Standards set the foundation for any professional organization. The baseline for professionalism in the US Army is Army Regulation 670-1; Wear and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia. This regulation dictates the standard for every Soldier, regardless of rank or position. AR 670-1 has long been a hot topic of discussion among Soldiers and leaders at every level; and too often left open to interpretation. Until now…
At the direction of senior Army leadership, Army Directive 670-1 has been released to clarify these standards and provide shared understanding between Soldiers and leaders to know what ‘right’ looks like.
To explain the changes and how they will affect every member of the Army, Fran Racioppi sat down with Sergeant Major of the Army Mike Weimer, SGM Laurin Nabors and SGM Alex Kupratty. The SMA shares the “why” behind personal grooming standards and the importance of doing the little things that develop a culture of commitment from compliance. SGM Kupratty breaks down the definition of professional soldier from the experienced warriors of 75th Ranger Regiment to the new Privates of 4th Infantry Division. SGM Nabors provides the details on what’s changing, when and how the new standards are expected to be enforced. She also shares her journey from an Army Reserve heavy equipment operator to the halls of the Pentagon.
This episode is about redefining what it means to serve in the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen and why development of a war fighting culture starts with how a Soldier presents themself each and every day.
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SMA Weimer, Sergeant Major Kupratty, Sergeant Major Nabors, welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast.
It’s great to be back.
I’ve never been this close to so many sergeant majors at one time. I had to admit that freely at this moment.
We could tell.
I don’t know if I’m going to get tuned up or if I’m going to get educated, coached or mentored. There’s so many different directions we can go on this. I’m a little threatened.
We could comment on your hair but we figured we’d let it go.
This is a new haircut. I just got this.
It was probably shorter than it was when I was in the 10th group, to be honest. It’s like me.
We have lots of comments about your hair.
I know. It’s a thing, real thing.
Thanks for having us back.
I’m excited for every opportunity that we get to come down and speak with leadership from the Army and come down here into the studio, which is such an amazing place. The Army’s done such a good job of building this place out and then focus on what the core messages are that are coming out of the army. Where are we going? Where are we looking at when we talk about the warrior ethos and the development of the war fighter, as you and I have spoken about numerous times at this point? What are the policy changes? What’s coming down for our soldiers?
As we’ve learned and as we know throughout your many decades of the career between the three. Soldiers care about a lot of things but high up on those lists comes things like pay, time, PT, which we talked about last time with Sergeant Major Mullinax and uniforms and physical appearance. Those things top the list of every soldier. Now, we’re looking at it in the next short order. There’s going to be a new army directive coming out which is centered around Army Regulations 670-1, and there’s going to be some changes.
I appreciate the opportunity to come down here and hear from the source about what we can expect and dig into that. We got to start with what’s coming out, is the Army Directive. What’s the difference between an Army Directive and Army Regulation when we’re talking about 670-1? I think Sergeant Major Nabors, they said you’re the expert on this, so let’s jump in.
I don’t know about experts but I can answer the question.
Hard enough to know about Beret Town. I know my strengths and weaknesses and I bring talented sergeant majors to help me out.
The SMAs are getting the Blue Book out, so it’s coming.
I believe it. The Army Directive starts with the courses of action that we had to present on how we were going to get the gap of information that we landed with having a gap of knowledge. There were ALARACTs that were published off of Army Regulation for 670-1. The last publication was in January of 2021. After that, the army published subsequent 4 to 5 ALARACTs that expired July of 2025. How do we bridge that gap with information for proper wear of a parent and also adding grooming and body composition and things like that into an army directive?
That was the approach that SMA gave us. It was like, “Here’s some KOAs. We can get the Army Directive done a lot faster to bridge the gap of information. We can simultaneously work on the revision of AR 670-1.” There’s two main efforts going on. One is going to get the information out there a lot quicker. The Army Directive is the way we decided to go.
SMA, you’ve spoken a lot over your time in the seat about the establishment of the warrior ethos. This war fighting culture that the army has to focus on at this inflection. It is an inflection point. We can talk about army culture in a minute, the multi-generations that exist within the force, and the knowledge gap that has to be passed from the GWOT generation down to the next generation of soldiers. When you look at the standard that exists across the army, those regulations and these directives set the foundation. Why now in your mind was this the time to do that?
The truth and landing, the revision of 670-1 and to Sergeant Major Nabors, it’s been ongoing for a while and that’s part of the problem. Part of the problem is, our process is too slow and troops out in the formation are confused as to what it looks like. You knew I’d break it out because it’s always with me. This is the next step. This AD is the next step in the journey of removing ambiguity and allowing soldiers to know what the standard is so that they can enforce the standard.
The feedback we’ve been getting and I got it immediately and I got it before being in this job too as immigrants and likewise was, “I don’t know what standard is.” The Blue Book helps us have one place to go. The digital one does, which this AD is going to merge a bunch of things in one place with some, we’re not calling them an Xs. We’re calling them enclosures. There’s one place and it is the source. We removed as much ambiguity as possible from human space. Everybody’s a little different.
It’s hard to make it perfect but it’s a lot cleaner than it’s been in the past. By the way, it happened in short order. The force is hungry for it and I know Sergeant Major Kupratty will talk about this from a 4th ID. He just came out of being in the 4th Infantry Division, CSM. He’ll bring it up. They’re hungry to know, like, enforce what? It’s not clear what the standard is. At those lower echelons, which you remember, like, do I step in and engage? Do I not engage? The soldiers are confused and the leaders are confused. That’s exactly why we did what we did. We couldn’t jump on that in the first six months. The Blue Book was step one, but it’s time.
