The biggest threat to America is too often the one we think about the least. Nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare has been around for decades, and the effects of an NBC attack on the homeland or our interests abroad is a very real scenario. Retired Lieutenant General Leslie Smith spent a career in the Army as a chemical officer.
He served as the Chief of the Chemical Branch and Commandant of the United States Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear School. He was the first chemical officer to serve as Commanding General of the United States Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence and the first chemical officer to serve as the Army’s Inspector General. He is now the Vice President for Leadership and Education at the Association of the United States Army.
With reports looming about Russian willingness to use NBC weapons in Ukraine and Iran’s constant desire to acquire them and put them into the hands of terrorist proxies, Fran Racioppi sat down with Lieutenant General Smith to discuss the real threat America faces. We broke down the history of America’s chemical weapons programs, their use in various stages of conflicts, the implementation of international prohibitions, how the US Army prepares for NBC threats, and what we learned about their modern-day use through the COVID pandemic.
Lieutenant General Smith also shared insight into the important role the Inspector General plays in maintaining standards and accountability within the Army, as well as the critical role AUSA is playing in supporting soldiers, both active duty and post-service. Read our conversation from the Association of the US Army Headquarters, and don’t miss the rest of our AUSA series.
The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by University Health and Performance, providing our veterans with world-class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media, listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube, as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.
—
‐‐‐
General Smith, welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast.
It’s good to be here.
It’s great to be back at AUSA. Thanks again for hosting us. We were just here like ten days ago or so, with Sergeant Major.
I’m feeling a certain way about that.
You’re a little jealous?
No, I was the 66th Inspector General. He was only the 15th Sergeant Major of the Army. 66th is above 15th. I understand you have a prior relationship. I got it. I know this thing is all about relationships. It’s all good.
You are each first, though, because he was the youngest SMA in the Army. You were the first chemical officer to ever be.
How strange is that? I’m like, “What? How does that happen?”
We’ve got to talk about how that happened.
We have a lot to talk about.
You had a great career. We talked about it so many times, especially on this show. We talk about Special Operations. We talk about Green Berets, the impact our Special Operators have. We haven’t had a chance to start to dig into some of those other branches that are so critically important to our national security strategy.
You don’t think chemical officers operate with Special Operators?
No, I do think that.
We don’t talk about it.
We don’t talk about it, and then we forget it until we get into a conflict and everyone goes, “Where’s my NBC mask?” You realize there’s probably way more than just that mask that’s going on here. A little bit about you. Commander at every level, including being the chief of the chemical branch and the commandant of the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear School. You were the first chemical officer to serve as the IG, but also as the commanding general of the Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence. A bunch of years there.
One more too.
Which?
I was in charge of the Army’s 20th Sovereignty Command. You had to do a little bit more work.
We got firsts all over those.
All good.
You’re now the vice president of leadership and education at AUSA, at the Association of the US Army. First off, thank you for your leadership and thank you for your service.
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me on.
We’ve got to start with what is chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear? Why is it important?
It’s about the defense of those systems. If you remember back in the day, World War I, the Germans used it, and the Americans were not ready to go. We had to stand up a branch called the Chemical Warfare Service to learn how to deal with that. First, we were using offensive. Remember the 4.2-inch mortars that we used to have back in the day? A lot with the infantry. Those chemical guys used to be the mortar men for the infantry guys before they became mortars as part of the infantry. It’s a great story. That’s how it started, back in 1917 during World War I, the defense thereof and the offensive use initially.
This is near and dear to my heart because you can’t find this on Google. My grandfather was in the Army Corps of Engineers as a lieutenant. His job was the development of mustard gas.
[00:04:47] I got a great story about that. The engineer regiment, that’s where the chemical corps came from. First engineer regiment, gas, and flame. The engineers are like, “No.” When you become the commandant, you get a chance to see behind the scenes, you get a chance to go downstairs and see all the artifacts associated from there.
We even have a Mickey Mouse mask that’s downstairs at Fort Leonard Wood. It was for little kids to be able to put on masks in the United States just in case something happened. Anyway, we came from the engineer regiment, first engineer regiment, gas, and flame. Back in the day, in the ’60s, they used to put mustard stains on soldiers so they would know what it felt like.
I remember my grandfather. They had an explosion in the plant. I think it was at Edgewood Arsenal, if I have my facts correct. A lot of folks were injured. This was rudimentary R&D and early stages of development in these parts.
