 Pohakaloa, we haven't talked about that before. We should talk about that. And we have Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Cronin to talk about it with us here on the military in Hawaii on ThinkTech. Welcome to the show, Kevin. Aloha, Jay. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. We want to talk to, we want to know more about Pohakaloa. You know, I mean, I'm a student of the Big Island. The Big Island has so much. You know, I mean, every ish, there's a surprise and a delight. And Pohakaloa is one of those things. It's been there for a long time. So give us the stats on it. How long has it been there? How big is it? How many people are there? That's right, Jay. It is a great surprise here on the Big Island. So thanks so much for having me on the show and giving me the opportunity to talk about the great mission we have here at Pohakaloa Training Area and the great team that supports that mission. So Pohakaloa Training Area is located on the Big Island in the Saddle Region between Manakea and Manaloa. Daniel K. Inouye Highway, also known as Saddle Road, passes right by our gate. And it's 133,000 square, 133,000 acres or 210 square miles. And it's one of the largest training areas in the Pacific Basin Region for our forces who are assigned here in the Pacific Region to come here and do their large-scale, key collective and crew training events so that they can achieve the highest levels of readiness. And we've been doing this mission for quite some time. So it was established as an Army Gears in 1956. So getting up there. But previously, during World War II, we traced our lineage to Camp Tarawa and the Marines who came to Hawaii Island to rest, refit and train after the bloody battle of Tarawa, consolidate all the lessons they learned there and then go on to their subsequent victories in the Pacific at Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima with the 2nd and 5th Marine Division. So we traced our lineage to them. And that's what we do here today, we train, we prepare, we consolidate on lessons learned. And so we're as ready as possible if and when our nation's men and women, our volunteers are called into harm's way to fight and win our nation's battles. But how come all Army now, or does it include Marines as well? It's an Army Gears in, but that's a great point today. It is very much a joint training environment area. So the biggest customer is US Army, but the Marines are close, close second. We have a great relationship with the Marines who come here to train and use this area quite a bit. And then we also have Air Force and Navy come here to train. And so that training, that's how we fight. We fight with all the services integrating together in a combat situation. And you're able to do that here at Falkaloa training area. You're able to exercise all those services in conjunction, in coordination, get those practice runs, get those repetitions and just be as prepared as possible. And you're the commander? That's right. It's my honor to be the commander of this garrison. What's a garrison? A garrison is an Army word for a base. You could use the word base, you could... We've all heard that word a thousand times, but until this conversation, I never asked anybody exactly what it meant. We got it. Always have to be cognizant of the Army, got lingo and language, make sure it's clear for everyone. So what kind of a duty station is this for you? I mean, it's kind of remote. Is it a sweet deal or is it hard work? It's both. It's a sweet deal and it is hard work, but that's what we sign. Not for us as professionals, professional military leaders. We want the hard jobs, we want the hard work, but it's a great honor. I say it's a sweet deal because it's a great honor to kind of have a key role in ensuring our nation's men and women are as prepared as possible for combat, our nation's men and women in uniform. And that's a sacred obligation. It's important for our nation because it adds to our readiness, which is a moral imperative to ensure our nation's men and women are as, it's an operational imperative to make sure they're as prepared as possible. But it's also a moral imperative, a sacred obligation. We, you have to make sure that our nation's men and women get the best training possible. And so I play a role in that and the great team here plays a role in that and I'm proud of you on that team. There's two, sorry, go ahead, Jay. Yeah, I want to get to that, but what is your, I don't know if they call it the MO, what is your, in the Coast Guard, we had a different word for it, but what is your specialty that makes you appropriate for this job? Are you into training? Is that what your basic specialty is? So in the Army, we call it MOS, Militant Occupational Specialty. And so my 18 alpha, which is Special Forces Officer. So you could very much say that I'm into training and I understand the importance of training and how good training is key and beneficial and it's when you find yourself in a combat situation, you have to do it, you have to get on the ground, you have to replicate the conditions of combat as closely as possible. So you're as effective as possible along with your team in a combat situation. And so the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel selected me to command this