 He's going, yeah. I kick it off? I just start? OK. You going to talk from the podium? So you're just going to follow him, and so just the clicker, right click, left click. Yes, the laser. So how's it going to go? Good morning. Welcome back. We had a great day yesterday, and I expect that we will have a full day today of great presentations and discussion. We're going to kick this off this morning, looking at what many people call the hard targets. We're going to look at the special operations forces of North Korea, of Russia, and of China. And we have three distinguished experts on these areas here. And I'd just like to caveat a couple points here that we're going to look at these special operations forces. I think it's important not to mirror image, not to compare them directly to US, or South Korean, or any allied special operations. We should think about whether they are 10 feet tall or not. I don't think the North Koreans are 10 feet tall. They're pretty small. But we tend to look at our adversary special operations forces as larger than life. So we really need to try to understand their real capabilities. And we don't expect that we'll be fighting allied soft versus our adversary soft. A lot of people ask me that question. They say, well, doesn't it take a gorilla to find a gorilla? But the special operations force one thing in common is that they are looking for targets that are vulnerable, that are strategic. And it is unlikely that we're going to be directly, deliberately encountering each other. The vulnerable people and the vulnerable targets are not protected by military forces maybe, or certainly not protected by soft. And populations are vulnerable. And so these special operations forces are really dangerous. And it's important that we know them. And so we're going to look at these three now. We hear often, we heard yesterday, know yourself and know your enemy. I think it was in Jeff Slides. I went on Jeff Slides yesterday. That is true. We have to know ourselves. We have to know our enemy. And 100 battles will be victorious. I'm also a proponent of Frank Hoffman, really the father of asymmetric warfare. He argues that we should have a principle of understanding and a principle of war. And it does seem like a no-brainer, because Sun Tzu did teach us to know ourselves and know our enemy. But we really have to have a deeper understanding of war, of warfare, the conditions that give rise to conflict, and the politics that lead to an end conflict. And so it's not just a question of knowing our enemy or knowing ourselves. It is really about understanding. But the need for understanding would seem to be so obvious that we think we do not even need to mention it. But in fact, I would argue that many of our failures, particularly in the last two decades, might be connected to our lack of understanding of the strategic environment, the operational environment, and the political environment. So understanding is, I think, an important concept. And I hope today we'll be able to gain some understanding about these forces. First, we've got Lieutenant General Inbun Ton, who is the commander of the South Korean Special Forces. And he's going to kick this off. Then we're going to have Dmitri Belikov, who is a photojournalist. And I think he has an advantage, because a picture is worth 1,000 orders. And I think he'll share some photos with us. And he's going to talk about his experiences with the Russian Spetsnaz. And then Lyle Goldstein, who is an expert on China, on the PLA in many areas there. And so he's going to talk about the PLA soft there. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to General Chun. And of course, we'll have Q&A followed. Good morning, everyone. Inbun Chun, I'm from the Republic of Korea. Today's subject is Know Your Enemy, the Future of Global Competition. But I would be remiss as a Korean to take this opportunity to thank all of the American people here for helping us Koreans. Please visit my country and see what you have been able to do with your support. I thank all of you as a Korean to all of the Americans here. So in order to approach this subject, I've labeled my title an introduction to the Asian way of special operations. And they gave me six minutes. And I've just used up 30 seconds. So we don't have much time. So let's all start at the same definition. So the definition of special operations, specially designed, organized, selected, trained, and equipped forces using unconventional techniques and modes of employment. I hope we can all agree on that. Well, actually, that was a definition of these guys. So thousands of years ago, even before this definition, we had these guys to deal with. And they were called ninjas, not the total ones, the real ones. And this is how you spell ninja in the traditional Chinese character. And what it means is the patient ones. So it says a lot about the thinking that goes on. A lot of planning, knowing your enemy, knowing yourself, training, and using all kinds of techniques, as we've seen in movies and novels and whatever. But what about the Chinese? Well, we really don't know. It's a secretive organization that nobody really knows. There's some comic books out there, but I don't think we should rely on comic books. The only thing that we do know is that they have them. Now, initially, I was under the impression that I was going to have a 90-minute time to lecture on this subject. But then I realized it was only six minutes. So I cut a lot out. But the North Koreans have their own version of special forces. And it comes from a great deal of experience during the Great Wars during World War II. So we won't be able to talk about that. But so going to China, and of course, Lyle's going to talk more about that. So we all know about the art of war. It was written on some bamboo sticks. It comes from 700 years of warfare in the continent. Can you imagine 700 years of fighting? And so this guy named Sun Tzu, you know? Wrote this book. And the art of war is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the 5th century. The work is, of course, attributed to Sun Tzu and is composed of 13 chapters. Each one is devoted to a different set of skills of art related to warfare and how it applies to military strategy and tactics. And because it is written in Chinese, unless you have a perfect understanding of each Chinese character, how it was written, why it was written, you really won't be able to grasp the full understanding of or the meaning of the art of war. So we fall into a mistake of reading something and thinking, you know, we understand it only as part of our own experience. And that's a danger that we must always be aware of. The second literature is this thing, the 36 stratagems. I think this is lesser known, but the 36 stratagems is a Chinese essay used to illustrate a series of stratagems used in politics, war, and civil interaction. Its focus is on the use of cunning and deception, both on the battlefield and in court, not in a legal court, but where the emperors and the eunuchs used to be and the princesses, a lot of political, you know, angling to survive in that kind of environment. So imagine somebody actually wrote about this. And finally, we have this, unrestricted warfare. This might be more familiar for you because it was translated into English as well. The full title is Unrestricted Warfare, Two Air Force Senior Kernels on Scenarios for War and the Operational Art in an Era of Globalization. This is a book on military strategy, written in 1999 by two kernels, Kyo-ryang and Wang Sang-su. Its primary concern is how a nation, such as China, can defeat a technologically superior opponent, like the United States, with a variety of means. Rather than focusing on direct military confrontation, this book instead examines a variety of other means, such as political warfare or legal tools, which they termed lawfare, and economic means as leverage over one's opponent and to circumvent the need for direct military action. And this is the area where I am really concerned because even now, the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans have access to not only an open society like the United States, but to Korea as well. So what does this all mean? Well, all those black and white World War II movies where the slanty-eyed Japanese fool the American Marines and portray the truce and everything, well, it's true. The Asians are cunning because they believe in this. All is fair in love and war. So lying, treachery, betrayal, cheating, to the Asian mind, that's how wars should be fought when you guys come up with rules and regulations, morals. I mean, even the use of using words, morals in war is, I'm sorry to say this, but stupid and something to be exploited from their point of view. And they can do these things. They can conduct one-way missions. We South Koreans are now spoiled like you Americans. I cannot tell my soldiers to go on a mission which will result in certain death. I used to be able to do that, but now I can't. They need at least a 50% chance of coming back. But it's still a very low number. But to the other guys, they can do one-way missions. We saw this a couple of days ago. Those guys on paragliders, do you think they were thinking about coming back? No, but they were able to do that. They can endure extreme pain and hardship. I mean, something that you cannot even imagine. And cruelty, extreme cruelty. Have you noticed in the Hollywood movies, there's a lot of movies about the European conflict, but very few in the Pacific? Very few movies. Why do you think that is? In Okinawa, it drove the US Marines crazy the way the Japanese fought. Don't ever, this is an advice from a Korean, feel guilty about dropping those two atomic bombs. You did the Japanese people a favor. You did all of us a favor. And to the Asian mind, it's about winning the hearts and minds. And this is where I think Americans are really bad at doing. So when I was deploying to Iraq, I was a colonel in 2004. My four-star general, he didn't like the fact that I had a lot of American friends like Dave Maxwell here. And he said, Colonel Chan, do you know the difference between an American and a Korean? It was a rhetorical question, so I kept silent. And he said, an American will throw an MRE to an Iraqi, but a Korean will give an MRE with both hands. You know, he didn't like the guy, but he had a point. Americans have a culture of such a casual culture. Anybody can come up to you and say hello. Koreans don't do that. You have a very casual culture, but in many other cultures, that casualness is thought to be rude and condescending. So beware, my American friends. Unbeknownst to you, your casual nature could be offensive to a lot of other people. Since I only have six minutes, I'm going to end with this. This is what your assistant secretary of state said in 1968. And I part with this thought for you. White men can't win this kind of fight. I hope you'll be able to win the next one. Thank you. In my journalistic past, I spent a good deal of time with the different Russian special forces units, and I was invited to discuss how the US Special Operations Forces could counter future engagement with the Russian counterparts should the need arise. It should be noted that at present, the probability of a hypothetical open clash between the Russian Spetsnaz and any foreign special force, including the American one, has significantly increased because all three kinds of Russian Spetsnaz, including Maroon Berries, which is the Rosgarde special force interior troop, are actively working beyond the Russian borders, mainly in Ukraine. And despite that, Russia do not authorize, do not allow the use of any interior troop outside of Russian borders. And such extraterritorial activity has been justified with the Kremlin propaganda slogan of protecting the Russian world. Apart from Maroon Berries, both the Russian Defense Ministry, GRU special reconnaissance units and the FSB anti-terror squads A and