The Army physical training test has long been a measure of a soldier’s fitness for duty and for combat. For decades it’s been used as the benchmark upon which all other physical fitness has been evaluated. And for decades it has been hotly debated, modified and enhanced to best represent the current mission of the US Army.
SGM Chris Mullinax has been charged with developing the Army Fitness Test; the newest version of the PT test that now replaces the Army Combat Fitness Test and its predecessor, the Army Physical Fitness Test.
From the Pentagon’s US Army Broadcasting Studio, and with a cameo from Sergeant Major of the Army Mike Weimer, Fran Racioppi sat down with SGM Mullinax to breakdown the changes in the test, why combat MOS’s are being held to different sex-neutral standards, and how the grading scale is designed to enhance and enforce a standard that ensures warfighting is at the forefront of every soldier’s fitness.
As a career 75th Ranger Regiment leader, SGM Mullinax also shares why America’s national security is reliant on Rangers, and why Ranger School remains the premier leadership standard in the military.
Watch, listen or read our conversation as SMA Weimer updates us on the Army’s Blue Book and how enforcing the fitness standard is increasing Army readiness.
The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by University of Health & Performance, providing our Veterans 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 why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.
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Sergeant Major Mullinax, welcome to The Jedburgh Podcast.
Thanks for having me. Thanks to you and your team for helping us tell our story.
It’s important. We’re back here in the Pentagon, which is awesome, by the way, and now we’re in the basement. I didn’t even know that this room existed. When I was in one of the last jobs I held as an aide, I got to go in the basement of the Pentagon to these places that you only see in the movies, but this one is definitely not in the movies.
I didn’t know it existed either until we were rolling out the AFT, and here we are.
You served as the Sergeant Major for the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Training, what we know as the G-3/5/7. Previously, you served as the Command Sergeant Major for the 1st Infantry Division and also served within the Regular Army, USASOC, and in SOCOM in all three Ranger battalions. We’re going to be talking about that. You also served in the 173rd Airborne Brigade out of Italy and the 2-2 Stryker Brigade. Certainly a long career.
Someone came to you, probably out of the Chief’s office or the Sergeant Major of the Army’s office, and said, “We need you to lead this effort to redesign the PT test,” which I think has been a topic of discussion and argument probably for the last 250 years. I want to ask you, why now was the time to start relooking at the PT test?
Great question. I didn’t know this until I started working in the building. You wouldn’t know until you worked here, but we’re always assessing our physical standards. The AFT changes are one of many examples of the Army getting better every day. Changing the PT test is not a new idea. We’re always looking to get better. This is where we are right now. Over the last eighteen months, we’ve been looking at the ACFT. We’ve got enough data over the last several years, and we can now look at all that data and evolve our standards and our fitness assessment into something more practical and more useful to our soldiers and our force.
The AFT has evolved their standards and fitness assessment into something more practical and useful to our soldiers and our forces.
Let’s talk about that evolution because if you go back, I got out many years ago now, and we were still doing the three-event Army Physical Fitness Test, the APFT. You have the pushups, you have the sit-ups, and you have the 2-mile run. Shortly after that, it evolved into the ACFT, the Army Combat Fitness Test. Now, we have the Army Fitness Test. Talk about that evolution for a second, and how come it’s gone from three-base exercises to six, and now, it’s gone to five? What’s the thought process behind that?
I think as the Army matured, especially during the GWA, we learned a lot. The SOF community and the resources for all things physical grew. We brought in strength coaches. We brought in physical therapists. We got smart on the medicine side. We got smart on the diet side. The Army realized, “Our OPT test is a very good indicator of performance, but we need something a little more holistic. We need to be able to test more than sit-ups, push-ups, and a 2-mile run. What we want to do is be able to measure on a broader spectrum, and so that’s where the evolution of the ACFT began.
We need a fitness test that is a little more holistic. We need to be able to test more than just sit ups, push-ups, and a two-mile run.
One of the people who designs a lot of that stuff and directs a lot of it walked into the room. Sergeant Major of the Army is here. Thanks for stopping by.