Sergeant Major Kupratty, SMA said you came from 4th Infantry Division. I’m a former fighting eagle of 1-8 Infantry and 3rd Brigade. That was my PL time, so my first unit. It was a lot of fun. It was also 2005 when I got there and so, we were busy then. In short order, I got there. My battalion commander, Jeff Martindale, and you might know him. He had just gotten there. He had spent his career prior to that in the ranger battalion and subsequently in firing the platoon leader who I replaced and because I had a ranger tab and he didn’t.
That was an awkward first day but we talked about standards. That was his standard. He came in and said, “We’re going to Iraq in six. We’re going for a year.” I have three or something and he said, “Every platoon leader in this formation is going to have a ranger hab and you got two choices. If you’re already here, we’re going to send you back. If you pass, you keep your platoon. If you fail, you’re out. If you choose not to go, you’re out. Every person who comes in who has won between now and then, immediately goes to a platoon.” I happen to be the first guy that showed up after that policy.
Fran, there was nothing in what he said. There was no ambiguity.
It was pretty clear, wasn’t it?
Very clear.
That’s where we’re going again.
When we look at the soldier level, the entry level soldier and I remember my days sitting in the formation with privates because when we got to SF, we got spoiled and we tended to lose. I say spoiled but we tend to lose that connection with the junior enlisted folk which is critical as a leader. You learn so much from being with the junior level soldiers. Where are the areas or the gaps that you saw where this directive is going to close those gaps now?
That’s a great question. I’ve served in the army 29 years now and most of it was in the 75th and we have the Blue Book. To the estimates point a little while ago, he talked about why now and why we’re doing this now? Back in March, under the Secretary of Defense, he put out the directive for the entirety of the force to look at how we approach appearance in our standards, but the army has done that for a long time. We’re constantly reviewing and updating policy. It wasn’t like a knee jerk reaction.
This is an area of process. You saw it. We talked a little bit about the AFT. We talked about grooming appearance beards in the past. This is something we have been working out for a while but I tell you, when I spoke to young NCOs and the middle level NCOs about the importance of discipline, upholding and adhering to the standards. The first thing I had to figure out is, are they educated? Do they understand the standards as they are written?
One of the things that we’ve figured out as we review the different policies is, there are gray areas that allow some soldiers to interpret the policy and that’s what we’re aiming to get us. How do we clear black and white standards that it’s easy to understand? To me, the standard is black and white. You don’t get to interpret it the way you want to interpret it. This is what I’m asking you to do and you adhere to it and force it. It’s all tied to readiness and it’s all tied to saving lives at the end of the day. That’s how I try to approach it. Understanding what soldiers and leaders understand, what’s critical to making those changes out in the 4th Infantry Division.
SMA, you’ve talked about the concept of compliance to commit as you evolved throughout your career. When you look at the standards and the policies and the enforcement of them, that’s what comes to my mind. We have NCOs. I think it starts at the leadership level and trickles down to our mid-level and junior level NCOs. What we have to get to is the point in which the individual soldier at the most basic level comes in and says, “This is the standard and I don’t need my NCO to tell me what the standard is. I need to do it because that’s the right thing to do.”
I’m pretty honest, candid and practical when it comes to my compliance with commitment. There are portions of my career I’ve been compliant with. Your audience deserves the truth. Staff Sergeant Weimer didn’t do everything perfectly. We won’t talk about Specialist Weimer. What I know is once you are in place in a leadership position, that’s where the commitment piece has to be rock solid at that point because I’m a product of committed leaders.
When I was compliant, it was committed leaders that got me to understand the why, to start Major Kupratty’s point. I went from compliant to committed. It looks a little different in the soft world, I get it but it’s not any different as far as compliance to commitment. Again, leadership. That’s why I’m passionate about leadership and we promote based on potential and not performance because I’m going to ask you to do more.
One of the things I need you to do is be the standard to enforce the standard but to do that, you have to remember a little bit of empathy is required. I’ll just say it. As we used to say when we were young kids, I needed to not jerk in my ass a few times. I also had the leader at the same time and said, “Come on. You’re better than that. This is simple. If you can’t do the simple things I’m asking you to do, how are you going to do the hard things in combat?” That’s stuck with me. I was like, “Okay.”
I was corrected sometimes a little harsher than maybe we’d use these days but then it was quickly followed with the empathy of like, “You’re better than this and the why is important.” When we go to combat, because in the ’90s, I never had any combat and almost all my leaders. None of us had any combat. I’ll tell you, when 9/11 kicked off and we started getting reps and sets. I started to understand what they were trying to teach me.
Sergeant Major Nabors, what are we looking at for changes?
We’re looking at some great changes, honestly. Things have gotten a lot more definitive with this army directive. To each of their points, it lessens the ambiguity and it’s not as vague as policy has been written in the past. We’re looking at specifying some of the minimum hair length, things with hairstyles, techniques and things like that. We had to do a lot of research with cosmetics on the things we know now like grooming and body composition. There’s going to be some changes with that and how we conduct these processes and things.
One of the things upfront that I like to say is we had to come in and define what military appearance is. What is that? How do we define that? How do we articulate that through three areas of this army directive, personal appearance, insignia, and the AGSU uniform and also the army body composition program.
What we were looking at is the total soldier concept, the body composition, grooming and then ABCP. Once we defined that and we got our left and right limits, then we were able to go through each for personal appearance. There are a lot of specifications now that we didn’t have minimums and maximums. I’m just broad stroking it but there are so many changes.
You can give them a couple of specifics. That’s incredibly important because when we looked at the original and the historical documents of AR 670-1. What was missing was the upfront why like, why does this matter? Why does professional appearance matter? Why is your appearance and your bearing matter to being a member of this profession? We said we got an opportunity. I said, “Let’s start with that,” then we got into fingernail changes, hair length changes and color of hair. You can go ahead and share some of those.
