#190: Building The Unified Global Special Operations Alliance - CSM(R) Warren Soeldner

advantage over our adversaries.

“A single command structure enables interoperability at every level.”

From communication and equipment to tactics and acquisition, ensuring partner forces can train together, fight together, and answer to a common mission. From the Global Special Operations Foundation's symposium at Athens Greece, I sat down with retired command sergeant major Warren Solmer, a 10-special forces group legend to now lives and works in Greece supporting the global soft community.

Warren brought home the central 10th of modern allied warfare, explaining that special operations forces across nations, solve problems together, build trust, and operate as one. He spoke about the importance of standing up capable national soft commands, the evolving NATO environment, and the realities of today's threat landscape. From Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the long term strategic pressure posed by China and Iran,

Warren emphasized that modern conflict cannot be viewed to a single West, war now spans

diplomatic, informational, military, and economic domains, and special forces play a critical

role in shaping outcomes long before conflict becomes visible. This discussion returns to what green berets have always done best. Building capability in part, understanding history and culture, maintaining discipline and professionalism, and quite shaping global security and weight, view, will ever see. Fall the Jedberg podcast in the green beret foundation on social media, list 9 of

favorite podcasts when I've formed. Read on our website and watch the full video version on YouTube. As we show you, why America must continually lead from the front, you'll matter the challenge. Warren, welcome to the Jedberg podcast. Thanks, Graham.

Happy to be here. We're sitting out on the deck. I mean, beautiful Greek morning. Yep. Right.

The music's playing in the background. We've had some great couple of days here at G-Soph, really having some opportunities to sit down with so many of our partners in our allies. Talk about the importance of coming together as allied nations.

“What does that mean and how do we define interoperability?”

I think it was one of the big terms that we heard getting thrown around. But for us, as green berets, as guys who served primarily in 10 special forces group where Europe was our area of focus, you like the mayor here. You and Stu Braden, you know, absolutely everybody in Steve's been a great friend of the podcast and was on a soft leak and was kind enough to start to welcome us to the G-Soph

community. You live in Greece. Yes. Okay. And about why an organization like G-Soph to come to Greece to have the European symposium

become so critical to building these relationships.

Well, as seen in the week, the focus and the theme for this whole week has been strengthening unity. I'm really trying to bring all of our partners together. I mean, the focus for global soft foundation is global soft. You know, Stu has been beaten as strong, you know, since he retired.

But bringing all of the global soft together to solve all these problems and to work together. And so every year when these symposiums happen, that's the goal. Here, this year, what we've been pushing is to really get Greek soft and they're fairly new special warfare command, the visibility, not just with the global soft partners and with the soft partners from other nations, but in Greece as well.

So what we really wanted to focus on here was to bring everybody here, bring the Greeks and let the Greek public and more importantly, parts of the government that still don't understand why it's important to have a joint unified command. See that it's a supported option that everybody's using and everybody's, it's the type of command that all the countries you're using and that they needed it to.

So we brought all these units here, their commanders, their staffs, their acquisition people and it's been a very successful event. The discussion around the joint unified command has been an interesting one this week.

“That is a big takeaway for me because I think we take it for granted.”

And yes, we know the history, we understand the impetus behind the stand up of US so we can remember the helicopter's colliding in the desert one and everyone coming together and saying, okay, we have a real challenge here when our forces can't even speak to each other. And we had a great conversation yesterday with Lisa Costa, who was the director of communications

and the chief information officer at Socom who talked about being in the job during black cockdown situation in Mogadishu and realizing that our air and ground units can't talk to each other as effectively as they needed to be able to respond to the threat.

under a single headquarters so that they can then begin to communicate at the same level

of share equipment, share TTPs, answer to the same commander, we obviously take it for granted as I was saying. But then you look across the allied forces and I had a chance to sit down with commander of the armed forces, the Philippines, J. Sock that just got stood up.

“And so why is that joint unified command for each of these nations so important for them”

to stand up? Yeah, so when we look at our budget in the US, socom budget, I mean, it's massive. And for the right reasons, a lot of these smaller countries, they just don't have that kind of budget. Well, it's not that they don't have them there, much decrease scale.

So for them, making sure that one command is funneling the money down to buy the equipment that the troops need, it becomes more important because in Socom, you know, and everybody knows about $1,000 hammers that we buy in the US military, that was a mechanized infantry platoon leader. Yeah.