Fran, it’s good to be here.
It’s good to see you again. I’ll tell you, you’re a YouTube sensation on The Jedburgh Podcast YouTube channel. There’s a whole slew of topics. I wrote down some notes because your folks, your staff, are very good. They gave me a heads-up that you might be stopping by. There are a few topics, like the Blue Book standards. “I’ve seen my fair share of combat, but I’ve never been to war” was one of the popular quotes. I was going to ask you, do you have it?
Of course we do.
How is the rollout going?
As a matter of fact, TRADOC gave me an update the other day. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but it’s the truth. I think we’re about 373,000 downloads. Now, we’re close to a million people in the Army, so I’m always like, “The glass is half empty. Why aren’t there a million people who have downloaded the Blue Book?” It’s a journey. We’re not going to get there overnight, but it is on a serious uptick. I don’t know how many people are printing it. I’m still old school. I like to touch it. It’s a good reminder of that was how we grew up, but I am excited to see they’re downloading it and using it as the reference for what right looks like.
We’re talking about standards, and that’s something that you’ve harped on, not only in the conversation we had in 2024, but even in many of the conversations you’ve been having over the past couple of months as you’ve visited the formations. I’ve read some of the transcripts and watched some of it that’s been publicized, and you’ve doubled down on standards. We’re about to get into it here when we start talking about the PT Test and the Army Fitness Test. Talk for a second about the importance of upholding the standards in the redesign of that fitness test.
That’s why Chris was the right Sergeant Major to come on here, and you’re seeing JoAnn Naumann out there. We intentionally picked the right people to talk about fitness. Audio and video have to match. I don’t like to start from the minimum standard. That to me is not a place you start any conversation, especially with war fighters, but we do have to have a minimum standard. That’s the journey Chris is going to talk to you about, a little bit like we’re raising that minimum standard. He’ll go over that in detail because he’s been studying it with the G-3/5/7 team, RAND, and some other folks. I’ll let him dive deep into that.
The bottom line is that I start the conversation with, “You should be trying to exceed any standard.” When I walked in, I heard you talk about the journey that you remember with the three-event test. Some folks remember we had extended scales, then we didn’t use extended scales. I would argue that the reason we had extended scales is that it was a fairly easy test. We scored 370, 360, or 350, and then it got to the point where you put 300 on your ACFT, on your NCOER, or you just put pass or fail.
The journey is about changing the culture of fitness and what it means to be fit as a war fighter. That’s the macro topic that we love. Right now, we’ve got to dial into the Army Fitness Test and the minimum standards for combat arms, etc. That’s important, too, but it’s bigger than that. It’s twice a year. You take this thing twice a year. If you’re doing everything properly in your fitness regimen, you should be taking that test twice a year and not even thinking about it. “We got the AFTs next week. Okay. Monday, 6:00. Roger that.” That should be your attitude.
The journey is about changing the culture of fitness, what it means to be fit as a warfighter.
Or “I forgot about it.” No big deal. We’re going to do it.
“We’re doing another one? We’re doing an extra one? There are people taking the retest? There are people who missed it because they were on pass or leave? Okay, whatever. I’ll take it again with my soldiers.”
If you think about elite organizations, dynasties in athletic programs, college programs, where they dominate every year, year in, year out, there’s this concept that gets talked about. You can’t put competition on a pedestal. You can’t look to the end of the week. If you’re a football player, you can’t say, “My hardest day is game day.” Your hardest day has to be the practice, so when you get to game day, it’s like, “I only got to do this once.” When I worked with rowing teams and from my days as a collegiate rower, we continuously needed to do four races in a practice, so when you get to Saturday, it’s like, “I’m going to do this thing once.” It’s not a thing.
The vice talks about this well, Vice Chief of Staff General Mingus, one of our phenomenal teammates we’re fortunate to work with here in the Pentagon. If you think about our mission, you’ve got to infil, you have to do something on the objective, potentially hold the terrain after you’re successful, or exfil. It’s not about one step and only one step. When you think about fitness, if I take an AFT this morning at 6:00, I have a full day of hard problems to get after.
