating
environment.
U.S. Army/Sgt. Seth Plagenza
This principle is clearly reflected in Operation Atlantic Resolve,
the ongoing series of multinational training activities
taking place in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Poland,
Hungary and Bulgaria. In this and other training initiatives,
our Army NCOs are gaining valuable knowledge while integrating
training concepts, developing experience, identifying
training gaps and leveraging technology to build and
strengthen the alliance.
During Exercise Trident Juncture, movement-control specialists
from the 16th Sustainment Brigade served at multiple
nodes. Army staff sergeants not only oversaw seaport debarkation/embarkation
operations and airfield departure/arrival
control group operations, but also trained U.S. forces and
movement specialists from Denmark, Germany, Poland and
Great Britain, all supporting the onward movement of cargo
and equipment to the multinational force.
NCOs also serve as observer/controller trainers in exercises
conducted at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center and
Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany, where interoperability
training takes place at the brigade level and below using
live, virtual, constructive and gaming initiatives.
This training at the small-unit level enhances the interoperability
and sustainment of our maneuver and fires elements,
which increases lethality. As U.S., NATO and partner-nation
forces continue to train together, increase readiness, and
30 ARMY ■ May 2016

Developing Junior Leaders
The development of junior leaders by NCOs in U.S. Army
Europe is the cornerstone of our success in the multinational
environment. Junior leaders conduct convoy operations over
several thousand miles while crossing multiple nations’ borders
to deliver equipment and supplies to our U.S., NATO and
partner-nation forces. Sergeants and staff sergeants advise
members of the National Movement Control Centers and
embassies in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, serving
not only as NCOs but as ambassadors for the United States.
This level of decentralized leadership is necessary as senior
leaders empower junior leaders at the lower echelons by providing
capacity, authority and capability, and developing the
responsibility to think autonomously. Junior leaders are entrusted
to make ethical and moral decisions within the guidelines
of the commander’s intent.
Junior leaders in U.S. Army Europe have the cognitive and
interpersonal skills necessary to exercise the tenets of Mission
Command in a complex tactical environment while making
decisions with operational and strategic implications. Leader
development continues at home stations as units and individuals
compete at the U.S. Army Europe and Department of the
Army levels, developing and building cohesive teams.
Competition includes the Army Award for Maintenance Excellence,
Supply Excellence Awards, Deployment Excellence
Award and the Philip A. Connelly Awards, and membership
in the prestigious Sergeant Morales Club. The result: Soldiers
depart U.S. Army Europe with skills and traits unmatched
anywhere else in the Army.
In addition, NCOs train soldiers to inform the local national
populace through radio, television, print media and
public interaction. Training in basic language skills and culture
awareness enables soldiers to successfully communicate
and engage the local population.
In turn, soldiers conduct interviews in all forums to inform
the host nation at every level about how their organizations affect
the local economy and the things they are doing with
host-nation forces, and to provide reassurance that we are here
to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
For example, during Operation Dragoon Ride last year, logisticians
from the 16th Sustainment Brigade supported the
3rd Squadron, 2nd Calvary Regiment, during a 1,500-kilometer
road march from Estonia to Vilseck, Germany. Soldiers
conducted refueling operations, maintenance and recovery activities.
The event allowed soldiers and leaders an opportunity
to interact with the local public as the convoy traversed six different
nations, building trust and improving governmental and
nongovernmental support for the alliance.
strengthen the alliance for unified land operations, they build
the flexibility, lethality, adaptability and depth required for
successful operations in any environment.
Looking to the Future
While the future operating environment is complex and uncertain,
the Army’s NCOs must prepare soldiers as much as
possible for the uncertainty of where and when the next conflict
may arise.
The NCOs of U.S. Army Europe are preparing soldiers to
operate in a multinational environment through joint, multinational
and combined arms training—rehearsing battle drills,
standard operating procedures and mission orders to facilitate
effective and efficient operations in the multinational environment.
As NATO faces the challenges of tomorrow, leaders from
all 28 NATO members and our partner nations must capitalize
on every opportunity to train together and strengthen our
relationships through personnel and equipment interoperability,
development of junior leaders, building readiness, and
training together in complex multinational environments. In
that light, training soldiers is the most important duty of U.S.
Army Europe NCOs. Fulfilling that duty is how we will ensure
success in any future conflicts in Europe. ✭
Command Sgt. Maj. Jessie C. Harris Jr. is the senior enlisted adviser
for U.S. Army Europe’s 39th Transportation Battalion
(Movement Control), based in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He has
deployed in support of numerous operations, including Desert
Shield and Desert Storm, Joint Guard, Iraqi Freedom and Enduring
Freedom. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Grantham
University and a master’s from Excelsior College. He is also a
graduate of all NCO Education System courses and the U.S.
Army Sergeants Major Academy.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 31

Brainstorm
Soliciting Variety of Ideas
Yields Better Results
By Maj. Wayne Heard, U.S. Army retired
Brainstorming is a valuable technique when an organization
must develop the plan for a large-scale or complex
project or an enduring program for which there
are ambiguous mission parameters, multiple constituencies,
and multiple references—or worse, none—to guide
the enterprise. Brainstorming helps staff generate ideas, solutions
and action steps to inform the venture. It also supports
the building of strong, engaged teams.
Typical issues that might lend themselves to an organization’s
use of brainstorming are doctrine, organization, training,
materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities
assessments; after-action reviews; and examining ways to
free up “white space” on the unit calendar.
When now-retired Col. Darrell Katz was given the unenviable
task of closing Flint Kaserne in Bad Toelz, Germany, by
July 1991 and relocating the organizations based there, he employed
brainstorming to generate a robust set of action steps to
ensure the move was conducted with the least disruption.
Returning control of a U.S. base to the German government,
and moving the unit and families, were formidable tasks. Armed
with very little in the way of guidance other than an order to
close Flint and a date for turnover, Katz’s team set to work.
His unique employment of inclusive brainstorming, and his
insights into managing complex and long-range tasks, resulted
in a plan that included input from many constituencies; enjoyed
“buy-in” by the organizations, members and families involved;
and incorporated management activities that ensured
all activities were completed on time.
Review the Rules
If you are considering a brainstorming session, review the
brainstorming rules of the road. Don’t assume that everyone
understands the process and will abide by the rules. Without a
brief discussion of the fundamentals and routine reminders of
the guidelines, the brainstorming process will be disrupted because
ideas will be judged and distracting discussions will begin.
The use of a skilled facilitator can help in the execution.
One question that should be asked early in the process is,
“Who else should be part of this planning team?” Also, a key to
an effective session is to ask the right question in the right way.
The brain will go to work on any question asked. For example,
when asked “Why can’t we…?” the brain will churn and provide
a long list of reasons why you can’t. If the question is
framed, “How can we…?” the brain will work just as hard on
providing a comprehensive list of activities to solve that puzzle.
A business consultant once told me that in most situations,
U.S. Air Force/Senior Airman Daniel Owen
all the information that an organization needs to solve a problem
already resides in the employees. His task was giving voice
to the employees who had the knowledge and skills, and teasing
the information out for the managers.
When an executive begins to express opinions too early in
the process or to overrule recommendations, the brainstorming
climate is dampened and the buy-in is less than optimal.
In brainstorming, the process is more important than the plan.
Buy-in is a critical element in executing a plan. “People support
a world they helped create,” according to Dale Carnegie, the
famous public speaker on self-improvement. The more involved
an individual is in crafting a solution or developing a plan, the
more energetically he or she will support the final plan of action.
Create Support
Including seasoned members of lower-echelon organizations
along with junior officers and enlisted personnel helps an
organization create linkages of support throughout the unit.
This increases the conviction that all voices were heard and
concerns addressed.
32 ARMY ■ May 2016

Soldiers from the 1st Armored Division
discuss patrol tactics in Iraq in 2009.
In the case of Flint Kaserne, the plan required seemingly
endless tasks. A short list included selecting the future home
from a handful of available bases that would be vacated in the
overall reduction of U.S. forces in Germany; identifying requirements
and coordinating adequate family housing, headquarters,
team rooms and barracks; arranging for training to
continue until the last possible day before movement and recommencing
immediately after moving; and identifying and
coordinating social and official events in support of the movement
to the next home.
As the project owner, Katz used what in a civilian context
might be called focus groups. He included several constituencies
from outside the normal planning staff. After the staff had
developed the basic plan and timeline of activities using the
time-honored reverse-planning process, these other constituencies
were invited to offer their insights. They often
identified activities that were not normally at the top of the
mind of the project manager.
These voices included personnel from facilities and organizations
such as dining facility, motor pool and arms room; commissary
and exchange; and medical and dental clinics. Spouses
provided their concerns; the unique requirements of specialneeds
children were also addressed. Key civilian leaders from
Bad Toelz were consulted. Flint Kaserne leaders met with the
counterparts of those civilian friends at the new communities.
As the search for a new home narrowed, engineers and security
personnel were consulted to determine the suitability of
each potential home for the 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces
Group. Would the upper floors support the safes? Could elevators
be constructed to facilitate movement of heavy team gear?
Well-facilitated planning sessions should result in a comprehensive
list of activities for the key staff to arrange and sequence
in the most logical order. The input of these constituents informed
a robust plan that was designed to execute all the activities
while maintaining a rigorous training schedule, with the
least disruption in the unit’s operations tempo and home life.
Manage Plans
Most projects don’t fail because of poor planning; they fail
due to faulty execution. As one sage remarked, “Even a hole
has to be managed.” Brainstorming to determine the action
steps for managing the execution will pay dividends. It’s difficult
to grumble about the management of an activity when you
have a hand in creating the management plan.
There is a tendency to develop what project management
guru Eliyahu M. Goldratt described in the book Critical Chain
as the student syndrome: building in safety factors and then
waiting until the last minute to work on a project. Leaders
need to be aware of these safety nets and squeeze this excess
from the plan during the development stage.
Using a simple plan of activities and milestones (POAM),
an executive can easily determine the status of a project and
make corrections early. A well-constructed POAM for executive-level
management of a project includes four elements: a
no-later-than deadline; the task, simply stated; who is responsible
for the task; and comments or notes such as what must
happen before this activity can be acted upon.
To maximize the effect, the senior leader should be the project
owner. Ownership by the rater encourages attention and
support of all departments. Katz, by word and deed, left no
doubt who was in charge.
Katz’s participation and continued interest ensured that
energy levels remained high throughout the execution phase.
There is magic in the executive showing personal interest. Attending
the meetings sends a clear signal that this project is
important to the leader.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 33

U.S. Army/1st Lt. Jeffrey Rivard
Above: Vermont Army National Guard soldiers
plan a field training exercise at Fort Drum, N.Y.;
right: 1st Infantry Division soldiers brainstorm
at Fort Knox, Ky.
However, the executive will probably
not be involved in the day-to-day execution
of the activities; the project manager
ensures activities remain on schedule between
meetings with the executive. The
project manager also conducts supplemental
meetings to discuss and coordinate
activities.
Develop After-Action Report
As the project comes to a close, take
the opportunity to review and analyze what went right as well as
what could have gone better. This is a great time to develop an
after-action report.
Brainstorming—especially inclusive brainstorming—is a
powerful tool to analyze a task; inform a robust plan; assist the
executive in managing the execution; and prepare for the next
Maj. Wayne Heard, USA Ret., spent 20 years in the Army with
assignments in airborne, light infantry and special forces. After
retiring in 1992, he co-authored the Army’s field manual on personnel
recovery and has served with personnel recovery staffs at
Army headquarters, U.S. Central Command and the Drug Enforcement
Administration. The opinions in this article are strictly
the author’s own.
complex, long-range or enduring project. Regularly managing
activities ensures all supporting tasks are completed on time.
Personal attention by the senior leader—the project owner—
prevents the loss of enthusiasm during a long-range project.
Including a broad and deep array of individuals and subordinate
units throughout the organization promotes greater understanding
of the activities; increases buy-in; and reinforces
cohesive teams.
However, gathering all the information from the multiple
brainstorming sessions with heterogeneous constituencies will
result in nothing if you don’t roll up your sleeves and go to
work on the plan. As noted management consultant Peter
Drucker once said, “Plans are only good intentions unless they
immediately degenerate into hard work.”
✭
U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Michael Lemmons
34 ARMY ■ May 2016

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Big Picture, Not Details,
Key When Eyeing Future
By Gen. David G. Perkins
36 ARMY ■ May 2016

Baseball great Yogi Berra supposedly once said, “It’s
tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
For a long time, I agreed with Berra, but I
have come to realize that the exact opposite is true.
Making predictions is absurdly simple. In fact, I am bombarded
by dozens of them each day. The real problem comes
in two parts: Most predictions are wrong, and it is fiendishly
difficult to separate good predictions from bad until they
manifest themselves.
As commanding general of the U.S. Army Training and
Doctrine Command (TRADOC), I am asked not only to
predict the future, but also to get it right. When Robert
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment
(Airborne) during Operation Destined Strike in Afghanistan
Gates was secretary of defense, he once testified as to the difficulty
of this task, stating that the military has a perfect
record of getting future predictions wrong.
It would take an unusually high degree of hubris for me to
declare that I have seen the future and it is so. For example, who
at the end of the Cold War could have foreseen our current operating
environment? In fact, who at any period of modern history
accurately predicted the world even a decade ahead?
By accepting that making predictions about today’s rapidly
changing and complex world is, if not exactly a fool’s errand, at
least fraught with difficulties, we at TRADOC hope to, as a
minimum, avoid getting it too wrong. With apologies to
British historian Michael Howard, we sincerely
hope to get it far less wrong than our foes.
U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Brandon Aird
Still, designing and preparing the future force
does require some aim points, so making predictions
remains an unavoidable part of my job.
With the full knowledge that the future is unknowable,
TRADOC is approaching the task
in a disciplined and broad manner, designed to
hedge against unrecoverable errors.
But even as TRADOC peers into the deep
future, we cannot ignore the demands of today’s
crises. Immediate events, which are taking place
at an accelerating tempo of human interaction
and in an information environment more demanding
than any in history, will always consume
most of our Army leadership’s time and
effort. Still, this daily barrage of challenges and
crises does not lessen TRADOC’s responsibility
to prepare our Army for a future that will
undoubtedly be radically different from our current
environment.
Thinking in Two Parts
As we go forward, TRADOC is thinking
about the future in two parts: Describe in broad
outlines a likely future and, given these outlines,
consider which capabilities are necessary to ensure
our Army can overmatch any potential foe.
By limiting ourselves to broad outlines, we can be
reasonably certain that we get the big picture
right even if details remain blurry.
For example, today’s demographic breakdowns
remain an excellent basis for predicting
the future population 25 years hence. Moreover,
we can be reasonably certain that digital technology
will continue to advance, and probably at
an accelerating rate. By applying these broad
strokes, we at TRADOC can “describe a future”
without predicting it.
Broad strokes rarely give much clarity about
the future, however. Knowing there will be digital
technology advances tells us nothing about
the direction or outcomes of those advances. Despite
our best efforts, then, we must accept that
we are building an Army to deal with a largely
unknown future environment.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 37

At the Joint Readiness Training Center,
Fort Polk, La., soldiers prepare to board
a Black Hawk during a field exercise.
U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Matthew Smith
This, of course, is the great difference between preparing
the Army during the Cold War and doing so today. Before
the fall of the Berlin Wall, we lived in a “complicated” world,
but one with a single defining enemy for which we could
plan against. In today’s “complex” world, there is no single
defined future foe with relatively known capabilities, doctrines
and intent. This is not a minor point, as designing and
building the future Army rests upon what kind of world we
expect to see.
But in a complex world that is unknown, unpredictable
and constantly changing, our view of the future is unreliable.
In fact, even when we get it right, our preparations will, in
and of themselves, hugely alter the final outcome. Think
how preparing for a “computer apocalypse” as the clock
ticked toward the year 2000 assured such a global disaster
was averted.
During the Cold War, we optimized the Army to confront
the Soviets on the plains of Central Europe. Similarly, by
2005 we confronted a well-understood problem in Afghanistan
and Iraq, and began optimizing much of the Army to
meet that current threat. The problem, however, is that by definition,
optimizing for one threat suboptimizes the force for
every other threat and challenge.
To meet the challenges of a “complex” world, we must build
capabilities that enable the joint force to rapidly adapt and win
when faced with unforeseen challenges. TRADOC has made a
start at this by implementing the 2015 Army Operating
Concept, which describes the end state in which the Army can
Gen. David G. Perkins is commanding general of the U.S. Army
Training and Doctrine Command. He is responsible for selecting
and recruiting every U.S. Army soldier, training and educating
Army professionals, and designing the future U.S. Army.
A 1980 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, he holds master’s
degrees from the U.S. Naval War College and the University
of Michigan.
execute joint combined arms operations to win in a complex
world. As such, it describes the capabilities the Army needs to
fulfill its strategic role in the joint force.
These, in turn, will guide future force development, which
aims at building an Army capable of compelling enemy behavior
at the tactical, operational and strategic levels. A welcome
byproduct of such a force will be its ability to deter enemies
and assure friends.
From Concepts to Capabilities
Stating an end state is the easy part; it is getting there that
has always been difficult. How does one convert concepts
into capabilities? Historically, we have left it to the Army’s
branch proponents to develop new capabilities centered upon
warfighting functions. This stovepipe approach has often led
to the acquisition of specific capabilities that were not integrated
with other Army systems, making it near-impossible
to build synergies across the entire force.
To facilitate broader capability development cutting across
all warfighting functions, TRADOC is implementing a threepart
approach: publication of the Army Warfighting Challenges,
integration of the Army Warfighting Assessment as
part of the Force 2025 Maneuvers, and a Force 2025 Governance
Framework that gives senior Army leadership input
early and often in the process.
As a result of these initiatives, Army leaders will possess the
knowledge necessary to make informed decisions about resources,
priorities and the specific weapons, programs and doctrine that
provide the capabilities needed to win in a complex world.
We have also learned from our recent conflicts that wars are
not won solely by winning tactical and operational victories on
the ground. Winning requires the synchronization and delivery
of all aspects of national power. If the Army wants to
achieve established national objectives in the future, we must
accept that battlefield success is only one part of winning the
larger contest of wills.
38 ARMY ■ May 2016

