Army - Rough, Risky Path Ahead

The Magazine of the Association of the United States Army
ARMY
April 2016 www.ausa.org $3.00
Rough, Risky
Path Ahead
Back to Basics on
Unit Maintenance
Page 26
Mission Command
Has Proven History
Page 30

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ARMY
The Magazine of the Association of the United States Army
April 2016 www.ausa.org Vol. 66, No. 4
DEPARTMENTS
LETTERS....................................................3
SEVEN QUESTIONS ..................................6
WASHINGTON REPORT ...........................8
NEWS CALL ..............................................9
FRONT & CENTER
Army Burdened by Weight
Of Nondeployables
By Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, USA Ret.
Page 15
No Time, Literally, for
All Requirements
By Maj. Crispin J. Burke
Page 16
Friend or Foe? Knowing the
Difference Key to U.S. Security
By Lt. Col. John Curtis, USA Ret.
Page 17
Improve Personnel System,
Don’t Change It
By Lt. Col. Thomas D. Morgan, USA Ret.
Page 18
Integrate Civil Affairs
Into Institutional Army
By Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. Jacobs, USAR Ret.
Page 20
Allies Must Join Forces to
Defeat Another ‘Ism’
By Col. Paul Zigo, USA Ret.
Page 22
SHE’S THE ARMY ...................................25
THE OUTPOST........................................63
SUSTAINING MEMBER PROFILE ...........67
SOLDIER ARMED....................................69
HISTORICALLY SPEAKING.....................71
REVIEWS.................................................75
FINAL SHOT ...........................................80
FEATURES
Not New, Not Novel but…
History Provides Many
Examples of Mission
Command’s Success
By Maj. Christina Fanitzi
Though Mission Command is an
increasingly trendy buzz phrase for
creating innovation and initiative at
the lowest possible level of
leadership, it has been used
throughout history. Page 30
30
ON THE COVER
Rough, Risky Path Ahead:
Reports Highlight Challenges
For Army Global Preparedness
By Rick Maze
Three independent reports warn that
the U.S. Army may be ill-prepared for
the complex world ahead. Page 40
Cover Photo: Exercise Sky Soldier II in
the Czech Republic combined Czech paratroopers
and soldiers from the 91st Cavalry
Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade.
U.S. Army/Markus Rauchenberger
26
Maintenance
Heads Back
To the Basics
By Gen. Dennis L. Via
The first decade of
the 21st century has
seen enormous
change for the U.S.
Army, and no field
has witnessed more
change than that of
Army logistics—
equipping and
sustaining the force.
Page 26
April 2016 ■ ARMY 1

Multinational Force Success Requires Multilingual Troops
By 1st Lt. Nicholas B. Naquin
To maintain our competitive edge, the Army must demand that junior tactical leaders have
practical fluency in at least one foreign language and invest accordingly. Page 48
48
34
Insight May Be the
Greatest Power of All
By Lt. Col. C. Richard Nelson, USA Ret.
One antidote for shortsightedness is
insight, which has been defined as the
ability to see a situation in its full
complexity. Page 34
Start the Presses: Write Your
War Memoir
By Col. Thomas A. Hardy, USAR Ret.
Putting your memories on paper ensures a
record of your service, crystallizes
recollections before they grow dim, and
gives family and friends insights into
military experiences. Page 53
56
53
36
Commanders as Communicators:
Conveying Clear Intent Helps
Create First-Class Climate
By Col. David M. Hodne
A good commander must communicate
his or her vision and intent clearly and
naturally, inspiring soldiers to work
together and appreciate each other’s
efforts. Page 36
Private Prevailed in Fight
Against General
By Daniel J. Demers
Court reporter John Mahler took his
typewriter with him in 1898 when he
joined the Nebraska U.S. Volunteers to
fight in the Spanish-American War.
Ultimately, the machine would lead to his
court-martial. Page 45
45
Families Have Needs.
Are Commanders Listening?
By Rebecca Alwine
With Army Family Covenant assimilated
into Total Army Strong, installation
commanders now determine which family
programs work best for soldiers, families
and civilians on their respective
installations. Page 56
60
Complexity Science Defines
Complex Systems
By Maj. Allen Trujillo
Complexity science defines organizations
throughout the Army as complex adaptive
systems characterized by diverse agents
that interact with each other and coevolve
with the environment. Page 60
2 ARMY ■ April 2016

Letters
Keep Fighting Spirit Alive
■ I love the “SoldierSpeak” column
and read it every month. The quote that
made me smile in the February issue
came from Sgt. 1st Class Matt Torres of
Fort Bragg, N.C.: “If you can’t fight and
win, then I don’t want you on the team.”
Torres is worried about some NCOs becoming
“stagnant in their careers” and
“willing to ‘sit back and chill’ while waiting
for retirement.”
As the commander of a 55-man unit in
Korea in 1999, I had a similar concern.
At my initial meeting with the unit, I
said there would be no easy medals
awarded upon their departure from the
unit, and then I challenged them to take
advantage of the opportunities available.
While I thought this would spur
them on to great achievements, several
members of the unit took exception and
filed an inspector general (IG) complaint
against me. They claimed I was
being unfairly harsh and that they would
be deemed failures at their next units if
they reported without a glowing citation.
I was amazed when the inspector general
called and “counseled” me about my
statement. The IG wanted to make sure
I was taking proper care of my soldiers.
My executive officer, sergeant major and
I weathered the inspector general complaints
and had a successful assignment,
although two soldiers left the unit without
an award. The IG could have done
my unit and the soldiers a great favor had
he told the soldiers to accept the challenge
and drive on instead of listening to
them whine.
I wish Torres and all the other great
NCOs success in their goals to instill and
maintain the fighting spirit.
Col. Bob Kleba, USAR Ret.
Crivitz, Wis.
How Will We Prevent World War IV?
■ Kudos to retired Lt. Gen. James
M. Dubik for his article, “Winning the
War We’ve Got, Not the One We
Want” (February). His candor and clarity
should be echoed by all who have
contact with and might educate national
leaders, service members and elected
civilians.
We have all seen the visionary search
for glamorous, new, high-tech weapons
systems imagined to cope with unknown
future wars, effectively diverting badly
needed funds and strategic direction from
the actual conflict in which we’re embroiled.
Do we need the Littoral Combat
Ship or F-35 to attack the Islamist extremists’
core beliefs, bases or units? Unless
we refocus our attention and scarce
funding to the real problem, we will
lose World War IV—the term that I
and others have adopted for the global
April 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
Ferdinand H. Thomas II
Sr. 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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U.S. Army/Spc. David N. Beckstrom
ideological conflict that we’re mired in.
For several years, I have presented the
situation at continuing education environs,
military groups and other venues,
at first titling the talk “It’s All Tribal” before
shifting to “World War IV,” laying
out the localized battlefield and underlying
causes of the conflict. Dubik said it
much better, and I’ll steal his thoughts to
revise my short paper on the topic.
Thank you, sir.
Col. Roger Mickelson, USA Ret.
Albuquerque, N.M.
Metrics Mean Better Gaming Odds
■ Retired Col. Charles D. Allen’s article
(“It’s Time to Establish Ethics-Related
Metrics,” February) brought back
memories of 50 years ago when, as a second
lieutenant, I learned that the ability
to tell official lies was a necessary skill
for an Army officer. I learned that every
officer for whom I wrote an efficiency
report was outstanding; every vehicle in
my motor pool was ready to go; and that
an unused, off-the-books field stove
built from requisitioned parts would
substitute for the real one whenever an
inspector general report loomed.
Years later, and after the next set of
official lies—the infamous “body count”
of Vietnam—I got a doctorate in military
history, during which time I wrote a
paper, “The Problem of the Substitute
Metric.” This referred to a situation in
which it was next to impossible to get an
answer to the real question of whether
we were winning the war, so one substituted
the body count metric as somehow
correlating to the real question.
The problem was that the metric, not
winning the war, became the goal. Lies
abounded, not to mention more than a
few war crimes, since everyone knew that
unless one’s own body count equaled or
exceeded that of the unit next door, one’s
career was doomed.
I truly, truly sympathize with Allen.
But short of a total rethink of the efficiency
report system, which today rewards
solely pleasing one’s rating officer,
another metric is just going to increase
the opportunities to game the system.
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Greenhut, USA Ret.
Durham, N.C.
CORRECTIONS
ARMY magazine welcomes letters to
the editor. Short letters are more
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email to armymag@ausa.org.
The “Army Women: Highlights” timeline (February) incorrectly said most
of the 13,000 WACs serving in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War were
nurses. More than 5,000 nurses also served in the theater, but they were members
of the Army Nurse Corps, not WACs.
Also in February, the review of retired Gen. Ann Dunwoody’s book, A Higher
Standard: Leadership Strategies from America’s First Female Four-Star General, incorrectly
stated that Dunwoody’s only deployment was to Saudi Arabia during
Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. In fact, she served overseas multiple
times in her 38-year Army career, including in Germany and Uzbekistan.
4 ARMY ■ April 2016

Seven Questions
Joint Chiefs Advisor Puts People First
Command Sgt. Maj. John W. Troxell, a 33-year Army veteran,
discusses his career and his appointment in December as senior enlisted
advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine
Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr.
1. Do you have a list of goals for your position?
Absolutely. The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman’s priorities
are to restore joint readiness, improve joint warfighting, and
develop [the next generation of] leaders for joint forces. As I
plug myself in there, I look at the chairman’s priorities and
what our national military strategy says. Then I look at that
and see how I can put myself as the senior enlisted advisor.
What it comes down to is processes, programs and people.
I’m going to focus on the people. The absolute best part of
my new job is that I have a direct line to the total force now,
but I also have a direct line with the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. We talk frequently. And he genuinely cares
about the men and women who serve in our military.
2. What does this appointment mean to you and your family?
It is absolutely the most humbling thing that has ever happened
to me and our family in our entire lives. Understanding there
were 19 others who could have been selected for this position,
and the chairman chose me, was so humbling—and exciting.
3. Do you have any pet peeves that people should know before
meeting you?
They should know that I’m a huge [physical fitness] guy,
and I absolutely love training. I’m almost 52 years old, and I
took a young Marine sergeant and a young Army major into
the gym this morning and put a coat of ‘scunnion’ [slang for
inspiring fear or anxiety] on them. I did that to show them
how important training is.
If you talk to the force about John Wayne Troxell, there will
be one word they’ll say: Mungadai [Warrior Challenge, the
team-building event to test leaders’ adaptability and build esprit
de corps]. Over the past 11 years, I’ve taken senior enlisted leaders
and put them in a Ranger School type of environment for 58
hours with minimal sleep, minimal food. These are troops from
all services, and the Korean forces have joined in as well.
4. Why did you join the Army?
I wasn’t that great of an athlete. In some cases, I wasn’t that
good of a student. I started seeing guys in my neighborhood
who were coming back after joining the military; specifically,
two guys who had joined the Ranger regiment. When they
came back and I saw how fit, how disciplined they were and
how they carried themselves, I thought: That’s an organization
I want to be a part of.
5. Did you ever think seriously of leaving the Army?
I did. My first tour was an assignment at Fort Bliss, Texas,
in 1983 and 1984. Hadn’t been there six months and already,
they had me on an assignment to Germany, and my wife at
that time was my girlfriend. We were trying to build our relationship
as a couple.
We got married and went overseas. Frankly, I got tired of
watching my NFL football games [early in the morning]. I
told my wife, ‘I’m thinking … we should get out and go back
to Iowa.’ There were a couple of emotional days where she
wouldn’t talk to me. I didn’t have a plan to get out, and I was
making an emotional decision based on something that really
didn’t matter: my ability to watch Sunday afternoon football.
So we made an agreement to stay in.
Command Sgt. Maj. John W. Troxell
6. What is one of your most memorable experiences as a
sergeant major?
Serving as the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division
command sergeant major, as Surge brigade No. 4 into Iraq in
2007, was the hardest 15 months of my life because we lost 54
men out of my brigade and had more than 500 wounded.
7. How did you get the name John Wayne?
Historically in my family, “Wayne” is a middle name. My
grandfather’s middle name was Wayne; my father’s middle
name was Wayne; and I named my son Daniel Wayne. John is
also a prominent name within the family; I have several uncles
who are named John. In the end, I think it was my father, who
is a huge country western fan and with the traditions and legacies,
he put it together as John Wayne.
—Ferdinand H. Thomas II
DoD
6 ARMY ■ April 2016

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Washington Report
Financial Belt Will Stay Tight Through FY 2017
The fiscal year 2017 budget has the Army looking to 2018
for any relief from budget constraints. Facing hard choices,
Army leaders continue to reduce money for force structure and
facilities, stringing out modernization.
A bipartisan attempt is underway in the U.S. House of
Representatives to provide some relief from troop cuts by requiring
the Army to keep a minimum strength of just over 1
million Total Force soldiers, but the bill that would do this
doesn’t explain how the Army would pay for the extra Regular
Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers.
For fiscal 2017, which begins on Oct. 1, the Army has requested
$148 billion in base and contingency funds. This is
the same total as the current budget, although the amounts in
the base and contingency accounts are slightly different.
“We knew ’17 would be a hard year,” said Donald Tison,
the Army’s assistant deputy chief of staff for financial management,
acknowledging that the $125 billion portion of the budget
dedicated to basic programs is $4.2 billion under the
Army’s budget estimate submission.
The five-year defense plan calls for a base budget of $132
billion in fiscal year 2018, a $7 billion increase that is subject
to change but may not. “I don’t think it will be much less,” Tison
said.
Facing another year of tight spending, Army leaders have
made readiness their top priority, according to Army budget
documents, by maintaining 30 brigade combat teams; funding
19 combat training center rotations; increasing funds for depot
maintenance; and improving operations, readiness and physical
security arrangements.
All components would continue to lose soldiers under the
FY 2017 budget. The Regular Army has three years of cuts
scheduled, dropping from about 490,000 active-duty soldiers
today to 475,000 by Oct. 1; to 460,000 by Oct. 1, 2017; and to
450,000 by Oct. 1, 2018. The Army National Guard and
Army Reserve would bottom out on Oct. 1, 2017, at 335,000
soldiers in the Guard and 195,000 in the Army Reserve.
The POSTURE—Protecting Our Security Through Utilizing
Right-Sized End-Strength—Act, introduced in February
by members of the House Armed Services Committee, would
block these full cuts, setting a floor of 480,000 for the Regular
Army, 350,000 for the Army Guard, and 205,000 for the
Army Reserve. This would be a temporary freeze until the next
commander in chief takes office and a new national strategy is
developed.
Stopping the drop in Army strength is an issue getting wide
attention in Congress. The powerful chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee is worried about the Army.
“On the present course, we are running the risk that in a crisis,
we will have too few soldiers who will enter a fight without
proper training or equipment,” said Sen. John McCain, R-
Ariz., who became the panel chairman in January 2015.
“As the demands on our Army continue to increase, our
support for our soldiers has not kept pace,” McCain said when
he opened a hearing in February about the Army’s future. “In
short, our Army is confronting growing threats and increasing
operational demands with shrinking and less ready forces and
aging equipment.”
Maj. Gen. Thomas Horlander, the Army comptroller and
assistant secretary for financial management, said the Army
remains busy. “A large portion of America’s Army continues
to serve around the world in virtually every corner of the globe
and in every combatant commander’s area of operation,” he
Maj. Gen. Thomas Horlander gives a budget briefing at the Pentagon.
said. “The current trend is that these numbers are on the rise
to support the combatant command missions.”
This is a continuation of what the Army called the “increased
velocity of instability” that has led to expanding missions and
expanding threats. For example, the FY 2017 budget includes
$3.4 billion for continuation of the European Reassurance Initiative,
a four-fold increase to expand Army deployments and
the rotation of armored and airborne brigades to Poland and the
Baltics. With the increase, there will be an armored brigade in
Europe and a minimum of three other brigade combat teams.
Horlander said the plan also includes increasing prepositioned
equipment and conducting more regional exercises.
The budget also takes Pacific Pathways, the U.S. Army Pacific’s
initiative for rotational exercises with Asian and Pacific
partners, into its third year, Horlander said.
The 2017 budget slows the pace of near-term modernization
with a $1.3 billion reduction in procurement funds while
research, development and technology funding remains about
equal to 2016 with an allocation of $7.5 billion.
“This is an area where the Army has had to take risk as
funding levels have come down,” Horlander said.
U.S. Army/C. Todd Lopez
8 ARMY ■ April 2016

News Call
Acquisition Official: Flexibility, Innovation Key
Sustaining Army readiness and maintaining
a technological edge require
shortening as well as strengthening the
acquisition process, a high-ranking Army
acquisition official told members of Congress.
“Technologies will continue to change,”
Lt. Gen. Michael E. Williamson, principal
military deputy to the assistant secretary
of the Army (acquisition, logistics
and technology) and director of acquisition
career management, said to the
House Armed Services Committee during
a January hearing on defense acquisition
reform. “And what concerns me
about that is the tremendous amount of
technology that our potential adversaries
now have access to.”
Williamson said it is critical to have “an
agile acquisition system, one that allows us
to not just meet the current set of capabilities
but also find technologies that give us
a competitive advantage.”
Giving the Army more authority
would allow it to assess the risks involved
in acquiring a particular technology and
eliminate the time needed to get approved
funding, Williamson said. If a
promising prototype is in development
but not complete enough to use, the
Army should be able to decide whether
it wants to take the risk of funding it
rather than waiting for the technology
to mature. Streamlining the acquisition
process requires giving the Army flexibility,
he said, adding, “I need the capability
to experiment.”
One of the challenges, Williamson
said, is that there may be a technology,
subsystem or end item that the Army
would like to acquire, but that element
may be hard to fit into a program, or
might not be developed enough to guarantee
success. The Army is unwilling to
invest “unless that technology is mature
enough to plug in,” he said, adding that
“it’s often hard to defend the funding associated”
to the Army, DoD “and also,
sir, to the American.”
Williamson called prototyping “vitally
important to the Army’s acquisition reform
efforts,” and said it relies heavily on
its laboratories and research, development
and engineering centers. Making a scale
model using a 3-D printer to create parts
is helpful in creating a concept and developing
it. Prototyping also helps ready a
more mature technology for acquisition.
“Both of these activities help to better
inform requirements for new systems, as
well as drive down the risk of integrating
new technologies by demonstrating mature
solutions that are technically achievable
and affordable,” he said.
Another way the Army is improving
acquisition is by keeping better track of
progress throughout the production
process so it can identify requirements
and make tradeoffs to ensure a program
The United States World War I Centennial Commission
World War I Memorial Concept Unveiled
“The Weight of Sacrifice” has been selected as the design concept for the World War I Memorial, which will be built at Pershing Park in Washington, D.C., one
block from the White House. The concept approved by the World War I Centennial Commission includes an 81-foot wall showing civilians transforming into
soldiers, with brass panels of troops in battle. Final design approval is expected by early 2017, with hopes of breaking ground for a $30 million to $40 million
project within a year. The long-term goal is to dedicate the memorial on Veterans Day in 2018, the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 9

stays affordable without becoming too
risky. Williamson singled out the Joint
Light Tactical Vehicle as an example,
saying the Army eliminated the need to
be able to airlift the vehicle and then
used heavier, cheaper material in its construction,
saving approximately $35,000
per vehicle.
The Army is trying to increase its
use of open systems, which employ
modular design and standardized parts,
to increase efficiency and lower costs.
“If you want to do things so that you
have a growth potential, if you want to
have competition in the future to bring
in components very quickly, you have
to start with an open architecture,”
Williamson said. The Army should take
advantage of the modularity of open architecture,
mixing and matching components
and using parts in different ways
for different systems and upgrading efficiently
when new technology becomes
available, he said.
Commission: Move ‘Total Force’
From Concept to Reality
With the mission load showing no
sign of abatement, the Army needs new
and innovative ways to expand the reach
of the Total Force, members of the National
Commission on the Future of the
Army told Congress.
The commission’s final report includes
63 recommendations, including several
to draw the Regular Army, Army National
Guard and Army Reserve closer in
training and operations.
Retired Army Gen. Carter Ham, commission
chairman, said examples of this
sharing include assigning more activeduty
soldiers into National Guard units
as well as cyclically increasing readiness
levels in Guard and Reserve units by using
the Regular Army’s sustained readiness
model.
Ham noted that Army Chief of Staff
Gen. Mark A. Milley has beseeched soldiers
in all components to “look at your
uniform: Over your breast pocket, it says
U.S. Army … it doesn’t say Regular
Army, it doesn’t say Army National
Guard, it doesn’t say Army Reserve. It
says U.S. Army.”
“That is, I think, a place to begin,”
Ham said.
Retired Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond
F. Chandler III, who also served
SoldierSpeak
On Having PTSD
“If I could tell everybody something about people with PTSD [post-traumatic stress
disorder], I would tell the people that have it not to give up,” said Michael Alexander,
a veteran of eight tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. “And I would tell the rest of the people
to quit looking at them like they are mentally handicapped. We are not; we are
just trying to cope.” Alexander is now a civil service employee at Fort Stewart, Ga.
On Training Young Officers
“We have this saying about captains and lieutenants: We put them in our pocket
and carry them around feeding them until they’re able to go out on their own,” said
Sgt. 1st Class Michael Nestell, senior instructor at the Fires Center of Excellence
Mission Simulation Center at Fort Sill, Okla. “I think that’s a good analogy. This
building takes in soldiers and carries them, and when they finish the class they’ll be
able to go out on their own and do something.”
On Allies
“Working with all of our Baltic allies, it has become readily apparent that there isn’t
much of a difference between the competency and capability of our staff counterparts,”
said Capt. Richard Minkwitz, 3rd Squadron’s military intelligence officer,
of a military-to-military interaction with Lithuania’s “Iron Wolf” Mechanized Infantry
Brigade.
On Family
“If you are expecting a soldier to focus and fight in ground combat, you must ensure
his family is taken care of,” said Army Chief of Staff Mark A. Milley, speaking at an
Association of the U.S. Army breakfast. “Their first love is always going to be their
children or spouse.”
On Fighting and Winning
“We are on a path of unsustainable readiness because of nondeployability of individual
soldiers,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey told soldiers at the NCO Solarium
II at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. “I don’t care what you do and what your MOS is.
You are here for one reason and one reason only, and that is to fight and win. If you
will not fight and win, then there’s no place for you in the Army.”
On Activity and Recovery
“I couldn’t run, do push-ups or sit-ups after the injury,” said Capt. Michael Rash,
wounded in a bomb blast in 2007, praising the adaptive sports program in the Warrior
Transition Battalion at Brooke Army Medical Center, Joint Base San Antonio.
“Riding [a] bike has changed my life. I was able to get back out and get physically active,
doing something besides sitting and gaining weight from not being able to be
active.”
On Training at the JRTC
“You get the feel of what might happen in combat from training here” at the Joint Reserve
Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk, La., said Pvt. Brian Jackson, 16th Engineer
Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. “With field training
that’s a month long, you’re not actually thinking about going home because you think
about what the situation is and what you can do to better progress yourself as a soldier.
Plus, you’re wearing all your gear and facing an enemy that’s firing back at you.”
On Being in Europe
“Sergeants could be advising ambassadors at embassies on freedom of movement
and deconflicting friction points between countries,” said Col. Michelle Letcher of
the Baumholder, Germany-based 16th Sustainment Brigade. “I believe there’s
no better place to develop junior leaders than in Europe.”
10 ARMY ■ April 2016