It’s not that you take an AFT, and you’re done for the week. That’s why the culture of fitness is our main priority. We’re hoping that this next phase in the evolution of a fitness test will help everybody understand, to Chris’s points before I came on here, this is a journey. This will continue to evolve, also. A year from now, we’ll have more data, and then we’ll reevaluate the process again.
I had a chance, since we last spoke, to sit down with your predecessor, a former sergeant major, the 15th Sergeant Major of the Army, Dan Dailey, who was my first Sergeant Major at the battalion level in the 4th ID. We had a great conversation about readiness and what readiness means. Now, as we see what’s going on in society right now, we see over the last several months a huge increase in recruiting, and it’s gotten a lot stronger, back to the conversation that we had about some of the challenges. Can you talk for a second from your perspective about how that has changed over the last year? How are things like a revamped Army Fitness Test re-instilling into the force this war-fighting first culture, which then is going to drive recruiting numbers?
Again, this is a journey with multiple chapters in it. We’re two years into getting after the warfighting ethos, if you will. Part of that has been part of our recruiting journey. Retention continues to stay steady. As a matter of fact, we’re crushing retention, and I don’t have any wood close by, but soldiers want to continue to serve. We’re not taking that for granted either. We’re taking a look at how we retain soldiers, how we use our bonus money, and how we use the choice of duty stations for second and third-term soldiers, and diving into that.
The warrior ethos goes, for years now, back to the Blue Book, back to the standards, and back to the oath. What does that oath mean? Private Weimer took an oath. Did I know what the oath was? You’ve heard me talk about that journey from compliance to commitment. It starts the day you ship from MEPS. What did I sign up for? By the time you’re done with basic AIT, you’ll get to your first duty station. Do I fully understand? Am I committed? That’s that journey. This is a hard life.
This is not easy. You chose the path that needs a machete. There’s a brush that needs to be cleared. It’s a righteous path. It’s hard. We need to embrace that this is harder than the average path and be proud of it. That’s what being part of this profession means. I think when you reset that, people sit back, and they’re like, “That makes complete sense.” That has been the last couple of years. I think you’re starting to see that in recruiting stations. They know what they’re signing up for. This is going to be hard. You bet it is, but we’re going to teach you. We’re going to coach you. We’re going to bring you along on the journey.
We’re not going to help you meet the standard in the wrong way. We’re going to coach you and help you meet the standard in the right way. As Chris is talking about, you’ve got to continue to be able to meet the standard over time because we exist to fight and win. We’re not a jobs program. We have a real mission with real consequences for the nation if we don’t take the profession seriously, which is why I’m not hanging out very long. You’re going to get to talk to Chris because, I don’t know if he mentioned it, he’s the next USARAF Sergeant Major. He’s going to work for General Donahue in Europe this summer. It’s Sergeant Majors like him that remembered where he started out as a private and how he got to where he is now. He’s passionate about giving it all back.
We exist to fight and win. We’re not a job program. We have a real mission with real consequences for the nation.
He’s going to do great in that role. We’re going to dig into the details of the Army Fitness Test. We were having a good laugh before this about, he’s going to go there and take the job from Sergeant Major Jeremiah Inman, also a friend of the podcast.
Another war fighter.
I was telling him how we dragged him out there into the bunkers of Pointe du Hoc last June. We did that interview with him there, and you talked about a real mission, but you want to talk about an organization that’s front and center, and the strategic impact of our forward-deployed forces. It comes back to everything you’re saying that this is a no-fail mission that the Army has, and we need the right people to do it. That’s without exactly what you said, is there deterrence?
Absolutely not.
I would argue there isn’t deterrence. We’ve got to be serious. We’ve got to be serious about our profession.
I’m going to get out of here. Chris has got this. You’re in good hands. Good to see you, Fran.
You, too. Thanks so much for stopping by. That’s amazing. See you later.
You got it. I’m going to catch an airplane.
