466: Some Lessons Are Learned By Getting Smacked In The Face. With Lt. James Lechner
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This is joko podcast number four, sixty six, with the roles and me joo will, and also joining us once again is retired army, who turned a kernel. Jim lectur, who was a ranger in the battle detailed in the book and movie black OK down, who wrote about his own experiences in a book called with my shield, an army ranger, somalia, which we covered on our last podcast, number four, sixty five.

If you haven't listen that podcast, go back and check that one out. Jim lector fought in that battle. LED in that battle, called in fire support during that battle, was eventually wounded pretty severely in that battle.

But that was not the end of career. Through the incredible work of our military medical system, his leg was saved and he Carried on with his career. And I eventually served alongside him in the battle over money in two thousand six, where he was the deputy brigade commander of the ready first bade, the first army division. And he's join in us once again. So jim, thanks for coming back.

and thank you. Great to bear.

So last time a we covered your career up to small, you one of the things that we didn't talk about that in your book was and we start we brushed up up against a couple times, but you should start talking about some of the lessons learned that you got. And you know one of the primary goals of talking about military things on this podcast is so that people later in the military can hear them and learn the lessons that you and I had to learn.

Know the hard way, in many cases, are trying to prevent that. I don't know if it's always preventable cause some of these lessons you don't burn until they sack you in the face, but I want to hit some of these that you talk about um in the book. So you say in the book, even before the Operations of task force ranger had ended in mog issue, jay soc had begun to carefully study the battle, the stealing lessons learned both good and bad, in typically pragmatic fashion.

J soak, ward, absorb these lessons, restructure its forces and refind its methods. IT would continue to build even Better trained and coordinated teams out of the various special Operations forces that must fight together. Jac will also begin to comprehended that the fact that effective special Operations take more than just skilled warriors or shooters, they also require intelligence systems across multiple disciplines capable of tracking any enemy anywhere.

This realization drove the development of a system of holistic planning analysis, which is critical to guiding strike forces with precision while limiting the impact of military Operations on the civilian. Populists must be considered as part of the strategy. IT was also determined that once battle was joined, every conventional weapon available must be ruthlessly used to save the lives of american soldiers.

The new systems and refocused units allowed j soc to emerge eminently ready to begin devastating alkahest a immediately after the terrorist attacks on the united states in two thousand one. So they got right into A J sac. And and j soc, obviously desert one had a huge impact on the on .

the growth right of .

of j soc and of our capabilities as special Operations. So you are saw the same thing coming after mog issue.

Oh yeah, hundred percent. I'm glad you reference desert one because I think I think J A, like any good organization, learns as much or more from failure as they do from success. And because it's about developing capability and you ve got to be pragmatic and you can't fool yourself.

And so that's one hundred percent what they did. And that's again, why don't mind bring these things out? And some kind of critical about things is they did that. They change things. They built a capability after somalia that that we saw almost unparalleled for the warrant terrorism.

Yeah, that's our responsibility. We came back um from when I came back from remote, you know we had a blue on blue we first got there and one of my guys killed in uh iraqi soldier um he was terrible. And I debrief that and explain what happened to every seal team for the next three years, like every time a seal team formed up and got ready to start their work up for deployment, I would give him that brief.

Here's what happened, had all the pictures up there, had the maps up there, explain the mistakes I made, explain what we could have done Better, explain what we change. Because, well, you you know like blue on blue was a thing in romantic IT was happening, right? And we were able to avoid that.

We got close in other situations. At the very fact, when late and I wrote extreme otherness, you know, he was right in his chapters. I was right, my chapters, and there's three chapters in there that are that the the, the first chapter, which is about the blue on blue, that happened.

But then there's two other chapters, blue on blue, that didn't happen. And one, the reasons that the blue on blue didn't happen was because we were freak paranoid about having blue on blue because we saw how is easily could happen. So I think this idea, you know, of being critical of ourselves is actually why we're good in the first place in special Operations said and in the U. S. military.

And hundred percent .

um you go on to say fans of that there were many aspects of the employment of task force ranger that were ill conceived in ad hawk. We had A U. S. Navy anti submarine plan as our primary airborne intelligence platform while their crues were killed professionals they were unused to working for a ground combat force, and there was little to no common understanding. Or unicode sion between the two elements seems real clear, looking back. And yet, you gotta work with people and they are got to be doing a job that they're familiar with, or you've got to give him the time to get familiar with that.

Yeah, I think one of the main points there is you can't just jump, write in and they were skilled and they were professional. They head more time. We probably developed. You can just show up on game day or or when you're going across the land of departure and think people will do that. So that's that's one of the problems.

Yeah, I think another solution to that, again, this is for the Young leaders out there. If you're working with the unit that you've never work with before, give them a liaison, put one of your junior officers up in that aircraft, put one of your junior officers ers in their taxi Operation center. Like getting someone embedded with a group that you haven't worked with before that can then build a relationship and answer questions and respond to things that is so important that when I was a one, was a Young CEO and lisa guys, a radio men.

And I would go, I was already, even when which, when I did call for fire before j tag was a thing, or was I call IT was called something else uh that's what I was can't believe I can think that right now I must begin old um but I was you know I went to the marine core schools. Um I did the puff board card so I went in A A C one thirty here so I could see what people I went in F A teen and did bombing runs in the F A teen back. C because you start to understand the capabilities so much Better.

But that idea of putting people into the job, and it's the same thing the marine court does a great job with this because they take their angle o guys, they take their fighter pilots and put them on the ground with the ground use. They ve been doing that. It's world war two freking outstanding.

So just another solution, if if you're working with the unit you haven't worked with before, go ahead and in bed. You know, we did that a lot remote when we go out on snipper over watches. A lot of times we'd have army guys with us, uh, army scales with us or they have been an nogent overwatch.

We all almost always had iraqis with us so that we could like understand what was happening and they could understand what we are doing. So those are some of the things. I'm just when you start working with unit, you have worked before. If you don't have time to get them trained up, at least in bed.

someone with them yeah one hundred percent. I agree with that. And then rehearsals, you can't just take a unit face value and say because it's supposed to be to do this. And this kind of sounds like what I need that they are going to be a show up on game day and do IT so the rehearsals in the ebel ding is like you said, I just to reemphasize them given time to train up the.

uh, go back to the book. Similarly, CoOperation with other assets and overall U. S. Intelligence network was not formalizing, often inefficient.

This was compounded by the fact that we had been inserted into the relatively fragile structure of a united nations coalition that had not signed on, nor was a designed for urban combat amid growing insurgency. And you talked about some of the people, some of the different elements, indian, pakistan, turkey. Like not, no, not always.

There are not alone. And there you are trying to sort all those things out. Uh, the situation fast for look at the situation.

Mog issue also called for more combat power. IT was naive of the senior leadership in washington to think that the S. N.

A did not have to be confronted on a larger scale and that the situation could be resolved by clean and surgical rate on their higher leaders. Task force ranger had begun the inevitable process of taking down the network of S. A readership, but what was also required were regular combat units with armored vehicles and artillery deal with the S.

N. A. Throughout the city and allow Better freedom of manuvers. No doubt about that.

Yeah, what i've always thought about that and and we thought of the time too, is I would like to have had a new jersey pulled up off off the coast. And the the thing about that, you don't have to use IT, but if IT, if it's not there, then you can use. And we needed at that day, we needed something like that. So I think this, no, that you can do things on the cheap, that you can do things surgically on the cheap with a really light footprint. The ground that's that's that's not a feasible way to do business.

I ve always said, is not like soccer yeah where you're only allowed that again. Not right. No, if I can bring fifty to go against your eleven, I do along if I can. And the weird thing is people, civilians, won't know this. There will be like in afghanistan and iraq, there was limitations on how many people you could actually put on the ground.

And while congress approved, you know, eighty two thousand people, well, they d max that out and now you're in a seal troop and you're like, well, we why can we bring for more guys? I got for more guys that. Can they just graduated from seal qualification training? We can get them over here like, no, why not?

That's where to reach our limit. So again, the same soccer, let us stack the battlefield in our favor. At the time, few of these issues resonated at the tactical level in the ranger company, in the delt assault teams or in the helicopter.

S this is the idea of haven't like armor run stuff. We assume that those above us, notably at the most senior levels, were taking a thoro and holistic look at the problem and doing their professional and almost to support our mission. Yeah the idea what's good about this is I definitely thought through some of these things as I grew up in the sale teams like directly from what you guys had to go through, no doubt.

Um what absolutely did resonate with us on the ground and in the air with the seeming half measures and the violations of time honored Mandates that all soldiers are taught among these are train as you fight, unity of effort and having a clear and distinct chain of command, the ad hawk nature of the U. N. Command and even aspects of task force ranger were troubling even then and seemed and support seemed incomplete but denying the most lethal capable arial platforms such as the A C one thirty and subduing eager but unfamiliar assets, the senior leadership violated common sense on multiple levels.

Yeah and it's hard to say no. You know when you get told well, you can have the asset, well then I don't think we should do this mission. It's very difficult in the in the U.

S. Military, not just says a human being. You know, when your when your football coach says, right, do this, you go, i'm going to try, right? So it's it's that idea that, hey, we can't give you what you need, but go do IT anyways. So like, how bad do you actually need IT.

right? How bad do you .

actually need an execute this mission? Because if you're saying it's so important, I just need a little bit more air support. I need a little bit more ground support.

I need a little bit more troops. So what do what do we talking about her? It's hard to have of these negotiations. Sometimes, uh, personal leadership and a clear chain of command are critical to the soldiers who are on the ground and in the fight. The old veterans of world war two korean modern battles like the eddring valley in vietnam had continued to pass these lessons on to us over the years. And leading up to our appointment to somalia, there were lessons written on the battlefield in the indelible ink of blood.

Yeah, I think this is where special Operations we got to be careful because you know a lot, a lot of times, it's not it's not just about there are some basic things that have to be adhered to for combat. There's some basic things, and that's what I say. We're war two and creamy.

I taught us those veterans taught us some of those things. You can't violate those things and we're not talking about do you have a short haircut or do you have the same uniform? What's talking about like the leader has to be on the ground.

If there is going to be two different units on the ground, there has to be one commander. Now I care who IT is. IT can be them, but as long as there's one commander and so we get in soft and I think we start thinking we're get two surgical and two sexy, we can violate some of these things. You can there's there's basic things like that, like command and control, like having reserved, like being able to do far support your basic building, block things you cannot violate the matter how good you .

think you are yeah the marine safe. There's two marines in the room. One of them is the senior man like that's that's yeah there's a reason for that because um at that critical moment someone's ve got to be responsible what's happening and even the even the fully supportive guy, there's a call this being made like we have to be aligned.

So important one uh next one, achieve as much realism in training as possible. In this training approach, IT is not acceptable to merely execute drills or redundant task by rote in a sterile environment. The standard of training is that whenever the seventy fifth range regiment is given a task responsibility, the profile or steps for that mission and all of its inherent task must be run through completely in every aspect, as closely as possible to reality.

This includes the use of similar train distances and weather conditions, live fire training with rangers using all their weapons and firing real ambition is the central pillar of this approach. Now, I had a change in attitude on this when I was growing up in the teams life. Fire was what we did.

We fired live fire like every target we did. We did immediate action drills in the jungle, immediate action drills in the desert. Uh, obviously see, you see all life fire all the time. That is what we did.

Probably around ninety nine, we started getting Simon tion and all of a sudden IT was like, oh, maybe we shouldn't stack all of our guys in the whole way waiting to go into a room because any idiot can stick the weapon up door and just kilos. W, we eventually got a really high speed laser tag system that we could use in land warfare out of desert, which was like you could hit people at four hundred yards. IT had IT snap going over your head.

IT was really awesome. And IT showed what you actually had to be ready for, because what we found with paper targets is paper targets never manuvre on you and never shoot back. And so I live fire, to me, was definitely a huge part of IT.

But I think I ended up with about a one third life fire and two thirds of force on force training, that sort of what became my, and we'd get a life fire done kind of first, like you work, come up like you do, like fire. And they're under that stress of life fire and the danger of life fire. And then we transition over to force on force where he is going to get crazy.