Was he a biologist, a chemist, or something?
He was a chemist. He went to URI, University of Rhode Island.
He was mixing things.
Let’s think a bit about NBC warfare and the evolution of it. You talk about how World War I, we know the Germans had employed it. We go off in 1917, we create the first origin of this.
Chemical warfare.
We get into World War II. We didn’t see a lot of it in World War II, but World War II brought nuclear technology to the fray. It ended with our attack on Japan. We go forward into Korea, Vietnam. There’s an argument in Vietnam. It was Agent Orange and some of the other chemicals that were used there some by us.
Do you want to know what chemical folks did?
Yes.
Do you remember the smoke and flame, the flame-filled expedients, the clearing of the herbicides? They became tunnel rats, too. A lot of chemical officers and chemical soldiers did that mission, too. What I used to always tell the troop was like, “We got to do sometimes the things that other people don’t want to do.” It was an interesting task and mission. As I mentioned before, when you become a commandant, you get a chance to see the history of every one of the commandants that came before you. I was number 25 of that timeframe. It’s just an amazing story.
We’ve seen, since that point in time, other countries use chemical weapons. We’ve seen Bashar al-Assad, who’s in Syria, and Saddam Hussein, who’s in Iraq. When you think about being the commandant and you look back at the history and the evolution of chemical warfare, what’s your assessment of it? Where are we now? What’s the likelihood that this is something that could come back?
I think the challenge is that there are always things adapting, and with the new technology that exists, there are different types of systems and processes we want to talk about on this net that could be perceived as not being chemical but chemical warfare-like or biological warfare-like. If you think about anthrax, you think about all those types of things.
What are some places that you could grow it or operate in it where you would not see it today, but you could see it tomorrow? That was the biggest concern when we had those anthrax attacks around September 11th. Around that timeframe, you saw the mail that they came through. That’s another story because my unit was around the Pentagon in that timeframe.
We don’t know what’s next. We just have to be prepared to deal with the situation then.
Talk about that for a second because that is one of the prevalent examples, and people compound that with the September 11th attacks. There was the theory that all this is connected. Is this the start of a broader thing?
It was an interesting piece because I got to give you a little background. I was in the Pentagon 90 days prior to September 11th happening. I was on the joint staff, doing my great thing, doing international negotiations. I don’t know if we have time to talk about that now in Geneva. I’ve been there many times. I go to Fort Polk, now Fort Johnson, Louisiana. You’ve been to Fort Polk before, haven’t you?
I’ve not been.
You’ve not been to Fort Polk?
No.
Fort Johnson?
I’m from Boston. Way too far South for me.
We got to fix that. Most of the time, they do rotation sometime now with heavy soft focus in that location.
We used to do that.
I think it was very good for them based off the mission set. Anyway, so we show up to this location and Fort Polk, now Fort Johnson. We call it 90-90, 90 degrees with 90% humidity at 6:00 in the morning. You will walk outside, you’re like, “Oh my gosh,” but it was great. Great preparation. We’re getting ready to go. 9/11 happens. I’m a battalion commander. I think I’m the man. The DCG Forces Command comes down. He just happened to be visiting that day, brings all the leaders in, and says, “I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I know it’s going to happen.”
The good thing about it is I grew up as a captain in the 82nd. I’ve heard some of your stories about that, some of those same things at Fort Bragg, now Liberty, that we had a different mindset. In that battalion of 500 troopers, we had a platoon that was always on lockdown. The stuff was packed. It was ready to go. They’re like, “Sir, why you got to do it?” September 11th happened, we were ready to go.
Let’s fast forward a little bit. We get a task of saying, “We think there’s going to be anthrax attacks in and around because we saw it with some of the mail things.” The country was reeling at the time, if you remember. No one knew what was going to happen next. The Pentagon got hit, too. They were saying, “Who’s going to be the defense of the Pentagon?” The Army stood up and said, “We will.” General King, I’ll never forget it, says, “The army will defend the Pentagon.” People are like, “How are you going to do that?”
They brought the 82nd up, troopers with the weapons because we used to have weapons outside of the Pentagon. The security you see now did not exist. We get there. We have these things called Biological Detection Systems, BIDS, that they put on every corner of the Pentagon. This is rudimentary. We’re trying to figure out where the wind is blowing. How is this going to happen? You had troopers sitting in there. You’ve got the defense of the DC area, something that’s done now, but we didn’t think about it.
