 Check one two one check check Good morning, we're gonna begin in a few minutes And I'm just gonna ask for those that are sitting on the end if you could move towards the middle We're gonna have people that come in late. So if you could just move towards the middle that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you All right. Good morning. We're gonna begin in two minutes if you could take your seats, please We're gonna begin in about two minutes. Thank you Imperial Loam, Deceptic Britain, to Democratic America, they are the stuff of which legions are made Their pride is their colors and their regiment They're training hard and thorough and coldly realistic to fit them for what they must face and their obedience is to their orders As a legionnaire, they held the gates of civilization from the classical world Special operation forces play a crucial role in modern military operations Making them a paramount importance. These highly trained and skilled units are designed to operate in unconventional warfare scenarios Or adaptability and agility are critical Special operations forces possess a unique set of capabilities That allow them to conduct missions with extraordinary precision such as counterterrorism hostage rescue intelligence gathering and unconventional warfare Their expertise in small unit tactics specialized equipment and cross-cultural awareness makes them invaluable assets in combating asymmetric and hybrid threats to overcome and win by operating in high-risk environments and executing missions that require extreme precision and Discretion special operation forces serve as a force multiplier and a coping deterrent Against both state and non-state actors their contributions often remain unseen and unrecognized in the public domain But their impact on national security and global stability cannot be overstated So mottos mottos are short sentences or phrases that are chosen To encapsulate the beliefs or ideals of individuals organizations or institutions He who dares wins say Eric mott call Israel make the impossible possible South Korea special warfare command. He who dares is able to who knows no fear will move forward Serbian special forces honor Unity modesty Switzerland commandos we hunt in packs in the Arctic the Norwegian Arctic Ranger company ready for action anytime Worldwide the German special operations division To free the oppressed United States special forces Intelligent strength the 29th special operations wing u.s. Air Force Navy Seals The only easy day was yesterday and Without equal u.s. Delta Force These mottos belong to groups around the world who have accomplished legendary tasks They've gone through incredible training have endured immense personal and professional hardship Although they are often the focus of movies and mass media the true nature of this profession is often misunderstood This is why we're here. We're here to advance our understanding of global soft My name is dr. Travis Morris and I have the honor and privilege of being the executive director for the military writer of symposium And the director for the peace and war center, and I'd like to welcome all of you here to the 2023 military writer symposium We are incredibly honored by our distinguished guests that are here and a big Thank you in advance for sharing your expertise and knowledge with us that will help advance our understanding of global soft The military writer symposium is the only event of its kind in the United States It exists to advance our understanding of significant security challenges in the 21st century Our nation's future future leaders. These are the students that are in the room at the other service academies at the other senior military colleges These students our future leaders will see a battlefield that is fought in multiple fronts both in peacetime and in war Many of these fronts involve global soft That some of you may join some of you may work with them Some of you may hear of their accomplishments Although most of their accomplishments will be remain known only to a select few and often hidden for years The military writer symposium charge is to select themes that are relevant To our current military and in the current situation involving security and conflict We've been doing this for 29 years and we have addressed some of the globe's most significant challenges and threats So over the next two days We are very fortunate to have an excellent program for you and would like to encourage you to attend as Many sessions as you can whether you're a crop your class requires them or not We'd love to see you attend as many sessions as possible So one objective for our symposium is this after you've attended the sessions Engage with our guests you will advance your understanding of global soft what that means from the past What it means from the present and what that means for the future and in order to do that. That's a team effort And what that means is that we have invited Some incredible individuals to help us do that over the next couple of days The military writer symposium would not be possible without the support of the university leadership and the Pritzker military museum in library and so a heartfelt thanks goes out to president Anna Marumo Thank you, sir for your continued support the provost and dean of the faculty dr. Gaines The associate provost for research and chief research officer dr. Tara Kulkarni the military writer associates and North University's development for their continued support on Wednesday morning June 6th, 1962 on the anniversary of the 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy D-Day president John F. Kennedy landed aboard a Sikorsky helicopter into the plane at West Point After ex exiting the helicopter he faced the cadets and he delivered a speech where he stated that the world Was constantly changing that some of the challenges facing the nation had historic precedents while others were entirely unique and that as part of the larger profession of arms the graduates must be prepared Adaptable and constantly learning in order to meet them Does that sound familiar? Should sounds like today Does that sound relevant for us the answer is yes it is an excerpt from his speech quote This is another type of warfare new in its intensity ancient in its origins war by guerrillas Subversives insurgents assassins war by ambush instead of by combat by infiltration instead of aggression Seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him if freedom is to be saved a Whole new kind of strategy a holy different kind of force and therefore a new and holy different kind of military training in Quote also that sounds very much like today Preparing leaders for the future has been Norwich's business for over 200 years It's what we do And it's what we will always do this year's theme train and fight to win It's an exploration of global soft. It emphasizes that the goal is not just to train It's not just to be prepared and it's not just to be resilient The goal is to win and the next two days will impact the ingredients that make that happen This morning, we are very fortunate to have two keynote speakers They will deliver their remarks and we should have time for some question and answers From you the audience at the end So if you have questions and we know that you always do please be prepared and you'll just line up on the left and right like we do and We'll see how many questions that we can get through at the end it is my distinct pleasure and honor to introduce Lieutenant General Mike Nagata and For every one of our guests here We could probably spend the entire symposium just reading every detail about their bios because they're very extensive And I'm very proud to say that so for each Guests over the course of the next two days. It'll be a condensed bio. So Sir, this is a condensed bio for you Lieutenant General Mike Nagata, US Army retired Currently works at the corporate strategic advice as a corporate strategic advisor and senior vice president of Consolidated Analyst Center Incorporated This is an international provider of expertise and technology that serves the enterprise and mission of defense Intelligence and federal and civilian governmental customers. There's a lot behind that statement if you read between the lines General Agata has served as an infantry platoon leader with the second infantry division in South Korea After graduating from the Q-course he commanded an operation attachment alpha for the first special forces group General Agata was selected for the intelligence support activity for an ultra secret unit Conducting signal and human intelligence gathering for special missions of joint special operations command He spent 15 years in the unit Serving as a troop commander until 1994 an operations officer from 97 to 99 He's later served as a squadron commander and unit commander as a colonel in 2005 to 2008 He's also served as the director for the US National Counterterrorism Center directorate of strategic and operational planning And previously he has served at the commander of special operations command central Where he helped to oversee the campaign against the Islamic State in the Middle East as a general officer He's also served as deputy chief of the office of defense representatives To Pakistan and as the deputy director for special operations and counter-terrorism on the joint staff So Norse community, let's give them a big round of applause. Sir the podium is yours. Well, good morning everybody Before I start I should and must say thank you both to the University and its leadership as well as the organizers and Architects of today's event. I'm honored to be here. I currently live in Washington, DC I was telling some of my colleagues this morning. That was not the plan when I retired. I hate the traffic And I hate other aspects of Washington DC. So my wife and I were planning to escape four years ago when I retired But I have a I have a couple of daughters that live in Northern Virginia and the month of my retirement ceremony one of them announced she was pregnant and For some mysterious reason my wife suddenly lost all interest in leaving Washington DC So I am trapped there forever So it's nice to escape the traffic if nothing else You've already heard about my background, so I'm not going to repeat any of that but for those of you that are not aware Retired flag officers are required by federal law to tell a war story So I have that that's an obligation. I must honor today But I'm not going to make the mistake of telling a combat war story Because some of you may have be aware of this old saying which it's actually a truism Nothing ruins a war story like an eyewitness and unfortunately there are a couple of eyewitnesses in this audience So I can't go down that road But I thought of one story that I should share with you because many of you will be soon entering the active duty service or Even if you are in the reserve you you might have an experience like this So I thought I would share this with you. This was a very much younger version of me You already heard that I was a special forces team leader in the First special forces group that that is headquartered in Fort Lewis, Washington. I Was still a first lieutenant and Like all lieutenants everywhere I had gotten myself into trouble Now ladies and gentlemen, this was so long ago. I actually don't remember what infraction I had committed But I remember being hauled into my company commander's office And he was reading me the riot act Calling me every four letter word in the book because of some stupid thing I'd done And I remember standing there at attention thinking I only got a it's a been a brief Mediocre meteoric career and it's all over you're gonna have to hang it up. I wonder what you're gonna do next But after a while I'm still standing there attention being yelled at but I could tell my company commander was gradually running out of steam Or at least running out of expletives and I started to think am I gonna survive this and My company commander finally Slumped back in his chair. I'm still standing there at attention And he said and he asked me a question. I wasn't prepared for he said Nagata Do you have your watch on? Which I thought was a very odd question So I looked down at my wrist to make sure I had my watch on and I said Yes, sir. I have my watch on why and he looked up at the ceiling. He said well, that's good Not too many army officers know what time their career ended But that's when I realized oh, he's making a joke. I I'm gonna survive this So the reason I tell you this story is all of you are gonna have some version of this. I guarantee you You'll survive it. Just don't do it again So a minor career tip for all of you okay, so One of the terms that you often hear that I have been asked to talk about and I want to talk about is this term quiet professional Which is a slogan a description that was formally adopted I could say by US special operations command when it was first formed back in the 1980s for those of you that are aware of the history of the creation of the US special operations Community that we have now it is a child of an act of Congress called the Nunn Cohen amendment to the Goldwater-Nickels Act back in the 1980s formally establishing a Special operations forces requirement for the Department of Defense a four-star command called us so come that is in Tampa, Florida and an assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflicts that still exists today in the Pentagon One of the initial challenges my community had to face is how do we describe ourselves and One of the phrases we Seized upon was this term quiet professional So I thought I would spend a couple of moments talking about why that phrase was chosen one of the reasons Was because there is a need for small elements doing very dangerous things often behind enemy lines to be quiet Because you're easy to destroy so keeping your signature small keeping your transmission level low and just Avoiding the spotlight is a survival requirement in many cases, but that's not the only reason There were frankly some cultural and political reasons We chose that phrase and the reason I'm going to take you through this very briefly is as it has an effect on What I the remainder of my remarks to talk about what I think the role of special operations forces is going to be in the future another reason we adopted that phrase is because we were dealing at the time and we still to a degree deal today with a Certain amount of rivalry or animosity or jealousy from the rest of the US government Even inside the US military. This is a controversial topic, but People made the mistake of inviting me here. So I'm going to raise a controversial topic We wanted to you avoid the use of the word special So we instead we adopted quiet why did we want to avoid the use of the term special because it creates Unintended negative consequences a Simple version is what the hell makes you so damn special. I'm special too Which which is a ridiculous conversation to get into but unfortunately that kind of conversation still happens today So we even though I'm an army special. I was an army special forces officer I tried to avoid the use of the term special every way every time I could avoid it because I knew that there would be Somebody in the room who would want to pick a rhetorical fight over the use of the word special Another reason we use that word quiet professional is because there had been Before the creation of us so come and there still is today a hint of a perception that we're just a bunch of cowboys Freelancing it all over the world getting into trouble getting our country into trouble Getting up to no good Out of control Now do we screw up from time to time? Of course we do we're human beings but We needed to somehow convey that we're not a bunch of cowboys. We're actually a professional military organization We follow rules and regulations. We're disciplined. We just do unusual things the reason I take you through that is because as us special operations Seek to conduct the activities that are now required In an era of what many people are styling great power competition pick your phrase gray zone Irregular warfare. It really doesn't matter what you call it but it is an array of challenges for the United States that may not be completely unprecedented but in some cases on a scale or Laced with technologies that are totally new as We adopted phrases like quiet professionals We always had to be mindful and I would argue we still have to be mindful today The existence of special operations forces in any military It's not unique to the United States military in any military because I've had this kind of conversation with US special operations veterans in dozens of other countries it's It's always a bit of an unnatural act in any military to have a special operations component why because Most people do not understand what I'm gonna now take you through and Then I'll stop because I want to make sure we preserve time for Q&A if someone were to ask me Whether we're talking about army green berets navy seals Marine Raiders The list is pretty long as I'm sure all of you know the various types of special operations forces that exist today in the Department of Defense What do you do? Well, I was already alluded to in the introductory remarks if all you do is consume TV shows and movies The only thing we do is close-quarter battle to capture or kill a bad guy, and we certainly do a lot of that I Would argue we're the best in the world at it, but it's Certainly not the only thing to do we do it's actually not even the majority of what we do It's just the sexiest thing I guess for somebody who wants to create a TV show or a movie So what do we do? Well, we do a lot of different things But there is one particular term that I believe is the best and most accurate and most useful description of the nature The purpose and the mission of special operations forces They were created we were created we we still Exert ourselves to be or strive to be the world's best Problem solvers for problems that nobody else can solve We don't we have no business trying to solve problems other people can solve But there are some problems there are some challenges there are some threats That you know the United States and some of our allies and partners around the world occasionally face that they're they don't have a Solution they don't they can't find a way to solve it. They may have already tried and it didn't work So now they're looking for alternative and very frequently actually I would argue with increasing frequency ever since we created People then turn to special operations forces and at the risk of oversimplifying it Okay, everything we've tried hasn't worked. How about you guys give it a shot? That dominated my entire career the United States had a problem they tried to solve it they couldn't solve it and then Some part of the special operations community gets asked by somebody in the White House by somebody in the Pentagon by some ambassador somewhere Okay, nothing we've tried has worked. Maybe you can solve this problem Now, what does it mean to be a problem solver? What does it mean to be a problem solver? It means many things and I won't try to go into it all here because it would take too long But but if someone were to ask me what is the single most important attribute of a special operations professional? It is that we are problem solvers Not because we're geniuses we immediately find the answer that nobody else could find It's because we will try everything and anything We will tolerate failure disappointment But we will not quit we will not relent We will be a dog on that bone until we find a way to solve that problem I would argue the entire selection assessment and training programs of the entire US special operations community Fundamentally is intended to identify those people if you give them a horrendous problem a horrendous challenge with very little assistance To find a way to solve that problem Instead of recoiling from that problem instead of saying I don't understand that problem. I can't do that problem I don't understand that problem the only answer you get if you've selected the right person is Give me that problem. I want that problem. Don't give that problem to anybody else. I Don't know how to solve that problem, but I will improvise I will adapt I will overcome until I find a way to solve that problem All human beings have those attributes to some degree But in our community This may sound like I'm being too prideful or I'm being too arrogant, but I I spent 34 years in this community I still believe it is true today We deliberately search for select and then employ people Who are relentless problem solvers and it does not matter to us or at least it should not matter to us whether or not Solving the problem Requires an act of violence if when we're at our best. We don't care We don't I don't if I need a gun to solve this problem fine If I need an aircraft carrier to solve this problem fine, but I don't care If I can solve this problem simply by building a stronger personal Relationship with a set of people who will then go solve the problem for me. I'll do that too To some degree what I've just told you is a little counter cultural for most military organizations Because in most military organizations There's a there's a much larger emphasis on I'll use a simple phrase. This is the way we do it in The special operations community we actually bridle against the way This is the way we do it at least when we're when we're doing it properly. We bridle against the way This is all the way we always do it Instead when we're at our best We just we just accept the problem and then decide I'm gonna I Think this might be the answer. I'm going to try it, but when it doesn't work I will improvise I will adapt and I will overcome So getting back and as I'll use this as my closing getting back to what has already been mentioned You know you you turn on a movie turn on a TV show about special operations forces What do you typically see the special operator portrayed as? The masked up kitted up Operator about to break down a door or assault an objective The most prominent you thing you see is probably is carbine or his primary weapon That's what the camera focuses on in many cases. You can't even see the face of the operator and so unintentionally the focus The focus becomes The stuff the operator carries and uses instead of the way the operator thinks But at the end of the day to ladies and gentlemen, and I'll use this of my as my get off the stage remark what distinguishes us special operations forces today and Frankly always has Which is the ability to improvise Adapt and overcome and solve the problem no matter what it takes no matter where it is No matter how dangerous it is no matter how alone you might be is Taylor made For the challenges the United States now faces which is fundamentally and I hope we get into this in the Q&A in My personal opinion what the United States and many of our allies around the world are engaged in but principally the United States is today Engaged in is fundamentally a conflict indeed a war over America's influence around the world That is the prize What our adversaries are trying to do is degrade America's influence around the world and in too many places They are succeeding in a war over influence ask yourself this question is The most useful instrument in convincing someone To allow you to influence their choices is the most useful tool for that something that explodes or Is the most useful tool for that? Building a stronger relationship with that person than anybody else can I think the answer is obvious Okay, there is so much more I could talk about But I was given a limited amount of time and I can go on endlessly so I'm gonna stop there I'd be happy to take any questions that anyone might have Okay, sir, thank you very much for your Incredible remarks and the breadth of experience that you reflected. So thank you, sir So it is now my pleasure to introduce our second keynote speaker Colonel David Maxwell United States Army retired Colonel Maxwell is the editor-in-chief of the small wars journal and so for students in the room Feel free to use that for your research and cite it appropriately He is the vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and is a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation He's a 30-year veteran of the United States Army He retired as a special forces Colonel He's worked in Asia for more than 30 years Primarily in Korea Japan and the Philippines Colonel Maxwell served on the United States excuse me the United Nations command the combined forces command the United States forces Korea CJ three staff he later served as the director of plans policy and strategy and then the chief of staff for the special operations command Korea He commanded the joint special operation task force Philippines for the United States Army special operations command and culminated his service as a member of the military faculty at the National War College Following retirement. He served as the associate director for the security studies program at Georgetown University School and Foreign Service and He is also currently a fellow for numerous prestigious Organizations and institutions, so let's give Colonel Maxwell a round of applause. Welcome, sir Well, I have a pro tip for everyone Don't ever have to follow General Nagata I have about 12 pages of notes and I'm just going to toss those out and and try to build on a couple of the themes that Surprisingly, we didn't coordinate but but I have a lot of the same Views and perspectives as as General Nagata you know special operations wouldn't exist without Congress