Night Stalkers Don’t Quit: An Interview With the Command Team of the 160th SOAR

[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. I'm Dr. Charlie Faint, your host and today's guest is the command team of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Colonel Sean Karls and Command Sergeant Major Julio Santos. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. [00:00:26] Speaker B: Thanks, Robert. [00:00:27] Speaker C: Thanks, Charlie. Appreciate it. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Sean. We have a lot to talk about today, but I think I'd like to start with why you're here. What brings you back to West Point? [00:00:33] Speaker C: So the unit that I Command, the 160th, is here for branch week, you know, trying to tell army aviation stories to all the cadets. And really for us, a recruiting opportunity to make sure we get in early with the cadets that are interested in branching aviation and plant a seed that we hope will grow into a tree someday where they end up in the 160th serving with the great men and women that support our unit. [00:00:52] Speaker A: Amazing. Have you noticed any trends here at branch week? Anything you're looking for in particular when people are coming up to you to talk about the regimen? [00:00:59] Speaker C: You know, so we talked a little before the podcast, Charlie, but you know, the branch went to a 10 year ad so a few years ago and a lot of talking points out there that, you know, there's less interest because of the Adso, but the cadets that I've talked to. And Elijah, we talked to him before he came in here. You know, he had one of the best answers I've ever heard. He said, hey, sir, like, I'm pretty young. I don't know what I'm going to be doing 10 years from now, but it's probably not going to be better than flying helicopters. The 10 year answer doesn't concern me at all. I was like, man, that's a fantastic answer. I'm going to steal that and give that to all the recruiters. [00:01:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that was Elijah Melendez who brought you up here. Now he's trying for aviation. So good luck, Elijah. [00:01:34] Speaker C: Yeah, good luck to Elijah. I hope to see him someday on the compound. [00:01:36] Speaker A: Before we go into the rest of the interview, I'd like you to share a quick origin story with our audience. What was your path into the army and why did you choose aviation? [00:01:44] Speaker C: Yeah, so I grew up on a ranch in western South Dakota, oldest of four kids. So I really didn't have the financial means to go to college. So initially looked at joining the Marine Corps. Funny enough, my cousin, who was an 87 or 88 West Point grad, was a junior senior here at the school. And I'm not a grad, so I can't remember the names, but he wrote me a letter. This was before the age of cell phones. This was in 1995 when I was a senior in high school. And he wrote me a letter and he was like, hey, Sean, I think you should look at the Army. You want to serve. The Army's got a lot more opportunities, a lot more things that you can branch out. And it's an accelerator. It'll accelerate your career. So I talked to the army recruiters. I ended up joining the South Dakota national guard actually on October 30, 1995. And on the delayed entry program. I went to basic training the next summer. September, October 96, was a four sport high school athlete. I ran track, did pole vault, was a wrestler, played football, golfed, played baseball in the summer. Thought I was going to get a baseball scholarship. Didn't work out. So the army worked out and then several years later transitioned to active duty, got put on recruiting duty, was recruiting in my hometown in South Dakota. And one of our neighbors was a crop duster pilot. And when I was a kid I used to go up with him all the time. And I really wanted to fly, but again, didn't really have the financial means to be able to pay for it myself. But I did actually start my private pilot's license. Got the flying bug when I was on recruiting duty. So I put my packet in to be a warrant officer. Funny story, I was actually doing pretty good recruiting because I had two brothers in high school, enlisted, I think 17 soldiers out of my brother's high school junior class. I think that was 97 or 98. The station commander's like, hey, you're not going to get picked up to be a warrant officer, man. I'm like, well, it's an army board. And he's like, well, yeah, but it's ran by Userec and you're on recruiting duty, you work for UseRec. And so I was fully qualified, non select twice. And I went home and I, my wife and I had just got married and I was like, hey, I really want to do this, but the only way I can do it is to ETS and then apply through ROTC and try to get a scholarship or like pay my wife through school. So I did well. And funny enough, about two months after I started ROTC and to make up the financial burden because I was a staff Sergeant, Right. I was going from being a staff sergeant to basically living off the GI Bill. And she was like, this is going to be rough. Well, she was in the South Dakota National Guard and she got deployed for OIF1. And so she deployed for 17 inch months when our daughter was 10 months old. And prior to that, I'd said, hey, I'm going to coach high school wrestling and baseball and to make up some of this funding because that's really what I was going back to school to do. If I couldn't be a helicopter pilot, my fallback was to be a high school teacher and wrestling coach. So I coached wrestling for a couple of years in South Dakota and then finally through rotc, was, you know, fortunate enough to be high enough on the OML and ROTC to get aviation. And then I ended up at 66 Cab after flight school in Illesheim, Germany. I was a scout platoon leader and we were a core asset back then. Part of the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment. You had two six and six six there in Ilisheim. And about a year into being a platoon leader, we got our notification to deploy for the surge in Iraq. And so we went through several trade ups and deployed for 15 months to Iraq. And when I was on my Iraq deployment, one of my warrant officers who was in my platoon, one of his frat brothers from North Georgia College, was a DAP platoon leader at C1. So I met Jeff Bragg under the, he said, hey, Sean, meet me at the Georgia Flag Blodgeow Hall. And he gave me the, the whole recruiting pitch on the 160th. And I was sold, put my packet in. But at the time, this was when captains were getting bonuses to stay in the army and they'd put a moratorium on Apache guys assessing for the 160th. So I had to get a waiver to assess and my assessed. They didn't have a spot in B1 or C1. So they're like, hey, we'll give you Chinooks in Savannah. And I was like, hey, I'll hand out towels in the gym. I just want to be a part of the team here. So I got Chinooks in Savannah, went to Savannah, showed up, and again, this is. I'd done three years as a platoon leader in Germany, 15 months of that deployed. I show up, go through green platoon at Fort Campbell, you know, seven, eight months, and I show up to Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion, which was the last Chinook company that the regiment built. You know, as you know from your former service in the Regiment There used to only be two Chinook 33 Chinook companies. Alpha, Alpha 2nd Battalion, Bravo 2nd Battalion and Bravo 3rd Battalion. When the regiment became a regiment and they built three more Chinook companies, Alf Company 3rd Battalion and then A4 and B4 really were. Were formed out of what was Echo Company. That was a standalone unit in Daegu, Korea. But it was a last Chinook company built. And Sergeant Major Julio Santos, who's with us here, and he was my first platoon sergeant in the regiment. And I show up, I'm the first captain in the company and it was right at the height of GWAT. So fast forward about 11 months later I progressed to fully mission qualified pilot. And now I'm in the asset column of the company. So they don't want to get rid of me. So I got to stay in the company another like 18 months. So I spent 30 months in the company as a platoon leader. The regiment commander, John Evans at the time retired lieutenant general selected me to be the headquarters company commander in 3rd Battalion. I did that for basically 11 months and 29 days and then came right back to Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion took command of the company as a. Was actually a captain for OCTA. Major commanded the company for two years. And that was my first 10 years of service as an officer. Was all at the company level and below. [00:07:02] Speaker A: Wow. [00:07:03] Speaker C: Lots of deployments, lots of deployments. I think over 15 by that time. And then I went to CGSC at Fort Leavenworth, came back, was the 2nd Battalion S3, was the Regiment S3 at Fort Campbell. Then went to work at USASOC for a year. JSOC for two and a half years. Kicked me back out to the army to command 2nd Squadron. I mean 6th Cavalry Regiment, the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii. Came back to the regiment to command the training battalion for two years and then I did. I was very fortunate to get a war college fellowship at Vanderbilt University and then came back as the regiment commander where I've been just a little bit over 60 days now. [00:07:41] Speaker A: It sounds like you spent almost the entirety of your career in the regiment. Is that normal? [00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:45] Speaker C: Wait, it's not normal. I jokingly. And you know, Sergeant Major Donaldson talked about this in his, in his podcast the the 160th is trying to get more like the Ranger Regiment where we have a charter with the aviation branch, send folks out and bring folks back in. But at the heart of GWAT, just like Sergeant Major Donaldson talked about, with the NCOs there, we really needed pilots. We still really need Pilots today. And when I progressed to fully mission qualified pilot at the time in the company when I first showed up, we had four pilots. We had a whole, all the crew members were downstairs for the, for the company we only had four pilots. And by the time I progressed we were up to about 21 pilots. And I, I think the MTO is 25 or 26 so we were still pretty short. So progressing put me in the column where they could deploy me as a pilot or they could deploy me as a leader. And those are kind of the two hats you have to wear as a commissioned officer in the regiment. You got to be a pilot and a leader. So I just got very fortunate Charlie. Kind of a non standard career. But to this day like some of the best jobs I've had were commanding that company, being a platoon leader, all my green tab jobs. But commanding two six in the army was fantastic. And I joke all the time. I've been in two regiments as a commissioned officer, the 6th Cavalry Regiment and a 160 so not very broadened. But I'm trying to get better. [00:09:03] Speaker A: Well it sounds like our time in the 160s might have overlapped a little bit because then Lieutenant Colonel Evans was my commander in 2nd Battalion. [00:09:11] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. So I was. I got to 3rd Battalion in September of 09. I assessed in October of 08. October or November of 08. And then I went to the infantry cabs career course and then Green Platoon right after the career course. But I had to go to Fort Rucker to learn how to fly the Chinook before the regiment could teach me how to fly the Chinook. So that that whole year between 08 and 09 I was basically in training before I showed up down at Savannah to 3rd Battalion. [00:09:37] Speaker A: Well what kind