We flew five C5s from Alexandria Airport to Andrews Air Force Base in the middle of the night. I would never see it. We’re driving down. Have you ever remembered those Godzilla movies? You would see the little trucks driving down in the cities. I would never have thought that it would have happened. I show up in my fatigues and everything. Everybody’s like, “What are you here for?” I couldn’t tell them.
I think about that often, but we were ready to execute those tasks and the missions because of how we prepared our unit to do what we needed to do. It was a tough time. It is because our bases, our installations used to be open, but automatically they were shut down. Kids’ schools, the buses were being escorted by the second ACR with a gun truck in the front and the back. They were like, “What is going on?” We’re not little kids, but it’s like things change overnight.
When you think about this evolution you’ve talked a lot about, and one of the first things you said was that our NBC capabilities are very defensive in nature. When we look at the threat, we mentioned here actors like Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, neither of which were in power anymore. Let’s fast forward and think about someone like Vladimir Putin. What is the propensity, do you think, to use that? What’s the biggest threat to the US? Is it a nation-state or is it a terrorist organization getting there?
The reason why I say that is because you never know the calculus of an individual. A nation-state is tougher than a rogue actor but on both sides. Our job, the Corps’ job, the Army’s job is to be ready to defend against whatever happens. One of my bigger concerns is that if it doesn’t happen, people are like, “It’s not going to happen.” That’s what CBRN stands for: Could be right now. The job of the chemical officer is first to be a good soldier, a good leader. People understand that, “I can soldier, but I’m going to show you how you survive and all these other pieces and parts from there.”
How do we get our forces to think about it and think about this capability more than the year when they’re cleaning their map?
You as a leader, again, you have to get the trust of the chemical officer. NCOs normally are in the G3, S3 shop. They’re learning how to do all the other projects. You’re a special project officer. I used to love doing that because you had visibility. People used to laugh, “You have to do the USR.” I’m like, “Yeah, but I know more about the unit than you do.” I learned a lot about organizations and leadership because I was right next to the commander, next to the three.
I had a chance to see what those things are. Once you get the trust and they know that you’re not going to do stuff just for stupid, you got to make the case. The higher you go, the easier it comes because at the higher levels, it’s all about building coalitions of people. I was comfortable doing that even at a young age.
What did we learn from something like COVID? We’re seeing that even the CIA has said, “We think it was made in a lab.” Although we understand that there are people out there who may believe that it was a willful act to release COVID into the environment. However COVID started, what it does prove to us is that you can create a virus in a lab. You can release it.
You can. What it tells us is that we don’t know what’s next. We just have to be prepared to deal with the situation. As leaders, we have to be thinking about it. If you think about it as a threat to the battlefield and not that one office, you say you do it once a year, just like you know how you grew up in special ops.
What’s the threat that I’m not thinking about? What are the things I’ve got to be able to deal with? It’s a risk analysis. That’s the other thing you got to talk to commanders about because they can’t carry everything all the time. What is the risk that we want to risk to the force, risk to the unit, risk to those things?
I remember watching the invasion into Iraq in 2003.
I was a battalion commander.
I remember watching multiple times that it was coming over the reporters, who were embedded with the invasion force, that they were donning gas masks. There was the threat of weapons being used by Saddam Hussein’s Army.
That was another similar point. Our battalion was deployed during that timeframe. As a leader, many times, you have to go where you think you need to be. I told my two-star boss because we were supporting the port operations, “Sir, I need to be forward because I was the only chemical battalion in theater at the time.”
I’m like, “If something goes bad, I got to be farther forward to X to be able to support my guys because we had guys supporting every division and every formation to do what we needed to do. I need to be forward where the core attack and the other units were to support just in case something bad goes down.”He’s like, “Roger that.”
Me and my sergeant major are on the road, traveling north because the leader has to be at the decisive point. I saw General Austin at his retirement ceremony, but we both saw each other on the plane flying in November 1990. I’m like, “I know where you’re going.” He’s like, “I know where you’re going.” I’m like, “Yes, sir.” We’ve both gone to the same place. We jumped off that year.
Let’s talk about the Army for a minute.
You don’t want to talk about me?
I do want to talk about it. That’s where we’re going to go. I want to know. How does it happen? It is because, in 1983, you commissioned from Georgia Southern University as a field artillery.