Yeah. So you know, and you can get fired for losing $1,000 anyway, but you can't go by it at home depot for $8,000. Yeah, that worked for us for a bit there, you know, and we fixed that a lot in the US. But here, you can't afford to do that.

$1,000 is a lot of money in the smaller country that doesn't have the GDP we do.

“So it's important that, as a unified command when we're talking about acquisitions, especially”

for trade shows like these, where we bring in all of our corporate partners and sponsors and they are able to show their wares and things that, you know, these forces might want, that the dollar go there, the euro here goes a lot further for them when it's a unified command and they can say, okay, well, we need a new weapon system, something that the Greeks are looking at right now, you know, do they upgrade their current weapons, do they go

to a new weapon, then they look at the prices, but now their unified command is looking to arm their army, navy, and air force special operations in the rest of the military as well. But it's one weapon system, you know, and it may be modified for naval use or maritime use versus air use or versus ground use, but it's going to have the same basics, parts

supplies and the nation, which is really, you know, where all the money goes when it comes to the weapons. So it's important to have one command to do that instead of, you know, four disparate commands or a headquarters at the three star and four star levels, you know, trying to push down something, I mean, we all know once you get up to those levels, you're not

really connected with what you need on the ground, so they don't know. And it also leads to the ability to do research and development for specific mission sets. So now you're shopping for specific things, and you're only paying one bill at the unified command level, and those staffs as opposed to each of those services paying those bills separately and basically, you know, not very cost effective.

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I want to ask you about the importance of European alliance, specifically NATO, over as tenth groupers, we're intimately familiar with Europe, and our allies here in Europe and how important in strategic they've been throughout history, really, I mean, we've been partnered with the French since the American Revolution. Right?

So, and they've become critically important when we talk about, you know, force projection. We've got a couple of years ago, at the day we had the chance to sit out with a sergeant major in men, Jeremiah, who you probably know, who was at that time, the sergeant major of US Army Europe in Africa, and you look at we still have forces in Europe, 82 years after the end of World War II, but that only gets us so far, and it's really this concept

in the soft of by-with-and-through, our partners in our allies, where we really affect strategic policy of US defense plans.

“Can you define by-with-and-through, and what that means to you as a greenbrake?”

Sure. Yeah. So, the NATO partnership here in Europe, something that, you know, I've been at a part

of, in fact, my first unit, when I came in, the Army was in Germany, and it was a NATO unit.

I'll tell you, my background here, I've worked with the Greeks for a long time, and I've

“lived in Greece and visited here, or been here, TTY, and in the past, it was always, oh,”

NATO. That's just the US. NATO says, "Do this. That's just the US. They do this."

And to, for some part of that, that may have been correct in the past, and yes, we know sackers, the US general, everybody said, "Well, it's the US telling us, I mean, that's changed now. That dynamic has definitely changed. They're not just because of the new administration of the US and the stance on making

other countries in NATO pay their bill as well, but also the fact that, since the incursion into Ukraine back in 2014, when you go that far back, in Crimea, we realize, hey, we really didn't have the US forces on the ground here anymore that we needed. And the other country did have to start picking up a lot of the work. And that's when we started to find out that some of the NATO processes weren't really

streamlined for other nations to be able to react while the US rebuilt, you know, built up our strength over here again or brought forces back into the theater.

So it became critical that the other forces now had the ability to project a rapid response

force quicker than the NATO process. And at that time, I think it was 30 nations having to agree to do something, you know, and the threat isn't waiting on 30 nations and their parliament. Yeah. So things have changed and since that time, NATO has been getting more streamlined, better,

and the other nations have been picking up some of the staffing and procedures and manning of some of these response forces and other units, deployment units. But at the same time, America's one that, you know, has, you know, huge piece of it. Now we can, in with the new administration, now we can see people are either there, the parliament's here and the countries are starting to pick up a lot more of the ball.

Because at the end of the day, NATO isn't just the US, NATO is 32 nations now, I believe it is. And so it's important that they know fight, train together. And that's what we're doing here.

“And that's what I was doing before I, you know, retired from the army.”

That's what I was doing for, let's talk here, and that's what I've been doing even now in like the past few years, military liaison for the global soft foundation. You mentioned Ukraine in 2014, so Russia's incursion into Crimea, but I think that certainly propelled the conversation about the relevance of NATO at that time. But how much has the conversation around NATO changed since Russia's invasion into Ukraine

proper, now what four years ago, I mean, how much has that changed the conversation around NATO's relevance? Because now, I mean, Crimea was one situation, but now, I mean, they're on the doorstep of Europe. And we haven't had chance to sit down with the Polish while we were here.

