 Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin with our next warrior corner, SFAB in Conflict and Building Partnerships in Africa. Today's speakers are Major General Todd Wasman, Major General Don Hill, and Colonel Grant Fawcett. Okay. Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Yeah. Welcome back to the Warriors' Corner and really glad to see so many people here and a lot of familiar faces. I'm Major General Todd Wasman, the commander of the Southern European Task Force Africa. And I'm joined by the commanding general of Security Force Assistance Command, Major General Don Hill, and the commander of the Second Security Force Assistance Brigade, Colonel Grant Fawcett. I'm happy to have the opportunity to introduce today's Warriors' Corner that's about the Army Security Force Assistance Brigades or SFABs. The Army uses SFABs to conduct its Title X Security Force Assistance Mission, organizing, training, equipping, rebuilding, and advising foreign security forces. Our objective today is to highlight the versatility of the SFAB capability. From competition to conflict, SFABs deliver a huge return on a modest investment. This is especially true in Africa. For those not familiar with CTFF, we are responsible for all of the Army's operations, activities, and investments in Africa. There are more than 2,000 Army soldiers in Africa setting the theater, supporting competition, and conducting Security Force Assistance with our African partners. We are also a certified Joint Task Force capable headquarters, trained and ready for scalable contingency operations, responding in support of US-African. We cannot accomplish our mission in CTFF without being on the ground, working hand-in-hand with our partners, and the SFABs give us that capability. So why Africa? As the Army refocuses on China, our pacing challenge as well as the acute threat posed by Russia, it's important to recognize that both countries are actively competing in Africa. China and Russia understand very well Africa's strategic significance. They are seeking to influence events on the continent in their favor. Using political influence, disinformation, economic leverage, and malign military activity. We also know that violent extremist organizations are a persistent threat. They seek to expand their safe havens in Africa, and we make their job easier if we fail to engage on the continent. If we seed ground to our competitors, violent extremist organizations will thrive. So why the SFAB? The second SFAB is employed in Africa to help us tackle all of these challenges. In 11 countries in Africa today, the second SFAB provides a professional, respectful, and consistent alternative to the exploitative nature of Russian and Chinese influence. In Ghana, despite influence from China at all levels, its military leaders pursued hosting an SFAB, building an intelligence training center, and receiving UAS training to shut down illegal Chinese mining. This is just one example of how the SFABs help us to compete. They enable us to build relationships, enhance interoperability, and bolster the resilience of warfighting capability and capacity of our partners. This helps our African partners and the US deter competitors and manage the threat of violent extremism. We can accomplish all of this with minimal resource commitment. SFABs are a true expression of employing an economy of force to achieve our strategic objectives. So how we leverage the second SFAB in Africa is a prime example of what the army can do with SFABs in the competition phase. I'm now going to turn the floor over to our second SFAB commander, Colonel Fawcett, who will go into more detail about our work together in Africa. And then we will hear from Major General Hill about the other end of the spectrum and how the army envisions using SFABs in conflict. Colonel Fawcett. Hey, good afternoon everyone. As this is the Warriors Corner, we do have a short video that I'm going to start with. I've been told the middle president or of each of these no one listens to. So we're going to start with a short video and then I'll turn right back up. The second SFAB, also our major who brings with him. We're both excited to be able to just talk a little bit about what second SFAB has been able to do over the last few years and just talk about the value that we provide to our partners and to the United States Army, and then also to the nation as we get after some of those strategic objectives. So at the end of this presentation, there's really two things that I want you to take away. One, our small and dispersed teams, they impact operational and strategic objectives every day as they're embedded with our partners. They directly support and provide continuity to U.S. strategic guidance, Department of Defense priorities, and U.S. Africa theater campaign objectives. By with and through our partners, we set the conditions for advantage in competition. And two, after two years of persistent engagement on the continent, really our African partners as well as a lot of the interagency that's working on the continent, they're seeking more involvement and more interaction with the SFABs. And our insight into partner nation militaries and security forces at echelon, they provide a lot of the