September 2, 2025 • 20 mins
🎙️ Welcome to the One CA Podcast
In this episode, host Brian Hancock sits down with JohnPaul LeCedre to explore the realities of military command and share actionable insights for emerging leaders.
📌 This is Part 1 of a special two-part series.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome back. This is Part 2 of Brian
Hancock's interview with Paul Lesedr.
I'd like to ask you a little bitmore about the art of command
versus the science. In your initial publication of
command priorities to your brigade, you articulated
something called the 3 + 1 principle.
Can you tell other aspiring commanders what is that?
(00:26):
One of the products of the pre command course and it was not
like a rote product. It was something that is an
expression of your personality and experience in command.
So a 3 + 1 is deliberate training.
Number 2 as presence, personal presence of leaders and #3 is
feedback which relates to mentorship and counseling.
So plus one is airborne in a training setting.
Airborne is by far the most dangerous thing we do.
(00:48):
It's the most likely thing to get somebody filled or seriously
hurt. So we want to make sure that
that is a requirement that we'reputting the sufficient amount of
assets, which is time and effortand money for that matter into
safety of Airborne. Yeah, I really love the way that
you said that. And I think when Lieutenant
General Daniels was the car, shealso kind of had that vision and
really pushed training and quality training.
(01:11):
She even wrote an article sayingthat, hey, readiness metrics are
useful, but they're not the end all be all.
If you develop a positive culture characterized by regular
good, hard training, you're recruiting and many of your
other problems just go away. I agree with that and I will say
second priority is presence. That means that you are at
(01:33):
battle assembly, you're training, you're consistent
because we create culture and organization by employing teams
and if you were not there, you are not part of the team.
Teams don't get created via e-mail.
Teams get created through personal presence and going
through adversity together. Yeah, they want to be part of
success. Exactly.
It's exciting to do that. The third thing is be back and
(01:56):
counseling. So the idea is we know in the
reserves that we can't do our monthly counseling like in a
4856. That's really not feasible.
But what we can do is we can take an interest in the careers
of people that we rate. We can let them know.
Certainly you should do it in writing when you start.
I do this, my battalion commanders and otherwise, let
them know what success and what excellence looks like.
We need to give them timely feedback, which often for us
(02:17):
means evaluations. And to get back to what you were
saying about Lieutenant General Daniels, the very famous article
written by the author who helpedto write it was her ex of
somebody who was actually civil affairs officer and former
commander of 358, by the way. Let me ask you a little bit more
about the third part of the 3 + 1.
I think that's something that a lot of organizations at some
(02:40):
risk on. I've been in the the Army about
20 years now. I think I can count on one
finger the times when I've gotten either written initial
counseling upon assuming a new duty or a timely OER.
And of course, I've never gottenquarterly counseling.
How do you manage that given thefact that there often isn't a
(03:03):
lot of incentive up and down thechain to deliver quality and I
have to say customized, not generic, but customized feedback
to the individual soldier? What I did is I took time about
minimum 30 to 45 minutes for each of those in the first
couple months of command. And I didn't in brief with them.
I didn't for those, I see your rate.
(03:23):
I don't do a 40 and 56. It's not necessary.
But what I do is I say, hey, here's my initial guidance that
I've put out to everybody. I want you to look through that
and I want to talk through that.And then because they're doing
their their counseling. So ideally with the Raiders.
But what do I mean when I say how do you have time not to?
Well, it's simply this. If what I found as a battalion
commander, as a company commander is if you clearly
(03:45):
articulate what success looks like, what excellence looks
like, they're highly likely to do those things in a way that I
don't have to then go back and correct them.
Versus if I'm not doing counseling, if I'm leaving it so
that they're just assuming what I want to do out of the ether,
then I'm going to have to spend so much time on the back end
correcting and adjusting and verbalizing everything that it's
(04:08):
frankly, it's a lot more time efficient.
Just set forth your expectationson the front end.
When I found that people, if they're given expectations, who
are majors, who are captains, who are command sergeants major,
they want to do the right thing and succeed.
And it's not simply my own experience.
I've done that. I've just been very blessed to
have commanding generals. I've had people like Major
General Jeff Ferris, Major General Tim Brennan, those
(04:30):
people who it was very clear to me what success looked like and
it was pretty great knowing that.
Yeah, you need the target you'reshooting for.