And and our training was IT was insane. You pay all everywhere because we use pay all your simulation, and we use this laser system at different times, different, different situation. So, uh, IT made a huge difference in the way that we worked, and IT made us much more prepared in my inner, oh yeah.

yeah, no. I think we're definitely the same track simmias force on force. So the enemy has a vote. Absolutely critical.

What i'm really trying to get at here, i'm not so much saying that every training event has to be life far. What i'm saying is your live fire events have to be realistic. There are so many instances i've seen in the army, especially where they want to have guys and orange vests.

They want to have guys with orange flags. They want to have a yellow stick to the left and yellow stick to the right. When you maneuver vehicle or in the position, then you can shoot, know you've got to be there.

When you do a live fire in user weapon system with real rounds, you've have to be able to do IT in realistic conditions. That's that's what i'm not with guys and yellow heads literally leading you from point to point yeah. Later on when we talk about ukraine, I can I can give some more insight into that too.

No, that's all some. And we would go through link to make our live fire training very realist, including shooting rockets, including shooting forty mike, mike, and shooting including hocking gades, which are who? Which is some people here that I think it's just insane to do.

But we would do live fire night immediate action, and we would do them at notin. So don't get me wrong， like live fire yeah so we we are told line on that the life fire has to be realistic. And if you make IT so controlled that there's no fault happening anymore, it's it's not really that helpful. And also, even with the semi tion or the laser tag stuff, there are certain things that you can do with that that's not realistic as well, where you can get some bad habits from that. So you ve gotta do both.

Yeah, you got to be good. And I guess one of the things I would say when we and it's it's hard to understand its civilian, but when we got in that the heavy combat aspect in moga issue, the live rounds were not what was so unfamiliar to us. We were very familiar with there and we were actually kind of comfortable in the environment. It's it's the other things that came from taking casualties from the enemy heaven of vote, but using the live of weapons and even receiving far back was not that was not that unfamiliar to us because we were so well trained.

fast. For a little bit i've made brief mention of the methodical, extensive and intensive training that goes into selecting and training and individual delta Operator. And you say the same thing about anger.

Similarly, the assault teams and various national of delta squad and receive extensive training as well, and mog issue the performance of the individual delta Operators, once again, completely validated the system selectivity and vast amounts of training and resources they received. And this is kind of one of things we talked about in the last point, cast letter. You, you, you just have to have hard freak training for the troops. And .

quality of the soft tenant.

no amount of planning or support can guarantee that the rate will go smoothly. IT may not be possible on every mission to achieve complete surprise or bring overwhelmingly forced to a target, the enemy becomes a critical factor in any mission planning. When a resolute enemy fights, they get a vote and the plan and stand up.

Combat is often unavoidable. Given these realities, teamwork and unique heating are critical, and the ad howk nature of a task force must be absolutely minimized. The co pickup team approach should not be permitted in mission critical areas.

And then this is something um I didn't agree with more just as training as important leadership is possibly the single most significant factor in effective combat unit. Well, of course, in the way look at that is whose responsible the training the leaders. So we'll go.

And that is the most important thing. There was no lack of leadership in tasks, ranger, at any level, inherent to the training of every unit involved in task. Worse, ranger was a constant eminent to take a charge of the situation around you and push on toward the goal of missions success, no matter what that may be or what chAllenges confront you.

While the chain 点 command tried to sort through the chaos and complexity of the battle， the individual ranger, delta Operator and one sixtieth pilot made sure the piece of ground they held or air space they were in was probably secured and if necessary, gave waters to those around them. And again, these are things that you have to train. It's not instinctive some people.

It's instinctive for some people that they'll see that there's avoided in leadership and all step up and pictures, but most people don't have that instinct. So you gotta train them. You ve got to put them in situations where there is a leadership void, where they are forced to step up.

And then when they don't step up, you got to train OK. How do you detect that leadership void? How do you become the one that steps up and starts to making things happen? Um you say this as a soldier and combat Better.

I've personally experienced to varying degrees, many aspects of the different types of campaigns, battles and military Operations that I have read about history. With one notable exception, i've never experienced being in a unit that has broken under the pressure of the enemy. Close out the book with this.

The assault force fighting around the crash side of super sixty one certainly felt immense pressure from the enemy as waves of somali gn relentlessly closed in on and thousands more pressed in from nearby crowds and surrounding city, but never for a moment did the men of task force ranger waver take a step back or begin to show signs of breaking part. The reason for this was our training, but the overwriting factor was the immense confidence we had in each other, underlining a determination that no matter what came, we'll never quit, give up or run that level of cohesion. And high moral is a rare thing on the battle field and an amazing honor to be part of.

Yeah and that is developed through so many. That's a culture .

sure yeah it's .

a culture um that clearly the military units should be striving for to have that culture. So now you got these things that you experiences in your cohl.

Do you know this point? I'll be fifty eight next month.

How about at this point in your career so you get done with you go through the the captains .

course twenty six.

So you're twenty six years old. Next thing you get after the after finish offers a career course. You get assign to the twenty fifty in inventory division hawaii. You're thone to some staff.

I is how is that going from somali a your wounded purple heart like your a combat veterans, probably one of the few real combat veterans at your unit. How's that feel? Yeah.

I was a bit of a chAllenge because he wasn't fully physically healed yet. I took to actually took about two and half years before I could go back and do standard inventory test. So by this time also, I had branch transferred from the artillery, the inventory.

So I was back in the inventory. I was going to take an infinity rifle company, twenty fifth, and trade visions of light units. So we had a roads ch into all that kind of stuff.

So I wasn't physically quite the at the point where I can do that. I was still in a cast when I got to. why? So I get put on the division staff, which is absolutely, you know, paper pushers in and you got sit a tent in the field.

I learned a lot from that, and I learned about Operations, how to plan big Operations and all that. But like you said, I was a bit of a chAllenge, because here I am coming out of the rangers, essentially being a shooter. I got this experience that I really want to infuse in a rifle company and I want to get down there and share this and and still be part of that again.

And and i'm sit on the division staff, I am feel like i'm so far away from IT that you know it's like in a glass case. So that was a little bit of a chAllenge. But but again, it's another one of those things that taught me some patients.

And then you finally get a assign to, uh, a company command.

right, right river company down in two, two, seven .

and eight. Yes.

we ent sigi peacekeeping Operation over their peacekeepers between israel and egypt. And again, IT wasn't know. We won't do any assault attacks.

Anything like that remain an observation, posts and reporting on the israelis and the egyptians. So pretty, pretty relatively beni role. But the beauty of that there was that's not what you did a hundred percent of the time.

They would rotate you through that. And so when you were rotate off the outpost, we were back doing training. And the other beauty of IT was he had some ammunition there, but most people just came over there and SAT the outpost. So we had all the same munition built up. So as able to do take my company into lots of live fire and get get a lot of, get out of my system again.

So was after that, did you do the demonian republican intervention?

No, no, no. Hate came up. And I was in the .

advances course after it's because you became a, because you became an aid.

That's right. Yeah.

you are aid to a minor, major general, Steve silvani .

and Steve vaca. Yeah, Steve vi was almost a reality. He was this most senior two star in active duty about thirty five years.

He'd been in the dam. He'd been in multiple tours in vietnam. I, an absolute hero. And he really had this old school, went to west point before there was women.

So he and I really you know could see that I on that kind of thing um and there was no war going on. But yet he was this warrior. And we would go all throughout the pacific. And we ran into a few things, were in the tree, loca.

when were you in .

chalk and chicken? About ninety seven during the tandem. Tiger.

I was there in either ninety seven or ninety eight. Yeah, we are there working with, working with the government, which were working with their s yes.

okay, yes. yeah. So good. So I was but IT from that perspective, again, i'm really far from the battle field. But but with him, IT was great and there was a fascinating time. And as you know, from three lanka, there was still a wargo.

And I think I think that's one of the times in the world where there was that was like one of the only wars going on. And we stated this fantastic hotel in columbo. And like the next week, that hotel got blown up by suicide attack and suicide commanders get out working people. And so he was really an interesting time to be in the .

pacific then with him. Yeah, I remember all that that happened might have been been there. And that's kind of crazy. sure. I would know if you guys there because i'm sure I would have to do some kind of dog and point, yes, something like that uh, so at this point, uh, you must have got a good view of sort of the big army be in eight because I was a two I was in for thirty months .

yeah I will say you know again, as as distasteful as IT was relatively to be on the division staff. But I was in plans, and that's really where you learn to plan campaigns to do stuff besides company platoon on tactics usually learn to do that. I like the division staff and a plan shop. So that coupled with being in the aid for gentle, as you get to go back and see how the pentagon worked, get to see how the four star commands worked throughout the pacific at the strategic level. I mean, he was a huge learning experience.

And then what's next? You early promote a major.

I did. So I went back to the range of regiment. Um when I was in batan, I have say that didn't count. So I have to say that didn't count.

But I went back to the regiment is as a liaison officer and I got assigned to be the liaison officer to eighteen airborne course. So still Operate at a pretty high level. In one of the ironic things about that was the core commander.

The three star was general bucer nan. He'd been the ranges of regiment commander. Every one of his staff had been ranger regiment or range of bataan officers, and they all had combat schools.

And so kept in elector would go in there and try to brief what the bataan s plan was going to be in IT is IT was a comedy because he was more collective experience and range regiment than than you could find anywhere. And here I am trying to tell them, but so but they treat me well. Again, good learning experience and you know.

a pretty awesome career path at this point. I mean, early promoted to major, that's huge. Like you must be lining up pretty good at this point.

You do pretty well and, you know, get ready to go to the next level of school. But before I did that, I again, I was at eighteen zero born court, the rangers, and looking for the next mission.

And did you end up going to bosnia?

yeah. So after about a year of being on the staff, again, there's an a war going on at this time. So I was looking for another mission to do. The united states was involved in bosnia, mainly peacekeeping.

But I get wind of a special Operation that was gone on over there, and there was an effort to track down all the war criminals from the three different warring parties. And so through my ranger or regiment connections and the U. S.

Army special Operations command, I picked up the tasking to go over and beer the Operations officer for the task force that were hunting work criminals before. I was incredible job a and kind of the spring board off what I was seen about post somalia getting ready for the warranty. Rorys m, this is another evolution that jsc took, and it's not just the j.

Suk figured everything out as bazinet hunting war criminals, they really had to take a law enforcement approach. And so there was lots of things learn from law enforcement that was integrated into that task force in baza. I think we were Operating off in detection from the hague, from the court system, and then we had to use law enforcement techniques in a pretty benign, restrained environment.

So we had to integrate a lot of long enforcement things. The call out is one tactic that the just an example of of some of the things that we learned from law enforcement, so that was really well, was a fun mission. We got to do things.

We captured about thirteen different war criminals while I was there. I got to go down with some of the test forces, the strike forces, while they were doing that, get to learn things from an Operational and strategic perspectives. Well.

did you guys do any call outs? Actually.

my the Operations I was involved in, we did not. But the, but the instead of going in and breaching the know, the priority in that case became isolate the objective and then deal with IT. So that's kind of where they learned .

some of them got you. Those were I know some guys that we're over there at time execute those missions and IT was pretty kind of cool. Look in the, you know, body snatches like we're going to kid, basically looks like we're a kidnap this .

guy like you had five nations, five countries were involved force. So the british sas was doing hits um for a while they were bringing in some of the two one units from the us. To do the hits. Then they would delegate that down to the special forces teams that were in europe. And so again, IT was is a really good learning curve to watch a lot of those techniques and watch the integrate some of the long enforcement that the intelligence tracking that some law enforcement uses.

And these were the real only real missions at the time. That's me. I'm set there.

Go on paying IT. yeah. So this is a pretty nine eleven.

This was in the ninety eight, ninety nine, two thousand five hundred.

And after that.

command and staff college, right, got to go to the the college life I never had at the city itals, at the air force command and staff. fantastic.

Long as a year.

That's a year. Yeah, I showed up and they maybe pay this this three hundred dollar landing fee. I was a look, a bit of a tight was so I was not too happy about, but I was the best money I ever invested, we had for completely gated parties, whatever restaurant we want anyway. So I just had a great time for a year going to going to college.

and i'm sure your wife enjoy that.

