The Strategic Lieutenant

Many episodes of The Spear have featured stories of action at the tactical level. This episode departs from that pattern, as Capt. Pete Mitchell joins host Tim Heck for a converation that reframes the role of the lieutenant. An air defense artillery officer, Mitchell was deployed to Guam in 2013 with the first operational Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) unit in the Army. The deployment came against the backdrop of an increasingly bellicose North Korea, but was also part of a broader US military shift toward the Indo-Pacific region. The scope of a lieutenant's focus is often limited—geographically and otherwise. But the decisions a junior officer makes can, in circumstances like those surrounding Mitchell's deployment, have implications that reverberate much more widely, even to the strategic level. Listen as he shares the story of that deployment.