of platforms are you qualified on? It seems like you've flown a lot of different things. [00:09:42] Speaker C: So I jokingly tell the guys like when I commanded so ATB I qualified in the little Bird. That was just because it was cheaper to fly. So I'm, I'm a lunch pilot. I'm a lunch MH6 pilot. I am qualified in the D model Chinook, the G model Chinook and the D model Apache. So the only aircraft I haven't been qualified in is the Blackhawk. But the unit actually flew me in a Blackhawk on Monday. So as a brigade commander you can fly as long as you're flying with the standardization structure. Pilot. So I have flown every airframe, I'm just not rated in every airframe. Charlie. [00:10:08] Speaker A: Sergeant Major, did you spend most of Your career in the regiment also. [00:10:11] Speaker B: I had a unique career path. I, I served about half my time in big army and, and in the reg. [00:10:17] Speaker C: Okay. [00:10:18] Speaker B: Going up through the ranks, you know, I met, I met Colonel Carls in A three down in Savannah like, like we were talking about before. I spent just, just about 10 years in the regiment. I went from E5 all the way to E8 and then you know, just the, the I had to go get my KD time and went, went out to Hawaii and, and had a first sergeant. Then I was the first sergeant in the flight company. After that it was a Delta company maintenance, you know, a little bit more responsibility. And then I went to JBLM to 16th Cav where I was at HSC Brigade first arm and about six up for SAR major. And after the Academy went to Fort Irwin NTC and did my, did my punishment there, you know, in the middle of the desert. You know, I avoided NTC my whole career, you know, and then I get, get stationed there. But I, you know, I, I don't, I don't regret nothing afterwards. I, I was a battalion sergeant major in Honduras, the 122 8th down there. Did that for a year. Dude, that's a great mission by the way. You know, real world humanitarian type support. Then I got picked up for a Brigade on Fort Rucker, the 1 10th Aviation Brigade. And then I got a call, hey, you want to compete for 1/60? I was like, absolutely, you know, put me back in. And here I am kind of back and forth, but just, just competed for another position which is our soac, which is our higher headquarters. So I got nominated for that a couple weeks ago. So that's going to be the next move, you know, after this. So that's the, that's the waterfall brag. It is, it is. That's our hiring. [00:11:41] Speaker A: That was new after I left. [00:11:43] Speaker B: Yep. [00:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:44] Speaker C: So, yeah. [00:11:46] Speaker B: But absolutely love the regiment. I love our soldiers. I couldn't think of a better place to be, you know, it's absolutely world class. [00:11:55] Speaker A: Have you been to West Point before? [00:11:57] Speaker B: I have not. I've always wanted to come here. I had a lot of, lot of buddies that came from here, you know, and a lot of leaders that I've worked with in the past. I've heard all the stories and whatnot. And I was like some really funny stories that I won't share here. But, but I was like, I was like, oh, I got it. I got to get a chance to get up there and see it first thing. I mean, you know, we got up here today. It's a beautiful campus. You know, we had a chance to have lunch down at the hotel down the street, you know, and sit on the patio and overlook the water there. It's absolutely gorgeous. So, yeah, what a blessing. [00:12:27] Speaker A: Michelle, will you please explain to our audience what the 160th is and what attracted you to try out for that unit? [00:12:34] Speaker C: Yeah, so what I'll start with is the 1/60. And really, SOCOM was developed out of the, you know, the failed Iranian hostage Cris. And the Holloway Commission came back and basically told the department, hey, you need to create a headquarters that can manage special operations. And then to try to keep it succinct, when they tried desert one, they had mixed crews. Air Force Marine Corps pilots flying 53s into the desert. And they ended up at a FARP site, a forward arming and refueling point. Flew a helicopter in the back of a 130. And so when they created SOCOM to basically manage all of joint SOF, they said, you need to create a rotary wing task force that can support all of special operations operations. And generally speaking, the department was like, hey, where are we going to find all these helicopters? Well, at the time, the army had more helicopters than everyone, and the 101st had more helicopters in the army division. So they were like, hey, just get the 101st to cut some helicopters over to this. This unit that SOCOM standing up. And, you know, Task Force 160 was stood up. And then as it grew, you know, after Grenada, into a regiment, the Special Forces groups had aviation detachments that they basically took and formed the majority of 3rd Battalion of the 160th. So when TF160 was established, you had little birds that they pulled out of, you know, the boneyard from. From Vietnam aircraft to form the little bird formations. And then I think it was Alpha Company, 1, 5 9th and Bravo158 from the 101st had the Chinooks and the Blackhawks, which kind of composed the task force. As they got more Blackhawks, they slid the chinooks over to 2nd Battalion. 1st Battalion had the Little Birds and the Blackhawks. 2nd Battalion had the big birds, the Chinooks, and. And they also had a detachment at the time, D160, which was in Panama, and then Roosevelt Roads, Panama. They pulled those helicopters back. Blackhawks and the Blackhawks from the Special Forces Group, pulled some more Chinooks from Fort Campbell down to Savannah to form 3rd Battalion. And then Fast Forward, I think it was somewhere between 2010 and 2012. They stood up 4th Battalion, the headquarters basically came out of portions of 1st Battalion and 2nd Battalion. And then like I mentioned earlier, you had E Company, which is a Chinook company in Daegu, Korea. They pulled it out of Korea, moved all those assets to JBLM to form our 4th Battalion. And now you had an entire, an entire regiment. And so our job is to provide precision rotary wing support to all of us, socom. And that takes a lot of training and a lot of time. And for me, coming out of a combat rotation in Iraq, like, the reason I wanted to be there was purpose. Like purpose driven individuals. You know the old saying, rising tides raise all boats. Like be around like minded individuals that are very mission focused. I said something one time that when I got to JSOC and they asked me, hey, like, why did you stay in the regiment so long? I said, well, everything in the regiment is a mistress to the mission. And it just, it. It filled my cup up being around people that were very mission focused, lots of training, and it was hard. It wasn't easy. It's just a great place to serv. [00:15:41] Speaker A: I think most everyone I've talked to about the 160 says the same thing, even if they weren't in it. I was talking with you and Sergeant Major before the podcast started about my wife's perception of how good it is to be a spouse in the 160th. It seems like a great place to be. [00:15:57] Speaker C: Yeah. Our saying is we recruit officers and NCOs, but we retain families. And there is a tribal lore that the 160th actually started the FRG program because they were so rapidly deploying post Grenada and into Gothic Serpent for Blackhawk lockdown. And that they, they had to come up with a mechanism to let the families, you know, because you're on an alert and on at the time, on a pager, can't really tell anyone where you're going. And so how do you keep the families in the loop? And so they, they created this program to like, let the families know, hey, your soldier's going to be gone for a while, but they'll be back. And they put their arms around everyone. And I think it grew into more of a family organization really through loss. You know, the unit did some very tough things. You know, we were testing tactics, techniques and procedures when the organization was testing goggles. You know, we. We lost a lot of really, really good folks and the families all came together to support each other. And that, that still happens to this day. I mean, I've never been a part of a family in the service like that. And, you know, the first word of our creed is service. And it's almost like that matriculates down to the families. Like the kids all know each other, the spouses all know each other. Even in places where, you know, folks are spread, like Savannah, people are spread out all over Savannah. You know, nobody lives downtown Savannah. There's people in Pooler, there's people in Richmond Hill, there's people in Effingham County. And if you go to jblm, you know, there's. There's people in dupont, there's people in Tacoma and at Fort Campbell. Like, it seemed like when I was a captain, all the captains lived in Nashville. So even, you know, people live all over. And there's some homesteading, right? Like some of the senior NCOs, some of warrant officers, they get to stay there a long time. So they build really deep roots. And that's. It's very powerful, extremely powerful. When you're that close and tight knit, not just at work, but outside of [00:17:48] Speaker A: work, I would totally believe that FRGs started in a unit like the 160th. You need that with that deployment cycle. And also you need to put your arms around them, to use your words, because if they don't know what to protect, they're going to talk about it. So you got to let them know, hey, this is, in general terms, what you're doing. This is the kind of things you don't talk about. And this is the type of stuff that you can share with anybody. [00:18:10] Speaker C: Yeah, in the training battalion, we actually do a family member orientation when they do green platoon graduations, to kind of lay that out, like as a baseline standard, like, hey, here's generally what you're going to know and what you're going to. And goes back to something I even saw General Major General Joe Ryan at the time, now the Western hemisphere commander in 25th ID. We started doing that when folks would come into the division because the orientation part, like the onboarding of new soldiers to a new organization, is just as important as any of the training you're going to do. And you've got to get it when they get there immediately before they get busy and don't have time to think about it. Like, plant that seed early, give them all the information to give them the tools to cope with the op tempo. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Sean, I know you can't give me specifics about the selection process and the training that goes into becoming a night stalker, but can you describe in general Terms, what the regimen is looking for, and what do you remember from your own experiences trying out for the unit? [00:19:10] Speaker C: Yeah, so I think, you know, if I. If I go on the way back bus and I talk to the guys about this, when I sit on assessment boards now, like, remember being in that seat, you want to be on the team so bad. And they're trying to decide it's really, are they trainable? Like, does the officer or NCO want to be here, Will they do the job and will they fit? I think that's very similar to what Sergeant Major Donaldson told you. Like, and for me, what Sean Carlson is looking for is I'm looking for team players, team players that understand, like, this is a very tough place to be, but the most important thing is helping your teammate. Lt. Gen. Kevin Mangum was one of our RCOs, and when he was the Deputy Commander at TRADOC, he came and did an LPD for us in 3rd Battalion when I was a senior captain. And he had a triangle. So if you can imagine a triangle, three sides of the triangle, he'd have player, coach, and on the base of the triangle was teammate. And he's like, hey, guys. Because we have an assessment process and a tryout here, we recruit some really good players. By the time folks have progressed to like, squad leader, platoon sergeant, fully mission qualified pilots, flight leads, company commanders here, senior staff officers like you or Charlie, like, we have created some really good coaches. Like, they're really good at developing their placements. He's like, but we're so competitive here, which is part of that juice, right? Sometimes we forget the base of that triangle is being a teammate. And so that one really hit me because I was like, as I looked back in the rear view mirror, I was about halfway through my company command at the time. I was extremely competitive. I grew up playing athletics. And I was like, I probably need to be a better teammate with my peers. And so I tried to, like, foster that for the rest of my career. Like, just be the best teammate. Because, you know, the psychologists are going to run, you know, psychological testing and intelligence testing on these folks. Like, we're going to know what we're getting from a. From an intelligence perspective, like a brain horsepower perspective. We give them a physical fitness test. Like, that's no secret. So you want someone that's physically fit and intelligent. But to me, the number one thing for me is teammate. And again, everyone has a different perspective there. Like, our instructor pilots want them to be good in the helicopters. You know, when you assessed the S2 folks wanted you to be a really good, intelligent professional. The NCOs, I think look kind of similar to say they want a teammate, but someone that will listen because, you know, we've got to teach you the way we do things here. It's just a little bit different. Not all that much different, but it's a little different. But being a teammate for me is the number one thing that makes a mission successful because it's not one person, it's a collective team of professionals. You know, and we talked a little earlier, Charlie, like everyone in the regiment is assessed and goes through the same process. And General Brown said this, I think he was our third commander. He said do not judge your importance by your proximity to the target. And to me, if I distilled that into one word, he's talking about being a teammate. Like every, every single person we have in the organization is important for mission success because our number one role is to support the ground force commander. We only ex to support the ground force commander. [00:22:26] Speaker A: Sean, you mentioned competition in the 160th and that was one of my fondest memories about being in that unit. You got to try out to be there. You got to try out to stay. In my experience when the 160th, everybody competed over everything. In fact, one of the earliest things that I wrote for the Modern War Institute was a piece called Competition, Call of Duty and Naked Ships with Guns. And for anyone listening, it's not what you think. Read the article and I wrote in there about how the ones 60th pilots, especially when we're downrange, we compete about anything. So running the skiff in Bagram, I put a chin up bar in there for my guys and then I would keep track of how many pull ups they could do. And the pilots were in there. They were in there knocking them out. I saw one guy come through juggling one time and then everybody's trying to juggle. The call of duty is how we competed the most and bonded while we were over there on the game server. It was quite impressive. [00:23:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, and you've got like potpourri is probably not the right word, but it's the one that comes to mind right now. But you know, we've got professional baseball players that are in the regiment, you've got college football players. I sat on Assessment Board 18 months ago. We had a former WWE wrestler. But the majority of our pilots and even some of our officers that have converted from being infantrymen, like we've probably got more former Army Rangers, Navy Seals, MARSOC operators, Green Berets that have become warrant officer pilots, that they flock to the organization because they operated in the special operations community before and they want to be part of that team that provides that support to the customer. We are a customer service organization and the competition just makes everybody better. [00:24:12] Speaker A: I agree. [00:24:12] Speaker C: I mean, and it cuts across like we, we do a similar, the Ranger regimen, you know, they have RASP2. We do a future leader appraisal when we hire our, our senior captains to come back to be company commanders as majors and the previous RCO and I, you know, he gets down on the deadlift bar on the ACFT and does 350. And Sergeant Major and I are like, well, we're both doing three. And then I think I ran the, the fastest two mile I'd ran in about 10 years. Because I was like, there's no way I'm letting the guy I'm replacing beat me on this. And you know, we're like 50 year. Like, it's just. There's no place I'd rather be, Joe, because that just makes everyone better. And you said it like, selection is an ongoing process. It's not like when you finish Green Platoon, like, you're a made man. Like, no, no one is. No one is granted tomorrow like the seals. One of their best things is the only easy day was yesterday. And that's what I brief all the inbound Green Platoon classes on. Like, hey guys, like, congratulations on getting through Green Platoon. I'm proud of you. Thanks for being a volunteer, a two time volunteer. You volunteered to join the Army. You volunteered for the 1 60th. Selection is an ongoing process and just try to get just a little bit better every day. And I think that's what that competitive nature, it breeds a culture of just get a little bit better every day. [00:25:26] Speaker A: You mentioned the quality of applicants that the 160th attracts. And I certainly experienced that going through the process myself. In my Green Platoon was a guy named Dan McCants who was special Forces, came back and flew and Dan died in Afghanistan. But he was a great guy. Special Forces wasn't enough for him. He wanted the next step, which is to be pilot and 2nd Battalion. [00:25:49] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, in my company in Savannah, I had. Now part of this is in Savannah, Georgia. So we had like five, 175 rangers that were warrant officers in the company. I mean, it's. And I would ask them all the time, like, hey, did you want to be in the regiment or do you like Savannah that much? They just kind of chuckle at me like, savannah's a great place, but it's not as great as the 160th. Yeah. So it's. It's just a phenomenal ecosystem that I feel honored to just be a part of. [00:26:15] Speaker A: We had a warrant officer here named Mike Rutledge who was a seal. [00:26:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:26:19] Speaker A: And flew for us for a number of years. Here is. You can imagine the reaction of cadets seeing this guy with a Trident and 1/60 combat patch and flight wings on there. It was very confusing to a lot of people. [00:26:33] Speaker C: Yeah, we had a lot of them. And, you know, Al Mack did that job for a while there. We. We had the market cornered on flight leads that decided to do their sunset tour of West Point flight cadet. So it's probably a great recruiter recruiting tool for us. I should probably pull that one back out for sure. [00:26:47] Speaker A: Sure, sure. It's a great thing to do. They fly the superintendent around VIPs, they fly the jump team, and everybody stops what they're doing. It doesn't matter what helicopter it is. It could be black with a refueling probe or. [00:26:59] Speaker C: Oh, my daughters. Like, every time I hear something go over, I'm still like. It's like I'm nine years old. I'm looking up to see what's in the sky. So once you get the bug, you've got the bug. [00:27:09] Speaker A: Well, Sean, I feel like we kind of already talked about this next question a little bit. The 160s is an aviation regiment, but there are numerous support roles in the unit, as I filmed one of them when I was an intelligence officer for 2nd Battalion 20 years ago. I was doing the math. It was 2006. So it's been a minute. What kind of things are you looking for in your support troops? And are those traits any different than what you're looking for in pilots? [00:27:32] Speaker C: Charlie? I don't think so. I think being a professional means being best of breed in your field. And when you look up the word professional, like, in the dictionary, it talks about doctors, lawyers, firefighters, people that go to additional education to be an expert at something. And so I think that's what we're looking for in our staff officers. Like, and it's. What is the best part about the regiment? Right. [00:27:56] Speaker B: You. [00:27:56] Speaker C: You alluded to this. You know, everyone is the same. They go through the same assessment. But what they're being assessed on during their assessment is how good of a professional are they at their role? So, like, if I have an S1 question, you know, I've been in the army almost 30 years now. I Got a pretty good handle on army personnel, but, you know, those regulations change all the time. And so I need the S1 folks to be extremely professional and understand what's changing in the army because, like, we focus on discipline, training, standards and supervision and doing things by the book. There's a misnomer, I think sometimes out there that in Special Operations you have talented people and you cut corners or figure out how to do things in the gray area. No, the reason Special Operations is so good is because you are brilliant at the basics. And so in our staff folks, we're looking for people that are brilliant at their job because if they're brilliant at the basics, then the pilots don't have to worry about it. The pilots can focus on being brilliant at the basics in the aircraft. Our maintainers can focus on fixing helicopters. And I think there's a lot of job satisfaction that comes from doing what you signed up to do. I think I probably learned that in battalion command more than anything. We've got a lot of great Americans that join the army and they join the army to do what's sold to them when they were enlisted. And so for our staff folks, like, I love it when I get to go out to a range and I see an ammo guy humping ammo cans with a big grin on their face. The S2 section probably working 18 hours to try to solve a tough problem, to figure out what the best way for us to get into Country X is. Our logisticians working their fingers to the bone to get people lodging, help us with some of our low visibility stuff, quietly working in the background, not worrying about who gets the credit. That's what we're really looking for in staff office. And again, I'll go back to being a great teammate. That is probably still the number one for me. But creating an environment where folks aren't worried about who gets the credit, that are very professional at their job. That is the synergy we're looking for in our staff officers. [00:30:01] Speaker A: I think the point you made about doing what you decided to do is so clutch. To be operating at that level and doing what you came in to do and knowing, as you also mentioned, that no matter where you go in the regiment, that whoever you're talking to is the expert in that it doesn't matter what that is. And they're probably experts in any number of other things and they're probably