B, they are actively working in the Ukraine. And it should be admitted that over the past 20 months of the war, various groups of Russian Spetsnaz demonstrated quite impressive results. Two recent examples. The demolition in September of a vehicular bridge across the River Sudost in the Sumy region, and the Russian Sniper's pair, Benchmark work, they were armed with the newest samples of ultra-long-range Lobayev arms rifles. And they were covering the actions of Spetsnaz group, which took out a Ukrainian stronghold in the Krasniliman region. But one way or the other, at the moment, all Russian elite Spetsnaz units are conducting criminal orders of Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin and taking part in outrageously evil and unjust war. All three kinds of Russian Spetsnaz once candidates are selected. The state allows from 12 to 18 months for training. Without exaggeration, this is the result of Spetsnaz, and there are a lot of motivated men willing to take risks. However, it is extremely hard to qualify for any Russian Special Forces unit. And one must be prepared for extraordinary physical strains, years of hardships, low pay, and a job that can cripple or kill you. Both variants can expect you already in training or tests. This is especially the case with the Spetsnaz Rosguardia, where everyone who wants to belong to the elite must pass the exam for the right to wear the maroon beret. The qualification test includes an exhausting course of seven and a half miles in full combat gear with at least three water hazards. Then one must pass through the fire and assault strip, then performing acrobatic exercises, hand-to-hand combat with and without weapon, and on top of this, there is a 12-minute full-contact spar with three fresh instructors. In the 30 years of the qualification tests, there were at least 10 deaths of volunteers who tried to pass. One of the highest advantages of the Russian Spetsnaz training program is that each soldier is trained so that he is capable of acting not only within a team, but also alone, representing a full-fledged combat unit. Each member of the team is expected to demonstrate independent survival and combat skills. But despite the development of self-reliance, one of the drawbacks is that in the Russian special forces, as in the entire Russian army, soldiers are almost deprived of the opportunity to show initiative. Orders are almost never explained or discussed. And I know of so many examples when idiotic orders from higher-ranking personnel, they forced the elite Spetsnaz to be used as regular assault battalions for primitive offensive reconnaissance, and they suffered huge losses and could not perform the task. I just give one example. In August 29, 1999, two combined groups of Maroon Berets received an order to take control of the commanding haze in the Buinaksk area of Dagestan, in Republic of Dagestan. There were huge problems with domestic insurgency at that time. So they were told that on that mountain there was a radio transponder or there were hubbys and there was a stronghold of militants. No one of the generals assigned to the task could explain to the chief of staff of that special force why the goddamn transporter could not be destroyed by an airstrike. Commanders had to go on a raid but during the performance of the task they discovered the hate was not commanding at all. And from there the militants successfully fired mortars and automatic grenade launchers. The Russian groups were trapped. When they asked for evacuation, they were refused and ordered not to panic and hold positions at any cost. Spetsnaz followed orders. They were fighting for 11 hours. Five special soldiers were killed. Almost 46 were wounded. Apart from that during a night march another soldier fell into an abyss and was badly mutilated. So such an example confirms that no one fact that Russian commanders they do not think of how to protect their soldiers, how to reduce casualties. They are more concerned with meeting the deadlines of the operation. As for the fate of the civilian population that is their last concern are no concern at all. Separately what's noting is the notorious tendency of a lot of soldiers in the Russian special forces to sadism. And this is particularly true for Marumbaris. Since 2000 as a journalist I used to interview a lot of people who suffered who were victims of police and military violence and were subjected to sadistic tortures. One of the most memorable interviews for me was an interview with a school teacher in Chechnya, Alav Dysadikov who was kidnapped in Grozny in March 5 of 2000 by the fighters of the Russian Amon which is riot police but some of them belong to the Marumbaris tribe. So for two and a half months they were holding him in inhuman conditions and tortured him, forcing him to confess that he was Amir of Jamaat a leader of Islamist cell. That was not true. But they pierced his palm with an iron hot rod burned his face with cigarettes cut him with a knife and forced him to eat his own hair. One of the henchmen, Major Dekterov after playing football an hour of severe beating cut off Sadiqov's ear with a knife. In 2009 I interviewed an officer of the Russian special force unit who for five years was running so-called black operations secretly tracking down, abducting, interrogating and executing suspects then disposing of their bodies. On conditions of anonymity he confessed to me that in 2002 during the interrogation of a man suspected of masterminding roadside bombs he drove a railroad spike into his skull with a hammer. Among other standard interrogations he mentioned electric shocks fingernail pulling and sodomizing with police batons. It was then also that I first learned about the practice of dispersion the disposal of bodies with the help of TNT. So the body of an adult man would be placed in a deep trench on a 130 pound TNT mattress and then dispersed with checkers detonated and this practice was so widespread that according to leading human rights monitoring group Memorial which was awarded recently the Nobel Peace Award in 2022 during the Second Chechen War alone just in Chechnya five and a half thousand people went missing. I would not advise anyone to surrender to the Russian special forces especially those Marun Berries even if you are diehard you're not going to be encouraged you're not expected for your courage just overwhelming pain and relentless humiliation so if it turns out that US troops have to face the Russians on the battlefield better make sure that you keep your last hand grenade for yourself. As unpleasant as it may seem it is also necessary to recognize the propensity of many Russian military to looting and primitive corruption Spetsnaz soldiers are no exception it is not a matter of low level discipline it's a culture and process of ideological mutation of many generations of Soviet people who were collectively accustomed to disrespect to private property we have heard a lot about the barbaric behavior of the Russian military in Ukraine where they looted supermarkets malls and private houses I myself witnessed how Russian soldiers on mopping up operations in Chechnya were taking away cars from civilians stealing belongings from the houses and extorting cash from drivers and roadblocks I once had to pay a so-called fine penalty even my press card did not help about tactics in general technical support communications, technological efficiency lag behind that in the west the Russians still do not have night vision devices competing with western designs until recently they had no tactical GPS navigation system GPS repeater kits target location and targeting system portable movement sensors are not there yet Russian soldiers have historically used very crude and simple but reliable military equipment and weapons the hardware works, doesn't fail users are not spoiled with comfort the Spetsnaz are considered among the best combat unit when it comes to close combat and they are well armed for that the Spetsnaz have no shortage of modern weaponry and in some ways Russian weapons designers have overtaken the west including in regard to particular sniping systems today's deadliest sniper rifle which has proven itself in the current Ukrainian conflict was developed and manufactured in Russia in Kaluga region I'm talking about a rifle called SVLK-14S Sumrak which is for twilight with an effective range of 1.4 miles the accuracy and range of Sumrak rifle sounds almost unreal with such a powerful cartridge as the Cheytak 408 which a few people know how to shoot another outstanding sample is the DXL-5 Hevek with every effective range up to 1.7 miles it's a multi-modular rifle which provides versatility of use by accommodating the ammunition at hand be it a 50 BMG or Russian 50 different calibers with different parent cases the irony is that the owner of Labaev Arms the talented Russian armorer of Ladislav Labaev who alone created more than 10 different sniping weapons studied weapons here in the United States with the assistance of outstanding American armorers Speedy Gonzalez a noted shooter, gunsmith and member of the Benchrest Hall of Fame and also with Clay Spencer former O&O Spencer Rifle Barrels Company and Mr. Labaev interned with the United States Marine there is a Russian saying slow harness fast ride it means that Russians traditionally are in no hurry to mobilize their forces but they solve their problems very quickly forcing the entire world into wonderment oh these Russians tricked us again we should have no illusions Western sanctions do not work as you would like Russia's economy is not in its knees Russia's army is not defeated or even depressed by the fellas on the front and there is simply no opposition to Putin he has turned my country into ideological dump where a normal thoughtful person is not allowed and can't afford anything and you can make money either working in the defense industry enterprise or killing Ukrainians on the front line or taking part in a propaganda circus that's why anyone who wants normal life leaves Russia those who remain are forced to be members of Putin's sect an aggressive totalitarian society is built with a hatred to entire world because normal Russian believes that Russia is a besieged fortress and NATO is looming and you know crap like this so the Russian population believes that the country is not at war with Ukraine even actually it is at war with the NATO bloc on the territory of Ukraine and they believe that Ukraine desires to embrace Russia as an older brother Russian soldiers are convinced that Russia has no right to lose the war because if it is defeated there will be no Russia as such in such a scenario, hopeless scenario we must prepare for a very long war probably 5 to 10 years in which Special Operations Forces will play a crucial role thank you Special Operations Forces and something very much worth keeping in mind but the other characteristics you described certainly don't want to ever think that they could be applied to to US or Allied SOF well, over to you Okay, yes, good morning everyone it's certainly a pleasure to be back at Norwich and this is I think a very hard act to follow let me give it a shot though well when we talk about Chinese Special Forces of course immediately the Taiwan scenario comes to mind and I think it is appropriate to think of it in that frame I've been working myself a lot on thinking through what a Taiwan scenario would look like and it is I think quite accurate to think that it could resemble a kind of D-Day type event indeed this is a very detailed Chinese study of D-Day and there are many of those and believe me they have fully grasped that a major aspect of D-Day of course was the use of Special Operations Units to clear obstacles there were hundreds of frogmen out there who were indeed the first to hit the beaches I should say though by way of a caveat that there are many ways in which China can make use of Special Forces of course and some of that is even for