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Reading to Recall

Moving from Notes to Actions

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Leaders are readers. But why read if you cannot recall 90% of what you read by next week? A good leader is carved from the challenges, trials, hardships, and enlightenment that are provided through experience. This is a variable that leaders cannot control, right? Sort of. The method for filling gaps in your knowledge base and level of experience can expanded via reading. Books, articles, or white papers provide leaders insight into the experience of others. Literature, in all forms, can help sand the edges of our experiences, give them more clarity and perspective, and allow us to incorporate those lessons into our own lives. As the retired General Mattis said, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate.”

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Urban Terrain Analysis

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What makes urban operations so challenging is in the name: urban. The physical terrain itself has been built and altered, whether coincidentally or intentionally, to create an extremely challenging environment with its own unique challenges for defenders and attackers. When most think of urban warfare at the tactical level, Battle Drill 6 comes to mind. A team of soldiers moving from room-to-room, violently clearing each in a savage contest of wills with an enemy only inches away in the cramped, dark confines of desolate buildings. In this mental scenario, solid planning takes a backseat while violence of action carries the day. This is not reflective of the reality of urban combat operations.

Soldiers learn maneuvering tactics during training at the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, Nov. 5, 2022 (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Miguel Peña)
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Parapacks over Holland

Operation Market Garden's Lessons in the Fight for Supply from the Sky

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Since the release of the hit miniseries Band of Brothers and Hollywood-classic Saving Private Ryan, the story of American paratroopers in the Second World War has become cauterized in the minds of history connoisseurs and students. The story has all the elements of a homeric epic: young, fit men strapping on a parachute and leaping from planes to land amongst the enemy. They were a live military experiment in an entirely new form of warfare. The two Hollywood productions were followed by almost two decades of literature from historians and popular authors alike analyzing and dissecting the fire and brimstone shooting matches fought by these men. But little analytics have been devoted to the factors that made these battles possible.

U.S. Army photo retrieved from U.S. Army W.T.F! moments Facebook page.
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Field Artillery – Beyond the Howizter

A #BranchSeries Piece

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The Field Artillery (FA) Branch is a great branch for junior officers to develop personally and professionally. The FA branch offers assignment diversity from the typical staff job or platoon leader position, as compared to other branches. It also offers lieutenants the ability to serve in positions that have effects at echelons above their peers. The FA branch is only growing as the U.S. Army focuses more on the importance of fires on the battlefield.

Soldiers conduct field artillery certifications at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., Dec. 8, 2021. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Beggs)
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SFAB Request for Forces Team in Theater

A View from Inside 3rd SFAB TM 3331

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No one warned us that Russia would invade Ukraine in February 2022. As a response to the ongoing effort to defend Europe against Russian aggression, Operation Assure, Deter, and Reinforce was introduced to bring to the EUCOM Theater 2 Armored Brigade Combat Teams, 1 Infantry Brigade Combat Teams, and 1st Security Forces Assistance Brigade (SFAB) Force Package comprised of twenty teams. The operational and support framework of an SFAB maneuver advisor team in a theater can serve as a strategic combat multiplier in the region.

U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Navarro, first sergeant of Ares Company, 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division receives a coin from Command Sgt. Maj. Ruslanas Gulevas, command sergeant major of the Lithuanian Armed Forces Algirdas Battalion during the closing ceremony of Exercise Iron Wolf 22 at Pabradė Training Area, Lithuania, Oct. 28, 2022. The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division is among other units assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, proudly working alongside NATO allies and regional security partners to provide combat-credible forces to V Corps, America’s forward deployed corps in Europe. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Lianne M. Hirano)

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Less Books – More Impact

2022 in Books

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Sometimes in life it all just comes together and you’re in the zone. Your schedule, your time management, your energy management or bandwidth, and all of the elements of your life are moving in a united direction toward your goal. Similar to a whole-life version of what Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously coined as Flow – these moments are special. But what about when you aren’t? What are the practices you try to sustain when you are just not in that state of total alignment. That was something I set out to answer in 2022. My current position and general time in my career brings with it a schedule and workload that required increased attention and bandwidth. Regardless of how much I wish they weren’t, my energy and attention are finite resources – more finite than I wanted to admit. With that in mind, I came out of 2021 and into this last year with the goal to minimize my focus to maximize my output. Put differently, I tried to do less, better. One of the areas that lost some of my time in this realignment was my reading. This was hard for me as someone who both loves reading but also approaches most things as if it were a competitive sport…to include how much I read. But the journey provided some important lessons that I will carry with me into future times when I return to a more balanced alignment.

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The Black Hornet as a sUAS Platform

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Drones have become more prevalent among small-unit tactics recently, specifically nano-unmanned aerial vehicles (NUAV) such as the FLIR Black Hornet. The Black Hornets, or Hornets, are intended to be a Soldier-borne sensor (SBS) for Infantry units that can be deployed faster than a Raven or Shadow and quieter than both UAVs. We used the Hornets with success during a defense training exercise and an offensive company-level live fire exercise (LFX).  There are limitations, as with any piece of equipment, but the benefits out-weighed limitations in both cases.

The Black Hornet PRS equips the non-specialist dismounted soldier with immediate covert situational awareness (SA). Game-changing EO and IR technology bridges the gap between aerial and ground-based sensors. It provides the same SA as a larger UAV and threat location capabilities of UGVs. It is xtremely light, nearly silent, and with a flight time up to 25 minutes. The combat-proven, pocket-sized Black Hornet PRS transmits live video and HD still images back to the operator. Image retrieved from flir.com.
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Hey Lieutenant!

The power of feedback and communication to accomplish the mission and not waste your soldier’s time.

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In August 2022 the Lebanese bushfire season should have been in full swing and keeping the soldiers of the United Nations Fire Brigade (UNFB) active and on their feet – but it was not. This Fire Brigade is responsible to fight fires on behalf of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). This force consists of four teams of 5 soldiers each, which assume different duties every 24 hours. To distinguish them, every duty has been assigned a colour, red, blue, green and yellow.

Service members are often called to deploy to austere, remote, and challenging locations for missions of great complexity.