garrison and yeah, I would say my background and experience is well suited to this mission. So if I, if I wanted to get your job, Kevin, I have to do a lot of push-ups, huh? Yeah, maybe the push-ups is part of our new Army combat fitness test. And really split. Well, yeah, let's talk about, you know, at any given moment in time, how many people have you got there? Is this a year-round sort of thing or is it seasonal? They come and go in groups that the groups interact between the branches and do they all have the same kind of training or different training manuals that apply different for different groups who come and spend time with you? Absolutely. So it definitely ebbs and flows based on different times of the year. So right now we're in a lull, but over the past two months, we're at a peak and we peaked at about 1,300 predominantly soldiers here at one day. And the training varies based on the unit's needs and requirements and desires. And so they come out early, they send an advanced party to do a reconnaissance and prepare and plan that training based on what they assess their unit needs to train on. And the team here works with them and is able to facilitate and support that training. We train about 13,000 soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen a year. It's a lull right now, but over the next couple of weeks, they'll pick up a little bit with about 400 Marines coming here for RIMPAC, RIM of the Pacific exercise and some allies and partners to conduct some key training here. And then in August, we'll have the Hawaii Army National Guard and 100th Battalion US Army Reserves come here to do their annual training. We are extremely proud of that. We are the home for training for the Hawaii Army National Guard, our state citizen soldiers. I was going to ask you about that, that's good. So I mean, everybody who could get trained gets trained. I saw a movie last night, Kevin, and I think it was Netflix about an agency in the British government in the war. And it was working actually with the American government for a while. And it was in charge of recruiting spies to deploy in continental Europe and to support the resistance and so forth. And training was really important in that movie. I mean, when I took away from that movie, if you asked me for a practical takeaway is that if you are not trained, you are at much greater risk. If you are trained, you can do a better job. You can succeed in whatever your mission was. And it's dangerous not to be completely trained. Do you agree with that? Is that part of your system there? I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment, Jay. The better training you have, the more training you have, the closer that training replicates the conditions of combat, the more prepared and the more effective you'll be in a combat situation. That's from an actual application in combat if you find yourself in combat. But it's also from a deterrence perspective. You look at, and you know, piece of this train, you look at deterrence made up of two key components, capability and will. And a key component, capability is readiness. And so, I mean, you bet adversaries are always assessing readiness. Potential adversaries are always assessing readiness. So the more trained you are, the more you're able to apply that training and kind of apply lessons that you see around the world from other combat situations to that training, the more you're able to fight or train with other services and incorporate maneuver on the ground and aircraft fires and artillery fires, the more prepared and the better you're gonna do in combat. Yeah, let's talk about the parameters of training. I mean, one thing strikes me is that, my guess is that the units who come and see you remain together. In other words, you're not juggling them around, you're not spending, you know, you're scrambling the units among training units, you're keeping them together because part of training is training together. It's the teamwork thing. It's knowing, you know, your buddies, knowing the guys in your unit really well and caring about them. And so, am I right about that or do you scramble them? No, it's all about the team. And so you come here and you're absolutely right, Jay. It's all about the team. You come here and you're able to do that training as a team. And, you know, the Army's always kind of, there's always an assignments process and new people are being cycled in and people have been in the unit a little longer or being cycled out. So here is where those newer people are able to come train together as a team called collective training and get that practice and kind of know, they know that they come out of here and they know the sound of their leader's voice in the dark and can kind of do for that way. So does your staff at Pohakaloa train, directly train the people who come for training or do the various branches and units send their own trainers to do the training under your command at Pohakaloa? The units that come here send the trainers as part of the units. That's a unit role and responsibility. What the team at Pohakaloa does kind of the institution and it's majority civilians, 230 team members work here day in and day out. And there's only two active duty military myself and the command sergeant major. Civilians who