Hair colors, getting out of the way of saying natural colors. What is that? What is a natural color? We need to specify some of these things. If we can’t come to a concurrence with, we don’t expect private PV2 Snuffy because this army directive says that all ranks can make on spot corrections. They have to be able to comprehend what’s in this army directive.
If they’re unable to do that, you don’t expect them to hold a color palette in their pocket and pull it out and say, “That’s more Prairie Winkle than it is Taupe,” to use an example. We were like, “If we can’t come to a consensus on what natural color looks like specifically nail polish for females in this example, then we’re going to go with the clear nail polish.”
What’s the standard now?
The standard now is clear nail polish for female soldiers. Male soldiers are not authorized to wear clear nail polish unless it is a situation where it is medically prescribed on a medical profile. To get definitive with some of these do’s and don’ts, adding specificity to the language and in the diameters and the inches. I’ll give you another example. One of the biggest concerns that a lot of females have is, “What can we do with our hair?” A lot of the hair techniques are specified like ponytails.
One new thing that came out of this army directive is now you can wear two braids like female athletes when they wear two braids. How they have the double dutch braids that go back. Now you can have two of them but we specify how wide they can be and how long they can be. The working group came up with some pretty cool techniques utilizing the Army Blue Book or two CACs. Three inches is the measurement for your CAC cart or your common access card. When you use those and you stack them on top of each other, you get six inches.
How about measurements like that where it’s an easy reference if I don’t pull out a ruler, but I’ve got two CACs and I got my smart book on me, then six inches from the top of the collar. My ponytail can be no longer than that. That’s a quick reference and something that leaders can do without feeling like they have to figure out where your shoulder blades are and that leads to other things that don’t make for a comfortable situation to try to glean where that is. Getting those specifics and definitions in there. Some of the other things like the army body composition program, the flag K. How is your flag with height and weight? That has changed in the army directive. That is no longer transferable. That’s a game changer for ABCP.
Did you ever receive a soldier that came to you flagged for army body composition?
Yes, but not anymore.
Non-transferable, meaning you can’t be PCS?
Exactly.
That soldier is my responsibility until that flag is cleared up.
It seems like it would make sense.
We hadn’t been doing that.
There are a lot more. I can go down the list. I’ve had fun with this thing for the last two and a half months.
I’ll ask you about two specifically because that’s top of the list when we sat down with one of your predecessors and former SMA Dailey. He likes to talk about tattoos because he took a lot of heat over the tattoos. In respect of him, is there any change to the tattoos?
There’s no change in the tattoos. If you have a face or neck tattoos and if you got a waiver then that’s what it is. Other than that, the only thing the army director talks about is the permanent tattoos with makeup in particular, cosmetics. All soldiers can have access to those. However, what we described is that semi-permanent makeup is okay but you can’t have permanent tattoo makeup. We give the left the right limits for that.
I didn’t even know it was a thing.
If I’m First Sergeant Smith or Platoon Sergeant Smith, how do I know that’s even a thing to enforce if we don’t but we learned through the working group. These are real things happening in the formation out there every day.
We had to solicit. When you talk about the army directive, it’s not you. I’m not a subject matter expert. Honestly, I was just a teammate that was contributing to the consolidation of guidance and recommendations, input and left and right limits given from our army senior leaders to see this thing through but we solicited.
All the key players that can speak on, “If we’re not going to allow eyelash extensions but what about those that have alopecia or what about all these other considerations?” It’s a real thing. Us, as policy writers, we’re not sneezing on that. We have to get that information from folks that know the ins and outs of those things, so lots of collaboration and lots of red teaming. We pulled together a red team. We wire brushed it with SMA at least seven times before him so they can put some target.
You mentioned a couple of minutes ago that soldiers have to understand why. Why do grooming standards and why do uniform standards matter? Now I have to ask you a question. Why do they have it?
I personally think it’s either one of two things. It’s a direct reflection of your willingness to be compliant to a standard in your leaders, which I already shared. I’ve been there. I’ve been that young soldier that didn’t fully understand. I won’t blame my leaders for not always explaining it. Sometimes, I just didn’t understand or I didn’t want to understand but I had to be compliant. The reason that’s important is because if I can’t do that in Garrison, how am I going to do that in common? That’s step one.
Step two is when we’re doing talent management and we are looking at leadership. That’s team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant and think it echelon. Now, I know you are either compliant or committed. Again, if you’re not committed then I question why we should put you in a leadership position because now you’re responsible for all the soldiers.
I’ll give you a little peek behind the curtain with PME reform. We’re taking a whole new look at BLC and you’re probably going to hear some stuff coming out here of a huge emphasis on what we’re doing at basically your course for new E-5 to set that foundation about what we’re talking about, what’s the spirit of this entire book and what it means to be an NCO committed to an oath.
Those are the two things. I was committed. Later on, to be honest with you, when combat kicked in, I became fully committed because now I understood the consequences. My concern is, if we don’t take the extra time to explain the why now through our experiences, some of them are tough with memorials and gold star families we still care for to this day. We’re headed to a period of time where I was in the ’90s with an army with very little combat.
Which means squad leaders with no combat and platoon leaders with no combat. If we don’t get after this and truly get them to understand why this is important, the next time the nation calls us to go do something we don’t want to do but we’ll be prepared to do. That’s not the time to learn the hard way. We have an upcoming generation that asks a lot more questions.
If we don’t address this and help them truly understand why it matters, then the next time the nation calls on us to do something difficult—something we may not want to do but must be prepared for—that’s not the time to learn the hard way.
A lot more than I think a lot of us do. There’s a lot less that will say, “They told me to do it so that’s what I do. Why would I do that?”
