Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have SFC Valor Breez and CPT Jarrett Redman discuss their winning paper titled, "Beyond Hearts & Minds: Transforming the Civil Affairs Regiment to Consolidate Gains in 21st Century Warfare." The paper was published in Volume 4 of 2017-2018 Civil Affairs Issue Papers published by PKSOI. Their co-author was SFC Sean Acosta.
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Transcript:
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Short of teams actually, you know, picking up the phone and calling one another, you really rely on those platforms to kind of share information and build more importantly. Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. My name is John McElligot. I'll be your host for today's episode. We're joined today by two authors and current members of Army Civil Affairs. We have Valor Breeze, Sergeant First Class. He's currently serving as the S -9 NCO of 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group. And Jarrett Bredman, who's a captain, currently serving as the CMOC Chief of Delta Company, 83rd Civil Affairs Battalion. Gentlemen, thank you for being here on the 1CA podcast.
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Thanks for having us. We're looking forward to talking with you tonight.
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We wanted to talk about an article that you wrote for the Civil Affairs Association, published by PKSOI, the Peacekeeping and Civilty Operations Institute. It's published in Volume 4 of the 2017 -2018 Civil Affairs issue papers called Civil Affairs, A Force for Consolidating Gains. And this was edited by Christopher Holczyk, who is a retired colonel and senior leader of the Civil Affairs Association. Can you talk to us, gentlemen, about the title of your paper and summarize what it meant?
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was working, General Harrington at the time, the commander of USRAP, was he'd already stood up an operational planning team looking at ways...
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Gentlemen, what does consulting gains mean to you?
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One of the things we looked at, and we were, again, we were just kind of fortunate circumstances. Our S3 at the time had rewritten a paper previously for the Civil Affairs Association.
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And one of the points he mentioned, Major Clay Daniels, was that if we take...
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When our stated goal is to be ready to go forward with any contingency that can happen on the continent, and then you look at what we have. We have five teams right now. In six months, we'll have five different teams. The reserve CA component has these number of teams. The 95th has these number of teams. If our goal is to...
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These teams change over every time we move to a new location. If we've had a team...
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If it's within the military's realm, then it's passing it from one team to the next or the next command that's stepping in. If the military is pulling away from the area, then it's consolidating gains and passing it along to partners in the State Department or interagency partners who are going to carry the ball forward, if at all.
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Yeah, I think that's right. And that would be the goal.
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Right. Gentlemen, I want to read a quote for you from page two of your paper and then ask you to explain in more detail. You wrote, Quote, recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria have reemphasized that its competitive military advantage in technology and hardware has limits in terms of accomplishing long -term strategic political objectives. Could you explain what that means? Not to be too pessimistic.
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the human domain in which we operate in civil affairs could fill in that gap long -term and strategically that is created by the limitations on technology and hardware. That's right. Jared, thanks. And let me ask you a follow -up. Your team wrote regarding Crimea that, quote, there are crucial lessons to be learned from Russia's use of military force to achieve lasting political change. What do you think the lessons were learned from Crimea?
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wrote our paper, we looked at a
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your operational environment. And the reason that we have Special Operations Forces is precisely because of their understanding of the human domain and of those political, historical, and geographical factors that made Russia successful in their operations in Crimea.
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Yeah, there's a tie to another episode we have in the 1CA podcast. It's already been posted, an interview that I conducted with. A guy in my unit, actually, who's a specialist, but happens to have a Ph .D. in Central Asia and Russian history. And he was talking about that as well. So, yeah, there's a lot that civil affairs brings to the table, understanding that operational environment. And so you found that the U .S. could learn from that lesson to look at our future operating environments. If we knew more about the history and the sociology, we could try to exploit that to the U .S. military's benefit.
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Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think it's noteworthy too that, you know, in terms of the scale of the operations.
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Gentlemen, I wanted to ask you the question about the long -term objective of conflicts. In the paper, you had written that, quote, the objective of conflict is an enduring political end state. Do you think that's always the case? I think that war is incredibly costly, both in terms,
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costly, both in terms, financial terms, and then also, obviously,
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quickly and with it committing as few resources as possible.
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Jared, do you think that the enduring political end state could be seen from the perspective of U .S. interests politically, or do you think it is from the perspective of the host nation or achieving a political end state for the locals in whichever country we're having a conflict with?
