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ARMY 

The Magazine of the Association of the United States Army 

January 2016 www.ausa.org Vol. 66, No. 1 

DEPARTMENTS 

ON THE COVER 

LETTERS....................................................4 

SEVEN QUESTIONS ..................................9 

WASHINGTON REPORT .........................11 

NEWS CALL ............................................12 

FRONT & CENTER 

America: Step Up, Wake Up, Wise Up 

By Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, USA Ret. 

Page 17 

What Lessons Should We Take From 

the Iraq War? 

By Emma Sky 

Page 18 

FEATURES 

Too Much World, Not Enough Army 

By Rick Maze 

Leaders at AUSA’s Annual Meeting 

and Exposition in Washington, D.C., 

describe the state of the Army, the 

growing and varied threats it must 

counter, the importance of building 

relationships to increase international 

reach, and how the readiness to fight is 

integral to success. Page 30 

Cover Photo: Army National Guard soldiers 

of the 125th Infantry Regiment secure 

a landing zone during a summer exercise 

at Camp Grayling Joint Maneuver 

Training Center, Mich. U.S. Air Force/ 

Staff Sgt. Matthew B. Fredericks 

Syria Operations Sending All the 

Wrong Signals 

By Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, USA Ret. 

Page 19 

Firefights 50 Years Apart Offer 

Valuable Lessons 

By Col. James J. Coghlan Jr., USA Ret. 

Page 20 

Even as Plebe, Female Ranger 

Showed Leadership Traits 

By Capt. Garrison E. Haning, USAR 

Page 23 

Seven Things to Know About the Islamic State 

Learning several facts about the Islamic State can lead to a better understanding of its 

members as well as the group’s aims and actions. Page 25 

Foreign-Born Hero Honored by U.S. 

By Laura Stassi 

When medically retired Capt. Florent “Flo” 

Groberg was honored in the fall for his 

heroism in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 

in 2012, he became the first foreign-born 

Medal of Honor recipient since the 

Vietnam War, and the 28th foreign-born 

medal recipient since 1942. Page 27 

SHE’S THE ARMY ...................................26 

THE OUTPOST........................................55 

SUSTAINING MEMBER PROFILE ...........58 

SOLDIER ARMED....................................59 

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING.....................61 

REVIEWS.................................................63 

FINAL SHOT ...........................................72 

January 2016 ■ ARMY 1

Let’s Solve the Army’s Recruiting 

Challenges 

By Col. Bob Phillips, USA Ret. 

A review of the Army’s recruiting history 

reveals that the service often has had to 

develop new ideas and approaches to 

attract enough soldiers—a challenge it is 

facing once again. Page 40 

46 

40 

How to Survive a Joint Command 

Transition 

By Lt. Col. George K. Hughes 

A joint command presents new 

challenges; to succeed, soldiers must be 

open-minded, have a positive attitude, 

and be eager to learn. Page 46 

Decisionmaking Lessons of Hungry 

Monkeys 

By Maj. Wayne Heard, USA Ret. 

Making decisions based on systematic 

mission analysis might be difficult to learn 

and streamline. But it produces better 

results than making decisions—as 

monkeys might—based on previous 

results. Page 44 

44 

49 

Crowdsourcing Innovation Through 

Social Media 

By Lt. Col. Chad Storlie, USA Ret. 

Social media can be used to unite and 

inspire like-minded people to help 

improve, develop and fine-tune new 

products and services. Page 49 

Managing Cyber Talent Requires 

Innovation 

By Jennifer Benitz 

An AUSA-sponsored discussion on the cyber 

workforce concludes that instead of figuring 

out how to pound a square peg into a round 

hole in terms of education, experience and 

character, the Army might do better to 

change the hole to fit the peg. Page 51 

Success Can Be Dangerously 

Seductive 

By Lt. Col. Joe Doty, USA Ret., and Maj. 

Shawn Tenace, USA Ret. 

Soldiers should strive for success, but they 

need to be aware of its addictive quality so 

they can resist its potentially destructive 

lure. Page 53 

51 

53 

2 ARMY ■ January 2016

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Letters 

Local Populace Is Responsible 

■ Amitai Etzioni’s November Front 

& Center article (“Who Causes Civilian 

Casualties?”) fails to depict the basic 

concept of war. If a war is worth fighting, 

it is worth winning—and that may 

be by any means necessary. 

I did not have the luxury of sitting in 

the halls of academia while developing 

my thoughts on civilians on the battlefield. 

Instead, I served on the front lines 

with bullets flying, and on targeting 

boards from the battalion to combined 

joint task force level. As a result, I would 

instead use the term local populace instead 

of civilian, innocent or noncombatant. 

While I can agree with much of Etzioni’s 

article, I also see the basic 

shortfalls in his argument. 

Before anyone can realistically apply 

moral restraint to battlefield conditions, 

we need to define conclusively what an 

innocent civilian or a noncombatant is. 

Until we do so, there can only exist gray 

areas that will be exploited by terrorists, 

insurgents, state actors, the media and 

politicians for their own purposes. This 

will continue to leave troopers on the 

ground vulnerable to indecision, restrictive 

rules of engagement, and accusations 

of indecent or unlawful conduct. 

Basically, we tie soldiers’ hands behind 

their backs and blindfold them while 

demanding they achieve success in illdefined 

military operations with unclear 

objectives. 

During my many years of service in 

the Middle East, Central Asia and 

Eastern Africa, I never figured out exactly 

what an innocent civilian or a noncombatant 

was. When the civilian population 

is providing safe haven and 

military and sustenance supplies, and 

gathering and disseminating information 

on our troops, how can we qualify 

them as innocent civilians or noncombatants? 

Is the auxiliary of an insurgency 

any less a part of the war effort? If 

Etzioni argues that this is the case, then 

our logisticians, military intelligence 

and other support efforts must also be 

considered as noncombatants. Or is the 

difference simply who carries a firearm? 

That said, the local populace may be 

forced to provide support to our enemies, 

but are they really innocent or nonparticipants? 

I conclude they are not; as active 

components of threat activities, we can 

only judge them to be combatants. As 

such, they are fair targets under the idea 

of distinction. Our support bases are fair 

and legal targets, and so the support areas 

of terrorists and insurgents should be. 

Additionally, Etzioni fails to clarify 

what the so-called civilian populace of a 

combat area really wants. My experience 

says people want security so they can go 

on with their lives. If some of their own 

are killed or wounded in nearby military 

actions, they are forgiving—up and until 

the U.S. accepts responsibility, apologizes, 

offers compensation to the families, 

and allows the media to rewrite the 

engagements and results. We basically 

paint a target for blame upon ourselves 

while ignoring the terrorists’ or insurgents’ 

culpability—or even the populace’s 

own. 

Etzioni is correct in that our failure 

to put the onus of responsibility on the 

terrorists and insurgents skews how the 

populace reacts toward our forces. He 

is also correct that by timid responses 

on the battlefield because of civilian 

presence, we prolong the military conflict 

and actually increase the danger to 

and casualty figures among the local 

populace. 

Etzioni refers to the principles of distinction 

multiple times in his article but 

fails to mention military necessity and 

proportionality. These are the principles 

that truly drive civil-military interaction. 

Under the DoD Office of the General 

Counsel’s Law of War Manual, killing 

civilians is to be avoided but can occur 

because of the need of military necessity 

or proportionality. In the haze of battle, 

it is too confusing, restrictive, time-consuming 

and deadly to our own troopers 

to try and distinguish between the immediate 

threats and the local population 

that may be supporting the enemy. 

By applying the principles of military 

necessity and proportionality, time and 

space slow down for the trooper. Training 

will allow him or her, not some armchair 

general in the rear or a politician in 

the U.S., to make decisions on the 

ground. Any and all rules of engagement 

should—and, I dare say, must—focus on 

these two principles instead of on distinction. 

So who causes civilian casualties? I 

propose that local populations do. Ultimately, 

they are responsible for their 

own actions, willingly or not. 

Lt. Col. Robert Biller, USA Ret. 

Dyer, Nev. 

Better Off With Bullets, Bullhorns 

■ Regarding the August feature article 

“Combatant or Collateral Damage? 

New Technology Offers Urban Ops Advantage”: 

Count me as very skeptical. 

We read: “Nonlethal capabilities [like 

directed energy] provide options. They 

can support tactical maneuver in the urban 

environment by providing a means 

to warn, deter or repel personnel, such 

as people approaching convoys or standing 

on rooftops, exhibiting suspicious 

behavior.” 

Since it’s not based on any patrol experience, 

my opinion could be completely 

wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. That 

said, let me suggest two much cheaper 

and, arguably, more effective methods: 

■ Bullets fired overhead. 

■ Pamphlets and bullhorns. 

My perspective is that of a former 

electronics maintenance technician. This 

new technology sounds great in the lab, 

but it will ultimately be one more system 

for the troops in the field to provide preventive 

maintenance checks and services, 

one more system to carry around, one 

more system that will need repair, and 

one more system for which repair parts 

will need to be sourced and stocked—in 

a combat zone. 

Others have argued that an excessive 

zeal in eliminating collateral casualties is 

actually self-defeating, but I won’t go 

there. It’s purely on logistical grounds 

that I am certain this system is a step in 


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 

Jennifer Benitz 

Staff Writer 

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 

ARMY is a professional journal devoted to the advancement 

of the military arts and sciences and representing the in terests 

of the U.S. Army. Copyright©2015, by the Association of 

the United States Army. ■ ARTICLES appearing in 

ARMY do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the officers or 

members of the Council of Trustees of AUSA, or its editors. 

Articles are expressions of personal opin ion and should not 

be interpreted as reflecting the official opinion of the Department 

of Defense nor of any branch, command, installation 

or agency of the Department of Defense. The magazine 

assumes no responsibility for any unsolicited material. 

■ ADVERTISING. Neither ARMY, nor its pub lisher, the 

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ARMY (ISSN 0004-2455), published monthly. Vol. 66, No. 1. 

Publication offices: Association of the United States Army, 

2425 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201-3326, 703-841- 

4300, FAX: 703-841-3505, email: armymag@ausa.org. Visit 

AUSA’s website at www.ausa.org. Periodicals postage paid at 

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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARMY Magazine, 

Box 101560, Arlington, VA 22210-0860. 

U.S. Air National Guard/Sgt. Edward Eagerton 

the wrong direction. I hope no additional 

taxpayer funds are wasted on it. 

Chief Warrant Officer 5 Steve Kohn, 

USA Ret. 

San Antonio 

A Fascinating Encounter With 

‘The Colonels’ and ‘The Kids’ 

■ In reference to William Matthews’ 

December 2015 article, “The Multinational 

Guard: Fostering Dynamic Partnerships 

Worldwide”: 

When the National Guard State 

Partnership Program started with the 

three Baltic countries, New York was 

originally paired with Estonia. At the 

time, I was commanding the engineer 

brigade of the 42nd Infantry Division. 

A good friend, Col. Jim Lamback, 

headed up the effort in New York. He 

had recently finished a U.S. Army War 

College Fellowship, and I was in the 

middle of the college’s Corresponding 

Studies Course. He asked me to go on a 

one-week assignment to teach a class on 

how the reserve components fit into 

the U.S. military, and how our military 

works in the U.S. under civilian control. 

The two of us and a smart young captain 

prepared classes and headed off. 

Our students were Estonian military 

and divided into what we called “The 

Colonels,” who were Soviet retired officers 

of Estonian ethnicity, including one 

who had commanded a Soviet infantry 

division in Afghanistan; and “The Kids,” 

young officers who, if they served in the 

Soviet forces, had been conscripts. There 

were some differences of opinion between 

the two groups; they even sat on 

different sides of the table. The exception 

was the former division commanding 

general, who sat with and was considered 

one of “The Kids.” 

I’ve always said that one week was the 

most fascinating I ever spent wearing an 

Army uniform, and that covers a 33-year 

career in both the active and reserve 

component. 

Shortly after my time there, New York 

was replaced by Maryland; can’t say I remember 

what the rationale was. 

Brig. Gen. Dale Barber, AUS Ret. 

Waverly, N.Y. 

CORRECTIONS 

Alaska Army National 

Guard Staff Sgt. Colin 

Oppegard instructs 

Mongolian armed 

forces service members 

during a survivaltraining 

course portion 

of an annual 

exercise in Mongolia. 

The December cover story, “The Multinational Guard: Fostering Dynamic 

Partnerships Worldwide,” incorrectly said the East European country of 

Georgia has been the second-largest partner contributor of forces to the wars 

in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, Georgia is the largest non-NATO troop 

contributor to Afghanistan and Iraq missions. It is the second-largest troop 

contributor to the current Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan. 

In all, Georgia has contributed close to 13,000 troops—equating to more 

than 18 battalions of U.S. soldiers that didn’t have to go to Afghanistan or Iraq. 

Also in December, the article “NTC: The Army’s Training Oasis in the Mojave” 

should have given the size of the National Training Center as 775,000 acres. 


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, altered or have watermarks. 

5. The minimum size for prints is 5x7 inches; the maximum is 8x10 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 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 jbenitz@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 

three times. 

12. Photographic quality and subject matter will be the primary considerations in judging. 

For more information, contact Jennifer Benitz (jbenitz@ausa.org), ARMY magazine, 

2425 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201; 703-907-2604.

Seven Questions 

Scarf Is Unique Solution to Specific Problem 

Dan Barker, an operations research analyst with the U.S. Army 

Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, discusses the Army’s proposed 

scarf-like protection mask. 

1. Where did the idea come 

from to have a scarf that would 

function as a protective mask? 

We got a set of unique requirements 

for this item that 

came out of a select set of niche 

operators within DoD. They 

were looking for an item that 

would provide protection for 

them against CS [tear gas], but 

be small or flexible enough that 

it could be stored in a cargo Dan Barker 

pocket and concurrently worn 

with the headgear they wear day to day. They wanted to be able 

to don this system without having to remove this headgear, and 

they wanted an opportunity to be able to provide protection for 

bearded wearers. 

Traditional respirators, or gas masks, didn’t really fit the 

bill, so we went through a lot of concepts trying to answer to 

this need. We did a lot of brainstorming, prototyping and 

feedback with the users and eventually, we settled on this 

wrap, or scarf, concept. 

2. What does it protect against? How does it work? 

Its primary focus, or the primary threat that we’re looking to 

protect against, is CS, so riot-control agent. We spent a lot of 

energy developing a rather novel filtration media that offers 

the required flexibility but can protect against CS for up to 

140 minutes. However, along with that, it would also protect 

against nuisance particulate matter, smoke, nuisance odors and 

very low-level chemical vapor threats. 

3. What doesn’t it protect against? 

It’s not a replacement for an M50 or M40 gas mask. This is 

not a traditional chem-bio mask. This is focused primarily on 

CS, so it would not be intended as a replacement for any of 

the traditional chem-bio gear that a warfighter would currently 

have. 

4. Are there other clothing products that offer chemical biological 

protection, short of a full hazmat suit? What makes 

this mask different? 

This is kind of a unique product. We design respiratory 

protection devices, so this isn’t really necessarily what I would 

call a clothing product. Most clothing provides skin protection, 

so this is a unique combination of filtration, material research 

and an interesting systems integration approach for a 

very specific problem. CS is not a traditional skin irritant, so 

U.S. Army/Jack Bunja 

U.S. Army/Steve Skurski 

the focus is more on the respiratory protection piece and the 

eye-protection piece. 

Prior to this, what you would have to do is either go without, 

or you would need to remove all of your headgear and 

then put on your traditional gas mask. So what this does is, it 

allows you to have a very specific level of protection without 

having to remove that gear. 

5. What are the challenges to overcome? 

We received just shy of $50,000 as part of our internal idea 

fund. What we were able to do with that initial seed money 

[was] really invest in developing this novel filtration media, 

and we were able to do some early prototyping with the user to 

nail down the respiratory protection design. 

What we did not have resources to do is address the eyeprotection 

piece. CS is not only an irritant to the respiratory 

tract; it’s also an irritant to the eyes. It does no good if you have 

[respiratory] protection and you don’t have something to 

cover the eyes. We would need to have both [to release the 

product]. That’s the largest challenge that still exists. 

Integrated 

Respiratory 

and Eye 

Protection 

Scarf 

6. How far along is the testing? 

We did extensive testing on the filtration media, so that’s 

fairly well along. However, testing to assess the integration between 

any future eye-protection piece, and what we’ve developed 

for the respiratory protection piece, is not very far along 

at all, short of these initial feedback sessions we had with 

users. That design would need to be finalized before we could 

really perform any high-fidelity testing. 

7. When might soldiers in the field first get to use it? 

That’s a tough one to predict because that’s all dependent 

upon when we might get funding for the eye-protection piece. 

If you were to hand me the funding tomorrow, I would think 

we would need at least another year or so to really get some 

high-fidelity prototypes of the eye-protection piece complete. 

Then it would need to enter into the acquisition life cycle. We 

are certainly actively looking for partners within DoD to help 

us bring the remainder of the project to fruition. 

—Jennifer Benitz 


ASSOCIATION OF THE US ARMY 

INSTITUTE OF LAND WARFARE 

LANPAC 

SYMPOSIUM & EXPOSITION 

A PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FORUM 

24-26 MAY 2016 

Honolulu, HI

Washington Report 

Army May Face Stagnant Budgets Through FY 2021 

Fiscal year 2017 is likely to see the Army continuing to reduce 

the size of the force while increasing engagement in the 

African, European and Pacific theaters; improving professional 

development for career soldiers and civilians; and putting readiness 

and surge capacity as top priorities. 

Accomplishing these goals won’t be 

easy because the Army faces a flat or 

negative budget for fiscal year 2017. The 

Army expects to ask for $129.3 billion, a 

modest 2.2 percent increase over 2016 

that won’t keep pace with inflation even 

if oil prices remain low. The five-year 

Army budget calls for a 2.2 percent increase 

in 2018, a less than 1 percent increase 

in FY 2019, a 1.5 percent increase 

in 2020, and just under a 2 percent increase in 2021. None of 

these budgets will enable the Army to take care of pressing 

problems, especially boosting low readiness ratings that appear 

impossible to solve before 2022. 

Factoring inflation into the five-year plan, the Army will see 

its funding remain steady in fiscal years 2017 and 2018, and 

then drop by about $2 billion for 2019 through 2021. 

Much of the cuts will come from continuing to reduce the 

size of the Army. Active-duty troop levels are expected to drop 

to 475,000 by Sept. 30; drop again to 460,000 by Sept. 30, 

2017; and end up at 450,000 by Sept. 30, 2018. The Army 

National Guard, authorized 342,000 soldiers by Sept. 30, is 

National security is being placed at risk because of a squeeze 

on the Army budget, a key analyst has warned. “While many 

are looking to the Army as a preferred bill payer for other parts 

of the military, I think we have gone about far enough with 

this way of thinking,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon of the Brookings 

Institution. 

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 

early November during a discussion about whether the services’ 

roles and missions need updating, O’Hanlon said he was 

not advocating for a larger Army but was “very concerned” by 

proposals that would cut the number of active-duty soldiers to 

pay for weapons modernization in the other services. For example, 

retired Adm. Gary Roughead, the former chief of naval 

operations, has advocated cutting the Army below 300,000 active-duty 

soldiers to pay for shipbuilding and other modernization 

needs. 

O’Hanlon, co-director of Brookings’ Center for 21st Century 

Security and Intelligence and author of The Future of 

Land Warfare, said those calling for a smaller Army falsely believe 

land warfare is obsolete. “The historical point we always 

projected to drop to its final strength of 335,000 by Sept. 30, 

2017. The Army Reserve, with 198,000 authorized soldiers by 

Sept. 30, faces a modest drop to 195,000 by Sept. 30, 2017, 

under current plans. 

The Army’s civilian workforce won’t 

be spared, with reductions expected in 

fiscal years 2017, 2018 and 2019. The 

cumulative impact of military and civilian 

cuts will result in more than 200,000 

fewer people in FY 2019 than were part 

of the workforce in 2012, although exact 

numbers and locations for the cuts remain 

undetermined. Since 2012, the 

Army has cut about 80,000 soldiers to 

reach 490,000, and plans to cut about 

15,000 a year for the next three years—which could mean the 

civilian workforce drops by as much as 75,000 over a decade. 

An order to cut headquarters staff by 20 percent over the next 

four years could account for a large part of that total. 

Personnel cuts are a vital part of the Army plan because 

savings from a smaller force are what would be invested in 

weapons modernization and readiness programs in 2019 and 

beyond. If the Army cannot save money on personnel, infrastructure 

costs and reform of military pay, benefits and compensation, 

Army officials worry about having limited options 

when called on to provide credible combat power in diverse 

terrain against a range of threats. 

O’Hanlon: Don’t Cut Soldiers for Modernization 

tend to assume is that we have figured out how to avoid big 

ground wars. And for the last century … we made that assumption, 

and we’ve been proven wrong,” he said. 

This is not to say the Army is doing everything right, 

O’Hanlon said. “The Army’s had some troubles with modernization. 

It needs to go back to the drawing board. It’s trying to 

do that, I recognize, but the Army is already thinking hard 

about how to scale back some of its modernization programs.” 

Armed Services Committee member Sen. Dan Sullivan, R- 

Alaska, said he agreed with O’Hanlon, calling it “strategic lunacy” 

to consider cutting the active Army to 300,000 soldiers. 

“Hopefully, nobody seriously is contemplating that,” Sullivan 

said. “I certainly am not. I think it should be about double 

that size.” 

There are places to cut, O’Hanlon said. “I would agree with 

the idea of putting 10, 20 or 30 percent cuts into some of the 

headquarters and staff, and then letting the services and other 

organizations—without DoD—figure out how to make that 

happen,” he said. “I support that because I think there is a lot 

of waste.” 


News Call 

Troxell Named JCS Senior Enlisted Advisor 

The next senior enlisted advisor to the 

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is 

an Army command sergeant major who 

is highly respected for involvement in 

joint and international operations. 

Command Sgt. Maj. John W. Troxell 

is a 33-year veteran currently assigned to 

U.S. Forces Korea who spoke in May at 

an Association of the U.S. Army-sponsored 

event about the importance of 

communication. 

“We are never going to face another 

fight alone, by ourselves,” Troxell said at 

AUSA’s LANPAC, or Land Power in 

the Pacific, Symposium and Exposition in 

Honolulu. He urged enlisted leaders to 

sharpen their communications skills so 

they can earn the trust and respect of 

other militaries. He provided an example, 

saying he uses a litter-carrying drill to 

build bonds even when soldiers don’t 

speak the same language. Ten men carrying 

a large American soldier over a long 

distance is a difficult task, he said, but “at 

the end, everybody feels part of the team.” 

Litter carrying is not his only drill. 

Troxell-led exercise routines can include 

tractor tires, telephone poles and chains. 

Troxell will be only the third person to 

serve as the JCS chairman’s principal advisor 

on enlisted matters, and the second 

soldier. The first person to hold the job 

was Army Command Sgt. Maj. William 

Gainey, who served from October 2005 

to April 2008. Gainey was succeeded by 

the current advisor, Marine Sgt. Maj. 

Bryan Battaglia, who is retiring. 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Marine 

Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford described 

Troxell as “someone soldiers, airmen, 

Marines and sailors can look up to. He 

can inspire people, and he is someone I 

trust to tell me things straight.” 

A DoD statement said Troxell “will 

serve as the armed forces’ most senior 

noncommissioned officer and the principal 

military advisor to the chairman and 

the secretary of defense on all matters involving 

joint and combined total force integration, 

utilization, health of the force 

and joint development for enlisted personnel.” 

Married with three children and two 

grandchildren, Troxell has five combat 

tours, including Operation Just Cause, 

Command Sgt. Maj. John W. Troxell 

Operations Desert Shield and Desert 

Storm, two Operation Iraqi Freedom 

tours, and one tour in Operation Enduring 

Freedom. 

U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan 

AUSA New Hampshire Chapter 

Renamed for Civil War Officer 

The Granite State Chapter of the Association 

of the U.S. Army has been renamed 

for a Civil War colonel who was 

famous for wearing a red bandanna on 

his head rather than a traditional officer’s 

cap. The Col. Edward Cross Chapter is 

named for a 5th New Hampshire Volunteer 

Infantry officer who died on July 3, 

1863, in the Battle of Gettysburg. 

Cross, a newspaperman and occasional 

Army scout, was commissioned at the 

start of the Civil War; he gained a reputation 

as a colorful and daring leader. 

Wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines in 

Virginia and again at the Battle of Antietam 

in Maryland, Cross was said to favor 

a red bandanna because it was easier 

for his men to spot on the battlefield. 

His journal, filled with lists of his soldiers, 

newspaper clippings and descriptions 

of some battles, is part of a Civil War 

collection at the University of New Hampshire 

Library. After one battle, Cross 

wrote that most of his officers were shot. 

“I lay on the ground for nearly three 

hours—part of the time between two 

fires—momentarily expecting to die, 

when I was discovered by Lt. Dan K. 

Cross of my regiment,” he wrote. “While 

lying there on the ground, I saw many 

acts of cowardice and bravery.” 

Cross led a brigade of the 1st Division, 

II Corps, during the Battle of Gettysburg. 

On July 2, 1863, the 1st Division 

was sent to the left flank after 

Confederates attacked the salient formed 

by III Corps. Cross’ brigade was formed 

on the left of the division’s battle line as 

it entered the area known as the Wheatfield. 

During the fighting, Cross was 

mortally wounded while at the left of his 

line near the Rose Woods. He died the 

next day at a field hospital. His body was 

shipped home to Lancaster, N.H., for 

burial in the town’s cemetery. 

A report filed by his aide, Maj. 

Charles A. Hale, after Cross’ death said 

the colonel “evidently had a strong premonition 

of his death. It did not seem to 

affect him much. In fact, it affected me 

more than it did himself, for I was then 

only a smooth-faced boy of 19 while he 

was a long-bearded man of 31.” 