counter-terrorism internal security which is a very deep concern of the Chinese as you know especially out in the western provinces on the Indian border that border has extremely difficult terrain as you probably know so it also lends itself to Special Forces and then China has a lot of expanding roles across the developing world for example in Africa and in places like that there are China certainly does envision possibly use of Special Forces but let's focus in this talk though on how they might apply Special Forces in a Taiwan scenario and here you can see this sniper training indeed the main objective I think for Chinese Special Forces in that scenario would be to isolate split up and collapse the enemy and Taiwan geography I think is quite amenable to that approach and here you see the kind of massive exercising really that goes throughout the PLA but with a focus on Special Forces for Helleborn and airborne insertion you know I'm somebody who watches Chinese military TV every day and literally this kind of exercise is going on that seems 24-7 I think you know it's not easy sorry it's not difficult to divine what the key targets for the Chinese Special Operations would be in these circumstances you know whether taking out key radars and sensors attacking headquarters you know they would attack key junctions bridges of course port facilities, airfields and they would also be used to improve targeting of course tracking mobile forces I wanted to highlight this article in particular which is fascinating kind of first examination it was published in June 2022 in a Chinese military magazine where they looked really hard at the kind of opening operations of the Ukraine war and the activities of Russian Special Forces and of course now they were quite critical and what that article said was that the you know the Russian Special Forces operation against Kiev against I think Gostomul airport there was more or less a failure why and they said this is an obvious Russian tactic everybody knew this was coming it was a kind of scripted right out of the Kabul operation that is when the Russians invaded Afghanistan so you know the Chinese conclusion is that that it was a complete fail to do such an obvious tactic so we can expect I think something quite different in the Taiwan scenario now I have a navy background so I tend to focus on a naval component of Chinese Special Forces and there you know again a lot going on let me highlight just a few items right away I mean you can see this the importance of learning to break through the obstacles use of kind of creative type propulsion methods here you see that as well and by the way a little bit of evidence that this has not been easy but we also have some evidence of them training from getting special forces out of submarines for example this is an article that looks at how we do that but one also point I just wanted to emphasize here and I think this shows this kind of let's put it this kind of seaborn attack has become in the Chinese Armed Forces that these this exercise here for example these are Chinese ground forces special forces also getting that diver training and preparing for the same sort of mission so this is not a kind of training that's isolated to just sort of the Chinese equivalent of the SEALs which they do have just as I close out though let me highlight one more dimension I found this in reading Jeff Han-Jun Pao their PLA Daily back in September but it was looking at how China is a major spacefaring power now this is a mock-up of their space station today but as a spacefaring power this is going to give them a lot more options for communications I'm just watching you know kind of Elon Musk's low orbit network and how that could support enhanced communications that would be important for targeting for special forces but what I found remarkable about this article if you're right in the title here you have mentioning that indeed that space and this kind of space superiority can be can really enhance special operations and I'll just say departing I guess I'll return to D-Day and just say that that here's a I picked this up off the Chinese military channel but it was a kind of minute by minute discussion of the special operations, preparations in this case the airborne attacks against that prepared the way for D-Day so I mean it seems to me PLA is studying this kind of these operations minute by minute that just gives you a hint of preparations underway so anyway thank you so much for having me and happy to answer questions you know across the board on China though we're focusing on special operations today thank you since we don't have much time we're going to go right to Q&A so if you please queue up to the microphones for your Q&A and as you do that we heard from General Chun really some a really important view of the Asian mindset and a very candid description of that something I think is very important to to understand I think that the brutality of the Spetsnaz really comes out from Dimitri's you know they are probably the most tested force that we will see as adversaries and I think that Laia made a point that we really should understand is how China will study us and everyone else to try to learn from and so I think that's really important to you know whatever we do they are looking at and determining what they should adopt so question good morning gentlemen my main question is how important is Mao Zedong's writings on guerrilla warfare to the Chinese and North Korean special operations way of war like I said Sun Tzu's art of war can be translated into many aspects and it has lessons and teachings that can be applied to many many generations having said that we Koreans north or south don't particularly like the Chinese so we'll take their advice but we'll never say it we're taking their advice it might be surprising to a lot of Americans but Koreans don't like the Chinese and that goes for the North Koreans as well this gives us a really good opportunity though when the North Koreans have been able to have six nuclear tests so far when they had the first one Kim Jong Il the leader at that time exclaimed now we don't have to worry about the Chinese he didn't say now we don't have to worry about the Americans so again Sun Tzu is a we South Koreans have a lot of translations of the book and all that but it's from China I think it's a very good question and I would just echo what the general said that Sun Tzu as we often say in English is extremely important and I urge anybody who hasn't looked at that there is actually an excellent English translation by Samuel Griffith and it really is I would argue the most important book in strategy so if you haven't but the question was about Mao Zedong's writings and here I think that you're very correct that certainly in China it remains a vital basis for how they think about war and really you see a very clear tension which really goes back to the beginning of the PLA but it still exists today between people who want to take the PLA in a kind of very high tech direction a very professional direction and those who say that the PLA needs to remain keep its kind of Maoist core it really is everything is about people's war and you see some of that in the Taiwan scenario and I would argue even in the special operations context there is some of that whether to how much to infuse their force with all this high tech gadgetry and there you know an obvious question I'm sure it came up yesterday I do apologize for missing yesterday but the tension between is this a mission for drones special operators or both you know so I think that tension will be out there but I do want to emphasize that in throughout a key part of their ideology and indeed the military ideology is that the human aspect of warfare trumps technology every time and they will stand on that point and really that is one reason why I think that they think that they can prevail in the Taiwan scenario because ultimately you know they think if their troops are infused with the adequate fighting spirit and by the way I think that's been quite lacking in the Russian forces in Ukraine and some would say the human factor has prevailed and so that sort of reinforces the Chinese ethic that it's not about technology it's not even about numbers it's about the will to fight and die. Good morning gentlemen I had a question kind of a two part question on in the scenario that China does invade Taiwan and the United States is pulled into a larger conflict directly with China how would this affect some of the disputed island chains in Japan the Kiril Islands with Russia how would this affect South Korea North Korean relations or conflict on the border and how would this affect India on their border would they strengthen security or would they worry about their own things If there was a Taiwan invasion that the Russians would conduct any kind of activity with the Kiril Islands the disputed islands with Japan so if China invaded Taiwan do you think that Russia would try to intervene in the Kiril Islands the disputed islands with Japan well I think that I'm the wrong guy to answer the question all I can say is that since the Russian invasion of Ukraine the Kremlin has initiated all sorts of contacts with all sorts of pariah states including Iran and North Korea and as you and I know recently North Korean leader visited Russia on his super expensive armored train and this was not just a demonstration of you know rehabilitation of political contacts and economical contacts of course the mainly this is all militarily and I mean I don't know what's happening of course because I just don't have access to all this information behind the closed doors but I have no doubt that something's going on and I'm sure that South Korea and Japan should be monitoring closely General Chun do you think you worry about a Taiwan invasion and then what North Korea might do? I don't know because I'm really scared let me be very frank we don't want to get into a war but we have a mutual defense treaty with the United States and we honor the treaty for the past 70 years during Vietnam we rotated half a million of our soldiers to Vietnam for seven and a half years during Iraq we were the third largest contingent sent to Iraq in Afghanistan we were there so and if something happens right next door to us of course we would be sucked into the war which again you know I laid the question to you should you fight there and if you must how should you fight that's the real question the other islands in Japan perhaps the Senakakus would be vulnerable if there's a Taiwan invasion yeah I mean look there is a lot of discussion in China now about what's going on on these islands because you see quite a robust Japanese and American build up around little islands like Ishigaki which are pretty close to Taiwan my view is that China in the opening phase will do everything to deter the United States and Japan and not bring them right in so I don't think they would be hit right off the bat but if it came to war of course they would come under full attack from the PLA no doubt about it Okinawa in particular I think would be hit extremely hard in fact some recognition by the Air Force of that because they actually ended up pulling out a few squadrons because they realized that they would probably lose those squadrons right away just one last comment on the Russian I do fear that Russians may consider making probably not getting involved directly but to make a demonstration during such a Taiwan scenario in order to keep the Japanese off their guard unhinge them as it were Korea I think I do believe the Chinese would do everything they could to keep Korea South Korea neutral they're very concerned about being involved on Jeju Island which is a new naval base that is quite proximate to Taiwan so this is an interesting question you know unfortunately I think China may be working together with North Korea would be able to threaten South Korea with grave retaliation