Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the Spear, a podcast about the combat experience from the Modern War Institute at West point.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: More than 100 meters outside the village. You were definitely getting in a firefight.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: My first patrol I took, we had
[00:00:17] Speaker B: a far ambush and then it was just a huge explosion.
The primary threat was RKG3 grenades, like
[00:00:26] Speaker C: machine guns and AK47s, that kind of thing.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Small arms fire, RPG fire, explos penetrators, suicide bombs.
And then that's about the time that the third IED went off. And that's when another grenade comes spinning over the side of the wall.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: And it's at that point the IED chain detonates.
There was enemy in the wire. There's all these Humvees on fire.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: It was truly bullets flying from every angle that you could see.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: I open the door and look outside and all I see is muzzle flashes.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: There's a guy on top with a 240 and the rounds passed right past his head.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: At that point, our instincts kicked in. One pilot on the controls, the other pilot was using his M4 to engage
[00:01:08] Speaker B: single man targets on the ground.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: You're shooting at everything.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: It was a fight.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: Welcome to the Spear, the podcast about the combat experience brought to you by the Modern War Institute at West Point. I'm your host, Tim Heck, and today I'm joined by Lieutenant General Chris Donahue, the current Commanding General of the 18th Airborne Corps and the previous Commanding General of the 82nd Airborne. Sir, welcome to the show, Tim.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Thank you. Very good to be here.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: Well, like we ask most of our guests, how'd you wind up in the Army?
[00:01:40] Speaker B: I think probably like most people, I don't come from a military family. I got recruited to play football here at West Point.
Was looking at a lot of different schools, but ultimately chose to come here.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: There's a saying that floats around campus about the fields of friendly strife. What did you learn at West Point and what was your path after graduation?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: I mean, I think the first thing is I probably need at West Point more than they need at Chris Donahue. So I'm pretty fortunate to have come here, sat here and told you that I loved West Point. I'd probably anyone who knows me would know I'm lying. But a couple things that jump out at me about West Point. The first thing is my wife and I came up for my 20th reunion. On the way home, I said, hey, so what'd you think? And she said, I don't think I've ever been around a group of people, just from A to Z. That are just as good a people as what I got to be with. So that's the first thing that always just. I get reminded of every time I come back up here, is that the next thing is I learned more probably about leadership, playing football and being at West Point. That combination that I think you probably will anywhere else, sir.
[00:02:53] Speaker C: Most of the world and America learned about Chris Donahue in a night vision photograph of you stepping onto the ramp of a C17 in August of 2021. At the time, you were the commanding General of the 82nd Airborne Division, and you deployed with your headquarters and about 1,000 paratroopers from 1st Brigade Combat Team. As you deployed your forces to the rapidly collapsing Afghanistan, what was on your mind?
[00:03:13] Speaker B: The first thing was we were very well prepared to go out there.
Everything and that group of individuals are out there. Obviously, the core of it. For what I was responsible for was the 82nd. But you also had the Minnesota National Guard. You had 310 from 10th Mountain, was out there with us.
You had clearly all your joint partners, SOF allies, everybody that was on that airfield just about had worked together somewhere else in the past. So you had a pretty great team that was out there and very fortunate to be part of it. And the other thing, too, with that is if you would just suspend anything about how you think the war ended. Should have ended everything else. But if you just look purely at the mission, I'm so incredibly proud of what everybody did.
And absolutely, you know, something I will never forget and to this day, when I go through the gate, there'll be someone who's at hkai, and they'll be, sir, hkai. I remember Gate three, Gate four, you know, whatever. And just an incredible experience.
I didn't answer your question so specifically. I knew we were ready, so I wasn't worried about that.
The thing that I wanted to make sure is that we had all the right capability and we had all the right people in place that we could, because nothing ever remains static. You always are going to. What we thought we were going out there to do, we didn't do. We did something different, but we had all the right people in place to manage everything that ultimately came, came through and lead our way through that. And, you know, just a remarkable experience.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: What guidance or advice did you put out to your young paratroopers as you were headed over?
