#175: Changing The Wear And Appearance Of The Army Uniform, US Army Directive 670-1 - SMA Mike Weimer, SGM Laurin Nabors, SGM Alex Kupratty

Standards set the foundation for any professional organization. The baseline for professionalism in the US Army is Army Regulation 670-1 https://tradocfcoeccafcoepfwprod.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/428-fa-bde/bolcb/doc/670_1.pdf; Wear and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia. This regulation dictates the standard for every Soldier, regardless of rank or position. AR 670-1 has long been a hot topic of discussion among Soldiers and leaders at every level; and too often left open to interpretation. Until now… At the direction of senior Army leadership, Army Directive 670-1 https://www.facebook.com/USarmy/photos/-army-policy-update-new-army-directive-clarifying-grooming-standardsarmy-directi/1229800765841928/?_rdr&checkpoint_src=any has been released to clarify these standards and provide shared understanding between Soldiers and leaders to know what ‘right’ looks like. To explain the changes and how they will affect every member of the Army, Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/ sat down with Sergeant Major of the Army Mike Weimer, SGM Laurin Nabors and SGM Alex Kupratty. The SMA shares the “why” behind personal grooming standards and the importance of doing the little things that develop a culture of commitment from compliance. SGM Kupratty breaks down the definition of professional soldier from the experienced warriors of 75th Ranger Regiment to the new Privates of 4th Infantry Division. SGM Nabors provides the details on what’s changing, when and how the new standards are expected to be enforced. She also shares her journey from an Army Reserve heavy equipment operator to the halls of the Pentagon. This episode is about redefining what it means to serve in the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen and why development of a war fighting culture starts with how a Soldier presents themself each and every day. Highlights 0:00 Welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast3:26 Army Directive vs Regulation in 670-15:30 Why Now8:49 Closing Gaps12:55 Changes to 670-121:08 Why Standards Matter28:25 Analyzing Data29:42 Beards34:30 Preparing soldiers38:10 Active Guard Reserve44:30 Joining the Ranger Battalion49:42 The Grace Period50:33 Daily Habits Quotes “Part of the problem is our process is too slow.”“The first thing I had to figure out is are they educated?”“Do they understand the standards as they are written?”“Once you are emplaced in a leadership position, that’s where the commitment piece has to be rock solid.”"If you can’t do the simple things I’m asking you to do, how are you going to do the hard things in combat?”“We had to come in and really define “What is military appearance?”“It’s a direct reflection of your willingness to be compliant to a standard in your leaders.”“The why reinforces one uniformity.”“We’re part of something bigger than all of us."“Really understanding the generational differences that exist is arguably the most challenging thing that I found as a senior leader in the Army.”“I don’t think anybody knows what large scale combat will look like.”“The camaraderie that exists in that formation is unlike anything I’ve seen before.”“Leadership’s not about 'What did I do here today?' It’s 'What did I do for everyone else here to be successful?'"“You’re only as good as the time you put in.” The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by University of Health & Performance https://university-hp.com/, providing our Veterans world-class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation https://greenberetfoundation.org/ 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.

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

• 0:02Fran Racioppi?

  Standards set the foundation for any professional organization. The baseline for professionalism in the US Army is Army Regulation 670-1: Wear and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia. This regulation dictates the standard for every soldier, regardless of rank or position. Air 670-1 has long been a hot topic of discussion among soldiers and leaders at every level, and too often, left to interpretation, until now. At the direction of senior Army leadership, Army Directive 670-1 has been released to clarify these standards and provide shared understanding between soldiers and leaders to know what right looks like. To explain the changes and how they'll affect every member of the Army, I sat down with Sergeant Major of the Army Mike Weimer, Sergeant Major Lauren Neighbors, and Sergeant Major Alex Caprati.

• 0:47Fran Racioppi?

  The SMA shares the why behind personal grooming standards and the importance of doing the little things that develop a culture of commitment from compliance. Sergeant Major Caprati breaks down the definition of professional soldier from the experienced warriors of 75th Ranger Regiment to the new privates of 4th Infantry Division. Sergeant Major Neighbors provides the details on what's changing, when, and how the new standards are expected to be enforced. She also shares her journey from an Army Reserve heavy equipment operator to the halls of the Pentagon. This episode is about redefining what it means to serve in the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen, and why development of a warfighting culture starts with how a soldier presents himself each and every day. The Jedberg Podcast is brought to you by University of Health and Performance, providing

• 1:29Fran Racioppi?

  our veterans world-class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Follow the Jedberg Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full version on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge. SMA Weimer, Sergeant Major Caprati, Sergeant Major Neighbors, welcome to the Jedberg Podcast.

• 1:56Fran Racioppi?

  Great to be back. I've never been this close to so many Sergeant Majors at one time. I have to admit that freely at this moment. We could tell. Or we could tell Frank. I don't know if I'm gonna get tuned up, if I'm gonna get educated, coached, mentored. So many different directions we can go on this. It's a little threatening. We were gonna comment on your hair. We figured we'd let it go now. This is a new haircut. I just got this last week. And it's probably shorter than it was when I was in 10th Group. To be honest, yeah. Kinda like me. Yes. We have lots of comments about your hair. Yes, I know. It's a thing. It's a real thing. Well, thanks for having us back. Really excited for every opportunity that we get to come down and speak with the leadership from the Army and come down here into the studio,

• 2:38Fran Racioppi?

  which is such an amazing place. And the Army's done such a good job of building this place out. And then really focus on what the core messages are that are coming out of the Army. Where are we going? Where are we looking at when we talk about the warrior ethos, the development of the warfighter, as you and I have spoken about numerous times at this point? And then what are the policy changes? And what's coming down for our soldiers? Because as we've learned and as we know throughout your, we have many, many decades of the career here between the three of you. Soldiers care about a lot of things, but high up on those lists comes things like pay, time, PT, which we talked about last time with Sergeant Major Mullenax, and uniforms and physical appearance. Those things, I think, top the list of every soldier.

• 3:21Fran Racioppi?

  And so now we're looking at in the next short order, there's gonna be a new Army Directive coming out, which is centered around Army Regulation 670-1, and there's gonna be some changes. And so I appreciate the opportunity to come down here, hear it from the source about what we can expect and really dig into that. So I guess we gotta start with what's coming out is the Army Directive. So what's the difference between Army Directive and Army Regulation when we're talking about 670-1? And I think Sergeant Major Neighbors, they said you were the expert on this, so let's jump.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  I don't know about expert, but I can answer the question absolutely.

• 3:53Fran Racioppi?

  Hard enough to know the brief talent. Smart enough to know I know my strengths and weaknesses, and I bring talented Sergeant Majors to help me out. Don't worry, the SMA is getting the blue book out. It's coming.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  I believe it. Directive, right? I think it starts with the courses of action that we had to present on how we were going to get the gap of information that we landed with having a gap of knowledge. There were alarx that were published off of a army regulation for six seventy dash one. The last published was like in January of 2021. After that, the army published subsequent four to five alarx that since expired July of 2025. So how do we bridge that gap with information for proper wear of a parents? And also adding grooming and body composition and things like that into an army directive. And that was kind of the approach that SMA kind of gave us was like, hey, here's some COAs.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  We can get the army directive done a lot faster to bridge the gap of information. And then we can simultaneously work on the revision of AR six seventy dash one. So there's two main efforts going and just ones is going to get the information out there a lot quicker. So the army directive is the way we decided to go.