Hale said that as Cross moved along 

the mountain, he announced that this 

would be his last battle and asked the 

aide to attend to his books, papers and a 

private box to be turned over to his 

brother. Hale was not with Cross when 

the colonel was mortally wounded, but 

reported that Cross’ last words were, “I 

think the boys will miss me.” 

Briefs 

Post-9/11 Veterans Earn More, 

But Less Likely to be Employed 

A U.S. Congress Joint Economic 

Committee report indicates that employment 

disparities still exist between military 

veterans and nonveterans, with post- 


SoldierSpeak 

On Cherishing a Helmet 

“This helmet has sentimental value for me because it reminds me of my brothers 

in arms whom I deployed with and with whom I became a family,” said Sgt. 

Christopher Thompson of Fort Carson, Colo., on the return of a damaged 

advanced combat helmet that helped him survive the explosion of a roadside 

bomb in Afghanistan in 2011. “It is also a constant reminder to always wear your 

protective gear.” 

On Aging Soldiers 

“I hope I can still fit into my uniform at your age,” said Command Sgt. Maj. R. Ray 

Lewis of the 10th Mountain Division as he met with World War II veteran Charles 

W. Smith, a former private first class drafted into the Army in 1943 and a ski trooper 

with the division in Italy. Smith was wearing his originally issued olive-drab uniform. 

On Saving Money with Hippos 

“One hippo is 2,000 gallons,” said Maj. Hank Coleman, support operations officer 

for the 129th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion at Fort Campbell, Ky. He 

was speaking of the container for keeping large quantities of filtered water being 

used by his unit. “It saves the taxpayers a lot of money since we are not paying a 

contract to transport bottled water,” he said. “We are also reducing a lot of trash 

from packaging.” 

On Nutrition 

“We want the whole base community involved in providing accessible, appropriate 

nutrition to troops and their families,” said Col. Deydre S. Tyhen of Army Medicine. 

“That means the commissary, the exchange, the chow hall and key agencies 

out in town,” she said, noting a DoD committee is working on ways to improve nutrition 

of items sold on military installations in vending machines and shops. 

On Change 

“Each unit in our Army has changed structure and focus at some point in history,” 

said Col. Ryan Janovic, 504th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade commander at 

Fort Hood, Texas. “What has not changed, and what won’t change, is the strength 

of Army intelligence. Our soldiers make that possible, no matter what structure or 

title we take on.” 

On Destiny 

“Way back when I was an enlisted guy in basic training, I made trainee of the cycle 

at Fort Leonard Wood, [Mo.,] and as trainee of the cycle you got to post the colors 

during graduation. I remember coming off the stage after the ceremony and my 

buddy said, ‘God, you looked like a little general standing there,’ and here I am,” 

said Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Richard Sele, deputy commanding general, 108th 

Training Command, in Charlotte, N.C., as he achieved general officer rank. 

On Heroism 

“Everybody was more excited about it than I was,” said Pfc. Jesse Hernandez of 

the 160th Infantry Regiment, California Army National Guard, who rescued 42 

people from a burning, smoke-filled charter bus. “I don’t see myself any different.” 

Hernandez was on his way to his civilian job at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s 

North County Correctional Facility, where he is a custody assistant, when 

he saw smoke and fire coming from the bus. He opened a jammed door; news of 

the rescue spread across TV and social media. 

On Testing 

“You’re a little sleep-deprived, but you have to remember your training. Attention 

to detail is vital during testing,” said Sgt. Matthew Gelperin during testing for the 

Expert Field Medical Badge at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. “Slow is smooth and 

smooth is fast. You hear that all the time but it really holds true.” 

9/11 veterans facing a slightly higher unemployment 

rate than nonveterans. Further, 

post-9/11 veterans who served in 

Afghanistan have an unemployment rate 

of 10.5 percent, compared with 7.1 percent 

for Iraq veterans and 7.8 percent of 

veterans who served elsewhere. 

However, some minority veterans fare 

better in the job market than their nonveteran 

counterparts, and post-9/11 veterans 

earn more than their nonveteran peers. 

The report, which is based on data 

from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, says 

the unemployment rate of post-9/11 veterans 

averaged 6 percent over the past 

year, but it has fallen steadily from its 

peak of 12.1 percent in 2011. In comparison, 

the unemployment rate of nonveterans 

is 5.3 percent. 

Female post-9/11 veterans fare worse 

than their male counterparts, with an 

unemployment rate of 6.7 percent. That 

compares to an unemployment rate of 

5.9 percent for male post-9/11 veterans, 

and 5.1 percent for women who have 

never served in the military, according to 

the report. 

The report notes that the disparity in 

jobless rates between whites and some 

minorities is smaller in the post-9/11 veteran 

population. For example, African- 

American post-9/11 veterans have a jobless 

rate of 9.5 percent, compared to 6.4 

percent of white post-9/11 veterans. 

Among nonveterans, however, the jobless 

rate of African-Americans is 11.3 percent, 

compared to 5.1 percent for whites. 

The report also says that in 2013, median 

earnings for post-9/11 veterans 

were about 11 percent higher than earnings 

of their nonveteran peers. 

No Going to the Dogs in 3-1AD: 

Every Member Must Meet Standards 

When American bulldog Cpl. Cody 

Chester VII reported as the new mascot of 

the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored 

Division, at Fort Bliss, Texas, he 

was 20 pounds overweight and deemed 

unfit for duty. “Chester,” said Bulldog 

Brigade commander Col. Barry “Chip” 

Daniels, “will have to meet the Army 

weight standard like every other soldier.” 

The dog had to lose 20 pounds 

and finish a 1-mile run. Some soldiers 

doubted he could do it. 

Handler Spc. Khalil Afflitto worked 

with Chester six days a week for six 


pursuits, and only 53 percent believed 

their educational institutions appreciated 

the assets veterans bring to a group. 

About 79 percent of respondents felt 

comfortable sharing their military experience 

with others, but 1 in 5 did not. 

They felt disconnected from the civilian 

world, perhaps because veterans make up 

barely 3 percent of the U.S. college population 

and many are older than their 

fellow students. 

U.S. Army/Sgt. Jose Ramirez 

Cpl. Chester 

months as the bulldog ate healthfully and 

exercised by chasing rabbits and running 

up and down stairs. 

Chester bested the skeptics. He lost 

25 pounds and led a 3-mile commemorative 

run the division held in the fall. 

An obstacle course is in the offing. 

Daniels “wanted physically and mentally 

tough soldiers,” Afflitto said, “and 

that’s just what Cpl. Chester is. He 

wears corporal stripes for a reason.” 

Veterans Say Education Benefits 

Are No. 1 Reason to Join Military 

Transitioning service members and recent 

veterans credit the military with instilling 

in them traits that contribute to 

success as well as endowing them with 

benefits that help advance their education, 

according to a recent study by the 

Institute for Veterans and Military Families 

at Syracuse (N.Y.) University. 

The study, “Missing Perspectives: Servicemembers’ 

Transition from Service to 

Civilian Life,” involved more than 8,500 

veterans, active-duty military members, 

National Guard and Reserve members 

and military dependents. A total of 83 

percent of those surveyed were veterans, 

with the largest percentage—63 percent—post-9/11 

veterans. About 47 percent 

of all respondents were either commissioned 

or enlisted in the Army. 

The study found that educational 

benefits and service to country were top 

motivators to join the military, followed 

by adventure. Also, 88 percent reported 

that joining the military was a good decision. 

The respondents said the military 

developed discipline, teamwork, leadership 

and management skills, and mental 

toughness. 

The biggest challenges for transitioning 

military members were navigating 

the VA administration or benefits (60 

percent), landing a job (55 percent), getting 

socialized to civilian culture (41 percent) 

and financial struggles (40 percent). 

Only 20 percent ranked university 

culture and climate as a challenge. Many 

respondents, however, noted that working, 

family responsibilities and money 

problems accompanied their educational 

New Applications Aim to Improve 

Soldiers’ Lives at Work, Home 

Applications developed by and for soldiers 

are focused on improving quality of 

life, while a new online store makes it 

easier to obtain Army mobile apps. 

During a 2014 rotation to Korea, Sgt. 

1st Class Ronnie Russell of the 1st Cavalry 

Division at Fort Hood, Texas, remembered 

how he had struggled to get 

around on his first deployment there. He 

tapped Google and YouTube to learn 

how to create an app that would help 

soldiers navigate from place to place and 

provide other helpful travel and military 

information. 

He polled his platoon members about 

features they would like to see included 

and incorporated their ideas. The app, 

Penn Around, has bus schedules and taxi 

listings, post exchange vendors, lodging 

information, and sexual assault and suicide 

prevention assistance and resources. 

“Whatever you needed as a soldier out 

there, it eventually ended up on the 

app,” said Sgt. Melvin Dizon, one of 

Russell’s soldiers. 

COMMAND SERGEANTS MAJOR and SERGEANTS MAJOR CHANGES* 

Command Sgt. 

Maj. C.W. Albertson 

from 75th 

Ranger Regiment, 

Fort Benning, Ga., 

to 10th Mountain 

Div., Fort Drum, N.Y. 

Sgt. Maj. J.K. 

Borgeson from 1st 

Armored Div. Ops., 

Fort Bliss, Texas, to 

TRADOC G-3/5/7, 

Fort Eustis, Va. 

Command Sgt. 

Maj. K.M. Graham 

from OTC, Fort 

Hood, Texas, to 

20th CBRNE Cmd., 

APG, Md. 

Command Sgt. 

Maj. M.D. McCoy 

from USAG Camp 

Humphreys, 

South Korea, to 

CECOM, APG. 

■ APG—Aberdeen Proving Ground; CBRNE—Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosives; 

CECOM—U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Cmd.; OTC—U.S. Army Operational Test Cmd.; TRADOC— 

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Cmd.; USAG—U.S. Army Garrison. 

*Command sergeants major and sergeants major positions assigned to general officer commands 


In Texas, Russell, a single father, 

turned to helping himself. He wanted to 

know safe neighborhoods for his son as 

well as events occurring around post and 

in neighboring towns. He created an app 

called Tx Corral that contains Internet 

feeds of law enforcement agencies and 

contacts for many other central Texas 

services. Both apps are free. 

College student Tyler Skluzacek and 

four friends entered the computer programming 

competition HackDC, and 

created an app for smartwatches that 

helps veterans suffering from post-traumatic 

stress disorder get some rest. 

Skluzacek was inspired by his father, a 

former sergeant first class convoy commander 

who spent a year in Iraq and 

came home with night terrors associated 

with PTSD. 

The app is called myBivy; “bivy” is 

slang for bivouac. It tracks sleeping patterns 

and searches for symptoms of the 

onset of a panic attack. It’s designed to 

forestall an episode by disrupting the 

pattern with vibrations or noises without 

waking up a person. Skluzacek’s father 

wears a smartwatch with the app to bed 

every night. 

Skluzacek and his team are customizing 

the app for other sufferers. He hopes 

it will be ready to test this month and 

launch in March. It is a “Band-Aid,” he 

says, not a cure, but he’s hopeful it can 

improve quality of life. 

Both new apps might be candidates 

for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine 

Command online store called the 

TRADOC Application Gateway, or 

TAG (www.adtdl.army.mil). TAG stood 

up in the fall to make the command’s 

apps and interactive digital publications 

available for download. It started with a 

limited number of apps; by the end of 

this month, there should be anywhere 

from 100 to 150 apps supporting three 

different platforms. 

Army Casualties in Iraq 

The following U.S. Army soldier 

died supporting Operation Inherent 

Resolve Nov. 1–30. His name 

was released through DoD; his 

family has been notified. 

Pvt. Christopher J. Castaneda, 19 

GENERAL OFFICER 

CHANGES* 

Maj. Gen. B.R. 

Holcomb from CG, 

RHC-C(P), Market 

Mgr., SAMHS, and 

Chief, ANC, JB San 

Antonio, to Dep. 

CG, Ops., MEDCOM, 

and Chief, ANC, JB 

San Antonio. 

Maj. Gen. D.D. 

Rogers Jr. from 

Spec. Asst. to the 

Cmdr., USSOCOM, 

MacDill AFB, Fla., 

to Cmdr., SOC- 

CENT, CENTCOM, 

MacDill AFB. 

Maj. Gen. T.R 

Tempel Jr. from CG, 

WRMC, Market Mgr., 

Puget Sound eMSM, 

and Chief, U.S. Army 

Dental Corps, JB 

Lewis-McChord, 

Wash., to CG, 

RHC-C-(P), Market 

Mgr., SAMHS, and 

Chief, U.S. Army 

Dental Corps, JB 

San Antonio. 

Brigadier Generals: S.E. Brower from Dep. Chief, Ops., ODR-P, to Dep. CG, 101st Airborne Div. (AA); W.E. 

Cole from Dep. CG, RDECOM, and CG, NSSC, Natick, Mass., to Dep. PEO, Missiles and Space, RA, Ala.; M. Dillard, 

USAR, from Cmdr., TPU, 310th ESC, Indianapolis, to Dep. CG, TPU, 99th RSC, JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, 

N.J.; J.J. Heck, USAR, from Dep. Cmdr., TPU, 3rd Medical Cmd., MSE, Fort Gillem, Ga., to Dep. Surgeon 

and Dir., IMA, Reserve Readiness, Jt. Staff, Washington, D.C.; W.B. Mason III, USAR, from Cmdr., TPU, 

350th CAC, Pensacola, Fla., to Dir., IMA, IMSG, USAJFKSWCS, Fort Bragg, N.C.; G.J. Mosser, USAR, from Dep. 

CG, TPU, 99th RSC, JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, to Cmdr., TPU, 364th ESC, Marysville, Wash.; P.D. Sargent 

from CG, PRMC, Cmd. Surgeon, USARPAC, Sr. Market Mgr., Hawaii eMSM, and Chief, MSC, Honolulu, to CG, 

RHC-P(P), Cmd. Surgeon, USARPAC, Sr. Market Mgr., Hawaii eMSM, and Chief, MSC, Honolulu; E.H. Torring 

III from Staff Veterinarian, AAFES HQ, and Chief, U.S. Army Veterinary Corps, Dallas, to Dep. CG, RHC-A(P), 

and Chief, U.S. Army Veterinary Corps, Fort Belvoir, Va. 

■ AA—Air Assault; AAFES—Army Air Force Exchange Service; AFB—Air Force Base; ANC—U.S. Army Nurse 

Corps; CAC—Civil Affairs Cmd.; CENTCOM—U.S. Central Cmd.; eMSM—Enhanced Multi-Service Market; 

ESC—Sustainment Cmd. (Expeditionary); HQ—Headquarters; IMA—Individual Mobilization Augmentee; 

IMSG—Institute for Military Support to Governance; JB—Joint Base; MEDCOM—U.S. Army Medical Cmd.; 

MSC—U.S. Army Medical Service Corps; MSE—Mission Support Element; NSSC—Natick Soldier Systems Ctr.; 

ODR-P—Office of the Defense Representative-Pakistan; PEO—Program Executive Officer; PRMC—Pacific Regional 

Medical Cmd.; RA—Redstone Arsenal; RDECOM—U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering 

Cmd.; RHC-A(P)—Regional Health Cmd., Atlantic (Provisional); RHC-C(P)—Regional Health Cmd., Central 

(Provisional); RHC-P(P)—Regional Health Cmd., Pacific (Provisional); RSC—Regional Support Cmd.; SAMHS— 

San Antonio Military Health System; SOCCENT—Special Operations Cmd.-Central; TPU—Troop Program Unit; 

USAJFKSWCS—U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Ctr. and School; USAR—U.S. Army Reserve; US- 

ARPAC—U.S. Army Pacific; USSOCOM—U.S. Special Operations Cmd.; WRMC—Western Regional Medical 

Cmd. 

*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. 

SENIOR EXECUTIVE 

SERVICE 

ANNOUNCEMENTS 

L. Muzzelo, Tier 2, 

from Dir., Software 

Engineering Ctr., to 

Dep. to the Cmdr., 

CECOM, LCMC, 

AMC, APG, Md. 

M. Esparraguera, 

Tier 2, from Chief 

Counsel, CECOM, 

AMC, APG, to Dir., 

Civilian Personnel, 

Labor and Employment 

Law, 

OTJAG, Washington, 

D.C. 

B. Pike, Tier 2, from 

Dep. PEO to PEO, 

Missiles and Space, 

OASA (AL&T), RA, 

Ala. 

Tier 1: S. Turner, from Dep. General Counsel for Procurement, Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer, 

NNSA, Office of General Counsel, Washington, D.C., to Deputy Chief Counsel, USACE, Washington, D.C. 

■ AMC—U.S. Army Materiel Cmd.; APG—Aberdeen Proving Ground; CECOM—U.S. Army Communications- 

Electronics Cmd.; LCMC—Life Cycle Management Cmd.; NNSA—National Nuclear Safety Administration; 

OASA (AL&T)—Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology); OTJAG— 

Office of the Judge Advocate General; PEO—Program Executive Officer; RA—Redstone Arsenal; USACE—U.S. 

Army Corps of Engineers. 


Army National Guard 

Helps Field Fossils 

A New Mexico Army National Guard 

Black Hawk crew from the 171st 

Aviation Regiment airlifts a sling 

load of the plaster-encased remains 

of a baby Pentaceratops for delivery 

in late fall from the New Mexico Badlands 

to the New Mexico Museum 

of Natural History and Science in 

Albuquerque. After months of planning 

and collaboration, 200th Infantry 

Regiment soldiers prepared and 

sling-loaded the fossils of a baby 

dinosaur as well as the skull of an 

adult Pentaceratops. The loads 

weighed close to 4,500 and 5,500 

pounds, respectively. For the last leg 

of the trip, the fossils were unloaded 

onto a waiting trailer by soldiers 

from the 1116th Transportation 

Company. 

Is a Breakthrough Possible 

On the Korean Peninsula? 

The waning days of 2015 were busy 

for U.S. Forces Korea. It hosted visits 

from U.S. military leaders following insults 

and threats between North Korea 

and South Korea. The divided countries 

agreed in late November to resume highlevel 

talks. 

A few months earlier, in August, land 

mines injured two South Korean soldiers 

patrolling near the border. South Korea 

and U.N. Command/Combined Forces 

Command/U.S. Forces Korea, led by 

Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, accused 

North Korea of planting the munitions. 

A meeting between North and South 

Korea was held later that month in the 

Joint Security Area on the border at Panmunjom. 

It ended with an agreement to 

continue talks and allow for the first visits 

in more than a year between families 

divided between North and South. 

In late October, several hundred South 

Koreans—many visiting for the first time 

since the 1953 armistice that ended the 

Korean War—traveled to North Korea 

for reunions with family members. Relations 

between the two countries then returned 

to a standstill marked by more 

name-calling and belligerence. 

Top U.S. brass started visiting in the 

fall. First came Gen. Vincent Brooks, 

commanding general of U.S. Pacific 

Command, who met with South Korean 

generals in October. He was followed by 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine 

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, who held a 

discussion with the Republic of Korea 

Joint Chiefs of Staff in November; and 

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who attended 

the 47th U.S.-South Korea Security 

Consultative Meeting in November. 

—Stories by Toni Eugene 

HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON 

Proud of each of you — Appreciate 

your willingness to serve our country. 

– Gordon Sullivan 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS 

To all our service men and 

women, we wish you a very 

happy holiday season. Thank you 

for all the sacrifices you make 

to protect our freedom. 

– General (R) John Coburn 

and VT Systems 

U.S. Army National Guard/Sgt. 1st Class Anna Doo 


Front & Center 

America: Step Up, Wake Up, Wise Up 

By Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, U.S. Army retired 

The American Security Council Foundation 

has produced a noble program 

called Step Up America, which is 

designed to help educate young Americans 

about their culture, their government, 

and the history of the design and 

growth of the most successful, powerful 

and humanitarian nation the world has 

ever seen. 

Unfortunately, there is now a requirement 

for a corollary program. Some 

might call it Wake Up America, but I 

think Wise Up America is more appropriate. 

Existing forces—some domestic, 

some international—are working or 

threatening to damage, if not destroy, 

our nation. 

The world has become more unfriendly, 

principally the Islamic terrorists 

who are not averse to a generational 

religious war fought with suicide attacks 

from land, sea or air—or with weapons 

of mass destruction, should they become 

available. That threat is growing, 

destabilizing the Muslim world, invading 

Europe and Africa, and creating 

subversive cells in the United States. 

A second threat is the expansionism 

of Russia, which has committed air 

power to settle the Muslim disagreements 

and establish a foothold in Syria, 

building an airfield to protect its naval 

base. No ground forces are to be committed 

except, of course, a few thousand 

to secure the air base. From these operations 

will come an influence on control 

of the production and distribution of 

Mideast oil, and access and egress in the 

Persian Gulf. Additionally, Russian action 

in Eastern Europe threatens its 

neighbors with indications of wishing to 

restore some of the borders of the Soviet 

Union, some of which include NATO 

nations. 

Another disruptive threat encompasses 

East and Southeast Asia, where 

the North Koreans are ever more dangerous 

as they contemplate the use of 

their nuclear arsenal to reunite the 

peninsula. The role of China in another 

Korean dispute is unknown, but the 

steady buildup of Chinese military capabilities 

and their claim to sovereignty 

over islands and waterways in the South 

China Sea are potential trouble spots. 

Threats to U.S. naval operations in the 

Western Pacific from both China and 

North Korea are tangible. 

The threat list includes many more 

potential requirements for a countermilitary 

involvement: protecting embassies, 

cyberwarfare, border disputes, 

and the growth and use of weapons of 

mass destruction around the world. We 

are committed formally and morally to 

allies around the world (NATO, Israel, 

South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan) and 

perhaps to places where unforeseen 

crises occur (Kuwait, Grenada, Bosnia). 

There can be no doubt about the potential 

need for capable joint American 

forces to be ready to combat such 

threats. Instead, we have an antiquated 

nuclear deterrent of suspect reliability, 

and conventional forces that are being 

reduced by budget and structure limitations 

to a state of questionable capability 

for achieving the minimum requirements 

of the National Defense Strategy. 

Specific details of the limitations of the 

joint forces are beyond the scope of this 

column, but those of the Army component 

essential for any operation are especially 

worrisome. 

Current defense strategy for which an 

Army of 490,000 active, 205,000 Reserve 

and 350,000 National Guard soldiers 

was considered adequate by the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff is now programmed 

at an “acceptable” 450,000, 195,000 and 

335,000, respectively; and forebodingly, 

at an “affordable” 420,000, 185,000 and 

315,000. But end-strength reductions 

are not the only worrisome issue. The 

impact on Army combat capabilities includes 

a drastic loss of experience as the 

captains, majors, colonels and sergeants 

of the recent wars must be terminated. 

The Defense Officer Personnel Management 

Act requires reductions of officers 

by grade as percentages of the total 

force. Other congressional limitations 

apply the same kind of rules to noncommissioned 

officers. The officer reductions 

are further increased by the 

normal practice of introducing thousands 

of second lieutenants earning 

commissions as they graduate from the 

U.S. Military Academy and ROTC colleges 

who must be assimilated to maintain 

a year-group balance in the force. 

Finally, there are requirements to continue 

social changes that will force additional 

leaders out. It will take years to 

restore the leadership experience that 

will be lost. 

Modernization of the Army becomes 

almost a dead issue as more than 100 

weapons and equipment programs are 

modified or canceled and new starts are 

halted completely. Army structure, measured 

in brigade combat teams, will be 

reduced more than 40 percent while the 

mission requirements continue to demand 

the same rate of rapid rotation 

burdened by soldiers during the last 

decade. 

The Army will continue to provide 

the high-quality forces to respond immediately 

to meet crisis needs. But very 

early and against any well-prepared enemy, 

it will be faced with expending 

rather than sustaining combat efforts. A 

replica of the Bataan Death March is a 

haunting portent. The move from step 

up to wake up to wise up is already at 

hand for both Congress and the American 

people. 

■ 

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. 


What Lessons Should We Take From the Iraq War? 

By Emma Sky 

On Nov. 5, 2015, I spoke as part of 

the Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer Lecture 

Series sponsored by the Association of 

the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare. 

I was opposed to the 2003 Iraq 

War. But I set out in my talk to explain 

why Iraq had descended into civil war 

following the 2003 invasion; why it 

came out of civil war during the Surge; 

and why it has gone back into civil war. 

De-Baath-ification and dissolving the 

security forces collapsed Iraq’s already 

weakened state in 2003. In the power 

vacuum, gangs and militias flourished. 

U.S. policies inadvertently accentuated 

the divisions in society and institutionalized 

sectarianism in the new structures it 

set up. The new elites put in power by 

the U.S. had little grass-roots support 

and used sectarianism to mobilize the 

population. The civil war was exacerbated 

by al-Qaida and Iran, which presented 

themselves as the defenders of 

Sunnis and Shiites, respectively, and 

fanned the flames. 

Iraq emerged from its civil war by 

mid-2008. During the Surge, the U.S. 

military changed its tactics to focus on 

population security, outreach to insurgents, 

and precise targeting of those 

deemed irreconcilable. The Surge helped 

bring about a shift in the strategic calculus 

of the various groups: They stopped 

using violence. The U.S. military brokered 

cease-fires and truces among Iraq’s 

competing groups. 

All the indicators were positive, and we 

hoped elections would produce a political 

settlement and power-sharing that would 

set Iraq irreversibly on the path toward 

stability. The turnout for the 2010 elections 

was high. The elections were closely 

contested, with the Iraqiya coalition, 

which campaigned on a platform of “no 

to sectarianism” and “Iraq for all Iraqis,” 

narrowly winning the most seats. 

Unfortunately, in our rush for the exit, 

the U.S. failed to uphold the 2010 election 

results. Nouri al-Maliki secured a 

second term as prime minister, with the 

support of Iran. His policies marginalized 

Sunnis further and created an environment 

that enabled the Islamic State 

group to rise up out of the ashes of al- 

Qaida. And Sunnis, who had previously 

contained al-Qaida in Iraq, determined 

that the Islamic State was the lesser of 

two evils when compared with Maliki’s 

Iranian-backed regime. The Islamic 

State is not the root cause of the problems 

in Iraq but rather a symptom of the 

breakdown of an inclusive political order. 