He did that. I had, I had two kids at the time, had we had a second daughter, kate had her back at the at brag while I was deploy to somalia, or excuse me, to bosnia. And then we, I took our two kids, and we went down to maximum force space in alabama, which I absolutely loved best barber cue in the world. And we just party for a year, went to school like half a day when we went no kids.

right? Is you're graduating, you graduate in, in two thousand one. And then september eleven happens. That's right. What happens with you after september eleventh?

So I went from air command and staff college, and I went to the what's called the strike brigade brigade second ID mcnicol son, who went on to be the sf commander, was was one of the guys task to build this new striker concept in the army.

And the concept basically was to bring arranged arrangement attitude, but given vehicles, given armored vehicles, so to build a brigade size element, uh, a couple thousand soldiers equipped them with these new light field armed vehicles and knew new for the army at the time, as opposed to the heavy track. And one in bradlee vehicles are used in desert orm. So bring these new light wheel vehicles, but also to bring a culture.

We're not going to sit in the vehicle in fight work. That's just a taxi that's gna take us to the fight. They're going to get out and fight like arranging of regiment.

And you two is credit until the units credit, they built a great culture out there. They had a lots of rangers involved out there in that regard. And I got hired to be one of the bataan Operations officers. So that's when I went out the fourth Lewis washington to build the very first strike of you in the army.

And you did those guys deploy to iraq.

They eventually did. So again, this is kind of see more of my career story. But at the time when I graduated air command and staff college pre nine eleven, there was in a war.

And so I thought others no war going on. So I go out to this new unit that will be interesting in good. And while I was there, uh, the war kicks off and the whole army starts to deploy again.

So I was desperate to get over to that. And eventually that brigade did did deploy to combat. But you know, the fine print that I did not read when I went out there was two years in this unit, developed this new, new striker brigade.

And then you have to go to one of the training centers and help, in part that knowledge to arrest the army. I did not read that fine print on that contract. And so after I did my two years, i'm thinking, I can go and join a unit, go with the rest of the army. And and that was not the case. I had to go to a training center.

train center. Germany, germany.

Home fell. right? There's three training centers. There's a light training center for pope. There's a heavy training center out at four earn in the ntc and there's one over in europe. And so at least let me choose which one I would go to.

And I went to the one in germany. What what was that decision .

based on that decision? Ninety percent was based on the fact that at this point now, we're about a year into the war in iraq and the units that initially to deploy over there, we're coming on their their year and haven't redeploy. And they were going out to germany to take units from germany deployed down there. And I knew that what that wave departing germany go down, I could probably snap link in. And somewhere, in fact, as a couple of funny stories about shown up, a places I wasn't really assigned and trying to get on the bus on, pulled out of the last minute, but he eventually work down.

so that eventually you end up as the volunteering to go and hell build the the new iraqi army. This is two thousand four.

right? So at the training center, doing some of that work with the units, get ready to go help and push them out the door, and then taking came down to build an adviser team. This is in two thousand.

Three, early in the war. War again, had even been going on for a year. And they know the U.

S. Military now figuring out they're to have to rebuild the rocky army. And so they reforming adviser teams almost at hack.

But they came to the training centre in satellite. I could be, we had nine commission officers, and we had officers that did the training. They would evaluate units and give them lessons learned.

And so IT wasn't IT was a pretty good fit, actually. And so we built a about a ten man team, very similar to an sf fod a, but not with any other special skills, but in application, in concept. So about a ten man team to go down and develop some of the basic building black skills that an inventory today would need with the iraqis. And we actually were assigned to the seventh batti, and that came out of the gates.

And then so did did you go through like a training cycle with them?

Yeah, again, I was I was kind of a dream come true. What they they told us wasn't. And the Cheney command wasn't really a mature yet.

So I was basically focused on the bataan level. So I didn't have a brigade staff that I had respond to. I was I was kind of on my own.

I had a support network um down there, but I didn't have a brigade command that I had respond to at that point. So relatively independent and what they is said, hey, on this date, you're going to get a thousand recruits. There's going to be some nutrition, and then you need march out the gates with seven hundred train soldiers about nine weeks later.

So, so in a lot ways that was a dream come true for for a Young major. I had enough resources. I had arranged, in order to do that, we were to base about twenty kilometers from the iranian border out in the desert, had a good range complex at plenty.

Amo had brand new romanian A K forty seven rifles. Um we got a few iraqi nc OS and a few iraqi officers with varying degrees of experience. We train them first, trying to do the train the trainers so they can help us put them through a pretty extensive program.

I focused on close quarter's battle Marksman ships, some of the basic fundamental things for invention. And then we get a thousand recruits and and went to town at night. I took just a little bit different approach, and some people took, you know, he wasn't hard to read the tea leaves, and you could see where the war was going in.

In two thousand and three and four, IT was starting to go bad from an insurgency perspective. And we head the whole experience of trying to spend iraq units into the first flush a and what a disaster that was in. And I knew the quicker that we could get iraqi units into the fight from account and certain cy prospect, if the Better IT was gonna be, rather than americans just trying to Carry the whole fight. So what I focused on was having their unit ready to do some sort of limited Operations as soon as they graduated.

And what were the limited Operations that you guys conducted when they graduate?

Yeah, I want to them to build some really basic company level attacks, company level defense. I want of them to be to set up traffic control points, to set up checkpoints so they could relieve U. S. Troops from doing that. And then I want to them bail the move from point to point b and then have .

some basic command control. So did you have like a targeted um Operation to actually go and conduct when you when you got done turning them?

No, didn't we didn't have any Operation on the horizon at that time. We could we could just see that. I mean, we knew with the way there was a huge failure in the approach to fallujah, with a rocky forces, we could see the way the war, the war was going, the way Operations were being conducted.

Again, from a counterinsurgency perspective. I knew iraqi army forces, we're going to be much more effective than american forces are trying to go, you know, storm through apartment complexes in bad data, whether IT may be so. So IT was pretty obvious what we needed to do, but but again, which he had to pick and chooses in eight or nine weeks, what can accomplish you? And so we had to focus on some things.

And what I focused on to the honest, was you lets get things right at the company level so they can do some basic things to be to move. And then we would provide americans would provide the command control IT wasn't, you know, set up to be that way. We were super to develop the iraq too, but there's only so much you can do in eight weeks. And so I knew me and my advisers would be essentially the company commander in the bitti commander and set on IT. And IT actually worked out really well.

So what came after that?

We had some limited Operations out there doing encounter and certain cy, but in the area by the iranian border. But the next big Operation that came in the war was that fall so we finished with our training around August um tuned up a little bit for the next three or four weeks and then in the fall came a surge to take back the city of tomorrow no so you had a failure out at follows a but the second cracked volusia came later that fall.

So most people not heard of sara, which came before. So in september they did sara in october, time for needed fallujah, which was a much bigger battle, much more famous. But before that we took five battalions.

And then I was able to bring our a rocky baton, the seventh batan to that fight. And IT was the first time we were able to commit an iraqi bati, take their own objectives. And I had a relationship with the pattern commander in that area.

He and I had been together in the ranger regiment, and three and five, jeff and clare, I knew him really well. I knew is ara major, another two, seven, five ranger. And so they and trusted us.

I told him, here's what I can do, and here's what I can do. You can count me for these these things. He trusted me enough and and then we went in and took our own objectors. And it's the first time i'm really aware of the iraqi army units able to have have an objective and take IT in a .

battle that's impressive. And so then what comes with that kind of the end that tour for you when you get on with the tomorrow?

Yeah, I A new team, came in to replace our team. And I actually tried to stay down there for a while until I get the word. I had to come home, so I stayed down for next for four weeks until I finally get the plane, came to take me back to germany.

But so I went back and did that. And then I had a little downtime. I was on a the four star staff and in hindle berg and did that until fifth core at a germany was going to go down and take over the whole command and control in iraq.

fear. So I got pulled into fifth core to be the nighttime join Operation center. O. I, C.

And so that was .

embed ed, right? The three started liver headquarters in baghdad.

run in the whole war.

That's that's an interesting perspective. Yeah again, you know IT seems like in micro, i'm always looking i'm always trying to get down at the lowest tactical levels. That's the last place in the world I wanted to be.

But IT IT turned out to be incredibly insightful. The join Operation center. I mean, everything that happened in the country get reported into us, into my my small team in the Operation cell.

So I had I had absolute visibility on every single square foot of iraq, so to speak, from the coalition perspective, I was getting updates and reports and the current situation, casualties, we track all that, all the current Operations going on. So I knew at a very good visibility and what was going on. But that's that's not what I wanted to be for a year.

I wanted to be done one of the units in the fight, we would literally like a stadium sitting in the palace, just taken reports day after day after day. And so it's interesting for a while, but that's not where I wanted to be. I want to be down and wanted the brigades, and i'd been promoted to tenant kernel by this time. So I was trying to be in one of the leaders, in one of .

the brigadier. As you sit there at this high level and in two thousand and five and you're watching the war and you're seeing the cash reports and you're seeing what real states be and taking what realistic be and given up, you're also obviously paying attention the news and what's coming out like what was your assessment of the war in two thousand and five? The insurgencies now in getting in the full swing is on the way. Was there a feeling of like we're not winning right now?

One hundred percent. okay. Yeah, hundred percent. You know, we were watching U. S. Troops, again, try to Carry most of the fight. And just from a intuitively from account and certainty perspective, we know by this time that's not gonna U. S.

Troops, that I don't care what their intentions are, what the reality is, the perception is not going allow them to Carry IT to be successful in a counter insurgency. And there was just so many factors, the poorest border from syria, you know, the the sheer uprising aspect, the dissolving situation there, just us. Troops were.

We're not going to be A A killer way out of this one is just another thing that I learned from laender cement. You can't arrest your way out of a crime problem, can't kill your way out of an interest urgency. And so that was very obvious.

Us and the situation on the ground was just getting worse and worse. We kept thrown bodies out IT, and we just had more and more casually come at home. And then, by the way, there was this kind of ticking time bm out name, but a province called remedy.

And this is the first time in my career ever talked to us of U. S. Military unit and they'd said, oh, ah that ground is owned by the enemy and like the enemy shoulder any ground when the U.

S. Military involved in a situation like that, they said, no, no, we don't go in there because that's, oh, by the enemies. So that's not our battle.

We can get into that place. That kind of thing is really kind of set me back. So there was there was a need for more troops, but there was certainly a need for a different approach and certainly a need form.

And this, I based the time, my experience to the iraqi army, certainly need to put the iraqis out front and have them executed. And, you know, I enjoyed developing that capability, the iraqis. But, you know, one of the things that I think a lot of american officers don't get and still don't get, is developed that capability and then let them bleed for their country, rather than our boys bleed for their country. So that was where I was.

And what were you seeing in any movement in that direction from like senior leadership, from the generals of them? Time to say, hey, look, we need to take a different approach.

Her or not, really. No, I I was not seeing that from the generals at all. Now I take that back. general. The trees, who was a three start at the time, was was very much on board, the developed in iraqi capability.

He had had some good experience, reports up in mozo when he was one hundred and first division airbnb orne division commander. And again, i'd been my boss when I had the iraqi army unit for a while. So I I admire his approach to things, and he seemed to get that.

But from the four star level, which was really driving how we were fighting the war, I did not see that. When I speak out of times, i'll do a comparison between gentle portrayer and the general that he succeeded, general casey. And general casey was a smart guy.

He he knew what had to be done from an administrative perspective to get the forces lined up in in order and and to try to you create the conditions on the ground for Victory. But did not have the same perceptions that patrice and gentle portrays new. I've got to go out in the field and i've got to go to this outpost and i've got to make sure they're working with the iraqi police or whatever the case may be. So I did not see at that time a lot of positive perspective at the forest star level. Let's put in that way.

Yeah, it's interesting for me. So I was the aid during this time frame, two thousand and four to two thousand five. And you I was in the pantagruel. I was hearing briefings. And like you kind of .

got the .

I kind of got the impression that, well, we're not really winning, but we're not going to do anything different. Yeah and you know have you set there briefing this month, briefing the next month, briefing the following month? And you're thin way to second if we're not if we're losing, well, they wouldn't say the word losing, but they ouldn't say the word winning, which implies that we're losing.

And yet I wouldn't hear here's our new approach. This is what we're going to try. So yeah, that was pretty disturbing to watch that.

And I can't say how many generals I would listen to say something to me which was completely a named like, well, it's their country. They are going to have to figure out how to fix IT. Now it's our boys that we're losing over there that's always, always concerned about.

