Episode Transcript
[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 Spear, the story of the profession of arms. I'm Dr. Charlie Feint, your host, and today's guest is Captain Francis Ambrogio. Francis, welcome to the show.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Hey, Charlie, thanks for. Thanks for having me. And it's still really weird to call you Charlie Sir Cadet.
But, yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really grateful to be part of the show.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Francis, you and I go way back to your time at West Point, and I think that's a great place for us to start this conversation. So can you explain to our audience why you decided to make the military career and why you decided to branch what you did?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: All right, so I grew up in Connecticut, about an hour away from West Point. My dad brought me there when I was a little kid. Thought it was really cool. Also, my, you know, my grand. Me, my dad, my grandfather, all in the same house, three guys with the same name. And my grandfather served in the Pacific in World War II. And I remember him telling me when I was three or four years old, after singing the Army Air Corps song, a pilot. But he said, go to west point, be like MacArthur. He said, I shall return. That kind of got it going early. And I, I didn't understand what a military family was until I actually graduated, because when I, when I grew up, like so many people, there were so many veterans around. And just in my family, everything from career officers and not NCOs, petty officers in the Navy, to every other uncle. My. Both my grandfathers have been drafted at various points. My great grandfather, I never knew, but he also was drafted. So it's something I kind of grew around and hearing stories about. So that really got me interested in it. Went to West Point. I was lucky to get in. I was even luckier to get out. And when it came time to pick a branch for me, the top two are always armor and infantry.
You know, one of my best friends tried to convince me to be an engineer so I could play in the mud. And I told him I was not that good at math. And I really was torn between armor and infantry. And I remember distinctly walking through Central Area one day and looking at one of the buildings and thinking I could put a tank round in that and keep driving or I could go through room by room. And as silly as that sounds, because I, I still have a lot of love for the infantry. I've commanded a Troop in a light infantry brigade. Here at Hornfels. I've worked with loads more infantry units. I have tank units.
But yeah, I love being in, you know, the armor branch especially, especially love the cavalry side of it. But that was kind of how I ended up at West Point. Got my way through there with the help from a lot of buddies instructors and ended up as an armor officer.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: So did you have any experiences at West Point that you thought particularly well prepared you for being a army officer other than the standard Ms. Courses or your summer training?
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Yes. So one thing in particular, right. So majored in history, did a minor program. I think you changed it from minor in social department. I really love that stuff. You know my extracurriculars was political theory, reading group and stuff like that. The Soc journal, the history journal. But the broad education I actually, it didn't click until I was a platoon leader. I actually wrote back to one of my engineering instructors. I really loved my civil engineering classes, they were awesome. First one put me through the rear and the rest of them I loved. But the broad education actually teaches you to think in different ways. They tell you that when you're, when you start it and it's hard to see while you're in it. But whether it's thinking more in terms of qualitative things like you probably would on the art side like history or social philosophy or engineering is I have a formula, I have tool A, tool B and tool C. How do I apply these things and understand how they relate to one another? Which sounds a lot like I've got mortars, squads of riflemen, machine guns and I can call for fire. How do I put these pieces together knowing the technicalities of how they work and how they don't work and do that. So I would say the broad education I came to see afterwards was very, very helpful.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Nice. What was your first job after you got in the operational army?
[00:03:59] Speaker B: So my first job I was a tank platoon leader. So I showed up at Fort Riley, we went to ntc, I was on the staff and as soon as we were done training at ntc I took over the platoon. We went on pre deployment leave and then went to Korea for nine months. So I really, I was in first I.D.
fort Riley, but I really did my lieutenant time in Korea. That was amazing job. Sixteen guys, four tanks. Like you know, doesn't get closer or better than that.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: That's interesting. I did two years in Korea about the same time that that you would have been there career wise obviously a long time before. So my wife and I were in the 2nd Infantry Division and we did two one year tours there and I really enjoyed it. Also very focused on the job. I loved Korea and the Korea people and, and I would have gone back later had circumstances permitted. Were you able to get out much and see anything in Korea or were you just out on the training area all day long?
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I absolutely got to see a lot of the country, so it was kind of funny how it happened. So one of my close friends from my class ahead of me at West Point had done a year of grad school in England. And while he was there, he met a Korean fellow. And the Koreans, they have national service. So even if you live your life in England or Canada or America or wherever, you have to go back and serve.
So he met a dude there who was going to go back to Korea and the three of us became thick as thieves. The Korean guy had, you know, he lived in Seoul at the Rock Air Force Club. So, you know, we always had a place to stay in Seoul and, you know, we would go on trips all over the country. And that was just when I was in the rotational force there the first nine months. I ended up picking up a job to be a general's aide there the year following, which again, extremely busy job. You know, like I like to say, it's 25 hours a day, eight days a week. But when we were able to on weekends or on leave, we would go all over the country, travel Asia a little bit as well. And then also just with the job, especially working for the, for the general, we were in helicopters almost as much as we were in cars, flying all over, visiting, training, visiting, you know, remote outposts, or just going to meetings at one of the three or four bases two ID was spread across at the time. So I absolutely loved Korea. I would happily go back there. It's a really marvelous country and just really some of the best people around. And the food. Can't beat the food.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Well, we're actually going to be there probably about the time that this episode airs. We're going back to visit with U.S. forces Korea. I'm looking forward to that. I don't think I've been back to Korea in about 24 years.