and General Nagata alluded to the Uncown amendment of Goldwater Nichols and you know, he's he's right that you know people look at special as as you know really kind of a sign of arrogance and They look at us, you know, why are we so specialist as as he said When I was the branch chief for special forces, I would get accused of By other branches saying that we were trying to siphon off the best and the brightest from the infantry and from From all the branches I myself volunteered for special forces training three times and was rejected Infantry branch said it wasn't in the best interest of my career and it wasn't until 1987 That it became a branch that they couldn't deny me from volunteering but what I used to say to the to those who said we were taking the the best and the brightest from them is that We're not we're trying to find the right person That's what selection the special forces selection and assessment is all about finding the right person who has the aptitude And the desire to do this kind of work and I tell When I would go out to Robin Sage, which is the culmination exercise for special forces training out in Pine land You know, I would tell the the soldiers That we're training out there I said, you know, you may have joined the military joined special forces to go to Afghanistan and Iraq kick down doors You know capture kill high-value targets But really what assessment and selection did was to find out and find the people who wanted to live and work in foreign cultures and Work with indigenous forces and populations And that's really the heart of of special forces combined with the problem-solving that General Nagata talked about and I I Cannot overemphasize the importance of problem-solving It is a mindset that that we we cherish we nourish develop and value And it's it is really you know, I've I've got war stories There's no no mandate for a colonel to tell war stories But I've I've got a couple that that I could I could tell you that Problem-solving by the by the most junior people In our force not by generals and colonels but by our non-commissioned officers Who are out there at the tip of the spear, you know living a dream? working with indigenous forces I Really want to talk about I just want a couple of points Irregular warfare is now the term of art We talk about operations in in the gray zone of strategic competition Strategic competition of our revisionist powers Russia and China the rogue powers of Iraq of Iran and North Korea And the continuing persistence of violent extremism or terrorism and again some people thought that terrorism was going away and My old boss at Georgetown Bruce Hoffman just wrote an article this morning in War on the Rocks You know people were telling them your your businesses is passe And and we just saw the biggest terrorist Activity this weekend happened in in Israel and it's of course ongoing So we have all these terms, but the term of art now is really irregular warfare I like to talk about what special forces special operations forces have to do in the future in terms of two trinities and The trinities are irregular warfare unconventional warfare and support to political warfare Political warfare is not partisan Politics that we see here domestically Political warfare is what George Kennan described in 1948 and the use of all elements of national power To achieve your objectives short of traditional armed conflict You know and using overt covert means psychological operations and alliances and economic coercion It is really statecraft And it and it applies in today's world of strategic competition So irregular warfare is really the overarching term term of art unconventional warfare is really that the It is what special forces were organized trained equipped Educated and optimized to conduct, you know, and we have a in the audience today an original member of special forces You know who came from from Europe and and it was about resisting tyranny, you know, and that exists who are to this day and Travis or dr. Morris I'm a great fond fond of quotes as as you are and of course used to press only bear to free the oppressed But a little more nuance to that it is to help the oppressed free themselves, and that's really how we don't do it for them You know, we help them do it themselves, and you're seeing that play out in afghan and Ukraine right now the incredible work done by the 10th special forces group the special operations command Europe and others from really 2014 on To really develop the resistance the resistance among the population That's the special forces mission at its very core, and that's a problem that that needs to be solved You know the resisting the oppression resisting the tyranny resisting the occupation of Russian forces, and the same thing might happen in Taiwan as well So the first trinity irregular warfare Unconventional warfare and political warfare and support to political warfare The second trinity is the comparative advantage of special operations forces and that is influence governance and Support to indigenous forces and populations and and together those two trinities really embody what special operations are all about But There is there continues to be to this day like general Nagata said people that don't want to Accept what special forces and special operations forces must do and what we can do and what we need to do for to support our national security and This conflict is really I think born out of Born out of misunderstanding, and you know dare I say ignorance and it goes back to quiet professional Which is a great description for us we really I mean it really does embody us But it also has caused us problems now of course people do write about Special operations and write some some books that I would I sometimes call chest-thumping and you know, I love me or there. I was What we don't get a lot of Are books that really explain what we do and we have some authors here who who have written those books that really Explain what we do and that are a testament to what special forces has done and can do And I I think but we don't have enough we don't have enough people writing about that and and I You know I come in to everyone in here as students To write you know to think to read to write and repeat Think read write and repeat, you know, that's what you do here in school And you've got to take that with you to the future and those of you serve In any capacity special forces special operations forces or in the military in general, you know You need to write about your experiences in a professional way And to help inform and educate fellow service members, but also the general public because as General Agata said most of what we do tends to be the stories tend to be told by Hollywood and and those are You know some feel-good movies and now though I think every military person Watches a military movie is as the biggest critic and finds everything wrong with them but it those are feel-good movies and I think that That we really need to write to inform and to educate Last couple points I just want to make about influence Influences is really key and we are so risk-averse when it we talk about psychological operations I mean we changed in 2010 we changed the term Psychological operations to military information support operations at the behest of the chief of staff of the army in a drug deal with the commander of U.S. Socom in return for a General officer billet for the psychological operations forces Because the general did not like the term psychological operations And so we created this new term military information support Operations and how do you explain that? Well, those are the guys who were formerly known as psychological operations. I call them the Prince Brigade, you know And and so we changed the name purely for cosmetic reasons And and it goes to our risk-averseness of of influence and information And it is something that that we lose on the battlefield every day because our adversaries are not afraid to use information one of the I was out at Leavenworth and with some psychological operations officers who are lamenting to me about the risk-averseness of of influence operations and They said that it is easier to get permission to put a hellfire missile on the forehead of a terrorist Then it is to get permission to put an idea between his ears Think about that You know, we have people that are that spend more time Overseeing and scrutinizing our influence operations, then we do firing a hellfire missile at a terrorist and We really have to reverse that and we have to reverse it so that we can lead with influence and That is the mindset. You're all students of Clausewitz war is a continuation of Politics or policy by other means our adversaries think that politics is war by other means You know as Mao said that Politics is war without bloodshed and war is politics with bloodshed and we don't really grasp that and We really we really need to Let me close with a couple comments. I just close with quotes So the SAS model motto is who dares wins as Dr. Morris said the late general Downing Modified that and he said who thinks wins I think that's that's really apt The former commander of US OCOM General Schumacher used to say train for certainty But educate for uncertainty That's what all of you are doing right now. You're being educated and contributing your own education for an uncertain future And the last is T. Lawrence said Irregular warfare is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge Now no disrespect to infantrymen conducting that bayonet charge. I was an infantryman, but Irregular warfare is is much more intellectual and as I used to try to tell my soldiers I know you can out fight anybody But we have to outthink them and I think that's the importance of this conference the seminar these seminars We've got to outthink our adversaries and we have the intellectual capacity to do that You have the intellectual capacity and I would urge you to write about that Share your ideas and your future expertise someday. You'll be standing up here. So I'll close there Look forward to Q&A. Thank you Okay, so students you can go ahead line up the mics are on the left end and and the right and Colonel Maxwell Thank you, sir. No math questions, please heavy on the physics neuroscience so While we're waiting for students to come forward, I just I'll begin for a couple of questions for the both of you gentlemen So over the years over the course of your career How have you seen? special operation forces evolve and that could be Any capacity it could be thought leadership. It could be the ability to solve problems. It could be recruitment It could be the types of tactics and equipment used but Over the years, how have you seen special operations evolve and your mic should be ready to go One big change that and and both generally got I experienced this We served during the Cold War and prior to 9-11 And you may not know this but at the time special forces and special operations forces were not so well funded At least at the tactical level And we developed very independent Self-sufficient capabilities and to be able to conduct training at very low cost if you wanted to get training approved you had to do You had to be able to plan it with You know for really, you know I mean we used to talk about hundred dollar off post training events You had to be able to take to only spend a hundred dollars in gas and food and go train somewhere So that was that was kind of the myth so prior to 9-11 We we could do things pretty cheaply now 9-11 happened and we got resources like you wouldn't believe and and I will tell you that I Special forces teams after 9-11 were doing things that I could only dream of and I never dreamed of when I was a team leader or company commander and and they incredible combat operations and being able to employ close air support You know all types of fires and really close with and destroy the enemy on a scale that that we couldn't imagine but that also Stymied some of our independence and creativity because we got a tremendous amount of support And we almost became very conventionalized in the fact that we had to centralize our pre-mission training And and we really you know used a lot of techniques from the conventional military and we developed Again the incredible combat capabilities, but we lost a lot of our independent self-sufficiency Now that's coming back now That applied to Afghanistan and Iraq fortunately seventh group going to Latin America first group to Asia tenth group going to Europe third group going to Africa. We did maintain those skills but the paradigm really was Iraq and Afghanistan and And that that really caused a big change in our our culture and that's why I mentioned in my remarks I had to remind incoming Special forces soldiers that you weren't selected for door kicking and capturing killing high-value targets You were selected to work with and because you had an innate ability And desire to work with indigenous forces and cultures Thank you, sir. I Think that the evolution of special operations forces at least in my own career Can imperfectly be binned into three areas one Dave's already talked about which is After the one of the things the Nunn-Cohen amendment that we've already described Created was a specific Funding line for us special operations forces is called MFP 11 dollars that is appropriated by the Congress it goes straight to us special operations command and all of its components and Frankly, nobody can touch it and That was a deliberate choice by the Congress to ensure that there was a reliable funding and resource stream for special operations forces and it was I mean the effect that had on the ability of the community that Dave and I hail from to To essentially almost reinvent itself because we have now a reliable repeatable well Established funding stream that we could count on So that had I mean it would take me too long to go to talk about all the benefits that my community has derived from that So but it's incredibly important the second one is that We We evolved We were forced to evolve our ability to Understand how our actions are perceived by policymakers both in Washington DC as well as other countries around the world because as our effectiveness grew our visibility grew and More and more people at the policymaker level became interested in what we do And there is nothing more dangerous for a special forces element than to have to deal with a policymaker No matter how well intended they may be and many of them are many of them are their fans Almost groupies of special operations forces There's nothing they want more than to have their picture taken on the battlefield with a special forces team or a Navy SEAL platoon But if you don't understand the perspective of that policymaker Could be an assistant to the president. It could be a congressman. It could be a senator. It could be damn near anybody If you mishandle Your conversation with that policymaker they could go back to Washington DC and do you substantial unintended harm? Because they fundamentally don't understand your mission. They funded limit fundamentally don't understand the risks you run They fundamentally don't understand or in some cases almost don't care about the secrecy You need to protect yourselves So we had to develop a degree of skill in Dealing with policymakers that we never had to worry about before when I was a young lieutenant because we just weren't that famous And we weren't that busy Now if you want particularly you if you're in the officer corps in the special operations community If you do not deliberately develop your skill at dealing with policy level individuals You're failing your force That becomes more important than your battlefield competence because the soldiers and sergeants and Sailors and marine raiders. They'll take care of the fighting You've got to protect them from unwanted interference, and if you don't understand the policy level you won't do it and finally integration This was not always true The 4911 we were a pretty siloed force The Green Berets over here the Rangers over there the Navy SEALs over there the the PJs over here we Trained independently. We operated independently. We were mostly suspicious of each other. We were competing with each other We wanted nothing to do with each other The the pressures of combat forced us to realize particularly after 9-11 We'd actually be better if we played like a team and so today the amount of integration That you can see across all of the special operations community is Not only has not only created enormous improvements in our ability to accomplish our missions. It's also become normal It's not weird anymore to see in a single planning bay representatives of all the special operations components special operations components planning Operating deploying and fighting together It was a totally unnatural act more than 20 years ago, but that integration has made us Exponentially more capable than we once were it's like the old adage If you have a team where all the individual players dislike each other our rivals with each other and compete with each other You got a lousy team If you have this team where everybody sees everybody else as a friend Wants to cooperate with them wants to collaborate with them wants to take risks for their buddies on their left and right You have an amazing team and that's probably in my book the single most important evolution. We've gone through Just let me add quick to that and I totally agree with that But soft is not fungible you know really the the art of Campaigning is using the right forces for the right missions and in the 2010 quadrennial defense review the beam counters Counted up and said there were 660 soft teams and they were counting green beret Oda's seal platoons tactical psi op teams civil affairs teams Marsoch Detachments and and PJ's and they were counting them all as one and I say that I Mention that because that is a lack of understanding of soft and it comes back to all of us here and why we're here This is the importance of writing about what we do. I taught a course at Georgetown for graduate students on unconventional warfare and special operations for policymakers and strategists and You know, even though we we have frustrated with policymakers civilian control of the military is You know paramount and so we've got to educate them You know that so that they're not mere groupies and they're not just you know want to go, you know hang out with soft guys They've got to understand because they're the ones that are gonna make the decisions, you know the policy decisions and so Writing about what we do is really critical and sharing your experiences your knowledge to to inform and educate them It's just a I mean so important and I just can't emphasize it enough Thank you very much. I'd like to poll the audience real quick How many of you are interested in any capacity for special operations in the future right raise your hand? Okay, and you know what that means. You're also candidates for questions. So Make sure you line up and ask your questions. This is a unique opportunity for you So we certainly appreciate that we have some students already here But if you just raised your hand, this is a unique opportunity for you So first problem first task is for you to ask a question. We'll start with you sir Good morning gentlemen my big question for you is considering the dramatic expansion of soft in comparison to the rest of the military force and also the Reduction in size due to recruiting problems. How do you what problems can you see with? Special operations may be taking the most resilient and motivated soldiers that are signing up Without Other sections of the military trying to compete for that talent Good great question. Thank you It's ironic you asked this question as I was I had a chance contact with the current SOCOM commander general Fenton at a fundraising event the other day and one of the things he talked about was the fact that It's it's close, but The special operations community is basically meeting its recruiting goals There's a couple of shortfalls here, but but it's it's very different than what the other services are going through Where we've got enormous shortfalls in some of the other services So I suppose one could make the argument that There's a downside to SOCOM and special operations forces meeting their numbers Because that means there's less for the other services. I've actually heard people make that argument that somehow it's unfair Or it's you're not sharing enough or something like that. I think it's balderdash If you're Take it out of the military. You're running a company. You're running a sports team You're running any kind of organization, but you need to hire more people if you fail to hire more people the The finger of blame ought to be pointed at yourself Not blame somebody else. Well, well, he took all the good people. Well, what's the matter with you? You know once you if you really want to identify the problem take a look in the mirror I'm being a little crass about this but I this is what I feel Secondly and this is an uncomfortable question for a lot of people in DC, but I'm a retiree now So I can I can just shoot my mouth off on anything I want to these days the There's a fundamental question when it comes to the recruiting challenges, you know that are we Effectively are we accurately identifying the reasons that young people? may be turning away from a career in the military and here again, I have seen Way too often the blame being pointed in the wrong direction like well, there's something wrong with those young people That is ridiculous That is ridiculous That's like blaming a customer at a car dealer for not being smart enough to buy your car It may make you feel good temporarily, but you're never you are never gonna solve your problem that way So let me just before I blather on here. Let me make one final point about this If you buy the argument I made during my prepared remarks that we are fundamentally today America is now fundamentally in a Global contest over its own influence a degree and you know at the end of World War two We were hands-down the most influential nation on earth much of the rest of the world had been destroyed we In ways we didn't we're not compelled to we decided to help rebuild much of a shattered world and for decades We were the most generous nation on earth and as a result. We were the most influential nation on earth Think of you think of your in your personal life Whatever neighborhood you may have grown up in if there was one particularly generous family in the neighborhood They had the most influence in that neighborhood For the last decade or so we've been walking away from being the most generous nation on earth and as a result our Influence has Rotted underneath our feet and now we're paying the consequences of that loss of influence So if you buy all that what kind of force is necessary for restoring influence I already alluded to this and my prepared remarks by I'll repeat it very briefly here number one You need an unrelenting problem solver and number two you need to understand you need people that understand How to build nourish and employ? Personal relationships. That's how you restore your influence. Thank you. Let's let's sub pivot to the next question. Go ahead, please Good morning gentlemen. I wanted to ask you Since you're both sort of veterans of the Cold War What and you've talked a lot about how America is engaged in a new struggle for Influence around the globe You know to to your mind, what do you think are like the biggest differences between the Cold War that dominated the last century and This new global contest and why aren't we calling it Cold War two? Thanks Great question, you know because I don't want to answer it. It's hard. No, it's a You know Cold War two. I think people are You know, I think people look at the Cold War as an anachronism, you know, it's past I frankly I Agree, I think I agree with what you're saying We should look at the Cold War for lessons for today and I think that the big Difference between then and now is I think we had a lot more confidence back then and I think we are lacking self-esteem You know as a nation today and and it's what general goddess said we've kind of backed off from being generous And we are we are seem more worried about people liking us, you know And wanting people to like us without doing the hard work that that develops that respect and and and Genders that kind of that kind of return so I think that but I think really at the very fundamental What won the Cold War for us were our values Were our values and we should be proud of our values, you know The I mean just as military people here we support and defend the Constitution of the United States, you know, and and that means You know, I may Disagree with whatever you said, but we are all willing to fight to the death for your right to say it You know that that's that's that is really the essence of of our values And we should stand up for that and and never be ashamed of of those values I think that during the Cold War we did a lot more In the way of influence but in much more subtle ways and and and I think that we've got to get back to that But I also recognize that the challenges of China and Russia today in particular make things a lot different than the bipolar Cold War and the economic integration really makes You know, I mean it makes it a very complex world And so we've got to develop national security strategy and National defense strategies that can really operate in this world We've come up with a lot of buzzwords, you know strategic competition gray zone irregular warfare But really we've got a we've got to think and we've