I am I wanted mission success for sure, but he just going to keep thrown our boys and girls down that hole. I mean, to me, that's absolute abrogation of which your duty should have been over there as a senior leader. no.

So you're at least aware of what's happened in romantic because you're in contact again. It's there is the report from kind of devil that came out that a remote now by province all but lost right? This is not good. Um and then you end up how do you to get orders to the one one how I work.

So I started talking to my bosses, lots and lots of guys hanging around the headquarters, lots of guys that could do my job. I knew that. So I started landing up some people you know that could back fill me because that's what you got to do.

You get to find you in replacement. So I made IT known, you know, that I wanted to, I wanted to go down. And being one of the brigg's es, had a lutte kernel that was know the place for me.

And so I did that. And I actually found out a team, a adviser team to go to and had that all set, you know, my my own plans. And I went to my my boss and and said, i've got this new opportunity and i've got a guy lined up to replace me.

And he, he said, we all think about and he he called me in like an hour later and he said, i'm not gonna let you go to that that team. And I was really unhappy you working the night shift, working in being a complete paper push while the wars go on on, just was not in a good, good place. And I really to bite my tongue, grit my teeth, and and he was playing with me.

He was a real smart guy, and he new idea, and he was playing with me. And he said, because I got another job for you, have to send you down to the first progne for army divisions is a dco that just came up. So I was one of these things.

We're just, again, planet's all come to alignment. I was walking on air, and so I immediately packed my stuff and going to burn, flow up, to tale up in the northwest. And you talked about people that we're having some success.

So there have been an army cafe regiment up their stars, intermix master, who had a lot of respect for, and his unit was employing some very effective counterinsurgency. We were starting to hear a lot about that. A brigade was coming down from germany. First brigade, first farming division, in its current configuration of hood was authorized to have they were not authorized to have a deputy commander, but within the theater, they authorized that. And so that's how I get fell into that slide to be the deputy commander up there and get set up and join that unit when they changed out in to offer.

So you were there immediately. You know, how was meeting kernal ic violent for the first time? great. Did you know about him? Did you or I did .

know about him because when I was in, we were off in germany and then i'd been on the staff in germany. And at the time when I met him, he'd been the Operations officer for fifth core. So pretty key figure in germany.

And so i'd met him briefly. I knew he was a real smart guy, quiet guy, very calm, very stable. And so, you know, got to meet him early in germany.

But then again, linked up with him. He was in bag dead for a conference. And we linked up and back dead and flew up to to offer together.

You get on their telephone or telephone how you saying that? I would say a telephone.

yeah telephone, yeah okay.

Uh, and it's you look at what general or conomo master done at the time IT worked. How long is IT you get orders? Where are you guys are now going to leave telefilm go to remote?

yeah. So I joined the brigade. I want to see him like the february time for him. I've been, i've been in baghdad for a couple months when I got sent down to the brigge. Join them again.

In february, we took over the sector and they were in at that point, they were in what we would call me like these four Operations. They gone through the whole process and got IT down to a manageable level. They were trying to finish things up well if they are time to go home.

So there was still some fighting, there was still some enemy, but IT was very manageable. And so IT really gave us a clear picture of what could be accomplished, because to often had been a very bad place, kind of of a mini remedy just a couple years before that. So he gave us us a rule picture of what could be done.

And IT gave us some time to get a organized kind of sharp on our skills up a little bit. There was just enough combat, just enough Operations to do that. And then in the summer, things really started to tank out in remedy.

And again, I was not surprised anybody. But by this time, the senior leaders knew they had to do something about remedy. And that's what became the surge was initially, how we going to deal remedy.

They brought they had two brigades in reserve down in quite. They made the decision to commit um two brigades to the surge and our brigade ade was going to be redeployed. There was a pencilling in national gade um that was down in remedy and when they were coming out they needed somebody to back fill them.

And again, everybody recognized IT was going to be a serious situation. So we couldn't screw around. We could do any half measures. And so they selected our arms get to redeploy down there.

So you're tracking you see what the cash reports coming out of remote. So you're again one of the few people that had this really significant urban combat experience right from mogae issue, which was, well, I guess what twenty years earlier.

something like that yeah yeah, that's all about years.

Uh, how did that impact? Like what conversations were you having with with economic foreland about this kind of thing? Did you feel like I gave you some a good insight? I mean.

clearly most of yeah I I think so kind of one of the funny things about getting to the armor brigade, I mean an m one tank brigade. And I I tell people I couldn't spill in one but they couldn't spell soft so that to his credit I M he's a very perceptive guy and so he recognized that so I wasn't going to be in charge, madness, anything. So he gave me a couple of things to do.

You know, one of the things about that situation, especially going to remedy IT, was so bad, there were so many things broken that there was just a lot to do. I mean, there was more to do than than you know, any of us could do. So it's just like here, take a few things and run with, but you can do everything.

So I would like to have influenced more, you know, some of the tactical aspect, but I just couldn't head too many other irons in the fire that were critically important. But um I think I did was able to give some good insight. And and when you coupled that with the fact that I had had an iraqi army batan in an urban fight in a kind of smaller scale Operation in somalia, I was able to put my two cents in, I think with some credibility.

then you must have feelgood about the fact that we had tanks. I mean, I I I love, just love tanks. I love bradlees. Um IT felt so good to have those breaking beautiful machines out there yeah and he even when I was reading your book, the point where you're talking about the the vehicles that are coming to get you, I remember red like the the noise, the sound of a tank, the sound of an m one when it's moving down the street, you're so happy.

It's the best noise ever. Yeah, I really, really became a believer. I when I joined the brigade, no, I joined the army in the nineties. And there was kind of a cultural thing between the invention and armor. And there is a perception that the inventory head of armor, but I will say, no matter what, to see an armor brigden combat versus know the rear in in garrison is two completely different experiences. You know, to see an army brigade able to go out there and just fightings the city.

Is this unbelievable in this? And there are some things you know that tanks are obviously not Better suited for, but there aren't too many and and it's it's a devastating you impressive system to have, especially in the city. And i've got we were talking about mike biomet earlier on. I've just got story after story about warriors like that just using his m one just as aggressively as you can imagine yeah.

really you don't you don't get the nickname man gun mike for nothing.

And yeah, you know, interesting thing is in remedy, the streets, a lot of streets were wide, right? So you know, I would always hear about like the chechen war and how the sessions would get the russians kind of pin down in these narrow streets with their tanks and they didn't have the elevation on their weapons to and I was like, romantic was almost an ideal urban combat for tricks. So, so that was kind of nice.

And you talked about this integration of of infatuation and armor. And then, you know, you had a small element of special Operations guys there. IT was rangers there. They were down the street for me. They were little literally next door and then you had us there um and we integrated very deeply with the with the armor.

And was that surprising to you? A little, a little. We'd had some as a begay, we'd had some bad experiences with some special forces guys up in the north. And and again, this goes back to, I ve been on that side of that.

So you know special Operations units not wanting to integrate with the battle space owner, not wanting to be part of that team or or whatever the case may be. But no, that's one of the things that was so incredibly impressive down their remote as I think we all recognized this is going to take every one of us. We've learned enough lessons over the last fifteen years that this is how it's going to be approached.

And I was really impressed with your approach to IT. I mea IT was very to me that you just wanted to go get the job done. And I was going to and maybe in some ways, be a non standard way of integrating in with a tank company or whoever the case may be. But whoever was gonna itch in the fight was what we going to go with and out. That was very refreshing to see .

you everything that we did. You know you can't plan to go into um you know fire cracker or south central mode. You can go in there without having a really good plan of getting out of there if you have wounded, if you have casual, if you need fire support. And so we knew, and we had such good relationships with the army, with the marine core, that we knew if something happens, we'll get the help that we need.

And you know the amount of times that the one one A D know any one of those batti and the first five sex, the three seven, the one three five, uh, the three marines, the one three seven, the ballot times that we were supported by them, even though we were always the 现在 按 我的 没 给你， anyone freak out here. There is a big deal in the military. Echostar between being the supported element and the supporting element.

And the the supported guys are kind of like the main effort, right? And the supporting guys are here. We we are subservient to you, which I had no problem with that, right? We you guys have five thousand, six hundred soldiers, marines.

I remember when we went into a put in combat outpost. Iron is the first big push in to put a combat outpost, and there was fifty armour pieces, and they're all wind up. And I said, yeah, this this is pretty awesome.

And you know, the legal limit going over there are kick this thing off was my guys that's right. And we would not have been able to take that risk without having the reliable support. Again, i'm using that word even though we were the supporting element. IT was a new supported effort across the board. Yeah.

I think a couple of different things came to that were unique in romantic and one again, IT was such a bad situation, and we all knew we were going out to give way together. I mean, nobody was gonna lay that on their own. And so when everybody had a pitching, IT was IT was so bad we're going to have to CoOperate.

You know, the other thing is the I think we just were very fortunate in the keen, keen nexus of leadership. Um you know everybody was perfect over there, but the the key decision makers just were able to jail together because all would have taken as one guy saying i'm not going to let seals leave my unit or i'm not going to have my tanks waiting on no, he was taken one. And what we've seen there through out our career, I mean, can't tell you how many times one attitude like that derail Operations. And thank god we did not have anybody in the flow that I came across that that impeded that.

Um one of the things that was good about what we brought the table because I was looked at, well, how can we compliment what the is what the money has? And luckily, again, there's you talk about the luck that you have in your career. And one of the lucky things for us is in our task unit, Normal task unit, you might have, you know, you ve got thirty, thirty five or forty seals.

You might have five snipers, maybe six snipers. We had thirteen snipers, which was a lot of snipers for a seal tasks to have. And the opportunity that presented itself in remote with being able to have snipers out in positions that can take these precision shots with no collateral damage, right, was such a beneficial.

And I think that's one of the things, you know, the support that we got from the army in the marine core was like the army would get hit with a murder, and, you know, we'd be able to kill those people with the borders, right? And, you know, somebody be put in I, D. S.

Were so terrible, and we be able to just go out there and kill the people that were in placing s without causing any lateral damage. Which rains? What made IT so effective?

I I agree. And I I just want to say again to, you know, without blown too much sunshine. Your approach to that was critical because, again, a lot of times, and we experiences with other aspects, other gts, they had what they wanted to do and they basically would coordinate with us to the point, you know that they had to, but they were going to go try to do things.

You came in and said, in essence, i'm, i'm, i'm trying to rap this all up, not rap this up, but i'm trying to make a synapses of this. You essentially want to go down to get the fight. And we had some things that we needed, but as as long as they were contributed to the fight, you know that work together. And so I think he was a win, win. Does that makes sense? No.

know. As I said, the colombia, finland, he reminded me because I didn't really remember he like the first thing when I met you. The first thing he said he was like, how how can I support you what you guys need from us and yeah, that's that's what i've said, what I meant.

And he needed various things. No iraqi police to get trained, okay, well trained to iraqi police. We need some, a special mission unit, iraq, to be trained.

Okay, we'll do that. We need snicker. Overwatch over this combat outpost has been okay. We'll do that. We were there to support and give what we could again, when you have five thousand and six hundred soldiers, yeah one hundred armed pieces inside of a city like where yeah, we try to figure what we can do that would give the best support to situation yeah .

I think that's one of the leadership lessons learned here is as long as you have an idea of what you want to accomplish, but you're not dogmatic about how you're going to accomplish with as some flexibility and both units come together like that and give a little bit as long as are both giving away together, that's that's when you're going to get the synergy like like we achieve there.

I'm again, a lot of units would come in and say, now i'm going to do this the way I want to do IT and you just gna either get out of my way or you're going to whatever. But I didn't see that that you guys want you to get downtown and get in the fight. And there were some things that we wanted done and you say, well, if that gets us in the fight, will do those things and so if we worked out.

yeah currently, finally, are generally finance now. But the attitude that he had of working together, if you know, when you mentioned that we didn't really get to we didn't see people that had a bad attitude about IT. And clearly, that's a leadership from the top. You know he wasn't going to not not that he didn't put up with that. I'm sure he wouldn't put up with that because of the example that he said.

