Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have Lieutenant Colonel Sue Gannon reflects on her time as commander of the 450th Civil Affairs Battalion, discussing her experience leading an Army Reserve CA Battalion, what it's like to be a Ready Force unit, and airborne training in the reserve.
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Transcript:
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This interview with Lieutenant Colonel Sue Gannon was conducted in June of 2019. She's currently halfway through her Army Fellowship at Tufts University. Enjoy the episode.
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The thing with the Ready Forces, regardless of how we feel about whether or not it's implemented right or anything, it's there for a reason. It's being driven by a real threat, and it's something that we have to do as an Army, right?
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So it's incumbent on me and my battalion command team and my peers to help us figure out the best way to do this.
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incumbent on me and my battalion command team and my peers to help us figure out the best way to do this. so that we preserve good soldiers in the force. But when the call of this come forward, those are the soldiers we take to war with us.
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Hi, and welcome to the 1CA Podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Lieutenant Colonel Sue Gannon, who is the outgoing commander of the 450th Civil Affairs Battalion Airborne, Preserve Component Unit based in Maryland, recently relocated to White Plains, Maryland, in the southern part of Maryland. Lieutenant Colonel Sue Gannon hails from Eden, New York, a town south of Buffalo. She attended the University of Pittsburgh and commissioned through ROTC in 2003 onto active duty in the Air Defense Artillery Branch. One of the first women accepted into Divisional Air Defense, she was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division as an Avenger Platoon Leader. deploying in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 2. Colonel Gannon's remaining time on active duty was spent as a headquarters battery commander at Fort Bliss, Texas, with an appointment in Qatar, Kuwait, and as an action officer on the Joint Staff. In 2012, she left active duty and transitioned to the reserve component, earning her civil affairs qualification and serving as the commander of Delta Company, 450th Civil Affairs Battalion, Airborne. She has also served at the Civil Affairs Command level, as a theater security cooperation planner and airborne operations officer prior to taking battalion command in 2017. Lieutenant Colonel Gannon has a master's degree in management and leadership from Webster University, and on the civilian side, she supports the headquarters department of the Army, G357, as a requirements and congressional analyst for air defense and field artillery portfolios. Lieutenant Colonel Sue Gannon, thank you and welcome to the 1CA podcast.
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a lot, John, for having me.
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Absolutely. Now, ma 'am, by the time this episode airs, you will have completed your first command of a battalion in the Army Reserve Civil Affairs Battalion. What would you say stands out from that experience?
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out from that experience? Wow. So, you know, that's actually kind of a hard question, as these two years have really been quite a ride, and it's been great. I will honestly say, best job I've ever had, hands down. what stands out most for me is that when you go into a battalion command, you head into it with this idea of where you are going to take the battalion. You spend a lot of time learning how to develop a vision, a philosophy, how to set goals. But what they don't tell you and what you really need to consider when you take a battalion is where is that battalion really going to take you? The 450th is a great battalion. It has a strong sense of identity. It has a very, very powerful legacy and a strong alumni. understanding and respecting that legacy has really shaped the success of this unit.
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What was the legacy that you knew of? So you were a Delta Company commander, so you knew about it before you took command as the battalion commander. What was that experience like going from company to then battalion commander in the same unit?
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Quite different than I expected. When I came into the 450th off of the access component, I will tell you the 450th is unlike any unit I've ever served with, and I've served with great units. strong sense of identity, maybe some of it's the paratrooper identity in them, and also the unit has deployed multiple times throughout the global war on terrorism. So there's a really strong connection. So when I came into Delta Company, I kind of came in on the back end of that and really had to learn to understand this unit. So I had time in Delta Company that was an awesome command. I would say it was almost harder than my active command because the reserves is all about learning how to... motivate people to do things when you only see them two days a month, and that's really a great growth opportunity as a leader. But then coming back as a battalion commander, you know, it was like looking at the unit with new eyes, right? So as a company commander, I had my small little company, and then coming back as a battalion, really seeing the breadth and the depth of capability across the formation was pretty awesome.
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And you said that you thought you were going to come into the battalion command So when you started, did you come on with an initial set of areas of focus or anything that you heard from the outgoing commander who transitioned over to you that, hey, this is the kind of stuff you need to focus on for training?
00:06:27 SPEAKER_03
So, you know, I came into the battalion at an interesting time. So when I arrived here, I was technically the fourth battalion commander acting or appointed in less than a year. And that was due to some out -of -cycle promotions and schools that the previous commander, who I should have officially replaced, had gone through. And this had caused some significant churn within the organization. Because I was fortunate to be familiar with the unit, so I heard that some of this sort of, there's some trepidation for, great, here we go, here comes another commander, right? My initial focus was re -establishing that key leadership team and achieving some buy -in and trust. I knew there were great leaders here, but they were also very frustrated because it was a constant change. And my focus coming in and what I've told the leaders is our job is to prepare to train soldiers to go to war, come home safely, and provide the best ability to our supported commanders. And I wanted to ensure that these leaders knew they had the full support of the battalion command team. to do just that. The capability was there. They needed to know they had that full support to get that done.