• 5:02Fran Racioppi?

  So SMA, you've spoken a lot over the, over your time in the seat about the establishment of the warrior ethos. This war fighting culture that the army really has to focus on at this inflection. It really is an inflection point. We can talk about army culture in a minute, the multi generations that exist within the force. And the knowledge gap that has to be passed from the GWAT generation down to the next generation of soldier. When you look at the standard that exists across the army, those regulations, these directives, they set the foundation. So why now in your mind was this the time to do that?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, truth in lending, the revision of six seventy dash one and to to Starmer's neighbors. Now, it's been ongoing for a while and that's part of the problem. Part of the problem is our process is too slow and troops out in the formation are confused as to what does right look like? And so you knew I'd break it out because it's always with me. This is really the next step. This AD is the next step in the journey of removing ambiguity and allowing soldiers to know what the standard is so that they can enforce the standard. So the feedback we've been getting, and I got it immediately, and I got it before being in this job too. SMA Princeton likewise was, hey, I don't know what standard is. The Blue Book helps us have. The one place to go, the digital one really does, right?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Which this AD is going to merge a bunch of things, one place with some, we're not calling them annexes. We're calling them. Enclosures. Enclosures. So there's one place, it is the source. We removed as much ambiguity as possible. This is the human space. So everybody's a little different. It's really hard to make it perfect, but it's a lot cleaner than it's been in the past. And oh, by the way, it happened in short order. The force is hungry for it. And I know Sergeant Major Caprati will talk about this from a fourth ID. He just came out of being the fourth infantry division CSM. He'll, he'll bring it up. They're hungry to know, like, enforce what? It's not clear what the standard is. And so that, at those lower echelons, which you remember, like, do I step in and engage? Do I not engage? The soldiers confused, the leaders confused.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  And so that's exactly why we did what we did. Couldn't jump on that in the first six months. The blue book was step one, but it's time.

• 7:10Fran Racioppi?

  Sergeant Major Caprati, as I said, you came from fourth infantry division. So I'm a former Fighting Eagle of one eight infantry and third brigade. So I did, that was my first, that was my PL time. So my first unit, that's a great formation. It was a lot of fun. It was also two thousand and five when I got there. And so we busy, yeah. And short order, I got there, my battalion commander, and I know his name was Jeff Martindale. He had just gotten there, had spent his career prior to that in Ranger Battalion. Subsequently, immediately fired the platoon leader who I replaced. And because I had a Ranger tab and he didn't, that was an awkward first day. But that was his, but that, but we talk about standards. That was his standard. And he came in and he said, we're going to Iraq. I think we had six months at that time.

• 7:54Fran Racioppi?

  They were going to Iraq in six months. We're going for a year. It was very, it was like OIF three or something. And he said, every platoon leader in this formation is going to have a Ranger tab. And you got two choices. If you're already here, we're going to send you back. If you pass, you keep your platoon. If you fail, you're out. If you choose not to go, you're out. And every person who comes in who has one between now and then is immediately going on the platoon. And I think I happened to be the first guy that showed up after that ball.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Hey Fran, there was nothing in what he said was, there was no ambiguity and that wasn't.

• 8:21Fran Racioppi?

  No, it was very clear.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  It was pretty clear, wasn't it?

• 8:23Fran Racioppi?

  That's very clear.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  That's where we're, we're going again.

• 8:25Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. So, so when we look at the soldier level, you know, the entry level soldier level, and I remember my days sitting in the formation with privates. Cause when we go to SF, we got spoiled and we, we tend to lose, I say spoiled, but we tend to lose that connection with the junior enlisted folk, which I think is critical as a leader. You learn so much from being with the junior level soldiers. Where are the areas, where are the gaps that you saw where this directive is going to close those gaps now?

• 8:55Speaker 03

  That's a great question. So I've served in the army 29 years now and most of it, you know, was in the 75th and we have the blue book. That is the deployment. Oh, no, not that many now. It feels like it, but, but really to the SMA's point a little while ago, he talked about why now, why is it that, why we're doing this right now? And it's, and it wasn't, you know, back in March, under Secretary of Defense, put out a directive for the entirety of the force to actually look at how we approach appearance and our standards. But the army has done that for a long time now. We're constantly reviewing and updating policies. So it's something that, you know, it wasn't like a knee jerk reaction. This is an iterative process. I mean, you saw it. We talked a little bit about the AFT. We talked about, you know, grooming and appearance, beards here in the past.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  So this is something we have been working at for a while. But I tell you, when I spoke to young NCOs and little mid-level NCOs, about the importance of, you know, discipline and upholding and adhering to the standards. The first thing I had to figure out is are they educated? Do they understand the standards as they are written? And one of the things that we've, we figure out as, as we review this policy, the different policies is that there is gray areas that allow some soldiers to interpret the policy. And that's where we're aiming to get is how do we clear black and white standards? That it's easy to understand because to me a standard is black and white. You don't get to interpret it the way you want to interpret it. This is what I'm asking you to do and you adhere to it and enforce it.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  Cause I think it's all tied to readiness and it's all tied to saving lives at the end of the day. And that, that's how I try to kind of approach it. And understanding what soldiers and leaders understand was critical to making those changes in 4th Infantry Division.

• 10:29Fran Racioppi?

  SMA, you've talked about the concept of compliance to commit as you evolved throughout your career. And when you look at the standards and the policies and the enforcement of them, that's what comes to my mind. When we have NCOs, I think it starts at the leadership level. It trickles down to our mid-level and junior-level NCOs. But really, what we have to get to is the point in which the individual soldier at the most basic level comes in and says, this is the standard and I don't need my NCO to tell me what the standard is. I need to do it because that's the right thing to do.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Now, I'm pretty honest and candid and practical when it comes to my compliance to commitment. There are portions of my career I've been compliant. But come on, your audience deserves the truth, right? Staff Sergeant Weimer didn't do everything perfectly. We won't talk about Specialist Weimer.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  Probably best.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  The file of record. Yes, it's best. But what I know is once you are in place in a leadership position, that's where the commitment piece has to be rock solid at that point in time because I'm a product of committed leaders. So when I was compliant, it was committed leaders that got me to understand the why to Sergeant Major Caprati's point. And I went from compliant to committed. It looks a little different in the SOF world, I get it, but it's not any different as far as compliance to commitment. And so, again, leadership, that's why I'm passionate about leadership. I'm passionate about, you know, we promote based off performance, or excuse me, potential, not performance, because I'm going to ask you to do more, right? And one of the things I need you to do is be the standard, to enforce the standard.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  But to do that, you got to remember, a little bit of empathy is required. Like, I needed, you know, I'll just say it, as we used to say when we were young kids, I needed a knot jerked in my ass a few times. But then I also had the leader at the same time and said, come on, you're better than that. This is simple. If you can't do the simple things I'm asking you to do, how are you going to do the hard things in combat? And that stuck with me. And I was like, whoa, okay. So I was corrected, sometimes a little harsher than maybe we do these days, but then it was quickly followed with the empathy of like, hey, man, you're better than this. And the why is important because when we go to combat, because remember in the 90s, I didn't have any combat. Almost all my leaders, none of us had any combat. I'll tell you what, when nine 11 kicked off and we started getting reps and sets, I started to really understand what they were trying to teach me.

