ISAF Planner in Afghanistan

[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is the Spear the Story of the Profession of Arms, a production of the Modern War Institute at West Point brought to you by the west point class of 1984. Welcome back to the Spirit, the Story of the Profession of Arms. Today's guest is Colonel Retired Patrick Howell, who's here today to talk about his experiences as a planner on the International Security Assistance Force staff. Pat, welcome to the show. [00:00:23] Speaker B: Shirley, thanks for having me. It's good to be back with mwi. [00:00:26] Speaker A: Pat, we're here today to talk to you about your experiences in ISAF and eventually working all the way up to your time as the director of the Modern War Institute. But before we get to all that, can we spend some time talking about your origin story? What was it like for you growing up? Why did you decide to join the army and why did you choose to go to school at West Point? [00:00:44] Speaker B: Okay, for my origin story. I came from a military family both on both sides of my family, my mom's side and my dad's side. A lot of the men, men in my family served, many of them served careers, not all, but I had a very high propensity of for the, the family to serve in the military. And why West Point? My first memories of life were at West Point. My father was assigned to West Point as a tactical officer. And for those listeners who, who are not sure, the tactical officers at West Point, the corps of cadets, they're organized into companies, about 110 cadets and while they do have a cadet chain of command, there is an actual commissioned officer who is their legal company commander. So my father was a tactical officer when I was two threeish. My first memories are of watch watching parade with a kid. So of course I, I wanted to be a cadet because that's what you saw as a little cadet. As I grew older I really actually didn't really know what I wanted to do until I got into probably my early high school time. I started thinking seriously about what do I want to do? I wasn't sure. But then I thought about all the conversations of listening into my dads and my uncles, my grandfathers talking with each other about their time in the military and while they didn't make it all rose colored, they, they highlighted a lot of bad things and but what I did take away was that the tremendous amount of, tremendous amount of pride they took in the job they had and the pride and with the people they worked with and just fantastic people and the satisfaction they had in serving our country. And I said I think I want to do that. I know the military life is not an easy life. That's maybe one benefit of growing up in a military family. You do hear the bad stories. But I also saw the satisfaction they took and the pride they took in their service. Probably midway through high school, I decided to go. I was going to go for West Point. And I applied and I was accepted and entered West Point in the summer of 1988. [00:02:33] Speaker A: What did you study at West Point? What kind of things were you into? [00:02:37] Speaker B: I studied. My major was international relations and the engineering track I took at that time. So at that time you guys had to take a 5, 5 course engineering track if they weren't doing STEM. Mine was systems engineering. The other things I did my I, I was able to walk on to the army lacrosse team. I was good enough to walk on. I was not good enough to stay on the team. So after one year, the coach told me he saw a great future for me back in the Corps of Cadets. So I do appreciate my time playing army lacks, but it was not for me. But I end up getting into being on the rowing team. And that was strangely enough, because in my company, in my sophomore year, we had an exchange midshipman and we did a lot of workouts together. And after I got cut from the lacrosse team, he said, I'm going to put you on a rowing machine. I did a piece and he said, well, let's, let's go talk to the coach because you are really fast. And I said, oh, I'm going to row varsity. He goes, no, no, your form's absolutely terrible, but you're pretty strong. So if Hugh McFarland ever hears this, I want to thank you, Hugh, for getting me into rowing. [00:03:42] Speaker A: What did you commission out of West Point? [00:03:44] Speaker B: I came out of West Point as in the Corps of Engineers. And so a few weeks after graduation, I went out to lovely Fort Leonardo, Missouri to begin my, my, my career as an engineer officer. I was originally supposed to go to the seventh ID for my first assignment because I wanted to be a light fighter. I wanted, I wanted the, the life that I wanted to be the light combat engineer. So a little bit of Ranger, a little bit of blowing stuff up. And then on what was one of the worst days of my life, up to my young age of, of 22 when I, when this happened, I was in the desert phase of Ranger school, desert phase, which does not exist anymore. And I just recycled. So I recycled with roster number 731. Not saying that it had affected me because I can still remember my, remember my roster number, but that same day I recycled. I got a letter from the 13th Engineer Battalion with the 7th ID saying they just received deactivation orders and they didn't know where I was going to go. Luckily, things worked out. I ended up going to Fort Bragg, North Carolina for my first assignment and got into the 82nd Airborne Division. [00:04:44] Speaker A: What was that assignment like for you? Coming straight from Ranger school, going to a unit like the 82nd. [00:04:50] Speaker B: What an incredible, incredible outfit. One reason I really liked it was most the men in my family have also been in the 82nd. From everything from platoon leader up to a brigade commander and an assistant division commander. What an incredible amount of spree de corps. I've heard a speaker years later when I was teaching the soccer department, one of our guest speakers described the 82nd as one step above the armed thugs, which probably has some truth to it, but I loved it because it was a great unit with a high amount of spree de Corps. Great NCOs, great officers. You're around people that wanted to be there. They talk about the triple volunteer. And so being around people who were that committed was just, it's just very motivating. It made me, it challenged me to be trying to be better than I was. [00:05:35] Speaker A: I hear that from a lot of people who served in the 82nd. Sounds like a fantastic unit to be in. Where did you go after that? [00:05:41] Speaker B: After three years in the 82nd, I went over to Germany. I was stationed in Bombard, Germany, where I went to a Corps mechanized unit. A Corps mechanized combat engineer unit, which was definitely a different lifestyle change. But I learned a lot there. I had some. Again, I've been very blessed through my career having just some fantastic NCOs, being my right hand man, that, that made me better. I think I genuinely pretty much for every NC I worked with, they all seem to take the mentality is we're going to make you better so you can go up and not make dumb decisions when you get to higher ranks. So I can name all my platoon sergeants and all my senior NCOs in my entire career and they I would not be where I was if it wasn't for those great NCOs that made me better. [00:06:24] Speaker A: And this assignment in Germany, did you make Captain while you were there? [00:06:27] Speaker B: I actually made captain right when I got to the advanced course. So for me it was captain in four. So I did OBEs, the officer basic course, three years at Fort Bragg, got to Fort Leonard for the advanced course, pinned on Captain and then I got to Germany as a baby Captain I see. [00:06:43] Speaker A: So a lot of a officers formative experiences happen in Those junior officer ranks 01 through 03. Other than what you just mentioned about the importance of non commissioned officers, which I completely agree with you on, I still remember with fondness a number of my NCOs as well. Other than that, what other big leadership lessons, big takeaways did you take from your time in the 82nd and up to the time where we're talking about now in Germany? [00:07:08] Speaker B: I'll pick the one from the 82nd which is always leading by setting the personal example. And I'll describe something. In 1994 we almost jumped into Haiti. And when I say we almost jumped into Haiti, the lead birds were two hours out when they got turned around in the air. Tactically the stupidest thing that for if the jump did happen, the, the stupidest thing tactically happens, which is the first jumper out of the first plane is the commanding general. General. What is a general doing on a jump? It's obviously he's, he will assume command. But you know that when you go out the door that your leadership has already gone in front of you. And so while there, while his immediate effect of being on the ground probably is minuscule to nothing, to me it's the, if we're going into a very dangerous situation, you're leading by setting the personal example and going first. And that that's just a great lesson to follow over time. You have to learn. And I'm going to bring a lesson from my time in