War on the Rocks: A Conversation with the Commandant, Gen. Eric Smith

You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

My name's Ryan Evans, I'm the founder of War on the Rocks, and in this episode I spoke

with General Eric Smith, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, about a whole bunch of things.

I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it.

Thank you so much for doing this.

Now that you are in the chair, no longer acting, but actual commandant, everyone is expecting

anticipating your Commandant's planning guidance.

What can we expect there?

I guess starting with continuity versus change, with the last Commandant's planning guidance

and then force design.

Well, the Commandant's planning guidance, it'll reflect me, my style, the way I operate,

the way I communicate with my Marines, with my Commanders.

I'd like to have it done by the birthday ball, I think I will, and it'll have three

big themes in there.

It'll talk about Marines, how we find them, how we recruit them, how we train them, and

how we retain them, quality life, caring for them, which is retention.

It'll talk about lethality, that's what we do.

We are America's crisis response force, we are a lethal fighting force, a Marine air

ground task force.

It'll talk about lethality, and it'll talk about mobility, because unless you can get

to the fight, it doesn't matter what you bring to the fight.

You have to be present to win, so it'll talk about those three themes, and if there's any

doubt or confusion, is he going to continue with force design?

That's an easy answer, yes.

Because force design, I won't say 2030 anymore, because then I'd have to say 31 and 32 and

every year update it.

It is a correct journey.

It's threat-informed, fact-based, about how to make us more lethal, more mobile for a

pacing threat that, frankly, we didn't focus on for about 15, 18 years in the wars in Iraq

and Afghanistan.

So, yep, we're going to continue on with force design, because it's working.

It is the correct destination.

You mentioned people, one of your big focuses in your last job was the talent management

strategy.

Could you talk more about that, and where that's heading, and some things that you're going

to tease out of there and emphasize more?

Talent management in my assessment was so simple.

If you let a Marine write their own tasking statement, they'll get it right every single

time.

Ask a Marine, what do you want to do?

I may not be able to provide that, but first we should start with, what would it take to

keep you?

I want to retain you.

I want you to stay a Marine.

What would that take?

Does that mean an extension at your current duty station?

Does that mean a different MO West?

Does that mean a promotion?

And what would it take in my 36 years of experience, and I have a son who's a Marine, so I get

a lot of very candid feedback from Marines, Marines just want to be involved in the conversation.

They just want to have some say, they don't demand that they get to write their own career

check.

That doesn't work like that.

This is a Marine Corps.

We give orders, but they do want to be involved in the conversation, and talent management

is just how do we change policies to let you be more involved in the conversation?

Everybody knows that if the Marine says, I want X, and the Marine Corps says, I have

to have Y, the Marine Corps wins.

That's who we are, right?

We are our mission, locate, close with, destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel the

enemy assault by fire and close combat.

That's our mission.

So the house, quote unquote, always wins, but it doesn't have to be adversarial, because

90% of the time, maybe 95% of the time, we can come to an agreement that we both are

happy with.

There's nothing more complicated about talent management than that.

I was actually just visiting with Frank Hoffman over the weekend, and we were talking about

the differences between when he was in the Marine Corps and how it's changing now in

terms of assignments and how the Marine Corps is or isn't changing the way it does business

for those things, especially when family considerations are involved.

There's a lot of service leaders now talk about it.

It's about retaining the family.

It's about retaining the family, but what are some of the specific things that the Marine

Corps is doing to realize that in practice?

Dynamics have changed.

Most Marines are, well, not most still, but way more Marines are married today than when

I came in.

When I, my first platoon, one, my first platoon was about 22 Marines instead of 41, because

of the way we did our manpower business.

I think I had myself, my platoon started, and maybe three Marines were married.

Now that same 21, probably 14 of them be married.

There's a few things that we're doing.

Spousal employment is a big one, and that means both us, Department of Defense, paying

for credentialing for spouses.

So you don't have to take a new teaching or nursing or medical.

You can have portability with your expertise, whether it's law or whatever.

You still have to obviously sit before the bar for each state, but we're doing everything

we can to make it more transportable if you're a professional.

The other piece is, if you want to stay at a specific location for longer, it used to

be three years and you're moving.