Yeah, coming out of a conversation with them, I knew
exactly what I had to do to win.And it's a pretty powering thing
to have that. And I try to pay that forward to
my commanders, not just my botany commanders, my company
commanders and Exos. This is what you got to do to
win at this position. We talked a little bit earlier
(04:52):
about readiness metrics. The environment, at least in the
Copper Three Army Reserve, has vacillated between how important
metrics are in terms of that B and all report card type style
of importance versus being another data point.
When we worked for Lieutenant General Lucky, there was a lot
(05:13):
of emphasis and of course that has to be taken in the context
of where the Army was and where Accomplifri was at that time in
his leadership. That was a essential and those
readiness metrics were sometimescompared up and down the chain
weekly. When General Daniels came in,
they remained important. But again, she said, hey, we
need to put more energy into treating that quality training
(05:36):
environment without forgetting the metrics.
So it was kind of a departure from what the climate had been
previously. What is that climate like now?
What would you say the role of metrics is both within K Pop and
within the Army Reserve? I think it's, it's a pretty good
balance. I will say it was a bit metrics
(05:58):
obsessive when I was sort of in my field grade, company command
battalion, XO time frame, early field grade and then
subsequently, as you mentioned, it switched from General
Daniels. I think her article was on
point. It was not metrics don't matter.
It was metrics can't be our reason for a living, right?
Like we have to be doing qualitytraining and metrics followed
with that. What I love about what General
(06:18):
Harder is doing is he has emphasized presence and training
so much, which is exactly what we need to do to build quality
organizations with good organizational cultures.
So why do metrics matter? Give you an example.
I want my people to be present to be and not counseling just to
check the block, but really to show an interest in investment
in the careers of the people that are going to be following
(06:40):
and replacing us in their positions and doing great
things. And as a commander, if I look at
a unit and I say that unit isn'tturning in their evaluations
timely. And then I also look at the fact
that maybe a large proportion ofthat unit is not getting paid
every 90 days, like they're non participants.
What that could tell me in concert if I look not just at
(07:01):
the snapshot, but at the trends,what's going on, who's taking
over? I can say, well, if somebody's
not getting paid, I either not coming to drill, right, because
that's how he can tell somebody's not going to drill.
And if somebody is not turning into valuations timely, which by
the way, they can indicate, it'snot an automatic determination
that it can indicate maybe somebody's not putting enough
attention and respect into the assessment of others in their
(07:23):
careers. But it can say this is maybe
where I need to focus a little bit.
Is this company commander, I'm abit overwhelmed.
Does he or she need maybe some time to go into the staff
position, maybe not be as burnout?
Or is there a fundamental structural problem with
leadership that I need to address in a more aggressive way
so it can tell me where to go? Because I'll tell you as a great
commander, 900 plus soldiers, I'm not able to go into
(07:46):
somebody's call log or e-mail log and see how much they're
emailing people or how effectively they're
communicating. I can look at trend lines and
then try to influence organizations versus I'm not
trying to get into individuals because that is the job of the
lower level commanders and really the.
NCOS absolutely. One of the big things that
battalions do, including civil affairs battalion, is we provide
(08:09):
forces to the active component when we deploy, but also to help
them train and validate for deployment.
We often go to externally evaluated culminating advance,
such as CTC rotations where we nest in ideally with the unit
that we would be deploying with to help with that final X check
(08:31):
before they are preparing to mobilize.
Let's talk about what we're learning about modern war now.
A lot of scholars are saying that in the last 20 years, war,
the way in which it's prosecuted, has changed more in
the last 20 years than has in the last 200 years.
(08:53):
It may be a little bit of an overstatement, but certainly we
have seen enormous change withinour respective military careers.
Some of the things that I see, we are now having to operate in
environments where we're under near persistent, not occasional,
but persistent enemy intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance. Once you are acquired through
(09:17):
ISR, if you are a command and control element, you have about
8 minutes before artillery or one way UAS, or more likely both
are falling on your position andusually with some degree of
accuracy. Another reality is that
signature management, how you'reemitting in the electromagnetic
(09:37):
spectrum, has become more important than physical
security, very different than how I was trained earlier in my
career. Given these great changes that
are happening, how has the CTC Enterprise itself changed to
keep pace and make sure we're training soldiers to deal with
those realities? That's a good question.