So what should we learn from the Iraq 

War? 

First, nothing that happened in Iraq 

after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein 

in 2003 was preordained or inevitable. 

There were different potential futures for 

the country. There were hopes of a world 

without Saddam, and the missed opportunities 

to create a better order. We have 

seen the unintended consequences of our 

action as well as our nonaction. We need 

to show greater humility. We need to investigate, 

in a bipartisan way, what went 

wrong and why so that we better understand 

the limitations of external actors in 

foreign lands—and where it is we can 

have influence. 

Second, it’s all about their politics. We 

tend to frame things in terms of good 

guys and bad guys. But really, it is all 

about power struggles. Those we excluded 

from power sought to bring 

down the new order; those whom we 

empowered sought to use the country’s 

resources for their own interests, to subvert 

the nascent democratic institutions, 

and to use the security forces we trained 

and equipped to intimidate their rivals. 

There was more we could have done to 

broker an inclusive agreement among 

the elites to create a better balance of 

power in Iraq—and to better balance 

power in the region. 

Third, we need a national strategy. 

Our civilian leadership needs to be more 

realistic in the goals it sets and the assumptions 

it makes. It also needs to better 

develop an overall strategy to bring 

about a political outcome. If and when 

military force is used, it should be as a 

means to bring about the desired political 

outcome, not as an end in itself. Critically, 

we need better diplomats and a 

more capable State Department, properly 

resourced by Congress. We also 

need senior military leaders who are better 

able to explain to their civilian masters 

the limitations of military force and 

its utility. We have many tactical generals; 

we need more strategic generals. We 

claim to have the best military in the 

world. So why do we lose our wars? 

The Iraq War led to the deaths of over 

150,000 Iraqis and 4,500 U.S. military 

members; to regional meltdown; and to 

Our civilian leadership needs to be more realistic in the goals 

it sets and the assumptions it makes. It also needs to better 

develop an overall strategy to bring about a political outcome. 

the proliferation of jihadis. If we don’t 

learn anything from the Iraq War, then 

all that sacrifice, all that loss of blood and 

treasure, will have been for nothing. 

If we don’t take stock of who we are as 

a country, what we stand for and what 

our national interests are, the Iraq War 

might mark not only the end of America’s 

moment in the Middle East, but the 

end of Pax Americana globally. 

I hope not, because as the Middle East 

shows, the vacuum left by the withdrawal 

of the U.S. will be filled by others: Russia, 

Iran, China and nonstate actors. 

I hope not, because America has given 

so much to the world—and has much 

more to contribute to making the world 

more peaceful and prosperous for all 

mankind. 

■ 

Emma Sky, director of Yale World Fellows, 

is author of The Unraveling: High 

Hopes and Missed Opportunities in 

Iraq. She served in Iraq from 2003 to 

2004 as the governorate coordinator 

of Kirkuk, and from 2007 to 2010 as 

political adviser to Gen. Raymond T. 

Odierno, then-commanding general of 

U.S. Forces in Iraq. 


Syria Operations Sending all the Wrong Signals 

By Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, U.S. Army retired 

The Obama administration announced enemy.” That kind of operational advantage 

does not scale well to theater-wide 

a shift in strategy last October when 

it acknowledged the deployment of a problems like displacing the Islamic 

small number of special operations forces State’s territorial control over broad 

into Syria. The move is part of American spaces in Syria and Iraq. There are not 

efforts to counter the Islamic State, the enough SOF to take back Iraq. 

transnational terrorist group that has established 

territorial control over significursors 

to a sequence of defined cam- 

Nor do SOF operations look like precant 

parts of the country and Iraq. paign activities to break the back of the 

The latest transnational terrorist attack 

in the heart of Paris looks to have tactics, not strategy. From the larger per- 

Islamic State. SOF in Syria are all about 

had little impact on the administration’s spective of troubles sweeping the region, 

assessment of what needs to be done to the response is wholly inadequate. 

defeat the group. The president undoubtedly 

has great confidence in the of its high-profile decisions on the em- 

Yet the administration, as with many 

course of action he has picked. 

ployment of U.S. forces, suggests the 

While intended to respond to concerns move has strategic significance, demonstrating 

America is still actively engaged. 

that the U.S. is doing too little to address 

the spiraling violence in the Middle This is not the first time the White 

East, the deployment raises troubling House has chosen to highlight the president’s 

role in directing military opera- 

concerns. President Barack Obama’s way 

of war is transforming the American tions. What is troubling is that the practice 

has become an end rather than a 

armed forces from an instrument tasked 

to accomplish military missions to a means and a significant misapplication of 

tool for strategic signaling. Making U.S. military force, particularly land power. 

force of arms the handmaiden of U.S. The Constitution assigns the president 

responsibilities as commander in 

diplomacy is a hallmark of this administration, 

and it is a dangerous mistake. chief. It gives the chief executive wide 

For starters, deploying special operations 

forces (SOF) in Syria is no game frame this exercise of command au- 

discretion in how he or she chooses to 

changer. As retired Adm. William H. thority. President George Washington 

McRaven, former commander of U.S. elected to command troops in the field 

Special Operations Command, explains during the Whiskey Rebellion, as did 

in Spec Ops: Case Studies in Operations President James Madison when the government 

fled the British occupation of 

Warfare: Theory and Practice, SOF operations 

done right deliver relative superiority 

over an adversary at a particular time 1812. Those were acts intended to instill 

Washington, D.C., during the War of 

and place. The advantage is transitory— confidence within the shaky new republic. 

The “White House on horseback” did 

intended to help set conditions for a 

winning campaign. There may be valid not become the norm, but a precedent 

missions for SOF in Syria, but a few was established: It was up to the president 

to decide how to act presidential. 

teams by themselves on the ground are 

not going to change the direction of the President Abraham Lincoln’s experiences 

during the great trials of the Civil 

war any more than a dose of aspirin is 

going to cure cancer. 

War remain the quintessential case study 

Further, it is far from clear the deployment 

foreshadows a major change in manding the military forces of a democ- 

of a chief executive struggling with com- 

how the administration plans to take racy. Eliot A. Cohen’s book Supreme 

down the Islamic State group. Certainly, Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership 

in Wartime offers a compelling 

piling on more SOF is no solution. “Relative 

superiority,” McRaven explains, “is treatment of Lincoln’s leadership. 

a condition that exists when an attacking President Franklin D. Roosevelt 

force, generally smaller, gains a decisive largely eschewed any effort to make it 

advantage over a larger or well-defended appear that he was directing military 

forces. Recalled to active duty, Adm. 

William D. Leahy served as the personal 

chief of staff to Roosevelt throughout 

World War II. Leahy’s purpose was 

more about ensuring the Navy didn’t feel 

outvoted among the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

and to provide a card-playing partner for 

the president, rather than to make it appear 

the war was being run out of the 

White House. 

On occasion, modern presidents have 

fostered the image of moving the mantle 

of military decisionmaking closer to the 

Oval Office. Although President Dwight 

D. Eisenhower personally chaired substantive 

National Security Council meetings, 

publicly he preferred the hiddenhand 

approach, masking his deeply 

personal role in directing national strategy. 

His style of leading is neatly captured 

in Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s 

Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan 

Thomas. Perhaps the greatest contrast to 

this approach was the iconic White 

House publicity photo of President Lyndon 

B. Johnson pondering over the 

sandbox depicting the siege of Khe Sanh 

during the Vietnam War. 

Arguably, no modern presidential administration 

has consciously and consistently 

sought to highlight the military decisionmaking 

of the president more than 

this one. Big and small decisions have 

framed the president as the decider in 

chief. Early on, the administration made 

a very high-profile effort to demonstrate 

that the decision for the scope of the 

Surge in Afghanistan came out of the 

Oval Office. The president also took a 

high-profile, personal role in reshaping 

missile defense plans for Europe. Further, 

the administration made a concerted 

effort to ensure the world knew 

the White House had decided to lead 

from behind in Libya. 

In smaller measure, the Oval Office 

made clear the president greenlighted 

the effort to rescue Merchant Marine 

Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, 

the mission to take down Osama 

bin Laden, the release of Sgt. Robert 

“Bowe” Bergdahl, and the high-profile 

but largely irrelevant effort to assist in 

the Ebola outbreak in Africa. 


There is, of course, nothing untoward 

about using the symbolism of the 

president’s office to highlight the function 

as commander in chief. That is completely 

at the discretion of the president. 

What is troubling are the kinds of messages 

that this administration is sending. 

The Obama doctrine is suffused with 

the belief that coercive military power is 

not just the last resort, but that the use of 

force is counterproductive to effective 

statecraft. Rather than employ military 

power to achieve specific military ends, 

the president believes force is most useful 

for sending the message that he is willing 

to use force. In this way, force complements 

soft power, establishing conditions 

for engagement or, alternatively, 

creating opportunities for the U.S. to 

disengage from a problem. 

There are, of course, times when the 

show-of-force gambit makes sense. Most 

famously, President John F. Kennedy 

used a naval blockade during the Cuban 

missile crisis to send a signal to the Soviets 

that he was serious about keeping nuclear 

weapons away from Havana. The 

blockade was not a military solution to 

the problem; the ships were there to start 

the conversation on de-escalating the 

conflict. President Ronald Reagan pushed 

through the deployment of intermediaterange 

nuclear weapons and then turned 

around and negotiated away their removal, 

using military power to jumpstart 

strategic negotiations with the Soviet 

Union. 

These examples of presidential leadership 

are of different character than what 

we are seeing now. Today, instead of occasionally 

using force for signal-sending 

as just one of many tools of statecraft, 

the practice has become a habit. 

The negative consequences of turning 

a tactic into a strategy are significant. Of 

first concern, the practice encourages allowing 

the capacity and capabilities of 

the armed forces to atrophy. If military 

forces are mostly to make an impression, 

then it matters less if they can conduct 

sustained combat operations. According 

to the Heritage Foundation’s “2016 Index 

of U.S. Military Strength,” the current 

state of the armed forces—as objectively 

measured against threats and 

missions—is, overall, only marginal. The 

state of land forces is particularly poor. 

The rating of the U.S. Army dropped 

over the previous year’s rating, primarily 

because of the reduction in active-duty 

forces. 

Another apprehension with this practice 

is the potential for miscalculation. 

Using modest coercive force to send signals 

risks that the signals could be misinterpreted 

or even ignored. This could 

lead to unintended escalation in military 

conflict. 

Further, the incremental use of force 

—meting out just enough military action 

to send the right signal—raises the 

prospects for tactical and operational 

failure. The forces assigned to the task 

might easily turn out to be short of 

what’s required to accomplish the missions 

they have been assigned or to adequately 

protect themselves. Additionally, 

military missions designed to send signals 

could impose rules of engagement or 

other restrictions that might unduly put 

forces at risk. 

For most matters of protecting the nation’s 

vital interests, coercive military 

force ought to be the tool of last resort. 

When employed, however, force should 

be used in a manner that ensures success. 

Diverting from that practice when the 

necessities of statecraft demand so makes 

sense. On the other hand, it makes no 

sense for the commander in chief to 

make signal-sending the norm for using 

military power. 

■ 

Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, USA Ret., a 

25-year Army veteran, is a Heritage 

Foundation vice president in charge of 

the think tank’s policy research in defense 

and foreign affairs. 

Firefights 50 Years Apart 

Offer Valuable Lessons 

By Col. James J. Coghlan Jr., U.S. Army retired 

Retired Col. Richard D. Hooker Jr.’s rence, I sought to report what happened, 

“Ride to the Sound of the Guns” identify pertinent influences, and provide 

(September 2015), about the epic battle a record of how we attempted to cope 

in Afghanistan’s Ganjgal Valley in 2009, with it. 

recalls a time early in North Vietnam’s The underlying factor was then-Secretary 

of Defense Robert S. McNa- 

1968 Tet Offensive when an infantry 

battalion en route to Hue, South Vietnam, 

requested artillery fire that was not air mobility would be achieved by an exmara’s 

insistence in the early 1960s that 

forthcoming. The units involved were tensive reduction of ground vehicles. In 

the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division compliance, planners reduced the number 

of ground vehicles from the standard 

(Airmobile); its attached 2nd Battalion, 

12th Cavalry Regiment; and the 1st Battalion, 

21st Field Artillery, which was in the airmobile division. They substituted 

division’s 1,920 to a total of 1,330 for 

direct support of the 3rd Brigade and lighter trucks for those of higher capacity, 

and reduced the number of 2 1/2-ton 

under my command. 

The circumstances of the firefights in trucks from 648 to 116. In so doing, they 

Afghanistan and Vietnam differ. At made the direct-support artillery of the 

Ganjgal in 2009, intermediate commanders 

restricted the delivery of fires from mobile. The 105 mm firing batteries lost 

Vietnam era’s 1st Cavalry Division im- 

artillery already in place. During Tet in their howitzers’ prime movers and ended 

1968, the brigade commander misappropriated 

a direct-support artillery battery’s To call attention to this immobility, 

up with only two 1/4-ton trucks. 

CH-47A medium cargo Chinook transport 

and used it to move the 2nd Battal- 

Command included these limitations 

U.S. Army Combat Developments 

ion into the forward area. This delayed when it wrote the battalions’ basic organization 

document: The unit would de- 

establishment of the brigade’s base of fire 

until after it had committed the artillery pend completely on helicopters to transport 

soldiers in and out of tactical field 

battery. 

Such a train of events could happen positions; and delivery of supplies for the 

again. In the hope of avoiding a recur- 

battalion would rely on helicopters pro- 


vided by units of the division’s aviation 

group. 

For these tasks, the 11th Aviation 

Group had 48 Chinooks; enough, it was 

contemplated, to lift the combat elements 

of three 105 mm firing batteries 

simultaneously. For moving infantry, the 

11th Aviation Group’s 120 UH-1D light 

Huey helicopters were thought adequate 

to simultaneously transport the assault 

elements of two infantry battalions. In 

two years of troop tests, proponents 

melded these aircraft and troops to produce 

a workable operating procedure for 

airmobile combat: 

■ Within range of artillery, a rifle 

company in Hueys seizes a landing zone 

suitable for use as a base of fire. 

■ On order, a 105 mm artillery battery 

borne by Chinooks follows. 

■ The battery supports subsequent air 

assaults by other rifle companies. 

Following this procedure, the 1st Cavalry 

Division (Airmobile) had conducted 

hundreds of such air assaults before it arrived 

in Hue in late January 1968. 

That region was challenging and from 

our first day, we received disquieting intelligence. 

Reconnaissance elements reported 

signs of heavy foot traffic, and 

villagers spoke of passing North Vietnamese 

Army units exhorting them to 

join in a forthcoming national uprising. 

More lethal were three consecutive 

nights of mortar attacks, followed by 

news that the North Vietnamese had 

seized Hue. 

Over the next three days, we artillerymen 

repeatedly asked the 

brigade commander and his staff about 

future operations, but the catchphrase 

in his headquarters was: “If we make a 

plan, someone will come along and tell 

us to execute it.” 

Accordingly, it was not until the 

brigade commander issued his fiveparagraph 

field order at 1400 hours on 

Feb. 2 that we learned what was going 

to happen. Instead of using the more 

numerous and nimble Hueys to move 

the 2nd Battalion forward, the brigade 

commander planned to use the only helicopters 

that could lift the artillery’s 

howitzers: the Chinooks. They would 

carry the 2nd Battalion in a single lift to 

the dirt airstrip at Van Xa, 11 kilometers 

from Camp Evans. Once it arrived, 

the battalion would proceed to Hue on 

foot. Meanwhile, the Chinooks would 

fly back to Camp Evans and move the 

battery. 

As the brigade commander spoke, the 

Chinooks thundered overhead on their 

way to pick up the 2nd Battalion. As 

soon as he completed his operation order, 

he absented himself from his command 

post. It was too late to effect any 

changes. 

I was astonished that any commander 

would place a maneuver element in imminent 

contact without first establishing 

a base of fire. If anything went wrong, 

the battalion would be at extreme risk, 

made all the more acute because of the 

degradation in infantry heavy-weapons 

employment that had taken place over 

the years in Vietnam. 

In fleeting engagements against an 

elusive enemy, there was little need for 

cumbersome heavy weapons, especially 

when field artillery could fire in support 

from the battalion fire base. Accordingly, 

the infantry battalion’s 13 M29 

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81 mm mortars and 18 M67 90 mm recoilless 

rifles fell into disuse and were 

habitually left at base camp. 

We also did not foresee in Tet that 

the North Vietnamese Army had 

changed its tactics. No longer would it 

engage U.S. troops in the fleeting engagements 

of guerrilla-style warfare. Instead, 

it opted for conventional combat 

in open terrain. Unfortunately, many 

U.S. troops remained geared for irregular 

warfare in the jungle. What else could go 

wrong, did go wrong. 

After the Chinooks delivered the 

2nd Battalion in a single lift, they 

needed to refuel. But rather than allowing 

them to deplete the scant stocks at 

Camp Evans, the division G-3 directed 

them to refuel at Dong Ha, 40 kilometers 

to the north. By then, the hour was 

late; the artillery lift was postponed until 

the following day. 

It was fortunate to be at Van Xa when 

the artillery lift was aborted. I immediately 

went to the nearby Army of Vietnam 

compound at PK-17 and met with 

the senior U.S. adviser present to arrange 

for fire, if needed, from the four-howitzer 

Vietnamese battery stationed at 

PK -17. My task was easier because the 

2nd Battalion commander had earlier established 

a personal liaison with the local 

Vietnamese regimental commander. 

Unfortunately, I could not be present 

when the decision was made to postpone 

the second lift, but no one seemed 

too concerned. Aerial movements had 

been interrupted before, and in due time 

this one would resume. Still with misgivings, 

I apprised my division artillery 

commander of the situation and requested 

his assistance. His response was 

that division artillery was not a resource 

provider, and I would have to work 

through 3rd Brigade. 

The next morning, two Chinooks began 

shuttling the artillery forward. Everything 

looked normal but while I was reconnoitering 

for forward locations, I 

monitored alarming radio traffic. Under 

orders emanating from the division commander, 

the 2nd Battalion had attacked 

the village ofThon La Chu. 

The battalion paid a heavy price for 

yet another bad choice. The division 

commander had offered to attach the air 

cavalry squadron's ground troop of 12, 

1/4-ton trucks armed with M60 machine 

guns; a 106 mm recoilless rifle section; 

and a 4.2-inch mortar squad to 3rd 

Brigade for ultimate attachment to the 

2nd Battalion. The brigade commander 

declined the attachment of this potential 

screening force. As a consequence, the 

battalion's attack came under withering 

surprise fire from what turned out to be a 

heavily fortified village. 

In structuring the airmobile division, 

planners realized maneuver elements 

might operate beyond the range of 105 

mm artillery. Accordingly, they replaced 

the standard division's 155 mm howitzers 

with aerial rocket artillery and 

formed a battalion equipped with 36 

UH-lB helicopters, each armed with 38, 

2. 75-inch rockets. With multiple sorties, 

aerial rocket artillery could provide sustained 

fire. It did come in support at 

Thon La Chu but, in contrast to its successful 

employment by the 1st Brigade 

two days earlier at Qyang Tri, the 2nd 

Battalion commander suspended its use 

because of troop safety concerns. 

22 ARMY • January 2016

A similar outcome occurred with respect 

to the four howitzers at PK-17. 

They willingly responded to our requests 

but with prudence dictating a 

meticulous check of all firing data, the 

rate of fire was slower than it would 

have been with a U.S. battery. The fires 

were suspended. 

Later, on Feb. 3, with a combination 

of aerial and ground transport, the U.S. 

battery went into position at PK-17. 

The following day, resource availability 

permitted arrival of the 5th Battalion, 

7th Cavalry Regiment, and its supporting 

battery. 

On the night of Feb. 4, the 2nd Battalion 

extracted itself and moved to high 

ground to the west. With it and the 5th 

Battalion beyond mutually supporting 

range, a three-week stalemate ensued. 

During that period, the two batteries under 

the 1st Battalion, 21st Field Artillery’s 

control fired 52,000 rounds in 

support of the 3rd Brigade. Because we 

were limited to 105 mm ammunition, we 

were grateful for naval gunfire support as 

U.S. Navy ships fired 7,670 larger-caliber 

rounds into the target area. Low visibility 

during the stalemate had precluded 

effective close-air support. 

As February ended, the brigade’s combat 

power increased with the attachment 

of two more infantry battalions. In terms 

of fire support, the 2nd Battalion of the 

501st Airborne Infantry Regiment came 

with its direct-support battery, and division 

artillery reinforced the 1st Battalion, 

21st Field Artillery, with a 155 mm and 

an 8-inch howitzer battery. In the climactic 

battle, the field artillery battalion 

controlled the fires of these five batteries 

in support of the attack that closed along 

the north bank of the Perfume River and 

against the walls of Hue. 

A lesson to be learned from this engagement 

is that commanders may cause 

harm if they separate towed artillery 

weapons from their prime movers. This, 

of course, would not be a problem if they 

were supported by self-propelled artillery. 

A more important lesson is the requirement 

for commanders to understand 

the limitations of supporting units. 

This requirement is as valid today as it 

was 50 years ago, when Field Manual 7- 

30 Infantry, Airborne, and Mechanized 

Division Brigades informed brigade commanders 

that “the flexible organizational 

characteristics of the brigade demand 

that the commander have complete 

knowledge and understanding of combined-arms 

operations. … The brigade 

commander is responsible for the effective 

employment of all available firepower 

and maneuver elements under his 

direct control or in support of his unit, 

and for the coordination of supporting 

fires with the plan of maneuver.” ■ 

Col. James J. Coghlan Jr., USA Ret., is a 1949 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. 

He served as forward observer with Company I, 187th Airborne Regimental Combat 

Team, during the Korean War. Subsequent assignments included advising the Nationalist 

Chinese Army on Taiwan and serving as senior artillery instructor at West Point. 

Joining the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in Vietnam in July 1967, he served as assistant 

division fire support coordinator before commanding the 1st Battalion, 21st Artillery 

from January until July 1968. Later staff assignments included Headquarters, 

U.S. Army Europe; and Headquarters, I Corps (ROK/U.S.) Group, at Uijeongbu, Republic 

of Korea. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College 

and the Army War College. 

Even as Plebe, Female Ranger 

Showed Leadership Traits 

By Capt. Garrison E. Haning, U.S. Army Reserve 

There’s a saying at the U.S. Military plebes, upperclassmen are made to be 

Academy: “Much of the history we larger than life. Especially during Beast, 

teach is made by people we taught.” Last there is a constant fear that being flashy 

year at Fort Benning, Ga., the first three enough to get on the radar will end in 

female soldiers in the history of the U.S. gaining the kind of attention that demands 

extra pushups. But ultimately, the 

Army graduated from Ranger School. 

As one of the most difficult training quiet comes from the fact there’s so 

courses that soldiers can volunteer for, much to learn. One of the first things 

Ranger School is hailed as a premier they tell cadets at West Point is that 

combat leader-development program there is more to learn than there are 

with inflexible standards. 

hours in the day. Learning happens 

There is a flurry of conjecture about through listening; cadets who spend 

what the graduation of these Army officers—1st 

Lts. Shaye Haver and Kristen are quick to fail. Haver listened well. 

more time talking than they do listening 

Griest, and Army Reserve Maj. Lisa I also remember that she was focused. 

One of the most significant jobs 

Jaster—means for the nation. Before our 

national focus shifts completely to the freshmen have during Beast—besides 

implications of this historic event and learning how to “close with and destroy 

the big question of “what’s next,” it is the enemy”—is to deliver newspapers. 

critical that we don’t lose sight of the Freshmen are required to deliver newspapers 

to upperclassmen each morning, 

women whose achievements are bringing 

this moment about. 

with the intention of encouraging seniors 

I was one of the upperclassmen in and subordinates to get to know one another. 

This also affords upperclassmen 

charge of Haver during her first two 

months in the Army, going through the chance to further develop their 

West Point’s cadet basic training, known trainees. 

as “Beast.” I remember her from our During training, we upperclassmen 

training company; she was a freshman made a ritual out of sidelining new 

and I was a senior. She had a few traits cadets by asking them personal questions 

I’d like to draw attention to. 

about their hopes, dreams and aspirations 

for their time in the Army. Once 

I remember Haver being quiet. During 

Beast, most cadets are quiet, out of we had our questions answered, it was on 

fear as much as necessity. The fear is to the pushups: “So, Cadet, you want to 

ever-present because at West Point, to become the next chief of staff of the 


Army? Well, not if you can’t drop and 

give me 50. Start pushing!” 

Haver managed to slip by my room 

without ever having to do excessive 

pushups, a true testament to her ability 

to stay on track. I remember her answering 

every question with one of the four 

basic responses you are “authorized” as a 

plebe: Yes, Sir; no, Sir; no excuse, Sir; 

and Sir, I do not understand the question. 

With these kinds of focused responses, 

it wasn’t easy to draw Haver 

off-task. And only a soldier on a mission 

could muster the focus to stay within 

those narrow parameters. 

And finally, I remember that she was a 

team player. In the eyes of peers as well as 

those of the administration, it’s hard to 

perform well at West Point. While cadets 

never forget that we’re on the same team, 

every classmate is competing for his or 

her slot in the class rankings. Ultimately, 

a statistical combination of physical, academic 

and military rank determines what 

each cadet’s job will be when the time 

comes to pin on lieutenant bars and serve 

our nation as an officer. The higher each 

cadet is ranked, the more likely he or she 

is to receive a desirable job in the Army. 

The competition is fierce, and the jockeying 

for position constant. 