Didn't matter.

East Coast, West Coast overseas, East Coast, West Coast overseas.

What if a Marine says, look, my kid happens to be a junior in high school, my spouse

happens to have a really great job, let's just say as a nurse or as a lawyer, and I'd

like to stay for a second tour here at Camp Pendleton.

We used to just say, no, just do what I tell you, Marine.

Well now, I have Marines who also want to stay at Camp Lejeune.

I have Marines who want to stay in Okinawa or Hawaii.

So you can't stay there for 10 years, but why can't you stay for six?

That's reasonable.

We're doing a few things such as opt out, meaning if you want to take, if you do not

wish to be considered for command this year or even for promotion, one time for promotion,

because you know, hey, I'm actually not ready.

I've been on a certain job and I'm not ready for that task of being promoted or being in

command.

And for one time, one year, I want to opt out.

Is it not ready or you just prefer for personal reasons or does this not matter?

I won't say it doesn't matter because you still have to see the first general officer

in your chain of command to say, this is why I'm opting out.

I don't want to be considered for command or for promotion.

So it could be either.

It could be, I haven't finished enough of my professional military education.

Right now, you know, my wife is finishing her doctoral thesis or my husband is working

on his veterinary degree, and this is a really bad year.

Okay.

I actually see the first general in your chain and explain that, but the reasoning is up

to you and you can do it one time for promotion.

For command, you could do it a couple of times.

There's also a program that lets you have, I don't like the word intermission, but career

intermission.

So you've been in for 10 years and right now your mom is aging.

We're all going through that.

Your mom is sick.

Your brother has cancer, God forbid.

And you say, listen, I need a year to really take care of my brother.

Right now, or previously, the Marine Corps would have said, there's not much I can do

for you.

I mean, you're a Marine.

Go get it done.

Why can't you take a year, go take care of your brother and then come back, pick up exactly

where you left off.

Same commitment, same requirements, but you took a year out because if I don't let you

do that and you walk away, then I lost an eight or a nine year intelligence officer.

That doesn't make sense to me.

And it's not that we're, quote, kindler and gentler.

We're just smarter.

I don't want to waste that talent.

So that's talent management.

And those are some of the things for families.

I would note too on families, Dodea schools, which are highly useful, especially overseas,

just got rated top in the nation.

Yeah, I saw that.

It was very impressive, actually.

Yeah.

And not a surprise to anybody who's had their kids in a Dodea school.

Everybody's got problems and drama and all that kind of stuff, but my son's a graduate

of a Dodea high school.

They're phenomenal because everybody in there values education because your parents are military

and we require professional military education constantly.

What's your vision for how Marines, compared to how they're learning now, whether that

is training or education or anything in between, what's your vision for how that should change

over the next five or 10 years?

We can be so much smarter.

I don't do anything around this house or any house or on my, I have a fishing boat.

I don't do anything without looking at a YouTube video to find out how to tie a certain knot,

how to throw a certain lure, how to fix the washing machine.

I mean, that's all on YouTube.

The challenge is, which of the 50 people telling you, this is how you should do it?

Do I listen to?

When we do that, when training and education command says, here's a video.

This is how to change a trailer tire on your trailer.

This is how to do whatever the task may be.

That's coming from training education command.

You can count on that.

We have to get better about using that kind of visual training as opposed to here's your

computer-based class.

It takes an hour, no matter how smart you are or how challenged you are.

Click through this and quizzes that don't really mean anything.

Right.

We want to make it more useful to the Marine.

Now, the Marines have to understand, we also have to account to Congress who has directed,

I need a one-hour class on X or on Y.

You have to actually account for that.

You have to prove that you did what Congress told you to do.

And since we support and defend the Constitution, we're kind of big on doing what Congress tells

us to do.

So there's a balance there.

And I'll keep working with the departmental leadership and then members of Congress to

say, I can get more of the effect you want in less time and more effectively using training

that is, that's individually-based and kind of YouTube-based.

Hi, everybody.

Aaron Stein here.

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With that, back to Ryan.

Experimentation and wargaming played a big role in informing forced design 2030 and

General Berger's efforts, which you were a part of.