Gen. David G. Perkins,
commander of the
U.S. Army Training
and Doctrine Command,
discusses the
Army of the future
at the U.S. Army
Sergeants Major
Academy, Fort Bliss,
Texas.
U.S. Army/David Crozier
Shift Strategy Focus
The U.S. Army will remain second to none on the battlefield.
But our strategic focus must shift to encompass more
than delivering decisive battlefield firepower. Building an
Army capable of synchronizing the delivery of all elements of
power is markedly different than building a force solely focused
on the tactical and operational levels of war. Although
this new emphasis represents a different approach from what
we have done in the past, it is one we must not shy away
from if we are to win the conflicts of tomorrow.
Checkers and chess are played on the same style board, but
the games are far from similar. For a long time, the Army
has designed forces based on a “checkers-based” world outlook.
Today, we’re switching to a “chess-based” appreciation
of the world.
In this world, there are many paths to victory; few events allow
for linear extrapolation. Victory no longer comes from
wiping out an opponent’s pieces, but by removing all his options.
By employing pieces with varying capabilities in a concerted
manner, one creates multiple dilemmas that over time,
erode a challenger’s will to continue.
So now that we know what game we are playing and assumedly
what is required to win it, we can employ these insights
to lay out a path toward building the Army our country
will need in 2025 and beyond. It is our duty, and our country
depends on us to get it right.
✭
May 2016 ■ ARMY 39

A Dose of Complexity Added to
U.S. Army/Sgt. Richard W. Jones Jr.
By Maj. William H. Shoemate,
Lt. Col. Rafael Rodriguez and
Karen Burke
As futurists continue to analyze and generate predictions for 2030 and beyond,
Army leadership is striving to accelerate the rate of innovation
through enhanced war gaming and experimentation. Recently published
DoD documents—The Defense Innovation Initiative and Wargaming and
Innovation—are instructing leaders to focus efforts on pursuing new, creative means
of supporting and strengthening the U.S. military’s dominance into the future.
Experimenting with new operational concepts and employing resources for greater
effects are two ways of sustaining superiority. The Army accomplishes these within
events such as the Army Warfighter Assessment, Unified Quest, and the Network
Integration Evaluation exercise. One noticeable effect is the transition from counterinsurgency
to decisive action rotations at the combat training centers. This transition
has enhanced experimentation and war gaming to prepare for future warfare.
Decisive Action Training Environment
The Army’s combat training centers are superior in their ability to replicate the
complexities of today’s tempestuous global environment. The training environment
stresses the brigade combat team’s ability to employ limited resources to seize, retain
or exploit the initiative to sustain a position of relative advantage.
The decisive action training environment includes near-peer competitor, hybrid
warfare, asymmetric warfare, guerilla warfare and cyberwarfare. The training centers
develop dynamic scenarios for analyzing the means by which brigade combat teams
40 ARMY ■ May 2016

Training for Hybrid Threats
At the National Training Center, Fort Irwin,
Calif., a soldier with the 2nd Brigade Combat
Team, 1st Cavalry Division, provides security.
pursue a persistent overmatch against agile and adaptive adversaries.
The agile and adaptive adversaries drive critical and
creative thinking to develop agile and adaptive leaders.
Today’s decisive action training environment continues to
inform Army Warfighting Challenges No. 8, enhance realistic
training; No. 9, improve soldier, leader and team performance;
and No. 10, develop agile and adaptive leaders. The combat
training centers consistently provide the framework and resources
to steadily enhance the rate of innovation needed to
fight and win against an unconstrained near-peer competitor.
Future Operating Environment
The Army Operating Concept: Win in A Complex World
highlights the future operating environment as “unknowable
and constantly changing.” It further iterates that “the Army
cannot predict who the Army will fight, where it will fight,
and with what coalition it will fight.” The future operational
environment is terrain-agnostic. It will require an adaptive and
agile land force capable of synchronizing and employing limited
resources across multiple domains.
Within today’s decisive action training environment, brigade
combat teams are consistently challenged by integrating limited
resources across multiple domains; for example, introducing
an unconstrained cyber environment or the challenges of
manned/unmanned teaming. The training centers routinely
adapt their operational framework for challenging the future
force, Force 2025 and Beyond (Force 2025B).
It is understood that Force 2025B is approximately 85 to
90 percent complete in achieving its projected target milestone
with respect to the pre-established guidelines for its resource
allocation. Given this, the current opportunities for
rapid innovation to identify disruptive technologies and operational
concepts can occur within the adaptive framework of
the decisive action training environment at the combat training
centers.
Enhance Realistic Training
Combat training centers provide a consistent platform of
10 decisive action rotations per year. Routinely, the operating
force has incrementally incorporated innovative experimentation
within its operational framework to replicate and challenge
brigade combat teams against their future operating en-
May 2016 ■ ARMY 41

U.S. Army/Pfc. Kyle Edwards
Soldiers of the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, participate in decisive action training at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, Calif.
vironment. This framework has allowed for steady integration
of future complexities.
Future integration could include using an autonomous car
with a micro unmanned aerial system to deploy training chemical
munitions. Or existing prototype systems, such as hoverbikes,
could be incorporated to disrupt the brigade combat
teams’ ability to execute wide-area security. Through integrating
these futuristic challenges into training, the Army can continue
to visualize, understand and direct actions to overcome threats.
Maj. William H. Shoemate, Lt. Col. Rafael Rodriguez and Karen
Burke are fellows in the Chief of Staff of the Army Strategic Studies
Group. Shoemate, an engineer, holds a bachelor’s degree from the
University of the Ozarks and a master’s degree from the U.S. Army
Command and General Staff College. Rodriguez, a Special Forces
officer, has a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Military Academy and
a master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School. Burke, a
program analyst with the U.S. Army Research, Development and
Engineering Command, earned a bachelor’s degree from Framingham
State College, and master’s degrees from Western New England
College and the Naval Postgraduate School.
Expeditionary Capabilities Incorporated
The Combat Training Center Program is incorporating resources
to develop these challenges. These resources are the expeditionary
capabilities of the U.S. Army Research Development
and Engineering Command, the Rapid Equipping Force
and the Asymmetric Warfare Group. Their capabilities, combined
with an unconstrained operating force, have enabled development
of the necessary framework for war game concepts
and technologies. This framework will continue to enhance the
rate of innovation into the future global environment.
As mentioned, the uniqueness lies within the consistent
framework provided by the environment at the combat training
centers. This environment promotes thought and experimentation
as well as opportunities for soldiers to enhance adaptability
and problem-solving skills through exposure to potential adversaries’
technologies.
Moreover, combat training centers allow for observation
and analysis to drive research development. In an era of limited
funding, they provide the means to synchronize existing
resources within a proven framework to train and develop current
force readiness and preparedness of the future force. The
Combat Training Center Program is an excellent platform for
determining the best investments for the remaining 10 to 15
percent of the science and technology budget focused on developing
overmatch capabilities.
The training centers provide the gold standard to test, enhance
and prepare a ready force for the challenges of the future.
In order to think, learn and analyze the future environment,
the Army can look to the combat training centers as the
means for incorporating future challenges. They provide a
foundation to think, learn and analyze Force 2025 against an
unconstrained near-peer competitor armed with disruptive
technologies and operational concepts to test the Army’s ability
to deter, shape and win.
✭
42 ARMY ■ May 2016

Cover Story
Five Years After
The ‘Pacific Pivot’
Regional Unrest Continues but Europe Woes Are Siphoning Attention
By Rick Maze, Editor-in-Chief
44 ARMY ■ May 2016

Just as the U.S. was turning its attention back to Europe
to face the threat posed by Russian aggression, Kim
Jong Un—North Korea’s 33-year-old supreme leader—
served up three reminders of why the Asia-Pacific Theater
is just as complex and dangerous as the rest of the world.
■ In January, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
carried out an underground test of what it claimed was a hydrogen
bomb. Although some outsiders believe it was more likely a
conventional or maybe boosted-fission bomb, this was still the
fourth nuclear test conducted by North Korea since 2006.
■ In February, North Korea launched a long-range rocket
that put an object into orbit. This was not the first such
launch, but it is a sign of continued technological advances.
■ In March, South Korea fired three salvos of missiles into
the sea, including one ballistic missile that flew 800 kilometers.
As the U.S. and South Korea consider how to respond, they
must keep China in mind, a nation in the middle of a longterm
military modernization that the Defense Intelligence
Agency reports is improving its capabilities to fight a short, intense
regional conflict and a nation that opposes introduction
of the U.S. Army’s Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense
system (THAAD) onto the Korean Peninsula.
Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, commander of U.N.
Command, Combined Forces Command and U.S. Forces Korea,
told Congress he favors deploying THAAD as a complement
to the additional advanced Patriot missile batteries sent
to South Korea after the missile and rocket tests. The
THAAD decision remains something for diplomats to handle.
The U.S. Army never really took its eye completely off the
Indo-Asia-Pacific Theater, not even at the height of combat
in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, America has had 117 years
of continuous presence in the Pacific, and 63 campaign
Library of Congress/Uehara Konen
May 2016 ■ ARMY 45

streamers to show the level of commitment. But as the direct
combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan were winding down in
2011, DoD and the White House announced what became
known as the Pacific Pivot, a rebalancing intended to shift
some resources and attention to a region that was a lesser priority
for a decade. That move also made China nervous.
Five years later, the Asia-Pacific region has some stronger
partnerships among the U.S. and other nations, partly the result
of several large troop deployments and multinational exercises,
and also because of improvements in military capabilities.
In a twist of fate that shows why the Army’s operating doctrine
is called Winning in a Complex World, the security environment
is not demonstrably safer today in the Indo-Asia-
Pacific Theater, but the 2017 defense budget contains another
shift in attention, this time to Europe. A Feb. 2 White House
policy statement says the European Reassurance Initiative is a
response to Russian aggression against Ukraine, providing
$3.4 billion in fiscal year 2017, a fourfold increase over 2016.
“This is a challenging and important time for NATO, a cornerstone
of trans-Atlantic security that is increasingly called
upon to be a cornerstone of global security,” the document says.
Asia Is Major Concern
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley told a Senate
committee in late February that Asia remains a major concern.
“In Asia and the Pacific, there are complex systemic challenges,
with a rising China that is increasingly assertive militarily and a
very provocative North Korea, both situations creating the conditions
for potential conflict,” Milley said.
“While we cannot forecast precisely when and where the
next contingency will arise, it is my professional military view
that if any contingency happens, it will likely require a very
significant commitment of U.S. Army ground forces.”
About a third of the deployable, operational Army is committed
to the Pacific, Milley said—about 80,000 soldiers in
total. Having a force so large “does a lot of things that I know
are worthwhile for deterring any potential outbreak of hostilities
and then shaping the environment, reassuring our allies,”
he said.
Overall, U.S. Army Pacific estimates it has 106,000 assigned
or aligned Regular Army, Army National Guard and
Army Reserve soldiers, making it the largest service component
command in the world.
In a report last year about gaps in U.S. security, the nonpartisan
RAND Corp. said, “The problem with the U.S. defense
posture in Asia is not primarily one of inadequate numbers of
American forces deployed forward.” The U.S. has about
325,000 service members deployed in the region when Army,
Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force units are counted.
“The problem is that U.S. forces in the region—particularly
land-based air forces, fixed infrastructure ashore and naval surface
vessels—are increasingly vulnerable to attack by Chinese
precision long-range strike assets, principally cruise and ballistic
missiles,” says the report, titled “America’s Security Deficit.”
“In a crisis, this risks creating a situation in which U.S. efforts
to strengthen deterrence and stabilize the situation by
sending more forces to the region could actually have the opposite
effect, provoking China’s leaders into attacking lucrative
targets pre-emptively as a means of gaining the initiative
in a conflict,” the report says.
The RAND report recommends a step already being undertaken
to improve air defense, cyberdefense and anti-satellite
weapons. Scaparrotti, the U.S. Forces Korea commander, lists
developing a robust, tiered ballistic missile defense as one of
his critical near-term objectives.
Another RAND Corp. paper, “Limiting Regret: Building
U.S. and Republic of
Korea soldiers guard
the border at the Demilitarized
Zone between
North and
South Korea.
46 ARMY ■ May 2016

Paratroopers from
the 501st Infantry
Regiment descend
during an exercise
with Japan and Australia
at Joint Base
Elmendorf-Richardson,
Alaska.
U.S. Air Force/Alejandro Pena
the Army We Will Need,” says that North Korea poses not
just a nuclear threat but also a large conventional threat to the
region. Of its 13,000 artillery pieces and multiple rocket
launchers, about 8,000 are in protected underground facilities
within 100 miles of South Korea.
This isn’t a new threat, but it’s one becoming “potentially
more dangerous” because the range of North Korea’s weapons is
expanding, more South Koreans live near
the border, and North Korea appears to
be close to building a small nuclear
weapon that could be fired from an 8-
inch artillery shell.
RAND estimates that North Korean
use of weapons of mass destruction could
result in a U.S. deployment of 188,000
soldiers, similar to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
This is a sizable commitment considering
the U.S. Army already has more
than 100,000 soldiers assigned to the Pacific.
If the North Korean government
were to collapse, finding and securing
weapons of mass destruction would be a
top U.S. concern that could “require an
additional 150,000 U.S. troops over and
above the forces already stationed and
presumed to be available in the Asia-Pacific
region,” the report says.
U.S. Air Force/Senior Master Sgt. Adrian Cadiz
Stability, Security at Risk
Navy Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the
U.S. Pacific Command commander,
warned Congress “a number of challenges”
have emerged in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region over the
past year “that place stability and security at risk,” and he listed
North Korea’s aggression, China’s destabilization of the South
China Sea, and terrorist attacks in Bangladesh and Indonesia.
Russia also is strengthening its Pacific-based military capabilities.
“There is more work to do, and we must not lose the momentum,”
Harris said. “I need weapons systems of increased lethality
that go faster, go further, and are more survivable.”
In a joint posture statement on the 2017 budget, acting
Secretary of the Army Patrick Murphy and Milley said they
recognize a look to Europe cannot mean ignoring Asia.
“The Army’s assigned and rotational forces in the Republic
of Korea, Japan, and throughout the Asia-Pacific region today
provide a deterrent and contingency response capability that
strengthens defense relationships and builds increased capacity
with our allies,” Murphy and Milley said. “We must sustain
and improve that capability to execute our national strategy to
rebalance to the Asia-Pacific.”
“In short, the conditions for potential conflict in Asia, as in
Europe, are of considerable concern and our Army has an important
role to prevent conflict and if conflict occurs, then to
win as part of the Joint Force.”
Milley has warned that the U.S. needs to tread carefully because
provocation by North Korea could spread and involve
China. “The Chinese are not an enemy,” Milley told the Association
of the U.S. Army in January. While China is investing
in military modernization, it has shown the same kind of
aggressive activity as Russia has against Ukraine.
“The Chinese, to date, are not invading foreign countries,
crossing borders and doing things that would be internationally
categorized with the word ‘aggression,’” he said. “That can
change, but it has not changed yet.”
✭
May 2016 ■ ARMY 47

Worthwhile Hiccups
In Tactical Networks
By Claire Heininger and Nancy Jones-Bonbrest
Until recently, the Army’s way of fielding tactical
communications gear went something like this:
Here’s your radio. Here’s your computer. Here’s
your satellite dish. Each piece of equipment was delivered
with care but separately, with its own operator training
package and dedicated field support
As technology has progressed, the Army’s view of the tactical
network has changed—and so has its fielding approach. Treating
the network as an integrated weapon system, the Army
adopted a new construct known as capability set (CS) fielding.
This method takes elements of communications equipment for
the command post, vehicles and dismounted soldiers, and fields
them as a package for brigade combat teams.
This unified operational capability allows commanders to
take the digital network with them in their tactical vehicles,
untying them from their command posts to enable expeditionary
operations. It links dismounted squads and teams with
the information they need to stay synchronized and safe.
Willard M. Burleson III, director of the Mission Command
Center of Excellence. “We’ve got tremendous capability now,
[but] a lot of this is a work in progress.”
While acknowledging the complexities, those at the center
of the fielding initiative—logisticians and trainers, brigade
commanders and program managers—say the technology’s
operational effect is worth the growing pains.
“In the end, it was completely worth the effort. I believe it to
be a game changer on how we think about not being tethered to
a land-based network,” said Col. Jerry Turner, commander of
the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division,
which completed a National Training Center rotation with
Unanticipated Consequences
Soldiers who have used the new gear in theater credit it with
keeping them connected over vast distances and challenging
terrain. Others who have trained on it say they wouldn’t want
to deploy without it. But as with the debut of any major
weapon system, the introduction of capability sets has also
brought unanticipated consequences for training, leader development
and personnel. Several of the systems have required
makeovers so they’re easier for soldiers to use. And the institutional
Army—from schoolhouses to combat training centers—
is still devising the long-term processes needed to support the
integrated network approach.
A detailed look at the capability set effort reveals a work not
yet complete, with the Army continuously refining the process
based on unit feedback. These improvements support the
strategic goal of an expeditionary force as articulated in the
Army Network Campaign Plan, the Mission Command Network
Vision and Narrative and other guiding documents, and
reiterated by senior leaders across the force.
“In line with the Army Operating Concept, when our soldiers
deploy downrange to any austere environment, they need
to be able to communicate, and push and pull information to
and from home station,” said Lt. Gen. Robert S. Ferrell,
Army chief information officer, G-6.
“How do we enable uninterrupted Mission Command
through a network to allow our commanders, teams and units
to fight and win in a complex battlefield?” asked Brig. Gen.
48 ARMY ■ May 2016