I remember that when Haver’s peers 

ranked her, she came out at the top of 

her group. I also remember that when we 

upperclassmen ranked their group, she 

was at the top of our list as well. This 

doesn’t happen every day. Indeed, success 

with one group often means failure 

with the other. But her desire to be a 

true team player helped her overcome 

that limitation with ease. 

From the Haver that I knew during 

her first two months in the Army, I 

gather that for her, the journey to 

Ranger School was not the “social experiment” 

the media has called it. It was 

simply an opportunity for her to build on 

the character and camaraderie she enjoyed 

at West Point. This was a chance 

for her to prove herself and become a 

better person, team member and leader. 

As we begin to consider the achievements 

of these soldiers, let’s take a moment 

to retreat from the strategic implications. 

Before the naysayers, activists 

and pundits have their way with this 

event and the lessons it entails, let’s 

pause to think about these new Rangers. 

Let’s take a moment to consider what 

they’ve taught us about character. In 

looking at the individual, we can draw a 

lesson so simple, yet so significant, that it 

warrants consideration before all else: 

Quiet, focused professionals can change 

the course of history. 

■ 

Capt. Garrison E. Haning, USAR, is a 

2009 graduate of West Point. He deployed 

to Iraq in 2011 as a platoon 

leader with the 1st Cavalry Division 

and served as a battery commander at 

Fort Sill, Okla. He is as an engineer officer 

in the U.S. Army Reserve. 

1-855-246-6269 

That’s the toll-free number to call 

AUSA national headquarters. The AUSA 

Action Line is open 8 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday 

through Thursday, and 8 a.m.–1:30 

p.m. Friday, except holidays. If you have 

a question about AUSA, give us a call. 


Seven Things to Know 

About the Islamic State 

1What is the group’s name? 

ISIL and ISIS are the terms favored by the Army, but that 

might be changing. ISIL is the abbreviation for the Islamic 

State of Iraq and the Levant, while ISIS is short for 

the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (or sometimes a-Sham). The 

Army has started using the term DA’ISH (or Daesh), an Arabic 

acronym for al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. Many 

major news publications, including ARMY magazine, use Islamic 

State, a name the military group gave itself on June 29, 2014. 

2What are their objectives? 

Strategically, the Islamic State seeks to become the 

legitimate heirs and descendants of Muhammad and 

to be recognized as the global leader of the Muslim 

community. To do this, the group needs to generate income, 

provide domestic stability for members, and build power bases 

from which to spread the movement. This requires gaining 

support among local populations to overthrow the regimes 

where they live, and to have some capacity to control the population 

by providing food, housing, money and security. 

3Why are they so powerful? 

The Islamic State wields intangible power rather than 

military power. It gets attention through coordinated 

attacks, such as the Friday the 13th attacks in Paris in 

November. The group also gains attention from “its ability to 

persuade, its ability to inspire, its ability to attract young men 

and women from across the globe, and its ability to create an 

image of unstoppable power and spiritual passion and commitment,” 

according to a preface to a December 2014 DoD assessment 

of the Islamic State written by Army Maj. Gen. Michael 

K. Nagata when he was commander of U.S. Special Operations 

Command Central. This is a resilient power capable of controlling 

people and territory—the result of “pragmatic” leadership, 

the use of intimidation and tapping into long-standing grievances, 

the report says. The group has a “well-developed narrative 

and media outreach to attract and motivate fighters,” Nagata 

wrote. 

4How do they flourish? 

Resilience and opportunism have worked in the 

group’s favor. The DoD assessment says the Islamic 

State has the “capacity to control people and territory 

stemming from pragmatic leadership and organization, intimidation 

tactics” and has tapped into Sunni grievances “to attract 

and motivate fighters.” The assessment says it has not 

shown expertise in governing and forming a bureaucracy, and 

may be “alienating local populations by over-the-top violence 

and strict enforcement of Sharia,” an Islamic code of moral 

and religious beliefs. 

Islamic State flag 

5Do they have international support? 

Funding comes from some wealthy Middle East patrons 

and from the sale of crude oil that could be netting 

the Islamic State $1.5 million a day, according to 

estimates in the Financial Times. Smuggled oil is believed to be 

sold at full-market prices to buyers in Turkey and Iraq. While 

the group doesn’t have allies in the conventional sense, there 

are like-minded partners and affiliates in Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, 

Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan and the Philippines. The 

DoD analysis warns the Islamic fundamentalist movement on 

which the Islamic State is built is becoming a “global phenomenon” 

even if the brutal tactics of the militants are not widely supported 

by other Muslims. 

6Who are their targets? 

Soft targets of any nation opposing the Islamic State 

are the main aim, as evidenced by the bombing of a 

Russian passenger airline and the series of attacks in 

Paris. In Europe and North America, unarmed military personnel 

located outside an installation are possible targets, the DoD 

analysis warns. 

7How can they be defeated? 

Defeating the Islamic State will be difficult, but it’s 

not impossible. “While we can and certainly are mustering 

physical, financial, and other forms of ‘tangible’ 

power and resources to effectively contest what DA’ISH 

is and what it strives for, where I would argue we are demonstrating 

significant weakness and vulnerability is in adequately 

confronting the ‘intangible’ power of this enemy,” 

Nagata wrote. 

—Staff Report 


She’s the Army 

Combat Medic at Wrong Place, Right Time 

Anight out in Louisville, Ky., for a bachelorette weekend 

turned into a night of horror for two Ohio sisters when 

they were both stabbed and seriously wounded during an attempted 

robbery. Fortunately, Staff Sgt. Katie Govoni, an 

Army Reserve combat medic, happened to be nearby when 

the chaos unfolded. 

Govoni, who in her civilian life is an EMT with the Cataldo 

Ambulance Service in Boston, was an instructor with the U.S. 

Army Reserve 100th Training Division (Operations Support), 

80th Training Command, teaching future combat medics at 

Fort Knox, Ky. She was standing outside the entertainment 

and retail complex Fourth Street Live with two other Fort 

Knox soldiers last August when suddenly, they heard screaming 

and yelling coming from across the street. 

“At first, I just heard [a woman] yelling that it hurt so bad,” 

Govoni recalled. She saw a woman—later identified as Melissa 

Snader—almost get struck by a car as she ran to the side of the 

road. “I saw blood between her fingers,” Govoni said. 

As Govoni and her companions, Staff Sgt. Joshua Smith 

and Sgt. Micah Stoke, ran toward Snader, Govoni saw another 

injured woman. It was Snader’s sister and the bride-tobe, 

Sherrie Snader. 

“I saw Sherrie standing directly to my right with blood going 

down the front of her dress, looking … white as a ghost,” 

Govoni said. She directed Smith and Stoke to help Sherrie 

while she raced over to Melissa. 

“She’s just been through this horrible assault and she 

would not allow me to see the wound,” Govoni recalled. “I 

asked her if she believed in God and [said] she should pray 

because she just ran into three soldiers, and she had a miracle 

on her hands.” 

Melissa cooperated; Govoni saw a laceration that was just 

under an inch long. She immediately worried about a lung injury. 

She called over to Stoke, asking him to place direct pressure 

on Melissa’s wound. While he stayed with Melissa, Govoni 

then rushed over to help Sherrie. 

As she approached the bride-to-be, Govoni could tell Sherrie 

was going into shock and saw a lot of blood on her dress. 

Govoni soon found a small laceration on the lower side of 

Sherrie’s chest. 

“I could tell she was having an extremely hard time drawing 

air,” Govoni said. “She was still talking at that point, but nothing 

she was saying was making sense—which is a very bad sign.” 

After Govoni exposed the wound site, she knew Sherrie was at 

risk for a collapsed lung. Soon, Sherrie’s pulses dropped and her 

airway became blocked. With minimal equipment, Govoni relied 

on her civilian and military training to perform CPR while instructing 

Smith how to unlock Sherrie’s jaw and clear her airway. 

“Once we got that airway cleared, Sherrie actually pops 

Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Katie Govoni received the Meritorious Service 

Medal and Good Samaritan Award from Brig. Gen. Jason Walrath of the 

100th Training Division (Operations Support) for her actions in helping 

two injured sisters. 

right up,” Govoni said, calling it “amazing. To have somebody 

come back with adequate signs of life … is incredibly rare. So 

when she popped up, I was so grateful. I knew right there that 

we were in much better shape than we had been before.” 

The Snader sisters were taken to a nearby hospital, where 

Govoni, Smith and Stoke later visited them. It was there that 

Govoni learned Sherrie and Melissa’s father is a retired Army 

combat medic. 

“I really couldn’t put it together until that moment how 

much the three of us were going to matter to them forever,” 

Govoni said. “It was life-changing.” 

Govoni joined the Army in 2005 and served as a military police 

officer with the Massachusetts National Guard in Iraq from 

2007 to 2008. It was during her deployment that she realized she 

wanted to be a medic. She joined the Army Reserve in 2013. 

“I looked at so many things that I can’t unsee, and I saw 

people really hurt, and I wanted to be on the other side of it 

because my medic provided that for many of my friends as 

well as myself, and not just in trauma treatments but also in 

mental health and just being there for people,” she said. “He 

cared so deeply about his soldiers that it showed me there was 

a job I could do that would be lifelong.” 

“I will never forget what he did for me,” she added. “I can 

only hope that I can provide that.” Even if it’s just for one other 

person, she said, “then I’ve made the right career choice.” 

—Jennifer Benitz 

U.S. Army Reserve 


U.S. Army/Eboni L. Everson-Myart 

Foreign-Born Hero 

Honored by U.S. 

By Laura Stassi, Assistant Managing Editor 

Medically retired Army Capt. Florent A. Groberg receives the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony. 

When medically retired Army Capt. Florent A. 

Groberg received the Medal of Honor at a White 

House ceremony in November, he joined an elite 

group. The naturalized U.S. citizen, known to his 

friends as Flo, became the 28th foreign-born medal recipient 

since 1942, and the first since the Vietnam War. 

Groberg “chose to commit himself completely to this country,” 

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said when Groberg was 

inducted into the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes one day after receiving 

the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama. 

Groberg is the 10th living service member to earn the medal 

for bravery in Afghanistan or Iraq. 

Carter said Groberg “follows in the footsteps of … heroes 

who gave up important ties to the past to fight for America’s 

future.” 

Groberg was born in Poissy, France, in 1983. He is only the 

third French-born U.S. Army officer to receive the Medal of 

Honor, after Civil War-era recipients Capts. Adolphe Libaire 

and Nicholas Geschwind, according to C. Douglas Sterner, an 

Army Vietnam veteran and curator of the Military Times Hall 

of Valor. And Groberg is the only French-born U.S. service 

member—officer or enlisted—to earn the award since Navy 

Seaman Apprentice August Chandron jumped off the USS 

Quinnebaug in Egyptian waters in November 1885 to save a 

fellow sailor from drowning. 

Groberg “comes from a long and distinguished line of combat 

veterans and heroes,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. 

Milley said during the Hall of Heroes ceremony. “Flo’s grandfather 

served with the French army in Vietnam and then later 

joined the Algerian quest for freedom. … Flo’s mother was 

the first woman commissioned in the Algerian military, and 

Flo’s uncle was a commando in the Algerian military, murdered 

by terrorists not too long ago.” 

‘Consummate Teammate’ 

Groberg immigrated to the U.S. as a child and became a 

naturalized citizen in 2001, a few months before graduating 

from Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Md. He attended 

the University of Maryland, where he competed in 

track and cross-country. 

“Flo’s college coach called him the consummate teammate,” 

Obama said during the Medal of Honor ceremony. “As good 

as he was in individual events, somehow he always found a little 

extra something when he was running on a relay, with a 


U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Alexis Ramos 

Courtesy retired Capt. Florent Groberg 

Clockwise from above: Then-1st Lt. Florent “Flo” Groberg flies in a helicopter 

over Kunar Province, Afghanistan, in July 2012; then-2nd Lt. 

Groberg conducts a leader engagement meeting in Kunar Province, February 

2010; Groberg and his father, Larry, at the then-second lieutenant’s 

Ranger School graduation at Fort Benning, Ga., in October 2009; 

Groberg, recovering at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, is 

visited on Sept. 11, 2012, by President Barack Obama, parents Klara and 

Larry Groberg, and friend Matthew Sanders; Groberg speaks at his Pentagon 

Hall of Heroes induction ceremony. 

team. … What made Flo a great runner also made him a great 

soldier.” 

Groberg graduated from the University of Maryland in 

2006 with a bachelor’s degree in criminology and criminal justice, 

and was commissioned as an Army infantry officer in 

2008. He deployed to Kunar Province, Afghanistan, in November 

2009 and again in February 2012. On this second deployment, 

Groberg was handpicked by then-Col. James J. 

Mingus, now a brigadier general, as a personal security detachment 

commander for Task Force Mountain Warrior, 4th 

Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. 

On Aug. 8, 2012, Groberg was in the provincial capital of 

Asadabad, leading an escort mission of almost 30 coalition 

and Afghan National Army personnel. The group was walking 

in a diamond formation to a security meeting. 

“Inside that diamond, I had my VIPs,” Groberg said in an 

interview videotaped during the Association of the U.S. 

Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition. Those VIPs included 

two brigade commanders, two battalion commanders 

and an Afghan National Army general. 

The patrol had reached a small bridge when two motorcycles 

approached from the opposite direction. After Afghan 

troops shouted at them to stop, the riders dropped the bikes in 

the middle of the bridge and ran away. 

U.S. Army/Sgt. 1st Class Clydell Kinchen 

Man Walking Backward 

Suddenly, Groberg noticed a man dressed in dark clothing 

off to the side, walking backward toward the patrol— 

“which was eerie,” he recalled. When the man turned and 

started walking toward them, “I left my post,” Groberg said, 

and sprinted toward the man. As he pushed the man away 

from the formation, he noticed a bomb under the man’s 

clothing. The motorcyclists had been a diversion for a suicide 

attack. 

“At that moment, Flo did something extraordinary,” Obama 

said during the Medal of Honor ceremony. “He grabbed the 

bomber by his vest and kept pushing him away.” 


15 or 20 feet away. “I remember waking 

up, and my leg had my fibula sticking 

out and my skin was melting; just blood 

everywhere,” he said, adding, “We defeated 

the enemy on that day. And we 

sent a message that no matter how bad 

you want to hurt us, we’re always going 

to keep standing up, and we’re going to 

bring it back twice more on you.” 


Groberg began shoving the man “as hard as I could. … I just 

wanted to get him as far away from my guys as possible,” he said. 

With help from Sgt. Andrew Mahoney, Groberg repeatedly 

shoved the bomber away from the formation. The bomber fell 

onto the ground chest first, and the bomb detonated. The explosion 

caused a second bomb nearby to detonate before it was in 

place. (Mahoney received the Silver Star Medal for his actions.) 

Four Americans died; however, “his actions prevented an even 

greater catastrophe,” Obama said of Groberg. “Had both bombs 

gone off as planned, who knows how many could have been 

killed?” 

Groberg was severely injured in the blast, which threw him 

‘Worst Day of My Life’ 

Groberg also said “it was the worst day 

of my life because even though we defeated 

the enemy, I lost four of my brothers.” 

Killed in the attack were Command 

Sgt. Maj. Kevin J. Griffin, Maj. Thomas 

E. Kennedy, Air Force Maj. Walter D. 

“David” Gray, and USAID foreign service 

officer Ragaei Abdelfattah. 

Groberg lost about half of his left calf 

muscle and had significant nerve damage, 

a blown eardrum and mild traumatic 

brain injury. After about three 

years and more than 30 surgeries at 

Walter Reed National Military Medical 

Center, he was medically retired and is 

now serving in a civilian position with 

DoD. Every day, he wears a bracelet inscribed 

with the names of the four men 

who lost their lives in the attack. 

“That is the stark reality behind 

these Medal of Honor ceremonies,” 

Obama said, “that for all the valor we 

celebrate, and all the courage that inspires 

us, these actions were demanded 

amid some of the most dreadful moments 

of war.” 

“That’s precisely why we honor heroes 

like Flo,” Obama said. “Because on 

his very worst day, he managed to summon 

his very best. That’s the nature of 

courage.” 

Almost 3,500 service members have 

earned the Medal of Honor, the nation’s 

highest award for valor, since it 

was established in 1861. Almost 20 percent 

have been foreign-born. 

A total of 16 foreign-born service members earned the 

Medal of Honor for actions in World War II, according to 

the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. Three foreignborn 

service members earned the medal for actions during the 

Korean War, and eight foreign-born service members received 

it for heroism in the Vietnam War. The majority of 

these medal recipients wore Army uniforms. 

“I stand in front of you as a proud American,” Groberg 

said during his remarks at the Hall of Heroes ceremony. “I 

will always do my best to … represent our flag and nation 

with honor.” 

✭ 



Too Much World, 

Not Enough Army 

By Rick Maze, Editor-in-Chief 


AUSA; Facing page: NASA 

Army Chief of Staff 

Gen. Mark A. Milley 

Alittle more than a year ago, the Army rolled out its 

new operating plan with the catchy name, “Win in 

a Complex World.” The plan spoke of developing a 

new breed of leaders, encouraging emerging technology 

and promoting innovative thinking in preparation for 

a future that Gen. David G. Perkins, the 15th commanding 

general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, said 

is not only unknown but unknowable. 

Today, “complex world” seems like an understatement. 

Festering threats such as Afghanistan, North Korea and Russia 

have coupled with multifaceted turmoil, including fighting 

in Syria. This change in the world catches the Army in a declining 

force structure, with troubling levels of readiness and 

too many idling weapons programs. 

Shortly before he stepped down, Army Secretary John M. 

McHugh described the Army as being at its 

“ragged edge” of preparedness, the result of 

its share of the annual defense budget dropping 

from $144 billion in 2010 to $126 billion 

in 2016. 

“We are in an extraordinarily rare position 

in American history where our budgets are 

coming down but our missions are going up,” 

said McHugh, recalling that when he became 

secretary in 2009, the budget was $235 billion 

annually and the Army had 553,000 active-duty 

soldiers. 

Today, the active Army has about 490,000 

soldiers. Current plans call for the active 

force to drop to 475,000 by October; to 

460,000 by October 2017; and to bottom 

out at 450,000 by October 2018. A smaller 

Army raises questions about whether the nation 

is taking on unacceptable risk, but 

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley 

has been careful to not describe the force as 

being “hollow”—as the Army was labeled 

near the end of the Carter administration 

because of deteriorating readiness and personnel shortages. 

“We are not even close to a hollow Army,” Milley said during 

October’s annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. 

Army. “No enemy of the United States should ever think otherwise. 

We, the United States Army, may bend but we, the 

United States Army, refuses to ever break.” 

There is some line below which Milley worries the Army 

would be too small to carry out national security commitments, 

but he has not publicly shared his view. He has said 

only that he’s comfortable with an active-duty force of 

450,000 soldiers as long as it is backed by a trained, equipped 

and ready Army National Guard and Army Reserve. 

“We are a total Army,” Milley said. “We are an Army of almost 

a million strong, not 490,000. We are an Army of 19 

divisions, not 10 divisions. We’re an Army of 60 brigade 

combat teams, not 32 brigade combat teams. We are one 

Army consisting of three components in the regular Army, 

National Guard and United States Army Reserve. And all 

our uniforms say United States Army.” 

Milley does not believe the smaller Army, which is also expected 

to shed about 17,000 from its civilian workforce over 

three years, is going to be permanently smaller. “There is no 

doubt in my mind that at some point, [the Army] will be required 

to expand again,” he said. 

“There is much to do,” Milley said. “We can’t just say 

we’re going to be strong. There is much to do to remain 

strong, to remain capable, to remain ready, to ensure that … 

we do not break.” 

At the top of the list is improving readiness. Only onethird 

of brigade combat teams are considered fully ready, but 

the sustained readiness rate should be about 70 percent, he 

said. Reaching that goal is expected to take at least two years. 

When Milley talks of uncertainty, he describes it as the increasing 

“velocity of instability,” requiring a force that is nimble 

and prepared for long fights in which advanced technology 

won’t necessarily give soldiers the upper hand. Wars 

might start with long-range standoff weapons, he said, but 

that doesn’t necessarily spell a quick end. 

“After the shock and awe comes the march and fight,” he 

said, referring to the phrase used for the March 22, 2003, 

massive assault on Baghdad that was supposed to quickly topple 

the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. 

“As we look around the world, we can see a significant rise 

in instability in many regions,” Milley said. “The velocity of 

instability is actually increasing, not decreasing. While America 

is safer, to be sure, we are still engaged in several active 

wars in support of our partners. And just as importantly, 

there are more than a few storm clouds gathering, and the 

warning flags are beginning to flutter.” 

“As an Army, we must maintain capabilities to fight along 

an entire range of military operations, from humanitarian assistance 

to fighting guerrillas and terrorists to nation-states, if 

required. We do not have the luxury of preparing to fight one 

type of enemy at one time in one place.” 

Here are some other themes from AUSA’s Annual Meeting: 


Army Does Heavy Lifting on Homeland Security 

While protecting the U.S. homeland takes what Army Lt. 

Gen. Perry L. Wiggins calls a “whole-of-government response,” 

much of the capability required comes from Army 

components. Wiggins, U.S. Army North commanding general, 

said working jointly with other military organizations 

and with state and local governments is different than being 

in combat because of the cooperation required. 

“We rehearse with partners. It is critical we exercise this 

zero-failure mission,” Wiggins said, noting most homeland 

security missions involve the military supporting another government 

agency that is leading the effort. 

“The Army does most of the heavy lifting on homeland 

defense,” said Robert G. Salesses, deputy assistant secretary of 

defense for homeland defense integration and defense support 

of civil authorities. 

Reserve contingent leaders stressed the special skills citizen-soldiers 

can bring to the homeland defense mission. Maj. 

Gen. James R. Joseph, adjutant general and commander of 

the Pennsylvania National Guard, said new cyber-protection 

units staffed by experienced, professional information technology 

specialists will serve each of the 10 Federal Emergency 

Management Agency districts. Maj. Gen. Daniel L. York, 

commander of the Army Reserve 76th Operational Response 

Command, said reserve emergency preparedness officers 

Lt. Gen. Perry L. Wiggins, commanding general, U.S. Army North 

throughout the U.S. are prepared for short-notice call-ins in 

support of civil emergencies. 

AUSA 

AUSA 

The Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., was 

the site of the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2015 Annual Meeting and 

Exposition. 

AUSA 


AUSA 

More than 600 displays were featured in five halls on two levels. 

AUSA 

Wide Variety of Complex Threats 

In today’s complex security environment, the Army does 

not have the luxury of a single opponent or threat and must 

be prepared to respond to all adversaries. “Unpredictable and 

unstable is the new normal,” said Lt. Gen. Mary A. Legere, 

deputy chief of staff, G-2. 

Lt. Gen. Mary A. Legere, deputy chief of staff, G-2 

Both state and nonstate actors are taking advantage of instability, 

increasing populations, dwindling resources and technology 

proliferation to strike at the U.S. and the Army in a variety 

of locations around the world and at home, Legere said. 

Phillip A. Karber, president of the Potomac Foundation, 

said Russian aggression in Ukraine is not abating, and the 

Army needs to be prepared to face the Russian military’s new 

strategies. 

Known as “new-generation warfare,” Russian tactics range 

from information war and subversion to threats to overt military 

action, said Karber, who recently returned from a stint in 

Ukraine embedded with local military. 

“Unmanned aerial systems are ubiquitous in Russia’s war 

in Ukraine,” he said, adding that at least 16 types of Russian 

UAS have been documented in Ukrainian airspace. 

Additionally, the Russian military “favors mass fires over 

precision munitions … quantity over quality, which can cause 

catastrophic losses in minutes,” Karber said. 

Karber also said that Russian air defense systems covering 

nearly the entire country are crippling the Ukrainian air force, 

and the U.S. may not be able to rely on superior air power in 

such a situation. 

Brig. Gen. Karen H. Gibson, deputy commander, Joint 

Force Headquarters-Cyber, said U.S. reliance on cyberspace 

“has made the nation and our Army vulnerable. Those who 

seek to harm us in the cyber domain use the same Internet we 

do,” which means that adversaries once separated by oceans 

now have direct access to the U.S. 

Gibson noted that cyber weapons are far less expensive and 

easy to find compared to conventional munitions. They are “a 

cheap and easy means to harm the American military,” she said. 


Most Critical Readiness Resource: Time 

The Army needs to change its mindset about readiness, 

said Gen. Robert B. “Abe” Abrams, commanding general 

of U.S. Army Forces Command. “We have to be ready all 

the time, not at specific points of time,” he said, adding 

that the most precious resource for readiness is not money, 

but time. 

“We can’t be lulled into a false sense of security that we’ll 

be able to set the conditions and the time and place for getting 

involved,” Abrams said. “We need sustainable readiness. 

… We can’t create readiness overnight.” 

Abrams also said that today’s Army is “rusty in our core 

competencies,” and “I am not overstating” the severity of the 

situation. “It’s a little frightening.” 

Laura Junor, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for 

personnel and readiness, noted that the purpose of DoD is to 

“generate military capability that we hope we will never use, 

but to dominate if we need it.” However, budget woes and sequestration 

have led to what she called “a toxic environment 

for building and maintaining readiness.” 

“Readiness takes a long time to create,” she said, adding 

that if anything goes awry with the staffing, equipping and 

training pipelines, “it takes an even longer time to mitigate.” 

Gen. Robert B. “Abe” Abrams, commanding general, U.S. Army Forces 

Command 

“Readiness for one mission doesn’t mean readiness for all 

missions,” she added. 

AUSA 

Retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, president and CEO of the Association of the U.S. Army, opens the organization’s 2015 Annual Meeting and Exposition. 

AUSA 


AUSA AUSA 

Scenes from the opening ceremony of the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2015 Annual Meeting and Exposition 

AUSA 


Total Force Perspective Required 

“Developing the future force is more important than ever,” 

said Lt. Gen. Herbert R. McMaster, director of the Army 

Capabilities Integration Center and deputy commanding 

general, futures, of Training and Doctrine Command. He reiterated 

that the Army must ensure it has the capabilities it 

needs, “and we must do that from a total force perspective.” 