How are you going to use experimentation and wargaming going forward?

And are there any specific examples you can give?

The campaign of learning continues.

So we'll do the exact same thing that we have been doing.

It's what I would call a virtuous cycle.

I stole that from Doug Hoffman, who's our senior analyst, Mr.

Doug Hoffman.

It is concept, wargame, experiment, feedback, concept, wargame, experiment,

feedback goes in a loop because first you just think of an idea.

Then before you apply people's time, you run it through a wargame and we have some

really exquisite high end modeling and simulation tools that we're using.

In fact, in 2024, we'll open the Robert Neller Center, General Neller, right

down the street at Quantico, and it will be a wargaming and analysis center.

After the wargame, then we'll go and experiment, actually put it to the

test in the field.

And that's what I'm most interested in is the experimentation where real

Marines put hands on real equipment and tell us what does and doesn't work.

They provide us feedback and then we keep going.

So I think what we've been doing is correct and we'll keep doing it in that

same cycle and you have to lean forward when your adversary is moving as

quickly as our adversaries are moving and not just an adversary, all of them.

You cannot wait to have a completely fleshed out, validated concept before

you start moving toward it.

Once I have enough data that says I am comfortable and confident that that's

going to work, then you have to start moving toward it in terms of procurement,

training, education, organization.

If you wait until it's completely validated, you'll get nowhere because the

commandant will change, the administration will change, the budget will change.

You can't do that.

You'll be stuck in a quagmire.

You got to be pretty bold here.

I mean, that's what we did in the 20s when Pete Ellis was out running

around Micronesia and he wrote expeditionary advanced operations in Micronesia.

We could have been even faster with what he found, right?

Pete Ellis found before he died in 23.

But we actually didn't move as fast as we could.

People say, oh, we did.

We did a lot of experiments and war game.

We did a lot of work and we did, but we didn't do enough because we still got stuck

on a reef at Tarawa because we didn't have the right equipment because I would

say we hadn't fully been committed to an idea, a concept that clearly had merit,

but wasn't fully fleshed out.

And one thing I worry about with the war games, I mean, I'm a huge supporter

of war gaming, both for experimentation, for con ops, for whatever, for education,

certainly, but you'll see these war games make the news.

So someone will leak or formally talk about the results of a war game as if

they are that game is determinative of all reality.

And I think that the department as opposed to a piece of the puzzle.

Yeah, exactly.

They, and they're played iteratively.

And I think that both the department needs to get a little bit better about how

it communicates about war gaming and the defense press needs to get a little

more disciplined and how they report on it.

I think you're right, because all the war games, the war games that are of value

are classified.

I mean, if you're not fully informed, if you, if you do a war game that doesn't

account for all of the tools that we have and that the adversary has.

For actual planning.

For actual planning.

Then it's a conceptual war game and you can learn some broad things.

But if it didn't include all of the tools in both of your arsenals, then it's

not actually a highly useful war game.

So it's hard to do that and communicate.

But to your point, one war game is, is one war game.

It's not the end all be all.

It's an indicator to data point.

Now, when I see 17 data points aligned and moving in a certain path or a certain

trajectory, okay, now I'm interested, but one, one war game, you know, and sometimes

it's, well, the war game didn't fix the problem.

Right.

But it's better than it was.

So that's a trajectory that we should stay on.

As opposed to, we'll go back to where you were.

Why would I go back to where I was when the war game found out that where you are

now is better than where you were?

Still doesn't work, but it's better.

Go back to the old way.

Why would I do that?

That's going backwards.

That doesn't make sense.

Along the lines of experimentation, you know, real life experiments going on right

now and that have informed, where, where do we stand with the marine literal regiment?

And could you talk about where that came from and where that's heading?

Yeah, there's two littoral regiment.

Well, there's one who's, who's FOC, fully operationally capable.

That's the third marine littoral regiment out of Hawaii.

They're up, they've been used, tested, experimented with.

They've been used in Balakutan.

They're asked for the combatant commander wants them.

He wants another one as quickly as he can get it.

That'll be the 12th MLR that'll be in Japan.

That littoral regiment that's in Japan, that is the most significant change to our

Japanese lay down that we have had in 15, 20 years, because the Japanese

government sees the threat the same way we do.

