#160: Is The US Army Ready? 15th Sergeant Major Of The Army Dan Dailey

Readiness is the ability to close with and destroy any enemy, anywhere, anytime. The role of the Sergeant Major of the Army is to ensure readiness. Command Sergeant Major Dan Dailey https://www.ausa.org/people/sma-ret-daniel-dailey was the 15th Sergeant Major of the Army and the youngest Soldier to ever hold the position. Today, he is the Vice President of Noncommissioned Officer and Soldier Programs at the Association of the United States Army https://www.ausa.org/. SMA Dailey joined Creator and Host Fran Racioppi to define what it really means for the United States Army to be “ready” to fight and win our nation’s wars. To do so, they went deep on each of the components of readiness, including: Manning and the impacts of the recruiting crisis the Army has endured over the past several years. Training and the importance of the Combat Training Centers and our combined exercises across the components and with our allies. Equipping for the next fight and why the current procurement processes must change if America expects to remain ahead in the innovation race. Leader Development including why softening the messaging of warfighting hurts mission focus and how the Army is closing the experience gap as the Global War on Terror generation of Soldiers retire. They also cover the important mission of the Association of the United States Army and how as the largest organization supporting our Soldiers their work only continues to grow. Watch, listen or read our conversation from the AUSA headquarters and don’t miss the rest of our AUSA series. The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by University of Health & Performance, providing our Veterans world class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/ and the Green Beret Foundation https://www.instagram.com/greenberetfoundation/ on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform https://pod.link/1558608802, read on our website https://greenberetfoundation.org/jedburghpodcast/investing-in-military-infrastructure-jumping-in-with-arkansas-senator-john-boozman, and watch the full video version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jedburghpodcast://youtu.be/LGnBfM9uKRs as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge. The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are an official program of The Green Beret Foundation https://greenberetfoundation.org/. QUOTES “Individual readiness is when a soldier themself feels capable to accomplish their mission.”“If you had one hour before your soldiers went to combat what would you train on.” “The high percentage of people who serve today come from families who have served in the past….that funnel is getting smaller and smaller.” “We have lost the value of service to our nation…is it actually a way to achieve the American dream?”"If we send everybody to college, who’s going to do those jobs?” “I think there’s a lot of young Americans out there who are fully capable to fight and win, they’re just not inspired.” “If you create a standard that nobody in America can achieve, it’s not a standard.” “This nation’s going to have an Army. America, not the Army, is going to decide how we do that.” “The only more expensive thing than fighting a war is losing one.”“Our first mission as the United States Military is to deter. Then to defeat.” “Most people look at war as armed conflict between two entities. War is a conflict of wills.” HIGHLIGHTS 0:00 Introduction4:44 Becoming SMA5:57 Readiness Defined9:55 How does the Army train at each echelon?11:49 Why become a Soldier?13:21 Can the Army bring the American Dream?19:53 Everyone can’t go to college22:11 Is recruiting college athletes the answer?25:14 Is there a reduction in standards?30:22 Changing the Army’s message34:13 Are we close to a draft?36:05 Technology & Force Modernization42:22 Is China ahead of America?48:17 Training for every threat52:48 Interoperability with Allies55:17 Loss of combat experience1:01:32 Next Generation Is Ready1:05:20 Leading AUSA1:11:01 Daily Habits The opinions presented on the The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of guests and host Fran Racioppi. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation and the Green Beret Foundation assumes no liability for their accuracy,

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Fran Racioppi?

  The United States Army defines readiness as the ability to defeat, deny, or deter hybrid, near-peer threats and meet operational demand requirements. More simply, readiness is the ability to close with and destroy any enemy, anywhere, anytime. The role of the Sergeant Major of the Army is to ensure readiness. Sergeant Major Dan Dailey was the 15th Sergeant Major of the Army, and the youngest-serving Sergeant Major of the Army in history. He was also my first Command Sergeant Major when I served as a young platoon leader in the Fighting Eagles 1-8 Infantry, 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. Sergeant Major Dailey and I broke down what it really means for the Army to be ready to fight and win our nation's wars. To do so, we went deep on each of the components of readiness.

• 0:47Fran Racioppi?

  First, we talked manning, including the reasons why and the impacts of the recruiting crisis the Army has endured over the past several years. Second, we broke down training and the importance of the combat training centers and our combined exercises across the components and with our allies. Next, we spoke about equipping for the next fight, and why the current procurement process must change if America expects to remain ahead in the innovation race. And finally, we explored leader development, including why softening the reality of warfighting hurts mission focus, and how the Army's closing the experience gap as the global war on terror generation retires. We also covered the important mission of the Association of the United States Army, and how as the largest organization supporting our soldiers, their work only continues to grow.

• 1:31Fran Racioppi?

  Watch, listen, or read our conversation from the AUSA headquarters and don't miss the rest of our AUSA series. The Jed Burke Podcast is brought to you by University of Health and Performance, providing our veterans world-class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Follow the Jed Burke Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.

• 2:00Fran Racioppi?

  Sergeant Major Daley, welcome to the Jedberg Podcast.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Hey, I appreciate it. It's great to be on the show. It's great to see you again, too.

• 2:06Fran Racioppi?

  It's been a long time.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  It has been a long time.

• 2:08Fran Racioppi?

  1-8 infantry, the Fighting Eagles.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Fighting Eagles, Scruggs.

• 2:11Fran Racioppi?

  Those were the days.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  They were. Yeah, the early days of the war.

• 2:14Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, 2005, 2006. I think back to those days all the time. And what always comes to my mind is formidable years.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:23Fran Racioppi?

  That taught me a lot, not only as a young lieutenant, working for you and the famous or infamous Jeff Martindale.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:31Fran Racioppi?

  Who was the battalion commander at the time. But I mean, I learned so much from you guys. And I have so much in my personal life and my professional life to thank you for. And I just appreciate when I reached out to you to set this up. It was within, within minutes, the response came of like, hey, I'm in. Let's do it.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 2:46Fran Racioppi?

  So I'm super excited.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Good days, though. You know, it seemed like yesterday, we talked about this before the podcast, but it's been 20 years.

• 2:52Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Long time. Yeah.

• 2:54Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, I feel like it was yesterday. And when the times when I realize it wasn't is usually when I'm in the gym.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:04Fran Racioppi?

  It's a little, we're a little slower now.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's great to see you. We had a great team.

• 3:07Fran Racioppi?

  We had a great team. They were well-trained.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were.

• 3:10Fran Racioppi?

  And I think when I reflect on that unit and the culture and the morale and the way that they conducted themselves and operated, I think about what we're going to talk about today, which is readiness.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23Fran Racioppi?

  A unit that was ready.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  We were.

• 3:25Fran Racioppi?

  And I came in and I was a young lieutenant, fresh out of Ranger School. Colonel Martindale fired the platoon leader in front of me because he didn't have his Ranger tab. And I'm like, what just happened here?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Wait, I don't think we're supposed to say that.

• 3:37Fran Racioppi?

  I don't think we're supposed to say that either, but it's been 20 years, so I think we care now.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  The statute of limitations is off on that one, right?

• 3:43Fran Racioppi?

  He was a good guy, I'm sure. He was good. But that's what it was about. Are you prepared?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:48Fran Racioppi?

  And we think about, what does that mean today? Where's the Army today? We talk about where you've gone.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:55Fran Racioppi?

  You became the 15th Sergeant Major of the Army.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:58Fran Racioppi?

  You were the youngest Sergeant Major.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Somehow, yeah.

• 4:01Fran Racioppi?

  At 42 years old. You still look 42. I gotta tell you.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  I appreciate that. I'm not feeling 42 anymore.

• 4:08Fran Racioppi?

  But you had an opportunity to serve at every level. At every role within the mechanized infantry units, almost in every mechanized infantry unit you've served as well. And so you were able to see over a 30-year career, a massive progression of our army, of our soldiers, of our culture as an organization. And now you sit here leading NCO development and the programs that are associated with soldiers at AUSA. And first of all, I want to thank AUSA and you for hosting us here today in the DC headquarters. But it's a tall task.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, I'll tell you, I was blessed. I joined the army because I wanted to be a soldier. You know, and nobody joins the army. Well, they dream of being the starman of the army someday as a young soldier, but the reality of that is just it's far reaching. But I learned one thing along the way is when you have great leaders and you mentor, get mentored by some of the best this nation has to offer, and you listen and you observe and watch and learn, the army is a place that is a land of opportunity. For a young kid from northeastern Pennsylvania, very poor family, now grew up, just wanted to be a soldier. And then next thing you know, you're leading the most powerful army in the world.

• 5:15Fran Racioppi?

  And it happens fast.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  It happens fast, yeah.

• 5:20Fran Racioppi?