U.S. Army/Amy Walker
Above: During a rotation at the Joint Readiness Training
Center, Fort Polk, La., 82nd Airborne Division soldiers use a
Humvee, left, integrated with the Army’s mobile network
backbone; left: Signal soldiers train at the Cyber Center of
Excellence, Fort Gordon, Ga.
Georgia Army National Guard/Staff Sgt. Tracy J. Smith
Capability Set 15 equipment in January. “You’re
going to go through some hiccups whenever you
field a complex piece of equipment, and you’re certainly
going to go through some hiccups when you
begin to think about how you use that complex
piece of equipment. So you have to have a leadership
emphasis from the entire organization that
says, ‘We’re going to make this work.’”
Total Fielding Effort
The Army began fielding capability sets in 2012
as an outcome of the Network Integration Evaluation
exercises. The technology was quickly
needed in theater: The 4th and 3rd Brigade Combat
Teams of the 10th Mountain Division (Light
Infantry) were slated for deployment to Afghanistan
in 2013. The two units, known as 4/10 and
May 2016 ■ ARMY 49

Strykers networked with Capability
Set 15 equipment enable Mission
Command on the move for 2nd
Infantry Division soldiers during a
rotation at the National Training
Center, Fort Irwin, Calif.
U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. John Briggs
3/10, became first on the Army priority list to receive the initial
set, known as CS 13.
Fielding the new mobile network in time for the units’
training and deployment required a total Army effort. But it
paid off in the summer of 2013, when 4/10 began leveraging
the capability set to carry out its advise-and-assist mission.
With CS 13, battalion-level advising teams could exchange
voice and data, access Mission Command systems, and maintain
situational awareness while on patrols. Leaders could digitally
track and communicate with soldiers who had spread out
to remote locations—even inside distant buildings—as they
advised their Afghan partners.
“The enhanced situational awareness given to us by this suite
of technology has allowed us to maintain a ‘digital guardian angel’
as we conduct our advising duties and missions,” Maj. Gary
Pickens said when he was the 4/10 S-6. “The various platforms
of CS 13 give us a digital reach like we’ve never had before.”
The package was by no means perfect. System startup, shutdown
and configuration processes were complicated and timeconsuming.
But CS 13 nonetheless crossed a significant
threshold: showing the operational significance of an integrated
network, unencumbered by terrain and connecting all
levels of the brigade combat team.
The experiences of 4/10, 3/10 and the 2nd and 3rd Brigade
Combat Teams of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault),
all of which deployed to Afghanistan with CS 13, informed
the continued evolution of the capability set fielding process.
As of March, the Army had fielded capability sets to 18
brigade combat teams—both infantry and Stryker units—and
four division headquarters, with plans to begin fielding National
Guard units in fiscal year 2018.
Challenges Emerge
As capability sets proliferate across the Army, a pattern
has emerged. Units are intrigued by the technology’s power
but stymied by its complexity. Several of the key systems
require weeks, if not months, of training for soldiers to reach
confidence and proficiency. This feedback drove a design
overhaul for Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-
T) Increment 2, the mobile network backbone, to simplify
operations for general-purpose users.
Then there is the challenge of vehicles. Force-protection requirements
of the Afghan Theater originally dictated that the
new systems be installed on MRAP and Family of Medium
Tactical Vehicle platforms. However, units such as the 101st
Airborne and 82nd Airborne said they wanted this capability
on lighter tactical vehicles that are C-130 air-transportable
and CH-47 sling-loadable.
Acting on this feedback, the Army is reducing size, weight
and power requirements of WIN-T Increment 2 nodes so
they can be integrated onto Humvees. Network and platform
program managers are also synchronizing efforts to optimize
configurations for Strykers and Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicles
to better tailor the network to the expeditionary fight.
By extending the network to the lower echelons, the Army
also inadvertently outpaced its personnel structure. At battalion
and below, soldiers with a signal MOS are hard to come
by. And when a unit does manage to get the right people
50 ARMY ■ May 2016

through the training curriculum, those soldiers often rotate
out to other assignments soon afterward—taking their hardwon
expertise with them.
“With the time and effort it takes to really learn these systems,
it’s been difficult to match the fielding cycle with the
right soldier skill sets to achieve continuity,” said Robert
Cross, a senior logistician for the Army’s System of Systems
Engineering and Integration directorate, which manages the
capability set fielding process for the acquisition community.
Old-School Training at First
Another persistent challenge is the training structure. Even
though capability set fielding delivers new communications
systems as a collective package, the accompanying training at
first remained old-school—narrowly focused on individual
system functionality. There was no culminating training that
addressed the network as an integrated weapon system.
“One of the consistent after-action review comments out of
CS 13 and early CS 14 units was that we needed training to
tie the whole system together,” Cross said.
Based on that feedback, the Program Executive Office
Command, Control and Communications-Tactical (PEO
C3T), which fields the Army tactical network, designed a capability
set integration training program working with the
Communications-Electronics Command and Cyber Center of
Excellence. This training includes an advanced user integration
course to make a small slice of a brigade combat team into
“super user” experts, as well as a basic user integration course
offered to a broader set of personnel. It also focuses on crew
drills that cross-train a collective crew on capability set systems,
both mounted and dismounted, in various mission scenarios.
Lastly, the training brings everything together into a
brigade-wide communications exercise so leaders and soldiers
can fight with their new capabilities.
The final major challenge is timing. Some brigades begin
the fielding process with more than a year to learn and integrate
the equipment before their scheduled combat training
center rotations and, in some cases, deployments. Others have
just a few months—and are left to cram in the network along
with numerous competing priorities.
“We recognize there’s a tremendous amount of capability
there,” said Col. Brett Sylvia, commander of the 2nd Brigade
Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. “But the compressed
schedule that we had, and the rush to get to [the Joint Readiness
Training Center] really made this a point of friction”
within the team, he said. Sylvia’s unit had eight weeks of
training compressed into three weeks last summer.
“This is a capability that we want to have, and it’s a capability
that we need to have,” he said. “But in a time-constrained
environment, it has been difficult to adapt the operational
concepts” of the infantry brigade combat team in Decisive Action
“to these complex systems.”
Getting It Right
Faced with the consistent challenges of complexity, personnel,
training and timing, the fielding community and units re-
Members of the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, calibrate a howitzer at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, Calif.
U.S. Army/Pfc. Kyle Edwards
May 2016 ■ ARMY 51

Soldiers with the
101st Airborne
Division (Air
Assault) train with
integrated network
capability at
Fort Campbell, Ky.
U.S. Army
ceiving capability sets have continued to tweak the process so
the Army gets the most out of the new equipment. One step is
to start earlier, by moving synchronization conferences—kickoff
events with units and program staff—to nine months prior
to fielding, rather than six months. The conferences also now
include G-1 representatives from the division level. If a
brigade will be missing key signal MOSs in the fielding window,
the division can work to realign personnel in time for
them to attend super-user classes.
“If the community works collaboratively to identify those
people far enough in advance, we’re going to get a vast return
on the investment,” Cross said, “because once they complete
the training, they can pass on the knowledge to their fellow
soldiers, even in future assignments.”
Addressing the personnel challenge also includes ensuring
all soldiers are receiving the right technical exposure, and developing
maintenance soldiers with the knowledge for expedited
repair of equipment. As new systems such as WIN-T
Increment 2 progress into broader production and fielding,
they are becoming part of the formal curriculum for signal soldiers
at the Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Ga.
Other digital master gunner courses, which exist at installations
across the U.S. and target NCOs, system integrators and
others, are evolving to train soldiers to operate and maintain
their network as an integrated weapon system. The Army also
has established a central Web portal where soldiers can go
back and reference capability set training material at any time
to keep their skills fresh.
Soldiers as Troubleshooters
These efforts are linked to another of the Army’s expeditionary
network goals: reducing reliance on contractor field
support by preparing soldiers to serve as the first line of defense
for troubleshooting. As part of this initiative, a new
home station training pilot was established in January with the
101st Airborne Division, and it will be extended to the 82nd
Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions. By analyzing trouble
Claire Heininger and Nancy Jones-Bonbrest are staff writers for
Data Systems Analysts Inc., an information technology consulting
firm for defense and federal government clients.
ticket data conducted during combat training center rotations
of capability set fielded units, the Army can tailor training to
increase unit self-sufficiency through resources found at home
station including mission training centers, signal universities
and unit training events.
“Units were relying on contractor support even to address
simple issues,” said Rich Licata, field support optimization
chief for PEO C3T, which is leading the pilot in partnership
with the Communications-Electronics Command and schoolhouses.
“By making an investment in soldier training, we’re
helping them keep pace with the ongoing deployment of CS
systems and at the same time evolving how we do field support
by letting the soldiers take the lead.”
The Army is also improving support for capability sets at
the combat training centers by equipping observer-controllers
with updated software and hardware, enabling them to better
understand and monitor how soldiers use the network as a
weapon system in tactical operations. They can then apply this
knowledge to mentoring unit leadership on how to use capability
sets as a force multiplier.
Since units will continue to enter combat training center rotations
with varying comfort levels with the equipment and
different timelines to get their communications established,
the Army has also created a comprehensive validation exercise
manual—based on processes from the Network Integration
Evaluation—that is essentially a “how-to” guide for standing
up a brigade capability set network.
For all of the institutional changes, there are two decidedly
nontechnical factors that will continue to influence the Army’s
integrated network success: leadership and time. Unit leaders
who make capability set fielding a top priority, and who also
receive the time and support from the fielding community enabling
them to execute it amid numerous competing priorities,
are rewarded with not just a functioning kit, but a combat
multiplier. As the Army gets better at aligning equipment,
fielding, manning and training to support CS units, Turner
believes the power of the network as a weapons system could
signify a culture shift.
“I wasn’t constrained in how I maneuvered my forces over
greater spaces, greater distances,” he said. “We could all communicate
wherever we were on the battlefield.” ✭
52 ARMY ■ May 2016

E-Communication and
By Capt. Gary M. Klein and Capt. Micah J. Klein
Army leaders use electronic communication on a daily
basis. Whether it is by computer, BlackBerry or
smartphone, it is part of how they share information,
engage in professional development, disseminate
tasks within their organizations, and much more.
Only a decade ago, leaders would have performed most of
these activities face-to-face, or verbally on the telephone. With
electronic communication much more prevalent in the information
age, leaders should be aware of its benefits and drawbacks
to understand its effects on relationships and organizations.
The benefits of electronic communication are numerous, of
course. It helps us overcome the restrictions of time, distance
and resources, and brings together people who otherwise might
not be able to communicate or share ideas. But these benefits
have side effects as well, including altering human interactions,
inadvertently creating subgroups based on individuals’ access to
digital systems, and increasing potential for micromanagement.
Overcoming Space, Time
The most obvious benefit of electronic communication is
the ability to overcome distances of space and time. Consider
the following situation: As the leader of your organization,
you want to share something with your subordinates. But you
are not able to get them together at the same place and time.
They might be training elsewhere, for example, or busy with
other tasks. You can use email or other electronic media to
overcome this challenge.
Electronic communication enables people to share their
message with a group. Individuals within that group can access
that message when it’s convenient for them. However,
communicating electronically removes other aspects of communication.
When you speak face to face, along with the verbal
message—the words themselves—you also convey paraverbal
messages, which are the tone, pitch and pace of those
words; and nonverbal messages, which are conveyed through
facial expressions and body language. Telephonic communication
preserves the paraverbal messages but loses the nonverbal
messages that convey our emotions.
Subject to Misinterpretation
Most electronic communication preserves only the verbal
message. This is part of the reason why emails can be easily
misinterpreted. So as leaders use this medium more often,
they are increasingly losing their ability to convey emotions.
What kind of an effect does that have on a leader’s ability to
build trust within his or her organization?
Another benefit of electronic communication is the ability to
reach a large audience, especially through social media. A great
example of this is Col. Ross Coffman, a brigade commander in
the 1st Armored Division who started developing leader professional
development videos on YouTube in 2014. In his first
video, he stated that his intended audience was his company
commanders. But by using YouTube, leaders from across the
Army have been able to watch and learn from his messages.
Leaders have started developing podcasts as well, such as
“Leadership on Tap,” to share their messages. YouTube and
podcasts are platforms popular with younger generations, and
they are accessed easily from around the world. Some people
listen to podcasts during their commute to and from work, enabling
access and an audience at a time not previously available.
Social media and electronic communication enable leaders to
flatten communication within their organization and distribute
their messages to an audience larger than ever before.
Flattening an organization is good in many situations, including
professional development, but there are potentially
negative side effects. Flattening communication within a hierarchical
organization such as the Army can remove leaders or
staffs from the decisionmaking cycle—or possibly the conversation
altogether. Maybe those removed would not normally
weigh in on the decision, but what if it is a decision that normally
benefits from staff synchronization? What if one member
of the group does not currently have the ability to access
digital systems? Many junior NCOs do not have regular access
to computers in company areas. Are they being left out of conversations
or decisionmaking?
These hypothetical situations are entirely possible, so leaders
and communicators must consider their situation to ensure the
54 ARMY ■ May 2016

the Art of Leadership
appropriateness of the medium. Although leaders use electronic
communication more, they must understand that it is not always
the best method, even though it might be the easiest.
Saving Money, Spending Time
Beyond the convenience and access that electronic communication
provides, it can also save an organization money. With
the advent of email and other digital information systems, individuals
and organizations can save money previously spent
mailing letters and other documents. With the right software,
you can even digitally sign documents, eliminating even more
paper consumption. Finally, since all of these electronic documents
can be stored digitally, organizations are no longer required
to physically store as much information, saving building
space and furniture costs.
The financial benefits are certainly welcomed in a tight fiscal
environment, but what are the hidden costs? Does the
ease of inexpensive communication create an artificial requirement
to increase the amount of communication and
share more information? Most leaders have visited an office
to request a service, only to be turned away and told to fill out
some paperwork, which must be submitted electronically. Or
what about the time you were asked to “write that up in an
email” as a record or reminder? Electronic communication
might be more financially effective, but it may increase the
demands on our time.
More damaging is the potential for micromanagement and
the subsequent erosion of trust. Since it is easier to gather and
share information, leaders often request and require more information
from their subordinates. This enables higher-level
leaders to make decisions that would previously have been
made by more junior leaders.
Done repeatedly or unnecessarily, this becomes disempowering
and damages trust in an organization. We are not suggesting
an end to sharing information, only that leaders be
cognizant of this negative potential. Electronic communication
enables us to have more information at our disposal, but
we need to be careful what we do with that information so as
to not damage trust in our organizations.
The benefits and drawbacks highlighted here only scratch
the surface of what could be explored in more detail. However,
this analysis should help us reflect on our use of electronic
communication and its effects on our organizations. The potential
impact leaders should be most mindful of is how our
communication style affects trust.
Communicating is part of the art of leadership. Like all
matters of art, the advantages, disadvantages and risks must be
weighed against each other. Leaders must consider the
strengths and weaknesses of their communication methods to
achieve their desired ends.
✭
Capt. Gary M. Klein is a small-group leader at the Maneuver Captains
Career Course at Fort Benning, Ga. He has served combat
tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Djibouti. Capt. Micah J. Klein (no
relation) is an instructor and operations officer at the U.S. Military
Academy. He served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 55

‘Papa Bear’
Didn’t Hibernate
At 73 Easting
Story and Photos by Sgt. 1st Class Brian Hamilton
Icould fill a calendar with dates that are important to me:
the day I got married; the birth of my sons; the day I quit
smoking, then started again, then quit again. But twice
over, Feb. 26 was a day that made me the man I am today,
all because one man took the time to make a difference in a
young soldier’s life.
Feb. 26 was the day I left home for boot camp at Fort Knox,
Ky., in 1990. Exactly one year later, Feb. 26 was the day I rode
into battle in the barren Arabian Peninsula.
No, I haven’t always lived the good life as an Army Reserve
journalist. Way back when, typical of most 18-year-old American
boys with a vast collection of G.I. Joes, I got a wild hair to
serve Uncle Sam by launching headfirst into oh-so-glorious
battle as a cavalry scout.
I got my wish at the Battle of 73 Easting. The list of 2nd
Armored Cavalry Regiment “Dragoons” who claimed 3rd
Platoon, A Troop, 1st Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment
as not just a unit but also an institution is long. But
there was one man who bore responsibility for us all: nowretired
Sgt. 1st Class Gerald Shoates. He became known to
us as Papa Bear and after 25 years, the power of social media
brought us back together.
Draft Pick
Shoates, a native of Sebring, Fla., was working his way
through his third year of college at Florida A&M University
when his number got called for the draft in 1970.
After basic combat training at Fort Jackson, S.C., and advanced
individual training at Fort Knox, Ky., Shoates was officially
an Army scout. Two weeks later, he was stepping onto
Vietnamese soil to serve with the 101st Airborne Division in
Quang Tri.
“I got my Purple Heart at Quang Tri,” Shoates recalled. He
and his unit were on patrol when they encountered North
Vietnamese Army troops and started taking fire. The battle
lasted for several hours; Shoates was injured by a mortar blast
but continued fighting.
“We were taking fire from everywhere when I got hit with
shrapnel,” he said. “I was returning fire from an M113 when my
section sergeant tried to pull me down off the gun. I told him to
hold on a doggone minute and about a half-hour later, I looked
Mementos of a soldier’s life; in this
case, that of retired Sgt. 1st Class
Gerald Shoates
down and saw blood all over my neck and chest.”
When he returned to the U.S., “I wasn’t the best person in
the world. I got into a lot of fights back then,” he said. It
wasn’t until Shoates served on the 4th Infantry Division
Honor Guard at Fort Carson, Colo., from 1971 to 1972 “that
I straightened up. We did a lot of military burials, and I made
up my mind that I could do better than what I’d been doing.”
“I kept looking at these guys’ families and thought, man,
I’m messing up,” Shoates said. “I convinced myself that the
best way to honor these guys is to do my job right. In that
way, I’ve tried to honor them ever since.”
First Run-In
I was a 105-pound newbie fresh from basic training when
my journey with Shoates began in Bindlach, Germany, which
sits at the top of a mountain near the old East German and
Czechoslovakian border. When I arrived in late June 1990, the
highlights of “The Rock” were a Baskin-Robbins with three
flavors, and a mobile ATM that made its way to post every
Tuesday and Thursday, give or take a Tuesday or Thursday.
56 ARMY ■ May 2016