And they said, yep, you can keep the 12th MLR on Okinawa.

That is a big step because it's long range fires.

It's a stand in force capability.

It's, it's quite lethal.

It's got sense, makes sense capabilities, reconnaissance, counter reconnaissance.

So those two MLRs, the third, which is stood up now and fully operationally

capable, followed by the 12th, which will come in the coming years informed by the

third, they're, they're exactly what we need in the Pacific.

And I would remind people, we were not best trained, organized, or equipped to

deal with the task that we'd been lawfully given in the last two national

defense strategies.

So we had to make a change.

So we did what Marines do.

We took a different approach to a marine air ground task force, because the

MLR is a marine air ground task force.

It's no different than a Mew or a Meb or a Mef.

It's just sized and it's purpose built for its task, which is to be light, lethal,

austere and be able to stand in to the weapons engagement zone when others are

going to have to leave because of the threat.

It is the best solution to the task we've been given.

So they're doing well.

You talked about long range fires.

What are some of your early thoughts has comment on about the future of

long range fires in the Marine Corps?

Fully committed long range fires.

The modern battlefield where almost everyone, state actors and non-state

actors have access to really long range fires either through drone technology,

missile technology, which has gotten cheaper in some ways over time.

Kind of like the wristwatch, you know, the original Cassio wristwatch when they

first came out, like 250 bucks.

Now you can get them for $20 computers.

Those were $6,000, $7,000 laptops.

Now you can get them for, you know, 900 bucks.

So that technology is now available to include long range fires for others

beyond state actors.

We're committed to long range fires.

We're also committed to lightweight long range fires.

That's our conundrum.

We're a light force.

We're a mobile force.

If we are dragging around systems that are so heavy that we can't get there

in time, then we have to spend our money trying to make them smaller.

So that's what I'm focused on is the naval strike missile.

How do I extend its range or use something like precision strike missile?

Because I want missiles that I can move and have a deep enough magazine

because I can carry volume.

So that's going to be my focus is extending the range of our smaller, lighter

rockets, missiles, such that I can take more of them and be more mobile.

I read the interview you did with Defense One, which was very useful.

I thought the issue of organic mobility is a big priority of yours.

What does that mean to you?

Organic mobility is a combination first and foremost of amphibious warships.

I'll stop.

We have to have what the law directs us to have minimum of 31 amphibious warships,

10 big decks and 21 LPDs.

And we'll need landing ship mediums, LSMs, which will are the short of

shore connectors that best enable the Marine with total regiments.

Because when you have only a few, let's just say a few days of unambiguous

warning, you need to move and to get yourself strategically positioned, not

quote, flung across islands, but strategically placed in pre-planned

locations to provide sea denial, which leads to sea control for the Navy,

which is distributed maritime operations.

That enables the movement of things in and out of the weapons engagement zone

and causes an adversary to question what they're doing.

Is this the right trajectory?

As Dr.

Hicks often says, the depths like death, what we're looking for, in this case,

China to say, Hey, today's not the day.

Maybe tomorrow, but not today.

Every day we buy back is a day our technology advances, the day that our

cyber skills advance, our undersea dominance advances.

So that's how I see organic mobility, first and foremost, amphibs.

And then our own true marine organic mobility, which is KC 130s.

That's why we're adding the second squad into Hawaii.

And then our 53s and our V 22s, the tertiary Lee, new word there, which is

impressive for a guy from Texas and I'm tertiary Lee.

If I would have gone to UT, which I didn't, my daughter did.

And we talked about that a little bit, then I'd have been faster with that

word, but in a tertiary sense, it is unmanned systems, both undersea

at sea and from the air, being able to, to produce and provide logistics

specifically fires, communications from an unmanned perspective.

Cause that kind of mobility matters to moving radios, moving signals.

It's not just moving people and weapons.

And I don't say this in a critical way at all.

So the Marine Corps culture is offensive tech at the tactical level.

A lot of this thinking and does, and force design that we're seeing in the

Marine Corps, as well as the way that technology is going, sort of emphasizes

and advantages the defense.