(09:59):
So the CTC rotations as many of us know who've been involved
with this have few years since switched from the the sort of
you know, peacekeeping reconstructive role to now the
kinetic role. I will say, and this is by the
way, sort of gets to our previous question about the PCCs
and just growing up not just in Combo 3 but also Combo 1, is
that many of my colleagues from active duty and then also from
(10:22):
the PCCs are commanding brigadesin the 82nd Airborne 101st,
people that are not just necessarily doing our CTC
rotations with us, but are also doing other CTC rotations across
the Army. And the bottom line is you are
not going to be relevant in Phases 2 and three in the
kinetic phase unless you're relevant in the shaping phase.
And I'll say the 4:26, their Charlie company just went
(10:43):
through a very, very successful CTC rotation a few months back
at the national training. And what made it very successful
at its core, and this is something that our Commanding
General 351 really emphasized from the Gecko was our ability
to interoperate in terms of their communications, their
satellite communications, their long range communications from
the Gecko. Because you are just a security
(11:05):
guard or maybe even less than that on the battlefield if
you're not able to get on the ground and communicate
effectively. And that doesn't happen by
showing up and talking for essentially the first time about
comms at the CTC rotation, but also getting involved with their
real time operations and partying processes and exerting
influence to become part of those processes before they get
there. And then making yourself useful,
(11:27):
which by the way, it's for me, it's never been really an
argument to make civil affairs useful.
It's pretty obvious. But the issue is a lot of our
senior commanders now at the O 6and general officer level, just
like you and me, grew up in a counterinsurgency world.
A lot of them don't understand civil affairs and kinetic
conflict. And I know that a lot of us want
(11:48):
to go back to that because it's comfortable, for lack of a
better term. But the ability to embrace the
fact that we're thinking of civil affairs and kinetic
conflict and we're able to articulate, immediately explain
why civil affairs is useful because it is.
And what I tell our BCT commanders and you know, just
had a discussion with a couple recently, if you're playing war
or if you are in war and you're operating under the assumption
(12:10):
that civilians aren't going to be on the battlefield, you are
operating in fantasy. Especially when we look at how
the world is becoming progressively more organized and
where wars are likely to occur. OK, if you're fighting a Navy
and Air Force war in Indo bacon that's one thing, but almost
anywhere else you're talking about fighting in a heavily
populated urban terrain. The National Guard of California
(12:33):
has an Urban Warfare Planners course that they run, and the
planning figure that they use isno matter what your best efforts
are, you need to plan that. At least 10% of that total
population will be there when major combat operations are
occurring. And you look at the size of a
city like Los Angeles, that is alot of people.
(12:55):
Right. It's a huge amount of people and
you have to be thinking about that in advance.
And really it's we are thinking about that for them to ensure
that they can be as efficient aspossible in dealing with that
issue so that our war fighters, I mean our our combat arms
individuals can get out there and win the fight without being
unduly affected by by the presence of that population.
(13:15):
Right on. This is a question nobody has a
good answer for, but there are alot of opinions on it.
I'd like yours. One of the big lessons that
we've learned in Ukraine is thatdrones have now surpassed
artillery is the number one killer on the battlefield.
That may be shocking to you. And that's even Russian
artillery, which is utilized under Russian doctrine, which is
(13:38):
very int artillery intensive relative to other militaries.
Even within their construct, they're achieving more kills on
systems and individuals with drones then they are with
artillery, 155, etcetera that I think they use 152, but that
(13:58):
type of attack. And I think a lot of artillery
folks who probably don't want tohear that, but that that is the
current reality and there's no sign that that's going to
change. You're looking at approximately
3001 way attack drones going back and forth across a FLOT per
day. So that's a lot, right?
(14:18):
And then they come in waves and the average wave has hundreds of
these things going. They wait for the electronic
warfare wall to go down and thenthey shoot everything back and
forth through those corridors. It's a very different kind of
battlefield and warfare. One way UAS, which are flying
between 40 and 130 kilometers per hour, coming straight at you
(14:42):
with EOIR day and night. What do we do about that?
How do we train and protect our cats and our detachments to deal
with that reality? This is prime territory for 38
golfs. I have 38 golfs, the military
governance officers who have AI expertise, who have tech
(15:05):
expertise, especially because we're we're not too far away
from the the Silicon Valley and who are qualified to talk
through this in his 38 alphas. You and I can translate that
deep expertise to something, especially at the field grade
levels that could affect. How?