granular information that proves critical to synchronization of theater security cooperation activities. And so then at the end, I'll finish with just a few vignettes and talk about both the tangible and quantifiable evidence of the value that we provide. So we'll start with strategy on the next slide here. And really, a lot of words up on the slide, but our ability to have a continuous and consistent interaction with our partner forces, they support campaign plan and country specific objectives from US-African, USER-AF and CTAP-AF. Major General Wassman talked earlier about the great power competition and the double-edged nature of what China and Russia are doing on the continent. And our partners increasingly understand these circumstances and as a result, as mentioned, the US military and second SFAB, they're the partner of choice on the continent. Our activities also nest with the concepts of integrated campaigning and integrated deterrents as reducing adversary decision space in Africa creates ripple effects across multiple OORs. And then furthermore, our continuous and ongoing efforts to gain access and influence in competition enables us to maintain a position of relative advantage in crisis or conflict. Major General Hill will be talking about that a little bit later during his comments. So this next part, I want to talk a little bit about the authorities that we operate under. This is really important because the key takeaway here is we generally have the authorities to do exactly what we want to do with our partner nations really right now. The first authority, Title 10333, this is most beneficial to our partnered forces because they build partner capacity. They're focused on providing a specific capability or capacity to our partners. And one of the examples I'll use later is what we've done in Djibouti to build a rapidly deployable infantry battalion capability. So I'll talk a little bit about that later. The second one is Title 10321. And although we do under this authority, help train and assist our partner nations, it's really focused on us improving our proficiency in our own Mets. And we're uniquely suited to operate under this authority because our Mets are about working with foreign security forces. So we found great flexibility with this authority and simultaneously providing that benefit to African militaries. And again, all illustrate kind of the cumulative effect of using 321 and 333 cases as it pertains to African lion just this past exercise that was done in June. And then the last one is Title 22. We use this quite a bit on the continent. So in addition to Title 10 funding authorities, we're often funded by Department of State under Title 22, and we enable security assistance goals through programs such as the Global Peace Operations Initiative or GPOI. And I'm going to talk a little bit about Ghana and what we're doing there. And then we also use combatant and command authority to do military-to-military engagement, subject matter expert exchanges. And we kind of use combatant and command authority to conduct recon and potentially develop future cases and do engagements with other African nations. So the next slide real quick, I'm just going to briefly run through recent history of conventional security force assistance on the continent. So prior to ESFABs, there was a RAF IBCT that was assigned to Africa. And so obviously there's some natural tension between readiness of that BCT and what they were asked to do on the continent. So rather than focus on modernization or their own readiness as an IBCT, their focus during that period was really more about training missions and exercises on the continent. And so enter the ESFAB and our analysis showed that we returned two or three IBCTs back to the Army inventory, which is great benefit to force comm. They have IBCT readiness and then also great value for the GCCs as they now have a more flexible and persistent force there on the continent. So in early 2020, first and fourth ESFAB, first deployed teams to Tunisia, Djibouti and Somali out of Fort Benning and out of Fort Carson. And then in late 2020, when ESFABs became regionally aligned, second ESFAB became home station allocated to AFRICOM for employment on the continent. And then it just expanded from there. So in 2021, we moved into Kenya, Senegal and Ghana. And in 2022, we've had cases initiated in Morocco, Zambia, Botswana, and there's a couple other countries that we're operating within as well. Additionally, second ESFAB plays a significant role in the execution of training that occurs during the CJCS exercises, most notably African lion and justified a cord. So in under three years, the ESFAB enterprise has conducted activities in over 15 countries on the continent. And today we have persistent or episodic presence in 11 countries. And of course, there's emerging opportunities out there in North Africa, the Sahel, and in Sub-Saharan Africa. And so our momentum just continues to build. So I'll get to a couple of the specific cases now and talk African lion first. So this is a great example of the return on investment from advisor team employment in countries across North Africa, in particular in Tunisia. This is a yearly exercise that includes multiple