I’m okay with that. I like the fact that they’re not full cavemen like I was back in a day where I was fit and I did what I was told and you were seen, not heard. That’s not the generation we have now. These youngsters coming into service are brilliant. Some of them are crazy educated, smart, and critical thinkers. You get them to understand the why. They’re an amazing asset a lot sooner than we probably were.
We got the SMA out of here. Now, the hard questions are coming on. He told me to make it slightly painful for you guys, but let’s keep going down the why because the why matters. When we look at the soldiers who are more prone to ask the questions of why, why does this matter and why do we have to do it? Also take that back into like broader leadership. When we conduct leadership development seminars and when we teach leadership, we always teach them to come back to the why.
When you go through selection processes, when you go to SFQC or you go to ranger battalion selection or even in basic training, for everybody coming into the army, we’re testing things like resiliency and adaptability. How does somebody bounce back when things don’t go well? If you don’t know your why, then you can’t make quick corrections to get back in the game. When we look at the why, why does it matter from your perspective? Having just come out of the division.
The why is significant. It reinforces uniformity. When we talk about building cohesive units, this is the way we would look. This is who we are. This is a culture as an army. Number one is uniformity. Next is discipline. I think the bedrock of any great organization is discipline and that comes with that here and understanding the standards and enforcing the standards.
Last is wise, because we are the greatest fighting force in the world. Professionalism should be one of the first things we talked about. Everywhere an American soldier goes, it should be apparent that they are the best and that starts with appearance, grooming and adhering into the standards set forth by senior leaders.
I’ll add a little bit to that. It’s also one of those things where we have to remember that we’re part of something bigger than all of us. We’re committed to the army. Its standards, values and things like that. The army wearing appearance is that visual representation of the set standards and discipline that we’ve established in an army.
When we’re reflecting on this policy and going through it, we’re constantly reflecting on the why as we write everything else in regards to the personal appearance and the body composition portions of it. It’s just that reflection that, “This is something that’s way bigger than you. We’re basically going to describe the visual representation that we want to reflect army standards.”
You talked about the process that you had to go through and we were here, a few months ago talking about the PT test. We dug into that and the amount of research that has to go into these things. What and who did you bring in to support the analysis in each one of these domains? If you break out AR 670-1, it’s not like it’s five pages. This is an extensive regulation. It’s broken up into a lot of different subsections. How do you go through that analysis? What data are you pulling to understand that?
A lot of the information came from the expired ALYX and needing to legitimize these liberties that we were giving from the ALYX. We needed to legitimize that. We’ll give you an example like an eye jacket. When you’re wearing all of your awards on your eye jacket, that’s fine but no one knows how to wear it. You’d see army senior leaders out front already wearing the eye jacket with a minimum of six ribbons. We didn’t have that in policy. We have to go back and legitimize some of these things to say, “That’s exactly what we want. That’s the intent,” but it’s not written anywhere to say that we can.
In a lot of ways, it was cleaning up the fact that we had been doing something but there was nothing written in policy, so going back and realizing that then talking to the stakeholders. Who are the stakeholders? It depends on the subject because we got many things. Public affairs was amazing. The office of chief of public affairs helped us out with a lot of things. AR MITCOM for some of the medical things like if we say that eyelash extensions are not authorized but they are for certain cases like alopecia and if you have facial reconstruction from maybe explosives or something like that. If medically prescribed then, they should be this X amount of millimeters long and length.
Getting to those each requires us to solicit a SME in those areas. We use a lot of the sergeant major channel. “Sergeant Major, AR MILCON, help us out. Can you form this to your team?” The team chose it a little bit. They get us something back and we send it up to the army senior leaders. They say, “Okay.” This helps us understand it better but in order to get to that credible information, to make sure that we’re riding clean policy, we had to do a lot of collaboration outside of just the G-1, which is where I work in HQDA G-1. Reaching out and knowing who and using the sergeant major channel was amazing in getting the right people to the table to make those decisions or help provide us guidance at least.
One more thing to add is, that is the bottom mod refinement, the bottom of my feedback. In 2024, they reached down to the division’s commanders and sergeant majors to understand what some of the things in the AR that are ambiguous are and what some of the things that we should look at that can clarify and help you teach your formation or help you enforce the status a little bit better.
That was extremely helpful because that allowed us to go in multiple directions to scope the problem that this is their focus, the grooming, this is particular to males or the makeup that’s authorized we use. Now, they have a start point to where to take off because as you said AR 670-1 is huge. You can change every single thing there. That was great from the total force providing the feedback that was recording that these changes going on.
We got a lot of senior leader feedback. G-1 Lieutenant General Eifler sent it to his G-1 crew of folks that trusted experienced leaders that say, “Poke holes through this. We want you to ask why and why you did some of the stuff. Provide us feedback that we can consider, that we can re-articulate in policy.” SAR Major Stevens, the G-1 sent it out to his group of folks. SMA sent it out to his group of folks. We formed this thing out.
At some point, as a policy writer, we’re allowed. I’m like, “How many times are we going to send this thing out?” It was worth it when you think about the return of investment from all of these personnel and it’s not just senior leaders. Senior leaders signed an NDA and gave us some feedback. The policy team in general, myself and my battle buddy who co-authored this, SAR Major Urzua, we informally socialize some of these things just in our office with civilians and personnel and say, “If the army were to change this grooming standard, what do you think about that?”
I even asked a couple of sergeant E-5 and staff sergeants, just their thoughts, “Would you understand this if this was a thing?” Also, just to informally socialize this so that we can gauge. Are we on target? Does this align? Is the comprehension there? It’s important for everybody to understand so that we can force. The fact that we have it to where all ranks can provide on-spot corrections, we need them to be able to understand the directive in order to do that to carry that out.
What about beards?