That’s a great story.
The first question we got to ask there is, why’d you want to go in the Army?
It is because my family always served in the Army. My dad was in the Army, a Korean War vet. One of his uncles was the 11th Airborne trooper. It’s funny. My dad died when I was five. I didn’t understand all the things that he did, but I knew there was something that I wanted to do. Have you ever heard of a place called Mountain Valley, Mississippi?
No.
It was founded by freed slaves, Isaiah Montgomery and a couple of other gentlemen. It was a great location to go visit as a kid. I always knew that my last name was Smith. My uncle was an entrepreneur, another who taught, who’s a Dean at a college, Alcorn State, and several others who did different things, either teachers, educators, or businesspeople. It was a great environment as a kid growing up. I’m from Atlanta. I always knew I wanted to serve. I served in the Army for 35 years.
My brother, who’s 5 years younger, served in the Army for 4 years. My sister was in the Marine Corps for four years, her husband’s too. My youngest daughter is an Army doc. She took it to the next level. I was like, “Do your thing.” Georgia Southern, that’s another story. I didn’t know Georgia Southern existed because I’m from Atlanta. I went there because a good friend of mine said that you should go down here with me. I went there with him, and they gave me, the ROTC guys gave me, a deal I couldn’t refuse. “What was the deal?”
The deal was that we’re going to make you a Lieutenant in two years. I’m like, “What? What do you mean?” I’m seventeen years old. They said, “You come, and you join the Georgia Army National Guard.” I was in the Guard for four years. “We’re going to make you a Lieutenant in two years.” I became called the Simultaneous Membership Program. As a freshman, I’m hanging out with the junior ROTC guys. I had to grow up quick.
You’ve got 17, you think you got it going on, but you see the 19- and 20-year-olds, you’re like, “I got to raise the level of my game.” I was in the Georgia Guard and the field artillery unit. That’s why I got a commission as a field artillery officer after my second year, but I didn’t graduate until 1985. I was in the Guard for four years. I learned a lot about what it meant to be a soldier in a field artillery unit, then a Lieutenant and a field artillery commission.
The standard is a standard, and we have to make sure that soldiers, the nation, Congress, and our leaders trust us in the things that we do.
During that timeframe, you probably remember this, but the Reagan buildup, all of us who got many of us that got brass chemical officers were from the Army Reserve and the National Guard. All of us got sent to Germany. He built up Germany. I was the first chemical officer they had at ten years. I’m like, “Can we touch him?”
I was in the air defense unit, 13 kilometers from the border. We brought all these people and locations. Reagan says, “You want to do this?” We had two cores. It was a bunch of four-star general all the way down. Everything else that goes with having two cores in Europe. It was powerful. Reagan says, “Can you deal with this?” Check and then mate.
We just had the opportunity when we were at D-Day, an episode released previously, now to sit down with Command Sergeant Major Jeremiah Inman. He’s the command sergeant major for the US Army, Europe, and Africa. We had a great conversation with him sitting on me at Pointe du Hoc in one of the gun placements.
Pointe du Hoc? You know the story.
I know the story. The story of AUSA? It’s phenomenal. We talked about that forward projection of power and how important that is for the Army and how important it is for the national sense of the US When you look at our presence in Europe, although it’s been significantly reduced, especially from the Cold War era, we haven’t left. It’s still a critical component of our ability to maintain. We can call it the status quo. We’re going to certainly talk at length about the challenges to that, but it is important.
It is. There are many ways you can do it. When a soldier, especially, shows up on the ground, when you have boots on the ground, it sends a signal. A plane can fly over, a ship can drive through. When you have boots on the ground, soldiers interacting with the people on the ground, it changes the atmosphere. The engagement of talking to people, learning the language, eating the food, hanging out, it changes the culture of what it means. I have many sayings, but here’s what I’ve done. Here’s one for you, a leader’s presence only matters when you’re present. When you’re there, and they know who you are, it matters.
That’s why those soldiers being in Poland matters. You never know how it comes up. One of my coworkers that I’m working with on a book, that’s another story, maybe for another time, her brother is in Warsaw, Poland. She told me that they had brought in some families from Ukraine. She says, “We know they got soldiers on the ground in Poland.” I’m like, “How do you know that?” It is because everybody tells them thank you. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s why this presence thing is important. There are many ways to do it. When you have troopers on the ground, either in an exercise or for a station, it matters to our nation and the world.