countries. And Tunisia this year served as a multinational joint headquarters and conducted a CPX and a CalFEX that included combat power from the Tunisian Army, Air Force, Tunisian SOF, and then it was combined with U.S. Marine Corps, Army National Guard, and U.S. Navy aircraft. And so our advisor teams, who've been working with them for the last two years, you know, helped them and worked with the Tunisian partners to train and prepare the team from the jock that served as the JTF headquarters. They vetted and built the live fire location with support from 7th ATC, developed the plan for OCTs, trained and certified OCTs from the Tunisian Army, and then they also assisted in RSOI and bringing together the U.S. military components from the Marine Corps, the National Guard, and other U.S. forces. And I'll tell you, these successes could only have been possible because of the enduring close relationship that exists, you know, between our advisor teams and the Tunisian partners. And so I wanna highlight two specific advisors who greatly extended influence above and beyond their grade because I think it's a testament to just how good our advisors are and how much influence they could wield. First, Staff Sergeant Samaya Grant, an intelligent analyst assigned to 2nd Battalion. Staff Sergeant Grant worked outside of her specialty. She's obviously an intel analyst, studied and learned the fundamentals of fire coordination, fire control, and during the exercise she served as a ground maneuver OCT for the live fire. And I can't think of another place in the Army where a junior NCO in a non-combat arm as MOS gets that opportunity and has such a broadening experience. And the second advisor is Major John Rambetsi, who through his credibility as a warfighter and his ability to influence others, gained the confidence of senior leaders throughout the Tunisian Armed Forces, and as the live fire concept and the participating units continued to grow in scope and scale, it really led to kind of a mutual desire to just expand the live fire into much larger exercise than what was originally planned. And the live fire went exceptionally well and our advisor teams were able to advise, support liais and assist the Tunisian Armed Forces throughout the exercise. Next, we'll move on to Ghana, which again, as a Title 22 case, this one's interesting, our teams were on the ground conducting Title 10, train and assist, intelligence as Major General Wassmann mentioned, also working with their engineering and their Northern border command. So we were doing a lot of Title 10 in the country, but recently the Ghanaian Armed Forces requested assistance from the embassy to establish a school focused on preparing soldiers for UN peacekeeping operations on the continent, which now that school is known as the Army Peacekeeping Operations Training School, or APOTS, but that school didn't exist before. And so based on our presence in Ghana and our position, our teams on the ground, they received additional Title 22 authorities, additional funding, and they rapidly shift to studying UN peacekeeping doctrine, developing POIs, training and certifying Ghanaian military teachers, and then they facilitated the first iterations of the course. And so today with minimal support, the Ghanaians instruct their own leaders and that they now use during real world operations underneath the UN banner. They've got another iteration soon and they actually have intentions on expanding APOTS to become a more regional course with other African nations attending and participating. So another just great example of what we've been able to do on the continent. And again, to highlight just some of our advisors, just in very short order, they went from doing what they were doing to all of a sudden briefing, this new school to the highest levels of the Ghanaian Army. So Captain Luke Sirek ultimately briefed and was commended by the Ghanaian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Sergeant First Class, Jass Ravaro was sought out and engaged by the commanding general of Ghanaian Northern Command. So just phenomenal influence that they were able to wield at the highest levels of our partners. Okay, one last final case study and this is probably the biggest example of a triple three case that's really come together over the last few years. Our advisor teams have worked with the Rapid Intervention Battalion or the Burr for nearly three years in Djibouti and three years ago they were just establishing themselves, recruiting soldiers into their ranks so really started at nothing and our teams have taken the unit or they've assisted our partner in bringing that unit from just training basic soldier skills to dismounted operations and they recently conducted a mounted platoon live fire. So we've had a maneuver advisor team and a logistics advisor team on the ground there for that full period of time. And so the multifunctional components that we have within those advisor teams have allowed us to assist and support in the development of all war fighting functions for the battalion with only 16 advisors on the ground. So truly phenomenal. They've been involved in training tactics, lifesaving medical skills, development of doctrine, employment of