  Well, I figure there's no better person to talk about readiness with, and I want to kind of throw out some definitions. So Congress, they define readiness as the ability of military forces to fight and meet the demands of assigned divisions. The army says that readiness is the ability to defeat, deny, or deter hybrid, near-peer threats and meet operational demand requirements. And then the army says there's four pillars when we talk about readiness. Manning, training, equipping, and leader development. And I want to break all those out with you here today. But before we get there, I want to start with your definition. When you think about readiness, what does it mean to you?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Individual readiness, we'll start with that because that's most important is when a soldier themselves feel capable to be able to accomplish their mission. That's easily said, right? But when you build self-confidence down at the individual level, and that's you gotta do collective training, but when soldiers know they're ready, like we talked about in our unit, I honestly believe our soldiers knew they're ready. Now, there's a lot that goes into that. We're gonna unpack that during this podcast, but because it builds a confidence and the capability that individual soldier, which then builds the team and the squad and the platoon and the company and it just keeps going. And it takes hard work, dedication, precision. We talk about 10,000 hours to become a professional. And imagine how many hours those even those young soldiers put in before we went to Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's easy to write on paper and put on a training schedule, but it's difficult to execute as we well know.

• 6:41Fran Racioppi?

  Transitioning out of the military is about more than polishing a resume or attending a LinkedIn workshop. It's about rediscovering your purpose and forging a new path that's worthy of your service. At the University of Health and Performance, veterans are offered transformative GI Bill approved programming designed to help take them to the next level with confidence. Nestled in the heart of the Ozarks, their 800 acre all-inclusive campus features world-class training facilities, modern living spaces, and miles of trails for reflection and growth. Here, veterans find a structured, immersive environment where they can explore their strengths, develop new skills, and build a life that not only honors their past, but prepares the future.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  I remember my first day there.

• 7:23Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  And Colonel Martindale brought me in the office and he said, we're going to Iraq in five months. And I'm like, well, that's a long time. And thinking in my head. And then he went on, certainly I didn't say it, but he went on to talk about how we had no time.

• 7:38Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  And how every minute was gonna have to be spent. There couldn't be any standing around, waiting around. There couldn't be any delay. We'll do it tomorrow. And I remember we would have those times because you get to do these fun things in the infantry a lot where it's like waiting on the word in the afternoon, waiting to be told to go home. And we wouldn't sit in the hallway. We'd be outside. We'd be clearing the barracks with, you know, our hands up as.

• 8:01Fran Racioppi?

  Put some engineer tape on the ground.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:02Fran Racioppi?

  And or clear a building, Drills. Yeah, absolutely.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  You know, we talk about that all the time about how much time there is for training. And one of the things I used to do as the SMA was go out to PCC every month and talk to the new battalion commanders, brigade commanders, and their SARM majors. And the challenge was, you know, how do we get after the things we need to do to be ready? And with all the competing efforts that go on in the army, all the, all the training requirements that are not necessarily combat focused, you know, and all the things that we are told to do and direct our subordinate leaders to do. And I used to tell them, describe them like this, if you had one hour before your soldiers went to combat, what would you train on? And then all you gotta do is just back it up. If you had two hours, had three hours and four days, or five days, or six days, those are the things you're supposed to be doing in order to make your soldiers mission capable and ready to fight and win, and give them the individual courage and competence and capability to do the mission.

• 8:50Fran Racioppi?

  I'm always reminded of Special Operations Forces truths, right? We call them values, we call them truths. But number four, because when I, when I left you, that's where I went. So I got to spend the rest of my career in SF. But I will say that, nothing against a lot of the SF guys I served with, we had guys in fourth ID in 18 who were equal, if not better than some. And I shouldn't say that on a great podcast, but I'll tell you that.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  The truth is, we have phenomenal soldiers everywhere. I mean, there are really, really good soldiers throughout our army. I mean, there are some superheroes throughout the army. We see that. Now, one of the best examples is when you run the best warrior competition. One of the things I got to do when I became an ACOM and a, and the SMA, and you're getting an individual soldier that could be a food specialist, you know, or an army reserve soldier, one, that just dominated the competition. Incredible capability, tactical, tactical, and you wouldn't think that, right? Because they only train one weekend a month. But some of these soldiers that we have, it makes you want to come to work every day.

• 9:50Fran Racioppi?

  Yes. They surprise you. You gotta empower them. But, I mean, so the Special Operations Force Truth Number Four says competent SOF, let's say, units, right? Competent units can't be created after emergencies occur.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:03Fran Racioppi?

  And when we talk about readiness, Why is it so important to be proactive? And how do we as leaders look down the road? Because we've got to understand the operational environment today.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:14Fran Racioppi?

  But we've got to know where was it gonna be? And at every level, whether we're at the strategic level as the SMA, or you're at a more operational level, maybe you're at a brigadier or a corps, or a tactical level in a platoon or a company. How do you now start to think about, how do I understand what's happening today? And where my unit needs to be tomorrow?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a great question. One of the things we have done with 100% accuracy since the formation of this great organization, we call the US Army, is predicted where we're going to fight next wrong every time.

• 10:44Fran Racioppi?

  Every single day.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  That's right. And that's what makes it so hard, right? We grew up in the Army. I shouldn't say you grew up in the Army. I was happy through my career when we met. But I grew up in the Army where it was completely different focus. High intensity conflict, near peer adversaries. And then we switched to counter uncertainty, right? Which changed the entire way we train, the entire Army to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. And now we're back to a different set of readiness. Now we're back to focus on near peer capability again, right? Conventional warfare. But we can't forget the lessons we learned over 20 years of unconventional warfare. Because, like I said, where are we going to fight next? Who knows? That's a difficult with being ready. You know, a lot of the tasks cross lines. I mean, a soldier's got to know how to shoot their rifle, regardless of what combat situation they're in. But how you fight, how you organize,

• 11:30Speaker 01

  how you train and equip your men and women to fight in a high intensity conflict versus unconventional or conventional warfare? Completely different. Completely different. There's a whole set of tasks. So it starts with setting priorities from the top, right? What's the focus of the Army? What are we focusing on? What is the strategic capabilities? And how does this support the national defense strategy?

• 11:49Fran Racioppi?

  You used a really great example a couple of minutes ago when you talked about the individual soldier and individual readiness. And how you have to have great individuals because great individuals build great teams. And then I say great teams build great organizations.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:04Fran Racioppi?

  But it starts with that individual. And so Manning comes to mind. One of those first pillars when we talk about readiness and we think about the future, where we got to be, how we're going to do it. Well, we got to be staffed.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:16Fran Racioppi?

  We got to be, we got to have all of these folks who are ready to go and proficient, which we'll come to training later. You said you came into the Army, though, because you wanted to be a soldier.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Fran Racioppi?

  What did that mean to you?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  I grew up in a family that served. Grand, I mean grandfathers, both in World War II. My father in Vietnam, along with his brother. My oldest brother had served before me. None of them stayed. And they're all, honestly, an advent of war. You know, World War II, Vietnam. My brother actually did get a better chance at life. But we grew up in a household that understood service. It wasn't required. That's not the way we were taught. It wasn't, hey, you're going to join the army. But it was understood and communicated to us at a young age, a very young age, about the value of service to the country and how it can give you a good start in life. I think we lost a little bit of that in America today. And I think that's why we're having some challenges. Those conversations are happening in families that have served. And the legacy is there, right?

• 13:15Speaker 01

  The high percentage of people who serve today come from families who have served in the past. But as we diminish in those numbers, we're going to have less and less people in hometowns of America at dinner tables talking about service. I would have never been where I was today had I not had the opportunities to serve in the United States Army and be a soldier. And I probably would not have done that had I not been influenced by the influencers in my life. My father, my brother, my grandfather, my coaches, my teachers. All of them were proud to say they served, if they had. And all of them were very positive about service in the military.

• 13:48Fran Racioppi?

  Do you think we did too good of a job over the last 20-plus years? And I mean, I put it that way because you think about World War II, Korea, you know, but you really think about 9/11. For us, you know, 9/11 was that galvanizing moment. And we look back, and we'll talk later about what may be on the horizon for us as a country in terms of international terrorism and stuff and the threats that we face. But everybody had to come together. And, look, we didn't get it right 100% of the time, but by and large, our nation has done a pretty damn good job of preventing the next 9/11. And we know those were planned and there were opportunities for people to come after us, and we stopped or prevented a lot of those.

• 14:32Fran Racioppi?

  But now we look at something like recruiting, where we don't have that impetus that are pushing people to serve.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 14:40Fran Racioppi?

  Did we do too good a job?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  I thought about this long and hard. I've been in a lot of forums, especially in the last couple of years. And actually, I just got an invite the other day to talk about service, how we inspire the next generation to serve. We know we want a volunteer army. We know we need a volunteer military. We know that as a nation. But you're exactly right. There's a small aspect of in this nation of we build a warrior class. Our army has gotten so good and so efficient that there's we're kind of like a piece of society that it's understood that hey, they'll take care of it. There's enough good people there and they're so good that, you know, we don't have to broadly communicate that everybody needs to serve, right? Back in World War II, like you said, it was probably taboo if you didn't serve during that time period. I mean, it was the nation had to stop

• 15:23Speaker 01

  what it was doing. You couldn't buy a new car. You had to ration items. We haven't felt that. But what we have done has gotten so good and so proficient and trained and educated our soldiers so well that we built this warrior class. And now we tend to just go in families, you know, the next generation of the same warrior class is inspired by that previous generation. But that funnel is getting smaller and smaller, right? We need to broadly communicate outside of our sphere of influence. We do a good job of talking to ourselves.