• 12:51Fran Racioppi?

  So, sorry, Major Neighbors, what are we looking at for, for changes?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Oh, we're looking at some, some great changes, honestly. Things have gotten a lot more definitive with this Army Directive. And to each of their points, you know, it lessens the ambiguity. And it's not as vague as, as policy has been written in the past. So we're looking specifying, you know, some of the minimum hair lengths, things with hairstyles, techniques and things like that. Cosmetics, we had to do a lot of research with cosmetics.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  The things I know now.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  The things we know now, gosh, right? Grooming, body composition, there's going to be some changes with that and, and how we conduct those processes and things. But one of the things upfront that I'd like to say is we had to come in and really define, what is military appearance, right? What is that? And how do we define that? How do we articulate that through three areas of this Army Directive? Personal appearance, insignia, and, you know, the AGSU uniform, and also the Army Body Composition Program. And what we were looking at is the total soldier, the total soldier concept, right? Body composition, grooming, and then ABCP. And so, once we defined that and we got our left and right limits, then we were able to go through the eaches for personal appearance.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  And there are a lot of specifications now that we didn't have, minimums and maximums. And I'm just broad stroking it, but there are so many changes. We didn't have a length.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Major Neighbors, let me interrupt you real quick. And then you can give him some, couple of the specifics. You give him the couple.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  That's incredibly important because when we looked at the original and the historical documents of AR 670-1, what was missing was the upfront why? Like, why does this matter? Why does professional appearance matter? Why is your appearance and your bearing matter to being a member of this profession? And so, we said, we got an opportunity. I said, let's start with that. And then we get into fingernail changes and hair length changes and color of hair. And you can go ahead and share some of those.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Hair colors, getting out of the way of saying natural colors. Well, what, what is that? What is a natural color? We need to specify, you know, some of these things. And if we can't come to a concurrence with, we don't expect, you know, private PV2 snuffy because this Army Directive says that all ranks can make on-spot corrections, right? So they have to be able to comprehend what's in this Army Directive. If they're unable to do that, you know, you don't expect for them to hold a color palette in, in their pocket and pull it out and say, oh, that's more prairie winkled than it is taupe, just to use as an example. But, you know, so we were like, hey, if we can't come to a consensus on what natural color looks like specifically for nail polish for females in this example, then we're going to go with the clear nail polish.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  So what's the standard now?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  So the standard now is clear nail polish for female soldiers. Male soldiers are not authorized to wear clear nail polish unless it is a situation where it is medically prescribed on a medical profile. And so, you know, just kind of getting definitive with some of these, you know, do's and don'ts, adding specificity to, you know, the language and the diameters and the inches. And I'll give you another example. One thing, one of the biggest concerns that a lot of females have is what can we do with our hair? And so a lot of the hair techniques are specified. Ponytails, one new thing that came out of this Army Directive is now you can wear two braids, kind of like female athletes when they wear two braids. How they have the kind of double dutch braids that go back in.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Now you can have two of them, but we specify how wide they can be, how long they can be. And then the working group actually came up with some pretty cool techniques utilizing the Army Blue Book or two CACs. Three inches is the measurement for your CAC card or your common access card. And when you use those and you stack them on top of each other, you've got six inches. So how you norm measurements like that where it's an easy reference. If I don't pull out a ruler, but I've got two CACs and, and I got my smart book on me, then bam, six inches from the top of the collar. My ponytail can be, you know, no longer than that. That's a quick reference and something that leaders can do without feeling like they have to figure out where your shoulder blades are.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And, you know, and that leads to, to other things that don't make for a comfortable situation. Right. To try to glean where that is. So just getting those specifics and definitives in there. Some of the other things, the Army Body Composition Program, the flag K, how you're flagged with height and weight. That is changed in the Army Directive. That is no longer transferable. And so that's, that's kind of a game changer for ABCP.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Did you ever receive a soldier that came to you flagged for Army Body Composition?

• 17:29Fran Racioppi?

  Yes.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Not anymore.

• 17:31Fran Racioppi?

  So you, so meaning non-transferable, meaning you can't PCS.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Exactly. That soldier's my responsibility until that flag is cleared up. Seems like it would make sense, right? We haven't been doing that.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so there are a lot more. I can go down the list. I'd had fun with this thing for the last two and a half months.

• 17:48Fran Racioppi?

  Well, I'll, I'll ask you about two specifically because it's top of the list. And when we sat down with one of your predecessors SMA, as former SMA daily.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Daily?

• 17:56Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. He likes to, he likes to talk about the tattoos because he took a lot of heat over the tattoos. So what, so in, in respect of him, is there any change to the tattoos?

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Go for it.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  There's no change in the tattoos. If you're, if, you know, face, neck tattoos, if you got a waiver, then that's what it is. Right. But other than that, the only thing the Army Directive really talks about is the permanent tattoos. With makeup in particular, cosmetics, all soldiers can have access to those. However, what we describe is that semi-permanent makeup is okay, but you can't have permanent tattoo makeup. And so we kind of give the left, the right limits for that.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Which again, I didn't even know was a thing.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, semi-permanent.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  So if I'm First Sergeant Smith or First Sergeant or Platoon Sergeant Smith, how do I know that's even a thing to enforce? If we don't, but we learn through the working group, like these are real things happening in the formation out there every day.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. We had to solicit, I mean, when you talk about Army Directive, right? It's, it's not, you know, I'm not the subject matter expert. Honestly, I was, I was just a teammate that was contributing to the consolidation of guidance and recommendations and input and left and right limits given from our Army senior leaders. To see this thing through really, but we solicited a midcom. I mean, all the key players that can speak on, hey, if we're not going to. Allow eyelash extensions, but what about those that have alopecia? Or what about all these other considerations?

• 19:22Fran Racioppi?

  It's a real thing, yeah.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  It's a real thing, right? And we can't, us as policy writers, we're not the smees on that. We have to get that information from folks that actually know the ins and outs of those things. So lots of collaboration, lots of red teaming. We pulled together a red team. We wire brushed it with S of May at least seven times before him so that he can put us on target.

• 19:41Fran Racioppi?

  You mentioned a couple of minutes ago that soldiers have to understand why. Why do grooming standards, why do uniform standards matter? So now I gotta ask you the question, why do they have?