The army directive for wearing appearance does not cover beards. That’s going to be a different army directive. Beards are not covered in this directive for 670-1 to wear an appearance in ABCP, but we do have an executive order and AD and potential FRAGO that’s going to release for beards that comes out of the policy section as well.
Let’s talk about army culture because all this comes back to the establishment of standardization of army culture and what we want the army to look like. We have in the army now, three generations of soldiers. We have pre-9/11, those who came in in the late ’90s and we have the 9/11 generation who came in in the post attack period. Now, we have a lot of new soldiers who were born on 9/11, which is probably crazy for all of us.
The job of our leadership of you, the SMA and everybody who now sits in our senior leadership position is, how we bridge that gap, how we take decades of experience in however many 90 day deployments you had in ranger battalion and get someone who wasn’t born on 9/11. They may not understand at the same level we do, the importance of never having something like that happen on our soil again. Also, needing them to understand the complexities of nation-state versus nation state and how a nation-state versus nation state type of conflict will be nothing like the 9/11 attacks. How are you bridging the gap?
First or foremost is understanding the generational differences that exist. As you mentioned, three different generations are serving. That is arguably the most challenging thing that I found as a senior leader in the army. You see it at the platoon company level. NCOs grew up onto that a long time ago and they’re tied to some old practices. Getting them to understand how to better communicate is number one. That’s hard. They don’t teach you that.
How do you get into the mind of a young soldier who habitually comes in and questions things? Not because he or she lacks discipline. They just want to know more and want to know why. Finding that venial was telling NCOs, “You are a highway of communication. You’re the one that takes language from the top. You chew it,” and you put it into language that your soldiers can understand, adhere to and your younger leaders and force and always find ways to make it relatable to what they’re going to experience potentially in combat.
Always find ways to make it relatable to what the soldiers may experience in combat.
It’s something as simple as, “I know you think your hair is not arsines but it is and this is why.” Doing it in a professional manner to understand and then say, “You taking that shortcut because you think it’s not important to you could result in you taking a shortcut on your tables as you conduct PMI.” You skip your virtual training and then you’re happy and comfortable with becoming just a regular marksman.
All these corners that you tend to shave because you don’t find them as important carry over into everything you do and try to make them understand that. God forbid we end up in large hill combat. What could happen? If you’re used to questioning things and interpreting things the way you do. That’s why it’s our job to educate them and teach them the importance of adhering to it.
All of what he said is super important and it’s just communication. Keeping that communication flow at all levels. We have got to make sure that we stay in touch with our soldiers, communicating with their soldiers and sharing our experiences. It happens from bottom, up, left to right. When soldiers tell you their experience, don’t be too quick to disregard their input. A lot of times, they have great things to add. Great things like, “You can do it this way,” because sometimes they’re a little bit more tapped into technology than those older soldiers because I am a post-9/11. I came in a couple of months right after December of 2001.
I find myself as a sergeant major, I’m a little out of touch with the privates and specialists even because of the echelons in which I’ve been placed to work. They’re input, a lot of times is like, “I didn’t think of that.” They’re helping me. As a leader, it’s super important just to not disregard them as being experienced. Listen to what they have to say. You can feel it as a leader. You know what to take in and what to say, “I’m going to put that in my pocket for maybe a different time.” Having that communication, that open communication and active listening is also one of the most important things as well, too.
As a leader, you’ll know what to take in and what to set aside for later. Maintaining open communication and practicing active listening are among the most important things you can do.
When we look at what’s next for the army, there’s a lot of discussion about transformation. Where is the army going? What are we preparing for? I won’t say the potential but there’s always been the potential, the risk and the threat of large-scale combat operations and what that might look like. We’ve seen the rapid advancement of technology on battlefields like Ukraine, where we have forests of fiber optic cable and drones that are not targeting formations or targeting people.
Which for those of us who served in the post-9/11 period, the GWOT. Were we much more advanced than like the Gulf War? Yes, but it hasn’t been that long since we left Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re running through the streets and now warfare has changed rapidly over the last 5 to 10 years. When you talk to soldiers, when you interact with them, how do you prepare them for everything?
That’s such a tough question.
I don’t think anybody knows what large-scale combat would look like. We can learn from some of the lessons that we’re seeing happening now and that’s where the army is moving forward with that, our transformation initiative. We are iterating at a speed that we’ve never done before. We’re changing things, getting rid of things that are obsolete, putting things in the hands of soldiers, and making them more lethal and much more rapidly than we have ever been.
I’m glad you brought that up because when you talked about how you put this thing together and make them relatable. We talked about ubiquitous observation from drones, drone warfare and precision fires. All these different things that are coming like the new ISV. No matter how far, how fast we advance, there’s always going to be a human being. There’s always going to be a soldier behind the trigger and behind that computer when we talk about the next generation C-2, behind the launcher. You want that soldier to understand what his job is. Mastering the basic things.
When we started looking at our appearance and grooming, you may find, “How is this applicable?” It’s fundamental. It’s just understanding, “I know and I have confidence. You can either understand and follow just plain regulations and guidelines because that’s all tied and relatable to your job performance.” It’s ultimately what’s going to make this a great fighting formation. Our ability to be uniform, disciplined, and understand what we’re being asked to do.
I’ve got nothing to add.
It’s tough. We have a litany of, I don’t want to say things but there’s a lot of events that could happen. We have peers. We used to call it near peer. They’re getting closer and closer here but what is our job? Our job is to make sure that as a SMA, and I said it in one of my first conversations with him, our job is to keep near in front of peers as long as possible and continue to delay those decisions. We want those adversarial nations every day they wake up and they say, “Is today the day we go after them?” “No, today is not the day. Maybe next week or maybe a year or two from now.”