I mean, I would view, and maybe this is incorrect, stand in forces is mostly a

defensive concept of operations.

Do you see that as a problem for the Marine Corps?

Do you disagree with my characterization on that?

Yeah, I would disagree.

Stand in force is offensive 100% because it is sense and make sense.

And what, what are you sensing?

You're sensing the adversary.

Make sense, make sense of what his intentions.

Okay.

So I sense that he's doing something and I can make sense because I'm there

and I have battle, uh, battle space, domain, awareness.

And I sense what he's doing and why he's doing it.

Well, in order to do what, in order to kill him.

So, but defending involves killing too, right?

Defending involves killing, but if you are sitting waiting for something,

that's, that perhaps is not how Marines want to be.

We are offensively minded.

What we're trying to do is I'm trying to make you stop going in direction one

or direction two, either change your trajectory or to kill you.

Everything we do is with an offensive mindset.

It is to, to impose my will on you.

That is, that is warfare is me imposing my will on the adversary.

And everything we do is part of a kill web.

So the person who pulls the trigger is the last piece in the kill web.

The most important part is actually finding the adversary.

Then you got to fix them, got to hold them in place, got to track them.

And then somebody's got to pull the trigger and put, as we say, a warhead

on a forehead, we can do that and still build a Marine who understands

and is ready for the gritty, nasty, harsh, horrible realities of ground combat.

Cause again, our mission, locate close with destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver.

So we're still teaching bayonet fighting.

And we will, we'll continue to teach that.

I mean, it is still at some point, rifle squads, closed non-rifle squads.

But when they were teaching bayonet fighting in World War Two, if you look

at the manual and they were teaching knife fighting, the instructors put in there.

The last thing you want to do is what I'm about to teach you.

You want to kill the enemy as far away as you can.

First kill them with artillery, then kill them with a machine gun, then kill them

with a rifle, then kill them with a pistol.

And if worse comes to worst, kill them with your bayonet and then you might

have to kill them with your hands.

But you want to kill the adversary way, way out.

So if I enable a Navy Tomahawk to kill an adversary at, let's just say,

hundreds of miles away, that is way better than a Marine killing them with a rifle.

It doesn't mean we're not offensively minded.

That means I'm feeding the kill chain that's killing people way further

out than I would be able to do on my own.

You mentioned the squad and there's been a lot of, especially during General

Berger's tenure, a lot of debate and controversy over the size of the infantry battalion.

Can you preview where we're heading with that?

Is that still undergoing experimentation or?

Yeah, the size is 811.

It was 896, although it really wasn't because no battalion had all their people.

Like I said, my first platoon of 41 was actually a platoon of about 21.

So we did an experiment.

We went out to each division and they formed a battalion and we told them to take

a look at, this is kind of rehashing the past, but we had them take a look at a

really hard objective, 730.

We said, can you get by with 730 knowing that we were shooting way

long at the target?

Each division formed a battalion and they tested it.

They tested it on a Marine expeditionary unit, tested it on a unit deployment

program and just tested it in a regular training regime.

And they all came back and said, no, too small.

What's the right number?

We asked 811.

Okay.

So the commandant said 811.

We're continuing with IBX, Infantry Battalion Experimentation, to validate that.

So if that number proves to be, if the facts and data come in and say you need to

add 10 or you need to drop seven or add 20, then I'll do it.

But I have to see the data first.

But right now the number is 811 and it's smaller, but they do in fact have more

lethality, more capability, more range, more communications than they had before.

And they are entirely capable because a normal battalion and most other services,

about 500, we're still behemoths compared to most other people.

Largest Infantry Battalion in the world, I think still, yeah.

And I think a lot of people don't appreciate how much, and you said this,

but it's worth emphasizing how much more lethal and how much more range is in a Marine

Infantry Battalion today than 10, 15, 20 years ago.

We used to talk about your 81s were your big thing.

You're reaching out there, maybe 5,800, 6,000 on a good day, six kilometers.

We're pushing stuff out now at the Infantry Battalion 30, 40 kilometers.

I mean, it's, it is not even remotely the same as it was, but that comes with the

cost, right?

You have to have the technology, the training, you have to carry the equipment.