• 19:54Speaker 02

  So I personally think it's a direct, it's either one of two things. It's a direct reflection of you're willing to be compliant to a standard in your leaders, which, you know, I already shared, I've been there. I've been that young soldier that didn't fully understand. I won't blame my leaders for not always explaining it. Sometimes I just didn't understand or I didn't want to understand, but I had to be compliant. And the reason that's important is because if I can't do that in garrison, how am I going to do that in combat? Right? So that's step one. Step two is when we're doing talent management and we are looking at leadership. That's team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, think at echelon. Now, I know you're either compliant or committed.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  And again, if you're not committed, then I question, I question why we should put you in a leadership position. Because now you're responsible for all the soldiers. So, you know, I'll give you a little peek behind the curtain with PME reform. We're taking a whole new look at BLC and you're probably going to hear some stuff coming out here of a huge emphasis on what we're doing at basic leader course for new E5s to set that foundation about what we're talking about today. What's the spirit of this entire book and what it means to be an NCO committed to an oath? So those are the two things. I was committed later on. I'll be honest with you, when combat kicked in, I became fully committed because now I understood consequences. My concern is if we don't take the extra time to explain the why now through our experiences,

• 21:20Speaker 02

  some of them tough with memorials and Gold Star families we still care for to this day. Headed to a period of time that where I was in the nineties with an army with very little combat. Right. Which means squad leaders with no combat, platoon serges with no combat. So if we don't get after this and truly get them to understand why this is important. The next time the nation calls us to go, what we have to go do something we don't really want to do, but we'll be prepared to do. That's not the time to learn the hard way.

• 21:47Fran Racioppi?

  And we have an upcoming generation that asks a lot more questions.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 21:51Fran Racioppi?

  Than I think a lot of us did.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 21:52Fran Racioppi?

  You know, there's, there's a lot less of, well, they told me to do it. So that's what I do. And it's, well, why would I do that?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I'm actually okay with that. I like the fact that they're not, you know, full caveman like I was back in the day where I was fit and I did what I was told and you were seen, not heard. That's not the generation we have today. I mean, these youngsters coming into service are brilliant. Some of them are crazy educated, smart, critical thinkers. You get them to understand the why. I mean, they're an amazing asset a lot sooner than I probably was.

• 22:20Fran Racioppi?

  All right. So we got the SMA out of here. So now, now the hard questions are coming.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 22:24Fran Racioppi?

  No, he wants me to load him up with the hard. That's right. He told me to, to make it slightly painful for you guys. But let's keep going on the why, right? Cause the why matters. And when we look at the soldiers of today, who are more prone to ask the questions of why, why does this matter? Why do I have to do it? Also take that back into like broader leadership. When we conduct leadership development seminars. And when we teach leadership, we always teach them to come back to the why. And when you go through selection processes, who's like when you go to SFTC or you go to Ranger Battalion selection, or even in basic training, you know, for everybody coming into the army, we're testing things like resiliency and adaptability.

• 23:02Fran Racioppi?

  How does somebody bounce back when things don't go well? And if you don't have your why, then you can't make quick corrections to get back in the game. So when we look at the why, why does it really matter from your perspective, having just come out of the division?

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Absolutely. The why is significant. Now I was looking at, I think it reinforces one, uniformity. When we're talking about building cohesive units, right? This is the way we look. This is who we are. This is our culture as an army. All right. So number one is uniformity, discipline. I think the bedrock of any great organization is discipline, right? And that comes with it here into standards, understanding. The standards and enforcing the standards and really lasses the why is because we are the greatest fighting force in the world and professionalism should be one of the first things we talk about everywhere an American soldier goes it should be apparent that they are the best and that starts with appearance and grooming and adhering to the standards set forth by senior leaders.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And I'll add a little bit to that. So it's also one of those things where we have to remember that we're part of something bigger than all of us, right? We're committed to the army, its standards, its values and things like that. So the army wear and appearance like it's that visual representation of the set standards and discipline that we've established in the army. And so when reflecting on this policy and we're going through it, we're constantly reflecting on the why as we write everything else in regards to the personal appearance and the body composition portions of it. It's just that reflection that hey, this is something that's way bigger than you. And this is we're basically going to describe the visual representation that

• 24:40Speaker 01

  we want to reflect army standards. Yeah.

• 24:43Fran Racioppi?

  So you talked about the process that you had to go through and we were here a few months ago talking about the PT test and we kind of dug into that and the amount of research that has to go into these things. So what did you bring in to support? What I guess in who did you bring in to support the analysis in each one of these domains? Because I mean, if you break out AR six seven eight dash one, it's not like it's five pages. I mean, this is an extensive regulation. It's broken up into a lot of different subsections. So how do you go through that analysis and what data are you pulling to actually understand them?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Right. So a lot of the information came from the expired Alarax and needing to legitimize the expired thing, these liberties that we were given from the Alarax, we needed to legitimize that, right? And give you an example, the Ike jacket. Right. When you're wearing all of your awards on your IAC jacket, you know, yeah, that's fine, but no one really knew how to wear it. You'd see the Army senior leaders out front already wearing the IAC jacket with a minimum of six ribbons. We didn't have that in policy, so we had to go back and legitimize some of these things to say, yeah, that's exactly what we want. That's the intent, but it's not written anywhere to say that we can. So in a lot of ways, it was kind of cleaning up the fact that we had been doing some things,

• 26:02Speaker 01

  but there was nothing written in policy. So going, going back and realizing that, and then talking to the stakeholders, who are the stakeholders? It depends on the subject, right? Because we've got many things. So we were talking to, I mean, Public Affairs was amazing. The Office of Chief of Public Affairs to help us out with a lot of things. AR MEDCOM for some of the medical things, like if we say that eyelash extensions are not authorized, but they are for certain cases, i.e. alopecia. And if you have facial reconstruction from maybe explosive or something like that, if medically prescribed, then yes, they should be this X amount of millimeters long in length. And so getting to those eaches required us to solicit a schmie in those areas.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  And it just came down to, I mean, we use a lot of the SAR Major channel. We, it calls our SAR Major, AR MEDCOM, hey, help us out. Can you farm this to your team? And then the team chews on it a little bit. They get us something back. You read team it, we send it up to the Army senior leaders. They say, okay, yeah, this helps us understand it better. But in order to get to that credible information, to make sure that we're writing clean policy, we had to do a lot of collaboration outside of just the G1, which is where I work in HQ DA G1. So just reaching out and knowing who and using the SAR Major channel was amazing. And getting the right people to the table to make those decisions or help provide us guidance at least, yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  And really, one more thing to add is that is the bottom-up refinement, the bottom-up feedback, right? Because last year, they reached down, down to the divisions, commanders and SAR majors to understand, hey, what are some of the things currently in the AR that are ambiguous? What are some of the things that we should look at that can clarify and help you, teach your formation, help you enforce the standards a little bit better? So that was. Extremely helpful because that allow us to just go in multiple directions to really scope the problem that okay, this is their focus. The grooming, this particular males or the makeup that's authorized to be used. So now they have a start point to where to take off because like you said, AR six seven dash one is huge. You can't change every single thing in there. So that was great from the the total force providing the feedback that was required to get these changes going.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. We got a lot of senior leader feedback. I mean, the the G one Lieutenant General Eifler. He sent it to his G one crew of folks that trusted experienced leaders that say, hey, poke holes through this. We want you to, you know, ask why and why you did some of this stuff, provide us feedback that we can consider. We can re articulate in policy. Sergeant Major Stevens, the the G one, he sent it out to his group of folks. SMA sent it out to his group of folks, you know, I mean, we farmed this thing out. At some point, you know, as a policy writer, we're like, okay, how many times are we gonna send this thing out? But it was really worth it when you think on the return of investment from all of these experienced personnel.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  And it's not just senior leaders that senior leaders got us, they sign the NDA, all that stuff, give us some feedback. But the policy team in general, myself and my battle buddy who co-authored this, Sergeant Major Ozawa. We kind of informally socialize some of these things just in our office with civilians and personnel and say, hey, you know, if the army were to change this about this grooming standard, what do you think about that? And even I I ask a couple of Sergeant E five, staff sergeants, just their thoughts and hey, would you understand this if this was a thing? Oh, yeah, you know, and just kind of informally socializing this so that we can see, but just so we can gauge, are we on target? And does this align? Is the comprehension there? Because it's important for everybody to understand so that we can enforce.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  And then the fact that we have it to where all ranks can provide on-spot corrections, we need them to be able to understand the directive in order to do that, to carry that out. So.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  What about beards?