He said that .

then everyone was A C O, K. That's what we're doing. We're not worried about is not the army versus the navy versus the marine core versus the efforts. None of that. It's not this pain verse that time is and that's not this company verse that company. It's like it's us against the insurgents, which is what it's supposed to be and he just said such an incredible example uh in in everything that he did, every meeting that we had. You know like you just had such a great open mind to do ideas here and listening to what people had to say and very decentralized, you know, very decentralize you you're a cornal dean on here, know corneal deans like, hey, I don't need you to run my my gade i'm going to tell you how to run my year battle on you go make IT happened yeah and like I was kind of shocked by that level of essential zed command like, oh, go go do what I want yeah just as long supports the overall mission that's we're doing.

Well, a spring board of that take a even step further is we talked about by this point in the war, bio six, we were not getting guidance from the generals on how to fix things. Know we weren't you in getting recognition that things were going wrong. We were getting just more troops.

Just keep doing things you are doing. And here's your here's your plan that was developed and back that on paper you go and execute that just just work harder is basic. What they would say and gentleman phone really saw that was not working, and he really was open to new concepts so weak when tony dean and shake guitar came on board, and we started thinking about these things and trying to think of different ways to accomplish the same thing.

You know, none of that would have mattered if gentlemen fron had not had the fortitude to accept that they we're not going to do things the way baghdad's told us. We're going to deviate from that significantly, but we're going to win. That's what this is about and .

we did yeah IT was crazy when he came on the podcast, the fact that we were putting in those combat outpost like every three or four days, because they were so were such a huge Operations. And in my mind, they all seem to be separated by for like two, three weeks at a time.

And and then I looked the dates and sure and off it's like, boom, this combat outpost going in fifty armer pieces move in two hundred, uh, t barriers getting put in position, flat bed truck generators, troops getting house down there. Now iraqi soldiers in the in the building living there. H, oh, we're done with that.

okay. It's been two days, three days. We're doing IT again, right? And we did that over and over again. IT was onesta. He was kind of macular was .

made even .

just from a logistical standpoint. Where did all those, uh, tea barriers come from? Like even even he is on the podcast is like, I don't really know these like they were just showed up two hundred concrete barriers and by the way, the ci multi ese Operation gone on as well, right? So IT was IT was even of thing came on, you know, on August second, when mark lee was killed. IT was, for us a huge battle with the one three, seven down there in in self central money. And I had literally almost forgot that that day we had also supported a massive Operation over over at the allama university and had seals over there and that battling did a huge Operation that was critical and so you just had so much going on yeah ah the decentralized command and the trust that that coronal farland put in the the leadership to make things up and get things done was was a .

downer yeah you know that's a great, great point because everybody in remedy had a lot to do. You kind of focused on your neighbors od that you were fighting in. But there was so much synonyms ation going on across the whole city and for not that relatively bigger place, the amount of things going on simultaneously is amazing.

So we saw the method on how to do the counter insurgency, and it's a step by step process. But we couldn't do a step by step process. And we had to go down, fight like styling, read in certain places.

We couldn't bring police down there. You know, that's what bag dad told us to do. And so we were able to figure out that if you can bring police in the styling red, or where can you bring him? And at least that's a start.

And so while the combat units are frightened, the battle of that intensity were off parallel in the suburbs, developing police and developing those programs. And like you said, there might be three different combat Operations going on and out. I'll also say that the marine headquarters above us was very, very support of general eller was a bridge at the time later Cameron, the machine core bridge ger, general nEllie.

I was my a counterpart that I worked with or my boss that I would work with at that level. They were very supportive again to this out of the box thinking, but that's what a turkey couldn't take this recipe go step by step. And if somebody like gentleman final and not authorized us to do that or understand that we want to .

mailed to do IT, no, you're again you you the experiences is mog issue. You're one of the combat leaders at the time that had served in that intense combat had had had casualties lost. Guys, as you're rolling into remote, you see this is start to unfold. begin. How did you how did you talk to guys about that kind of thing?

Yeah, unfortunately, I I hoped that we were get in there kind like experiencing smart and do a big surge and push everybody out. But I I really realized I wouldn't to be that way. He was going to be months and months.

So just grinding in IT out and that's not where you want to be in a meat grinder. And that's what I was. I was just going to be months and month. You remember the cycle. I mean, we would we would go out and do Operations.

We would come back to the hospital into the morg and deal with guys, and then we've go on to the airfield at night and fly the bodies at home, and they just repeat and then go to memorial services the next morning. And IT was that way for a weeks and weeks and weeks, and I really had hoped that would not be the case. But I I was pragmatic enough to know that was.

So I told my guys, you gotta mentally prepare yourself right now. We're gonna a get hit. We're gonna a lose. Guys, be prepared for IT.

But what I try to do is tell them it's not just we can roll around the street and show the flag for a year. Here's what we're trying to accomplish. And I tried to keep them informed and it's a very difficult to get them to see the long term effects that they're fighting for.

But I tried to explain to them here's what we're trying to achieve. We've got a recipe for success we thought into offer or bringing IT to remedy. It's just gonna take a long time and be prepared. We're going to lose guys, and we did.

Yeah the the extension. So were you part of the extension when these guys got extended?

Ah I was actually home on leave and just hug my family good bye walk through tsa and I came up to a television on or literally said one one is extended through february soa.

How's the impact of the troops there?

Would you say everybody lives in? My experience was positive because by that time this is by like september by that time we were get traction. We could see um you know that he was going on the right way, was going on our way.

I wouldn't say was the tipping point yet, but we definitely will get interaction. We definitely were achieved. We wanted achieve. I mean, there was obviously guys were disappointed to n frustrated that they weren't going to go home.

But but I think a lot of us, I certainly felt like this was bigger than than just our individual desires. This this was a major contribution to the campaign, in my view, to the war. And so I I was I was happy to be staying.

So as you get towards the end of deployment, because I left, I left in october, october twenty first. So IT was still pretty breaking in hard core at that time. But by the time you guys are going home, IT started you started to seem more that transition.

oh yeah, yeah, that I mean, the conditions were released yet. Weren't we weren't having a parade down main street yet, but the conditions, I mean, he definitely was turned. You know, the old powerpoint slides.

So we had a two or three different powerpoint slides that could show you graphically, mean the change, like I had. One was a map of remote with the number of police stations we arrived, which was two. And then I had, when I showed by the december time frame, which was like twenty three, two hundred policeman versus five thousand policeman. And these weren't just guys on the roles. These were guys down and in neighborhood.

making a difference that usually from that neighborhood.

a ge, again, one, the things that we put in the effect to do that way, as suppose what baghdad was tell us to do. But know, even even my driver, you know, could see IT was very quantifiable, and we would fight and we would lose guys, and we hated that. But then we would come in and put a police department in that neighbor.

D would change. I mean, almost overnight, that neighbor od changed when we put policing. And they could see we were moving across the city and pacifying different areas of the city. So IT IT was very cleared to us that we were winning. And I think that made a worth wild guys.

What is your major any major lessons learn that you brought .

home the things, reinforced the whole intelligence peace. If you know, from mock issue, I was a Young loop tenant, so I didn't have a lot of access to the overall intelligence systems. But I learned in remedy, you really got a trace like you were talking about.

You got ta trace that intel report all the way back to its source to verify and validate and give IT fidelity. Been very careful on that targeting you time and again. We would hit friendly houses for various reasons in that a tragedy that I often had to deal with the the ramifications of that um so that aspect of the interactive how would .

you do with the reference of had the wrong target house talk through? Just people .

understand yeah .

and a lot of people, when they think about the americans going in, they think of this a beast that just doesn't care about the civilian populous, doesn't care about collateral damage. And I was trying to explain the effort that we went through to secure that was literally the mission was to secure the civilian and make sure that they were safe. So guys got hit a wrong building.

hit the wrong house. Yeah, tragically, we, I think we did a Better job of this than most armies in history like you are losing to. And I think arberg ade did a very good job at this.

But war is war, and we killed some civilians. We made mistakes and accidently killed some civilians in. But to our credit, we owned up to IT.

So unfortunately, as the deputy brigade commander, IT often felling me to be the face that had to go down to interface with these families and say, we made a mistake. I, I will never forget one husband that I had to go apologize. We killed a snipper, killed his wife just because he happened to look up over wall at night.

And I didn't, couldn't identify was a female, but they they took the shot and killed his wife and he was just looking up over the wall that something going on her neighbor. Od, so again, very difficult to have to go down and face that that husband, that father and say, I am sorry, there's my my apologies is no way address the situation. But we had to deal with that. We had to show that we were sincere and IT was a very difficult, difficult thing to do. But we did that.

And then the the building of relationships with the local populist, with the shake, bazza shakes a tar that you mentioned. And then in each one of these neighborhoods, the batting commanders and the company commanders are out there shaking hands and they have to make sure that they're doing everything to .

protect the populous as well. Yeah, same same thing. And that was you did a great jobs set in the tone, but IT was a constant effort to make sure IT was not just getting to the battery commander has to get down to the lowest ranking sergeant that he's executing in the right way because it's so easy in that environment when you're losing guys to just go in and say, you know, screw all, we're just gonna ill, a mall, I don't care what if i've make them mad, but you're got to fail to make sure they understand you're affecting the battle negatively.

When you do that know, you've got to understand why and whether you like IT or not, you've got to you've got to do things away that you will be conducive to this counter insurance y effort. So that took a lot of across five battis again to make sure that was being done right to address issues. And I can't emphasize enough how important the tribes were, because IT doesn't matter how many times I would show up with some sort of payment or some sort of apology, what they would do is turned to their tribal leaders, and culturally and literally, and their tribal leaders would say, now these I trust these americans, they're trying to do the right thing his apologies release cere, you need to accept that and so that that tribal aspect was with the glue that held our account insurance cy effort together. I can't over .

emptied that enough um and again, the leadership was just set from the top and everyone just got on board with us how it's gotta be you wrap up that deployment. Come home. How's the transition come in home?

Yeah that was a real tough one. I mean, moga issue was again IT was my first time. I was I was Young, but I was one eighteen hour fight.

Remedy was nine months of IT. In a lot of ways, remote was was tougher because I lost so many guys, and I was just a continual process very similar to moga issue. I lost half of the guys and girls that that I had that worked for me.

And, you know, just to go back to the office and just start seeing empty chairs. And, you know, there was one chair that we finally threw in the duster, because three people in a world that occupied to get killed in space about six weeks. So probably a tougher fight for me personally then.

Then the issue was, you know, one of those things where I went home and leave. I was glad to be home. I was glad to be with my family, but I just couldn't stand thought of of the unit be and over there in that fight without me.

And so I was very anxious to get back. So a transition. And again, it's one of those things where you can't really articulate that. You can't really describe that to your family back in georgia where where you go home to you know to go from one extreme to another um so that was a bit of a tough transition, but I went from there to so come and and tried to sink my teeth into that assignment .

and was your job when you ve got to so come. H.

I started that work in a place called the interagency task force. So springing board off pazon a spring water off. A lot of the different things i've done.

We were taken a kind of strategic level approach to to the counter insurgency, trying to focus on a lot of the insurgent networks coming from syria, the foreign fighters coming from syria into iraq. And again, I think you probably have a similar perspective. I mean, those foreign fighters are the ones that there's only one solution for them.

There's no counter insurgency going on with them that's harden and alka, which later became icy. So I got a lot of, you know, good experience doing that. I got out of that position.

I get sent up to the agency for a year. So I work at C A. I was still in the military, but I worked in A C. I, in agency task force, and again, get a lot of incredible insight into how .

that orange zone works and then what comes .

up for that. Then I I did my year at the agency, which included working down the national security council, the White house. So mean, pretty incredible experience. One of our bitti commanders from one one A D had become the iraq desk officer on the national security council, the White house.

And so I would go work with him sometimes at night, kind of free lancing, but pretty incredible experience for him to be asking me for input. He's typing. And i'm asking, what are you type in there? Because this is a point paper going to the president tomorrow.

So that was for me that that was pretty amazing experience. But I went from there, went back to so come after my year of the agency, and then volunteered to go to afghanistan. I'd not been to afghanistan yet. I've done four tours in iraq and the other experience before that, but had not been to afghanistan's. So I wanted to get in that fight and solo, I volunteered to go over with the special Operations command over there.