We sit on the, and the Romanians as well. And they're sitting right there on the edge of the battle, essentially. It's critical. The other part of NATO is, you know, having the same equipment, having the same resupply capabilities.

You know, the NATO standard, something that, you know, even some of the NATO countries drifted away from during the following cold war and into the time leading up to now. And we saw it with the invasion of Ukraine, where now we, what we had, is former former eastern block fighters and tanks and armored vehicles, when one country is using one standard and the rest of the countries are using another standard, resupply becomes a lot harder

for that country, and now you're running two different resupply lanes. It's, you're not going to resupply for Eastern block equipment, other than battlefield recovery, because obviously, in this case, the threat is also the producer of that equipment. So it became a very, being Russian equipment. Yeah.

Yeah.

“So it's important that the NATO standard is maintained.”

It's important that the tactics, even now we see it, you know, when I did some time in

the first group and I go over to Asia and the countries are still looking for what tactics

they use, doctrine, you know, and even now we tell them through the little soft foundations, like why aren't you using NATO standards? You might as well, the manuals are out there, the procedures are out there, everything is, is available. It's done for you, you know, you build your units into a NATO standard so that now you can

come over to Europe and you can exercise as NATO countries where NATO countries can come out to Asia, especially, you know, as we look at what do we do there, if something accelerates in that region, just like during the Korean conflict, you know, the war, it was all, you know, those were NATO countries that were over there in Korea. So if everybody is fighting the same, training the same, using the same standards, doctrine,

and equipment, it makes things a lot easier, and interoperability is greatly enhanced.

week. I mean, there's interoperability in terms of, if we're in Allied nations, can we talk to each other? You know, that's interoperability, but there's an level of interoperability, too. That says, well, you have a platform that I need.

Can you give me that use of that platform? I'm going to use it through my systems and then give it back to you when I'm done. How effective has that type of interoperability been in NATO and where are the gaps right now? I mean, I've been away from the problem set now for about a year and a half, but when I was

still working up in Germany, the gap we were seeing was until is it sharing compartments, I've weighed too many compartments still, and we as a U.S., we were the worst at it, really. So, we had so many compartments, I mean, have time we didn't know what we're doing. You know, we've gotten much better at that, moving a lot of our communications down to a

“NATO secret level, and then just keeping the U.S. or the five eyes or the other compartments”

stuff on separate systems, but getting everything down from a top secret level where we

seem to always jam stuff that we even amongst our own people, you know, to keep a separate,

getting it down to NATO secret onto NATO secret systems and other systems that we use, so that we can't share that with the partners and we can share intelligence and information, we can share, you know, some of the doctrines and TTPs, but more importantly, we can plan better together. It's amazing when you're playing in exercise with NATO partners, five, six partners, and

you're all in a room, everybody's working great, and then everybody breaks off and goes in their own little spaces, and then re-does the whole plan in order to utilize the assets that they brought with them that have a different TTP that we women not want to share with our partners, and at the end of the day, we're all out on the same battlefield and they're seeing what we're doing, we're seeing what they're doing, so it's important, so information,

you know, that was always the biggest gap amongst the planners, planning systems, and, you

know, that's always a problem too, and then we have the language problems too, but a lot of that is with AI and all that, you see here, we're doing briefings here, and we're doing general sessions, and we're using apps that translate on the fly, so our friends with Filipinos or the gentleman from the UAE that we're here, you know, I'm watching these guys, they're watching its stream in their language as, you know, they're up on stage speaking in English, it's an amazing

capability that we're now starting and integrate into these planning processes too, so AI is helping us a lot, you know, the new era of digital communications is, it's filling that gap, yeah.

“When you look across NATO right now, what do you think the biggest threat is?”

So when I think the biggest threat for NATO now, I mean obviously, you know, Russia is a huge threat right now, but I think we may be getting too hyper focused on that, and forgetting that we do have other threats like China, Iran, until at least recently, but when I travel across NATO countries here and driving on roads that were, you know, built by the Chinese, when I'm using cell towers, that were put placed by the Chinese, and I'm looking around and I'm seeing everybody's using

Chinese technology, electronic electric cars, and China, it's one thing for us to sit in the states, you know, and by, you know, $80,000 Tesla's and, you know, $2,000 iPhone's and Samsung's, but to a lot of the countries, you know, have they're not as rich or they don't have the salaries and levels of salaries, it's some of the larger countries have, and they're buying all this stuff, it's not in, so they're optic on China maybe different, but yeah, at the same time

is definitely a NATO problem, and these are NATO countries, and so we're looking out the front window and the problem sets say of China, but coming through the back door is China.