if South Korea got directly involved but it is a very important question on everybody's mind in Northeast Asia right now Question here Good morning gentlemen in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan what would they be what do you believe the global response would be would it be fast and immediate conflict or would there be deliberation on what to do Go ahead Lyle if you want to take that Alright yeah I could see everybody focus on Taiwan and for good reason I mean in my view Taiwan is truly the most dangerous spot in the world today even more dangerous if I don't know if General permit more dangerous than the situation on peninsula and more dangerous even in the Ukraine war which is in itself shows a very troubling dynamic but I mean in it to put it simply I think that the cost of such a war and it's extraordinary violence probably from the outset and my view is it probably would not there would not be a kind of a lot of warning that it would be a very sudden kind of operation because the Chinese know that that has the best chance of success a lot of deception I believe the general was completely accurate in his portrayal of China's mindset and I think in some ways that is a cultural difference but I mean to I guess my simple answer to your question is I think I think it would look a lot like what we've seen in Ukraine that would be a lot of a lot of concern about escalation right China is a nuclear power it's building up its nuclear forces very robustly it today has the forces to destroy the United States so that should give us I think a bit of pause so I think I think it probably would be a slow and deliberative process there was a recently an article in foreign affairs that talked about how the West has reacted to Ukraine and it kind of said like actually we needed this slow and deliberative process because I know it's very controversial but because of the escalation dynamic which is there so anyway I think that would occur I think there would be vast economic sanctions the global economy would be shattered at least for for several years but I I don't think that it would descend into World War 3 right away anyway it would unfold over a period of weeks well it's easy to know when it's 9.50 because people I guess have to get up and go to class so I think we're at our break time here unless somebody can wants us to continue I'd be happy to do that but I think we're at our time here let me just close with one quick anecdote unrestricted warfare was mentioned in 2004 when I was at the National War College the Chinese Minister of Defense came and so I asked him in the Q&A I mentioned that that's a very prescient book you know predicted a lot and I asked him if China was using that book to inform its concept development and its doctrine and he walked off to the side of the stage and consulted with his handlers and then he walked back and looked me right in the eye and he said that book has been debunked and don't believe everything you read and I felt like he doth protest too much and perhaps it confirmed for me in us that that is an important book to China and I say that because I think it's more it's important to more than just China I think others are learning from that and it is a book that needs to be studied along with all the others so I'd like to thank our three great panelists here that's an incredible amount of information that we learned in a very short time and it gives us a lot of food for thought and so please give a round of applause to these three great gentlemen thank you and we'll get to the next panel so it'll be right forward left back that simple alright it's about time to get started so my name is Dr. David Albrecht and I am the Associate Dean for the online programs in Arts and Sciences and I also direct the online masters in history, military history and museum administration programs welcome to the 2023 military writer symposium it is my distinct pleasure to introduce you to the winner of the 2023 Colby Book Prize Charles Stanley Junior is the son of one of the 18 lost airmen who walked across the Yugoslav wilderness to safety in January of 1945 that was one of the coldest worst winners in European history now retired Stanley has held several positions in New York state government most notably he coordinated the state's response to 9-11 attack as an aid to General George Pataki and with that I am pleased to introduce Charles Stanley I'm going to take the liberty of supplementing my biography which I wrote myself I you know it's been my honor to hang out with my fellow panelists and speakers and I must remark that they are distinguished and impressive they are and many of them are operatives and many of them were if you'll pardon the expression the most bad ass of all the bad asses but I as part of my biography I have to tell you that I was the worst nightmare in my time little white haired me I was the worst nightmare in two lives first I was a bean counter and the bean counters are feared very feared and for the right reasons nothing happens without money and then in my second life I was a policy maker even worse even more feared and so the piece of advice to pass on to the perspective military and civilian people is make friends make friends with your bean counters and make friends with your policy makers because they can hurt you they can hurt you a lot I I'm told it's tradition to read a segment of the book so I will do that I'm very happy that I was selected to speak rather than the first because it gave me a little bit of perspective on how to address you today and what perhaps section of the book could be most relevant so I picked one that I think will be self-explanatory I should have done that official Air Force policy held that the stress of combat would affect the bravest men of men and nowadays women courage was like money airmen spent some of it each mission and no man had an unlimited supply AF psychologists identified three stages of fear at first the danger of aerial combat seemed remote reality set in during the second stage by the third airmen understood they were fugitives from the law of averages sooner or later their luck would run out at this stage they became next to unbearable in battle every soldier has his own motivations for standing and fighting when his instinct for self-preservation tells him to run away some do it for pride some out of duty and some believe in the righteousness of their cause others fear shame or punishment studies show repeatedly however that men stand and fight mostly because of the camaraderie they risk death to avoid letting down their comrades they find courage in the company of their brothers and arms the polar brotherhood was just as strong in the air as it was on the ground perhaps more so bomber crews had trained together stateside shared a long sea voyage airplane flight overseas and bunked together officers with officers enlisted men with enlisted men their shared experiences often alchemized into deep bonds that extended long past the war most of all a bomber crew was a team the survival of all might depend on the actions of any single member morale depended upon every airman's confidence in his crewmates for this reason the AAF wanted crews to begin and end their two tours of duty together and that's sort of a little foreshadowing of a disaster that comes later in the chapter how should we proceed with the slides well just I also want to add one little thing since I have the podium I was one of the little things that surprised me as I sat through some of the discussions was how interested many of you are are in the process of writing and I thought I thought you would be more interested in the military side of things but there's been a lot of discussion about the process of writing and I agree with everything that my fellow writers said about making the book whether it's fiction or nonfiction all about the story and all about the characters but I'll add one thing and I think this speaks to both book writing and bureaucratic writing which is really important to anybody who wants to get anywhere in any bureaucracy and that is that to be successful you really need to keep the reader in mind you need to serve the reader you need to understand what the reader needs and wants and give it to him the reader is your client and you need to serve him or her and that is the key to good communication and good writing alright now the book is about US Airmen who bail out over Yugoslavia during World War II and become stranded behind enemy lines it's not my fault so the book is it's about the airmen it's about how they got there how they got out the context but most of all it's about the experience by the time you finish the book you should have gotten a sense of what it was like to be an airman during World War II and to have been shot down and to if you were lucky to have survived one of the little tricks I employ while writing the book is that it's written as though it was written during the time there aren't any modern expressions in there the language, the metaphors the movie stars that I say somebody looks like Robert Taylor probably none of you know who Robert Taylor was of a certain age but I do that for a reason you can look up who Robert Taylor was but the airmen of the time didn't know they might look like George Cloney or somebody like that they lived in their times and I wanted the reader to live in those times with them and that's part of the context so just a little trick I interviewed 40 of the airmen including my father who was one of them they became my friends as they all departed this veil it was one of the tougher things I dealt with some of them I was too late to find I was fortunate to discover that many of them had been interviewed by others and I employed those sources so there's a lot of original research in here I use secondary sources to make sure I covered the sort of theoretical side of things but mostly it's original research and much of it from the Air Force Archives and the National Archives another sort of tactic I employ is that I weave theoretical context into the practical context of what's happening so in other words there are 13 crews that I write about and I serving the reader I know better than to try to throw 130 characters at the reader because there's no way that you as a reader would be able to keep track of everybody this isn't war and peace so what you do is you select certain members of each crew and focus on them and meanwhile I sometimes sneak in and sometimes not so subtly stop and say okay this is what this chapter is going to be about this is about the stress of combat or about the draft or about any of these several themes so I start with my father not just because he was my father but because I knew a lot about his training and selection I think that would be a part of the book that would interest a lot of the young people here these men were at the time the best of the best they were tested they were trained and they were the best of their time physically and mentally I get into their backgrounds because that tells who they are that's how you flesh out the characters and their ethnicity was an important part of them one of the interesting things that I found in my research is that each crew of 10 men with one exception had a foreign speaker in it because they were the sons of immigrants and not only were they that they have another language but they had a language that was useful in nowhere Yugoslavia because they were right next to Italy so if you were the son of an Italian immigrant it was useful I have a Czech, I have a Slovak I've got a Ukrainian, I've got a Russian I've got a Pole and their languages were useful and so remarkably language was not all that much of a barrier even though the men bailed out Yugoslavia I talk about the strategy behind the missions why they were up there what their purpose was and I spoke of the unique character of the air war and I don't think there's ever been anything like