• 29:44Speaker 01

  What about beers? Army directive for wear and appearance does not cover beards. That's going to be a different army directive. Yeah, beards is not covered in this directive for six seventy dash one, the wear and appearance in ABCP. But we do have an executive order and a AD and potential fraggo that's going to release for beards. That comes out of the policy section as well, so.

• 30:07Fran Racioppi?

  Let's talk about army culture, okay? Cause all this comes back to the establishment of a standardization of army culture and what do we want the army to look like? And we have in the army now, three generations of soldiers. We have pre nine eleven, those who came in in the late nineties. And then we have the nine eleven generation who came in in the, the post attack period. And now we have a lot of new soldiers who weren't born on nine eleven, which is kind of crazy for, I think, all of us probably. And the job of our leadership of you really, and the SMA and everybody who now sits in our senior leadership positions is, how do we bridge that gap?

• 30:48Fran Racioppi?

  How do we take decades of experience and however many ninety day deployments you had in Ranger Battalion? And get someone who wasn't born on nine eleven, may not understand at the same level we do, the importance of never having something like that happen on our soil again. But also needing them to understand the complexities of nation state versus nation state? And how a nation state versus nation state type of conflict will have, be nothing like the nine eleven attacks.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:26Fran Racioppi?

  How are you bridging the gap?

• 31:27Speaker 03

  It's not starting out. So first and foremost is really understanding the generational differences that exist. As you mentioned, three different generations really serving right now. That is arguably the most challenging thing that I found as a senior leader in the army. And you, you see it at the platoon, company level, NCOs kind of grew up under that a long time ago. And then they're kind of tied to some old practices. So getting them to understand how to better communicate, that's number one, and that's hard. They don't teach you that, right? How do you get into the mind of a young soldier who habitually comes in and questions? Things and not because he or she lacks discipline, he just they wanna know more, they wanna know why. And finding that Vinnie, I was telling CEOs, you are the highway of communication. You're the one that takes language from the top, you chew it.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  And then you put it into language that your soldiers can understand, adhere to, and your younger leaders enforce. And you know, always finding ways to make it relatable to what they're going to experience potentially in combat. And it's something as simple as like, I know you think your hair is not our sentence, but it is, and this is why. And doing it in a professional manner to understand. And then say, you know, you taking that shortcut because you think is not important to you. Could result on you taking a shortcut on your tables as you conduct PMI. You skip your virtual training and then you're you're happy and comfortable with becoming just a regular marksman. But all these corners that you tend to shave because you don't find them as important. They carry over into everything you do and try to make them understand that. And God forbid, you know, we we end up in large scale combat, you know, what could happen?

• 32:54Speaker 03

  If you're used to questioning things and and interpreting things the way you do. That's why it's our job to educate them and teach them the importance of adhering to it.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. All of what he said is super important. And it's just the communication, right? Keeping that communication flow at all levels. We have got to make sure that we stay in touch with our soldiers, communicating with our soldiers, sharing our experiences. And it happens from bottom up, left to right. And you know, when when soldiers tell you their experience, don't be too quick to disregard their input. A lot of times they have great things to add, great things that, hey, you know, you can do it this way, you know? Because sometimes they're a little bit more tapped into technology, you know, than us older soldiers. Because I am, you know, post nine eleven, I came in like a couple of months right after December of two thousand one.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  So, yeah, and and I find myself, you know, as a sergeant major, I'm a little out of touch with the privates and specialists even. Because of the echelons in which I've been placed to work. But their input, a lot of times it's like, wow, I didn't even think of that. And they're helping me. And so I think as a leader, it's it's super important just to don't disregard them as being inexperienced. Listen to what they have to say, you know, you can filter it as a leader, you know what to take in and what to, you know, say, okay, I'm gonna put that, you know, pocket for maybe a different time. But just having that that communication, that open communication and active listening is also one of the most important things as well, too.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:26Fran Racioppi?

  When we look at what's next for the army, there's a lot of discussion about transformation. Where's the army going? What are we preparing for? We know that there's the, I won't say the potential, but there's always been the potential and the risk and the threat of the large scale combat operations. And what might that look like? We've seen really the rapid advancement of technology on battlefields like Ukraine, where we have forests of fiber optic cable and drones that are not targeting formations or targeting people, which for those of us who served in the post nine 11 period through the GWAT, I mean, were we much more advanced than like the Gulf War?

• 35:07Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, but it hasn't been that long since we left Iraq and Afghanistan and we're running through the streets. And, you know, now warfare's changed really, really rapidly over the last five to 10 years. How, when you talk to soldiers, when you interact with them, how do you prepare them for everything, really?

• 35:27Speaker 03

  That's such a tough question. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I mean, I don't think anybody knows what large scale combat will look like. I think we can learn from some of the lessons that we're seeing happening right now. And that's where the army is moving forward with that, you know, our transformation initiative. I mean, we have, we're iterating at a speed that we've never done before. We're changing things, getting rid of things that are obsolete, putting things in the hands of soldiers to make them more lethal, more lethal and much more rapidly than we have ever. And I'm glad you brought that up because when you talk about how do you put these things together and make them relatable? And we talk about, you know, ubiquitous observation from drones, drone warfare, precision fires, all these different things that are coming, you know, the new ISB. No matter how far, how fast we advance, there's always going to be a human being.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  There's always going to be a soldier behind the trigger, behind that computer. We talk about next generation C2, behind the launcher. And you want that soldier to understand what his job is, basic, mastering the basic things. And when we started looking at our appearance and grooming, you may find, hey, how is this applicable? But it's just, it's the fundamentals, this understanding, I know, and I have confidence in you. You can understand and follow just plain regulations and guidelines because that's all tied and relatable to your job performance. And I think it's ultimately what's going to make us a great fighting formation, our ability to be uniform, disciplined, and understand what we're being asked to do. Absolutely. I got nothing to add to that. Yeah.