Let me ask you about being the Army inspector general.
You don’t jump far forward, but okay.
I got to get to it because I think it’s important to talk about the army presence. We think about what our Army is there to do. I think that that’s an important question where we sit now because we hear so much talk. The Army, the military, for twenty-plus years, we were at the forefront of the news cycle. We’re not now.
You would probably argue it, I would probably argue as well in the same position that we are at more risk now as a nation than we’ve ever been, both from foreign external actors and internal domestic actors. We need to be thinking about our Army. We need to be understanding where our Army is now, the lessons from the past, and how are we going to learn from those lessons to shape the Army of the future. The inspector general is a big part of what that looks like.
You want to know the story about becoming an inspector general?
I do.
It’s a great story. I’ll never forget it. You were the commanding general of any location, but I was the commanding general of Fort Leonard Wood. You got a driver, you got an aide, you got a chief of staff, you got an enlisted aide that takes care of you. It is because you change your uniform sometimes 3 or 4 times a day.
I was an aide.
You know exactly what I’m talking about. You get a phone call from GOMO that says, “The chief of staff of the Army would like you to do this and that.” In this case, the chief of staff of the Army would like you to become the deputy inspector general. You’re like, “What?
It’s not a question.
You have a choice. You can either take it or retire. That’s how it works. I see General Allen, and I’ll never forget this. He was the vice chief of staff at the time. We were at a function in December. I said, “Sir, who did I piss off to go to this job?” He said nothing. No response. He just looked at me. I was like, “I guess I keep moving.” What I found out later was what leaders do is talk about what needs to happen in organizations. The trade-off commander, a guy, rest his soul, General Cohen, told me, “We need to change the culture.” You also found out that whoever the three-star is has a lot to do with whoever they want as the deputy.
David Quantock was coming in to be the inspector general. He says, “I want Les Smith as my deputy.” I’m like, “Come on, David.” Anyway, it blew my mind. I had no idea all the things that the inspector general does. Most people think it’s only about senior official investigations. As the deputy, my nickname was Darth Vader. Why? It is because I had to call my peers on the phone that says, “You’re the subject of an investigation.” That’s no fun, but first, I would never lose my job over somebody else.
Many of these investigations don’t provide any substantiation at all. Many of them are just investigations because you got to look into what those things are. The problem is those that are published come out from a negative perspective because that’s what you see. When you become a general officer, SES, it’s all on paper. Enlisted guys, most of the time, not unless they’re high-level senior enlisted people, there’s not an investigation.
Every leader is responsible for enforcing the standard. If we allow our people to be treated a certain way and don’t correct it, we’ve established a new standard.
As a deputy, I was responsible for doing all the background work, but the IG does investigations, assistance, and inspections for those 1.2 or 1.3 million soldiers and civilians. There are two ways of looking at it. One way is to be reactive. One way is to be proactive. I chose to be a proactive person when I became the inspector general. I spent most of my time talking to leaders about how to stay out of trouble. Those who listened did well.
Some did not because the standard is a standard, and we have to make sure that the soldiers trust us, the nation trusts us, Congress trusts us, our leaders trust us in the things that we do. It’s not personal, but it has to be done to the standard. We have the schoolhouse where we train IGs because IGs work from four-star level down, but they all get trained at the IG school at Fort Belvoir. They learn how to do the efficiency, effectiveness to support commanders.
You mentioned standards. I had a chance, but the episode came out last April or so, to sit down with the current Sergeant Major of the Army, Mike Weimer. He has very strong opinions about standards that he shares in our conversation. They’ve even reintroduced the blue book.
Who developed that? Von Steuben.
It was in the Army, but then it went away for a while.
I know, but who developed it? Von Steuben. He was the first effective inspector general. Did you know that?
No. Sergeant Major Weimer did not tell me that.
That’s okay. I’m telling you. When he came out, I was like, yes. Way to go. We could tell that story. General Washington was having a problem with standards in his force. He brought a Prussian in to help with the standards. He came in and said, “You cannot use the bathroom at the same place where you sleep.” That’s where he came and brought those standards about latrines, standards about how you eat, how you dress, and how you fire. That was a precursor to the non-commissioned officers for our Army.