it I don't think there's ever been anything since when the guys were over the target and this was after the threat they just had to sit there and take it they were going 170 miles an hour over often an oil target sometimes a transportation target and they just had to sit there and take it if you watch 12 o'clock high or something like that they just droned through there was no evasive action there was bursting all about them and either one of those pieces of flak had your name on it or it didn't and there was nothing you could do about it absolutely nothing but pray talk about the military context we'll get into that later and maybe the most relevant thing here is the internecine warfare between two different factions in Yugoslavia at the time the partisans and the Chetniks on the end of course these airmen were rescued by the partisans which is part of a regular warfare and I think it's fair to say we could discuss this over a beer some time I think it's probably the most successful force multiplier operation in history basically the eventually the British supplied the partisans to and eventually the Americans provided the treasure that forced Germany to keep 600,000 men in Yugoslavia when they didn't want to and that helped immeasurably on the eastern front with the Russians and in Normandy and southern France so and that was done with basically 200 agents that the British had in the country and roughly the same with the Americans imagine that you've now down 600,000 of the enemy with 400 guys that's pretty good and there are the British secret agents we can talk about them and eventually things kind of go bad with the partisans and with the people and we'll talk about that more sub themes one of the one of the themes that I have in here is that prejudice in the armed forces was maybe greater than people think these days and there was a lot of anti-Semitism I've got a lot of Jewish flyers in the book and the extent of anti-Semitism in the army air forces which we know was segregated but I didn't understand until I researched this how prevalent prejudice was and even about the recent immigrants when you look at the names in the book and you look at the names of the pilots they're all mostly Anglo-Saxon or the best you can get is Irish and and there's one Italian and that's it if you were Polish chances are you weren't going to be a pilot because the air forces idea at the time was that officers and gentlemen were Anglo-Saxons and there are a number of factors that go in that I don't want to forget the impact of the war on me the guys going missing on the home front I wanted to make sure I covered that aspect of the war too the war impacted people at home and my mother like to tell me that remind me that this is her story too because she met my father in training she was the girl he left behind the parents got those horrible missing in action telegrams if you became missing somebody showed up at your parents in a life store with a telegram and your heart skipped a beat because nobody sent telegrams unless it was bad news so your loved one was either dead or missing and the best you could hope for when you saw the telegram was that I hope he's just missing I also talk about the people who get on the ground and are captured rather than rescued by the partisans and that's a story in itself so I cover all the bases so that by the time you're done you'll have a pretty good idea of what could happen and could happen to any airman who flew out of Italy at the time there's the guy that I started with I started by researching his story and that sort of evolved over time into researching the book I realized as I researched his story that there was a again there's a pretty good story here and I had some pretty good characters so all of a sudden I had a pretty good book this is my father's first airplane that he was shot down in V for Victor always known as the fertile turtle I included this slide just so that you know that not all of World War II was fought I'm a firm believer that that much of of history is really geography and the two circles represent the ranges of the 8th Air Force the more famous 8th Air Force flying out of England and the range of the 15th flying out of Italy and you'll see from the lower circle that there was a great deal of the third Reich that couldn't be reached by the 8th and that's why the 15th was there so this illustrates I think to a great extent why the 15th was an operation and keep in mind that Albert Speer the Reich's armaments minister had placed most of the oil refineries in the Reich outside of the range of the 8th wisely that wisely until Italy surrendered and that we could place bombers in Italy and that was the primary mission of the guys who were shot down was to attack oil targets this explains again why the airmen that I write about ended up where they were and basically ground zero as you can see is kind of the nexus of their flight patterns and they ended up in that territory because it was on the way back from their oil targets in Germany so 84 airmen become stranded in this town this is a postcard from the time several of the airmen had them so they had postcards back then even in nowhere Yugoslavia modern day Bosnia they become stranded there because the Germans are mostly retreating they're trying to get out of Greece so that they can reinforce their comrades on the eastern or western front and they don't want to become isolated and trapped in the Balkans so the Germans are everywhere and the partisans only hold Axemot of the country and this was one of the few safe spots and the only spot in the region that had flat enough territory that a C-47 could land the topography we'll see later on is it's rugged it's more rugged than here it's more rugged than the high peaks of the Adirondacks it's the Daeneric Alps it's tough territory so what happens is that the reason the town is there is because it's on the river and the river had flooded as it did every fall and the airstrip was flooded so the airmen had to wait for an airborne evacuation until it got cold enough for the soggy ground to freeze I talk about the the secondary there are actually when you count them there were five wars going on at once in Yugoslavia at the time Yugoslavia was the third most dangerous place on earth to live during World War II the Russians and the Poles suffered more per capita casualties but Yugoslavia's third a million people out of 19 million people before the war died and a great many of them were killed and this sort of internusting warfare but we can talk about the why the British eventually changed their support from the royalist Chetniks to communists here's them the most ardent anti-communist of the 20th century decides he's going to shift his focus on resistance to the Germans from a king who was in exile in London to communists and the idea was basically that they would kill more Germans than the Chetniks would and it was that simple and he's going to leave it until the end of the war to figure out to pick up the pieces so 84 airmen is a lot of airmen they sort of trickle in and it causes problems the airmen are not briefed on how to behave when they get on the ground I'm sure the things are much more elaborate now there's a class of cultures but most importantly each American has 48 gold-backed dollars in their escape kits and I did a little math I figured out how many Kuna had been printed by the Croatian government their unit their monetary unit and when you add up just the escape kits the value of the money in the escape kits that the airmen had in this one little town 84 airmen had the equivalent of one tenth of the Croatian economy in their little backpacks to give you an idea of how ridiculously wealthy they are they drop into a communist held town communists believe in equality and they're conspicuously rich and things do not go well eventually the last crew that comes into town includes this man who is a flight surgeon named Captain James Johnson and this is a picture that he had one of his crewmates take while he's in the airplane waiting to take off in the day that he was shot down he's the only captain he's finagling to get flight paid he flies once a month so that he can increase his pay by 50% so that he can get flight pay and when he gets shot down and ends up in town he's the only captain in town so he's the ranking officer among these 13 aircraft commanders experienced leaders of men the flight surgeon all of a sudden becomes a senior officer in town and things do not go well there either finally after waiting about a month these are not actual photos these are examples of what might have happened but a C-47 arrives it unloads a jeep for the British agents present for them and they load up 66 of the airmen and as I said there were 84 airmen in town so 18 of them are forced to stay behind and there's a dramatic scene in the book where the 18 they're left standing there and they're saying to the commander of the transport hey there's room for us we can go and the commander of the aircraft says no you can't I have a limit of 22 per plane and what he had forgotten I think is that what his 22 man limit was based on paratroopers who each carried 80 pounds of weight when they were dropped so there was plenty of room on the planes and there was plenty of capacity to carry them all out but he followed the rules and left 18 behind my father volunteers to stay behind when they promise that they'll be back the next day and of course they weren't back the next day and again disaster ensues so this is a photograph I took while I was in Bosnia this gives you a little sample of what the terrain is like for the 120 miles that my father and 17 other airmen had to traverse in the middle of what we know is the worst winter of the 20th century this is the winter of the battle of the bulge historically bad weather the snow was so deep as they were trying to escape that they were basically it was six feet deep and they were basically swimming through the snow and they had about 10 partisan escorts and basically they took turns on point plowing through the snow and all the airmen spoke incredibly highly of the partisans and their ruggedness and their stamina and we've got several football players among the Americans and not even the hardest of the football players could keep up with the smallest of the partisans this is the route they took for I like this map first of all because it's from a map that was included in the escape kits but it also gives a sense of the terrain the darker the print, the higher the altitude so our heroes at last get to split which is a port on the Dalmatian coast they somewhere along the way they had been in a cabin on a mountainside when the worst of the blizzard hit they were stuck there for three days they run out of food for a while the horse that had carried some of their goods was neighing outside protesting against the the blizzard and eventually the airmen realized wait a second we don't hear that horse anymore and pretty soon one of the partisans brings in a pot of stew that they hadn't witnessed before so they know what's in there but what are you going to do it's eat it or starve so our heroes reach the coast and this is again a postcard that some of the guys brought back but wait there's more because we still have to deal with the other guys who are missing and some of them return they hadn't been away long enough and they returned to combat there's members of the blind crew who ended up with the Chetniks the other faction in Yugoslavia we have to deal with the POWs which is an experience in itself and some of them go back in the combat and three of them are killed in action so they go through this entire strenuous exercise Mulvaney was with my father he was missing 40 days biblical 40 days he returns the quote of for having been missing so you could go home it's 42 days so he just missed it by 2 days he goes back into combat and is killed and I think one of the more interesting parts