We run our countermeasures to these type of things and not
just our direct kinetic countermeasures, but the way
(15:25):
that we're able to be mobile, todisperse, to decentralized, and
then also to anticipate where these issues are creating risk
and then how to both counteract,prevent risk.
So I think what we need to do ona reserve standpoint is to be
able to help me to understand how these risks are different in
a civil environment, that they can be harnessed much more
(15:46):
effectively than regular fires in a civil environment.
And then how is that different? Because I'll tell you is we've
all seen the videos we've all seen, you know, read the the
after action reports, those typeof dangers in a densely urban
environment versus rural environment highly different.
And that basically goes to the way that we're employing not
only our forces, because we knowour BCD commanders are thinking
(16:07):
about this stuff for their own defense and their own force
protection, but it's also, by the way, this has a huge ability
to affect the way that we're dealing with civilians on the
battlefield. So more to come on that.
But we do have expertise at our level, including at 358, by the
way, and 351, yeah. And I think recognizing the
complexity of the question I asked, probably we're looking at
(16:28):
a whole dot MILF BPF solution tohave to address this.
Cats are often and SIOP tacticalmiso teams are often on their
own with a minimal security element doing what they do.
So they're not going to have a lot of ability to call for fires
or other things. So equipment that they can be
fielded and trained on at their level.
(16:49):
There are precision guided firearm attachments to a
Picatinny rail system, about maybe $2000 a unit, and if you
can acquire the target, you can put 3 rounds in it in about 3
seconds very quickly. They're working on higher scale
kinetic versions of that poweredby AI and part of automated
(17:10):
defenses that are showing some promise right now in Ukraine.
But that down to that squad fireteam level, you could have one,
one person on the team who has that $2000 attachment drone gun,
right? And drone Busters, we have those
to use an electronic warfare capability, not overly
expensive, not too difficult to train.
(17:32):
That's something that a cap could roll with one of those
two. And there's probably some other
things if we got creative that we could think about other than
just telling them to increase their dispersion that would help
give them an ability to manage that thread a little bit better.
But that's that's just the reality of where we have to
operate now and work the IBC TS and the folks that we're
supporting, that's what they're dealing with.
(17:53):
Right. Exactly, exactly.
OK, good stuff. All right.
So last question for you, you alluded earlier to very
challenging positions that you have both in the military's
brigade commander and also as anattorney or I understand if I
read your bio correctly, you're a criminal prosecutor going
after organized crime. What is the secret that you're
(18:15):
able to maintain such aggressive, time consuming, high
profile position in your civilian side as well as
something similar in your military career and not end up
divorced? How do you do this?
Basically what it comes down to love of the game, right?
So I'm excited about both of thecareers that I have.
(18:40):
Obviously we've talked quite a lot about the the civil affairs
aspect. I do work as an organized crime
prosecutor. A lot of what I do involves
things related to organized drugtrafficking, cartels, that sort
of thing. It's interesting work.
It's exciting work. I get to work with a lot of
really talented federal agents and local law enforcement, but I
find what I do to be incredibly professionally satisfying.
(19:01):
On the civilian side, it's very interesting work.
As working federal prosecutor onthe front lines, I am often put
up against some of the best criminal defense attorneys.
Incredibly talented, and that means you have to be at a
really, really high level, whichis interesting.
We're not doing things in sort of a bureaucratic sense, but
more of I have to employ a lot of intellectual challenge to do
(19:22):
the job. It's exciting every day.
I get to go out and do from timeto time with federal agents
doing some operations. And I'm lucky that I get to do a
job really on the civilian side and the military side that is
wake up in the morning and I think, wow, this is really,
really fascinating. And there's a new challenge that
I have to really kind of think about and work with really
interesting people about. And I'll say this, if I didn't
(19:44):
find these jobs interesting either the military civilian
side, I'd probably find something else to do pretty
quick. Yeah, well said.
Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
I know as a senior leader, your time is very valuable, but this
type of information you providedcan help steer a lot of folks
towards success. So my personal appreciation,
thank you and I appreciate you coming on the show.
(20:07):
Likewise, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening.
If you get a chance, please likeand subscribe and rate the show
on your favorite podcast platform.
Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an
episode, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com.
I'll have the e-mail and CA Association website in the show
notes. And now, most importantly, to
(20:29):
those currently out in the field, working with a partner
nation's people or leadership toforward US relations.
