by Garrett Chandler
Most of the stories they tell you about being a School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) planner are true. You will likely be thrown right into being the lead planner for something immediately, or, as in my case, on the third day of in-processing at the installation. People will poke fun at you for being a nerd and tease you about loving to read – and then later those same people will sit silently, waiting for you to step in and make sense of the opaque dumpster fire handed to you by higher headquarters. Almost nothing you do in utilization will gain you fame or glory. The only troops you will spend time with are the nameless (and often some of the most underrated) warriors on staff, those responsible for helping set conditions for success for the warfighters in the brigades and battalions. The love-hate relationship with your utilization assignment will teach you more about what it takes to run large organizations and will help you determine if you have what it takes to help lead lethal brigades, divisions, and corps.
The Company to Field Grade Transition
When I first heard about SAMS, I thought it was probably a waste of time. I figured it would put me off my career timeline, and I wanted to stay close to the fight. I had just come out of six straight years in Brigade Combat Teams with a couple of deployments to Kunar, Afghanistan. I had split my time between an infantry battalion and a cavalry squadron and even did a year as a battalion S3 as a junior captain. I thought a program like SAMS would take me away from the troops and where the action was, and I wanted to stay where the “rubber met the road.” I had joined the Army during the deployment surge, and so that was all I really knew. Fortunately, while a battalion S3, I was surrounded by many superb field-grade leaders as fellow battalion S3s – most of whom continued on to be great battalion and even brigade commanders. They showed me that you could still provide value and leadership beyond what I already knew. They helped me realize that there was so much more to being an Army officer than I really understood so far.
As I entered the purgatory known as “broadening” in preparation for becoming a field-grade officer, I came to the realization that, like a high school football player who has since graduated, my playing days as a company-grade officer were over. No matter how nostalgic I was about the glory days as a young officer, I needed to reinvent myself because the Army has plenty of great company-grade officers to do company-grade officer things. They didn’t need a Major to do a Captain’s job. Besides, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, the next conflict likely would not start for some time. Once I worked through my Army mid-life crisis and accepted these two facts, I went to work trying to figure out how to best prepare for whatever conflict came next. That led to SAMS, the school that teaches officers to think critically, think creatively, study history, and plan at the operational level of war. In other words, it prepares them to help lead large organizations – specifically, the types of organizations that are critical during large-scale combat operations.
The Utilization Experience
When I arrived at my utilization assignment, I was blessed with the full spectrum of experiences at the division level. The first lead planner responsibility handed to me was preparing the division headquarters for a rotation in Europe as one of two forward-deployed division headquarters supporting V Corps. From routine deployment mobility requirements and conferences, pre-deployment requirements, and mobilization requests, to helping craft the overall problem frame, force posture, and operational approach, I experienced everything from basic soldier tasks to participating in brainstorming sessions with multiple general officers. Experiencing the full progression from notification to eventually deploying with the headquarters let me see how the “big swoopy arrows” translated over time and how assumptions at a higher headquarters lead to frustrations. Historically, I was only blessed with the privilege of seeing the back-end frustrations without seeing all the effort (or occasionally lack thereof) that went into planning and coordinating at the higher level. This role eventually culminated in the opportunity to work with corps and theater army staff to better posture forces to deal with contingencies within Europe.
One of the primary goals for SAMS is to prepare you to plan division-level operations; therefore, no utilization is complete without the opportunity to experience a warfighter at the division headquarters level. The progressive series of command post exercises is the foundation that helps hone the staff to communicate information quickly and appropriately while developing at least somewhat usable plans in a timely manner to disseminate to subordinate units functioning as a response cell. My warfighter experience was cut short when, during the final portion of the actual warfighter iteration, I departed to attend the final force flow meeting for our rapidly approaching deployment to Europe. The three iterations before that provided vast amounts of experience on the value of knowing what information was relevant during operations and seeing how echelons actually divide up tasks to distribute the planning and tracking requirements. This experience was extremely helpful. I returned two years later for another division warfighter progression, this time as a brigade executive officer leading a staff as a response cell. Effectively, there were two key takeaways from the warfighter experience. First, a warfighter is less about how tactically capable you are of beating the opponent in the simulation and more about whether you can communicate up, down, and to adjacent units to create a clear understanding of events to work together as a team to defeat the enemy as opportunities present themselves. Second, most individuals on a division staff have not spent much, if any, time above a battalion level and therefore default to planning the things they know. Unfortunately, battalions need brigade and division to plan brigade and division matters, not to have three different echelons plan the same activities. To be successful, a division staff must set the conditions for subordinates to win their own fights.
The final full experience I received while in my utilization assignment was while deployed forward in Europe. Beyond the interactions with partner nations and higher headquarters in managing the deployments in and out of theater for subordinate units, or negotiating future force posture locations, we also experienced multiple opportunities to exercise with allies for training – sometimes while in their country. Somewhat unique to our rotation was that the training exercises with allies revolved around training higher-level headquarters to fight within large-scale combat. Effectively, this meant that our staff had the opportunity to conduct several other warfighter-equivalent training exercises throughout the remaining 6-7 months of my utilization assignment. While at the Leadership Training Program in Louisiana this past summer as a brigade executive officer, we were told that it typically takes ten or more Military Decision Making Process training iterations to be fully trained as a staff. During my time on division staff, just in tactical planning scenarios, we reached at least seven. Most years, the staff is lucky to get the four iterations in a warfighter progression. The training paid further dividends when we worked alongside partner nations to help train recently established division-level headquarters to prepare for large-scale conflict. In each of those scenarios, we used the same tools and skills taught in SAMS.
Why SAMS?
SAMS is not going to give you the answers. It will give you tools to understand your problems, examples you can reference, and plenty of practice dealing with challenges. Sure, you will study the classic theorists and the evolution of doctrine, but at SAMS you also study how adversaries think and how to think outside of the box to solve problems. You will see how different echelons or groups working on separate components can combine to achieve great things.
SAMS is not based on past performance or ratings. It is based on potential, willingness to put in the work, and commitment to learning. It is not about having the best evaluations, knowing the right people, or coming from the right jobs. It is more of a grindstone to make you sharper. It is about a professional drive to learn and be a better officer. It is about wanting to learn how war is fought, why it is fought, and how to better understand problems. You will read a lot, you will write a lot, but you will also think a lot. You will study doctrine and where it comes from. You will study different nations and their histories. You will study critical thinking and problem-solving. You will also conduct planning exercises for operations from division to corps level. It is not a course for those who are already the best, but a course designed for those who want to do better, challenge each other, and strive to be the best officer they can be for the units they will one day serve.
Maturing in the Army
Making the transition to field grade officer – and presumably a desk job – and working further away from the line companies might sound boring or intimidating. It is also part of growing up in the Army. You will still do all the things the Army asks you to do; different things are just more important in your new role. The Army needs you to do different types of things once you become a field grade officer, and that is okay. If you are looking for a way to continue to challenge yourself or a way to develop more “tools” to be a better field grade officer, look into attending SAMS. Not going to SAMS won’t make you a bad officer, but going to SAMS will make you a better officer than you were before. If you are concerned SAMS will put you into a staff position and away from troops, your key developmental assignments will still be the same, and you will probably spend a year on division staff before then anyway; only SAMS will give you more preparation. Lastly, if you are concerned that SAMS will take you off timeline, you can try to be a “field select” and attend after completion of your key developmental assignment as a Major.
Garrett Chandler is a SAMS graduate who spent his formative field grade years as a division planner, a brigade SPO, and as an aviation brigade executive officer.