communications, establishment of sustainment functions, conducting driver's training, facilitating new equipment, fielding under some of the FMS cases that we've had and really done some phenomenal work. So throughout the multiple years of consistent engagement across several force packages, they've built that battalion level response capability that the devotions were asking for. So in closing, our teams continue to advance operational and strategic objectives and they really do provide responsiveness to the GCC. So that's all I have today. Thank you for your time and attention. So I've talked a lot about how advisors are employed during the competition space and I'm gonna turn it over to Major General Don Hill to talk about conflict and crisis. Sir. Thanks Grant, can you have that? So good afternoon. You just heard Colonel Fawcett talk about what S-Fabs do, campaigning in competition today. And including 2nd S-Fab in AFRICOM, we have today 95 advisor teams in 34 countries across the globe enhancing our network of partners and allies. But what I get asked the most is what do S-Fabs do if competition moves into crisis or further into conflict? Our current doctrine does not clearly define those tasks and those roles that advisor teams at echelon would need to perform in crisis and conflict against a peer competitor, but we're working to fix that. Right now we are writing into doctrine descriptions of how through support, liaise and assess functions, S-Fab advisor teams operating as an inside force consistently enhance the joint forces situational understanding. Advisor teams can provide the informational, decisional and positional overmatch during crisis and conflict needed to successfully execute multi-domain operations against a peer enemy. If the A2AD bubble goes up today, we are already in 34 countries. When integrated into multinational formations, S-Fabs rapidly expand combined and integrated combat power, improve overall command and control and enhance overall situational understanding. When operating as attachments, augmenting an independent partner force, S-Fabs improve partner force lethality and endurance while providing the joint force, the ability to leverage effects in support of partner objectives and operations. If we want to achieve convergence, advisors will be critical to set the conditions with our partners. Second S-Fab understands their partner force capabilities and effectively aligns their advisor teams against the right echelon informations and Grant just gave you some great descriptions of that. CTFF and second S-Fabs objective based campaigning exponentially increases the effectiveness of S-Fabs in crisis and conflict based on the placement, access and influence achieved during competition. So in support of the national security strategy, globally advisors are key to quote, bolstering and defending our unparalleled network of allies and partners. An example, about six months ago, fourth S-Fab was tasked to support UCOM in their response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Fourth S-Fab, much like second S-Fab in Africa was already forward deployed and integrated with their partners across Europe. But we also managed to deploy a few extra advising teams to support emerging requirements driven by the crisis. The advisors impact was immediate. Their presence and access created opportunities to smooth the arrival and integration of U.S. response forces in Latvia. The first U.S. battalion off the plane saw a brown beret and a familiar uniform. Their reception and integration was more rapid than could have been achieved otherwise. In Bulgaria, advisors assisted the creation and validation of a new NATO battle group. Here advisors were key to the evolution of an interoperable multinational tactical formation. As Sweden and Finland progress to full NATO integration, advisors are there focusing on interoperability and assisting these peer militaries to integrate with NATO and NATO standards. In Romania, fourth S-Fab worked with a land forces command to build an air-common operating picture. Meanwhile, a fire advisor team worked with Armenians on their newly purchased IMR systems. These actions and more represent the kind of interoperability and common understanding necessary for effective multi-domain joint fires. So those are some examples in crisis and the Tradoc G2 Mad Scientist has just released a fictional short story that highlights the transitions from crisis to conflict and the role advisors play increasing the lethality and effectiveness of our allies and partners on day one of a conflict. I encourage you all to read it. It is called the Battle of Rione River Valley. It pops up right on Google if you do a search and anytime you can go to the Tradoc G2 Mad Scientist it's something worth reading. And if you're gonna operate in conflict, you're gonna need trust and that's something you can't search. Joint fires are not a pickup game. A common operating picture, intelligence and targeting and then timely effective fires on dynamic targets in a contested environment requires training, rehearsing and effective systems and processes. Advisors presence in competition builds the trust needed during conflict and helps develop the needed systems and processes. Due to their