I was standing, frozen at parade rest and with jaw clenched,
outside the office of the platoon sergeant, Shoates. After what
felt like days but in retrospect may have been minutes, a hulking
man approached me from next door. The left shoulder of
his uniform bore a fleur-de-lis; perched on his right shoulder
was the screaming eagle. In a deep, low voice, this great big
bear of a man asked me, “Which way does wheat grow?”
Dumbfounded, I stood there and answered his question
with another question, “In the ground … sir?”
Several minutes later, as I was recovering from pushups to
the point of muscle failure, my new supervisor explained that
wheat alludes to the gold border around unit awards on the
dress green uniform. More importantly, knowing so indicated
attention to detail—the very thing that got Shoates through
Vietnam. That same attention to detail, he said, would carry
me throughout my military career.
New Threat Emerges
The months following my arrival at Bindlach were dedicated
to preparing for a Soviet threat that never came. The
call that did come, quite unexpectedly, was to deploy to the
deserts of the Middle East. It was a terrain vastly different
from what we had trained for, but Shoates wasn’t worried.
There were some tactical adjustments that would need to be
rehearsed before deploying, he said, but these things become
second nature.
So in late February 1991, gear and equipment in hand and
as ready for battle as we could be, the soldiers of the 2nd ACR
braced ourselves for Middle Eastern theater ground operations.
It was the last great tank battle of the 20th century: the
Battle of 73 Easting.
The events of 73 Easting have been well-documented. The
battle’s name is derived from a north and south grid line on a
map in the barren Iraqi desert used to mark the advance of
U.S. and coalition forces.
In it, elements of Operation Desert Sabre, namely the 2nd
Armored Cavalry Regiment under the command of Col.
Leonard D. “Don” Holder, spearheaded a lightning-quick attack
against a well-equipped opposing force in Saddam Hussein’s
Republican Guard—the Tawakalna Division.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 57

Retired Sgt. 1st Class
Gerald Shoates
We were facing a formidable foe, and Shoates decided we
needed a reality check. “You know, we’d been sitting there,
bored, for quite a while,” Shoates said later, “and there was a
lot of bravado in the platoon. Having been one of a small
handful of people in the troop that had actually seen combat,
it worried me.”
“So I borrowed a body bag from one of the medics and met
with all the leaders of the platoon the night before the battle. I
explained to them how to use it.”
It was a cold dose of reality. “Soldiers get hurt and killed. It
happens,” he recalled telling us. “But you guys are the besttrained
in the Army, with the best equipment in the world.
Rely on your training, and let’s go out there and do what we
need to do.”
Shoates then reached back to his faith for that final pep talk
to his platoon.
“I thought back to an old hymn my wife used to sing, A
Storm is Passing Over. I said, ‘There’s a storm passing over.
Yep, it’s a Desert Storm, but it will pass over.’ I prayed every
day that if it did come and we were caught in the midst of it,
that it would indeed pass over.”
Though the Republican Guard was dug in and probably expecting
a large attacking force, they were not prepared for the
swift and violent attack that came. In fact, the 2nd Armored
Sgt. 1st Class Brian Hamilton is the public affairs NCO for the
108th Training Command (Initial Entry Training), Charlotte,
N.C. He is a graduate of the Basic NCO Course at Fort Knox,
Ky.; and the Senior Leadership Course, the Basic Public Affairs
Specialist Course, and the Public Affairs Qualification Course
(Distance Learning) Phase 1, all at Fort Meade, Md.
Cavalry Regiment advanced so quickly that most of the Iraqi
opposing force were caught off-guard and out of their tanks
and personnel carriers.
In all, 113 armored vehicles were lost that day by the Iraqi
army, while the U.S. lost just one Bradley Fighting Vehicle
and a crew member due to enemy fire.
Returning Home
Twenty-five years after Operation Desert Storm and about
50 years after Quang Tri, Shoates said a lot has changed in the
Army and in the U.S. in general. But of it all, the one positive
change that stands out to him is how returning soldiers are
treated.
“After Vietnam … the Army as a whole was demoralized,”
he said. “Don’t get me wrong, I served with some brave and
dedicated [soldiers], but our demoralization resulted from the
way [the war] was opposed when we returned stateside. I am
proud to witness, and be a part of, the revitalization that took
place and was crucial to our Desert Storm success.”
Shoates retired from the Army shortly after Operation
Desert Storm. He and his wife, Angela, live in Tyrone, Ga.,
about 25 miles south of Atlanta, and have been married for
more than 40 years. They have seven children and 21 grandchildren,
several of whom are in uniform.
During our recent visit after reconnecting on Facebook, the
man who had served as my platoon sergeant, father figure and
mentor told me he was proud of me, and I gave him a hug. A
tough and battle-hardened former cavalry scout would never
admit to getting emotional, so I whispered the words as I
walked away.
“Wheat grows up, Papa Bear. Wheat grows up.” ✭
58 ARMY ■ May 2016

Let’s Get Wet
Take to the Water for Combined Maritime Maneuvers
U.S. Army/Spc. David Innes
Soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division undergo waterborne air assault training in the Pacific. Assisting them are members of the 8th Theater Sustainment
Command aboard their logistical support vessel.
By Lt. Col. James J. Brown
U.S. Army retired
The U.S. Army Operating Concept: Win in a Complex World introduces
the idea of joint combined-arms operations, an expansion that includes the
integration of joint capabilities and the broad range of efforts necessary to
accomplish the mission. It further introduces the idea that the Army must
possess the capabilities to operate across the land, air, maritime, space and cyberspace
domains.
The addition of the maritime domain introduces a significant expansion of Army
operational thinking. This is the first time the Army’s top-level operating concept
formally recognizes the requirement for the Army to possess as a core competency
the capability to conduct combined arms maneuver on the water.
This new idea means the Army must develop the concepts, doctrine and training,
and undertake the organizational and equipment modernization actions needed, to
deliver a force that is as competent at supporting maneuver on the water as it currently
is on the land and in the air. It also clearly establishes the requirement for the
Army to be able to conduct waterborne maneuver, which goes well beyond anything
previously considered in Army concepts and doctrine, with significant implications
for its maneuver forces and their capabilities.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 59

These simulations from a video show a Maneuver Support
Vessel (Light) transporting Stryker vehicles to complete a
task and return.
Although the Army possesses waterborne mobility
capabilities in its small watercraft fleet, those
capabilities are relegated primarily to logistics platforms
with little or no ability to conduct combined
arms maneuver as envisioned in the operating
concept. The most significant challenge to achieving
this core competency will be overcoming the
Army’s perception that its waterborne mobility
forces are a purely sustainment capability.
Becoming an Army as capable of maneuvering
on the water as it is on the land and in the air will
require significant thought and effort to develop
the concepts, prepare the doctrine, and implement
the training required. However, there is little evidence
that serious effort is underway to develop
and implement waterborne maneuver capabilities.
The current Army watercraft fleet is not equipped
or trained to conduct maneuver operations, and
Army maneuver units are not being trained to
conduct waterborne maneuver. In addition, with
the exception of one initiative—the Maneuver
Support Vessel (Light)—little work is being
done within the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine
Command (TRADOC) Centers of Excellence
to develop the concepts, doctrine and training
needed to define and implement waterborne
maneuver capabilities.
New Maneuver Space
Waterborne maneuver capabilities can provide
tactical-level mobility, enabling the Army and
other land forces to use littorals and coastal waters—the
maritime domain—as maneuver space.
Employed in concert with vertical maneuver, waterborne
maneuver provides freedom of movement
for the land forces while creating multiple
dilemmas for adversaries across multiple domains.
Waterborne maneuver is essential to Army
forces that project power across the maritime domain
and those areas of the land domain dominated
by water. Army waterborne maneuver capabilities
give land force commanders the ability to
use coastal waters as maneuver space, extending
the lines of movement, opening new avenues of
approach, and providing stand-off maneuver capability
by avoiding contested or impassable
ground lines of communication.
Those maneuver capabilities can also have a
key role in supporting maneuver through the
land domain by providing the ability to operate
on rivers and inland waterways that are often
U.S. Army
60 ARMY ■ May 2016

obstacles to ground-based maneuver forces.
Waterborne mobility platforms have the capacity to carry
heavy supplies and equipment; maintain operational tempo
even when terrain or weather conditions negate the use of airlift;
and give land forces the option of using waterborne avenues
to avoid contested or impassable ground resupply routes.
Waterborne platforms can provide multidimensional mobility
by conducting tactical maneuver while simultaneously supporting
operational and strategic mobility. Those platforms
also give land forces the ability to use waterborne avenues to
conduct maneuver operations and sustain dispersed operations.
Committing to the Concept
The Army has much work to do to achieve the competencies
needed to be a cross-domain maneuver force. The burning
question remains: Is the Army committed to accomplishing
this? Though the operating concept was published well
over a year ago, little has been done to address the issue of
how the Army will operate in the maritime domain. The Sustainment
Center of Excellence is working on developing and
fielding new watercraft with enhanced maneuver capabilities,
but the Maneuver Center of Excellence has barely begun to
embrace the ideas and implications of waterborne maneuver.
Recently, the Army has shown increased interest in seabasing,
which is the ability to function at sea independent of onshore
infrastructure. But most of this focus continues to be
within the logistics communities. The Army has yet to develop
the concepts and capabilities needed to understand how seabasing
fits with combined arms maneuver in the maritime domain.
The Army also needs to answer several pressing questions.
How will it train leaders to plan for and integrate waterborne
maneuver into ground and vertical maneuver tactics, techniques
and procedures? How will it train brigade combat
teams to achieve and maintain proficiency in waterborne maneuver
operations? Which capabilities are needed to identify,
modify, develop and conduct combined arms maneuver in the
maritime domain?
Resolving these challenges will require clear, visionary,
practical thought to identify and develop the requirements.
Then changes must be implemented that are operationally effective
and fiscally prudent. If successful, the end product
would mark a new era for the Army, one that adds another dimension
to how maneuver forces are designed, equipped and
trained to conduct combined arms maneuver in all domains—
including maritime—while reconsidering some long-held beliefs
and practices.
Today’s Army watercraft fleet, primarily conceived as a
Cold War logistics capability, was largely designed in the
1970s and built in the 1980s and ’90s. To achieve the ideas
presented in the operating concept, the Army needs to develop
and build a modern, cutting-edge set of watercraft capabilities.
Those capabilities will require a rethinking of how the
platforms operate, and also how the fleet is organized and distributed
across the global operational environment.
As a cross-domain joint land force capability, the Army will
require waterborne mobility equally capable of conducting
maneuver as well as sustainment through the maritime domain.
The Army needs to conceive its waterborne capability in
the same operational context as Army aviation: mobility for a
land force engaged in combined arms maneuver that includes
movement and sustainment of distributed combat power.
It further implies a watercraft fleet built to operate in the
same environment as Army aviation: designed to support the
land maneuver force in all phases of operations; equipped with
protection that enables operations in the same threat environment
the maneuver forces will face; and trained to conduct the
U.S. Army/1st Lt. Steven Siberski
Aboard a British navy
craft, paratroopers
with the 173rd
Airborne Brigade
rehearse amphibious
landings in Sweden.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 61

U.S. Army vessel
Churubusco hits
heavy seas in the
Persian Gulf in
January 2013.
U.S. Army/Sgt. Christopher Johnston
full range of cross-domain operations the future Army must be
able to execute.
Real Challenge: Changing Mindset
Modernizing the Army’s watercraft fleet into a multidimensional
mobility capability will have important implications on
how future vessels are designed, built and equipped, and how
future leaders and soldiers are trained. But the real challenge
for the Army will be changing the mindset of its leaders in
ways that fully leverage the potential of the watercraft fleet.
The value of employing a balanced combination of aviation
and waterborne maneuver capability was recently demonstrated
during the operational assessment phase of the Maneuver Support
Vessel (Light) program. Analysts from the TRADOC
Analysis Center and subject matter experts from the Maneuver
Center of Excellence simulated employment of watercraft that
were designed to support both maneuver and sustainment. By
employing waterborne lift with the right speed and capacity in
conjunction with other mobility capabilities, the maneuver
force had multiple options previously not considered—littorals
as maneuver space. These options enabled placement of significantly
more firepower in multiple locations, resulting in a rapid
build of effective firepower and overmatch of enemy forces that
could not otherwise be achieved.
These results support maneuver through the maritime domain
as an essential element of the Army’s ability to operate in
complex terrain. However, they matter only if the Army is
able to institutionalize the application of waterborne maneuver
in its concepts, doctrine, leader development and training.
The associated challenges are twofold. All maneuver commanders
must understand and implement the idea of waterborne
maneuver, and leaders in the marine field must understand
how their watercraft are employed in both maneuver
and sustainment operations.
The starting point for resolving these challenges is to incorporate
waterborne maneuver and sustainment into the Army’s
functional concepts. Those ideas must be tested and developed
alongside aviation as part of the Army’s warfighter experimentation
strategies. These efforts will require a shift in the
thought process of the Army’s maneuver and sustainment
leaders—a shift that moves waterborne avenues of approach
out of the “logistics-only” paradigm and into one based on
maneuver in the maritime domain as an Army operation.
Army leadership must work through the challenges that
waterborne maneuver presents. The longer the Army waits,
the closer it gets to 2020 without the capabilities that the
Army Operating Concept clearly states the Army needs. ✭
Lt. Col. James J. Brown, USA Ret., served 24 years as an enlisted
soldier and officer in the U.S. Army Transportation Corps. Since
retiring, he has supported several joint and Army logistics efforts.
A senior consultant for LMI, he holds a bachelor’s degree
from Carson-Newman University and a master’s degree from
the University of Tennessee.
62 ARMY ■ May 2016

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U.S. Influence
Responsible for
S. Korea’s Nurses
By Anne Dressel, Laurie K. Glass, Myunghee Jun and Jeeyae Choi
The U.S. Army Nurse Corps served heroically during
World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, and more recent conflicts in Afghanistan
and the Middle East. Many of these stories are
fairly well-known, but little information exists about another
important mission: helping to develop the nursing profession
in South Korea.
Established in 1901, the U.S. Army Nurse Corps’ mission is
to provide “responsive, innovative and evidence-based nursing
care integrated [into] the Army Medicine Team to enhance
readiness, preserve life and function, and promote health and
wellness for all those entrusted to our care.” During the Japanese
occupation of Korea from 1910–1945, that country’s
health care facilities, and medical and nursing training programs,
were severely depleted.
After liberation from Japan in 1945, the Korean health care
system faced myriad challenges. For example, nursing academic
institutions needed to be rebuilt, and the reinvigoration
of the Korean Nurses Association was necessary to assist with
the establishment of a national nursing licensure exam.
While foreign missionaries had been involved in Korean
nursing education since the start of the 20th century, nursing
education after World War II was supported and influenced
by foreign universities and the U.S. military. The U.S. Army
Nurse Corps had a continuous presence in Korea starting from
the end of World War II through 1965, and helped rebuild
nursing and medical facilities there.
In 1946, the U.S. Army 80th Medical Group established six
station hospitals, several medical dispensaries and one general
hospital throughout Korea. Capt. Mildred Lucka, head of the
U.S. Military Nursing Affairs Office in Seoul, developed special
departments to build capacity among Korean nurses. The
departments were focused on midwifery, nursing education
and public health nursing.
Contributions by Lucka and her staff “included nursing arts
classes, lectures on history and ethics, public health nurse training,
emergency courses, midwifery refreshers, presentations on
operating room technique, immunization, vaccination, DDT
dusting programs, and health lectures for school children,” according
to Mary T. Sarnecky in A History of the U.S. Army
Nurse Corps.
In 1946, Korean nursing educational
institutions were unified as nursing technical
schools under a U.S. military education
ordinance. The Korean Ministry
of Health and Welfare distributed a
standardized nursing curriculum for use
in the nursing technical schools, and
nurses of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in
Korea provided instruction to the Korean
nursing technical school faculty
about how to implement and teach the
standardized curriculum.
Korean Corps Formed
Maj. Mildred I. Clark of the U.S.
Army Nurse Corps was stationed in
Korea in 1947 and 1948. She developed
a program that provided classroom and
clinical training for 20 Korean nurses in
Ascom City. These nurses became the
core of the Korean Army Nurse Corps,
which was formed in 1948. During
Clark’s next assignment in Korea, she
continued her work with the Korean nurses and was instrumental
in getting them recognized by the International
Council of Nurses.
Also in 1948, the U.S. Army nursing system was established
in Korea. Korean Army nurses were trained to provide nursing
care to wounded soldiers. The U.S. Economic Cooperation
Administration and the U.S. Eighth Army supplied nursing
equipment, uniforms and other supplies.
When the Korean War broke out in 1950, Korean and U.S.
nurses provided support for the war effort. Approximately 540
U.S. Army nurses served in Korea during the war. Following
the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953, U.S.
Army nurses remained in what was now South Korea to assist
with rebuilding nursing education programs and training.
Government agencies that had been displaced during the
conflict returned to Seoul after 1953. Hospitals, medical
schools, nursing schools and other institutions needed to rebuild
their physical structures as well as their educational cur-
U.S. Army
64 ARMY ■ May 2016