on the eight-member commission, said,
“We’ve used the active component—
the Regular Army—significantly, and
the Guard and Reserve less.” He said
the Army needs to “use and execute the
Total Force Policy to get the Guard
and Reserve engaged on a predictable
rotational basis. The vast majority of
Guardsmen and Reservists that we
talked to want to be utilized more frequently,
in a predictable manner.”
One specific manifestation of that
philosophy is reflected in the commission’s
recommendations to assign some
of the active Army’s Apache helicopter
assets to the National Guard, and regularly
rotate them into operational missions.
“If you put all of the AH-64 aircraft in
the Regular Army, you have no strategic
depth,” said retired Army Gen. James D.
Thurman, former commander of U.S.
Forces Korea. “We felt there needed to
be depth in the force.”
The commission’s plan envisions about
280 Apache pilots assigned within the
Guard. Once established, “these formations
need to be put on a rotational cycle
… and actually utilized” to offset the
current stress of peacetime deployments
on the service’s aviation community,
Thurman said, adding that attack helicopters
will “continue to be a high-demand
item in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in
any other theater that we are going to get
involved in.”
“As a division commander in Baghdad
in 2006, the first call I always heard was
troops in contact requesting attack helicopters,”
Thurman said. “This entity is
one of the capabilities that changes dynamics
on the battlefield.”
“I think that’s true,” responded Sen. Jeff
Sessions, R-Ala. “I was talking to a young
former helicopter pilot who flew over a
group of Sunnis that we were supporting.
And they were all standing up and cheering.
They were facing combat, and they
had called for aviation support and when
it came, he could see them cheer.”
“So I think this is a big deal,” Sessions
said.
Bidding Wars Could Improve
Tour-Extension Process, Study Says
A RAND Corp. study indicates that
the Army could improve its tour-extension
process and save money at the same
This 1969 image shows the American side of Niagara Falls after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Buffalo District, N.Y., requested a temporary water shutdown.
time by creating an auction-based incentive
program in which soldiers would indicate
how much it would take for them
to extend their current tour.
DoD relocates about one-third of
military personnel each year, at a cost
of approximately $4.4 billion, with $1.5
billion covering overseas moves. As the
largest of the services, the Army bears
the brunt of these permanent change of
station moves.
The study, “Tour Lengths, Permanent
Changes of Station, and Alternatives for
Savings and Improved Stability,” found
that almost 60 percent of service members
surveyed would not extend voluntarily.
It also suggested that an auction, with
soldiers bidding on needed extensions,
would improve the inducement process.
Corps to Help Turn Off
Niagara Falls—Again
The flow of water on the U.S. side of
Niagara Falls is likely to be temporarily
stopped, for only the second time since
1969. If this happens, the Buffalo, N.Y.,
District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
will have once again played a role.
According to Andrew Kornacki, a public
affairs official with USACE, the Buffalo
District executed the first “dewatering”
in conjunction with the International
Joint Commission, which was formed by
Canada and the U.S. in 1910 to deal with
issues of interest to both countries along
the shared, 3,000-mile border.
Of the approximately 100,000 cubic
feet per second of water that flows over
Niagara Falls, only 10 percent is on the
U.S. side, with 90 percent flowing over
the Canadian side. Temporarily stopping
the flow of water in 1969 enabled engineers
to study the geological formation
of the rocks as well as erosion.
For this latest proposed dewatering,
USACE is not the instigator, Kornacki
said. Instead, the New York State Office
of Parks, Recreation and Historic
Preservation, along with the New York
State Department of Transportation, are
attempting to determine how to replace
two stone arch bridges that connect Niagara
Falls, Green Island and Goat Island
within Niagara Falls State Park in the
City of Niagara Falls.
Keith Koralewski, USACE Buffalo
District’s chief of water management, is
serving as a technical adviser to the International
Joint Commission, which will
review three proposals to accomplish this
work. Two of the proposals call for temporary
water shutdowns of about nine
months and five months, respectively.
The third proposal would not divert water
at all, but this three-year plan is
widely considered too costly and timeconsuming
to implement.
Policy Changes Called Crucial
To Afghan Security
The U.S. needs to make two policy
changes to better support Afghan forces
and help ensure Afghanistan’s fragile security
situation does not become cata-
Niagara Falls (Ontario) Public Library
April 2016 ■ ARMY 11

strophic and threaten Western security,
according to Michael E. O’Hanlon of
the Brookings Institution. Those two
changes are allowing U.S. and NATO
air power to target the Islamic State
group and Taliban in Afghanistan, and
increasing U.S. troop strength there beyond
the 5,500 ceiling in 2017.
O’Hanlon is director of research for
the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy
program, and a co-director and senior
fellow of the Brookings Center for 21st
Century Security and Intelligence. In his
report, “Improving Afghanistan Policy,”
he notes that current U.S. policy allows
only self-defense for American troops.
“Sometimes in a pinch, the U.S. military
has helped Afghan forces when they
were in desperate straits,” O’Hanlon
writes. “But generally speaking, rules of
engagement have been very narrowly
constructed in an effort to push the
Afghan armed forces to defend their
own territory.”
Although O’Hanlon calls this a
“seemingly reasonable proposition,” it
puts “unrealistically high demands on
Afghan forces at this juncture in their
development.” Afghan troops have already
been forced to adjust to a 90 percent
reduction in NATO troop strength
over the past three years, “even as the
Taliban threat has remained resilient,”
O’Hanlon writes.
Current policy also prevents soldiers
from attacking Islamic State “assets in
GENERAL OFFICER CHANGES*
*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.
Maj. Gen. E.M.
Daly from DCoS,
AMC, RA, Ala., to
CG, ASC, RIA, Ill.
Maj. Gen. S.A.
Davidson from CG,
SDDC, Scott AFB, Ill.,
to CG, 8th TSC, Fort
Shafter, Hawaii.
Maj. Gen. W.K.
Gayler from Dep.
CG, USAREUR,
Germany, to CG,
USAACE and Fort
Rucker, Ala.
Maj. Gen. C.W.
LeMasters Jr. from
DCoS for Logistics
and Ops., AMC, RA,
to CG, TACOM,
LCMC, Warren, Mich.
Maj. Gen. J.M.
Richardson from
CG, AMCOM, RA, to
Dir., Army QDR Office,
ODCoS, G-8,
USA, Washington,
D.C.
Maj. Gen. M.R.
Stammer from
Cmdr., CJTF-HOA,
OEF-HOA, Djibouti,
to Dep. CG, XVIII Airborne
Corps and
Fort Bragg, N.C.
Maj. Gen. S.P.
Swindell from Cmdr.,
SOJTF-A/NSOCC-A,
RSM/USF-A, OFS,
Afghanistan, to Dir.,
J-8 (Force Struct., Reqs.,
Resrcs. and Strat.
Asmts.), USSOCOM,
MacDill AFB, Fla.
Maj. Gen. L.N.
Thurgood from
PEO, Missiles and
Space, RA, to PEO,
Dep. for Acquisition
and Syst. Mgmt.,
OASA (ALT), Washington,
D.C.
Maj. Gen. K.F.
Vollmecke from
Dep. PEO to PEO,
IEW&S, APG, Md.
Brigadier Generals: (P) J.P. Harrington from DCoS for Ops., ARRC, NATO, England, to CG, USARAF, Italy; G.M. Brito from Dep. CG (Ops.), 25th Infantry Div., Schofield Barracks,
Hawaii, to CG, JRTC and Fort Polk, La.; J.R. Burgos, USAR, Cmdr. (TPU), 1st MSC, Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, to Dep. CG (TPU), 99th RSC, JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst,
N.J.; P.T. Calvert from Dep. Dir. for Ops., NJOIC, Ops. Team-1, J-3, Jt. Staff, Washington, D.C., to Dep. CG, 1st Cavalry Div., Fort Hood, Texas; C.H. Cleveland from Sr. Mil.
Asst. to the USD(I), Washington, D.C., to DCoS, Communications, RSM, NATO, OFS, Afghanistan; D.C. Coburn from DCoS, G-8/Dir., Resource Mgmt., USARCENT, Shaw AFB,
S.C., to CG, USAFMCOM, Indianapolis; T.J. Daugherty from Dep. CG, 4th Infantry Div., Fort Carson, Colo., to DCoS, G-3, USAREUR, Germany; M. Dillard, USAR, from Cmdr.
(TPU), 310th ESC, Indianapolis, to CG (TPU), 78th Training Div. (Ops.), JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst; J.J. Elam, USAR, from CG (TPU), 102nd Training Div. (Maneuver Spt.) and
Dep. CG for Mobilization and Training (IMA), MSCoE, Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., to Dep. Cmdr. (TPU), 416th TEC, Darien, Ill.; B.P. Fenton from Asst. CoS, G-3, USARPAC, Fort
Shafter, Hawaii, to Cmdr., SOCPAC, USPACOM, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii; A.M. Fletcher from Spec. Asst. to the CG, USASOC, Fort Bragg, N.C., to Dep. Cmdr., SOJTF-A, OFS,
Afghanistan; D.M. Gabram from DCoS, G-3/5/7, TRADOC, JB Langley-Eustis, Va., to CG, AMCOM, RA, Ala.; B.E. Hackett, USAR, from CG (TPU), 78th Training Division (Ops.),
JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, to Cmdr. (TPU), 451st ESC, Wichita, Kan.; E.J. LeBoeuf, USAR, from Dep. Cmdr. (TPU), 416th TEC, Darien, to Dep. CG (IMA), VPAA, Army University,
Fort Leavenworth, Kan.; T.P. McGuire from CG, JRTC and Fort Polk, to Dep. CG, USAREUR, Germany; F.M. Muth from Dir., Army QDR Office, ODCoS, G-8, USA, Washington,
D.C., to PM-SANG Modernization Program, Saudi Arabia; A.C. Rosende, USAR, Cmdr. (TPU), Atlantic Training Div., 75th Training Cmd., JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst,
to Cmdr. (TPU), 1st MSC, Fort Buchanan; M.N. Schanely, USAR, from Dep. Cmdr. (TPU), 412th TEC, Vicksburg, Miss., to CG (TPU), 102nd Training Division (Maneuver Spt.)
and Dep. CG for Mobilization and Training (IMA), MSCoE, Fort Leonard Wood; M.C. Schwartz from Dep. CG (Maneuver), 1st Cavalry Div., Fort Hood, to Cmdr., SOCEUR
and Dir., Special Ops., EUCOM, Germany; K.L. Sonntag from Cmdr., SOCSOUTH, SOUTHCOM, Homestead ARB, Fla., to Cmdr., CJTF-HOA, OEF-HOA, Djibouti; R.J. Ulses
from Dep. CG (Spt.), 7th Infantry Div., JB Lewis-McChord, Wash., to DCoS, G-3/5/7, TRADOC, JB Langley-Eustis; R.P. Walters Jr. from Dir. of Intel., J-2, USSOCOM, MacDill
AFB, to Dep. CoS, Intel., RSM, NATO and Dir., J-2, USF-A, OFS, Afghanistan.
■ AFB—Air Force Base; AMC—U.S. Army Materiel Cmd.; AMCOM—U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Cmd.; APG—Aberdeen Proving Ground; ARB—Air Reserve Base; ARRC—Allied
Rapid Reaction Corps; ASC—U.S. Army Sustainment Cmd.; CoS—Chief of Staff; CG—Commanding General; CJTF-HOA—Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa; DCoS—Deputy
Chief of Staff; ESC—Sustainment Cmd. (Expeditionary); EUCOM—U.S. European Cmd.; IEW&S—Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors; IMA—Individual Mobilization Augmentee;
JB—Joint Base; JRTC—Joint Readiness Training Ctr.; LCMC—Life Cycle Management Cmd.; MSC—Mission Support Cmd.; MSCoE—U.S. Army Maneuver Support Center of
Excellence; NJOIC—National Joint Operations Intelligence Ctr.; NSOCC-A—NATO Special Operations Component Cmd.-Afghanistan; OASA (ALT)—Office of the Assistant Secretary
of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology); ODCoS—Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff; OEF-HOA—Operation Enduring Freedom-Horn of Africa; OFS—Operation Freedom’s
Sentinel; P—Promotable; PEO—Program Executive Officer; PM-SANG—Program Manager, Saudi Arabian National Guard; QDR—Quadrennial Defense Review; RA—Redstone
Arsenal; RIA—Rock Island Arsenal; RSC—Regional Support Cmd.; RSM—Resolute Support Mission; SDDC—Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Cmd.; SOCPAC—
Special Operations Cmd. Pacific; SOCSOUTH—Special Operations Cmd. South; SOJTF-A—Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan; SOUTHCOM—U.S. Southern Cmd.;
Spt.—Support; TACOM—U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Cmd.; TEC—Theater Engineer Cmd.; TPU—Troop Program Unit; TRADOC—U.S. Army Training and Doctrine
Cmd.; TSC—Theater Sustainment Cmd.; USA—U.S. Army; USAACE—U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence; USAFMCOM—U.S. Army Financial Mgmt. Cmd.; USAR—U.S. Army Reserve;
USARAF—U.S. Army Africa; USARCENT—U.S. Army Central; USAREUR—U.S. Army Europe; USARPAC—U.S. Army Pacific; USASOC—U.S. Army Special Operations Cmd.;
USD(I)—Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence; USF-A—U.S. Forces-Afghanistan; USSOCOM—U.S. Special Operations Cmd.; VPAA—Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.
12 ARMY ■ April 2016

COMMAND SERGEANTS
MAJOR and SERGEANTS
MAJOR CHANGES*
*Command sergeants major and
sergeants major positions assigned
to general officer commands.
Command Sgt.
Maj. T.L. Cherry
from Cyber CoE,
Fort Gordon, Ga., to
Sgt. Maj., HQDA
CIO G-6, Pentagon,
Arlington, Va.
Command Sgt.
Maj. R.R. Clark
from 173rd IBCT,
Caserma Ederle,
Italy, to USARJ
and ICF, Camp
Zama, Japan.
Command Sgt. Maj.
J.P. McDwyer from
USA NCOA,
Schofield Barracks,
Hawaii, to Sgt. Maj.,
CAC-Training, Fort
Leavenworth, Kan.
Command Sgt.
Maj. R. Rodriguez
from 1916th Support
Battalion,
Fort Irwin, Calif.,
to Sgt. Maj., TAG,
Fort Knox, Ky.
Command Sgt.
Maj. L. Thorpe
from USAG
Stuttgart, Germany,
to Sgt. Maj.,
EPMD, Fort Knox.
■ CAC—Combined Arms Center; CIO—Chief Information Officer; CoE—Center of Excellence; EPMD—Enlisted Personnel Management Directorate; HQDA—Headquarters,
Dept. of the Army; IBCT—Infantry Brigade Combat Team; ICF—I Corps (Forward); TAG—The Adjutant General; USA NCOA—U.S. Army Noncommissioned Officers
Association; USAG—U.S. Army Garrison; USARJ—U.S. Army Japan.
Afghanistan … unless specific individuals
have already posed a direct threat to
NATO.” O’Hanlon calls this a “nonsensical
prohibition given what we know”
about the Islamic State’s “worldwide ambitions
and activities, as well as its growing
strength in Afghanistan.”
O’Hanlon’s second recommendation
is to expand the U.S. force in Afghanistan
to around 12,000 for a year or two
instead of enforcing the currently prescribed
ceiling of 5,500 in 2017. He
notes that while a 5,500-strong force
keeps operational combat bases in Helmand,
Kandahar, Khost, Jalalabad and
Bagram, additional troops would enable
U.S. soldiers to work with fielded
Afghan forces as well as provide more
security to these five key hubs.
The U.S. and NATO “should stop
making an exit strategy their top priority
in Afghanistan security policy,”
O’Hanlon writes. “They should emphasize
instead the importance of an enduring
partnership between NATO and
Afghanistan.”
O’Hanlon concludes that with other
reductions in troops and funding, “the
burden of the mission” in Afghanistan
has become sustainable. “In light of the
continued extremist threat in South
Asia, and thus the continued importance
of Afghanistan to Western security,
it is a burden that the United States
can afford to bear given the credible alternatives.”
April 2016 ■ ARMY 13

Army-Influenced Entrepreneurs
Win TV’s ‘Shark Tank’ Support
Two former Rangers who started a
casual clothing company, and two Army
spouses whose handbag company employs
other military spouses, landed investment
deals during an episode of
“Shark Tank” that featured entrepreneurs
with military links.
“Shark Tank” is an ABC-TV reality
show in which entrepreneurs make presentations
about their startups to a panel
of business owners, or sharks, who then
decide whether to invest.
Former soldiers Matthew Griffin and
Donald Lee served together in the 2nd
Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Joint
Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. They
made a deal with three of the five
sharks—Mark Cuban, Daymond John
and Lori Greiner—for a $300,000 investment
for a 30 percent combined
stake in their Combat Flip Flops.
Combat Flip Flops sells casual clothing
made from repurposed military gear,
clothing and weapons. Both men served
several tours in Afghanistan, where a
combat boot factory supporting thousands
of family members that made up
an entire community inspired their company’s
mission: “Business, not bullets.”
The two former soldiers, with Griffin’s
brother-in-law, launched their enterprise
in 2011 aiming to provide jobs,
build security and reduce unrest in conflict-ridden
areas. The company sells
handmade sarongs from Afghanistan,
flip-flops made from old military boots
in Colombia, and peacemaker bracelets
fashioned from unexploded bombs in
Laos. The sale of a sarong affords an
Afghan girl a week of secondary school;
each bangle sold pays to clear 3 square
meters of unexploded ordnance.
Entrepreneur Cuban also made a deal
with Lisa Bradley and Cameron Cruse,
spouses of Rangers stationed at Fort
Bragg, N.C. The women’s company,
started in 2011, is R. Riveter, which sells
handbags and carryalls handcrafted from
upcycled Army canvas and deer-hide
leather. The company motto, “We Can
Do It,” recalls World War II icon Rosie
the Riveter, which inspired its name.
Frustrated with trying to balance family
and career with frequent moves,
Bradley, a business school graduate, and
Cruse, who has a master’s degree in architecture,
wanted a business that was
portable and would provide jobs to other
Army wives. R. Riveter employs “Riveters”
at various military installations who
make the pieces of the bags in their
homes and ship them back to the warehouse/headquarters/retail
store near
Fort Bragg, where they are assembled
and sold. Each bag is marked by the
Riveters who helped produce it.
Cuban invested $100,000 for a 20
percent equity stake in the company,
and also offered credit to help buy
equipment and increase inventory. R.
Riveter got two other offers before accepting
Cuban’s deal.
Briefs
MRE ‘Cooks’ Finally Deliver Pizza
It took a lot longer than 30 minutes,
but the U.S. Army’s Natick Soldier Research,
Development and Engineering
Center in Massachusetts has finally delivered
an edible pizza with a shelf life of
three years. Officials announced in February
that pizza will be part of the MRE
selection sometime in 2017.
“It’s a fully assembled and baked piece
of pizza in one package,” said food technologist
Lauren Oleksyk, describing the
taste as “like ‘day after’ pizza.”
Researchers at the center spent about
five years experimenting with the pizza
recipe and packaging; preventing mold
was a particularly challenging issue. Soldiers
at Fort Carson, Colo., and Fort
Devens, Mass., among others, participated
in initial taste-testings in 2014.
Vietnam War-Era Army Secretary
Robert F. Froehlke Dies at 93
Robert F. Froehlke, who served as
secretary of the Army during the final
years of the Vietnam War, died in February
in Arizona. He was 93.
A Wisconsin native, Froehlke enlisted
in the U.S. Army in 1943 and served in
the infantry in the European Theater,
leaving as a captain in 1946. After earning
a law degree in 1949 from the University
of Wisconsin, he ran Melvin
Laird’s successful campaigns for U.S.
Congress. Laird resigned from Congress
in January 1969 to become President
Richard M. Nixon’s secretary of defense
and tapped Froehlke to be a key assistant.
In 1971, Nixon appointed Froehlke
the 10th secretary of the Army. He
served from July 1971 to May 1973. As
secretary, Froehlke oversaw the withdrawal
of all U.S. combat troops from
Vietnam, 500,000 of them U.S. soldiers,
as well as the end of conscription and the
Robert F. Froehlke
conversion to an all-volunteer force. After
resigning, he returned to the insurance
industry.
“He was a good man in all that the word
implies,” his son wrote in his father’s obituary.
“Did his best for his family, his
friends and his country his whole life.”
U.S. and British EOD Groups
Work Together to Raise Awareness
The U.S. EOD Warrior Foundation
and the British Felix Fund have joined
forces to raise awareness and funds “to
celebrate and support” American and
British bomb disposal forces who “have
trained and fought wars side by side
since 1941.” They will be honored at a
charity gala in London on April 19.
Both organizations provide financial
assistance and support to active and veteran
explosive ordnance disposal warriors
and their families. They also maintain
memorials to EOD technicians who lost
their lives in the line of duty.
The gala includes a reception, dinner
and charity auction. It coincides with the
two-day Security and Counter Terror
Expo 2016 in London. This free event
draws more than 9,000 attendees and
more than 300 exhibitors annually.
—Stories by Toni Eugene and Laura Stassi
U.S. Army
14 ARMY ■ April 2016

Front & Center
Army Burdened by Weight of Nondeployables
By Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, U.S. Army retired
Arecent issue of AUSA News carried
two articles that I believe deserve
attention from DoD as well as Congress.
The first covered comments by Sgt. Maj.
of the Army Daniel A. Dailey at the
Noncommissioned Officer Solarium II
at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he
was reported to have said that the biggest
problem in the Army today is soldiers
who are nondeployable. The second concerned
the transitioning of soldiers to
civilian life. Since I have already been
recognized as a heartless troglodyte survivor
of the brown-shoe Army, I will
gladly wade into another controversy.
Dailey’s revelation is the first official
recognition of a problem that I have ever
read. I do not recall seeing a reference to
the subject in the combined presentations
of Army secretaries and chiefs of
staff to Congress during the annual budget
hearings. I do not remember any articles
in the ARMY magazine Green Book
that called attention to the issue. I have
referred to the subject a number of times
in past articles, but I believe the problem
is continuing to grow.
Dailey identified a current 50,000 nondeployable
soldiers, a figure that I quoted
as reaching 70,000 during the Iraq War.
The bulk of those numbers result from
governmental rules binding the Army to
policies that might be humane, might be
understandable, might even be desirable
but, as a whole, are detrimental to the
readiness and effectiveness of the force.
I am not privy to the list of today’s restrictions
but presuming things have not
changed, HIV-positive soldiers are not
deployable and pregnant females are not
deployable. I also presume that the new
transgender policy will exclude these soldiers
from deployment and that new DoD
policies for “improved parental leave” and
special treatment for lactating will extend
the pregnancy restriction for as long as a
mother continues breastfeeding—a condition
that might last many months.
One last nondeployable category,
which I fully support, concerns soldiers
who wish to return to full-time service
but who are severely wounded and undergoing
long rehabilitation periods. However,
there should be some kind of limbo
status that does not count them as part of
the end-strength limit for the months or
even years that they are in recovery.
I do not know the numbers associated
with each category, but the grand
total of 50,000—which now promises
to increase significantly—is
already more than 10 percent
of end strength, equal to
three divisions’ worth of combat
forces or more than a
third of the reduction from
the 570,000 once fighting the
Iraq and Afghan wars to the
450,000 now authorized.
Whatever the justification
for these policies, the impact
on the rest of the Army is
unfair, debilitating and costly
in terms of personnel turbulence,
excessive rotation requirements
for deployable soldiers,
additional workload in
understrength units, and contract
costs for civilian workers who
make up for end-strength shortfalls. It
should also be apparent that added rotations
for career soldiers increase the
risks of those soldiers becoming casualties,
and certainly affect enlistment considerations.
The overall impact of these policies is
compounded by the Army’s new transition
program that, according to one
DoD official, allows a potential terminee
to begin training for a return to civilian
life as much as two years in advance. It
would seem that these soldiers must also
become nondeployable as they approach
their discharge dates, adding to the
50,000 already identified.
One wonders whether any of the nondeployables
can be included in the forced
reductions that have been scheduled. Are
there medical reasons for retaining HIVpositive
soldiers? Do pregnant and lactating
soldiers and new parent spouses
have to be retained when their condition
is the result of voluntary decisions on
their part?
I am not sure if Dailey’s claim of “the
Army’s biggest problem” is correct, but
it is clear that this is an issue that should
be dealt with by our senior leaders. We
are engaged in what is already termed a
generational war, one that really has
gone on for a few hundred years. The 1
percent of the U.S. population willing
to fight it should not be burdened with
manpower policies that add strain,
costs, readiness problems and ineffectiveness.
Informing Congress of the impact
of such policies, and recommending
changes to relieve these restrictions,
should be the first step in the resolution
of the problem.
■
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.
U.S. Army/Gertrud Zach
April 2016 ■ ARMY 15