“I think we have to defy what war is, yeah, based on the adversary that we face, yes, and I think”

we always have to take that back to time, the diplomatic informational, military and economic,

the elements of national power, and throughout the 250 shows that we've done here in conversations that we've had, that always tends to kind of come up, because those are the strings that countries pull, and we can say, oh, well, because we're military, or we're not at war with China, maybe not militarily, or we can certainly say we're in a gray war with China and they possibly through proxies, but economically, we're certainly at war, certainly at war, informationally,

that I've fortunate enough to spend in Africa, I mean, the amount of Chinese and Russian investment in Africa is tremendous, and because we don't have the long time affiliation that we do with a lot of the European countries, the ability of them to get in and supplant us is way easier, and way faster, and for a way lesser amount of money, so their cost of investment is much lower, to go to places like Africa where you have a wealth of national resources, and you kind of,

we think we continue to underestimate the long-term value of the African nation,

which is a conversation we always had at South Africa and that Africa.

But we really have to start to define where are we in respect to the elements of national power.

“You know, Russia, on the other hand, I mean, are we militarily at war with Russia?”

We might not have American student at Russians, or Russian student at Americans, but we certainly have American weaponry, but hit in Russian targets, and there's no hiding, you know, that, and the same for Iran. And so, I think quantifying it in that metric can really help us to broaden our lens, to understand, you know, what are the real threats out there and how are we combatting them? Because as we focused so long on the global war on terror, we have to ask

ourselves a question, did we then allow these countries specifically, Russia, Iran, who we definitely were fighting in the global war on terror, and China, to focus on their long-term plan, to achieve some of the aims that they have, and I think that we have to say to some extent, yes. So, yeah, they're certainly not to discredit our efforts in the global war on terror, but to your point, how do you do that? How do you focus on everything at once?

Right. And how do you do it when everything changes every four years? And where some of these threats, they don't have changes every four years, and their projection

“out to success is counted in thousands of years or hundreds of years, and generations,”

and we're going four years at a time, and like ping pong ball, in some cases here. We're focused over here. Four years later, we shipped, and we focused over here. We've lost that edge now, you know, with the adversary, whichever adversary may be, when they have a long-term plan, and we don't. One of the values that we take out of serving the special forces groups is the regional focus, and so, I've got a full-dark green berets high for a minute, because I want to talk about,

I think it's important. There's two aspects of being in green berets that I think separate are 18 series from everybody else. And number one is green berets are certainly not a bunch of door kickers. You know, I think that through the global war on terror that has certainly been a lot of the highlight of a mission set that we have, but that is not the core mission set

“of what we do, and I'll never say that it should be. I think it's one of the things that we are”

capable of, but the most important thing that we do is build capability in our partners and our allies,

which requires our green berets to be students, students of history. How important is it to you, to look at our 18 series force, and make sure that they are students of history, and how does that set them apart from their conventional partners? Yeah, that's a great question for Anne. I mean, I agree. I mean, green berets, I came up in an era where we did two things. Uncomventional warfare, and fit for an eternal

defense. All those other supporting missions, the seven missions that we have, yes, we do those two, but we do them in support of uncomventional warfare or fit, which is both sides of basically any conflict. You know, you're either trying to undermine a government through uncomventional warfare, a sitting government, or you're helping a sitting government, you know, battle of insurrection, or some kind of resistance through foreign-attirled defense. You know, the CQBE,

the SAR, you know, the long-range reconnaissance, or the reconnaissance, special reconnaissance, all those other things support that those two lines of effort. So I grew up in an era where,

you know, we had smaller teams, we never had full teams, so all of our green berets had to do,

you know, two or three things at once, and we were doing it in foreign countries. You know, we were going to different countries in Europe, or Africa, or Asia, or South America, wherever, group were in, or Middle East, and we didn't have resources. We had to learn the culture, we had to speak the languages, we had to support ourselves, we had to understand the culture,

what we had was us. So first, you had to learn the culture, so that you could fit in and understand and identify a threat, you know, and mitigate the threat, whatever it would be. So you had to understand your culture, you had to understand your history, so that you're not alienating the people you're working with by making comments, or not understanding what they've been through to get to where they're at, and why we're there now, whether it's training them, or helping them to feed,

you know, some target. So the history part from my aspect was, you know, we would isolate before we'd go into an omission, which we don't do anymore. And, you know, the isolation was where you learned everything there was about that country. You learned about their history, how they got to where they're at, who the leaders were, you know, who the people that put them in that position or in, and how did they get there? What their economy was, you know, who their enemies were,

“because those, as you go into that country, either help them or fight them, you need to know that too.”