• 15:52Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  We got to do a better job of talking to the rest of youth in America.

• 15:56Fran Racioppi?

  Well, I mean, manning recruiting is the hot topic.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:00Fran Racioppi?

  Right now, I mean.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  But you gotta have, you gotta have people to be ready, right?

• 16:03Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:04Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. And depending on who you talk to, they'll give you a different opinion of has the army met their numbers? What are the army numbers? What are the metrics that have gone behind that? And I've had the opportunity to speak with U.S. SOC and First SFC and the leaders at every level. And there's a lot of data out there. So here's the data I'm going to use.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:24Fran Racioppi?

  And I think you'll appreciate this because it only really matters coming out of the mouth of one man. And that's someone who followed you into your role as a Sergeant Major of the Army, and that's Mike Weimer, who sits in the seat right now. Here's what Sergeant Sergeant Major of the Army Mike Weimer told me last year when I talked to him. He said, "The Army is meeting its numbers, but those numbers need to be higher."

• 16:45Speaker 01

  That was creative.

• 16:47Fran Racioppi?

  What's your take on that?

• 16:48Speaker 01

  There's no doubt that the Army missed its recruiting goals, right? And we saw, and that's not the fault of any leadership today. We have phenomenal leaders leading our military. We do. We saw this back when I was a Army to the Army. We saw the advent of this occurring. And I'm not going to say it predicted. I'm not Nostradamus, right? But you felt it. You felt the hardships of recruiters when you went out and visited recruiting stations, recruiting brigades, and it was getting tougher. And that was from 2015 through 2019 as the war drew down. Now, in the height of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, actually recruiting was pretty easy. Now, the quality wasn't always there, but the numbers were, right? I have a different outlook than most people, and I'm probably going to upset some of your listeners, of what the major cause of our recruiting crisis in America was. There's a lot of factors. So I don't, I don't claim to know the one single reason.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  I'm not saying that this is, there's a lot of reasons. And every individual human being who makes a choice whether to serve or not has their own personal reasons, right? But we have lost the value of service to our nation, not just from a patriotic perspective, but is it actually a way to achieve the American dream? And what's the American dream? It's not much different from when you and I grew up or the generation previous to me. The American dream is to, you know, graduate high school or college and get a good job, buy a house, build a family, go to school, raise some kids, hopefully get some grandchildren someday, and give a little bit more to the next generation. I still believe today that every American largely believes that, right? Our job is to provide for our families, be part of this great institution we call America,

• 18:18Speaker 01

  and make it a little bit better for the next generation, right? And we've lost sight that the military service is an avenue to that dream. And why? We've told every young man and woman in America who graduates high school that the only way you can achieve that dream is how? By going to college. That's right. I'm not knocking college. I'm educated just like you. I'm an advocate, a huge advocate of education. But what are they going to college for? We're not talking to young men and women about what's good for them. We're just using one narrative. Some of those young men and women probably are not destined to go to college, right? And we're, but we're not talk, having the other conversations about industry, technical skills, right? Which we're losing in America.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  The ability to do all the skills we need to help the industrial base defend this country. Right? And we just had a meeting about that here yesterday. The workers, the hard, the skilled laborers, the welders, the pipe fitters, the plumbers, electricians. And how about military service? I just don't think we're having those conversations broadly across America. The standard in most guidance counselors today, which I believe, right? And I don't have a whole lot of facts and I've spoken to a lot of folks about it. Is when they go in and say, they say, what college are you going to go to? That's not bad. I'm not trying to, again, I'm not trying to deter people from doing that, but we're not. When I went to my guidance counselor, he talked about a whole bunch of different things. Hey, you can go to technical school, you can go to a university, or how about military service? I just don't think we're having those conversations today.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  I don't think that American society broadly is viewing us as a means to the American dream. And I'm living proof right here, because I lived it and I'm living the American dream right now. And my generation that behind me, my children are fruits of the benefactors of service, my service, just like I was of my grandfathers, my fathers and my brothers.

• 20:03Fran Racioppi?

  It'd be interesting to see the data and how it correlates to the reduction in recruiting numbers coming into the military verse those who are going into the trades.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:15Fran Racioppi?

  Because we do a lot of work with the unions in the city. And my day job outside of the podcast is I run a security and operations company in the city. And so we work a lot with the unions and the trades. And you see a significant reduction of folks who just want to be a carpenter or a plumber. And you know, as you were talking about, you don't see those numbers as high as they used to be.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  No, I'll tell you, the trade industry struggles for employee all across this country. I've talked to them. One of the big things that I championed while I was the SMA is to initiated the proposal to create the credentialing assistance bill. It's the sister to the tuition assistance bill that we've had since the public act of 1965. The federal tuition assistance program that allows you to take college courses while you're on active duty. Up until 2019, you could not use any of that money to go to a trade school. What is 80% of the army enlisted and what do they do? Trades. And as a result, their skills were not being recognized or built upon. And when they got out of the service, many of those people, our air-conditioned techs, our mechanics, our truck drivers, could not drive a truck in America, but yet they've been doing it for 30 years, right?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  So we weren't even enabled. Now, with the graces of our elected leaders up on Congress who passed that bill, you know, we're starting to focus on that. And it has greatly reduced our unemployment in post-service. They created things like the Army Career Skills Program and Skill Bridge, which we've talked about earlier today.

• 21:32Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  As a nation, I think we have to start really doing our jobs as influencers to our, the next generation of, what is it you want to be versus directing a path for every single one of them. And a singular path won't work for this nation. It won't. We send everybody to college. Who's going to do those jobs? Who's going to join the military? We do need higher educated people. My son is literally a rocket scientist, right? So, but I knew, I knew that the best path for him was not to be a SAR major of the Army.

• 21:59Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Right? He was an academic and he did very well. And so I pushed him to higher education. But I also told him, I said, hey, listen, you can take anything you want in college, but dad's only paying for engineering.

• 22:11Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Because, because I wanted value for his service, right? It is hard work. And I wanted him to be able to serve the nation. And he wanted to work for NASA. And he wanted to advance us in modern science. And then what he's doing, that's how he serves. Because I'm also a proponent of the fact that you don't have to wear a uniform to serve this nation. You just have to serve the nation. And everybody had, every, every single American has a responsibility to serve this nation.

• 22:36Fran Racioppi?

  So there's DOD data that is fairly recent, the last couple of months, that says only 23% of the American population is actually qualified to serve in the military, whether that be physically or cognitively.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:49Fran Racioppi?

  How do you overcome that?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was the trade ox armater. I had recruiting command. I was the SMA. And I was intimately involved in these numbers on a day-to-day basis for a period of 10 years. Now, when I was division's armater, I was focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean intimate. And then I started traveling around the country and looking at how many young men and women apply for sports programs and universities across this nation every year. Now, I'm not saying they meet all the military requirements, but physical is one of the main reasons.

• 23:13Fran Racioppi?

  Sure.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  And education, right? So they have the education. They're obviously physically fit or they wouldn't be applying to collegiate sports, right? So the only other thing would disqualify that population would be a background thing, right? Some indiscipline that they did throughout their lives. You know what the number is? It's almost more than the requirements of all the services put together. So I think we have an entire, healthy, educated, young population that can serve. The difference is whether or not they're motivated.

• 23:42Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Now, I'm not going to challenge, I was in the institution. I'm not going to challenge that number. That's not my job. I don't have the data. I'm not going to broadcast like I know everything, right? But I think that we need to probably take a look at that from a broader aspect. Now, I think that's very accurate of the people that we interview for service, right? Who approach a recruiting commander, I'm recruiting command or recruiter, things like that. But I'm not sure, again, I'm not going to question the data.

• 24:05Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  I'm not sure it's as accurate as it possibly could be. I don't know how you would actually obtain a very accurate number. That'd be very difficult.

• 24:11Fran Racioppi?

  Cause it's probably based off of what you're saying is of the amount of people who walk into the recruiting station, how many are actually capable and so.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  I mean, something like, and don't quote, that could be off, but I think it's something like 15,000 applicants to West Point every year. That's a large number of people. I would bet, oh, by the way, they have to meet military service in order to go to the, just think of the service academies. How many people? Now, we need those people and not, they need to keep, you know, trying to get into that great institution because we need great officers in our army. I think there's a lot of young Americans out there that are fully capable to fight and win. They're just not inspired.

• 24:44Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. Yeah, they lack the propensity to say. So if we face this, I will call it a crisis, a challenge, wherever you want to term it. We have, we've got to overcome it. And what's been discussed a lot and you're seeing it in congressional testimony on the Hill right now for cabinet positions is this conversation of standards. Sergeant Major Weimer talked a lot about the Blue Book and coming back out with the Blue Book and, you know, the fact that we're going to reinstitute these standards. And that has generated on our YouTube channel, a significant amount of discussion around what standards actually look like in the evolution and the ebb and flow of standards. You were intimately familiar as during your time as the SMA with standards and even looked at some of the standards.