of the book is about the blind crew the four guys who ended up with the leader of the Chetniks and he and 21 others are the last Americans to see Mihailovic and they witnessed the destruction, the final destruction of the Chetnik army at the hands of the partisans and so they are they're the only outside witnesses to history so that's pretty cool stuff and then there's the POWs and on the right is Eugene Quinn who I had the pleasure of interviewing and on the left is Colonel Zemke who was the senior POW commander in Stalag Luft 1 and he's a remarkable figure in history when the Russians were approaching and about to liberate the camp most of the camps were evacuated by the Germans at gunpoint and they had what they called the Black March which was something of a death march because there was no food and most of the American prisoners had to travel a good 600 miles on foot without any supplies given by the Germans Zemke stood his ground and simply refused to go and he went to the commandant and they said I'm going to hold you accountable if any of my guys are killed because you're trying to force us to move we're going to hold you accountable the commandant relented and his Stalag was spared the ordeal that every other Air POW anyway in Germany had to face and then we have our happy ending my father returns home he had carried his parachute all the way across Yugoslavia he says that on the first time my mother chided him for not bringing back her parachute because it was in vogue at the time to turn parachutes into wedding dresses for the brides and so he said well okay I'll carry it across he carried it the whole 120 miles the seamstress when she was making the parachute had to, or the wedding dress had to cut away all the mud stains from Yugoslavia but somehow managed it and made the wedding dress so that's our that's the storybook ending to the book thank you very much for joining me over here I'd like to open the floor for some questions and to prime the pomp I will follow what many of the other moderators have done and start with this question we are at a conference on special operations so can you talk a little bit Charles about what sort of special operations activities that the American OSS and the British SOE did to assist your father and his comrades well the as the allies kind of split their spheres of influence at the beginning of the war Yugoslavia and Greece and the rest of the Balkans were considered to be a British sphere of influence but as and so they as I said I think about 200 agents scattered all around Yugoslavia many in Slovenia to gather intelligence to assist in any way they could the partisans and also to together the stray airmen who showed up as time went on Americans became the dominant partner of the western allies and they had the money they had the they had the troops by then the British were pretty much exhausted from remember when America entered the war the British had been at war for two years and had been carrying the load by themselves so by 1944 many of their young men were already in service or or killed or whatever and the Americans had become the dominant force in the western allies and so the Americans started to sort of stick their nose into Yugoslavia and and had very different ideas about what to do with the country so when you got on the ground if you were British the partisans sort of looked at you as scants because they knew that the British wanted influence they wanted not control but at least they wanted them in their sphere of influence the Americans didn't want anything the partisans knew that the Americans were willing to give without getting anything which I think gets back to the point that the general made last night and before that it was generosity rather than just pure generosity rather than transactional aid that actually gave the Americans more influence than the British had in the long run that's a good lesson I think it accents what the general said last night we didn't use the term force multipliers at the time but the British aid and then the much greater American aid were really what allowed the partisans to keep those 600,000 men away from other fronts President Anarumo thank you David and so thanks for being here first of all congratulations on the award thank you for that honor and we're very proud to have you it's my honor the last slide talked about difficulties of reintegration from those that you covered in the book can you talk more about what was the core was there a common theme about the difficulty of reintegration was it about captivity about the trauma of warfare was there a common theme of the difficulty of the returnees I I think that's a great question because I think the perception is that particularly after the Vietnam War when veterans came home and many of them were greeted with scorn as they came back and I think they contrasted it in their minds to the return that their forefathers had received when they got back from World War II but I think that was sort of a false impression the people came back from World War II were not often greeted with parades they were welcome but there were so many of them there's 40 million of them in a population of like maybe 160 million in the country so they were everywhere and so they were so ubiquitous they went almost unnoticed so they were kind of alone I used the metaphor of like trees in a forest they were sort of unnoticed and yes they were appreciated they had to transition back into civilian life most of them were draftees if they weren't draftees in the Air Corps they were volunteers but many of them were volunteers because they would have been drafted otherwise and they decided they'd rather be in the air than on the ground so they didn't really have a lot of choice in the matter they had left their homes they had left their jobs and life had gone on without them and they were gone for three or four years and they didn't understand the post-traumatic stress syndrome like they do today and there wasn't the help available and plus the ethic of the time was to sort of suck it up and not talk about it although official I have the official sort of release documents that the Air Force gave they encouraged them to talk about it and in fact with many of the Airmen who I interviewed 40 years later the family would come to me and say this is the first time he talked about this these guys are 65 years old and they hadn't talked about it at all and part of my job as a researcher was to establish my credibility so that these guys would talk to me I had to sort of prove my worth tell them let them understand that I knew what I was talking about that I had talked to others like them and I got it and that's part of an interviewing technique if you're ever in that situation Dr. Morris Congratulations also on the award well done and also thank you for telling this important story I was struck with your comment about FLAC and them just taking it and I was thinking about something similar from an infantryman's perspective that even in artillery barrage you can still see cover potentially but just thinking of these bomber crews time and time again just sitting there hoping that they're not going to be struck it's really profound actually so can you speak a little bit about what the crews and the Airmen did maybe psychologically to endure that and the resilience that it took and not just by these crews but thousands upon thousands of Airmen did this time and time again and I think to your point it's really unique for warfare so if you could unpack that a little bit it would be greatly appreciated and I do talk about that in the book the fact that you know the at the time and I think that's been discussed yesterday too at the time and I think even now infantrymen look up in the sky and they see the Airmen flying by and say those glory boys and you know and it's true the Airmen worked 8-10 hour days they got up in the morning they had a hot meal if they weren't shot down they returned to a hot meal and warm barracks or tents and to an infantryman I can see where you'd say I'm in a mud hole I haven't had hot food in a month and those guys are the glory boys well you know that's true but the infantrymen had the ground and the Airmen didn't no matter what happened to you you could hug the ground the Airmen had I think a unique sense of danger you're suspended in the air the threat is three-dimensional things are blowing up all around you not only that you have an unfortunate clear field of vision you can see that everywhere around you for five miles there's flak and once you get out of that you're probably okay but for those five-six minutes you are you're in it you are in danger and there's no getting out of it so yes and I do talk about it as a unique aspect of warfare I don't think it's ever happened before and I hope it never happens again but but yes the stress became too much for some of them and I talk a good deal about that one of the main job flight surgeon although none of them or few of them anyway were trained as psychologists was to determine if a flyer was fit to fly and determine whether they had enough and then send them home so Captain Johnson there was a pediatrician and yet he's making the decision on the base of who's going to fly and who isn't even the wing commander couldn't allow an airman to stay out of the air it was only the flight surgeon in the whole group was the one who could determine that an airman had had enough and I mentioned in what I read that near the end of their missions and I think we're used to hearing that that the 8th Air Force had a quote of 25 missions because that's what happened to the Memphis Bell in Italy it was 35 and by the time you got to the end of 35 you know it's like I'm almost there I'm almost there and by the time of your last mission you just the suspense was unbearable and in fact what happens in one crew is that a guy on 35th mission panics and bails out without orders when the plane gets in trouble and the other guys don't hear an alarm to bail out there's no order from the captain to bail out but the others follow him because panic is contagious so you know it's again one of the more important things that the book conveys time for one more question hi so I have an author question for you so I'm curious every author thinks about that next book as they're writing and I'm curious if any of the stories that you collected stood out to you for your next book I have stories that didn't make it into the book I think the book is 100,000 words when I first wrote it just to get it all down it was 200,000 words and there are I said there are 13 crews there's one crew that I don't deal with at all because they're mentioned but not much because there wasn't room for them and nothing that happened to them didn't happen to somebody else what I've done is I've taken some of the stuff that I cut out and I put it on my website as kind of bonus content so and I think there might be an article or two somewhere to publish but no my next book will be on about 9-11 it'll be about I was lucky enough to be part of the team that commanded the response to 9-11 and so I was there I have all the material that is available from the state's records I know everybody who participated in the response and I think I'm in a unique position again to write this book so I know stuff that nobody else knows and I have material that nobody else has so I feel duty bound to make that my next book before we adjourn I believe that you have a show and tell you're never too old for show and tell so what you learned there's some book out there somewhere that says everything you need to know you learn in kindergarten but I thought people might enjoy this this is the parachute wedding dress this material that's cute you can see the cutaways they had to build it this way and it seems all over the place because they cut away the mud anyway thanks very much thank you everyone have a wonderful day it's not a percentage it's just the