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Could you describe the unit for people listening? Who do you have in not only a civil affairs reserve battalion, but the mix of people that I think is pretty unique to have just outside the Washington, D .C. area? How many soldiers do you have? How many Department of the Army civilians are in the unit? And what are some of these amazing, I guess, day jobs, civilian expertise that comes to the table?
00:07:59 SPEAKER_03
That's an awesome question. So from a purely numbers standpoint, so the battalion sits currently at about 225 soldiers, which is actually overstrength. This battalion is chronically overstrength, and I'll talk more about that. So those 225 soldiers, you have 12 active guard reserve soldiers that support us, so they're the full -timers. And then we currently have four PA civilians assigned. We have three other vacancies that are in the process of getting filled. unit is authorized about 200, 203 is what we're authorized. So we chronically sit anywhere from 130 to 150 % over strength. And that I would say is the number one strength of this battalion is the amazing talent pool that it has. Nowhere else in the army are you going to find over 200 people with such diverse and dynamic skill sets. We have soldiers of all ranks with multiple advanced degrees and professional experiences. I mean, these range from medical and law degrees to UN workers. We have a video game tester in the S6 shop. We have soldiers that speak more than one language in all sorts of different languages. And you won't see this replicated in an active duty unit. I would offer, John, you're an example of that incredible depth that the reserve component CA force brings to the fight with your time in the Peace Corps. The 450th, we probably attribute some of this fortune, I think, as you said, to the proximity to DC. But at the same time, There's something about this skill set and this mission that attracts people to have sort of these out -of -the -box professional experiences, and that's what makes the Reserve Proponent Civil Affairs Force so valuable, is that we're out -of -the -box from the traditional Army.
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Would you think that's why the Army continues to have the vast majority of the force in the Reserve Proponent?
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Oh, absolutely, and they need to stay with that, because... I mean, I spent nine years on active duty, and I didn't get anywhere close to being out of the box until I came into a civil affairs unit. I had very good active duty experience, but I did not have this. I didn't have professional experiences that really stretched me or had me look other than sort of a traditional Army way.
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So I guess that leads me, ma 'am, into the next question about the strengths and weaknesses inherent to a reserve CA unit. Some of the strengths you're talking about now are? the civilian jobs that we bring to the table. What else do you see as strengths, and what are some of the weaknesses?
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Additional strengths that you have, and it kind of goes more towards your talent pool and the professional level that you find within the forces. You have a group of soldiers that is very dedicated, reserve soldiers, and I'll admit it, I was one of those active duty soldiers that did not get what the reserves was and thought that they were just me. lazier than active duty because they only went twice a month.
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than active
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What I didn't realize is that the commitment and time it takes to be a reserve soldier really pushes you above and beyond a certain level. I mean, these leaders put in time unpaid, after hours, and unasked because they know that that is what needs to get done. And when you have people that are intrinsically that committed to their unit and to their team and to the mission, you can't help but be successful. I truly did not appreciate that until I became a reserve soldier myself and saw the work across all ranks that was getting done and how well it was being done.
00:11:27 SPEAKER_04
Yeah, and that's after coming home from a day job or in between breaks of a day job, you're working on Army stuff.
00:11:33 SPEAKER_03
Exactly, or in between coaching soccer games or putting kids in the tub. Yeah. You know, all these different things, all these things, these components of life, and yet all of these soldiers have chosen. to make space for this reserve duty. And I think that there can't be understated how incredible that really is.
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You know, all
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how incredible that really is.
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Yeah. And what would you say are some areas of weakness that you always have to be working on for people who are in reserve component? And for CA, is it any different from a normal reserve unit when you talk to other commanders?
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So I think, you know, with all reserve units, time is absolutely our biggest constraint. There just really isn't enough of it. Because in theory, you get 24 drill days a year plus two weeks of IEDT,
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two weeks of AT,
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of AT, excuse me. Maybe you get some more based on schooling and stuff, but you really don't have a lot of time together. So trying to build a team in that little bit of time, especially when that time is broken up every month, it can be really challenging. The other thing that makes it, and one of the biggest challenges I know that I've identified in my time that we continue to work on is If you don't have strict, tight administrative processes, which often get truncated and shorted when you're short on time, it impacts all other aspects of the talent. Everything from getting the mission done to making sure soldiers' promotions and medical and all that stuff stays on top of it.
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the mission done
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That requires a very close coordination and integration and appreciation of the full -time unit staff, both the AGRs and civilians. That full -time staff... carries the yeoman's work during the week to keep those processes alive. The TPU staff needs to be just as aware and integrated into that piece to make sure that those processes survive tu