• 36:50Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, it's tough, right? We have litany of, I won't say, I don't want to say things, but yeah, like, you know, there's a lot of events that could happen, you know, and we have peer, we call them near peer, you know, they're getting closer and closer here, but what's our job? You know, our job is to make sure that that as a start, I think it was the SMA that said it in my, one of my first conversations with them, that our job is to keep near in front of peer as long as possible and continue to delay those decisions. We want those adversarial nations, every day they wake up and they say, you know, is today the day we go after them? No, no, today's not the day. Maybe next week, maybe a year or two from now. We want to continue to push that further down the road as we're able to modernize and develop capability. But there are still

• 37:33Fran Racioppi?

  terrorist organizations who are interested in striking the homeland, and we have to be ready to get back out there and deploy our counterterrorism forces in rapid capability to be able to combat that. Let's talk about the guard. All right. And the reserve.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  And the reserve.

• 37:45Fran Racioppi?

  And the reserve. You were, I know, you gave me the look, but you're, you are in the reserve, but you are in what's called the active guard reserve.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 37:53Fran Racioppi?

  And so when we look at the total army, we obviously historically on this show have spent, well, I'd say 100% of the time until right this minute, talking about the active duty component. Yeah. And what does it mean to serve in the active duty component? Obviously, a lot of that focus has been in the special operations community. But what is the active guard reserve? And when we, when we look at the total army composition, where do the reserve and the national guard forces fit in in comparison to the active duty component?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Gotcha. That's a load of questions.

• 38:23Fran Racioppi?

  It's a long question.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  All right. So I'll start with the army reserve components covering two and three, Compost two and three, National Guard and Army Reserve. So I'll tell you this, I deployed to Iraq 2004, went to Al-Takhtam and with a reserve unit. That was my first exposure to contribution to unified land operations, right? And what we were there to do in Iraq. And we were a combat support battalion, right? Combat support battalion. And it was mostly sustainment functions. So in a lot of sense, the Compo three in particular is a huge. Sustainment element for compo one and we kind of balance out some things on a sustainment side of the house for contributing those things to the operations.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  But in particular in Iraq, what was the unique skill skillset that I'm pretty sure that a lot of folks have heard before is that the uniqueness of having a civilian skillset that a lot of our part-time troop program unit soldiers have. And those are the ones, so there's two statuses, kind of, well, actually, there's more. There's actually about four statuses, but we're just going to stick to two for the purpose of time. Okay, so under the Army Reserve, we have, what do we call your traditional drilling soldier that shows up two days out of the, that performs duty two days out of the month and two weeks out of the year, right? And then you have active guard reserve. That's kind of like your full-time support continuity for the reserve component units. We all have our missions, we all have metal task and things like that and still,

• 39:54Speaker 01

  still charged and challenged to do everything we're supposed to do as if we were all on full active duty at all times. And, and a lot of times those guys that get it done are those soldiers, they get it done over a weekend, but that full-time support is carrying a brunt of the operations. And there's only a few that are dropped into these main elements of, of units, maybe two to, to five, depending on the size of the unit. So that active guard reserve support kind of carries the, the full-time continuity. And then you have civilians that's also there that helps, the A civilians and what they call military technicians, mil techs, and they kind of provide that support as well. So that we are still doing our mission. But the uniqueness when I experienced in Iraq is that we built the chapel over there

• 40:39Speaker 01

  at the time and we didn't have anything at TQ. And, and so we went over and my combat support battalion, we had some engineers that were probably 92 Yankees on the military side, but in their civilian jobs, they were like architects, like all of these really cool jobs. And we built things based off of their civilian careers, you know, skills that they brought in. And that's kind of the uniqueness that the compo's two and three kind of brings to the tables that we go in, we Can give you two sides of the coin essentially. And a lot of them are still very successful in their military career as well. So yeah, it's a very rewarding. I joined the Army Reserve because I still wanted to go to college.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  And I was like, I wanted to only dip one toe in the water at the time, you know, after when, once I joined. I'm like, I still want to go to college, so I'm just going to join the reserve, you know, and just try it out. And that worked for me, but it did lead to me wanting to be on a continued form of active duty. And so the way that I ended up doing that was by joining the active guard reserve. So I'm still affiliated with compo three as an Army reservist, but I'm just on a full-time status. And I don't come off of that. It's comparable to the active component. I don't come off of that until I get a DD two fourteen, or if I submit for release from active duty. And then I can retire and have all the same benefits and, and everything as an active component soldier.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  So it's just that we provide a lot of support mostly to compo three units. Again, we're mostly logistics sustainment. We're heavy in that, but we can also be nested under HQDA, just like I am here for headquarters, Department of Army G1. So it's, it's a little bit of both best worlds, but it's been a great career for me. Shout out to Command Sergeant Major Betty, the Army Reserve, Command Sergeant Major and Lieutenant General Harder, the Chief of the Army Reserve. So they do afford us opportunities. I'm only able to serve at this level because they authorized me to do so. Because they saw value in having a compo three person on the HQDA G1 policy team. That way I can keep an ear out for and advocate for compos two and three.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  And also contribute to the active component mission as well.

• 42:50Fran Racioppi?

  If I have it right, you started your career in sustainment, but also a heavy equipment operator.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  I did, yes, I did. Actually, I came in with an engineer unit. And again, I, I wanted to, I wanted to go to college still. I still wanted to finish college, but what ended up happening, I ended up really falling in love with the Army. And so I,

• 43:09Fran Racioppi?

  Twenty-four years later.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Twenty-four years, I, I fell in love with the Army and, but my engineer unit was my first handshake into what the Army is. And a lot of times you don't really. Like Army, Army Reserve, I can, I can personally speak for Army Reserve. Campo two, I, I know a little bit about, we're very similar in the way that we do things. Uh, they're more state driven, whereas we are Title 10 federal. But with the Army Reserve, when I came in, I was a 71 Lima. As HR and I picked that job because, well, I knew a friend that was a 71 Lima. So like, what job should I pick? Oh, you're a 71. Okay. I want to be a 71 Lima. That's kind of how I became a 71 Lima. So I went into HR and then I got to the engineer unit and they were like, hey, we're pipeline construction unit, you know, how about you, you come out and do some cross training

• 43:53Speaker 01

  as a 21 Echo heavy equipment operator at the time. And I'm like, okay, you know, I'm just, I'm a naive. I think I was a PV three at the time, you know, in this unit and went out and did some pipeline construction stuff, fell in love with it, but you know, still kept the HR as my primary as well. So yeah, did a little bit of that, got my hands dirty. Then went back into the office.

• 44:18Fran Racioppi?

  Well, we got Ranger Caprati over here too. The, the biggest piece of equipment he had to operate was the 240 Bravo. And he got to that. That's right. I shot a Carl G once or twice as well too. So I can't hear out of one ear now. So let's talk for a second about Ranger Battalion, because it's a very different experience. That Sergeant Major Neighbors had and we've talked a lot about Ranger Battalion on the show over, over the years and certainly our, our brothers in arms and special operations community. Why join the Rangers?