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21st century is that the two are usually in line with one another. You know, so September 11th, one of the reasons September 11th was able to happen was because there was a
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You know what I mean?
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Yeah, absolutely right. The Afghans are the ones who have to deal with that on a day -to -day basis. But I guess the United States is only involved, really, as long as our interests are somehow tied to the region or having assets like the U .S. military country. I wanted to ask you about the Civil Affairs Regiment and whether the CA Regiment can lead efforts for consolidating gains through network engagement and using the CIM process. civil information management process and the various technologies that we have. Definitely. So I think another thing about modern warfare that we're increasingly realizing,
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increasingly realizing, and it's not just the military that's realizing it, it's a lot of private entities, and that's that civil information is incredibly valuable.
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Is there a future technology or future process that you've put in place to help fill that gap?
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So you're saying those platforms are tools to execute the SIEM process, but the process involves six steps, which for the audience are collection, collation, processing, analyzing, production, and then finally dissemination. So regardless of which tools you're using, which platforms technology -wise, you can still collate data from other teams or other services and disseminate the information out to them as well so you don't have the sort of team practice side.
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We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
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Get published and win some money. The Civil Affairs Association and its partners invite you to send an originally written issue paper with recommendations related to some or all of .mil PFP. You should reference the new FM 3 -57 in the Civil Affairs Operations 2025 and Beyond white paper. Given the white paper and the Stabilization Assistance Framework, how can the CA Regiment optimize its force? How can the Army and Marine Corps organize, train, educate, and resource CA forces to synchronize and leverage the efforts of multiple partners and sustain engagements to mitigate conflict, shape security environments, and prevail across the range of military operations? The top five papers will be published in the 2018 -19 Civil Affairs Issue Papers. Authors will present them at the CA Centennial and Symposium at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on 2 -4 November. The top paper will receive $1 ,000 cash, second gets $500, and third, $250. Papers prepared jointly by civilian and military professionals are most welcome. The deadline is 7th September. So please send all papers and inquiries to papers at civilfairsassoc .org.
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Welcome back to the 1CA podcast.
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Gentlemen, I wanted to ask you about three recommendations that you included in your paper. The first was to establish a Joint Theater Civil -Military Operations Center, Joint Theater CMOC. Could you explain to the audience why that new structure is needed and also try to mention why multiple CMOCs in a theater do not share information and how your proposal would try to help that situation?
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Yeah, so, and again, we'll go back to our most recent deployment in supporting USRAP. the global force management process and the way that FTNs are generated and missions are sourced is there's goodness and badness that comes out of the current global force management process. The problem that we were seeing is that civil affairs teams were being sourced from use of KPOP.
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That one central CMOC would simply have to know who the players are and where they are in countries and solicit information and know when they're getting it, who it's coming from, the context in which it's submitted, and then go through the process. That's right.
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recommendation that you had in the paper, and that was to designate a warrant officer program. And your team had written about how this idea was discussed for years. I just had not heard about it in the past. Why hasn't this idea progressed, and do you think there's any traction today for it?
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guys as well about another recommendation you had in the book and that was to modernize civil affairs doctrine. What would you say are the gaps in doctrine today that need to be filled or updated?
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the pockets of security and stability during phase three. That's right. Well, gentlemen, we wanted to close the conversation with a final question about how others in the civil affairs community could submit an issue paper for consideration like what you did for the volume four issue.
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The two of you and Sean Acosta, a name people would recognize, also a guest on the podcast. I really hope that people will take you up on your advice and recommendations to submit their work for consideration in the issue papers that are collected by the Civil Affairs Association and published by PQSOI or other publications that are out there, as you mentioned. Vala Breeze and Jared Redman, you together with Sean Acosta, wrote a paper titled Beyond Hearts and Minds, Transforming the Civil Affairs Regiment. to Consolidate Gains in 21st Century Warfare. This was published in the Volume 4 issue, 2017 -2018 Civil Affairs issue papers, titled Civil Affairs, A Force for Consolidating Gains. This was published by PKSOI, Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute. For listeners, you can find a copy of this and their other publications at pksoi .armywarcollege .edu. Valor and Jared, thank you very much, and glad you guys were here on the 1CA podcast. Thank you,
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and thanks for having us.
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Thank you for spending some time with us. Please subscribe and come back for another installment of 1CA. Until then, be safe and secure the victory.