At a time when international security is threatened not only 

by the Islamic State group and al-Qaida but also by North Korea 

and Russia, “the U.S. has planned only enough ground force to 

fight one major conflict in one of these places at any one time,” 

said Timothy M. Bonds, vice president of the Army research division 

at Rand Corp. In his division’s analysis of announced 

troop cuts, “this does not provide enough ground force capacity” 

to meet President Barack Obama’s commitments, he said. 

“DoD should pause the drawdown of Army active and reserve 

component soldiers to ensure that sufficient hands remain 

to succeed in two contingencies,” Bonds said. “DoD 

should improve the posture of ground forces in the Baltics 

and in Korea, including both equipment and troops. Finally, 

DoD should fund the highest possible readiness levels among 

ground forces in both the active and reserve components.” 

Lt. Gen. Herbert R. McMaster, director, Army Capabilities Integration 

Center, and deputy commanding general, U.S. Army Training and 

Doctrine Command 

AUSA 

Soldiers and others mingle in U.S. Army North’s display. 

AUSA 


Former Secretary of 

Defense Leon Panetta 

shakes hands with 

retired Gen. Gordon 

R. Sullivan, president 

and CEO of the Association 

of the U.S. 

Army, after receiving 

AUSA’s George Catlett 

Marshall Medal. At 

left is Nicholas D. 

Chabraja, chairman 

of AUSA’s Council of 

Trustees. 

AUSA 

Relationships Matter 

The Army Operating Concept makes it clear that “we 

don’t do things by ourselves. We are part of a joint team,” 

said Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, U.S. Army Pacific commanding 

general. “We must be actively engaged if we plan to have 

the type of relationships that can build coalitions in a time of 

having to win in a complex world.” 

With representatives of more than 60 countries registered 

to attend AUSA’s annual meeting, Brooks emphasized the 

need for partnerships and the urgency to maintain already established 

ones. 

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commanding general of U.S. Army 

Europe, and Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, commanding general 

of U.S. Army Africa, reiterated the importance of alliances 

in their respective regions. With the support of 30,000 troops 

stationed in Europe, U.S. Army Europe faces resurging aggression 

from Russia. Meanwhile, U.S. Army Africa has dealt with 

Ebola research and medical aid efforts as well as joined in the 

fight against Boko Haram and an increasing presence of the Islamic 

State group in some of Africa’s 54 countries. 

“That’s the power of a regionally engaged Army service 

component command,” Williams said. “It’s in the fight. It can 

get there quickly and make a difference, and help bring a little 

bit of support to the lead federal agency.” 

Thomas Harvey III, principal deputy assistant secretary of 

defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, discussed refining 

AUSA 

Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, commanding general, U.S. Army Pacific 

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commanding general, U.S. Army Europe 

AUSA 


AUSA 

Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, commanding general, U.S. Army Africa 

AUSA 

U.S. approaches and applying lessons learned to find an approach 

that is efficient and economical, at a time when cost 

for modernization is increasing dramatically and the defense 

budget is tightening. With partners around the globe, the 

U.S. will have to be more selective, he said. 

“With the budget readiness challenges, it will place a burden 

of proof and justification for continuing engagement activities 

just because of the competition with other priorities,” 

Harvey said. “But it won’t be a binary question of do we do 

engagement or not. It’ll be at what level, how much, to what 

extent.” 

Top: Gen. David G. Perkins, commanding general, U.S. Army Training and 

Doctrine Command. Above: Command Sgt. Maj. David S. Davenport Sr., 

Training and Doctrine Command 

Leadership Through a Compound Lens 

Shaping tomorrow’s generation of soldiers to lead and fight 

in an ever-changing world full of unexpected threats is a top 

priority, senior Army leaders said. “There’s nothing more important 

than developing leaders for the future,” said Lt. Gen. 

Robert B. Brown, commanding general of the U.S. Army 

Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, Kan. 

Gen. David G. Perkins, commanding general of U.S. 

Army Training and Doctrine Command, said in addition to 

understanding the tactical, operational and strategic levels of 

war, soldiers need to know how military and civilian components 

interact. 

“You have to have soldiers that understand all of those different 

elements. … We have to develop leaders that can harness 

all these elements of national power, and they can synchronize 

and deploy them in an environment that we can’t 

predict,” he said. 

Broadening assignments that take soldiers out of their traditional 

MOS provide new perspectives and can build a better 

understanding of the Army, said John E. Hall, president of 

Army Logistics University, adding that they’re beneficial for 

senior executive service civilians as well. “The Army recognizes 

that broadening never stops,” he said. 

“Development occurs over the course of a career,” said 

Command Sgt. Maj. David S. Davenport Sr. of Training and 

Doctrine Command. Training, education and experience are 

all interrelated, and they need to be aligned to make this paradigm 

work, he said. 

Leader development “builds trust in our units, prepares leaders 

for future uncertainty, and is critical to readiness and our 

Army’s success by exposing these great soldiers to these opportunities 

and teaching them how to think rather than what to 

think in a checklist mentality. That’s how we will build upon 

the leaders of today, so that future leaders will have the ability 

to thrive in ambiguity and chaos,” Davenport said. ✭ 

AUSA 

Jennifer Benitz, Luc Dunn, Toni Eugene, Thomas B. Spincic and Laura Stassi contributed to this report. 


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Let’s Solve the Army’s 

By Col. Bob Phillips, U.S. Army retired 

Recruiting difficulties are nothing new to the Army. 

With just a brief look at history, one can discern the 

lack of human capital reaching back to World War II, 

when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower wondered why he 

was constantly coming up short of his infantry requirements in 

a country as large as the U.S. 

Even after World War II, it was the Army that depended 

upon the draft (for a two-year term) as young men opted for 

longer commitments with the Navy, Air Force and Marine 

Corps in order to get their choice of service. 

Of course, the biggest shake-up in the past 50 years was the 

elimination of the draft in 1973 as the U.S. adopted the recommendations 

of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer 

Force, also known as the Gates Commission. What is 

interesting is that the commission stated the Army would have 

the most difficult time in an all-volunteer era. But their “fix” 

for that problem was to raise pay levels for all services so the 

Army could meet its mission. 

Indeed, during the severe recruiting difficulties of 1978–79, 

it was the Army that came up 17,000 short of its recruiting 

mission for the active component, with then-Chief of Staff 

Gen. Edward C. “Shy” Meyer making his famous “hollow 

Army” comments as even tanks, along with other combat vehicles, 

had to be put in storage. 

Later analysis of data clearly showed that Air Force and 

Navy enlistees resembled college kids; the Marine Corps recruits 

fit the full-time labor market employees; and Army recruits 

looked like the unemployed. The great fears of many had 

come true as the Army was indeed the employer of last resort. 

History of Trouble 

In times of war, the vast majority of the population did not 

compete for jobs in which the living conditions seemed to involve 

endless days and nights in the mud, freezing cold and 

rain. Constant combat, along with the conditions of service, 

also led to a significant percentage of non-battle casualties. 

In times of peace, some of the best minds publishing on the 

subject offered reasons for the Army still being in the last 

place for enlistment preferences. The expert consensus can be 

summarized in four major points: 

■ Status, prestige. 

■ Civilian-applicable skills. 

■ Conditions of work—minimize deprivations. 

■ Peacetime/wartime training congruence. 

Aside from the choices made by potential enlistees, job satisfaction 

data across the services also showed the Army in last 

place. 

After the 1978–79 disasters, Congress and DoD finally began 

to address the Army’s recruitment problems. Maj. Gen. Maxwell 

R. Thurman, one of the Army’s brightest generals, was appointed 

to head U.S. Army Recruiting Command. The Armed 

Members of the South Carolina Army National Guard 

graduate from the Recruit Sustainment Program. 

Services Vocational Aptitude Battery exam was properly 

normed. There was an increase in advertising dollars. President 

Ronald Reagan began to honor veterans and even came to the 

Pentagon in 1981 to present the Medal of Honor to retired 

Master Sgt. Roy Benavidez for his heroism during the Vietnam 

War. The Army was given authorization for its college fund and 

a two-year tour for high-quality enlistees. It was the only service 

to have such an incentive. Internally, there were highly significant 

improvements in recruiting policies as well. 

The advertising positioning concept was changed from a 

feel-good approach following “Today’s Army Wants to Join 

You” and “Join the People Who’ve Joined the Army.” The 

new recruiting commander insisted on an approach that would 

appeal not only to those who might join, but also to those already 

serving. The ad agency suggested this was an impossible 

task; Thurman insisted that rather than offering a single option, 

the agency instead develop a range of possible positions. 

It did so, and he chose “Be All You Can Be.” 

Now, the early fears of the volunteer enlisted force have 

been thoroughly assuaged, as evidenced by the following data 

from fiscal year 2013: 

■ Ninety-one percent of the youth population has high 

school diplomas; the Army has 94 percent. 

■ The youth population has 51 percent Mental Categories 

I-IIIA (above average to average); the Army has 63 percent. 

■ The youth population has 36 percent Mental Categories 

I and II (above average); the Army has 40 percent. 


Recruiting Challenges 

U.S. Army National Guard/1st Lt. Jessica Donnelly 

■ The youth population has 21 percent 

Mental Category IV (below average); 

the Army has less than 1 percent. 

■ The in-discipline rate in the Army 

has continuously decreased in proportion 

to high-quality enlistees. 

Most Difficult Recruiting Mission 

First, we must examine how the 

Army compares to the other services as 

equipment complexity and boots-onthe-ground 

missions have become greatly 

complicated. When we look at the data, 

the story isn’t so good. In 2013, the Air 

Force had 96 percent high-quality enlistees 

(high school diploma graduates 

and Mental Categories I-IIIA). The 

Navy had 82 percent, the Marine Corps 

had 72 percent, and the Army had 61 

percent. The Army continues to significantly 

lag behind the other services and 

if we are not careful, the Army will be 

the first service to take a major downgrade 

in quality as it is the last choice 

and has the largest mission. 

Second is the problem pointed out by 

Maj. Gen. Allen Batschelet, Rick Ayer 

U.S. Army Reserve recruiter Sgt. Gregory Theriault 

U.S. Army/David Bedard 


A mass enlistment 

ceremony during the 

Southern California 

Recruiting Battalion 

Mega Future Soldier 

Event 

U.S. Army/Valerie Resciniti 

Col. Bob Phillips, USA Ret., is a former chief of staff of U.S. Army 

Recruiting Command. After retiring, he became a professor and 

associate dean of the Rawls College of Business Administration, 

Texas Tech University, and has continued to research and write 

about recruiting issues. 

and Col. Mike Runey in the April 2014 ARMY magazine 

(“Radical Changes Required in Recruiting”): the growing rift 

between the Army and American society. Certainly, the authors’ 

recommendations for citizenship opportunities through 

service ought to be implemented. 

Third, there has been no acknowledgment by DoD or Congress 

that the Army has the most difficult recruiting mission 

and needs something other than the standard pay and benefits 

offered to all services. The elephant in the room of military recruitment 

and compensation is the wide variance in risk, living 

conditions, and civilian-applicable skills of the various in-service 

specialties. 

Fourth, the Army needs to develop an option that has high 

appeal to college-bound youth. The general GI Bill is fairly 

high in incentive but highly unrealistic in time commitment. 

According to the Department of Labor’s National Longitudinal 

Survey of Youth, the main influencers on major life decisions 

are parents, not peers. 

Almost 70 percent of the youth population headed for college 

after high school in 2014. Yet today, there is not the option 

that was available to Recruiting Command in the early 

1980s that would allow a college-bound young person to obtain 

college money with a two-year tour. Past focus groups 

conducted by Recruiting Command with parents have generated 

strong objections to a son or daughter delaying more 

than two years between high school and college. 

The hip-shot objection to a two-year tour is, “We can’t afford 

it.” However, look at the total cost of recruitment, including not 

only the pay and allowances of the service member but also the 

cost of family support and the probability of attrition. A twoyear 

tour for a smart high school graduate, the vast majority of 

whom are not married, can come out cheaper for the Army than 

a longer-tour enlistee. 

Offerings to Consider 

Consider the offering of a college incentive and a two-year 

tour to a high school graduate for one of the combat arms 

MOSs, and perhaps for an MOS with deployment requirements 

with fairly short Advanced Individual Training. 

Further, consider looking at providing basic training for an 

enlistee during the summer between the junior and senior 

years of high school. The basic training might even be provided 

by Army Reserve units with perhaps even parts of or almost 

all of the advanced training during subsequent weekends, 

finishing two weeks after graduation. Then, have the 

term of service start two weeks after high school graduation 

and end in mid-August of the following year so youths can 

enroll in college only a year and three months after high 

school graduation. It is important that the Army be the only 

service with such options. 

When the two-year tour with college option was implemented 

in the early 1980s, the Army’s quality of enlistees 

greatly recovered and even outdid the Navy’s. It also allowed 

the takers to go through ROTC and return as officers. 

Analysis also found that the other services did not suffer any 

decrement in quality. The college incentive with a two-year tour 

opened up a new market for high-quality recruits. And in a major 

behavior reversal, many of the guidance counselors who had 

rued the presence of Army recruiters on campus began to welcome 

them. The option bridged the holdover Vietnam rift between 

the Army and the high schools as never before. 

The penetration of the very large segment of college-bound 

youth would not only enhance the combat viability of the 

Army but would also yield future military, educational, industrial 

and political leaders with at least some experience in the 

defense of their country. 

✭ 


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Decisionmaking Lessons 

Abehavioral science experiment often cited in the 

business world supposedly involved 10 hungry 

monkeys, a ladder, a bunch of bananas, a hose connected 

to an ice-cold water source, and a not-sonice 

scientist. 

The monkeys were split into two groups. As each monkey 

in the first group attempted to satisfy its hunger, all were 

sprayed with cold water until they no longer tried for a banana. 

The monkeys were replaced one at a time and as the replacements 

reached for a banana, they were disciplined by the 

others. The monkeys quickly learned: Don’t eat the bananas. 

True or not, this story is often presented by consultants to 

explain a “that’s-the-way-we’ve-always-done-it-here” attitude 

expressed by employees. 

I confess to having fallen victim to, or serving as spokesman 

for, the “don’t eat the bananas” mindset during my early days in 

uniform when it came to conducting systematic mission analysis 

using METT-T in the military decisionmaking process. 

METT-T is a construct to remind us to evaluate the following 

subjects: mission (specified, implied and mission-essential), 

enemy, terrain and weather, troops available and 

time. (“Civil considerations” was added later.) It provides a 

comprehensive body of information for situational awareness. 

Unfortunately, the military decisionmaking process can often 

be treated like preventive maintenance checks and services—always 

endorsed, but rarely enforced. I had learned 

from others that conducting a formal analysis using METT-T 

took too long. This prejudice reinforced my experience at Fort 

Benning, Ga., during command post exercises. Formal analysis 

was time-consuming. 

Eat the Bananas? 

Fortunately, Lt. Col. Hayward S. “Stan” Florer Jr., the Operation 

Desert Storm commander of 1st Battalion, 10th Special 

Forces Group, had either not learned or refused to believe 

that we shouldn’t eat the bananas. Instead, his mantra was 

“prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.” In other 

words, preparing an order without thorough, systematic analysis 

was unsatisfactory. 

When I suggested that METT-T analysis takes too long, 

he responded, “How long does it take?” When I answered, 

“too long,” he remained unconvinced and asked, “How long 

is too long?” I had no good answer. (This is similar to the 

question management consultant W. Edwards Deming was 

said to have regularly used, “How do we know that?”) 

Of course, I had never timed a battalion staff conducting 

analysis. Although I had participated in comprehensive 

analysis and planning in other battalions, I had never witnessed 

a staff—outside of the schoolhouse—systematically 

dissect a mission using the factors of METT-T. Life, and 

planning as I knew it, would change. This type of analysis 

would become an almost daily affair for the next 12 months. 

To envision how your staff might develop impressive skills 

using this process, consider a budding musician learning to play 

a musical instrument. Every note is a struggle as the young musician 

learns finger placement on the right string and fret, or 

key. Playing a scale takes time, thought and effort. But with 

practice, positioning the fingers becomes easier; anticipating 

the next note becomes second nature. In just a few weeks, the 

scale can be played with some degree of competence. 

I would suggest there is similarity in analyzing missions. 

When we are introduced to an idea that seems to have merit, we 

make a decision to give it a try. Afterward, we must discipline 

ourselves to use it the first time, and then again every time 

an opportunity exists. It becomes habit. We develop 

the requisite knowledge, skills, abilities and competence 

until we own the process. Ultimately, 

this activity becomes part of our expertise. 

From Theory to Practice 

In developing our competence, the staff 

talked through the process and determined 

our expectations from each METT-T 

topic. Our initial walk-through lasted four 

hours. During the after-action review, we 

considered ways to accelerate the effort. The 

planning team suggested that for the missions 

we expected to undertake, the members 

develop lists of implied tasks from 

their individual perspective. 

From that day forward, every event 

we planned—social events, deployment 

to Turkey, combat operations, 

support to 200,000 Kurdish refugees 

and ultimately, the closing of Flint 

Kaserne and move to Stuttgart, 

both in Germany—was informed 

by the systematic and habitual 

METT-T analysis. 

With every analysis, our speed 

and comfort level increased; evaluations 

were more comprehensive 

and intense as we developed our 

expertise. We began playing the 

scales faster and better. This 

habit paid off in spades when 

the commander of Special Operations 

Command Europe invited 

us to a late-night conversation 

in the spring of 1991. 

We left his office at 0300 

with a new requirement: Put 

a Special Forces company 

into a camp of 100,000 Kurdish 

refugees—beginning at 

0700. 

Joe Broderick 


of Hungry Monkeys 

By 

Maj. Wayne Heard 

U.S. Army retired 

We contacted the operations center; issued a warning order; 

and directed the planning staff, along with the company commander 

and sergeant major, to assemble immediately. We 

conducted a detailed analysis and developed the course of action 

in under an hour. After providing guidance to the orders 

production team, we departed for the company assembly area, 

where the teams were already hard at work. Within an hour, 

the production team arrived with a hard copy of the operations 

order. Wheels up began at 0700; Operation Provide Comfort 

had begun. 

Over the course of a few days, we deployed one company 

after another into a camp or with orders to construct 

a camp, and repositioned the battalion headquarters 

to the Iraqi border. April and May unfolded 

with the teams supporting 200,000 Kurds in four 

camps along the Turkish and Iraqi border. By 

the second week of June, we had moved entire 

populations of four camps back into their 

villages in Iraq by truck, bus and foot. Operation 

Northern Watch had begun. 

One year before, I had doubted the ability of a 

staff to conduct METT-T analysis for operations 

with the necessary speed and still deliver the quality 

results expected of a first-rate planning team. 

I believe one of the deciding factors that contributed 

to developing our competitive edge 

was Florer’s commitment to using the same 

planning methodology for every event—large 

or small, simple or complex. 

Why It Works 

Florer would begin the process with 

“We will be successful when…,” describing 

success for that particular 

mission or activity and giving us his 

vision and intent. 

The planning team, under the direction 

of the S-3, would dissect the 

mission, recording every specified 

(written or oral) task assigned to 

the unit. We would evaluate each 

task, announcing implied tasks 

from each individual’s perspective 

based on staff position, 

training, knowledge and experience. 

This combined list 

of specified and implied 

tasks revealed what we 

needed to accomplish to 

be successful. It also allowed 

us to rewrite the 

mission statement with 

more clarity. Identifying 

the implied tasks aloud proved very helpful for developing 

the junior members of the team and maintaining experienced 

insight among the staff and replacements. 

We developed requests for information, forces, support and 

more, updating the status as each was answered and following 

up when responses lagged. In some instances, like a Hail and 

Farewell, enemy included factors outside our control but that 

might affect the outcome. In combat, we evaluated the enemy 

on organization, training and equipment, location, tactics, 

techniques and procedures, and alert posture. 

Terrain and weather are factors that deserve more study 

than space allows here, but we used the OCOKA approach— 

observation, cover and concealment, obstacles, key terrain, 

and avenues of approach—to evaluate the ground on which 

we would be operating. Weather consisted of an assessment 

of the climate and forecast along with light data, and the effects 

on personnel and operations. 

Troops available included those forces you were employing, 

those supporting the effort (internal or external to the unit), 

and those involved in other activities. We constructed a timeline 

of all events that had been given a specific or no-later-than 

time. We employed the timeline in reverse planning. 

Informed by the commander’s vision and intent and the information 

revealed by the METT-T analysis, the staff developed 

courses of action for the commander. His decision set in 

motion the activities of the orders production team. One member 

of the production team always participated in the analysis 

by transcribing the easel pads we had used in planning, ensuring 

the rest of the team understood what had been discussed. 

Unlike the analysis of an operations order, reviewing the 

requirements of a program involves the identification of specified 

tasks from a library of applicable references, including 

DoD Instructions and Directives, Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff manuals, service regulations and combatant 

command documents. A staff might identify over 100 specified, 

or regulatory, requirements for the command. By conducting 

a comprehensive mission analysis, the staff can more 

effectively inform the leadership of the body of requirements 

and execute those mission-essential tasks. 

If you decide to institute systematic mission analysis, you 

may find it helpful to treat it like high school math and show 

your work. Establish folders with the requirements hyperlinked 

to the references. This will serve as the Federalist Papers 

for your analysis. And remember, prescription without 

diagnosis is malpractice. 

✭ 

Maj. Wayne Heard, USA Ret., spent 20 years in the Army with 

assignments in airborne, light infantry and special forces. After 

retiring in 1992, he co-authored the Army’s field manual on personnel 

recovery, FM-3-50. Since then, he has served with personnel 

recovery staffs at Army headquarters, U.S. Central Command 

and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The opinions 

in this article are strictly the author’s own. 


How to Survive a Joint 

By Lt. Col. George K. Hughes 

Working in a joint command is a great opportunity 

to learn and grow as you contribute to furthering 

national objectives. When planning for 

your first assignment in a joint command, however, 

you might not realize all the new challenges you will face. 

Differences in service cultures, maintaining a connection with 

the Army, and integrating Army-specific functions into joint 

operations are just a few examples of the challenges you must 

overcome. Luckily, you will not be the only one adjusting to 

culture shock; each new member goes through an adjustment 

period while he or she learns the new environment. The key is 

to approach a joint assignment with an open mind, positive attitude, 

and readiness to learn about the other services. 

Culture Differences 

One of the first challenges is learning about the differences 

in service cultures. When comparing other services to the 

Army, you will notice a difference in leadership styles, planning 

processes, and emphasis on evaluations. Some services 

have career paths that are more focused on technical expertise 

over direct leadership skills, and service members will have different 

experiences due to different assignments. You may find 

that your rater or senior rater has been more focused on technical 

abilities during his or her career while you have been 

more focused on leading soldiers. You will notice how these 

different experiences affect approaches to problem-solving and 

daily operations. Some services take more time to analyze a 

problem before acting to solve it, while others take a more direct 

approach over an indirect one. These differences could 

lead to misconceptions, so it is important to understand that 

they exist as a result of different career paths and experiences. 

One way to prepare yourself and reduce the anxiety over 

service culture differences is to learn more about the other services 

before arriving at your assignment. Understanding each 

service’s mission, capabilities and assignment locations will 

better prepare you to interact with the other services and understand 

their points of view. Your academic introduction to 

the joint environment begins with various interservice classes 

in your Joint Professional Military Education Phase 1 education 

that explain each service’s role in unified action. 

Attend Warfighting School 

Before arriving at a joint assignment, attend the Joint and 

Combined Warfighting School at the Joint Forces Staff College 

in Norfolk, Va., if possible. This 10-week course introduces 

joint operations at the operational level and provides a 

great introduction to each service. Having the opportunity to 

work with the other services at this course will also ease your 

transition into the joint environment. 

When it comes to planning processes, you will see that each 

service has its own, but the amount of exposure your peers 

DoD/Helene C. Stikkel 


Command Transition 

have to each process will differ greatly, depending on their 

specific specialties. Some services do not expose their officers 

to the planning process until later in their careers, while the 

Army exposes its officers to the military decisionmaking 

process during the Basic Officer Leader Course. 

Help Others Understand 

You could find yourself the most experienced planner in 

your section, so it will be up to you to help your fellow service 

members understand planning. The joint operation planning 

process is very similar to the Army’s process, so it’s easier for 

Army personnel to adapt to it. Therefore, you should prepare 

yourself to not only participate in the planning process, but to 

teach and lead as well. 

Finally, each service has its own approach and rules for writing 

evaluations, such as the acceptable amount of white space 

and punctuation use. It is important to understand any differences 

so you can effectively contribute to a service member’s 

evaluation and better understand an evaluation’s impact on 

promotion. 

You should also be prepared to educate your supervisor and 

peers on how to complete an Army Officer Evaluation Report. 

They may have never seen one before, so it is your responsibility 

to ensure they write in a way that is consistent with Army regulations 

and culture. Ensuring that senior raters know to address 

key elements such as enumeration, promotion potential, schooling, 

and potential to serve in key leadership positions is critical 

to ensuring the future success of your fellow soldiers. 

Taking the time to reflect on why our service cultures are different 

will assist you with understanding your new teammates 

and make working with them easier. Remember that each of us 

has a responsibility to teach others about the Army culture as 

well as learn about theirs. To effectively communicate the Army 

culture, you will need to keep an open mind and understand 

that the Army way might not be the best way all the time. You 

will also need to remain current on changes—which means you 

must find a way to stay connected to the Army. 

Keeping in Touch 

Maintaining a connection with the Army sounds easier than 

it is. When you are in a joint environment, you begin to lose 

some of your Army green and become more “purple.” As an 

Army officer in a joint command, you are seen as an expert on 

all things Army. You will not be able to do your job effectively 

if you are unaware of changes in Army policies, doctrine or the 

Army vision. For example, if the plan you are helping to develop 

requires a Stryker brigade combat team and you are out 

of date on that combat team organization, you could unintentionally 

cause the plan to fail. 