• 44:42Speaker 03

  That's great too. I thought I wanted to be an officer when I first, uh, you know, the role is that, but there's a nod. It was not my path ultimately. I'm a product of JROTC. I knew at a very young age, I'm originally from Peru. You know, I immigrated here when I was 12 years old and, you know, just like everybody else, you know, why? Cause this, this country provided me so much and my family, I was like, how do I give back? And the service was the way I gave back. So JROTC was really the gate that kind of allowed me to see, I had a great mentor there. And then I went on to Virginia Military Institute because I was like, I think I'll be an officer. I think a year into it there, listening to the, the senior instructors and ROTC and SF. Yeah. I had a Ranger. They always tell these stories in middle of class. And I'm like, I think this is the route I'm going. So I left school after a year,

• 45:27Speaker 03

  asked for an option 40 contract, the premier. Raid force in the army. And next thing you know, I'm in RIP airborne school and assigned to my first duty assignment, which is the first Ranger Battalion. And I managed to stay there for 12 years. And really the mission set, the focus and the camaraderie that exists in that formation is unlike anyone, anything I've seen before. And I stayed there, you know, from really from the rank of PFC all the way to 75 CSM, at which point, you know, when I went to the conventional army, and we're talking about Abrams Charter a little long ago, and really the reason why the regiment was was built this to take this SOPs, TTPs and share, share with the entirety of the army what the Ranger Force does. So stayed on until then.

• 46:07Fran Racioppi?

  What are the lessons you take back out of the Rangers? I mean, when we think about, I mean, I have credited a lot of, I mean, hesitate to call it success, I'd say anything I've done in my life, you know, I think always goes back to a couple of things, right? You have some defining moments in your life. And, you know, for me, it was being a collegiate rower because it instilled discipline and hard work ethic. Nothing's ever in my life is going to be as painful as those six minutes of the race course, I always told myself. But the other one was range school. You know, when you go and at least I was fortunate to go when I was young. And now I've talked to people who are like, oh, I went when I was like 35. I'm like, damn, that sucks because I went at 25 minutes. So I take a lot away from that experience in terms of you have to get the job done.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 46:48Fran Racioppi?

  And you have to get the job done to a standard. And it really doesn't matter if you're cold or you're tired or you're hungry or you have other priorities, you have to then figure out what is the most important task that I have to do. And all of that gets learned, you know, walking through the 37 degree rain, you know, in the mountains, the jaw all wet and then, you know, getting in your hooch and getting blown out of it 30 seconds later. But what are the lessons that you take from serving at every level in the Ranger Battalion back into the bigger army, especially now as you sit in the G357 where, you know, you're looking at entire composition of the army mission?

• 47:23Speaker 03

  There's, we can sit here for an hour talking about the different things and that place is done for me. You talk about resiliency, you know, mission focused, having a purpose. I think holistically, it's made me a better, a better father, a better husband, definitely a better leader and really coming to and serving in our Organization like that, we always talked about it is every single day is an opportunity for you to reinvent yourself. And that's the mindset that they have there. What do you bring to the table today? I'm mildly interested on what you did yesterday. I'm mildly interested in your accomplishment from last week. Well, how are you different in how you're making your team, squad, platoon, or company better today? And it's that constant churn of making yourself better, making the people around you better that just never stops.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  And I think carrying that throughout my career, and then the first time I actually left the regiment, I was in a three, four calf, twenty fifth infantry division. And I took what the charter said is like, what are the things that I've learned over my career here? That can be applied to this reconnaissance formation. How do we get lighter? How do we get more lethal? How do we instill some of that discipline that I kind of grew up? That was second nature to me. But the difference between the compliance, you know, that the SMA was talking about. TTPs was great. By that time I had deployed many times. So being able to come back and share some of those lessons, some of them hard, unfortunately, to make formations, see solutions from a different angle. But I say all that to say this as well, you know, having served in the twenty fifth in the eleventh airborne division, there is just an incredible amount of talent in the total army.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  And that that applies company one, two, and three. And be able to see some of these soldiers who have at some point served and they're actually following the charter as well. It's amazing to see when you get this cohort of people who have served in an organization, just flood the army and lift the charter as it was designed to do. Something that I've tried to carry really from leaving the battalion and then serving as the fourth infantry division CSM in Colorado Springs. Which is like the best place to be stationed. It's amazing. It is incredible. It's incredible. Yeah.

• 49:18Fran Racioppi?

  Always wanted to be stationed. I was like, no complaints. I was there as a platoon leader and I went back there in tenth group. And I was pretty much, you know, outside of training at brag and betting, that was where I was.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  I was also, those are great teammates. Yeah, absolutely.

• 49:29Fran Racioppi?

  All right. So the new Army Directive around six seventy dash one is going to go out here right around the timing when this conversation is going to go live. And there's going to last point that we got to make is there's going to be a grace period because we're not just going to wake up one day and say, hey, do this tomorrow. We got to let everyone have some time. So what's that grace period look like?

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Right, absolutely. There is a transition period for about 30 days. So soldiers will, soldiers and leaders have 30 days to digest the Army Directive, make some changes if it warrants that. And one of the things when we were coming up with that transition period, we're like, hey, there may be something that depending on what it is, they may have to make some significant changes. If it's more than 30 days, we encourage commanders to have discussions and conversations with their soldiers. And that was one of the biggest things about, hey, we're trying to get better at discipline and standards. It's okay to have a conversation. It's okay to talk about it. Need more time? That's on the commander and the NCO support chain to have those conversations with the soldiers. But as written, they have 30 days from the date that the Army Directive will publish

• 50:31Speaker 01

  in order to adhere to those changes.

• 50:33Fran Racioppi?

  Last question for each of you. This is the test question.

• 50:39Fran Racioppi?

  I kind of close these things out where we really talk about our namesake, the Jedbergs, in reference to the fact that we as leaders have to be able to do our tasks on a daily basis, really sometimes as routine, as habits, because our habits set the foundation for our performance. And I think it's timely in this discussion because when we talk about where an appearance of the uniform and personal beret and sandals, we're really talking about habits. And in World War II, when the Jedbergs jumped into occupied France in very little guidance, very little direction, except win the war, but they had to be able to do a couple of things really well. You probably have heard of them. They permeate today, but they had to be able to shoot, move and communicate. If you could do those things as a soldier at any level,

• 51:22Fran Racioppi?

  then you can really focus your attention on anything else and any more complex challenge that comes your way throughout the day. So what are the three things that you each do every day in your world to set the conditions for success?

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Ooh, that's a good one. You want to start or you want me to start?

• 51:36Fran Racioppi?

  I agree with that one.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  All right, okay. All right, the three things, man, I think about that for a sec.

• 51:41Fran Racioppi?