No Time, Literally, for All Requirements
By Maj. Crispin J. Burke
There are plenty of things I’ll miss
when I eventually leave the Army:
the camaraderie, the sense of duty, and
the feeling of being part of something
bigger than myself. But there is one
thing—other than the reflective belt—
that I won’t miss when that day comes,
and that is mandatory training.
It can be sheer agony to sit through
one mandatory training class after another,
be it the Cyber Awareness Challenge
or the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure
approach to countering human
trafficking, no matter how hard the developers
try to make it interesting.
Leaders have long understood that
there are far too many mandatory training
requirements. In fact, the recent
National Commission on the Future of
the Army recommended Army leaders
“reduce mandatory training prescribed in
Army Regulation 350-1, Army Training
and Leader Development.” And a 2011
study designed to aid Gen. Martin
Dempsey’s transition to Army chief of
staff featured findings from the field such
as the suggestion to “take a red pen to,”
or eliminate, most of the requirements in
AR 350-1.
Indeed, recommendations such as
these date back to official studies commissioned
even before 9/11. But while
the problem is well-known, there’s often
little Army leaders can do to hack away
at the ever-growing problem of mandatory
training requirements.
How much is too much mandatory
training? For over a decade, it’s been
painfully obvious that it is impossible
for Army units to accomplish all their
mandatory annual training requirements
in a calendar year.
A 2002 study commissioned by the
U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies
Institute found that company commanders
had a total of 256 days available
for training annually, accounting for
weekends, holidays and block leave. Yet
given the deluge of mandatory training
requirements in 2002—over 100 separate
requirements—it would have taken
297 days, a deficit of 41 days, to accomplish
all assigned training.
Fast-forward to 2015, wherein a study
U.S. Army/Jennifer Mattson
at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., revealed a
training deficit of 258 days—so nearly 20
months of annual mandatory training
crammed into a 12-month calendar year.
Army senior leaders have long realized
the stress this places on junior leaders.
Unfortunately, there are many training
requirements that Army leadership simply
can’t eliminate. The National Defense
Authorization Act, passed every
year, often mandates or recommends
mandatory training in various areas; for
example, the 2009 NDAA called for
DoD to establish suicide prevention programs,
so mandatory annual training.
Other requirements are a byproduct of
bureaucracy. The Pentagon is home to
dozens of special interest groups, many
of whom fight for relevance by instituting
some mandatory training requirement
or another—all of which will undoubtedly
increase as agencies within the
Beltway vie for defense dollars.
Mandatory training requirements have
a deleterious effect on small-unit leadership,
as company commanders have
fewer opportunities to plan and execute
their own training—an essential part of
learning to become an effective Army
leader. With hundreds of training requirements
culled from over 1,000 Army
regulations and other policy directives,
the Army has gradually eroded the autonomy
and decisionmaking authority of
junior leaders. This is a trend stretching
back nearly 40 years.
Many senior leaders believe that company
commanders “lost the art of training
management” as a result of the last
decade and a half of war, as junior leaders
were told precisely what to train for
to prepare them for war. However, the
historical record paints a very different
picture: Junior leaders had lost most of
their autonomy in planning their own
training well before 9/11.
Nearly 40 years ago, the average commander
had over 150 days to plan, prepare
and execute his or her own training.
By 2002, that number had been whittled
down to just 36 days. Today, that number
has likely dwindled even further—
absolving junior leaders of the responsibility
to think critically and determine
organizational training requirements.
The proliferation of training requirements
also places junior leaders on the
horns of a dilemma. Should they try to
accomplish the ever-mounting cascade
of training requirements, or should they
neglect them and claim they completed
them anyway? A landmark study by the
U.S. Army War College, “Lying to Ourselves:
Dishonesty in the Army Profession,”
highlights the ethical dilemma
many junior leaders face.
Some officers reported a slipshod approach
to accomplishing mandatory
training. For example, one officer said
he called his subordinates on the radio
with the simple message “Don’t touch
women” and thus, Sexual Harassment/
Assault Response & Prevention training
was accomplished that quarter—at least
on paper.
Other organizations reported outright
fraud, which is worrying for an institution
that prides itself on integrity. One Army
captain explained how a sergeant picked
the smartest soldier in the squad to take
mandatory online training for his buddies.
Others reported printing out dozens of
fraudulent training certificates to satisfy a
mandatory training requirement.
Today, the temptation to “pencil whip”
training, or document it as if it’s complete,
is even more powerful thanks to
information technology. Twenty years
ago, mandatory training may have easily
gone unchecked. Today, technologies
such as the Digital Training Manage-
16 ARMY ■ April 2016

ment System allow senior leaders to examine
every imaginable training requirement
under the sun—with junior leaders
frantically trying to complete it all.
But there’s a false dichotomy between
outright lying and slipshod training.
Junior leaders can simply break the
rules—smartly, of course. In the late
1970s, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen.
Edward C. “Shy” Meyer advocated “selective
disobedience.” Army leaders of
the era actually encouraged junior leaders
to selectively ignore stifling bureaucratic
regulations. One officer of the era, Gen.
Robert Shoemaker, remarked, “You will
impress me if I come to your training site
and you tell me what parts of my guidance
you have chosen not to follow. You
will really impress me if you have already
told my staff and explained why.”
It takes maturity and moral courage to
know how and when to break the rules.
And while we must never violate ethical
standards or safety provisions, leaders at
all levels have an obligation to prioritize
requirements and let nonessential tasks
fall by the wayside, when necessary.
At the same time, senior leaders must
establish clear priorities—what mandatory
training requirements can subordinates
write off? As retired Lt. Gen.
David Barno said in a 2014 op-ed in The
Washington Post, senior Army leaders
“must empower their young leaders to
say no to the bureaucracy, or they risk
creating a generation of compliant officers
unprepared for the ‘think on your
feet’ nature of modern war.” ■
Maj. Crispin J. Burke is currently assigned
to the U.S. Army Security Assistance
Training Management Organization at
Fort Bragg, N.C. Qualified in the UH-
60 Black Hawk and LUH-72 Lakota,
he has served in the 82nd Airborne and
10th Mountain divisions. He can be followed
on Twitter at @CrispinBurke.
Friend or Foe? Knowing the
Difference Key to U.S. Security
By Lt. Col. John Curtis, U.S. Army retired
Like many Americans, our leaders and infidels within and outside Islam and is
government often have difficulty correctly
assessing the motivations of fordentally,
by non-Muslim groups and in-
abetted, whether intentionally or incieigners
and their leaders. This national dividuals with diverse motives.
blind spot is not new. In 2007, investigative
journalist Tim Weiner pub-
been a constant factor in our interna-
Arab antagonism toward the U.S. has
lished a magnificent history of the first tional relations due to our steadfast support
of Zionism and Israel since the late
60 years of the CIA that garnered the
National Book Award in Nonfiction. In 1940s. In the late 1980s, a radical Islamist
group calling itself al-Qaida was
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,
Weiner attributes the agency’s continual formed by mujahedeen who successfully
institutional failure to its chronic inability
to correctly assess the intentions of istan. It promptly began conducting
resisted the Soviet invasion of Afghan-
America’s enemies and friends. anti-American and anti-Western terrorist
acts. This got the attention of the
Despite enormous expenditure on and
expansion of our intelligence services after
9/11, nothing has occurred since then public effort was mobilized to focus on
Clinton administration, but no major
to persuade me that our assessment of and combat al-Qaida.
foreign intentions has improved. Without
that, I cannot imagine how our strat-
to arouse Americans’ fear and resolve to
It took the blindsiding shock of 9/11
egy to combat terrorism can succeed. give terrorism priority attention. Our intelligence
organizations utterly failed to
Let us begin by describing the challenge
we face in what we routinely call predict or accurately warn of the coming
the global war on terror. It is a revolutionary
struggle driven by jihadist Istrations
did little to heed such vague and
attack. The Clinton and Bush adminislamic
sects against those they regard as inadequate warnings as they were issued,
and our security organizations did not
prevent any aspect of the attacks.
We ought to remind ourselves that
our enormously expensive reaction to
our 9/11 failure has taken on a robust
fiscal life of its own. This should be
borne in mind as we try over time to allocate
resources to deal with the ongoing
challenge of terrorism. Our resources
are, in a word, finite. America’s reaction,
including two invasions, cost us more
than a trillion unbudgeted dollars, a fiscal
plight made worse by significant declining
tax revenues during the 2008
economic downturn.
More important, our reaction to 9/11
rather predictably suffered from the law
of unintended consequences. Afghanistan
has proved to be no easier for us to
handle than it was for the former Soviet
Union. We then emerged from destroying
its government and that of Iraq surprised
to find that Iran suddenly seemed
much more threatening. We should have
been more careful what we wished for:
Saddam Hussein was bad, to be sure,
but in 2003 he lacked the power to
threaten us, and he was Iran’s sole remaining
regional adversary.
The jihadist group that is our current
focus of attention is the so-called Islamic
State group, many of whose leaders
are Baathist Sunni Iraqis who were
harassed, exiled and/or otherwise excluded
from power in Iraq by the Shiitedominated
government installed under
our tutelage after our 2003 conquest of
Iraq. At that time, we utterly ignored
deep-seated rancor between Sunnis and
Shiites, as our focus still was on al-
Qaida, and (as then-Maj. Gen. David
Petraeus and others observed in the
wake of our overwhelming “victory”) our
invading forces did little to control the
disbanded Iraqi army or deny access to
its vast stores of military equipment and
supplies abandoned during their defeat.
Much of this was quietly taken by the
dispossessed Sunnis during the turmoil
of 2003–07. Thus we own the Islamic
State “problem” because it arose due to
our unwise decision to reconquer Iraq
and eliminate Saddam, and our subsequent
inexcusable negligence and underestimation
of Baathist resilience.
Today, we observe the Obama administration
making a surprising demarche
in Syria. Prodded by the mixed
April 2016 ■ ARMY 17

lessing of Russian intervention, recognition
finally has dawned in the White
House that we were pursuing two utterly
contradictory goals: destruction of both
the Islamic State and the Bashar al-Assad
regime, which had the most incentive to
defeat the Islamic State. Like Saddam,
Assad is bad. But he poses no threat to
the U.S. or our citizenry. Also like Saddam,
Russian President Vladimir Putin is
bad, but perhaps we should be quietly
grateful that he is helping us straighten
out our act.
I do not see where our excellent Constitution
authorizes our habitual interference
in other countries’ internal affairs
to coercively install representative
governance. As I recall from high school
history, the theoretical basis for our
democracy is Enlightenment-era social
contract theory, which specifies that the
legitimacy of government issues directly
from the voluntary consent of the governed.
To be constitutionally consistent
for a change, rather than expensively coercing
people to adopt democracy, the
U.S. ought to cheaply set a good example
for others to voluntarily emulate.
Unless we plan to expensively occupy
and rebuild a defeated enemy country
for several generations—as we did
with the Marshall Plan in defeated Axis
countries after World War II—it is
counterproductive to saddle a weak, inexperienced
new government with the
responsibility and inevitable domestic
opprobrium for enforcing the terms of
their surrender: Recall Germany’s reaction
to the installation of a democraticinspired
government at Weimar in 1919.
Some argue this system gave way to the
birth of the Nazi party. We should bear
in mind that many of our previous wellmeant,
ideological coercions have left
lasting hatred of America in their wake.
Much as America might wish to earn
international gratitude for successes of
the Arab Spring, that really is not Uncle
Sam’s job, and hindsight has shown that
springtimes sometimes prove to be transitory.
We should recall, as we contemplate
the motives of the Arab factions
vying against Assad, that the Afghan
mujahedeen who were our allies against
the Soviets became the Taliban who
hate and harass us today. ■
Lt. Col. John Curtis, USA Ret., served two
years of enlisted service in U.S. Army
Europe before being commissioned in
1976. He served in howitzer and missile
battalions, and in higher echelon staff assignments
in the continental U.S., Germany
and Korea. He also was a member
of peacekeeping missions for the U.N. in
Cambodia and in the implementation
force in Bosnia. He has a master’s degree
from Purdue University.
Improve Personnel System, Don’t Change It
By Lt. Col. Thomas D. Morgan, U.S. Army retired
The so-called illegitimate war in Iraq is fraught with unintended consequences.
over, and it has killed an estimated Maybe we should just make the current
500,000 Iraqis and nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers
at a cost of about $2 trillion that years old, work better rather than try to
personnel system, which is more than 60
has probably scarred the U.S. economy change it. We are told by some pundits
for the foreseeable future. It has been that the current personnel system is not
likened to an old-fashioned “oil war” sustainable because of the cost of the allvolunteer
force.
dressed up as a crusade for Western values
that had been proposed by a clique of Those pundits don’t seem to realize
Judeo-Christian, geopolitical neoconservatives
who exploited it in the post-9/11 because they were sought by Congress
that personnel costs are not too much
media frenzy.
and the Pentagon when the fighting
Now, the problem for the military is started in 2003, and only now are believed
to be too much. In truth, the pay
how to develop a strategy that at least
contains and hopefully fixes the situation. raises came too fast, and other Pentagon
Spending a lot of money will not do it, as funds were spent unwisely and in a
it has done in the past. The Pentagon wasteful manner. Many projects cost billions
but never bore fruit because they
needs to be reformed, according to DoD
bureaucrats. We cannot spend ourselves were poorly planned by the militaryindustrial
complex.
out of the current Middle East mess like
we did with the Surge and the $700 billion
spent on the Afghan War. We can-
Comanche attack helicopter, the can-
Other costly examples are the failed
not field a 500,000-man field Army celed Crusader mobile cannon, the family
of Future Combat Systems, the exor-
again, as we did with Desert Storm.
The Army is faced with recommendations
to improve troop retention and price to reorganize the Army’s combat
bitant cost overruns of the F-35, and the
cater to certain career field needs, such as brigades to a modular configuration and
cyberwarfare and civil affairs activities. now convert them back into almost their
These are somewhat revolutionary and old organizations—except that there are
fewer of them now because of the
Army’s troop-strength cuts. Slashing soldier
end-strength for the sake of modernization
is not a good plan.
Retention in the Army will face significant
challenges after 2018, when the
new military retirement system goes into
effect. The 2016 National Defense Authorization
Act mandates major changes
in retirement benefits for those entering
the services after January 2018. This new
system will cut the defined retirement by
20 percent and offer small government
contributions to a 401(k)-like savings account
that will not be available until age
59½. This is at the expense of those staying
in uniform 20 years or more. The
business-oriented Pentagon basically
plans to save money by moving it and
transferring the financial risk to the service
members. The Pentagon can then
spend more money on combat systems of
dubious value.
Another thing in the new retirement
plan is to offer more soldiers who do not
achieve 20 years of service a token lump
sum at separation, and access at age 59½
to the 401(k)-like funds they accumulated
before they left. The 401(k)-like
18 ARMY ■ April 2016

feature is supposed to make up for the 20
percent reduction of the current defined
retirement after 20 years of service. But
now, with the current market crash and
Dow Jones ratings going south in a
hurry, that nest egg is rapidly becoming a
worthless liability for service members
regardless of whether they separate or retire.
And a “business” plan that worries
more about people who serve fewer than
20 years defeats the purpose of a retirement
plan.
The Pentagon tries to make the point
that the current system is not fair to
the 83 percent of those leaving the service
with fewer than 20 years who get no
retirement money for their service. The
Pentagon misses the point. Nothing in
the service is fair; the lowest-paid private
takes most of the combat risk. What the
Pentagon should be looking for is equity:
What you get is what you earn/deserve
based on your years of service.
Also, to say that the current 83 percent
do not get anything in the way of
benefits is wrong. Former soldiers can
keep their Thrift Savings Plans and get
veterans’ health benefits, education assistance,
job training, job priority and other
special state-level benefits as well as
membership in the Veterans of Foreign
Wars and American Legion—both of
which also provide assistance. Bragging
rights at the local bar should not be discounted,
either.
Most soldiers do not understand this
new retirement system because it has
been imposed on them without input
from the rank-and-file troops. It had not
really been briefed to them before because
it was a “done deal” in the fiscal
year 2016 budget. When the troops realize
in 2018 that the new plan will seriously
erode their future retirement benefits,
it will be hard to motivate them to
stay in. Congress needs to look at ways
to save defense dollars besides raiding
soldiers’ wallets.
The Army is not missing in spite of
bureaucratic plans to scuttle it. It is present
in spirit and in the flesh, in spite of
plans to reduce it. It is still “all in a day’s
work” for the Army, no matter how big
it is. We do not need to have personnel
reductions pay for expensive equipment.
The current retirement plan is much better
than that proposed by the betterbusiness
advocates among the Pentagon
bureaucrats for 2018. There is an old
Airborne saying: “When the parachute
opens, don’t mess with it.”
Those who want the current defined
20-year retirement plan should just have
to stay in the Army long enough and
pay their dues to get it. The Army may
be too small for the size of the world’s
troubles, but the real disconnect is that
defense money is being wasted designing
exotic and expensive military equipment
that we really do not need to fight
Third World, indigenous, religious fanatics.
We just need good, tried-andtrue
equipment and leadership. ■
Lt. Col. Thomas D. Morgan, USA Ret., is
a West Point graduate who served in field
artillery, Special Forces, civil affairs, community/public
affairs and force development.
He also worked as a civilian contractor
for the Battle Command Training
Program until retiring in 2002. He is the
recording secretary/photographer of the
Society for Military History.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 19

Integrate Civil Affairs Into Institutional Army
By Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. Jacobs, U.S. Army retired
In 2014, the Army published the U.S.
Army Functional Concept for Engagement,
creating a seventh warfighting
function. In this document, the Army
stated for the first time that civil-military
operations are the responsibility of every
Army commander.
Broadly speaking, civil-military operations
are the activities that establish relationships
with civilian institutions and
populations. They are a critical component
of engagement. Civil affairs is the
only branch of the Army solely focused
on the civilian populace and institutions.
The civil affairs branch is to civil-military
operations as the field artillery branch is
to fires, and logistics branch is to sustainment.
In other words, commanders
cannot execute civil-military operations
without civil affairs.
Civil affairs, however, has long been
an “institutional stepchild” to the Army,
to quote the seminal 2009 Center for
Strategic and International Studies report
on the future of the branch. The
Army thinks it understands civil affairs.
It doesn’t.
The institutional Army trains commanders
on fire support, logistics and intelligence.
Although civil affairs assets
are attached to conventional units at
every level down to the maneuver battalion,
the institutional Army doesn’t train
commanders to employ these assets.
More often than not, the civil affairs staff
billet—the S-9—is vacant. As the center
concluded in its report: “The history of
U.S. civil affairs employment unfortunately
illustrates persistent deficiencies in
commanders’ understanding of civil affairs
capabilities and how to use them. …
These continued shortcomings suggest a
wider failure in educating general purpose
forces on the advantages of civil affairs
assets.”
The Army’s failure to understand and
properly employ civil affairs capabilities
is rooted in the dysfunctional organization
of its civil affairs force. Although almost
all civil affairs now belongs to the
conventional operational Army—U.S.
Army Forces Command—civil affairs
does not belong to the conventional institutional
Army—U.S. Army Training
and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).
Unless its generating force also moves to
TRADOC, civil affairs will continue to
be an institutional stepchild, and the
Army’s longtime indifference to civilmilitary
operations will continue no matter
how many documents it publishes.
Civil Affairs soldiers during Ukraine 2015
About 90 percent of the Army’s civil
affairs force is in the Army Reserve. Until
2006, all Army civil affairs units, both active
and Reserve, were assigned to U.S.
Army Civil Affairs and Psychological
Operations Command, an Army Reserve
special operations forces (SOF) headquarters
assigned to U.S. Army Special
Operations Command.
In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld sent a series of his famous
short memos, called snowflakes, to
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, who was
then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In the first, Rumsfeld wrote: “Let’s
talk about whether or not all the civil affairs
ought to be in SOF. I am inclined
to think not.” A subsequent snowflake
stated: “My impression is that we ought
to give careful thought to moving [civil
affairs] over to the regular Army, so
that the regular Army interests itself in
that subject.” In yet another, Rumsfeld
averred that “the Army needs to develop
greater skill sets in” civil affairs. Rumsfeld
reached the same conclusion intuitively
that the Center for Strategic and
International Studies reached analytically:
The Army is not interested in civil
affairs and doesn’t know how to use it.
U.S. Army/Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Chlosta
At Rumsfeld’s urging, Civil Affairs
and Psychological Operations Command
and all of its Army Reserve units were
reassigned from the Special Operations
Command to U.S. Army Reserve Command
in 2006 and became conventional
forces, while the active component civil
affairs force remained as special operations
forces, a decision known euphemistically
as “the divorce.”
The Army expanded the SOF (and
active component) civil affairs force from
one battalion to a brigade, activating the
95th Civil Affairs Brigade in 2007. In
2011, the Army activated an active component
conventional unit, the 85th Civil
Affairs Brigade, assigning it to the U.S.
Army Forces Command.
The divorce is universally described as
an active-Reserve split. Though the divorce
was along active-Reserve lines, the
more significant split was between conventional
and special operations forces.
The civil affairs operating force moved
to the conventional Army, but the civil
affairs generating force did not. The
Army’s civil affairs proponent is still the
U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special
Warfare Center and School, the Army’s
Special Operations Center of Excellence.
Rumsfeld correctly identified the
problem, but his solution made it worse.
Aside from dividing a unified (and truly
multicomponent) operating force, a primarily
conventional operating force
now has an SOF proponent. Make no
mistake: special operations—support to
U.S. Special Operations Command and
not to the conventional Army—is the
singular focus of the Special Operations
Center of Excellence. The Army manages
active component civil affairs soldiers
as SOF personnel. The Special
Operations Center of Excellence has divided
loyalties at best, and conflicts of
interest at worst.
A conventional civil affairs force with
a special operations force proponent is
akin to the Kennedy School being the
Army’s infantry proponent because the
75th Ranger Regiment is a special operations
force. Rumsfeld’s was only half a
solution; he granted a divorce but didn’t
decide child custody.
20 ARMY ■ April 2016

and understanding of civil affairs by reassigning
civil affairs units from SOF to
the conventional operational Army. But
interest and understanding are not fostered
in the operational Army. That
happens in the institutional Army.
The Army must integrate civil affairs
into the mainstream of the institutional
Army. Civil affairs must be an
integral part of all of its institutional
training, including, for example, captains’
career courses and intermediatelevel
education.
The Army must change personnel
policies to ensure accomplishment of
the primary civil affairs mission—support
to the conventional force—by filling
civil-military cooperation slots, for
example, and assigning civil affairs officers
throughout TRADOC. It must
recognize the practical necessity of assigning
an active-duty (not necessarily an
active component) general officer as the
civil affairs branch proponent and chief
of branch.
All of this can be accomplished most
effectively by moving civil affairs proponency
to TRADOC and re-establishing
the U.S. Army Civil Affairs School.
Support to conventional units is neither
Special Operations Command’s
nor the Kennedy School’s top priority.
It is, however, TRADOC’s top priority.
The Army must align organizations
and resources with priorities and
missions. It did so with the civil affairs
operating force; it must do so with the
civil affairs generating force. Without
its other half, Rumsfeld’s solution will
continue to fail.
Moving civil affairs proponency to
TRADOC would fix the problems that
have been talked about for years. It
would force the Army to become, and
remain, interested in civil affairs. It
would make civil affairs part of the
Army’s family and not an institutional
stepchild. And unless the Army quits
treating civil affairs like an institutional
stepchild, its newfound embrace of civilmilitary
operations will turn into just another
unread manual gathering dust on
the Army’s shelf.
■
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. Jacobs, USAR Ret.,
served 35 years of active and Reserve
service in infantry and civil affairs assignments.
His final assignment was as
commanding general, the U.S. Army
Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations
Command (Airborne). He is a
1979 graduate of the U.S. Military
Academy.
Allies Must Join Forces to Defeat Another ‘Ism’
By Col. Paul Zigo, U.S. Army retired
The emergence of the Islamic State
group in the Middle East as a ruthless,
ambitious political entity bears more
world attention than it is getting. Advocating
radical Islamic fundamentalism,
this group seeks to establish a
caliphate—a theological Muslim empire—that
will envelop all of Iraq and
Syria. To date, it has occupied territory
and has imposed a dictated way of life
via intimidation and the use of force in
the countries. In northern Iraq, it is currently
engaged in ethnic cleansing on a
“historic scale” of those not adhering to
its dictates, according to Amnesty International.
The Islamic State also claims religious,
political and military authority
over all Muslims worldwide and has further
territorial designs on Jordan, Lebanon,
Israel, Turkey and beyond. Its popularity
is due to the impact of a collision
of forces—political, religious, military
and international—unleashed by the
Iraq War in 2003.
It is a movement that is threatening
the Muslim world and global peace.
Around the world, Islamic religious leaders
have condemned the group’s radical
ideology and actions. Religious leaders
state that the group has strayed from the
path of Islam and that its actions do not
reflect the religion’s teachings or virtues.
The rise of the Islamic State parallels
another “ism” that seriously threatened
world peace in the last century: Nazism.
The Nazi party during the 1930s rose as a
major political entity in Germany advocating
a new world order. The party’s
goal was to establish a Judean-free, thousand-year
Third Reich that would envelop
all of Eastern Europe for the benefit
of a racially pure German Aryan race.
Upon attaining political control of Germany,
the Nazis initially used intimidation
and the threat of the use of military
force, then actual armed aggression. They
overtook Czechoslovakia, Poland, the
Baltic States, and all of European Russia.
Driving the support of the German
people for the Nazi goal was the impact
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (from left), President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill during the 1943 Tehran Conference in Iran
Library of Congress
22 ARMY ■ April 2016

of the disastrous results of World War I
on Germany. The Nazis ruthlessly implemented
political and military authority
throughout all of Eastern Europe, ultimately
resulting in the Holocaust, the
ethnic cleansing of over 11 million people.
Today, the ethnic cleansing in the
Middle East is reportedly paralleling
this event.
Initial reaction by Europe’s principal
powers, Great Britain and France, to the
regional threat Nazi Germany posed
was a policy of appeasing the Nazis to
avoid war. In addition, the U.S. exhibited
a policy of isolationism, whereby
the U.S. chose not to become involved
in the affairs of Europe. Russia, viewing
the weak response to the Nazis’ aggressive
moves by all, initially decided to
align itself with Nazi Germany, hoping
to any avoid armed conflict. It was a
hope that came to a sudden end in June
1941, when Germany invaded Russia.
Lacking throughout the 1930s was determined
national leadership that would
convince its various publics and its
countries’ allies that Nazism was a threat
to world peace and thus, worth fighting
and defeating.
Ultimately, it took a coalition of nations
led by an aroused, determined
leadership of the U.S., Great Britain,
Free France and the Soviet Union to
confront and defeat Nazi Germany’s
threat to world peace. Faced with a major
threat to their core values, security
and vital interests, these four nations led
an Allied coalition to victory over
Nazism during World War II. They attained
an unconditional surrender of an
“ism” seeking to establish a new world
order. Today, there is no such coalition
confronting a similar “ism”: radical Islamic
fundamentalism. The Islamic State
is on the path to expanding its destructive
caliphate throughout the region.
Defeating today’s threat to regional
stability and world peace will be difficult,
but not impossible. If determined leaders
can come together to confront the radical
Islamic fundamentalists—as British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
President Franklin Roosevelt and other
Allied leaders came together to defeat
the Nazis—history need not repeat itself.
On Jan. 1, 1942, three weeks after the
U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor was attacked
by Nazi ally Imperial Japan, representatives
of 26 countries signed the
Declaration of the United Nations. The
declaration spelled out the importance
of total cooperation among all to conduct
full-scale war against Nazi Germany
and its partners, with the goal being
complete victory. Absent today,
however, is such leadership and an allied
coalition determined to confront the
new threat to regional and world peace.
Does the world have to wait for another
U.S. military base to be attacked,
or another Holocaust, to take action? If
the threat of radical Islamic fundamentalism
is not met now, will history repeat
itself?
■
Col. Paul Zigo, USA Ret., is the director of
the World War II Era Studies Institute,
based in New Jersey. He is a graduate of
the U.S. Army War College and holds a
master’s degree from Temple University.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 23