And I was that, too, like, again, IT was.

at the policy level, genome mcroy stal taken over. We were trying to put, we were trying to put a counterinsurgency effort into place. We were focused I was run in a program called village stability Operations which was which was focused on securing villages and turn on the tide village by village and leverage an afghan n culture to build local militias and got to work with a PHD names seth Jones um and so he and I were were the directors and he was pretty, pretty ironic because i'm arranged regiment guy.

But this is a special forces oriented program and I would have to go down the special forces groups and trying to convince them to get back in the villages. And you do there, there are thing, engage in the villagers and build in the strike forces. And I just wanted to go hit targets.

And like, guys, this is the ranger telling you that you provide to do that, that special forcest thing. So anyway, was kind of funny, but did that for about a year. And then I got offered command of the at the afghan commander base.

Can't more head outside of of couple. I was basically the mayor, but I was in commander. The base. The S, F.

Guys and a variety of different units were in their training afghan commander batteries, and they were training these commander batteries to be like rangers. And so I really enjoyed that. There was a great to all do that for about six months.

And what was your assessment strategically of the more effort that was on in in afghanistan this time and in my view.

much more difficult for variety reasons, afghanistan and and have near the educational level or infrastructure that iraq. Um you know you're dealing with the with the population in a culture um that was not as conducive to some of the things that we were trying to do, at least with the iraqis, we could pretty rapidly build an army.

We could pretty rapidly build you know a municipal, a mayor and officers that could run a city that wasn't the case in afghanistan in my experience. IT was IT was really dealing with really backwards, uneducated culture. Not that the people weren't good, but they just didn't have the education.

You couldn't build a city administration out of the people they were. You go hers and all these types things. So very difficult. And again, I saw the senior leadership just did not grass what needed to be done, what they held, dogg matic ally, with this idea they could build a government in couple and that the government would be able to have municipal branches and execute down at the city in the lower level and just wasn't going to happen.

And what we focused on, as you gotto build these local militias, he gotto build these local tribes and let them run the area. And I just very frustrating to see people to senior level, not grass, really what we were trying to do there, I mean, we were we trying to build a very viable country or will be trying to make a place that was not going to facility to another alcoa threat. And I had some time again, people lose sight. What we were trying to do.

yeah. I always talk about the fact that it's very difficult to impose things on people, even in the military. I always tried to not impose my plan on the team. I tried to not impose things even with my kids. I try not to impose like this is the way it's going to be right and for some reason.

And this is what made me realize IT in iraq, we were we had these these officers skim the, the, the iraqi officers that we're skim ming, the pay from the listed guys. And some people were freak out, going to stop this. We got to have these guys arrested like IT was football.

And um I talk to the enlisted guys, finding my interpreter has like really good interpreter that were from iraq, from Jordan, so they knew what was happening. And you know SAT down like this feedback from the soldiers, the iraqi soldiers and the iraqi soldiers were like, of course, the boss got to take a cut that he's the boss. When i'm boss, i'm going to take my cut, right? And what I realized is in some cases, well, in in some cases like that, a very specific case of we are trying to impose our culture and our values on these people.

That's like you can do that. You can oh, maybe if you spend generations, you can, but you can make that happen if you spend literally generations letting people understand the way you Operate and seeing the advantages of IT. But if you think you're just going to impose a new way of living now on these people, it's not gonna.

And like you said, what can we get done? what? how? How can we sort of guide their culture? They are existing culture in a way that's cohesive or at least not obstructive to the way that we want to live.

So you guys live the way you guys live, that's okay. Are going to live on our way. Just you don't bother us. We won't bother you.

Are we good? Can we be copah tic? Instead of you need IT, we are going to pose our way of life and our values, our culture on you doesn't work.

absolutely. And I get just to emphases or reemphasize that point time and again, you would have like a list of ten things that you are Mandates to do, right? I'm just been relatively, but I would always have to say that to parts of the military, but usually to the other parts of the U.

S. government. You know, how about we achieve two of those? Would that be nice to achieve to or will lose, not achieve any? And if you look at afghanistan now, women, women back being impressed, you know, you just go through the whole social scale, and we have achieved none of them.

And and again, that was my point of them, is how about we just achieve achieve a couple because we can achieve a couple and then don't let's not worry about maybe rights for certain groups this year. And if we win five years, ten years down the road, we can start working on that. But right now, you're just going to sink the whole ship, and that's what they do. They think the whole ship.

So you end up with that, a coalition basie commander of the camp. More head. You do that. What comes after .

that came back to to the U. S. Who was time retired. So I retired, took a job in in with third army in south CarOlina to get my family set. I had talking to my oldest daughter um you know SHE SHE was going into her soft more year uh in high school and I and he told me he had moved twelve times and I didn't realize that I didn't hadn't kept track of IT.

So I thought, yeah, it's time to prioritize that had a little bit so I got got them stabilizing a place, got her in in the high school so he could start and be stable and then I went back to afghanistan. I was a contractor so I need to started being an encounter and surrender. Y advisor, again, can kind of ironic with a ranged of regiment background, but I was a counter insurgency visor at the, at the general mcmaster al, the four start level.

And that was another fantastic job, was a job where we could talk strategic stuff, we could talk geopolitics, encounter and certain cy and effect policy, but then the next day you could be down with an infinite patroon patrol in the mountains and getting the firefights. So that really was one of the favorite jobs i've ever head, because we advisers and observers, and our job was to write reports from the ground if units were executing the policies they were supposed to and how effective they were, find the good and the bad. So again, and allowed me to be done with an infinite patti e in a firefight. And then couple days later at helicopter, upped carbon and build brief, the commanding general.

So was a great up.

How long did you do that for to death? About two years.

Were you there the whole time for for when the Crystal was in charge? At no.

actually, by the time I took that job, that something that he put into place by the time I took that job, IT was the next h four star was gentle. John Ellen, who had come in the remote, is a one star. So I knew him from that.

Okay, so you get done with that job.

What's next? So then I get to another opportunity, will work for the agency. So I was I I have an air background. So I known guys, some guys in the ranger regiment connection got me hired there. So I got to go as a contractor working over there in afghanistan. I ran some of the air Operations at a couple, and then I got to go to one of the ford bases down in coast, and I got to run that from their perspective. So I wasn't Carrying a rifle in one of the strike teams, but I was as closely you can be in and then got heavily .

help and control their assets and what not?

Yeah, I had I had helicopters, and I had drones that for me. And so in I, S. R.

platforms. And so I helped run all those Operations, and I did everything except fly or turn ranches. And then actually I had instructor pilots that worked for me.

So I actually did get like six hours from a helicopter. That was, well, that was a lot of fun too, but got addicted to her in afghanistan. Yeah, yeah, on post.

that's pretty legit. You barely knew how to fly and you ve got combat time into in the sea.

I guess technically I did. That would just fine around the air field. And all of that I got some time flying down there. And then I got addicted to using drones. So actually got to, do you get more, more, more b da with drones that I had in my entire career put together before that? So that was really satisfying.

Just clean, hot drones to take out targets.

I hate some drones to work for me. So I just started the whole hunting process. I mean, I had drawn Operators that would fly, but I got to run that.

And we would just sometimes we would pick a guy up in the morning as he started going to work and he didn't look right. The next single, we got a hope conboy taliban, and we would bring in health fires and crush him IT was just IT was really satisfying. I had some a patches that worked at support for me. So we got to use that, that set. But again, to have a lot of effects using our our drones to pick up up scanners.

Yeah no familiar those. yes. How long was the rotations that you would do?

We don't like sixty to ninety days. And IT was really a good lifestyle, you know the agency as a real good lifestyle. And a lot of times it's for a good reason. But so we would do sixty to ninety days, then rotate at home for a couple month, then rotate back.

How many years did you do that for?

I did that for about four years. Yes.

check. And then what was after that?

I got out of that seventeen, and I was home .

for a while.

I know your, yes, he then seventeen, home for a while, started some training. I arted a training company, doing tactical shooting and some other things. I get picked up by an air of fifteen company radical defense, doing a and suppressors, trying to sell cruise of weapons, suppresses to the military.

I started teaching college. I teach liberty university. I teach american history and military history, liberty.

I still do that. Teach about six different courses. So start writing the book.

How many, how? How long does IT take? The teacher course is IT .

like a prerecorded. thanks. Yeah it's it's mainly prerecorded. It's we work of a website, soa. I once you build the course, it's a lot of effort to build IT and record the videos and do all that stuff. But after that it's.

you just got a great papers. What are the six courses?

Evolution, military, darron, military logistics. I teach U. S. military.

Or I teach military history from twenty five hundred to the present. I teach another variant of U. S. Military history.

And then I teach a variant of european history and and I teach american civil war not all the same time. Yeah ah those are that's my portfolio, guess civil war, war between the states. That's my favorite .

thing .

to teach you.

Been to getting's breakup bunch at times.

So my three daughters, whatever they graduate high school, the obligatory trip that they get is I take them to the battle fields where their ancestors fought, and they get to walk where their ancestors walk and gets Better as one of the key places we go. Yeah, they are ancestor, confederate company commander captured the town etty's burg. So who was IT Johnson cousins with the twelve George a regiment, and on the first day get his bird. When the yankees retrieved out of through getty birth, his unit pushed him out, spread ad and capture the town.

Looking into that a little bit more, we go there a couple times a year with my company, national long front. You got to come up to that sometime. I'd love yeah you don't enjoy IT and it's awesome incident. You're working um you started at some point you got engaged win when russia invaded ukraine.

I'm back doing my various jobs, haven't haven't fun in south CarOlina and wasn't really paying attention. Ukraine when I was in afghanistan, we'd actually had guys rotate down from ukraine. And again, I mean, I was aware of IT in general, but I couldn't tell you, I couldn't have told you the time who the president was. And I said that this war kicks off. And I started paying a little of attention when the news was talking about IT. Because, remember, the build up was almost a year, but really didn't like that, really didn't pay attention till the war kicked off and then I got real interested um and one of the interesting other parts that is my undergrad degree in history from the city ital the the focuses on the eastern front war war two and IT turns out most of that fought ukraine so get real interested but the word out to the range regiment network out I knew there was a bunch of volunteers going over um you know gos and other volunteers like put the word out of every season opportunity i'd be in and about two days later I got a call that they want .

to be to come over and take a position how that go yeah again.

another one of these ones in a lifetime experiences. I literally got the call on saturday. That news, max needed a security guy and a team leader for a correspondence was over there.

And by this time now, the russians have cave surrounded on three sides. It's said the wars only about two weeks old. And this news, max team was inside cheve.

And the the guy do in the job needed to come out and do something else. You had another commitments. They need a replacement. And I got that call on saturday morning, if i'd be interested, couple more phone calls, got hired. And I was literally on a plane like five thirty the morning on monday, so packed my stuff, got all my gear together, flew up to new york to news max. They said, OK, we're going to put on a plane tonight that means you're get into key prior like wednesay morning and then you're going to be on by six and I said, what what mean going to be on said, no, you're the nighttime correspondent and so that .

was a good from security dude, the nighttime .

from the log guy and security guy to be in the nighttime correspondent. So I was actually pretty excited about that because I I do some public speaking, and I think I I can do this, you know. So, um I was prety excited, but I got over there.

Mean, another getting my rim former congress in in new york. We I flew over there together and then we split right before the border. Again, kind of something out of a movie.

We flew into romania. This is again, we're just about a days notice flu in romania. And that's where I split from amy at another role.

I jumped in a taxi, took a three hour taxi right to the border, tried to cross the border that night. They didn't work. They said, come back the next morning.

I've got through the next morning and I met my contact, which was a ukrainian, a guy with a runner car on the other side of the border, and he hand me the keys and said, you should drive and because I can't drive, so I jumped in in the S. U. V.

And we had to find our way, drive all the way across southern ukraine. There was one road left in the key that had been cut by the russians. There was actually some bypassed russian units that we had to drive right by.

But we found that road there was very little gas. And so by the time we get over there, we write a gas. unfortunate. We found a guys so in black market out of the back of the truck right outside.

And how are you feeling when you roll in into you through last open road? yeah. Because so so this is the russians are still advancing at this point. Well, they had tied.

The time turned. I mean, I mean, by no means to were the ukrainians winning at this point, but IT was siege and IT was static. IT was static.

So at least where I was there was not a lot of advance going on at this point. And I was in touch with the guy that I was replacing. He's a former ranger, actually had a former ranger from a company, three and five chuck holton.