[00:04:56] Speaker B: So the first thing we said is, you're going to do what paratroopers always do. You're disciplined, you're fit, you're incredibly well prepared. When you get out on that ground just do what great young non commissioned officers and paratroopers do, take in the situation and do the right things. And then obviously we knew the situation that, that we were going to get into. But, you know, probably as you watched as some of the planes were landing those paratroopers, you know, whenever those doors of the C17 opened up, they immediately had to be confronted with Afghans that were out there. And the, the amount of discipline that they used to control that situation was
[00:05:34] Speaker C: eye watering on the ground at hka. What did you see from junior leaders in your unit or the allies and partners that you talked about that met or exceeded those expectations you had?
[00:05:45] Speaker B: I think the first thing was they were again, very disciplined, understood the basics, they were very fit. They could endure the rigors of being out on that forward edge almost the entire time.
They always understood they had to be in a position of advantage. When we first got there, we had to push the Taliban out and reestablish that perimeter well, well beyond what the Taliban wanted us to have.
And we remained in a position of advantage. We dictated the terms to the Taliban and that was remarkable. The other thing too is the amount of trust that there was between everybody in that task force. And again, I mentioned previously, all the senior leaders, we all knew each other, but just across the board, the amount of trust, pretty remarkable. There was one MP company commander who came out of 10th Mountain Division up there, out of 16th Military Police Brigade from the time she hit the ground in her company.
Within two hours, we made them the division reserve, and within two hours they were out executing missions as if they'd been there for days. Just across the board, absolutely remarkable.
[00:06:57] Speaker C: On the inverse, where did you see deficiencies or room for improvement?
[00:07:02] Speaker B: I mean, kind of the first thing that I would say is our ability to make all of our systems from the various commands that I highlighted interoperable right away. That was a challenge. That was probably the biggest challenge, to include allies and partners and making sure that we could all understand the enemy situation and then also the friendly situation and track where the Taliban were. Without a doubt, that was the primary thing that we were dealing with.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: You mentioned all of these units, allies and partners, SOF, Marines, Minnesota National Guard, 310 Mountain. And we interviewed and recently released a podcast with Colonel Matt Hardman talking about his experiences at hki. Very briefly, you've taken lessons from that, I assume to now be the division commander or the corps commander, rather. What did you learn there from a leader's perspective, and how did you incorporate them into other BCTs? In the 82nd and now into 18th Airborne Corps.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: So I think the first thing is. Let me go back and talk about Matt Harmon. So Matt, you know, we gave him. And I'm sure he talked about it. Did he talk about how he was responsible for organizing and taking in all these hundreds and thousands of people that were reaching out to us to coordinate how we could link up with the various groups? Yeah, I didn't think he would talk about it. What that guy did was absolutely amazing. Matt is a hell of an officer and he will never get his just due for what he accomplished out in hk. So the first thing, it reinforced one thing with everybody who was out there, the basics.
You have to master the basics before you can do anything else. And everybody always talks about that. Right.
And you have to trust each other.
And that's as old as the 300. Right? It will always be that way. And if you can't do that, you can't do anything else.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: You talk about the basics from your perspective, given your evolution in your career. What are the basics that young and junior leaders need to be focusing on?
[00:09:01] Speaker B: So I think the first thing is, how do you know the basics? Whenever you hear the basics, it's kind of, hey, the basics. And right away people are kind of like, what? What does that mean, the basics? Well, General Miller and I used to talk about, okay, well, what are the basics?
And as he and I would go back and you obviously he had his defining moments in Somalia. My defining moments were Iraq, Afghanistan. As a captain. And I've been pretty fortunate captain through now three star general. I've been able to deploy to combat at every rank multiple times.
And I say that because I've been around the best people in the world.
That's at every rank. That's why that's been such an incredible honor. So the basics, what are they? Well, we define it as you want your formation to be unbeatable.
Okay. Not meet the standard. Okay. Because certain things you're going to meet the standard. But when it comes to the basics, you have to be unbeatable. So the first thing is you have to be absolutely incredible at battle drills. Not meet the standard.