the Ranger regiment when Colonel Paul, then Colonel Paula Cameron was the Ranger regimental commander and he would have, he would emphasize slash hammer down on officers that try to do too much. Lead by example. And what I mean by it would be on admission going into a building, the platoon leader is not the number one man in the stack. Not because he's not brave, but because he said platoon leaders, you need to balance leading by example and also supervising and on the, on these tasks, on these operations, these raids, platoon leader, your weapon is called first, second, third squad and that radio you're holding to call, to call an air. And if you're leading by example being number one man in the stack, you're not leading the mission. So you gotta balance it. So you gotta, there's time to lead by example and there's times to step back and supervise the overall what's going on and what that balance point is. It depends. Different units require will require leaders to go different places. If a unit's getting hammered pretty hard, maybe the platoon leader that Platoon leader, company commander, they're going up front and leading, saying, men, follow me. And then once you. Once they get back on their feet, he's going to step back and go to the supervise. So it's one of those easy but not simple, or simple but not easy. Find that balance between leading by example and then supervising. And you got to find that balance point. Find that balance point is the hard part. And that's what you develop over time. But that was the big thing from the 82nd, was if you went out the door, you knew the CG was already on the ground. [00:09:24] Speaker A: Was it a big adaptation for you to go from a paratrooper unit to what sounds like a heavy unit in Germany? [00:09:32] Speaker B: It was very big. My. Before my first. First field problem in this combat mech unit, my first sergeant, who was. He only pulled us off. He was another former paratrooper, Bill Ratliff. And he's like, sir, I need to talk to you before we go to the field. Like, okay, what is this, first sergeant? He goes, well, we're going to take cots. And I think I had a conniption. My face. Face split in two, and I had a heart attack. Because you don't have costs. We're tough. We live on the ground. And he said, sir, I'm asking you to trust me. And if after. If you just. After this field problem, if you disagree, the cots will go away, and I'll never bring it up again. But let me tell you my reason. I'm like, okay, tell me the reason. And he said, we've all, you know, tough. We slept on the ground. We slept in Humvees. He goes, but you know what the value is of 3 hours of good sleep lying on your back? Then we went through the field problem. And what we did, not every soldier took a cop, but what we would do in our. In our unit, maintenance, collection. Collection point where all the tracks had to go through at some point because everything was always breaking. We have some cots there in a tent, and so the guys that weren't working the vehicle were getting quality downtime for two to three hours. And it had a major positive effect on. On their performance. So, you know, I was wrong. It had a good. It had a value to it getting quality sleep. And maybe coming out of the second where I thought I had the. The terrible mentality of, I'm just going to grunt through everything and be tough. Well, that was tough, but it wasn't that smart. It wasn't. It was a culture change. And if. And if Bill Ratliff had not been a paratrooper, I probably just would have just ignored him. But he asked me to trust him. I trusted him and he, His. His observation was spot on. You don't have to be. It's easy to be hard, but it's hard to be smart. And so I think I got a little bit smarter, thanks to Bill. [00:11:16] Speaker A: That's a great story. I love that vignette. Was there anything else that you thought was particularly noteworthy during your time in Germany? [00:11:24] Speaker B: We lived. We were there for four years. I had the opportunity. I was in a very unusual. I was in the 54th Engineer Battalion stationed in bomber Germany. Now during the Cold War, the 54th Engineer Battalion was part of the. The ACR in full. The gap. That was sort of our lineage. But the ACR was gone and now it was just a standalone battalion. An unusual mission that my company had was there in Europe. There was a. At the time, there was a. There was an organization called Allied Mobile Force Land, which was a multinational unit that was created during the Cold War. And it wasn't an exist other than having an HHC there. It wasn't an existing unit. It was. Is basically an hhc, which was manned by the US but it was a bunch of units from all the NATO countries that were. That could be rapidly deployable airborne units, Alpine units or mountain units from the Germans or the Italians. The, the guy, the. Our guys from Vicenza, Paratroopers, they were part of it. And the AMFL had two deployment locations. There was only two NATO countries that shared a border with. With the Soviet Union. That was Norway and Turkey. So AMFL was designed. If the, if it looked like the Soviets were ever going to move into Norway and Turkey, they would deploy amfl. And if everyone showed up, what it would be. If they went to Norway, for example, we'd have a headquarters with a. With a two star that rotated amongst all the NATO countries. When I was in it, the commf commander, amfl, was a Canadian. 10 infantry battalions. No brigades, just 10 battalions. You had three artillery batteries and a hodgepodge of other stuff. And I was part of the hodgepodge as company. And the defensive plan was get side by side on the border and raise the flag and tell the Soviets, okay, the moment you shoot one person here, you shot all of NATO. It was designed never to win. It was designed to be a show, to be a show of political resolve. It was not a show of force because these are light units that'd be going up against tanks. But what it did get was Some pretty cool training deployments. My one to Turkey got canceled two weeks out due to. Due to her. Due to earthquakes. But I did get to take my company 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle in the winter up in Norway. That was. That was cool. Fantastic training opportunity. We had a great time. So, yeah, I enjoyed my time in Germany. And being in a mechanized engineering unit, I really got to appreciate maintenance. [00:13:49] Speaker A: I'm sure that's something that served you well throughout the rest of your career. [00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, maintenance. Maintenance is maintenance and needs to get done. It's important. It's. It's not the sexy part, but if you don't do it, your vehicles don't roll, then you're failing your mission, so it's important. [00:14:02] Speaker A: So you did your four years in Germany. What was next for you after that? [00:14:06] Speaker B: I. I'd been picked up to teach in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. And so I went from 2000 to 2002. I went to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy up at Tufts University in Boston. [00:14:19] Speaker A: That's pretty prestigious assignment. What was the application process like, and why did you decide to go back to West Point? Was that something you always wanted to do? [00:14:27] Speaker B: That's a great question. I think I always wanted to go back to teach at West Point because so many, not all, but so many, the professor had. Were so inspiring to me. They, I. I came out of West Point with so many officers saying, I want to be like them. [00:14:42] Speaker A: They. [00:14:42] Speaker B: They're soldiers. But these guys are also pretty dang smart. So I'd always want. And I found in my time at West Point, I enjoy teaching. I enjoy helping others learn more. So, yeah, I'd always wanted it, and I. So I pursued it and was. Was lucky enough to be picked up. I remember, I still remember the phone call when Cindy Jebb called me when I was in Germany. And I got this call from this Lt. Col. Jebb, future Dean, and she's like, congratulations, you're going to come back to soc. [00:15:09] Speaker A: Oh, that's amazing. All right, so you did your two years at Tufts in the Fletcher School, and you came back to the Department of Social Sciences. What did you teach, and what was that experience like for you? [00:15:21] Speaker B: I taught the core course of international relations. I became. I think I might still have the record for being the course director for the core course, which is called SS307, which is the course that all the cadets take, normally the standard model in the SOC department, at least up until, as far as I know is, instructors come in their first year after the first semester, first year, the leadership makes a decision on who's going to take over what courses the following year. And normally for the core courses, whether it's international relations, economics or American politics, the person they pick is the course director. They'll start doing it their second year, they'll do it for two years and then they'll move on to another assignment. So it's normally a two year assignment. So at the end of the first semester, I got told I would be the next court