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She’s the Army
From Cancer Patient to Boston Marathoner
Capt. Kelly Elmlinger, 36, was an Army medic for
13 years. She deployed once to Afghanistan and
twice to Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division, and
also completed a two-year special mission assignment
before earning a nursing degree in 2011 from
the University of North Carolina through the Army
Enlisted Commissioning Program.
The avid runner and Boston Marathon hopeful
wanted to work with wounded warriors at home as
she had on deployments, so she asked to be assigned
to San Antonio Military Medical Center in Texas. It
was there, in March 2013, that doctors discovered
she had synovial sarcoma, a rare type of soft-tissue
cancer, in her left leg. Even that didn’t deter Elmlinger’s
desire to compete in a 26.2-mile race.
“Running in the Boston Marathon has been a
goal of mine since I was a kid,” she said. “I ran
cross-country and track throughout junior high,
high school and college, and continued to run in local races
while in the military. It was an activity that has been a part of
my life for a very long time.”
Elmlinger ran a marathon on Veterans Day 2012 in under
four hours, just missing the qualifying time for her age group
for the Boston Marathon. She was training for a triathlon
when she went to a doctor about a continuing leg pain, and
that’s when she received the cancer diagnosis.
Elmlinger and her doctors opted for tissue removal to get
rid of the cancer rather than amputation. The limb salvage required
nine operations, including taking skin grafts from her
left arm. She was a patient on the same floor she had previously
worked. In January 2014, Elmlinger was assigned to rehabilitate
at the Center for the Intrepid, next to the San Antonio
Military Medical Center.
The bone and soft-tissue losses were so great in her left leg
that she could not run. Someone suggested wheelchair racing
and though less than thrilled, she decided to give it a try.
Running had “always served as an outlet to relieve stress,
sort out my thoughts and escape from life for a few minutes,”
she said. One day, Elmlinger felt that release as she “ran” in
her push-rim wheelchair. Since then, wheelchair racing has
replaced running as “relaxation, another way to participate in
running events and as rehab for my arm.”
Elmlinger does not do things in half measures. “Working hard
is in my family genes,” she said, “and I intend to keep doing so to
be an example” to her daughter, Jayden, now 7. “I want to show
her that life is not always going to be fair, but that does not mean
goals, dreams and ambitions have to stop. I had to make a major
readjustment because of my cancer diagnosis, but it has opened
up new opportunities for me I wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
Capt. Kelly Elmlinger in training
Before she began competing in the wheelchair, Elmlinger
spent about four months training for hours each week to build
up speed. At the same time, she worked on a master’s degree
in nursing administration from the University of Texas at Arlington,
which she funded using the post-9/11 GI Bill.
She “started the program while going through treatment
and my many surgeries, as I realized I most likely was not going
to be able to rely on my physical abilities in my career.”
Elmlinger earned the degree in October.
Elmlinger was the only female wheelchair racer to compete
in DoD’s 2014 Warrior Games, so she competed against men
and won silver medals in 100-, 200-, 400- and 1,500-meter
races. She also took three golds in swimming events. In the
2015 games, she won five gold medals, one silver and two
bronze. Last March, Elmlinger raced in the Los Angeles
Marathon, her first 26.2-miler in a wheelchair, and qualified
for Boston with 10 minutes to spare.
“After I was introduced to wheelchair racing and realized I
had potential in the sport, I made Boston my goal,” Elmlinger
said. “I’ll be using my arms and not my legs.” She knows she is
competing against women who have been wheelchair racing
for more than 15 years and that she cannot make up that experience.
But her goal is “not to be first place, but to be the
best I can be.”
“I am a competitor through and through, and I want to beat
the other athletes just as they do me, but I am in competition
more with myself,” she said. “I want to give it my best and
reach my best every time I compete.”
Look for Elmlinger on race day April 18; the push-rim
wheelchair event is slated to start around 9 a.m.
—Toni Eugene
DoD/EJ Hersom
April 2016 ■ ARMY 25

Maintenance Heads
Back to Basics By
Gen. Dennis L. Via
26 ARMY ■ April 2016

Left: Pvt. Allan Thompson, 615th Military
Police Company, services a machine gun
mount during a tactical road march from
Germany to Hungary. Below: Soldiers
discuss sling-loading during training
in Kosovo.
The first decade of the 21st century has seen enormous change for the U.S.
Army. No field has witnessed more change than that of Army logistics—
equipping and sustaining the force. Years of sustained combat operations
led to major advancements in weapons, vehicles, uniforms and more. The
Army’s Materiel Enterprise became highly efficient and effective at solving issues
quickly at the point of need; rapidly fielding equipment through the Rapid Equipping
Force and Field Assistance in Science and Technology teams; and providing
sustainment through a variety of primarily contractor-based logistics support.
Army logisticians mastered the art and science of retrograde, reset, redeployment,
redistribution and disposal. They moved billions of dollars of equipment
and materiel in and out of theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan while simultaneously
supporting multiple operations and contingencies around the world. They
learned invaluable lessons that will endure in future conflicts. They effectively
managed the global supply chain, developing advanced automation, systems and
processes that allowed commanders and units a level of visibility of equipment
never before seen.
Period of Transition
The U.S. Army remains in an undeniable period of historic transition. Not only
is the force restructuring to meet future requirements across the full spectrum of
military operations, we are also changing the way we generate readiness. Gone are
the days of Army Forces Generation, where readiness efforts were focused on specific
units, times and missions for predictable deployments. Today’s Army—the
entire force—must be prepared to deploy in an expeditionary manner, often with
little advance notice, to prevent, shape and win in austere environments around
the globe.
As we transition to the new sustainable readiness model, efforts will be laser-focused
on ensuring Army units at all levels maintain a high level of readiness at all times, and
Far left: U.S. Army/Sgt. William Tanner; left: U.S. Army/Sgt. Erick Yates
April 2016 ■ ARMY 27

not solely to meet a latest arrival date on a patch chart. The new
model will reduce readiness “peaks and valleys” in formations,
and allow forces to respond whenever and wherever needed.
This new approach will dramatically challenge soldiers and
units, the vast majority of whom have experience only in a
post-9/11 Army. The Army they know is one of nearly unlimited
resources, with equipment often delivered, stored and
maintained by contractors and Department of the Army civilians.
Soldiers were able to concentrate solely on their deployed
mission tasks while contractors and civilians, many
from U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC), took care of
the other requirements including their most basic equipment
maintenance and sustainment needs.
The current environment of decreasing budgets and global
uncertainty requires soldiers and units to once again take responsibility
for their equipment under the basic soldier tasks
of install, operate and maintain. We must reinvigorate soldiers’
ownership for maintaining and sustaining their equipment
and revive a culture of maintenance at the unit level.
Redefining the Basics
Asking general officers and command sergeants major what
it means to go “back to the basics” would undoubtedly mean
something very different than it would to today’s junior officers,
NCOs and soldiers. Redefining the basics starts with
maintenance, a point that Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A.
Dailey continues to stress. In the first of a series of videos intended
to set standards for soldiers, Dailey said, “Maintenance
is critical to the success of our Army and the systems we use to
help soldiers on the battlefield fight and win our nation’s wars.”
We must restore in soldiers a sense of pride and ownership
of their equipment, from their individual uniform to their assigned
weapon and their vehicles. From preventative maintenance
checks and services to having a comprehensive understanding
of technical manuals, and through regularly scheduled
command maintenance periods in the motor pool, soldiers and
units must continually ensure the readiness of their equipment
to meet contingency and expeditionary deployment demands.
Further, we must return to a time when commanders and
units were graded and evaluated on the readiness of their
equipment upon arrival to combat training center rotations.
Units must be held accountable to maintain their equipment
at home station, and be ready to fight upon the first day of arrival
to the National and Joint Readiness Training Centers.
Reinstituting drills like emergency deployment readiness exercises,
maintenance rodeos and tactical road marches will measure
unit and materiel readiness, and help unit commanders
see where they need to improve and prioritize their maintenance
efforts.
Vital Transition Role
No other group will be more indispensable to this transition
than the Army’s warrant officer corps, complemented by the
capabilities and experience of AMC’s logistics assistance
representatives. At the Chief of Staff of the Army-hosted
Warrant Officer Solarium in January at the Command and
General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., warrant officers
pointed out that the deployment operations tempo over
the past decade forced the Army to rely primarily on contractors
to maintain rapidly fielded new equipment. This resulted
in their role being expanded into more generalized logisticians.
Rather than executing their primary role of training or assisting
NCOs and soldiers in maintaining and repairing their
equipment, warrant officers found their mission being exe-
Chris Flegel, a logistics
assistance representative
with Tankautomotive
and
Armaments Command,
checks the oil
of a vehicle at Forward
Operating Base
Salerno, Afghanistan.
U.S. Army/Graydon Field
28 ARMY ■ April 2016

Parts for vehicles
from the brigade-size
European Activity Set
undergo inspection.
U.S. Army
cuted primarily through contractor logistics support instead.
Warrant officers have an enormous opportunity to lead and
train the force and reclaim their traditional roles as technical
experts for maintenance, supply and property accountability.
They must be embedded into every phase of the equipment’s
life cycle, from acquisition to fielding, reset and disposal. They
must set unit maintenance standards and restore supply discipline
and accountability across the Army.
To complement the Army’s warrant officers, AMC’s logistics
assistance representatives from Aviation and Missile
Command, Communications-Electronics Command, Tankautomotive
and Armaments Command, and Joint Munitions
Command bring a wealth of experience in maintaining and
sustaining Army commodities and equipment fleets.
Logistics assistance representatives represent a special tool
in a commander’s maintenance toolkit. These specialized
Army civilians, many of whom are veterans, remain ready and
capable of assisting divisions and brigade combat teams in
generating equipment readiness. From resolving long leadtime
parts delays to identifying repair solutions for unique
equipment, they stand ready to support units at home station
and during combat training center rotations and deployments.
One-Two Punch
Today, AMC has more than 1,200 logistics assistance representatives
stationed across every Army installation. These
subject matter experts are very knowledgeable about motor
pool operations, supply activities, ammunition supply points,
petroleum operations and much more. Working in concert,
warrant officers and logistics assistance representatives provide
a powerful one-two punch for Army readiness at the division
and brigade combat team levels.
Global threats will evolve. Budgets will fluctuate. Constant
change is the norm in the world today. What must not falter is
the Army’s preparedness to respond anytime, anywhere in defense
of the nation.
Move-shoot-communicate is the basic task of every soldier;
all three actions require maintenance. Redefining the basics
and reviving a culture of maintenance at the unit level will
safeguard Army readiness while saving the Army enormous
resources—resources that can be applied to modernization and
future readiness.
Officers, warrant officers, NCOs and soldiers across the
force must once again take ownership of their equipment and
their unit equipment readiness. They must be trained and
prepared to conduct the necessary maintenance and repairs to
ensure their equipment—vehicles, aircraft, weapons, nightvision
goggles, communications devices—is always ready to
operate and deploy.
The strategic advantage in the U.S. Army remains our ability
to sustain the force. Essential to maintaining this advantage
is the ability of soldiers and units to maintain their equipment.
Future Army readiness will be founded on our
reinvestment in soldier standards, discipline and accountability.
Soldier equipment ownership is integral to achieving and
maintaining these standards.
✭
Gen. Dennis L. Via is commanding general of U.S. Army Materiel
Command. He also served as AMC deputy commanding general,
and deployed to Kuwait to oversee the retrograde of equipment
and materiel out of Iraq at the conclusion of Operation New
Dawn. He has served in numerous command positions, including
commanding general, Communications-Electronics Command
and Fort Monmouth, N.J.; 5th Signal Command, Mannheim,
Germany; Third Signal Brigade, III Armored Corps, Fort Hood,
Texas; and 82nd Signal Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division,
Fort Bragg, N.C. Via graduated from Virginia State University
and has a master’s degree from Boston University.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 29

Not New, Not Novel but…
History Provides Many Examples of Mission
30 ARMY ■ April 2016

Command’s Success
During a live-fire exercise in Poland, soldiers with the 2nd
Cavalry Regiment fire an automatic grenade launcher.
By Maj. Christina Fanitzi
Mission Command, the increasingly trendy buzz
phrase for creating innovation and initiative at
the lowest possible level of leadership, is neither
new nor novel. That does not mean it isn’t relevant
for today’s U.S. Army as it faces a complicated and unpredictable
world.
While the current evolution of this warfighting theory derives
from a late 2009 push by the then-commander of U.S. Army
Training and Doctrine Command, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the
idea of having centralized intent but decentralized execution is
a Prussian-tested doctrine used by European and American
armies in the 18th and 19th centuries to outpace opponents
through agile, adaptive action.
Dempsey, who rose to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff before he retired with 41 years of service last fall, wrote
in 2011 that success in Mission Command “demands that
subordinate leaders at all echelons exercise disciplined initiative
and act aggressively and independently to accomplish the
mission.” Throughout history, military leaders used the tenets
of Mission Command to revolutionize warfare and succeed in
battle in the face of complex, uncertain and ever-changing operational
environments—scenarios very similar to the challenges
facing our Army today.
U.S. Army/Spc. Marcus Floyd
Look to History for Answers
The decline of Napoleon offers a historical perspective regarding
the negative implications of failing to anticipate
change and adapt accordingly. Napoleon massed battlefield
successes from 1805 to 1807. While he continued to fight
from 1808 to 1815, his enemies—especially Prussians—grew
stronger by capitalizing on the lessons Napoleon taught them
in combined diplomacy, combined operations, ideological nationalism
and multilevel organizations. Napoleon failed to
adapt in kind, and that resulted in his defeat at Leipzig in
1813, abdication in 1814, and exile from France in 1815. Brilliant
adaptation by the allies was one of several factors contributing
to Napoleon’s precipitous decline.
Conversely, German implementation of Auftragstaktik—
“mission-oriented tactics”—prior to World War I offers a historical
perspective of an army’s ability to anticipate necessary
change and adapt. The driving force for Auftragstaktik was the
necessity to develop greater initiative in leaders at all levels. At
the tactical level, the Prussian army discovered during both the
Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars that increased
lethality of weapons forced greater dispersion across the battlefield,
and commanders could neither observe nor control
their forces in the detail previously offered.
The new Prussian army, determined to correct the problem,
studied the context and as early as 1888 implemented infantry
drill regulations that relied on decentralized command and
subordinate initiative. This innovation took root in 1914.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 31

World War I saw the pendulum-like swings in the application
of this innovation in dynamic organizational structure change
and the creation of elastic defense-in-depth and assault tactics.
Mission Command instills the importance of anticipation
and adaptation using mission orders to enable disciplined initiative
within the commander’s intent to empower agile and
adaptive leaders. The commander’s intent creates shared understanding
and purpose, while agility is gained through mutual
trust. Mission Command is a decentralized leadership approach
where subordinates are told what they are to achieve,
and the reason it needs to be achieved. They are not told how
to achieve the objective.
A contrarian view of Mission Command would suggest
centralized authority is required and far more effective than a
decentralized perspective to authority. Observations in 17thand
18th-century France suggest otherwise. Louis XIV established
a battle culture of forbearance where self-control gave
way to control by officers. In The Dynamics of Military Revolution,
1300–2050, military historian John Lynn suggests Louis
XIV, through tedious drill, instilled discipline coupled with a
fear associated with disobedience. “Drill was thus essential to
physical and psychological control that the battle demanded,”
Lynn writes.
‘Controlmania’
While Louis XIV’s era established a strong sense of identity,
long initial periods of control and drill brought significant
morale problems and ultimately led to rigidity and fear of execution
and an ineffective French army in the face of a revolution.
The military art of the old regime suffered from interlocking
and crippling constraints on mass, mobility and decisiveness.
Armies were also largely devoid of command articulation
where “controlmania” was the foremost characteristic of
the 18th century’s philosophy of command.
Conversely, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s orders to Maj.
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman on April 4, 1864, offer a
different perspective where decentralized orders and commander’s
vision empower subordinate leaders to achieve their desired
end state. Grant fundamentally believed in decentralized
control, subordinate initiative and empowerment. He aligned
his forces in a manner to protect communication lines while
allowing commanders to act promptly in battle without needing
higher division approval. Additionally, he provided clear
commander’s intent to subordinate leaders via personalized
letters that created shared understanding and also conveyed
his trust in their leadership.
“I do not propose to lay down for you a plan, but simply lay
down the work it is desirable to have done and leave you free
to execute it in your own way,” he wrote. “I believe you will accomplish
it.” Sherman responded to Grant’s orders demonstrating
he understood Grant’s intent. “We are now all to act
on a common plan … I will not let side issues draw me off
from your main plans.”
The contrasted examples of 18th-century controlmania and
the 19th-century leadership style of Grant demonstrate the
positive results when commanders use trust and shared understanding
as methods to empower subordinates’ initiative within
their intent. The effectiveness of Mission Command tenets of
mutual understanding and shared trust are only possible
through synergies in mutually supported command and staff
Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, front right, with his staff near Atlanta in 1864
Library of Congress
32 ARMY ■ April 2016

A photogravure from the late 1800s depicts
fierce fighting in Bazeilles, France, during the
Franco-Prussian War.
Library of Congress
tasks. Commanders are unable to fully predict their enemy’s
actions, and their staffs create as much fidelity of this prediction
through proper staff planning. To function effectively and
have the greatest chance for mission accomplishments, commanders,
supported by their staffs, exercise Mission Command
throughout the conduct of operations.
Lack of Adaptability Fatal
Austrian and French actions against the Prussian-German
revolution in military affairs in the 19th century offer an example
of combat limitations when technological superiority is
not matched with strategy and good staff planning. During
the 1848 revolution, rail transport proved to significantly enhance
military effectiveness. Austrian and French forces outpaced
their Prussian contemporaries with better rail infrastructure,
and expected to defeat their opponents based on
these advances alone.
What was absent was limited strategic research and a concept
for the effective use of these advantages. This limited
conceptual understanding resulted in the Austrians’ 1866 defeat.
French staffs, based on Austro-Prussian War observations,
adjusted their doctrine and tactics. While well-intended,
French staffs lacked critical thinking and did not grasp Prussian
decentralized command tactics because of their own
predilection for structure. Their lack of advancement resulted
in their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.
Conversely, the Prussian army leveraged its general staff to
analyze and plan operations that gave their commanders significant
advantages over enemies lacking command and staff
structures. Prussian adversaries such as France and Austria,
while more technologically robust, were unable to fully bring
those technologies to fruition without strategy and conceptual
understanding.
Helmuth von Moltke understood the
benefits of an effective staff and in
1873, transformed the Prussian general
staff into a unique instrument combining
flexibility and initiative with a focus
on common operations doctrine and
commander’s intent. The Prussian general
staff served as the “brains” behind
operational planning; thought critically and creatively; and
provided the opportunity to analyze, decide and act faster
than their opponents.
In Moltke’s words, “Superiority is no longer to be sought in
the weapon, but in the hand that wields it.” Commanders who
are mutually supported by well-trained and well-educated
staffs yield greater results than less-prepared, less critically
thinking armies, as evidenced by the juxtaposition of Austrian,
French and Prussian army staff practices.
Ultimately, while Mission Command may be a new concept
for the Army, it is neither a new model nor a new idea. Historical
examples predating the French Revolution and conflicts as
late as World War I demonstrate the successful implementation
of Mission Command principles to exploit the initiative.
By no means does this negate the value of Mission Command.
It simply confirms that when properly implemented,
Mission Command logic is a practical and effective model of
leadership. Leaders benefit from the study and application of
these historic examples as they endeavor a Mission Command
approach to leadership.
As military historian Scott Manning suggests, “Military history
fills in the gap where personal experience is sorely lacking.
As warfare continues to influence our world today, we who
study military history must continue to learn, and to teach, the
lessons demonstrated in history.”
✭
Maj. Christina Fanitzi is battalion commander and executive officer
of the 303rd Military Intelligence Battalion at Fort Hood,
Texas. She deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and
recently completed duties as an instructor at the U.S. Military
Academy. She is a graduate of the Tuck School of Business at
Dartmouth, where she earned an MBA and distinction as the Julia
Stell Award recipient.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 33

Insight May Be the
Greatest Power of All
By Lt. Col. C. Richard Nelson, U.S. Army retired
The first requirement for effective decisionmaking is
to understand the situation. Accordingly, for generations,
U.S. Army leaders initially framed problems
in terms of the “estimate of the situation,”
providing a mental construct of factors likely to be important.
The estimate began with the mission or a clear definition
of the problem, and addressed the main factors bearing
on the problem.
The terms may change, but the process remains similar.
One must begin with a framework of how best to think
about the problem. How well can you estimate the situation?
If your estimate is wrong, then your advice and decisions
will be in error. You are likely to neglect important
aspects of the problem unless mere good luck prevails.
One antidote for shortsightedness is insight, which has
been defined as the ability to see a situation in its full complexity.
Of course, perfect understanding is impossible, but
it is critical to see the key factors.
Insight is not just information and intelligence. It includes
understanding a problem in its broadest context and
its many important linkages, determining the most important
aspects, and judging the extent to which key factors may
be amenable to change. Such skill is particularly important at
the strategic level where estimating the situation correctly—or
not—with all its complex interrelated political, economic, social
and military dimensions can have enormous consequences.
In 1972, then-Maj. Gen. John H. Cushman captured the
importance of insight in his debriefing as commanding general
of the Delta Regional Assistance Command in Vietnam. “All
too often, insight is gained too late and through adverse experience,”
he said. “I believe that great costs could have been
saved in the Vietnam experience if our individual and collective
insight had been better as things were developing.”
“Insight—or the ability to see the situation as it really is—is
the most valuable asset an adviser can have,” Cushman said,
describing insight as coming from “a willing openness to a variety
of stimuli” including intellectual curiosity, observation and
reflection, continuous evaluation and testing, conversations and
discussions, review of assumptions, listening to the views of
outsiders, and from what he called “the indispensable ingredient
of humility. … The man who believes he has the situation
entirely figured out is a danger to himself and to his mission.”
Cushman noted that “the reflective, testing and tentative
manner in which insight is sought does not mean indecisiveness.
It simply raises the likelihood that the decided course of
action will be successful, because it is in harmony with the real
situation that exists. I am convinced that the subjective insight
Joe Broderick
into the conditions which actually prevail comes about only in
the way I describe.”
Those ‘Aha’ Moments
Cushman’s list of sources of insight makes sense. Openness,
curiosity, observation, testing, evaluation, reviewing assumptions,
listening to others, and targeted discussions with wellinformed
observers would probably appear on most lists of this
nature. The discipline of regular reflection is less obvious but
can provide those “aha” moments that may not come from
study and analysis.
Humility, which Cushman considered “indispensable,” is a
less obvious source of insight, but others have also expressed
its importance. Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster was a combat soldier
in World War II, deputy commander of U.S. forces in
Vietnam and adviser to four presidents. He came out of retirement
to serve as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy
after a cheating scandal. Goodpaster often cited Gen. George
C. Marshall Jr.’s counsel that there are no limits to what a person
can achieve as long as he or she does not seek credit for it.
Both men were insightful exemplars of humility, and both
were widely trusted in large part because they thought first of
what was best for the country rather than for themselves, their
unit, or the Army.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was also one of our more insightful
leaders. As NATO’s first Supreme Allied Comman-
34 ARMY ■ April 2016

Strategic Genius
Another more recent example of an insightful person is
Andrew W. Marshall, the director of DoD’s Office of Net
Assessment for more than 40 years. Marshall has been labeled
“the most influential man you’ve never heard of.” He worked
directly for every secretary of defense beginning with James
Schlesinger in 1973 to Chuck Hagel in 2015, when Marshall
retired at age 93. Despite vast changes in personalities across
both parties leading DoD as well as enormous changes in the
strategic environment, Marshall remained highly influential
because of his unique insights.
Marshall was a genius on how to think about strategic problems.
With a small staff of midgrade military officers and a
few civilians, he engaged many of the best minds to illuminate
emerging problems and strategic opportunities far enough in
advance for decisionmakers to take action. He provided analytic
frameworks for comprehending the fundamental character
of competitive situations, but he did not provide recommendations.
He brought key ideas to the right senior officials
at the right time, but left decisions to the responsible officials.
With collective insight, these analyses led to sound competitive
strategies that pitted enduring strengths of the U.S. against
weaknesses of adversaries, thereby imposing disproportionate
costs and extraordinary challenges on adversaries. Unfortunately,
however, putting such insights into practice was not always
successful because of institutional resistance to change.
In a career spanning decades of public service, Marshall was
brilliant with an intense curiosity about how things really work.
He was intellectually honest, willing to reconsider his positions.
He also challenged conventional wisdom, especially common
metrics for measuring military balances. Marshall operated behind
the scenes, avoiding attention; he personified humility.
Skills Can Be Developed
Insightful leaders are essential, and the necessary skills to
enhance insight can be developed. To do so, we must understand
our own strengths and weaknesses. This requires some
der, Europe, in 1951, Eisenhower consulted regularly with
outside experts such as the “Three Wise Men”—French political
economist and diplomat Jean Monnet, British statesman
Hugh Gaitskell, and U.S. diplomat W. Averell Harriman—to
reconcile military requirements with political and economic
capabilities.
Faced with a threat of 175 Soviet divisions and a similar
number of satellite country forces, NATO planners recommended
about 100 divisions at a time when NATO forces
consisted mainly of two American divisions and one British
division in Germany. French forces were heavily committed to
Indochina; U.S. forces were fighting in Korea; and Germany
had yet to rearm. In determining the most desirable and feasible
force posture and strategies for NATO, Eisenhower was
careful not to jeopardize European recovery from World War
II while still providing sufficient forces for a credible defense
and deterrence.
framework for assessment. Currently, senior Army officers are
rated in performance evaluation reports on their mental
agility, including their ability to make reliable estimates and
sensible decisions. These ratings include the ability to think
through second- and third-order effects. These criteria provide
an indication of insight, but not as clearly as those delineated
by Cushman.
In judging ourselves on insight and identifying areas for improvement,
we can use the factors that Cushman identified,
augmented by examples from George Marshall, Andrew
Marshall and other insightful people. In addition to our selfassessment,
it also may be useful to think about how others—
especially subordinates, peers and seniors—may view us in
terms of insight.
Deciding what to do is only about 5 percent of solving the
problem, according to Gen. George S. Patton Jr.; the other 95
percent is getting it done. Nevertheless, if we don’t get the
first 5 percent right, the rest may be in vain. Thus, to better
ensure we can get the job done well, we also need to build in
sufficient collective insight to overcome institutional obstacles
that often block insight from being translated into appropriate
actions. More collective humility would be a good starting
point toward building the collective insight we need. ✭
Lt. Col. C. Richard Nelson, USA Ret., Ph.D., learned about insight
through serving in Vietnam and on the Army Staff, and teaching at
the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. The West
Point graduate earned a master’s degree from the University of
Michigan, and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 35