U.S. Army nurses, medics
and a doctor prepare
for surgery during the
Korean War.
ricula. Many Korean students who had been studying in the
U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Canada returned to South
Korea to serve as professional leaders and help re-establish
nursing education. This included the establishment of a school
of nursing at Ewha Womans University in 1955. Two years
later, the Yonsei University School of Nursing program was
promoted to a four-year college of nursing offering a bachelor
of science degree in nursing.
Standardizing, Improving Quality
Another milestone in South Korean nursing education occurred
in 1960, when Ewha established the first nursing master’s
degree program in the country. Graduate-level nurses
provided a well-educated cohort to serve as nursing faculty at
institutions throughout the country. These nurses were
knowledgeable about nursing research methods and were involved
in writing for publications, further strengthening Korean
nursing education.
In 1962, several medical acts in the country were significantly
revised, impacting nursing education. As a result of
those revisions, nursing programs at technical schools were
promoted to three-year nursing colleges. The exam for nursing
certification was abolished and replaced by a national nursing
licensure exam. The new licensure exam helped to standardize
and improve the quality of nurses and nursing education.
Finally, formal academic nursing education spread with the
establishment in 1964 of a nursing school at the Catholic University
of Pusan. Pusan had been devastated during the Korean
War, and thousands of refugees in the city were in need
of health care and other services. In response to those needs,
Sister Patricia Conway—from the U.S.—founded the Maryknoll
School of Nursing.
Work Continued
Members of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps continued to work
in South Korea throughout the 1960s. In addition to serving
May 2016 ■ ARMY 65

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Harriet H. Werley, right, chief
nurse of the U.S. Eighth Army in Seoul, South
Korea, and a South Korean Army nurse accompany
a member of the Defense Advisory
Committee on Women in the Services in 1963.
U.S. military personnel, the U.S. Army
Nurse Corps worked with their hosts to
strengthen and expand nursing education
in the country. For example, in
September 1962, Lt. Col. Harriet H.
Werley was appointed chief nurse of the
U.S. Eighth Army that was stationed in
Seoul. The U.S. Army nurses were located
throughout South Korea in hospitals,
dispensaries and health clinics.
As chief nurse, Werley oversaw all the
nursing care the U.S. Army nurses provided.
Werley was an experienced Army
nurse who had over 20 years of service
prior to her assignment in South Korea.
While serving at the Walter Reed Army
Institute of Research in Maryland from
1955 through 1962, she had created a
separate nursing department aimed at
developing Army research nurses, training
them in research methods, and developing
a scholarly program of research to improve nursing
education and delivery of care.
Werley’s efforts in these areas were quite successful, and she
brought her talents to South Korea. She was especially noted
for her contributions to improving the rigor and quality of
nursing research in order to discover new and better ways to
deliver nursing care.
Werley also oversaw training that was provided for South
Korean nurses at four U.S. Army hospitals in that country.
Eleven nurses from the Republic of Korea Army (RKA) completed
six-month training rotations at U.S. Army hospitals.
Six of these South Korean nurses were selected for additional
specialty nursing training through the U.S. Army Advisory
Group in South Korea’s military assistance program.
One of Werley’s most significant accomplishments during
her service in South Korea involved her work with the nursing
schools, the Korean Nurses Association, and the RKA Nurse
Corps. Werley maintained correspondence and professional relationships
with many South Korean nurses, including the
chief nurse of the RKA Headquarters Hospital, and nurses
from the Korean Service Center Hospital in Seoul. She provided
guidance and advice, developing long-lasting friendships.
The U.S. Army Nurse Corps extensively influenced nursing
education in South Korea. This included training nurses and
providing clinical practicum experience, providing leadership and
support for South Korean Army nurse development, emphasizing
the importance of nursing research, and expanding international
pursuits of the Korean Nurses Association through encouraging
activities with the International Council of Nurses.
In 1967, not long after Werley’s departure from South Korea,
the Korean Armed Forces Nursing Academy was established
to train nurse officer candidates—a testament to the
groundwork laid by Werley and the U.S. Army Nurse Corps
in South Korea.
✭
Anne Dressel is director of the Center for Global Health Equity at
the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee College of Nursing and
a Fulbright Scholar-South Korea alumna. Laurie K. Glass is a
nurse historian, retired Navy nurse, and a longtime friend and
colleague of Lt. Col. Harriet H. Werley. Myunghee Jun is a
nursing researcher at South Korea’s Chung-Ang University and
a registered nurse. Jeeyae Choi specializes in nursing informatics
research. A registered nurse originally from South Korea, she is an
assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Courtesy of the authors
66 ARMY ■ May 2016

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Divorce, Military Style
By Rebecca Alwine, Contributing Writer
Most people who get married probably have high
hopes it will last forever but unfortunately, divorce
happens. While the percentage of soldiers
who get divorced each year has been holding
steady at about 3 percent, there remains a need for easily accessible
and reliable information for those facing this lifechanging
event.
Several programs are available for Army couples who want
to improve their relationship, but there is virtually nothing
available for those who have exhausted all options and are
facing divorce. Soldiers and estranged spouses alike need to
know what each partner is entitled to throughout the process,
considerations regarding children, and issues related to property
division and financial support. As with any Army situation,
the answers to these questions vary depending on state
of residency, length of marriage, time in service, and number
of dependent children.
Lt. Col. Ernest Freund, commander of the U.S. Army Recruiting
Battalion-Portland, Ore., is familiar with DoD regulations
regarding divorce benefits, available
resources for those in uniform as well as estranged
spouses, and the emotions and tensions
that can run high in these situations.
Freund said he begins any conversation with
a soldier considering divorce by making sure
he or she has sought marriage counseling
and has considered other options.
When it is clear that the relationship is
beyond repair, Freund encourages the soldier
to immediately seek legal assistance.
“Many installations have a small Judge Advocate
General staff with limited attorneys
helping with divorce,” Freund said. “It can be
first-come, first-served, so if the spouse contacts
them, the soldier may have to go” somewhere
else for legal advice. That’s because one attorney
cannot provide advice to both parties.
Elizabeth Jamison, a Navy spouse and an attorney
who focuses on business and family law, said a good resource
for finding an attorney off-post is the Military
Spouse J.D. Network, a national organization for
military spouses who are also attorneys.
No Simple Answers
“There are no simple answers when
it comes to military divorce, which is
why it is important to get expert advice
from someone familiar with military
divorce issues,” she said. “Who
better to help with a military divorce
than someone who truly understands
the military lifestyle?”
And for couples with no property or child issues to contest
who may decide to “do it themselves, use the [legal] services
offered at base … to make sure everything is covered,” Jamison
said.
Jamison noted that the definition of a legal separation varies
by state, as do timelines for filing for divorce after separation.
She recommended estranged spouses get individual legal consultations,
even if they are not ready to take formal steps to
dissolve the marriage.
When soldiers are having marital problems, their teammates
and leaders are among the first to find out; frequently,
they become marriage counselors of sorts. “As a first-line supervisor,
you are in a unique position to know your soldiers
better than anyone,” said Sgt. 1st Class Richard J. Mareira Jr.
of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, Requirements
Determination Directorate at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. “It
is your responsibility to be there when they need assistance
and get them the help they need.”
“Once they are enrolled in counseling, financial readiness”
and other needed services, “periodic follow-ups are required,”
Mareira said, adding that while leaders can be helpful, soldiers
should know they are not obligated to discuss personal issues.
Conscious Uncoupling Considerations
When it comes to divorce, “it doesn’t matter where you
got married,” Jamison said, but “it does matter where you
live or have lived” because of differences in divorce laws
in various jurisdictions. Researching the laws for these
jurisdictions is especially important when it comes to
the division of property.
“While it may be convenient to divorce where you are
stationed, there can be restrictions based on child custody
issues and even division of the military retirement,”
Jamison said.
Another reason to consider residency options other than
the current duty station is because a permanent change of
station may be unavoidable during the divorce process,
which might take up to 12 months
—or even longer.
Freund noted that divorce
can put a large strain
on finances, particularly
with relocating or maintaining
two residences. “I
encourage soldiers to consider
their financial and personal
decisions during the
process,” he said, adding
that soldiers should develop
a budget, establish a
bank account separate from
their estranged spouse, and set
68 ARMY ■ May 2016

up automatic deductions to fulfill any support requirements.
“They should keep records of all payments made so they can
show proof of support if there is nonsupport alleged later,” he
said.
Freund also said soldiers should remain professional during
the process and avoid escalating arguments, which can make
the process more complicated. “In the Army, you are married
until a divorce is finalized, even if you are legally separated,”
Freund said. “Soldiers must avoid behaviors that suggest cohabitation
or sexual relationships with a person other than
their soon-to-be-ex-spouse.”
Benefits Information Available
There can be confusion about benefits that estranged
spouses are entitled to; DoD’s Military OneSource provides
information on its website. Most important, Freund noted,
the marriage is considered legally intact until the divorce is finalized.
This means estranged spouses retain their militaryissued
identification card and all privileges until the divorce is
finalized.
For ex-spouses to generally retain full benefits after a divorce,
the so-called 20/20/20 rule must be met. The military
member must have served at least 20 years, the marriage must
have lasted at least 20 years, and the marriage and military service
must overlap by 20 years.
The 20/20/20 rule enables ex-military spouses who do not
remarry to retain medical benefits and commissary and exchange
privileges. According to information provided by the
National Military Family Association, medical benefits permanently
cease if the ex-military spouse covered under the
20/20/20 rule remarries, but commissary and exchange
privileges can be restored if that remarriage ends because
of death or divorce.
There’s also a 20/20/15 rule: The marriage and active
duty service overlapped by at least 15 years, the marriage
lasted at least 20 years, and the service member
served at least 20 years. In these cases, unmarried former
military spouses are generally authorized military
medical care only, for the duration of one year.
While there is not much focus on divorce proceedings
in precommand courses, nonsupport is a top
complaint to inspectors general. “Usually, the nonsupport
complaint is related to a former or current
spouse requesting command assistance
to get the soldier to
pay child support or alimony,”
Freund said.
“The most common reason
a spouse would go to a
commander during the divorce
proceeding is because
they don’t feel they are getting
what they are entitled to.
In a divorce, there are at least
two sides to every story,
and commanders need to
proceed carefully.”
A commanders’ focus is
ensuring soldiers “fulfill their obligations, remain professional,
and maintain their health during divorces. We urge all parties
to use Army Community Service and Military OneSource resources,
as well as the chaplain,” Freund said.
The main responsibility of divorcing soldiers, Freund said,
is to comply with the terms of any separation or divorce agreement,
“which can quickly be checked and enforced by the
commander.”
If there is no formal agreement, the soldier is responsible for
paying the Basic Allowance for Housing Differential (BAH-
DIFF) Rate, which is the difference between the soldier’s basic
allowance for housing with dependents and without.
“BAH varies depending on where the soldier is assigned so
if a permanent change of station occurs during the divorce
proceeding, the dollar amount may change,” Freund said.
Beyond the Border
Divorces granted overseas can cause a multitude of problems,
the most common being that the Defense Finance and
Accounting Service, the DoD agency that provides finance and
accounting services, will not honor orders from foreign courts.
“Generally, American courts will recognize an overseas divorce
if one of the parties was domiciled in the jurisdiction
where the divorce was granted and there was proper service
and notice of the proceeding,” Jamison said. However, she
recommends against foreign divorce when military
retirement is at stake.
“The same problems occur with child custody,”
she said. “Again, I stress the importance of
confirming the attorney has actual experience
with military divorces.”
Jamison noted that military couples do have
options to file in the U.S. even while they are
living overseas; the best way to do that
would be to contact an attorney in the state
where the couple claims legal residency.
“Each case has its own issues that should be
fully evaluated to decide when and where to file, especially
for military couples dealing with complicated issues
like military support orders, disability and pension
issues, and other factors like [child] visitation,” she said.
Marriages that dissolved overseas can make things more
difficult from a command perspective as well, Freund
said. “I’ve had to return dependents early from overseas
assignments twice in my career,” he said. “Both were
related to domestic abuse or child neglect on
the part of the dependent against either
the soldier or another family
member.”
“Both times, [the] Family Advocacy
Program was involved
and we had exhausted all other
options for resolving the issue,”
he said. “However, it can be a
powerful tool to motivated parties
to cooperate and find joint
solutions” during divorce proceedings.
✭
May 2016 ■ ARMY 69

The Outpost
Years Before Civil War, Grant ‘Saw the Elephant’
By Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, U.S. Army retired
Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant seems frozen in time. You think of
him as a general, and a famous one at that, immortalized in
glorious black and white courtesy of the greatest of Civil War
photographers, Mathew Brady. True, he was also a two-term
U.S. president, a gifted horseman, and author of perhaps the
best American military memoir ever written. Few remember
any of that. Even on the $50 bill, depicted in civil attire, Grant
looks like a general just off the dusty trail from Appomattox
Court House, Va.
Of course, he didn’t start out wearing stars on his shoulder
straps. Indeed, most of Grant’s fellow cadets at the U.S. Military
Academy were amazed he even made it to graduation in
June 1843.
“A military life had no charms for me,” he wrote decades later
in his memoir, “and I had not the faintest idea of staying in the
Army even if I should be graduated, which I did not expect.”
But the unexpected happened. Young U.S. Grant—or Sam,
as in “Uncle Sam,” to his classmates—completed West Point
standing 21st of 39 in his class. He had shown some skill at
horsemanship, some promise in mathematics, and little interest
in the minutiae of cadet spit-and-polish. He was a rearrank
private in the Corps of Cadets his
senior year. Some of the West Point faculty
thought even that low station exceeded
Grant’s military talents, such as
they were thought to be.
Grant’s indifferent cadet record prevented
him from getting his first choice,
the flashy dragoons, a type of horse cavalry.
Instead, he received his second pick:
the 4th Infantry Regiment, stationed at
Jefferson Barracks south of St. Louis.
Grant chose it because it was the only
Regular Army regiment anywhere near
his Georgetown, Ohio, home. The 4th
Infantry Regiment was neither elite nor
inept. Like Grant, it was present for duty.
Grant’s former West Point roommate,
Frederick T. Dent, also served in the 4th
Infantry Regiment. Dent’s family lived 5
miles from the post and his younger sister,
Julia, found Grant a welcome visitor.
By May 1844, the two were engaged to
be married. But they had to wait. Grant’s
regiment had received urgent orders to
move south to Louisiana. There was
trouble brewing in nearby Texas. It
would be more than four years before
Library of Congress
they wed. By then, Grant would be a different man.
Grant noticed some things as the regiment fitted out to sail
south on Mississippi River steamships. Some of the more
punctilious and intrusive senior officers, many of the real firebreathers,
found reasons not to deploy. The better ones didn’t
say much; they just went. As usual, in the 4th Infantry then or
in our battalions today, the lieutenants drew their own conclusions.
Talk was cheap. With war in the wind, what counted
was who moved out. Grant was one of them.
Most of the officers didn’t care about the politics of the
looming war with Mexico. A few were in favor of it. Grant
thought otherwise. He saw the coming conflict as “one of the
most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”
He would later see the great Civil War as the consequence of
this unjust act in that the eventual American victory added so
much territory to the republic that invariably, the pro-slavery
and anti-slavery zealots clashed over how to divide the spoils.
But which new lands would be cursed by slavery, and which
would become free soil, was a question for the future. In the
summer of 1844, the 4th Infantry Regiment and the other
U.S. Army Regulars had to get ready to fight.
Ulysses S. Grant,
here in a West Point
portrait, was
considered a
mediocre cadet.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 71

Grant’s regiment spent a year in a tent and wood hut
bivouac named Camp Salubrity. There, the 4th Infantry
drilled day after day. The evolution from marching column to
firing line was practiced over and over in all its many variations.
Training also included loading and firing their smoothbore
Springfield Model 1816 muskets.
Volley firing was still the norm. A few U.S. units would use
far more accurate rifles against Mexican forces, but most carried
the Model 1816. It was effective within 100 yards and deadly
within 30. Absent the benefit of rifled barrels, the thumb-sized
musket balls zipped randomly in a general direction. As Grant
observed later: “At the distance of a few hundred yards, a man
might fire at you all day without your finding it out.”
So the point of infantry drill was closing that gap quickly
and then firing fast, at least three balls a minute. After months
at Camp Salubrity, the soldiers of the 4th Infantry Regiment
could do all of that very well.
In July 1845, the regiment relocated to New Orleans Barracks.
Col. Josiah H. Vose, who had fought in the War of
1812, took charge of regimental drill in the hot Louisiana sun.
“He was not a man to discover infirmity in the presence of
danger,” Grant noted with approval.
But the man Grant called “exemplary” was still a 61-yearold
colonel. The searing sun and dripping humidity did him
in: One day, he collapsed and died. The 4th Infantry Regiment
would have much younger commanders during active
operations in Mexico.
Over the next few months, 1845 became 1846, and the 4th
Infantry Regiment joined about 3,000 more U.S. Regulars in
moving from camp to camp. The Americans finally drew up
near the shallow Rio Grande, the claimed American boundary
with Mexico. Although assigned to a line company, Grant inherited
the additional duty of regimental quartermaster. Today,
he’d probably be assigned to a forward support company. But
in his time, Grant inherited a mix of detailed soldiers, hired
civilians, and unhappy (and unwilling) local pack animals.
A smart and experienced horseman, Grant learned more
than he ever wanted to know about mules. Unlike soldiers, the
mules could be neither inspired nor threatened. Once broken
to harness, mules pulled their wagons “submissively if not
cheerfully,” thought Grant. It all kept the lieutenant very busy.
As Grant shifted wagons here and there, on the far side of the
river approximately 3,700 Mexicans gathered for war.
Things came to a head on May 8, 1846, at Palo Alto (Tall
Trees), not far from a makeshift U.S. fort on the Rio
Grande. The Americans found the Mexicans blocking the
way to the fort. Both sides expected a battle. A while after
high noon, they got it.
Grant was with his company for the battle, his first. The
U.S. soldiers formed a line in shoulder-high grass. They could
barely see the Mexicans formed well to their front, but they
could hear them. Cannons on both sides sounded; a loud,
ragged series of blasts that swelled and ebbed as the day
dragged on. Now and then, random Mexican cannon balls
hissed through the chaparral.
The skilled, well-led U.S. artillery batteries proved much
more effective than their adversaries. Aggressively pushing
forward, two American 18-pounder crews and six smaller gun
teams used well-aimed solid shots and also carefully lobbed
exploding shells to rip up the Mexican infantry, caught standing
in the open in long lines. More than a hundred Mexicans
were killed, and a like number wounded. Enough was enough.
Helped by desperate cavalry charges, the Mexicans pulled back
out of cannon range. Dusk brought the fighting to a close. It
would surely start again in the morning.
Library of Congress
The Battle of Palo Alto, 1846
72 ARMY ■ May 2016

