Welcome to the One CA Podcast. Today we have Major Devin Conley discusses the Civil Affairs experience at National Training Center rotations. Hosted by Sergeant Sarah Kelly. Sponsored by the Civil Affairs Association.
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Transcript:
00:00:01 SPEAKER_02
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00:00:48 SPEAKER_00
I'm Sergeant Sarah Kelly with 450 SCA unit out of Maryland. And today I'm interviewing Major Devin Connolly. He is here in NTC as one of the OCs. So welcome, sir. Thank you so much for agreeing to the podcast.
00:01:03 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for inviting me on. Yeah.
00:01:06 SPEAKER_00
How did you get involved with civil affairs? I don't know,
00:01:08 SPEAKER_01
don't know, by accident, right? So I was originally an artillery officer in the Army when I came in as a second lieutenant. I think like 2006, 2007 in Iraq, we weren't doing a whole lot of shooting of artillery. right? I ended up, I was basically a civil affairs officer for an armor company, I guess you could say, right? Managing their CERT projects and doing stuff with local police, local sheikhs, local government, all the types of stuff. So I was kind of doing CA work as an artillery officer. And then one of my buddies, another artillery officer, I don't know how he heard about like active duty civil affairs and like the recruiting briefings that came to Fort Stewart at the time, but he went and I just went with him. Yeah. And I decided to join. I mean, cause I thought it was just... to be challenged and I thought it'd be something that would be fun. And I think it's been both. So how many years actually have you been in civil affairs?
00:01:52 SPEAKER_00
how many years actually have you been in civil affairs? So it'll be like nine years in like two months.
00:01:55 SPEAKER_01
it'll be like nine years in like two months. So yeah, it's about nine years right now I've been in active UCA.
00:02:00 SPEAKER_00
What kind of areas of the world have you mostly been with?
00:02:03 SPEAKER_01
So like most people in the army, I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan, but then also spent eight months as CA team leader in Tajikistan as well. What motivated you to become an OC here at NTC?
00:02:10 SPEAKER_00
motivated you to become an OC here at NTC?
00:02:13 SPEAKER_01
The primary motivating factor was HRC. sending me orders telling me to come to NTC. So, and I got, so nobody really, nobody volunteers really to be an OC here. But I think what keeps me or like, that's what made me an OC. But I think what makes the difference between this, like people who are just gradually come here and people who actually make this a worthwhile experience is, you know, a desire to take our experiences, help other units, help other individuals grow while they're here. Because for most people, this is, this is going to be the biggest and probably most worthwhile. training experience they're going to have. So I think a desire to teach and to help other units grow that really makes people at OC as opposed to just orders from Human Resource Command. So you liked it that much during your rotation and decided to stay,
00:02:56 SPEAKER_00
you liked it that much during your rotation and decided to stay, huh?
00:02:59 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, for sure.
00:03:01 SPEAKER_00
And what exactly is it that you do here? First and foremost,
00:03:03 SPEAKER_01
and foremost, just like OCT, Observer, Controller, Trainer, I mean, that really is what we do, right? Observing units and I would say helping them see themselves. A lot of times when units come in, they kind of have a false sense of where their shortcomings are. and where their strengths are. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. And I think that's one of the primary things that we do here is help them get an accurate picture of themselves. So we do that during force -on -force training here. Our team of CA and PSYOPOCs help run the sticks lanes that we do towards the end of NTC rotation. But then also we use our feedback for the scenario planners for ops group headquarters in order to continually improve the training, but also keep it relevant to what's going on with the force, you know, the way that units are being used, current conflicts are going on. on, like how do we continually make the training here most relevant, most worthwhile for units that come. And what would you say some of the units'
00:03:50 SPEAKER_00
what would you say some of the units' biggest pitfalls are? I mean,
00:03:52 SPEAKER_01
mean, the biggest pitfall is going to be, I think, integration. And then I think it's primarily because, especially for use of KPOC, CA, and PSYOP units, you just can't do that at a lot of other places, especially at the brigade level. So you maybe have opportunities at least to partner for a couple days or go to, you know, foot brag for some sort of training exercise that a brigade is doing there, but not at this level. So a lot of times the teams... Come in with an idea of how they want to integrate with battalion. Does it work out so well? And we see that teams get misutilized. And some of that, you could say, is on the supported unit. You know, battalion commanders not knowing how to use resources and stuff. But that's also on us to understand how can we talk to those units to make sure that we're being effectively utilized. So a lot of times, and I think you guys probably said during your rotation, some teams immediately got pushed down to a maneuver company. And then they seem to kind of disappear. And they have long stretches of time without doing anything worthwhile. Where some teams manage. keep themselves at the battalion headquarters. They do go down to line companies when it comes time for execution, whether that's doing civil reconnaissance or whatever, key leader engagements, but they go back to the headquarters and continue to build integration. And the company headquarters is always a struggle at the brigade combat team, especially if a brigade doesn't have an S -9 of how does the headquarters plug into all of the planning processes of the brigade. I mean, that's something that you just can't really train at home station, understanding. I think kind of how we talked about one of our big topics, you know. You know, in your AAR about IPB, intelligence preparation of the battlefield, how does CA plug into that? You know, and a lot of don't have a great idea of how that's supposed to work. I don't think it's a friction point that we generally see coming. Honestly, it's not really one you can do a lot to prepare for at home. There's some, but not a lot.
00:05:26 SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because I know for us, one of the biggest things we noticed really was communication, not just comms, but sometimes between different teams and within the teams themselves.