director. And then one week after the semester began, things were kicking up in Iraq and Sonia Finley got picked up on a TCS assignment on I think the first week of class. So I became the core course director as a newbie, as a first year instructor. So I have a, I have a. So if the model's designed for a two year course director, I did it for two and a half years, so taught that class I think 19 or 20 times. I could probably still give less than five if I had to. [00:16:39] Speaker A: That's a pretty heavy lift. Coming straight from graduate school with presumably not a lot of teaching experience in international relations. Do you think that you had any special skills or experiences that helped you negotiate that? [00:16:52] Speaker B: I think that the social department did a really good job of onboarding you to teach the different stems. And I don't know how it's done now, but when I was there, the different stems, Economics, American Politics and International Relations, they each ran their own onboarding process. And the international relations STEM was very heavy on practice classes. So by the time we were done, you gave four, maybe five practice classes to your peers. And so you gave a lot and you also watched a lot of your peers give because you would be the students for your peers. But what was funny is on the, and I was just as guilty on the first practice class, all your students, and I'm air quoting students, which are your fellow instructors, they were the ideal students because they did the readings and they asked questions. And by the fifth one, they all the instructors learned how to be the worst students possible, falling asleep talking. And so they did a great job. Sonia Phillip, hats off to Sonia Finley. She did a great job of, of onboarding us, got us all over. Everyone had a little bit of nerves. But by the time you get to that fifth class with the work class with the worst students possible, AKA your peers, we were, we were pretty ready and having, having coming out of being a company command, you, you've been teaching, I mean that's what commander leaders do. You, you teach and give, give guidance, whether it's an outboarder or a class on realism. You're still imparting knowledge. We're just changing what we cover. Going from how to. How to take the hill or how to put the minefield into. So what does the Thucydides think about, you know, the, the trash. [00:18:21] Speaker A: What else did you teach at West Point during this assignment? [00:18:25] Speaker B: I had to teach comparative politics one semester. And during intercession I taught military science. I again, I might have the record for the number of times teaching SS 307. That was it. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Okay, so you wrapped up this assignment at West Point. Are you a major at this stage in your career? [00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I've been on major my going into my third year teaching. So I left, left West Point with a major with about one year, one year in, and headed out to Fort Leavenworth to Angel Staff College. [00:18:56] Speaker A: What was that experience like for you? [00:18:58] Speaker B: I have a love for learning and so another opportunity. I haven't been, I've been teaching the last three years, but just this was an opportunity to learn more. The Iraq war had kicked off, and so I used this opportunity to try to learn as much as I could about counterinsurgency because I figured I might be doing that sometime in the future. It was great, the classes. So when I went to CGSC at that point, still only a small percentage of the student body had patches on the right shoulder with shoulders with combat experience. Fast forward a few years later, and every guy had a patch. But at this point, it was still relatively new in the conflict and only a small percentage. So it was a great chance to, to talk to them with your classmates to find out what worked, what didn't work, what they, you know, what would they, what do they wish they could have done to better prepare? [00:19:47] Speaker A: What year was this? [00:19:48] Speaker B: This is academic year 2005 to 2006. [00:19:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, right. So the war in Iraq is, is really just in its early period. The war in Afghanistan had been going on for four years. So I remember that time period as well. And you're right. The, the people wearing right shoulder patches are kind of few and far between, especially at the big schools like cgsc. Do you think that the people that were coming in with that experience, were they sharing it in a way that was useful to you or was just kind of vignettes that were interesting but not particularly useful when you had your own deployments down the road? [00:20:21] Speaker B: That's a great question. No, I, I it. And you're also going to be skewed by the guys that I, the guys in my small group were fantastic. Sean Davis, who I think is now the logistician down at the command formerly known as forcecom. So the guys in my small group, the guys I interact with were is very great to hear their insights and no one has the exact same experience but getting any information you can, you know, learning anything and everything you can, it might not have immediate application but still learning is learning and it makes you a smarter thinker and improves your proves your critical thinking. So I was very blessed with the guys that I had in my section leaving cgsc. [00:20:58] Speaker A: Most people coming out as majors are looking for their key development job. What did you do after you left cgsc? [00:21:06] Speaker B: I followed a non standard track. I left CGSC and I went to be the regimental engineer for the 75th Ranger Regiment. [00:21:14] Speaker A: That seems like an interesting job to go straight from CGSC to the Ranger Regiment. Did you always have an interest in doing special operations and if so, why did you choose to go to the Ranger Regiment instead of one of the other organizations out there? [00:21:26] Speaker B: I actually as an engineer I never really thought about it. But the way it happened was one of my best friends in the Army, Everett Spain, who recently retired as out of the head of bsnl. We're housemates. We were, I should say duplex mates. We live in the same duplex at Leavenworth and ran into him. The hall was like hey, Ranger regiment's gonna give a talk. I'm like oh. He said they say they're hiring engineers. Like well let's go. So we went, sat down, listen to brief and we looked at each other and said, and we both said let's both compete for it and if one of the two of us gets it, that's a great day. So we, we both competed and I'm getting it but so I had not thought about it at all because I didn't know that Rangers had an engineer. Now I was very excited. My, my uncle was a Ranger company commander in the Vietnam War. So he got some Ranger back, family background as well. So he was a, a Vietnam Ranger then he taught in the Ranger department. So he was very excited when I told him I was going to the Ranger Regiment. And then he told my wife that you can only be so lucky to have a Ranger. Hahaha. [00:22:28] Speaker A: I'm sure she appreciated that over the time. [00:22:30] Speaker B: I'm sure she did. [00:22:32] Speaker A: The Ranger regiment was pretty involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if I remember correctly at this point. So what was your experience like in the Ranger Regiment? What kind of core memories do you have your time there? [00:22:45] Speaker B: I absolutely love the Ranger Regiment and I will tell everyone I had the most boring job in a very exciting unit, the range. The engineer in the Ranger Regiment, the command engineer is not about blowing stuff up, which I hoped he had been, but he was not about blowing stuff up. It was about doing the large scale construction for ranges, for, for operating bases, for buildings back in the cone and back in the United States. It was about construction. So when you're in the Rangers, it's a very exciting unit. Was very. With these excellent NCOs and Rangers doing great missions, the engineer is not. It forced me to, to mature a little bit because at first I was a little, you know, oh man, I want to do. I want to do these fun things. And then I realized, well, that that's. Well, that'd be neat to do the fun things. I realized that mentality that got repeated a lot in jsoc, which is your importance to the mission is not dictated by your proximity to the objective. So I could decide not to do my engineer job, that'd be fine. But that means some Ranger somewhere is not going to have place to sleep, a place to eat, a place to train or forbid. They won't have a gym to work out. So while I didn't have that verbiage, I didn't hear that verbiage until I got to. Got to JSOC later on. But it forced me to mature, to realize that not everyone's, you know, doing the fun stuff is when you're younger, but you can still take. If you, if you truly love the, love the soldiers and Rangers that you're working for you, whatever job you are, you do your best because you're taking care of them so they can go forward and take care of the mission. But it, yeah, it was not the. Like I said, very