REFLECT
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The [Re-iterated] Case for an Apolitical Military
by Brett Tinder We are not political pundits. Our service does not strip us of our rights to vote, but faithful adherence to American civil-military relations requires an ambivalence to political change. An apolitical military benefits the...
The Picture of Captain Dorian Gray
By Micah Ables There’s a portrait hidden in the closet of every company commander – one that bears every unspeakable thing they have to see, hear, and carry. To every young commander or first sergeant who’s seen more than any one person...
On Getting Humbled
By Joe Byerly The words escaped my mouth before my brain could catch up. I saw my commander lean back in his seat, eyes narrowing. His chair creaked like a spring under pressure—until it snapped forward. Then came the ass-chewing. My face...
What Three Hobbits Teach Us About Friendship, Virtue, and the Company We Keep
by Jay Carmody Since J.R.R. Tolkien first published The Lord of the Rings trilogy nearly 70 years ago, authors and fans have published a wealth of articles exploring Tolkien’s characters and universe. One topic worth revisiting for military leaders...
Why We PT (Together), and Why You Should Too
by Garrett M. Searle In 2014, Admiral William McRaven, then Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, made a famous speech at a commencement ceremony for his alma mater, the University of Texas. The thesis of his address was the importance of...
Power Without Preparation
By: Joe Byerly Have you ever watched a baking show and thought, I could do that? Or seen a YouTube clip of someone playing a popular song on guitar and thought, How hard can it be? Or listened to a podcast and said, I could make one of those? Then...
Telling the Story: Using Narrative to Synchronize Operations
By Rich Groen In tactical operations, effective communication remains one of the most underappreciated yet crucial competencies for field-grade leaders. At the upper echelons of operational and strategic planning, one of the most enduring...
Timeliness Over Perfection: The Critical Balance in Fast-Moving Operational Environments
By Caleb D. King III Have you ever found yourself delaying reporting something up the chain of command because the information was not perfect or pretty? How much time did you spend perfecting the information before other decision-makers could...
The Day Lightning Chose Me
By Kyle McCarter Not everyone gets the chance to grow their lore, legend, or earn a cool scar. But I was blessed with such a day in the summer of 2005. It was a regular, hot, humid, and rainy day in Florida. I was stationed at Camp James E. Rudder,...
Friction’s Impact on Warfighting: Time is Readiness
By: James Boyd, Adyton CEO and Co-founder Time is readiness. I’ve seen firsthand how we tend to operate as if time is a free and limitless resource. It is neither. Whether it’s making soldiers stand around waiting to be released or...
Retiring at 20: Why I Chose Family Over Competing for Battalion Command
Three years ago, with palms sweating, I walked into my senior rater’s office for a counseling session. I told him, “I don’t want battalion command and plan to retire at the first opportunity.” It took months to gather the courage to say those...
Sometimes, They Have to Touch the Stove
By Joe Byerly Now that I’m a parent of kids who are getting older, I find myself wanting to play more “life defense”—to protect them from the bruises and blows of growing up: failure, misfortune, consequences. I think we all do this to...
Because the Plot Demands It: On Roles, Responsibility, and Character
By Joe Byerly I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the various roles we play in life—and the responsibilities, behaviors, and costumes that come with them. Every role, from parent to spouse to commander to CEO, comes with a contract. Sometimes...
Soul vs. Ego
By Joe Byerly I would love to play guitar in front of a crowd at a bar, watch them sing along, and then take requests for their favorite songs. I would love to have a custom-built shed in my backyard that I built myself. I would love to hike the...
Power, Character, and the Gates We Open
By Joe Byerly Throughout ancient history, cities didn’t always fall on the fields of battle or by infantry scaling the walls. More often than we realize, they were undone from within—by opportunists who, under the cover of darkness, opened secret...
Power, Hubris, and the Role of Fortune
By Joe Byerly When we attain power, we often see it through the protagonist’s lens: “This is my story. I climbed the ranks. I earned this.” And while that may be partially true, it’s rarely the whole story. What’s often missing is the hand of...
Power and the Most Dangerous Myth of All
By Joe Byerly At 24 years old, Robert McNamara became Harvard Business School’s youngest assistant professor. Six years later, he joined an elite team at Ford Motor Company known as the “Whiz Kids” and helped turn the company around. Within a...
Saying Goodbye to the “Sunday Scaries”
By Joe Byerly If you had told me years ago that the “Sunday Scaries” would one day disappear from my vocabulary—or that the phrase “Thank God it’s Friday” would lose its meaning—I probably wouldn’t have believed you. Military service gave me...
The Climb to Power Conceals
By Joe Byerly We often hear that power reveals. That once someone has it, their true character is finally exposed. But what’s less often acknowledged, and arguably more important for you and I, is that the climb to power conceals. The...
What Fairy Tales Teach Us About Power
By Joe Byerly Have you ever actually read the original Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen? It’s pretty dark. There are no singing crabs, cute blowfish, or happy endings. It’s a story about a girl who gives up something of great...