We want to continue to push that further down the road as we’re able to modernize and develop capability but they’re still terrorist organizations you are entering and striking the home lander. We have to be ready to get back out there and deploy our counterterrorism forces in rapid capability to be able to combat that. Let’s talk about the guard and the reserve. You gave me the look. You are in the reserve but you are in what’s called the Active Guard Reserve.
When we look at the total army, historically on this show, we have spent, I’d say 100% of the time until right this minute talking about the active duty component and what it means to serve in the active duty component. A lot of that focus has been in the Special Operations Community but what is the Active Guard Reserve? When we look at the total army composition, where do the reserve and the national guard forces fit in in comparison to the active duty component?
I’ll start with the Army Reserve components covering compost two and three, the national guard and Army Reserve. I’ll tell you this. I deployed to Iraq in 2004. I went to Al-Qaeda with the reserve unit. That was my first exposure to contribution to unified land operations and what we were there to do in Iraq. We were a combat support battalion and it was mostly sustainment functions. A lot of sense, the compo three in particular is a huge sustainment element for compo one.
We balance out some things on the sustainment side of the house for contributing those things to the operations. In particular in Iraq, what was the unique skills set that I’m pretty sure that a lot of folks have heard before is that the uniqueness of having a civilian skill set that a lot of our part-time troop program unit soldiers have. There’s two statuses but there’s more. There’s about four statuses but we’re just going to stick to two for the purpose of time.
Under the Army Reserve, we have, what we call your traditional drilling soldier that performs duty two days out of the month and two weeks out of the year. You have Active Guard Reserve that’s like your full-time support continuity for the reserve component units. We all have our missions. We all have metal tasks and things like that and are still charged and challenged to do everything we’re supposed to do as if we were all on full active duty at all times.
A lot of times, those guys get it done or those soldiers get it done over a weekend but that full time support is carrying or running the operations. There’s only a few that are dropped into these main elements of units. Maybe 2 to 5, depending on the size of the unit. That Active Guard Reserves support carries the full-time continuity and then you have civilians that’s also there that help A-civilians and what they call military technicians or Mil-Techs. They provide that support as well so that we are still doing our mission.
The uniqueness in what I experienced in Iraq is that we built the chapel over there at the time and we didn’t have anything at TQ. We went over and my combat support battalion had some engineers that were probably 92 Yankees on the military side, but in their civilian jobs, they were architects and all of these cool jobs. We build things based off of their civilian career or skills that they brought in. That’s the uniqueness that the compost 2 and 3 brings to the tables. We go in and we can give you two sides of the coin essentially.
A lot of them are still very successful in their military career as well. It’s very rewarding. I joined the Army Reserve because I still wanted to go to college. I wanted to only dip one toe in the water at the time once I joined. I’m like, “I still want to go to college. I’m just going to join the reserve and just try it out.” That worked for me, but it did lead to me wanting to be on a continued form of active duty. The way that I ended up doing that was by joining the Active Guard Reserve.
I’m still affiliated with compo 3 as an army reservist but I’m just on a full-time status. I don’t come off of that. It’s comparable to the active component. I don’t come off of that until I get a DD214 or if I submit for release from active duty, and then I can retire and have all the same benefits and everything as an active component soldier. We provide a lot of support mostly to compo three units. Again, we’re mostly logistics sustainment. We’re heavy in that but we can also be nested on a HQDA just like I am here or Headquarters Department of Army G-1.
It’s a little bit of both worlds. It’s been a great career for me. Shout out to Command Sergeant Major Betty in the Army Reserve. Commands Sergeant Major and Lieutenant General Harter, the Chief of the Army Reserve. They do afford us opportunities. I’m only able to serve at this level because they authorize me to do so because they saw value in having a compo three person on the HQDA G-1 policy team. That way I can keep an ear out for an advocate for compost two and three and also contribute to the active component mission as well.
If I have it right, you started your career in sustainment but also as a heavy equipment operator.
I did. I came in with the engineer unit and again, I wanted to go to college. I still wanted to finish college, but what ended up happening is I ended up falling in love with the army but my engineering unit was my first handshake into what the army is. A lot of times, you don’t realize it’s like in the Army Reserve. I can personally speak for the Army Reserve, compo two. I know a little bit. We’re very similar in the way that we do things. They’re more state driven. Whereas, we are titled in federal.
With the Army Reserve, when I came in, I was a 71 Lima as HR. I picked that job because I knew a friend that was 71 Lima. I was like, “What job should I pick? You’re 71 Lima. I want to be 71 Lima.” That’s how I became a 71 Lima. I went into HR and then I got to the engineer unit. They were like, “We’re a pipeline construction unit.
How about you come out and do some cross training as a 21 Eco heavy equipment operator at the time?” I’m like okay. I’m naive. I was P-3 at the time in this unit. I went out and did some pipeline construction stuff, fell in love with it but still kept the HR as my primary as well. I did a little bit of that and got my hands dirty then went back into the office.
We got Ranger Kupratty over here, too. The biggest piece of equipment he had to operate was the 240 Bravo and he got trade.
I shot at Carl once or twice as well, too. I can’t hear out of one ear now.
Let’s talk first a second about the ranger battalion because it’s a very different experience than Sergeant Major Nabors has and we’ve talked a lot about the ranger battalion on the show over the years and certainly, our brothers in arms and Special Operations Community. Why join the rangers?
I thought I wanted to be an officer when I first got Bragg. It was not my path ultimately. I’m a product of JROTC. I knew at a very young age. I’m originally from Peru. I immigrated here when I was twelve years old and just like everybody else, why? This country provided so much for my family. I was like, “How do I give back? The service was the way I gave back. JROTC was the gate that allowed me to see. I had a great mentor there and then I went on to Virginia Military Institute because I was like, “I’ll be in office I think a year into it there, I’m listening to the senior instructors and ROTC, MSF guy.”