The Joint Service Color Guard on parade at Joint Base Myer-Henderson 

Hall, Va. 


A Marine, an airman, 

a soldier and a sailor 

collaborate during a 

joint service exercise. 

U.S. Army/Maj. Avon Cornelius 

One way to maintain your Army knowledge is to sign up for 

newsletters that are available from most Army branches and 

other organizations. A few examples of organizational newsletters 

are those from the Center for Army Lessons Learned, 

which provides best practices; Army OneSource, which gives 

updates on issues impacting Army families; and S1NET, 

which details human resource changes. Newsletters will help 

you stay current without flooding your email inbox and are 

quick to review. 

You can also bookmark Army websites that provide information, 

including those of the Army Publishing Directorate, to 

keep up to date on doctrinal changes; and U.S. Army Training 

and Doctrine Command, for information on new capability 

developments and training. Reading Army professional periodicals 

like Soldiers and Military Review will also keep you apprised 

of what the Army is doing around the globe. 

You can also stay in touch with the Army by participating in 

video teleconferences with your branch, attending Army networking 

events including Association of the U.S. Army functions, 

and participating in the annual local/regional Army 

Ball. By attending these networking and social events, you will 

be able to learn about changes throughout the Army and meet 

Army leaders. 

Of course, it is also important for you to support the Army 

Lt. Col. George K. Hughes is an ordnance officer and assistant professor 

in the department of logistics and resource operations at 

Fort Belvoir, Va. Before that, he served as the executive officer 

and director of staff for the directorate for logistics, J4, U.S. Africa 

Command. He holds a bachelor’s degree from The Citadel, a master’s 

degree from the University of Oklahoma, and an MBA from 

Norwich University. 

element at your command. Each joint command has a service 

element that ensures all Title 10 functions—such as leave and 

pay, evaluations and promotions, and personnel record management—are 

carried out for its service members. By supporting 

your Army element, you will maintain a better connection 

to the Army and help support those who are there to support 

you. By keeping current on Army updates and changes, you 

will be ready to accurately represent the Army and effectively 

integrate Army forces into joint operations. 

Integration of Army Functions 

Integrating Army functions into joint operations is a key 

role for an Army officer assigned to a joint command. No 

matter what your branch is, you will be assigned to participate 

as a member of either a joint or operational planning 

team. In this role, you will be responsible for ensuring Army 

forces are effectively integrated into plans or operations and 

that all considerations for sustainment have been addressed. 

You must possess a deep understanding of the capabilities 

and requirements of Army units as well as how Army capabilities 

can best support the functions provided by the other 

services. You are likely to face challenges when working to 

integrate Army forces into joint operations and plans, including 

interoperability issues with equipment such as command 

and control hardware; materiel needs such as different 

petroleum products and ammunition; and conflicting doctrinal 

concepts. 

Our military operates as a joint force. By serving in a joint 

command, you will see firsthand how each service comes together 

to complete the mission. With the right attitude and a 

firm understanding of the Army’s functions, serving in a joint 

command could be your most memorable assignment. ✭ 


Crowdsourcing Innovation 

Through Social Media 

iStock 

By Lt. Col. Chad Storlie, U.S. Army retired 

My first real experience with the Army was as an 

ROTC cadet at the U.S. Army Airborne School, 

Fort Benning, Ga., in 1987. There, we received 

information about training schedules, off-limits 

areas and formation times one of three ways: in person, 

through written documents, or by notices posted on bulletin 

boards (the old-fashioned kind). Several times a day, seven 

days a week, we would have formations solely for passing and 

sharing information. Flash-forward to today; the use of social 

media has transformed the speed, effectiveness, reach and accuracy 

of how the Army communicates with soldiers. 

The Army’s use of social media has perfected the bulletin 

board approach to information sharing. The ability to transfer 

timely, accurate messages in near-real time to thousands of 

people is of incredible value. The Army has a largely free tool 

that all personnel have access to over a variety of electronic devices, 

and it is a very effective communication platform. 

There are additional complexities to using social media as a 

bulletin board, such as maintaining operational security, mitigating 

and expunging rumors, and reducing attempts to hack 

or modify official communications. Social media did not create 

the need for operational security or rumor management; it just 

made the need much more immediate and pronounced. 

More Than a Bulletin Board 

Is social media just a better bulletin board—or can the 

Army derive other benefits from it? The communication 

technology developed in the past 11 years in the social media 

realm such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all possess 

bulletin board-style functionality as a central benefit. However, 

what business has realized is that social media serves as a 

tool to unify, join, communicate and direct like-minded people 

and then use group members, advocates and others to become 

part of the quest to understand, develop and innovate 

new products or services. 

Business, in other words, has begun to figure out how to use 

social media beyond a bulletin board to communicate with 

customers and stakeholders. Social media can also be used as 

an innovation laboratory to get the most knowledgeable and 

committed members to help improve, develop and perfect new 

products and services. 

The challenge before the Army is how to employ social media 

as its in-house innovation laboratory. Some relevant business 

examples highlight the true potential to use crowdsourcing 

and social media as an innovation laboratory. 

Business came to the conclusion that it needed a new way to 

help find new products, ensure these products met customer 

needs, and do it much faster. One of the best examples of using 

social media to support crowdsourced innovation is the 

Netflix Prize, a $1 million computer algorithm challenge to 

help Netflix get a 10 percent improvement in its ability to predict 

whether customers would enjoy a particular movie based 

on how they felt about previous film selections. 

Netflix ran the challenge for almost three years and had about 

44,000 contest entries from over 5,000 teams. The company 

used a disciplined evaluation process to select the winner. The 

winning team achieved a 10 percent improvement in late 2009 

and won the $1 million. The genius of the Netflix Prize was that 

Netflix realized getting people to watch more content tailored to 

their interests had a financial benefit as well as increased customer 

satisfaction. Netflix also realized that it had great computer 

and data scientists—but could it go further to improve the 

model? It was only after Netflix sought outside assistance that 

the company was able to make the algorithm breakthrough. 

Innovation Requires Fresh Ideas 

Even a market leader like toy company The LEGO Group 

believes it needs outside help to innovate new products. After all, 

LEGO sets have been around for decades, with entire landscapes 

from undersea cities to space worlds. Because LEGO has 

to be at the global center of so many trends in culture and entertainment, 

company executives saw a need to gather, assess and 

implement feedback from brand advocates. 

What LEGO calls its ideas process consists of four parts: 

Share an idea, gather support, review, and produce the new 

product. This process is critical to the company’s success because 

it allows support for a product to generate, and allows time for a 

review before the company benefits from an approved project. 

The community discussion board allows members to interact 

with each other. To date, LEGO has gone through two annual 

reviews to support the evaluation of 20 proposed projects. 

General Electric offers an innovation platform that is similar 

to LEGO’s ideas process. The primary difference is that 

GE proposes three to five specific problems that it needs help 

solving. The company’s open innovation platform seeks to resolve 

technical solutions for specific power-generation products, 

for example, or find new markets and uses for products 

such as water purification. The platform is a combination of 

the Netflix Prize and a specific business problem, with the 

open ideas and community of LEGO’s ideas platform. 


Benefits of Crowdsourcing 

The Army can benefit quickly from these great corporate examples 

to help drive innovation efforts. The initial, and most 

important, step is for the Army to change and broaden its culture 

of innovation. Too often, there is a “not invented here” criticism 

of outside innovation ideas: If we did not come up with 

the idea, then we do not support it. The Army must realize it 

can find other sources of innovation, creativity and productivity 

outside the normal channels of procurement and development. 

The second immediate benefit is that the Army has an incredible 

social media following to help advance and undertake 

innovation efforts. The service has about 3.5 million Facebook 

followers, 727,000 Twitter followers, and more than 25,000 

YouTube channel subscribers. These numbers represent the 

primary social media pages and not all 

the major command and installation social 

media channels. With the strength 

of these relationships, the Army can notify 

literally millions within days of its innovation 

challenges. 

Finally, the Army has experts in evaluating 

and measuring the results of innovation 

submissions, and it also has the 

immediate social media presence and expertise 

to begin evaluating suggestions 

for innovations. 

The Army should follow an initial 

crowdsourced innovation path like General 

Electric’s and identify four major project 

categories that would be open for 

eight weeks. It should copy an innovation 

platform like LEGO’s that is open, allows 

members to join and vote, allows member 

collaboration to share and improve ideas, 

and showcases projects from submission 

through voting to acceptance or rejection. 

The first and second weeks would be 

for initial submissions, and the third 

week for voting and elimination of lowranked 

projects. The fourth and fifth weeks would be for revised 

submissions based on member feedback, and the sixth 

week for member voting and final evaluation. Weeks 7 and 8 

would cover U.S. Army evaluation and review, with the results 

posted during the eighth week. The innovation idea winners 

could be announced at the end of this week, and a new innovation 

cycle would begin a week later. 

Here are my four ideas for innovation work: 

@USARMYSoldierHacks. The Program Executive Office- 

Soldier has been the Army’s innovation and purchasing hub 

for individual soldier gear. New equipment brings new ways to 

Lt. Col. Chad Storlie, USA Ret., is a retired U.S. Army Special 

Forces officer with more than 20 years of active and Reserve 

service. In addition to teaching, he is a midlevel marketing executive 

and has worked for various companies, including General 

Electric, Comcast and Manugistics. He has a bachelor’s degree 

from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in 

business administration from Georgetown University. 

fully benefit from the equipment’s capabilities, especially in 

combat operations, and they should be shared. 

Soldiers have created and perfected items ranging from 

“Ranger Pudding” to poncho hooches to the Bangalore Torpedo. 

A program such as Soldier Hacks would allow soldiers, 

veterans and other interested parties to submit no-cost ideas to 

better the performance of individual items in the Army inventory. 

The purpose is to improve what we have with no cost. 

@USARMYUnder50. The U.S. Army Under 50 program 

would allow open submissions that introduce solutions costing 

$50 or less to implement. This open forum would allow a wide 

variety of ideas, solutions and potential fixes to be submitted, 

improved, evaluated and voted on, with the fundamental goal 

of improved performance at very low cost. 

@USARMYBeSafe. Safety must always be a major focus of U.S. 

Army operations. This program would be for safety submissions 

to make equipment, operations and other activities safer. 

@SSIAnswerMe. The U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute 

asks a lot of relevant, timely and critically important questions 

that commanders and Army staff members need answered. Unfortunately, 

a lot of these are missed on the Army’s website. By 

working closely with academics across the globe over a wide social 

media platform, the Army could get the answers it needs in 

a timely manner from a highly educated group. 

In each project example, the Army could pay the top 10 entries 

$10,000 each. The four project categories with 10 winners 

each, and the innovation contest conducted five times a 

year, yields a total payout of $2 million plus the cost of the 

ideas innovation platform. 

By focusing on low-cost, high-impact innovation ideas, we 

can use social media and a crowdsourced innovation challenge 

paired with an easy-to-build innovation platform to discover 

and benefit from amazing ideas. 

✭ 

iStock 


Managing 

Cyber Talent 

Requires 

Innovation 

By Jennifer Benitz, Staff Writer 

iStock 

Finding and keeping talented soldiers and civilians in a 

force of cyberwarriors could require a new way of 

looking at personnel management. Instead of figuring 

out how to pound a square peg into a round hole in 

terms of education, experience and character, the Army 

might do better to change the hole to fit the peg. 

At an Association of the U.S. Army-sponsored discussion 

about talent management in the cyber workforce, Michael Colarusso, 

a senior research analyst with the Army’s Office of 

Economic and Manpower Analysis, said skill and productivity 

might be key to having top-notch performance. Rather than 

assessing candidates’ potential by how they meet strict general 

standards, organizations instead should focus on identifying 

candidates’ specific skills so they can be placed in the best-fitting 

position to optimize their contributions, Colarusso said. 

For example, a tattoo on a candidate who has unique skills 

and a valuable degree from a top-notch university should not 

be a disqualifier if he or she can help an organization. This is 

the same in recruiting and keeping soldiers and civilians, Colarusso 

said. “We have, right now, more turbulences in our 

civilian workforce than even our uniformed workforce.” 

Colarusso also is a believer in looking at talent from within the 

current workforce before rushing to recruit. “When you manage 

talent, when you manage the matching of your supply of talent 

versus the demand for talent that you have, your whole organization’s 

productivity level goes up, even though you are using the 

same people on the team you’ve had before,” he said. “You don’t 

have to do new hires. You don’t have to do a whole bunch of new 

training. All those things are important, and they are going to 

continue to happen, but you are getting people in the right seat in 

the organization so that they can make a difference.” 

Sweeten the Deal 

Karl Schneider, principal deputy assistant secretary of the 

Army for manpower and reserve affairs, stressed the need for 

options when recruiting people, and less focus on a recruit’s 

Ferdinand H. Thomas II 

military or civilian status. Recruiters should be asking, “What 

would it take you to come join our organization?” Schneider 

said, and offer options that would sweeten the deal. 

“Maybe we need people out in recruiting stations saying, ‘I 

know you want to join the Army … but if you’ve got a degree 

from Carnegie Mellon, maybe I want you to come be a civilian 

for cyber. If you really want to be a soldier, I’ll get you a position 

in the Army Reserve,’” Schneider said. “Seems the most important 

thing is, I get that person who’s got the skills, the attributes, 

the behaviors that I’m looking for so we can get the job done— 

because at the end of the day, that’s really what it’s all about.” 

When thinking of what it takes to keep personnel once 

they are in the organization, “Leaders should ask, ‘Did we get 

the highest and best use out of this person?’” Schneider said. 

The innovation that goes along with retaining valued personnel 

comes from having a conversation with them. 

Michael Colarusso, senior 

research analyst with the 

Army’s Office of Economic 

and Manpower Analysis, 

spoke about cyber personnel 

at the AUSA Hot Topics 

forum on Army Cyber. 


“It’s not about more education in all cases,” said Command 

Sgt. Maj. Rodney Harris of U.S. Army Cyber Command. 

“It’s not about more pay in all cases. It’s more,” he said. “One 

of the things coming across all of them is, do you understand 

who I am, and why I want to work in the place where I do 

work? If you don’t, because I’m employable, I am going to go 

somewhere else.” 

“Let’s … realize they’re different,” Harris said, “and figure 

out how to keep them.” 

Rate of Change Adds to Urgency 

The rate of change that Army Cyber Command faces only 

adds to the urgency of retaining the right people. Technologists 

need to be trained to identify issues that have yet to exist, using 

technology that is either consistently changing or hasn’t been 

produced yet. However, Army cyber is competing not only with 

other services but also with other agencies, such as the National 

Security Agency, to recruit knowledgeable individuals. 

“We shouldn’t have to have a conversation as to why it is 

better in the Army, or Air Force, or any of these other agencies,” 

Harris said. “We ought to be having a conversation, 

who is it that we need to do this job and how do we lead 

them? They’re leaving because of failed leadership, and the 

failed leadership isn’t because people want to fail in leading. 

It’s because they haven’t taken the time to figure out who it is 

they’re trying to lead.” 

In a field where information can become outdated quickly, 

junior leaders often have the most relevant and current information, 

Colarusso said. However, in a field where operators 

have the potential of year-round contact with the enemy, junior 

leaders may be more vulnerable to mistakes. And “in this 

domain,” Colarusso said, those mistakes could become national 

security issues. 

“You don’t have the luxury of ever falling out of the band 

of excellence in this domain because you are in contact with 

the enemy 24/7, 365 days a year,” Colarusso said. “That’s 

something that makes talent management critical. … There’s 

absolutely no room for error.” 

However, millennials and the generations to follow are 

more likely than older generations to seek employability 

where they feel valued, making talented operators vulnerable 

to poaching from other organizations. 

Management Strategy Needed 

Army Cyber Command is a relatively young organization 

that has yet to make a cyber management strategy, Harris 

said. This makes training operators and analysts, and placing 

their particular skills in the most optimal fashion, difficult. 

Without a strategy, cyber operators are also left with little 

guidance as to what their role is when a cyber security issue 

arises, he said. 

Harris said he wouldn’t mind if the Army stopped calling 

them cyberwarriors. “Cyber is not a word I like,” he said. “It 

is not a word that the industry really likes, outside of the defense 

industry. Cyber is a word that is used for marketing, 

and a word that is used to attract resources.” Instead of warriors, 

industry refers to the workforce as operators or analysts. 

They don’t “describe themselves as warriors,” he said. 

Professionals also don’t like to be called hackers, he said, 

and using that term can hurt morale. “When people say, ‘You 

are Army cyber, so you’ve got an organization with all these 

hackers,’ I say, ‘No. We don’t hack.’ When you use the term 

hacker, it’s a term that’s traditionally associated with nefarious 

behavior, and that’s not what our service members do.” 

Cyber operators are not the same as information technology 

specialists, Harris said. “We don’t have a problem attracting, 

training and retaining IT individuals. We have a problem 

attracting, retaining and training cyber individuals.” ✭ 

Ferdinand H. Thomas II 

Karl Schneider, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, left, joined Michael Colarusso, senior research analyst with 

the Army’s Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis, and Command Sgt. Maj. Rodney Harris of U.S. Army Cyber Command at the one-day Hot Topics event. 


Success Can Be 

Dangerously 

Seductive 

By Lt. Col. Joe Doty, U.S. Army retired and 

Maj. Shawn Tenace, U.S. Army retired 

It goes without saying that many people are driven to 

be successful, and those in the military are no different. 

The Army’s professional development schools, 

promotion system, and mentoring and leader-development 

programs speak directly to striving for success 

and “up-or-out” improvement and learning. 

But success can be like a drug—a powerful drug. Some 

people have unwavering ambition and will go to any 

length to get ahead. Ambition is a key to being 

successful, but unchecked ambition can be 

problematic. Stories of success going to 

people’s heads and affecting their behavior 

are numerous. We acknowledge 

this topic is not new, but it is a topic 

that should be constantly addressed and 

reinforced: We need to be intentionally 

mindful of the seduction of success. 

Flag level officer misconduct cases are not new. Further, 

commanders and command sergeants major have been removed 

from their positions because the chain of command has 

lost faith and confidence in their ability to perform duties. 

Most, if not all, of these cases appear to be classic examples of 

success going to people’s heads. Is there anything that could 

have been done to prevent such cases? Does the counseling 

and promotion system feed the seduction of success? Does the 

military need a mechanism to keep its fastest-rising leaders 

grounded with some level of humility to prevent them from 

drinking the “I’m-too-important” Kool-Aid? 

Expecting the Best 

Expectancy theory, which is taught in most basic psychology 

courses, suggests that people behave in ways in which 

they are expected and encouraged to behave. Officers and 

NCOs who reach flag level rank or billets are the best of the 

best and are expected to stay almost flawless in terms of competence 

and character. In some cases, they may really think 

they are flawless (as their evaluation reports state). This level 

of hubris often results in unfortunate outcomes as leaders 

start to exist in their own echo chamber, listening to and 

hearing only themselves—or what they want to hear. The 

iStock/Alexandr Moroz 

outcome can be an emperor who’s not wearing clothes. 

Here we note that there is a difference between being confident 

and being arrogant or egotistical. Successful leaders may 

inevitably have a healthy dose of narcissism, but they should 

not be pathologically narcissistic. These differences are among 

the topics that should be included during leader development 

and promotion counseling sessions. 

Additionally, how a sense of humility plays into one’s identity 

and leader behaviors will shape and influence how, and if, 

a leader gets overly seduced by success. The current commander 

of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, Lt. Gen. 

Robert B. Brown, often discusses the importance of humility 

as a leadership trait and as being an essential component of 

Mission Command. 

Another aspect of the seduction of success is that organizational 

leaders tend to hoard success. They often get on a hedonic 

treadmill of never being able to get enough praise, success 

or wins. This can drive an organization to destruction. The 

unit’s success becomes the commander’s or leader’s success. 

Organizational success can be (and often is) confused with individual 

success. 


When a unit succeeds, the unit deserves 

the credit—not an individual. For 

example, Mike Krzyzewski, Duke University 

head men’s basketball coach, 

teaches and uses “collective responsibility,” 

which helps his team more easily 

focus on we and team, not me. The 

team succeeds or fails as one entity, regardless 

of the performance of any one 

individual player. 

Bathsheba Syndrome 

In terms of the human dimension and 

understanding the seduction of success, 

a number of psychological processes are 

at work. One is called the Bathsheba 

Syndrome, or the dark side of success. It 

suggests that absolute power corrupts 

absolutely, or that extremely high levels 

of success or ambition are often antecedents 

to ethical failure. 

As such, it can easily be argued that 

because of their success, flag level officers 

and senior NCOs need some kind 

of external mechanism to act as an antidote 

to the success drug. We agree. At a 

minimum, those selected for flag officer 

and/or command sergeant major billets 

would benefit from some form of external 

oversight. This is due in part to their 

strategic responsibilities and the potential 

for national or international embarrassment. 

It is safe to assume there are bad apples at the flag level. Statistically, 

there have to be. The military’s selection and promotion 

system is run by human beings who sometimes make mistakes, 

so it must have flaws. It is neither realistic nor smart to 

think that every flag level officer and/or senior NCO is not 

challenged or tempted by the seduction of success. 

‘I’ve Got Your Back’ 

Staying loyal to (and taking care of) your buddies and 

comrades in arms is part of the professional ethic. It is the 

very nature of life in the military to cover for and take care of 

each other. A subordinate’s loyalty to flag level officers and 

senior NCOs is exponentially magnified due to the rank, position 

power, referent power and expert power of the senior 

leader. Arguably, loyalty at this level is impervious to wrongdoing. 

Professional and personal bonds are emotional and 

powerful; they have to be because of the nature of the profession. 

But to what extreme? The answer is clear. When one’s 

actions are unethical, will hurt the unit or are against the law, 

Lt. Col. Joe Doty, USA Ret., Ph.D., works in ethical leader development. 

He commanded at the battalion level and previously 

served as deputy director of the Center for the Army Profession 

and Ethic. Maj. Shawn Tenace, USA Ret., was a Special Forces 

officer and instructor at the U.S. Military Academy. He is currently 

a substitute teacher and leadership consultant. 

loyalty goes to the profession and the larger organization— 

not the individual. 

A solution to the seduction of success challenge is for DoD 

to post (perhaps part time) neutral-party individuals in the offices 

of flag officers and senior NCOs. These individuals would 

need fairly extensive military backgrounds to understand context 

and culture, but they must be civilians to mitigate concerns 

about promotions and next postings. They should not be in the 

chain of command. Their job description could include responsibilities 

such as challenging the flag leader’s assumptions, asking 

lots of “why” questions, disagreeing with the leader, arguing 

for extreme counterpositions, providing candid and blunt 

feedback and assessments, and acting as an alter ego. 

Another solution would be to require officers and NCOs selected 

for flag level positions to reflect on and write about 10 

people they believe are responsible for their success. The writings 

should include specific stories of how and why these individuals 

helped shape their success. Newly promoted senior officers 

and NCOs could also reflect on specific areas they think 

could be their biggest challenges and threats, both professionally 

and personally. Much of the leader development research 

suggests that leaders who take the time to reflect and write 

about who they are, and who they want to be, grow and develop 

into better leaders who are less likely to succumb to the 

seduction of success. 

These solutions are not perfect because there aren’t any perfect 

solutions to human problems. But they are a start. ✭ 

iStock/Alexandr Moroz 


The Outpost 

Becoming Billy Mitchell By Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, U.S. Army retired 

Most soldiers have heard of Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell. He 

was the father of Army Aviation; the aerial leader of 

Maj. Eddie Rickenbacker, 2nd Lt. Frank Luke Jr. and our 

other famous flying aces of World War I; the founding spirit 

of the massive Army Air Forces of World War II; and the inspiration 

for our great U.S. Air Force of today. Mitchell was a 

flier, a fighter, a thinker and especially, a doer. Today’s superb 

Army Aviation exists because of what he started. As we continue 

our centennial commemoration of World War I, we do 

well to remember him. 

Mitchell’s father was a Civil War veteran and prominent 

Wisconsin politician, and his grandfather had enough money 

to be considered the wealthiest man in the state. But young 

William—known to all as Billy—began at square one. When 

America went to war with Spain in the spring of 1898, 

Mitchell enlisted as a private in Company M, 1st Wisconsin 

Infantry Regiment. 

The war ended before Mitchell and his fellow Badger State 

riflemen deployed, but not before some astute senior officers 

noted the private’s three years of attendance at Columbian 

University (now George Washington University) and recommended 

him for a commission. His father’s position as a U.S. 

senator didn’t hurt his chances; he pinned on gold bars. After 

short stints in occupied Cuba and the troubled Philippine Islands, 

the new officer found himself assigned to the Regular 

Army Signal Corps—probably as a nod to his influential father—and 

stationed just outside the nation’s capital at Fort 

Myer, Va. 

At Fort Myer, Mitchell lived in Quarters 2 from 1901 until 

1905. The imposing brick house was built in 1899, and it’s 

still in use today. Mitchell was one of the first occupants, but 

he wasn’t there much. In current parlance, his dwell time got 

way out of whack. Of four years assigned to Quarters 2, 

Mitchell was gone almost three, way up north in the snows of 

Alaska. The new lieutenant was fine with that. As long as he 

was out with soldiers, he liked to be away from home. So 

much for the dwell clock. This was the first hint he would be 

a good Army aviator. 

In the Alaska Territory, Mitchell found himself with a big 

job and a long leash. His signal unit was supposed to string 

telegraph wires across the wilderness. When he arrived, he 

saw that not much had been done. 

“I submitted a report of my observations in Alaska to 

[then-Brig.] Gen. [Adolphus Washington] Greely,” he explained 

later, “to the effect that the people trying to build 

telegraph lines stayed in the house too much in the winter, 

and that if they got out and worked when it was cold, the 

lines could be built.” Greely himself had explored much of 

Alaska, and he agreed with the young officer. 