But if you don't have range to sense the adversary before they sense you, then

you're playing defense because he found you before you found him.

The advantage is always to the hider.

Ever since Berger's planning guidance was issued, it has seemed to me that the

biggest, one of the biggest problems the Marine Corps has in realizing its vision,

which I support for force design is, and this is Ryan's opinion here, is the Navy

isn't meeting the Marine Corps where they need to.

Part of this is number of amphibs, which I know is a subject of disagreement.

Actually, it's not.

We're good.

I'm afraid Katie and I are both set on 31.

Okay.

Minimum 30.

Don't let them withdraw the comment.

Which is actually great because it's what the law requires.

Has been a subject of disagreement.

It has been.

Yeah, we're both set on 31 as a minimum.

Are you happy with where the Navy's meeting you on other issues as well?

Or what more would you like to see from the Navy?

So one, Admiral Frank Kedde and I, truly good friends, we get along.

We both share a vision of a powerful naval expeditionary force that's globally deployable.

You're certainly seeing that now in the vicinity of Israel.

What neither of us is happy about is the state of maintenance of ships.

The maintenance numbers are in the 30s and 40 percentile.

That's not acceptable to our vice-CNO.

Hopefully our soon CNO, not acceptable to me.

So that's, I think, where we want to focus because we need our ships ready to go.

But when we add the LSM landing ship medium and a minimum of 31 amphibs, we're in a good place.

You mentioned Israel, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit is on it.

I believe on its way to the Eastern Mediterranean, if not already there.

I don't really know the schedule.

But what is its mission there and what are you watching its mission for?

Not just for the immediate consequences on the war that's ongoing, which hopefully we

don't have to get directly militarily involved in, but for learning for the Marine Corps.

So the mission of the 26th Mu, I will not violate a classification level or pre-decision.

What I can tell you is the Mu has been disaggregated or distributed.

We've had the Mesa Verde doing operations in the high north with our allies and partners

there to include Norway.

We've had the Batan and the Carter Hall down in the Gulf of Oman.

They've been up into the Strait of Hormuz.

So the decision on where the Mu will be still to be made can tell you that what they have

a capability to do is to strike.

They have a capability to do non-combatant evacuation operations at scale.

I mean, I had an amphibious ready group when I was a company commander.

We did the evacuation of Liberia and we're moving thousands of people.

It's one thing to move a couple of 300.

It's a different to move thousands.

That requires an amphibious ready group and a lily pad, which is that big deck.

So we'll see what the decision by the secretary is for where the Mu goes or doesn't go.

But we certainly have the capability to do whatever is required in either the Mediterranean

or the Middle East.

I'll just leave it at that.

Shifting to the Indo-Pacific, there's two interesting deployments going on right now.

One has one marine rotational force Southeast Asia and the other is Darwin.

Could you talk about what we're learning from those missions and what they're doing in Asia?

Yeah, and I failed to hit the experimentation piece that you talked about for the Mu.

Every unit that goes out for deployment to Okinawa on a Mu to Murph C, and that's SEA,

Southeast Asia, not Murph C, because the other one's Murph D, the letter Murph Darwin.

You're sure that never gets confused.

People screw that up all the time.

I see it MRF dash in the letter C. It's like, nope, it's SEA.

Every one of them is tasked to experiment with drones, with VBAT systems, tail sitters,

with communications gear.

Every one of them is working by, with, and through Marine Corps Fighting Lab.

So what those units are doing, Murph C, Murph D, and the Mu, is looking at our distributed

operations.

How do you sustain yourself?

How do you do 3D printing and additive manufacturing at sea or in austere environments?

How do you do new formations?

How do you use your ability to use expeditionary contracting?

Because you can buy just about anything anywhere in the world if you bring enough

money with you.

I mean, people will sell you chow, they'll sell you water, they'll sell you everything

but ammo.

So they're all doing those experimentations and they're doing command and control.

How do they, how does that small command element sense, make sense of the battlefield,

the cop, the common, common operating picture, and then pass that data in time that

matters, meaning seconds or milliseconds, to the rest of the joint force and our partner

force in that last piece.

How do you be interoperable with your allies and partners?

Not just reassure them.

