TRADOC Commander: Podcast with WOTR
Strengthening the Army Profession and professional discourse
General Gary Brito, the commander of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, talked with Ryan Evans about strengthening the profession on a recent War on the Rocks podcast.
The interview explores how TRADOC is strengthening the Army profession writ large, while the excerpt below focuses on how professional writing is “free”, the investments needed to renew professional writing, and a commitment to listen to ideas that will help strengthen the profession. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, roughly from 20:30 to 24:40 if you are listening along.
Evans: A big part of professionalism, and I know you and General George are very supportive of what the Harding Project’s doing, revitalizing the Army's professional journals, but also inculcating a culture of public communication, debate, writing among soldiers. And it goes back to how we originally met several years ago when I was teaching a class for new Army two-stars on writing for outside DOD audiences. So what are the feedback mechanisms? It sounds like a lot of the specific initiatives are still being put together for professionalism. What are the ideas you'd like to hear from soldiers on this and where would you like to hear them? How would you like them to communicate these ideas?
Gen. Gary Brito: Well, thanks, Ryan. I'm really excited about this and I'm going to add some context and some of its personal. But I'm really excited about anything we can do to generate professional discourse that is free. And I'll use the words, my words, free opportunity to just discuss things, free opportunity to share lessons that a person might have observed, free opportunity to share with TTPs…
And something that a light bulb moment that I personally had in looking at better ways to generate professional discourse is to connect to the majority of the Army, which might be below the age of 40. The young soldiers and leaders that are out there, that (1) have ideas, and (2) have experiences and things that could just help in the professional dialogue and discourse at any level. And I say free 'cause I'm not grading your report, you're not doing a thesis in the war college. You could be, but it could just be generated through the specific branch journal or From the Green Notebook or Military Review just to help people think of some things.
So if I may continue to drag on with this, in that we also looked at, as a command, what avenues might've been lacking. So I can say there's been some momentum in our professional branch journals that existed more heavily when I was a lieutenant and captain and a major than they do now. And part of that is, one: Do young soldiers look at the glossies as much as they did back then than they do now? No.
So what can we do better as a command to help our Army connect to some of the innovative social media venues that may be out there? I'm aging myself, I couldn't name them all right now, not only YouTube and other things, but there's certainly some platforms that are more accessible very quickly, iPhone accessible. Hopefully that would resonate more with a younger generation, but a bigger generation than it might've 15, 20 years ago.
Evans: Would you be willing to assure, especially our Army listeners, our soldiers out there also, but also the Department of the Army, civilians, and contractors that support the Army, if they write or podcast or whatever it is, something substantive about how to improve Army professionalism that it'll get read by your staff?
Gen. Gary Brito: Yes, I would. I'll be willing to own it and listen to what people offer to strengthen our Army profession or anything. It could be how they did at this NTC rotation, and we need to do that. Look at it this way. This is the full circle professional discourse. That's very helpful. And you might read something you disagree with, but you might reach something. "Gee, Captain, that was great," or, "Gee, Sergeant, that was great."
I do a lot of battlefield circulation, just visiting TRADOC units and others and was visiting a course at Fort Bliss, our NCO academy, and challenged a sergeant to write about this course that you're going through now. It happened to be on battle staff management and what do you think about it. Just to bring the audience in 'cause it's building to our profession. So yes, we would. And I need to also ensure that we have repositories and the venues for you to click and input things and make it go quickly as well. So I was very excited about this opportunity. I think it's important.
Listen to the whole podcast at War on the Rocks and be on the lookout for an upcoming article by GEN Brito there also.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/magazine/suicide-military-austin-valley.html?smid=url-share