So I was in touch with him. He actually came out and met me in romania. So I kind of out the debrief, and he said, and I know that sounds crazy, but you'd to have to see IT when you get up there, know the center of the city is stable.

The russians are about ten miles in three directions, but the lines are holding. And so, you know, a little bit easy, but but he assured me that he was doable. So I said, okay, we had a, we had a whole plan.

We had a bug out plan. We had safe house network established, we had vehicles, we had liason with the ukrainian military. So found this, found this highway, got up into the city and linked up downtown with a correspondent camera man in, and started, started doing Operations and start to cover in the fight.

So what can you tell us and what can you teach us about the evolution of war aid? What we're seeing this this is a this is a new type of warfare that's happening with the drones, the robots. Like it's it's a different scenario, also like very brutal.

Um what can you what do we need to learn about what's happening in ukraine? I and I and bit you've spent what years now in ukraine, various different things. So the lessons, what do we need to know? What are the Young military people need to know about what's happening ukraine? What we learn from them.

Well, I think the first thing people should understand the context, and especially for the older guys like me, who've done twenty years, thirty years of orn terrorism and insurgency, this is like reward to. This is like the battle, the bulge. This is tank inventory, artillery attacks, attack helicopters, fixed wing fighter strikes.

I mean, that you're on the receiving end of, I would never have vision that i've been a war like that outnumbered and all the weight of a conventional army, you know, against you. I never thought i'd be on the receiving end of enemy navy. Never thought I been to receiving an enemy air force.

And so that's the first thing to realize. You are in a conventional fight, just like you have imagined from any movie on what word do. That's what you're in that you know, we often say over there in comment that it's like we war one with drones.

They don't have they're not as neither side the ukraine or the russians are dynamic enough to use tanks in like a blitz creek fashion like we used in desert orm of the germs used. So it's more, more of a slow moving, static war like war, war one with drones. So you've got all that high tech sensor array and you've got drones. And it's not a matter of are you onna be detected on move minutes. It's when you're going to be detected and then how the enemies is going to react and how you're going to react so you will be detected.

Um I spent a lot of time at the front, almost all that time, even up to about twenty lumbers behind the front you know under the observation of the russian intelligence surveilLance, reconnaissance platforms, they are fixing platforms like the Peter orion, their versions that the russians can see you and it's just a matter of are they are going to be to react that the good news is they're very slow at reacting. You just don't want to be in when they have something in position that day because then it's going to be a bad day. They will do.

They will do counter fiers, just like we were taught way back when, and they're gna be able to see you. So that's what I think people need to look at is not i'm going to be able to stiffness li infiltrate without being detected. You will be detected.

They're very smart, especially defensive mode. They do some really fascinating things and they build their defenses down there with technology. The russians do so you will be detected.

It's gonna how you're going to react to that. That's that's one of the first things. The second thing is um it's all about combined arms warfare.

And the Better u at combined arms warfare, you are more successful. You're gone to be in and i'm a huge fan of the ukrainians and I think their soldiers are excEllent. But one of the things they just don't grasp, because their foundations of soviet style military is what what combined arms means.

And they tend to think in the russians, definitely. This is how they fight as if tanks and inventor toiler together on the battle field. That's combined arms.

It's not you. I know that they've all got to work together. They they have to work off the same shooting music and it's all got to be synchronized. And if you do that, if you have a combined arms force, you can be successful. But you got to go back to my world war two statements is you're gonna a lot of casualties even when you're successful.

One of the things that I um was surprised that and but this is because my lack of understanding happen on the ground there. But I was very surprised that the ukrainians engaged in this type of conventional war and didn't go more insurgent warfare and gorilla warfare out of the gate. Is that because the russian was just too big and would push too fast to make that effective?

Well, so there's a couple parts to that one. Yeah, the war moved a lot faster. And one of the things I can explain, and a lot of people can explain, is when you talk to ukrainians, most of them will tell you we just didn't think they we're common.

And I talk to people in villages have been overrun, and they didn't take IT serious until tanks were coming in the north of the village, and then they try to get their current flea. And IT was too late. So I don't I don't understand that mindset, but many of them say we just didn't think IT was going to happen.

The war was actually going to come. The second thing is, IT did move a little bit too quit form. But the third pieces they are doing that they do have a party in tradition and execute that over there.

There is organized, and I would come spontaneous partisan groups, but there is there is an extensive behind the lines efforts are effort going on an assembly c effort on the part of the ukrainians, and they're very good at IT. There is also an asymmetric effort on the part of the russians and and they're good at IT too. But with the wartime conditions, ukrainians have in in many ways got in their areas locked down so they can find they're good to counter intelligence. They get some good counter intelligence efforts of workers, so they're able to root out a lot of the russians. But there is a robust partisan effort going on in the occupied ies.

What your assessment of like the casualty levels, because that's one thing that neither side will talk about. We know I ve red in the hundreds of thousands killed.

Yeah so and and I tell the ukrainians that deal with this. So i'm not not afraid to say that now from an information perspective. And then they've got a job to do.

Their job is to convince the west that they can win and so they should be supported. I get that, but they are are putting out mainly propaganda. The casualty figures are nowhere near what they claim. And and i'll give you just a couple metrics that it'll underline that the whole invasion began with the force of about two hundred and twenty thousand russian soldiers. I think the last time I read the mystery defense casualty sheet.

this is from the ukrainean ministries.

this from the ukrainian ministry defense on claims of casualties theyve inflicted on the russians. They claim that they may have inflicted somewhere around seven hundred thousand casuals on the russians. It's it's pure fan.

It's pure fantasy y and it's fantasy to the point where there they're basically discredited. And I try to tell them that you can only put this kind of thing forward so many times till people are are going to see right through the B. S.

They claim that we've destroyed like eight thousand tanks. I'm not sure the russian and head eight thousand tanks at the beginning of the war. So you know, I obviously i've not counted every tank that's been destroyed.

But being a professional soldier, I understand what types of units are getting into a fight. And I can see certain things developing on the ground when I identify these things. I know what size unit there are, and I have walked many the battle fields and counted the vehicles destroyed.

And it's nowhere near it's a fraction of what the ukrainians claim. So I I know for a fact that the that the casualties are propaganda and overinflated. One of the things that shocks me though, is that the U.

S. Military accepts these facts. And I recently was dealing with some people on the chairman of the joint chief staff, nelly, and he was spouting some of these casual figures.

And I had a call, my contact, and say he's he's talking in complete fantasy. Where does he get this? I naively thought he had some sort of top secret, you know, pipeline and assessment. Now he was taken, ministry of defense, casey figure. So that's from the top down accepting these claims.

Now that's all sounds like i'm buston on the ukrainians you know bit again, they're got a reason that they're doing that to try to convince people to support them and stay in the fight. Um what I what I think and what i've watched and what i've counted on the battle field, I think the russians are probably up around sixty to seventy thousand K I um which is a huge number. Again, that's more than we lost in vietnam we're talking about in about just over twenty four months of fighting.

So you've lost, I think, probably around sixty five, seventy, seventy five thousand. The other tragedy of that is that ukrainians aren't far behind. They've probably lost forty five, fifty five thousand.

One of the really interesting things is in in its its brutal. I'm not saying it's acceptable, but you get ta look at how the russians are approaching in this. They're cleaning out their homeless shelters. They're cleaning out their prisons. They're cleaning out their juvenile tension halls.

They tell these people you join a unit and we're going to give you such in such rewards, the world commuter sentence or whatever is and they march those people in in the machine and fire. But to them, they're cleaning out their juvenile detention hall and their middle institutions and their prisons. The ukrainian ans are losing doctors and lawyers. I can't tell you how many platonians i've met speaking english and i'm like, what do you do in real life on the district attorney in my my state and and that guys dead in a week. So that's who they are losing is their doctors and their lawyers and the best in their brightest, and they can afford to keep doing that.

So where where is that? What your assessment where IT ends up? We got you.

Trump has come out the presidency here. He's been elected. He's already communicated. He's communicated with the ziller si, and he's communicated with people at this point, right? I'm coming to some kind of compromise that can be reached.

Well, I do. I think there's a viable peace plan. But what's not gonna happen is the ukrainians are not gonna their territory back. They'll get some back, the invasion that they mounted into ukrainian in russia and the curse region.

That's clearly just a negotiating position because if you look at the map, it's just a tiny dot on the map compared to the area the russian's occupy, but its russian soil. So strategically, it's a pretty brilliant move. So it'll be some negotiation um and they'll get some of their territory back, but they are not getting at all back, just IT depends on what they're willing to give up.

And and as far as that goes, but i'm i'm going to be very interested to see what the trump administration peace plan is. I'm in a very tertiary way in some discussion with them and given a my two cents, I think i've come up with like a ten point peace plan that could be viable. But it's it's gna involve giving up territory.

An and I think the ukrainian people are getting ready for that. They were so a high on the Victories that they achieved with. They accomplish that. They thought they could get IT back. But I just time and again, as a professional soldier header, kind of burst their buff and say, IT just isn't happening.

Last summer, I was with a unit that was up in the front trying to take some participate in the counter offensive, trying to take some of those places back. And in my view, I was with the best brigade in the army. They told me that they fashion themselves after the range regiment.

They were good guys, but they were fight and dying for hundred meters, were trying to train vehicle crews. They were getting shoot up by russian attack helicopters. So fast we couldn't get him through the whole course. So you and that's for one hundred meters. So for them to think that they are going to get twenty percent of their country back, tragically, it's not going to happen.

I think what's going to be important is how are we going to punish russia for this? You know, they're going to get the territory they are onna get, but there's going to be some cost to them beyond what they have already received. And I am really interest to see what president trumps gona do.

I think economically, they're gna suffer. I think they should suffer financially. There's a lot of russian assets tied up in the in the various banks around the world.

They're going to lose that or they should lose that. So I think there's going to be an impact, but it's going to be a harsh punishment. But unfortunately, that's not going to be a liberation of the ukrainian territory.

From a perspective of the war, this new war, if you were um in a pot oner company right now, what would you would you be trying to train your your troops on?

Yeah different. That's great question. I tell soldiers all the time, go up by a drum.

I don't care if you buy a twenty five dollar drawn from hobby lobby. Go out and buy a drone. Get used to IT.

Get start developing that skill set because drones, drone warfare, you just can't over emphasize IT. I got a lot of of guys at the front ukraine. Tell me what we can do certain things because of the drones.

That's not true. Combined arms can counter IT. But on the other side of the coin, other side of my mouth, I don't think the U.

S. Military has any concept of how important is. I see some units like we talked about taking this seriously. But a, you are gonna encounter drones and it's gonna. You're going to be detected and you're going to be attacked.

And no amount of electronics warfare that we have is going to be an encounter that because the russians are smart, they are very smart electronic work for, I would tell you, the ukrainians and russians are ahead of us because we're moving at the speeds of bureaucracy. They're moving at the speed survival. And so even on the russian side and even on the ukrainean side, they're figuring that out because their life depends on IT.

So we cannot depend on electronic defenses. And so are U. S.

Units as well at home get as familiar as you can with drones start working now on any kind of experience measure to count them? I don't care if that's a shotgun on full choke to balter a small microtron the air, whatever IT is, but start working on that. And then similarly camellias, I think I think we're going .

to get back to an era where can .

flags incredibly import, you know, every level of canoes logic can do .

from the year. Yeah, that's IT. Seems like this is A A new phase of warfare, much like, you know, the the machine gun, right? This is that much of a change. The tank like this, this is a thing.

And I know we know, for instance, the df capabilities, direction finding capabilities of the russians is like, if you key your hand set, they know where you are, you're going to be getting model or artillery in two minutes, right? So the idea that for so many years in the global war on air, you and I were just talking on the radio like no factor when you think twice about IT and and now sudden know you can do that anymore. You can't even keep you your radio anymore and now you're talking about, you know, with the with the drones to me there's thermal everywhere now yeah.

thanks for saying because I was going to spring board of that. The thermal is that one of the things, grain. And two, the russians are most effective. They have excEllent thermal systems, and they amount among their armored vehicles. And so they integrate that in the defense, but there they're very effective using thermal.