So the history part has always been important, and I think green berets have always been good at

doing it, but when you change from that type of environment, now you're going in the fobs of all that, we kind of lose some of that focus, because hey, every night, now we're coming back to a secure area. And it's a critical piece, and now I know we're going back to that, and I'm happy to see that we're finally going back to some of the roots that made special forces successful in the past for the long term. So right now, a lot of the discussions around what's the next

conflict, you know, I would argue that we're in the next conflict. The sooner we start to really realize that, the better off we're going to be. I said a lot of people are starting to really realize that, but how do you define that? The term that's been, I don't want to say it's controversial, but I threw it out there, and it's the term, a large scale combat operations, and some people I've been talking to are like, I hate that term. We can't use that term and other

people are like, that's where we are. But large scale combat operations, what's the difference between CT and coin, really, you're looking at nation state on nation state? What happens where you have

“great power competition, where it starts to come to ahead, and that's what you're seeing with”

a move away from counterterrorism, precision operations that we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan,

and the global war on terror, which still exist, and are still a critical part of what we're doing,

and we can't forget about the terrorist organizations who will have it stopped, and you know, they all of a sudden didn't wake up one day ago. We don't hate America anymore. You know, they still do, and they hate our allies here in Europe, and they're willing to target us at the first opportunity, so we can't forget about that. But when we look at large scale combat operations, we're looking at long-range precision fires. We're looking over the horizon type operations.

We're looking at innovation and technology where autonomous capabilities are going to become critical because the sensors that our adversaries have, rival the sensors that have given the U.S. and

“our European allies the advantage over the last 20-plus years. Where do you see special operations”

integration into large-scale combat operations? Yeah, so that's funny because I've argued about this for years working at Staff headquarters and all that, you know, we at some point special forces became its own thing, not so much as in its own branch, but all of a sudden it became about special forces operations, and then you had conventional operations, and we're in the same battle space, and we had to make up ways to integrate that, even though I mean already was existing ways,

and it came about special forces were conducting our own operations. And I've always believed that,

yes, special forces is its own command and we have our own commanders, but at the end of the day, I grew up again in the Nera with a Soviet threat where special forces supported large-scale combat operations. So when that theater commander needed something done, and special forces was the right tool that was the tool that needed to be used. And then in some cases we have, you know, conventional forces supporting special forces missions, and you know, the supporting supported the concept,

but when we start looking at large-scale combat operations, special operations aren't the primary tool for that, and even though we try to make it that, and then we just build our bigger forces, we add more enablers, you know, we bring in more gunships, or we bring in, you know, other types of technology to conduct those operations ourselves. And Afghanistan and mountains, when we were chasing bin Laden, I would argue those weren't large-scale combat operations,

because they're over a large area where we're directing a lot of a huge volume of firepower, and we had the ability to move in those areas. But when I look at the large-scale combat operations,

we've got all these other types of capabilities. I mean, yeah, we still need artillery, because if we go back to that type of scale with a larger threat, the value of artillery is, you can still clear, you know, square kilometers of terrain quickly and effectively with artillery. But, you know, some would argue now, we can do that, you know, with UAVs and be more precise. Well, there's something to be said when you're raining, you know, artillery rounds on a whole area,

and it's always been a tactic that we had in our pocket, but we've haven't used,

I asked the Polish deputy commander of their armed forces on the panel the other day, a very similar question about where he saw large-scale combat operations playing into soft in the next several years, and it was interesting to give me a very similar answer, because he said, you know, I came up in the Cold War with fighting the Soviets, and then we went and the Polish were instrumental in the NATO mission in Afghanistan. And he said, and now I'm fighting the Soviets again,

and so all of those, the generation who were young officers and NCOs, you know, were your peers,

who started their careers fighting the Soviets, now have to pull those TTPs and tactics back out,

you know, modify them for technology and today, and then refight got battle almost again, you know, and prepare for it. And so his position was, it's actually not that much different.