interested in a whole bunch of stuff because everyone's so competitive. [00:30:23] Speaker C: Yeah, you've got to be intellectually curious. Like, I learned that from One of my mentors, Scott Howell, like, he's like, just be intellectually curious. Have a good attitude and be intellectually curious. The rest kind of take care of itself. Like, Charlie, we're solving some pretty tough problems for the nation, and we've got some, like, some talented space folks. And I do not have the intellectual capacity to keep up with those folks, but I do know that they're experts at their field. I'm glad they're on our team. [00:30:48] Speaker A: Sean, you've experienced the 160 at the very different points in your career, including combat service. As a younger officer and now in command of the regiment, how is your understanding of what makes the 160 a successful change, if at all, between being one of the operators executing the mission and being the commander responsible for the entire organization? [00:31:06] Speaker C: Yeah, that's correct. I think generally speaking, the unit is good at its wartime mission because of its mission focus. But I do think, like, if you went back and talked to Captain Carls and Major Carls and even Lieutenant Colonel Carls, what is important to me hasn't changed. Flying, fixing helicopters, and supporting the ground force. Right. But I think when I was younger, I lacked the perspective on not only what being a good teammate really meant, but also, so what all the folks at the staff, what they're doing in the background to provide you the ability to be the operator on the ground. Going to the X is very powerful. And when you're younger, you just. You don't have that perspective. And so that's why, like, I want to be more Ranger regiment, like, and expose folks to more things. Because when I learned, you know, my first staff job in the army was being the second Battalionist, I was really good operationally, but I had about a sliver's worth of knowledge on what the staff was really doing. And I don't think really, Charlie, like, and this is just me being 100 honest with you, until I was a squadron commander, I don't think I understood, like, the staff's job is to resource the companies so the companies can operate. And in the 160th, the companies are the center of gravity because we've got so many different companies. And the battalion staff's job is to resource the companies and the regiment's job. And this is what I'm. I'm. You can ask Sergeant Major. I'm approaching with reckless abandonment the relentless pursuit of making the regiment of war fighting headquarters. Because for years in gwat, we had so many, for lack of a better term here, little groups of paratroopers. In several different places throughout the world. The regiment headquarters was resourcing them to get them there, but it didn't have the bandwidth to be there all the time. [00:32:52] Speaker A: Right. [00:32:53] Speaker C: And I think in the next fight, in like large scale combat operations or, you know, whatever thing you want to call it, the regiment headquarters is going to have to be deployable. And again, that's kind of a shift in the army too. Right. The army went away from the bcts being the maneuver arm to the division being the maneuver arm again. And so what I've learned is like my job and the only thing I can provide the battalion commanders is time, resources and top cover. And so I don't need to be a battalion commander again. I've already got to do that. I've got to let them command their battalions, but I've got to resource them appropriately. And each one of them needs a little bit different level of resourcing. And it took me a long time to realize that ecosystem at Echelon and that, that's the benefit of, you know, getting to serve for a long time is you just get to learn. It kind of goes back to, you know, Scott Howell's comment, like, be intellectually curious. The more you learn about what your headquarters can provide you, the better a leader you can be for your people. But, but, you know, we breed this, I think General McChrystal talked about in his book Team of Teams. Like, we breed this like, screw second squad mentality because there's that competitive nature. You're trying to get people competitive. And if I couch that with, with Mangum's leadership triangle and the teammate thing being the base of that triangle, like, you fostered this competitive nature down there at the company and platoon level. But like, sometimes like the officer, the leader's job is to pick their head up and say, okay, like there's other resources out there. Like, let's use these resources. Let's ask the question. Let's build relationships to our left and right so we can get the most resources for the, for the person at the pointy end of the spear that's going to the X. Let's get them everything they need. But you can't do that if you don't build relationship. [00:34:44] Speaker A: That's right. [00:34:45] Speaker C: And so that's my job. My job is to build relationships with the other CAB commanders in the Army. My job is to build relationships with the branch, with usasoc, with jsoc, with socom, with anyone that can provide a resource to help us get the ground force to the target. That's my job. And you know, I use resources because it's a, it's a simple term. But what we're really talking about here is extending, I think the army would say extending influence beyond the chain. [00:35:11] Speaker A: Well, speaking of doctrinal terms, it sounds like what you're talking about is kind of textbook mission command stuff. [00:35:17] Speaker C: It is 100% Charlie, like, and that's, you know, I'm glad you brought that up. Like, why did Sean Carl stay in the 160 when I was a captain, I love telling this story. I got sent to Key West, Florida for a training mission. There was three Chinooks, four Blackhawks, three little birds. I think we were there for like 10 or 14 days. It was like a 7 million dollar training exercise. I was at 03 in the United States Army. My battalion commander just acknowledged the sit rep every night and just let me run it. And I was like, this place mission commands. Like I have more autonomy here that I've had my entire military career. And that's what keeps leaders in the organization is they have the autonomy to lead their formations. And we practice mission command. We don't just preach it, we practice it. And that is a very, at least in my opinion, a very professionally rewarding thing to be a part of. [00:36:14] Speaker A: I could not agree more. And the army wasn't calling it mission command when I was in 160th, but I certainly experienced it. I remember very early in my time there as that we were in a battalion staff meeting and there was an exercise that had taken place which we'd all supported. And they were debriefing. There had been a blade strike. Very common thing for something that happened. Some debris got kicked up and it damaged a blade on a MH47. And the pilot's briefing was like, hey, sir, we flew in, this happened and it's going to be some astronomical price. It was like tens of thousands of dollars on that to repair it. And the battalion commander was like, roger, glad nobody was hurt. And it just kind of blew my mind coming from the units that I'd been in previously where that would have been a flipple and just an investigation, everything else. But when you empower your forces to take that prudent risk and do what needs to be done in the mission. You got to underwrite when things happen like that. Nobody did anything wrong. [00:37:16] Speaker C: Wrong. [00:37:17] Speaker A: It's just the condition of the operating environment. [00:37:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm glad you used the word underwrite because like I, I hit that in my command philosophy. Right? I want to teach disciplined initiative and underwrite subordinate decisions because we're all going to make mistakes. One of my first is actually my first combat rotation on my fifth mission, I ripped all four landing gear off of a Chinook. All four. [00:37:40] Speaker A: That's pretty impressive. [00:37:41] Speaker C: Yeah, it was Julio Santos, my sergeant major here was platoon sergeant at the time. And he comes running out and, you know, we're just dumping gas all over the airfield, about to flame the aircraft out. And I see him looking like, you know, he's like, we're on Alpha Taxiway, Kandahar. He's trying to see the aircraft, and he's trying to, like, flag down the guys that are coming with the. Basically the mattresses and the pallets that you land on, because, you know that was a common occurrence. You'd at least rip one or two off a night in Afghanistan at the time, just because we were landing those Chinooks so hard, infilling Rangers and SF guys at the. Not all four, though. And I thought I was done. And I see Julio, like a 1, 2, 3. And then he, like, shakes his head and he. He holds up four fingers to the crew chiefs that are bringing the stuff out. And Tim Long, the guy that's flying with me, him and I are like, man, I hope they get him out here before we run out of gas. This is not good. And, you know, after the melee and, you know, it's. It's humorous to look back on now, but I remember Talking to the 2nd Battalion Commander at the time, and I was like, sir, am I. Am I going to get released from the regiment? And he's like, sean, the current RCO wrecked Three Little Birds when he was a captain. He's the rco. Mike, don't worry about it. There'll be an investigation if you didn't do anything wrong. And it's part of combat. Like, just stay in there and. And focus on the next thing and like, let's not make that mistake again. And I was like, man, that amazing. It made me feel so much more secure because I thought I was dumb. [00:39:00] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [00:39:02] Speaker C: And now I did a lot more in depth planning and map analysis on every single mission I flew after that point, because I wasn't going to let that again, and thank the good Lord it hasn't. But I. I thought I was. I thought I was done. But that's another great part about the regiment is like, we understand that there's going to be failures. One of. One of my first sergeants, when I was on the training battalion came up with this mnemonic and he was like, hey, sir, a failure is just a first attempt in learning. And I was like, that is. I had never heard anyone say that. And I was like, freddie, that is probably one of the smartest things I've ever heard anyone say. And he was my flight company first sergeant in the training battalion. It was our biggest company. And so I wrote it into the command philosophy. I'm like, hey, we're going to push people to failure here. And that's what we have to do in training. You know, the army says train as you fight, like, you're going to break some things. And it's the leader's job to, you know, to calmly assess and then provide feedback. One of the best things, like I told my brigade commander when I left Batank command, I said, sir, like, you never overreacted to any bad news. That made it very easy to. To lead with him. And so I try to practice that. I can guarantee you, when I was a captain, I was not as calm as I am when I was a major, so. And that's a maturity thing, right? But I think that's what I would impart to the listeners. And if I, If I look back to when I was a wrestling coach, it's kind of the same thing. Like, I learned very early on, like, you can't tell someone when they were walking off the mat everything they did bad. Like, one of my mentors, he grabbed me one day, he's like, hey, you can't start with everything they did bad. Give them what they did good first and then give them what they did bad