got a plan We've got to develop strategy and policy that really support our national interests But have to be based on our values and that that's what I think we need to stand up for Thank you next question Morning gentlemen So you guys both brought up the civilian sector and the important role that it plays in the special forces community Common question that gets brought up in some of my intelligence type classes is a concept of oversight and you know, there's Interpretation that oversight sometimes leads to less results and compares into less oversight with more results Can you guys speak on that topic? Oversight is a word that gets interpreted many many different ways One way of interpreting oversight is it's some sort of a watchdog function because without that watchdog Whoever they're overseeing will do the wrong thing They will make an immoral choice an unethical choice an illegal choice or just a bad choice That's why we need oversight another usage of the term which is more positive is to ensure that whoever is being overseen has the resources the support and the Advocacy they need so one is a very negative connotation one is a very positive connotation unfortunately a Lot of the policymaker level people that I used to deal with before I retired Tended to use the word oversight in its negative connotation far more often than in the in the positive connotation Now personal opinion here, and then I'll stop because I want to give David a chance to talk about this because he deals with on this topic a great deal these days the the problem for special operations forces in the realm of oversight has typically been either a Suspicion that if left to our own devices will deliberately decide to do the wrong thing or because we're a bunch of cowboys or or as a way of reigning us in Because we shouldn't have been created in the first place There are some people there are there are many people actually so they're just not the majority Who use oversight in its more positive connotation very sadly? I wish that were not true, but I believe it is true well You know general gotta has much more experience with oversight especially on the Intel soft side, which is really that's where we really get into some Really complex issues there and the the overlap between intelligence and special operations It's very complex and beyond my my comprehension sometimes, but One of the things that I think is really important and generally gotta really laid out the two types of oversight Which I think are right the way that we could help ourselves though is by better campaign planning and What I mean by that is that we need to develop campaign plans that set objectives And that help the people who provide oversight Be able to see what it is we're doing and and it it supports what generally you've gotta said because if we're not able to Meet the objectives. Is it a resource issue? Is it a you know training issue? Is it something? That might be fixed might be helped by oversight. That's the positive aspect of oversight and of course it also Campaigns can hold us accountable as well, you know by not not executing the campaign properly and and I make this point because We tend to focus on oversight of programs 1208 and you know 2007 all these different programs that are in legislation and that's what we really tend to focus on and it's the use of money and different types of You know authorities, that's what we focus on. No one really focuses on execution of the campaign plan and I I had a my experience in the Philippines we developed a campaign plan and We said we needed authorities and it went all the way to the executive branch and They approved the campaign plan and when they approved the campaign plan They gave us the authorities one of them was to train civilian police, which the military doesn't generally do that You know, that's not you were not often allowed to do that but that was a requirement that was in the campaign and because it was in the campaign plan it got approved and We use that campaign plan really for more than a decade And it was it really helped us to be able to it helped with oversight and it helped with Getting the resources that we need so Oversight is critically important. It is complex civilian control of the military is an absolute And so we have to work within that but there's got to be a give-and-take and You know in a mutual respect, but we got to help policymakers understand what we do So I come back to our requirement to help inform and educate policymakers about what it is we do So we have about six minutes left and we have five questions So we'd like for the lightning round each student to at least say your question And then we're gonna leave it to you about three minutes each to respond to a mixture of the questions or a single question We'll leave it to to your choice. So far away far away Good morning gentlemen. My name is Amina Bernhardt. I'm a senior here at Norwich University And something that has been mentioned throughout this entirety is the importance and also the diversity of problems Solving at the center of special operation forces as well as the cultural influence that you hold over foreign countries So my question is how does the influence of these indiginal cultures? Influence American tactics and American strategies and how do you bring these perspectives back with you to improve? domestic type of issues Excellent next question. I wanted to raise question. So sir, you talked about how someone had made a comment to you about with the end of the war and terror the age of special operations being over and In light of this weekend as you mentioned we know that that's not true But as we move forward in the future and terror hopefully becomes a thing of the past How do you think special operations will evolve? It's a it's mission and tactics from there. All right, another great question Go ahead, please. Good morning gentlemen. Thank you for your insights. My name is Joshua Smith. I'm an international studies major I'm very curious to know your insights and also experiences into working with other militaries and how our Influence kind of melds clashes With other specialized forces and how you all collaborate. Thank you Thank you. Oh Gentlemen, I am Dennis Kuhn. So I'm a political science major My question to y'all was how has US special forces been able to adapt and evolve itself with? Near-peer power threats such as China and Russia developing their own special forces All right, each of these of course is a 50-minute response, but we'll go with the last question and Close it out with that Hello, my name is Isabel Mildell. I'm a civilian in the and doing computer science and information systems My question is to for part in the sense first What do you mean by when you need to do psychological operations and second if you were given More rain to use your minds as you mentioned in psychological operations Would you be able to do your job and have less of an impact on the civilian Sector when you go in to do an operation? I mean I guess I mean like fewer civilian casualties So students, thank you very much Your choice is about two minutes apiece. You can choose whichever topic you like. All right for an influence One of the things that I always Emphasize is we need to understand the indigenous way of war and not force the US way of war on indigenous force we tend to and I think you can see the problems that happened in in some countries where we try to Make indigenous forces look like us when in fact they don't have the history the culture the capabilities To be able to do that. So we have to understand the indigenous way of war and adapt to that Rather than force our way upon them. So that that's how I look at dealing with foreign forces I Also think and it didn't bring this up But how we need to adapt and when we are starting to adapt and that is women in special operations We need this you know one of the we didn't talk about this but part of irregular warfare and unconventional warfare is Resistance resistance of tyranny. Well in any country that where there is resistance There are women that are conducting that resistance and see that in Ukraine today, you know And so we need women in special operations to be able to work with women to to set an example You know and so I think that's that's something that is is really overlooked We have a hard time with with bringing women into special operations forces now There are many that operate and support special operations forces But you know we we have not We only have a handful of green berets who are women and we don't have any seals that I know of And we have some rangers some incredible women have gone through ranger school and assigned to the ranger regiment We have women in aviation special operations aviation But green berets in particular really require women and that's a controversial subject But I'm a supporter of women in in special operations forces You know we don't compete with China and Russia and in Soft, you know, I should say I guess in Jordan they do they have an annual soft competition and China's been doing great things But you know competition is one thing operations in the field or another and you know China has really been developing a Great force that looks good in competition. Are they really effective? I don't know The Psyop question that you answered we need to be able to conduct effective Psyop that is about influencing the target audience influencing decisions that that target audiences may make and target audiences may be leadership may be civilian population may be the the military of an opposing force And and so in some cases we want to create dilemmas for them to make it hard to make decisions in other cases We want to give them options and to get to your point That they know the right options that will result in their safety and their you know avoiding combat or Changing their own governance and system, you know to better their lives. So psychological operations is a really broad topic complex but it's something that we really need to be able to conduct effectively and We're just not doing it as effectively as we should Okay, I'm gonna go in reverse order and I wish I could go on at length But I know I have to be brief here. So pardon the the abruptness of my answers here on the psychological operations question I often wish we have not used ever adopted the term psychological operations because for too many people it creates the impression We're trying to reprogram people's brain somehow turn a neurotic person into a psychotic person or something like that It's not what we're trying to do or at least not when we're performing properly That's not we're trying to do what we are trying to do is help people make better choices that are not just Advantages for our military purposes, but we also believe are better for them in the long run may have some short-term downsides But in the long run, they'll be better off if they made different choices That's in my view. That's at the heart of an effective psychological operation get people to make different choices But not by deceiving them and not by trying to coerce them by by by trying to persuade them This is a better choice for you. It's not just a better choice for me And a very good example of this is how often and there are some people in the room that I'm sure have had this experience just like I have of Convincing a local indigenous force. It might be a special operations force. It might just be a militia force You will be better off if you accept more tactical risk for you and your forces In order to safeguard the population around the target you in the end of the day, you'll be better off That's a better choice on how Our adversaries have changed related to soft in my view they fundamentally have not they cannot Because for most of our adversaries, their special operations forces are at the risk of oversimplifying this. They're simply a Two an additional tool for imposing their form of tyranny on their own population or some population that they're preying on that is fundamentally Inconsistent with what us special operations forces do the people that do model us are all our partner and allied forces I mean that there are some people in the room you saw you've seen this just like I have as soon as we adopted a new helmet or a New style of uniform or a new carbine They rushed out to buy it too because they were they were trying to mimic us because they admired us and they wanted to Be like us so the modeling doesn't happen on the adversaries the side the modeling happens on the allied side How do we influence foreign partners by being generous? When we when we get it right sometimes we don't sit you sometimes even soft doesn't get it right by being generous How will solve soft of all once CT is over CT will never be over Hopefully this horrendous situation in Gaza was will put to bed this ridiculous notion that someday the war on terror is going to be over Terrorism emerges from populations that hate their own governments Is that ever going to go away populations that hate their own governments? No, that's never going to go away ergo counterterrorism will never go away The question the challenge for soft is not how to pivot away from CT and do something else The prop the challenge for soft is going to be we have to remain exquisite at dealing with terrorists And we have to do a whole bunch of other things as well because we have this great power competition thing that we got to deal with and then finally How do how do indigenous populations how we would do indigenous forces influence us All the time in meant a thousand different ways when we're willing to listen even in soft Sometimes not a lot, but sometimes I've seen a soft element refuse To hear what the indigenous population is saying and what has always been the result of that that team starts failing Because if you come across as if you're not listening to a bunch of people you need to accomplish your mission They're gonna stop helping you and it always goes badly Gentlemen, thank you very much. Let's give them a round of applause Okay The first session we hope to see you the rest of the day. Thank you very much Good morning. Good morning, everyone test test test test morning test All right ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna start in about a couple minutes. So please take your seats, please Hello ladies and gentlemen, I am cadet Dennis Koons. I'm a political science major here at Norwich University Welcome to the first panel of the 29th annual military riders symposium today we'll be blending reality and fiction as As we delve into the Narratives that explore the world of special forces and special operations for this panel Morning ladies and gentlemen, my name is Teresia Muema. I am a nursing student and Psychology minor and I'm originally from Kenya. I'm here as an international student and I'm so excited to be part of this panel So if you take attention to my left right here We have two very very special guest speakers for this panel The first one I'd introduce is Don Bentley a best-selling author of the Matt Drake series of which I own one of his books. I own two of the books from these authors He was a Apache helicopter pilot Whenever he served in the army where he would be deployed around the world and Specifically one point. He was deployed as a troop commander during operation and during freedom After the after the military Don would work as an FBI special agent And then he was and then he would also work as part of Dallas's SWAT team Next is James Stetzkel He is a historian and a fiction author James prior to being an author and historian spent 23 years in US special forces Having having been deployed to places such as Europe Africa and the Middle East He then spent another 13 years in the CIA He has published four books with military and espionage themes all of which have been well received in their communities We would like to take these The next five minutes to give it to our guest speakers so that they can give their opening statements Well, I appreciate you all showing back up to see us You got to see the real speakers and now it's the people who just make things up for a living So we'll try and be entertaining. Like I said, my name is Don Bentley. I get to write My Matt Drake series as well as the Tom Clancy books and next year I'll be taking over the Vince Flynn books and so when they asked me originally to come here I said, I think you might have the wrong guy because Brad Taylor actually is a soft guy I'm just someone who writes about it and they said, no, no, no, we really do want you to be here So I appreciate you having me and look forward to talking a little bit about what I do I would just like to say thank you to Norwich for the invitation I think we're gonna bring this down from the strategic level that you just heard to a little bit more of a tactical level those guys were the Upper grades and and we're we're down a little bit lower so in any event As Don mentioned and Dennis mentioned I started out in the military became a historian afterwards began to write history but the history of my experience informed The fiction that I wrote and I think that's the the topic of this discussion today so I look forward to hearing from you and Answering your questions Ladies and gentlemen, have you have you all know today like this panel? We are going to explore inside the world of US special forces crafting comparing fictional narratives So I'm going to start by asking the first questions and my questions are going to be based on the US special forces And so the first question is how has the landscape of unconventional warfare and special operations Evolved over the years and what challenges have emerged? So the question it's for you both for me, okay so We were actually having this conversation a little bit in in the car on the way here and so like I said full disclosure I'm not from a soft background, but I got to Interact with soft a little bit as a army of patchy pilot Be happy to talk about that more later over a beer because flying stories are always best told over a beer But basically the mission of army aviation special attack aviation had to transition significantly after the war on terror to do More close combat attacks more over the shoulder stuff and soft was a natural partner for that As far as the way that software at large has changed and most of my research comes from Once I left the FBI I worked for a series of companies that was primarily Staffed with soft veterans and our customers were all folks in the special operations community Is that soft very much has gone since the war on terror to a more of a direct action mission where? Elements before such as the Green Berets That didn't have that or maybe I guess Doctrinally still don't have that as their primary mission found themselves Everybody doing the kick in the door and shoot bad guys in the face Mission and so it's been maybe something that's a necessity and certainly something that's reflected in Fiction and big screens and TV, but I think you're starting to see the pendulum swing back the other way right now where Folks on that side are going back to more doctrinal missions as we're Realizing that we now have to confront near peer threats or kind of great power struggles I Would like to take that a little step further I'm a Cold War veteran. I served after 9-11, but I was with the CIA at that time Special operations special forces seals really came from poverty. I'm gonna put it that way prior to 9-11 We were met by two real Obstacles the lack of resources because the Pentagon did not give us money and Because of suspicion by the regular army Soldiers do not fight Irregular warfare guerrillas, you know, you're you're just like terrorists Well, that's part of the problem is if you're gonna fight an unconventional war You have to know how the unconventional soldiers on the other side work After 9-11 that changed quite a bit, but as Don said Most special operations forces became what I like to call hyper infantry Super well trained able to move on a dime and do whatever the government wanted But they've lost touch with the unconventional side in a large degree You alluded to the good things that 10th group is doing in Europe that's very true But I had a call from a guy who was a fifth group guy who spent a lot of time in the desert and they're going The war in Iran or Iraq and Afghanistan is finished now. What do we do? what's our mission and This is I think What the theme of this is along with the writing But how do we get back to the focus of your regular warfare unconventional warfare? asymmetrical warfare, which whatever you want to call it and that's going to be a challenge for the government and The military from here on out so Both of you are in my in my honest opinion really good writers One thing that I hope to engage in a discussion with both of you is how have your personal Experiences influence the stories that y'all have written. I know with mr. Bentley. He has a very very intricate law enforcement background working with the FBI and in hostile intent the book right here that tends to be a very big theme is some levels of law enforcement and with Mr. Stetzkel being You know Being in special forces writing a book, you know the snake eater chronicles a question in time the first book of that series How has how have your personal influence is built upon your stories? Go first because I'm closer I Brought this up as a training aid primarily so I wouldn't forget its title, but this is probably my first Nonfiction History book that I wrote about the American special forces and it talks about a classified unit that was in Berlin During the Cold War and it was a special forces unit that existed there from about 1956 onward this history And the things that I experienced both in Berlin and afterwards during my career with the agency Are very much prominent in my novels. That's where I get a lot of my experience or my themes and That's what I try to bring in it gives it I think assemblates of realism and How an American soldier and even foreign soldiers will act under pressure so Like I said, this this is where my information comes from Yes, so I think what makes great fiction great are the characters or the people in the pages that you can relate to and When my first but so my book my protagonist is a guy named Matt Drake He's a case officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is a fancy way of saying he's a spy When I was an FBI agent I was a human guy and so I ran what was called sources in the intelligence Community they're called assets and so we had very similar jobs and I thought it would be interesting to write him But I really I wasn't he's also a former Army Ranger And so if you read my books and you are a Navy seal or aspire to be I apologize ahead of time All of my friends are Army Rangers and Green Bracer. There's a lot of seal jokes in there but the as I tried to understand How he would think and what his mindset was it was interesting when the book came out I had a an interviewer say are you Matt Drake? Are you your protagonist and I said I am absolutely not Matt Drake But I've stood in the same room with men who could be and that's absolutely true One of my closest friends is a guy who spent the majority of his army career as a assaulter in Delta Force his first assignment Coming out of Delta Force was or coming out of the operators training course was Mogadishu was the what we would call Black Hawk down and he told me a story about that horrific day And he said you know when the black hawks had been shot down and crashed and and we were recovering The Americans in those helicopters. We knew that we were they were dead and he said we were under fire by the Somalis We knew that they were dead already and we still stayed on every one of those Helicopters cutting away pieces of the helicopter in order to recover every piece of our fallen comrade and into somebody like me Who's not from the special operations community? That doesn't make a lot of sense Like why would you risk the living for people that you know already dead? But for folks from that community they live by a creed and part of that creed It is embodied in a phrase in the ranger creed which says I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall under the hands of The enemy and so again to somebody who isn't from that community you say yeah, I can get behind that that sounds good But for somebody who actually is a soft member What that means is that even though you know your fallen comrades are passed away You are willing to risk your life to make sure you bring them back home And so when I heard that story I thought That's a window into a community that very few people have access to and I'm lucky enough to know men Who could be characters in my books and in some cases women and I'm gonna write about them And so that's how I came to write the kind of books that I do I Just like to add Don brings up a very important point of fiction writing and it's all about the characters not not necessarily the story The story's got to be good with the characters have to be good too and one of the biggest things I have seen are books that Emphasize one person in that in that book and I think Some people can pull that off I don't like to because what I have seen throughout my entire career or 35 years working with the US government is it's not one person it's a team effort and I Try to introduce that team aspect into things because you can't get anywhere by yourself There are probably two rambles in the in the real world and one of them is fiction So you have to realize that this is this is nothing more than a team effort Yeah, there might be some outstanding people there, but it's