• 25:29Fran Racioppi?

  For instance, the tattoo policy, which you're very famous for and said, look, some of these things don't make sense. And then there are other standards that have been discussed when we talk about the inclusion of women in the combat arms and people have argued that standards were reduced physically, some will argue against that, not saying they were or not, I'm just saying those are the two sides of the conversation. Do you think there's been a reduction in standards in order to make up this gap?

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yes, that is a great question and it's been a very recent discussion, it was a big discussion in testimony the other day. People think of the word standard and they think it's a fixed object. They're not. We raise standards. The Army, the APFT, we raise standard for years because once the service adapts to it and you realize there's room for improvement, you set a standard and then you can increase it. Now, sometimes we have to reduce standards, right? And because why? It's, the Army is just like society, it's made up of its population, right? And what you have to do is if you create a standard that nobody in America can achieve, it's not a standard. So, I cringe when people say, "Oh, you reduce this or raise this." There is many times that we've raised standards. Raised standards because our soldiers were able to achieve them, they were so good and

• 26:38Speaker 01

  they were getting better. And sometimes, yeah, I'm very forthright with you. Building the ACFT, I was in the design phase when I was a trade ox R Major, all the way up until just implementation right before I left. We varied the standards during pilot phasing, up and down dozens of times, trying to figure out what is the standard. When we apply this thing that's going to have a huge effect on a very large population of people and we want it to be fair and equitable as possible, right? Because it's not perfect.

• 27:03Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  It's hard to determine the standard. And then when you do set a standard and then you finally release and tell, "All right, now the whole Army do it," because you're gauging it from a very small population when you're testing it, then you realize, well, it's not working. And sometimes you gotta go up and down. People look at the word standard and they think, "Oh, it's fixed, you know, back in 1965, this is what we had to do." Okay, well, I'll tell you what, and then-

• 27:23Fran Racioppi?

  The YouTube channel.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Education, physical fitness, and weapons qual standards have increased exponentially over the last three decades. So, and I tell veterans from years ago- Learn how to like we were. I said, no, they're better. I can show you all the statistics. And we, we raise standards. When I graduated basic training, I had to graduate basic rifle marksmanship, sit in a foxhole in one position and shoot at targets. Now you gotta do it in three positions, standing prone, unsupported, prone supported. And you have advanced marksmanship where you have moving targets. I mean, it's, we raised the standard. Yeah, you still gotta hit so many to get expert, but it's not the same skill set. We've gotten better, right? To sit outside the sidelines. Or on the sidelines.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Engage the quarterback is a very easy thing to do. But when you're throwing the ball, it's a lot harder. So yeah, we've lowered standards. But for the right reason. I don't think we've done it. And I don't think any leadership in, in my personal opinion that's there now have done it because of any influence. It's done it because when we create a standard. And we don't know how it's going to affect the entire population of an army. We have to apply it and engage the outcome. And then we have to make decisions as senior leaders of whether or not it's in the best interest. To raise or lower a standard or continue on with what we released. And if anybody's not in and have all that information. Then they really don't have a true understanding of what the standard really is because standard is not a fixed object.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  A standard is something that has to be evaluated and changed all the time.

• 28:58Fran Racioppi?

  Let's talk about culture.

• 29:01Fran Racioppi?

  And the army culture. I think it's an important part of recruiting. When we look at, why do people join organizations? People join organizations because they see the culture, they see the imaging, they see the messaging, they want to be a part of that. I always think about. And I'll give credit to our Marine Corps, brothers and sisters out there. I think they do a phenomenal job in recruiting, in their marketing.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, they do. Awesome job. They're great.

• 29:22Fran Racioppi?

  Cause everything is about, you know, we built leaders from day one. You know, you walk into that recruiting station, you know, you're a Marine from.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  We need a few good men.

• 29:29Fran Racioppi?

  Exactly. And you look at the posters and you're like, man, like I want to be a Marine. I sat down with Troy Black. At the time he was the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps and I walked out of there and I'm like, I'm ready to be a Marine.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 29:39Fran Racioppi?

  I mean, because it was just very inspirational and they do a great job with that. The army has. Obviously invested a tremendous amount of time in marketing and developing that culture. And we've seen a lot of ebb and flow in what is the army culture. Here's my perspective and I want to get yours. The army has a mission to close with and destroy the enemies of our nation. What does that mean? It means that we are warfighters and the business of warfighting is not a pretty business. It is a difficult business and it is a business that may very well involve you taking the life of someone who's trying to take yours and possibly giving yours in that mission.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 30:16Fran Racioppi?

  Yet I do believe that we've seen over the last couple of years, a softer side to that marketing. And then when we talk, think about that and we think about, okay, well, we've, are we getting away from the mission? Are we not presenting the mission? And do we have a populace who's not inclined to serve? They have a lower propensity to serve. They want to go to college, as you said, they want to go be software engineers and work at Facebook because everyone thinks they can code. But at the end of the day, maybe we don't need those people. Maybe we need the people who are willing to run down the street towards the sound of gunfire and close with and destroy the enemy. And if our messaging was, hey, this is what the army does.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:56Fran Racioppi?

  And if you want to do that, we want you today. And if you don't, that's okay.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:01Fran Racioppi?

  Would that help?

• 31:02Speaker 01

  I don't know because what we saw was, is when we did the hoo hoo videos for commercials, you know, when we did the shoot them up guys commercials, we constantly reminded the American public that we were at war. That's a fact of the reality. You just said it. The fact is, this nation's going to have an army. Whether America gives its sons and daughters freely to do it as volunteer or we choose it. It's going to have an army. I promise you, we are not going to be without an army. America, not the army, is going to decide how we do that, right? Not the army, America. Congress is going to make the decision, obviously, but America is going to decide. But unfortunately, what America wants is something better for their children. And they all have their individual views on how they should tell their children to get there.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  This just goes back to the advent of, we're telling young men and women, the majority of them, almost all of them, when they graduate high school, there's only one path, right? That's what we've gotten away from. And there's many jobs in the army. You know that, but the fact is someone's gonna have to be at the business end of a rifle and do the nation's business. I mean, you and I lived that business for many, many years, right? So we need both aspects of that. So I think from a marketing perspective, I think we were successful when we have a blend of that. We got to inspire the next generation of cyber warriors, of food mechanics, you know, all those other things. But we also need to generate the next combat soldier. I mean, for the defense of this great nation. So I think marketing strategy is very difficult in this nation because you also have to gain the attention of a population that is over inundated with information. When I grew up,

• 32:28Speaker 01

  there was no such thing as a cell phone. I talk about this all the time. My teacher would say, you have a homework assignment. I used to walk to a place called a library and draw out a book that was probably written 30 years prior. Today's generation woke up, was born and wakes up every morning and has the world's information in the palm of their hand, available in a microsecond on a handheld computer that had more computing power of the first spaceship that went to the moon. So I think what we have to do is we have to gain the attention because the conversations at dinner tables is not happening. So the marketing strategy that the army and the other services have today is not just convincing them to join the army, but gaining their attention, just injecting it, right? A wise man once told me, "It's easier to change a perception than to instill

• 33:11Speaker 01

  one in a human being. If you have a negative perception of me, it's most likely easier for you to have your perception of me changed than it is for to introduce myself to you." That's what I'm talking about is we have to first instill a perception at a younger age, the influencers in the lives of America, that the mothers, the fathers, the coaches, the guidance counselors, the teachers that have to have honest and open and positive conversations about service. And then it's the services job, because their job is not to recruit. They are the honest. Like, once somebody's 18 years old, if they have not been influenced to join the military, it's pretty difficult to convince somebody. That's what I'm talking about. It's easier to change a perception than it is to instill one. And it's the army's job to attract them to be a viable path to the American dream. How do we make that happen? We gotta convince, well, no, I know the answer.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  We have to convince the influencers, the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, teachers, mentors, coaches, all those, that we're a viable solution to the American dream.

• 34:05Fran Racioppi?

  If it were easy, we wouldn't be having the conversation.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  That's right. This is, I'll tell you what, and we're not the only ones that had it and that, and this, yeah, I'll tell you what, this is gonna be a challenge, yeah, forever. I mean, it's not, this is not easy business. You know, um, running the largest military service was not easy. It's not a nine to five job. It is not by any measure. Um, but I know that we have, we, we do have a good time. You and I served with the best soldiers that this nation has to offer. I mean, they are phenomenal. They're out there.

• 34:32Fran Racioppi?

  Do you think we're close to having to instill compulsory service? I mean, what's the, what's the threshold?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:41Fran Racioppi?