Thank you all for what you're doing.
Stay tuned for more great episodes one California podcast.
Welcome back. This is Part 2 of Brian
Hancock's interview with Paul Lesedr.
I'd like to ask you a little bitmore about the art of command
versus the science. In your initial publication of
command priorities to your brigade, you articulated
something called the 3 + 1 principle.
Can you tell other aspiring commanders what is that?
(00:26):
One of the products of the pre command course and it was not
like a rote product. It was something that is an
expression of your personality and experience in command.
So a 3 + 1 is deliberate training.
Number 2 as presence, personal presence of leaders and #3 is
feedback which relates to mentorship and counseling.
So plus one is airborne in a training setting.
Airborne is by far the most dangerous thing we do.
(00:48):
It's the most likely thing to get somebody filled or seriously
hurt. So we want to make sure that
that is a requirement that we'reputting the sufficient amount of
assets, which is time and effortand money for that matter into
safety of Airborne. Yeah, I really love the way that
you said that. And I think when Lieutenant
General Daniels was the car, shealso kind of had that vision and
really pushed training and quality training.
(01:11):
She even wrote an article sayingthat, hey, readiness metrics are
useful, but they're not the end all be all.
If you develop a positive culture characterized by regular
good, hard training, you're recruiting and many of your
other problems just go away. I agree with that and I will say
second priority is presence. That means that you are at
(01:33):
battle assembly, you're training, you're consistent
because we create culture and organization by employing teams
and if you were not there, you are not part of the team.
Teams don't get created via e-mail.
Teams get created through personal presence and going
through adversity together. Yeah, they want to be part of
success. Exactly.
It's exciting to do that. The third thing is be back and
(01:56):
counseling. So the idea is we know in the
reserves that we can't do our monthly counseling like in a
4856. That's really not feasible.
But what we can do is we can take an interest in the careers
of people that we rate. We can let them know.
Certainly you should do it in writing when you start.
I do this, my battalion commanders and otherwise, let
them know what success and what excellence looks like.
We need to give them timely feedback, which often for us
(02:17):
means evaluations. And to get back to what you were
saying about Lieutenant General Daniels, the very famous article
written by the author who helpedto write it was her ex of
somebody who was actually civil affairs officer and former
commander of 358, by the way. Let me ask you a little bit more
about the third part of the 3 + 1.
I think that's something that a lot of organizations at some
(02:40):
risk on. I've been in the the Army about
20 years now. I think I can count on one
finger the times when I've gotten either written initial
counseling upon assuming a new duty or a timely OER.
And of course, I've never gottenquarterly counseling.
How do you manage that given thefact that there often isn't a
(03:03):
lot of incentive up and down thechain to deliver quality and I
have to say customized, not generic, but customized feedback
to the individual soldier? What I did is I took time about
minimum 30 to 45 minutes for each of those in the first
couple months of command. And I didn't in brief with them.
I didn't for those, I see your rate.
(03:23):
I don't do a 40 and 56. It's not necessary.
But what I do is I say, hey, here's my initial guidance that
I've put out to everybody. I want you to look through that
and I want to talk through that.And then because they're doing
their their counseling. So ideally with the Raiders.
But what do I mean when I say how do you have time not to?
Well, it's simply this. If what I found as a battalion
commander, as a company commander is if you clearly
(03:45):
articulate what success looks like, what excellence looks
like, they're highly likely to do those things in a way that I
don't have to then go back and correct them.
Versus if I'm not doing counseling, if I'm leaving it so
that they're just assuming what I want to do out of the ether,
then I'm going to have to spend so much time on the back end
correcting and adjusting and verbalizing everything that it's
(04:08):
frankly, it's a lot more time efficient.
Just set forth your expectationson the front end.
When I found that people, if they're given expectations, who
are majors, who are captains, who are command sergeants major,
they want to do the right thing and succeed.
And it's not simply my own experience.
I've done that. I've just been very blessed to
have commanding generals. I've had people like Major
General Jeff Ferris, Major General Tim Brennan, those
(04:30):
people who it was very clear to me what success looked like and
it was pretty great knowing that.
Yeah, you need the target you'reshooting for.