00:05:34 SPEAKER_01
Sure. So, I mean, communication is always one of these struggles for units here, right? And it's not just CA units, right? At the brigade level, communication. is one of the biggest friction points because until you've come to NTC, nothing can match the distances of NTC. The no training environment you're going to come upon is going to match that. You go to some training event at Fort Bragg or wherever at home station and you're like, yeah, FM communications, it works. It's awesome. It's easy. Sure, but because we're talking like a kilometer, two kilometers away, we start to get units and teams that are 30, 40 kilometers away. All of a sudden, FM is not going to do it for you. So then becoming understanding your second and third priorities for communication. having a pace actually is feasible, is understandable, and that we actually have the expertise and the training on all those systems to make sure that they can actually function. Yeah, it's difficult. I mean, that's probably the number one problem area as far as training that we see when units come in.
00:06:26 SPEAKER_00
Besides that, what other ideas for CA units to prepare to come out here, whether it be towards the KLE engagements or just kind of the understanding of the CA doctrines themselves? So,
00:06:36 SPEAKER_01
yeah, so understanding of CA doctrine, I think, is a big one. So I'll be the first person to tell you this. that doctrine is not the way it has to be done. Like, you can't just read this, and it's a guidebook, and it explains to me exactly how to do all of the things I'm supposed to do. No, I think it's really a guideline, and it's a set of principles about how you should be operating. However, it's not a very good guideline if you've never read it, and you don't know what's in there. It can't be used as a guide, so you still have to know what's in there. And I think it's totally fine if you understand the doctrine, you understand what it says, and that with the mission you've been given, the assets you have, you say, look, look, I make a conscious decision to not do, or to kind of... shift from doctrine a little bit because it's going to work better. I think that's totally fine. If, however, you're saying I'm operating this way, but I also don't really know what doctrine would tell me to do anyways, well, then that's a problem. So definitely a big one. I think more generally, it's, you know, the biggest thing for units is SOPs. And I go, it's a hassle because we talk about SOPs. It's like, oh, I got to write out like pages and pages of SOPs, which I got, I understand why that is such pain. But when it comes to communications, like understanding, not just like the physical equipment where using, but the methods, timelines, the formats of our reporting that we're going to be doing, having an idea before, especially before coming to NTC, about how we think that's supposed to work. Duties and responsibilities, not just on a team, the company headquarters level is even, I think, more complex because we have more people. And the things that the company headquarters could be asked to do, especially when you are plugged into a brigade headquarters and you've no experience doing this, understanding how we can break apart those duties and responsibilities so that we're effectively accomplishing all our tasks, we're making the use of every soldier. time, I think it's very beneficial. And I'm not saying that units should come in with like, here are SOPs. They're 100 % complete. We have validated them. We have done them. No, just like come in with, I don't know, like a 75 % solution. Like we think these are pretty good SOPs. We recognize that, you know, we've not actually been had a chance to test all of these very thoroughly. Awesome. Let's look at your SOPs on day one when you get here. Let's operate according to those SOPs for some days and we'll have some conversations about what is working, what is not working. You know, what do we need to add to our SOPs we've identified here so that when units leave NTC, I mean, they can have a very good idea of where they need to go in the months coming up. Like, what do we need to improve upon in order to make sure that, heaven forbid, we have to come back to NTC in six months from now. Like, we're better prepared.
00:08:49 SPEAKER_00
Now, do you see any difference between, like, a reserve unit coming out versus the active duty? I mean,
00:08:53 SPEAKER_01
mean, so sure, what you're asked to do, I mean, the structure of what you do here is a little bit different. Like, so reserves here, you guys are supporting a brigade combat team. We're on the active duty side. They're supporting Special Operations Task Force. But at the end of the day, like, the specific tasks, like healer engagement, civil reconnaissance, understanding the civil component of the environment, like all of those things are kind of the same. There's not this big difference between the two. There are like our differences, right? In the reserves, a lot of people, a lot of individuals have some great technical skills that they've got from outside of the army, whether that's, you know, law enforcement, medical, city planners, whatever. Active duty has the benefit of being on active duty and five or, you know, sometimes even seven days a week, they're training so they can put a little more time into that. So while there are differences at the baseline, I mean, I think the tasks are kind of the same, right? There's no, you know, I think what they're being asked to do is not drastically different. Have you ever seen an interaction together?
00:09:42 SPEAKER_00
Have you ever seen an interaction together? Or see reserve units teamed up together out here?
00:09:46 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, I think we have. Yeah, we have. Absolutely, right? And so then there are times when overlap where... and reserved teams may have a different purpose for what they're doing in a certain urban area, but it's very beneficial for the two to team up in order to, you know, both having, sharing a key leader engagement, elements from both teams, you know, talking to the same person with different purposes, and that's fine. Or it just comes down to just a sharing of information that just like if you have multiple teams from your company working in an area, you should be working together to make sure that we're not duplicating effort, you know, helping each other out, sharing information can be extremely beneficial. Yeah, we see it, I think, every once in a while, yeah.
00:10:19 SPEAKER_00
What about with PSYOP? advice to give when working with them better? Because sometimes it's certain teams that seem to work out better than others, and I don't know whether it's sometimes personalities of the Clash or just different ideas of what's expected of them out here.
00:10:31 SPEAKER_01
It blows my mind when we get PSYOP and CA units out here that just refuse to work together. And we've had some really bad ones where they just almost refuse to talk, and I don't understand why. I think it just comes down to personalities. While our tasks, you know, what we're trying to do are not exactly the same, one, we're kind of in the same boat, especially here at NTC. where you're being plugged into a brigade combat team that doesn't, one, doesn't exactly know how to use you, but also your supporting element. We come with, like we talked about some communication challenges, some equipment challenges. It always works