Mitchell did not let cold slow him down, then or later. He 

led his soldiers out into the snow and cold to erect poles and 

run cables. On Jan. 2, 1903, the temperature at one signal 

post plummeted to 62 degrees below zero. 

Day after day, the lieutenant set the example. When wind 

and snowdrifts snapped dried-out wooden poles, Mitchell 

took charge of the repair parties. It was dangerous, difficult 

work. Men died, but not the lieutenant’s soldiers—he made 

sure of that. Mitchell’s superior officer, a tough old major, 

lost his mind in the howling white waste. Local Indians 

found it amazing that soldiers would brave the elements to set 

up the long, black “talk string.” But they did. The lines went 

up, more than 400 miles in all. Others had tried and faltered, 

but not Mitchell. He summarized: “Those who had failed accused 

us of wasting equipment and endangering the lives of 

Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell 

U.S. Army 


U.S. Army 

Then-Capt. Billy Mitchell in Alaska 

men and animals, but I never lost a man or even had one seriously 

frozen.” Few others could say that. 

Mitchell never forgot those snowy days and frigid nights in 

Alaska. When he eventually reached the Western Front in 

1917 in the depths of the wet, clammy European winter, 

British and French pilots warned him he’d have to fly hundreds 

of feet up in the cold sky, perched in an open cockpit 

and protected only by a leather skullcap, flimsy goggles and a 

white scarf. That suited him just fine. As in Alaska, he just 

kept going. So did those he led, and he led in person. 

When Mitchell returned from Alaska, he wore the twin silver 

bars of a captain. Impressed with his initiative in an independent 

role, the Signal Corps leadership sent the new captain 

to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., then as now the intellectual 

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. 

center of the officer corps. Mitchell attended the School of 

the Line and followed up with the Staff College, where he 

was one of 20 distinguished graduates, a mark of great things 

to come. His prospects were looking up. So was the Army. 

When the captain went to Washington, D.C., to visit his 

family, Mitchell stopped at Fort Myer to find the Signal Corps 

experimenting with a new contraption. Army communicators 

had used balloons since the Civil War, but they were yesterday’s 

news. There was something better than a balloon, and 

two brothers from Ohio named Orville and Wilbur Wright 

had one. It would change the nature of war. It would change 

the U.S. Army, and it would change Mitchell’s life. 

In the summer of 1908 and again in 1909, Orville brought 

the Wright Flyer to Fort Myer. Wright and his assistants 

assembled the thing’s engines in a little white building right 

next to Mitchell’s former home in Quarters 2. A century 

later, that small structure was used by the Fort Myer Officers’ 

Wives’ Club to store Christmas decorations. But back in the 

hot, humid summers of 1908 and 1909, the cramped cottage 

was full of angular engine parts, boxes of tools, several grease 

cans, a pair of mechanics, and a Wright brother or two. 

On July 2, 1909, Orville hopped on the lower wing. His 

helpers gave a push, and the Wright Flyer launched off the 

parade field at Fort Myer and ran smack into a tree. By today’s 

standards, in an era of multimillion-dollar helicopters, it was a 

relatively minor Class D accident—indeed, the entire plane 

was worth only $30,000. After some repairs with tough steel 

wire, spruce wood and stretched fabric, operations went much 

better on July 12 and afterward. In the official Army test run, 

Orville flew for more than 60 minutes, reaching 42 miles per 

hour and an altitude of 400 feet. The Army liked what it saw 

and purchased Signal Corps Aeroplane Number One. 

Mitchell saw the future and for him, it worked. A major by 

1916, Mitchell judged this aeroplane business to be a lot 

more interesting than stringing wire across the Alaskan tundra. 

He applied to flight school. The Army said he was too 

old and refused to pay for the training, at that time done by 

private contractors. Mitchell paid $1,470 (more than $33,000 

today) from his own pocket, took the classes (15 hours and 36 

flights), soloed and became an Army aviator. 

In World War I, Mitchell served in France with the American 

Expeditionary Forces. He rose to brigadier general. At 

the height of the war, Mitchell commanded all 45 new U.S. 

air squadrons, about 740 aircraft and more than 24,000 soldiers. 

Mitchell led in his usual way, in person and out front. 

He flew mission after mission with his crews, earning the 

Distinguished Service Cross for his valor. In addition, he also 

earned the Distinguished Service Medal for organizing and 

training the fledgling U.S. Army Air Service. His lesson 

learned was simple but true: “War is decided by getting at the 

vitals of the enemy, that is, to shoot him in the heart.” 

A great war record made Mitchell a famous aviator, but 

what made him legendary happened after the war. In widely 

publicized postwar exercises, Mitchell and his pilots excelled 

in demonstrating gunnery and bombing techniques. Their exploits 

included the famous sinking of the captured German 

battleship Ostfriesland off the coast of Virginia. This did not 


Left: The exploits of Billy Mitchell and his pilots 

included sinking the captured German 

battleship Ostfriesland off the coast of Virginia 

in 1921. Below: Then-Col. Billy Mitchell at 

Bolling Field, now part of Joint Base Anacostia- 

Bolling, Washington, D.C., in 1925. 

Library of Congress U.S. Air Force 

make Navy admirals very happy, as they 

thought modern battleships were unsinkable. 

One senior Army aviator was 

saying otherwise—and worse, proving it 

with real bombs. 

Had Mitchell left it at that, he’d be a 

footnote to history—an important one, 

but not the patron saint of Army aviators 

and Air Force pilots. But a man who 

lived the aviator life; who defined it; who 

sported the white scarf, the big watch, 

the desire to fly more than anything else; 

also had a trait sometimes known to aviators. 

He liked to talk it up. He talked inside the Army. 

He talked outside the Army. He talked to the Navy. He 

talked to Congress. He talked to the press. As a contemporary 

of his, fireball pitcher Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean, 

put it: “It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.” Mitchell 

could back it up in the air. But then—and now—the 

Army leadership would prefer that its senior leaders 

clear their remarks with the department. 

Mitchell chose to say what he thought. He spoke 

his mind. The more the War Department told 

him to shut up, the more he spoke out. In a country 

enthralled with barnstorming biplane crews, daredevil 

wing-walkers, and the promise of winning wars with 

technology rather than blood in the mud, Mitchell 

found a very interested audience. So he spoke his 

mind, to include some very public criticism of the U.S. 

Navy. It was not very joint. It was not very gracious. 

And it was also in direct violation of specific orders. 

For that, he faced a general court-martial on one 

charge with eight specifications, all amounting to “failure 

to shut the hell up.” The court-martial was a media 

circus. Mitchell spoke his mind there, too—about the 

importance of Army aviation, about airpower in general, 

and about the risks of a Japanese air attack on an 

island base called Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He was found 

guilty of violating orders—as indeed, he had by not 

clearing his pungent remarks. But in the verdict of history, 

Mitchell has been vindicated many times over. 

His example still shines almost a century later. 

People who risk life and limb in a flying machine 

tend not to have a lot of time for euphemisms or 

weasel words. Flying can be dangerous, even if you’re 

doing everything right, and aviators have little time to 

waste telling each other only what they want to hear. 

Mitchell knew that. He spoke up. He paid for it. But 

in the end, this soldier of the sky made our military 

and our country stronger. That’s why we remember 

him and always will. 

✭ 


Corporate Structure—President and CEO: Bradley H. Feldmann. 

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Founded and headquartered in San Diego since 1951, Cubic 

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Cubic Corp. was founded by 

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By 1968, Cubic had introduced more than 60 products and services 

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systems before the advent of GPS technology. The major contributors 

to Cubic’s growth during this time were the Electrotape, 

the world’s first commercial distance surveying system to provide 

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for U.S. and Australian hydrographic fleets and was a major milestone 

for Cubic’s emergence in the defense marketplace. 

Before 1970, Cubic began producing precision distance and angle 

measurement (tracking) systems for aircraft and test-missile 

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Today, Cubic Global Defense is a leading provider of highly specialized 

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Training systems and services. Cubic Global Defense is a leading 

AUSA Sustaining Member Profile 

Cubic Global Defense 

provider of realistic training systems and services worldwide. Our 

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Soldier Armed 

Helicopter Enhancements Avoid ‘Flying Blind’ 

By Scott R. Gourley, Contributing Writer 

While recent U.S. conflicts have emphasized the critical 

contributions of Army aviation on modern battlefields, 

the environmental factors surrounding these operational theaters 

have served to highlight the dangers of helicopter operations 

in what aviators call a degraded visual environment. Developing 

technology to ensure safe operations in these 

conditions is an extremely high priority in the Army aviation 

community. 

The Army experienced nearly 400 Class A and Class B 

flight mishaps between 2002 and 2015, according to Col. 

Mathew Hannah, U.S. Army project manager for aviation 

systems. His comments came during the Association of the 

U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition in October. 

Flight mishaps are classified according to the severity of resulting 

injury or property damage. Class A mishaps involve 

damage of $2 million or more, a fatality or permanent total 

disability. Class B accidents involve damage ranging from 

$500,000 to $2 million, permanent partial disability, or inpatient 

hospitalization of three or more people. 

“During that period, we lost 152 personnel in aviation accidents 

attributed either to controlled flight into terrain or operations 

in a degraded visual environment,” or DVE, Hannah 

said. “That personnel loss is by far the most important aspect. 

But I would also say that there was a materiel cost associated 

with that of approximately $1.4 billion.” 

Accidents related to degraded visual environments accounted 

for the majority of fatalities and costs associated with 

those accidents during that time span, he said. Most occurred 

during combat or combat-related missions in varying geographic 

locations, Hannah said, adding that more than half of 

DVE-related accidents “were in a brownout situation. And the 

remainder were in another degraded visibility, such as low illumination, 

low contrast or whiteout, which is basically snow.” 

360 Degrees of Coverage 

Technology explorations to date have resulted in an envisioned 

“end state” materiel solution called the Degraded Visual 

Environment Pilotage System, which utilizes external sensors 

to provide 360 degrees of coverage and allow aviators to successfully 

conduct tactical operations in all visually degraded 

conditions. That capability is still a few years off, however. 

In the meantime, the Army is taking a first step by focusing 

development on a forward-looking sensor package capability 

for use in aircraft-induced brownout environments. That first 

step is being called the DVE/Brownout Rotorcraft Enhancement 

System, known as BORES. 

Hannah characterized this system as similar to “driving your 

car without any mirrors or side windows to look through, but 

just looking through the front window.” So the pilotage system 

allows the user to take off and land, but “like in your car, 

you wouldn’t want to change lanes, go around curves or things 

like that,” he said. 

The Army completed an analysis of alternatives to achieve 

this capability in late 2014, and briefed the results to service 

leadership in early 2015. Based on that analysis, PM Aviation 

Systems was authorized to update the technology readiness 

A CH-47 Chinook lands in brownout conditions in Afghanistan. 

U.S. Navy/Petty Officer 2nd Class Jon Rasmussen 


A helicopter in a brownout at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., tests 

technology designed to help pilots fly in visually impaired conditions. 

level assessment, conduct a limited user assessment, and begin 

to develop a request for proposals for the new system, 

Hannah said. 

Multipronged Effort 

According to Hannah, the multipronged effort involves 

close cooperation across the Army aviation community as well 

as with organizations such as the U.S. Army Aviation and 

Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center and 

U.S. Special Operations Command’s Technology Application 

Program Office to research the current capabilities of industry 

with the goal of pursuing and advancing development of 

DVE/BORES. 

The research, development and engineering center “helps us 

with the research side of the different technologies,” Hannah 

said, noting that the field includes technologies such as light 

detection, laser detection and ranging, and long wavelength 

infrared and millimeter wave radar. 

The Technology Application Program Office is working on 

the Degraded Visual Environment Pilotage System, Hannah 

said. Sierra Nevada Corp. announced its selection for the 

Phase 3 award in October. 

“So we are looking at what they are doing and seeing where 

we can take credit for their testing and their development. 

And that will help us move quicker, with a goal of requiring 

fewer resources to get to the solution,” Hannah said. 

In addition to leveraging what other government organizations 

have already learned and accomplished, he characterized 

the AUSA Annual Meeting as “an ideal venue, with the presence 

of so many industry partners in one place, to discuss their 

technology as it relates to DVE.” 

Lessons Learned 

One of the lessons learned through the analysis of alternatives 

process was that there are three basic elements to any degraded 

visual environment pilotage solution, Hannah said: 

sensor technologies; symbology presented to the pilot; and an 

improvement in the handling qualities of the airframes, which 

will reduce pilot workload and allow them to utilize the pilotage 

system. 

Translating that to the industry exhibits at the AUSA gathering, 

he said some companies “are bringing to the table different 

types of symbology; others are bringing the actual technology 

itself—the different types of sensors. Some of the 

[helicopter] platform project managers are talking about their 

handling qualities. And some [companies] believe that their 

niche is the integration of those things. So all the companies 

pretty much fall into those four areas.” 

The Army was planning to release a request for information 

by early 2016 “to gather industry data in regards to obscurant 

penetration technology and the ability to fuse multiple sensor 

output into a single synthetic solution,” Hannah said. Additionally, 

the Army is planning to conduct a limited user assessment 

in late spring at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. 

“To be able to do it quicker, we are using the systems that 

we are currently working with,” Hannah said, noting that the 

base platform for the assessment will be a UH-60 “already fitted 

with the right mounting hardware for us to be able to put 

that sensor on.” 

The assessment sensor package will include a 94-gigahertz 

radar, light detection and ranging, and long-wave infrared 

camera with Christiansen Feature infrared technology. 

More About People Than Equipment 

“The important thing is not what vendor that sensor is 

coming from,” Hannah said. “The real value of that information 

is putting pilots of various experience levels onto that 

platform and seeing how they do. It’s more about the people 

than it is about the equipment for that particular limited user 

assessment.” 

In parallel with the DVE/BORES capability development 

document, which Hannah said was “drafted and now in 

staffing” at the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, the 

results of the Yuma assessment, as well as industry responses 

to the upcoming request for information, will inform the formal 

request for proposals that is slated for fiscal year 2017. 

When asked if the longer-range Army vision called for the 

eventual pilotage end state to use the same technology as the 

first-step DVE/BORES, Hannah said, “I can’t say what technology 

will be two or three years from now. But I can say that 

our intent is to achieve DVE/BORES pilotage initially and 

carry that same technology to 360 degrees around the aircraft.” 

“It may be the same technology,” he added, “but we are 

open to some other technology development that might … 

lead us in a different direction.” 

Current Army fielding plans are to begin installation of the 

capability on Black Hawks, followed by Chinooks and then 

Apaches, he said. “Apaches already have some capability with 

their sensor, so we wanted to first take care of the aircraft that 

don’t have anything,” he said. 

✭ 

U.S. Army/Mark Schauer 


Historically Speaking 

Charles V at 500 By Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, U.S. Army retired 

Jan. 23 marks the 500th anniversary of the accession of 

Charles V to the throne of the Spanish Empire. Already 

Duke of Burgundy and Lord of the Netherlands, Charles was 

presumptive heir to three of Europe’s leading dynasties: Habsburg, 

Valois-Burgundy and Trastamara. 

Soon, he succeeded his grandfather 

Maximilian I to become Holy Roman 

Emperor as well as King of Spain. This 

brought extensive tracts of central Europe 

under his authority. In the New 

World, Spanish explorers had seized 

toeholds in the Caribbean even before 

Charles V ascended the throne, and they 

were increasingly aware of vast riches 

beyond. 

Charles V presided over sweeping 

conquests in the New World that 

poured incredible wealth into the Old, 

helping fuel both unprecedented economic 

development and devastating 

warfare. The rise of the first global empire 

profoundly shaped the world we 

find ourselves in today. 

Ostensibly serving both God and the 

King of Spain but only nominally responding 

to the supervision of either, Spanish conquistadors 

fanned out across the New World in campaigns of exploration 

and conquest. They boldly exploited both technological advantages 

and hostilities that divided Native Americans. They also 

inadvertently gained advantages from devastating diseases they 

brought with them. They quickly amassed vast conquests, including 

Mexico, Central America, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela 

and Chile. Ferdinand Magellan led an expedition that circumnavigated 

the globe, explored the Philippines, and led Spain to 

claim extensive holdings in the Pacific. With these explorations 

and conquests came extraordinary mineral, commercial and 

agricultural riches, most notably gold and silver. 

The conquistadors had much of the freebooter in them, and 

their far-flung conquests easily could have disintegrated into 

squabbling personal fiefdoms. Charles V and his emerging 

colonial bureaucracy largely prevented this, albeit not without 

setbacks and confusion along the way. Charles V formally organized 

his governing Council of the Indies in 1524, having 

already employed the concept and the term at least five years 

earlier. To “launder” their plunder and garner their profits, 

conquistadors participated in the ever-increasing trade flowing 

through the port of Seville. Seville was also the port through 

which reinforcements and supplies flowed to them. 

Charles V parlayed his grip on this vital commercial link to 

Library of Congress 

Charles V 

reinforce authority he already exercised as king and defender 

of the faith. Soon, the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru 

returned enormous wealth to the king himself as well as to the 

men who had seized the bounty. Over time, royal appointees 

assumed governance from aging conquistadors. 

Bullion flowing from the New World 

dramatically reinforced advances in productivity 

and commercial development 

already underway in Europe. Global 

trade followed closely behind voyages of 

exploration, yielding fortunes from traffic 

in sugar, spices, European manufactures 

and exotic commodities. An entrepreneurial 

class prospered, plowing money 

into expanding regional traffic in coal, 

iron, textiles and bulk commodities. 

Money was in motion all over Europe; 

state revenues soared. France’s revenues 

doubled and England’s tripled 

during the 16th century. Revenue of the 

Spanish Empire multiplied eightfold. 

The shift in global trade to transoceanic 

settings heavily favored the West. In 

1483, the Ottoman Exchequer—the 

government department responsible for managing taxes and 

other revenues—took in twice as much as the Spaniards. By 

1600, Spanish revenues were four times those of the Ottomans, 

despite a tide of Turkish conquests. 

Charles V was not left to enjoy this economic progress in 

peace. Armed conflict was almost continuous during his reign. 

Three prolonged contests stand out: the containment of the 

Ottoman Empire, the rivalry with France, and the Protestant 

Reformation. The threat from the Ottoman Empire was existential. 

Effectively an Islamic military machine under the able 

rulers Selim I and his son Suleiman I (the “Magnificent”), the 

Ottomans conquered large tracts of Africa, Asia and Europe. 

They overwhelmed Hungary in the Battle of the Mohacs in 

1526, and pressed on into the Holy Roman Empire to attack 

Vienna. Vienna held out in a hard-fought siege. 

After several years of further campaigning, Charles V secured 

his Balkan Frontier and extracted a treaty from Suleiman. Ottoman 

and corsair fleets also ravaged the Mediterranean, so 

Charles V countered with hard-fought campaigns there as 

well. The decisive battle was ultimately won at Lepanto in 

1571 by Charles’ illegitimate son, Don Juan of Austria. 

Charles V perceived himself as defender of Christendom, and 

the strategic containment he engineered held until the Ottoman 

disintegration beginning in the 18th century. 


This 16th century 

painting depicts 

Charles V defeating 

Francis I of France at 

the Battle of Pavia in 

Italy in 1525. 

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. 

Ironically, this defender of Christendom shed even more 

blood fighting Christians than he did fighting Ottomans. 

Francis I of France proved an incorrigible adversary, jealous of 

Charles’ holdings on both sides of France and determined to 

expand in Italy at Charles’ expense. Francis even went so far as 

to ally with Suleiman to advance his ends. Charles’ generals 

defeated and captured Francis at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, 

but fighting resumed almost as soon as Francis was released 

after signing a treaty—which he repudiated. Charles generally 

got the better of 20-plus years of intermittent warfare 

with Francis, with the end state being pretty much the status 

quo ante. 

Charles V was unfortunate enough to be Holy Roman Emperor 

as the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter- 

Reformation got underway. Apparently not particularly theological 

himself, he characterized Luther’s theses as “an 

argument between monks.” He sided with the existing order 

nevertheless and crushed several Protestant-inspired uprisings. 

More followed. Charles decisively defeated the Lutheran 

Schmalkaldic League at Muhlberg in 1547. After further perturbations, 

both sides agreed to the Peace of Augsburg in 

1555. This divided Germany along confessional lines, and allowed 

each prince within the empire to select Lutheranism or 

Catholicism within territories they controlled. 

The wars of Charles V profoundly affected military development. 

For the first time since the Caesars, the state had revenues 

sufficient to sustain standing armies. Continuous conflict 

made standing armies necessary. Long-serving veterans 

professionalized. Their leaders, some noble and some not, did 

so as well. The Spaniards established combined arms teams 

such as the colunela (from which we get “colonel”) to better exploit 

evolving firearms. 

Charles V standardized artillery into seven types. The basic 

division of labor among culverins (guns), cannons (howitzers) 

and pedreros (mortars) remains with us today. Spanish engineers 

led in redesigning fortifications into the robust squat 

configurations best able to employ or resist artillery. War at 

sea revolutionized as well, with the galleon replacing the galley 

and transoceanic forays replacing the coast-hugging fleets of 

earlier times. 

After 34 years in power, Charles V felt his health and his 

powers slipping. In 1556, he abdicated in favor of his son 

Philip II in the case of Spain, and in favor of his younger 

brother Ferdinand I in the case of the Holy Roman Empire. 

He retired to a monastery in Extremadura, where he died two 

years later. 

Charles V was survived by three legitimate and three illegitimate 

children. Their marriages cemented relationships with 

Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Portugal, Austria, Florence 

and Parma. Close ties between Spain and Austria lasted for 

centuries. Charles V was a towering figure by any measure. 

Five centuries later, his global impact still reverberates. ✭ 

Additional Reading 

Maltby, William S., The Reign of Charles V (New York: 

MacMillan, 2004) 

McEvedy, Colin, The Penguin Atlas of Modern History 

(to 1815) (London: Penguin Books, 1986) 

Parry, J.H., The Spanish Seaborne Empire (Oakland: 

University of California Press, 1990) 

Google Art Project 


Reviews 

Man Behind the Scope Sees More Than Crosshairs 

The Reaper: Autobiography of One of 

the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers. 

Nicholas Irving with Gary Brozek. St. 

Martin’s Press. 320 pages. $27.99. 

By Kelly S. Kennedy 

Do not expect to find Chris Kyle’s 

American Sniper reincarnated in former 

Sgt. Nicholas Irving’s The Reaper. 

There are no jarring statements of a love 

for killing, no back-home bragging of 

civilians killed, and no need to think of 

an entire people as the enemy. The lack 

of braggadocio pushes forward an almost 

impossibly earnest telling of a similar 

situation: the need to kill the enemy 

before the enemy killed Irving’s battle 

buddies. 

That doesn’t mean Irving didn’t feel 

capable in his skills. He had trained his 

whole life to become exactly what he 

was—focusing on target practice, getting 

back on track in school so he could join 

the military, and pushing hard to go to 

Ranger School. 

Nor is this a story of struggle to be the 

first African-American sniper in his battalion, 

the Army’s Special Operations 

3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. 

In fact, Irving never mentions this 

himself. In his world, he was just one of 

the guys. But he and the guys were in the 

Army, in which African-American infantry 

soldiers—and officers—are rarities. 

For example, in 2012, only seven 

African-American cadets were commissioned 

as infantry officers. This is key 

because it’s hard for soldiers to make the 

general officer ranks without an infantry 

background—an issue women serving in 

the military also face. 

In other words, Irving’s story could 

have been a call to arms, so to speak, for 

soldiers who in the past had chosen military 

fields with skills like combat service 

support that could have led to civilian careers 

in ways an 11B MOS can’t. After a 

brief period in the Vietnam War when 

African-Americans were sent to the 

front to die in greater numbers than 

other ethnic groups, parents steered their 

children clear of combat arms. 

But as simply a soldier story, it’s a tale 

of friends lost, problems solved, and 

thoughtful questions about the point of 

it all. Irving’s first kill left him feeling 

“queasy, with that stomach-sinking feeling 

you get when somebody gives you 

some bad news.” Still, he said, the rush 

of combat was unlike anything else he 

had experienced. Later, after a particularly 

gory shot, “I didn’t want to deal 

with my thoughts about what I’d just 

done,” he wrote, so he simply moved on 

to something else. 

He writes about his mistakes, too, including 

his fear of jumping from airplanes 

that led to a bad landing; and also 

of starting out as an angry kid, but not a 

kid who loved to kill animals. When he 

hunted, he was “squeamish” about handling 

the rabbits and squirrels he shot, 

but he mastered emotional and mental 

discipline on the range with his dad. 

Soon, he was studying the dynamics behind 

hitting a target on a windy day and 

at different distances. And that made 

him realize he needed to pay more attention 

to his math skills. 

Part of the debate over American Sniper 

focused on the nature of being a sniper. 

Some see it as a brave and expected part 

of combat, while others see hiding to take 

a shot as cowardly. Irving wrote of his encounter 

with an enemy sniper: “What I 

experienced was personal. Seeing sniper 

action from the other side made me realize 

how calculating the act was.” 

He obviously feels respect for the enemy. 

He displays compassion in trying 

to imagine who he would be if he had 

grown up in a village in Afghanistan 

that had never seen peace, and who had 

a “limited understanding” of his “war on 

terror.” He recalled his thoughts while 

preparing for a mission: “What bothered 

me as I sat loading my weapon before 

we left was realizing that I might have to 

fire these live rounds at another human 

being.” 

Irving’s coming-home story also differs 

from a typical hero story. Rather 

than continue in a job in which he had 

proven his performance to almost legendary 

proportions—there’s a reason the 

book is called The Reaper—and instead 

of resting on his laurels to move up the 

ranks, he paid attention to his concerns 

about nightmares as well as his anger 

when his wife rearranged the furniture. 