Commanders as
Communicators
Conveying Clear Intent Helps Create First-Class Climate
By Col. David M. Hodne
Among the many rewards of commanding at the
brigade level, the opportunity to mentor, observe
and share in the lessons of command is the most
profound. In focusing “two levels down,” brigadelevel
commanders are in position to share their experiences
with young officers about to assume command for the first
time. In coaching subordinate battalion commanders, this relationship
among more seasoned commanders allows for reciprocal
learning across echelons. My experience in commanding,
observing and coaching others on this important responsibility
reaffirms my belief that command is best understood in terms
of “intent and climate.”
Almost 20 years ago, before I assumed command of a rifle
company in the 25th Infantry Division, a supervisor handed
me a copy of Roger Nye’s The Challenge of Command. I eagerly
digested this book, in which Nye discusses the opportunities of
command and addresses the role of a commander as tactician,
warrior, moral arbiter, strategist and yes, even mentor.
While commanding companies together, I also recall when
two of my friends kicked off the widely popular “Company-
Command” forums that now include multiple books, magazine
articles, online discussions, a collection of “best practices”
and peer reflections on training, leader development, setting
goals and assessing units. Today, there is no shortage of online
resources that offer more specific tricks of the trade, including
detailed “how-to” recommendations on almost all administrative
processes encountered while in command.
Rare Opportunities
Up front, officers should accept that command opportunities
are rare. There are simply far more staff officer positions
than command positions. Second, there are no guarantees that
you will get to command again, so approach every opportunity
to command as if it might be your last.
Third—and this is a lesson likely learned in hindsight—
time in command passes quickly. Sadly, some commanders do
not appreciate the value of the command experience until they
are about to pass the colors. In other cases, commanders never
complete their research on how to command, or relax their
singular emphasis on mastering processes or developing systems.
They learn too late that they should trust their instincts
and simply lead and care for people. Others may focus only on
how command will affect the next promotion. Unfortunately,
36 ARMY ■ April 2016

A 4th Infantry Division company commander, center, reviews procedures with two first lieutenants during a clearance operation with Afghan police in
Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.
U.S. Army/Sgt. Seth Barham
April 2016 ■ ARMY 37

this condition only devalues command and is also detrimental
to a commander’s formation.
Which brings me back to my favorite two words about
command: intent and climate. Commander’s intent, according
to Army Doctrine Reference Publication 5-0 The Operations
Process, “succinctly describes what constitutes success for the
operation.” I maintain intent must also be communicated
orally. Not only is it much easier for the commander to explain
repeatedly for messages to take root, but it is also easier for
subordinates to pass on and remember when it is spoken in
the commander’s familiar jargon.
Defining Climate
I define climate as the tone and stance typically assumed
while communicating with people. Climate is who we are,
and it’s as unique as our individual personalities. In expressing
the importance of climate, I remind all new company commanders
that command is,
indeed, who they are and
not a role they are playing.
Not only is role-playing exhausting,
but soldiers are
astute enough to recognize
when you are faking it or
trying to be someone else.
This is a recipe for a poor
command climate or sets
conditions for inconsistent,
toxic leadership.
While commanding my cavalry squadron
in Iraq, I drew a simple diagram (left)
on a whiteboard during a late-night,
impromptu leader-development session
with a few members of my staff. It has
since come to define both my command
philosophy and my approach to
coaching subordinate commanders.
A commander’s vision provides a common
purpose or path for all activities
within the organization. This vision may
be shared across formations based on a
larger context such as installation, mission
or the next higher echelon’s requirements,
and it can be tailored to deployed
or training environments. While a staff is
assigned only to battalions and higher
echelons, the relationship of vision, commander’s
intent and command climate endures at all echelons
of command including the company, troop or battery.
Even internal to a company, wise captains assign and divide
responsibilities among executive officers, first sergeants, platoon-level
leaders and even supply personnel to constitute a
rudimentary “staff” necessary for the company to run smoothly.
Missions Accomplished Together
As depicted in the graphic, the commander is, of course,
central to the organization. The staff runs the formation, but
the commander commands it. Together, they accomplish all
missions. Without the exacting efforts of staff and subordinates,
the commander cannot achieve his or her vision (or that
of higher headquarters), implement intent, or accomplish the
mission.
It’s feasible that a staff can work very hard and expend an
enormous amount of wasted energy that only pushes a unit off
During counterinsurgency
operations in Afghanistan’s
Zabul Province, a 23rd Infantry
Regiment captain briefs his
team for a mission.
U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez
38 ARMY ■ April 2016

Then-Lt. Col. David
M. Hodne, the author,
reviews Rangers at
Joint Base Lewis-
McChord, Wash.
Northwest Guardian/David Poe
course. This results in mission failure as well as a disgruntled
staff and confused subordinate units. Careless and incomplete
staff work might also require the commander to reiterate his
or her intent or worse, temporarily adjust the climate to get
the unit back on course.
While commander’s intent and command climate originate
from the commander’s personality and leadership style, one
can never underestimate the role of the staff in either enhancing
the commander’s ability to lead the formation or in defeating
efforts, resulting in a poor, dissatisfied command climate
and a low-trust organization.
In maintaining a consistent climate and communicating a
clear intent, the commander must also remind his staff that
there are few things more satisfying, or more necessary to
combat effectiveness, than good staff work: timely, detailed,
well-reasoned, well-coordinated and well-supervised. This intricate
relationship among vision, intent and climate also reinforces
the role of the commander in fulfilling his or her responsibilities.
In failing to clearly communicate intent, or
failing to maintain a positive command climate, commanders
will similarly learn the value of communication and interpersonal
leadership.
Communicate Among Echelons
Lastly, central to consistent vision in command is the ability
to communicate effectively among the Army’s nested echelons.
These echelons serve as important networks to communicate
intent up and down the chain of command. Only
through effective communication will commanders share the
understanding that’s essential to today’s doctrine of Mission
Command.
Captains, less experienced in this, benefit from the experience
of battalion commanders who are uniquely prepared
and selected for their position, and involved in the daily actions
of their units. Lieutenant colonels, in command of battalions,
now have the responsibility to communicate “two
levels up” with general officers and other senior commanders.
In this regard, the brigade commander plays an important
role in coaching battalion commanders through the art of
precise and well-timed communication. This is particularly
important when senior commanders at the division and
higher may interact less frequently with their subordinate
battalions, given today’s wide range of missions and activities
across echelons.
As stated earlier, command is rare as well as short-lived.
Command is also an honor and should be enjoyable. Even
more so, focusing primarily on those things only you can do,
and allowing your staff to do their part, makes for a better
team writ large. Only the commander can communicate intent
and maintain a climate. Both of these are personal in nature
but by investing in and paying attention to climate and intent,
you will improve not only your interpersonal skills but also
your relationship with the formation.
Clear intent and a good command climate create an organization
that people will be proud to be part of, one that takes
care of soldiers and families and most importantly, sets an example
in command for the next generation of leaders. ✭
Col. David M. Hodne was recently commander of the 1st Stryker
Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson,
Colo. He also commanded the 3rd Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry,
in Iraq, and the 2nd Ranger Battalion in Afghanistan. He
received a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Military Academy
and a master’s degree from American Military University.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 39

Cover Story
Rough, Risky
Path Ahead
Reports Highlight Challenges For Army Global Preparedness
By Rick Maze, Editor-in-Chief
DoD
40 ARMY ■ April 2016

Three independent reports warn the U.S. Army may
be ill-prepared for the complex world ahead.
■ The conservative Heritage Foundation rates the Army as
the weakest of the U.S. military services. The Air Force, Navy
and Marine Corps are rated as “marginal” in the foundation’s
2016 Index of Military Strength, while the military power ranking
of the Army is “weak.” The assessment is based on capability,
capacity and readiness.
The Army’s score dropped from “marginal” in 2015,
largely because of having fewer brigade combat teams ready
for deployment. Despite the reduced rating, the Heritage
Foundation report still ranks the U.S. Army as the world’s
most powerful land force. The overall U.S. military, rated
as “marginal” and “trending toward ‘weak,’” also ranks as the
world’s strongest military.
“Fiscal challenges” are the Army’s chief problem, the report
says. “The Army has continued to reduce its end strength and
accept greater risk to its modernization programs to preserve
readiness levels,” the report says, noting the Army is protecting
operational readiness for current and near-term operations,
allowing a long-term strategic risk that is a large part of
the reason for the “weak” rating. Actual readiness is “dangerously
close to nearing a state of ‘very weak,’” the report says.
■ A second report, from the American Enterprise Institute’s
Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies, says today’s
military is “too small and is losing its traditional technological
advantages.” Individual services “have become too dependent
on one another—losing service capabilities developed by and
for a single service that for some contingencies result in less efficient
use of U.S. forces.” Titled To Rebuild America’s Military,
the report warns: “It has been the unerring inclination
and desire of post-Cold War defense reviews to reduce the
size of America’s land forces, especially the U.S. Army. This
has also been the greatest folly.”
The institute’s report calls for a long-term approach.
“Sound defense planning demands a long-term perspective,
resting not on what changes—threats and technologies—but
on what remains constant—American security interests and
political principles. Since 1945, the one constant of international
politics has been the military power of the United
States. Our next commander-in-chief must rebuild America’s
military power.”
Quality people leave the Army because of the faults, the report
says. “The military services are in danger of losing their
best, brightest, and most battle-tested people: the ‘all-volunteer
force’ marks a moral compact between the American public
and the small number of Americans who risk their lives to
keep the rest of us safe,” the report says. “That compact requires
us not only to care for the wounded, the widows, and
A 101st Airborne Division soldier patrols near a
remote village in Khowst Province, Afghanistan, in 2013.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 41

This February exercise
at Hohenfels Training
Area, Germany,
involved NATO
members and
partner nations.
U.S. Army/Pvt. Randy Wren
the retired but also to provide those who would go in harm’s
way with the means for victory. When we fail to do so, it
breaks faith with those in uniform.”
■ The third report, from the nonpartisan RAND Corp., is
titled Limiting Regret: Building the Army We Will Need. It attempts
to calculate how the nation would come up with the
land forces required for multiple contingencies and concludes
that a big burden could fall on existing soldiers. “Absent an increase
in end strength, units would have to deploy for 15
months with very few troops available to provide an opportunity
to rotate these soldiers home,” the report says. “It is unknown
what effects the high deployment tempo and other
measures will have on the ability of the Army to maintain its
high performance standards and its end strength.” The report
also notes that some rotational relief may be needed to ensure
the all-volunteer force “remains viable if contingencies stretch
into a second or third year (or longer).”
The RAND report warns that current plans leave the Army
with too few ground forces to satisfy national security commitments.
It recommends pausing the Army drawdown; increasing
readiness funding for active and reserve forces; and
preparing to fully mobilize the Army National Guard, Army
Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve to “avoid strategic failure
and regret.”
All three reports are speculative because no one can say for
certain how much money the Army will have and how many
troops will be authorized in the future. After November’s
presidential elections, a thorough review is expected of national
security strategy and priorities. The current DoD plan
calls for no real growth in spending through 2020, according
to a forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
of the cost of future defense plans. However, the assumption
of nearly flat budgets is based on a projection that the number
of active-duty service members will drop from 1.31 million in
2016 to 1.27 million in 2020.
For the Army, long-range plans call for a 40,000-soldier
cut in the active force, 3,000 in the Army Reserve, and
15,000 in the Army National Guard by 2020. From
2015 levels, this represents reductions of 8 percent for
the active force, 4 percent for the Army National Guard, and 2
percent for the Army Reserve. Those are the biggest costs of
any of the services.
The National Commission on the Future of the Army reported
in January that a combined force of 980,000 is “unlikely,
at least for the next few years.” The smart course may be
to take two infantry brigade combat teams out of the Regular
Army to free active-duty space for the expanded manning of
aviation, short-range air defense and other capabilities in short
supply, the commission said.
42 ARMY ■ April 2016

The commission report cautions that in a “constrained budget
environment,” the near-term demands of having enough
soldiers and adequate levels of readiness mean “accepting substantial
risk in modernization.” The report concludes “limited
investment in modernization is a course of significant longterm
concern, a concern that would surface even had the lesschallenging
security conditions assumed in the current defense
strategy held.”
Army leaders have spoken about the need to kick-start
weapons modernization, but the Congressional Budget Office
says the long-range defense budgets show the $23 billion
Army weapons procurement budget for 2016 remains mostly
flat, with adjustments only for inflation, through 2030.
Some equipment has been worn down by usage in Afghanistan
and Iraq, but the Army has undertaken a reset initiative
and the bulk of its vehicles “are young,” the Heritage Foundation
report acknowledges. However, modernization is limited
by resources, the report says, noting that because of budget restrictions,
20 research and development programs were canceled,
125 were delayed, and 124 were restructured.
Army leaders aren’t hiding their concerns about overall
readiness, noting that fewer than 40 percent of
brigade combat teams are fully ready for deployment.
Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel Allyn
has warned that after making readiness the Army’s top priority,
readiness problems won’t be eliminated until 2023 or later.
To Rebuild America’s Military says dramatic changes are
needed. “Reversing our current course is a matter of great urgency,”
the report says. “To begin with, the world we have
made is unraveling. No one threat is either existential or the
single root cause or solution. But the system is rotting, and it
is doing so faster than imagined; it is sobering to recall how
quickly the Soviet empire imploded, and it is hubris to think
that the liberal, peaceful, and prosperous American world is
inherently eternal. If America and its allies do not make the
world, our adversaries will.”
The reports suggest three approaches to reducing national
security risks:
■ Until the threat of Russian aggression in Ukraine and
NATO states in the Baltics has receded, RAND recommends
freezing the personnel strength levels of the active Army,
Army National Guard and Army Reserve. To “remain a global
power,” the U.S. needs the capability of operating in three
theaters at once with significant forces, the American Enterprise
Institute report says.
“Today, fewer than 70,000 U.S. troops—including just two
Army brigades—are stationed in Europe, down from the late
Cold War level of 350,000. Returning to the force levels of a
few years ago—about 100,000 total—and permanently repositioning
units to Eastern European NATO countries would be
a very small investment but have a huge return with respect to
a robust deterrent,” the report says.
■ The Army should be prepared for mobilization of the entire
National Guard and Army Reserve, last done in World
War II. As part of premobilization planning, readiness levels
of the reserve components need to be raised.
■ Steps are needed to reduce deployment times for Army
units to the Baltics and South Korea, two possible hot spots
requiring quick response. “This would entail building the warsupporting
infrastructure required, maintaining armored
brigades and supporting forces in the Baltics, and assessing a
variety of options to rotate or permanently station them
there,” according to the RAND report.
✭
U.S. Army/Sgt. John L. Carkeet IV
Maj. Gen. Les Carroll, commander
of 377th Theater Sustainment
Command, talks to troops with
the 641st Regional Support Group
during a multiechelon training
exercise in Florida.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 43

Private Prevailed in
Fight Against General
By Daniel J. Demers
John Maher of Platte County, Neb., was a court reporter
in 1898 and, as such, owned a typewriter. He
also was a lawyer, served on the staff of Nebraska
Gov. Silas Holcomb, and was active in Nebraska
politics. Two months after the Spanish-American War
broke out—on April 25, 1898—Maher enlisted as a private
in the Army (Chadron Company, Second Regiment,
Nebraska U.S. Volunteers). This no-ordinary private took
his typewriter to war with him; ultimately, it would cause
his court-martial.
When the war started, the strength of the Regular Army
was 28,000. Army authorities anticipated an increase to
50,000 men and were caught off-guard when suddenly
confronted with enlistments and National Guard activations
amounting to about 220,000 men. Overwhelmed and
understaffed, the Army had to quickly buy new supplies
and equipment to handle the influx.
Like many young Americans caught up in the war fever,
Maher was eager to fight and shortly found himself at Camp
Thomas, located on the Civil War Chickamauga Battlefield,
Ga. He was assigned as clerk-stenographer to Col. C.J. Bills
of the Nebraska State Militia, which had been federalized.
In July 1898, an orderly from Brig. Gen. Frederick D.
Grant’s headquarters came to Bills’ headquarters with instructions
to “take possession of Private Maher’s typewriter and
make fourteen copies of an order for a sham [war game] bat-
iStock/powerofforever
Remington No. 7
typewriter, circa 1896
April 2016 ■ ARMY 45

John Maher was a private when he
refused an order from Brig. Gen. Frederick
D. Grant to use his personal typewriter for
Army business.
tle” set to commence at 6 a.m. the following day. Grant was the
eldest child of a general and former president, Ulysses S. Grant.
His Own Private Typewriter
Maher refused to allow the use of his private typewriter,
which he had brought with him at his own expense. At the
time, he was making a transcript of the testimony of a Nebraska
court case urgently needed for an appeal, and he was doing so
with Bills’ express permission. The appeal related to one C.C.
Stevens, who had been convicted of cattle rustling. Stevens was
the father of five, and his wife had written Maher several “very
pitiful letters” begging him to speed up the transcript because
she and her children were “dependent on the father for bread.”
Maher declined Grant’s request. The orderly returned to
the general’s headquarters and reported that Maher refused to
comply. Maher was immediately ordered to report to the general’s
headquarters, where he explained that “the machine is
my personal property, and I do not propose to allow the government
to wear it out copying orders.” Grant responded “very
well” and Maher returned to Bills’ headquarters, assuming the
matter was resolved.
A little while later, the orderly returned with a note demanding
Maher make the copies with his machine as punishment
for refusing to comply the first time. Maher again refused,
asserting, “You can make me copy those with pen and
ink, but you cannot make me use my private property.”
A little later, Bills rode up and, while acknowledging that
Maher was legally right in his refusal, politely asked Maher to
make the copies as a personal favor to avoid a fallout. Maher
readily agreed, telling a fellow soldier: “That’s the way to treat
a man.” He said Grant “can get anything I have got, but it will
be a cold day when … I knuckle down to General Grant or
anybody else, flying high [because] they are backed by a reputation
won by their ancestors.”
A short time later, before he could start typing the orders,
Maher was arrested and charged with insubordination. Once
under arrest, “Grant sent down a stenographer to take Maher’s
machine and copy the sham battle orders.”
Maher’s subsequent court-martial became a national cause
celebre reported widely throughout
the U.S. For example, the Wheeling
[W.Va.] Daily Intelligencer, under
the headline “This is Petty Business,”
asserted the case was about “the
right of an enlisted man [to refuse
the Army] the use of his own private
property.”
Flowers and Ice Cream
The trial lasted several weeks. According
to one witness, Maher was allowed
to stay with his attorney, Capt.
Allen Fischer, and dined in the Officers’
Mess during the trial. When
Grant discovered Maher wasn’t in the
guardhouse, he “immediately ordered”
him to be put there. Even so,
according to the witness, the tall,
“strikingly handsome” Maher “enjoyed many luxuries. The officers
of different regiments who heard of the affair sent fruits
and cool drinks, while the Southern belles sent flowers and ice
cream … to make the time pass away quickly.”
One Nebraska newspaper noted that Maher had made “pecuniary
sacrifices … to enlist as a private and fight for his ‘Uncle
Sam.’” The paper noted he had resigned the court reporter
position, which came with a $208 monthly salary, to fight for
his country for $15.60 per month. A number of high-ranking
officers with legal backgrounds believed Maher had “a distinct
right to refuse” the Army use of his typewriter.
Ultimately, Maher was acquitted. It was a bitter defeat for
Grant who, “just because he could, held the verdict of the
court four days” to keep Maher in the guardhouse. The enraged
and embarrassed general then lectured the military
court, asserting “there was no limit to the punishment for the
crime [and then] fired the court and appointed a new court to
try crimes in the future.”
Maher went on to have a stellar military and highly successful
business career. He volunteered again in 1916 and served
under Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing with troops sent to
search for the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa along the
Mexican border. A year later, he again volunteered when
America joined World War I. With the rank of major, he became
the chief disbursing officer of the American Expeditionary
Forces headquartered in Paris. In that position, he
oversaw the handling and distribution of $500 million. His
duties took him to Germany, Romania, Italy and Belgium.
Maher was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in
1919. After the war, he became a successful international businessman
and in 1933 was appointed Nebraska’s state adviser to
the board of the Works Project Administration by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. He died in 1939 at the age of 70. ✭
Poems and Sketches of Nebraska, 1908
Daniel J. Demers, who served in the Nevada National Guard in the
1970s, researches and writes about 19th- and 20th-century events
and personalities. He also owns and operates a sports bar in
Guerneville, Calif. He holds a bachelor’s degree from George
Washington University and an MBA from Chapman University.
46 ARMY ■ April 2016

Multinational
Success
Requires
Multilingual
Troops
By 1st Lt. Nicholas B. Naquin
To maintain our competitive edge, the Army must demand
that junior tactical leaders have practical fluency
in at least one foreign language and invest accordingly.
Foreign language fluency empowers partner nations
and increases organizational efficiency. Moreover, it fosters
the flexible and adaptable leadership we need to face present
and future challenges worldwide.
I became convinced of this stance after my recent experience
in Ukraine. Throughout 2014, a smoldering civil conflict
there burst into open violence. As the world watched this violence
threaten to spin out of control, the 1st Battalion (Airborne),
503rd Infantry Regiment, was ready to act.
In January 2015, my battalion, based in Vicenza, Italy,
received a unique mission entirely outside the battalion’s traditional
operational roles: conduct foreign internal defense
missions by training the newly formed National Guard of
Ukraine for stability operations throughout a nation plagued
by civil strife. After a month of feverish preparations, our
paratroopers from Legion Company were ready to deploy to
Ukraine for the inaugural iteration of Operation Fearless
Guardian.
Newly assigned to Legion Company, I took over my responsibilities
as an airborne rifle platoon leader as our unit hit
the ground in early April 2015. As a company, we did not
know what to expect when we got to Yavoriv Training Area
in western Ukraine, but it was immediately clear that the area
assigned to us as a training site needed significant improvements
before the imminent arrival of two National Guard of
Ukraine companies about a week later.
As combined elements from Bulldog Troop, 1st Squadron
(Airborne), 91st Cavalry Regiment and Legion Company
started building our task force’s training areas from scratch, we
determined that without some kind of flooring below the nine
tents we had set up for classrooms, our training site would not
only be unprofessional in appearance but also fall prey to any
inclement weather—and that would quickly compromise our
training, movement and support plans. After juggling several
ideas, our task force leaders decided that we needed to put
down gravel for classroom flooring, parking lots, and access
points to our training site.
No Points of Contact
But how does one acquire 1,500 tons of gravel in rural
Ukraine with little notice and no points of contact? As our
newly arrived task force logistic elements were having trouble
securing gravel from our main provider of building supplies,
my company and task force leadership asked me, a brand-new
platoon leader, to tackle this problem.
Little in my military education had prepared me to find,
48 ARMY ■ April 2016

