 Welcome to this edition of the US Army Europe podcast. I'm Jesse Granger, and joining us today again is the commander of US Army in Europe, Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling. Thanks for joining us again today. Jesse, it's good to be with you again. All right, we wanted to get this time with you to go over US Army Europe's new campaign plan. Can you tell us a little bit what's this about and how the command is gonna use this going forward? Yeah, this is something we've been working on for about six months now, and a key group of people came together to write something that will provide not only internal to the command, but to people outside the command, what the heck it is we're doing in Europe, in US Army Europe. It's our vision for the future. It's our vision, it's a strategy for how to achieve the kind of goals that we want. And it's written in the document so that anybody who is not familiar with the Army in Europe or who wants to know more about what it is we're doing can read this and say, oh, okay, I get it. And frankly, some of the reasons that we put it together is there are a lot of folks out there who think we're still fighting the Cold War. And it's for people who have never been here before or people who really don't understand what US Army Europe contributes to not only the U-Com strategy, but also the national security strategy. So it is our vision and our campaign for the future. Almost a user manual. It is exactly a user manual. And what's great about it, I think, is it really paints a very concise picture of where we are today and where we're trying to go. It's just like, you know, you use campaign, the term campaign plan is all about what a military organization does to accomplish the mission. It's usually associated with battle plans or strategy and combat. But what we're trying to do is exactly the same thing. We're giving a vision and a direction to the subordinate forces within our organization. But we're also painting a picture to those who might be on our flanks, whether it's the State Department or the President or some of our allies or congressmen or senators, what it is exactly we're doing within our battle space. I've had a chance to go over some of it so far. And I wanted to get a little bit into the weeds here. The plan is kind of broken down into four main objectives and four separate lines of effort. Can you share some of those with us and talk about how this affects those of we implementing the plan, the soldiers of US Army? Yeah, I'll try and simplify those four objectives for you. The first one is we have to continue and it's a primary objective. We have to continue to train US Army forces for any contingency operation. Across the full spectrum of operations in unified land operations in asymmetric conditions. So number one, and our top priority is to make sure our soldiers are ready for anything that the nation asks us to do. Number two, and this gets to our U-Com and somewhat our AFRICOM mission that we support and that is build partner capacity. Work with our allies. Allow them to see what we're doing, contribute to their activities as they grow their forces but also learn from them. So the next time we come together with allies on the battlefield, there's not a high learning curve or a steep learning curve. So we know exactly what our allies are doing. They know how we operate and we've done it before we actually go into the fight. The third area is it's stated in the document as setting the stance. And stance is defined as where we are located and what we are doing. So as we continue to evolve the user of footprint in Europe, in all the places where we have soldiers and family located, over the next few years we'll continue to polish what we have as a force structure organization. So there will still be some fits and starts and changes but what we have to do is make sure our communities and our units are set to accomplish the mission that we have here in Europe. And the fourth one is to establish a standard centric community. Now that one is a little bit fuzzy and what we mean by that is that soldiers, family members, civilians, local nationals are all part of the community of user that are abiding by our values. They're disciplined, they're abiding by our standards. They have communities which serve one another and which really turn into family. So there's a lot that can be read into that particular objective and line of effort. Now looking outside of Europe, how does the new campaign plan support the overall strategy for the Army and the Department of Defense? Yeah, I think is, well just recently President Obama, Secretary Panetta, Chairman Dempsey, General Dempsey, rolled out their new strategic overview for the U.S. military. And I think that what you see in that is a shift to other areas in the world but as part of that strategic review they've also said hey we've gotta continue to maintain our strongest of allies. And they in fact pointed directly to Europe and said our strongest allies are in Europe so we've gotta continue to maintain that. I think our campaign plan is nested in that strategic review first of all. Secondly, it's nested very well in the UCOM campaign plan and the UCOM theater security cooperation plan. So we're taking a look at our higher headquarters here in Europe and saying hey we're doing the things that they're asking us to do and we're doing it with a lot of initiative and a lot of rigor and a lot of discipline. The third thing is in fact just recently, just last week as a matter of fact, the Army rolled out a new Army campaign plan, ACP. And frankly as we looked at it we said oh my gosh, is it gonna significantly change the work we've done over the last six months? And that's a good thing about a campaign plan if you get it near right the first time you put it through. You can take a look at it and say hey, does this nest within what our higher headquarters are doing? And what we found is it nests very well from a strategic review, from a UCOM campaign plan and now from an Army campaign plan. We're doing the things that our higher headquarters are asking us to do. Now you've mentioned before that this plan is kind of a living document. How do you envision it taking shape over the next few years? Yeah well what our plan is, we had a very small group working it, put the words together based on my guidance, they met with me several times, numerous times to make sure we were getting the things that as the commander I wanted in it to set the conditions from the years 2012 to 2014. That's the purpose of the campaign plan. But what we're also doing is we're rolling it out to all of our commanders at the upcoming UCER Senior Leader Forum. We're gonna give our commanders, our subordinate commanders, all the brigade and garrison and staff officers throughout Europe, an opportunity to be briefed on it from the guys that put it together. And I think we'll give them the document itself, but then we'll spend a little bit of time talking about it and say okay, because it is a living document, here are lines of effort, here are our metrics, here are our objectives. How do you feel about these things? Do we need to polish them a little bit? Do we need to tweak them a little bit and see what they say? I think based on the things that this will continue to drive, we've got the opportunity to now bring about 200 more people into this and say first of all, let's build consensus. And secondly, if you've got some ideas or some initiatives you'd like to place in this, how does it fit in? So it will become a living document, we'll review it after about six months, we'll say are we on track, are we meeting the metrics and let subordinate command teams take a look at it and contribute as well. All right sir, so thanks again for your time, we really appreciate the chance to talk to you. Thanks Jesse, appreciate it, it's always good to talk to you. And of course the document will be available online and that's gonna be on the US Army Europe homepage at er.army.mil. So until next time for the US Army Europe podcast, I'm Jesse Granger, thanks for downloading.