boring job and a very exciting. [00:24:18] Speaker A: Did you deploy overseas with Rangers? [00:24:20] Speaker B: I did. I. Both Iraq and Afghanistan for very short durations. At that time, the engineer, the Ranger regiment had one engineer. That was me. So I had construction, forward construction back of the two, the construction back in the United States was more important because at a forward operating base, we could be gone in six months. Whatever we built at Savannah, Georgia is going to be what we have for the next 20 years. So I think I got, I used to joke I got to go forward for two to four weeks at a time for good behavior, and then did I have to come back home and do my real job? But they. I got to go forward some, but it was even When I went forward, it wasn't doing the fun stuff. It was hanging out with cool guys doing cool things. But I'm, I was just doing stuff just to take care, take care of Rangers. [00:25:01] Speaker A: You mentioned jsoc, the Joy Special Operations Command. Is that where you went after you, you completed your time in the Ranger Regiment? [00:25:07] Speaker B: It was not. After the Ranger Regiment, I actually went back to Fort Leavenworth for sam's, the School of Advanced Military Studies, where, where we studied campaign planning. I, I like to joke it's because I did not train to standard the first time I went to Leavenworth. The first time I went to Leavenworth, we, we had a move. I don't think anything was broken in our household goods, which obviously does not meet the army standard. So I had to go back to Leavenworth to get retrained and Yep. And it happened. We went back, we had a lot of stuff broken in the move. So that I finally had a successful move to Leavenworth with a lot of stuff breaking. So after, after Ranger Regiment, I went back to Leavenworth, did the Sam's program for one year. So that would have been 2008 to 2009. After that, that's when I went to Afghanistan from nine to 10. So I, I didn't get to JSOC for a few more years. That's a few more years down the line. [00:25:55] Speaker A: Right on. So School of Advanced Military Studies. That's a pretty prestigious, hard to get into course. How are you selected for that? [00:26:03] Speaker B: You, you interview, you apply, and I'm sort of floundering a bit because it's that, as I think about it, that was about 20 years ago. So I don't have too many exact memories, but it's an application process. It's. It is a competitive, it is a competitive process to get in there. And while I'm sure there's always tweaks every year, the principle is it's competitive. It's. It's not a giving. You have to compete to get there. And of all the military schools I've been to, being a sam's was the most. There's a phrase of iron sharpens iron. And that's how I would describe SAMs for this. The intellectual development in there. You organized into small groups of about 15 officers. We had all the services, mostly army, obviously. We had, I think one or two sister service and then we had a British officer. And from normal small and normal small groups, whether it's the basic course, advanced course, or CGSC in any group of 15 there might be two really, really strong guys and a couple guys that are pretty good. And then everyone else, at the end of the first day of discussion at sam's, everyone just looked at each other because the entire room was just running full speed. And over the course of year, you learned that if you made an argument and could not back it up with logic and facts, you just got decimated. So we forced ourselves to get sharper because it almost, almost the entire group were just extremely high performers that, that love learning, that wanted to get better. We wanted to intellectually develop ourselves. Not to go to academia, but to go off and hopefully do better planning for the army and Joint Force. So it was a great intellectually developmental period. I likened to my time when, when I was in the social department from two to five, same thing. Everyone was intellectually sharp and if you wanted to make a weak argument, you'd be the butt of all jokes. So you had to know your stuff and you had to. He had to prepare. So it was, what a great way just to intellectually develop. Develop your mind. These critical thinking is a skill that never goes out of style. [00:28:02] Speaker A: Other than being more intellectually rigorous, what types of things were you learning in sams that you would not have gotten through CTSC or even one of the war colleges? [00:28:11] Speaker B: Sam's is really focused on, on campaign planning. And I will, I will use an analogy that I used in my SAM's comprehensive exams. I like to try to come up with simple definitions so to differentiate what makes campaign planning or the operational level of war. This is the pat hell definition and what I. My definition does not contradict the army. The army's doctrine definition. It just says it differently. But so a tactician. A tactician synchronizes units and effects in time, space and purpose. You can be a tactician as an E5. Smitty go left. Joe go right. That you're doing tactics. You could be a tactician as an aircraft carrier strike group commander. Because you're telling, I want my sub sub line here. I want my agent's credence here. You're synchronizing units and effects in time, space and purpose. That's a tactician. It's not about size. It's about the type of thinking you're doing. Whereas campaigning, you're not synchronizing units in time, space and purpose. A tactician synchronizes units in time, space and purpose to win a battle. A campaigner or the operational artist is synchronizing battles in time, space and purpose to achieve Strategic ends. So a great tactician can take the hill, but if it's the wrong hill, that doesn't help anything. Good job taking the hill. But that did us nothing. You got to take the right hill. So campaigning is about, it's just taking a more macro view and figuring out what are the battles that we need to fight to win this war. And the great learning vision, the great visual learning tool is the island hopping campaign in the Pacific in World War II. Because obviously we didn't take every island, but we took certain islands and we bypassed other ones. They, someone was synchronizing the battles. Every, every island was a separate battle. They synchronized those battles in time, space and purpose to ultimately get to the invasion of, to the point where we could invade Japan, which luckily we didn't have to do. So that's where, that's where can. That sam's is really focused on the campaigning part. Now we, you learn a lot from strategic level to tactical level. But the, the gist as you walk away and you're, you're supposed to be thinking like a campaigner, not about how to take the hill, but what are the hills we need to take to get to the national strategic objective. [00:30:26] Speaker A: You mentioned a few minutes ago that you went to Afghanistan after SAMs. Was, were those two things tied? You went to Sam's and then you got this job in Afghanistan. [00:30:37] Speaker B: Great question. Yeah, that. For, for any listeners that aren't aware for the SAMS program, if you go to sam's, it's not just you're going to school for a year and you have this great intellectual development which you are, but it's tied to an immediate utilization assignment. So when you graduate from sams, there are certain bills throughout the army and Joint Force that are coded for SAMS graduates. Normally you think of a Chief of Plans or League plans. Normally at a two star, three star or four star, there's others that are out there. But that's, that's sort of the simple answer. So I was in a SAM's utilization assignment and I went to the Four Star headquarters in Afghanistan, which was the NATO headquarters called ISAF International Security Assistance Force, under the command of General Stan McCrew Crystal, a former former JSOC commander. So there I was in the. What was called the CJ35 Combined Joint 3 5, which is future Operations. I was, I was a lead planner in the future operations section. I worked for the chief of plans was a guy named Derek Miller, sam's graduate extraordinaire. And I was what's called a Lead planner. And what that means is the biggest flaming bags of crap. That's what you give to the lead planners. [00:31:47] Speaker A: That sounds like a very interesting assignment. [00:31:51] Speaker B: It was, when I look back, I think six or seven of my major planning efforts that I was the lead planner on the big flaming bags of crap. Six or six or so of them ended up being on the front page of the New York Times above the fold. So I was, I had the opportunity to work on things. Now my name's never mentioned. And as a sans planner, your name should never be mentioned. It's not about you. You're there to provide advice and planning for the commander. Do not be seen. Just be, just be the. Be the person that helps the commander. But I think six of my major efforts were in the New York Times on the front page, the most prominent being the number of troops. When General McChrystal requested 40,000 troops to go to Afghanistan, that was my planning endeavor. [00:32:40] Speaker C: Wow. [00:32:40] Speaker A: I remember that