You have to be incredible at the battle drill so that no matter what happens, whatever battle drills you think that has to be, you're so good at it, you can outmaneuver, out, fight any adversary anywhere. Out. Shoot whatever you see. You have to be able to shoot and kill whatever you see. And you don't want to shoot and kill. You don't. But you have to be that great, you have to be so physically fit that you can outrun any enemy and just run them into the ground. But the other key thing with that is if you're that physically fit mentally, you'll always be able to keep up. Because whenever people get physically exhausted in combat, they stop thinking, and you can never stop thinking. And then you're always in a position of advantage because you have so many repetitions and sets. Everyone always talks, reps and sets. What that really means is you're like a quarterback and you automatically know what right and wrong is. You can just feel it whenever you're coming up onto an objective or whatever you're doing. But that's how well you kind of know each other. And then trust, right? All, all those things we just described build incredible trust. And whenever you're in, you know, it doesn't matter whether I was a captain in combat, a major in combat, a lieutenant colonel, colonel all the way up, all you have to do is listen on the radio and as soon as you hear contact who's talking, that's who you know is really in charge. That's that trust, right? You can listen to a net and you can know exactly who's in charge, who's driving what. Okay? And all that was built prior to that moment, right?
All those things I just described there.
That's the expectation, unbeatable.
That's what great combat units have, these unbeatable formations.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: You've commanded them. You look to build that in 18th Airborne Corps.
Looking to the future, the army is shifting from the counterinsurgency fight that you grew up in as a company and field grade officer and is preparing for large scale combat operations. What leadership lessons or principles do you see easily translating from COIN to large scale combat operations?
[00:12:07] Speaker B: That essence right there of what I said about being unbeatable, right?
At that lowest echelon, they have to be that good.
The other thing is, wherever you go in the world now, you're going to be seen, right? You have to start dealing with that uas.
It's going to be out there, right? How are you going to counter that uas? How are you going to employ your uas? You now have to bring all that in at that lowest echelon and back up and then the importance at echelon. So, so now what is the equivalent of I just described for that lowest echelon now? At that battalion level, brigade level, division, corps, you have to have that equivalent. And you're watching this play out in
[00:12:48] Speaker C: Ukraine right now, you talked about UAS we also have cyber space information, these other new domains and areas of warfare. What guidance have you given to junior leaders in your formation at 18th Airborne Corps for how to deal with that?
[00:13:02] Speaker B: A lot. That's the first thing. You know, we compete in three areas. The physical, the virtual, virtuals, cyber, some of the information, some of the stuff you talked about, and then the cognitive. The cognitive is where you actually win. You can physically dominate your enemy in the cognitive or in the virtual. You can dominate cyber and everything else. But the other day your adversary has to stop fighting.
And again, you're seeing that play out in Ukraine right now. You saw that play out in Afghanistan to a certain degree. You see that everywhere. You have to impose your will on them. No different than what Klaus Wood said. Right.
And I think we can't forget that.
And those are the three spaces you have to dominate all three to win.
[00:13:44] Speaker C: How are you seeing your paratroopers? Incorporate them into the training and exercises they're conducting.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: So, you know, across 18th Airborne Corps, we will incorporate UAS at all echelons.
That's one aspect. Some of this I'm going to be a little cagey on purpose because it's new techniques. Right. I don't want to share everything, but I would just tell you across the board, we're doing that.
[00:14:06] Speaker C: Thinking back to Cadet Donohue or Lieutenant Donohue, what would you recommend that he would do to prepare for this upcoming LISCO fight?
[00:14:14] Speaker B: The intellectual precedes the physical or anything else that you're going to do. So I would read just so you can start to understand the scale and what the challenges are that you're going to have come at you.
We got to watch looking at Ukraine and Russia too much. Right? Because that's one fight. Anytime we get involved, it's going to be different. So I would go back and read a lot about World War II. That's probably the easiest. And then I would start to look at how are you going to start bringing in all these other capabilities that are out there. If you look at the electronic warfare fight that's happening, the use of short and mid range air defense, and then obviously UAS one way attack drone munitions, the battle space has gotten longer, deeper, and that includes at that lowest level, mean you're watching just, you know, fire up your, you know, Twitter or whatever you're looking at, and you see individual Ukrainian soldiers launching uas and they're using Starlink as that feed to come back and get that. So you can just see how it's changing. But at the End of the day, you have to be able to dig a trench to withstand the artillery that's going back and forth. So I think those are all those things, but I just don't think people.