enduring presence with their foreign partner forces, advisors at a division headquarters combined with advisors integrated in a forward brigade's fire direction center can provide supporting US joint fires as part of that partner forces defense. In the event the opening stages of conflict are not resolved SFABs provide the framework for a truly multinational force. And SFAB can partner with a foreign division at Echelon creating redundant command and control nodes as far down as the company level. Integrated the advising teams provide a green common operational picture and NATO compatible communication to the partner force allowing US headquarters like Fifth Corps to maneuver a US and allied division side by side. 800 advisors in an SFAB unlock the capabilities of a 20,000 soldier partner division. And SFABs have been training for these scenarios for the last 11 months. Advisors participated at Echelon from the operational level with core and division war fighters such as the recent war fighter 2301 that we participated with First Corps to the tactical level of combat training centers such as a recent rotation 2204 at the national training center of Fort Irwin. We validate advisors at all echelons ensuring they are consummate professionals, experts in their craft and ready on day one to handle the most challenging large scale combat operation tasks in our pacing theaters regardless of their regional alignment. Each partner force is unique. However, the fundamental requirement to build trust and to enhance interoperability with allies and partners remains. Our competition may become our partner's conflict. With that, I think it's time to take questions and answers. Not just for me, the other two as well. I'll stand up. Everyone. Hi, sir, Justin Katz with Breaking Defense. This is for any one of the three of you who ever feels best for it. I was wondering if any of you have observed notable changes in Russia's or China's activities in Africa as a response to the F-SPAB's activities. Either are they increasing their activities to compete with you or have you gotten commitments from any of these African nations that we don't need to work with them since we have you. Thank you. I'll start with an attempt. I wouldn't say that we've observed directly a change in their behavior. That's difficult to do. What I would say is relative to our partners, the conversations that we have with them, they continue to be committed to a partnership with the U.S. And the F-SPABs make that partnership especially important to them because of the unique capabilities that we can deliver, the persistence we're able to stay there over time and build a trusted relationship. And that's really the value proposition that we make that's different than our transactional or exploitative partners in China and Russia. Thanks. Other questions? Yes, good afternoon, sir. My name is Scott Morgan. I'm a contributor to militant wire. We track militant activities around the world. I specifically monitor their Africa correspondence. I have a two-part question. One, how would the withdrawal from the French, other French from the Sahel, particularly Mali and Burkina affect your operations? And secondly, considering often French forces and U.S. forces partner with each other in the region. And secondly, in some of my research, we've noticed an increase in activities and interest in the region if I'm both Turkey and Rwanda, for example. Are there any plans for cooperation or planning or strategic work with either Turkey or Rwanda? Or is this another or what may be partners to help offset the Chinese and Russian influence, particularly with their increase in private military companies? So that's a complicated question, but I do appreciate you asking it. The situation in Mali certainly became much more difficult as a consequence of the malign activities of the Wagner Group. And so that made it much more difficult for us to operate and for our partners to operate. And so what we always look for in our partners in any country is that we look for a reliable and a trusted partner with shared values. And I would just point back to the way that we engage with our partners on a level of trust focused on values and focused on our commitment over time. And so I think that's true of all of the partners that we seek to work with in Africa and elsewhere. So the only thing I would add to that, so I mean, obviously we work in a lot of countries with a lot of our allies and partners on the ground. Kenya is a great example with a lot of the British presence and we coordinate with them, we work with them and really what I would say we do in those countries where there are other allies and partners is we try to make sure we're doing right by our partners and not overloading them with the same type of training. So we'll de-conflict with those other partners on the ground wherever we have to, so. Other questions? Sir? Call Majority French Army. A bit American as an officer in Fort Lebanos. In Africa you have various kinds of environment. You may have United Nations, you may have European partners, you may have the French, you may have some very different countries. And so how do you work on interoperability with all those cultural, technical, human, procedural