“You know, we've already been here, we've already done that, which I think is very interesting when we look at”

the army today, and you look at the US Army, I mean, you could apply that to our allies as well, but when we look at the US Army today, we've got three generations that exist, and there's a generation of senior leaders on the innocent officers side who were the pre-9/11 generation who understood

what it was like, you know, prior to the CT coin fight, and then led our country through that,

and now serve at senior levels, and you have folks like myself who were the 9/11 generation, who were inspired by the 9/11 events, and said, I got to go out and serve, and they're retiring. Now, and then you've got a group that's coming in who were not even born on 9/11. And those are the ones who are getting ready now to really, those are our captains, those are our majors, our E6s, our E7s, and now who are leading our formations. When you look at the three generations in the army

today, how do we transfer the knowledge and the experience from the pre-9/11 generation, the 9/11 generation,

“to the next generation who's going to fight whether it be CT coin or large scale combat operations?”

Yeah, it's our member when Russians crossed into Crimea, and I was, I was in shock here at the time back then as well, and we're all in a conference room, and I was stunned at how surprised all of us were when that happened, because we'd all been looking at GWAT, everybody was supporting GWAT, everybody was supporting GWAT, and it kind of surprised everybody. I mean, when there was some younger people in the room, and younger, I mean, officers, and NCOs, and they're like, you know, what do we do?

And I had to heard the news, and so I brought in something that we used to have a lot of, and and I threw the deck of recognition cards, you know, Soviet recognition cards out on the, and I said, well, I guess for the equipment, we might want to start studying back up on what all those old Island equipment looks like, you know, and I was being flipping about it, but, but I was a little disappointed that we had been very surprised and lost the ball. I mean, not not just suck here. I mean,

suck here, we have thousand things for looking at, and it's a small command, but the whole bigger command had, we had lost the ball and been some, and got surprised, I mean, we recovered well,

“and got to it. That's what makes us great, and that's one of the reasons we are successful”

is we recover pretty quickly and get back to the task at hand. But at that point, I realized that we did have a huge gap in learning and in understanding, in special forces and special operations, because we'd been so hyper-visual and we focused on that, you know, CT-coin piece in GWAT, and forgot everything else that we didn't. Now, they still teach it in QCours, but, you know, since you got out of QCours, you're focused on whatever group you're going to and what they're doing.

I made it a point, as I was going around to make sure that, hey, let's not just to focus on one

“thing. There should be team training on this. You should be learning about your going back to,”

and we did this. We, you know, going back to country study, country studies, mission letters, that, you know, assigned countries, again, to ODA, so they could study and learn how we grew up, you know, when I was young on a team, you know, when I walked into my first team room, they opened the safe, and they said, hey, this is our target country. You start reading this, and you need to know everything about this country, and these are our three primary targets.

You know, back then, you know, by ODA, we had you this lobbyah was, and we had a, it was a damn, and I can't remember the details anymore, but I mean, one of our primary targets was a damn. And we had no, everything about that damn. We had study, you know, our languages, and well, my language was Greek and German. I was also learning Yugoslavia, because at the end of the day,

if they launched our ODA, we were going to take out that damn. I think that's still critical

“to special forces. And I think that's how we maintain that Soviet era mindset for the ODA,”

is that by making sure that, okay, we can go do CQB and do our suffocs, and, you know, our halo refresher, and our, you know, and the various other things we do day-to-day on the ODA, but we should all, I mean, the importance of that ODA is, I've got a 12-man team. I've got two six man splits that I can fire like a missile at a target, you know, send them out to door and they're more mature, they're culturally aware, they speak to language, they're, you know,

proficient in all of their MOS's and their cross-training, and I can send them out to door to go hit a target and they're fired for get, you know, and they'll report back, you know, like we did back then once a week or whatever the context schedule was, you know, something else we've lost and now, you know, now we can't go out to door without 50 different messages, you know, greens and greens, a paper were to conops and, you know, and back then it was, hey, that was

why special forces was successful is because they went out and they did their mission, and it wasn't, hey, I need to know what they're doing right now, where I need to direct a mission from the headquarters, you know, it's important that teams still do that because that is, that is how you fight any threat, you know, because in that isolation, when you're doing that pre-mission isolation, that's where you find to the skills that you need for that mission,

for instance, I used to preach, you don't need to do safalk every year, you know, once you've learned how to shoot, you know how to shoot, okay? If you're doing safalk every year for a mission who requires, you know, that type of precision shooting, then okay, great, but you learn how to shoot, and then you go, when you're in that isolation phase or pre-mission training phase, that's when you're supposed to say, okay, well, in my mission, I'm going to be doing this,

and you spend some time refining those skills to go do that. And, or I need to be able, oh, my guys need to be able to speak a language, okay, well, then that pre-mission training phase is where you're tightening up those language, that specific language regardless of its your primary

language or not. So we got away from that, you know, PMT was always the same, rolling in the PMT,

and, you know, you're going to do, you know, this much PMT, you're going to rotate back into the box,