So, Francis, you mentioned that you were a general's aide. That sounds like an amazing job. Can you talk to us a little bit more about who the general was, how you applied for the job, and what you actually did in that role?
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I was just living my life as a platoon leader and 2nd Infantry Division's headquarters put out in one of his weekly orders, hey, we need nominations from units to go and interview to be aide de camp to the new incoming deputy commanding generals. And the incoming commanding general, my company commander, asked if I would be interested. And I said, sure, I'll try it. And the first thing I did was I actually went and emailed General Caslin, who's the superintendent.
So for PL300 I was, you know, you have to have an officer to be your mentor for the course and do a series of interviews and essays with them. And I was originally going to pick my Spanish professor who did my commissioning and cal your Francis Ambrosio decided at the end of a brief the suit gave to our class to just walk up to him and ask him if he would do it.
So I ended up doing PL300 with General Caslin, you know, email him back and forth from time to time after that. And he said, hey, you got the nomination. That's the win. Like after that it's click. Do you click with the boss?
And that's really important because when you're general's aide, I mean you are, you are a jack of all trades to that general. You are his coffee maker, slide preparer, transportation organizer and arranger, bartender, sounding board, shadow. Like you have to, you have to, you have to have that sort of personal click, which we really did. And the general I worked for, absolutely magnificent guy, just a very real person. And one of the eye opening things you get to see, especially when you're that separate in rank as a lieutenant and a brigadier general, is they're humans too, just like anyone else. Now. They have ways, they like to receive communication, they have all their own isms like any other person, but they're real people.
And that's how most of them like to engage is like, as real people.
And then I guess probably the other big thing is you, you see how the machine works. I remember actually in my interview that he said, why do you want this job? I said, I want to see it how the machine works. And as a platoon leader, I see platoon A company, I vaguely understand what the battalion's doing. And I granted, I was new to the battalion, but I wanted to see how things work. And just the way I think understanding the bigger picture helps me contextualize what I myself am doing in my part of that, that puzzle.
So that was cool. And then 2id specifically was very unique because the division, it's, its other name is the Rock US Combined Division. So the commanding general is American and there's his normal two deputies you would have. But then there's a Korean general who's a deputy as well. And every staff section, you know, there's an American G3 Chief of Operations, and then there's a Korean C3 Chief of Operations. The whole staff is integrated, and everything we do with them is, you know, joined at the hip. So it was a very unique thing. And then the time that I was there was when the North Koreans were really accelerating their. Their nuclear weapons program. There were a lot of missiles. And back to the context thing, you know, as a platoon leader, we would do alerts, emergency deployment, readiness exercise, which when it's three or four in the morning, you get the phone call, whole battalion has to be ready in four hours. You're like, you know, geez, like what? Why are we doing this again? This is kind of stupid. And many times it's just a drill, so you're ready to do it. But go to work as an aide and you see, oh, wait, this is a reaction, right? Because, you know, our national command authority has got a big playbook of different things it can choose to do.
And obviously an ery of a come of an armored brigade is, you know, one very small piece of that.
But you see, oh, when we do this alert or when we go exercise our non combatant evacuation operation down to Seoul just to practice it, that makes the North Koreans then look and say, wow, there's something going on here. For every action, there's a reaction. And it's hard to see when you're doing it, but when you're up 30,000ft, you can make much better contextualization of what exactly is going on.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember doing those as well. The early morning rollouts and loading up, getting everything in the motor pool for sure.
How long did you have that job, Francis?
[00:10:32] Speaker B: So I was an aid for just over a year. It was about a year. Yeah. So it was. Yeah, because I. So when I got the job, I flew back to Riley in April 17th. I was back on ground later that month with a 2 ID patch on. My men were still wearing their first ID patches and giving me all kinds of hell. My farewell.
Yeah. So it would have been end of April until I think July or August of 19. So just over a year.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: When I was in 2id, our commander was General Russell Honore. Major General Honore, the Raging Cajun.
And I remember him talking about his aides. I think he only kept him for six months. Whatever the time period was, his thought was, any longer after that, they start to hate you. So I'm Glad that you managed to make it through for a year.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Well, and, but to that point though, and it's actually impressive that he recognized that because burnout is a reality at any job in the army, especially whether it's being a general's aid or you're like a, a key position, like a maybe not company commander, because ultimately, you know, it's a company. But like at any position, you know, battalions, brigades. We had a thing with our commanding general from first ID while I was a platoon leader, and he talked about burnout. But no, the, the General Howerton who I worked for, he. He was the type of guy who recognized that as well. And I remember at least once or twice, maybe three times when I was working for him, he would look at me in the office late in the evening and he'd say, bro, you need a four day.