All right. Thank you for stopping by. Good seeing you. We heard it from the man himself about the importance of the standards, the Blue Book, where the Army Fitness Test now falls into how we increase that culture of war fighting. Let’s get back a second to the test itself. As we were talking before the SMA stopped by, we’ve seen the evolution of the fitness test go from the three exercises to six exercises to five, now we dropped one from the Army Combat Fitness Test. Can you talk for a second about why those changes were made and why the focus is now on these five exercises? We can name them. We got them right here. The three repetition maximum deadlift, the hand release push-up, arm extensions, sprint-drag-carry, the plank, and the 2-mile run.
The three to five, as I said before, is realizing that we need a soldier, and we’re trying to create a soldier who is much more well-rounded. When I grew up in the Ranger, I was a young private, like SMA was talking about. It was a right face, and run as fast as you can. That’s important. A lot of important stuff happens. You learn a lot about yourself. You learn a lot about your team. You develop grit. What we’ve realized, we’ve gotten smarter.
We’ve realized that with the evolution of changing to the new events and with a lot of research behind that, we’ve had to use a lot of resources to develop those. In the practice of physical fitness across the world, there are a lot of things we could have picked, and nobody is arguing that, but we had to pick something. These are the things that, with all the work that we did, we came up with. What I appreciate about this test and why I think it’s better is that one of the aspects that a lot of times soldiers don’t realize is that doing well on each event is very important. You want to max those. You want to move beyond them.
Those should always be your goals, but also your ability to recover in between them is the true test of your fitness, because the sprint-drag-carry is tough. You still got the plank, and you’ve got to get that two-mile run knocked out. If you want to max both of those things, you’ve got to be able to recover in between them. I think that’s where the test is. That’s where the difference is. The test in the test is better. You only get about four minutes between each event.
You get a ten-minute reset before the run. We try to keep that close to those times as possible because the indicator of your fitness is your ability to recover in between those events. Now, the ball-throw. We got rid of the ball-throw because measuring explosive strength is very important. We’re still looking at that. We’ll figure something out. You can’t measure everything, but measuring explosive strength is important. We thought the ball-throw was going to do that for us, but we had a lot of inconsistent data. That’s the first thing.
The second part of that is that soldiers were spending a lot of time training for the test, specifically for the ball-throw. It’s very technique-focused. You’ve got soldiers running up and down a field, throwing the ball, trying to get the angle right, trying to make it go as far as possible, from a technique perspective. We didn’t see the value in that. We decided to remove it.
The four-minute interval is an interesting piece when you do talk about recovery, because I remember back to the three-exercise test, and there was no specified interval, at least that I ever saw.
I think that there was probably no more than ten minutes, if I’m remembering. It fluctuates because if you got in the front of the line, you knew that you were going to get more time on the backside. There were ways to game it. Still, when you have a lot of soldiers, it’s not going to be perfect.
Like Airborne School. I remember the PT test at Airborne School was five hours long.
Yeah. The test should take an hour and a half. That requires whoever the testers are to come up with a strong plan so that they can get that entire formation through there within that time limit. We need them to do that the right way because you don’t want soldiers getting too much. You want them to get the right amount of rest in between those events, otherwise, you’re not getting the result that you’re looking for out of it.
If you think about replication of combat, that’s what you’re seeing. You’re seeing a go, stop, go, stop. Very rarely are you, as you said, popping on and running for fifteen or twenty minutes.
SMA’s point was very valid. You’ve got to be able to get off the objective, and you’ve got to be able to exfil. We still have to be able to do that.
Let’s talk about some of the standard stuff. There’s a differentiation here between the combat MOSs, the combat military occupational specialties, there are 21 of them that have been identified, and then all of the others. I think the number is 80 or something total in the Army, if I recall. A lot have been in the combat supporting roles that are operating under a different standard. Talk for a second about the differentiation between the combat MOSs and the combat supporting MOSs, and why that differentiation in standards has been put in place.