We got great allies and partners who don't need that much reassurance.

What they need is interoperability.

So they can call targets for me.

I can call for them.

That's what Murph C and Murph D and the Mu are doing.

We just had Spaniards and Italians on our ships and simultaneously.

And we do the same thing with our Filipino partners or Japanese partners, Korean

partners, Australian partners.

Pretty much we had a lot of friends.

China has a lot less friends.

Russia has almost no friends, except for China, who has no friends.

So that's how it usually works, is people with no friends hang out together.

One of the contingencies that people talk a lot about and that is driving a lot of

planning in the Defense Department is a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

In our pages, Benjamin Van Horek wrote an article straight too far that basically

points out how historic weather and patterns make the Taiwan Straits very

difficult to navigate, certainly for an amphibious landing force between June and

August and then again from November to February.

So it really leaves small windows in the year where China could feasibly launch

such an attack if those weather patterns hold.

How does this correspond to schedules for exercises and rotational deployments

for deterrent purpose?

I won't get into Admiral Aucalino's lane, the Indo-Pakum commander who owns the four,

you know, I provide forces, he employs forces.

But I can say as a member of the Joint Chiefs that what is always on the table

is do we have our experiments and our exercises correct in time?

Do you want to be in location A, B or C at the time of maximum pressure or

danger or challenge?

So I think everyone's open to redoing exercises and experiments to make sure

that, you know, you focus and have forces available when it is most likely

that an adversary will do A, B or C.

And I think that's where the, again, that's where the Marines are so valuable

in those standing forces because there are other forces will move outside

of the weapons engagement zone.

We won't.

And that's not bravado.

That's who we are.

Someone has to be first in the door.

I use this analogy a lot.

When you clear a room, we build the staff.

Somebody has to be first through the door.

The other Marines support them.

But on behalf of those three behind, somebody has to go first.

And that is us.

That's first to fight.

You can't enable the joint force and be useful unless you can sense, make

sense, target and fire at range, which is why we've made some of the

modernization changes, because frankly, some of the systems that we had after

15 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, just they don't have the range.

They just don't.

You have to modernize or we'll be fighting the last war or fighting the next

war with last war's equipment.

Shifting gears a little bit.

There's been some tragic accidents that the Marine Corps has experienced this

year that have seen Marines killed and injured.

This has been a big issue for you.

I know since you took command, both as acting and as, and as commandant, what

are some of the initiatives underway to, I don't want you to pre-judge any

investigations, of course, but to, to make sure that this doesn't happen again

as best as we can guarantee that.

We did two different safety, one a safety review and then a safety stand down

after the tragic loss of the MB 22 down in the Tiwi Islands up on Melville

Island and the results of that are still pending.

And that, that often takes months to truly understand what happened.

The results of the initial, what things could we do better?

Should we do better?

Not the stand down, but the, the safety review, those are done.

Those are coming to me this next week.

Colonel Good, uh, call sign fingers is the head of my safety division until

I get a one star in there next summer.

And I'll have some more, probably in this month or early next month.

And here's what we found in our maintenance procedures and our ready

room procedures in our driving procedures.

So I'll probably have a little bit more for you in the next 30 days.

I'm not ever satisfied with, well, what we do is a dangerous business inherently.

My job is to drive every ounce of risk out our, our aircraft are safe.

Our pilots are well trained.

Our vehicles are safe.

We do things though, with them that others could never do.

We fly in close formation at night, long ranges, low visibility in order

to deliver ordinance on highly defended targets.

That's not what Delta American airlines do.

We drive our vehicles on roads that no FedEx guy would ever go on.

That's what we do.

We have to do it.

So there is some risk in what we do because of the environment in which we do it.

But my job is to drive that risk to as near zero as I can.

Before you were a general officer.

Who's the best boss you ever had in the Marine Corps?

Oh, wow.

That's hard.

I mean, I have had so many bosses.

So before I hit my bosses, let me instead, and I'll hit the bosses.

Let me, let me talk about who I learned the most from.

I learned the most from my sergeant's major and I can list every one of them.