“you're going to do an eight months rotation there, you're going to come back, you need to 30 days leave,”

but that was what we focused on, and we said, it's a GWAT, you know, war, but our teams lost a lot of other skills during that time that we are finally bringing back now because of Russia, you know, that's what, at least in 10th group, and in 1st group, it was, you know, North Korea at the time was, you know, kind of getting a little pushy with their missiles, so, you know, 1st group started, and at least my battalion started focusing again on some of those old tasks,

and, you know, then the new Green Braids didn't know. I mean, they didn't know my, I know team sergeants, I didn't, I'm not going to use the name because it's, you know, somebody that was, you know, killed an action, but, uh, when he made team sergeant, he came to me as a certain major, and he's like, you know, I don't know what to do. All I know is GWAT. All I know is CT, and you saw it, he's great to do, and I'm a very solid, proficient, you know, operator, and I was like, now you, you got it, just,

you know, but he is self admittedly said, all he knew was GWAT, and we have a whole generation of Green Braids that went that way. You know, it's, uh, I don't know how it would fit. I mean, we are fixing it,

we've been really fortunate, as a show, and as an organization, to have been embraced by

someone, you know, the sergeant major of the army, Mike Weimer, has been a huge advocate of the show, and we were very lucky to be, I have been brought in by the army to cover some of the big policy changes that the army has put out over the last couple months, you know, changes to the army fitness test, and then also the army directive, 670-1, which is a directed, that is clarifying guidance that's in army regulations, 670-1 around uniform and wearing a pair and appearance of the

army uniform and hair and beard. Well, beard's are not in cover to now and all the secretary

hexaft did cover the beard situation, but clearly in his discussion. Yeah, the beard goes special.

“Right. Which, well, and so that's why I bring this up, because I believe that as a special force”

is operator as a green bra, there's nothing special about being a green bra, but we're just a bunch of dudes, but the difference is you do things to a higher standard more consistently without compromise. And so my question to you is, when you think about your long career as a green bra, and you look at those who wear the bra now, and you think about the importance of standards and discipline, what does it mean to you to be a green bra? Yeah, look, so I'm, again, go back to, I'm

the area of, but at the same time, so I, you know, I was fortunate, fortunate enough to spend a long

time as a sergeant major. So I was 11 years as a sergeant major, and then all my guys, I mean, you know, when you're in Garrison and you're back home and you're doing your day-to-day stuff,

“I mean, you need to be the best, and you need to look to best. You know, I've always been a believer”

that the green bra, it's a symbol, and it attracts, you know, greatness, to try to be the best, to be great, and everything you do. And so I would tell my guys, I mean, look, guys, when you're walking around post, you're recruiting poster. That's how I, look, brought me to special forces, was seeing, you know, a green bra, and just wearing that thing proudly, you know, and not on a big puff of hair and overbeared, you know, when you're in Garrison,

you need to be looking like the most professional soldier, because we are professional soldiers, and yes, whether you have beard or uniform, looks, you know, good or not, you know, someone say doesn't define you as a professional soldier, but it does, because again, you go back to the standards, and being exacted, everything you do, and taking pride in that, and looking sharp, we have to do that, because that's also what brings new guys into the unit. That young E2 or E3, you know, that's

trying to decide whether he wants to re-enlist. You know, in an era where we can't fill the ranks, and we're making numbers in the army, but we're making the wrong numbers in the army. You know, because at the end of the day, the army's job is to close with the enemy and kill the enemy. Not go to college, you know, or, you know, learn how to drive a truck, or learn how to cook, or, you know, how to do logistics, and that's all parts of the army, but every person in the army

needs to be, you know, able to do the army's job, which is close with the enemy and kill. That's what we do. So, in order to do that in special forces, we need to write people, and we need a constant flow of them coming in, and part of that is, you know, guys, it's seed-green array,