Those 21 MOSs, which we define as the close combat force, now, we can expand it. We’re looking to expand that. There are some others that we may have left out. We’ll look to bring some others in. I think that our 13 Bravos may be one that we’ll look at. Our combat medics, for example. There are a couple of things. We’re increasing the standard to 350, so a total minimum score of 350 for those 21 MOSs will be their requirement. Of course, it’s sex-neutral, but age-norm. Every soldier within those MOSs serving will be required to have a 350 minimum standard in their age bracket.
Regardless of gender.
That’s right.
We’re looking at infantry, engineers, field artillery, Special Forces, armor, and the cav scouts. They all fall into that world. The standard for the non-combat or close combat MOSs is a 300.
That’s right. Minimum score of 300.
When you look at the development of the assessment and the grading criteria, I think SMA started to talk about that for a second, where he said we have to develop a very standardized approach to actual evaluation. How do you go about the development of the evaluation metrics for each one of these?
We use RAND. It’s a think tank that does a lot of great work for the Army. A bunch of scientists come together, and they analyze this in every way possible. We use the research that they do to develop it. Right now, we know the implementation guidance is coming out real soon, and the scorecard will be associated with that. You’ll see some changes there. We’ll see the scorecard revised based on the data that we’ve had over the last several years to match where the force is currently. We’ll see those minimum scores from the old scorecard go up a little bit. You’ll have the tables associated. The close combat force needs an average of 70% in each event. As long as they get a 60, then they’re passing, but as long as they have a total of 350. I think that scorecard will be part of that package.
How are you envisioning one standard that’s going to exist between men and women in the combat MOSs?
There will.
The gender standard is still different in the non-combat MOSs.
Yeah.
Do you envision any challenges with that in the combat MOSs?
Right now, our females who are in those 21 MOSs are performing well. We don’t anticipate any challenges for our soldiers in those MOSs to continue. They’re there for a reason. They want to be in those jobs. They pick those jobs. They know that they’re very physically demanding. They raise their right hand, committed to service, and to get better every day is one of the commitments that they made. Right now, we’re optimistic that we’re not going to see any challenges there. The rest of the force, that’s the traditional male and female age norm scorecard.
When we think about fitness, and we look at it from a leader standpoint, why is fitness so important for leadership to put an emphasis behind? The reality is, as you know, at all the levels that you served, the team cares about what their leader cares about. When we have physically fit leadership at the NCO level and the officer level, it inspires our ranks. From your perspective and your career in working across both Special Operations Command and the Regular Army, why do we put fitness as such a high priority?
We could talk about that forever. The short answer is it’s our edge over our adversaries. Our ability to fight and win our nation’s wars relies heavily on our fitness. That is strategically important. There are other things. What we’ve also learned in our research is that a physically fit soldier who performs well on the AFT is also less likely to be injured.
When we’re rolling out our H2F, our Holistic Health and Fitness programs across the force that are getting stood up everywhere with the resources associated with those, that’s all part of the package in having a well-rounded, strong, physically fit soldier. The other part of it is that there are studies that show that the best and fastest way to get rid of anxiety almost immediately is to workout, which is simply taking a good walk somewhere. The list goes on and on, but at the end of the day, having a strong, physically fit force is our edge over our adversaries.
That mentality doesn’t go away. A few days ago, I was dealing with a client who was giving me a hard time. I stood up and was like, “I got to go for a run.” That’s what I did. I’m like, “I’m going for a run, 30 minutes, knock this out, clear my head.” I think when we look at physical fitness, and we’ve done a lot on The Jedburgh Podcast over the years about physical fitness, you’ll put a lot of emphasis on athletics and the importance behind it, but it clears your mind and gives you distance. It allows you to think through a lot of challenges at times, but also, the emotional nature of being in shape at a higher level is the difference between those who find success and those who struggle.
Imagine a soldier on the battlefield in a gunfight. A lot of emotions there. That soldier is maneuvering across the battlefield. At some point, they’re going to stop, and they’re going to have to take shots. The more physically fit they are, the better their shots are going to be. The more physically fit they are, the more clarity they’re going to have. To your point, the list goes on and on.