And there are other times you'll be like, hey, sorry, the North Koreans launched something. He, he, you know, I'd call him, say, sir. Do you see the news? Yep, I got the update. We'd be down in Seoul on the weekend because his family lived in Seoul, so. And I had a second set of quarters in. In Yongsan garrison, which is kind of like a central park. We're a base. And we'd spin up the car and I'd be sitting in the front seat, he'd be in the back. He'd slap my shoulder and say, sorry I ruined your working plans, bro.
Even general officers are human beings. They're real people. And when you're 10 miles away at the back of formation for the division or division run or whatever, and it's that guy with stars on his uniform and you know, he seems like this like marble cut person far away. And that's important. That's an important part of the job of leadership at any level, is to have that sort of Persona and bit of distance. But they're also human beings.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great point. We often don't think about that when we see the generals up there. We think that they're superheroes, the sergeant major or whomever. And we also have to recognize that these are people with human needs and human failings as well. Very good. That must have taken most of your time up to captain. Between Olig being a platoon leader and being general's aide. Did you have any other jobs between them before you went off to the captain career course?
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Yes. So when I was done being an aide, the branch said, hey, you can go to captain's career course right away or you can pre position there and be an XO in a basic training unit. And I said, all right, I'll do that after, you know, again, working 25 hours a day, eight days a week for a year. I was like, that sounds kind of nice. I wasn't super excited about the job, to be entirely honest. You know, it's not as dramatic as being Korea when there's a major geopolitical crisis going on, but it ended up being really good. My company commander was a friend from West Point who was a year ahead of me. Our squadron leadership was really outstanding. And again, I got to see a part of the army that you seldom see as an officer, certainly very rarely as a lieutenant, kind of the. The factory where we're producing new soldiers. And it's interesting to see how they're formed to work with drill sergeants who, you want to talk. Some of the unsung heroes of the Army, Drill sergeants, really, they put in all the work and then some. And it was actually a great, great experience working there for a year. And also just to prepare myself, kind of reground myself away from thinking about division stuff as I got ready for the career course, you know, Ph.D. to trying to go for Ranger School round three, because I failed twice after BUL and third time was the charm. Yeah, no, that was a really great job. It was eye opening. And also, you know, different jobs have different pacing demands. You know, unfortunately, my. My father had a stroke and ended up passing while I was in that job. And because, you know, basic training, you know, you are Producing x many 19 Delta cavalry scouts for the Army a year, everything is planned and laid on six months out, 12 months out. Unlike a normal unit where there is a lot of churn, a lot of curveballs, and a lot of, you know, things that come up that you aren't ready for or not that you weren't planning on. So fortunately, because of. Because I had a very, really great chain of command there, I was able to go home, be home, support my dad, be with my family for really as much time as I needed during that time.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Oh, nice. It's great to be in a unit like that and have a chain of command that's willing to support when you have tragedies like that. For sure. Okay, we're going to talk at length about your experiences as an oct, and I'll ask you to explain that acronym here in a minute. But between that time and the Captain career course, were there any other experiences that you had in the military that you would like to bring up to. To Talk about.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So immediately before the captain's career course, I usually you do it afterwards, but I wanted to go to Ranger school right afterwards. I went to the Cavalry Leaders course, which those three weeks, some of the hardest instruction I've ever gotten and some of the most learning I've ever done. And Cavalry Leaders course is awesome.
They told us this is Ranger School for staff officers, which sounds incredibly thrilling, right? But no, it was just, it was a great planning course, learning how to really do the staff work. Because your regular courses in the army, you know, you, you often. Especially for maneuver officers. Focus tactics, tactics, tactics. CLC obviously doesn't, not just doesn't ignore tactics. It's an important part of it. But they want you to think about the doctrine and understand it to the point of why, you know, the instructor will ask you what you ask him a question. He says, all right, what's doctrine? Say you did your reading last night, right? Much like the Thayer method, this is literally what it is. And they really teach you to think in sort of a open ended, unbounded problem set. Because it's a reconnaissance course. I absolutely loved clc. Then it was Ranger School. We were the first Covid class, which was an interesting experience. And normally you get a couple weeks afterwards to rest before going to Airborne. We did not. We had to go straight there. I actually, I made one of my old social professors very happy when I told him. I remembered I was thinking about Alexander the Great asking these guys to go for one more, one more journey when they were in India. I was like, don't let him down. Don't let Alexander down. I gotta do one more. Because the end of Ranger school, all your things about, I want my bed, I want McDonald's, like, that was that. And then I went to Fort Drum, which. And coming from the armor branch, which is very tank focused, but back then we still had light cavalry. And 10th Mountain Division is a really cool unit. It's a really cool place to be with an amazing legacy. Actually found out when I was on my way there. Apparently the civilian ski patrol founder, who also told the army we need a mountain division, was my great grandfather's skiing buddy.