live in the community are from the community for quite some time. They facilitate the training through providing services, support, infrastructure, and then there's a branch here that we call range operations division and they support the ranges and they ensure range scheduling, they ensure the targetry on the ranges is appropriate, they ensure the safety zones are correct and they kind of help synchronize the training. So when the units rotate through, they can just hit the ground running and get after it. Yeah, you got to be careful on those ranges. I remember when I was in the Coast Guard Day and they said, oh, your lawyers, you have to get out and train too. So they sent me down to Cape May to get trained on weapons. And I was there on the firing line with a 45 and all of a sudden the chief started yelling at me and he stopped everybody at ease or whatever it was and he came over and he looked at my 45 and noticed the barrel was cracked and he might have saved my life, just to notice that kind of thing. So when you go out of the range, everything has to be careful and observed and the people who supervise it have to watch out for any kind of thing that happened because you're dealing with lethal equipment, no? Absolutely, Jay, it's serious business. And we have all sorts of mechanisms, control measures and most importantly, experienced leaders, non-commissioned officers and officers who are ensuring that the training is conducted safely. Yeah, well, so we read about Ukraine, we read about the new weapons that the president would like to give them, maybe is giving them, I don't know, right now in terms of a long range artillery and so forth. And the Ukrainians, unfortunately, they have no training experience themselves in how to operate these high-tech artillery devices. And so I wonder if that's one of the things you deal with, in other words, the latest and greatest field artillery, what have you, other equipment that the Army may use in the field, are you training these trainees on equipment as well as doing the range and doing push-ups? Absolutely, the units that come here are being trained on their equipment, their organic equipment, their unit-level equipment and that equipment's always being updated. And so when a unit gets a new equipment, coming out to PTA, especially for artillery pieces like you're referring to, is a key step in the progression to practice using that piece of equipment. So you'll see that with artillery pieces here, absolutely. And then the size of PTA allows for artillery units maneuverability because as you see in Ukraine, it's not a good idea to stay in one place for too long. So you practice your shooting, targeting the enemy and then you move in a phenomenal place for PTA to do that training, which is kind of what you see in Ukraine. You know, in various commands within the military, there's training by people who are not in the U.S. military. They come from other countries. We invite them here, we train them, we, you know, they're our allies after all. Does that happen in Pohakalo? Yes, allies and partners come here and train a fair amount. Not all the time, but they'll rotate through like in RIMPAC, we'll have some allies and partners here. And that's also critically important because we talk about training like we fight. Well, we're gonna fight joint and we're gonna fight as part of an alliance with allies and partners. So we get those opportunities to train here at PTA and improve and increase our interoperability, which is really important. You know, part of training, at least the way it's emerging, part of being in charge of a group of people, at least the way it's emerging is to make sure they're mentally healthy. And I wonder if the training protocols that you have or the independent branches that come around and train their people at Pohakalo are also evaluating and training people to make sure that they're okay because not everybody in the world is okay, especially if you have somebody who's been through a few rotations in dangerous areas and, you know, and comes back with the side effects of PTSD. So query, is that a focus of either the command, your command, or possibly the individual branch leaders who come and do training? I would say that's definitely a focus of mine and the team here and the units and the leaders that rotate through and the units that train here. It's a focus of everyone in the military. It's important that we, you know, people first, it's a number one priority in the US Army. And so it's important that we're always kind of checking in and working with our people to ensure that they're ready and resilient. And train, good training is a great piece of being ready and resilient. You develop cohesive teams, you get experienced, you're proud of what you accomplished. And so PTA, the training here helps contribute to that. And then leaders at echelon from team leaders, which are corporals all the way up to Lieutenant's Colonel and Colonel and General Officer are always checking up on their leaders and their subordinates to make sure everyone's doing okay. Yeah, oh, that's great. That's really important, I think. Because an Army that is together, psychologically is certainly gonna be a better Army. I was joking before about push-ups, but is push-ups, it's push-ups in the