Well, that's not true. People do grasp the mass right now, but it's just hard to get into that mode of thinking about it.
[00:15:34] Speaker C: You have a formation full of junior and aspiring leaders. What do you see as the key to their success in combat and as leaders hasn't changed.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: It's very easy. It's all about your people, and it's all about whatever your mission is. And out of that, what they're really looking at is. And by the way, it's always been about people.
The people are the United States military. The people are the United States army. Right? So they want to know that you are competent, Right? I didn't say perfect, but they want to know that you're competent. They want to know they can trust you with their lives. They want to make sure that you know what you're doing, that when the chips are down, whatever situation they're in, that you're going to make the best decision that you can.
And that's where you ultimately get trust. Right? They know they got to do a hard job.
That's why they joined the Army. That's why they joined the Marines to do that hard job. They got to know that you got it. And I think, again, proving to them that they understand it's about the competence, the character, and the care of their people and that you're going to do the best thing that you can for them in combat. That's what it is. And by the way, it's always been that way, and it'll always be that way going into the future.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: Earlier you mentioned listening in on the nets. As a Corps commander, you're probably not listening in at the company tac nets. But how do you build or how do you foster a climate where it's clear who's in command or it's clear where that presence is, that unbeatable formation is created?
[00:17:02] Speaker B: I'm not listening on those nets. And so the first thing is, it starts the day you show up, day one.
Okay? And again, they don't expect you to be perfect, but they expect you to be present. You gotta be present.
Okay? I'm not a big believer of call sign patches and all that other stuff. You should be able to look underneath a set of nods, hear your voice, and they should know exactly who you are, okay? So you gotta be present. The other thing is, again, you gotta be competent, right? But they gotta know that you're competent.
And all those things again, are done weeks and months in advance.
And they got to know you, you got to do things with them. You have to share those hardships as a young junior leader. The one time you get to do that every day, no matter what BS you're doing or anything else, every day is pt. You know exactly why you do pt. It centers everybody. You're there to prepare for combat. It's a chance for you to prove as a leader that you know what you're doing. This is our goal for the Army. It's easy. The Army Combat Fitness Test. My goal is everybody gets 600 or whatever it may be, and you get to prove them, you know how to plan, and then they actually see the result. So you can see where you're building that confidence. That's where you get to know everybody.
They get to know you, you get to know them. And that's where you get to build that physical and mental toughness all the time. You know, we're, we're just talking about what now, Lieutenant. Right, that we said that. I was asked that question all the time when I was growing up. Right, what now, lieutenant that was the norm then. That's when you have all those things we just described. You can do that and then you're prepared.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: You talked about HKA having all of these common backgrounds with the other commanders there, the other places there. What made them the right people, what made you the right person for the job. If you go so far as to
[00:18:52] Speaker B: say that, you know, history will judge all that, but just look at the results. I mean, over, you know, they talk about the 30 some thousand that came out. It was actually when you throw in allies, embassies, bunch of others, it was over 42,000 people.
I think the number one again, you know, Admiral Pete Vasley, remarkable boss, you know, and then my, to my flank, you know, Brigadier General Sullivan from the Marine Corps, Sully, great, great guy, you know, and then we had our, our portion of it. You know, we went in under one mission and then it very quickly evolved into a number of other things. You know, we had to open up other gates was not the original purpose. And the team did remarkable at that. ISIS was throwing the kitchen sink at us. So you had to deal with all of those threats both on and off the FOB or the airhead. And then we were responsible for ultimately, the Marines initially were processing everybody and they had that portion to account for everybody as they screened in. And then we would put them on the aircraft. And then ultimately we had to, you know, open those other gates and. And bring people in as well.
So that's just kind of the normal day churn, right, of dealing with all that. But then you had to coordinate and plan the withdrawal.
[00:20:10] Speaker C: The mission when you went into HKA was supposed to be one thing. Something else happened when you got there. On the ground, we've talked about unbeatable formations.