So working on your ways to camilla's and screen from and shield from thermal is another important thing in we found out over there you can just put a punch or via because eventually that he will bleed out around. So the more you can learn about thermal, there's I was actually looking at a good website last night. There's guys that test out systems on the net if I was advised the U. S. Soldier be figured out thermos, figure out counter measures that thermal and work on that .

as much as you can um do you mentioned um that you write the books so this book came out twenty twenty three yes. Uh, you how long to take you right?

Took me about four weeks to write. I've told the story so many times that flowed out putting quickly. I took me prize another two months to do research.

I told us interviewing some guys and doing some research. And then again, I just was ignored the process. I thought I would get picked up right away. I took me four years to get IT published. Ah association, the U.

S army, I want up the convention, and I saw they had north section, and finally they picked IT up, and they can act as my agent that get published by a bloomsbury aspire y over england. But took me four years. That turned down a lot of times.

That's the way the publishing world works um and what about right now, what are you up to? What are your latest .

and Grace still a try to sell cruiser weapons .

suppresses to the military.

Where do the radical defense out of a houston, texas and then we will make them for crucial weapon belt fed machine guns. I'm a huge proponent of that. Its life changing and IT reduces that thermal signatures on big on, i'm big on that again, teaching IT liberty.

And I will probably, I was waited on the election, you know, thank god. And so i'm gna see now what happens with ukraine, but I want to, I want to to wait in the election til I went back. But i've got some business things that I want to go back to my unit in ukraine. So i'm shooting to do that here after the first of the year, but my wife's done with once in a lifetime experienced. So it'll be a short, short trip, no more six months to points.

awesome. Does that, that get us up .

to speed?

That's warm IT. Currently it's right. And so where can people find you? You you're on twitter. Experts don't go on there very much.

Yeah, facebook is my, is my man in facebook. I've got to am on there. I am on instagram. I am on x um i'm on newsmax occasionally I still do some contributions for newsmax. When I started serving in the unit, I had to become A A military contributor rather than a journalist because there is a hole in either convention thing but ah so I do some military contributions for news max on occasion and when i'm over there, I do so yeah facebook is my main thing.

And by the way, there's a ready first parade remedy reunion that is being planned for january twenty twenty sex. So if you were with us over there, if you were soldiers and sailor, airman or marine, that was with the ready first of check out the ready first parade remedy reunion. It's going to be in january twenty six.

It's on facebook. Yeah, I look, ford, so get on there and followed on facebook and look for the messages Linda mic foreland and and general make foreland are spearheading that. And it'll be the twenty year.

It'll be the twenty year mark, so try and get there if you can. Uh, echo Charles, you get any questions and not actually just kind of wind. Do you have fly drones like because you you are you say one of your jobs with drones, right? Do you refer the little drones now?

Yeah, yes. So I when I was back in afghanistan at coast, I flew out of the microphones. G, I found him.

So, yeah. And may vics, I fly out of mavicks now. So yeah, I still try keep that .

skill going. No, what does IT drink? I thought you're going .

to ask some kind .

of predator question because we're talking in thermal, the moving action mode. thanks.

Tele, Charles, you good at just the germany. Any closing thoughts this time?

No, I just great to see. Great to meet you at o, very honored to be here and glad to tell the story, not just to honor the guys, but you know, talk about some of the themes that we talked about and so just hope, hope, hope people can get some .

stuff out of IT again, again, again. We've been since two thousand and six ince, I ve went home and and to meet up if you get and seek ah just awesome thanks for sharing all your lessons alone you get so many in thank your service to sacrifice so many different battles, so many different wars um and and for passing your lessons on again you pass lessons on what you guys learned in mog issue that that LED me and my generation of special Operations to to move forward and thank you your leadership and thank your support in the battle of mody and for everything else that you've continue to do and and for supporting the war fighters around the world today and especially those war fighters that you support in ukraine. Appreciate everything .

are thank you. And with that.

the tenant cornal gym lector, has left the building. Obviously, he's been a busy man for many years and staying strong, saying in the .

game for .

decades got on that range or program. You get that mentality that you're going to do what you've got to do IT last a lifetime means you working out, means you stay in healthy. Also, engineer fuel, clean fuel.

I recommend the fuel. By the way, you were starving today. We are not. We had no mulk in the office. You.

you you look for we had .

a bag of like mix nuts in, yeah yeah I saw you proud for IT was gone. And so then you found a jar of peut butter and he started eating peanut butter. I want because we took a breather yeah and I came back.

And here, the home broom smell like peanut butter. I have you smart IT on your upper left or something that is. But listen, that's my fault. My fault. Because if there would have been some milk, no, no factor, literally no factor whatsoever.

Thirty grams of protein, crack IT open, chocolate, vanilla, banana just cracked open and you're good to go and you're full you don't know ourself for you feel like to have a mok you think your whole body goes thank you. So jog a field dog ARM go get yourself some milk protein, get yourself some hydrate shoes off some some go. I'm on two girls right now three you're on three yek rough night sleep and last night yeah, long story but yeah, good, we're here.

Good, we are here. Check out. No, say this. Get the joint warfare and get this all these things is or how we can just continue to get after IT, you know, roll the other day, right? Okay, good.

But if you're not on that doing warfare, we're not that perl. I don't know what happens to you. Yeah, get on IT.

Stay on IT. That's what are you can also check this stuff out, a wall mart, get that free work out. My daughter the other day, some of her friends ran a yeah, hana, hana, yeah.

Like, great thing. He trained for like five hours on halloween. And so then her and her friends, we're like, oh, you know where we want to go out? Club, yeah yeah.

And SHE, they had up, they had joke of your preview out before roll out. They were the up. And you know why I know that? Because I went out, I roll out that.

oh, where would you go?

We went to. The holding company in ocean bed beach, california, the holding company otherwise known as T. H.

C. OK, we went there. We went to pack chores. Okay, now, like bar club stopping ground back when everyone, when all the boys lived in oby, we'd rolled the pack chores get after IT. But here's the funny thing.

All those, like I was out with hanna and a bunch of her friends and no one was drinking, but they, but a bunch of them took the work that we work out and they were like this. This is insane. You could see how people get addicted that time.

yes. Yeah you but no, but good, right? No one's drinking, just out there drinking water and tweak out on jaco pre workout. Yeah mean, it's not like it's not like super loader with caffeine. And no, no, it's like two hundred milligrams.

Yeah so if you drink two cups of coffee and you trust me, you know, you just can do work in the old school like with the toxic free. There is one called speed stack with a federation in IT. And there was this one called jack.

He was called jack. But instead of A E, D, there's a three one member that was the original, yeah, yeah. hi.

My first one was a speeds deck. And then jack, and have you tried the c of burner? O, so burner. So we we made, we made a product in the past that was called greek fire. Yes, so fat burn or type thing.

And we when we switch everything over the joke of you, we stop making IT, even though was a pretty good, pretty like people like that. Well, one of the people like IT was crispy and he was like, dude, like what happened to that? I use that.

yes. And I said, Brown, we can make IT. So we've made IT. So we made IT of the new fis called jacko burner. But IT, i'm taking IT.

It's pretty far is IT like an Opera though like they're cafe yeah the cafe in IT there's caffeine in IT want to say it's like, you know hundred thousand grams or something like that but you can feel like the warmth yeah you can feel your temperature rise and IT it's good. You know when uh, Jason garner turned me onto this is just like waking up in the morning and taking a one, two with those you like. So anyways, you can get all the stuff.

Jock of your dark at walmart. wow. Videant shop. G, N, C, military commanders, a fees. And for that stores, the maryland wake from a shop, ride A, G, B, down and take off.

Man, you should see what they build in H, B, into a, you got a wall of joke for is awesome. Thanks everyone. In texas. Mayor, same thing. In the midwest, go, there is a wall.

Pilots, same thing with wegen pilots, haris t or lifetime fitness, lifetime fitting, one of my body, send me a picture, lifetime fit to see other day. Big pile mock. Um so they go shield s small dreams everywhere.

Judice, cross fit. Email, J F sales, a jock of dotcom, get some. Also, we should be turning digital, by the way, or the U.

S. A 点 com。 You can get your coding, you can get hunt gear, you can get a workout, you can get jeans, you can get boots.

And all this one hundred percent made amErica grown in america. Everything's from america. So all this fighting that we have to do around the world, hopefully we don't have to do IT.

One of the best ways that you don't have to do is you just build economic power. So go to origin U. S.

A dot com and just invest in security of this country by getting a pair of freak american made blue jeans. Go get some true. But also, jack has a story called jacko store.

This is where you can represent this in edom. Why around that? You representing today always?

Yes, we got some shots on there. That's the main thing that who is their hats on there? A lot of stuff.

So on 点 com is the shirt lucky？ That's a new design every month of subscription scenario designs little bit Better, but still representative of the path. Just me.

Yes, everything just was just good deal. Also, you need stake. So prime beef dot com and colorado craft beef dom, you can get technology.

M, do you always have time to cook a stake? The answers, no. So we got you covered at primary ef outcome.

You can get jerky within the jersey's delicious. It's freaking amazing. And I call our craft beef dog com. You can get beef sticks, so we got you covered.

So if you need stake for sure, if you need beef hot dogs, if you need ground beef, if you need a big prime rib, check out primo beef dot com, check out color craped beef dot com, get yourself some stake or some other kinds of meat activities. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast, make sure you subscribe the jackal underground bt com. Make sure you describe to the youtube channels the the jacka one, what is a joke podcast making things happen.

I check out the origin USA 点 com or the origin USA one， and then the joke of fuel one psychological warfare. Check that out flips like canvas dot com, the code to mire, making call stuff to hang on your wall books. Obviously, the book that we were reviewed last couple poncas with my shield by James lector, check that out.

And then over in a bunch of books about leadership, built strategy, about tactics, about washing machines and sacrifice. That's final spend, by the way, about kids where the world kit one, two, three, four and five, we have a movie coming directed by mic g storing. Chris prat also featured echo Charles do you're featured and featured this, so also featured hanna willink and willink in there.

So I think he may or may not say something in the movie speaking roles I did. So hopefully her shot of the title doesn't get edit IT down. Also, we train one co.

What yours is a camel. You seem like a camel. No, you seem like a camel.

no. Cause like you're known for other stuff, the bone you appear as other thing. Well, we're in IT.

No, with you. What do you considered them? Are you more? That's what you're known for acting.

Check making the dragons about face extreme moderation economist leering also asche on front. We saw problems through leadership. Uh, our next monster is in sand ago, california.

A february twenty, twenty third, twenty fifth, our douse muster sold out. All of our events will sell out. The council is the next councils in june, we are doing to them back to back.

The first one's already sold out. So if you want to come to one of our events at national front, go national front dot com. Or if you need help from the leaders perspective inside your organization, we have a leading consulting cy national in front dot com. Check those out.

Also we have online training, can learn all these leadership principles that you can apply in every aspect of your business, every aspect of your life, with your your kids, with your spouse, with your neighbor, with your boss, with your peers, with your support, dance, extreme otherness dot com. Learn these leadership principles. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families.

Gold star family ties check up markedly. Mom ly, she's getting amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to america's mighty warriors dot org.

You can also check out heroes and horses dot org, where Michael fan is taking our veterans up into the back country where they can find their soul. And of course, Jimmy may, he's got an amazing organization that's really help me out. A lot of seals beyond the brotherhood dot org checked that one out.

And if you want to connect with us for jim lector, look, he's a busy guy. He's on linked in and he's on facebook a James letter. He's occasionally on twitter at light net under score jim uh, for us i'm a joke 点 com and on social media just like echoes that Charles， just be careful because there's an algorithm on there and it's a monster and IT take everything that you have and burn IT.

Thanks once again to gym letters for your service, your sacrifice, your support is under to serve with you on the battle field, and thank you for sharing your lessons learned with all of us and also thanks to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines who are on the front lines around the world right now, taking care of us, protecting our way of life. Thank you for your service. Also thanks to our police, the enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, emt, this after correction after to border patrol.

Secret service as well as all of the first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home and everyone else. There's a quote in the ten coral electors book where he quotes through, and the quote is, we must remember that one man is much the same as another and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.

You're that we're all pretty much the same, but the best are trained in the sea school. So train hard and be ready. In order to be ready, what you have to do, go out there every day and get after IT and until next time this zecha and jo out.