total number that you can ultimately get to a point that they can actually go to fight and there are women who want to go and fight and there are women who are willing to sacrifice their lives for this country and can do so honorably and at the standard that's expected of them and I think that that's an important delineation that has to be made here even though this discussion is supposed to be about CSTs and OEF and OIF what we're really talking about specific to this question is is there a specific value to a woman in combat and I would argue no the value comes from the fact that that's a person who is willing to fight for their country and if enough of them want to do that that's just more people that are willing to do what it takes to win a war so fundamentally like Allison made some really great points about why people like her were so valuable in an operation that is kind of characterized by stability to an extent to enable other offensive operations or intelligence operations whereas this question specifically alludes to today and combat and I think that's kind of an important delineation in this conversation overall thank you the next question we have for the panelists is when did the realization hit for commanders that the status of being a woman during operation and during freedom and Iraqi freedom was a benefit in gaining intel was this a rapid transition or did it come with hesitation you know I really can't speak to the when and why and how I think that there probably was a hesitation when we were chosen for our rotation some of the special forces teams were not open to what we could bring to the table nonetheless some of my counterparts were chosen to go with those teams and they were not received well they were not used well they were the whole gambit cook for us won't take you on a mission that kind of horrible stuff I was lucky enough to be with a team that was very mature and had the ability and wanted it so I think at that time at least it was dependent on the team the folks that went in the first rotation for cultural support teams were essentially volunteer to go so it was they might have been the quote-unquote problem child the commander didn't want to deal with and said you're going to go downrange with special forces whether you like it or not some folks volunteered a little bit and then it kind of got better as time went on so that there was a need we met the need eventually there was definitely hesitation and we probably could have been used at least in that capacity from when we started in the Middle East up in Gulf War so I've had the pleasure so again while I have not served in that capacity so I definitely don't want to speak in that capacity because Allison definitely was on the ground and experienced and I think there's so much value and respect that comes with that I think from an academic perspective have done some research to understand when female engagement teams came about I've had the honor to publish with Dr. Johnson Fries on articles and so I'm a little bit more familiar with the timeline and in our conversations Pulumi and I, he said something that really resonated with him in our discussions is what I'm going to share with you all I think and this contributed to commander's decision to advocate for the need for teams and cultural support teams it was the sheer fact that the majority all of the special operators were men it was their gender the fact that they were men that prevented them access to a key node of intelligence in OIF and OEF a lot of people associate gender with women that's conflating sex and gender sex is what how you are biologically born is male-female and because of that as it relates to mission you can be excluded from something because you are a female or included and the same goes for men and as we're speaking here or what we're speaking about here today it was the men who were excluded and who did not have access to a key node of information just for the sheer fact that they were men and once they realized that how that was impacting their ability to complete the mission is when they advocated and promoted for hey we really do need cultural support teams and female engagement teams the idea really resonated in around 2009 once they started training up more afghan forces who they felt could do the job it kind of was disbanded in 2012 and then they realized the need for it so the program stood up again in 2015 the article that tahina references wrote was on the need to integrate women peace and security into professional military education and the reason we felt it imperative to write and publish that article is so that there was a ground up understanding of the role of gender equality in national security affairs again internally and externally so that Allison didn't have to worry about was the person or was the team she was assigned to going to accept or not accept them so that tahina as a gender advisor didn't have to educate every single commander that you worked with or for as to the value that it inherently would be part of the analysis and assessments and considerations that were part of operations and to just kind of boil down the women peace and security framework that has pillars everything has pillars into two parts it's inclusive diversity so there is that diversity part the second is what's called gender perspectives this idea that we're not talking about just women we're talking about how policies and programs affect men women boys and girls differently just a very simple example that I'll give you two one is more women than men are seriously injured or die in car crashes than men why are more women more seriously injured or died than men it's not because we're worse drivers it's because the crash dummies upon which safety standards are built are built around a six foot tall two hundred pound male body type doesn't work for a hundred pound five foot two woman at the national or international level the food and agriculture organization says that if we would distribute food aid that is given internationally differently to the women who work the fields rather than the men who own the fields we could increase food production to the extent that there would be a hundred to a hundred and fifty fewer hungry people globally so it's this idea of working in gendered perspectives into considerations of assessments and again analysis increases the potential for your strategy to be effective our third question the US permitted women to serve in combat roles beginning in 2013 what factors enable women to be a pioneer in the field of women in combat I can give you background Air Force General Wilma Watt basically said things in the military changed by policy and lawsuits and there were two lawsuits that were initiated one on the west coast and one on the east coast that were going to challenge the women being excluded from ground combat that perhaps motivated the Pentagon to move before they actually got to court but it was also in recognition these lawsuits were being filed by women who had served in combat but had done so through attachment rather than inclusion they had to find workarounds and that consequently in the case of one of the women who was ready to file the lawsuit she had been shot down a helicopter pilot shot down and after she went back into service she wanted to be an air ground controller and was excluded because it was considered ground combat she could be shot down but not served in its other role and she decided that the capabilities that she could bring to that role were such that again she was the right person for the job but being excluded because of her sex and that moved things along recognition of need and she was able to do exactly what's been said before recognition of need I think specifically what factors enabled you're looking at a factor Alison's work the CSTs are really I think what set the stage for women to be able to be integrated into combat arms and to be in special operations forces units now it was the demonstration of their competence to hold their own and be accountable and maintain themselves and maintain their surroundings I think that ultimately lends itself to the trust and confidence that they were able to earn from their peers and from their superiors and subordinates and it's that combined with I think policy that ultimately allowed for women to be able to be integrated into combat so I think this is a perfect point for maybe if you want to talk about that Alison you're it sounds good so yeah stuff has just changed so much since 2000 I think back even when I did a real anecdote here from when I graduated Norwich and the colonel who was in charge of Army ROTC at the time when we went to commission he said that all the women had to wear skirts and if you chose to wear pants you were going to get your first negative counseling statement in the Army and we were fighting for a second time and we were fighting for a second time so how far we've come just in that time and then back to 2011 the frontline the idea of frontline was nonexistent we were fighting counter incertity there was no front line like you had in world war 2 and we were in combat we were going to get closer to combat formerly PSI ops military police. They were doing it longer than cultural support team members. They were there to see a see a girls were See a women were doing that type of mission training up females bringing them resources long before CSTs were even a Factor and I'm happy that I was part of of that and part of that They almost break in the glass ceiling if you will But I do want to make sure people understand that there was civil affairs PSI ops women who were doing that Before us as well. I Also think it's important to say that women have been serving in combat well before we were allowed to serve in combat Or women were allowed to serve in combat as far back as the Revolutionary War Deborah Samson she was the first woman who she had to disguise herself as a man, but she served And was the first woman to receive pension as a result of that and so we've been serving For as far back as our country goes I do think that as dr. Johnson freeze mentioned the the threatening of being sued may be propelled kind of motivated the government to establish a law and While sometimes it's unfortunate to think that it requires law and policy to be in place to kind of direct folks to do that I do I have seen over the last Five ten years that there's been more policy In 2017 the women peace and security act which was followed by a 2019 women peace and security strategy in 2020 It was followed by an implementation plan directing the Department of Defense services to kind of Let the Department of Defense know how they intend to actually implement it And I'm very proud to say that the Department of the Air Force in 2023 so this past June was the first service to publish their women peace and security Implementation plan of which I had the honor to be part of and so I do think it comes hand-in-hand I Unfortunately things take time, but I do think it's important to note that women have been serving in combat for As far back as our country goes Thank you So this is our final question from the moderators So if any students or faculty would like to line up in preparation after this question feel free to So our final question is what do gender perspectives look like in warfare today across the globe? We know the United States is not the only country to use gender perspectives. What data points vary country to country? ending with a tough one right I spoke a little bit about like the the numbers of How different countries are incorporating women in the percentages I think if I could offer maybe a slight reframing of the question, which would be How does gender matter in peace, which I hope is the ultimate goal of warfare, right? We're not just fighting to fight we're fighting because we want to make sure that everyone regardless of gender race ethnicity can live safe can have food