program. I mean, training to me is, a lot of guys have desk jobs, they never get out much. And like the rest of us, they get a little buggy. But query, when I go to walk along with some of this training, am I gonna get trained up physically as well as militarily? So as the units, again, it's a unit responsibility. I do my physical training here, but the units, they maintain their physical fitness while they're here. So they're training on their weapon systems, they're training, maneuvering on the ground, incorporating artillery and aircraft fires, and they're also doing physical fitness. We have a fantastic gym here, where at 6,500 feet elevation. So you come here and you're training at altitude, and it's good, it's a good workout. It's a little tougher than a sea level, eh? Yeah, I'm up here at altitude, and then I take my physical fitness test down at sea level. Yeah, well, that's a great way to go. You know, I've hiked up the other side. You know, opposite Pohakaloa and the Stadler Road, you can go, I guess it's south or southeast as well, and go up top of Montaloa. Then going up to the top of Montaloa, you know, you have to make tracks to get up there before sunset, because it's sunset, it gets very cold. I'm sure that's the case in Pohakaloa too. And when it gets cold, you know, you really want to be in the cabin up there or, you know, camped out, otherwise you freeze. And so you have to rush, and when you rush, you're going up the altitude, you know, so quickly, and there's pulmonary edema issues, there's all kinds of issues relating to, you know, what am I called, systemic reaction to the altitude. Does this happen in Pohakaloa too? So 6,500, not as much, people will get winded and fatigued, but you're not going to see that altitude sickness very rarely. I should mention that Montaloa, the summit of Montaloa is more like 12,500 or 13,000, so that's double the altitude. Exactly, but it gets cold here at night, like you said. Yeah, temperature will drop, that's for sure. Yeah, so I expect all the bunks are heated, yeah. And you have a jacuzzi just outside. Yeah, not so much. I will say that at that point, you know, we've emphasized training throughout our discussion, you know, rightly so, this is, you know, we provide readiness to our leaders in our commands here in the Pacific, US Army Pacific and then Indo-Pakom to contribute to their strategy. But what we do a lot, which I assess as a key component of readiness and critical to a military mission, is we interact with the community quite a bit. And so to your point about altitude sickness and hiking on Montaloa, our emergency responders here respond to those emergencies and we regularly rescue lost and stranded and, you know, hikers who are experiencing issues. We respond to vehicle fires and accidents on Saddle Road about three times per week. Oh, wow. Quite a bit, and we're able to get there faster because of our proximity and that free, you know, that helps out our community which is super important to us. The other thing that we do is our fire department will help respond in the event of a wildfire which is a huge risk in the United States and the state of Hawaii and here on the Big Island and even more so because of the drought conditions. And so last summer, we responded, we helped respond to the 50,000 acre Monta Road wildfire and helicopters come from Oahu, five helicopters, firefighters come from Oahu, our firefighters here, our bulldozer operators. We all responded as part of the community and team effort to help arrest the spread of that fire and stop it from being even more devastating than it already is. And another program that we're proud to announce that was just released is called the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program, REPE. And the Department of Defense just released a 4.8 million program to improve wildfire management adjacent to PTA. The Department of Land and Natural Resources we called REPE Challenge proposed this, DOD accepted it. And so it's a matching funds program that totals 4.8 million. And we're gonna improve fire breaks, fuel breaks, roads to get after the wildfire risk together. What about aircraft? Do you have any helicopters that are assigned to Pohakaloa or have to call them in? So when we have training here, we always have Medevac helicopters here on our airfield to see one third capable airfield. When there's not training, like right now, there's the aircraft go back to Oahu so they can get their maintenance rest and refit. But in an event of emergency situation to support the wildfire fight, they'll come over from Oahu. Yeah, sure. To support the training, sure, absolutely. One other area you touched on it is Pohakaloa is right there on the hillside and then I guess the northern hillside of Manakea which is a sensitive cultural area. And you do engage, you do work with various groups of native Hawaiians about that. Can you talk about what you do and what your relationship is and what the sensitivities are? Absolutely. So community engagement is so important to the military. We're from the community. We are the community's army, we're your army. And so it's really important to engage and have dialogue with the community. And so we go about that in a variety of different ways. We both informally and formally have dialogues and