very much about a team and teamwork together Thank you so much So the next question also applies to both of you and it's how do you see the role of Special forces evolving in response to contemporary global security threats such as terrorism and hybrid warfare Yeah, I think so certainly the earlier two speakers probably talked about that much more eloquent eloquently than I can I think I think we We as as Americans or as American policymakers I think certainly have a little bit of hubris in that we think we can decide when it's time to pivot, right? So we famously decided we were gonna pivot back to the Pacific and then the real world intruded again, right? Or we decided that the age of the war on terror is is Over and then Hamas decided this weekend that it wasn't and so I think it's I think To paraphrase what what Mike said earlier? I think it's yes and in that it's yes and that here's the mission that soft has already always done or has done the last 20 years yes, they have to keep doing it and Here's the mission of what soft looks like against a great power struggle or a near-peer conflict And yes, they still have to do that and maybe there's something else that we haven't seen yet And yes, they will have to do that because I think I think whichever the two of you said it so well before that what makes a Soft operator different from anybody else is that ability to solve problems that nobody else can solve and we don't know what those Problems are gonna be like we know what they've been like the last 20 years We knew what they were like during the Cold War arguably Could be something completely different, but the men and women that are a part of that community I think will continue to solve those hard problems just like they have for the amount of time. They've been in existence Coming coming after the the two great speakers we had before it's kind of difficult, but Special operations in fact most most things in the United States whether it be Foreign policy or anything else is quite often very reactive something happens and we have to find a solution for hence the problem solvers and For the future we have to be able to anticipate what those problems are gonna be And that's gonna be a lot of what you guys should be doing out there whether you're in civil life or military life Because it's fairly easy to have a problem and then try to figure out how to solve it And it's a little bit more difficult to figure out what the problem is going to be You talk about terrorism in the 1970s We were just beginning to figure out that terrorism was going to be a problem It was big in Europe the Germans the British The French the Israelis especially had already seen it, but the American military hadn't and So people were given the tasking to come up with the solutions of how the American military could fight terrorism Nobody had a clue how to do it The commander of one of my units was asked can you come up with a force to do this and it was sort of like an Elon Musk moment or maybe it was Steve Jobs who said don't Not accept the job because you don't know how to do it take the job and figure out what you have to do And that's what happened and from that time on we've been adapting and Creating flexible forces to handle these problems, and that's what's going to be necessary in the future Thank you so much so Your books have very intense have very intense and memorable moments in the in each of the stories What are some Memorable influences that you may have read or may have studied or maybe even listen to from other people whenever you were creating your stories The moment I had to stand in front of the sergeant major General Nagata brought that up when he had to stand in front of his commander we had incredibly Flexible and tolerant leadership and some of the units that I was in and they allowed us to do what Basically ever whatever we needed to do to accomplish the mission But if somehow you messed up It wasn't the enemy that you worried about it was your own leadership and going in standing from the sergeant major it was one of the worst things in the world and It was that was some of my most memorable Moments so I was standing in front of the sergeant major and him asking that question. Did you do this? Only later Did I figure out if you answered that question wrong? You were going to be out of the unit luckily, I answered the question right but Those are the moments that you really remember as the moments with your team members the moments with Confrontations with your commanders the stuff out in the street. Well, that's just sort of to be expected Yeah, I think when I get asked the question a lot like where do you come up with the ideas for your stories? Where do you come up with the things that you see happen in the book? And it's it's often the opposite where I get to I have so many that I have to pair them down because for You know when you get to go hang out in a team room or go buy a bunch of green Berets of beer You can just sit back and listen and listen to things and for me it was more like I'm gonna use that That's incredible. Nobody will ever believe this so I can't use it and one of the ones that falls into the No one will believe this that I'd love to use in my book But don't think I can as I was having a beer with a young captain and a team leader He had been special forces when he was enlisted went to West Point met his wife at West Point She went aviation he went back in the infantry became a team leader and she became an Apache pilot which I think is a little higher than being a green beret, but I'm not sure you can ask me that later and Their their marriage did not go went the way that a lot of military Marriages did and they ended up getting divorced and so fast forward to he is a team leader Special forces a team in Iraq his guys are in an ambush and he calls for air support and guess who shows up His ex-wife is shooting rockets over his head at the bad guys and I was like, how did it go? And he said I'm still here Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question apply at specific hurry to Mr. Staskar and it's How has your background in conflict archaeology influenced your understanding of historical events and military operations? that question sort of out of left field, I think conflict archaeology is Basically the study of warfare and how battles are fought, but it's also how warfare influences Communities of people I would actually put it the other way around That my experience in the military has really helped me out in In the area of archaeology because my experience gives me a way of looking at things that civilians might not I can interpret things differently than civilians and See the entire picture from a different aspect a different point of view and I Did a I did a An expedition in the Jordan to look at T. Lawrence and I was writing a history of that and We found a pile of ammunition. I'm gonna try to make this short found a pile of ammunition near where no battle had been fought There were expended cartridges and then there were live cartridges the live cartridges though had Indents in the primers indicating that they had actually tried to fire them and not been used and I started looking at this and somebody asked me What I thought that was no battle have been fought there. Why was this stuff on the ground? Lawrence was using armored cars With machine guns mounted in them So what I figured was they had fought a battle elsewhere Come back to a camp and then they swept out the cars leaving all the ammunition on the ground I had no conclusive proof to say that was the case But it made sense and later on I saw a picture of that location With armored cars parked approximately where we had found the ammunition conclusion My military experience was what helped help me in that. Thank you so much Mr. Bantry, how do you develop your characters, especially those ones involved in special operations missions? Yeah, so I think one of the things When you are trying to write commercial fiction is you have to do something my editor calls it the same but different So Brad Taylor is a great friend of mine. He's a fantastic writer writes the Pike Logan series He was a Delta Force troop and squadron commander I'm never gonna write a better Brad book than Brad does but my books should be shelved next to him And so you kind of have to figure out what are you gonna do differently? And so as I got to know people in this community One of the things I learned is that there's a lot of gallows humor that's involved, right? Because you take folks who have a very very hard mission to do Where the results are catastrophic if you fail and they often use humor in order to In order to cope with that and so I decided to use humor in my books And I told my wife that and she's like well, you're not really that funny And I said I know but if you give me enough time to write the joke it might be and so I Purposely did that the second thing I did that was a little different From a lot of the books that you find in this genre is again The men I know who could be Matt Drake or who could be characters in my Clancy books Most of them have families and they're married and they love their wives and their kids It's it's not the James Bond kind of guy that's just wandering around That they're their family and their their spouse is what keeps them tethered to a sense of normalcy in a very Unnormal vocation and so I kind of incorporated that in there and tried to make it a little bit the same But different the other thing because I have so many friends is I use a lot of them in my Clancy books And so if you've read my Clancy books, there's a pair of green berets one. It's named Jad Those are real people but because I'm an author and I get to stick it to my friends Jad in real life is actually Navy Seal and I made him a green beret and Brandon Cates He was a Navy Seal team leader in my books was actually a Ranger platoon leader in real life and they hate that But I think it's kind of funny Great. Thank you All right, so this is where I get into the kind of books specific questions For what I have so each each one's going to be directed at At each of you so I'm going to be starting with a question in time So the main character in a question in time is a man by the name of Kim Becker, right? Is he is he inspired off of one person or is he inspired off of multiple people with multiple different? Like a collage of multiple different events that you've known to have happened totally fiction But he's not He he like like Don said, I try to bring real people into these things and Kim is a composite of Several people that I knew and served with one of whom served in Vietnam and that gives birth to a Flashback he has to his days with special operations group in Vietnam Another part of him is spawned from a CIA officer who did an operation in South Africa So these these are composites and I tried to build upon Both there are strengths and their weaknesses because everybody has Strengths that they want to show and then they have weaknesses that they want to keep under wraps And so I try to bring those out and If you can fit the family in there This is something I'm gathering from Don's writings. I'm reading his too It's influencing mine in the fact that these people have real-life relationships Beyond their job and their family is very important to them in some cases. It's not so important So you have to be able to articulate that and show it to your readers. So All right. Thank you for that. So Mr. Bentley my I'm going to be asking you the same type of question on whether or not whether or not your main character Matt Drake and in the Tom Clancy zero hour series. I think he's from Is he a composite of multiple people if so what what main aspects were you trying to emulate within Matt Drake? Yeah, so I'll try and keep this interesting because my wife tells me when I talk about writing It's kind of like human Ambien and so hopefully I won't put you all to sleep I don't have her here. Normally. She starts texting me with encouraging things like this is boring move along And so I'll try and I'll try and keep that in mind like I said before Matt Drake is is a former ranger because three of my closest friends were rangers and I Spent and to this day my last real job was working with them before I got to to write full-time And so they heavily influenced My view of the world and what it meant to be a ranger and that's why Matt is is a ranger He works for the DIA because again going back to that same but different. I didn't know the DIA really even existed When I was a military officer when I was an FBI agent doing human stuff My aperture expanded a little bit and and figured out there was this other agency that had a really interesting mission set and Typically didn't get along with the CIA at all and so I thought oh, that's great I can use that as as more stuff for fiction and so he's he's definitely is is a combination of different people I've known and then also like I said, I think when you I Think when you're lucky enough to know people from that community and you see what Hollywood shows Which is sometimes good and sometimes bad and sometimes not realistic at all you want as a writer to say I have the privilege of knowing people who actually do this for a living and I want to give Readers kind of a window into that my job at the end of the day is to tell a really great story that keeps you up at night I'm not writing nonfiction here, and I'm that same Delta Force guy I talked about before helped me out with a scene in my first book without sanction where Matt's doing a Hey ho jump into Syria because who does not want to do a hey ho jump? I mean it's one of the coolest it's on every recruiting picture ever right and so He helped me with a whole bunch of the technical details for that and and then at the end of it He sent back this little note and he said, you know, we would never just send one guy right and I said Yeah, but was it a good story and he said it was a great story I'm like that's all I care about and so I think that's part of what you try and walk the line of is Is how accurately can I reflect the community or give people advantage into it? But at the end of the day my job is to tell a story Thank you for thank you for that was Really insightful on how your characters have been developed throughout your stories Mr. Mr. Stetscar, I have another question for you concerning the cold war your cold war experience So what challenges did you face as a special forces operator while conducting the clandestine operations in Bahrain? I Go back to my certain major. He was the biggest one Yes, he said basically the word was You can do it any way you want just don't screw it up So I think everybody tried very much to Take heed of that advice the challenges were Imagine a Company of special forces troops about 90 strong most of them Americans But we had quite a few foreigners also logic people especially in a city a Foreign city where you had to be able to speak local language and maybe at least one other language besides English How do you live work and operate in a city like that? without being Compromised and people knew there was a military unit We were part of a military unit, but what we were trying to portray was something that was Vanilla very non-contentious What we were hiding was the fact that we were a special forces unit sent there to sabotage the East German Government and the Soviet army so our Everyday actions were geared around tradecraft How to act and and how to work in a city to conduct clandestine unconventional urban warfare? Some people could do that some people could adapt to it Some people wanted to be out in the woods with a rock sacks, but to walk around the city wearing civilian clothes maybe carrying Some sort of a bag with your weapon in it and working day-to-day with Germans And try to hide that from from them was the biggest challenge Everything else you know if you if it came to pulling out a weapon or something like that Obeds were off at that point. It didn't matter if you were an American or what but up to that point You were that's what you were trying to avoid Thank you very much Mr. Bantry do you think the special forces in the real world is where represented in the fictional world accurately? I Think the Navy SEALs would say yes because they get to be on everything. They're in every document. They're in every No, I I don't know that I should be the one to answer that I think it's I Think in one aspect going back to what Mike and Dave were talking about before Everybody in America knows there's a thing called special operations now, right? Everybody everybody knows you know of the the horse soldiers of the the triple nickel guys that went in on horseback and and helped Take over Afghanistan Everybody knows that special operations exists now I think very few people know what they actually do or should do and I think the the gap between that is probably fine for The general American public probably not as fine for policy makers and politicians, especially when those views are too often informed by what they see in movies or read in books like mine, maybe and so I Think I would say that that it is well represented now whether that's a good thing or a bad thing or accurately I'll have to defer to somebody who's actually from that community Thanks Yeah, there's there's two faces to special operations the visible face for the guns is Mike said, you know, you're focusing on on the kit And then there's the other not so talked about Whether it be in cyber warfare or intelligence operations, and I'm not talking about the CIA. I'm talking about the military doing intelligence operations Mike stop me if I say too much but You don't see that and There are people out there that that the rest of America is Totally unaware with about that are doing these operations on a daily basis And so far we've done a pretty good job of keeping that under wraps Yeah, it's great to see the movies with the guns and all that stuff But there are so many people out there that are doing these other low-key things That you don't see and that's very important. That's you know as I don't know as Dave or Mike said, you know, if you if you're too pulling out to the gunpoint You're you're already too far and what you do before that is really what's important. Thank you all right, so in both of you have two really new books that are coming out or are out right now and What are some of the inspirations and challenges for these newest books that y'all had come out for mr. Bentley? I believe it's weapons grade and for mr. Stetskill. It's dead hand Which is interesting because yours is more about the war that's happening on in Ukraine right now I think I just flipped it going Long story short I my my fiction up to this point has been Cold War 1970s 1980s because that's very interesting and burnt it to me and that's where a lot of my stories lie But I saw a story in what's happening in the Ukraine and it involves some of my characters I've recalled them to active duty, you know, they might be in retirement, but now they have to do some work It's amazing how much good stuff old people can do but Basically, the premise is that the Russians have rolled over Ukraine and Moldova and are now preparing to go into the Baltics Some people have said that this is pre-Sien. I said no, it's not pre-Sien. It's it's history And it history repeating itself and that's basically what's happening in this book Yeah, I put my characters in it and I weave a story around it, but it's history and Trying to tell that good tale that is Up to date and pertinent to readers is very important. That's what I'm trying to do with that book So I have to start by correcting the record a little bit You said one of my books is good like all all of my books are good So the the latest book of mine that just came out is Tom Clancy weapons grade And so I had the opportunity to write both my series of books and the Clancy books and so for about Two and a half years. I had to write a book every five months And I'd alternate between one of mine and one of the Clancy books and it is really hard to come up with new ideas every five months For a new book and so I think I think part of what you do as a writer is say What are you interested about and if you're even if you're writing thrillers if you're trying to chase current events You're never gonna win that but if you can look out at the world and say what are people interested in what's happening right now And does it interest you and if so write about that and so for me, it's hypersonics. I'm a big aviation geek Everybody has been talking about it or most people have been talking about it from a munitions a missile standpoint There's also some significant work Getting done on on platforms and so there's a really neat start-up company in Atlanta, Georgia called Hermes That's trying to make a hypersonic UAV or a UCAV I guess depending on on how it gets purposed and so that was fascinating for me and growing up as a kid of the Cold War and an aviation there was one airplane that all of us loved and it was the SR 71 And I'm like I'm going to bring that back because by God I'm the writer and I can do whatever I want And so I brought it back for Weapons grade and as part of that I got to talk to a retired general Air Force general named Bob Beeler Who was a Air Force test pilot and flew the SR 71? And so I spent two hours on the phone with him Listening to stories about what it was like to be alone and unafraid on the other side of the world where there was No sat-com and you're just doing your mission and it was it was so much fun And I put as as much as of talking to him in the book as I could and at the end I said can I use you as a character in this book and he's like yeah And so I named one of the characters after him and in the part I'll remember besides the incredible flying stories That was the most fun is you have this to retired two-star Air Force test pilot flew 65 different types of aircraft and you should have seen us me trying to tell him how to use zoom so that we could have the Call like it almost completely derailed so if you can use zoom you can fly the SR 71 That's the moral to that story Thank you, so you said something interesting about Dead hand having a really big historical component to it. Do you think you can expound on that mr. Sets cool The man who is currently in charge of Russia Forget his name Has as a historical precedent The czar's who are very territorial ambitious will say and A number of Russians have made Statements that they're doing nothing more than reclaiming ancient Reddit Redditorial lands of Russia and they're not going to stop In my opinion if Ukraine falls Moldova will probably fall a doubt that Russia Will be completely satisfied if you go back to 1939 and a different country moving east it was the same thing you give me one thing I'll be happy But he wasn't happy and I don't think Putin Will be happy unless he can Extreme what he wants and that's basically a new Russian Empire Right, thank you for that Thank you, sir So I I am a very curious person when it comes to leadership and I like to run as much as I can To be a leader and to develop as a leader. So this question is Related to leadership and it applies to both of you Are there any particular reasons or principles from your military career that you believe are variable for leadership and Decision-making in both military and civilian Oh me and it's and so the question was Principles from my military career that are useful for leadership in the civilian world too Yeah, I think so The way that the military in my opinion teaches leadership is Profound not not so much because Everybody that comes out of the military, you know is is the equivalent to somebody that goes to the Harvard Harvard Business School But because the military teaches servant leadership in a way that then nobody else does so what does that actually look like? So when I was a young officer the first time you go to the field So we're an aviation we actually have hot chow in the field because if it is and we don't fly and if there's no hot Chow, there's no airplanes And so one of the things very early that was driven into me as a young officer is you eat last You watch your guys and your girls go through the chow line because number one You want them to know that you as an officer are looking at them or taking care of it in number two If you were to run out which in aviation you never run out a child But if you were to run out that your your junior enlisted people would get fed first Because that's your responsibility as a leader is to take care of soldiers that that phrase taking care of soldiers Isn't just a buzzword. It's something that you're taught to do every day as an officer There's another incredible tradition where during Thanksgiving you would get dressed up in your dress mess And you would go down to the dining facility and you would serve your junior soldiers many of them You know we're we're gone from home from the first time We're not able to travel home for the holidays and their leadership You know me and my first sergeant would show up and serve them child because Because you wanted them to know that you cared about them more as an individual or cared about them beyond just being a Soldier of yours because in our profession. It's different than any others There may came a come a day where you have to ask them to do something or that is going to put their life At risk and they're going to do it number one because they're a soldier and soldiers follow orders But number two because you have earned their trust as a leader by being a servant leader to them And if you figure that out in the military, it pays dividends wherever you