  Where you say like, you know, we've gone long enough where, you know, the numbers are low and as you said, you know, it's a non-negotiable that the nation will have an army and here we go. You guys didn't want to join, so now you get to.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, the word draft is a four-letter word. It's not, I know, I'm not, I am a product of Appalachian educations. It's got more than four letters, so I know your listeners out there, but it's a four-letter word, you know, in society. We don't want to do that. But I'll go back to what I just said. This nation's gonna have an army and the Congress and the army's not gonna decide how we do it. The American people are, right? Are we there? No, I don't think so. I think along with the things I talked about, there's a lot of other things in America that set the stage for that generation to join and we're seeing that get better, right? Cause it also has to do with culture and atmosphere and, and political, all kinds of things, right? I don't think so. If we go to war, near peer? Absolutely. Oh yeah, there has to be. I think that America needs to hear that.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  The army today is to be fighting, ready and win, but to deter near-peer adversary? Or what about two near-peer adversaries simultaneously? Of course, yeah, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to. Get away from, not get away from, but we're gonna have to instill something.

• 35:53Fran Racioppi?

  Well, that's a good segue into the next topic I want to talk about, which is equipping, which is one of those next pillars when you talk about readiness, because forced modernization, I mean, we were joking that it's been 20 years, but you know, I think back to 2005 and came in the army in 2003, and they always talked about forced modernization. And you go to AUSA conference here a couple of months ago, and all you're talking about is forced modernization. So it's the term that never really goes away.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  We talk about it every year.

• 36:17Fran Racioppi?

  Exactly. But when we talk about equipping, it does come down to what's the next battlefield? And how well do we understand it? And technology sits at the center of that. And everybody I've talked to over the last year or so, as we made our rounds through senior leadership within the army, has always brought up technology and the technological advancement and how quickly it's happening. How does the army stay ahead of the, how does the army stay on the leading edge of technology and forced modernization?

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a very, very difficult challenge. I mean, there's so many factors that influence this. Let's start with near peer capabilities, right? We dominated the battlefield for decades because of the fact that the resources we had and the technology gap that we put between ourselves and our adversaries. That doesn't exist today. It doesn't. I mean, you can procure commercial off the shelf equipment globally, that we were the only ones that had in our inventory just 10 years ago, right? The resource and capabilities of our near peer adversaries is consistent and almost getting close to ours, right? I mean, and what they're spending on it has increased exponentially over the last decade. And that's the first challenge, is near peer capabilities. Second challenge is the resources, right? We are not without

• 37:30Speaker 01

  a limit of money in this nation. I used to remind soldiers all the time, part of our job is to help preserve the great wealth this nation has been plentiful of, which provides us with the great equipment that we have, right? And I think we have to understand a couple of things. We gotta, we gotta maintain the equipment we have, right? We have to ask for what we need, not what we want. And we saw some of this during Iraq and Afghanistan, right? A lot of ACOG's laying around that nobody looked their eyes through, right? And then we have to build the right equipment and specify the right requirements. And we, there's challenges with all of those, right? From the individual level feedback all the way to the strategic level, right? And then we have to balance that huge cost. With the needs of this nation.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  And that's what most service members, soldiers, don't think about. And when you get into the echelons of leadership that I was fortunate to be able to sit in, then you start to realize the challenges when you go up there and go, hey, I need this. Why can't you just give me the money? You know, what's up, man? Just open the checkbook and write me the check. But then you sit in there and realize that the national budget, it's hard, right? It's not an easy, it's not an easy thing to do. So what, what do we need? And there's a lot of input that goes into that, right? What are our adversaries' capabilities? What are the resources we have? How do we correctly spend those resources and allocate them across not just the army, but all the services, right? And then what's in the future? So that's the research and development, which takes a lot of money, right? So there's been, I don't even use the word dozens because I am uninformed on it,

• 38:58Speaker 01

  but I just, there's probably millions of projects that we start. And you have to do this. You have to put money into this research and development and find out if you can create this technology, this dream of the next great weapon system or the next great platform to work off of. And it fails, right? It fails. So all those things are very, very uniquely interrelated and make it so difficult to build modernization, as you said, and we've been saying it for how long? And we're still using the platforms that were designed after Vietnam. The Abrams, the Bradley, the Blackhawk, the Apache. Well, Cobra first and then Apache, right? We're still using them. Now we've, they're not the same, you know? We've put a lot of money and effort, but we do have to get to the next generation of equipment to equip. And the leadership struggles with all those things and more, right?

• 39:43Speaker 01

  That I just talked about, but they're making progress. They are.

• 39:46Fran Racioppi?

  So there's, there's two points here that you made up that I think are important to kind of address in a little bit more detail. So you talked about, you know, essentially what you're talking about is the procurement process. And we have a very bureaucratic and lengthy procurement process. So how do you rapidly innovate when you have this process that says like, you know, it's going to take five years, 10 years to field the new Blackhawk?

• 40:11Speaker 01

  I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not the acquisition expert. I dealt with a little bit of it, sat in the meetings and smarter people, way smarter than me. I call them the wicked smart people. We still have figured it out, right? And it's the next administration just said the other day, you know, we're going to, we're going to get after this. And we've been saying that, and I'm not saying they won't, or anybody in the past has failed. That's not what I'm here, I'm not an inditer. It's difficult. It's hard, but I can tell you the outcome if we don't. I do know this because I have enough experience. We got to change. We got to fix this. We have technology today, like you said, under the current process that won't get into our soldiers' hands for five years. But guess what? It's obsolete. Now, we've done much better. We have done much better. And, you know, one of the things, unfortunately,

• 40:54Speaker 01

  that war brings us is changes in those policies, or it gives us exceptions to those to do Rapid Fielding Equipment Initiative. The equipment we have right now, which is phenomenal, you know, when I grew up in the Army, I had two canteen cups, you know, two magazines made out of canvas, and an M16 rifle with no sights, you know, nothing, right? And when I turned in all the TA-50 I got from all my deployments, I had 12 duffel bags full of stuff from Rapid Fielding Initiative. Soldiers are well-equipped, but are they equipped for the next fight? And where's that fight gonna be, right? And it's challenging, and it's expensive, and it's increasing in cost. And these are all things that we have to factor into it. But I don't know how to get it better, and I'm not gonna be the one to sit here and act like I know the answer, because I don't. Because, like

• 41:36Speaker 01

  I said, smarter people than me have tried to figure it out. But I know the consequence if we don't. And it's gonna be expensive. And a great man I worked for, General Mark Milley, had an awesome quote that I love. And he used to use it on the Hill all the time. Because this is an expensive endeavor, a very expensive endeavor. And he used to say, "The only thing more expensive than fighting a war is losing one." Yeah. So it's gonna cost. It's gonna come at great cost. But if we don't do it, we'll be at greater cost if we lose the next war.

• 42:06Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. So I've been fortunate to sit down with Joseph Votel, former SOCOM commander, the SOCOM commander, JSOC, and you name it, he probably commanded it at some point. And also with the now the incoming National Security Advisor, Mike Walz. And both of them talked at length about China. I think we feared Russia in a lot of ways, and the Ukraine exposed Russia's, at least their conventional military capability has been exposed to a significant degree. And we know a lot more about Russia there. But let's, we talk about China. China's investment in things like hypersonic technology for missiles, reports of Chinese investment in Gen 6 and 7 fighter jets. Their 4-1 advantage in deep water

• 42:49Fran Racioppi?

  Ports and their ability to produce an aircraft carrier in like five years and it takes us 12 years to produce an aircraft carrier. Are we behind China in innovation and technology? And if we are, how do we close the gap?

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, now I'm not privy to the information I had in the past and many of that would be classified. I couldn't, you know, I can't talk in that. But yeah, I worry about it. I listen to our elected leaders and our leaders in the Pentagon now and they have concerns of in certain areas. Yeah. Do I think that they are an adversary of great concern? Oh, yeah. Not just militarily, economically, geopolitically. I mean, you name it. That's their desire to do what we've done for the last, you know, decade. I do know this, if we don't invest in modernization, if we don't start moving that ball forward, we will continue to fall behind. We will. I mean, we will. It's just a fact. I mean, it's not something that is, that's a secret. China's been very public about what they're trying to do.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  It's not like there's a closed book and we're trying to figure out and look inside what they're trying to write down in that book. No, they've been very clear. They've been very clear on what their objectives are, right? And that's the great cost of defense of this great nation. We either match or exceed their capabilities or fall behind. I mean, it's that simple. It's not, it's not rocket scientists in the aspects of what you have to do to deter, because that's our first mission. Our first mission as the United States military is deter and then defeat, right? And deterrence only works if you're the bigger guy on the block, right? If you have the capabilities and the known capabilities to give them the possibility of never wanting to fight America. Yeah. So I'm sure, you know, I'm speaking hypothetically

• 44:26Speaker 01

  because I don't have the information these leaders have today and I'm not privy to it. But I'm sure there are technologies that we may be falling behind, but I also know that we've got to invest in the future. And if we don't, we'll continue to fall behind.

• 44:37Fran Racioppi?

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• 45:08Fran Racioppi?

  Is it likely, though? I mean, it is, let's call it it. Is a peer-to-peer confrontation with China actually likely? Because you have camps who are saying, look, we're going down that road.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 45:21Fran Racioppi?