Yeah, coming out of a conversation with them, I knew
exactly what I had to do to win.And it's a pretty powering thing
to have that. And I try to pay that forward to
my commanders, not just my botany commanders, my company
commanders and Exos. This is what you got to do to
win at this position. We talked a little bit earlier
(04:52):
about readiness metrics. The environment, at least in the
Copper Three Army Reserve, has vacillated between how important
metrics are in terms of that B and all report card type style
of importance versus being another data point.
When we worked for Lieutenant General Lucky, there was a lot
(05:13):
of emphasis and of course that has to be taken in the context
of where the Army was and where Accomplifri was at that time in
his leadership. That was a essential and those
readiness metrics were sometimescompared up and down the chain
weekly. When General Daniels came in,
they remained important. But again, she said, hey, we
need to put more energy into treating that quality training
(05:36):
environment without forgetting the metrics.
So it was kind of a departure from what the climate had been
previously. What is that climate like now?
What would you say the role of metrics is both within K Pop and
within the Army Reserve? I think it's, it's a pretty good
balance. I will say it was a bit metrics
(05:58):
obsessive when I was sort of in my field grade, company command
battalion, XO time frame, early field grade and then
subsequently, as you mentioned, it switched from General
Daniels. I think her article was on
point. It was not metrics don't matter.
It was metrics can't be our reason for a living, right?
Like we have to be doing qualitytraining and metrics followed
with that. What I love about what General
(06:18):
Harder is doing is he has emphasized presence and training
so much, which is exactly what we need to do to build quality
organizations with good organizational cultures.
So why do metrics matter? Give you an example.
I want my people to be present to be and not counseling just to
check the block, but really to show an interest in investment
in the careers of the people that are going to be following
(06:40):
and replacing us in their positions and doing great
things. And as a commander, if I look at
a unit and I say that unit isn'tturning in their evaluations
timely. And then I also look at the fact
that maybe a large proportion ofthat unit is not getting paid
every 90 days, like they're non participants.
What that could tell me in concert if I look not just at
(07:01):
the snapshot, but at the trends,what's going on, who's taking
over? I can say, well, if somebody's
not getting paid, I either not coming to drill, right, because
that's how he can tell somebody's not going to drill.
And if somebody is not turning into valuations timely, which by
the way, they can indicate, it'snot an automatic determination
that it can indicate maybe somebody's not putting enough
attention and respect into the assessment of others in their
(07:23):
careers. But it can say this is maybe
where I need to focus a little bit.
Is this company commander, I'm abit overwhelmed.
Does he or she need maybe some time to go into the staff
position, maybe not be as burnout?
Or is there a fundamental structural problem with
leadership that I need to address in a more aggressive way
so it can tell me where to go? Because I'll tell you as a great
commander, 900 plus soldiers, I'm not able to go into
(07:46):
somebody's call log or e-mail log and see how much they're
emailing people or how effectively they're
communicating. I can look at trend lines and
then try to influence organizations versus I'm not
trying to get into individuals because that is the job of the
lower level commanders and really the.
NCOS absolutely. One of the big things that
battalions do, including civil affairs battalion, is we provide
(08:09):
forces to the active component when we deploy, but also to help
them train and validate for deployment.
We often go to externally evaluated culminating advance,
such as CTC rotations where we nest in ideally with the unit
that we would be deploying with to help with that final X check
(08:31):
before they are preparing to mobilize.
Let's talk about what we're learning about modern war now.
A lot of scholars are saying that in the last 20 years, war,
the way in which it's prosecuted, has changed more in
the last 20 years than has in the last 200 years.
(08:53):
It may be a little bit of an overstatement, but certainly we
have seen enormous change withinour respective military careers.
Some of the things that I see, we are now having to operate in
environments where we're under near persistent, not occasional,
but persistent enemy intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance. Once you are acquired through
(09:17):
ISR, if you are a command and control element, you have about
8 minutes before artillery or one way UAS, or more likely both
are falling on your position andusually with some degree of
accuracy. Another reality is that
signature management, how you'reemitting in the electromagnetic
(09:37):
spectrum, has become more important than physical
security, very different than how I was trained earlier in my
career. Given these great changes that
are happening, how has the CTC Enterprise itself changed to
keep pace and make sure we're training soldiers to deal with
those realities? That's a good question.