go whether that's corporate America or anywhere else I have two observations. We hardly ever had a hot job in the field Air conditioning we had that too and I remember a cartoon where you've got the picture of the pilot up in the sky And he's looking down at the guys in the field and he says that looks like it really so And then there's a guy in the field goes But the Don has made all the right points It's important I think also for leaders to know that they don't have the all the answers It's not a business relationship where you can go out and have you know 24 hours of discussion and Hold up hands and that votes at some point the leader has to make a decision And he may have all the tactical and strategic sense that he needs from his learning But one thing I think you have to realize is You've got to give your Subordinates the people that work for you the chance To excel also and the best way to do that is just simply say okay. This is what we have to do This is my idea What ideas might you have? Get the input from your people Talk to your sergeant who if you're a lieutenant or a captain is gonna be the guy that saves your life about 28 times Before you're done with your first day And talk to your privates, you know, they may have a good idea something he saw in a movie And I'm serious about this people read books and have ideas and it might be a stupid idea But it might have some semblance or some application to your stuff and the more you do that Your people are gonna have more trust it At some point you're gonna say okay discussions into this is what we're going to do Some people do that anyway. I can think of several general officers. You not not this one But several Historical figures that would say this is what we're going to do. We're doing it my way And it went bad Despite the fact that people were telling him this is gonna be very ugly So you have to listen to your people give them the opportunity to speak without fear and then go from there and make your own decisions Thank you so much. So that's very insightful So I'm going to ask one last question and then you're going to jump right ahead to the Q&A session So students and our audience if you have any questions, you can start lining up on our left and our right So the last question that I'm going to ask is that What are some of the most memorable responses or feedback you've received from your readers? Yes, for me my the last book in my Matt Drake series was called forgotten war and I Was writing it as our withdrawal from Afghanistan was happening back in the summer of 2021 and For me, you know, I only served one tour in Afghanistan, which is puts me in the minority It's it's incredible when you look out and say that less than one quarter of one percent of the U.s. Population served and most of those folks served multiple times across Iraq and Afghanistan And so for 20 years less than one quarter of one percent of the American population willingly willingly Bore the word wartime burdens for this nation, which is incredible in itself But as Afghanistan was crumbling. I just had It was hard to come to terms with what that meant And so I kept getting these texts and emails and calls from fellow veteran friends of mine That were all some variation of was it worth it was the 20 years of blood sweat and tears and the sacrifices and The the treasure we poured into that place was it even worth it and and if you knock Afghanistan out Then then you start questioning whether Iraq whether any of it was worth it and I didn't know the answer to that question and so a friend of mine said that in a great book what's happening is that the Author is trying to answer a question for themselves and the pages and so when I sat down to write forgotten war That came out and that the book is very much fiction But the emotional core of it the questions were the questions That I got from fellow veterans that the questions that I was asking the that gut punch of a can't end this way It can't my son has made poor choices in life and so he's about to be commissioned as a Marine Corps officer And he was a September 11th, baby, right? So he was born September 28th, 2001 so as a dad as a parent thinking there's no way I would want my son to have to go back there a generation later But as a veteran who who spent a year of his life there and who lost friends there at the same time was thinking It can't end this way this can't be the end to to our sacrifice And so what was interesting when I wrote the book and some of the comments that I love the most were people who Didn't serve and said I get it now I understand you know, I never served in Afghanistan or Iraq I never served in the military But I understand now why this meant so much so much to you and then the other set of comments I loved were from my fellow veterans that said something along the lines of thank you you put into words What I couldn't and so that's what kind of meant the most to me. I've only had two reviews of my books So I can't really speak I got a telephone call a couple of weeks ago from a special forces team leader and they had read this book this history of Berlin and most of them didn't know about it and They wanted me to come down and talk to them About about the history and I'm going you know Why are they interested in this this whole the history and he goes well All of us have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan recently And now the wars are over and they're asking the question What do we do now? Why and it goes very much to what Don was saying and what General Nagata and Colonel Maxwell have said is We have got to do a better job of making people understand what this nation is about and the contributions that the military makes to it and I'm going to be going down and talking to these guys and I'm going to tell them you know This is this is the kind of stuff that that is still applicable. It's all history Sometimes it's new when we write it again, and we make it a future war Hypersonic weapons and things like that But all of this stuff comes around and you can't forget the history of why we were put on this World I think the United States as a country and it's an example and Military service is probably one of the best examples. I can see of the American spirit not just going and kicking down doors, but Influencing people as Brave speakers said so I think that's very much a thing that that we need to impart as as writers Yes, sir So if you have any questions, we have these two microphones over here Please split off and head to the respective microphone, and then we'll call on you for your question While people are doing that. I'm going to go ahead and ask one question that came to my mind For you too, how much of yourself is in your novels names on the cover There's a lot of Everything I think we write comes from our own experience our own point of view So that's that's where I get a lot of my information So I'm filtering out the things that I have heard had People explained to me things I have seen and I put that into the novel As my interpretation of that I'm not in there as a character But my friends are in there as characters my some of my not so friends Obviously they've taken taken on roles on the other side much, you know instead of becoming a seal when you were a ranger Then you become a bad guy instead of a good guy but It's it's all my point of view and how I interpret things. So that's how I put myself Yeah, I think what what? readers resonate with in a really good book is Veracity and and what I mean by that isn't so much, you know in my genre Did they get the caliber of the rifle right which is? important or or Details like that as much as do they recognize the characters on the page. Do they feel real can they? Sympathize or empathize with what they're going through and so I wrote before I wrote my first book that was published I wrote three books that nobody cared about over 17 years Because there's an appropriate time of sulking that needs to happen after each book before you write another one when it doesn't sell And so it took me a while and it wasn't to my fourth book that I thought you know what by God I'm gonna put the stuff in there that scares me the stuff that keeps me up at night the stuff that I did and so Like a lot of people that have served. I had a really bad day in Afghanistan Mine was June 28 2005 and when I got out I spent a lot of time Reflecting on that and trying to figure out what what did it mean that I was here and a lot of people weren't and how What did that mean for how I was supposed to live my life? What did what does it mean when the single moment biggest moment of significance in your life happens in an instant? And then it's gone and then what do you do and so for me? For my fourth my fourth book, which was my first book that got covered or published excuse me without sanction I made my protagonist deal with that where his his version of a bad day as he was a DIA case officer And so he was running an asset in Syria and his asset and his assets family was murdered and his best friend was horribly disfigured in a in an IED explosion And so I think when I finally got brave enough to put Enough of me in the books or the things that I was struggling with or thinking about or trying to figure out on my own is When they started resonating with readers and people wanted to read them Good morning. My name is John Walsh. I'm a senior here at Norwich University. I have a question for mr. Bentley Obviously you're writing under a very high profile name of Tom Clancy How has that affected your writing and is that daunting in a way? Yeah, so I was talking with John earlier John, right? Yep has also made bad choices and was with my son and officer candidate school in the same platoon in last summer so it is so writing for the Clancy State is is humbling and terrifying at the same time it is you you have to know, you know, I was Young 14 year old I think or so when I wrote or read my first Clancy book It was most people's hunt for the red October mine was red storm rising and there was a scene in there Where there's an F-14 doing a strafing run on a Russian container ship And I just remember reading that and thinking man This is this I know this is a book But I feel like I'm in the front seat of this cockpit and I would love to write books like that And so when I got the opportunity to do that my editor Thankfully is is is the same editor as my books and he said you know I don't want you to write try and write like Tom Clancy. Nobody can he said it But I want you to do what you do in his universe And so that kind of took some of the pressure off But I have another friend also an army vet Josh hood that writes in the Jason Bourne universe And he said when you get a chance to write for Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or WB Griffin It's kind of like your dad finally tossing you the keys to his vintage 65 Mustang So you want to drive that car as fast as it'll go, but you want to bring it home with no new dings in the bumper So that's what I try and do Thank you, sir Morning. I'm Richard Conlin. I'm a first-year student here and I have a question for both panelists I know in my reading I Devote a lot more time to nonfiction rather than fiction The last fiction book I remember reading was defensive Duffer's drift, which if you're familiar is barely a fiction book And I was just wondering if you could share some of the Benefits for people wishing to pursue military or intelligence community or governmental service that can come uniquely from fiction Thank you. I'll answer real quick Have you ever read Once an Eagle? I Have read excerpts of it. I have not finished shame shame right now. I'm just kidding I think what good fiction does certainly nonfiction is important and as a military officer We were talking about this yesterday too like your profession Requires that you read nonfiction in lots of it, you know before I went to Afghanistan our squadron commander had us read that You know the bear went over the mountain because when you were in Afghanistan You could see the exact same points in time or exact same pieces of the train that the Afghans had used to Ambush the Russians that they were using to ambush us that they had you know from time eternal But I think what great fiction does is help you understand something at a visceral level What does it mean to be a soldier? What does it mean to serve? What does it mean? Once an eagle I think is one of the seminal books It's like what does it mean to leave to go to war and to try and come home? And I think we're as human beings were hard-wired to communicate through stories And I think good fiction books allow you to see the world differently I can really only second what Donna said Fiction one French writer said fiction is basically the way to hide the truth And by that he meant that we can say things in fiction that you also often cannot write in nonfiction Whether or not you're gonna solve the world's problems or not. Yeah, that's secondary But you can say things in there to be inspirational and to give purpose to what the soldiers do very rarely in Nonfiction in history do do authors articulate what it's like to be on on the front line To be a soldier. I think Rick Rick Atkinson in his trilogy on World War two does a good job of that But very few people do So fiction provides an avenue to get that out to inspire and challenge people One one plug real quick for a nonfiction book If you haven't read it pick up outlaw platoon by Sean Parnell And I really think it's about his time as a platoon leader in Afghanistan I really feel like from my generation It's the we were soldiers once and young when people ask me what it's like to be a junior army officer What it's like to lead in combat that one and what I love about Sean's book. I think too many Memoirs are kind of chest pounding and here I was and here was the great stuff and what comes through in Sean's book Over and over again is what does he need to do as a junior lieutenant to be worthy of the men that he's leading in combat And what are his responsibilities? You know all kidding aside when my son went through officer candidate school It was the hardest thing he's ever done Especially the first phase and there were some very heart-to-heart phone call conversations between us. I said son There's a reason why it's hard because one day America Moms and dads are gonna entrust to you their sons and daughters and you might have to lead them in combat And it will be the single biggest responsibility you ever have in your life And when that day happens you want to get it right and Sean really does that well in that book Thank you very much So one of the things and this may resonate with the rest of faculty in the room One of the things that we've heard I've heard over and over again from a faculty member from students I've heard them say I can't write well. I'm not a good writer And I've heard that time after time and sometimes this comes from students when they raise their hand They give articulate answers and they're incredibly intelligent and yet I still hear this phrase. I can't write How would you respond to that and can you describe a little bit about your? Craft of writing and how that's improved over over time and I'll just preface that by saying is when I was an undergrad I Thought you were either born to ride you can't No one explained that it was a process in a craft And so could you unpack that a little bit and just respond to the phrase when you hear students that are very intelligent? I'm not a good writer practice My books Have gone through Several evolutions they continue to change The more I write the more I learn The more I listen to other authors the more I listen to people who read the books the more I Look at my writing critically. It's very important. It's also really good to have some what I call beta readers and One person in particular that has a very prominent purple pen It goes through my books and generally I Start rewriting them after she gives me my stuff back But it's Learn as much as you can about the craft. Yeah, you can see all these podcasts about how to write But it's up to you to go out and start writing if you don't start writing you're not going to get any place So the most important place to start is obviously on that first page started and starting to put down words and Then just keep practicing keep working at it and be extremely critical of everything that you write Yeah, I think I think in order to be a good writer, especially a fiction writer You have to read a lot and you have to write a lot and so You have to read a lot because you're you're learning how authors do something It's kind of when when my third book didn't sell one of my favorite authors is Vince Flynn and I took My favorite book of his protect and defend and I took note cards and broke out every scene every character by a different color Note card and we lived in a really small house at the time And so I taped those to my bedroom wall which my wife was less than and thrilled with but what it allowed Me to do was kind of the difference between looking at a house and looking at the blueprint of the house You know for the first time from a structure perspective. I could understand what the author was doing and how he was doing it I think if you really want to learn how to write just like any other craft you have to Do the professional development to do it which means reading books about writing So a really great one kind of seminal one on just how to write in general is called on writing by Stephen King And it's fantastic the first half of it He's actually telling his story as a writer and so it's autobiographical and very interesting the second part He actually has and this is kind of nerdy stuff for writing, but he actually has in there Pages of his that he's corrected and you can see what he's done and what not and so I think if you if you're talking from a fiction Perspective you can be taught how to write I think what you have to have innately is that desire to tell stories and the in the when I was a kid I remember watching I grew up in the 80s and they had some fantastic cinema like the a-team which was Phenomenal and I remember you know watching that and thinking how could they have done something different? How could they and then starting to write my own a-team fan fiction which surprisingly there is not a large market for I don't know Why but you know having that ability to want to tell stories and then getting your toolkit big enough or Developed enough to be able to have the tools to tell the stories that you want to tell But you got another great one It's called save the cat where it talks about the three act structure and how to how to break those down But you can certainly learn the mechanics of writing I think if you aren't somebody who loves to tell stories that part is going to be hard for you as a fiction writer But certainly as a non-fiction writer Just like I said you can learn how to do how to communicate more effectively and even if you're not going to be an author Y'all are going to be sending emails for the rest of your life You're going to be if you go out in the business world. You're going to be doing proposals You're going to be writing performance evaluations learning how to clearly and effectively Communicate is is one of your most important tasks as a professional no matter what profession you're in All right I want to thank everyone for the questions that they have given our Panelists here and I want to specifically thank our panelists for coming up and Taking time out of their day and time out of their schedule to come over to Norwich University and talk to us Absolutely. Thanks for having us Before before you decide to get up and leave Let me find it real quick. I had to write it down because I wasn't going to remember it So the Norwich unit the Norwich University humanity initiative fellow fellows invites students Who are interested in this event? Who are interested the discussions that have been happening so far the issues and discussions There is an after session during lunch in the faculty dining hall that you're invited to attend Thank you Sorry We will beginning in one minute Good afternoon and welcome to the third session of the Military Writers Symposium the title of this session is Special Operation Forces leadership tried and tested in combat. My name is Tony at a Pietro and I am a senior here at Norwich I'm from Bloomingburg, New York And my name is Ethan Trask I'm a senior studies and war and peace major from Sarasota, Florida in this session We are honored to feature Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Teague's Author of where have all the heroes gone a pilgrimage through the Bible the battlefield and back home again a counterterrorism and counterinsurgency expert with 25 years of experience over 25 years of experience in US Army special operations He is commanded units during combat operations around the globe including Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan Jeff Jeff entered the United States Army as a private in 1987 First serving in the first Ranger Battalion and culminating his career as a Lieutenant Colonel in Delta Force retiring in 2015 Jeff has a master's degree from the Naval War College and has earned numerous military decorations including the Ranger the Ranger and special forces tabs Special forces combat diver badge and the military free fall badge He has received numerous awards including five bronze stars for distinguished service in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and a Silver star awarded for valor during combat in Iraq He is currently the president of Skull Games where he is taking those harder and skills to free the oppressed around the globe To combat sex traffickers and the exploitation of women and children by building leaders to protect the vulnerable Isn't it weird when you when you hear your bio? It's like is that who's that guy? Yeah, so a little bit different I'm gonna talk for about 15 or 20 minutes and then and then we'll do some questions and answers and that type of thing and you would think Travis that you you you put all of these together where we kind of pile on on top of each other But I think it's I hope it's great minds think alike kind of concept And what you're looking at here with this first slide The this is this is my journey at 17 years old I joined the army and became a Ranger and Rangers lead the way was was something that really shaped me my parents are wonderful Wonderful parents. I came from a wonderful family in Wisconsin But I'll tell you those Ranger NCOs are really prepared me and and are still in my bones and blood and muscle and tears You know because they did it isn't an easy life and then when I moved into special forces that that motto of Diopresso Really bear I didn't realize how much of that was like sinking in and if you if you listened at the end of my Bot my bio I believe now. I'm as much a green beret as I ever was I don't wear I don't wear the silly hat anymore, and I don't have to report to General Agata I don't have to you know get send data today for him to crunch But we're you know, I'm we're out there alone and afraid still trying to free the oppress I'm focused on women and children that are being being trapped in this sexual abuse But I didn't realize that at the time and one of the things for the cadets out there that I want to encourage you is you you Don't realize it at the time Some of you do maybe as your seniors and you're looking reflectively like what Norwich really did and created in you But as you get a little bit older and think think through those things you become appreciative and acknowledge those and then that my time at Delta Force and I didn't know this and you know, I don't know what the motto is for Delta I know I you know it could be without equal was what you mentioned I know that's use of stock in Delta Force. I never heard a motto, but somewhere on the Google. I saw oppressors beware I don't know if you know is it is it oppressors beware? Does anyone know I don't know now that makes sense to me though because Delta Force is first first special forces operational attachment Delta So we talk about the A team we talk about the B team we talk about the C team back in the back in the 70s we recognize we needed to create a Delta detachment and they were specific an extension off of freely oppressed to oppressors beware So that that's the life that I am in tension with right now is freeing the oppressed through these women children They're being abused, but the exploiters and predators that are out there. I want you to beware because you know Retired guys like me are on it So I'm gonna go a little bit back and forth the book that I that I wrote is called Where have all the heroes gone a pilgrimage to the Bible the battlefield and through the battlefield the Bible and back home again And it's interesting James because you mentioned this also the the impetus of this was me in Israel Surveying some of these sites and recognizing What people were speaking about currently with the eyes of a soldier? I saw no it couldn't have happened that way They wouldn't have been over here They would have been over here and it really started this journey on what what do I understand and recognize of the Bible stories? That I've been told and we tell each other that have been lost lost to time This phrase right here Sun Tzu a lot of people know this and it's kind of almost a postcard kind of a pithy thing But again for the cadets in there What you really need to do while you're here is understand who you are Understand your enemy read we Your job as an officer is to read it's to read and understand history It's to read nonfiction. It's to