so they can absorb it. Because if you just start with the negative, like, you're gonna. They're gonna shut down and they're not really gonna learn from the experience. And it took me a long time as an officer to figure that out because, you know, you get. I understand Green TAB leaders are in a knife fight every day, and. But sometimes it's just like, hey, it's the old. Like what my grandma used to tell me, right? Two things. The golden rule. Treat other people how you want to be treated. And then if you're upset, just silently count to 10. By the time you get to 10, you'll be all right. You're not going to be as excited as you were when you started, right? [00:41:22] Speaker A: There is, of course, a culture of accountability in the 1 60th, and. And I remember again, early on in my time there, we did a flyaway camp Atterbury, and it was a check ride for a flight lead, and I didn't know what that meant. At first I just knew that they asked me to come. I was super excited. And I remember being at the AAR for the flight read checkride and it was brutal. It's a cultural thing because the consequences are so high. I was sitting there thinking, these guys [00:41:52] Speaker C: are about to fight. [00:41:53] Speaker A: There's about to be a fist fight right here. And then the AR was over. Everyone win lifted and played Call of Duty or whatever it was, and it was over. But that accountability makes everybody better. Yes, you have. You underwrite the prudent risk and everything like that, but at the ar, you still got to make everybody better for it. [00:42:10] Speaker C: Yeah. And again, that's. I talked to the Vanderbilt football program about this when I was at Vanderbilt. Scott Brower Former 5th Group Commander and DCG 201st like, hey, I want you specifically to talk to these coaches is about how you guys do AARs. And it should be a visceral environment. Like, the learning comes from dissecting the mistakes that were made. But if it's not a little visceral, you're going to forget because, you know, the human brain, like, it will compartmentalize bad things and only remember good things. This is just generally how it works. Right. So having an environment where one, everyone is free to speak their mind mind, and two, it's a visceral experience for the, the person doing the learning. And I think what sometimes we even fail to realize is everyone in the room is learning. We think it's just that person taking the evaluation. Right. But because we've fostered this culture of accountability and this culture of teamwork, everyone that is trying to support that person on those evals, which is really just like a real mission, we're right. Feels like they should have done something better to help their teammate. And that is a very powerful part of those AARs. Most aviation communities have these. I'm just glad that we still do them the way we do them because it's intended to be that way. And you know, when you're operating in an environment where inches matter, you've got to be a professional. You've got to be serious. [00:43:37] Speaker A: Yes. [00:43:38] Speaker C: Because if you let complacency creep in, that's when accidents start happening. So it has to happen. And again, there's been some discussions like, hey, do these need to be this painful? And I always answer, yes, yes, they do, because it's how we learn and it's how we get better. Because what you don't want to do, like, a lot can get lost in translation and communication. That's why communication is so hard. That's why I try to be like, I've been chastised in the past for being extremely direct. And it's not from a place of malcontent. And I'm not a curmudgeon. It's just, I'm trying not to waste people's time. And the more direct you are, the easier it is for your people to say, hey, I got the bosses intent. He's very clear about this. Don't beat around the bush. And in the aircraft we have all these crew coordination drills that we go through where one of them is, avoid excessive professional courtesy. And if I'm flying with a W2, he's like not calling me sir the whole flight. Like, I, we're, we're operating a crew served weapon here. You cannot be excessively professional. It's just like, hey, I need you to do this. I'm doing this. I don't want to run into this tree. Like, let's get on with this. Like, so it's, it's already in that aviation DNA. I think the regiment, like most things, we just, we put it on steroids and we bring the ground force into it. Like the ground force has just as much of a vote in those AARs as we do. [00:45:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:04] Speaker C: Because we're supporting them. [00:45:06] Speaker A: How do you balance conveying leaders intent with making sure that your troops can exercise disciplined initiative? You mentioned your leadership philosophy. How are you ensuring that they are staying inside the boundaries of leaders intent while making the most of what they can do inside of it? [00:45:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's the whole. I use this discipline, training standards and supervision. Those are the four things I try to say consistently. And then there's, I am a big believer in leadership by walking around like spot checking. When you're a leader, you've got to spot check things. And one of the old retired W5s that worked on the training battalion, when I was a training battalion commander, I'd sneak down to the flight line all the time unannounced. He's like, sir, I'm going to start putting a bell on you because sometimes as a leader you want to get the ground truth from someone that isn't prepared for you to be there. And you know, sometimes in the army we call this Napoleon's corner Corporal. I used to, when we would do these big air mission briefs, right. Two, three hour briefs on, on missions, you know, the flight lead would get up and brief and you know, a flight lead in the regiment just to kind of give the audience some Awareness. When you graduate Green platoon, you're a basic mission qualified pilot and about 24 to 36 months later you're a fully mission qualified pilot. And then about five years after that you're a fully mission qualified or flight lead qualified pilot. So you're a very senior pilot that leads everyone to the target in conjunction with the air mission commander. And they do these big air mission briefs. They're like two to three hours long and at the end there's questions. And when I was a company commander, I started noticing like folks weren't asking questions. And so I would pick the most junior crew chief in the formation and ask him what he thought the mission was, ask him what his sectors of fire were on the target, ask him all kinds of questions. One, to make sure he was paying attention to the brief. Two, sometimes the leader has rose colored glasses on, on and people simply won't ask them questions because they're the leader. And so it's imperative that you ask open ended questions and spot check to make sure your intense beat met. And sometimes it has to be unannounced. Like I went and flew with some of the guys on Monday and I got more information in a 2 hour flight than I would have got from 10 days of staff meetings. Because I'm getting to talk to crew chiefs who they're just happy to see the RCO and they're. But when, when I'm flying in the helicopter, like they're not pulling punches, they're making fun of my maneuvers and they're. And so like to break the monotony, I'm asking them questions back so they'll stop focusing on how bad a pilot I am. Right. And I'll get like candid feedback from them. And really it's candor, Charlie. Like you've got to foster an environment where people feel like they can bring you problems. Which part of that goes back to what I talked about earlier. Like you, you can't overreact to failure. And part of it is you've got to be approachable enough and accessible for people to come to you with issues. [00:48:11] Speaker A: Sure. [00:48:12] Speaker C: And then the reverse of that is, you know, it's the old Ronald Reagan trust but verify. I trust my people implicitly, but who's verifying? And it doesn't always have to be me. Like I can use the sergeant major, I can use a senior warrant officer, the executive officer, the deputy commander, the battalion commanders. Like I've got a whole team that can verify. Doesn't always have to be be me. But sometimes it has to be the leader, like this is old adage from one of my oldest mentors is like 75% of leadership is presence, like just being present and accessible. Now, I've also been accused of being too accessible, but I would rather be being accused of being too accessible rather than no one talking. For sure, that makes sense. [00:48:53] Speaker A: I really like the vignette you shared about encouraging the. Especially the younger soldiers ask questions. It's an interesting dynamic, especially in elite units with charismatic leaders, that people won't do that for two reasons. One, they don't want to embarrass a guy talking, especially if there are RCOs there, they catch after. And the second thing is they don't want to be that guy that. The one guy that didn't understand the plan. Well, guess what? There's probably six or seven others who are also not going to ask the question. So I think that's a really important thing to do. [00:49:25] Speaker C: And we, you know, I talk about this all the time in army aviation. Like the ecosystem works really well when you have a senior warrant officer and a sergeant major and a commander that are all synchronized because you'll get that. We had a really tough problem we had to solve early in the command. And I, I was relentlessly driving the staff on doing basically Enterprise design because we didn't have time to do mdmp. And I kind of felt like I wasn't getting any feedback. And our first battalion sergeant major's like, hey, sir, I have a question for you. And it's probably going to be contrarian to your point of view here, but I think it needs to be asked. And I won't go into what the question was, but it was. He knew what I meant, but what he was hearing was things he knew that were outside of what my actual intent was. So he had me clarify. And he did it because he knew, brand new boss. No one else is going to question him. I had this reputation as a major of being very intense. Like some people still remember that, right? And so, so Sergeant Major Young asked the question. I'm like, rick, thank you so much for asking that question. That is not what I meant. Here is what I meant. Let me expand on that. And so I realized a long time ago that I was never the smartest person in the room. So how does a commander fight that? He's got to have really good teammates. And he's also got to create an environment where people feel like they can do that and they don't and there's no repercussions. And that's tough. The higher you get in command, it's even tougher because you said it. The RCO sometimes becomes a deity. And I keep telling them, hey, don't make me a deity. And also, please do not make me the most over scheduled and underutilized member of the chain of command, please. [00:51:09] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that was a great example, the one you just gave about doing a confirmation brief to make sure the message sent is the message received. I think that's a source of frustration not only for commanders but for staffs. As a guy who spent a lot of time on staff, it's very frustrating that you put all this effort into it. Then you get to the briefing and the boss was like, actually what I wanted was something completely different. Very frustrating. [00:51:32] Speaker C: Training helps us, right? Like our, our combat training centers, what we in the, what