Which is the biggest differentiator between our Army and everybody else. They enforce those standards. When we think about standards, we think about where the Army is. A lot of people are out there publicly, and you can go to our YouTube channel and look at the comments. I’m often shocked, and yet appalled at times, about the amount of comments that we get about people who distrust our Army, distrust our government, and distrust the standards.
When we think about the evolution of standards, I always felt, and I can only speak from my personal opinion, that standards existed when I was in the Army from 2003 to 2016. I think my career in the infantry and going into special forces proved that you had to meet a standard. That’s what we talked about. When we look at the Army, has the standard changed? Where are we when we look at standards in the Army?
I think standards exist. They still exist. It has to be enforced, just like when you and I both were there, by leaders. Good thing I got to back up a little bit. I told my IGs this, and it applies across the board. Inspector generals are training multiple generations of leaders. As a young captain, do you remember when we used to have the ULAC down at Fort Bragg, where they took all the equipment after it got inspected and it got locked down? You probably remember that.
One of the brigades, the DRB, would go through an inspection, and the equipment got locked down. I’m a young company commander. I see these leaders, NCOs like, “Wow, here I am. I’m the man.” I’m like, “Who are these guys?” I found out later that they’re inspector general NCOs. They’re training. They take my equipment, they inspect it, they make sure everything is squared away. I got smart and said, I don’t want to wait until the inspection time, not to tell me what was right or wrong. I go see them before the timeframe. I get trained as a young captain.
Little did I know, 20 or 25 years later, that I would be the deputy inspector general, then the IG. I got trained to say, “Use the IG before something happens. Let’s see what the standards are,” because they’re a repository of many of these standards. They have all this background stuff. They have this whole enterprise all the way back up to the Department of the Army that can help you see what those inspections were in the past. What are some of the tools that they’ve sent across other units? That’s what helps us across the board.
When it comes to standards, every leader is responsible for enforcing the standard. As soon as we walk away from one, allow it to not be met, we’ve established a new standard. Frankly, that applies, in my viewpoint, outside of the military too. If we allow our people to be treated a certain way and we don’t correct it, we’ve established a new standard.
When I work with athletic teams and companies, we talk about standards and the upholding of standards a lot. I’ll go into the locker rooms in athletic teams, and I’m going to tell them, “If your locker’s a mess, or your locker room’s a mess, or the weight room’s a mess, that’s the standard you set.” Oftentimes, they’ll bring me in and they’ll say, “We have a performance issue on the field.”
Let’s go to the locker room. Let’s go to the weight room. You often see the locker room is a disaster. There are weights on the floor. There’s trash on the floor. The very first thing we start talking about is, “Why’d you walk by the trash?” It is because if you are a senior and you walk by the trash, so do the juniors, sophomores, and freshmen.
You establish them.
The first step of that is you have to enforce it.
Which, in turn, turns into the climate and the culture of the organization. Climate beats strategy all day. All day, every day. Twice for lunch.
I want to ask about the culture because you brought it up. The Army, and Sergeant Major Dailey and I had a bit of this conversation, the Army has a job. The Army’s job is to fight and defend the nation’s wars. That is inherently a difficult job. It is also a job that, I believe, shouldn’t be sugarcoated.
Every generation wants to have a sense of purpose in life, and the military is a great way to help them find that purpose.
In order to fight and win our nation’s wars, we have to develop a culture of warfighters who, at the end of the day, are willing to take a life and possibly give their own in defense of the nation. Yet, over time, we have seen a bit of softening in the messaging around the culture of the Army. Have we forgotten that we’re warfighters at heart? In order to be an effective warfighter, that has to be the message. You have to be willing to go out there and violently execute a very difficult mission.
I think we had to tell the story about what the mission of the Army is, but all of the missions of the Army. The 150-plus jobs that exist, and there’s no front line, real line. It’s all together. Folks got to understand what that task is. Support and defend that constitution means that. We need to be upfront with people, but we just need to tell people, young people, what options and opportunities exist for our jobs. It is because everybody can’t be an infantryman, even if they want to be. Everybody can’t be a special ops guy because you got to have everything associated to support them in that task.
Let’s talk about all of them, but everybody’s got to do the mission. I laugh because my daughter had to learn how to fire an M4 and a 9 mm. She hadn’t fired one of those before. She went to the field. She’s like, “Dad, you know why you’re doing that?” It is because they treat them like medics. When they become docs, they can have an appreciation for what that means. I think the other part that we have to do is talk about not only the task but also the purpose of the task. What’s the purpose of the mission?