Yeah. Small world. Yeah. So went up there. Fort Drum is not anything like people tell you it is other than the fact it's extremely cold. I've lived right on Lake Ontario. Really beautiful place and wonderful people right near Canada. If we want to go travel and hear some very interesting French up in Quebec. Yeah. And I took command of the cavalry troop there. And I'd have to say, you know, every armored officer has to watch Fury and it's about tanks. But commanding that light cavalry troop was the best job I ever had. I mean we were just an absolute tribe of guys. You know, it was, there's nothing like being a company commander. It was really special experience.
We had got some great training in, has built a great culture on the team. I absolutely loved being, being a troop commander. I could go on at length about my troop command, but I absolutely loved it. It was a great time and I was fortunate to have a really amazing group of guys under my command and as my fellow commanders.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: When you moved on to become an oct, was that something you asked for? No.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: So there was something I asked for. You know, with the marketplace system now, you know, there was however many options, 50, 75, 100 different options in the marketplace and some of them look kind of cool, some look pretty interesting. The two I narrowed it down to and has my number one, number two were either coming here to be an OCT in Germany or going to Quebec on an exchange. So if you, you know, the army has these tests called the DLPT Defense Language Proficiency Test.
So if you take those, it goes onto your record. And there's lots of jobs that people don't even know are there where you know, if you're, if you're a Ranger instructor and you speak Spanish, you can go to Columbia and work in their school or if you're an officer who knows some Italian, you can go serve as in an Italian armored brigade and, and so on. And this was a job in Quebec in a French speaking mechanized brigade for an exchange armor officer from the U.S. army, which sounded really cool. And I'd been up to Quebec before and I loved it. I actually had a great friend from, from SCUSA who's a fighter pilot and was stationed up there and the Royal Canadian Air Force obviously. But I had been for three years at Fort Drum where there's three feet of snow every year and Quebec gets more than that and is even colder.
So I said I can be there in the corner of Canada with six feet of snow or I can be in central Europe with four seasons and easy travel. And you know, the city I live in here, Regensburg, is absolutely beautiful. So I picked Germany.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: It's interesting that that's something that was interesting to you to go be an oct.
I think a lot of people don't understand how important and interesting those types of jobs are.
Hoennfels like ntc, like jrtc. I also understand that the acronym itself has Changed over time. Back in my day it was oc, Observer, Controller, now it's oct. Can you explain what the acronym means now and the significance of the change?
[00:20:00] Speaker B: So it means observer, coach, Trainer. And the name kind of encapsulates what we do.
When units come here, they're either going to make themselves better or they aren't.
And that's not just in the immediate sense, but when they take their lessons learned, hopefully if they learn them and go back to their home station, we tell everyone that comes through here, hey, we're here to facilitate. Our job is, you know, we're going to observe, we're going to give you feedback, we're going to coach you where, where we think we can have some positive influence.
And you know, hopefully you get some training out of it, which I would say they all do. But our job really is to be there as a presence to give them the feedback right there on the ground and to advise them as well, but help them see themselves so they can get better and make their organizations better when they go back to home station, get ready for whatever they have next.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Let's talk a little bit more about Hohenfels, about the center there. Why, what is it? What does it exist for and what kind of units come there?
[00:20:54] Speaker B: All right, so it's, it's a really cool and actually quite unique place. It was originally a German army installation, at least in the Second World War and possibly in the First World War.
And so after, after the Second World War, we came here, established a garrison and it became the joint, or, excuse me, the Combined Multinational Training Center, I think back in the late 80s, early 90s. So that was on the heels of us creating National Training center at Fort Irwin and the Joint Readiness Training center at Fort Polk. And those things, they really came off the wake of the Vietnam years and then the retooling of the army, the refocusing of the army in the 70s and in the 80s, you know, with the big five platforms.
The idea was to create these laboratories of, of combat. You know, there's a OP4 units at all of them that are trained, designed and trained. And they have even had their vehicles mocked up to look like a rival, I don't know the proper Army. Rival powers, Opposing powers, competitors. But the idea is they come here and they train live as, live as we can make it. And that's, you know, the, the, the scenarios. We just like any other training scenario, we say, hey, keep it real, right? Treat this like it's real.
So there are civilians on the battlefield, there Are town sets, there are enemy soft running around in plain clothes. There are media injects, obviously responsive artillery fires. And we throw artisans which is one of the fun parts of the job.
If they get, if a soldier becomes a casualty, they have to treat him correctly, the right medical care and then speed him to the rear to the right levels of medical care to ensure that that soldier survives. One of the things that makes us really unique here though is you know, JRTC at Fort Polk is it's in the bayous and swamps of Louisiana, beautiful place and it is tooled for light units.