What elements of that process allowed your staff and your team and your partners to shift from A to B. So effectively, yeah.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: So I think incredibly proud again, of what all those folks did. So you fly in and again, the mission's changing constantly, as I mentioned earlier. So the first thing you do is you had to run current ops.
Okay. You had ISIS throwing the kitchen sink at you. We had to land aircraft, load the aircraft and get everything out. We diffuse into that existing marine infrastructure, Brigadier General Sullivan and Admiral Vasily what they had already established and morph into that. And then, you know, we had to plan for the ultimate tactical exfil out of there as well, which meant that we had to have those units thin, all those units, and then you get down. How do you make sure that, you know, that last 24 hours, that you do that the right way with a very limited amount of people on the ground and, you know, for a person like me as Ranger experience, that's that airfield seizure, that's that exfil portion of it. Right. And how do you do that? It's the largest airfield, you know, seizure type operation in exfil that has happened. And you had to do all that while in contact with the enemy. You had to do all that while in contact with the Taliban and trying to get all those people through that gate while you're trying to reach out and coordinate and bring all those people in, which is what Matt Harmon was doing. And absolutely amazing what all those various staffs did to include our allies, to include partners.
And when you just look at the enormity of that task and how well people did that and forming all that team, pretty amazing. Extremely proud. Again, just suspend everything else about your thoughts of that. What actually happened out there. Absolutely amazing.
[00:22:09] Speaker C: There's social science about the forming of teams and, you know, the storming and norming and forming and all of these things that was happening in an incredibly compressed timeline and incredibly stressed area. What were some of the things that you used as a touch point to keep things moving in the right direction?
[00:22:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so the first thing is, you know, anyone who's ever been around People like General Miller, General Votel, General McChrystal, Admiral McRaven, kind of the world that I came from, you learn very quickly that the battle rhythm will create that order and that allow you to deal with whatever, you know, situation evolves, and that will keep everything going. Because, like I mentioned, the. That was like five different significant planning efforts that were going on concurrently while you were managing everything else that was happening. And so, you know, for me, my personal battle rhythm was we'd get up, we'd hold our coordination meetings up front, and then I would go out and I'd battlefield Cirque almost the entire day, and then we'd come back in, in the evening and do the exact same thing, go through all of our efforts, make sure that we were straight, and then go out and battlefield Cirque that night. And, you know, obviously we weren't getting very much sleep. But that. That disciplined approach that had been built well before that, and that very well trained team, okay, you know, Colonel Teddy Kleisner, James Stoltz, the G3, Nate, my G2, Nate Adams, absolutely remarkable. My G4, Heather was absolutely incredible. Then we had our combat aviation brigade commander, Jen Mikins, and then, you know, we also had, you know, specifically Liz Curtis, our sustainment brigade commander. Amazing what all those folks did and then coordinating in with this, you know, again, international coalition that was out there. And we were the ones that would coordinate all that every day, make sure that everybody got out. And then, you know, nobody. Nobody wanted to leave. You know, the Minnesota National Guard, I had to go over and finally find their commander one night and say, you're leaving.
He's saying, we're staying with you until the end. I said, you're leaving. You have to leave. And, you know, the Marines didn't want to leave. We. We had to have them go out just. Just so we could start collapsing everything down while still bringing everybody through those gates. And we just. Again, when you look at that in Normandy, it was amazing. Now, the thing that saved us was that we had all fought for years together. We all knew each other. There are almost no new actors in any of this equation, and that that trust was already built. So Pete Vasily and I, extremely close friends, and a remarkable boss was out there. General McKenzie, you know, all of us had. We knew each other, we trusted each other, and we knew what we had to do.
[00:24:52] Speaker C: You've mentioned a lot of officers in these positions, but your right hand as a leader is that NCO Corps. You've mentioned NCOs before. What role did your command sergeant major or did the ops sergeant major play for you at HKA in tremendous, right?