How does it support that special ops guy? How does it support the infantry guy that’s doing the mission and the task that needs to happen? I had a great platoon trainer. He trained us like infantrymen back in 1986. We were digging foxholes. We’re like, “Why are we doing that?” It is because you’re going to be with them. You’re going to operate with them. I want you to be able to speak, look like, walk like, talk like, and hang with, because that’s how you get the respect.
You had a 35-year career. Through that time, you saw the Army ebb and flow. You saw heightened public perception of the military as we went into the Gulf War in 1991, as we went into Afghanistan, we went into Iraq, but you also saw the interwar periods. In your opinion, what do we need to be doing now to rebuild the Army? Build the Army. I don’t like using the term rebuild because the Army evolved.
How about maintain?
Maintain. What do we need to be doing now? What’s the next threat?
I will tell your story. Not my story, but tell your story. It is because I think the great, the big, “Be all you can be,” which I’m glad we should have never left that one, but that’s a nice term for another day. Be all you can be. We all became who we are because of our service. That’s what we need to tell young people. I teach leadership at Georgia Southern, where I went to school, and I don’t talk to ROTC guys. I talk to them when I visit, but I talk to the College of Business.
Every class, there’s 1 or 2 young people that say, “How can I do some of that?” I don’t always tell them this during the military. I said, “Let’s find whatever your purpose is.” Everybody’s looking for a sense of purpose. We found our sense of purpose in our military service. Some people could be in the Boys and Girls Club. Some people could be teaching in an inner-city school, but we have to help young people find their purpose.
That, in turn, because every generation, and I don’t know if COVID did it or what did it, they all want to have a sense of purpose in life. Again, I think this is a great way to have a sense of purpose. That’s why I’m here at AUSA, to help talk about that purpose, because those 122 chapters, which are across the world, they’re embedded in our communities. They’re telling those stories.
If you get one person, like my high school ROTC person, I didn’t know this, but he says, “You ever thought about joining the National Guard?” What would have happened if he hadn’t talked to me back when I was a senior in high school? Where would I be? I don’t know. Georgia Southern. That guy says, “I got this great deal.” If we don’t have the conversation, we know what will happen, because they won’t know. We owe it to young people to talk about what those options are and how they exist.
I think it’s important, too, as we see the GWAT generation retiring, that everybody remembers they need to be proud of their service, and they have a story to tell. What I don’t want to happen, and I don’t think we will, but I think that there’s a lot of polarization in society around this, is that we end up like we did to some extent, I don’t think it’ll be as bad,.
However, after the Vietnam War, where you have folks who don’t want to talk about their service and don’t want to share those experiences. It is because I think, as you said, getting out there, talking about it, talking about things that went well and also things that didn’t go well, will motivate that next generation to reduce that interwar lull that we may have.
I think it’s incumbent on all of us to talk about those things. I call it the one-over-the-world thing. It’s about, “Going to Germany was great. South Korea, I took my family there. It was our best assignment.” That’s true. It was our best assignment. My wife didn’t want to go, but it was great. My kids were eating strange stuff that they liked, but it was stuff that you learn.
It was cultures that you understood, families and friends and people that we know from around the world. My kids are international people because they understand, they have an appreciation for all cultures, respect for all cultures. They understand what that means. I had to bring one of my nephews up here to DC. He grew up in Orlando. I didn’t know anything, brought him to DC. His mind was like, “Poow” I’m like, “Let me explain to you, if you don’t grow up in a separate one space, this is all you know.” We owe it to young people to see what those things are, what those options are.
You brought up AUSA. In your role, leading leadership and development here, what are you focused on?
Everything. If you think about the mission of AUSA, it’s support for the soldier. Jack Haley, one of our vice presidents, got three of us, me, Dan Dailey, and Jack. Jack is like a logistician, the big conference, he does all the pieces and parts.
That thing’s huge.
It’s great.
I never saw anything like that.
Leadership is about building trusted organizations, knowing your presence matters, and understanding what purpose looks like.
It’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s AUSA. The Army is big. AUSA has got to be big. We’ve got to be bad. I provide the content. We do hot topics for all the speakers, all the panels, and the senior executive round tables. We take the Army senior leaders are talking about, and then we amplify it during the year. It is because you know how long it takes for a message to get down to the force. About eighteen months.