So I not IBCs anymore. NBCTS go there and they train trudging through the swamps of Louisiana NTC out in the deserts in California. It is designed for mechanized warfare. Large formations, tanks, Bradleys and all your supporting equipment and platforms, you know, sweeping across the desert. Really cool. Both those plays are awesome. They do great training. Yeah. JRTC is a little different because we take all different kinds of units. Our terrain is a little bit more varied than the other two places. There's hills, there's woods, there's open fields. I'm sure there's some swamps out there that our dismounts have had to walk through.
But because of that, and granted we are smaller geographically than those two, but because of that we have armored units come through, striker units and and motorized units come through. We have light infantry come through. So it's all different types. And then the other huge difference is that we're overseas, we're in Europe, it's in the name, it's the Joint Multinational Readiness center jmrc.
So it's not just the United States training here, it's also all of our allies from NATO as well as a couple of other countries that are part of different compacts and agreements we have with them.
And also our, you know, our partners over in Ukraine, they come here as well.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. That's a wide range of training and opportunities. So there's cross leveling of best practices between all those different nations.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. So they come here. And again within NATO in particular, there's a standard that we do things mostly the same way, but there are different variations. And what's great about that is, I mean we often learn more from them than they do from us just from watching because we, we as the OC cadre here, we're also, we're learning from what we see. So I mean just to run off a couple, I mean the lithw Lithuanians, like if I were to pull platonic abstract ideal of an infantry Company out of, out of the ether, it would be these Lithuanians. I mean, they've taken the best practices that we can offer and they do it really, really well.
You know, the French, I've never seen anyone do mission command like the French. They call it subsidiary subsidiarity. They give a simple order, they give clear parameters, timeline, and then say, go, execute. And they do it really aggressively. You know, the Germans invented staff work back in Neil Clausewitz's time. Important. It's important. How do you beat. How do you beat a genius like Napoleon? Build a staff.
And when the Bundeswehr were here, their staff, their staff work, their planning was, I mean, it was precise, it was clear. It was really good. You know, the Ukrainians, you know, we could go on for a while at the Ukrainians. They are cutting edge. They are far ahead of us in a lot of things. We also see things that we maybe wouldn't want to adopt from them, that just wouldn't work for the way we do business. And that's okay. You see the, you know, different strokes for different folks, right? Each of these countries, armies is different and does things its own way for particular reasons. But yeah, no, we, we get a lot from them, from being around these guys and learning from them.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Are you seeing any regular shortcomings across the force? You don't have to name names, but things that people could generally be doing better. And when it comes to war fighting
[00:25:38] Speaker B: 100% and to, to the point on working with our allies, it helps us take a step back and look at ourselves sometimes a bit more critically. One major problem I've seen with every US unit is we've got lots of great toys, lots of cool technology. Many individuals in units from top to bottom don't know how to use it. And it's great if you've got four radios on you and one that is, you know, satcom and one that is, you works on a cell network or whatever, but unless you're training how to use them and you're comfortable and you understand the pace plan of switching from one to the other and with whom to use that pace plan, you've just got a bunch of extra little bricks on your, on your chest rig other things, our staffs and command posts, you know, we, the way we do menning in the army, oftentimes obviously you have your key leaders on the staff, but everyone else there is kind of either waiting to go to their quote unquote real job, or they're there because they've left that quote unquote real job, for better or for worse. And the effect is that you often have like a couple people rowing really hard on the staff. And most of the staff doesn't really know how a staff's supposed to function, which is critical. You could have the best squads of riflemen and tank crews or artillery crews out there in the army, but unless you've got the right framing and the right bigger enterprise stringing it all together, it's, it's, you know, marginally effective. Yeah, I would say that that's kind of one of two of the things I've seen that are pretty, pretty common across especially American units.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Do you know if that's common across all the different training centers, or is that something that's unique to where you are?
[00:27:01] Speaker B: I don't know if it's common across jrtc, JRTC and ntc, but given that I've seen that with most American units here, and they've also gone through the other two training centers before they come to Europe, that I would presume it's probably a similar case.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: Do the countries that come to your training center also have their own organic ones in their home countries?
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Yes and no. And that is a thing. You know, the European countries right now are trying to build more of their own capacity in this regard.
Off the top of my head, I know Poland has one or two big training centers, and I know the French. The French. Do the French have Sontac, which is tactical center, and then Sanzu, which is urban center. And I, I gotta say, I, I visited Saint Zube one time when I was an aide. We were in France for the World War I centennial and we stayed near there. So we got a tour of it.
Really impressive urban site. I mean, outdoes anything I've seen. You know, I've been to all three of our big training centers. It's really impressive. So hopefully they keep building more things like that because, you know, the more we can share best practices and training sites and sensors you get, the better.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: The Modern War Institute took a trip to Europe and indeed including Ukraine last summer thanks to SAG U. And one of the things that we saw was how much impact drones and AI are having on the modern battlefield, especially in Ukraine, but places all over the world, including Israel. Is that something that you're incorporating in the training at your center as well?