read fiction one of my favorite movies of all time is three days of the condor Remember that if anyone if anyone remembers the the premise to that movie It was a bunch of these guys that would just read books and in fiction books And they would come up with these hypotheses of what could of what could happen? How the how the different state actors or or terrorists could attack the United States and they actually stumble upon a plot That ended up coming true So I you really have to balance between fiction and not fiction and I'll be glad to send you guys reading lists Steven Pressfield gates of fire Malcolm glad well There's there's just there's just tons and tons of material that's out there Which you really owe it to yourself to know yourself and know your enemy and in part of knowing yourself is don't fool yourself and It's one of the one of the leadership lessons in soft is you don't have this mask of command Okay, that's my first book book stop Keegan mask of command You don't get an opportunity to walk out in front of the men and present yourself for 15 minutes before PT You know are giving them the safety brief at the end of the weekend a soft leader lives with his guys and they Understand your strengths and they understand your weaknesses And if you're trying to fake the funk you're gonna be found out and you you're forced to live your principles So you at first and this is what you're doing through this this university and what you're gonna be doing in your first few assignments is Really know yourself in and out and what your strengths and weaknesses are Focus on your strengths and find those partners that NCO counterpart or either peers that can bolster your weaknesses And this idea of who who are you and we were just talking about this at at lunch with General Nagata You are gonna be a different person at different points throughout your career And if you you heard it from general Agata, you're gonna hear it for me when you're when you're a young lieutenant running a platoon Be that person Push the envelope train your people prepare them for what you are expecting and if you go to combat Recognize and understand that your job is to fight and win the day. I retired kind of Was conveniently as a lieutenant colonel right and in in Delta Force That's right about the time where you're losing the tactical side of things and you're moving into more policy and strategy and staff and all of that And and and I really enjoyed being the tactical guy the ground fighter the assault commander So I understood what what my skills were and I picked up those skills and I've laid them now over this Counter-sex trafficking. I thought maybe counter-terrorism Counter-insurgency maybe some of that would translate into this crime category and it's it's it's 100% so I've it's helped me transition from who I identified that I was through my years in uniform and I took that uniform off Who I still was and if too much of who your identity is is in that uniform You've really got to figure that out and then this idea of where you are someone we were talking about that We were talking at lunch and he was saying where you know He's not so sure that Norwich University or as a cadet. They really are encouraging you to push the boundaries Well, that's not really there the job here You know, I mean they're they're really educating you and when you're not in charge you aren't the God that's supposed to push boundaries You're supposed to support the commanders. You're supposed to understand these different staff functions so know specifically and precisely Where where you are at all times and it's going to change and the faster you recognize what that changes You're no longer a cadet when you guys graduate and you take over a platoon You're a platoon leader You know and and it's one of the things by the time you get to Delta Force I'm in my late 30s or something and it's called going across the hall because the training set the Training site is on one side of the hall and when you go across the hall, you're expected to lead You're no longer a trainee You're no longer in the training course. You are expected to lead So the the more rapidly you can really precisely identify where you are the more apt you're going to be to lead effectively and Being truthful to yourself if if you are ready so the the again the book began with a Deep dive into the stories from the Bible that that I've always anchored on You know and one of the stories that is really people everyone knows the story of David and Goliath, right? Well, there's there's these hidden little things in that story Where you know David shows up to give his brother some bring them some chow and he hears Goliath taunting the Israelites And he's like what what's going on here for 40 days this dude had been taunting the Israelites And nobody had the courage to go out there and face him and David said I'll do it He was probably 14 or 15 years old definitely no more than 16 Short little ruddy guy. You remember he tries to put on Saul's armor and it doesn't fit so he goes out there with his with his sling and What is said there in passing is David had already confronted a lion and a bear in at his dot his time as a shepherd and The Bible says things like that and you'll hear things like that from your peers and from your bosses and from from your Subordinates these little these little gems and you'll just let it go and and I refuse to do that in my in my time now as When I'm reading the Bible and and you think about that idea where David killed a lion and he killed a bear So do you think he was ready for Goliath? He was ready. Do you think when he confronted a lion or a bear? He he recognized that that was training for something more No, he probably liked the rest of us was like oh my how many sheep did he lose did he get injured? But but God had been putting him in these places and prepared him for that precise time And then how many how many stones did David pull from the brook anyone remember? five stones So when you when you see these little pieces of information is what prompted me to dig into it deeper and it isn't 100% clear through the Bible story But you can extrapolate from other pieces and parts through Samuel and Chronicles that Goliath had four brothers So David didn't bring five stones because he thought he was gonna miss He brought five stones because he thought he was gonna have to kill five giants that day Because tradition back then was the brother would avenge their brother's death So he recognized he had five shots to kill five giants He didn't have to do that, but he was prepared to do it and I then Transition into this into the stories where when I was a young sniper a young ranger I was a sniper and my job was to make that shot But then when I became a Delta Force commander and a special forces commander My job was no longer to take that shot. My job was to set the conditions For these other guys to take that shot, and I'll never forget the first time We were coming in on a helicopter assault and there were children that had entered into the battlefield And I asked my guys, how do you feel about shooting around the kids? They gave me the thumbs up. How do you think that felt as the commander? I said shoot around the kids execute execute execute the first time I said that I thought it was the last Last decision I ever made and I knew that when I was a young sniper. I couldn't take that shot I wasn't prepared to take that shot, but these Delta Force Assultors that I'd been working with and training with I knew they could take that shot And I had set the conditions and I had the trust built with them to be able to take that shot So I'm going to show you a real a short little video here and the prep the the lead up to this is This is back in bagged out. I think this is around 05 Boss, I'm not sure if you're gonna if you're gonna remember this one or not It was a it was a learning experience for all of us and one of the reasons I'm really glad to be here is because there is so much warfare that My generation has experience and we're not doing a great job of sharing that with y'all and In this thing that you're gonna you're about to see we had landed on this roof We had gone down into the house and we had gotten jackpot and we had X filled with the prisoners Now we had a couple guys that we were leaving off of this roof Okay, so you're seeing the security element walking around is anyone know what those those white things are Those white things are the enemy We didn't know that they were the enemy But you can see what they do here. They get sucked up into the rotor and We have a catastrophic failure. Do you remember this boss? Those were sleeping pads on the roof. They're about this thick. They're kind of they're kind of like furniture Padding lawn lawn furniture. I can't tell you how many times we've landed on a roof with those sleeping pads And that never happened and to this day. We don't know why what were the conditions? What was the humidity? What was the wind what we had already landed on that roof? We were X filling what were the conditions that sucked those sleeping pads up into that rotor? We still don't know Don. Did you ever know of the story? You know, but what I can tell you we never landed on a roof with sleeping pads again Never and what we would do is we would send guys in early and they would ladder up and they would climb and they would take all Those sleeping pads and they would anchor them down and then we would land on the roof So we were we were going through extreme risk on putting guys on these roofs If it was someplace that we wanted to land or we would have to land on another roof and bridge our way across like We were climbing Mount Everest or something to that effect Okay, so that is that is one of those lessons that we learned the hard way and we never did it again and my fear is That one of these days it's gonna happen again because you guys don't know that we already learned this We already know you cannot land on these roofs with with these sleeping pads or something like this can happen So this is that idea again is our are you ready for this and we thought we were ready We thought we were prepared. We thought we mitigated all of the risk. It was a sex it was a it was a successful mission Just like black Hawk down right that was a successful mission They got who they were going after it was on x-fil when everything went to shit So Were we ready Are you ready? It's not enough. Are you really ready now if you watch this video Who's the guy in charge Look and see if you can identify who's in charge Who's the leader in this situation? I cheat a little bit because I highlight them Do you see one guy checking on his men? Do you see one guy going to the fuselage of that helicopter and turning it off because it was spewing fluid and he was concerned that it was going to blow Up on the top of that picture is alex. He broke his back in that in that spinning the The skid that he was on broke away and he was strapped till he broke his back Nygard is sitting up here in the corner right over there chuck who's checking on his men. That's chuck. He's the team leader He's rattled Chuck goes up to check on nygard nygard flipped up into the helicopter blades and he lost a leg from here down So chuck goes over there nygard's already putting on a tourniquet and he helps him put Put shoots the morphine in now when chuck tells this story What he failed to do was chuck the pocket nygard had a magazine in his pocket Chuck wasted two vials of morphine trying to jam it through a magazine You know so even even when you're ready and you're really ready Things are still still going to go wrong chuck goes on to lose a leg in combat And he in my in my understanding was was was the first assaultor ever to return to combat in At full combat mode with with one leg So the other reason I show this is I can tell you about chuck and this isn't the best video But you can see by his actions That he's in charge and he is ready And he went and checked on his men and secured the scene and prepared for xville So it's the same thing again. You hear people hear people say this Don't lead with your mouth Lead lead with your actions Next piece of that is is your team ready Like I talked about I made the decision as that assault commander That we were going to shoot around the kids and I didn't want to kill kids And I fully expected if we killed the kid that would be my job and it should be my job My job is to protect civilians on the battlefield But I had the trust and confidence in my guys That they could that they could pull it off And that's the kind of thing that was expected of me as a Delta Force commander And as I got higher in rank Of course, I would question that troop commander who said seriously Shoot around the kids. That's your plan. Roger. That's her Okay The last thing I want to talk about too is just will you finish strong? You know and as I get older it really hurts my heart to see people who have incredible careers And you guys are filled with ambition now and your whole life is ahead of you and you're excited And then you get there and you start to do the things that you never would have done You start to cheat on your spouse You start to finagle records You start to use credit cards the way that you shouldn't be using them That that it's because you've you've reached the peak you you've got into where you want it to be And again when we look at david, that's the story of david Everyone knows david and besheba as well, but when you pick that piece apart The story goes it was the season for war And the israelite army was out in war. Where was their king? Where was their commander? He was back home Doing what napping on the roof? We've all been exhausted We've been exhausted of war, but your place as a commander is with your people So that was david's first mistake He was back home when his troops were forward And then he sees his attractive woman who's taken a bath and he didn't have heard his he didn't have heard his eyes He inquired about who she was who she turned out to be one of his commanders one of his mighty men's wife That didn't stop him. He invites her over. He has sex with her. He gets her pregnant He tries to cover it up by bringing uriah home from the front lines So uriah would have sex with her and then he could hide it all But uriah was such a dedicated commander He would not go home and sleep with his wife because his men were still in the field. He slept on the porch So what did david do? He had him murdered He told the commander of his army joe ab in the heat of the battle pull back and leave uriah alone So he gets killed And sure enough. That's what happens And then david on top of it takes bath sheba into his family And everyone thinks he's a good guy. Oh, look at how good david is one of his best friends One of his when his top commanders he's taking care of his his his wife and soon to be child That's the most despicable thing I can think of And what I love about david is the bible says over and over and over that he was a man after god's own heart It's unequivocal god love david and he and he had a special place in his heart for david and when i'm Wondering and feeling unqualified. I want to be a man after god's own heart And you feel like you're unworthy But then I think of david i've done a lot of bad things. I've done a lot of stupid things But i've never had sex with one of my best friends wives and then covered it up with murder So I can still be a man after god's own heart even with the flaws that are within my life And as a commander you have to believe that as well. You can make mistakes. We expect you to make mistakes And that's god's limit there, right? Don't have one of your subordinates married Murdered get their wife pregnant and then try to cover it up if you're not doing that You're doing okay Thank you Jeff For the next 20 minutes ethan and I will be asking jeff some questions And then the last 10 minutes will be an open question and answer with the audience So starting out as a young ranger and then becoming a special forces I'm sorry a special forces operator and then a commander in delta. That's a quite demanding journey I remember reading in your book when you talked about How you were in selection and you thought that it was over so you rushed to the finish line Thinking it was the last event but when you got there it was not the last event Yeah, so this this is one of those things where I pushed I pushed the book through the unit to get approved So I wasn't talking about op sec, but we're in a closed audience, right? So anyway, a lot of people know Everyone knows at the end of delta selection There's a 40 mile movement that you have to make and you're all alone and you're taking trails You're really not navigating that much. It's just it's just a long difficult movement and the only Intel I had was from a friend of mine I won't name him a friend of mine who had gone through selection In in 1990 and he said when you get to the end of the 40 miler You're going to have an option to take the road, which is much longer or go up the mountain laurel however Alluring the short direct up the mountain laurel looks don't do it. It'll eat you alive take the road And and I went to selection in 2004. So this is this is 14 years later I don't know anything about selection and and those of you that are thinking about You know doing any of these things don't don't try to g to it. Don't try to figure it out It's it's much better just letting it all come because when you think you expect something that's going to happen And it doesn't it's a much harder pivot So this was and this is my one example. This was the one thing as soon as I hit that spot I was like, oh, I remember this And I started running up this road and it was about five kilometers long and I was chucking batteries I was chucking water. I was chucking food. I'm like, I'm setting record time And I get to the next rendezvous point And it's not the finish And the cadre is standing there and he goes through the same process And I keep waiting for the commander general miller To jump out of the woods colonel miller jump out of the woods and and congratulate me that you just Passed election and he didn't show up I had blown all of my reserve energies And I had to walk I had to play it cool I kept you know, I kept I kept walking out and I kept waiting for people to jump out of the woods It didn't happen I walked about 200 meters into the woods and I took a knee and I cried I did I cried I was like, I can't I'm exhausted. I I don't I can't take another step and let me so let me add one more piece to this because A good friend of mine bill I write about him in the book quite often He was ahead of me so when you when you're in selection You they stagger when you when you go out and bill and I were We could move under a rock and they and they we were best friends and they separated us And bill was the only guy still still ahead of me and I was feeling sorry for myself and I was Recollecting kind of my thoughts and it started to snow a little bit and it was a little bit muddy and I was expecting a an intersection just a t-intersection And it wasn't it was like a six-way intersection And I got to there and I wasn't paying attention because I was feeling sorry for myself I thought it was going to be very obvious and I got to this intersection and again I put my head down and I didn't know what to do And then I looked at the ground and I recognized bill's footprints I had raced and trained with bill so often He had crazy small feet like he had tiny little like size sevens like it was crazy Guy was like six foot two with like size seven shoes And I even knew how he rolled, you know his his pronation And I saw bill tracks and I saw where he went And I followed bill because I knew That son of a gun knew he was going Thank you So tying in some of your training to your combat experience You mentioned in chapter 19 of your book an ambush by al-qaeda that was Rather unexpected You were able to take charge of the situation and Lead your men's deadly precision and aggressiveness to Drive back the enemy What was going through your head and what was required for a leader in an unplanned combat situation? Yeah, rarely is it rarely do they get the jump on us, right? Especially especially in delta force that we control the environment, you know And we really choose the place and time Well, and this was like you will find when you make mistakes and all of you already know this It's usually a series of Somebody not saying anything or not rectifying a small mistake And we had landed to do a desert loiter For for just a short amount of time And we we usually had a standard With the standoff we needed, you know, what was what was safe? And we kind of we landed near a river with some reeds and it was you know We only really had on one side about 40 or 50 meters that we could see And we landed there and initially I thought Well, this is weird like we never land in a place like this because the Al-qaeda the insurgents they could they can get a jump on us But I didn't say anything Because dan was flying and he should have said something no the the the the flight lead Didn't say anything the troops aren't major it didn't say anything the team leaders didn't say anything and even though I was the troop commander I thought well If they don't really care It it can't be that bad. Oh, and we're only going to be here for a few minutes. Well as luck would have it a part broke And it didn't end up being a few minutes We ended up having to send one of the aircraft back And get up get apart so we we were in this unsafe logger site For about 45 minutes And we had gotten approval from command that initially we were going to do an interdiction But we were going to do a hard site assault instead And we were literally in a circle kind of talking, you know doing the little rock drill stuff I literally had my overpants down around my ankles because it was it was winter and we you know It's we used to wear those big NFL football jackets that you would you know and an overpants and stay warm and then when you were going on the assault You would take all that stuff off because you knew you were going to be running and gunning for a while So I literally had my pants down And all of a sudden the machine gun opens up And it's it starts spraying all around us And my first thought was Are they shooting at us like who in the world? Is shooting at a Delta Force troop? What what do they think is going on? Immediately run back to the helicopter because of my helmet my weapon my comms It was all sitting in the helicopter. We had gotten very comfortable in combat And and for those you know for your cadets out there you will find a new normal You will find a new normal of stress. You'll find a new normal of chaos You'll find a new normal in combat, but you have to always be very very careful Of not letting your guard down and we had let our guard down over and over and over Um, and then an rpg goes off and I realized oh boy They've got the jump on us. So first job was to get the helicopters up again. God forbid we heard a helicopter, right? So get those helicopters up in the air and we counter attacked on this small ambush And they didn't know what hit them obviously it was a Delta Force troop online fire maneuver and I remember when we when we came up on the insurgents They were they were two young guys. They were loaded for bear and I I felt bad for them because They just didn't know what they were doing They didn't know who they were attacking If they would have known we were Delta Force. They probably wouldn't have done it So they highly highly underestimated us And we had gotten a little bit lazy in in our standards as well So those are two things that you really really have to guard yourself against every single Second when you're in a combat environment. Is that? So we talked about it a little overlaunched and you mentioned it briefly in the beginning The change in leadership from an nco's role being on the front of the lines as an officer You have to stand back. Can you talk about the change and the balance of leadership? But also knowing when to step in as a commander Yeah, one of the uh, the the nco officer relationship is is magic It's exponentially magical when it works If if there's tension and it doesn't work it it can be bad, but I still don't think A bad officer nco relationship Is is ever worse than one of those guys alone? There's there's just a power to it And it's really something I miss as as a civilian. I've tried to really partner and pair with people I think I'm at at heart. I'm at I'm that nco So I've usually tried to partner with that officer type kind of a deal And and I miss that in life and I and I think it's it's one of those things also that I've begun to appreciate and learn I'm 34 years married now I know my wife since I was 15 years old and it's only now that I'm really beginning to appreciate this command team That that we've had together and how magical it is When it works and it's and it's and it's worth fighting for so in the the way that we would do it Especially in a combat environment Was the nco would run the fight down and in and the officer would run the fight up and out So you were responsible for the isr and the taskings and the follow-on and the qrf You it was it was not good for you to get sucked into the fight It was very different as an sf guy because we were so limited on resources Back in the early days of 2003 2004 when I was in 10th group It was it was different like I would I would tell my bosses were commencing the assault I would hang the radio up and I would be an assaulter and then the assault would be over And I would come back to the radio and I'd be an