  And then you say, all right, well, what's the impetus? You know, what's the match that lights the book? And then I think people sometimes struggle to then kind of define that, right? Because I think we're not dealing with an irrational other side. You know, the enemy gets a vote. You know that we, the enemy gets a vote whether you're, you know, a lone terrorist running down the road or you're Xi Jinping. You know, you get a vote and you have an input. And so they're not irrational to say like, well, you know, there's no repercussions of going to war with America because we're just going to kick their ass. Like, they're having the conversation of like, you know, this is our biggest trade partner. This upsets the global state, you know? It's not like a conversation with Iran, you know? Like, I mean, President Trump in the first term assassinated a leader of Iran and nothing happened.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That's a great question. I think what to answer that question, you have to find what war is. Most people look at war as armed conflict between two entities. War is a conflict of wills. So we waged war against Russia for decades and never fired a shot on them. That's what China's doing now, right? So and not having the military strength to deter their actions allows them to do what they want to do. We have deterred enemies for decades and never fought them because of, they knew the capabilities of the US military and the capabilities of if we did act, what their consequence would be. If we allow China to continue to do what they're doing and we don't meet or exceed

• 46:44Speaker 01

  their capabilities, they will know that they could continue to do it without friction. All right. That, I think, is more likely than than having an armed conflict against China or Russia, right? Or worse, both, right? I read a great story the other day. Ukraine is not fighting Russia.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  They're fighting China and Iran and Russia, right? They're fighting three countries right now.

• 47:09Fran Racioppi?

  And a couple of North Koreans running around there.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  And the world's watching about what's going to happen about this and what we're going to do. Right? And I do believe there's threats in places like Taiwan as a result of us not having competing capabilities to deter war, right? So is armed conflict, I'll get back to the question and answer it. Likely in the very near future with China? Most likely not, in my opinion, right? I'm not the big analyzer of the next fights, but my opinion, no. Is war with them? Yeah. In a different sense, though. At the, well, I think it's ongoing now, to be honest with you. It depends how you want to define the word war.

• 47:46Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, I would argue that as you've defined war here, we would absolutely be at war with them.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah, of course, for sure. Yeah, and they're very, they're very upfront about it.

• 47:56Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, I agree, yeah, they're not, they're not holding it back. Let's talk about training, that third pillar. Many believe we're in this, they've called it a 1939 interwar period, you know, where you had the culmination of World War I. Everything, you know, was supposed to be great. And then you had, you know, the rise of Nazi Germany. And all of a sudden, we found ourselves in World War II. And so inherent within that period of time, you had these indicators. And we've seen over the last couple of years, we've seen the FBI directors, you know, standing up and saying, you know, all the red lights are blinking. And we've seen our military leaders, I've had a chance to sit down with so many of our military leaders, who will kind of tell you the same thing.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there's a bunch of red lights blinking. Yeah, absolutely.

• 48:35Fran Racioppi?

  And if you look around the world, and we see proxy warfare in the Middle East, you know, we've got a land war in Europe as we talk about, you know, the Russian invasion into Ukraine. We look at, we've talked at length about China and the, you know, efforts to dominate the Taiwan Strait and the Pacific region. And then we could even argue that, you know, we have a proxy war going on to our south with the border conflict and South American adversaries like Venezuela, who are trying to actually wage war on our own soil through some of their actions. And so we're trying to figure out, okay, we have all these various things in the world that are going on. And what could be that spark? And so what does that require of our army? That requires us to train a force that is dynamically capable of combating-

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Any one of those threats. From, yeah, from large, small actors, you know, non-state supported to near peer adversaries. Yeah.

• 49:28Fran Racioppi?

  How do you do it?

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, right, right. That's what, you know, people say all the time is, is the job of the Sergeant of the Army, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of the Army hard? A little bit, you know, because that's their job. Man, train to the quip, right? So, you know, and the Army has recognized this, and I do not think we're in a 1939 state. I just came back from the National Training Center. You know, my job now of being with the AUSA affords me the opportunity to do leader development all over the Army for our soldiers, and I still get to see firsthand our soldiers are doing. We're deploying all over this world. We have soldiers in Europe, in the Pacific, all everywhere, out training with our allies, everywhere around the globe, right? There's nobody putting any brakes on. The rotation cycle is full at both JMTC, all three locations, JRC and NTC.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  It's full. And the Army is adapting back to, well, we used to call it TIC, I mean, HIC, High Intensive Conflict. Then we went to COIN, Counter Insurgency Operations. Now it's LISCO, Large Scale Combat Operations, right? And what I like about, what I just got briefed on at the National Training Center, which is the Army's largest training center, is we haven't lost the aspects of counter insurgency operations. Because even if we fight a near peer adversary, there's going to be an aspect of counter insurgency involved in that, right? Or counter, or counter soft operations, which they have scaled immensely from when I was going to the National Training Center. They're highly involved now. Remember, you guys didn't like to sit out in the desert for weeks at a time.

• 50:52Fran Racioppi?

  I sat there with you.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Never, I never had to go back.

• 50:55Fran Racioppi?

  When you were an operator, later on.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I never went back.

• 50:58Fran Racioppi?

  Never went back.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  I touched my Bradley and burned my hand. That's not the NTC of today, right? So, having gotten just briefed on that, the Army is adapting, right? Now, again, I opened up with the fact that what we've done with 100% certainty for the last 250 years is guess where we're going to fight wrong every single time? I mean, where we're going to fight wrong every single time. So, that's, that's a chance you take. What's the next conflict? If, I'll tell you what, if you can tell me, and with certainty, I'm sure the Chief Staff of the Army would listen to you, right? And he would adapt the training to meet the need, but you got to make your training broad and flexible. The one great thing that you and I lived and we know is, is the resiliency of the American soldier, right? The fundamental skills that we give him or her, they can adapt those on the battlefield, and they're the best at it. That's why we've been successful.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  And because of the way we lead, we give them the flexibility to be able to do that, right? The Russian Army, when they were training against us during the Cold War, hypothetically. They would, you know, look at the way we were trained. They had people in Europe watching us train. They had people all over the world watch this train and they couldn't figure out why we weren't exactly following our doctrine. They couldn't figure it out. They're like, wait a minute, this is what the book says. Why aren't they doing this? Why aren't they doing this? And that's the beauty that we give our leaders is to be able to adapt on the battlefield. We did that in Iraq. Now, in every war, there's a learning curve, right? But we have quickly adapted in every war, you know, War One, Vietnam, Korea, World War Two, and the recent war too. So I see the army going in the direction in which it thinks it's going to fight next.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  And that's the best they can do. You have to pick a situation and you've got to train your army for it. And you've got to train them broadly enough to where they can adapt to the needs of some of the, the other things that probably will also spin up. A non-state supported counterinsurgency or unconventional fight. Yeah. But I think our soldiers and this, and their training methodology that leadership has in the army today, I think they can accomplish that.

• 52:51Fran Racioppi?

  I told you I had a chance to sit down with Sergeant Major Jeremiah Inman. So he's the Sergeant Major.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Good man, known him for years, great man.

• 52:59Fran Racioppi?

  He was awesome. We sat in the, in the bunker at Point Duhon and talked about America's forward projection of power. And the importance of the organization that he's in charge of, US Army, Europe, Africa. And you look at, they've got like 170 countries or something and there is a thousand, 70,000 soldiers. It's crazy. When you look at the influence that they have in that command. But one of the things that really stuck with me from that conversation is he said, America will never fight alone.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:29Fran Racioppi?

  Again.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. You can't say again, we've never fought alone.

• 53:33Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, I guess you're right.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Not even during the Revolutionary War, not Civil War. Civil War, we were held to.

• 53:39Fran Racioppi?

  But so that was his perspective and he put it in the context of our partners and allies are our strength.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 53:48Fran Racioppi?

  And the investment that we make in our partners and allies creates that deterrence that you were talking about. Why is interoperability so important when we look at our partners and allies?

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Not only important, it challenges, just like everything else we talked about. I mean, so our adversaries, near-per adversaries, would be less apt to be fearful of us if we had, did not have our allies. I mean, they know when they're going to fight America, they're not fighting America. Why? We've never done that, and we never will, and we can't. We need them, right? And that's why it's so important that we maintain alliances with them, right? Now, more importantly is, when we fight, we got to be able to fight together, right? And 10 years ago, we had more challenges than we do today. There's still challenges today. You know, we didn't even have radios that could talk to each other. That our allies would come to Iraq and Afghanistan. What did we do? We issued them our equipment so we could talk to them, right?

• 54:42Speaker 01

  And that's what our combatant commanders are out there battling and fixing on a day-to-day basis is a lot of strategic capability with our European and Asian allies, right? But if we can't, if planes can't talk to each other, if ships and guns and missile systems can't work together, if shooters from one country can't support the ground elements of another country, it's all for naught. I mean, it's not all for naught. There's still capability there, right? But we got to be able to talk together, and not just on a radio, systems. Indirect fire, direct fire, unmanned, aerial, space, you know? Do our satellites talk to European satellites? I mean, I don't know. I'm not a satellite guy. I'm not a satellite guy, right? If ours, one of ours goes down, can our satellites crossband into theirs?