[00:25:05] Speaker B: And if you're using and you have that right relationship with your command Sergeant Major, you know when you need to be together and you know when you can send your CSM out and say, hey, csm, I need you to go check out this location, check out this gate in this situation. But that should be true all the time. You know when to be together and then you know when to put your command sergeant Major out to go out and learn things, solve things, come back to you with, you know, hey, this is where I think we have opportunities that we should be doing more and then just get their insight. You know, obviously that's incredible tool is incredible relationship that has to happen. And just NCOs in general, right? I mean, you know, I mentioned it up front. I am where I am today because of my NCOs. Make no bones about that. My soldiers, paratroopers, but in particular NCOs.
No greater rank in the world, by the way, that's the difference between us and every other army in the world is our NCO corps. I mean, if you look at what's playing out in Ukraine right now, the Russians don't have zero NCO corps. The Ukrainians are doing well with their NCO corps. But our true decisive advantage is our NCO corps.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: You mentioned morning PT and how important that is in building these formations and building trust and building a team that functions. Part of that is being present. How do you see being present as enhancing these formations and creating the necessary conditions for them?
[00:26:27] Speaker B: The number one thing for any leader.
Absolutely. The number one thing for a lieutenant or a captain. I don't care what is going on. Do everything in your power to be present with your troops wherever the most difficult, worst weather, worst situation. Any leader should go to that point. But as a lieutenant or a captain, you have to be there all the time. Combat training barracks on the weekend, be present in the barracks on the weekend.
They want to see you.
They want you to be there again. They don't want you to be perfect, but they want you to be present. They want. They want to see that you care. Right? That's part of that caring that we were talking about. It's part of that competence that we talked about. If you're there, then you will also. That is where you will inspire them. That is where you will gain that trust by being present. You know, in the 18th Airborne Corps, we talk about innovation all the time and data. And I know this Wasn't about that. Whenever it comes to innovation, we innovate for three reasons. The first reason is to allow leaders to be present, not back in their company headquarters on a computer. It allows you to be present with your troops. That's where they need you. That's where you should want to be. It's why you join the army. The second is to solve a problem or create an opportunity. But again, we do these things to make sure that leaders are present anywhere in the world, any situation.
[00:27:49] Speaker C: Looking back at your career, did you have moments when you could sense that that trust had either been built or hadn't been built?
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I've been very fortunate that I've been around incredible NCOs, officers, where they instilled that in me. And again, blessed absolutely fortunate for that. And yet I've been around a number of organizations that have been that way. I would like to think that's pretty much the norm throughout our military.
[00:28:14] Speaker C: You mentioned earlier that junior and aspiring leaders should be reading books about, you know, in articles and reviews and these kind of discussions about large scale combat operations.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing would be, I think any junior leader should always read the book Band of Brothers. Right.
Because the thing I love about the Band of Brothers, it takes you through that life cycle of a unit, but it shows the good, the bad and the ugly. But it points out where everything we just talked about. If you look at Dick Winters and I've been pretty. I was fortunate to get to know Dick Winters. And if you think about what his subordinates would say about him, it was pretty much that in that book, very specifically, it jumps out. And again, this is one of those just truisms of any unit in combat, is that Dick Winters never tried to be liked. Right. He knew he had to be respected to lead people in combat. And by just being respected and doing the things that we just talked about, they loved him.
And you could see that, right? But there's always a little bit of a distance between him and his other men. And I, again, I was fortunate to kind of see them at picnics a couple times and even later on in life, you know, they would joke around with him and everything else, but there was always just a little bit of deference and difference of how they held him. And he always conducted himself in the right way around them, you know, remarkable team right there. And that'll tell you. But in there you can see how he cared for his men. Right. He knew when to be hard. He knew when to give them slack off a little bit. He knew how to really take care of them, right, because it's always about the people and then the mission always works out.
And that's where that book's so great. I do think Ghost War just to put people in the right frame of mind of thinking through what all is out there. And then there's tons of kind of publications that are out there right now, other things like that that kind of bump up and down at that tactical level that you can get some pretty good insight.
[00:30:14] Speaker C: Sir, I want to thank you for walking us through your army careers. You know, starting here at West Point on the football team through Corps Command. I think the valuable lessons you've shared about building teams and trust and being present will carry through and hopefully, you know, find willing ears.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: No, thank you, Tim, and really a great honor to be here. And thanks for everything you're doing with the Spear.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: 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.