I had a ranger. They always told these stories in the middle of class and I’m like, “This is the route I’m going.” I left school after a year. I asked for an option 40 contract, the premiere rate force in the army. Next you know, I’m in RIP Airborne School and assigned to my first duty assignment, which is the first range of a battalion. I managed to stay there for twelve years.
The mission is set and the focus and the camaraderie that exists in that formation is unlike anything I’ve seen before. I stayed there from the rank of PFC all the way to 275 CSM. When I went to the conventional army and we talked about Abraham’s Charter a little while ago. The reason why the regiment was built is to take these SOPs, TTPs and share with the entire army what the ranger force does.
What are the lessons you take back out of the rangers? I have been credited a lot. As they call it success, anything I’ve done in my life always goes back to a couple of things. You have some defining moments in your life. For me, it was being a collegiate rower because it instilled discipline and hard work ethic. Nothing’s ever in my life is going to be as painful as those six minutes of the race course. I always told myself, but the other one was ranger school.
At least, I was fortunate to go when I was young and now, I’ve talked to people who are like, “When I was like 35.” I’m like, “Damn.” I take a lot away from that experience in terms of you have to get the job done and you have to get the job done to a standard. It doesn’t matter if you’re cold or you’re tired or you’re hungry or you have other priorities. You have to then figure out what are the most important tasks that I have to do.
All of that gets learned walking through the 37-degree rain in the mountains and you’re all wet then getting in your hooch and getting blown out of it 30 seconds later. What are the lessons that you take from serving at every level in the ranger battalion back into the bigger army? Especially now as you sit in the G-357 or you’re looking at the entire composition of the army mission.
We can sit here for an hour talking about the different things and that place is done for me. You talked about resiliency, mission focused and having a purpose. Holistically, it’s made me a better father, a better husband and a better leader. Coming to and serving an organization like that, we always talked about it as every single day is an opportunity for you to reinvent yourself and that’s the mindset that they have. What do you bring to the table? I’m mildly interested in what you did yesterday and I’m mildly interested in your accomplishments from last week.
How are you different? How are you making your team squad platoon or company better today? It’s that cost and turn of making yourself better and making the people around you better that just never stops. Carrying that throughout my career and in the first time I left the regiment, I was in 3-4 CACs 25th Infantry Division. I took what the charter said. It’s like, what are the things that I’ve learned over my career here that can be applied to this reconnaissance formation? How do we get lighter? How do we get more lethal? How to install some of that discipline that I grew up with that was second nature to me?
It’s the difference between the compliance that the SMA was talking about. TTPs was great. By that time, I had deployed many times. Being able to come back and share some of those lessons, some of them hard unfortunately to make formations, see solutions from a different angle. I say all that say this as well, having served the in 25th and 11th and 3rd one division, there is just an incredible amount of talent in the total army.
That applies compo 1, 2 and 3 and kneel to see some of these soldiers who have at some point served and they’re following the charter as well. It’s amazing to see when you get this cohort of people who have served in an organization just flood the army and lift the charter as it was designed to do. It’s something that I’ve tried to carry from leaving the battalion and then serving us a 4th Infantry Division, CSM in Colorado Springs.
Which is like the best place to be.
It’s amazing. This isn’t Brazil, though.
I always wanted to be stationed there.
I was like, “No complaints.” There’s a platoon leader and I went back there in 10th group and it’s pretty much outside of training at Bragg and banning those.
I’d also say, these are great teammates.
The new army directive of around 670-1 is going to go out right around the time when this conversation is going to go live. The last point that we have to make is going to be a grace period because we’re not just going to wake up one day and say, “Do this tomorrow.” We got to let everyone have some time. What’s that grace period look like?
There is a transition period for about 30 days. Soldiers and leaders have 30 days to digest the army directive, make some changes if it warrants that. One of the things when we’re coming up with that transition period, we’re like, “There may be something but depending on what it is. They may have to make some significant changes.” If it’s more than 30 days, we encourage commanders to have discussions and conversations with their soldiers.
That was one of the biggest things about, “We’re trying to get better at discipline and standards. It’s okay to have a conversation. It’s okay to talk about it.” We need more time. That’s on the commander and the NCO support chain to have those conversations with the soldiers. As written, they have 30 days from the date that the army directive will publish in order to adhere to these changes.
Last question for each of you. This is the test question. I closed these things out where we talk about our namesake, the Jedburgh’s and reference to the fact that we, as leaders, have to be able to do our tasks on a daily basis and sometimes as routine or as habits because our habits set the foundation for our performance.
It’s timely in this discussion because when we talk about wear and appearance of the uniform and personal grooming centers. We’re talking about habits. In World War II, when the Jedburgh jumped into occupied France in very little guidance, very little direction, except during the war but they had to be able to do a couple things very well. You probably have heard of them.
They permeate now, but they had to be able to shoot moving to communicate. If you could do those things as a soldier at any level, then you can focus your attention on anything else and any more complex challenge that comes your way throughout the day. What are the three things that you each do every day in your world to set the conditions for success?
The three things. I have to think about that for a second.
I told you it was a test.
It is a good test question. That’s for sure. One thing that I do is self-reflection. I’m always trying to realize what I can do better and how I could communicate better with the tasks that I get. It’s so random. I’m a policy integrator. It’s chaos at best every single day. Depending on what comes down from the top. Self-reflection is one of those things that keeps me humble. It keeps me motivated. It keeps me wanting to give direction to my soldiers because I’m thinking about them.