• 55:27Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't know. These are, that's why it's so critically important, because if our adversaries know that, yeah, there's a lot of airplanes over there in Europe, and they got to deal with ours and theirs, but if the credible, capable, technologically advanced systems that we have can't work together and integrate, it makes their systems more capable. I think that's more important. We think about just being able to communicate from a language perspective, from a cultural perspective, from a direct communications perspective. I worry about broadband, satellite communications, can our missile systems be tracked, guided, and targeted with their guidance? That's the most important thing. And there's just layers and layers and layers of complex problems there that our NATO allies and us

• 56:12Speaker 01

  work together through on a daily basis. It's understood. It's known. But we've had challenges in the past. We've gotten better. I'm sure there's a lot more challenges today because when every one of us develops the next great technology in our countries, right? The next question should be, well, how do we integrate it? Right? How do we integrate?

• 56:26Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. Let's talk about leader development.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:29Fran Racioppi?

  The last pillar when we talk about army readiness.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  I'd love this to subject.

• 56:32Fran Racioppi?

  I figured you would. I had to make sure. That's why I saved it for last.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Love the subject.

• 56:36Fran Racioppi?

  It's the most important job of an NCO is to develop and train their individuals and their teams. And leadership, by and large, leadership, I believe, can be taught. But there are also some qualities of great leaders that are innate to a person's character. You know, they are born with some of those. But development takes patience. It takes time. It takes investment. And it takes our ability to, even at times, suffer short-term risk.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:04Fran Racioppi?

  Or even loss for long-term success. There's three generations in the army right now. There's a pre-9/11 generation. There's the 9/11 generation who saw 20 years of global war on terror and combat operations across the world. And now you have a post-9/11 generation of folks.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Which one are we on now? The name, I think it's a...

• 57:29Fran Racioppi?

  I don't even know.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  X, next word, beyond. Are we still in X?

• 57:32Fran Racioppi?

  No. Yeah, Generation X, maybe. Is it X?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not sure. I think so.

• 57:36Fran Racioppi?

  But many of these folks weren't even alive on 9/11. And so to them, that's Pearl Harbor to us. You know, something that happened in the past. And they see the pictures. The global war on terror generation is retiring. I mean, I came in in 2003. I've gone to retirement ceremonies now. So we've got guys who are getting out. They hit their 20 years. They're going to hit their 25 years and that pyramid is tight, as you know. It gets tighter and tighter each year that you kind of get past that 20 to 22, 25 year mark. And they're, they're getting out. And so what does that mean at the most foundational level? There's less and less combat patches on those shoulders at the company level.

• 58:18Fran Racioppi?

  And now kind of almost soon and probably into the battalion level and we're seeing, I mean, I've no, I've met majors who never went to combat.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:26Fran Racioppi?

  And that experience at the top now is counter insurgency. It's counterterrorism. It's, you know, lower intensity conflict is sometimes in the soft units. And the consensus is that, you know, we're going to have this Lisko fight, this peer to peer fight that we, we've been talking about. Near peer actors.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Well, that's the biggest threat.

• 58:49Fran Racioppi?

  The biggest threat. Yeah, because there's, there are a lot of folks who were out there talking about the next terrorist attack on America. And what does that look like? And, you know, there's various people on the scale from the conspiracy theory to, you know, actual real threat out there that we could talk about at length. But what is the effect of the loss of that experience have on the development of the next generation of soldier?

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, I came in the army where there was, you know, the very senior leaders who were Vietnam vets. Battalion brigade commanders, corps commanders, you know, and, and then there would maybe, I remember there was a, one platoon sergeant, one platoon sergeant was a Vietnam veteran when I came in the army because he had gotten out and come back in. And that's, that's the way they felt. Like, oh, you guys, you know, and then you know, not about war. And we did all right.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  And there's something to be said about combat experience. I'm not going to deny that. I mean, you and I both lived it, right? I mean, I was a Desert Storm and five tours in Iraq. And there's something to be said about that. So there's an aspect of knowledge and experience that you can't replicate until you get there, until you do it. But that doesn't mean you can't train and develop leaders to prepare because you and I started off with the fact that we were in a unit. Ninety-nine percent of that unit did not have combat patches. But you said, "We were ready and we felt it." Remember, and I opened with the fact that when the individual soldier feels like they're ready, that is when you achieve readiness. When they feel like they're ready, right? Leaders can say their units are ready. I've heard lots

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  of leaders go, "My unit's a T." I look over and go, "Ooh, wow." You know, but I honestly feel that every one of the soldiers in our formation in 183 felt like they were ready. And none of them had combat experience. And they performed, I wouldn't say flawlessly, and we make, we all make mistakes. Yes, but gosh darn, I was proud. I could cry right now just thinking about it. When you watched him and you were just like, "Man, how do we do that?" We're gonna lose combat experience. There's nothing we can do about that. 100% of the people who are in the Army today are gonna get out someday, right? 100%, unless they cryo-freeze us right now, you know, and then draft us later on. It's gonna happen. It's just gonna happen. And it is important, and it's experience. What we have to do before they leave, and this is about leader,

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  this section's about leader development, is we have to gain the knowledge and experience that they have, and we have to transition that the best we can to the next generation of warfighters. And that's what our Vietnam vets did. I'll give you a funny story. We went to Desert Storm. My platoon sergeant was in the latter part of Vietnam. Older guy got out, came back in, and I was the RTO. Prick 77 with the long whip antenna out in the desert, right? And you know what he kept telling me? "Get away from me. Go over there with the lieutenant." You know why? Because they were targeted during Vietnam. Yeah. And I remember it all the time is that that's a little thing. I never forgot that for my entire life. That makes sure that I'm concealed the best I can be in combat because that's a little thing. And he gave us a lot more skills than that.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  He did, but he transferred those skills and I remembered them, right? Funny thing was, he said, go there by lieutenant. You pick up on that? Oh, yeah. Well, the, so I think from a leader development standpoint is they're gonna go. They deserve to retire. They deserve all the benefits they earned. It is knowledge and skill that's irreplaceable, but it not doesn't mean it's not transferable. I honestly believe it's transferable, not a hundred percent. You know, experience is experience, but if we don't capitalize on that. And by the way, we're all not dead. We could still come back and help train. I do that every week here at the Association United States Army. Go out there and, and share the experiences I have. And that's what our combat veterans need to do is figure out a way to stay involved with the service. Not necessarily always capitalize on them, right? I mean, the army needs some help with resourcing, but transfer the skills.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Do the best you can to predict where we're going to fight next. Ready your soldiers every day for that fight. What does our next generation of soldier look like? Better than us. I mean that. Are they different? Absolutely. Absolutely. They are much different. Not completely. Like I said, they're fit. Do they come to us fit? As many of them do, many of them don't, but we've always, you know, made them the soldiers they are. That's our job. If we got delivered perfect product from America, you know, we just get rid of basic training. I mean, you know, I mean, it's, there's an aspect of that that's gonna have to continue. But I gotta give you a history lesson, not a lesson. I don't want to profess to you that. I like history. Yeah. In the 30s and 40s, there was a nationwide phenomenon that the youth of the nation was going to destroy this great country.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  This is true. Now, think about this generation. This is not the industrial generation. This is the dinner generation that expanded to the West. They clawed the soil, broke the ground and built us an agricultural Mecca. Right? And they expanded and they've set the foundations very well for the next generation. But the nationwide perception was that generation was going to destroy America. Why? The roaring twenties, jazz music, smoking, the youth of America was partying. And then we go into the Great Depression, which the adults at the time have to have to blame the youth as a result of the Great Depression, right? What did that generation become? The greatest generation. The greatest generation. So for everybody out there that thinks that next generation is not better than you or you are better than them,

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  just look back, the one thing we've done since the inception of this great nation is blame the next generation for not being as good as us. Now, one more history lesson on them. There's a term I'm about to say that was developed during that time period that is commonly used today. That has a different meaning than it did then. The generation, the adults of the twenties and thirties had a name for that generation or the people within it. They called them teenagers. Go back in history now, there's there's some debate about where this was first used, but it was you first use. Some say early, at the nineteen hundreds, but most predominantly it was used in the twenties and thirties, right? There's debate about when it was first used. That the word teenager was the negative connotation put on the youth of that day by the adults of the time. And they became the greatest generation. So does this generation have flaws?

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Of course it does. Every generation that's been in this country, because we're a melting pot of people from all around the world, right? And we still are today and we're seeing that, right? But don't doubt that they don't have capabilities that we don't. Is their attention span as great as ours? Absolutely not, their science that proves this. But their absorption rate, so let's just say, for example, I'll just throw a number out. Let's just say their attention span is half ours. Parents out there will probably agree with me, it's probably more than that. It's probably a third of their attention span, right? Really, I would agree with that, yes. You know what their absorption rate is? Probably five times of what we were. The amount of information they can consume in a single hour is so much more elevated than what we could. Imagine when you went to school, I did that book report. They can flip through more information on their cell phone in a minute than I could spending the whole afternoon at the library. Right?