We reiterated it again. We just had one on the enterprise of, drawing a blank, the enterprise of the information hot topic now, but it was on the enterprise. Anyway, it had to do with the logistics enterprise for the nation. We brought all these: you had the DLA director here, the G4 was here, and you had the Army and military command.
It was a great topic. Over 200 people showed up because everybody is trying to figure out how the infrastructure, as it ages, is being upgraded. We’re ready to execute that next task because we’re not going to have a year to build up like we did for 9/11 or even for 2003. It’s not going to be that way anymore.
That’s what I do. That’s why I took the job here, because I teach leadership at Georgia Southern. The Center for Leadership that we stood up is teaching leadership back to the Army, stuff that we learn, helping guys to understand why your presence matters, how you build trust in organizations, what purpose looks like. It’s great. I love doing what I do every day.
I’ve got time for one more question for you, and we’re going to hit that leadership piece. I want to ask you about habits because I think habits are critical in leadership. We talked about the origin of the Jedburghs before we started. When I think about the Jedburgh mission and the three-man teams that parachuted behind enemy lines starting the night before D-Day, they were given very general guidance, win at all costs.
I think they had to do three things. You’ve heard of these three things, certainly in your military career. They had to do three things effectively every single day that had to become routine, second nature. If they did these three things, then they could focus on the more complex task that was at hand, which was defeating the German Army. They had to be able to shoot, they had to be able to move, and they had to be able to communicate. They couldn’t think about it, they just had to do it. Instinct. What are the three things that you do every day in your world to be successful?
Physical training, reading, and engaging. I got to tell you, and I was talking about this the other day. You know what a towing panel is and a cotter pin?
Yes.
I had a non-commissioned officer tell me that the reason why I am where I am is because of great non-commissioned officers. Dan Dailey reminds me of that all the time. The point is, in the motor pool, we check towing panels and cotter pins. That was the standard on Monday. If on Friday it wasn’t squared away, we released all the soldiers. Do you know who fixed the towing panels and cotter pins? For your readers, a towing panel slides down, the cotter pin goes inside. If it doesn’t work, then when you need to tow something, you can’t do it because you don’t have a cotter pin. It seems very simple.
If you have attention to detail, you understand what the standard is, and the leaders are enforcing the standard, then you can do the other things. It’s blocking and tackling. Washington Commanders, great, they lost this weekend because they couldn’t do the basics. They had four turnovers. You don’t win games that way. That’s the same thing with us.
If I don’t exercise every day, I don’t look like the leader I’m supposed to look like. I don’t have the confidence, and the people don’t have the confidence in me. If I’m not thinking about what’s happening in the world every day, then I can’t communicate that. Lastly, if I’m not engaging people, I don’t understand how they’re feeling. The only way to have the finger on the pulse of people is by spending time with them. You can’t feel the pulse this way, so you have to be here.
For your readers, don’t go around and touch your people. You got to know what’s going on. “How are you doing?” When I walked in, I’m like, “Who’s this guy coming in to see you?” When Dan was there, I did that all the time. This is doing the Pentagon. I love doing the Pentagon. Can you imagine a tall, bald-headed three-star stopping a major in the hallway? You got to engage folks. All those guys are now colonels and generals. They’re like, “Thank you, sir. I appreciate you for talking to us,” because sometimes they are not seen. That’s how you find out what’s happening within your organization. That’s what you have to do as leaders every day.
Those three are great. The basics, PT, reading and engaging those around you. I think all that’s very cool.
That’s how you keep your finger on the pulse.
General Smith, I appreciate you taking a few minutes to sit down with us. I sincerely appreciate all the support that
AUSA has given to myself and my team and the hospitality here over a couple of episodes. I very much look forward to continuing to build the relationship.
We got people to talk to. We need to be on site. There are some places and things I think we need to do together.
I’m all about it. I’m going to get you involved with the Green Beret Foundation.
Roger that. Will I be able to do a Halo jump, tandem jump somewhere?
We know the Golden Knights, so they’ve been off. You listened to the episode, so let’s get them in here and make it happen.
Roger that. Thanks a lot.
Green Beret Foundation
P.O. Box 25138
New York, NY 10087-5138
Note: Please use USPS mail or priority mail. Do not use FedEx.
15618 Summit Park Drive, Suite 801 Montgomery, TX 77356
Call: at: (844) 287-7133