(09:59):
So the CTC rotations as many of us know who've been involved
with this have few years since switched from the the sort of
you know, peacekeeping reconstructive role to now the
kinetic role. I will say, and this is by the
way, sort of gets to our previous question about the PCCs
and just growing up not just in Combo 3 but also Combo 1, is
that many of my colleagues from active duty and then also from
(10:22):
the PCCs are commanding brigadesin the 82nd Airborne 101st,
people that are not just necessarily doing our CTC
rotations with us, but are also doing other CTC rotations across
the Army. And the bottom line is you are
not going to be relevant in Phases 2 and three in the
kinetic phase unless you're relevant in the shaping phase.
And I'll say the 4:26, their Charlie company just went
(10:43):
through a very, very successful CTC rotation a few months back
at the national training. And what made it very successful
at its core, and this is something that our Commanding
General 351 really emphasized from the Gecko was our ability
to interoperate in terms of their communications, their
satellite communications, their long range communications from
the Gecko. Because you are just a security
(11:05):
guard or maybe even less than that on the battlefield if
you're not able to get on the ground and communicate
effectively. And that doesn't happen by
showing up and talking for essentially the first time about
comms at the CTC rotation, but also getting involved with their
real time operations and partying processes and exerting
influence to become part of those processes before they get
there. And then making yourself useful,
(11:27):
which by the way, it's for me, it's never been really an
argument to make civil affairs useful.
It's pretty obvious. But the issue is a lot of our
senior commanders now at the O 6and general officer level, just
like you and me, grew up in a counterinsurgency world.
A lot of them don't understand civil affairs and kinetic
conflict. And I know that a lot of us want
(11:48):
to go back to that because it's comfortable, for lack of a
better term. But the ability to embrace the
fact that we're thinking of civil affairs and kinetic
conflict and we're able to articulate, immediately explain
why civil affairs is useful because it is.
And what I tell our BCT commanders and you know, just
had a discussion with a couple recently, if you're playing war
or if you are in war and you're operating under the assumption
(12:10):
that civilians aren't going to be on the battlefield, you are
operating in fantasy. Especially when we look at how
the world is becoming progressively more organized and
where wars are likely to occur. OK, if you're fighting a Navy
and Air Force war in Indo bacon that's one thing, but almost
anywhere else you're talking about fighting in a heavily
populated urban terrain. The National Guard of California
(12:33):
has an Urban Warfare Planners course that they run, and the
planning figure that they use isno matter what your best efforts
are, you need to plan that. At least 10% of that total
population will be there when major combat operations are
occurring. And you look at the size of a
city like Los Angeles, that is alot of people.
(12:55):
Right. It's a huge amount of people and
you have to be thinking about that in advance.
And really it's we are thinking about that for them to ensure
that they can be as efficient aspossible in dealing with that
issue so that our war fighters, I mean our our combat arms
individuals can get out there and win the fight without being
unduly affected by by the presence of that population.
(13:15):
Right on. This is a question nobody has a
good answer for, but there are alot of opinions on it.
I'd like yours. One of the big lessons that
we've learned in Ukraine is thatdrones have now surpassed
artillery is the number one killer on the battlefield.
That may be shocking to you. And that's even Russian
artillery, which is utilized under Russian doctrine, which is
(13:38):
very int artillery intensive relative to other militaries.
Even within their construct, they're achieving more kills on
systems and individuals with drones then they are with
artillery, 155, etcetera that I think they use 152, but that
(13:58):
type of attack. And I think a lot of artillery
folks who probably don't want tohear that, but that that is the
current reality and there's no sign that that's going to
change. You're looking at approximately
3001 way attack drones going back and forth across a FLOT per
day. So that's a lot, right?
(14:18):
And then they come in waves and the average wave has hundreds of
these things going. They wait for the electronic
warfare wall to go down and thenthey shoot everything back and
forth through those corridors. It's a very different kind of
battlefield and warfare. One way UAS, which are flying
between 40 and 130 kilometers per hour, coming straight at you
(14:42):
with EOIR day and night. What do we do about that?
How do we train and protect our cats and our detachments to deal
with that reality? This is prime territory for 38
golfs. I have 38 golfs, the military
governance officers who have AI expertise, who have tech
(15:05):
expertise, especially because we're we're not too far away
from the the Silicon Valley and who are qualified to talk
through this in his 38 alphas. You and I can translate that
deep expertise to something, especially at the field grade
levels that could affect. How?