meetings and engagements with native Hawaiian organizations and native Hawaiian individuals to talk with them and dialogue and engage in a dialogue and develop understanding in a transparent manner. We have what's called the Kohakaloa process which are community led engagement dialogue to kind of interact and develop relationships which is really important. We understand that there's lots of sensitivities and there's some people who don't agree with our presence here but we still try to engage and we still try to talk about our mission and the importance of our mission and hear those concerns and dialogue and see, look for opportunities to work together in a transparent and respectful manner. Yeah, I told you the back when in the days of Senator Dan Akaka, I met Noelani Kalipe who was on his staff and later on I met her in the context of organizations on the Big Island that deal with Kohakaloa, among other things. And she had only good words for Kohakaloa. She was on the show about a year ago and I really appreciated that. It was all very positive. When you get a chance, take a look at Think Tech and look her up and you'll be able to see what she was saying about you. Absolutely well. So Noelani Kalipe is our civilian aide to the secretary of the army, appointed by our secretary of the army, Christine Warmouth to help exactly what you just described with that community engagement and be the secretary's touch point here on the island. And she's been a great partner for us. So where's the future take things, Kevin? Where does the future take you in a career built around training and commanding facilities, the garrisons like Kohakaloa? And where does it take the army? I imagine that Kohakaloa is not the only training facility in the whole army. There must be others. Maybe one of these days you'll get orders to another one. How does it look for you? How does it look for training in general? On the basis of what you said before, it's really critical that the army be well trained for internal and external purposes. So tell us about the program around the world and for you. That's right, Jay. Well, I still have some time here in the seat and so I'm focused on this job and doing it well and doing it as, you know, going as hard as I can to help get this great, you know, facilitate this important training that happens here. From where Kohakaloa training area fits kind of into the grand scheme here in the Indo-Pacific region, it's only increasing in importance. The, our senior leaders have said that this region, the Indo-Pacific region is the most consequence for our nation's future now and now going into the future. And China is our pace and challenge. And so, you know, it goes kind of in line with that, that the forces who are assigned here in the region need to get great training. And so PTA is a key component of that great training, particularly from a land forces perspective. General Flynn, the US Army Pacific commander, he's implemented what's called the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center. And this GPMRC is a regional combat training center. So similar to what you see in Europe and Germany, now we have one in the Pacific region. And what this does is it allows the units to stay in the region, train in the conditions of the region that where they're assigned to, and it keeps their equipment and the personnel in the region instead of having to ship all that equipment and personnel back to the mainland, where that's where you would have to go if you weren't able to train here at PTA. And so with this new JPMRC initiative, PTA is only increasing in importance because it's a key component, a key hub of that initiative. Any other big training facilities? Anywhere else? And I'll just say it, it contributes to full energy in the region, JPMRC, because those forces train here, they achieve the highest levels of readiness, those units, and then they rotate forward into the region, even farther west, past the international date line, and then they conduct training and exercises with allies and partners. So for other training areas like PTA in the Pacific Basin region, you'd have to go back to the mainland. Okay, well, we covered a lot of ground and I only have one suggestion for you. I'd like to make suggestions to our guests. So it's night, it's a little cooler. You know, your people in training programs have had a tough day and I assume that you have wireless up there, I assume you get the internet. So what your guys can do, and girls, is tune into ThinkTech and have our kind of education and training. I might even look up Kalipe, know a lot of Kalipe, and see what she has to say. So that could be part of your training protocol, Kevin. Yeah, I like it, Jay. Yep, training encompasses a wide variety of aspects. Yeah, great, great to talk to you, great to meet you, great to, you know, to feel the energy and to see what you're doing up there. You know, it's been kind of a remote area. I've passed it by so many times on the saddle road. It's seen in a great distance and this brings it much closer for me and a lot of people. So I appreciate your coming on. Thank you so much, Kevin. Thanks, Jay. It's my pleasure. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching ThinkTech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.