being kind of controversial in political circles. To us in the military, that seemed pretty reasonable, but I guess politically it was a little bit of a hot potato. Was that accurate? [00:32:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it was very much so. And, and when General McChrystal, he knew [00:33:00] Speaker A: when he, when he. [00:33:01] Speaker B: I actually to get ready, I, I found my planner's notebook from that day of when he gave his guidance. And it was an eighth of July. I, I just happened to have it on my bookshelf with. And I've written on top of my notebook, do not discard. He, he knew that it from the beginning said that whatever we say will be controversial, we need to write like Hemingway and we need to have the math and logic to back it up. And now of that two, I was not the Hemingway. I was the math and logic. And we had a. There was a Navy SEAL whose name I wish I could remember. He worked in the, in the Commander's Initiative group, who was a former White House fellow. So he took all my analysis and he rewrote it to make it actually sound nice because I'm not a naturally, naturally good writer, but that was my first. I'd been in the country for about one week at that point, and that was my first major planning effort. My, My first big flaming bag of. Of crap that I had to work on. But yeah, it was very controversial. So we had, we. We put the work in to do the rigorous analysis on how we got to the number. And then it was very close hold on the distribution of our analysis of the analysis. If people remember in history, General McChrystal shortly after he gave his assessment that got leaked in about 12 hours, need to say General Crystal was not very pleased. And so the analysis that my team did that, that we bundled into a product, it was, it's never been leaked. The numbers came out. The number was easy, 40,000. Anyone can, anyone can write that down. But the 40 pages analysis to get there has never been leaked because we never emailed it. General McChrystal hand carried copies to D.C. when he briefed the National Security Council on drone Petraeus. I hand carried copies to NATO headquarters when I briefed Admiral Sadridas and his staff. And what I did not know at the time was when the king, when the Initiative Group repair initial Commander's Initiative Group repaired the packets, every packet was a different font and font size. So if it did get leaked, we know who leaked it. [00:35:10] Speaker A: Oh, that's sneaky. It was so I remember when the number got leaked there was huge dust up and furor over it and some people were speculating that General Crystal leaked it himself. I don't think that was ever substantiated and certainly based on my knowledge of them, that's not something he would do to begin with. Did they ever figure out who did leak the information? [00:35:34] Speaker B: Well, the, the leak we're talking about is leak on the ones the, his assessment board basically says we're losing. That's, that was the assessment. That's when they got leaked. Within within a few hours, the entire, his entire document got leaked. So for my document, which was what do we need to achieve the goals that the president gave to General McChrystal? That document never got leaked. [00:35:58] Speaker A: Nice. [00:35:58] Speaker B: Because we never emailed it. The number was people, people, like I said, people remember 40,000. But how we got there was 40 pages of analysis that never got leaked. [00:36:09] Speaker A: How many troops did you end up getting? [00:36:11] Speaker B: Ended up being 40,000. Most people think it's 30,000. But it was, this was a NATO effort. There was 30,000 from Americans and then our NATO allies contributed another 10,000. So it was 40,000 and very close to emphasize it because this wasn't a NATO fight, wasn't an American fight. So we, we didn't fix it in the 30. It was the 40,000 that, that, that the analysis, the number, the number that the analysis came to. [00:36:36] Speaker A: What were some of the other big projects you worked on while you were ISAF planner? [00:36:39] Speaker B: One was our engagement with the Pakistan military. And one of one, one of our big successes was the first couple times we'd fly down to Pakistan. I wish I can remember the name of the base, it's drawing, I'm drawing a blank on it. We would show up our threat map and we show arrows of bad, of bad terrorists coming from Pakistan, Afghanistan into Afghanistan. The Pakistanis would put up their map showing terrorists coming from Afghanistan into Pakistan. But I think on maybe the third or fourth engagement, the Pakistanis put. The Pakistan military put up a map showing the threat arrow of terrorists going back and forth. We've got success. We're agreeing that there's a fourth. So that was one, one that got a lot of attention was the change of operational control of the Marines in Afghanistan to be under what's called operational control or OPCON of General McChrystal, which they were not when they came in theater. That one got a lot of, a lot of emotion attached to it. In the end, General McCrystal got operational control of the Marines. Another one was the size of the Afghanistan police force. And this was actually an EU initiative where the EU countries were trying to figure out how much to resource the Afghan police project. And my analysis ended up using my analysis to come up with a certain number. The number they were. That was being debated. I showed them through various analysis was. It was a, was a police ratio that was, was minuscule compared to what the requirement was. In fact, it was far less than even what they had in, in Europe. Those are the big four that jumps ahead. I have to, I have to pull up my. Go flip through my notebook to find the other ones, but those are, those are the big ones. [00:38:29] Speaker A: Those are some major stories and I remember most of them. Some of them, I, I wasn't tracking the PAC military engagement seems particularly interesting. Were you, were you in the room or were you actively participating in the discussions when this was happening? [00:38:44] Speaker B: More My, My stuff was mostly on preparing because this was definitely a key leader engagement. We have a fourth star talking to a four star. So my part was more on the preparation, getting ready for it. So when we got there, I just sat down with some, some Pakistani major. We're just like watching. We were just. Two of us were just watching what was going on. So I. Nothing. The meeting was more on the prep, more on the preparation. But a funny story on the, on the 40,000 number because Jeremy Crystal had to go back to D.C. around December of 2009 to testify before Congress. And he took with him a lot of his, a lot of the key leaders and key staff from isaf. And what we did was the. So our chief was chief planner. Derek Miller was gone. Our deputy was a Swedish, Swedish lieutenant colonel. You Joaquin Broden, fantastic officer. He happened to be on leave, so I was the senior officer for the CJ35. And we had testimony happening. And what we did is we literally would watch testimony. And as we see. Quite as we see General McChrystal or his staff getting questions, if it was something in our lane. I remember one time something popped up with partnering, and I turned to Rick Dembowski, my Sam's classmate. This is something Rick had worked on. I said, rick, you have two hours. Give me a product. And by the time the testimony was over, we had already emailed the product to our boss. And the boss, the emails from Derek Miller were funny. The first email was, hey, I need you guys to crash on this thing. And then the next email a minute later was, oh, wait, you already sent it. Thanks. So we literally were watching congressional testimony to figure out what products we had to develop really quickly to answer very specific. To answer very specific questions. [00:40:28] Speaker A: That sounds like some amazing staff work. Anticipation being one of the key attributes of a good staff officer. I. I gotta imagine that's pretty fulfilling that your boss would send you a request for something and then have to immediately acknowledge that you'd already sent it to him. That's great. [00:40:43] Speaker B: Yeah, we, We. We did our best. It was rather fun. You sit there and we just watch TV and start. I started giving assignments left and right for. For what? And some of the. Some of. Some of the data calls are really, really quick, but sometimes they had to do a. Do a quick analysis. People get out. The general got asked a question that we didn't have a specific thing for, so we had to do a. A quick crashing and get a product made. [00:41:05] Speaker A: I'd like to revisit this point you were making about the operation control op counter Marines to McChrystal. I think that a lot of our audience will be kind of surprised to learn that the Marines were not under the ISAF commander for a long period of time leading up to the time that General Crystal was the ISAF commander. Could you explain a little bit, the details on that, why that was not the case and why it was so controversial when it finally happened? [00:41:31] Speaker B: Okay, I will this. There's a lot of nuance, this one. So technically, the