the 160s refer to as situational training exercises. The more times the commander is put in a position to actually articulate what he wants, the better it is for the staff and the people executing. But what I learned through different levels of command and what I tried to practice, this is, and the army says this. When the army talks about mission command, it talks about also the commander driving the operations process. [00:52:02] Speaker A: Yes. [00:52:03] Speaker C: And again, for the, for the, folks listening to the podcast, the word commander here, like, I want you to use that at every level that you're a green tab leader. So think platoon leader. I want you to add commander at the end of that. Company commander, first sergeant, platoon sergeant. Just add that command like you're driving the operations process. You have to give initial commander's planning guidance. The commander giving initial commander's planning guidance will save the staff and the subordinate leaders an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what the commander wants. But it's usually the executive officer or the sergeant major, or in our case in aviation, the senior warrant officer has to tell the commander, sir, you need to give your intention here because commanders get busy. I, I understand. Yeah. But if you just. This is what I try to articulate to all the young leaders in our formation. Do what the army tells you to do in the book. Issue commander's initial planning guidance and then follow the Army's eight step training model. Do AARs, do retraining. The army tells you everything that you're supposed to do. They write it in a book, just follow it. And the things that say command commander, do them, but you do them. You cannot delegate those things. Do things only the commander can do that will, will save the staff time. And coincidentally, it will save you time because you won't have them coming back asking RFIs to reconfirm what you said. Like, just get it. Like in sear school, they have this saying and it was really about eating roadkill, but it was like, go ugly early. Like when you're the commander with guidance, just go ugly early. It gives you two things. Things. Not only does it save the staff time, it's also going to give you instantaneous feedback about whether or not you're wearing any clothes. Like, if you've come up with some bright idea that is really not a bright idea, you're going to get some feedback from your senior NCOs and your subordinate leaders. But the army, like, writes that down for you. Like, here's what you need to Commanders drive the operations process. So drive it. Own it. That's the ownership piece of leadership. Leadership. [00:54:10] Speaker A: Sean, this is music to my ears. This is the second time in this conversation that you've mentioned the importance of doctrine. And for all our listeners out there, especially you cadets and ROTC and West Point listening to this, you need to get good at the basics. And one of the things that frustrates me in this job is when I'm working with these great cadets here, they'll come up to me and they'll say, hey, sir, I like to think outside the box. And it irks me. And to me, they say that because they know my background and they think it's going to impress honest me. But for me, I don't want them thinking outside the box. At least not acting outside the box. [00:54:47] Speaker C: That's. So I got this when I was at flight school and I have remembered this and I can remember it was Major John Hopkins. I think he went by Jay Hopkins. He ended up being a brigade commander in the army. And he's talking to this group of lieutenants and I can probably even find the green book I wrote it down in. That's how big a nerd I am. He's like, all you guys are going to come talk to me about thinking outside the pocket box. You actually have to know what's in the box before you can think outside of it. And the box is doctrine. [00:55:12] Speaker A: Yes. [00:55:12] Speaker C: It is there for a reason and it's there for. That's what I. Every Green Platoon class that I am [00:55:16] Speaker B: brief when you talk about it during your. Your embryo from about the tactical SOP. Yeah, that is the box. [00:55:21] Speaker C: Yes. 100. Sorry, Major. Like, the box is where you start. And I tell the Green Platoon students, you don't get to deviate from the regimental Tactical SOP until you've memorized. Then you can come talk to me about your wonderful ideas about thinking outside the box. But you better know what's in the box first. [00:55:37] Speaker A: That's right. [00:55:37] Speaker C: Because that thing has been built with blood, sweat, and tears. [00:55:40] Speaker A: And the important. The other aspect of that is we don't want to confine people's creativity. But if you're following mission command, then discipline, initiative is baked in. If you're outside the box, you're outside the leader's intent. And that. That's not a good place to be. [00:55:53] Speaker C: No, that's what, you know, can get people hemmed up. And there's also this. This is a great vignette from when I was in 25th Infantry Division. I was running the CAB through doing what they call fat cow operations, which is essentially fueling out of the back of a Chinook and carrying ammo. And we were putting ammo in skedkos and breaking down ammo pallets, just stacking them in the Chinook. And division safety was like, hey, sir, you can't do that. Like, you can't carry live ammunition in the back of a Chinook. And I'm like, okay. And so my S3 is like, sir, what are you going to do about this? I said, well, when the division commander comes out here, I'm just going to show him this new innovative thing, right? [00:56:28] Speaker A: Doing. [00:56:29] Speaker C: And he was a former Ranger, and the sergeant major was a former Ranger. And they get out there and the division served, looks at me. He's like, sir, that's. That's not new. I'm like, it's new to your division safety officer, and it's new to all these soldiers that are doing it out here. But they haven't read it in a book because it's been removed from doctrine. So sometimes there's stuff in old doctrine that is actually innovative today because we've forgotten to do it. And so technology sometimes isn't always the answer. Sometimes there's an answer that the army has come up with. With. Which is why I love the center for Army Lessons Learned. Like, now there's so much stuff in there. Like, you can't spend all your time reading that. But like, that, to me, was a perfect example of a tried and true forward arming refueling capability that army aviation has been doing since the Vietnam War. The units have. Have developed and made better over time, but it kind of. It slips away when you don't do it all the time, particularly when you're in 20 years of GWAD and there's FARPs everywhere. But in the regiment, we had been doing that forever because that wasn't the only mission we were doing. Right? And so I pulled it out of the SOP and showed my guys, like, hey. And again, the division started. Major chuckling was like one of my favorite moments of battalion command. Because he's like, sir, this isn't new. And I'm like, yeah, I understand, Sergeant Major. I just. I need you to tell your division safety officer that I can do it so I can execute this mission later on today. All right? So. And that's what commanders get paid for, right? Like, you teach, coach, and mentor folks that, hey, there's a different way to do this, this. And some of my NCOs were. They were very concerned. And I'm like, I acknowledge your concern. [00:58:01] Speaker A: So, Sean, you mentioned that the Sergeant Major Santos Julio was your platoon sergeant. [00:58:05] Speaker C: Yes. [00:58:06] Speaker A: And now is your regimental command Sergeant Major. That sounds like a lot of history together. So do you remember the first time that you met Captain Carls? [00:58:17] Speaker B: Yeah, actually, I have a couple stories [00:58:22] Speaker C: that great. [00:58:23] Speaker B: You know, 1, 1. 1 is a tribute to. To his leadership is. You know, we used to. Down in Savannah, it's very flat, right? There's no hills to get around, you know, so when we run, we'd. We'd meet up downtown and we'd hit up all the. The parking garages, you know, and just go level after level after level, and we just had this route and whatnot. Or we go to the. The stairs, you know, throughout Savannah and just, you know, and, you know, and run them all. But one morning, young Captain Carlos comes out there, and I'm like. I'm like, sir, what's going on? What are you doing out here? You know, he's. He's like, we. What do you mean? I'm too leader, you know, I should be out here with the troops. And I just didn't see that before. You know, it was always NCOs were leading PT and officers were doing their own thing. But that meant a lot to me because I was like, all right, he wants to be with the troops. He wants to, you know, endure the. Endure the pain with the. With the rest of the folks. And so I really, you know, I learned a lot from that, you know, and, you know, just being out front, I think it's very difficult for young captain captains, you know, especially post command captains to come over to the regiment because you're essentially starting over again, you know, the BMQ and whatnot and going through the progressions. But I Remember down. Down range, you know, you know, Captain Carl's at the time, you know, he was a bmq. And, and you know, it's. It's almost like a, A rite of [00:59:36] Speaker C: passage, you know, where you're like rushing the fraternity. [00:59:38] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, where you're, you know, you got to sweep the talk, you know, every night or, you know, or, you know, man the fraternity fridge, you know, or something, you know, but. But I was walking upstairs and he was sweeping up the talk, you know, [00:59:49] Speaker C: and he's like, God damn, what the hell? I'm captain. [00:59:52] Speaker B: You know, And I was like, I was like, I was like, hey, just. Just get through it. You know what I mean? It's just a ride of passage. This is just the way it is, you know, and. And I was just pretty funny at [01:00:01] Speaker C: the time, but I was the best fridge filler. I'm leaving the expletive out of it, but I was the best fridge filler in that country. Company. Because I just wanted to be there. [01:00:11] Speaker A: Someone's got to do it. [01:00:12] Speaker C: But my platoon sort of let me complain about it. Just soldiers, right to bitch, right, Charlie? [01:00:17] Speaker B: So don't show them, don't show them. I was like, vent to me, vent to me. Don't let the flight lead see this, you know, just. Yeah, it's pretty fun. [01:00:28] Speaker A: Sean, you recently wrote about the challenges of integrating AI, automation and unmanned systems without allowing technology to erode fundamental tactical skills for the 160th. Specifically, what is the future relationship between manned special operations, aviation and unmanned or autonomous systems? Looks like. [01:00:45] Speaker C: Yeah, so that's a great question, Charlie. And again, I think it all comes down to balance so, so many times as a leader and even if you think of like an athletic stance for the listeners, like, you don't want to have too much weight on one foot or the other. Are we going to have more autonomy in the future? Absolutely. I think we should be using autonomous systems for tasks that, that we don't need a human in the loop for. There's definitely a spot for them. My concern like that, that is for echelons at the brigade and above to solve, in my opinion, because I think at the battalion level and below, particularly in our branch, being a really good