He talked with his wife. He looked at reenlisting. 

He thought about what he 

could do on the outside. 

“Going out intact and on top was as 

good a way as any to end things,” he 

wrote. 

Instead of pushing through the pain, 

Irving chose to stay back and heal. 

Kelly S. Kennedy served as an Army communications 

specialist during Operation 

Desert Storm and is the author of They 

Fought for Each Other: The Triumph 

and Tragedy of the Hardest Hit Unit 

in Iraq. 


History Recounted Through Eyes of Young Soldier 

Airborne: The Combat Story of Ed 

Shames of Easy Company. Ian 

Gardner. Osprey Publishing. 304 pages. 

$25.95. 

By Nancy Barclay Graves 

Ian Gardner is the author of several previous 

books about the 101st Airborne 

Division. In his latest book, he focuses 

on one young soldier who was with the 

101st as it spearheaded battles across 

Europe in World War II. Most accounts 

of war are written from the top 

down, so to speak, with maneuvers described 

like a chess game. Airborne: The 

Combat Story of Ed Shames of Easy Company 

describes these historic events from 

the soldier’s vantage point: personal accounts 

of the training, fellow soldiers, 

day-to-day living conditions, confusion 

when airdrops do not put the soldiers on 

their exact targets, and soldiers’ ingenuity 

and fortitude to regroup. Here, 

Gardner recounts the hardships of close 

fighting, wounds and death, and the few 

respites between battles. 

Gardner states in his foreword that he 

wrote this book as a reaction to what he 

believed were inaccuracies in Stephen 

Ambrose’s acclaimed book Band of Brothers. 

He chose Shames to personalize these 

events because he was very much a part of 

the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 101st’s 

506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. 

In 2002, Gardner met Shames, who 

had retired from the Army as a colonel. 

Even at 80 years old, Shames’ memory 

was still clear. In an interesting format, 

Gardner uses Shames’ own words, separated 

from Gardner’s text by the use of 

smaller print. The book becomes almost 

an autobiography. 

Gardner covers Shames starting from 

his enlistment as a 20-year-old raw recruit. 

Training at Camp Toccoa, Ga., as 

described by Shames and Gardner, was 

rigorous. It was intended to cull those 

who would not be able to withstand either 

further training or the severity of 

combat. It did. A sleek, well-trained unit 

set off for England between Sept. 5 and 

6, 1943. The descriptions of the lives of 

the soldiers who were quartered in 

British homes from their own viewpoint, 

and from the wary residents in whose 

homes they were billeted, give a personal 

picture often omitted in histories. The 

training continued until just before midnight 

on June 5, 1944, when the soldiers 

took off for France. 

The drop into Normandy, aimed for 

Utah Beach, is vividly described. The 

landings were scattered, and Shames’ description 

of how he got out of the milk 

factory where he had landed to Sainte- 

Mere-Eglise, his target, is clearly detailed. 

So are the soldiers’ injuries and 

deaths, and the unbelievable skill and 

bravery of the medics who were seemingly 

everywhere. 

Gardner, with Shames’ personal descriptions, 

details the next month of 

fighting, which cleared the area of the 

German units with their omnipresent 

tanks among the hedgerows. For his 

heroism, Shames was nominated for a 

battlefield commission. 

By early July, the 506th returned to 

Ramsbury, England, where they had 

spent the previous winter. The cost of the 

six weeks in Normandy had been high: 

Of 575 men who jumped with the 506th, 

93 were killed. Back in Ramsbury, 

Shames’ commission came through. He 

transferred from the 3rd Battalion to 

the 2nd, where he spent the rest of his 

time in Europe. 

In mid-September 1944, orders came 

for the next big mission: Operation Market 

Garden, the effort to take vital roads 

and territory in the Netherlands and 

push on to Berlin. Personal descriptions 

from the vantage point of Shames and 

other soldiers—of the drop, close fighting, 

the linkage with the Dutch underground, 

the back and forth of the troops 

and the final breakthrough—are vivid 

and engrossing. 

Included in their activities was Operation 

Pegasus, an amazing rescue of 130 

British paratroopers along with seven 

American airmen who had escaped German 

imprisonment. At last, in late November 

after 71 days of fighting and a 

loss of around 60 percent, including 17 

commissioned men during Operation 

Market Garden, the 506th was relocated 

for rest in France, near Reims. But they 

were not able to rest and relax for long. 

On Dec. 19, the regiment was trucked to 

a village 3 miles northwest of Bastogne. 

The result of the Battle of the Bulge is 

well-known, but Gardner vividly narrates 

the personalities, the suffering, uncertainty 

and ultimate success—including 

not only of the 506th but of the other 

units involved. The battle for the town of 

Foy is described in detail, so important 

was it in breaking the siege at Bastogne. 

The Battle of the Bulge “was arguably 

one of the most important events of 

World War II,” Gardner writes, and certainly 

the last big hurrah for the beleaguered 

German army, although fighting 

continued until the surrender in May 

1945. 

On March 15, 1945, the 101st Airborne 

received a distinguished unit citation 

for their actions in Bastogne, the 

first complete unit to be so recognized. 

Soldiers from the division also liberated 

the Dachau concentration camp, and the 

operation is traced here in horrible detail. 

Chapter 13, “Last Stand,” follows the 

men of the 506th as they opened Eagle’s 

Nest, Hitler’s opulent mountain lair at 

Berchtesgaden. 

Forty-four pages of snapshots make 

this an intimate journal in which the 

reader meets many of the men involved. 

However, the lack of any line maps of 

the various engagements during the 


war is a serious omission. 

Gardner has written Shames’ personal 

epilogue reviewing his three years with 

the 101st Airborne. This makes a fitting 

summary for the division’s role in Europe. 

As we rethink the events of 70 

The Last Days of George Armstrong 

Custer. Thom Hatch. St. Martin’s Press. 

366 pages. $29.99. 

By Col. Cole C. Kingseed 


Few battles have captured the public 

imagination as the Battle of the Little 

Bighorn. The Sioux and Cheyenne 

victory over Lt. Col. George A. Custer 

and the U.S. 7th Cavalry on June 25, 

1876, was a watershed event in American 

military history. Not only was the 

engagement “Custer’s Last Stand,” but 

the battle also marked the last stand of 

the Indian tribes that had assembled in 

1876 and defeated Custer. 

Thom Hatch is a premier Western 

historian with 10 books to his credit. He 

has made a career of examining the life of 

Custer, with titles including The Custer 

Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to the 

Life and Campaigns of George Armstrong 

Custer; Clashes of Cavalry: The Civil War 

Careers of George Armstrong Custer and Jeb 

Stuart; and Glorious War: The Civil War 

Adventures of George Armstrong Custer. 

“Brace yourself for the unthinkable,” 

Hatch urges readers of his most recent 

book, The Last Days of George Armstrong 

Custer. “You are now hot on the trail of 

the holy grail of American history.” He 

also says reading Last Days is “the next 

best thing to having been there.” 

Unfortunately, the book does not live 

up to the author’s billing. Hatch plows 

familiar ground that was recently examined 

by authors James Donovan (A Terrible 

Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn, 

the Last Great Battle of the American West) 

and Nathaniel Philbrick (The Last Stand: 

Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the 

Little Bighorn). Both of these books are 

arguably definitive works in the field of 

years ago, this book is a recommended 

portrayal of a segment of that time. 

Nancy Barclay Graves is an Army wife 

and freelance writer who lives in Arlington, 

Va. 

Custer Tome More a Well-Told 

Than Untold Story of Battle 

Custer historiography. 

Hatch begins his narrative by examining 

the events in the life of Custer and 

the mood of the U.S. as the nation approached 

its centennial. To fully understand 

Custer the soldier, Hatch states 

emphatically that people who wish to 

comment on the Little Bighorn “would 

be well-served to learn those battlefield 

strategies and tendencies that made 

Custer a national hero.” 

In this regard, Hatch stands in the 

forefront of Custer apologists. “By the 

same token, this battle against the Sioux 

must be examined through the eyes of 

1876,” he writes, and not from 21st century 

standards “by people who tend to 

ignore necessary truisms of that distant 

time and replace them with societal rules 

today.” 

Hatch is at his best when challenging 

the traditional interpretations of what 

actually occurred on that June 1876 day 

in the valley of the Little Bighorn. 

Hatch’s Custer was not a “bumbling tactician” 

or “some sort of rogue commander 

who was free to pillage, plunder and 

kill his way through the West,” Hatch 

writes. Rather, Custer’s tactics were “in 

fact well thought out and logical and 

could have—should have—succeeded.” 

Hatch dismisses modern scholars who 

opine that Custer’s battle plan was 

“hastily devised, reckless, and destined to 

fail.” On the contrary, Hatch posits that 

Custer’s tactics were “nothing less than 

brilliant, especially given the terrain.” 

If there is a villain in Hatch’s narrative, 

it is Custer’s second-in-command, 

Maj. Marcus A. Reno. While Custer 

was riding toward the opposite end of 

the Indian encampment in the valley of 

the Little Bighorn, Reno willfully disobeyed 

Custer’s orders and “lost control 

of his senses and perceptions, which 

would not be expected of a competent 

Army officer at such a crucial time.” 

Hatch describes Reno as “no longer rational, 

not knowing whether to stand his 

ground or change his position.” 

Hatch’s history would have more 

merit if he stuck to the facts and described 

the battle in the exemplary manner 

he has done in previous works. After 

expending an inordinate amount of time 

examining the military clauses of the 

U.S. Constitution and Article 9 of the 

Articles of War prohibiting any officer or 

soldier from disobeying a lawful order of 

his superior officer, Hatch directs his 

wrath against a “disgraceful school of alleged 

scholars and pseudo-revisionists” 

who “have desperately searched for any 

way to place the blame for this devastating 

defeat on George Armstrong 

Custer.” Such invectives serve little purpose 

and detract from the book. 

On the positive side, Hatch’s analysis 

of the fight at the Little Bighorn has 

much to commend it to ARMY readers. 

Hatch competently addresses the mysteries, 

myths and legends surrounding 

the battle. In addition to an extensive 

bibliography, he provides annotated 

notes on his sources. These annotations, 

coupled with an appendix that outlines 

the table of organization and casualty report 

of the 7th Cavalry’s Little Bighorn 

campaign, make this book worth the 

price of purchase. Moreover, Hatch’s 

maps are clearly understandable and aid 


Women at War. Edited by Elspeth 

Cameron Ritchie and Anne L. Naclerio. 

Oxford University Press. 392 pages. $85. 

By Kayla Williams 

When women began serving in the 

U.S. military during the Revolutionary 

War, they did so disguised as 

men. Today, they represent approximately 

15 percent of the force. Despite 

the continual expansion of women’s 

roles in the military and the increasing 

number of female veterans, research on 

their specific physical and psychological 

health issues has remained relatively 

sparse. Women at War attempts to change 

that. The co-editors are medical doctors. 

Elspeth Cameron Ritchie is a retired 

Army colonel; Col. Anne L. Naclerio is 

deputy surgeon, U.S. Army Europe. 

The volume covers not only women at 

war but also their return home from 

war, the psychological issues of activeduty 

women, and the experiences of female 

veterans. The chapters—written by 

40 authors with vast experience within 

DoD, VA and beyond—cover a range of 

topics, including reproductive health, 

psychological health, suicide, intimate 

partner violence and military sexual 

trauma. (Full disclosure: I have presented 

on panels and professionally collaborated 

with co-authors of several of 

the chapters.) 

The authors approach their subjects 

with varying degrees of clinical specificity. 

The chapter “Issues in the Prevention 

of Malaria Among Women at War,” 

for example, narrowly focuses on its topic 

in a highly technical way. “Traumatic 

Brain Injury: Implications for Women in 

the Military” contains information on 

the reader’s comprehension of the Little 

Bighorn campaign. 

In short, The Last Days of George Armstrong 

Custer may not be the untold 

story of what occurred at the Battle of 

the Little Bighorn as much as it is a welltold 

narrative. Hatch’s approach to understanding 

one of this country’s legacy 

battles may be controversial, but he 

forces current scholars to continue the 

dialogue between past and present. 

Col. Cole C. Kingseed, USA Ret., Ph.D., a 

former professor of history at the U.S. Military 

Academy, is a writer and consultant. 

Documenting Women’s 

Military History and Health 

blast-induced and repeat traumatic brain 

injury, medical and neurobehavioral outcomes, 

and the possible protective factor 

of female endogenous hormones. 

Conversely, the chapter “Building the 

Framework for Successful Deployment 

Reunions” is a much more personal account 

of experiences and lessons learned 

as the author and her husband took turns 

deploying to and returning home from 

war zones. Similarly, “Women, Ships, 

Submarines, and the U.S. Navy” includes 

an abundance of personal anecdotes and 

“clinical pearls” of wisdom for doctors 

serving on Navy ships. 

A few chapters focus on narrow populations 

and time frames, such as “Female 

Combat Medics,” which describes 

a recent longitudinal study of behavioral 

health among U.S. Army combat 

medics. Others are broader and more 

wide-ranging, including “Compensation, 

Pension, and Other Benefits for Women 

Veterans with Disabilities,” which delves 

into the history of disability compensation 

and pensions given to women who 

have served in or with the military from 

1775 to the present. 

For those who choose to read the 

book front to back rather than focusing 

on specific chapters of interest, some 

weaknesses become clear. Because different 

authors wrote the 19 chapters, many 

cover the same ground, often opening 

with a brief history of women in the military. 

This becomes tedious. Various authors 

also either repeatedly cite the same 

statistics or different statistics about the 

same topic, leading to confusion about 

which may be more accurate. Occasional 

inaccuracies jump out, such as the assertion 

in “Female Soldiers and Post-Traumatic 

Stress Disorder” that “Brigade 

Combat Teams … are combat troops 

and therefore male.” These teams include 

engineer, signal and military 

intelligence companies—with, of course, 

women. 

There are also discrepancies in how 

each chapter characterizes recent developments. 

Some correctly refer to DoD 

rescinding the policy banning women 

from direct ground combat, while others 

refer to a combat exclusion law being repealed. 

Although that may seem like a 

minor quibble, such inaccuracies could 

make a reader question the veracity of 

more important clinical aspects of the 

work. 

Given that musculoskeletal injuries are 

among the top reasons veterans separate 

from the military, there is a surprising 

dearth of information on women-specific 

issues in that area. Other acknowledged 

weaknesses of the volume are the lack of 

broader comparative international perspectives 

(only Australia is represented), 

and no presentation on the experience of 

gay women service members. 

Women at War is aimed at health care 

providers who care for female service 

members, and they will likely derive the 

most benefit from clinical recommendations. 

However, the information will also 

be useful to providers who care for female 

veterans and military family members, 

as well as nonprofits and advocacy 

organizations that work with these communities. 

Students and researchers looking 

for new avenues of study will find 


many areas identified as ripe for further 

research. The chapter "Human Sexuality 

and Women in the Area of Operations," 

for example, points out significant gaps 

in the literature. 

The book is rich with history, data and 

I anecdotes regarding female military 

and veteran issues, making it a valuable 

addition to the collection of anyone who 

works or holds deep interest in these issues. 

The $85 suggested retail price, 

however, may make it more suitable for 

institutional rather than individual libraries. 

Kay/a Williams, a former Army sergeant 

and Arab linguist, is a senior project associate 

at the nonprrfit, nonpartisan RAND 

Corp. and the author if Plenty of Time 

When We Get Home: Love andRecovery 

in the Mtermath ofW ar. 

Fierce Battle of the Tenaru 

As Seen From Both Sides 

Victory Fever on Guadalcanal:Japan's 

First Land Defeat ofWWII. William 

H Bartsch. TexasA&M University Press. 

339 pages. $35. 

By Col. Stanley L. Falk 

Army of the United States retired 

Japan's twin defeats on Guadalcanal 

and in Papua, New Guinea, at the be- 

ginning of 1943 marked the crushing 

end of the Japanese strategic offensive 

that had swept triumphantly through the 

Pacific during the first six months of the 

war. They also signaled the beginning of 

a major Allied counteroffensive to halt 

and throw back Japanese advances. 

In his latest book, Victory Fever on 

Guadalcanal, William H. Bartsch concentrates 

on one tiny yet vital fight dur- 

ing the early weeks on Guadalcanal: the 

Battle of the Tenaru. Bartsch's detailed 

examination of this fierce encounter adds 

revealing new material about the personal 

behavior, feelings, fears and lifeand-death 

experiences of individual 

combatants. 

By the end of May 1942, Japan had 

seized and consolidated its initial strategic 

objectives, and its military forces had 

undertaken a secondary push to isolate 

Australia by interdicting lines of communication 

to the U.S. In July, Japanese 

troops had landed in Papua and, more 

importantly, pushed down the Solomon 

Islands to Guadalcanal. There, a small 

force of construction units began building 

an airstrip from which Japanese 

planes would be able to dominate Allied 

air and sea routes to Australia. 

To counter this move, on Aug. 7, 

American forces began landing on Guadalcanal. 

The Americans quickly seized 

the almost completed airstrip and established 

a large defensive perimeter around 

it. Thus began a bitter half-year struggle 

to control the island, during which both 

sides brought in major ground, air and 

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' Lead story. 

January2016 • ARMY 67

naval reinforcements. Their fierce engagement 

on the ground was matched by 

intense sea and air battles. 

Japan and the U.S. both committed far 

smaller forces to Papua. Indeed, as the 

Japanese were increasingly hard-pressed 

to reinforce their troops on Guadalcanal, 

they all but abandoned their effort in 

Papua. So by January 1943, Australian 

and American forces in New Guinea 

were able to gain a difficult bloody victory 

over the stubborn Japanese. Meanwhile, 

early February saw the hardfought 

defeat of the Japanese on 

Guadalcanal. 

The Battle of the Tenaru was a smallunit 

action between Allied and 

Japanese forces on Aug. 20–21, 1942. It 

took place inevitably as the result of 

Japanese hubris and overconfidence. 

Easy victories before this battle had infected 

Japanese military leaders with 

what Bartsch calls “victory fever” (“victory 

disease” in the original Japanese). So 

sure were they of their military superiority 

that they expected to meet no real Allied 

resistance until late 1943. They thus 

assumed that the U.S. landing on Aug. 7 

was no more than a weak reconnaissance 

force that could easily be eliminated. 

Still, it would have to be destroyed 

right away. The only unit immediately 

available was the so-called Ichiki Detachment, 

about 2,000 men in two battalions 

of the 28th Infantry Regiment 

under Col. Kiyonao Ichiki, the regimental 

commander. Originally scheduled for 

the abortive invasion of Midway, the detachment 

was readily available for speedy 

transfer to Guadalcanal. A “spearhead 

unit” of about 900 men would be sent to 

Guadalcanal at once, with the remaining 

troops following a few days later as a second 

echelon. 

Bartsch’s vivid account describes the 

personal experiences of hundreds of the 

men who fought and died on both sides 

on those two bloody days. Based primarily 

on extensive interviews, diaries, memoirs 

and correspondence with both 

Japanese and Americans, it offers what 

he describes elsewhere as the “bottoms 

up” approach to history. His full exploitation 

of Japanese sources, many of 

them heretofore unseen by other American 

historians, allows him to intersperse 

Japanese and American actions throughout 

his combat narrative. Yet in the absence 

of adequate maps, the course of 

battle is often hard to follow and the detailed 

confusion of individual efforts 

masks the underlying pattern of the 

fight. Still, the enormity of the lethal trials 

experienced by men on both sides is 

starkly evident. 

The Battle of the Tenaru set the pattern 

of combat for the rest of the war in 

the Pacific. It demonstrated the fierce 

determination of the Japanese to fight to 

the end, take their own lives rather than 

surrender, and cling to a belief in their 

own invincibility that led them to persist 

in desperate attacks that even they realized 

had no chance of success. 

Bartsch, who previously authored 

three excellent books about World War 

II, has written a dramatic and compelling 

account of ground combat on 

Guadalcanal. It adds considerably to our 

knowledge of that key struggle in the 

first year of the war in the Pacific. 

Col. Stanley L. Falk, AUS Ret., Ph.D., is 

a military historian and author of books 

and articles on World War II in the Pacific 

and Southeast Asia. 

How Once-Surprised Allies Bested Germans 

Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge. 

Antony Beevor. Viking. 480 pages. $35. 

By Col. Richard Swain 


There is a groaning bookshelf of 

books about the Battle of the Bulge, 

and many are excellent. Most, however, 

are still a gloss on Hugh Cole’s 1965 

Army Green Book, The Ardennes: Battle 

of the Bulge. Its maps alone make it the 

irreplaceable basis for serious study. 

Antony Beevor, who achieved celebrity 

status with his books on the war on the 

Eastern Front—Stalingrad: The Fateful 

Siege: 1942–1943 and The Fall of Berlin 

1945—has now followed subsequent 

books on D-Day and World War II 

with a very good study of the German 

offensive from December 1944 to January 

1945. 

At a macro level, the Battle of the 

Bulge was all about gaining control of 

the road net through the Ardennes Forest 

in Belgium and Luxembourg, and 

the ability of the concentrated German 

forces to pass large bodies of men and 

vehicles through the narrow valleys 

faster than the Allies could respond to 

the surprise the Germans achieved on 

Dec. 16, 1944. The Germans had been 

very successful doing this in 1940, and 

they timed their 1944 offensive to coincide 

with bad weather that would deprive 

U.S. defenders of the plentiful air 

support that might decisively shift the 

balance of forces at the outset. 

Every Army officer basic course 

teaches that no obstacle has value unless 

it is covered by fire. The difference between 

1940 and 1944 was that the 

American troops in the Bulge were prepared 

to fight, even in brutal conditions; 

and the American command, for the 

most part—particularly Gen. Dwight 

D. Eisenhower at Supreme Headquarters 

Allied Expeditionary Force—was 

remarkably flexible. 

Eisenhower recognized what was occurring, 

began reinforcing then-Maj. 


Gens. Troy H. Middleton’s and Leonard 

T. Gerow’s overextended corps on which 

the attack had fallen, and rapidly reorganized 

his command to reflect conditions 

on the ground. Troops on the 

ground recognized the importance of 

villages as roadblocks, and defended 

them fiercely. It is not coincidental, if 

seldom adequately addressed, that U.S. 

forces commanded extraordinary transportation 

assets, which permitted them 

to reinforce the Bulge faster than the 

Germans could transit the region and 

remove logistic stocks to the safe side 

of the Meuse River. 

Beevor’s account opens with a fivechapter 

prologue that begins with 

the liberation of Paris and covers the 

pursuit across the Seine through the 

battles for Aachen and the Hurtgen 

Forest, before turning to critical examination 

of Adolf Hitler’s decision to attack 

in the west. Beevor analyzes the 

Allied intelligence failure that led to the 

opening difficulties, then describes the 

defensive battle day by day, with due attention 

to actions on both sides of the 

hill. Of course, by now there is little 

new to report, but Beevor is a very good 

storyteller—sensitive to the conditions 

and tribulations at the sharp end. The 

maps that accompany the text are better 

than most in similar books. 

Beevor is particularly novel when describing 

in detail the travail of civilians 

in the battle area. He puts the green dimension 

among the red and blue, 

pointing out that while American soldiers 

were more sympathetic than Germans 

to villagers in the Bulge, their way 

of making war with field artillery and 

bombers was very costly to noncombatants. 

Indeed, he calls the increase in 

losses of civilians, consequent to use of 

massive artillery and bombs to spare infantry, 

“the terrible irony of twentiethcentury 

warfare.” He uses transcripts of 

concealed recordings of German prisoner 

conversations somewhat like a 

chorus behind the narration of the rise 

and fall of German operational fortunes, 

and he gives more attention to 

the role British forces played in the 

blunting of the offensive near Dinant 

than do most American authors. 

Beevor is highly critical of then-Lt. 

Gens. Omar Bradley and Courtney 

Hodges, not uniquely and not without 

cause. He examines Field Marshal Sir 

Bernard Law Montgomery’s conflict with 

Eisenhower and Bradley thoroughly, and 

not at all to Montgomery’s credit. Beevor 

overstates the consequences of Montgomery’s 

obstreperousness, attributing 

subsequent British marginalization largely 

to his inability to be a good ally. Greater 

stress might be given to the nature of 

armies as national manifestations; the 

shift of predominance of forces deployed 

within the Western Alliance by December 

1944; and the often overlooked fact 

that by the period of the Bulge, the 

British government was effectively 

bankrupt and in the hands of its American 

creditor. 

By December 1944, the U.S. government 

was well on its way to creating a 

new postwar world order that would 

end the age of colonial empires and divide 

the world into two rival power 

blocks, whether that was the general intention 

or not. The Bretton Woods 

Conference was held in July 1944, and 

Dumbarton Oaks in August to October 

of that year. The notion that the U.S. 

would govern the endgame of the war 

in the west as an equal, as opposed to 

acting as a very dominant partner to its 

rapidly declining coadjutor, was simply 

not in the cards no matter how urbane 

and cooperative the Allied commander 

in the north. Montgomery simply exacerbated 

what was already a bad hand for 

a bankrupt empire in sharp decline. He 

was fortunate to survive. 

The only significant shortcoming of 

the book is the form of the notes. The 

publisher has dispensed with superscripted 

notation in the text, but created 

a significant notes section with oddly 

structured references organized by page 

that many will find awkward. 

If Ardennes 1944 is not a canonical 

text, it will not disappoint either the 

specialist or general reader. 

Col. Richard Swain is a retired field artillery 

officer. A longtime faculty member 

at the U.S. Army Command and General 

Staff College, he was the Third 

Army historian for Operations Desert 

Shield and Desert Storm. From 2002– 

07, he was professor of officership at the 

William E. Simon Center for Professional 

Military Ethic at the U.S. Military 

Academy at West Point, N.Y. 

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Final Shot 

U.S. Air Force/Alejandro Pena 

Paratroopers descend into a drop zone at 

Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

Army - Too Much World

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