Commander’s Focus Areas for Large Scale Combat Operations
by Ronald Sprang Commanders are critical to an organization’s success. Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) stress a unit’s leaders, systems and processes, which require unremitting focus and leadership. Commanders must train their organizations to...
The Field Grade Leader and Domestic Operations: A Primer
by Rick Chersicla ...
The SFAB: A Lieutenants Experience
by Christopher Wilson Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article was published in the Spring 2022 issue of Infantry magazine and has been reproduced with permission. As I in-processed to the 2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade...
Faithful and True: Lessons Learned at Combined Resolve XVI
by Samuel “Joe” Nirenberg During the past nine months, I was fortunate to command 1-5 FA while it served as a part of the rotational ABCT in support of Atlantic Resolve. Up front, I will say that the Atlantic Resolve mission allows...
The Top 10 Things I Learned as a Battalion Commander at the National Training Center
by Ethan Olberding Editor’s Note: Over the next week, we will be running a series of articles from 4-70 AR on their lessons learned at the National Training Center (NTC). Each article is unique in that it will present a different perspective from...
Digital Dunkirk: Lessons Learned
On August 15, 2021, I doom-scrolled through social media feeds that tracked Kabul’s fall. By August 31, my phone had thousands of messages from hundreds of people I didn’t know two weeks before, and we’d helped some Afghan allies leave Afghanistan....
Why Army Sustainment Units Need Gunnery Training
by Alan Farr In the past, the Army geared its gunnery program towards combat arms Military Occupational Specialties (MOS). The gunnery program trained combat Soldiers to be highly proficient on their assigned weapon platforms, mounted or...
The Thinking Combatant
Editorial note – This blog post is part of our Scribbles series. If interested in submitting creative content, view our guidelines here or contact Daniel Vigeant at dan@fromthegreennotebook.com. By Phil Mitten It was a searing hot and dry...
How We Prepared Our Brigade to Fight at JRTC: An Interview with Bastogne 6
Last month, I had the chance to sit down with COL Robert Born, the commander of Bastogne Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division and talk about his experience as a brigade commander during his recent Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) rotation....
6 Lessons I Learned Moving Nuclear Weapons Through North Dakota
by Andrew Klinger I was both excited and anxious the day I got my orders to Minot Air Force Base. I requested to be sent to a nuclear missile base because of the challenges and opportunities the mission presented. Every day, Airmen at Minot and...
Weaponize the Neurodivergent
by Dr. Katy Davis, Lt. Col. Erik Davis, and Lt. Col. Nick Frazier. While the US Army hit its recruiting goal for 2024, the target is much lower than previous years, and following a deficit of 25,000 recruits from the previous two years One...
Revitalizing Resilience Training to Prevent Army Suicides
by Major General Windsor S. Buzza Since 2009, the U.S. Army’s suicide rates among all soldiers have exceeded age-adjusted national norms by an average of 20%. In my current role as the Chief of Staff for U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM), I have...
Cultivate Workplace Creativity With These 3 Methods
by Tommy Miller At the core of ever-changing warfare, human curiosity demands that we uncover new problem-solving approaches to create effective solutions. Just think about how much the Army and its warfighting tactics have changed from the...
CrowdStrike, COVID, and System Fragility: Takeaways for Today’s Leaders
By John Geracitano On July 18th, a software patch from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike tore through Microsoft operating systems, exposing the fragility of our technological networks. This incident didn’t just crash Windows computers; it required...
It’s Not All Supposed to Suck: Fighting Operational Friction
(Matthias Fruth/Army, 2019) By James Boyd I remember doing my first inventory preparing for deployment. It was 2008, the first iPhone had just been released, and I was new to a Special Forces Team. I spent days sifting through reams of paper filled...
Overcoming Barriers to Innovation: Taking Lessons Learned from Ukraine
by Andrew DeMoss and Luke VanAntwerp Over a century ago, on the European battlefields of World War I, new technologies in the form of machine guns and massed artillery forced armies into trenches. Leaders turned to other new technologies such as...
Bigger Sibling’s Advice for Post-Platoon Leader Life
As I prepared to move across the hallway and take over as our company’s Executive Officer (“XO”), I was sick-to-my-stomach nervous. Sure, I had been reasonably successful as a Platoon Leader, but what on earth did I know about running a company? It...
Behind the Camera: The Purpose of Unit Public Affairs
By Haylee Gagnon Taking the job as the Unit Public Affairs Officer (PAO) and Battalion Adjutant is not what every Infantry Officer prepares for. Trading in my ruck for a camera was terrifying for the simple fact that I wouldn’t be doing what...
Professional Military Education is PT for the Brain
by Chris Johnson “The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by cowards and its thinking done by fools.” – Lt. Gen. Sir William Francis...
The 10 COMMANDments: A Company Command Team’s Reflections
by Dan Kinney and John Singharath Regardless of branch, commanding a unit is one of the hardest jobs you’ll ever have as an officer or senior NCO—it’s also one of the most rewarding. With anything in the Army, it’s been done before and there’s a...
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