We run our countermeasures to these type of things and not
just our direct kinetic countermeasures, but the way
(15:25):
that we're able to be mobile, todisperse, to decentralized, and
then also to anticipate where these issues are creating risk
and then how to both counteract,prevent risk.
So I think what we need to do ona reserve standpoint is to be
able to help me to understand how these risks are different in
a civil environment, that they can be harnessed much more
(15:46):
effectively than regular fires in a civil environment.
And then how is that different? Because I'll tell you is we've
all seen the videos we've all seen, you know, read the the
after action reports, those typeof dangers in a densely urban
environment versus rural environment highly different.
And that basically goes to the way that we're employing not
only our forces, because we knowour BCD commanders are thinking
(16:07):
about this stuff for their own defense and their own force
protection, but it's also, by the way, this has a huge ability
to affect the way that we're dealing with civilians on the
battlefield. So more to come on that.
But we do have expertise at our level, including at 358, by the
way, and 351, yeah. And I think recognizing the
complexity of the question I asked, probably we're looking at
(16:28):
a whole dot MILF BPF solution tohave to address this.
Cats are often and SIOP tacticalmiso teams are often on their
own with a minimal security element doing what they do.
So they're not going to have a lot of ability to call for fires
or other things. So equipment that they can be
fielded and trained on at their level.
(16:49):
There are precision guided firearm attachments to a
Picatinny rail system, about maybe $2000 a unit, and if you
can acquire the target, you can put 3 rounds in it in about 3
seconds very quickly. They're working on higher scale
kinetic versions of that poweredby AI and part of automated
(17:10):
defenses that are showing some promise right now in Ukraine.
But that down to that squad fireteam level, you could have one,
one person on the team who has that $2000 attachment drone gun,
right? And drone Busters, we have those
to use an electronic warfare capability, not overly
expensive, not too difficult to train.
(17:32):
That's something that a cap could roll with one of those
two. And there's probably some other
things if we got creative that we could think about other than
just telling them to increase their dispersion that would help
give them an ability to manage that thread a little bit better.
But that's that's just the reality of where we have to
operate now and work the IBC TS and the folks that we're
supporting, that's what they're dealing with.
(17:53):
Right. Exactly, exactly.
OK, good stuff. All right.
So last question for you, you alluded earlier to very
challenging positions that you have both in the military's
brigade commander and also as anattorney or I understand if I
read your bio correctly, you're a criminal prosecutor going
after organized crime. What is the secret that you're
(18:15):
able to maintain such aggressive, time consuming, high
profile position in your civilian side as well as
something similar in your military career and not end up
divorced? How do you do this?
Basically what it comes down to love of the game, right?
So I'm excited about both of thecareers that I have.
(18:40):
Obviously we've talked quite a lot about the the civil affairs
aspect. I do work as an organized crime
prosecutor. A lot of what I do involves
things related to organized drugtrafficking, cartels, that sort
of thing. It's interesting work.
It's exciting work. I get to work with a lot of
really talented federal agents and local law enforcement, but I
find what I do to be incredibly professionally satisfying.
(19:01):
On the civilian side, it's very interesting work.
As working federal prosecutor onthe front lines, I am often put
up against some of the best criminal defense attorneys.
Incredibly talented, and that means you have to be at a
really, really high level, whichis interesting.
We're not doing things in sort of a bureaucratic sense, but
more of I have to employ a lot of intellectual challenge to do
(19:22):
the job. It's exciting every day.
I get to go out and do from timeto time with federal agents
doing some operations. And I'm lucky that I get to do a
job really on the civilian side and the military side that is
wake up in the morning and I think, wow, this is really,
really fascinating. And there's a new challenge that
I have to really kind of think about and work with really
interesting people about. And I'll say this, if I didn't
(19:44):
find these jobs interesting either the military civilian
side, I'd probably find something else to do pretty
quick. Yeah, well said.
Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
I know as a senior leader, your time is very valuable, but this
type of information you providedcan help steer a lot of folks
towards success. So my personal appreciation,
thank you and I appreciate you coming on the show.
(20:07):
Likewise, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening.
If you get a chance, please likeand subscribe and rate the show
on your favorite podcast platform.
Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an
episode, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com.
I'll have the e-mail and CA Association website in the show
notes. And now, most importantly, to
(20:29):
those currently out in the field, working with a partner
nation's people or leadership toforward US relations.
Thank you all for what you're doing.
Stay tuned for more great episodes one California podcast.
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