The more physically fit soldiers are, the better their shots and the more clarity they will have.
Let’s talk for a second about your career. We mentioned that you served in all three Ranger battalions and also served in the conventional infantry force. You’ve probably got 35 deployments or something like that from your time in there. We had a chance a couple of weeks ago. We went down to the 160th, and Chief Warrant Officer Five Pete Sullivan is the Command Chief Warrant Officer for the 160th. We were talking to him, and he has 35 deployments. I’m like, “This is ridiculous.” He was our pilot when they took us up in the MH-47. I’m like, “I think we’re in good hands, probably the most experienced guy in the Army or possibly the world who’s flying us right now.” For you, if you look back to prior to coming into the Army, and you had to make a decision, why come into the Army?
I wasn’t a very good student in high school. Probably one of the best decisions I ever made in life was joining the United States Army. I think I always wanted it. I was always interested in service. I did three years of Junior Navy ROTC. I thought I was going into the Navy until I met this guy that my dad was helping out, as I was getting ready to graduate and hadn’t signed up yet. He had come out of the Ranger Regiment, and he was transitioned to civilian life. My dad was a mentor for him there for a little while. He told me, “You need to get a RIP contract.”
I asked him, “What’s that? What’s a Ranger?” I had no idea. Anyways, go down to the recruiting station, ask for it. They get me signed up. He said, “Whatever you do, though, don’t sign up for 11 Bravo. You want to be a medic, an FO, or something like that.” I come back, and he’s like, ”What’d you get?” I’m like, “11 Bravo.” Anyways, it worked out for me. I couldn’t be happier with the time. It’s interesting because as I look at my time in the Ranger Regiment, a clear set of standards throughout that I spent sixteen years there, a clear set of standards the entire time. For the close combat force, it feels very similar to that. They have an increased standard. They have to get a total of 350 on their test. It feels similar.
We didn’t have females yet in the Ranger Regiment whenever I was there, but knowing that we had one standard and we were all held to that standard every single day, no matter the conditions, is what helped seal that trust within the organization. One of many things, but a strong cohesive team that can fight and win on the battlefield is a team that’s strong because they trust each other. Most of that trust is developed by me demonstrating that I’m proficient at my job.
One important element is that I’m physically fit, and I’m proficient in my craft. I know my craft, but I can do my craft and do it well under harsh conditions. That is where that trust is so important. We’re trying to extend that same cultural element to the close combat force because they require it as much as any Ranger battalion does.
I think when you look across the Army, you look at the formations, and you think about the term esprit de corps when we have it in the creed, you think about Ranger Regiment first and foremost because they do such a good job with the cultural institutionalization, as you’re talking about, of putting that warfighter mindset into your mind and not the back of your mind. That lives in absolutely every aspect of what you do when you serve in the Regiment or you’re around the Regiment.
I’ll go back to my days in Ranger School. I want to ask you, when you look at Ranger School, and we look at the Army Fitness Test because inevitably, that’s going to be the first couple of hours of Ranger School moving forward, how do you assess Ranger School now in their ability to continue to develop the premier army leadership cadre across both the NCO and the officer ranks?
I think it’s probably harder than it ever has been.
What do you mean? I went when it was hard.
Last hard class, right? I think that as the Army’s matured, that organization, like many others, has matured as well. The standards have been consistent throughout. We’ve introduced females into the course, which is fairly new for the organization, but the standards held strong throughout all of that. I think that’s what makes it such a prestigious school because, like the SMA was talking about, they have not deviated. Things have evolved, but the standard is still the same. In a lot of ways, I think it’s probably harder than when we went through.
We’ve had a chance to spend some time with Lieutenant Colonel Lisa Jaster, who was in the first integrated class. She went to Ranger School three times. I went once. She got recycled in every phase. Her perspective is that she felt, at least, that it was harder because of the microscope that was put under the females who were going through the course. Inevitably, there are a lot of YouTube warriors out there who will have a different opinion and talk about that, but I think when we talk about the implementation of the standard, I always think back to Ranger School.