I'd be an officer again because we didn't have the resources right It was just us. It was us and our host nation partners Uh, but but as you're moving up higher you really have to understand the the the broader repercussions of what that Battlespace looks like and it's always in a 3d environment Let's see what else and and again you've heard me say it The officer's role and responsibility is is to set the conditions So your team is trained Appropriately and when they go to combat They're not doing anything for the first time And if you're asked to do something for the first time you have to have to have the courage to tell your bosses Wait a minute. I need to train up on this and I'm not just saying this Hypothetically we were asked to do a mission And we were supposed to swim across this river because we're delta force right We're supposed to swim across this raging river and go hit this target and then come across well about 200 meters down on the river There's a checkpoint and if anything went wrong You're now in a gunfight in the water against people on a bridge Um, and and I and I had to tell my bosses We're not ready. I know we're delta force, but we're not ready. We don't have The flotation devices, you know, we don't have the tie downs. We haven't done this swimming. We're going to need fins We're not ready to do this. So have have the courage When you're not ready to say you're not ready And and I I think that was really the only time in combat where I had to say I wasn't ready But again, how many how many river crossings do you think we train for? In Iraq, you know everything else that came our way from hey-ho. Hey, low even water infiltration We we had trained and prepared for that Um, I want I want to comment on one thing too. That was interesting who is just talking about it James, I think you were talking about it where You know, you have to be prepared for all of these different things and one of the One of the tensions that we found in the unit was we're the aircraft take down guys, right? If anyone ever hijacks an aircraft, that's our responsibility to Secure that aircraft kill the terrorists, you know free all the hostages. Well, how many times does that happen in American history? Zero, but that was our job. So even in the middle of Iraq in Afghanistan We still twice a year had to practice aircraft takedowns because in the Off odd chance that we would be called to do it We had better be ready And how many times do you think I had to talk to my nco's and explain to them? I know we're not going to do it We're never going to do it, but what if thank you Well speaking of the what ifs You make mention more than once of the importance of following through with the mission once it has commenced One instance that really stood out to me was a situation where you were attempting to stop a suicide bomber And the lz was not what you expected Would you like to comment on that and uh that in mind what considerations are necessary on the ground when dealing with incomplete or incorrect intelligence Down what you both all you guys at write books like you write stuff and you forget you wrote it, right? You're like, what what are we talking about? Did I write that did I say that that's a good turn of a phrase? That sucks. So it took me a minute to figure out what you were talking about. So is this on the mosque? Okay, so this is this is an interesting story because I just saw some so in in in most places Mosques are oriented towards mecca. So Depending they kind of stand out you can do a real quick Map recon and you see this building that's off on a on a weird angle Well for some reason this this village that we were in the whole village was kind of canted that way So it really didn't it didn't stick out to me And we were going after a Suicide bomber he had it We knew there was a vehicle born ied in this village and we were coming in on short final And I see this large antenna With loudspeakers on it and I'm I'm I I ask the flight lead Is that where we're landing and he said yeah, I was like, oh that's a mosque And you don't land on mosques without general my god at telling you you can land on a mosque But it was short final we were coming in and this is that example guys Another another choice I made that I that could have ended my career It's like look we're landing on a mosque and I called my boss and I said You know zero one. This is one one. We're landing on a mosque and hung up and I but I had This bank of trust with my boss and he had a bank of trust with me that I knew If and when I had the opportunity to explain it to him Um that things would be okay And when we landed on this mosque and we were running we were climbing down off the roof There was about a hundred pairs of flip-flops outside the mosque And my immediate thought was We're looking for one guy And there's a hundred dudes in there how in the world are we going to identify This one guy that we're looking for And the thought hadn't even gone all the way through my mind when I had crossed the threshold of that mosque And there were 99 people turned around looking at us And one guy staring forward And I recognized it immediately and our team leader recognized it immediately. That was our guy Because everyone else that was innocent is wondering what in the heck is going on And the to their credit again as I'm seeing all this these highly trained nco's are closing the distance And we're able to we're able to grab that guy now what what isn't in the book Ethan that I talked to a buddy of mine the other day and we were kind of recounting this story And you know what my nco said He said oh, we all knew it was a mosque I said You did it was like yeah, we thought you knew it was a mosque We thought we were just going to pretend that none of us knew that it was a mosque I was like no, I seriously didn't know it was a mosque So the the epithet whatever you know the end of that story is apparently everyone else knew it was a mosque And they thought I was going to pretend it wasn't a mosque And but but you know my career survived Um, and we found the vbid and lived to fight another day All right. Well, thank you. This will be our last question of the session afterwards We will be taking questions from the audience. Uh, please go ahead and make your way along the sides of the auditorium up to the microphones on each side of the stage Jeff you've led an incredible career service and I want to come back to the work you do today Jeff here is the president of skull games incorporated Would you please tell us a bit more about your team and what it is that you do? Yeah, so let me let me back up a little bit on this You know, we were talking about don you were talking about this Other you guys were talking with this what what really makes Special ops what it is it isn't just the assaulter. It's the enablers. We have the greatest cooks We have the greatest admin. We have the greatest mechanics Absolutely selfless and the intelligence professionals that we have are are worth their weight in gold and and I and I I really got a I really had an affinity for these men and women that were supporting us And they were in many ways working harder than we were You know when when they handed us a packet and we went out on target They were looking for the next one they were looking for the next one And they carried some of that load. I had to tell many of them. Look, I'm the boss I'm the commander if we're going in there to kill these guys or we're going in there to drop a bomb That's my responsibility. So a lot of these analysts carry that weight Of of of the information that they gave us to to prosecute So as as I began to move into the civilian sector and this goes back to this who who are you know who you are I really loved the hunt. I really love the tactical fight. I really loved the relationship With with intel and and I was looking for a new problem set and I hate bullies And when I began to feel this calling to address this scourge of sex trafficking and and understood that it's alive and well In the United States, I I understood it in far east asia. I understood it How isis we how isis was used in in taliban was using it But in in the modern western world, it's it's an economy We're selling women and children boys for sex And we we aren't equipped as a government. We aren't equipped as a police force to do that But you know, we've got this group of intel professionals That understand how to find bad guys and what we leverage is open source intelligence It's called oscent or publicly available information. It's a space. You don't need anything special It's all this information that people willingly put online And when you have the talent and the experience To to to look at oscent and identify who these women and kids that are being sold And build that into lead packets to push to law enforcement. You've got something that's going So if those of you that are the green berets, it's it's what we've always done, right? You develop the intel you develop the lead you get your host nation partner nation force to the right place of the Right time with the right gear And our host nation force right now is is american law enforcement homeland security and local law enforcement who really lack this This wisdom and experience of what we've garnered over time So this this ct monster that that we built that you had a hand in building We've picked that up and put it against this this crime of sex trafficking and it's beginning it's beginning to grow It's beginning to work. Um, so in addition to How we do oscent? This weekend i'm going down to new Orleans. We we bring in what we have these task force events Again, it's designed like the task force the big tent where everyone can come in And we have about a hundred people on site and another hundred people playing online Where we're hunting in about 30 cities across the united states to identify women and kids that are being sold And then we try to push those leads and prosecute those targets as rapidly as we can to have kind of a network effect against it it briefs well and it is working but it It demands a level of funding that is very very difficult to achieve So if you know any rich people, please have them give me a call and and really I I say that kind of tongue in cheek But what I haven't created in life is wealth It was it was never Again, I joined the arab in 17. I married at 19. I never knew what my paycheck was I don't know what my paycheck is now. I have no idea my wife She could be she could be a millionaire right now and and and been you know Putting money away. I would have no idea. I I didn't Focus on creating wealth other people in this world have been gifted And they've created wealth and where I am proud to be is that person who can now take what what they've been given And what god has blessed them with to really some some tangible results And you know and a passion purpose and then It breaks my heart that we have soldiers killing themselves And it's getting deeper and deeper into the soft community I thought for a while we were kind of immune to it, but it's getting deeper and deeper We we just lost A really good friend a a Delta force officer here last year. He just couldn't see his way out And some of it is chronic pain Some of it is tbi's But a lot of it is they're not finding a new passion and purpose and when they take that uniform off They don't know who they are anymore. So what with what we're doing the skull games is at least once a quarter They can kind of put that uniform back on they could put that green beret back on and they can become a hunter And we also have survivors from trafficking that are hunters So now we have women that have survived the life And they are the human computer understanding what it looks like Where these oppressors should be aware All right, thank you, jeff. We will now be opening the floor to questions for the next five minutes You guys better come down and ask questions Please state your name and class you're followed by your question So who's here from ranger company? All right, you need to have questions. So come on down. I'm serious And you can ask me jiu-jitsu you can ask me jiu-jitsu questions from this morning. I like bible questions It doesn't have to be just uh, so uh jeff. Thank you. One one of the things that we hear often I'm at nor just the importance of cross cultural intelligence The ability to think through the eyes of the other to understand the eyes of someone else Friend or foe Can you just speak to the importance of that concept in your your career either as a ranger or green beret or Or delta. Yeah, so one of the things when when I You know, I'm a little I'm a little mixed on the special forces Focus on language right because what what special forces was built upon was like this man right here He he came from estonia So he spoke that language like this this expectation that as special forces guys are supposed to be fluent in a particular language Is an unrealistic expectation? Some of the guys can and again, we have such a varied Space that we that we work in you, you know, you you're never going to speak arabic the way you You need to you know what I mean to be able to blend in But what you do learn that can never be underestimated is that cultural knowledge when I learned russian Where's our russian friend is he in here today? He was sitting next to me earlier When I when I learned russian, I felt like I really began to understand That mentality the way you speak the way that they have certain words for things So studying language studying arabic studying the quran really helps you understand What what people's mentality is, you know, we we talked about this right before we went on Even understanding salam aleykum aleykum salam That we we translate that you know on the on the tv. They translate that as hello No, you know, this is this is an opening a spiritual religious opening You know, so every single thing that happens in the arab world It has has undertones of of religion and spirituality So when when we want to pretend that this has nothing to do with islam, it's just false. It's not Uh a secular islam. It's not a modernized islam. It's a radicalized fundamentalist islam But you you can't separate out the two and I like which what what what you had said james. I say the same thing Russia's going to roll east every opportunity it gets Germany's going to do it again as well. Germany's going to break their boundaries. Turkey's going to break their boundaries History repeats itself. I had a discussion at dinner I'd be you're going to be hard pressed to convince me that china is going to go on the offense militaristically Because I would challenge you in the history of china. When when did they ever do that? So you you when you understand culture and you understand history You have at least a baseline to to pivot off of and if you willfully don't want to understand those things You're not going to get it right and we've proven that time and time again with these last Handful of wars that we've gotten engaged in Good afternoon, sir. My name is cadet maraschi. I'm a senior here at norwich university In your introduction you reflect a lot on stories from the bible Has faith always been a part of your life and military career or has there been a certain point in your life career that It stood out to you. You just got more into it Yeah, so um as luck would have it my my parents raised me like from a young age I was baptized as a little baby. I was raised as a luther and it was boring as hell Right like like like god's favorite music is from 1812. You know what I mean? Like it just I I had an affinity for it And I and I studied it And then when when I was in college and before we had kids My wife and you know, we kind of got lazy and moved away from it. I've always believed in god I've always been a follower of jesus, but but but but but but just like most people I've had my my peaks and valleys When when we had our children it was kind of a wake-up call like what are we going to expose our boys to? and then even before I I worked in israel for a half a year in 2009 and then before I retired I I lived in israel for two years Working some specialty ct jobs But even even before that I kind of got on this kick of understanding the jewishness of jesus and and and and what what it meant to be What judaism meant and when then what what it meant for him to fulfill You know what I mean? So I really began to study this From a from an old testament point of view and in a judaic point of view and a traditional point of view And then I had the opportunity to live in israel and walk these walk these places and you stand where they happened There's this this guy this this catholic Friar named basal bargell pixner and he says when you when you go to israel and visit these sites It's like being exposed to a fifth gospel You have the four gospels you can read but there's a fifth one and it's in it's walking the terrain And I and I I love what you said james because it with the soldier's eyes. We know terrain I have I have folded my body, you know underneath and you know next to an anthill because bullets were flying You know I I know the terrain. I'm acutely aware of the terrain So to be able to walk those places it really had an invigoration In my life and I think it it set a tone for my boys that will never go away But even but you still have these valleys right because you I don't have that realism in america and american You know christianity. It's just kind of it's kind of watered down. It's kind of like feel good It's you know, it's it's got a very different different place So I really don't know where I stand anymore with my faith, but it's always been part of it Um, I would also say I have long answers. So I would also say I always made it clear with my guys where I stood And the worst thing you can do is talk about how you believe in jesus and what you think is moral And then you're doing things that are that are immoral so You know I I I I walked the walk. I didn't I didn't talk the talk, but I also wasn't judgmental You know guys are drinking guys are going to strip clubs guys are cursing and swearing and gambling and all those types of things Um, it wasn't it wasn't my place to judge them It was my place to understand them And I think that's the christianity that I come from Especially these men that we ask to go to war over and over and over And then we're don't understand why they're gambling when they get home or they're drinking alcohol or doing, you know, risky business So be be very Be proud of who you are And and and don't Don't bend on your principles. Again as a soft guy They'll see it Hello, sir, um cadet denis kunz. So the question I had for you was Of course christianity being like the mainstay of what um, what is the uh moral backing for you would probably consider a leader How does one as a christian because me being a christian myself. I'm heavily invested in this How does one become an effective leader while still maintaining christian principles and christian beliefs? Yeah I I I think the number one thing is don't pass judgment Like I like who are you to pass judgment, you know, and I think very very specifically Especially guys that don't believe like when you when you look at our faith tradition The gentiles have a pass man those those people that weren't jews or that that didn't believe in jesus like They don't believe what you believe. So stop telling them What what to do You believe what you believe and and and you live it, you know, and there was only one time in my career Where I sat down with a guy and I said He was he was he was cheating on his wife And I said look this isn't I'm not coming from the moral high ground But but I I want to have this discussion with you Because you know how this ends And if you want it to end that way you're you're going to lose your wife and you're going to lose your family And and and it's there's there's a lot of other ways So if if you if you aren't looking at apologetics apologetics is a big thing that I you know C. S. Lewis on this idea where you're not referencing the bible itself. You're referencing logic You know, you're referencing old traditions I think one of the things I would also recommend is just just understanding Where I've gone with my book is I've I've tried to look at tradition and myth and all these things So a a guy like Joseph Campbell who looks at these things that are just Truths around the world, you know finding finding these things that we've universally accepted as standards and truths Your guys will understand it doesn't have to be based on your judei and christian beliefs Because our judei and christian beliefs really stand on a lot of these universal truths But again, the biggest thing I can say is walk the walk. Don't talk the talk and and They'll respect you for that and your faith will Be contagious Okay, unfortunately, we are out of time to take any more questions But let's give a round of applause for Jeff for being Thank you for advancing our knowledge and helping us a few main takeaways that I took from this are to know yourself and your enemy and to have the courage to speak up So, thank you. Jeff the session is over In the back All right, Dave. Is there anybody behind you that's waiting to come in? Nope. All right. Well, please Grab a seat Um, I'm really pleased right now to introduce cadet corporal. I'm ruda. Vibo. She's our richard schultz class of 60 symposium fellow this year And she has been involved in a real whirlwind of research Since she began her career here as a student just last year In this case her research centers around modeling the capabilities of the mb 22 osprey And developing a primitive enhanced flight navigation system Now I don't know about the rest of you But my intellectual pursuits while I was a student here As an undergrad were not near this league either in depth scope or the value to society Uh, and we're very proud to have her as a student capable and willing to do this type of research Well, my friend, uh professor travis morris asked me to act as a moderator for this talk First I was reluctant Because it requires some preparation and I need to see what else was going on that day But as soon as he talked to me about what it was and I found out it was a presentation by one of our students About a subject that affects the warfighting Capabilities of our country it became an easy yes for me to say I would I would love to participate Um, and it combines what are now my two favorite pursuits One developing and preparing our students for the challenges of the future and continuing to protect our country I have a fairly entwined history with the aircraft and I think that's why travis asked me to uh to be a part of this um In the spring of 2000. I was one of the few infantry students who were out at the marine course premier aviation school that's uh Called wti stands for weapons and tactics instructor. It's run out of mcas yuma out in arizona And students at wti they spend weeks Developing the planning and execution skills required to integrate all facets of u.s. Marine Corps aviation In support of the force commander's requirements During this particular course Wti would be incorporating the mv 22s for the first time On april 6. I was pretty proud. I was asked to be chosen to be the ground mission commander for the first mv 22 mission that wti would be involved in We were doing a simulated non-combatant evacuation operation involving mv 22s f 18s and then a platoon from my home battalion third battalion fifth marines From where I was seconded to the school Together the pilots and my infantry team Built a plan that took great advantage of the improved speed and range that the mv 22 brought We took off from mcas yuma on the evening of the 8th With four mv 22s Two were carrying me and my ground team and we had two empty birds Reserved for the simulated evacuees that we were conducting the mission to remove from the danger area Upon our descent into the marana airfield The bird next to the one I was in entered what was later determined to be something called vortex ring state Lost all of its lift to one of its rotors Several hundred feet above the ground and it catastrophically crashed Killing all 19 marines aboard It was an absolutely heartbreaking tragedy that seared into my mind The absolute requirement and vitality of all of the research The modeling the simulation the testing and the evaluation that goes into designing and producing modern aircraft Training their pilots and maintainers and eventually Fielding and integrating them into the force Throughout the early 2000s the aircraft went through additional design improvements and testing Culminated in the fielding to the fleet in the first operational deployment of the mv 22 with the marines In 2007 in alasad iraq Variants were later fielded by the air force in the navy From 2009 to 2016 I flew on this aircraft extensively throughout iraq and afghanistan I was pleased to be able to use the aircraft's increased speed Load carrying range ability to aerial refuel to a tremendous advantage enhancing my ability as a commander To project insert and sustain combat power throughout all of the cent com aor Now as the search for the mv 22's replacement has already begun I am glad that we are raising a next generation of aspiring service members Who are willing and able to do the intellectual work? Required to ensure that we as a nation build the most capable and safest aircraft. We are able to produce And we must do this faster than our adversaries if we hope to maintain the tactical and operational advantage that we seek to achieve Cadet Vibo is the representative of that next generation and I can't wait to see how she presents her work here So cadet Vibo Please