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  And it's accurate, up to date and well, relevancy is gauged on, I guess, who's viewing it. So that's my long answer to we're going to be just fine. And they're better than us in different ways. But they're not bad and don't blame the next generation because you'll fall victim to the people who called them teenagers in the nineteen twenties and thirties. And you'll be wrong. I can't predict the future, but I hope I'm right, right? I hope I'm right. That's what we have to believe.

• 1:06:01Fran Racioppi?

  Our service doesn't end when we take the uniform off and you've transitioned from your role leading our army and you've come over here now to the Association of the US Army and continue to give back probably a close to the same volume as you did when you were in the army. But talk for a second about the importance of AUSA. It is the largest organization that is supporting our army, those who serve, those who have served, those who will serve, and they're really doing some important work across a wide range of different programs.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  And Fran, I have to, first of all, thank you. First, one, for bringing me on the show and I have great appreciation for you as I did when you were the young lieutenant. You're just a great person, a great human being, a great soldier. But you also just gave me what is called in this business, because I have a podcast too as a plug. So, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the plug, Fran. So, I'm gonna take it. You gave me the plug.

• 1:06:51Fran Racioppi?

  Door's open.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, what a great organization. My only regret is that I didn't know as much as I know about it now, having worked here and, and all the things it does behind the scenes. And I could spend two hours talking about all the great things. I won't do that today. But I will tell you this is that without AUSA, our army would be missing a great component that helps build the team from outside, right? We always use the term from within, and we used to be, actually, as part of the history. The army developed AUSA. Most people don't know this. It was in the army for the first six years of its existence. It was moved out, actually, to enable it, to be able to free up its thing, its job. But what I, I found is I didn't fall far from the tree. I can't wear the uniform anymore. And that's, it's tough, once you've done it as long as I did, you know? But God, it feels good to at least have the, the word army in the, in my title, right? And I get

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  to do great things for our service members every day. You know, I ran out of jobs. I literally found the top in the army and I wasn't done being a soldier. And so I'd said I wouldn't talk along about AUSA. I'd ask you to go check us out. You know, we are your professional organization. And it doesn't let me be a soldier, but it lets me continue to give back to them every single day and enables me to do things that I would not be able to do had I not picked this job. And a great leader told me when I retired, he said, hey, don't be in a rush to get a job, because a great job will find you. And I'll tell you what, it did. It did. Because this organization does so much for our soldiers and families, without merit, behind the scenes, with great humility. And it's just a good organization to be part of. And it enables me to get out there and Give back to the next generation, communicate those combat skills, conduct leader development,

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  all kinds of other things. It's the Soldiers Professional Association and it's just a just a great organization.

• 1:08:25Fran Racioppi?

  And you get the community. I mean, that's what matters. You know, talk about veteran transition and the difficulty about veteran transition. And I think about when I had to leave Fort Carson, you know, and you get out and you turn your ID card into

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Who?

• 1:08:37Fran Racioppi?

  Somebody who you never met before. And they they shake your hand, they walk you to the door and they say, thank you for your service. And you look in the rearview mirror as you go through the gate and go, what now? What do I have? And organizations like AUSA and Green Beret Foundation really create this community for you to find those like-minded folks who are really, you know, as important to you as your family.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  I'll open up to you. I'll tell you, I mean, I was a sergeant major of the army, working at the Pentagon, you know, I had my own access to airplanes, you know, all that stuff. And I was scared. From the time I was a child, that's all I did. I joined the army when I was 16, came in at 17, did delayed entry program, signed up in 11th grade. I knew I was gonna be a soldier. I mean, I was recruiter's dream. You know, I walked in and said, sign me up. Yeah. What's your grades? Straight A's. Yeah. I'm an athlete in the, oh gosh, I'm going home early today is what the recruiter said. And I was scared. Not because of confidence. I was scared I wasn't going to be able to find what I had. Not the fear that of the unknown. That's what I dealt with 35, I'm not 35, 30 years. The army taught me how to be resilient and, you know, and prepare for the unknown. I

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  was scared of, was I gonna have what I had for the last 30? Where was I gonna find what I got a part to be of for 30 years? There's not many places. This is one of them. I can tell you that. You can't fire people from this place. They'll just come back and work for free. I mean, that we wouldn't anyway. We have great people here. But yeah, that was my biggest fear of leaving was, I think a lot of service members, veterans, struggle with that. You know, what's their identity gonna be after service? And you kind of said it too. You know, you drive away, look in the rearview mirror and you're like, it's not fear from the unknown. It's fear like, man, am I ever, am I ever gonna find, am I ever gonna find something like that? The answer's probably not, but there's some great things out. There to do after and our and our veterans are doing wonderful things.

• 1:10:28Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, no, they are. Our veterans through history have always shown that they will lead in the civilian world. And host service.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  And a plug for service, moms and dads out there, you know, the veterans make more money than their civilian counterparts. Veterans have their children have higher graduation rates. There there's just so many metrics we don't talk about. About how well our veterans do in post service. What we hear about is the bad things that people over emphasize like PTSD and sexual assault. And those are real things, but they're not as big as the bullhorn. Does that if that makes sense to you?

• 1:11:00Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Fran Racioppi?

  All right, last question. This test question. This is a tough one.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Can I get a multiple choice or a lifeline? Is there a lifeline or a multiple choice? Can I call my squad leader?

• 1:11:11Fran Racioppi?

  No, but yeah, you call.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  I just gotta know where I'm standing.

• 1:11:14Fran Racioppi?

  You're gonna leverage your experience, your wealth of experience to answer this one with some terms that you probably heard before. We talk about habits and this matters in leadership.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Fran Racioppi?

  Because our job as leaders is to set the vision, set the example, and often our effectiveness as a leader comes down to the standard we hold to ourselves to. The habits that we have and the things, small things that we do every day in our life.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:37Fran Racioppi?

  To be successful and this ground us in the army. I'll tie a tie back to the Jedbergs at being the Jedburgh podcast when they parachuted into occupied France the night before D day and had one mission. Very broad guidance. It conducts sabotage and subversion operations against the German reinforcements. Okay, now what? I don't know. It's your job. I figured it out. So what do you have to do? You had they had to be able to shoot. They had to be able to move and they had to be able to communicate something we talked a lot about from our days from the infantry. You had to be proficient in those tasks. And if you were, then you could focus on the more challenging things that came your way on any given day. What are the three things that you do every day to be successful?

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  As a soldier or a person?

• 1:12:14Fran Racioppi?

  Okay.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Number one, stay physically fit. Without your health, you're not a member of the team. I'm gonna be very bold and very upfront about that.

• 1:12:21Fran Racioppi?

  Right?

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  You're a hindrance to it. Most important thing every soldier does every day is physical fitness. Number one. Right. Number one, it may not be the most important thing you do on any given day, but it is the most important thing you do every day. Number two, do they have to be just individual skills or kind of do broadcast?

• 1:12:38Fran Racioppi?

  They could do whatever you want. This is your time.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Know what you have to do in your job at the skill level you are and be good at it. And I mean scared of yourself. Good. Let me explain. Land navigation, when I was a young squad leader, I had been the Desert Storm and moved at night in the desert and was scared of navigation. That fear stayed with me the entire time I was a leader and I practiced it all the time because I told myself, I am not going to fail this when it counts. Right? You had to be scared. Good. Scared. Good. The fear that drives you to do the right thing. That's number two. Number three, never forget that you're just a soldier, no better or worse than any other and just one of them. And if your soldiers, when you become a leader, don't know that, it creates a tremendous barrier of trust and trust is what we live upon each other,

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  especially on the battlefield. It's the golden rule that I have for all leadership. If you get that right, people will follow you. I promise you, people will follow you to the end of earth and give their lives prematurely, as you discussed in the beginning, at will. Isn't that weird? For somebody I didn't grow up with, from a different walk of life, who someday was put in charge of me, if I trust you, I will, I will give my life prematurely for you and the cause we're fighting for. You get number three right, they will do it and we saw it. It's incredible. I don't know why, but it works. That's my three pieces of advice.

• 1:13:54Fran Racioppi?

  Be physically fit, be scared. Good at your job and never forget you're just a soldier. Love it.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  It's all I got, man.

• 1:14:01Fran Racioppi?

  That was great.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  It's all I got.

• 1:14:03Fran Racioppi?

  Well, Sergeant Major, you said in your appointment speech as the Sergeant Major of the Army that all you ever wanted was to be a soldier and be the best that you could do. And I'll tell you that you left the Army in a better place than it was before you got there. You left many of us at a better place than we were when we came under your command. And I know that I speak on behalf of not only myself, but 1-8 infantry who served with you there and all the units that you served in and the Army, much more broad level. Thank you so much for everything you've done and thanks for joining me today.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Well, Fran, thanks for your incredible service and thank you for continuing to inspire the next generation and want to be guys like you, man. Thank you. We've got work to do.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  American Jedbergs went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces in the

• 1:14:45Fran Racioppi?

  Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jed Burke Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Rychowi. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short-form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jed Burke Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X for Threads. Send your comments and inquiries to [email protected]. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jed Burke Media Channel, and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special Forces and their families. Thanks for joining us on this episode. How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.