Clockwise from top left: 173rd Airborne
Brigade paratroopers arrive in Ukraine for
a six-month deployment to train National
Guard of Ukraine soldiers; a paratrooper
briefs Ukrainian troops; a Ukrainian soldier
rushes to position during a timed assessment;
Maj. Gen. William Gayler, center,
deputy commander of U.S. Army Europe,
is briefed during a squad live-fire exercise.
U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Adriana Diaz-Brown
U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Adriana Diaz-Brown
U.S. Army/Sgt. A.M. LaVey
U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Adriana Diaz-Brown
buy, transport and install more than 1,500 tons of gravel
within three days at a training camp in an isolated corner of
Ukraine. Yet this was what the mission demanded.
I simply approached the first Ukrainian officer I could find
and explained to him in Russian the problem at hand. He immediately
put me in touch with Ukrainian Lt. Col. Alexander
Shelydko, a logistics officer from the Ukrainian Army supporting
Fearless Guardian. With a few phone calls, Shelydko
found the solution to our task force’s problem.
Within a day, I found myself with two of my paratroopers
at a remote gravel pit near the Polish-Ukrainian border overseeing
the loading and delivery of gravel in trucks that Shelydko
resourced. Over the telephone, I coordinated the distribution
of the gravel at Yavoriv with U.S. Army 1st Lt. Rudolph
Weisz. As I watched trucks come and go from the gravel pit,
Weisz was at our training site, sitting beside the driver of a
large tractor that Shelydko also resourced for us. Weisz, also
fluent in Russian, directed the tractor driver to clear terrain
and distribute gravel where needed as our paratroopers spread
the gravel with shovels, mounted tents and prepared the professional-looking
and practical site that served us as well as
later Fearless Guardian iterations.
Thanks to hard work by our partners and paratroopers, we
achieved our commander’s intent much quicker and at far less
cost than we could have done using the only other known
sources available to us in Ukraine at the time.
Magic Ingredient
The magic ingredient to solving this problem, as in so many
of Legion Company’s undertakings during the inaugural iteration
of Fearless Guardian, was adequate language knowledge.
During our preparations for this operation, our battalion commander,
Lt. Col. Patrick Wilkins, understood the importance
of having tactical leaders with appropriate language skills. For
April 2016 ■ ARMY 49

this reason, he hand-picked Weisz and me to go to Ukraine
with Legion Company in February 2015.
Weisz’s parents were longtime U.S. Department of State
diplomats who had served in Russia, where he had spent most
of his youth. For my part, I had studied Russian for three years
as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University, lived in St.
Petersburg for a year as an English teacher from 2003 to 2004,
and had gained fluency in military Russian and slang during
my service for the French Foreign Legion from 2008 to 2010,
where native Russian speakers were as plentiful as native
French speakers.
During our time in Ukraine, in addition to translators picked
from throughout the 173rd Airborne Brigade who contributed
enormously to the operation’s success, Weisz and I, two commissioned
officers, were able to communicate directly with all
echelons of our Ukrainian partner units. I could describe
countless episodes like the one above, in which the language
knowledge organic to our company leadership empowered our
partners, vastly increased our organization efficiency, and fostered
the flexible and adaptable leadership that is and will remain
essential to operating effectively as a global force.
Partner Nations Empowered
Having senior leaders with appropriate language knowledge
empowers partner nations to contribute more effectively to
joint operations. Every infantryman knows that his primary
tasks are to shoot, move and communicate. For infantry leaders,
communication is clearly the most important of these three
tasks, as they coordinate the application of lawful violence as
well as the training needed to harness this violence. In partnership
training operations, especially, effective communication
with all echelons of our partner nations takes precedence over
other infantry tasks.
Leaders throughout the U.S. military
engage with partner forces to ensure the
success of operations worldwide. If we
must rely on translators to filter information
between us and partner forces, we
invariably strain the communications architecture
binding us with our partners.
True, we may have liaison officers and
translators there to help, but their time
and energies are limited. What is more,
we are often unable to understand the internal
politics of partner forces, and we
therefore cannot see whose voices may or
may not be marginalized or amplified in
translation. With a direct line of communication from our own
tactical leaders to partner forces, we empower their leaders to
identify solutions to problems and contribute to the mission.
The example of the gravel delivery is telling. We never
would have found this effective solution to a substantial logistical
challenge had I not been able to speak Russian and approach
a partner leader with this problem. Shelydko spoke no
English whatsoever. Without our language knowledge, given
the halting flow of information through translators and staff—
especially at that early point in the operation—his solution, to
which we returned several times over the course of Fearless
Guardian, probably would never have come to our attention,
and surely not in a day.
Lost in Translation
Direct communication with the partner force also drastically
increases organizational efficiency. In the safety and known
contexts of our own garrisons, leaders would find it absolutely
unacceptable to play a game of telephone, all in English, in
which another soldier would transmit messages, orders and
social interactions to subordinates, peers and superiors. In
such a hypothetical game of telephone comprising speakers of
the same language, members of the same culture and soldiers
in the same organization, countless messages, implied and
stated, would be lost in translation as soldiers tried to relay information
back and forth among leaders and subordinates.
And how many of the nonverbal communications on which
soldiers rely would mean little or nothing as they passed
through the mouths of our telephone operators? How much
time would leaders lose trying to make sure that their communications
were clearly understood? Would they even have the
time to ensure that they were clearly transmitted?
Vasyl Mykhailovych Gevalo, director of a woodworking
vocational school in Ukraine, presents
the author, 1st Lt. Nicholas B. Naquin, with a
plate produced by a student in a community
outreach program.
U.S. Army/Sgt. Alex Skripnichuk
50 ARMY ■ April 2016

Aerial view of the
Presidio of Monterey,
Calif., home to the
Defense Language
Institute Foreign
Language Center
U.S. Army/Natela A. Cutter
We would never accept such an unwieldly communications
architecture in the safety of our own garrisons. How much
less, then, should we accept an even less reliable and more
cumbersome architecture in unfamiliar operational environments
in which our partners belong to different cultures and
speak organizational and national languages markedly different
from our own?
Having leaders with adequate language knowledge cuts the
time needed for communication in half, at least, by removing
translators from the equation. In most cases, it also increases
the accuracy and reliability of our communication. Although it
may not be possible to have leaders throughout the organization
with knowledge of a particular language, it would be very
helpful to have appropriately trained leaders at “friction
points” throughout our task forces for partnership operations.
Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable
Finally, the very process of language learning fosters the flexible,
adaptable leadership needed in the global force of today
and the future. More so than anything I learned in the Foreign
Legion, during my officer education, in Ranger School or since
my arrival at the 173rd, working through the infantilization
and misunderstandings that we invariably undergo as we advance
from beginner to fluency in a foreign language prepared
me to deal with the unexpected and to grow comfortable with
being uncomfortable. I learned four different European languages
as an adult and over a period of 10 years, most of which
I spent abroad. Negotiating through the challenges of daily life
as a student of foreign cultures fostered flexibility and adaptability,
which has served me well so far in my military career.
A quote often attributed to the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V reads: “A man who speaks four languages is worth
four men.” What this quote intends to convey is not only the
technical value of speaking four languages, but also the accumulated
wisdom and know-how that it takes to learn four languages,
communicate in them, and function with ease in foreign
cultures.
In light of our worldwide commitments, we cannot fail to
make language education for Army leaders a priority. In order
to increase language proficiency throughout the force, every
battalion should choose 10 volunteers—five officers and five
NCOs—and provide them with two months of intensive language
instruction at their post, given by qualified personnel
from the Defense Language Institute. Following this crash
course, the volunteers would be required to undertake an internship
or course of study (including military schooling) from
six to 10 months at a military or civilian institution in one of
the battalion’s regionally aligned nations.
The battalion adjutant should make appropriate arrangements
to accommodate this training in these soldiers’ timelines,
such as shifting officers’ year group, and all battalion leadership
should support this as an effort essential to force generation.
Within a few years, leaders throughout the Army would recognize
the high value of training junior leaders early in languages,
and in requiring proficiency for advancement and promotion.
After Legion Company’s experiences in Ukraine, the question
is not whether we can afford to invest in language proficiency
for junior leaders but instead, how can we afford not to
make this investment, given the Army’s worldwide commitments?
✭
First Lt. Nicholas B. Naquin is an infantry officer in the 173rd
Airborne Brigade based in Vicenza, Italy. He began active-duty
service in April 2013, after studying European history at
Princeton, Oxford and Johns Hopkins universities. He also has
a Ph.D. from Princeton. From 2008 to 2010, he served as an
enlisted soldier in the French Foreign Legion, where he deployed
to Afghanistan for six months.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 51

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Start the Presses:
Write Your War Memoir
DVIDSHUB
By Col. Thomas A. Hardy, U.S. Army Reserve retired
Last summer when visiting one of my former subordinates,
we reminisced about serving together in Al Anbar
Province, Iraq, in 2005. He relayed a story but a decade
later, I could not remember it had happened at all. It
was then that I knew it was time to write my war memoirs.
The writing of war memoirs is a long-held tradition among
military members. First come those from the senior commanders;
these are usually more political in nature and designed to
get “their side” of the story out to the public. Wiser in Battle: A
Soldier’s Story, by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, former commander
of coalition forces in Iraq, is a prime example. Others
include It Doesn’t Take a Hero: The Autobiography of General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf, and Gen. Omar Bradley’s A Soldier’s Story.
Then, memoirs from the line soldiers begin to appear. Some
of the better examples in this category are Audie Murphy’s
World War II memoir, To Hell and Back, and The Killing Zone:
My Life in the Vietnam War, by then-Lt. Frederick Downs Jr.
Some memoirs from Iraq and Afghanistan have already
been published, including House to House: An Epic Memoir of
War, by Staff Sgt. David Bellavia with John R. Bruning.
All of these books are excellent accounts produced by mainstream
publishers. Yet they may be daunting examples to
those who believe they do not have a “heroic” story to tell of
their military service. Still, I want to encourage all veterans to
write their memoirs.
Write to Remember
The main reason for this is there may be no other record of
our service that will survive from the war. One of the primary
sources of information for books about the Civil War are the
letters that soldiers wrote home. Many of these collections have
been published and are available to the general public. The letter-writing
tradition continued through World War II and
Vietnam but with current technology, emails have replaced letters
and they are rarely retained for posterity. As future historians
try to piece together the experience of the common soldier
in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they will find a shortage of
solid primary sources. Your memoir will help fill this gap.
A second reason to write your memoir is to record your
thoughts before they fade. We all have our war stories, but those
memories dissipate with time and should be recorded before
they are forgotten completely. My last tour ended five years ago
April 2016 ■ ARMY 53

The author, retired Army Reserve Col. Thomas
A. Hardy, wrote and self-published two books in
less than a year.
and even in that short time, I have forgotten
many details.
A third reason is to provide a solid account
of your service to family and
friends. I was fortunate to serve as a
commander on my two tours. After writing
and self-publishing two books about
my experiences—Black Sheep Six and
Jayhawk in Iraq—I discovered that not
only my family but also the soldiers in
my units were interested in what I wrote.
They were eager to read an account of
their service and to relive those times. My command sergeant
major even used my work for his emotional recovery. He had
his wife read passages to him, and then he explained to her the
details behind them. In that manner, he helped her understand
what he went through and in the process, healed some of his
own psychological scars.
Putting Pen to Paper
The process for writing is simple. First, gather your sources.
I kept a journal during each of my tours. These journals were
written in the standard lime-green Army notebooks that we
all carried. Even meeting notes recorded in those books provide
a good starting point for a memoir.
Another source are the letters that some wrote home to
family and friends. These are critical to provide detail, and to
place the correct sequence of specific events. Finally, there are
unit newsletters or letters to family support groups. These can
also be invaluable in setting the proper chronology.
Once these sources are gathered, start writing a sequential
account. Even if you don’t have complete sources, start an account
of your memories from the calendar of the tour. Start
with the significant “war stories” that can be remembered, and
then fill in the gaps as best you can.
Once you have a somewhat complete account of the year,
begin editing. As you edit you will remember more stories that
you failed to include in the first draft. These can be added,
even if they cannot be accurately dated. These stories provide
the background for the rest of the memoir.
Upon completion of a good draft, edit again. In rereading a
draft of your own work, it is easy to skip over glaring mistakes.
It is also easy to believe that a paragraph makes perfect sense,
but in later reviewing you discover it contains too much jargon
and inside information to be coherent. When you have a solid
draft, edit again just to find the few remaining errors previously
missed, and to rework stories that remain unclear.
Naming Names
Don’t forget to scrub your memoir for anything that will insult
or harm the individuals cited in your work. There may be
individuals you did not respect; I recommend that you change
their names in the narrative. It is also recommended to minimize
criticism of anyone in your writing. It is best to tone
down the harshness of the memoirs in order not to cause harm
so many years after the events. Focus instead on praising those
who richly deserve it.
Finally, include a dedication to those particularly close to
you, with primary emphasis on those lost in combat. And don’t
forget page numbers and a table of contents—missing in my
first book.
There are countless resources for publishing your memoir.
Mainstream publishers are always looking for a good story, but
breaking in may prove difficult. For most of us who served
honorably, the best method may be self-publication. There are
numerous companies that will print your memoir; fees and included
services can vary widely.
After over 10 years of war, the stories recounting the services
of individual veterans are beginning to fade from memory.
It is incumbent on all of us to record our stories in order
to provide a record of our service—and especially the service of
those who did not return home.
✭
Col. Thomas A. Hardy, USAR Ret., is an assistant professor in
the distance education department of the U.S. Army Command
and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He retired
in 2010 after serving for over 30 years and completing
two tours in Iraq.
Rodney Morris
54 ARMY ■ April 2016

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Families Have Needs. Are
By Rebecca Alwine, Contributing Writer
Every time the Army concludes a major conflict, change
occurs. Budgets tighten, the force draws down, and those
remaining feel the pressure to do more with less.
That includes offerings for military families. With an eye on
sequestration and budget cuts, in 2014 the Army announced
that Army Family Covenant, the successful program designed
to show commitment to military families, was being assimilated
into Total Army Strong. This new program allows installation
commanders to determine what programs work best
for soldiers, families and civilians, within the confines of Army
regulations and the law.
The basic reasoning behind this change was explained by
Robert E. Hansgen of the Soldier and Family Readiness Division,
U.S. Army Installation Management Command, during
the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2014 Annual Meeting
and Exposition.
“The reason we did that was because it’s difficult from a
headquarters level to say which program is more important
than another,” he said. “Commanders will now be able to determine
what is best and then do some rebalancing.”
Amy Bushatz is the spouse of an Army captain and a managing
editor for Military.com. According to Bushatz, many
Army spouses have seen support for family programs declining,
and they are concerned.
“The Family Readiness Support Assistant program, for example,
went a long way toward making life during deployment
Staff Sgt. Angus Hairston, 82nd
Airborne Division, greets his
family at Fort Bragg, N.C., in
2012 after returning home
from a six-month deployment
in Afghanistan.
U.S. Army/Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod
56 ARMY ■ April 2016

Commanders Listening?
just a tad bit easier by making sure it wasn’t all volunteers all
the time” doing all the work, she said. These civilian positions,
established in 2003, included logistical and administrative
support for Family Readiness Groups.
In 2015, however, the civilian positions were cut from the
active-duty side; 127 remain for the reserve components to
support family members of deploying units. “Without those
[active-duty-side] positions, things are that much harder,”
Bushatz said. “It seems like for better or for worse, the Army
is shifting away” from spending large sums of money on programs
ensuring family members’ needs are being met, “and focusing
more on making sure the service member is happy. Is
that a good strategy?”
Bushatz said it’s too soon to tell if retention will be affected
by the Army “essentially moving from the ‘happy wife, happy
life’ mantra back to ‘if the Army wanted you to have a spouse,
they’d issue you one’ mindset.”
Cautious Optimism
The change from Army Family Covenant to Total Army
Strong was met with cautious optimism. After years of war
and increases in spending for family programs, senior leaders
were prepared for some pushback. The purpose of the Total
Army Strong program is to provide a “broader, tailorable platform
from which commanders can develop essential programs
to support a ready Army,” according to a September 2014 edition
of Stand-To! an e-newsletter offering news and information
about Army operations, doctrine and programs. In other
words, positioning family programs under the Total Army
Strong umbrella gives garrison commanders the leeway to
make decisions that affect their respective installations, as they
have been doing with other programs that concern combat
readiness.
With the change from the Army Family Covenant to Total
Army Strong, family programs are bouncing back from yet another
transition. The basic concept of Total Army Strong—to
allow installation commanders the freedom to decide which
programs work best at their respective locations—makes sense
in theory because the needs of the population vary from duty
station to duty station, said Michelle Hodge, spouse of a retired
Army general officer and a former volunteer with Army
Family Team Building at Fort Carson, Colo.
“It is very true that a constantly deploying installation like
Fort Bragg would have different needs than a training installation
like Fort Lee,” she said, citing the need for a large deployment
and mobilization program at the North Carolina installation
and others like it, but programs to increase family
members’ knowledge of the Army culture at the Virginia post.
However, some families are voicing concerns that even
commanders at the garrison level are not always in tune with
The Army’s Family Programs
Family programs fall under the umbrella of Army Community
Services, which in turn falls under the Directorate
of Family, Morale, Welfare and Recreation. The
Army OneSource website offers this comprehensive list of
family programs:
■ Army Family Action Plan: This annual conference
provides opportunities for soldiers and family members to
brainstorm solutions to problems and have them presented
at the garrison level. Key outcomes have included the
Thrift Savings Plan, a U.S. government-sponsored retirement
savings and investment plan.
■ Army Family Team Building: The three-level program
is designed to offer training and knowledge to family
members to give them a better understanding of the Army
culture as well as skills and resources they need for successful
integration. It’s available both online and in-person
at some installations, and is taught by volunteers.
■ Mobilization, Deployment and Stability Support Operations:
Army families learn how to navigate through deployments,
redeployments and reintegration.
■ Employment Readiness: Employment information
and other career services are offered to spouses and other
family members, soldiers and Army civilians.
■ Exceptional Family Member Program: This comprehensive,
multiagency program provides community support;
housing; and medical, educational and personnel services
to Army families with special-needs members including
spouses, children and dependent parents.
■ Family Advocacy Program: The prevention, education,
prompt reporting, investigation, intervention and
treatment of spousal and child abuse is the focus of this
program.
■ Financial Readiness: Services include tax-preparation
assistance, financial counseling and budgeting classes designed
to help soldiers become debt-free and financially
stable.
■ Relocation Services: Families are helped with finding
sponsors, applying for housing, and developing a timeline
for a successful resettlement.
■ Soldier and Family Assistance Centers: Wounded
warriors and their families are offered care and leadership;
services are often available virtually.
■ Survivor Outreach Services: Families of fallen warriors
are provided access to information, support and services.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 57

U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Keith Anderson
U.S. Army/J.D. Leipold
Clockwise from above: Robert E. Hansgen of the Soldier
and Family Readiness Division, U.S. Army Installation
Management Command, describes Total Army Strong
during the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2014 Annual
Meeting and Exposition; Debbi Nash-King, family readiness
support assistant for the 1st Armored Brigade
Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, at Fort Hood, Texas;
Lt. Gen. David L. Mann, commander of U.S. Army Space
and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic
Command, second from left in front, gathers with
members of the command’s Army Family Action Plan
workgroup at Redstone Arsenal, Ala.
U.S. Army/Jason B. Cutshaw
what the families of their installation desire. With the constant
influx of new families, units being realigned, and the
feeling that Installation Management Command officials
don’t understand the challenges of each installation, families
can’t easily see that commanders are taking their personal
needs into consideration.
No Guidance
At this point, there has been no guidance from Installation
Management Command or the Department of the Army on
how garrison commanders will make these decisions, said Col.
Samuel Anderson, garrison commander of Fort Gordon, Ga.
According to Nathaniel Allen of the Installation Management
Command’s public affairs office, “Depending on the resources
that are being used and those that are needed to meet
the particular installation’s mission, commanders are encouraged
to create an individual plan, keeping in mind” Department
of the Army regulations and laws.
One way families used to participate in change was through
the Army Family Action Plan, which was established in 1984.
Through AFAP, members of the military community were encouraged
to bring up issues that affected them. Those issues
would be prioritized and worked through by groups of soldiers
and family members, and then resolutions would be suggested
to garrison commanders. Issues such as the sensitive destruction
of identification cards for deceased service members were passed
along at regional and headquarters-level AFAP conferences.
In 2013, AFAP underwent changes. According to Heather
Leiby, volunteer program branch chief at the command, “The
requirement for garrisons to collect quality-of-life issues and
address them, either at the local level or by passing them up to
headquarters, is still in effect. The changes give the garrison
commander more leeway in how to collect the issues, and how
they will be addressed,” she said. This falls in line with the
Total Army Strong process of allowing local installations to
make decisions that fit their respective needs.
Leiby said over the past 18 months, she has not heard any
complaints from family members who feel they are being left
out in the new process. However, she said a marketing campaign
is in the works to educate family members about the
changes.
“The first stop for families” should be their local Army
Community Service office, Leiby said. “They’ll have the
specifics about how the program works at that installation.”
Generally, the process has become quieter, she said, with
the multiday conferences largely gone because of funding, and
the midlevel AFAP conference being eliminated. “Issues are
still being worked quarterly at the Department of the Army
level,” Leiby said. “The program hasn’t disappeared. It’s just
changed.”
✭
58 ARMY ■ April 2016

Complexity
Science
Defines
Complex
Systems
By Maj. Allen Trujillo
Atypical Army organization is a unique collection
of diverse personnel grouped together in
order to accomplish a mission. Army leadership
doctrine provides a useful set of ideas for
leaders to understand their organizations. However, it
does not provide a comprehensive list of the common
characteristics of organizations throughout the Army.
Complexity science fills this critical gap and provides
leaders with a definition of these characteristics. It defines
organizations as complex adaptive systems characterized
by diverse agents that learn and self-organize by
interacting with each other in nonlinear ways, have
emergent properties, and co-evolve with the environment.
Complexity science helps leaders identify and
understand what is actually happening in their respective
organizations.
Work Together
The first characteristic of a complex adaptive system is
the presence of diverse agents that learn. Although the
initial thought is to assume that all agents in the system
are human beings, literature suggests that is not always
the case. Consider the scenario where a pilot is interacting
with his or her cockpit. The pilot and the cockpit itself
each are independent agents that play a prominent
role in the task of flying. When observed on their own,
the pilot and the cockpit cannot perform the task of flying.
However, the task of flying is possible when the two
independent agents come together and interact as one
complete system.
Agents in a complex adaptive system have the ability
to constantly learn. The military uses job titles and job
descriptions to guide agents to act in certain ways. When
agents are forced to follow these titles and descriptions,
they are inadvertently limited in what they can or cannot
do. As a result, agents learn how to be successful under
their new constraints and in most cases, fail to perform to
the higher capacity they would have achieved had they
not otherwise been limited.
Leaders should use job descriptions as a tool to provide
agents an overarching sketch of all the relationships
that they are required to establish and maintain. Leaders
must focus on improving the interactions among agents,
not specifically explaining to them what they need to do
or how they need to perform. In addition, leaders should
strive to understand the natural learning process of the
agents within their respective systems.
Joe Broderick
Teaching Isn’t Always Simple
The second characteristic of a complex adaptive system
is the nonlinear interactions among the agents. In
trying to understand them, it is first important to understand
the world of linear equations. These teach us that
simple equations tend to behave in simple ways, and
complex equations tend to behave in complicated ways.
However, in the world of nonlinear equations, it is quite
possible to have simple equations that produce complex
results as well as complex equations that produce simple
60 ARMY ■ April 2016

esults. The idea that small actions have large, unintended results
is a cornerstone idea used to understand and develop
some of the most prominent theories in complexity science. In
practice, examples of nonlinear interactions are commonly
found in organizations where small policy changes have many
unforeseen or unintended consequences.
In order for leaders to see the nonlinear patterns that exist
within their respective organizations, it is important for them
to constantly change how they view the agents within them.
One recommendation for leaders is to interact with the agents
in their respective systems in as many settings as possible. Examples
include observing them in day-to-day activities, individual
and collective training events, and social settings.
Share Knowledge, Practice
The third characteristic of a complex adaptive system is the
ability for agents to self-organize. Self-organization is a process
where agents form some type of order, potentially in the form
of an informal structure where they have the ability to interact
with each other in a setting that can be different than the structure
that exists within an organization. Complexity science
teaches us that this order is often a spontaneous, unplanned
event that occurs as a result of the nonlinear interdependencies
among the agents. Self-organization is also continuous in nature;
complex adaptive systems have the ability to self-organize
multiple times in very short periods of time.
One example of how agents self-organize is explained by
the establishment of communities of practice. These are formal
or informal groups of agents that share knowledge, experience
and ideas for the overall benefit of the agents within the
complex adaptive system. Communities of practice can exist
informally within an organization. As a result, leaders are often
unaware of their existence. Communities of practice are
important to systems because they provide an avenue for
agents to learn new information, discuss some of their personal
ideas and potentially even innovate new, more efficient
techniques for accomplishing certain tasks.
Army leaders should strive to identify and influence the formal
and informal subsystems within their organization. It is
also important for leaders to identify and influence communities
within their organizations. If a leader is unable to identify
the presence of a community of practice, it may be a good idea
to set the conditions for one to develop. This can be done by
creating an environment where soldiers regularly interact with
one another; for example, leaders should examine the physical
layouts of the workplace as well as daily schedules to help force
interaction among agents.
Can’t Teach Everything at Once
The fourth characteristic of a complex adaptive system is
emergence. In complexity science, emergence is defined as the
organized patterns of behavior that are a result of the self-organization
process mentioned previously. Emergence can also
be described as the systematic behaviors that are inherent in a
specific organization. Although there is a natural tendency to
want to understand systematic behaviors as a summation of
many individual properties, the nonlinear interdependencies
within the system make this belief false.
For example, it is often the belief that safety is an organizational
characteristic that can be learned. As a result, companies
spend a large amount of time and energy teaching workers
how to be safe. Eventually, when accidents happen, leaders are
surprised that their teaching methods were not understood by
their workers; as a result, the entire organization is retrained.
Leaders fail to see that safety is not something that can be
taught; it is an emergent property from the nonlinear interdependencies
of the agents within the system.
Instead of looking at organizational or systematic behaviors
as things that can be taught and learned, leaders should view
them as emergent properties that are the result of productive
interactions within an organization.
The fifth characteristic of a complex adaptive system is coevolution.
This is the process in which a system changes with
its environment over time. The key characteristics of co-evolution
are the ability of the system to allow its agents to self-organize,
interact in nonlinear ways, and display emergent properties
in a continuous manner that changes with the world as it
notices differences in the world.
Examining Math for Answers
One way to describe this property is to examine the world of
mathematics. In math, solution spaces are often characterized
in fitness landscapes. These landscapes provide the user with an
up-to-date sketch of the solution space, complete with minimum
and maximum values as well as a general understanding
of the characteristics associated with the entire region. As input
parameters change, so does the landscape of the solution space.
As a result, the user is presented with an alternate fitness
landscape, sometimes much different than the one previously
observed. This dramatic change is the result of nonlinear interactions
between the input parameters. This methodology
not only shows the property of co-evolution, it also confirms
the idea that sometimes, small actions have large, unintended
consequences.
In practice, the co-evolution and fitness landscape ideas are
a good way to observe and understand changes within the
world. These ideas also provide leaders with the ability to see
why certain actions work for a given time period and then
suddenly stop working. Complex adaptive systems constantly
co-evolve with the world as it changes. It is up to the agents to
collectively identify the landscapes as they change, and to help
each other make sense of what is happening around them.
Complexity science does an excellent job helping leaders
identify five specific characteristics within their organizations.
Additionally, the theories associated with complex adaptive
systems help leaders identify why certain things are happening
within their units. In the end, complexity science begins to
provide a framework for how to improve your organization.✭
Maj. Allen Trujillo is a student at the U.S. Army Command and
General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Previous assignments
include infantry company commander, and cavalry
platoon leader and executive officer. He has deployed twice to
Iraq and is the recipient of two Bronze Stars and the Purple
Heart. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Military
Academy and a master’s degree from the University of Texas.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 61