have the right to pursue their dreams and that is where a gender comes into play we can't Fight wars without gender in mind if the ultimate goal is peace for everyone regardless of gender I mentioned last night on the panel that other countries including countries in the Middle East Latin America everywhere are including Increasingly including women across the board in professions. I've worked with Pakistani fighter pilots women fact Pakistan fighter pilots Jordanian special forces women special forces there is a recognition again that there is a need for both workforce and capabilities and This sometimes it's slow integration can be very slow What we see also is as women become involved in the military It can it can have Spillover effects to the general population it can have effects on things like the atrocities of domestic violence that are still Suffered among many women in many countries of the world. I have In a shameless promotion of my new book my new books coming out December 1st women peace and security and on the cover it's a depiction of a acid-throwing survivor from Uganda acid-throwing is Primarily against women it is prevalent in some African countries and also in South Asia and Southeast Asia The violence that is experienced by women in the home is called the first political order And there's empirical linkage between what happens in the home and what happens at national and international level so this general recognition of these linkages are making a real difference in Across across the globe in the role that women are playing and it often starts in the military Thank you. We'll begin with asking questions from the audience or taking questions from the audience. We'll start on the left side Yeah, really great panel a couple quick comments and a question What well, I think, you know, Israel is on a lot of our minds and I know a lot of female Israeli soldiers have been on the front line But I would just commend to people 50 years ago was the Yom Kippur war and Israel's wartime leader gold of my ear. There's actually a movie about this and really I really commend it to everyone If you're interested in national security leadership, you need to see this You know next to her is Moshe Diane the wartime hero. He completely falls apart. He mentally. He just cannot take the pressure you know, she stands in and gets the job done and Her actions led to the peace then the victory and then the peace with Egypt one quick comment on China would say that China does, you know, they are they appreciate the force multiplier They have so many women in their armed forces and I want to say including in the special forces and They've taken it to a new level. I think where they've created many Special female units like elite female units. So that's an interesting approach My question is about at the leadership level, you know, there've been some real new achievements here The leader of the Navy the chief of naval operations is Admiral French Eddie We also have the leader of the Coast Guard is female too So I just you know, maybe to dr. Johnson freeze. I'm a great admirer of your work yet Maybe you could comment on the kind of this new level You know the the levels that that women are now reaching in national security. What's your appraisal? Well, I think it's great first of all I think it's great and it's been a long time coming But I also think we can't assume that because there is a woman in a leadership position That all is rape right within the organization as a whole very often as Women when they get to a higher level Can speak out more about about gender issues and about inclusivity But if they do it too much then they will there can be rebuke from that. So I think One of the things that I argue is that in organizations any organization including the military It's often kind of the middle managers that can be decisive in whether women feel accepted are promoted the The three factors that men count on for hiring retention and promotion are competence confidence and mentorship those three factors are the same for women, but work entirely differently and Women find themselves having to navigate Behaviors that in a man will be considered Aggressive in a positive way can be similarly Considered aggressive in a negative way for women. So women have to walk a very careful line And I think this women's leadership They are work. They are still walking a very careful line as leaders and What a lot of research has found is that until an organization Reaches a tipping point a demographic tipping point of about 25 to 30 percent women tend to be Included but not really Have the voice that is needed to make make the organization More inclusive Thank you. We'll take the next question on the right Hi, my name is Isabel. I'm a computer science and information systems major here at Norwich My question is this NASA has considered sending an all women team to Mars and beyond in future space missions because They require fewer resources and can use said resources more efficiently Has the military ever considered doing something similar with a mission on the ground? No unequivocally no, and I'm not I'm not saying trying to be rude in that at all So I think the that makes a lot of sense and that's actually extremely cool I didn't even hear about that until you said that right now But the military's mission at least in combat particularly We're talking about like a typical combat load for somebody who's going to go on patrol is anywhere between 80 to 120 pounds so from like an efficiency perspective and like a Mechanical perspective I like a man is a better choice to be able to carry that load on average He's generally 180 pounds maybe between like five nine and six feet tall. So that load Percentage wise is significantly less of his body weight compared to like an average female There have been all female teams in the military not just CSTs, but in other parts of the soft community those are for very exquisite missions and Because they're so exquisite relative to that how much they cost they often end up being divested of Because there there's so few use cases ultimately because oftentimes at least in the army and I can only speak for the army Our job is to close with and destroy the enemy So it's it really comes down to the best person for the job So more often than not the army doesn't usually look for all female. They just look for who is going to do the job the best Thank you We'll take the next question on the left Good morning, ladies Could I let him thank you for inspiring us today? I really look up to every single one of you this on Question is directed to captain Burnham Could you share your experience of being one of the first females to graduate ranger school and For anyone if you have any advice for those females who are interested in joining special operations in the future Yeah, absolutely. I will try not to be too long with this because that could definitely be a long story. I Think we've kind of already touched on this numerous times and in my experience that I had There was a lot of fanfare about women going to to ranger school I think there was an expectation that They were going to experience a lot of sexism like if you were a woman going through ranger school You're going to experience a lot of sexism. Everything would be significantly more difficult I Certainly kind of went into that with that mindset Just thinking that that's maybe how it would be and it in fact was not In no way was it that way and I actually had a really just good discussion with my friend about this yesterday Ranger school was was quite generally literally about could you carry the weight could you walk the miles? Could you do what was expected of you and what your team needed you to do and that was that was it and There were men there were two men in my squad that were my size literally five foot three Maybe slightly heavier. So there was never an excuse of size There was never an excuse of of anything certainly I didn't offer any of those But I think if you're interested in going to that school or if you're interested in joining an elite unit It's about what you're doing and that that purpose that reason for being there is the only thing that anybody's really going to care About you're going to find very few people who are the stereotype that maybe sometimes the media inflates That are going to want to undermine you There are not a lot of people like that. It's going to be based in Mostly on your performance And mostly on your ability to work with other people in that team environment Thank you so much This will be our final question on the right We have the honor to have our panelists for the rest of the day I believe so so if you have if you have any time just stop them and ask your question Otherwise, this will be our final question. Thank you Thank you for coming. I Just had a question mostly for Captain McDonald But like you mentioned last night that you had to come up with fake husband and fake kids to kind of like Reach through and talk more the locals. Did you have to make any other adaptations like that? Not really and I think Specifically this is great points from this panel, but my my mission was so unique to Afghanistan just because of the culture So had to concede a lot. I remember We were wearing at the time we first first were doing our missions our plate carriers And I remember females would feel me up. They would just automatically like are you really a woman? We don't want to talk to you man because you look like a man So having to just kind of take that American hat off and just ingrain yourself in this culture where? Unfortunately women there's still female circumcision, right? There's women getting pushed in fires because they're females so to take off that First world hat and just kind of let it happen was a challenge, but we kind of got through it I think those are pretty much the two examples I gave last night and I can I can repeat them too so gave the example of Culturally having to Talk to these females who typically were being married off between the ages of 12 and 15 if not earlier We're having kids starting as early as they could multiple kids And then for me to come to Afghanistan with the woman. I was deployed with a gen We both were I was 22. She was I think maybe 27 28. We didn't have kids at the time We didn't have husbands at the time and that was Alarming to the Afghan women who were wondering what the heck was wrong with us because Physically you're supposed to have kids at this time and you don't have a husband. Nobody likes you. What's wrong with you? So they would spend the first I mean the first few missions we did it was just focused on what was what's wrong with you guys Can we help you? They were trying to give us marriage counseling advice on how to how to catch men it was it was wild and So eventually realize that we're gonna have to start telling them that we have kids and that we're married So my boyfriend at the time. I put a ring on my finger I had family from home send me pictures of my little cousins at the time and I'd say is yeah These are my kids and this is my husband and I'm already getting the question of How does your husband let you come here? How is that even allowed? You know and trying to navigate that too is another challenge But specifically that was it was just an interesting unique experience all around Awesome awesome as we wrap up this very enlightening panel session I think it's abundantly clear that Incorporating gender perspectives has been an instrumental factor in the success of special operations But there's still a lot more that can be done Over the past 50 minutes, we've heard powerful stories insights and evidence That on the score is the value of gender inclusion in the field The experiences and expertise shared today remind us that embracing gender perspectives not only strength things are forces But also the nation's security. Let's give a well-deserved round of applause to our esteemed panelists