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. And every rotation we do, there's more added in and it's difficult. It's difficult because we're, we're not used to it. We are learning it and drinking from the fire hose and Obviously, we have, you know, some partners, like the Ukrainians, who are miles ahead of us with it. So each different rotation has been. All right, now we're going to add in more drones in the OP4. Now we're going to add in drones that can do dropping, right? Drop. Drop a ordinance, which is like a Nerf football, and you don't want to hurt anybody.
But each iteration adds more of that. And it's been a transformation, really, since I first got here, when there was still virtual UAS in the system, where a unit would be doing its best to camouflage itself in the wood line to not provide a large signature. But because the system, there's a big computer program.
Okay, time to put virtual UAS here.
And then I'd get a call, throw some RD sims.
We throw them big booms, all right, Identify the casualties. And this poor unit is sitting there like, yeah, we're as camouflaged as we can possibly be. And you're blowing us up because the invisible drone can see us. Well, now we've got so many in the sky that they actually can see them.
Maybe your camouflage wasn't that good, right?
And many such cases of that. Every training iteration has had further and further inclusion of drones of AI and sometimes they bring out tools that. But we say, maybe this one's not that good.
Maybe this one is really awesome. We need more of it. And I think one of the big cultural things that we as an army are still getting our heads around is you got to fly them and you got to break them. Like, if. If. And if they're too expensive to break, then maybe we should be looking at cheaper options. Because the whole. The whole point of these things, you can fly tons of them, they can do lots of stuff, and you can just keep flying them, breaking them, flying them, breaking them. And we're usually. Traditionally, we've been very hesitant to do that. We. With not just our drones, but any of our equipment.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: I know that environmental concerns are a big deal in Europe like they are in America, but I know sometimes it gets in the way. Are you experiencing that as well? Any environmental issues with your host nation that impact training here?
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Not so much. I know when we were out in Poland working with the US and the British on drone exercise, and there was a little bit more concern there, and it came really to when and which ranges units could use. But here, the biggest thing is that we'll often expand the boundaries of JMRC and use what's called an mra, a Maneuver Rights Area. What that means in plain English is we pay local farmers to use their land and they let us use it, whether it's setting up, you know, howitzers out there or flying drones from out there or helicopters. And just when you go out there, there's extra considerations. And there are German, you know, forest meisters who come out and check and make sure, you know, we're following the rules, but it's really never a huge issue, you know, if you just report it up. As long as. As long as you're an honest broker, they're pretty easy to work with, you know, oh, we had a Bradley start leaking fuel. Okay, cool. Get out there market, dig the dirt up, you know, whatever you have to do. It's. There are extra considerations, especially because it's not our country, and not just that we're guests here, but we're ambassadors in a sense as well. You know, if we make a mess, that tells people something about Americans if we don't act on it correctly. So. But it's not really a huge. A huge problem in any sense.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: Speaking of being an ambassador for your country, I know that you're deeply involved in your local community, including local sports league. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that helps spread, I mean, America's message overseas?
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I lived in the city of Regensburg's beautiful old city. It was preserved from a lot of the destruction in the Second World War. Very. You know, fortunately, my. My house is 300 years old. Right. Napoleon got operated on in there by my landlord's, like, great, great grandfather. It was really special to live there. But you live on the economy and you get to know your neighbors, whether they're German, locals or people who move to the city, other countries.
I play in the city's rugby club. Again, you're not going to not get to know them really well. It's a rugby team, you know, with all the fun sports, you know, shenanigans that involves. But again, you keep in mind, you know, whatever you do, you want to leave that good impression of, hey, Americans are great people to have around. We like these people. They're fun, they're intelligent. Most of the time.
We like having this. Anytime you can put that best foot forward as an American, I mean, whatever country you're from visiting for however long, you know, that pays dividends down the road in shaping how people perceive you and perceive your country.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: Country also, now that I understand what observer, controller, correction, observer coach, trainer does,
[00:32:52] Speaker B: we mix it up all the time, too.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Old habits are hard to break. Well, that seems to Be a continuation from some of the things that you were into in your cadet. If I remember correctly, you did some tutoring and some coaching and some training when you're here as well. Could you talk a little bit about that?
[00:33:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. So I played rugby my first year for West Point, and then math and chemistry and being a plebe got. Got the better of me. But that first year, you know, it was. It was a lot of those older guys, actually, the. The yucks, the yearlings on the. On the rugby team who, you know, kind of kept my head screwed on straight, kept me moving forward. So I figured, hey, you know, I can go back and, you know, they help me, I'll help them. It's just. It's just what you do, pay it forward and, you know, the things I was good at, like history and soc and philosophy and foreign language. So I work with them on that. When I was a cow, because I was a history major, I took mill art and I would, you know, basically get all the guys from the team together in one of the day rooms and we would prep for a wpr, we would prep for a tee. Well, when I was a firsty, I was like, you know what? I'll do it again. I enjoy doing it. So I got my classmates who were on the team and we start in a day room. Well, by the second or third time we were doing this, we had a ton more people asking if they could come to the review sessions.