pilot requires flying. Doesn't matter if you're flying in the simulator or flying in the helicopter. It requires repetitions. We're a repetitions based enterprise. And in our line of work in the regiment, like we do some, you know, we're landing little birds on. On lips of buildings, we're landing blackhawks on lips. I've done two wheel landings in the mountains of Afghanistan before. We had all this whiz bang tech that we have on the helicopters now. And that requires repetition to be skilled at. And so leaders at my level have to make sure battalion commanders and below have the time to train those tasks because I can't give folks more time in a day. You know, there's, there's just certain required tasks you have to do every day. I think it was one of the old sergeant Major of the army that said PT may not be the most important thing we do every day, but it's the most important, important thing we do every day. Well, you can add aviation maintenance to that in army aviation. Like it may not be the most important thing we do every day, but it's probably the most important thing we do for our pilots every day is, is the maintaining the helicopters. And that chews up a lot of time. And so balancing the time required to test new equipment and the time to train basic fundamental tactical tasks is very important. And so what I don't want to do is lose the forest through the trees, for lack of a better term, when it comes to tech. Like we, we hang a lot of tech on our helicopters. We, we have a whole enterprise that, that tests new tech for the helicopters. You know, you've been in the institution, we've got those guys. And yes. Do you have to have units tested 100%. I think that the tick model works in some instances. But I do think you have to, you have to carve out time to actually train fundamental tactical tasks. Just like the infantry wants to create experts on the rifle range, I've got to create experts in the front seat of the aircraft. I've got to create expert gunners that are manning the guns on the aircraft. On our attack pilots, I've got to have attack pilots that are. Because we're shoot danger close to maneuvering Rangers and SMU and Green Berets like we're, we're shooting rounds within 100 meters of these folks. Like that takes a lot of practice. And so balance is the key there. Now I do think even if you look at some of the vignettes from, you know, current events that have been an open source, like the autonomous boat picking up the Apache guys that put the aircraft down in the water, that is a very, that is an excellent capability for an autonomous system. Another thing with autonomy me is computers are zeros and ones. So my fear with AI and again, there's been some stories in open source out there about you know, bots eating themselves. And my fear was like, I've got a, I've got a 24 year old daughter and an 18 year old daughter, both of them Tennessee Volunteers. Go balls. Had to get that one in there. But my 18 year old, she used chat GPT more than I did in the war college. And I was trying to explain to her and I think it's important for the listeners here, like, hey, Chad, GPT is easy for me because I'm almost 50, I know what I think. And so I can write a prompt like, hey, I just wrote this five pages of garbage because I'm very verbose, like, help me condense this into something that someone would actually like to read. And so I can put it. And like I want to, I'm really trying to say this, but I don't think I'm saying this. And so it's very effective at that. I think for staff work, it can save staff officers tons of time. [01:04:32] Speaker A: Yes. [01:04:33] Speaker C: But when you're a young student or a young pilot or a young infantryman, I need you to learn how you think first before you start using AI or machine assisted learning systems to tell you what you think. Because to me, being a critical thinker is the most important part of your leader development. Because, and I didn't say this when I was talking about the teammates and you know, disciplined, physically fit people. We're also hiring problem solvers if you don't learn how to solve your own problems at a very early age. And in aviation we call it primacy, right? Like I can recite the before landing, check for an Apache helicopter because it's what I learned to fly in flight school. It's weapons ace, tail wheel and parking brake. I can't recite any of the other ones. In the aviation community they call that primacy. The first thing you learn, you always remember. And so if you think about, you know, if you're a baseball pitcher learning how to throw your four seam fastball, if that's the first one you knew how to throw, that's your best pitch. A lineman that gets taught the appropriate stance and how to explode off the ball, a linebacker, how to read the quarterback's eyes, like, name your endeavor. The first thing you learn, you're always the best at. And I told my daughter, like, hey, if that's how you're learning how to summarize a Shakespearean sonnet, sweetheart, like 20 years from now when your daughter's asking you about it, you're not going to know. Like you've got to Meter this. So that's kind of how I feel about. It's all about balance. And don't limit yourself to learning by using a tool. That's easy. Another thing I learned at SEAR school, hey, gentlemen, we want you to take the hard right over the easy rock. If you don't, your resistance laboratory is probably going to be a little longer. And so, you know, sometimes, like, I'm a hard head, I had to learn hard lessons. Right. But the saying is true, like build critical thinking skills so you can be a problem solver someday. Because I don't care what industry it is, leaders are problem solvers. [01:06:44] Speaker A: It's very interesting, this conversation we're having about getting the basics done right. You mentioned the primacy, which I'd never heard it expressed like that before, but we see that here as well. I work with the combat weapons team. It's an action shooting club. They're very good. But we talk about training scars. It's really hard to undo something if people get the basics wrong over time. [01:07:06] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, I would have this. We've got less experience in the regiment right now. And I talked to one of our very senior instructor pilots, Randy Gant, before he retired. Retired. And I like, put it in perspective how senior he was. When I was in flight School in 2004, Randy Gant was the chief warrant officer of the aviation branch. [01:07:25] Speaker A: Wow. [01:07:26] Speaker C: And then he came back to the regiment, was the regiment sp, and flew in the company for like another five or ten years and then retired and taught Green Platoon for the next 20. He's still there in 2023 when I show up to be the SOA TB commander. And I said, hey, are you concerned with the, that the aviators were getting? Because, you know, we used to get roughly 1500 hour aviators with 500 gong of hours, and now we're getting 500 hour aviators with 100 goggle hours. And he's like, hey, sir, you know what a 500 hour aviator has that a 1500 hour aviator doesn't? Or the other way around. And I'm like, no. And he's like, they don't have any bad habits, so we can teach them exactly what they need to know because their primacy is what they learned at flight school. But we can teach them exactly the way we do it here. And I don't have to undo, you know, three to five years of bad habits. So there's a balance there too. And again, I've used that word several times. Right. But balancing learning it the right way. The first and Again, that goes back to good repetitions. You have to have good repetitions. It's, it's the whole Nick Saban when he says practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect. Practice makes perfect. And focus not on the outcome, but on the process. If your process drops driven, you're going to get the outcome you want. And if you, like, relentlessly pursue perfection. And again, I had a couple people in my command philosophy say, hey, sir, like, you can't get to perfect. I said, I'm so glad you asked that question. I understand that you cannot get to perfect. But Vince Lombardi said he used the relentless pursuit of perfection. And he said, if you chase perfection, you're going to catch excellence. So that's really what we're talking about here, Charlie, is like set a baseline of knowledge college where your basic skills are impeccable and then chase perfection so you can catch excellence. [01:09:20] Speaker A: I think it's a great lesson for this podcast. Sean, I'm going to direct this question to you, but Julio, I'd like you to chime in on this one as well. The 160th has spent much of the last quarter century operating in an environment where American soft often enjoyed considerable freedom of action in the air. In a modern operating environment that includes things like sophisticated air defense, electronic warfare, degraded comms and contested logistics, what does a night stalker of the next war need to be able to do that the night stalker of Iraq and Afghanistan did not? [01:09:50] Speaker C: It's a good question, and I'm not being flippant here, but I don't think they need anything different. Because if I'm hiring the right person that is physically fit, is a critical thinker, a problem solver, and as a teammate, they can solve any problem in the world. I am a people based individual. My three command priorities are people preparation and ownership. And so if the people prepare and they own the problem and they solve the problem, there's no problem you can't solve. We sent people to the moon. Charlie and I tell the guys in the regiment this all the time. I'm like, guys, you made the Blackhawk an attack helicopter. There's no problem we can't solve. We have the right people here. It's. Are there tools out there that we need to use? Yes. So like Charlie, we've, we've got more space operations folks and EW folks than we used to have. Working with the S2 sections, we've created a denied area planning team to get after these, these tough problems. And we're trying to, we're trying to scale that and share it with army aviation and the army as a whole. So, like, I'm. I'm not trying to talk out of both sides of my mouth. I think the people we have are going to solve the problem. Number one, are there some capabilities we need? Yes. We also, like, our UAS folks, are the best in the army at taking an MQ1 and flying it at helicopter altitudes, at penetrating iads that no one else can do. And I'm not trying to get into classified things there. There are some tools. Right. But it's the people that test capability and push it to its limits to figure out how to solve a problem. Like, I've got hundreds of stories about things our UAS soldiers do who are primarily enlisted folks that come up with, you know, the old farm boy from South Dakota would say, basically coming up with ways to use baling wire, induction tape to make this thing do things that other platforms just don't do because they're innovative. And so the regiment's always been innovative. So are we going to have to innovate a little bit? Yes. I'm not trying to say we're not, but those problems can be solved with ttps and a few boutique capabilities. But if I don't have the right people, people, I can't solve that problem anyway. And so no one is going to convince me that we can't get it done. Like, can't is not in my lexicon. It's not a word that I even consider. There's no such word in my vocabulary. If you hire the right people, you can solve any problem. [01:12:37] Speaker A: So, Julio, as perfect as the regular mental sergeant major and the senior enlisted advisor, what are you looking for in the enlisted