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant with warhorse
Cincinnati in 1864
Library of Congress
Grant’s regiment had no significant role in this great clash.
They moved up a few times but never fired their muskets, let
alone used their fixed bayonets. One enemy cannon ball
streaked by not far from Grant. The hot, black orb took off
the head of a private and smashed the lower jaw of a captain.
Musket splinters, bone chips and brain matter wounded another
officer and two privates.
It got Grant’s attention, but training kicked in. The wounded
were helped, ranks were closed, and the regiment continued to
advance as ordered. Along with those hit near Grant, eight
other Americans were killed, and 45 more were wounded.
The next morning, fighting resumed. The Mexicans had set
up a defensive array in a dry ditch, the Resaca de la Palma
(Palm Ravine). The enemy hid in the thick, tall grass. Grant’s
captain was designated to lead a detachment to find a way
through the dense thicket. This left the lieutenant in command
of about half of the company. Again, the artillery on
both sides banged away. This time, the range was close, the
Mexicans were concealed, and the gunnery duel was more
even than it had been the previous day.
When word came back that the scouts had found a way toward
the Mexican flank, the 4th Infantry joined in the general
advance. Grant led his company behind the guides, unable to
see anything in the waving chaparral. “At last I got pretty close
up without knowing it,” he recounted. He couldn’t see his foe
and they couldn’t see him, but the hostiles were firing into the
rustling brush. Hundreds of Mexican musket balls tore at the
waving grass. Grant directed his men to lie down, “an order that
did not have to be enforced.”
Sensing a slackening in the Mexican rate of fire, Grant got his
men up. They plunged forward, stumbling out of the tall vegetation
and into a clearing. A few Mexican troops made a show of
resistance, so Grant and the company lowered their bayoneted
muskets and charged. The Mexicans, one a colonel, immediately
surrendered. Grant thought it was a good day’s work. He was
honest enough to admit later that another company in his regiment
had shattered the opposing line. Grant’s men had merely
cleaned up the mess.
In a much greater war 15 years later, one in which once-Lt.
Sam Grant would serve with distinction as Lt. Gen. Ulysses
S. Grant, the young soldiers referred to the first experience of
combat as “seeing the elephant.” The term came from the circus,
usually the biggest public show in any small American
town of the time. If you saw the elephant, you had seen the
main event and lived to tell of it. That’s what Grant did on
May 8–9, 1846, in the high chaparral near the muddy Rio
Grande.
What did Grant learn? Training mattered. Discipline
counted. And leadership meant everything. Under fire, good
soldiers do their job. One hundred and seventy years ago,
Grant saw that elephant, and he learned from it. Lieutenants
today are learning the same hard lessons. The elephant hasn’t
really changed all that much. Neither have the lieutenants. ✭
Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, USA Ret., was the commander of Combined
Security Transition Command-Afghanistan and NATO
Training Mission-Afghanistan. Previously, he served as the
deputy chief of staff, G-3/5/7, and as the commanding general,
1st Cavalry Division/commanding general, Multinational
Division-Baghdad, Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has a Ph.D.
from the University of Chicago and has published a number of
books on military subjects. He is a senior fellow of the AUSA
Institute of Land Warfare.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 73

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with our customers, the company successfully enables
the enduring priorities of the U.S. government around the
world. We believe our success can be attributed to the quality
of this team’s work and the integrity and high ethical standards
that define our business operations.
In our recent history, PAE has increased breadth of services
by integrating companies with proven capabilities and a customer-focused
workforce. The acquisition of A-T Solutions
Inc. in May 2015, and the Global Security and Solutions (GS&S)
business unit of U.S. Investigations Services in January 2015,
enhanced PAE’s national security portfolio. With A-T Solutions
and GS&S, PAE supports programs of critical national importance
for customers across the law enforcement, homeland
security and intelligence communities. These new team
members also enhance PAE’s ability to support the U.S.
armed forces, our allies and numerous DoD agencies.
The 2013 acquisition of Computer Sciences Corp.’s applied
technology division expanded PAE’s portfolio to include military
and space testing and training ranges primarily within
the U.S., infrastructure services, and aviation maintenance
support at critical U.S. government installations. The acquisition
of the applied technology division complemented PAE’s
acquisition of Defense Support Services LLC in 2011. PAE integrated
the leading provider of aircraft and vehicle maintenance,
logistics and base support services, and continues to
provide the services that support our customers’ most challenging
missions.
Today, PAE helps ensure the Army’s readiness for today
and tomorrow through the delivery of effective aviation and
vehicle maintenance, logistics, forensics and training services.
Our aircraft services include reset, preset and reconstitution
of helicopters as well as maintenance management, quality
control, production control, supply procedures, and forms
and records maintenance.
We provide aircraft services for remotely piloted aircraft
missions, military and Federal Aviation Administration-certified
rotary- and fixed-wing as well as single- and multi-engine
aircraft, many of which are modified and equipped with stateof-the-art,
highly sophisticated sensor equipment. Additional
services include weapons loading; munitions buildup; and logistics
support such as aerospace ground equipment, tool
room, parts ordering, custodial responsibilities for parts and
equipment, and plans and scheduling responsibilities.
PAE augments government capabilities for vehicles by
supplying technical services to receive, issue, warehouse,
maintain, repair and overhaul customer assets associated
with vehicles, equipment or facilities anywhere as requested
by customers. Qualified and skilled technicians perform every
level of maintenance support services, supply, logistics, technical
expert services and unit equipment training.
Our global supply chain of existing vendor networks spans
all seven continents, guaranteeing an effective logistics solution
for our customers’ needs anywhere in the world. Our logistical
expertise has proven essential to the successful operation
of many of our programs with significant logistics
requirements, dating back to our founding.
John Heller, CEO, PAE Government Services Inc.
In more recent history, our teams have leveraged their logistical
expertise to bring much-needed supplies to conflictor
disease-challenged areas such as South Sudan and Liberia.
We have also worked with customers within our U.S. aviation
portfolio to ensure on-demand parts availability, which translates
directly into reduced turnaround time for aircraft repair
and ultimately, time and money saved.
With our recent acquisition of A-T Solutions, our subjectmatter
experts are considered worldwide authorities on counterthreat
solutions. These solutions range from training devices
that replicate current improvised explosive device threats to
risk management tools that collect and analyze vast amounts
of data from disparate sources, and field reporting software
used by law enforcement teams around the U.S. and abroad.
As a result of these proven products, PAE is trusted by the
U.S. and several allied governments to perform and train military
and law enforcement personnel in counterthreat procedures
and technologies, guided by actionable intelligence
about current and emerging threats.
As we grow, the values that have set us apart over the past
six decades continue to guide our company in leading with integrity
and excellence. We are strongly committed to diversity,
recognizing that our success depends on bringing together a
wide range of perspectives, skills and experiences to find the
most innovative, cost-effective solutions for our customers.
Above all, PAE is dedicated to the missions of our customers.
The entire PAE workforce maintains a focus and commitment
on delivering the highest quality of support to the
critical work of the U.S. government, its allied partners and international
organizations.
74 ARMY ■ May 2016

Soldier Armed
‘Laser Stryker’ a Collaborative Countermeasure
By Scott R. Gourley, Contributing Writer
Even the quickest glance at the industry displays during the
most recent AUSA Annual Meeting and Exposition served
to emphasize the serious threat presented by unmanned aircraft
systems. Across the exhibit hall, companies profiled a variety of
so-called counter-UAS capabilities, from a shoulder-fired design
to electromagnetic architectures and new types of kinetic
engagement capabilities.
Many of those capabilities and different technologies were
scheduled to be demonstrated at Fort Sill, Okla., in April during
the Maneuver Fires Exercise. Among them is a demonstrator
platform that features a counter-UAS laser system
mounted on a Stryker wheeled vehicle. The resulting “Laser
Stryker” reflects a team development effort that includes General
Dynamics Land Systems and Boeing Laser and Electro
Optical Systems.
General Dynamics was approached by the Fort Sill Fires
Center of Excellence and the U.S. Army Space and Missile
Defense Command “a couple years back to participate in some
meetings and collaboration sessions they were having about
how to put a laser weapon system on a combat vehicle for
counter-UAS,” and eventually for counter-rocket, artillery and
mortars, said Tim Reese, a business development manager at
General Dynamics Land Systems. In 2014–15, “things got serious,
and we were asked if we could participate” in the Fort
Sill exercises, Reese said.
“We said that we could, and Boeing said that they would
participate as well, because we were able to do it on independent
funds to provide a proof of principle vehicle that puts a
laser on a combat vehicle.”
While the Army has had the large, 10-kilowatt High Energy
Laser Mobile Demonstrator system mounted on a heavy
expanded mobility tactical truck, the service has yet to fund
efforts to put a laser on a tactical combat vehicle, Reese said.
Over the last few years, Boeing has also been exploiting its
work on the large demonstrator by exploring the tactical applications
of downsizing that laser technology. Part of that exploration
resulted in the development of a 2-kW Compact
Laser Weapon System prototype that was comprised of four
modules: a beam director, a commercially available fiber laser,
a water-cooled chiller and a battery power supply.
The system could be transported by two people each, with a
single operator able to track and engage UAS targets. With a
tripod-mounted beam director, it was demonstrated in multiple
environments over the last few years.
For example, during laboratory demonstrations held in Albuquerque,
N.M., in late August, the compact system demonstrated
the ability to incinerate the nose of a UAS target surrogate
with a single, full-power pulse. A lower-power pulse
engagement conducted at the same time also showed the potential
of achieving scalable effects on a target.
Experimenting With Lasers
Reese said the Laser Stryker participating in the April exercise
reflects the loan of a vehicle by the Stryker program management
office coupled with Boeing’s compact laser design, allowing
Fort Sill “to experiment with the procedures and
possible tactics of a tactical laser to see how it would work on a
battlefield.”
The nose of this simulated unmanned aerial system was incinerated by a
prototype of the 2-kilowatt Compact Laser Weapon System.
According to Jim Leary, a sales and marketing manager at
Boeing’s Strategic Missile and Defense Systems division, the
2-kW laser put on the Stryker is “a slight upgrade” to the system
used in recent demonstrations.
The key in any laser design is beam control, Leary said.
“Having a nice, tight beam is what heats the target up and allows
you to be successful in the engagement.”
“The Compact Laser Weapon System was originally on a
tripod,” he said. “And now, because its components are
smaller and more useful, we’ve been able to put it on a Stryker.
That’s key, because the Stryker is an existing vehicle in the
Army. And the best weapon systems in the world all have to
fit within the requirements of budgets and formations. But
now you can take a directed energy weapon and put it on an
existing vehicle.”
Reese described the current proof of principle design as “an
installation and not an integration. The challenge for us was to
make room for everything. So we took out one bank of seats in
the right side of the vehicle. We created some specially de-
Scott R. Gourley
May 2016 ■ ARMY 75

The ‘Laser Stryker’ targets unmanned aerial systems.
General Dynamics Land Systems
General Dynamics Land Systems
signed racks and power cables and cooling, and stuff like that,
to fit into the vehicle. And we made a bracket on the top of
the vehicle for the beam director.”
The Laser Stryker vehicle has been at Fort Sill since January.
Two “dry-fire” rehearsals have been conducted, with one livefire
rehearsal event planned in late March before the main
demonstration period was to begin in early April.
Defining Future Requirements
In addition to an initial glance at possible tactics, techniques
and procedures for a tactical laser system, both Reese and
Leary noted that the April demonstration could also serve as a
base case to help the Army define future system requirements
for a tactical laser weapon.
“I can’t speak for the Army, obviously,” Reese said, choosing
his words carefully. “But the range that they want to engage
at, and the number of things they want to be able to engage
at a set period of time, are greater than the 2-kW laser
can provide.”
Acknowledging that the current “sharing a Stryker” concept
could probably fit up to a 5-kW laser on an existing vehicle,
with anything above that likely requiring “a purpose-dedicated
The beam director of the laser system, right, sits atop a Stryker.
vehicle,” he outlined potential near-term growth to a so-called
high power, 30- to 50-kW laser size.
“It’s a two-phase approach,” he said. The first phase was the
April demonstration, and the second phase “is an engineering
effort that’s going on in parallel, again with industry, Fort Sill,
and Space and Missile Defense Command,” he said. “Under
that phase, we’ve done the engineering analysis and the architecture
for putting a 30-kW laser on a Stryker. It was a project
put together and submitted last fall through Space and Missile
Defense Command” to the DoD Ordnance Technology Consortium.
Reese added that “it was accepted as a viable project, and
we’re hoping that this year it will be funded. There are a number
of us involved,” including Boeing and General Dynamics.
“Lockheed Martin was involved at the time,” Reese said, “as
were a number of other companies that have systems that are
in the high power range that would really provide good capability.”
In addition to increasing the size and power of a possible
Laser Stryker, Leary also acknowledged the possibilities of
parallel growth in laser technologies.
“Boeing builds their lasers with an aperture within the
beam director, so we can ‘scale up’ when higher-powered
lasers are available,” he said. “If you think that 50-kW lasers
are needed to shoot down a cruise missile, well, we will be able
to hold up to a 100-kW laser. So you don’t need to replace the
beam director every time you have a new generation of laser
coming up.”
“We are in the process of working many of the existing vehicle
providers for the U.S. Army” to perform “the same kind
of integration we are going to have in the April demonstration,”
he said, adding that he hoped to see that April event
followed by additional Army warfighting analysis.
The Laser Stryker concept is just one of the technologies on
the range at Fort Sill. Other participants include radars, possibly
modified to track small-UAS to counter-UAS electronic
warfare designs.
✭
76 ARMY ■ May 2016

Historically Speaking
21st Century Update for 75-Year-Old Charter
By Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, U.S. Army retired
Today’s critics of U.S. foreign policy often opine that it lacks
overarching or long-term vision. We hurriedly deal with
the crises of the moment, or the “near targets,” without defining
the larger direction in which we would like to see our
country and the world go. “Don’t do stupid stuff” is a worthy
admonition, but it’s not an organizing principle for grand
strategic thinking.
Indeed, one could argue that Americans have not enjoyed a
generally agreed upon foreign policy since the Soviets deprived
us of our focus by imploding in 1991. What could be done to
better ensure singleness of purpose beyond our borders?
In August 1941, four months before the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and
President Franklin D. Roosevelt met aboard warships in Placentia
Bay, Newfoundland. Great Britain was locked in a desperate
existential struggle with Nazi Germany, and Churchill
was eager to draw the U.S. into it. Roosevelt was mindful of
the Nazi threat, determined to assist Great Britain, and anxious
to define objectives worthy of the sacrifices the British
people were enduring and the American people seemed likely
to experience. The resultant Atlantic Charter of Aug. 14 envisioned
the postwar world that Roosevelt and Churchill believed
they could convince their peoples
would be worth fighting for.
The Atlantic Charter was brief, vaguely worded, and without
implementing instructions. Its goals were lofty. Virtually
every nation that espoused its principles cheated on them to
some degree. Great Britain, for example, proved far more eager
to restore self-government to Belgium than to extend it to
India. The Atlantic Charter became rather like the Ten Commandments,
a definition of what right looked like rather than
a fully achievable goal.
Nevertheless, an agreed definition of what right looks like is
a powerful force. Men and women who had sacrificed so much
fighting for a better world aspired to see their efforts come to
fruition, as did their children—and others who were galvanized
by high ideals.
The principles of the Atlantic Charter became a multigenerational
beacon, always visible to those who by accident or
design found themselves inclined to do the right thing. With
respect to self-determination, for example, it is fairly easy to
connect the dots among the restorations of democracy to those
who had lost it to the Nazis; the extension of democracy into
Germany, Italy and Japan; the defense of democracy under the
auspices of NATO and other alliances; the decolonization of
much of the world; the fall of the Berlin Wall and self-libera-
Progressive Thinking
Key points of the Atlantic Charter
included self-determination, freedom
from fear and want, no territorial aggrandizement
by victor nations, territorial
adjustments in accordance with the
wishes of the people concerned, international
economic cooperation, lower
trade barriers, freedom of the seas, international
advancement of social welfare,
and disarmament. The provisions
of the Atlantic Charter brought together
ideals that had emerged through several
generations of progressive internationalist
thinking. During World War II,
they were further popularized, in all or in
part through media campaigns to inspire
a common vision of the war’s ultimate
purpose. Other Allied nations came to
accept the charter’s principles. These
echoed strongly in the United Nations
Charter, signed on June 26, 1945.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, supported by his Army
pilot son, Elliott, met aboard warships off Newfoundland in 1941, resulting in the Atlantic Charter.
Imperial War Museums
May 2016 ■ ARMY 77