And it got to the point where we'd get 100, 120 people and take over the auditorium in the basement if they are all. And we go through everything. But it got to the point where I know some things. I don't know everything. I'd have to bring in some of my buddies who from, like, history departments. All right, now we're going to have Stu Vanderkoy talk to us about, you know, the western front of the second World War. But it was a team effort and we made it work. And again, I would not have gotten through other classes if I hadn't had my, you know, engineering buddies or math whiz buddies help me with that.
And similarly, yucks of the rugby team like Savusa, who made sure I made it through my first year.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Well, I'm glad to see you're paying it forward. Now out at the training center, what are some of your biggest lessons learned? Learned either for you personally or things that you've seen other units do or fail to do in terms of preparing for future wars?
[00:34:55] Speaker B: So I think we'll start organizationally with one of the organizational things is. And again, this is also individually, but you have to treat it like it's real. When you're in a training center, there's a reconstitution cycle, right? Yes, on day three, you could suffer 43 casualties. But you know that as long as the S1 and G1 channels do their part right, and the medical channels do their part right, fight, those soldiers will get, quote, unquote, reconstituted and put back into the fight. So you just sometimes kind of cheat a little bit and plan, oh, well, we know we'll be reconstituted in, you know, 24 hours or 48 hours or whatever. That's not real. The reality is, like, you, you don't know that's going to happen. You can't make super daring or sometimes super reckless moves or plan based on assets you don't have, you don't know you're going to have. So again, treating it like it's real and understanding like, this is. This is not just a unit thing, this is an army thing, frankly. You know, I remember when I was in Korea, I think it was General Camera, during one of the big, big meetings, said, one of the generals said the country needs to kind of get its head around this. You know, the things that we are training for, preparing for, and God willing, deterring from ever happening on a scale that we as a country have not thought about, we as an army have not thought about in 50 years, at least, you know, give or take. Right. You know, there probably isn't a single officer in the army today who's had to deal with, sir, half of our vehicles just got destroyed or something like that. And that, that's sort of a harrowing reminder that we think about a lot here, especially at jmrc, especially when we deal with some of our allies, work with the Ukrainians. This is real and it's big. Back to the sort of more individual small unit side. The little stuff really matters. I mean, even just for us as coaches, right. You know, we're trying to look at how is the company being run, how is the battalion functioning, you know, are the systems and processes in place? Well, it's hard to coach a unit on that when they're not doing even little basic things right, which we've seen happen. You know, whether it's security, whether it's movement techniques, whether it's keeping the vehicles working right. Maintenance doesn't stop just because you're out in the field, all those little things. And this is why I Love going back to my grand strategy strategy courses at West Point is that those actions from individual soldiers and tie into the platoon, which ties into the company, which ties into all the way up the chain, all these different levels are related. And it's again, when I was talking about being a. It's a big machine.
Each piece has to do its piece and work right. When you see critical failures are when the pieces aren't doing their parts and then you can't make the machine work. I think probably the lesson of that is like, whatever role you're in, own that role and do it really right. Do it as well as you can and then start helping other people do it as well as they can. Because guess what, you probably have some, you know, gaps in what you're doing as well. It's also a question of like, looking out for one another, making because, like, if my company is great, but the other company is bad or my company's horrible and the other company's better, guess what? The whole battalion or the whole squadron starts to have a hard time if we're not making each other better as well.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: That reminds me of something that General retired Jeb, who is the head of this social department would say bloom, where you planted. So, yeah, very, very similar. Do the job you're in, the best you can do. Very good.
Francis, you spent a considerable amount of time in the army at this point. What advice do you have personally for young leaders? Doesn't necessarily have to tie into what you've learned from the training center. What would you offer, especially for young leaders who consider their future the future of warfare?
[00:38:12] Speaker B: First thing I would say is listen, right? Two ears to listen, one mouth to speak.
I'm sure any, any cadet is still told, you know, listen to nco.