  I believe it was a test.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a definitely good test question, that's for sure. Okay, so one thing that I do is self-reflection, right? I'm always trying to realize what I can do better, how I could communicate better with the task that I get. It's so random. I'm a policy integrator. Like, it's chaos at best, every day, every single day, depending on what comes down from the top, right? So self-reflection is one of those things that keeps me humble. It keeps me motivated. It keeps me wanting to give direction to my soldiers because I'm thinking about, I'm making a conscious decision to reflect upon what I could have done better or what I needed to do better. And what I'm currently doing that's right, that I need to sustain or maintain.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Self-reflection is a, is a big thing for me so that I can communicate those things. Make a conscious effort to just go around, take a break. I have been known to be a workaholic, and I get my work ethic from my parents. My father, he stayed on his job for 35 years. My mother stayed on her job for 42 years. So work ethic and commitment, something I definitely didn't have a problem with before joining the military that was already instilled in me at a very early age, just growing up. So what I've had to learn to do is take a break, peel off for just a second, go around, talk to everybody, see how they're doing. I make a point to kind of do that every day. There's some days that I mess up, I don't make it around, but I try to pull away for a little bit just to kind of get the heartbeat of what's going on in my section

• 53:10Speaker 01

  and to see, hey, is there anything, what's going on? How are you doing? And when you talk about that commitment versus compliance thing, a lot of those informal and just sharing the empathy that you have with soldiers in those moments, it can translate to commitment to them. I want to do better because, you know, I got my leaders walking around. They actually care. They actually are genuine. And they're exchanged to figure out how I'm doing and what I'm doing. And is there anything as a leader that I can provide top cover on? Or what can I do for you to make you better? And hey, here's something that I might need your input on from me so that... Exchange. So I make it a point to kind of dial back a little bit and kind of just go around, see how everybody's doing. And the third thing, gosh, I don't know. I do so many weird and awkward

• 53:53Speaker 01

  things. I don't know. I owe you one on that one. How about the next podcast I come up with the third one? But I could tell you that, yeah, there is just a couple of just feel good things that I have to do. I mean, I was Those are important. I would tell you, the third thing is just already says self reflecting, but gratitude is really big for me. Gratitude is huge. It goes a long way. And showing gratitude, giving gratitude, and just kind of realizing how you contribute to the organization and making a conscious effort to contribute. You know, it's easy to say, oh, yep, that's not my policy. I don't. It's kind of what I did with the Heisman about the beard question that you gave me. Right. I like totally Heisman. I'm like, no, not an army director. Not going to talk about it. It's not talking to

• 54:38Speaker 01

  that. It's so

• 54:40Fran Racioppi?

  Good try, though.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Good try, though. Good try. Nice try. But honestly, it's one of those things where like, I can't Heisman, you know, everything. I gotta be able to be a team player and I gotta be able to kind of lean in and say, okay, what are my strengths and weaknesses? What can I contribute better? And what can I do to get, you know, more self-development as well? So, you know, just those things. For me, it's just, I'm an introvert, but I'm also a people person. It's very confusing, right? But I know my soldiers and like, that has been my strongest probably attribute as a leader that I've been able to get my soldiers to commit because I'm really getting after what can I do for you? And how can I provide you support? And hey, I need your input on this because I want you to feel valued and things like that. So I'm huge on things like that. I

• 55:26Speaker 01

  know that was rambling, but

• 55:27Fran Racioppi?

  No, that's, I think you're spot on. Leadership's not about what did I do here today? It's what did I do for everyone else here to be successful?

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:34Fran Racioppi?

  That's why I have to look at it. All right.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Why have you had to do that? They did. They gave me a lot of time.

• 55:38Fran Racioppi?

  Absolutely.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, as good as yours may be.

• 55:42Fran Racioppi?

  She, yeah, she set conditions already.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  It was rambling. I apologize. No, that was great. You know, I will start really, and this is loosely tied to your first question. One of the things you learn in your previous organization, but learning, the thought of constantly learning and evolving and changing the way you think, the way you act is really important. Sadly enough, you know, throughout my career, I've spoken to people that had the mentality that they see change as not being original. And we have those conversations. That's like, you have to change. You have to learn to read the room. You have to understand, all I need is my commander's intent, and you got to make it happen one way or another, right? And that takes some reflection, that takes understanding, how you have to change, how you communicate, how you behave. And some people struggle, and I struggled quite a bit of that when I first became, you know, a young company first sergeant.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  And really, it affects your formation. At the end of the day, you're going to go in there with, hey, this is what I know. I'm going to stick to it. So, learning and evolving. This job has been incredible for me. I've had fun for the last 29 years being tactical. And now you're actually looking at big army problems. So you're talking about the Department of Defense, changes that are going to affect generations. You're talking about the Army of 2040, right? So constantly understanding that you're only as good as the time you're willing to put in. The day that you show up to work and say, I got this figured out, man, take your uniform off and hang it. You're done. You're done being value added to any organization. So that would be my first one, learning. Educating, and it's tied kind of to what we're talking about. So what do you do with that knowledge? What do you do with the things you learn? And knowledge is power. And how you get that down to the, to the formation is incredible.

• 57:13Speaker 03

  And that has its challenges. And again, the way we articulate ourselves, the way we break it down at Echelon, that's truly important. So not only learn, but learn how to share that information to make the rest of your formations better now. And being so close with the G3, listening to the Sergeant of the Army, the chief, and all the changes that we have, it's having those touch points with, you know, ASCs and ACOM G3s, and let them know, hey, we're here to answer any questions. This is what's changing. This is how it's applicable to you and why it matters, and how I can help you kind of push that information down. The last thing it's receiving that constant feedback and that takes a little bit of vulnerability. And I tell you that took a lot of vulnerability for me here in particular, just not being exposed to policy

• 57:57Speaker 03

  and the things that happen inside the building is being comfortable talking to people and having people understand, hey, I don't know this. You are the subject matter experts because I saw that when I left the regiment. I came to my first conventional unit and some of the processes and systems. I was like, what is this? You know, I had peers that are like, hey, check it out. This is a Capri. You know, he just asked what DTMS was, you know, it's something as simple as that. And then I'm like, yeah, okay, what is it? You know, it's so being comfortable, not knowing everything and just asking, believe me, your soldiers know what you don't know. So just being comfortable to say, I don't understand that. And sometimes to her point, bottom of feedback is sometimes incredible. Some of these soldiers are just incredible. Just very fiber of their being is intertwined with technology.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  That was not accessible to us when we're growing up. So I think those are the three things I've kind of used to get me through the point I'm at right now. I don't think it's got me through. It's maybe successful, I guess, in some ways. But how to pick one is the constant hunger to learn and understand your job. So you can make formations better than they are now.

• 58:56Fran Racioppi?

  So we got self-reflection, take a break, gratitude, constant learning, educating, and constant feedback. That's it. If our soldiers can put those things to use.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 59:06Fran Racioppi?

  Continue to be the premier fighting force in the world.

• 59:08Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 59:09Fran Racioppi?

  So appreciate all your efforts and thank you for spending some time with me today, sharing where we're going as an army more broadly. And then also what our, what our look and feel is going to be because it's about the culture. At the end of the day, when as the SMA has talked about, as, as everybody in the entire chain of command has talked about, you know, we need warfighters. We need a generation of soldiers who are going to carry that torch and hold that flag high and take us to 2040 and beyond. And it's going to take having a solid, solid foundation and understanding their purpose and why, why are we here? And why is America continuing to be the greatest nation on earth? And it's because of this army right here. That's right. I appreciate the invite.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 59:52Fran Racioppi?

  Thanks.

• 59:56Fran Racioppi?

  American Jedbergs went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jedburgh 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 Jedburgh 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 Jedburgh Media Channel, and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special Forces and their families.

• 1:00:40Fran Racioppi?

  Thanks for joining us on this episode. How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.