environment? I mean, are you going to build a fab school somewhere to prepare your trainers or not? Thank you very much. Francois, thank you. That's, first of all, thanks Francois. Always great to hear from you. And you know, we've got three levels of interoperability that we talk about. One, we've got to be interoperable amongst all of the S-fabs. You know, there's five in the active component, one in the guard. And if we've got a surge to a crisis, we've got to be able to operate amongst ourselves. So we are developing interoperability that each of the regionally aligned S-fabs is creating so that we understand if we are going to go into AFRICOM, this is how second S-fab works. So that's the first thing. We're developing interoperability amongst the United States Army. So as we plug into Army headquarters, a good example against Fifth Corps, how do we operate in their AO? We've got to educate them. You know, we're still a toddler. The S-fab's only been around for five years. So we're still figuring things out. And so that's the inter-army interoperability. And then the final one is really what you're talking about, which is the joint and the coalition interoperability. And that's where we've got to work with our joint partners in the U.S. DOD, but also we've got to work with our coalition partners and say, hey, this is what we bring. This is what we can offer. This is what advising is. There was some consternation in certain countries early on who said, hey, we don't need your advice. We're a very capable force. And we said, hey, understand, however common there are other things that we can bring. And so we've had to have those conversations with our partners. And every theater has a learning curve and every country has a learning curve. But what I would offer is to know us is to love us. And so when we've had those conversations and we've worked through what it is that we bring, generally folks are like, oh, that's great. And what we are also is very receptive to adjusting. General Miller used to say, you've got to be the advisor your partner needs. And so we may come in with a, the theater says, hey, this is what we think we want to accomplish in this country. And that's what we'll go in and we'll have that. But then we develop those relationships again because it's a persistent relationship. And then Grant's team will go back and go, hey, you said you wanted this but they want this. And that goes to the, do we have the right authorities conversation? Do we have the right resources? But it is a dialogue. Is that, does that help? Thanks. Sir, just to add one point to that, because from a brigade perspective, the challenge is always you have these advisor teams and these young advisors who come in, Staff Sergeant, Sergeant First Classes, young captains and majors who, they have to understand that environment, you know, before they arrive. And so we spend a lot of time making these advisor teams, you know, just working on the case that they're going to take over. And so the broad understanding that they usually have by the time they hit country is they understand intelligence sharing agreements. They understand who else is in the country, interagency, allies, partners, you know, and everything else. So I mean, we spent a lot of time educating our advisors so they're ready when they get there. Sir, let's not call it poor, French is an officer as well. You talked about writing the doctrine currently. Following the question of interoperability, do you intend to bring your partners working with you on these currently writing doctrine? That's a great recommendation. And so 3-96.1 is the FM that specifically, you know, directs, you know, S-Fabs, the brigades. And when it was originally published, it had a very Afghanistan-centric tinge to it. We just went through a writer's conference in September. We did not bring in the coalition, but we did bring a much broader joint and interagency audience to that discussion. But I think once we get that a little more fleshed out and we've got a little bit more solid doctrine on our end, I think that's a great recommendation and we should definitely look to the coalition. And I think that's a great tasking to all the brigade commanders who are standing out there to then take that manual out and bounce it off their partners in theater. So that's great, and I think that's an example of what we were just talking about where it's gotta be a dialogue. We're still figuring this out. We've been doing this for years, but we haven't always gotten it right and we're trying to get better and better at it. And so it is a dialogue. We'll go to the French first for that staff tasking to get chop on that manual. I'll be looking to you, I know where you live. Okay, any other questions? I'll wrap it up. You good? Yeah, so again, you can see we've got a great Army Service Component Command that is employing advisors on a day-to-day basis doing great things. They're also across the globe doing great things. We have evolved a lot in the last five years, but we are continuing to evolve and advisors are doing great things in support of the national security strategy. We appreciate your time today, victorious together. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.