Yes, you should. That doesn't mean you listen to everyone and everything, not just NCOs, right? Like, not everything you hear is going to be right. But listen and soak stuff up and then evaluate it. Like critically evaluate what you hear and think about, you know, what you're learning versus your gut instinct, your common sense. But listen and absorb everything. Keep in mind, like when, when you get to a unit, you're going to be doing a lot of ojt, a lot of on the job training. It's just, you know, for, for better or for worse is how we structure our professional military education courses like Bolic, like the Captain's career course. You know, you lear certain things there, but then you're going to get to your unit and there's all Kinds of stuff that they don't teach you in Bolic or in triple C. And then there's all kinds of isms and whatnot of how your unit does it. So again, back to the first point. Listen, soak it up, and then once you understand how things work, identify where you can make them better. Right. Like we always say, like, you know, leave an organization better than you found it, leave a team better than you found it. Okay, cool. Like, that's absolutely what you do. But you have to understand it first. I think another huge thing is it, you know, the army is a people profession. And sometimes I think that can be overstead, but it is. It is true. Like, there's all kinds of systems and policies and rules, but at the end of the day, like, you know, that honor code thing, don't lie, cheat, steal, tolerate those who do. That's a. That could be summed up in one word, is trust. We have all these other rules, systems, but again, it's trust. And it's putting your own skin in the game for your people. Even if that means like, you know, know calling a soldier every night at 8pm because he needs help with something, whether it's studies or just life. It's doing house visits. It's speaking honestly and just being yourself with people. Right. Again, back to what we were talking about with generals. How there is this, you know, aura, this Persona of command that is important.
But one of the best pieces of advice that the general I was Nate to gave me is be yourself. Like, you have to be real to people. Because guess what? I think it was Rudyard Kipling in one of his followings said, you bet that Tommy sees. Which Tommy, for us would be Joe. Joe can see. He can see when you're, you know, putting on a front or like you're doing something fake, like, be real with soldiers, be real with your peers, and be real with your superiors. You know, like, they want that. They're humans. But again, it's a people business. It's about relationships, is about honest relationships.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: Well, Francis, I know we got to get you off to your rugby game here shortly, but I wanted to turn the mic over to you to see if there's anything else you wanted to add that you thought was important that we haven't talked about or already beat.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Maybe.
Yeah, no, it's. It's. It is. This has been, you know, a real whirlwind of what, 11 years in the army and three years at JMRC has been a really special assignment because, again, it takes you away from the day to day of army life where then you get to look from that, you know, removed position at lots of different organizations, lots of different people.
And as you do it, you think back because, right, I'm. I'm a captain and I oc. I coach company commanders. Generally makes you think back and reflect, oh, maybe I could have done this better. I wish I'd been as good at this as this guy or thank God I didn't do it like that guy. But it gives you a little, you know, reflection in retrospect. But the whole point of reflection and, you know, looking back on things before is. Can look forward. What. What can I do better in the next thing I'm doing? And that's, I think, a sort of a constant, constant challenge. Not just for like a leader leader in the army, but a human right is like you look back, look at other people's examples, and then say, all right, how can I integrate that to make myself better? So as octs, we also were responsible for providing feedback to the army as an enterprise. So whether it's for center for army lessons learned, for call for the professional journals like, you know, infantry magazine, Armor magazine. Armor journal. We produce papers, we produce writing whether it's analysis of what we've seen, whether it's recommendations for the army. I have a piece coming in infantry magazine saying, hey, infantry is doing reconnaissance now with light cavalry gone, we'll get them in the cavalry reconnaissance courses. Yeah, we provide that feedback back to the army enterprise because it's not just the units here. It's taking what we see and making that lessons the whole army can use.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: So speaking of looking forward into the future, what's going to be next for you? I understand you're already on the list for major. Congratulations. And can you talk a little bit about your next duty station and what you'll be doing there?
[00:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So my next job will be down at 3rd Infantry Division in Fort Stewart, Georgia. I will be background division staff for the first time since I was a lieutenant. And this time I'll be be one of those staff officers. I remember thinking, lieutenant, thank God I'm not doing his job, even though I'm working for the general 25 hours a day.
Yeah. So I'll be doing that. Army's a small place. One of my best friends from triple C is going to be in the same stack, same staff section as I will be.
My first sergeant's taking a brigade op sergeant major job there.
One of my gunners, my platoon is a first sergeant now, which is, you know, you think back, damn, he was a corporal when I was his platoon leader, and now he's a first sergeant, like, and one of my platooners. He'll be taking company command down there while I'm there. I mean, I could even end up as his, his S3 or his XO. The Army's a small place, so that's. I think one of the best things about it is, you know, you keep running into people, you know, and you know that it's a, it's a community and it's. Yeah, it's relationships.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: I understand how you feel. I remember you as a West Point cadet and now you're a big bad feel great to be. So congratulations on that, Francis.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: God help me and God help the Army.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Well, Francis, thank you for your time in this fascinating discussion. I learned a lot about OCT and Hohenfels and look forward to talking to you again down the road for your 10 more years in the Army.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: Thanks, Charlie. I appreciate it. Have a good one.
Beat Navy.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Beat Navy.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Spear. The Spear is produced by the Modern War Institute at West Point. What you hear in each episode are the views of the participants and don't represent the position of West Point, the Army, or the US Government.
Be sure you're subscribed to the Spear on Apple Podcasts Stitcher or your favorite podcast app, where you can also give the podcast a rating or leave a review which helps us reach new listeners. And if you aren't yet following MWI on social media, please find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening.