www.ausa.org
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of the AUSA Sustaining Membership Program. Is yours?
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a role in strengthening national security for over 60 years by facilitating partnerships between military
decision-makers and industry leaders.
When you join AUSA’s Sustaining Membership Program, your company’s executives will have the
opportunity to share ideas with top Army officials at AUSA events. These events are conducted and
attended by high level Army decision-makers, DoD officials and industry leaders – the individuals who
are setting the agenda for the Army’s future!
Join us today and discover what the AUSA Sustaining Membership Program can do for your business.
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The Outpost
Behind Chicago Park’s Name, A Story of Bravery
By Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, U.S. Army retired
There’s not a lot to Olive Park, a little enclave on the north
side of Chicago’s downtown Navy Pier. A black, wrought
iron fence marks a neat, 10-acre triangle of mowed grass
around five circular aeration ponds. On the Lake Michigan
side, honey locust trees shade a broad sidewalk.
It’s a nice place to walk on a sunny spring afternoon and if
you look over your shoulder at day’s end, you can watch the last
rays turn golden as the sun sets behind Chicago’s famous skyline.
Sometimes young people take wedding photos there. It’s a
place of peace, an unhurried patch of calm in a very busy city.
You won’t find anything about Olive Park on the Chicago
Park District website. Rather, it helps if you know that Olive
Park is essentially the front lawn of the city’s James W. Jardine
Water Purification Plant. People often wonder about the
name because in this part of northern Illinois, battered by winter
snows and year-round wind gusts, no olive trees grow.
The park isn’t named after a tree. The real story hangs on
the fence, packed into a neat sign of bright-gold letters on a
rectangle of black metal.
MEDAL OF HONOR
RECIPIENT POSTHUMOUS
MILTON L. OLIVE III PARK
PFC U.S. ARMY COMPANY B
2d BATTALION (AIRBORNE), 503d INFANTRY
173d AIRBORNE BRIGADE, VIETNAM, 1965
Milton Lee Olive III probably did not ever expect to have a
park named after him. He was born in Chicago in 1946, but
his mother died from obstetric complications just after his arrival.
He was raised by his father, “Big Milt”—and, at times,
also by his grandparents—in Lexington, Miss.
Slight but full of energy, the boy whose nickname was Skipper
was clean-cut and stayed out of trouble with the law—often
not an easy thing for a young black man in the heart of the
Jim Crow South. Although he went to high school in Mississippi,
he always thought of Chicago as home. At age 17, that’s
where he went to enlist in the Army.
When Olive volunteered in 1964, he asked for the infantry.
More than that, he asked for the Airborne. The recruiting
sergeant obliged. If this little guy liked jumping out of perfectly
good airplanes, who was a recruiter to disagree? So Olive
went to basic training and advanced individual training, and
then to Airborne School at Fort Benning, Ga., where he
earned his silver wings.
When he returned to Chicago on leave, he wore his uniform
everywhere. In Chicago’s black neighborhoods in 1965
and indeed, in any U.S. neighborhood that year, a man in uniform
received respect. That wouldn’t last much longer but for
young Olive, it was enough.
In June 1965, Olive reported to the 3rd Platoon, Company
B, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne
Brigade in Vietnam. The unit had been in country for a
month and had already taken some casualties. Olive showed
up as a new guy, a bit apprehensive because he had only six
jumps: the five in school, and one other. But these paratroopers
weren’t going to war by parachute; they were going in by
helicopter. Then they were doing business the same way as the
infantry that marched with Julius Caesar did: on foot, up close
and personal.
By Oct. 22, 1965, Olive and his platoon had already been
out on one operation after another. Their Vietnamese opponents
hung back in the heavy undergrowth. The enemy preferred
to rely on booby traps, mortar rounds and the odd rifle
shot. It was like chasing ghosts. Some days the paratroopers
Pfc. Milton Lee Olive III in an undated photo
April 2016 ■ ARMY 63

caught the ghosts and laid into them. A few terrible times, the
ghosts bit back hard. Olive had been sliced by a hot fragment
on one of those ugly occasions. Most of the time, the point
men picked along through the thick greenery, and the rest of
the column sweated and swatted bugs and tried to pay attention.
Usually, nothing much happened at all.
But on this day near Phu Cuong, things kicked off early.
The Viet Cong, or Charlie—Mr. Charles on the bad days—
was into it. Not long after the Huey helicopters dropped them
off, a single shot nailed Spc. George G. Luis in the head. The
platoon sergeant, Sgt. 1st Class Vincent Yrineo, sent out Luis
from the same landing zone his paratroopers had just left. It
was a rough start, all right.
A few hours later, the point man reported an open, burned
patch in the jungle. Lt. James B. Stanford slowed the column.
He passed the word: Keep alert. Stay ready. The old-timers—
and even after a few months, that number included Olive—
must have rolled their eyes. Lieutenants. The officer had been
with the platoon only three days, but he’d already mastered
the obvious. Still, he was there with them, not back in some
air-conditioned trailer sticking pins on a map and babbling on
a radio. That counted for something.
The paratroopers began to edge around the blackened clearing,
careful to stay out of the open. So far, so good. Men
moved slowly, placing boots with care. The enemy like to
plant unpleasant surprises on the fringe of open spots.
The Americans looked. They listened. The point man
leaned forward. Was that something shiny?
Crack! An AK-47 round, then a dozen more, then a whole lot
more. That zip-zip near your ears was never a good thing.
Without a command but with a lot of hard-won common
sense, the Americans dropped to the ground almost as one.
Some squirreled toward tree stumps, others behind dirt
mounds, seeking anything firm between them and the incoming
rounds. Then the dry, hot ripping of a Soviet-made RPD machine
gun cut above the sound of AKs—bad and getting worse.
At Fort Benning, soldiers are taught to “assault through”
an ambush. Well, OK, but who wants to stand up first and
test the aim of the unseen Viet Cong? Better to gain what
the tactics field manual called fire superiority: sling lead, fast
and in volume. The Americans were firing back. Their new
M-16s, the plastic and metal space-age “little black rifles,”
worked great in pumping out wicked 5.56 mm slugs by the
gross, full auto, rock ’n’ roll. That, the paratroopers knew
well. They banged away. But the U.S. bullets were headed to
a general direction, not a specific address. The enemy fire
didn’t slacken a bit.
Under the murderous AK hail, Olive found himself flattened
behind a log. He was one point in an uneven pentagon
of prone Airborne men that included Yrineo, Stanford, and
Pvts. John “Hop” Foster and Lionel Hubbard. Those Fort
Benning experts always warned you not to bunch up because
one grenade could get you all. But here were Olive and four
fellow paratroopers, way too close together, pinned by sheets
of enemy rifle fire and especially that searching RPD machine
gun. One Vietnamese bullet smacked into Foster’s steel helmet,
cutting him on his eyebrow. Olive was unimpressed.
“You’ll live,” he joked.
Then a “black egg” came sailing in. One could get you all.
Olive didn’t hesitate. His hand shot out, snagged the deadly
ovoid, and pulled it right in to his stomach. The muffled blast
flipped over the skinny paratrooper, killing him instantly. But
Foster, Hubbard, Stanford and Yrineo lived.
In Hollywood, that would have been the big scene before
the fade-out. But real war isn’t so neat. After Olive died, the
firefight continued until U.S. artillery battered the enemy
troops enough to cause them to pull back. Hubbard, Stanford
and Yrineo also were cut up by hot shrapnel—probably hostile,
but it was hard to say. In all, 12 Americans were
wounded. As for Mr. Charles? There were bandages, blood
trails and shiny AK cartridges, but no bodies turned up. The
intelligence people estimated 20 Vietnamese dead. Maybe.
Who really knew?
Six months later, just after noon on April 21, 1966, Big
Milt Olive was at the White House. He stood in the Rose
Garden, joined by his wife, Antoinette; then-Secretary of the
Army Stanley R. Resor; then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Gen. Earle G. Wheeler; and Chicago Mayor Richard
Daley. With them stood soldiers Stanford and Foster, a white
man and a black man. They were all there for Skipper.
President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a short speech. Then
Resor read the citation: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity
in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call
of duty.” You could have heard a pin drop. Even the spring
breeze stopped blowing.
Today, we’d find this all impressive but not unprecedented.
Third Platoon had the usual people from central casting:
black, Latino and white. But 50 years ago, in the America of
1966, a place in which vile racial epithets were common, inner
cities burned, and minority Americans wondered if the country
would ever really include them, the presentation of the
Medal of Honor to the first African-American so recognized
in Vietnam loomed large indeed.
Young Olive didn’t care about the color of the skin of his
fellow paratroopers. He just saved them all. But his father recognized
it. In a letter quoted by Johnson, he put it this way: “It is
our hope that in our own country the Klansmen, the Negroes,
the Hebrews and the Catholics will sit down together in the
common purpose of goodwill and dedication.” The message was
clear. Like Olive’s platoon, we’re all in this together. We’re all
Americans. A brave young paratrooper had reminded us of this.
So that’s why it’s called Olive Park. There is a lot behind
that name: bravery, pain, loss and gain. You wonder how
many of the joggers and photographers enjoying the park
know Olive’s story. They should. So should we all. ✭
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 holds a doctorate
in Russian history 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.
64 ARMY ■ April 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.
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-and-white 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 must 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.

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
• 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)
• The U.S. Army’s Expeditionary Mission Command
Capability: Winning in a Complex World
(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)
66 ARMY ■ April 2016

AUSA Sustaining Member Profile
NEANY Inc.
Corporate Structure—Founded: 1994. President and CEO:
Steven Steptoe. Headquarters: 44010 Commerce Ave.,
Suite A, Hollywood, MD 20636. Telephone: 301-373-3017.
Website: www.neanyinc.com.
Founded over 20 years ago, NEANY Inc. has grown from a
small startup to an industry leader in providing time-sensitive,
rapid-response solutions. Beginning as a certified
Small Business Administration 8(a) company in 2005 and
graduating in 2014, NEANY supports the government and
private industries in areas including unmanned aerial systems
(UAS), ground control systems, ground-based sensor
integration, rapid prototype fabrication, UAS training, field
deployment and logistics. Headquartered
in the Patuxent River,
Md., corridor, NEANY also has offices
in Arlington, Va.; Niceville,
Fla.; and Starkville, Miss.; and
manages and operates a UAS
training facility in Yuma, Ariz.
NEANY has supported numerous UAS efforts including
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Buckeye-Arrow program;
Raven and Puma training at the National Training Center at
Fort Irwin, Calif.; Persistent Ground Surveillance Systems;
High-Performance Engagement Lightweight Integrated
Optical System; Persistent Surveillance UAS; TigerShark; and
Copperhead. NEANY has amassed over 1 million operational
hours in support of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles
and tethered aerostat—or lighter-than-air—systems.
At the heart of its UAS program, NEANY’s flagship system,
the Arrow, is suitable for both military and commercial
applications. It is an extremely versatile aircraft offering
a 15-cubic-foot payload bay accommodating up to
200 pounds of payload with additional hardpoints on the
wing able to accommodate an additional 125-plus pounds
of payload suitable for sensors or weapons. The endurance
capability is up to 12 hours, depending on the payload and
fuel load. The UAS has a 23.5-foot wingspan and a body
length of approximately 19 feet, and is powered by a Rotax
912ULS engine.
The Arrow has proven to be a key asset to the U.S.
warfighter in Afghanistan since July 2010 and has completed
over 3,000 operational flight hours. Equipped with
an automatic takeoff and landing system, the Arrow is capable
of fully autonomous flight. Current mission capabilities
include change detection; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance;
urban mapping; terrain studies; mission
planning; line-of-sight analysis; and identification of helicopter
landing zones.
NEANY also specializes in rapid customization of rugged,
easily transportable, climate-controlled S280 and ISO shelters
utilized globally in numerous UAS and aerostat systems.
NEANY designs, procures, integrates, manufactures
and tests all elements of their ground-control systems,
which contain operator terminals and mission-planning
consoles designed to meet unique application requirements.
NEANY’s portfolio of ground-control systems includes
a solar-powered version and accommodations for
integrated security systems and fire suppression.
NEANY ground-control systems are currently deployed in
multiple locations outside the continental U.S., performing
a variety of missions collecting and disseminating valuable
real-time intelligence and situational awareness data.
One of NEANY’s primary areas of expertise is rapid integration
of tethered aerostat systems. The aerostat systems
provide perimeter defense, improvised
explosive device detection
and force protection for forward
operating bases. The Sky-
Kite is one of NEANY’s smaller
lighter-than-air vehicles used for
relaying communications, disaster
response, perimeter defense and force protection, and
providing support to the counterdrug mission with a movable
surveillance platform.
NEANY’s newest asset is the DragonSpy, an unmanned
surface vehicle for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance;
weapons deployment; channel mapping; and area
protection. The vehicle, combined with the Arrow UAS, offers
hub and spoke communications capability for air and
sea coverage. Communications include a 900-megahertz
command-and-control system, waypoint navigation, and
position hold capability. The vehicle carries up to 400
pounds and can be equipped with an ARES 7.62 mm Externally
Powered Gun, Precision Remotes’ TRAP T360 ultralight
weapon mount, and various turrets.
NEANY Inc. has long been an industry leader in UAS training
and logistics. NEANY’s Yuma facility has trained several
thousand mission commanders, payload operators, air vehicle
pilots and technicians, many of whom have supported
operations outside the continental U.S. NEANY uses cuttingedge
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities
to offer warfighters, homeland security officials and
commercial clients a complete surveillance picture.
NEANY’s skilled, experienced and highly diversified professionals
enable the team to perform engineering, research
and development, logistics, test and evaluation,
training, and operations for unmanned aerial vehicles, communications
equipment, and ground equipment and sensors,
providing an end-to-end understanding of air and
ground architectures. NEANY uses a multifaceted approach
to the task assignment considering location, schedule constraints,
expertise, experience and discipline. NEANY’s commitment
is to ensure every task is completed successfully to
conduct and sustain operations using unmanned systems.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 67

Soldier Armed
Advances in Armament for Army Aircraft
By Scott R. Gourley, Contributing Writer
Against a global background of increasing threats from
manportable air defense systems, the U.S. Army recently
re-entered engineering and manufacturing development of its
latest response: the Common Infrared Countermeasure system.
With significant weight and performance advantages over
the Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasure system currently
fielded on Chinook helicopters, the new Common Infrared
Countermeasure (CIRCM) will be carried on more aerial
platforms while also providing an open architecture that
will help defeat future evolving threats.
CIRCM is a lightweight, laser-based countermeasure that
will be fully integrated with an Aircraft Survivability Equipment
(ASE) suite that includes passive missile warning, an
improved countermeasure dispenser and advanced expendables.
The program is administered by the Army’s project
manager for ASE, located at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., and falls
under the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic
Warfare and Sensors.
Col. Jong Lee, the project manager, said the mission of the
office “is to develop and field world-class aircraft survivability
equipment that maximizes the protection of Army aircraft
against a continually evolving threat. Our newest program is
the CIRCM,” which will be equipped on Army helicopters
and fixed-wing aircraft to defeat manportable air defense systems,
or MANPADS.
Lt. Col. Kevin Chaney, product manager for ASE Countermeasures,
explained the basic system operation during a recent
media briefing. After a MANPADS threat is fired at an
Army helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft, he said, “Our missile
warning system will detect the threat and hand off that information
to the CIRCM system. The CIRCM system will acquire
the threat; will track the threat; and then emit laser energy
to defeat it. Once that’s done, the engagement is over.”
Near-Spherical Coverage
The complete system includes two “half-ship sets” consisting
of a laser coupled with a pointer/tracker unit, Chaney said.
Those can be located on either side of the aircraft or on the
top and bottom to provide “near-spherical coverage.” A system
processing unit interfaces with the missile warning system and
allows communication between the two pointer/trackers.
Aircraft installation features both “A-kits” that include
wiring harnesses and connectors permanently installed on the
aircraft, and “B-kits” that are added to provide MANPADS
defeat capability when aircraft are deployed to a theater or a
combat training center rotation.
The new CIRCM is significantly lighter than its predecessor,
Lee said. While the Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasure
system currently weighs about 300 pounds, CIRCM
will weigh approximately 120 pounds, he said, adding that the
weight difference will facilitate installation on aircraft types
beyond Chinook.
The existing countermeasure system currently fielded on
CH-47s reflects a quick-reaction capability response to a July
2008 operational need statement. That action was followed by
a “revalidation” of the capability requirements and eventual
movement into a technology development phase for the
CIRCM program.
BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman Corp. both received
technology development contracts at the end of January 2012,
although a subsequent Government Accountability Office
protest by an unsuccessful bidder delayed the start of development
activities until May of that year.
According to Chaney, on Aug. 25, 2015, the defense acquisition
executive signed the acquisition decision memorandum
that allowed CIRCM to move from its technology development
phase to the engineering and manufacturing development
(EMD) phase. Three days later, the Army Contracting
Command at Redstone Arsenal awarded the contract to
Northrop Grumman.
Current Value of $35 Million
He identified the present contract value at just over $35
million but noted that options for expanded platform integra-
The Common Infrared Countermeasure, or CIRCM, system
Northrop Grumman
April 2016 ■ ARMY 69

The Army installed the current
system on Chinooks in theater
as a rapid-response effort.
tion, two lots of low-rate initial production and a U.S. Navy
support option could increase the contract value to over $140
million.
The EMD contract was protested to the Government Accountability
Office on Sept. 8, 2015, which resulted in a stopwork
order issued the following day, Chaney said.
“Due to legal constraints, we cannot discuss the details of
the protest or its resolution,” he said. “That said, [the unsuccessful
bidder] withdrew their protest on Nov. 25, 2015, and
the contracting officer removed the stop-work order on Nov.
30, 2015.”
“For the EMD phase as we go forward, the Army and
Northrop Grumman plan to finalize the design, conduct performance
and reliability testing, and ensure that Northrop
Grumman is ready for the production and deployment phase,”
Chaney said.
Chaney emphasized that the earlier technology development
phase activities had focused on “an open architecture
principle, which means that CIRCM will be able to interface
with different missile warning systems so we don’t have to rely
just on the Army’s Common Missile Warning system.”
“Additionally, the open architecture system will allow
CIRCM to be upgradeable to incorporate new countermeasure
technologies without having to completely redesign the
system,” he said. “This will allow the CIRCM system to stay
relevant for many years against the emerging MANPADS
threats.”
Asked if the Army has developed any notional timeline for
possible future upgrades, Lee said the response to emerging
threats would happen “as quickly as possible.”
Looking at All Options
“Right now, we are in a very defined phase—an EMD
phase,” he said. “And we want to continue to pursue that. But
again, we are looking at all options.”
While the UH-60M Black Hawk aircraft will be “the lead
platform for the EMD phase,” Chaney said CIRCM will
eventually go on a range of Army aviation platforms, including
“multiple variants of the family of Black Hawks, the ’64
[Apaches] Deltas and Echoes, the CH-47F and some fixedwing
aircraft.”
“We have an improved test strategy” from the director of
operational test and evaluation that “we will execute to during
the EMD phase,” he said, explaining that the strategy begins
with laboratory testing before moving into aircraft integration
and then flight testing.
Based on the results of that testing, the Army is planning for
a Milestone C low-rate initial production decision sometime in
fiscal year 2018, and a full-rate production decision in FY 2020.
Current projections are for first deliveries to the field and
initial operational test and evaluation in FY 2019. Chaney
characterized this phase as “where we’ll really prove out the
details and look at the whole system of systems, such as how
the missile warning system works with the CIRCM system.
So it’s the end-to-end engagements that we’ll be focused on.”
The complete fielding plan will be determined by Headquarters,
Department of the Army G-3/5/7, but Chaney
noted that current acquisition planning calls for roughly 1,000
B-kits and 3,000 A-kits.
✭
Quantum cascade laser
Northrop Grumman U.S. Army/Sgt. 1st Class Eric Pahon
70 ARMY ■ April 2016

Historically Speaking
Great Migrations: Ever-Present Markers of Change
By Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, U.S. Army retired
Migration has been in the news lately. Visceral arguments
concerning immigrants, refugees, national security and
economic well-being dominate political discourse in many
lands. News footage echoes the exodus scenes in Cecil B. De-
Mille’s motion picture The Ten Commandments. Never before
have so many people been on the move, and seldom before
such large proportions of the world’s population. The term
“great migration” has been variously applied in history, often
describing rather different phenomena.
Similarly, today we often lump significantly different
processes together under a single label. It might be useful to
categorize the migrations of the past in terms of representative
models, to distinguish among them and to assist in evaluating
responses. I would like to suggest five migration models: Jericho,
Babylonian Captivity, Manchu, Frankish and American
Industrial.
■ Jericho Model: The biblical Book of Joshua vividly describes
the divinely assisted capture of Jericho as the Israelites
migrated into their “promised land.” It further notes that the
Israelites slew “all living creatures in the city: men and women,
young and old, as well as oxen, sheep and asses.” Joshua and
other biblical texts go on to describe similar fates for other
Canaanite cities. The notion of migrating into and acquiring
land by exterminating or driving out those already there predates
considerably the Old Testament.
The recent paleontological discovery of a massacre site near
Lake Turkana in Kenya pushes such intergroup violence far
back into prehistory. Ancient and medieval accounts feature
numerous examples of local genocides as one group displaced
another. Much of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain progressed
in accordance with this model, as did some fraction of
the Anglo-Saxon settlement of North America. “Ethnic
cleansing” in the 1990s Balkans is another echo of this technique.
■ Babylonian Captivity Model: As societies became more
sophisticated and complex, conquered peoples could become
more valuable alive than dead. Individual slavery was the
first manifestation of this insight, soon followed by relocations
en masse to serve the purposes of the conqueror. Several
books of the Old Testament speak to the “Babylonian
Captivity.” Nebuchadnezzar valued the skills, craftsmanship
and energy of the Jews. He did not, however, want them
proximate to Egypt, with whom they had conspired against
him several times. He forcibly resettled tens of thousands
into Mesopotamia. The Assyrians preceded the Babylonians
in this technique, shuffling populations from one part of
their empire to another to develop underdeveloped areas
and pre-empt collusion.
Mass relocations have remained an instrument of imperial
policy throughout history. The Soviets moved Poland several
hundred kilometers to the west after World War II, chasing
out millions of Germans to do so. Modern India and Pakistan
were born as millions of Hindus were forced to move one way
and millions of Muslims the other.
■ Manchu Model: Advantages in military organization and
technology could create circumstances wherein small populations
of conquerors, largely male, assumed control over much
larger populations whose military means they had subdued.
The conquerors spread across the land in a thin crust. Many, if
not most, married local women who in turn, bore and raised
their children. The natural increase of “pure-blooded” conquerors
was soon eclipsed by those of mixed blood, and
dwarfed by that of their subjects. Sometimes with violence and
sometimes without, these conquerors were assimilated from
the bottom up into the lands they had conquered.
The Manchu are merely the latest, and perhaps most famous,
Illustration from an 1866 Bible depicts Israelites burning the
Canaanite royal city of Ai.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 71

Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his troops arrive at the Mississippi River in this 1850s painting commissioned for the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
Architect of the Capitol
of the “northern barbarians” the Chinese have thus absorbed.
Fifth-century German conquerors of Italy and Spain became
Latinized in much the same way. The conquistadors were a
small demographic in many of the lands they conquered, and
Europe’s colonial empires left behind fragments of their countrymen
as decolonization progressed.
■ Frankish Model: Unlike other fifth-century Germanic
conquerors of Imperial Roman lands, the Franks remained
proximate to their original population base. Rather than being
absorbed by the culture they had conquered, they were
continuously infused with fresh Frankish blood from across
the Rhine. The demographics, politics and economics were
such that the Gallo-Romans and Franks became intermingled
in large numbers over time. Results included a robust
hybrid culture, the vigor of Charlemagne’s empire and the
uniqueness of France today.
Incidentally, the reason there were Gallo-Romans to hybridize
with was because the Romans happened on much the
same approach as the Franks when occupying Gaul five centuries
earlier. They drew heavily upon their own nearby population
base, and a hybrid culture emerged. Developments
along both sides of our relatively peaceable Canadian and
Mexican borders suggests such hybridization between intermingled
cultures is underway today.
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.
■ American Industrial Model: The Industrial Revolution unleashed
unprecedented demands for mass labor. Jobs emerged
quickly in numbers that defied local natural increase. The transportation
revolution caused by the steamship and railroad allowed
employer and employee to link up from ever farther apart.
Prospects of a good job became a distant magnet, drawing immigrants
to the U.S. from throughout Europe and much of
Asia. Industrial demands increased demands on agriculture, creating
further employment opportunities. A successful immigrant
to the U.S. in turn became a magnet for family and friends left
behind. These joined him or her in the new country, forming
temporary ethnic enclaves as they did so. Liberal access to citizenship,
public education, far-flung job opportunities and a
growing economy dissolved these enclaves over time.
Descendants of immigrants assimilated into the American
mainstream within a generation or two. Assimilation could be
accomplished with a minimum of disruption—as long as the
numbers of immigrants arriving approximated the absorptive
capacity of the economy. Internally, the “great migration” of
Southern blacks to Northern cities, and of others from farm to
city, echoed this model—albeit too often with complications
from racial prejudice.
Push and Pull
All models of migration feature factors that push people to
leave their original home, and factors that pull them toward
another. The “famine in the land” that sent the sons of Jacob
into Egypt or the 1840s Irish to the Americas were push factors.
The promised land of the Israelites, and “good jobs”
working in industrializing Detroit or elsewhere, were pull factors.
Means of transportation—foot and sail in biblical times,
steamship and railroad in the 19th century, and airplane today—affect
the pace and velocity that migration can assume.
72 ARMY ■ April 2016

A migration in itself can become a push or pull factor.
Canaanites fleeing a repeat of Jericho were pushed to become
migrants pressing upon others. When the Jews were relocated
to Babylon, their emptied promised land pulled in others, with
subsequent complications upon the Jewish return. Models of
migration should be assessed in terms of the respective push,
pull, and means of transportation.
We live in a complicated world. All five of the migration
models are in play or in prospect today, each with significant
consequences. The Islamic State group has carved out a
promised land of its own, and is driving out those it defines as
nonbelievers with Old Testament ferocity. Proposed settlements
in the Middle East and elsewhere often include redrawing
boundaries to resolve ethnic quarrels. It is hard to imagine these
going into effect without massive relocations to clean up resultant
enclaves. The Russians scan their near abroad, concerned
their once-dominant countrymen now on the far side of their
borders will disappear like the Manchu into local populations.
This, in part, explains Russian activity we regard as meddling.
The Germans hope that the distant magnet of their
economy will not be overwhelmed by the number of immigrants
seeking to take advantage of it. The push of conflagrations
in the Middle East and elsewhere threatens to overwhelm
the pull of employment they have to offer. The French
worry their Muslim population will pass some tipping point,
and they will face hybridization rather than assimilation.
Worse, the two populations might become hostile and not
blend at all. We in the U.S. pride ourselves on our own capability
to assimilate, but seem more likely to hybridize instead
in our own Southwest. Some object to this.
Additional Reading
Stewart, Richard W., General Editor, American Military
History, Volumes I and II (Washington, D.C.: Center of
Military History, 2005)
Taylor, Philip, The Distant Magnet: European Emigration
to the U.S.A. (New York: Harper, 1971)
Upchurch, Catherine, General Editor, Little Rock
Catholic Study Bible (Little Rock, Ark.: Little Rock
Scripture Study, 2011)
Army’s Role in Migrations
The U.S. Army has played a central role in all of the migrations
with which our nation has dealt. The militia that annihilated
the Pequot Indians had Joshua in mind. The Army that
escorted the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears sent them into
their own Babylonian captivity. Descendants of our soldiers
remain in the Philippines today, like latter-day Manchu. The
single most consequential agent for the assimilation of immigrants
has been the U.S. Army. If hybridization is in our future,
the Army will take the lead in that as well. For better or
worse, our nation’s approach to migration has always leaned
most heavily upon soldiers.
If the refugee crisis in Europe is to diminish, the Islamic
State must be destroyed. If diplomacy dictates massive relocations,
peacekeepers will be called on to supervise. If the Russians
are to be dissuaded from military operations in their near
abroad, our Army must help them resist temptation.
As further waves of immigrants arrive, we will assimilate
them into our ranks. If our political masters require us to pursue
a bilingual approach, we can do that too. We as an Army
have a great deal of experience—some good, some bad—with
migrations. We should carefully study our own experiences
and those of others to prepare for even greater migrations yet
to come.
✭
Online Archive of California/U.C. Berkeley, Bancroft Library
Thousands of Chinese immigrants helped build the transcontinental railroad across the American West.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 73

Reviews
‘Officer Everyman’ Overcame Bad Career Start
I’m Tim Maude, and I’m a Soldier: A
Military Biography of Lieutenant
General Timothy J. Maude. Stephen
E. Bower. iUniverse. 390 pages. $35.95
By Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales
U.S. Army retired
Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Maude’s tragic and
untimely death makes him a hero, but
he’s little known to most Americans
outside the small confines of the officer
brotherhood. To those of us commissioned
during the Vietnam War, he is a
man who defied the odds to become one
of most venerated general officers of our
time.
His life prior to his ultimate sacrifice
to the evil monsters of 9/11 is the story
of an officer everyman, frozen in amber:
an example of career success taken from
adversity and extreme hardship to remarkable
success before it ended in
tragedy. Maude left behind a reputation
defined by triumph and distinction.
His story is very much mine: We both
started our careers badly; we overcame
hardship by hard work and tough jobs;
we both paid a price in our personal
lives. Maude and I each have two lovely
daughters and supportive wives. But our
families suffered through separation driven
by ambition and assignments to
tough places like Korea or, even worse,
the Pentagon.
Maude’s story—written by Stephen
E. Bower, a historian for the Army—is
more remarkable because, unlike most
general officer biographies, his does not
include heroism in combat. He did not
lead large formations against the enemy,
nor translate military success to become
a political power in America. His story
begins humbly in small-town Indiana.
After attending college for only a year,
he volunteered for the Army in 1967 at
the height of the Vietnam War and immediately
went to Officer Candidate
School at Fort Benning, Ga.
He was a physically unimposing candidate.
His commissioning evaluations
were not terribly complimentary. Perhaps
that’s the reason the Army assigned
him to the Adjutant General’s Corps at
a time when the vast majority of his
classmates went into the infantry.
While his peers found themselves
fighting for their lives, Maude went to a
postal unit in Vietnam. It was there, in
his first command, that he received what
to our generation was a “killer OER,” or
bad officer efficiency report. Many Vietnam
veterans remember the professional
cost of poor combat reports. Some career
officers eventually papered over the
stigma of a bad OER, but not many.
Even for the best, 25 years later, promotion
boards terminated them at lieutenant
colonel—if they were lucky.
But Maude persevered. A year of college
thanks to the Army’s “Bootstrap”
program helped him overcome educational
shortcomings. He dodged the reduction
in force of the early ’70s and began
to prove himself with command in
Germany of the most unromantic of all
adjutant general commands—again, a
postal unit. It was in Germany that
Maude rebuilt his career and began a
slow and determined move to the top of
the profession.
Every successful general has a moment
that makes him. In Maude’s case, it was
as a major in the Pentagon in 1982, when
he fought fiercely to be assistant executive
officer to then-Lt. Gen. Maxwell R.
“Max” Thurman. Nothing in the Army
at the time was more risky to one’s career
than to be associated with the legendary
“Maxatollah.” (I know: I worked for Thurman
as a lieutenant colonel.) Thurman
was, at the time, the smartest and hardest-working
officer in all the services.
Unmarried, the Army was his wife. You
either became part of his team and prospered
or, much more often, failed because
you weren’t smart enough or hardworking
enough to keep up with him.
Maude actively sought to work for
Thurman, and Thurman immediately
discovered Maude was a gifted personnel
analyst who was willing to keep the
hours. In the early days, Maude assumed
the most trusted position for Max as his
“bagman.” He would assign tasks and
help worried staff officers through the
trauma of “briefing Max.”
They became close. Thurman pushed
Maude into several career-making assignments
to include adjutant general (and
later G-1) of the 2nd Infantry Division in
Korea. After Korea, he commanded a
battalion (rare for an adjutant general officer
at the time) at his longtime favorite
post, Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ind. Very
soon thereafter, in 1992, he was made one
of the youngest generals in the Army. A
few years later, he made an even greater
splash as U.S. Army Europe’s deputy
chief of staff for personnel.
Maude was one of only a handful of
adjutant general officers to have made
three stars when selected to become the
Army’s chief of personnel. And it was in
that position he died at the hands of terrorists
who flew an airliner into the Pentagon
on Sept. 11.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 75

His death, in many ways, reflected his
life. He died at his desk during a
normal day. He made his name doing
routine management tasks brilliantly.
He arrived at his office on that day looking
forward to an intense schedule because
he was a devoted, hardworking officer
willing to put in the hours to serve
his Army.
It’s Maude’s everyman persona as a
general that makes this book so extraordinary.
He overcame the stigma of a bad
career start. He didn’t go to West Point.
He joined without a bachelor’s degree.
He never fired a shot in anger, nor did he
command victorious forces in the field.
He was great because he was a good man,
a dutiful husband, a devout Catholic; as
he put it so well and plainly when he introduced
himself: “I’m Tim Maude. I’m a
soldier.”
Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, USA Ret.,
Ph.D., spent more than 30 years in the
Army. He commanded two units in Vietnam
and later served in command and
staff positions in the U.S., Germany and
Korea before ending his military career as
commandant of the U.S. Army War College.
After retiring, he became president
and CEO of Walden University, Baltimore.
Later he founded Colgen LLP, a
consultancy for senior military and civilian
leaders. He is the author of several books
including Certain Victory, the Army’s official
story of the First Gulf War. He graduated
from the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point, N.Y., and has a Ph.D. from
Duke University, Durham, N.C.
A Botched Mission in the Vietnam War Was
Crucible for Special Forces Soldier Benavidez
Legend: A Harrowing Story from the
Vietnam War of One Green Beret’s
Heroic Mission to Rescue a Special
Forces Team Caught Behind Enemy
Lines. Eric Blehm. Crown Publishers.
304 pages. $27
By Matthew Lee Henderson
Eric Blehm’s Legend is a look back at
the Vietnam War’s special operations
forces with an emphasis on one soldier,
then-Staff Sgt. Roy P. Benavidez, and
the battle that earned him the Medal
of Honor. This book is a combination
of history, biography and exhortation.
Blehm writes with unapologetic admiration
for the men whose story he is
telling. Family and classic American values
are secondary themes that seem to
underpin the soldiers who are the subjects
of this book. Legend also tells a story
that is longer in scope than the war itself:
the extended fight for Benavidez to be
awarded a belated Medal of Honor from
President Ronald Reagan, in 1981.
The bulk of this book is dedicated to
one Special Forces mission that takes
place in Cambodia on May 2, 1968,
when a 12-man unit is ordered to steal a
North Vietnamese truck from the Ho
Chi Minh Trail in neutral territory. The
mission goes terribly wrong, with the
U.S. Special Forces and their Civilian Irregular
Defense Group counterparts inserted
in the immediate vicinity of a
massive, fortified concentration of North
Vietnamese Army soldiers. The team is
discovered and then comes under withering
fire, sustaining fatalities and serious
injuries. One helicopter rescue attempt
after another fails to reach them, and
they are left on the ground and under fire
for hours on end despite air support from
fighters and gunships.
As reports come in to Loc Ninh, just
over the border in Vietnam, Benavidez
grabs a medical bag and jumps aboard
Huey Mad Dog 1, just back from the
fight and ready to make another attempt
at the pickup zone. As it lifts off,
Benavidez realizes that he forgot his
weapon. When he reaches the pickup
zone, Benavidez jumps out of the helicopter
unarmed and under heavy enemy
fire to rush to the rescue of the Special
Forces team.
Despite sustaining injuries so severe
that he is mistaken for dead and placed
into a body bag upon his return, Benavidez
saves the remaining team members
and retrieves classified documents
that might have revealed the highly secret
presence of the U.S. in neutral Cambodia.
While the May 2 mission is clearly the
focus of Legend, its presentation is made
meaningful and enjoyable by Blehm’s
writing style and the way he prepares his
readers for his subject. Blehm’s narrative
is very easy to follow, with climaxes and
tension built in that make its pacing
reminiscent of fiction. There are very few
pages that readers of Legend will have to
force themselves through.
Blehm blends military history with biography
in an extremely effective manner,
beginning with Benavidez’s childhood.
After he was orphaned at a young
age, Benavidez was raised by his uncle.
An aggressive streak aggravated by having
to battle racism contrasted with a
solid, loving background in his uncle’s
home to mark his early years. While he
did not finish high school, a strong work
ethic was ingrained in him through arduous
summer work on Colorado farms
and then work in a local tire shop.
His admiration for Maj. Audie Murphy
and the efforts of a local recruiter
drew him into the National Guard, and
from there he entered the Army. His last
brush with his unruly streak was when he
risked court-martial for striking an offi-
76 ARMY ■ April 2016

cer over a racial slur. Soon afterward he
married, then went to Vietnam for the
first time. The next thing he knew, he
awoke in a U.S. hospital with severe injuries
and memory loss after stepping on
a “suspected” land mine. Then, after encountering
and impressing Gen. William
Westmoreland, Benavidez was given the
chance to go Airborne and, ultimately, to
return to Vietnam.
Blehm breaks away from Benavidez for
a time to give abbreviated backstories
of many of the men who took part in the
May 2 mission. Emphasizing their backgrounds,
and especially their family attachments,
he prepares readers to understand
and identify with the personnel
whose actions are described. Even if we
have to admit that this is a standard technique
widely used by writers of military
histories, novels and movies, it is worth
pointing out that Blehm employs it effectively.
Moreover, he describes the operational
nature of everyone’s jobs, from Special
Forces to helicopter crews, in ways
that are both interesting and accessible.
Blehm does an outstanding job of explaining
duties, operations, forces and
procedures to the rest of us. It makes his
work an ideal Vietnam War 101 read for
anyone who knows little of the conflict
but is interested in learning. Blehm’s elementary
outline of the war, the U.S.’s
classified and widely denied presence in
Cambodia, and the significance of the
Ho Chi Minh Trail are very clearly presented.
They are interspersed into the
rest of the story in places where they fit
naturally and are easily remembered.
Both maps are simple to read and make
the extended description of the May 2
engagement easy to follow.
There is much to praise about Legend.
Its one downside, and it is a significant
one, is its lack of documentation. There
are no footnotes, or bibliography. The
most we have is a “Research and Acknowledgments”
section, which gives a
general idea of the author’s methods.
Benavidez’s own books, declassified reports,
and interviews are his main
sources, with the direct quotes in his descriptions
taken from interviews with survivors.
However, the lack of the ability to
trace most facts presented in the text to
their sources limits the value of Legend.
While he tells the story very well, Blehm
at Washington’s crossing of the Delaware,
but it is beyond these well-known
narratives where O’Donnell’s skills as
a researcher and writer truly shine.
Through the use of journals, letters,
pension applications and other primary
sources, we learn enough of the Marymisses
the opportunity to make his research
a contribution to scholarship on
the Vietnam War and give his readers
confidence in the historical validity of
what he wrote.
Legend is highly recommended for
those who enjoy fast-paced military
nonfiction, or for those who would like
an easy introduction to the conflict in
Viewing the Revolution Through
The Prism of the ‘Immortal 400’
Washington’s Immortals: The Untold
Story of an Elite Regiment Who
Changed the Course of the Revolution.
Patrick K. O’Donnell. Atlantic
Monthly Press. 440 pages. $28
By Tyrell O. Mayfield
Largely overlooked by history, the 400
men of the American Revolution’s
1st Maryland Regiment receive a fitting
tribute from best-selling military historian
Patrick K. O’Donnell in his latest
book, Washington’s Immortals: The Untold
Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed
the Course of the Revolution.
O’Donnell’s tale begins in modernday
New York City, flashing back to the
outbreak of the American Revolution.
Gen. George Washington is struggling
to manage the initial confrontation with
the British in New York as the denizens
of the Colonies jostle for position, forming
enclaves of Loyalists and revolutionaries.
Washington’s Army and the fledgling
country are both in disarray, rife
with ethnic, religious and political tensions
and shocked by the violence of an
erupting war.
Out march the “Immortal 400,” men
from Maryland who are self-organized
and largely self-funded. They fight in
key battles including in Brooklyn, where
their fatal last stand buys precious time
for Washington’s Continental Army—
and with it, America’s future as a nation—to
withdraw and fight another
day. A small sign marks the mass grave
in New York City where their final action
left 256 of them dead.
After the opening passages, the reader
is left wondering whether the Immortals
Vietnam, even if its flaw may irritate
those of us who are sticklers for research
methods.
Matthew Lee Henderson currently works
as a federal contractor in the national
security field. He has a bachelor’s degree
from Radford University and a master’s
degree from Kent State University.
have truly made a difference for the Revolution
as the Continental Army continues
to struggle. Their glory as a unit is
brief, but their legend is born and the
survivors go on to serve in key leadership
positions in the Continental Army. They
help span the divide between what then
constituted the Regular Army and the
militia. It is perhaps here that they become
true immortals.
O’Donnell’s narrative follows the surviving
Marylanders through the crucible
of the American Revolution. There are
familiar scenes at Valley Forge and again
April 2016 ■ ARMY 77

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landers to know what they risked in service
and the totality of their commitment.
Personalizing them in the context
of their time and decisions, we come to
know the few survivors by name. This is
one of the unique and valuable aspects
of O’Donnell’s telling of this American
story.
O
’Donnell clearly walked much of the
terrain himself, and the book serves
as a medium to collect an oral tradition
passed on piecemeal by park rangers and
signposts and hidden in obscure archives
into a single volume. Along the trail, we
find ourselves oriented by landmarks
now familiar, for reasons different than
for our predecessors and the Immortals.
Washington’s retreat from Long Island
finds him launching boats in the shadow
of the Brooklyn Bridge; we endure the
bombardment of Fort Mifflin, Pa., near
today’s Philadelphia International Airport;
and we watch as the British fleet
drops anchor at Sandy Hook, N.J., a
point of geography and tragedy only recently
re-etched in the American mind.
O’Donnell leaves Washington here
and follows the Marylanders south into
the Carolinas and Georgia, where the
Revolution continues. Unforgiving terrain,
stretched supply lines and slow
communications grind away at both
armies. It is here, through the eyes of the
Marylanders, that we see the Americans
adapting new tactics and the British begrudgingly
responding.
The Americans turn to raiding and
laying siege to distant outposts, sending
a “Flying Army” of light infantry across
the wilderness to harass the British at
every turn. The Americans fight desperately
to choose their battles and the
British, in growing desperation, take
more risks—Cornwallis goes so far as to
order the baggage train of his entire
army burned so they might march faster
and catch the Americans. There are
flashes of “the Swamp Fox,” Brig. Gen.
Francis Marion, and his marauding band
of raiders who strike at Loyalists and
British soldiers alike. It is in the description
of these evolving, nontraditional
tactics that O’Donnell describes the Revolution
as something it has not historically
been viewed as: an insurgency.
In using America’s contemporary experience
with counterinsurgency operations
as a lens to view the Revolution,
O’Donnell drifts a bit. It is, after all, difficult
for the British to adhere to the
tenets of modern counterinsurgency
when it had not yet been recognized as a
form of warfare. It seems unfair to critique
the British this way. And O’Donnell
pursues this line of contemporary
comparison further by casting some of
the Revolutionary actors as early special
operations forces or elite warriors. In the
army of conscripts and unreliable militia
that O’Donnell describes, there were
surely those who rose to the occasion.
But it seems awkward, almost hagiographic,
to describe these men in modern
terms that bring with them an entire
new concept they could hardly be judged
against.
There are other points within the
Revolutionary experience that echo far
into America’s future; in this way,
O’Donnell’s work is instructive. While
the Army failed to institutionalize many
of the adaptations that emerged at the
tactical level, there are themes we can
trace across time. Washington’s decision
to crudely vaccinate soldiers against
smallpox is one example of the Army
and conflict as a catalyst for innovation.
The Army’s inability to raise significant
numbers of African-American soldiers
is shackled to the root of another great
conflict, and we see that America
struggled much longer than may have
been necessary because of social constructs
that even the necessity of war
could not break.
We also see the early signs of a new
version of a professional army, one
bound to an ethical code of conduct
outlined in what John Adams in 1777
called a policy of humanity. Finally, and
perhaps most importantly from a contemporary
perspective, we are introduced
to the challenges of coalition
warfare. It is humbling to be reminded
that while the American Revolution
may have been a homegrown affair, it
was doomed without the assistance of
the French.
With the close of the Revolution,
Washington returns to civilian life, albeit
briefly. We see the surviving Marylanders
follow his lead here as well, and this
is the beauty of the story. Like Cincinnatus,
these men served and then returned
home to their farms and their
78 ARMY ■ April 2016

families. Many, like Washington himself,
would return to public service as
governors, senators, state representatives,
and some again in uniform with
the coming of crisis in 1812. The
Marylanders serve as a useful lens for
not only viewing the American Revolution,
but also for understanding the society
born of this great conflict.
Washington’s Immortals is well-placed
in time to serve Americans of all stripes.
Fans of history, Revolutionary scholars
and strategic thinkers all will enjoy this
read. There is history here spoken for the
first time; in light of our current challenges,
it is a pleasant distraction to be
reminded of the foundational struggles
we faced as a nation.
Tyrell O. Mayfield is a political affairs strategist
in the U.S. Air Force and an editor at
thestrategybridge.com. He holds master’s
degrees from the University of Oklahoma
and the Naval Post-Graduate School.
Soldier Chronicles Real Cost of the War in Iraq
Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers,
Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.
Daniel A. Sjursen. University Press of
New England. 280 pages. $27.95
By Col. Kevin C.M. Benson
U.S. Army retired
The narrative of this powerful book
made me angry at the author, made
me shed tears of frustration and grief,
made me angry again—this time at myself
and my own trials dealing with
Iraq—and at the end, made me hopeful
yet again for the state of our Army and
the republic.
Amid stories of the “brain drain” from
our Army, the author of Ghost Riders of
Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth
of the Surge, Maj. Daniel A. Sjursen, remains
in the ranks. This is a good thing
because evidently, Sjursen will be a senior
officer with the ability to recall the
trials and tribulations of being a platoon
leader and realize how truly important it
is to communicate the purpose and the
reality of combat not only to decisionmakers,
but to our soldiers as well as to
the American people.
Sjursen, who is pursuing a doctorate in
history while teaching at the U.S. Military
Academy, wrote this book about his
time in Iraq as a lieutenant in 2006 and
2007. It is written in what I will call a
“millennial” style: short sections and
chapters that are almost staccato in intensity,
battering the reader with concept
after concept and emotion after emotion.
Sjursen’s style of writing led to hopping
from one short story to another seemingly
without a link but upon reflection,
they all tell the same story. The rhythm
levels out near the end of the book, as if
the author had concluded purging his
soul and mind of demons and was catching
his breath. This is a compelling style,
as Sjursen used it to communicate the
intensity of his initial combat experience.
Part of his first wartime deployment
was to Salman Pak. His story brought to
mind the principle of war economy of
force: using available combat power most
effectively, and allocating a minimum
amount of that power to secondary efforts.
He also forcefully stresses the real
meaning of this principle of war, given
his 21-man platoon and an operating
area of hundreds of square miles.
Sjursen’s tour was extended as a part
of the Surge. In his mind, the Surge and
the victory it produced is a myth. I am
certain this subject will be debated for
decades, but Sjursen’s perspective is an
important one. In the words of one of his
soldiers, all of whom were upset at
spending another three months in combat,
“Sir, if this mission is so important,
why aren’t we asking more people to join
up so the Army isn’t so … stretched?”
There is truth in this as our Army considers
how to do more with less.
The book concludes with a reflection
on his killed and wounded soldiers.
Here, again, Sjursen highlights the intensity
of being a soldier and platoon
leader, and coming to grips with what it
really means to be responsible for everything
your unit does or fails to do. As he
continues his personal search for meaning,
he writes, “I’m not sure what it all
means—maybe because it doesn’t have
the intrinsic meaning I so badly want it
to.” The cost of war and combat includes
the memories we carry forever.
As I reflected on Sjursen’s book, I
asked myself, “Do the American people
really understand we were at war and
what it meant?” On Veterans Day, I
played in a golf tournament with three
stockbrokers. They told me stories of
the Great Recession and how they had
weathered this storm. It occurred the
same time Sjursen was in combat, but
they never mentioned the war the U.S.
had been in. Indeed, during the recession
the war had never entered their consciousness.
This book deserves a place in your personal
library. Read it at least once a year,
and whenever you think your grasp of
the real cost of war is slipping away.
Col. Kevin C.M. Benson, USA Ret., Ph.D.,
served in armor and cavalry assignments
in Europe and the U.S. He commanded a
tank company at Fort Polk, La., and a
tank battalion at Fort Hood, Texas. He
also served as the C/J-5 for Combined
Forces Land Component Command during
the initial invasion of Iraq and as director,
School of Advanced Military Studies.
He has a doctorate in history from the
University of Kansas and writes for a
wide range of professional journals.
April 2016 ■ ARMY 79

Final Shot
U.S. Army/Jason Johnston
All-terrain vehicle testing in Germany
gets down and dirty as a U.S. soldier
rushes to change a tire.
80 ARMY ■ April 2016