Having served even in the Special Forces Regiment, going through SUT, going through the Special Forces Qualification Course, the standards were there. The standards were enforced. It was hard. Don’t get me wrong, but when people say, “What’s the hardest thing you did in your career?” It was going to Ranger School, 100%. Hands down. I think it prepares you as a leader to be able to go out, stand up in front of your formation, and have a sense of confidence and probably at times, overconfidence, especially as a young officer or NCO. That prepares you to be able to lead when it does get challenging.
For me, personally, I think that the most important part about Ranger School is that you learn a lot about yourself. You learn how you’re going to react under some tough conditions. Those conditions hadn’t been replicated in your life until that point. Where were you going to do that? Basic training didn’t quite do that. Your unit wasn’t doing that. That school brings it all out. You learn about yourself, you learn from that experience, and you learn how you need to get better. I think that’s one of the greatest strengths of the school.
It applies in all phases of your life. I joke. Now, I’ve got two little kids, an older one and two little kids, and I’m like, “I live at Ranger School. There’s no sleep.” Somebody’s always in there. You’re going to do something. I feel like I live there. Let’s talk for a second about readiness. We talked about it with SMA Weimer and also with SMA Dailey in our previous conversation. When we talk about manning, training, equipping, and leader development, from your perspective, as you sit in the G-3/5/7, and you’re preparing yourself now over the next couple of months to head out to Europe and take the senior enlisted role at US Army Africa Europe, how do you assess the Army’s readiness across manning, training, equipping, and leader development right now?
It’s a hard process. It’s a continuous process. I think the Army has it pretty well figured out. We’re in a space right now where we’re transforming as an institution because we’ve got to be able to fight and win on the modern battlefield. We’re transitioning from the twenty years in the GWOT, where we weren’t focused on large-scale combat operations. We’re redefining what that looks like for the force. The AFT is a great example of that.
How do you do both, though? When I say both, what I’m talking about is that we did spend 25 years focused on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. The discussion now, as we look at the forward strategy, we look at the threats that we face across the world with peer and near-peer adversaries, and we talk about the term LSCO, large-scale combat operations that you mentioned, the threat of terror still exists. We’re sitting in a building that was attacked on 9/11. We think about the kids who are coming into the Army who were not alive during 9/11. How do you prepare an Army to combat such a wide range of potential challenges? Because we can’t forget about it.
I think for the life in the day of the everyday soldier, it’s starting your day with tough, realistic PT. You talked about SMA Dailey. He had the great line of, “PT might not be the most important thing we do today, but it’s the most important thing we do every day.” That mindset is a great example of readiness, of culturally getting better every day, and being ready. It starts with the individual doing the things that they’re supposed to do every single day, learning their craft, maintaining themselves, and continuing to grow and learn as a soldier.
Our commanders across our force at every echelon are managing all those very difficult nuances when it comes to trying to modernize their force and be ready at the same time. It’s difficult. You could make an argument. You can’t modernize and be ready at the same time, but it’s a difficult math problem. What our commanders do is they figure out what’s most important and they prioritize those things. That’s how we focus the force.
I would argue you have to. You have to modernize and be ready at the same time. I don’t think he can look at it in a linear space and say, “Okay, for the next two years, we’re going to modernize the force, and then we’re ready to fight the enemy, whoever that might be. Everyone just stand by.” We know that we’re constantly being evaluated. We’re constantly being tested and assessed. Our will versus our capacity is being tested on a continuous basis by our adversaries. I think when we talk about things like the Army Fitness Test, capacity is in there.
I also think that the aspect of will is there. Is America willing, ready, and able to combat the next large threat because of being at war for twenty-plus years and because of the struggles that we’ve had with bringing people out of the military back into society, and then over the last couple of years, trying to bring people back into the military? We’re seeing that turnaround. To me, it’s about how we develop a culture of will where our adversaries understand that America is ready, the Army is ready, and if and when it’s called, we will show up.