tion of Eastern Europe; and the prolonged self-democratization
of Latin America. In 1941, a tiny fragment of the world’s
people enjoyed democratic self-governance. Now most do,
and more will surely follow.
With respect to international economic cooperation, the
prewar patchwork of self-isolating mercantile spheres and the
horrific destruction of the war itself gave way to a more integrated
and prosperous world. The famous Marshall Plan provided
an invaluable spark, but perhaps even more important
were such long-term initiatives as the World Bank, International
Monetary Fund, and General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade. By 2007, over 95 percent of the world’s commerce
flowed under the auspices of the World Trade Organization,
founded in 1995. The flow has been as smooth as the traffic in
a modest American city, recognizing there will always be occasional
accidents or rolled-through stop signs.
With respect to human rights and dignity, the dots to be
connected roughly parallel those pertinent to self-determination.
However, the psychological effects of the principles of
the charter upon the self-awareness of oppressed peoples bear
comment. Mahatma Gandhi quoted these as India developed
its irresistible momentum toward independence. Others
picked up on the themes. The principles echoed in the
Helsinki Accords of 1975 and directly contributed to the selfliberation
of Eastern Europe. Men and women everywhere aspire
to dignity and respect. Given an international environment
that supports such norms, most will eventually achieve
them.
With respect to the peaceful resolution of disputes, the
U.N. and other international forums have often headed off or
reduced violence, and peacekeeping missions have saved innumerable
lives as well. After the scare of the Cuban missile crisis,
the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 paved the way to serious
disarmament. Chemical, biological and even conventional
weapons have come to be under appreciable control as well, albeit
far less coherently. Perhaps most to the point, the
wartime losses in the second half of the 20th century were an
order of magnitude less than those in the first.
Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, USA Ret., was chief of military history
at the U.S. Army Center of Military History from December
1998 to October 2005. He commanded the 2nd Battalion,
66th Armor, in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War and returned
to Kuwait as commander of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry
Division, in 1995. Author of Kevlar Legions: The
Transformation of the U.S. Army, 1989–2005, he has a doctorate
in history from Indiana University.
Generations Served Well
If the principles of the Atlantic Charter have served several
generations well as a long-term vision, what would a modern
version look like? Most of the principles have been incompletely
fulfilled, and many could be carried forward substantially
intact. Archaic or anachronistic language might need to
come out, but ideals such as “no territorial changes that do not
accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned”
or “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government
under which they shall live” seem like keepers. We
are not there yet; these describe the world we would like our
grandchildren to live in.
Other principles bear updating. The right “to traverse the
high seas and oceans without hindrance,” for example, reflected
naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s thinking that
the seas were the great commons across which the world’s
commerce flowed. Now, that role increasingly includes air
traffic and cyberspace. Outer space plays vital commercial roles
as well. This principle would need to be rethought to achieve
the overall effects Churchill and Roosevelt sought.
Similarly, the term “human rights,” although certainly implied,
appears nowhere in the charter. Given the salience this
term has achieved in the diplomatic vernacular, it would need
to directly appear in any future document.
New Risks
We now face risks Churchill and Roosevelt did not. Global
warming, failing water supplies, and our current industrial capacity
to poison ourselves were not on their horizon. For
them, the existential threat was interstate, and their principles
focused on interstate actors. They knew of great migrations,
humanitarian crises and terrorism but did not feel particularly
threatened by them. Have such nonstate dilemmas become
dangerous enough to merit inclusion in a future version of the
Atlantic Charter?
If editing, amending or adding to the principles of the Atlantic
Charter, we would be wise to remember that one of its
greatest strengths was pithiness and brevity. The principles were
inspiring and comprehensible, something that broad publics
could rally around. They were akin to the Ten Commandments,
not Leviticus. After World War I, French Prime Minister
Georges Clemenceau is said to have remarked how tired he was
of being regaled by President Woodrow Wilson’s somewhat
thickly written Fourteen Points, as God had made only 10.
How would one come up with a new version of the Atlantic
Charter that attracted international support? A grand, Versailles-like
conclave of nations comes to mind. Unfortunately,
Library of Congress/Marjory Collins
78 ARMY ■ May 2016

A March 1943 exhibit of the
Atlantic Charter at New York’s
Rockefeller Plaza featured statues
of the ‘Four Freedoms’ as articulated
by Roosevelt, including
freedom from fear and want.
Library of Congress/Marjory Collins
like Versailles, such an assembly seems likely to become derailed
by competing national interests, distorted by whomever
is not there, and to sink to the lowest common denominator.
Besides, absent an existential threat, why would most nations
not prefer to rely on the U.N. Charter as interpreted or updated
by the General Assembly—another iconic example of
deliberations en masse?
Alternatively, one might rummage among existing international
agreements and usages to compile a list of “best practices”
most pertinent to the threats we face. This international version
of common law could make good use of agreed precedent but
would be backing into the future rather than foreseeing it.
Roosevelt and Churchill were in a unique historical position.
The British flag, or a variant of it, flew over a quarter of
the Earth’s surface; the governments-in-exile or liberation
fronts of democracies overwhelmed by the Nazis were headquartered
in Britain; the U.S. was an unparalleled economic
superpower; and the U.S. was first among equals amid the
Western Hemisphere’s democracies. The two men wielded
unprecedented authority in their own countries and could reasonably
assert that they spoke for the free world in the face of
an existential crisis.
Charter Catches On
The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration, not a treaty or
binding agreement. It articulated a vision upon which to “base
… hopes for a better future for the world.” Roosevelt’s and
Churchill’s interpersonal (or perhaps interstaff) product
caught on. In due course, virtually the entire world claimed to
embrace it or its derivatives.
If our new president were to play the role of Roosevelt in
the pursuit of long-term principles, who would play the role of
Churchill? The “free world” is larger and more multipolar than
it ever was, and Great Britain no longer speaks for half of it.
Any visionary joint document the U.S. and China agreed to
could carry a lot of clout, although responsible and uncorrupt
governance might replace democratic governance as a mutually
agreeable aspiration.
The best approach might be for our own president to come
up with his or her own multigenerational international vision,
and then successively engage a half-dozen or so of the world’s
key leaders to negotiate bilateral versions. Candidates might
include the European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia and
Brazil. The resultant joint declarations would not be identical,
but hopefully close enough as a cluster to attract other nations—and
to provide inspiration for the next several generations
similar to that provided by the Atlantic Charter to the
past several.
Whether or not multipolar international versions of a renewed
Atlantic Charter actually emerge, the process of striving
to achieve them would be helpful. At minimum, it would lead
our own country to articulate a multigenerational vision of
where we would like the world to go from here.
If broadly supported by the American people, this would be a
powerful force. We would all be better off if our new commander
in chief were to leave the near-troop silhouettes to the gunner
and shift his or her focus to the more distant horizon. ✭
Additional Reading
Feis, Herbert, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They
Waged and the Peace They Sought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1957)
Selverstone, Marc, Constructing the Monolith: The United
States, Great Britain and International Communism,
1945–1950 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2009)
Stewart, Richard W., General Editor, American Military
History, Volume II: The United States in a Global Era,
1917–2003 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History,
2004)
Stoler, Mark A., Allies in War: Britain and America
Against the Axis Powers (London: Bloomsbury Academic,
2007)
May 2016 ■ ARMY 79

Reviews
Looking to Literature for Leadership Lessons
Leadership: Essential Writings by
Our Greatest Thinkers. Edited by
Elizabeth D. Samet. W.W. Norton &
Company. 749 pages. $35
By Brig. Gen. Harold W. Nelson
U.S. Army retired
Anyone who has taken a basic English
course surely has used anthologies.
English teachers love them, and the
bookshelves in our own household are
graced with several anthologies that
survived many moves.
Elizabeth D. Samet, an English professor
at West Point, has published an
anthology, but hers is far more compelling
than old compilations of literature.
She has built around leadership as a
theme, producing a volume that should
survive permanent change of station
purges and subsequent downsizing.
Tenured faculty at West Point have
long had influence in the Army far beyond
their classrooms. In the old days
they all were men, and they all were in
uniform. The group is more diverse today,
and Samet is part of it. One of her
earlier works, Soldier’s Heart: Reading
Literature Through Peace and War at West
Point, drew on her continuing interest in
officers who had been her students. She
also participates in professional development
sessions and other activities
throughout the Army. She is an important
player in the Army’s continuing effort
to perfect leader development.
This anthology is the result of lots of
collaboration, careful study and tough
decisions—decisions on what to include
and how the contents should be organized.
Collaboration and study clearly influenced
the decisions on the “what”
question. Individual or collective genius
determined how those selections should
be organized.
On one level, the organization is quite
simple. Each of the 11 chapters addresses
a specific topic, including “Studying
the System,” “Emulating Heroes”
and “Risking Revision.” The chapters
consist of literary gems drawn from a
broad range of sources—usually seven to
10 per chapter.
Each chapter opens with a short essay
that explains the topic, sets it into a context
that will be useful to a leader, and
provides a short recommended reading list
that goes beyond the anthology for anyone
who might see this particular aspect of
leadership especially relevant at the moment
this essay is encountered. Each
chapter closes with discussion questions.
Included in each chapter are typical
passages—from Roman emperor Marcus
Aurelius, Chinese military strategist
and philosopher Sun Tzu and Prussian
military theorist Carl von Clausewitz,
for example—mixed with others that are
new or unexpected—including from Dr.
Atul Gawande, a public health researcher;
retired Gen. Martin Dempsey,
former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff; and warrior and statesman Red
Cloud. These selections open with a
short section that introduces the author
and sets some helpful context.
The last chapter, “Disciplining Desire,”
is unique. It consists of only one
selection: Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This
allows Samet to provide a comprehensive
analysis of the play, something she
couldn’t do in her introduction to “Taking
Responsibility,” where there is only a
short introduction to excerpts from
Henry V and Julius Caesar. Macbeth itself
constitutes over 80 pages of the anthology,
by far the longest selection.
Several “albums” are inserted between
the chapters. In her introduction, Samet
tells us that these albums “highlight a set
of attributes that leaders (both admirable
and reprehensible) have demonstrated
over the centuries: the capacity for deep
attention, a sense of timing and the
knowledge of when to delay decisions, an
ability to persuade—occasionally to con—
others, the exercise of superior judgment,
the ability to weave effective personal and
organizational stories, and a recognition,
achieved through introspection and reflection,
of when to let go.” Each of these
albums has an editor’s introduction and
some discussion questions.
All of this results in an impressive organizational
structure, but the genius is
found in a second table of contents that
aligns specific selections in the anthology
to various “fields of interest”: business, finance
and industry; government, politics
and diplomacy; science, technology, nature
and environment; culture, arts and
letters; education and training; family,
society and civilization; war and peace;
and introspection and motivation.
A leader who approaches the anthology
from this perspective will jump from
chapter to album to chapter and can
“zoom out” by reading the associated introductory
essays or dipping into other
selections within a chapter. This additional
dimension broadens the anthology’s
appeal and renders it far more accessible
to a casual user who may not be
part of a study group or leadership forum.
May 2016 ■ ARMY 81

Browsing through the lists in the eight
fields of interest prompts some observations.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth appears in
four. Virginia Woolf’s essay “Professions
for Women” appears in five. Dempsey
and Civil War Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
show up twice to Clausewitz’s four recommendations.
This helps us understand
the decision to include Macbeth in
its entirety—obviously, it has broad application
to the study of leadership. It
also reveals that the inclusion of a selection
in a given chapter or album is not
meant to bound its application within
the definitional framework. Many literary
works that evoke thought don’t fit rational
frameworks, no matter how sophisticated.
The anthology ends with a coda:
“Letting Go.” The title is apt. Just
as in a complex musical composition, a
work such as this needs a “tail” that
can’t quite be characterized as a conclusion.
The coda has the same internal
organization found in chapters and albums.
But it is short—only nine pages
and three selections—and only one of
its selections is cited in more than one
functional list.
All three appear in the “introspection
and motivation” section—the last and
one of the longer lists, with 41 entries.
Pale Horse: Hunting Terrorists and
Commanding Heroes With the 101st
Airborne Division. Jimmy Blackmon.
St. Martin’s Press. 365 pages. $27.99
By Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano
U.S. Army retired
Every American war produces books
that look at battle from the perspective
of the ground commander down. In
Pale Horse: Hunting Terrorists and Commanding
Heroes With the 101st Airborne
Division, retired Col. Jimmy Blackmon
delivers an account of small-unit actions
during combat in Afghanistan.
The story of a tour of tough fighting
against the Taliban in 2009 covers some
The longest list, “family, society and
civilization,” has 43 entries, yet the two
lists have only 10 entries in common.
This gives a glimpse into the painstaking
judgments that must have gone into
choosing the selections and devising the
lists. It also reveals some of the reasons
I believe this anthology will be a useful
and enduring addition to works that
help us grow as leaders while also helping
other leaders grow.
Samet concludes her introduction by
writing, “The argument of this book is
that the work of understanding, analyzing,
interpreting, comparing, contrasting,
synthesizing, and reflecting—the work
that serious literature compels a reader to
perform—can help awaken leaders and
keep them ever sharp.” I agree with her
assertion, and I have never encountered a
book that will serve that purpose so well.
Whether in individual study or in a group
learning environment, this anthology can
provide virtually unlimited opportunities
for leaders of every age and background
to think and grow.
Brig. Gen. Harold W. Nelson, USA Ret., is
a former U.S. Army chief of military history.
He has served on the faculties of the
U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Army
Command and General Staff College,
and the U.S. Army War College.
Ground Commander Gives
View of the War He Knew
of the most well-known engagements
of this long war, including the tragic
battle of Wanat, fighting at Outpost
Restrepo, and the campaign across the
Korengal Valley.
In the American way of war, midlevel
commanders hold a key and vital role:
they are the linchpin between fighting on
the ground and aspirations of higher
commanders to impose their will on the
enemy at the tactical and operational levels
of war. What is remarkable is how
true that remains over the course of
modern American military history despite
the changes in technology, terrain
and geography.
Beyond the timeless story of midlevel
commanders at war, Blackmon’s war is
worth documenting. Americans may be
tiring of the kinds of wars his soldiers
fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that
is no guarantee war is tired of America—
and that small-unit combat won’t be an
integral part of future U.S. combat operations.
Not surprisingly, much of Blackmon’s
narrative zeroes in on individual
soldiers. His account of the Battle of
Wanat, for example, centers on the actions
of Spc. Christopher McKaig, one
of the handful of soldiers posted at Observation
Post Topside. Cut off and
subjected to withering fire over the
course of the battle, with most of his
teammates wounded and running low
on ammunition, McKaig made a suicidal
dash to resupply the OP.
Blackmon also recounts the skill and
courage of Chief Warrant Officer 2 Joe
Mosher during a harrowing resupply
mission in the Korengal Valley. His Chinook
hit by a rocket-propelled grenade,
Mosher struggled to get the helicopter to
the safety of a nearby firebase before
crash-landing.
Pale Horse is not just about firefights.
Blackmon also highlights the contributions
of Staff Sgt. Jay Karvaski. Karvaski
helped oversee his battalion’s intelligence
team and dissected the activities of the
Taliban in the Pech River Valley, the
place Blackmon called “the most violent
area in our battle space.”
In another chapter on the less-known
82 ARMY ■ May 2016

fight for OP Bari Ali, Blackmon recalls
the efforts of Iranian-born Sgt. Azad
“Oz” Ebrahimzadeh to calm and reassure
local villagers caught in the crossfire.
Ebrahimzadeh enlisted in the Army out
of high school, joined the infantry and
then became a combat medic.
Blackmon also tells the story of a
major battle along the eastern wall of
the Watapur, which marked “the crossroads
of enemy lines of communication
from the north and east, supplying
weapons and fighters to … Korengal,
Waygal and Shuryak.” Blackmon’s task
force raced to relieve a patrol from an
adjacent unit. Among those flying in
resupply and reinforcements was pilotin-command
Capt. Joe McCarthy, who
spearheaded the charge into a “lifeand-death
battle” that lasted over eight
hours.
Pale Horse is a timely reminder of how
powerful the all-volunteer force has
been. Blackmon clearly has a deep affection
and respect for the soldiers he
fought with, but it is an admiration born
of their performance, sacrifice, courage
and achievement in the field.
One of the key challenges of contemporary
military policy will be how to sustain
the achievements of the all-volunteer
force. Pale Horse is a reminder of the
payoff of getting that task right.
Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, USA Ret., a
25-year Army veteran, is a Heritage
Foundation vice president in charge of
the think tank’s policy research in defense
and foreign affairs.
Go-To Guide to Revitalize Command Climate
Tarnished: Toxic Leadership in the
U.S. Military. George E. Reed. Potomac
Books. 203 pages. $26.50
By Maj. Nathan K. Finney
Now that the external pressure of the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has
largely abated, the military appears to
be returning to its peacetime procedural
roots. Initiatives like Force of the Future,
new evaluations, and a renewed
focus on professional military education
all point to an acknowledgement that
the services may have slipped in their
management and education of people to
meet operational requirements. Add into
the mix war atrocities and high-profile
ethical misconduct, and it is no wonder
the Army is in a reflective mood regarding
the people who were promoted and
placed into leadership positions over the
last decade, and their effect on the organization.
Into this internal reflection steps retired
Col. George Reed, a former director
at the U.S. Army War College
and dean of the School of Public Affairs
at the University of Colorado at
Colorado Springs. His book, Tarnished:
Recent Publications
from the Institute of Land Warfare
All publications are available at:
www.ausa.org/publications/ilw
Land Warfare Papers
• LWP 108 – Are U.S. Army Capabilities for
Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction at
Risk? by Thomas C. Westen (September 2015)
• LWP 107 – Integrating Landpower in the Indo–
Asia–Pacific Through 2020: Analysis of a Theater
Army Campaign Design by Benjamin A. Bennett
(May 2015)
• LWP 106 – American Landpower and the
Two-war Construct by Richard D. Hooker, Jr.
(May 2015)
National Security Watch
• NSW 16-1 – African Horizons: The United States
Army Working Toward a Secure and Stable
Africa by Douglas W. Merritt (February 2016)
• NSW 15-4 – These Are the Drones You Are
Looking For: Manned–Unmanned Teaming and
the U.S. Army by Richard Lim (December 2015)
• NSW 15-3 – Innovation and Invention: Equipping
the Army for Current and Future Conflicts
by Richard Lim (September 2015)
• NSW 15-2 – Malaysia, Singapore and the United
States: Harmony or Hegemony? by Richard Lim
(May 2015)
NCO Update
• Lead Story: Brainpower is the Next Frontier in
Army’s Arsenal (1st Quarter 2016)
• Lead Story: Mark Milley, 39th Chief of Staff, Army
(4th Quarter 2015)
Special Reports
• AUSA + 1st Session, 114th Congress = Some
Good News (December 2015)
• Profile of the U.S. Army 2014/2015: a reference
handbook (October 2014)
• Your Soldier, Your Army: A Parents’ Guide
by Vicki Cody (also available in Spanish)
Torchbearer National Security Reports
• U.S. Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense
Capabilities: Enabling Joint Force 2020 and
Beyond (May 2014)
Torchbearer Issue Papers
• Sustaining the All-Volunteer Force: A Readiness
Multiplier (March 2016)
• Strategically Responsive Logistics: A Game-
Changer (October 2015)
• The U.S. Army in Europe: Strategic Landpower in
Action (October 2015)
• Rapid Equipping and the U.S. Army’s Quick-
Reaction Capability (October 2015)
• Enabling Reserve Component Readiness to
Ensure National Security (September 2015)
Defense Reports
• DR 16-2 – National Commission on the Future of
the Army: An Initial Blueprint for the Total Army
(February 2016)
• DR 16-1 – Until They All Come Home: The
Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action
Accounting Agency (February 2016)
Landpower Essays
• LPE 15-1 – Strategic Landpower in the 21st
Century: A Conceptual Framework by Brian M.
Michelson (March 2015)
May 2016 ■ ARMY 83

Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Military, is a
quick and easy read that succinctly defines
toxic leadership, places it within an
organizational context, and describes its
causes and some mitigating factors.
Ipicked up this book expecting to be
disappointed; so many books on this
subject are either too academic to be decipherable
or are screeds at the ineptitude
of military bureaucracy. Tarnished
is, thankfully, neither. Soldiers possessing
a story of enduring a boss who was
inept, cruel or a micromanager will immediately
identify with aspects of Reed’s
elaboration on toxic leaders’ destructive
behaviors and dysfunctional personal
characteristics.
To many people, the definition of a
toxic leader is largely subjective. One
person’s toxic leader may be another’s
highly effective and demanding boss who
should be emulated. What Reed provides
in Tarnished is a solid definition
based around the negative effect that demotivational
behavior has on unit morale
and climate. More importantly, Reed
provides toxic characteristics and typologies
of harmful leaders that can be used
to assess how leaders are interacting with
their subordinates.
Chapters describing ways to mitigate
such behaviors on a personal level are
particularly useful. While other works
on toxic leadership focus exclusively on
the drivers and organizational remedies,
Reed also describes individual
ways to confront toxic leaders, work
around them to improve organizational
climate, and ultimately go above them to
address their negative impacts. I certainly
could have used these tools in previous
jobs under bosses who spanned the spectrum
from petty tyrants to bullies.
At a time when talent and the larger
human capital management are under
review, I recommend that Army leaders
use Tarnished as a tool for determining
ways to identify substandard and harmful
leaders as early as possible, as well as
to create periodic assessments over a career.
Even more importantly, Tarnished
should be required reading in NCO
courses, company grade officer career
courses, and intermediate-level education.
As Reed points out, “It is the obligation
of followers to try to influence
their leaders toward more effective behavior
and to do what they can to craft a
good unit climate.”
We must provide all leaders the tools to
recognize and ultimately overcome toxic
leadership. Tarnished is a great starting
point.
Maj. Nathan K. Finney is a strategic plans
and policy officer. He is the founder of the
online publication The Strategy Bridge,
a founding member of the Military Writers
Guild, and a term member at the
Council on Foreign Relations.
A Window Into Life of Heroic Soldier-Statesman
Marshall: A Statesman Shaped in the
Crucible of War. Rachel Yarnell
Thompson. George C. Marshall International
Center, Inc. 736 pages. $35
By Col. Cole C. Kingseed
U.S. Army retired
Anumber of excellent biographies have
been published over the past decade
chronicling the life of Gen. George C.
Marshall Jr. In Marshall: A Statesman
Shaped in the Crucible of War, Rachel
Yarnell Thompson reveals both the
private and professional lives of one of
this country’s most celebrated heroes.
Thompson’s Marshall is certainly the soldier-statesman,
but also a “kind, thoughtful
and caring man who experienced two
great loves, suffered deep personal losses,
and knew well both the joys and challenges
of family.”
Thompson is a Marshall Scholar and
director of special projects at the
George C. Marshall International Center
in Leesburg, Va. Over the course of
16 years in which she served as a researcher
and educator at the center,
Thompson created and developed the
Marshall Immersion Workshop for secondary-level
educators from across the
U.S. and Europe. In addition to her educational
projects, Thompson coauthored
another Marshall biography,
America’s Hero to the World: George C.
Marshall.
What separates her latest biography
from previous works about Marshall is
Thompson’s ability to interweave the
general’s professional career with glimpses
into his personal life. Thompson’s purpose
is twofold: “to help the reader appreciate
the energy, commitment and
dogged determination that it took for
him to accomplish all that he did during
50 years of service to his country,” and
“to get specific about the complex tasks
that Marshall tackled, shedding light
upon the significance of his leadership to
the whole military-diplomatic scene.”
Born in Uniontown, Pa., in 1880,
Marshall described his early life as “very
simple.” Graduating from Virginia Military
Institute in 1901, he found his true
calling as a soldier. Commissioned as an
infantry second lieutenant in 1902, Marshall
began his military career with the
30th Infantry Regiment in the Philippines.
Benefitting from the Progressive
Era reforms that emphasized institutional
professional education, the young
officer graduated No. 1 in his class at the
U.S. Infantry and Cavalry School at Fort
Leavenworth, Kan., in 1907. The following
year, Marshall earned the top
spot in the General Staff School.
84 ARMY ■ May 2016

Marshall’s subsequent military service
is well known to ARMY magazine
readers. Returning to the Philippines,
Marshall attracted the attention of Maj.
Gen. J. Franklin Bell, one of the commanding
generals in the Philippine Department.
Bell, commanding the Eastern
Department of the Army in 1917,
approved Marshall’s transfer to the 1st
Infantry Division as chief of operations.
By the end of World War I, Marshall
served as senior aide to Gen. John J.
Pershing, commanding general of the
American Expeditionary Forces.
Marshall endured the trials and tribulations
of the interwar Army, including
a delayed promotion to the grade
of brigadier general, but his talent carried
him to the post of deputy chief of staff of
the Army in October 1938. When President
Franklin D. Roosevelt informed
Marshall that he would be nominated
as Army chief of staff, Marshall replied,
“I feel deeply honored, sir, and I will give
you the best I have.”
In examining Marshall’s private papers,
Thompson captures the drama of
the day when Marshall assumed the
highest post in the Army on Sept. 1,
1939. In Marshall’s own words, “My day
of induction into office was momentous,
with the starting of what appears to be a
world war.”
Thompson offers other insights in
the challenges encountered by Marshall
as the U.S. waged global war. One of
these challenges included support of
the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps as
an auxiliary to the U.S. Army. In several
speeches and public appearances,
Marshall actively championed that the
Women’s Army Corps receive full benefits
allowed to other service members.
By Victory in Europe Day in May
1945, British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill paid Marshall the ultimate
compliment by proclaiming the Army
chief of staff as “the true organizer of
victory.”
To Thompson’s credit, she dedicates
fully a third of this biography to Marshall’s
life post-World War II. Service as
special ambassadorial envoy to China,
secretary of state, and secretary of defense
followed Marshall’s retirement as
Army of chief of staff. Perhaps Marshall
made his greatest contribution to world
history as secretary of state, and Thompson
is at her best in describing the origins
of the Marshall Plan.
In Marshall’s view, unless the U.S.
State Department did not act, Western
Europe would sink into an economic
abyss. “Something had to be done to
break the vicious cycle,” Marshall announced
in an address at Harvard University
on June 5, 1947, to “restore the
confidence of the European people in the
economic future of their own countries
Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and
Redemption of Stonewall Jackson.
S.C. Gwynne. Scribner. 688 pages. $35
By Lt. Col. Kirby R. Dennis
The Civil War defines perhaps the
most complex period in our nation’s
history, shaped by powerful social, political
and military forces. As so many historians
have pointed out, many of the
Civil War’s political and social outcomes
were determined by events on the battlefield
and, more specifically, the successes
and failures of American generals
on both sides.
New York Times best-selling author and
and of Europe as a whole.” Marshall’s
speech—“one of the most significant in
mid-20th century history,” Thompson
writes—lasted only 12 minutes and 10
seconds. The resulting Marshall Plan
fixed Marshall’s role in history.
Alone of the great military figures from
World War II, Marshall refused to publish
his memoirs. When asked by a newspaper
reporter from Chicago American if
he would like to break his silence, Marshall’s
response was hardly surprising.
“If I were to write my memoirs,” he
said, “I’d want them to be completely
honest, historical and factual. To meet
those qualifications, I would have to
step on the toes of too many people. It’s
better to write nothing under these circumstances.”
That statement alone reveals
more of Marshall’s character than
the volumes that have been written
about him.
Thompson has produced an insightful
analysis in the career of one of America’s
foremost heroes. We are indebted to
Marshall for his selfless service across a
half-century as both a soldier and a
statesman. We are in Thompson’s debt
for making Marshall’s story accessible to
another generation of Americans.
Col. Cole C. Kingseed, USA Ret., Ph.D., a
former professor of history at the U.S. Military
Academy, is a writer and consultant.
Assessing Shortcomings,
Skills of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson
historian S.C. Gwynne believes Confederate
Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall”
Jackson is one such commander whose
battlefield prowess directly impacted the
course of the Civil War. More specifically,
Jackson’s aggressive tactics, unbending
leadership style, and devotion to
military victory set him apart from all his
contemporaries.
In Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and
Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, Gwynne
contends that these qualities directly influenced
the shape and duration of what
was originally expected to be a short and
bloodless war. In addition to his convincing
historical evidence of Jackson’s
impact on the war effort, Gwynne treats
May 2016 ■ ARMY 85

the reader to a unique perspective of
Jackson as a soldier, strategist, leader,
husband and brother.
Gwynne opens the biography at Virginia
Military Institute, where Jackson
first hears the call to arms. The author
paints a portrait of a man who opposed
secession and possessed vitriol for war,
yet decided to march into battle out of
perceived concern for Union invasion
and subjugation of his beloved Virginia.
Even in his position at VMI, in which
he was described as “contented [and]
domestic,” Jackson possessed a knack
for soldiering that ultimately led to his
meteoric rise in both rank and fame.
Gwynne captures the essence of Jackson’s
character in battle at the book’s
outset, citing his “harder-edged, less
charitable” belief in total war as well as
his reputation as a “rigid disciplinarian”—two
qualities that Gwynne brings
to life throughout the book.
Initially billed as an officer who was
overzealous and a little crazy, Jackson
proved his worth as a commander during
a retreat action at Harpers Ferry in what
is now West Virginia, ironically resulting
in his promotion to brigadier general.
Gwynne highlights this seemingly minor
skirmish as a formative experience for
Jackson, as it illustrated the South’s lack
of strategy in what was quickly becoming
a “war of maneuver.”
As Gwynne colorfully describes, this
experience imbued in Jackson a sense of
urgency to always remain on the offensive
as a means of countering Union advantages
in men and materiel. Earning a
reputation as a reliable, competent and
aggressive commander at the seminal
First Battle of Bull Run—or First Manassas—Va.,
Jackson maneuvered an inferior
force with speed and determination
to secure an improbable victory.
This was a significant development in
what was otherwise a stalemated war at
the time.
Bull Run is only one of several battles
in which Gwynne artfully describes the
impact of Jackson’s generalship and in
doing so, goes the extra mile to provide
the reader with evidence that Jackson’s
operational decisions had far-reaching
consequences.
Aside from richly told accounts of his
subject’s battlefield exploits, Gwynne’s
greatest accomplishment is his narrative
of Jackson’s leadership and the conditions
in which he exercised his command.
Take, for example, the Romney Expedition
of 1862, in which Jackson sought to
recapture and occupy the town located in
present-day West Virginia. Gwynne described
it as the “most horrific noncombat
experience of the war.” Freezing temperatures
and fierce winds combined with
a lack of equipment and food to create an
untenable situation. Yet through it all,
Jackson maintained his resolve to push
forward, even if it meant breaking the
morale of his troops. Gwynne notes that
Jackson “showed no sympathy at all for
his troops’ suffering,” but also shared in
their misery every step of the way.
Despite open revolt from his officers
and second-guessing from his superiors,
Jackson’s campaign ultimately succeeded
in securing Romney and clearing
Union forces from key terrain, and thus
reinforced his belief that victory would
lie in the South’s ability to keep the
Union uneasy and off-balance through
bold offensive maneuver. Yet Jackson’s
subordinates did not always buy into his
“persistent, terrier-like” notions of battle,
and his plan to continue the pursuit
of Union forces was derailed by a unit
tired and in tatters.
Herein lies Gwynne’s fairmindedness
in assessing Jackson the leader, as the
reader comes away with an appreciation
for both Jackson’s skills and shortcomings
as a commander. Many examples
like Romney are scattered throughout
Rebel Yell, and the author brilliantly
brings to life Jackson’s leadership qualities,
both good and bad, through vivid
descriptions of each.
In addition to his descriptions of Jackson’s
battlefield exploits, Gwynne also
delves into other aspects of the general’s
life: his spirituality, family relationships,
and upbringing as a West Point cadet
and U.S. Army major who resigned his
commission in 1851, about a decade before
the Civil War.
Gwynne sometimes meanders in these
topics, leading the reader to question the
relevance of certain chapters to the
book’s overall purpose. Yet his goal in
providing these seemingly detached details
is worthy, as he attempts to give the
reader a holistic view of Jackson as a human
being and, on balance, does service
to the annals of Civil War literature.
Gwynne follows an impressive cast of
Jackson biographers—Robert Tanner,
James Robertson and Lenoir Chambers,
to name a few. Yet his sweeping portrayal
of one of our most successful and enigmatic
military leaders is timely, as it sheds
contemporary light on those qualities that
made Jackson both revered and despised.
Indeed, during a time in our history when
unconventional military leadership has
proven to be essential against the most
complex of enemies, Gwynne’s Rebel Yell
warrants close examination and study.
Lt. Col. Kirby R. Dennis is an infantry
officer serving in a joint assignment at
U.S. Northern Command. He previously
served as the brigade executive officer
of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team,
10th Mountain Division.
1-855-246-6269
That’s the toll-free number to
call AUSA national headquarters.
The AUSA Action Line is open
8 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday through
Thursday, and 8 a.m.–1:30 p.m.
Friday, except holidays. If you
have a question about AUSA, give
us a call.
86 ARMY ■ May 2016

2016 ARMY Magazine
SFC Dennis Steele Photo Contest
Sponsored by the Association of the U.S. Army
The Association of the U.S. Army
is pleased to announce our
annual photo contest. Amateur
and professional photographers
are invited to enter.
The winning photographs will
be published in ARMY magazine,
and the photographers will be
awarded cash prizes. First prize
is $500; second prize is $300;
third prize is $200. Those who
are awarded an honorable
mention will each receive $100.
‘Out of the Smoke’ by Christina J. Graber
was the 2015 SFC Dennis Steele Photo
Contest winner.
Entry Rules:
1. Each photograph must have a U.S. Army-related
subject and must have been taken on or after July
1, 2015.
2. Entries must not have been published elsewhere.
3. Each contestant is limited to three entries.
4. Entries may be 300-dpi digital photos, black-andwhite
prints or color prints. Photographs must
not be tinted or altered or have watermarks.
5. The minimum size for prints is 5 x 7 inches; the
maximum is 8 x 10 inches (no mats or frames).
6. The following information must be provided with
each photograph: the photographer’s name,
address and telephone number, and a brief
description of the photograph.
7. Entries may be mailed to: Editor in Chief, ARMY
magazine, 2425 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201,
ATTN: Photo Contest. Send digital photos to
armymag@ausa.org.
8. Entries must be postmarked by Sept. 15, 2016.
Winners will be notified by mail in October.
9. Entries will not be returned.
10. Employees of AUSA and their family members
are not eligible to participate.
11. Prize-winning photographs may be published in
ARMY magazine and other AUSA publications up
to three times.
12. Photographic quality and subject matter will be
the primary considerations in judging.
For more information, contact Thomas Spincic (armymag@ausa.org), ARMY magazine,
2425 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201; 703-907-2419.

Final Shot
U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Carlos Davis
A 25th Infantry Division soldier has
his eye on you during an air assault
exercise at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
88 ARMY ■ May 2016