Marines, in. In military parlance, we like to talk about command relations, or nickname is comrade, and there is actually multiple comrades going on at the same time. So the Marines were under the operational control of General McChrystal as the ISAF commander, and they were under what was called NATO opcon, which is not US Opcon they were under for us comrade relations they were only what was called under tactical control. Adrenal McChrystal as the US forces Afghanistan commander. So he had certain authorities as an American commander and that was very limited tactical control which is he could tell them where to go. He couldn't assign them a mission, couldn't task or them. Basically he just tell them you're going to go here, you're going to go to this place called, we're going to call it RC Southwest Regional Command Southwest. He that's all he could tell. That's all he could tell. With his U. S Hat on, with his NATO hat. He had what was called NATO opcon. NATO opcon. It's basically the same as US Tacock. But the thing that was different about it is under NATO command relations every, every troop contributing nation they always retain what's called the nicknames called the red card. NATO commander can never order a NATO unit to do something that's against that unit that the interests of the country. I'll think of an example from 1999 when Koso was kicking off and the Russians made a dash from Bosnian. They went and seized the Kosovo airfield and the sink Husser. Wes Clark he gave an order for I think the British parabergade to go seize the airfield before, before the Russians got there. And the British commander said no. Under NATO you can say no to any order if you think it's against your national interest if it violates the, the agreements. If you were sent there to do mission X, you can't be told to do mission Y. If you get, if you go over, if you deploy under a NATO agreement to be at location X, you can't get moved to location Y even it's the same mission. So General McChrystal he had NATO OPCON over the Marines but technically they could tell him no if they gave him an order they didn't want to. And the graphic, I don't know I don't know what graphic or what product of mine General McCruso used. I don't think he used any. I think he used. My analysis just gave him, just took him from a feeling he was pretty sure he was right. To certainty that he was right. I, I made a map of, I took a map of Afghanistan. I had all the regional commands colored in with different colors and a flag of the nation that was in charge of that region. And I said sir, every flag you see right there, they can with their. If you give them an order, they can tell you no. He goes, why Is there a Marine flag there? I said, sir, they can tell you no. Again, I don't think he used any of my products. When he went to talk to General Petraeus, I think it was. He had a feeling that he was pretty sure that as the commander he should have operational control of all the forces. And I just did the background work to basically eliminate all possible other arguments. And when I did that, I put my, I put my hat on as a, I read doctrine as a Marine to find, to find the, the, the paragraph and doctrine that supported the Marine Corps point of view. And I found it, it did exist. And it, the doctrine clearly states that forces should stay under the operational control of their service component command. So army stays under arson, Marine stay under Marsan. And it absolutely says that, but it doesn't have a period, it has a comma. And after the comma says, except when the following conditions exist and all those conditions existed, in which case it didn't support staying under the operational controller service component command. So, yeah, that got that, got that got put in the front page of the New York Times above the fold. [00:45:20] Speaker A: General Crystal was pretty well known at this point, having achieved a great deal of success in command of JSOC in both Afghanistan and Iraq. What was it like working for him at isaf? [00:45:30] Speaker B: What a very, very impressive, impressive person intellectually, physically, leadership wise. He was just a great leader. He's a man that, that really thought not just about militaries, but about organizations. And if you, if he wanted, how do you make org. And this is what he did in jsoc. If you want to make organizations better, you got to understand people. So the guy, he really understood people and how people think and they act and they develop and then how they interact to become an organization. And how do you change organizations? How do you make organizations better? Extremely inspiring. I that, that, that movie on Netflix called War Machine where Brad Pitt played him. I absolutely hate it because it portrays it in the, in the movie Bradford Port, the general as pretty much kind of dumb and just physically hard, but not even in great shape. He could barely. He runs at a shuffle. And if you still ever saw General Crystal running around the compound at O Dark 30, he was not shuffling the guy, the guy was moving out. [00:46:24] Speaker A: While you were at isaf. How long was that deployment for you? [00:46:27] Speaker B: It was a 12 month, oh, lengthy one. [00:46:31] Speaker A: So about the time you got really good at your job, it was time to leave again. Just kind of a standard military thing, right? [00:46:36] Speaker B: Yes. [00:46:37] Speaker A: Okay, well, what did you do with all that knowledge when you Left. Where'd you go after isaf, everything I [00:46:42] Speaker B: learned I did not apply to my next job because I went to the. I went back to Fort Leonardwood to be a battalion commander for a training battalion. I did, did have some, some stuff to carry over because I had a, I had a, what was a multi service training battalion. So I had companies at six locations across the US Training with me. Back up a second. The, the engineers across all the services have been multi service since the 1990s. You don't need full school. You don't need four schools of car or electricity. So in the 1990s all the engineers got together and every service picked up lead for one or, you know, one or two different skills. And then all the other services would send their instructors and their students there. So at my location at Fort Leonard Wood I could walk into a training room for we had. The army had technical engineers which are your surveyors and drafters. I can walk in to see 40 or 50 trainees from all four services being taught by a gunny and a chief. It meant I was on the road a lot which meant I was interacting a lot with my assistive service counterparts which actually was very important. So the lessons I learned from being an ISAF under General McChrystal on working jointly with multinational partners that carried over because I'm doing it with, with my sister service partners and, and how that assignment really made me better for my next one, which was the JSOC engineer was when I came into the JSOC Engineer job in 2012, I knew intimately every engineering capability across all four services because I'd been working with their sister. So I can name if I had a requirement I could say I want this element out of the Air Force. And I know they just came out of a return. You know, they're six months out of I knew units and what capabilities were available from all four services. Something I would not have known if I was just doing if I didn't have this multi service training battalion. So it was, it was a, it was a very interesting training battalion. My fifth one of my companies was underwater construction divers. And so my fourth or fifth day in command, I'm down at Panama City, Florida, 20ft down in a dive tank with a hard helmet on, wearing a uniform, doing a change of command ceremony with Rusty. [00:48:46] Speaker A: Amazing. [00:48:46] Speaker B: What a great experience in a formation of divers down there wearing, wearing scuba tanks. [00:48:53] Speaker A: So you had that command for two [00:48:55] Speaker B: years then was to your command. Yes. [00:48:58] Speaker A: And then you mentioned you we moved on to the JSOC after That. [00:49:02] Speaker B: Yes. [00:49:03] Speaker A: So this is your second tour with the special operations community. What was it like to be an engineer at jsoc? [00:49:10] Speaker B: I'll repeat my saying, it was a very boring job and a very exciting unit. The difference was I matured enough to realize on day one that though my job was not the exciting door kicking, if I didn't do my job well, that means a door kicker would not be taken care of. So I came in a little more mature, recognizing that my proximity to the objective didn't, didn't define my importance to the mission. And so the did that for two years. Enjoyed that thoroughly. Thoroughly enjoyed enjoy that assignment. I had some great. Unlike when I was in the Ranger Regiment when I was a staff of one. I had a small staff. I had a. My deputy was an Air Force Air Force major who's now the, the. The chair of the Civil Engineering department at the Air Force Academy. I had two senior list advisors. I had a. From the Army, Derek Broad. For about a year I was a temporary Phil and then I had Senior Chief Brett Wilburn