My first platoon sergeant, very, very first one, Rick Hawkins, first company,

first sergeant, Jill Morgan, both retired sergeant's major, Chuck

Blumenberg at one five, Dave Job, sir, major at eighth Marines, Tom

Egerling at McSittic, Mario Marquez out at three mef, Tom Sowers, first Mar

Div.

So, uh, and when I was an officer selection officer, I had a guy named

Lou Hapschey was a master then a gunny was my officer selection team recruiter.

I learned the most from my staff NCOs because they are the backbone of the

core.

They provide the discipline.

It's a hard life.

So it is from my staff NCOs who I have learned the most gunnery sergeant

Baxter in our company, Gunny, Alan Slater, my first sergeant weapons company,

two, two bosses.

I've had so many great ones.

Uh, John Tulin, Jaco was both my OCS platoon commander.

So he's responsible for letting me in the Marine Corps.

He might regret that today.

I don't know.

And then he was my boss at eighth Marines, Larry Nicholson, first Marine,

sorry, Larry Nicholson was my boss at fifth Marines.

Uh, absolutely loved, loved working for both those gents.

Uh, I had, I had many, many more, but I'll leave it at those, those two for now.

Cause if I go any more, I'm going to start talking about 85 different bosses.

I want you to let me know after this airs, how many, what about me?

Emails you get.

Oh, I'm going to get her.

So I'm, cause I'm sorry, but it's not an exhaustive or, or a complete list.

Cause there's so many other people that I learned from Jeff Patterson at

two, two, I mean, I could, you know, if I start doing this roll rabbit hole,

we'll be here all fricking day.

And, and also I want to back that up because not just military.

I had great civilian bosses.

So remember, I worked for three depth sec deaths and one sec death.

As their military.

As their senior military assistant.

I worked for a guy named Ash Carter.

He's deceased now.

God bless him.

Phenomenal boss.

Learned so much from him.

I worked for Bob work, retired Marine colonel, depth sec death, astoundingly good

boss, and I worked for Christine Fox.

I will tell you, I loved working for Miss Fox.

She, she was the acting DSD, just a stellar lady and a machine.

Oh my God, wicked smart.

She was a machine like 0730 arrived, boom, doing reading, finished by eight o'clock.

She was a clock and, uh, and treated people extremely well.

So I've had great bosses, uniform and civilian.

What are some books that have had a big impact on you throughout your career?

Yeah.

Oh man, that, that, that's a long one.

I mean, it's okay.

All the way back to the beginning, you know, we, we all had to read Feels of Fire by

Webb, great book on how to suffer adversity.

Um, phenomenal book of late was a book fall for country and core.

It was, uh, written by the granddaughter of OP Smith and it was his General Smith's

life focusing a lot on Korea and it was about leadership and what, what real

leadership is and how to be stoic.

I read a pretty good book, uh, about Red Mike Edson, which I, I thought was, um,

I thought was, was pretty, pretty stellar.

Uh, I read a good book by, I'll give a shout out to Chris Bros called Kill Chain.

That was a great book.

And if you're looking for something that's, that's not factual or not, uh, it's

fiction, if you haven't read Once an Eagle, that is, that's formative, right?

If you put yourself in that particular book.

It's been recommended many times on this show, although I think you're the first

Marine, uh, it's usually soldiers that recommend that.

It's a great book.

You know, do you want to be massing Gail?

Probably not.

You know, so that, that is a phenomenal book.

And then I think for Marines, one of the seminal, well, two more and I'll stop.

Hasting is battle for the Falklands because you understand what it, what happens

when you show up without the kit that you need.

And the Brits did a significant change after the Falklands to their, to their kit.

So I think that is a good one.

If I'm, if I'm calling just one other one out, it's so hard because you don't want

to, you don't want to forget, forget anybody.

If you haven't done this kind of war by a Fahrenheit, then you don't understand

what it is to start with nothing.

And except for your pride, except for your ethos, which is where we were at the

Pusan perimeter and the first provisional brigade.

So I think, um, I think this kind of war is a book that is, is should be

formative for everyone about how we, we didn't just survive.

We thrived in Korea.

That one is key for Marines because we're always doing a little bit more, a

little bit less.

Thank you so much for this.

This is great.

Hey, thanks a lot.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast.

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