come to the stage Thank you, sir honorable commandant of cadets Brigadier general william mccullough colonel pasal aqua kappa pengal lutein gibson Ladies and gentlemen authors scholars Warriors my fellow norish family. Good afternoon I am rita. Vibo The 2023 Richard m. Schultz military writer symposium fellow welcome you to my talk On redesigning the stability control and augmentation system of the united states marine corps mv 22 osprey As a hypersonic suborbital aircraft That is the united states Marine corps mv 22 osprey tilt rotor It's called a tilt rotor because it's not conventional like an aircraft It takes off like an airplane but has the rotors of a helicopter attached onto its wings This was done to ensure maximum maneuverability in and out of a battlefield as quickly as possible It works on a principle called vertical takeoff and short landing So that no matter how long or short the runway is marines can be Fetched to and from battle safely like sir mentioned On 8th april of the year 2000 The united states marine corps was conducting a night flying experiment in the deserts of arizona A glitch the cause of which was not known at the time cost 19 lives all marines in the aircraft were killed Though that was not the first crash of the osprey after july 1992 and august 1996 That was the most fatal till that date and began the united states marine corps doubt in their trust in the osprey Last year in a similar accident in the deserts of california All five marines of the vmm 364 purple foxes detachment lost their lives in a similar night training accident One of whom is a norwich grad and alum captain lucapio the one in the middle I Remember as a rook standing on the up last year in my tunic as we did echo taps to remember him and his sacrifice I remember watching his mother father and at the time fiancee absolutely distraught with the loss of his life That moment triggered me and struck a chord that had only been stricken once before When I was four The columbia shuttle disaster took place The only indian woman to have ever made it to space kalpana chawla lost her life That as tragic as it was was my introduction to the concept of space and that there's something beyond what I can see Seamlessly ending air One of the reasons i'm here at norwich standing before you today Is I want to pursue a similar dream That captain lucapio had and more to what kalpana chawla had I want to be the first indian woman on the moon I want to accomplish that by serving the united states first before I take advantage of the opportunities it has to offer me Hence the united states marine corps That day at echo taps I knew that I wanted to do something to justify why captain lucapio died the way he did That began a summer's worth of research The Richard m. Schultz military writer symposium fellowship My idea of investigating why the osprey behaves the way it does and why it crashes the way it does Is encapsulated on this board that was my mind map during the summer This is an encapsulation of 50 consecutive failed attempts at comprehending even one equation Of the 5000 page manual the only one to have existed in history on the united states marine corps osprey designed in 1971 When I began looking at it I went through first principles In 1971 after the united states spearheaded the mission to land the first man on the moon The space war or the cold war ended and what began was a series of Harmonious events to bring together all four nations involved in the space age to build what is now known as the international space station That project was the united states army's rocket plane or the xv-15 Marines put their lives at stake to test them to become the first test pilots after nil Armstrong And others who went to the moon What I couldn't understand during the summer was since 1971 with the advancements that we have had Many of whom I've worked on artificial intelligence quantum computing black holes There should be no reason that I was not able to understand even a single equation of what was written in 1971 To be honest, this doesn't require genius. It doesn't require that much that much smarts To actually understand it requires a cause that you're willing to fight for which I am willing to fight for and then it hit me In the summer of 2020 as a covid senior graduate of high school I took a year off to do research I began by taking a class at mit in the fundamentals of aerospace engineering and engineering the space shuttle What I hadn't looked into Was the very thing that sparked my interest in spaceflight what kalpana chawla worked on vt vl Vertical takeoff vertical landing meaning it takes off like a rocket Goes in to suborbital space. So it's still the atmosphere Comes back and lands like a helicopter Because the osprey's problem is that it's designed in such a way that it can transition between being a helicopter and a plane So as to compensate for the loss of stability in both phases But that is the exact stage at which it loses stability. Therefore defeating its very purpose of invention On my 51st attempt at comprehending this based on the principles of the space shuttle right there It takes off like a airplane come spacecraft With the thrust generated by solid rocket boosters Deploys marines to wherever they have to go Takes off again But instead of landing straight down it goes into sub orbit Goes through re-entry breaks the hypersonic sound barrier, which was the success of the space shuttle Comes back and lands like a helicopter I understood this the week before the day before I was supposed to be here for leaders week to report as a cadet training company cadet leader I now understand that what began as a summer fellowship Is now going to be a two-year long project for which me and my professors are now embarking on a Application process for a $500,000 grant with the Einstein Foundation in Burden, Germany Should the young career research award be awarded to me as their youngest Einstein in the United States I would do the following first Understand The 20 subsystems that I couldn't comprehend before of the osprey I have begun coding them up and I'm in the process of compiling everything second I would reproduce the systems of the space shuttle And then after a fair bit of thinking Whatever I can figure out about stability I will do my best to combine both of them and build what would be the first four rows worth of A miniature RC osprey hypersonic however it may be Ladies and gentlemen Thank you for being patient listeners of my project in redesigning the stability control and augmentation system of the osprey Or as I like to call it no marine left behind norwish together norwish forever simplified alice. Thank you For those that are qualified Does anyone have any questions at the outset? On cadet febos research on this project Please feel free to come down raise your hand. I I got the lights in my face So I can't really see if anyone in the back. Well, I'm going to lead this off You know first off Thank you for being one of our students Thank you for working so hard on something that's important But then also, you know, you've seen this on my desk and this sits as a reminder of those that we lose in not just on the battlefield in pursuit of tactical operational and strategic gains But to develop the capabilities to win on the battlefield. There are all kinds of people That are lost and this aircraft. I told you one of my stories and then your poignant story About meeting captain lasopio's family when we opened that shadow box it It's important to have reason And drive behind your research and I believe you found yours With that question you've you've studied at mit you've studied at other very prestigious very well funded research institutions Why are you here at norwich? Why have you picked this place to be the place that you're going to conduct your research? Sir, I'm often asked why I've come all the way across the world to serve in the united states military and not just commission into the indian navy Or whichever branch that I was qualified enough to go out for I'm someone who believes in founding principles Even though the soviet union was the first to put a man in space What the united states did by creating the international harmony with the international space station So we can find solutions to problems That we cannot otherwise solve on earth Makes it the pioneering country For that does something for good of all humankind I believe norwich as a pioneering institution of the rotc does the same with citizen soldiery If I am to take advantage of that bigger for an opportunity say that I Accomplish everything that I have in mind make it to a point where I can actually go to space I wouldn't want to be the one to first exploit the opportunities the country has to offer me Before I can call it home. I want to be able to serve the nation and that's why I'm here, sir You briefly touched on it, but I'm interested in What research Are we going to see out of you next? Is it building more onto this? Are there other areas that you plan to explore? We have another two and a half years of your time here at the school And I'm I'm interested many of your professors are interested in What sort of research are we going to see you present to us Next year in the year after As many of the people present in this room know I cannot sit still or do one project at a time I'm doing five researchers at the moment, sir One of them is with mit and the ukrainian government in Investigating the radionuclide poisoning in ukrain central dam that was born by russia I do I can recall that in my Stanford admissions. I say two years ago They wanted me to justify my intellectual vitality The last sentence of my essay was With our existing knowledge of cosmology. We know 95 percent of what exists But by merging astronautics and astrophysics, I seek the 90 the 5 percent that remains hidden in plain sight So as I am doing research in black holes and dark matter and what lies beyond the realm of what we can imagine I want to focus that physics into investigating quantum worst disease the cause of the crash of that osprey in humor I Would like to extend this research to a point where I can build a self-propagating Gyroscopic navigation system for the osprey that uses the very cause of those crashes the quantum water seas to propagate to propel it further I want to do that by the time i'm a senior here I uh I would like to tell you my goals. Where's lofty? Well, I was a student here, but uh I didn't have the intellectual capability, but i'm still working on it. We stop learning We stop leading. Um Now that you've heard her research and you've heard her Reason for wanting to pursue that research here and what she's doing next I'm going to give you all one last chance Is there a question that you would like to ask? Sergeant major bb yell it out No, sir major Yes, and no sir major because the osprey the way it crashes is not because It happens due to purely scientific reasons It happens at a point where if the pilot is unable to decide which mode he or she wants to land it in as an aircraft or as a helicopter At a certain point it keeps going back and forth. It overrides the pilot's command and locks to one Depending on whether the terrain is appropriate for that mode of landing. It might survive. It might not So if I am in that position and it is absolutely necessary. I will take that risk But scientifically I would not be comfortable riding in an osprey. No I'll ride it in it with you Sean please Yeah, so i'm a helicopter pilot the vortex ring state is something That's commonly known among helicopter pilots when you're at a very high hover If you start to drift downwards you get air that comes up through the Rotor and then erodes your ability to fly and so my understanding and please correct me if i'm wrong is that The vortex ring state that was the cause of the first crash Was not the same as the second crash the second crash was a mechanical failure They call it like a hard clutch engagement or something like that. Are you saying those two things are related or have a similar Cause or or what's what's your thesis? So that's part of what my advice and I investigated this summer We found out that the osprey is No surprise. It's not linear as a mathematical model. It has 20 subsystems within which there are sub subsystems And part of my research was trying to code all of that up manually because at the time the osprey was built We didn't have artificially intelligent systems to read in all the data together What I want to do is Try to pinpoint if those subsystems Can cause failure of one another using chaos theory and something called the kalman filter That's part of what I began researching at the very end, which was my 51st and first successful attempt What I did towards the very end that produced that catalog in a short paper was news data from blue origins 40 000 takeoff and landing procedures that would Conduct a sequence of five years Put them into an artificially intelligent model and try to see which kind of stability It is that compromises the stability and control of the osprey So to the answer to your question It might be that one system causes the crash for another and both of them together crash the osprey That's something I want to use do using transient sensitive. It's transient sensitivity analysis as I was That's what I want to do sir So it looks like we have a lot of the same interests I also want to go to outer space although I'm currently doing computer science and information systems here at norwich My question is What advice do you have for people who would look to do a research project get norwich? So in general any research at norwich? well I I also really like artificial intelligence and outer space. So I've been considering To apply for research projects Maybe similar to what you're doing although maybe not focused on the military but more in space Right um That's part of what I did this summer. I I was in charge of I was Doing many research projects this summer one of which was using the quantum computing sources that we have at norwich at the AI center and applying them to find or build an algorithm to distinguish between black Holes dark matter candidates and normal gamma rays. So I would suggest Trying to pinpoint Although this is very vague and that's where I struggle also But pinpoint an area of physics that you would actually like to look at Then look at the tools that you need Computationally, I feel computer science is a very very important field. I have four majors at norwich physics, chemistry, math and computer science That is to help me become a high energy astrophysicist while also studying ballistic systems like I want to so I would say physics computer science and then try to see Which professor matches your understanding the best from what? I know professor Ali who is my advisor for the gas center is a very good person to go to Um professor kulkarni. She's at the back. She is a very good person to go to the only high energy astrophysicist We have is professor whole who studies supernova wind pulsars and stuff like that. So I would suggest starting there Okay, thank you. And then I kind of find another question as well How does chaos theory fit into your calculations because chaos theories? I know it is The entropy of the universe. Yeah so The tilt rotor is very chaotic First off why because it's an amalgamation of two theories. The airplane works on something called blade element theory because lift Trust gravity and drag are the four forces that primarily control an airplane And then helicopters work on rotor element theory in 1971 when the u.s. Army started thinking of building The osprey which was then later transferred to bell and bowing They focus on something called rotor plate element theory bringing the two together And entropy becomes very very prominent there Because like I said, it's a closed loop. It's not linear. So the outputs from one system go as inputs to another Which is why it's highly non-linear. So chaos theory would help us quantize that entropy of the system Okay, thank you I find you really inspiring. Thank you very much. Thank you Good afternoon sir. Catherine coppaville My question is based on both your research with the osprey and Sir your personal experience with the osprey Do you believe that the like recent public distrust of the osprey is justified? and Why are we not seeing this distrust? More towards other branches that use utilize the osprey such as the air force it seems to be mostly concentrated on the marine core Do you believe that this public discharge is justified? If I heard you correctly, it's a little the acoustics are strange from where you are to me You're asking if I think the public distrust of the osprey is justified. Yes, sir. Okay The public has a right to have their opinions and It's a sign of great health inside of a country like ours that research people's personal experiences all kinds of different Inputs of data and information about aircraft weapon systems you name it are open for people to draw from You can imagine My time with the aircraft the the first time re-stepping back on the aircraft after losing 19 friends and Finding out that there was something that we discovered about how the aircraft acts that Wasn't well known by the pilots at the time It uh, you know, I'm not a researcher. So I have to rely on others to tell me that that is That was the proximate cause of what happened When deciding however to to wear the uniform All of these things every advance comes with risk every aircraft we've had out there has had a series of trials and tribulations in designing it fielding it testing it and It's an inherently dangerous business That defending this country, uh, it's built in it's hard baked into the the lifestyle that we choose So I don't bring the intellectual rigor to a lot of the discussions as to whether any newfound Doubts about the aircraft are are founded or not I've flown on it hundreds and hundreds of hours if the Call came and it was required to do that again to reach the places I needed to reach with the equipment I needed I would gladly fly in it again What I will say is I love The fact that we've got student researchers because As she brought up this feels like new technology, but this is actually old technology just took a long time To get it fielded to the force to have it in operation I think we are Going to be better at our ability to model things Using ai using quantum computing. I think some of the things that we perhaps learned in blood In earlier years some of those things can be shortcut And with proper research with proper methodology We might not have some of these things that we learn in the most devastating way possible by losing our friends to discover something About the inner play of various systems and that's why I'm I'm very heartened by You our students taking on the research that probably will give us A better aircraft when this one is retired that can reach farther carry more people Have a lower signature and be safer While doing it So that's a long answer, but uh, it's a it's a complicated question Everyone rates to have their opinion about this and I try not to Replace logic with emotion for decisions that I make and I I don't have enough knowledge on the The interplay of these systems to have a logical decision Thank you sir The only thing that qualifies me to ask a question is that genius isn't required to understand this problem so I need to know Are you needing to leave this university environment? to continue your research into this problem Do you mean that because of the grant I mentioned? When I hear you asking or pursuing Funding from the einstein System going to germany and asking for additional research Opportunities Do you feel you need to leave norwich university to continue your research on this problem? I want to be at norwich is the very reason I want the grant from germany Any other institution in the united states that I've looked into that would help me pursue this takes me away from norwich The einstein foundation however awards the young early career researcher award to one student and two postdoctoral Researchers or more at an institution across the world that would be willing to pursue the research Given that i'm a sophomore at the moment I would prefer to be at norwich and which is why I want the grant to come to norwich Okay, and that's for five thousand dollars five hundred thousand five hundred thousand dollars five hundred thousand dollars. Yes, sir. Okay, and then The result of that research would belong to who? Norwich university, okay Thank you Fantastic presentation You've brought up cosmology astrophysics aerodynamics mathematics and an interest in leadership Incredible diversity I'm going to ask a more humanities question, which is who are the people who inspire you contemporary or historically and From all history, who would you most like to have lunch with? That seems like a stand for admissions question, which I did answer Historically it would be Kalpana Chawla She grew up where I did she went to the same elementary school that I attended Every time that I feel demotivated, which is a lot given the goals that I have and how lofty they are I would wish I wish she was here She would be the only person to understand the challenges that I'm trying to overcome People ask me why Do you have four majors? Why do you want to do this? Why were you placed in junior senior physics as a freshman? She would be the only person to understand that that's what it takes To shift my entire life from halfway across the world And pursue a new career Only one percent of humanity could make it to the space program So even if I don't end up making it there, I will end up somewhere and she's the only person who would understand it So I would want her to come back if I were to have lunch with a historic person Thank you I certainly understand your interest in the research Where does the drive come from service? So can understand your interest in physics mathematics and science But that doesn't always equal a passion Equal to wanting to serve or to lead So can you help us understand the origin of that? It's a complicated question, sir A lot of which requires understanding my own brain, which I don't um I think the best answer would be Covid I graduated from high school in the spring. I want to say in 2020 I was set to go to the University of Chicago or wherever I wanted to go at the time and pursue a career in cyber security And then Covid-19 hit The United States suspended all contacts with every other country, especially India and China That sort of threw my entire trajectory off at the at the time I didn't think it would be worth doing online school From India and so I took off Took a year off to take college classes, but not Be enrolled formally anywhere That led me to do research Started off as a simple CS problem at the University of Chicago Ended up being a paper on dark matter Where I ended up detecting 31 dark matter candidates on the outskirts of the milky way galaxy I had to apply for certain permissions from NASA Gordon Space Flight Center To use that data and when they came across that research They thought it was published. It was worth of being published That ended up with me being Introduced to a NASA astronaut who is a marine or test pilot She's actually the first woman in line to go to the moon in 2024 next year Her name is Major General Jasmine Mugbelli. She is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy Actually, she's a graduate of MIT And then she ended up enlisting and serving and that by that route. She's now going to space I spoke to her briefly and she said that I seem someone who's rather intellectually stimulated but also very restless And would not fit the description of a typical grad student postdoc that career path and she suggested I look into other things One of them being a test pilot When I looked into the kind of resources that I would be exploiting from a country that is not my home at the moment I felt I owed the country something before I take that opportunity And serving in the United States Marine Corps is That thing that I want to give to the United States first before I take everything that the nation has to offer So that's where my drive to serve comes from. Also, my father was in the Indian government Um, I'm not a military brat by any chance, but I have seen What goes on in those borders between Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, China Just how much lack of justification there is For one nation to just do something and not think about the repercussions it would have on the other As someone who's both intellectually stimulated and eager to serve. I want to bridge that gap. I want to make mindful decisions Whether that's in the United States that benefits the rest of the country or Just my country itself That's the sense of service I have Are there any other questions from The group well, I for one I I didn't have much to contribute to this As the moderator, but I I feel like every time I hear from you I uh, I'm reminded of why I came back here so that I could be associated with students like you and help People achieve their dreams and if those dreams coincide with this school and your future service I think we're doing all the right things here So if everyone will please join me in Clapping and giving great applause for this fine student Now she doesn't know this but she's going to stay around for a few minutes for those of you who Didn't want to ask a question in person But have that question that you want to talk to her about maybe it's something personal about your own research You want to do or something else, but she'll be around for the next few minutes. Be sure to ask her a question