“and say, man, that's what I want to be. And I think part of that comes from looking professional,”

you know, being competent, and being in shape, and, you know, not trying to stand out and be special, because we are the quiet professionals. I remember an instance where I walked into the shop that on Carson, down by the gate, and down by gate 20, and there was this infantry E7 just remin a guy about how he was looking. I mean, just launched in there, and you could tell the guy was an SF guy. How can I tell? Well, because he was in a mixed match of uniforms, you know,

unkempt hair, you know, two days growth, you know, different boots, and he had been out of the range, training, you know, and they just got back, and he had stopped into the shop at to grab something on the way back, you know, to the team room, and I just say anything, I let the, you know, I let that E7 do

I saw that young soldier parking, and so I was like, okay, I see where he's parked,

I know where he's at, so I walked up and I'm, hey, man, what was he, on you about, you know, well, you know, I was just running in there to get a drink on the way, and, you know, he just started on me about my uniform, and you know, talking about how USF guys, you know, you're making us all look bad, and I'm like, well, how did you know you're an SF guy? Because you have no patches on it, right? And he goes, well, go, go, because I got no patches on,

like it exactly bad, I mean, and he was right, I mean, it was just, I mean, great kid, got, I mean, I knew the guy, he's a good dude, it's all a soldier, and he just, now, go and say, well, you know, hey, you just stopped into grab something, well, you know, maybe you go back

to team room first, and put on a good uniform, or at least put on the uniform, and then go to the

shop at. It's stuff like that that makes us all look bad, it doesn't matter whether it's right or

“it's wrong, that's what's happening. I mean, people are making judgment calls on us by what they see.”

It was first impressions, and I mean, it's not necessary. The beards, but for me, if you mission calls for beard, stroke beard, you know, but if it doesn't call for a beard, you shouldn't have beard. I mean, because that's the regulations. I don't know whether it's right or it's wrong, but that's what the regulations say, and you just gotta be able to do it. It's not hard. Well, you did stand 11 years as a sergeant major, and I was fortunate that about three or four

of those. I was able to serve under a year and around you, and it was truly an honor, and I mean, we talk about the standards, we talk about the discipline. I mean, look, I'm biased towards 10 special forces group. It was the honor of my life to serve there, and serve with you, and some of your peers who were really, you know, very, very instrumental in not only developing me as a young officer, you know, we learn a lot from the officers, but we learn more from the

“NCOs. I can tell you that, and that was something I learned as a very young,”

platen leader when you walk into a room of already combat experience to NCOs, and you realize, you know, I better listen to these guys, and then you kind of come over to SF and you realize, well, these guys even have like four more times the experience of the guys in the infantry, and so it truly was an honor to be around you, and learn from so many of the things that, you know, you continue to share, and love catching up with you this week, and just to be all the

CU back in action in this room, you know, shaking hands, hugging everybody, it shows the impact over the long term of why SF guys are different from everybody else, and how it may seem like a small thing to know a bunch of people in this room, but the people in this room this week are the ones who are affecting international policy and are setting the conditions for the security of the world in the future, and so that all comes back to the work that you've done over

your career and continue to do at the Global Soft Foundation. So I'll soon be catching up,

“appreciate you sitting down with me, and I think we have a gem of the day here.”

We do, Fran. I appreciate it. It has been a phenomenal week here. It got more out, but it's good. It's been fantastic, just meeting everybody again and seeing everybody again, and I'm truly honored to have been able to help Greece put this on, and the Hellenic Special Warfare Command, which you know is very close to me, because I helped stand it up with them, and so all those people that are hugging me and shaking my hands, and these are all the young, their special operations

guys, you, some of them, I first started working with when they were, you know, E5s or OR5s,

and now they're like, sergeant major and senior sergeants or colonels and generals now, and in a lot of cases, a lot of them are generals, but you know, those are guys that I've developed a relationship over 35 years now, and especially in the last five years, as I helped them stand up Special Warfare Command as a liaison here, and it's been an honor and a culmination of this great event, and seeing you here was fantastic. When I found out that you had signed up to come along

on this, it was great, I was absolutely, and, you know, the Greenberry Foundation very close and dear to me, I know a lot of, you know, the people there, and you know, some fantastic Warcraft Station. Awesome. Thank you. I'm jealous, you're living in Greece. American Jet Birds went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces in the Special Activities Directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the

Jedberg Podcast, an official program of the Greenberry Foundation. I'm your creator and host, friend, Richard. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Check out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short-form content.

and the Greenberry Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, extra threads, send your comments and

“inquiries to [email protected]. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedberg”

Media Channel and the Greenberry Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations

of U.S. Army Special Forces and their families. Thanks for joining us on this episode.

How you prepare today to determine success tomorrow.