It’s a very dangerous world, arguably more dangerous than it ever has been in our history. We have to be ready. That’s the bottom line.
It’s a very dangerous world, arguably more dangerous than ever, and we have to be ready. That’s the bottom line.
Is there anything we’re not doing right now that you think we need to be?
I’m sure there is. It’s a great question. I don’t have anything off the top of my head that comes to mind that keeps me up at night. We’re in a place right now as an Army, like we always have, we’ve got phenomenal leaders. We’re focused on the right things. We had a change in administration. What’s awesome and what I’ve learned about the Army since I’ve been in the building is the Army is focused regardless of the path of how our civilian leadership has largely had the same goal for the Army as the goal, which is to fight and win our nation’s wars. The path may be a little bit different, and we may have to course correct a little bit along the way, but the Army is very good about moving out and staying focused on the right things.
The truest song in the history of the world is the Army song. The Army keeps rolling along. That’s been going on for 250 years. I’ve got one more question for you. The fitness test, fitness in general, as we’ve talked about, is about habits. It’s about developing a habit that is something you don’t have to think about. At the end of every one of our conversations, I ask our guests about their habits, and I always phrase it in terms of the Jedburghs and the Jedburgh teams in World War II, who had to be able to do three things. They had to be able to shoot, move, and communicate. When we look at ‘move,’ the fitness test falls into that, but they had to do those things without thinking.
You referenced being in a firefight, and you have these decisions that you have to make. One of the decisions that you can’t make is, can I run from here to there and execute the job that I have to do right now? You don’t have time to be thinking about that, and that has to be table stakes. What are the three things that you do every day to prepare yourself for success?
I think one, every day, PT. Not doing PT is not an option. We’ve got to find time. In this building, sometimes, it can be very difficult, so making sure that I make time for PT is very important. On a personal level, I’ve got to make sure that I figure out that balance that we say we can’t figure out, which is making sure that I’m available to my family. I’m always thinking about that. One of my goals is always to try to sit down and eat dinner with my family every single night. The third, which I struggle with, when I do it right, it’s worth its weight in gold, is to pause and reflect on the work that I got done. Service is hard, and it wouldn’t be service if it weren’t hard.
One of the most important things we do is when you come to work every day, some days are miserable. A lot of days are miserable in the Army. You’ve got to be able to reflect and find the good stuff that happened throughout that time because reflecting on that is important to make sure that you stay positive. It’s easy to get discouraged. It’s easy to become salty, especially for a senior NCO, as you get older, but you’ve got to be able to reflect, find the good stuff that you did that day, and find a way to be positive.
If you’re coming to work every day and you’re miserable, you’re probably making everybody else around you miserable, too. You’ve got to come to work every day with a positive attitude, a can-do attitude, and a never-quit attitude. You’ve got to be thinking about the war ethos and find the goodness in the work that we do every single day. Service is hard. It wouldn’t be service if it weren’t hard.
I’ll tell you, when you get out, you think back about all the days, and you realize that even on the worst day, it wasn’t that bad.
That’s probably fair. You stuck around for all those years because you were surrounded by great people.
It’s all about the people. That’s what you remember. You remember the events you went to. You remember the deployments. You remember things you did. You always remember the people. Whenever you come into a building like this, you’re always walking through the hall, going, “I wonder if I’ll see anybody that I know,” because those are the people that you came up with who understood you. They were with you through the good and the bad. You remember them fondly, even the bad ones.
Sergeant Major, I appreciate you taking the time. Good luck as you roll out the AFT over the course of the next couple of weeks. I know that there’s a timeline for it to go out to the National Guard and the Reserve Force. It’s certainly going to be an evolution that will continue to occur. You’ll be able, in the next couple of months, to get out of the spotlight. You’re not going out of the spotlight. You’re going into a different one, but at least you won’t be in the head chat. You’ll have a little reprieve with an ocean between you and this building.
I’ve paid my dues.
I hope you enjoy Europe. I look forward to seeing you again out there and having a little catch-up once you get into that role.
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Thanks.
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