I’m making a conscious decision to reflect upon what I could have done better or what I needed to do better and what I’m doing that’s right that I need to sustain or maintain. Reflection is a big thing for me so that I can communicate those things. Make a conscious effort to just go around and take a break. I have been known to be a workaholic and I get my work ethic from my parents. My father stayed on his job for 35 years. My mother stayed on her job for 42 years. Work ethic and commitment is something I definitely didn’t have a problem with before joining the military. That was already instilled in me at a very early age just growing up.
What I’ve had to learn to do is take a break, peel off for just a second, go around and talk to everybody to see how they’re doing. I make a point to do that every day. There’s some days that I don’t make it around but I try to pull away for a little bit just to get the heartbeat of what’s going on in my section and to see, “What’s going on? How are you doing?” When you talk about that commitment versus compliance thing. A lot of those informal and just sharing the empathy that you have with soldiers and those moments can translate to commitment to them.
I want to do better because I got my leaders walking around. They care and are genuine. They’re exchanged to figure out how I’m doing and what I’m doing and if there is a leader that I can provide top cover on or what can I do for you to make you better and like, “Here’s something that I might need your input on from me.” That exchange. I make it a point to dial back a little bit and go around and see how everybody’s doing.
The third thing, I do so many weird and awkward things. I don’t know. I owe you one on that one. How about the next episode I come up with the third word. I could tell you that there are just a couple of feel-good things that I have to do. I would tell you. The third thing is, I already said self-reflecting but gratitude is big for me. Gratitude is huge. It goes a long way and shows gratitude, giving gratitude and just realizing how you contribute to the organization and making a conscious effort to contribute. It’s easy to say, “That’s not my policy.” It’s what I did about the beards question that you gave me.
I’m like, “No, not an army directive. I’m not going to talk about it.” Good try, though. Honestly, it’s one of those things. I got to be able to be a team player and to lean in and say, “What are my strengths and weaknesses? What can I contribute better? What can I do to get more self-development as well? It’s those things. I’m an introvert but I’m also a people person. It’s very confusing, but I know my soldiers. That has been my strongest probably attribute as a leader that I’ve been able to get my soldiers to commit because I’m getting after, “What can I do for you? How can I provide your support? I need your input on this,” because I want you to feel valued. I’m huge on things like that. I know I was rambling.
I think you’re spot on. Leadership is not about, what did I do here today? What did I do for everyone else here to be successful? That’s the way I look at it.
That gave me a lot of cons.
As good as yours may be.
She said conditions already.
It was rambling out. I apologize.
That was great. I will start and this is loosely tied to your first question. One of the things you learned in your previous organization, but learning. The thought of constantly learning, evolving and changing the way you think and the way you act is important. Sadly, throughout my career, I’ve spoken to people that had the mentality that see change as not being original. We have those conversations. It’s like, “You have to change. You have to learn to read the room. You have to understand that all I need is my commander’s intent.” You got to make it happen one way or another.
That takes some reflection and understanding how you have to change, how you communicate and how you behave. Some people struggle and I struggled quite a bit of that when I first became a young company first sergeant. It affects your formation at the end of the day. You’re going to go in there with, “This is what I know. I’m going to stick to it,” so learning and evolving. This job has been incredible for me. I’ve had fun for many years being tactical and now you’re looking at big army problems.
You’re talking about the Department of Defense and changes are going to affect generations. You’re talking about the army of 2040. Constantly understanding that you’re only as good as the time you’re willing to put in. The day that you show up to work and say, “I got this figure out.” Take your uniform off and hang it. You’re done. You’re done being value added to any organization, so with my first one learning. Educating and it’s tied to what we’re talking about. What do you do with that knowledge? What are you doing with the things you learn? Knowledge is power.
How you get that down to the formation is incredible and that has its challenges. Again, the way we articulate ourselves, the way we break it down at echelon, that’s as truly important. Not only learn but learn how to share that information to make the rest of your formations better and being so close with the G-3. Listen to the sergeant army, the chief and all the changes that we have. It’s having those touch points with ASCCs and ACCOM G-3s and letting them know, “We’re here to answer any questions. This is what’s changing. This is how it’s applicable to you and why it matters and how it can help you push that information down.”
The last thing is receiving that constant feedback and that takes a little bit of vulnerability. I’ll tell you that it took a lot of vulnerability for me here in particular. Not being exposed to policy and the things that happen inside the building. It’s being comfortable talking to people and having people understand, “I don’t know this. You are the subject matter experts.” I saw that when I left the regiment. I came to my first conventional unit and some of the processes and systems. I was like, “What is this?” I had peers that are like, “Check it out. This is Kupratty. He just has what DTMS was.” It’s something as simple as that. I’m like, “What is it?”
It’s so comfortable not knowing everything and just asking. Believe me, your Soldiers know what you don’t know. Being comfortable to say, “I don’t understand that,” and sometimes, to her point, the bottom of feedback is sometimes incredible. Some of the soldiers are just incredible. The very fiber of their being is intertwined with technology that was not accessible to us when we’re growing up. Those are the three things that I’ve used to give me through the point. It’s got me through maybe being successful in some ways. It’s hard to pick one as the constant hunger to learn and understand your job so you can make formations better than they are now.
We got self-reflection, take a break, gratitude, constant learning, educating and constant feedback. That’s it. The
first soldiers can put those things to use and continue to be the premier fighting force in the world. I appreciate all your efforts. Thank you for spending some time with me and sharing where we’re going as an army more broadly and then also what our field is going to be because it’s about the culture.
At the end of the day, as the SMAs talked about, as everybody in the entire chain of command has talked about, we need warfighters. We need a generation of soldiers who are going to carry that torch and hold that flag high and take us to 240 and beyond. It’s going to take having a solid foundation and understanding their purpose and why we are here and why America continues to be the greatest nation on Earth. It’s because of this Army right here.
I appreciate the invite.
Thank you so much.
Thanks.
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