personnel of the future when you're thinking. Thinking about what you want in the formation that, that you and the RCO share? [01:12:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So the rco, he touched upon. [01:12:56] Speaker C: Excuse me. [01:12:57] Speaker B: He touched upon teamwork before. You know, we have, you know, when we. When we recruit a new soldier coming into the 160th, we do what's called a. An EEV, an entry eval. And so they go through this process. You know, they talk to the psychs and what whatnot. But, you know, we assess these. These folks, you know, their maturity, their ability to. Number one, are they physically fit? Are they mature? Are they professional? What is their background? Are they financially, you know, sound all these things. You know, we go through the whole background. We have a conversation with, with the other leaders, and do we think they're going to be a right fit? Are they Going to be a good team player, you know, and, and based on that assessment, okay, we're gonna give them a shot, go through egp, then they go through egp. And I, I tell the, the Green platoon students during the, their in brief, this, this is your interview. You know, this is not, this is not your, this is not saying you, you know, you made it and, and that's it. And, and you know, you put it behind. This, this is your, this is an interview process. When you get to the line, now it's game on. Now it's time to learn. Now it's time to be a team player and, and, and soak in all the things that, that, that our coaches are teaching and telling you what we're running to right now. There's a lot, a lot of folks out there that are not physically fit. You'd be surprised how many folks out there cannot pass the basic AFT and don't have the mental capacity to withstand, you know, pressure and sleep deprivation and all these things that we try to teach you in egp. So, you know, we're, we're, we're trying to make sure that we, we, number one, we get the right folks, you know, we put them into the line, they got the grit to withstand and the pressures of deployments and all these other things that we throw at you. And then we're essentially molding that person to be that nice doctor that we're looking for. So if that answers your question for sure. [01:14:46] Speaker A: Thank you. This question is also for both of you and we're going to wrap it up here shortly. A couple more questions. The 160th has built a culture around the idea that Night Stalkers don't quit. But maintaining a legendary culture can sometimes be as difficult as creating one. As the regimental commander and Sergeant Major, what parts of the Night Stalker culture are you determined never to change and what parts might need to evolve for the wars ahead? [01:15:12] Speaker C: So the, and again, this. I'm going to sound like a broken record to me. Problem solving teammates, I don't ever want that to change. The NSDQ Night Stalkers Don't Quit came from the ground force. I never want the formation to free. Forget that we exist because of the ground force. We are a customer service organization. They've got to be the ones that move to the breach and are getting the hostage facing the enemy down like we are a vehicle to get them there. And we're their teammates, but we are there to support them. We can never lose that in our culture. We have to be a Formation that relentlessly pursues perfection and gets to. Yes. And that is, I think, what endears us to the ground force. We put you in, we're going to take you out. We're there for the ground force. Every organization, every big organization can experience cultural drift. When Nick Saban talks about it's very easy to win one championship, it's hard to sustain success. We have to every day work to sustain success. And that's leadership. And most of that, you know, is resides at the sergeant major and I's level. Like we've got to be the ones teaching young leaders that they haven't made it. And not through like blunt force trauma, but making them understand your job is to hold the line and hold the standard. And I'm again, I'm going to go back to the four things I've said multiple times in this interview. If they focus on discipline training, standards and supervision, that culture will never erode. But the minute you walk by something that is incorrect or you think you've made it, or you think you can let someone slide on this check ride, you've created a new standard. Our senior warrant. I wish you, I wish Bill was here. Bill tells this story about Mike Hardy who was also one of the regimental senior warrant officers. He failed Bill on a checkride for failing to do one of his three fuel checks in the flight. And he said, hey, it's the standard, man. You failed to do it. They had to reprogress. And the ARS that we do like all of these things that we've talked about in this interview, Charlie, that's all baked into the culture. But at the end of the day, if you do not have disciplined people that trust their leaders and hold people accountable to the standard, that culture will erode. And we have to relentlessly protect the that. And that's really our role in our level because you know, we, we can see the entire formation and our job is to be objective about it. You cannot be subjective about it. It has to be objective. We have a regimental training sop. The sergeant majors created a white book. The standard is the standard. Our physical fitness standards are higher than the Army's. That's for a reason. We create battle focused, problem solving leaders that get the ground force to the action and sustain excellence. That's kind of how I would answer that. [01:18:15] Speaker B: Yeah, we're never going to sacrifice the standards. You know, what's, and what's unique about the, the regimen and the range regimen also is everyone that goes through that is, that is a member of the 160 has to go through EGP regardless of MOS, you know, whether you're 42 Alpha or you're a medic, you're fueler. Doesn't matter. Intelligence, doesn't matter. Everyone goes through the same pipeline. So. And I think that that in itself breeds that culture of. Of. Of excellence, you know, when everybody's held to the same standard. And I, you know, I. I found this out a long time ago when I mentioned before I was going to Hawaii, had a flight company, and they said, hey, hey, you know, hey, we're going to move you up to. To a Delta company maintenance. You know, you're gonna have, like, you know, 200 folks, 250 folks. [01:18:57] Speaker C: I was like, all right, right on. [01:18:58] Speaker B: And, you know, I get into this company, I noticed that, you know, in, you know, word of mouth and whatnot, you know, morale wasn't that high and this and that. And I was like, okay, let me. Let me poke around a little bit. Let me see happened. What. What's going on? A lot of overweight soldiers. A lot. A lot of soldiers just go on smoke breaks and doing. Just doing. Doing young soldier things, right? But the company had zero bars. They had zero UCMJ in the last year, zero. You know, nobody was flagged. And. Yeah, and then, you know, and I said, okay, well, there's. There's problem number one, you know, because. So, yeah, I mean, I went through the formation, and if you even looked overweight, you know, you're in my office getting taped, and. And, yeah, I held everybody the same. And you want to talk about a morale boost? Because, you know, when you're a young soldier and you're doing all the right things and you're, you know, you're out there doing PT and you're out there working and whatnot, but you're seeing, you know, somebody just kind of. Kind of slacking off, you know, then what am I working hard for, you know, when this guy's continuing to move up the line? So I, you know, I learned that, you know, holding everybody to the same standard, regardless of rank, position, anything doesn't matter. I don't care if you're a platoon leader, platoon sergeant, anything, you know, you're not holding the standard, that's it. You're. You're going to be dealt with, right? You know, going back to the 1 60th, I mean, you know, we're never going to sacrifice our standards. And I think. I think that that itself will make sure the culture breeds, you know, excellent stuff. [01:20:13] Speaker A: Gentlemen, last question. So, Sean, you first. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you offer your younger self? [01:20:21] Speaker C: Enjoy the ride. I think when I was younger, and I kind of alluded to that a little bit earlier, right, Charlie, like you can. Sometimes when you're trying to do the right thing and you're extremely competitive and ambitious, you can lose sight of what's really important. Julio and I were talking about this earlier. Like, the number of sergeant majors and senior warrant officers and battalion commanders that were in the company that Julio and I served together with is remarkable. I probably should have enjoyed that 24 months of command a little bit better. Instead of driving the company so hard to be the best in the battalion and training so hard. I. It was coming from a good place. But what I try to impart on the company commanders today in the formation is Guy's command is fleeting. It will be over before you know it. You've got to find some time to find some balance. And again, when you're a leader, there's not a lot of balance. I'm honest with him about that. But you can enjoy the ride while you're on it, because at the end of the day, the journey is far more important than where you get. And I've enjoyed my entire journey. It wasn't like I am not your typical rco. I took a totally different path, just like Julio did. And so enjoying the journey. I know I got better at that in the last five years, and I'm going to try to keep getting better at it in the future. [01:21:42] Speaker A: How about you, Julio? [01:21:44] Speaker B: If I could talk to my younger self, I would say be a good teammate. We grew up in the same company. I was a star for school class, young captain. We were extremely competitive. Always trying to be the best company. Always trying to be the best, best, best at everything, you know, whether it's the mission with the aircraft, whatnot. And it does breed. It breeds a competitive nature. But. But. But I wish that I would have pulled in some folks out there that were not. That were kind of not at that same. That same standard. I guess I would say, you know, they just weren't just torn the line, I guess. I mean, you know, I guess there was just some folks that were struggling, you know, and I wish I would. I wish that I would have pulled them in and said, hey, check this out. This is what we're doing to get after it. Try this out. You know, looking back, not, you know, I don't regret anything. It is what it is. But that. That's kind of. If I was to talk to my younger self. Like, hey, it's not all about you, man. You know, it's about the team. It's about your teammates. Don't worry about just your. Your bubble, your formation. Let's look at the other. The other formations around you, see what they're doing, you know, because ultimately you're trying to help the battalion commander. Right. Take. Take weight off their box. So that's what I would say. [01:22:54] Speaker A: Sean and Julio, thank you for your time today in this great episode. On behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the director of the Modern War Institute, it is my pleasure to present you with these rare and coveted MWI coins. Night stalkers don't quit. [01:23:07] Speaker C: Night stalkers don't quit. Charlie, thank you very much. [01:23:09] Speaker B: Thanks. [01:23:20] 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. 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