for the Navy Seabees. It was just a great team. And then just being what I talked before about in the 82nd, being the triple volunteer and how I was great with the spirit of corps. Now this is a quadruple or a quintuple volunteer to get to JSOC to be. To work with people of that caliber that are just so, you know, professionally excellent and iron sharpens iron. You just wanted to get better because you didn't want to be the weak link in anything. So that was a fantastic assignment. I did that for two years. [00:50:43] Speaker A: And then what. Where did your career take you after that? [00:50:47] Speaker B: After that I, I've been accused of being a professional student and that's probably true because I went. I was picked up for program called the Chief of Chiefs Chief of Staff of the Army's Advanced Strategic Plans and Policy Fellowship. So ASP3 is the nickname for it and it was. The idea came from General Odierno when he was the Multinational Force Iraq commander. And one of his observations was I've got a bunch of really smart sams guys. And I'm going to say sams. I also mean the sister service counterparts. The air force has SAS, the Navy has. The Marines have SAWS. But General Ernier said I've got a bunch really smart SAMS guys that are tackling PhD problems with master's degrees. That's an intellectual deficit. So he created the SP3 program which takes 10 to 12 officers per year and it follows a Model similar to sam's in the sense that you do intellectual development, academic development, followed by an assignment. But where sams was one years at a, at a military master's degree program followed by one a one year assignment in a SAM's job for ASP3. It's three years at a civilian university getting a PhD that's addressing that intellectual deficit. And then your fallen assignment is, I jokingly say it's your soul. It's two assignments each one, two to three years where you're doing, you're being put in key positions where you're not, it's not. You didn't get a PhD to go teach in academia. You got a PhD to apply PhD level critical thinking to problems that the army and Joint Force are facing. [00:52:24] Speaker A: Wow, that sounds like a pretty serious commitment. Where did you end up serving your utilization tour? [00:52:30] Speaker B: Well, I went, I went to Duke for my, for my program, but my first assignment was back at jsoc. I went back to jsoc still not doing the cool jobs, but I was now, I wasn't doing construction, I was now doing strategic planning. I was the lead strategic Planner in the JSOC J55 in their planning section. [00:52:49] Speaker A: How different was that work from what you were doing at say isaf? [00:52:52] Speaker B: At jsoc it was similar because the sense that we're still working on national level sort of strategy and policy. ISAF by the nature of being in a country, it was more grounded because I was trying to solve the problems in that one country. Whereas in JSOC it's more for this organization. You're trying to set up the access assets and authorities that JSOC would need to do a mission somewhere. But still very much on the high level. I did a lot of both in Afghanistan and in jsoc. I did a lot of interagency planning. So I worked and had contemporary in when I was in Afghanistan. A lot of most of it was with the, was with our State Department and also the DEA and jsoc. It was with a variety of agencies. [00:53:38] Speaker A: Okay, and you mentioned that that was a two year assignment. [00:53:42] Speaker B: It was two years, yeah. [00:53:43] Speaker A: And then you had another requirement to as part of your soul after that. What did you do after this? [00:53:50] Speaker B: I was supposed to go to the. The idea for the ASP3 is you do two assignments in a perfect world. Your first assignment which is going to be strategic planning assignment and that's defined by those what are the headquarters that take that take that are given ends ways and means from the national command authority and they turn into A plan. It could be a 4 star, it doesn't have to jsox a 3 star. I was also being looked at to go to Jada south in Key west which is a one star or two star Coast Guard command. But they, but, but the commonality is they take end ways and means from the national leadership and they turn around and turn it into plans that synchronize units or operations in time, space and purpose. That's your first assignment. If we do it right, it's related to what you studied in graduate school. So and then your second assignment is if things go perfectly, you go, go from being the strategic planning assignment, taking ends ways and means. Do you go to your, the corresponding policy level headquarters where you're developing the ends ways and means to give to the, to the action headquarters. So I had, I had worked hard to influence myself going back to jsoc. So I picked topics at grad school that made me look like a JSOC guy, studied topics that were of either immediate or tangential relevance to jsoc. So it became a very obvious, yeah, Pat should go back to JSOC because he's been studying those type things. So I use, I use that to steer going back to, going back to the motherland. Oh, jsoc. [00:55:21] Speaker A: After your time in JSOC was complete, where did you go after that? [00:55:24] Speaker B: I was supposed to go, I was following them to follow the model. I was going to be going up to OSDP in the Special Operations Division to mark time until I'd go over the National Security Council. But at that time, my friend and classmate Liam Collins, who was the first director of mwi, if anyone knows Liam, if you tell Liam he's got a 0.1% chance of making something happen, his response is so I got a chance. So Liam was getting ready to retire and he thought I'd be a good fit to, to, to backfill him. And so yes, you know, liam had a 0.1, 0.1% chance of getting my orders changed and he got him changed. So I got to, came up to West Point, which I absolutely love. So it wasn't the, it, it still fit within the ASP3 model because one of the, There's a variety of science that ASP3 fellows can do working at a think tank fits, that fits that bill. And so that's why ASP3 said yeah, that's, that's still a fine assignment working in mwi, trying to help, trying to help the army figure out how to win tomorrow's war today. That Fits the bill. And I, I absolutely love being the MWI director, but that's tip of the hat to Liam Collins for, you know, anyone who knows Liam, they know exactly what I'm saying. [00:56:36] Speaker A: Liam was a very interesting guy. Retired colonel, first director of the Modern wars, the two. But a lot of time in the special operations community as an operator and has a PhD from Princeton. So kind of a superhero in terms of military officers. [00:56:51] Speaker B: Yes. And, and his. And not to mention the fact he's probably one of the fittest guys I've ever. Bert is won the best Ranger competition as a major. [00:57:01] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. [00:57:02] Speaker B: Extremely fit. [00:57:04] Speaker A: And you had to take over for this guy coming in as the second director of the Modern War Institute. So what was that experience like? [00:57:11] Speaker B: As with. With so many jobs in the military, you go to job you've never done before. So there's always a learning curve which over time your learning curve gets shorter and shorter because one, you already know a good chunk of stuff and then you've learned how to learn and you learn how to learn jobs faster. So. So I thoroughly enjoyed the job. I thought it was a great transition. I think Liam, Liam was smart and picking me and I'm not saying that to sound self flattery, but Liam and I approach problems very differently. Liam is. He can make anything happen. I'm assistants and process guy. So Liam made this thing called MWI out of nothing. Just. Absolutely just he had a good idea and somehow he got in front of the Chief of staff of the army and sold him again. Liam can sell anything, but he's a make it happen guy. I'm a system and process guy. So I think it was a great transition because all the great stuff he got going. I sat back and started to figure how do we turn this, turn this into a system and process so MWI can keep being successful over the years. So I think it's a good. We approach problems very differently. I could not have made mwi, never could have. But I could take what he did and try to institute policies and procedures so we can keep a successful. [00:58:16] Speaker A: What was it like coming back to West Point for a third assignment, counting your cadet days and your time in Sochnadwi? This is kind of the, the twilight of your career. You retired out of that position. What was that like for you coming back after all that time? [00:58:30] Speaker B: Well, I'll correct you. It was actually my fifth time at West Point. My father was stationed there twice. Yeah, Swift. I went to Iowa. So every time was better than my third time when he's being a cadet. So it's better to be a dependent there and it's better to be on faculty than it is to be a cadet. And no, I absolutely, I love my time there. I was blessed that I had a bunch of my classmates that were there at the same time in various positions, a couple department heads, the commandant, Curtis Buzzard, the brigade task officer. It was having, it was weird having a miniature class reunion at academic board meetings. And it was, it was different seeing West Point from sort of more the bigger strategic picture. My first time there was in the trenches doing teaching, but seeing how, seeing how an academy runs like any large organization, it's a, it's a, it's challenged to run large organizations. And we got hit with that lovely thing called Covid, which, which definitely threw a. Through a loop. Through a loop in things. But it. To be able to develop future officers was. Is extremely, extremely rewarding. [00:59:31] Speaker A: Pat, I'm going to ask you to think about the entirety of your military experiences, but especially your time in isaf. What were some of your biggest career takeaways? And we. I can give you a minute to think about it if you need to, because I can edit this part out. [00:59:47] Speaker B: All right, Big takeaways from isaf. Here's a humorous story, a takeaway. And this is a story that is an argument for the ASP3 program. So there's a humorous story, and this is a great selling point for ASP 3. General Crystal had briefed, done the briefing in, in D.C. i had briefed NATO headquarters, Admiral Sad Breeders and his staff. And then I. So actually I flew out of Afghanistan to go to NATO headquarters for a week. So it's rather surrealistic being in Afghanistan and then 18 hours later I'm drinking a beer on a train heading up to NATO headquarters. We had. Because there was no copies of our analysis after, when I was done, I shredded them all. The ones that went to D.C. they all got shredded. So we have what I call was the attack of the PhDs and these. And I wish I had. I had written these names down. I didn't. I wish I had. It was. We had PhDs normally from the National Security Council or from various think tanks. And they want to come over and they want to dive in to see how we got the numbers. And when the first one came over, my, my boss, Derek Miller, who was again, extraordinary sands planner, he said, pat, this is your briefing. I mean, you're. It was your methodology that we came up with. You're the, you did the work. He goes and you're also an academic geek. So he goes, but I recommend, don't tell the person your background. Okay, I'm not going to. So before the first, right before the first guy came in for the briefing and I had, I had the room set up, I started knocking out push ups. So when he walked in, I'm doing push ups and I get up and I'm sweating thing and I was starting, he says, well, tell me how you got, you know, how you got there. I started talking. He just started interrupting me. He was very condescending. It's like, you stupid army dude. And. And he started critiquing me without hearing, hearing logic or how we got there. And I said, well, what do you recommend? And he started pontificating. And then I started sharpshooting him with methodological arrows that. Well, there's. I started pulling out the fallacies of his argument or the methodological errors he was making. And this went on for a few minutes. And he stopped, he goes, where'd you go to school? And I said, I went to Fletcher, the Fletcher School, Law and Diplomacy. And he said, did you work for Dick Schultz? I'm like, yeah, Dick Schultz was my advisor. And once I said that, I went from being a dumb grunt to I'm an academic. And he said, okay, tell me how you did this. And I walked him through my facts, I walked into the assumptions, I walked into the process. I showed him here, you know, here's the weaknesses of my methodology. I said, I don't know if this is the right number, but I can tell you how we got there was very solid. And he ended up saying, yeah, I agree, maybe it's the right number, maybe it's the wrong number, but I can't fault how you got there. But his mentality, he walked in thinking, this is just a dumb uniform guy. And so I actually, that story I just told you, I used when I did my interview for ASP3 and when I was saying why I was applying for it. This is a way, in some of the interage debates, unfortunately, some people will judge you by your credentials, which is absolutely stupid, because I've known some brilliant people that have very little education, but they're brilliant. And I've known some really dumb guys that have a lot of letters behind their name. Some people might say, that's me. But that was a funny, a funny story on that. Sort of supported the idea of ASP3. We're creating these PhD level intellectual thinkers to solve policy and planning problems. [01:03:12] Speaker A: And don't judge a book by its Cover is always great advice as well. [01:03:16] Speaker B: Yeah. If your method of argumentation is to, is to critique someone's for their, their lack of education, that's. You've lost the argument because that's not a, that's not a criticism. You know, you shake them on their facts or the logic, not on the fact that they have a degree or don't have a degree. [01:03:30] Speaker A: Well, Pat, before we close out, I want to ask you if you have any advice for aspiring military professionals. What are some of your big takeaways that you would offer for cadets at West Point and ROTC ocs or thinking about joining professional army? [01:03:45] Speaker B: I hinted at maybe have two or three things. One first one could be really geared especially for the lower ranking guys, which is when I use this for counseling. I think I use this for you when you came to work for me, which is I only have two standards by which I, I evaluate a leader. Did you accomplish your mission and did you take care of your soldiers? That's again, that's a simple but not easy thing to do. You got to do both and they contradict each other. So if, if you do that, if you're doing your job and take care of your troops, that's successful. The only technique that I require, that I told, I told supporters I require them to do would be the one I've mentioned before, which is you to. While you're accomplishing your mission and taking care of your soldiers, you need to be leading by example and supervising at the same time. Those two contradict each other. You need to find that balance point. Sometimes it's going to be more leading by example, sometimes it's going to be more supervising. And though that's that guidance I apply, you apply it to all leaders at all levels. Another learning point more for lifetime learning is you know what, what does officers in six years need to need to know? I don't, I don't know. In JSOC we used to say that JSOC changes. It reinvented itself every six months. So if you left JSOC when I left JSOC in 2014, then came back in 17, the command was completely different. Now it was absolutely the same. It was the same professional organization, but the way it was doing things was constantly changing. So I don't know what guys in three or four years need to know because it's going to changing world. And you can spend all your time trying to learn a million facts about a million things, but what would better serve you is developing the ability to do critical thinking. Because critical thinking. There is no max effective range on critical thinking. While you might not know any any one certain topic, if you've developed yourself as a critical thinker, you'll figure it out and you'll be making you know, you'll be assessed, assess data, assess facts, assumptions, look at methodologies, and you'll come to sounder conclusions. Because you'll never learn everything about everything. There's no way you can. You could spend your entire career studying drones, but now we're going to deal with hypersonics. But developing critical thinking? Every problem we face requires critical thinkers. And again, that's a plug for ASP3 program which was designed to make PhD level critical thinkers to solve operational problems [01:06:03] Speaker A: well Pat, I really appreciate your time today. It was great getting caught back up with you. We really enjoyed having you here as Director of the Modern War Institute for many years and you've left it in really good hands. Love to have you back up your West Point next time you're here to show you the new suite, newly remodeled after the flood we had a couple months back. And on behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the current Director of the Modern War Institute, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for your words of WISD and I look forward to having you back up here soon. [01:06:34] Speaker B: Looking forward to it Charlie. Keep up the good work. It's a fantastic, fantastic mission. [01:06:45] Speaker C: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Spear. The Spear is produced by the Modern War Institute at West Point. What you hear in each episode are the views of the participants and don't represent the position of West Point, the Army, or the US Government. Be sure you're subscribed to the Spear on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app, where you can also give the podcast a rating or leave a review which helps us reach new listeners. And if you aren't yet following MWI on social media, please find us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening.