466: Some Lessons Are Learned By Getting Smacked In The Face. With Lt. James Lechner

Summary

Podcast Summary: Jocko Podcast Episode 466: "Some Lessons Are Learned By Getting Smacked In The Face" with Lt. James Lechner

In Episode 466 of the Jocko Podcast, host Jocko Willink and co-host Echo Charles engage in a profound conversation with retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner. Drawing from Lechner's extensive military career, including his experiences in Somalia, Ramadi, and Afghanistan, the discussion delves into critical lessons on leadership, training, and combat strategy.

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1. Introduction to Lt. James Lechner

Lt. Col. Jim Lechner joins Jocko and Echo to revisit his military journey, notably his role as a Ranger in the Battle of Mogadishu, as chronicled in his book With My Shield: An Army Ranger in Somalia. Jocko highlights Lechner's resilience, mentioning, “Jim Lechner fought in that battle, led in that battle, called in fire support during that battle, was eventually wounded pretty severely in that battle” (00:05).

2. Lessons from Somalia and the Evolution of JSOC

The conversation begins with an exploration of the lessons learned from the Battle of Mogadishu and how they influenced the restructuring of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Lechner emphasizes the importance of learning from both successes and failures: “JSOC, like any good organization, learns as much or more from failure as they do from success” (03:24). This pragmatic approach led to enhanced training, intelligence integration, and the ruthless use of conventional weapons to protect American lives, setting the stage for JSOC's readiness in the post-9/11 era.

3. The Importance of Training and Unit Cohesion

Jocko underscores the significance of rigorous training and critical self-assessment in preventing friendly fire incidents, recounting a personal experience: “I debriefed that and explained what happened to every SEAL team for the next three years” (03:56). Lechner echoes this sentiment, advocating for thorough rehearsals and embedding officers within unfamiliar units to foster cohesion and readiness (06:17; 08:31).

4. Challenges in Task Force Ranger Operations

Lechner discusses the ad hoc nature of early Task Force Ranger operations, highlighting issues like inefficient cooperation with US intelligence and the complexities of operating within a fragile United Nations coalition. He notes, “the ad hoc nature of the UN command and even aspects of Task Force Ranger were troubling” (08:31). Both leaders agree that a clear, unified chain of command is essential for mission success and effective combat operations.

5. Transitioning Post-Somalia: Leadership and Staff Roles

After Somalia, Lechner describes his transition to various leadership and staff roles, including his time with the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii and his deployment to peacekeeping operations in the Sinai. These roles taught him patience and the intricacies of large-scale operational planning, contrasting with his direct combat experiences (24:04–30:06).

6. Building the Iraqi Army and Counterinsurgency Efforts

Lechner details his pivotal role in training the Iraqi army during the early years of the Iraq War. He emphasizes the necessity of empowering Iraqi forces to lead their own operations: “I know you are going to have to let them bleed for their country rather than our boys bleed for their country” (47:37). This approach highlighted the limitations of US-led counterinsurgency and the critical need for local capacity building.

7. Ramadi Deployment and Leadership Under Pressure

During his deployment to Ramadi in 2006, Lechner faced intense urban combat conditions reminiscent of Mogadishu. He credits strong leadership and decentralized command for their success: “General McFarland had such an incredible example... we're not worried about... it's us against the insurgents” (66:34). The integration of armor, infantry, and special operations units, along with effective use of snipers and precision strikes, proved instrumental in stabilizing Ramadi despite heavy casualties (63:43; 64:59).

8. Post-Military Career and Continued Service

Upon retiring in 2017, Lechner transitioned to civilian roles, including teaching military history at Liberty University and founding a tactical training company. His dedication to leadership and training remains evident as he continues to advise and support military and first responder communities.

9. Insights on Modern Warfare and the Ukraine Conflict

Lechner offers a strategic analysis of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, drawing parallels to historical battles like Stalingrad and emphasizing the evolution of warfare with drones and advanced surveillance. He advises modern troops to adapt by integrating drone countermeasures and enhancing camouflage techniques: “You are going to be detected... How are you going to react to that?” (101:36).

10. Closing Thoughts and Recommendations

The episode concludes with Lechner sharing his latest endeavors, including product endorsements for tactical gear and pre-workout supplements. Jocko and Echo commend his continuous commitment to training and leadership, reinforcing the podcast’s overarching theme: “We must remember that one man is much the same as another and that he is best who is trained in the severest school” (120:27).

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Notable Quotes:

• Jocko Willink (03:24): “JSOC, like any good organization, learns as much or more from failure as they do from success.”

• Jim Lechner (03:56): “Being critical of ourselves is actually why we're good in the first place.”

• Jim Lechner (06:17): “You can't just jump right in.”

• Jocko Willink (03:56): “Blue on blue was a thing in Ramadi. It was happening, right. And we were able to avoid it.”

• Jim Lechner (08:31): “Rehearsals and embedding is like you said, I just to reemphasize that. Giving them time to train up.”

• Jim Lechner (47:37): “You have to train them. Put them in situations where there is a leadership void, where they are forced to step up.”

• Jocko Willink (66:34): “We're not worried about... it's us against the insurgents, which is what it's supposed to be.”

• Jim Lechner (101:36): “Drones, drone warfare, you just can't overemphasize it.”

• Jocko Willink (120:27): “We must remember that one man is much the same as another and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.”

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Conclusion

Episode 466 of the Jocko Podcast provides a deep dive into Lt. Col. Jim Lechner’s extensive military experience, offering invaluable lessons on leadership, training, and adaptability in combat. His insights into modern warfare, particularly the integration of drones and the importance of local force empowerment, are especially relevant for today’s military and leadership challenges. Through candid discussions and real-world examples, Lechner reinforces the podcast’s core message: disciplined, well-trained leadership is paramount in overcoming the most formidable obstacles.

Transcript

[Jocko Willink]

This is Jocko, podcast number 466 with Echo, Charles, and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

[Echo Charles]

Good evening.

[Jocko Willink]

And also joining us once again is retired Army Lt. Col. Jim Lechner, who was a Ranger in the battle detailed in the book and movie Blackhawk down, who wrote about his own experiences in a book called With My Shield, An Army Ranger in Somalia, which we covered on our Last podcast, number 465. If you haven't listened that podcast, go back and check that one out. Jim Lechner fought in that battle, led in that battle, called in fire support during that battle, was eventually wounded pretty severely in that battle, but that was not the end of his career. Through the incredible work of our military medical system, his leg was saved and he carried on with his career, and I eventually served alongside him in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006, where he was the deputy brigade commander of the Ready First Brigade, the first armored division. And he's joining us once again. So, Jim, thanks for coming back. Appreciate it.

[Jim Lechner]

Thank you. Great to be here.

[Jocko Willink]

So last time we covered your career up to Somalia, one of the things that we didn't talk about that's in your book was. And we start. We brushed up against it a couple times, but you start talking about some of the lessons learned that you got. And, you know, one of the primary goals of talking about military things on this podcast is so that people that are in the military can hear them and learn the lessons that you and I had to learn, you know, the hard way. In many cases, I'm trying to prevent that. I don't know if it's always preventable because some of these lessons you don't learn until they smack you in the face. But I want to hit some of these that you talk about in the book. So you say in the book. Even before the operations of Task Force Ranger had ended in Mogadishu, JSOC had begun to carefully study the battle, distilling lessons learned both good and bad. In its typically pragmatic fashion, JSOC would absorb these lessons, restructure its forces, and refine its methods. It would continue to build even better trained and coordinated teams out of the various special operations forces that must fight together. JSOC would also begin to comprehend that the fact that effective special operations take more than just skilled warriors or shooters. They also require intelligence systems across multiple disciplines capable of tracking any enemy anywhere. This realization drove the development of a system of holistic planning and analysis, which is critical to guiding strike forces with precision while limiting the impact of Military operations on the civilian populace must be considered as part of the strategy. It was also determined that once battle was joined, every conventional weapon available must be ruthlessly used to save the lives of American soldiers. The new systems and refocused units allowed JSOC to emerge eminently ready to begin devastating Al Qaeda immediately after the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. So they got right into it. JSOC and JSOC, obviously, Desert One had a huge impact on the. On the growth of JSOC and of our capabilities as special operations. And so you saw the same thing coming after Mogadishu?

[Jim Lechner]

Oh, yeah, 100%. And I'm glad you referenced Desert One, because I think JSOC, like any good organization, learns as much or more from failure as they do from success, because it's about developing capability, and you gotta be pragmatic and you can't fool yourself. And so that's 100% what they did. And that's again, why I don't mind bringing these things out and sound kind of critical about things is they did that and they changed things and they built a capability after Somalia that we saw almost unparalleled for the war on terrorism.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's our responsibility. We came back from. When I came back from Ramadi, we had a blue on blue when we first got there, and one of my guys killed an Iraqi soldier. It was terrible. And I debrief that and explained what happened to every SEAL team for the next three years. Like, every time a SEAL team formed up and got ready to start their workup for deployment, I would give them that brief. Here's what happened. Had all the pictures up there, had the maps up there. Explain the mistakes I made, explain what we could have done better, explain what we changed because, well, you know, like, blue on blue was a thing in Ramadi. It was happening, right. And we were able to avoid it. We got close in other situations. As a matter of fact, when Leif and I wrote Extreme Ownership, you know, he was writing his chapters and I was writing my chapters. And there's three chapters in there that are that the first chapter, which is about the blue on blue that happened, but then there's two other chapters that are blue on blues that didn't happen. And one of the reasons that the blue on blues didn't happen was because we were freaking paranoid about having blue on blues because we saw how easy easily could happen. So I think this idea, you know, of being critical of ourselves is actually why we're good in the first place. In special operations and in the US military.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, 100%.

[Jocko Willink]

You go on to say fast forward a little bit. There were many aspects of the employment of Task Force Ranger that were ill conceived and ad hoc. We had a US Navy anti submarine plan as our primary airborne intelligence platform. While their crews were skilled professionals, they were unused to working for a ground combat force. And there was little to no common understanding or unit cohesion between the two elements. Seems real clear looking back. And yet you got to work with people and they got to be doing a job that they're familiar with or you got to give them the time to get familiar with it.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah. I think one of the main points there is you can't just jump right in. They were skilled and they were professional. They had more time. We probably could have developed. But you can't just show up on game day or when you're going to cross the line of departure and think people are going to do that. So that's, that's one of the problems.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I think another solution to that, again, this is for the young leaders out there. If you're working with a unit that you've never worked with before, give them a liaison. Put one of your junior officers up in that aircraft. Put one of your junior officers in their tactical operations center. Like getting someone embedded with a group that you haven't worked with before, that can then build a relationship and answer questions and respond to things that is so important. Like when I was a, when I was a young CEO, I was enlisted guys, a radioman. And I would go, I was a radioman when. Which meant I did call for fire. Before JTAC was a thing. What was that called? It was called something else. That's what I was. I can't believe, I can't think of it right now. I must be getting old. But I was, you know, I went to the Marine Corps schools. I did the puff board called I. So I went in a AC130.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So I could see what they're capable. I went into F18 and did bombing runs in an F18 backseat because you start to understand the capabilities so much better. But that idea of putting people into the job and it's the same thing. The Marine Corps does a great job with this because they take, they're Anglico guys. They take their fighter pilots and put them on the ground with ground use. They've been doing that since World War II. It's freaking outstanding. So just another solution. If you, if you're working with a unit you haven't worked with before, go ahead and embed. You know, we did that a lot in Ramadi. When we go out on sniper overwatches, a lot of times we'd have army guys with us, army scouts with us, or they'd be in an adjacent overwatch. We almost always had Iraqis with us so that we could, like, understand what was happening and they could understand what we were doing. So those are some of the things I'm just. When you start working with units you haven't worked with before, if you don't have time to get them trained up, at least embed someone with them.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, 100%, I agree with that. And then rehearsals. You can't just take a unit at face value and say, because it's supposed to be able to do this, and this kind of sounds like what I need, that they're going to be able to show up on game day and do it. So the rehearsals and the embedding is like you said, I just to reemphasize that. Giving them time to train up.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Going back to the book, similarly, cooperation with other assets and overall US Intelligence network was not formalized and often inefficient. This was compounded by the fact that we had been inserted into the relatively fragile structure of a United nations coalition that had not signed on, nor was it designed for urban combat amidst growing insurgency. And you talked about some of the people, some of the different elements, India and Pakistan, Greece and Turkey, like, those are not. No, those are not allies.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, they're not allies.

[Jocko Willink]

And there you were trying to sort all those things out. The situation. Fast forward a little bit. The situation at Mogadishu also called for more combat power. It was naive of the senior leadership in Washington to think that the SNA did not have to be confronted on a larger scale and that the situation could be resolved by clean and surgical raid on their higher leaders. Task Force Ranger had begun the inevitable process of taking down the network of SNA leadership. But what was also required were regular combat units with armored vehicles and artillery to deal with the SNA throughout the city and allow better freedom of maneuver. No doubt about that. Yeah.

[Jim Lechner]

And what I've always thought about that, and we thought at the time too, is I would like to have had the New Jersey pulled up off the coast. And the thing about it, you don't have to use it, but if it does, if it's not there, then you can't use it. And we needed it that day. We needed something like that. So, yeah, I think this notion that you can do things on the cheap, that you can do things surgically on the cheap with a really light footprint on the ground. That's, that's, you know, that's not a feasible way to do business.

[Jocko Willink]

I've always said it's not like soccer.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Where you're only allowed to have level 11 guys. And I'm only allowed to have 11 guys.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

No. If I can bring 50 to go against your 11, I'm going to do that all day long if I can. And the weird thing is people, civilians won't know this. There will be like in Afghanistan and Iraq there was limitations on how many people you could actually put on the ground.

[Jim Lechner]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

And well, Congress approved, you know, 82,000 people. Well, they'd max that out. So now you're in a SEAL troop and you're like, well, we wait, why can't we bring four more guys? I got four more guys that can. They just graduated from SEAL qualification training. We can get them over here. Like, no. Yeah, why not? That's where we've already reached our limit. So again, this ain't soccer. Let us stack the battlefield in our favor. At the time, few of these issues resonated at the tactical level in the Ranger company, in the Delta assault teams or in the helicopter crews. This is the idea of having like armor.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And stuff. We assume that those above us, notably at the most senior levels, were taking a thorough and holistic look at the problem and doing their professional and utmost to support our mission. Yeah. The idea, the, what's good about this is I definitely thought through some of these things as I grew up in the SEAL teams, like directly from what you guys had to go through.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

No doubt. What absolutely did resonate with us on the ground and in the air were the seeming half measures and the violations of time honored mandates that all soldiers are taught. Among these are train as you fight, Unity of effort, and having a clear and distinct chain of command. The ad hoc nature of the UN command and even aspects of Task Force Ranger were troubling even then. And seemed, and support seemed incomplete. By denying the most lethal and capable aerial platforms such as the AC 130 and substituting eager but unfamiliar assets, the senior leadership violated common sense on multiple levels. Yeah. And it's hard to say no, you know, when you get told, well, you can't have this asset, well then I don't think we should do this mission. It's very difficult in the, in the US military. Not even just, just as a human being, you Know when you're. When your football coach says, do this, you go, I'm gonna try.

[Jim Lechner]

Right?

[Jocko Willink]

So it's. It's that idea that, hey, we can't give you what you need, but go do it anyways. It's like, how bad do you actually need it?

[Jim Lechner]

Right. Right.

[Jocko Willink]

How bad do you actually need me to execute this mission? Because if you're saying it's so important, I just need a little bit more air support. I need a little bit more ground support. I need a little bit more troops. So what do you. What are we talking about here? It's hard to have these negotiations. Sometimes personal leadership and a clear chain of command are critical to the soldiers who are on the ground and in the fight. The old veterans of World War II, Korea, and modern battles like the Idrang Valley in Vietnam had continued to pass these lessons on to us over the years and leading up to our deployment to Somalia. They were lessons written on the battlefield in the indelible ink of blood.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, I think this is where in special operations, we got to be careful, because, you know, a lot. A lot of times, it's not. It's not just about. There's some basic things that have to be adhered to for combat. There's some basic things. And that's where I say World War II and Korea and Vietnam taught us those veterans taught us some of those things. You can't violate those things. And we're not talking about, do you have a short haircut or do you have the same uniform? We're talking about, like, the leader has to be on the ground. If there's going to be two different units on the ground, there has to be one commander. And I don't care who it is. It can be them, but as long as there's one commander. And so when we get in soft and I think we start thinking we get too surgical and too sexy, and we can violate some of these things. You can't. There's. There's basic things like that, like command and control, like having reserve, like being able to do fire support, you know, basic building block. Things that you cannot violate no matter how good you think you are.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, the Marine. Safe. There's two Marines in the room. One of them is the senior man. Yeah, like, that's. That's. Yeah, there's a reason for that, because at that critical moment, someone's got to be responsible for what's happening. And even the. Even the fully supportive guy, there's a call that's being made like, we have to be aligned so it's an important one. Next one, achieve as much realism in training as possible. In this training approach, it is not acceptable to merely execute drills or redundant tasks by rote in a sterile environment. The standard of training is that whenever the 75th Ranger Regiment is given a task of responsibility, the profile or steps for that mission and all of its inherent tasks must be run through completely, in every aspect, as closely as possible to reality. This includes the use of similar terrain, distances and weather conditions. Live fire training with Rangers using all their weapons and firing real ammunition is the central pillar of this approach. Now, I had a change in attitude on this when I was growing up in the teams. Live fire was what we did. We fired live fire. Like every target we did. We did immediate action drills in the jungle, immediate action drills in the desert, obviously cqc, all live fire all the time. That's just what we did. Probably around 99 we started getting simmunition and all of a sudden it was like, oh, maybe we shouldn't stack all of our guys in the hallway waiting to go into a room because any idiot can stick their weapon out the door and just spray us and kill us all. We eventually got a really high speed laser tag system that we could use in land warfare out in the desert, which was like you could hit people at 400 yards. It had it snaps going over your head. It was really awesome. And it showed what you actually had to be ready for. Because what we found with paper targets is paper targets never maneuver on you and they never shoot back. And so I live fire to me was definitely a huge part of it. But I think I ended up with about a 1/3 live fire and 2/3 of force on force training. That's sort of what became my. And we would get the live fire done kind of first. Like you work them up so they do live fire and they're under that stress of live fire and the danger of live fire and then we transition over to force on force. Where is going to get crazy. And our training was, it was insane. You paintball everywhere. Because we use paintball, we use ammunition, and we use this laser system at different times for different, different situations. So it made a huge difference in the way that we worked. And it made us much more prepared, in my opinion.

[Jim Lechner]

Oh yeah, yeah, no, I think we're definitely on the same track. Simunitions, force on force. So the enemy has a vote. Absolutely critical. What I'm really trying to get at here, I'm not so much saying that every training event has to be live Fire. What I'm saying is your live fire events have to be realistic. There's so many instances I've seen in the army, especially where they want to have guys in orange vests, they want to have guys with orange flags. They want to have a yellow stake to the left and yellow stake to the right. And when you maneuver your vehicle or into the position, then you can shoot. No, you've got to be at. When you do a live fire and use your weapon system with real rounds, you have to be able to do it in realistic conditions. That's what I'm saying. Not with guys in yellow hats, you know, literally leading you from point to point. Yeah, and. And later on when we talk about Ukraine, I can, I can give some more insight into that too.

[Jocko Willink]

No, that's awesome. And, and we would go through great lengths to make our live fire training very realistic. Including shooting rockets, including shooting 40 mic mike and shooting. Including hucking grenades, which are, which is. Some people hear that and they think it's just insane to do. But we would do live fire night I immediate action shows and we would do them ad nauseam. So don't get me wrong, like live fire. Yeah. So we are, we are totally aligned on that. The live fire has to be realistic. And if you make it so controlled that there's no thought happening anymore, it's, it's not really that helpful. And also, even with this ammunition or the laser tag stuff, there's certain things that you can do with that that's not realistic as well, where you can get some bad habits from that. So you gotta, you gotta do both.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, you gotta be good. And I guess one of the things I would say is when we. And it's, it's hard to understand as civilian, but when we got into the heavy combat aspect in Mogadishu, the live rounds were not what was so unfamiliar to us. We were very familiar with that and we were actually kind of comfortable in that environment. It's, it's the other things that came from taking casualties from the enemy, having a vote. But using the live weapons and even receiving far back was not that was not that unfamiliar to us because we were so well trained.

[Jocko Willink]

Fast forward a little bit. I've made brief mention of the methodical, extensive and intensive training that goes into selecting and training an individual Delta operator. And you say the same thing about Rangers? Similar. The assault teams and various echelons of Delta squadron receive extensive training as well. In Mogadishu, the performance of the individual Delta operators once again completely validated. The system selectivity and vast amounts of training and resources they received. And this is kind of one of the things we talked about on the last podcast. Like you, you just have to have hard freaking training for the troops.

[Jim Lechner]

And quality over quantity.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep, yep.

[Jim Lechner]

Soft tenant.

[Jocko Willink]

No amount of planning or support can guarantee that a raid will go smoothly. It may not be possible on every mission to achieve complete surprise or bring overwhelming force to a target. The enemy becomes a critical factor in any mission planning. When a resolute enemy fights, they get a vote and the plan and stand up combat is often unavoidable. Given these realities, teamwork and unit cohesion are critical. And the ad hoc nature of a task force must be absolutely minimized. The, quote, pickup team approach should not be permitted in mission critical areas. And then this is something I couldn't agree with more. Just as training is important, leadership is possibly the single most significant factor in an effective combat unit. Well, of course, in the way I look at that is who's responsible for the training? The leaders. So we'll go ahead and say it's the most important thing. There was no lack of leadership in Task Force Ranger at any level. Inherent to the training of every unit involved in Task Force Ranger was a constant admonition to take charge of the situation around you and push on toward the goal of mission success, no matter what that may be or what challenges confront you. While the chain of command tried to sort through the chaos and complexities of the battle, the individual Ranger Delta operator and 1/60 pilot made sure the piece of ground they held or airspace they were in was properly secured and if necessary, gave orders to those around them. And again, these are things that you have to train. It's not instinctive some people. It's instinctive for some people that they'll see that there's a void in leadership and they'll step up and take charge. But most people don't have that instinct. So you got to train them. You got to put them in situations where there is a leadership void, where they are forced to step up. And then when they don't step up, you got to train them. Okay, how do you detect that leadership void? How do you become the one that steps up and starts making things happen? You say this. As a soldier and combat veteran, I've personally experienced, to varying degrees, many aspects of the different types of campaigns, planes, battles and military operations that I have read about in history. With one notable exception, I've never experienced being in a unit that has broken under the pressure of the enemy And I'll close out the book with this. The assault force fighting around the crash site of Super 61 certainly felt immense pressure from the enemy as waves of Somali gunmen relentlessly closed in on us and thousands more pressed in from nearby crowds and surrounding city. But never for a moment did the men of Task Force Ranger waiver take a step back or begin to show signs of breaking. Part of the reason for this was our training, but the overriding factor was the immense confidence we had in each other, underlining a determination that no matter what came, we would never quit, give up, or run. That level of cohesion and high morale is a rare thing on the battlefield and an amazing honor to be part of. Yeah. And that is developed through so many. That's a culture.

[Jim Lechner]

Sure. Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

It's a culture that clearly the military units should be striving for, to have that culture. So now you got these. These things that you experienced in your career. How old do you now at this point?

[Jim Lechner]

I'll be 58 next month.

[Jocko Willink]

How about at this point in your career? So you get done with Somalia, you go through the Captain's course.

[Jim Lechner]

That's 26.

[Jocko Willink]

So you're 26 years old. Next thing you get after the. After you finish the officers career course, you get assigned to the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii. You get thrown into some staff assignments. How is it going from Somalia? You're wounded, Purple Heart, like you're a combat veteran. Probably one of the few real combat veterans at your unit. How's that feel?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, it was a bit of a challenge because I wasn't fully physically healed yet. It took. Actually took about two and a half years before I could go back and do standard infantry tasks. So by this time, also, I had branch transferred from the artillery to the infantry. So I was back in the infantry. I was going to take an infantry rifle company. 25th Infantry Division is a light unit, so we had road march and do all that kind of stuff. So I wasn't physically quite at the. At the point where I could do that yet. I was still in a cast when I got to Hawaii. So I got put on the division staff, which is absolute, you know, paper pushers, and you go out and sit in a tent in the field. I learned a lot from that, and I learned about operations, how to plan big operations and all that. But like you said, it was a bit of a challenge because here I am coming out of the Rangers, you know, essentially being a shooter. I got this experience that I really want to infuse into a rifle company And I want to get down there and share this and still be part of that again. And I'm sitting on the division staff. I mean, I feel like I'm so far away from it that, you know, it's like in a glass case. So that was a little bit of a challenge, but. But again, it's another one of those things that taught me some patience.

[Jocko Willink]

And then you finally get assigned to company command.

[Jim Lechner]

Right, right. Rifle company down in 227 infantry.

[Jocko Willink]

And then. And then did you actually deploy to Egypt with us?

[Jim Lechner]

We did, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So what was that all about?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, so we went to the Sinai, peacekeeping operation over there. Peacekeepers between Israel and Egypt. And again, it wasn't, you know, we weren't doing any assaults or attacks or anything like that. We're man in observation posts and reporting on the Israelis and the Egyptians, so in a pretty, you know, pretty relatively benign role. But the beauty of that, though, was that's not what you did 100% of the time. They would rotate you through that. And so when you were rotated off the outposts, we were back doing training. And the other beauty of it was you had some ammunition there, but most people just came over there and sat in the outpost. So we had all this ammunition built up. So I was able to do. Take my company and do lots of live fire and get. Get a lot of that out of my system again.

[Jocko Willink]

How. So what was after that? Did you do the Dominican Republic intervention?

[Jim Lechner]

No, no, no. Haiti came up, and I was in the advanced course after.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, I know what it is. I got one of my notes in here. I was wondering. What the hell am I talking about? It's because you became a. It's because you became an aide.

[Jim Lechner]

That's right, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And you were aid to Major Major General Steve Silvasi. Am I saying that right?

[Jim Lechner]

Steve Silvesi. Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Jim Lechner]

Steve Silv a. Almost a relic. He was this most senior two star on active duty about 35 years. He'd been in the Dom Rep. He'd been in multiple tours in Vietnam. I'm an absolute hero. And he really had this old school, went to West Point before there was women. So he and I really, you know, could see eye to eye on that kind of thing. And there was no war going on, but yet he was this warrior. And we would go all throughout the Pacific, and we ran into a few things. We were in Sri Lanka.

[Jocko Willink]

When were you in Sri Lanka?

[Jim Lechner]

In Sri Lanka, in about 97, during the Tamil Tiger.

[Jocko Willink]

I was there in either 97 or 98. Yeah. We were there working with, Working with the government troops. We were working with their sbs.

[Jim Lechner]

Okay. Yeah. So we good soldiers. Oh, yeah. But from that perspective, again, I'm really far from the battlefield, but with him, it was great and it was a fascinating time. And as you know, from Sri Lanka, there was still a war going on. I mean, I think that's one of the times in the world where there was. That was like one of the only wars going on. And we stayed at this fantastic hotel in Colombo. And like the next week, that hotel got blown up by a suicide attack and suicide commandos got out whacking people. And so it was really an interesting time to be in the Pacific then with him.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I remember all that, that happening. We. We might have even been there at the same time. I don't know. That's kind of crazy. I'm sure I would have known if you guys were there because I'm sure I would have had to do some kind of dog and pony or something like that. So at this point, you must have gotten a good view of sort of the big army being an aide, because I was an aide too. I was an aide for 13 months.

[Jim Lechner]

And yeah, I will say, you know, again, this is distasteful as it was relatively to be on the division staff and. But I was in plans, and that's really where you learn to plan campaigns, to do stuff besides company and platoon tactics, that you really learn to do that, unlike the division staff and a plan shop. So that coupled with being the aide for General Solvesi, getting to go back and see how the Pentagon worked, getting to see how the four star commands worked throughout the Pacific at the strategic level. I mean, it was a huge learning experience.

[Jocko Willink]

And then what's next? You early promote to major?

[Jim Lechner]

I did. So I went back to the Ranger Regiment when I was in battalion. I have to say that didn't count. So I have to say that didn't count. But I went back to the regiment as a liaison officer and I got assigned to be the liaison officer to 18th Airborne Corps. So still operating at a pretty high level. And one of the ironic things about that was the corps commander, the three star was General Buck Kernan. He'd been the Ranger Regiment commander. Every one of his staff had been Ranger Regiment or Ranger Battalion officers. And they all had combat scrolls. And so Captain Lechner would go in there and try to brief what the battalion's plan was going to be. And it was just, it was, it was a comedy because there's more collective experience in the Ranger Regiment than you could find anywhere. And here I am trying to tell them about things, so. But they treated me well. And again, good learning experience.

[Jocko Willink]

And you're on a pretty awesome career path at this point. I mean, early promoted to major. That's huge. Like, you must be lining up pretty good at this point.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, Doing pretty well and, you know, getting ready to go on to the next level of school. But before I did that, I again was at 18th Airborne Corps with the Rangers and looking for the next mission.

[Jocko Willink]

And didn't you end up going to Bosnia?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah. So after about a year of being on the staff, and again, there's no war going on at this time, so I was looking for another mission to do. The United States was involved in Bosnia, mainly peacekeeping. But I got wind of a special operation that was going on over there, and there was an effort to track down all the war criminals from the three different warring parties. And so through my range of regiment connections and through U.S. army Special Operations Command, I picked up a tasking to go over and be the operations officer for the task force that were hunting war criminals.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, that's pretty awesome.

[Jim Lechner]

It was an incredible job. Yeah. And kind of to springboard off what I was saying about post Somalia getting ready for the war on terrorism. This is another evolution that JSOC took. And it's not just that JSOC figured everything out is, you know, Bosnia, hunting war criminals. They really had to take a law enforcement approach. And so there was lots of things learned from law enforcement that was integrated into that task force in Bosnia. I mean, we were operating off indictments from the Hague, from a court system, and then we had to use law enforcement techniques in a pretty, you know, benign and restrained environment. So we had to integrate a lot of law enforcement things. The call out is one tactic that, you know, just an example of some of the things that we learned from law enforcement. So that was really. Well, it was a fun mission. We got to do things. We captured about 13 different war criminals while I was there. I even got to go down with some of the task forces. The strike forces, while they were doing that, got to learn things from an operational and strategic perspective as well.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you guys do any call outs? Actually.

[Jim Lechner]

My. The operations I was involved in, we did not. But the. But the, you know, instead of going in and breaching, the priority in that case became to isolate the objective and then deal with it. So that's kind of where they learned some of that.

[Jocko Willink]

Got it. Yeah, those were. I know some guys that were over there at that Time executing those missions. And it was pretty kind of cool looking, you know, body snatches, like we're going to kid, basically. It looks like we're going to kidnap this guy is what it looked like.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, we had, we had five company nations, five countries were involved in the task force. So the British SAS was doing hits for a while. They were bringing in some of the tier one units from the US to do the hits. And then they would delegate that down to the special Forces teams that were in Europe. And so again, it was a really good learning curve to watch a lot of those techniques and watch the, you know, integrate some of the law enforcement that the intelligence tracking that some of the law enforcement uses.

[Jocko Willink]

And these were the real, only real missions at the time, you know.

[Jim Lechner]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

That's me as I'm sitting there going, dang it.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah. So this is pre 9, 11. This was in the 98, 99, 2000 time frame.

[Jocko Willink]

And after that's Command and Staff College.

[Jim Lechner]

Right. Got to go to the college. Life I never had at the Citadel was at the Air Force Command and Staff. It was fantastic.

[Jocko Willink]

How long is that? A year.

[Jim Lechner]

That's a year, yeah. I showed up and they made me pay this $300 landing fee. And I'm a bit of a tight wad, so I was not too happy about it, but it was the best money I ever invested. We had four completely catered parties at whatever restaurant we wanted. Anyway, so I just had a great time for a year going to college.

[Jocko Willink]

And I'm sure your wife enjoyed that time.

[Jim Lechner]

She did, yep. I had two kids at the time. We had a second daughter, Katie, had her back at Bragg while I was deployed to Somalia or, excuse me, to Bosnia. And then I took our two kids and we went down to Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, which I absolutely loved, best barbecue in the world. And we just partied for a year, went to school like half a day when we went.

[Jocko Willink]

No kidding, right? As you're graduating, you graduate in 2001 and then September 11th happens.

[Jim Lechner]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

What happens with you after September 11th?

[Jim Lechner]

So I went from Air Command and Staff College and I went to the. What's called The Stryker Brigade, 3rd Brigade, 2nd ID. Mick Nicholson, who went on to be the ISAF commander, was one of the guys tasked to build this new Striker concept in the Army. And the concept basically was to bring a Ranger regiment attitude, but give them vehicles, give them armored vehicles. So to build a brigade size element, a couple thousand soldiers equipped them with these new light wheeled armored vehicles. New for the army at the time, as opposed to the heavy tracked M1 and Bradley vehicles they used in Desert Storm. So bring these new light wheeled vehicles. But also to bring a culture of we're not going to sit in the vehicle and fight work. That's just a taxi that's going to take us to the fight and then we're going to get out and fight like a Ranger regiment. And you know, to his credit and to the unit's credit, they built a great culture out there. They had lots of Rangers involved out there in that brigade. And I got hired to be one of the battalion operations officers. So that's where I went out to Fort Lewis, Washington to build the very first Stryker unit in the Army.

[Jocko Willink]

And you did those guys deploy to Iraq?

[Jim Lechner]

They eventually did. So again, this is kind of similar to my Korea story, but at the time when I graduated Air Command and Staff College pre 9 11, there was no war. And so I thought, well, there's no war going on, so I'll go out to this new unit and that'll be interesting and good. And while I was there, the war kicks off and the whole army starts to deploy again. So I was desperate to get over to that. And eventually that brigade did deploy to combat. But you know, the fine print that I did not read when I went out there was you do two years in this unit, develop this new Striker Brigade, and then you have to go to one of the training centers and help impart that knowledge to the rest of the Army. I did not read that fine print on that contract. And so after I did my two years, I'm thinking I can go and join a unit and go with the rest of the Army. And that was not the case. I had to go to a training center.

[Jocko Willink]

And the training center that you went to is in Germany.

[Jim Lechner]

Germany, Hohenfels. Right. There's three training centers. There's a light training center at Fort Polk, there's a heavy training center out at Fort Irwin, the ntc, and then there's one over in Europe. And so they at least let me choose which one I would go to. And I went to the one in Germany.

[Jocko Willink]

What was that decision based on?

[Jim Lechner]

That decision, 90% was based on the fact that at this point now we're about a year into the war in Iraq and the units that initially deployed over there were coming on their year and having to redeploy and they were going now to Germany to take units from Germany deploying down there. And I knew that with that wave departing Germany and Go down, I could probably snap, link in and get somewhere. And in fact, there's a couple funny stories about showing up at places I wasn't really assigned and trying to get on the bus and getting pulled out at the last minute. But it eventually worked out.

[Jocko Willink]

So eventually you end up as the volunteering to go and help build the new Iraqi Army. This is 2004, right?

[Jim Lechner]

All right, so I'm at the training center doing some of, some of that work with the units, getting ready to go, helping push them out the door. And then the tasking came down to build an advisor team. And this is in 2003, early in the war. The war again hadn't even gone on for a year and the US military is now figuring out they're going to have to rebuild the Iraqi army. And so they were forming advisor teams almost ad hoc, but they came to the training center and said let's, because we had non commissioned officers and we had officers that did the training that would evaluate units and give them lessons learned. And so it wasn't, it was a pretty good fit actually. And so we built about a 10 man team, very similar to an SFODA, but not with any of the special skills, but in application and concept. So about a 10 man team to go down and develop some of the basic building block skills that an infantry battalion would need with the Iraqis. And we actually were assigned to the 7th Battalion that came out of the gates.

[Jocko Willink]

And then. So did you go through like a training cycle with them?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, again, it was, it was kind of a dream come true. What they, what they told us was, and the chain of command wasn't really mature yet, so it was basically focused at the battalion level. So I didn't have a brigade staff that I had to respond to. I was, I was kind of on my own. I had a support network down there, but I didn't have a brigade command that I had to respond to at that point, so relatively independent. And what they did is said, hey, on this date you're going to get a thousand recruits, there's going to be some attrition and then you need to march out the gates with 700 trained soldiers about nine weeks later. So, so in a lot of ways it was a dream come true for, for a young major. I had enough resources, I had ranges and all that to do that. We were at a base about 20 km from the Iranian border out in the desert, had a good range complex, had plenty of ammo, had brand new Romanian AK47 rifles. We got a few Iraqi NCOs and a few Iraqi officers with varying degrees of experience. We trained them first, trying to do the train the trainer so they could help us put them through a pretty extensive program. I focused on close quarters battle marksmanship, some of the basic fundamental things for infantry. And then we got a thousand recruits and went to town. And I took just a little bit different approach than some people took. You know, it wasn't hard to read the tea leaves. And you could see where the war was going in 2003 and 4. It was starting to go bad from an insurgency perspective. And we had the whole experience of trying to send Iraqi units into the first Fallujah and what a disaster that was. And I knew the quicker that we could get Iraqi units into the fight from a counterinsurgency perspective, the better it was going to be, rather than Americans just trying to carry the whole fight. So what I focused on was having that unit ready to do some sort of limited operations as soon as they graduated.

[Jocko Willink]

And what were the limited operations that you guys conducted when they graduated?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, I wanted them to be able to do some really basic company level attacks, company level defense. I wanted them to be able to set up traffic control points, to set up checkpoints so they could relieve US troops from doing that. And then I wanted them to be able to move from point A to point B and then have some basic command and control.

[Jocko Willink]

So did you have like a targeted operations to actually go and conduct when you, when you got done training them?

[Jim Lechner]

No, we didn't, we didn't have any operation on the horizon at that time. We could just, we could just see that. I mean, we knew with the way there was a huge failure in the approach to Fallujah with Iraqi forces, we could see the way the wars, you know, the war was going, the way operations were being conducted. Again, from a counterinsurgency perspective, I knew Iraqi army forces were going to be much more effective than American forces that trying to go, you know, storm through apartment complexes in Baghdad or wherever it may be. So it was pretty obvious what we needed to do. But again, what you had to pick and choose is in eight or nine weeks, what can you accomplish? And so we had to focus on some things. And what I focused on, to be honest, was, you know, let's get things right at the company level so they can do some basic things. Let's be able to move. And then we would provide, Americans would provide the command and control. It wasn't, you know, set up to be that way. We were supposed to develop the Iraqis too, but there's only so much you can do in eight weeks. And so I knew me and my advisors would be essentially the company commander and the battalion commander, et cetera. And it actually worked out really well.

[Jocko Willink]

So what came after that?

[Jim Lechner]

We had some limited operations out there doing counterinsurgency in the area up by the Iranian border. But the next big operation that came in the war was that fall. So we finished with our training around August, tuned up a little bit for the next three or four weeks. And then in the fall there came a surge to take back the city of Samara. Okay, so you had a failure out at Fallujah, but the second crack at Fallujah came later that fall. So most people not heard of Samara, which came before. So in September they did Samarra. In October timeframe they did Fallujah, which was a much bigger battle, much more famous. But before that we took five battalions. And then I was able to bring our Iraqi Battalion, the 7th Battalion, to that fight. And it was the first time we were able to commit an Iraqi battalion to take their own objectives. And I had a relationship with the battalion commander in that area. He, he and I had been together in the Ranger Regiment in 375. Jeff Sinclair. I knew him really well. I knew his sergeant major, another 275 Ranger. And so they entrusted us. I told him, here's what I can do and here's what I can't do. You can count on me for these, these things. He trusted me enough. And. And then we went in and took our own objectives. And it's the first time I'm really aware of that Iraqi army units were able to have, have an objective and take it in a battle.

[Jocko Willink]

That's, that's impressive. And so then what comes. Was that kind of the end of that tour for you when you got done with the Samara?

[Jim Lechner]

Yes, a new team came in to replace our team. And I actually tried to stay down there for a while until I got the word and I had to come home. So I stayed down for an extra four weeks until I finally got the plane came to take me back to Germany. But so I went back and did that and then I had a little downtime. I was on the four star staff in Heidelberg and did that until fifth Corps out of Germany was going to go down and take over the whole command and control in the Iraq theater. So I got pulled into 5th Corps to be the nighttime Joint Operations Center OIC. And so was that out of Baghdad? That was in Baghdad. Right. The three star level headquarters in Baghdad, running the whole war.

[Jocko Willink]

That's, that's an interesting perspective.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah. Again, you know, it seems like in my career I'm always looking, I'm always trying to get down to the lowest tactical level. So that's the last place in the world I wanted to be. But it turned out to be incredibly insightful. The joint operations center. I mean, everything that happened in the country got reported into us, into my small team in the operations cell. So I had absolute visibility on every single square foot of Iraq, so to speak, from the coalition perspective. I was getting updates and reports and the current situation, casualties, we tracked all that, all the current operations going on. So I knew I had a very good visibility in what was going on. But that's, that's not where I wanted to be for a year. I wanted to be down with one of the units in the fight. You know, we were literally like in stadium seating in a palace, just taking reports day after day after day. And so it's interesting for a while, but that's not where I wanted to be. I want to be down in one of the brigades and I'd been promoted to lieutenant, lieutenant colonel this by this time. So I was trying to be, you know, one of the leaders in one of the brigades.

[Jocko Willink]

So as you're sitting there at this high level and it's 2005 and you're watching the war and you're seeing the casualty reports and you're seeing what real estate's being taken, what real estate's being given up. You're also obviously paying attention to the news and what's coming out. Like, what was your assessment of the war in 2005, the insurgencies now in getting into full swing? It's on the way. Was there a feeling of like, we're not winning right now?

[Jim Lechner]

Oh, 100%. Okay, yeah, 100%. I, you know, we were watching U.S. troops again try to carry most of the fight and just from a, intuitively from a counter uncertainty perspective, you know, we know by this time that's not going to work. U.S. troops, and I don't care what their intentions are, what the reality is, the perception is not going to allow them to carry, to be successful in a counterinsurgency. And there were just so many factors. The porous border from Syria, you know, the Shia uprising aspect, the dissolving situation there, just US Troops were not, we're not going to be able to kill our way out of this one. It's just kind. And another thing that I Learned from law enforcement. You can't arrest your way out of a crime problem. You can't kill your way out of an insurgency. And so it was very obvious to us and the situation on the ground was just getting worse and worse. We kept throwing bodies at it and we just had more and more casualties coming home. And then, oh, by the way, there was this kind of ticking time bomb out in Anbar province called Ramadi. And this is the first time in my career I'd ever talked to us a U.S. military unit. And they'd said, well, yeah, that's ground is owned by the enemy. I'm like, the enemy shouldn't own any ground when the US military is involved in a situation like that. But they said, no, no, we don't go in there because that's owned by the enemy. So that's not our battle. You know, we can't, we can't get into that place. So that kind of thing just really kind of set me back. So there was, there was a need for more troops, but there was certainly a need for a different approach and certainly a need for. And this, I based this on my experience of the Iraqi army, certainly a need to put the Iraqis out front and have them execute it. And you know, I enjoyed developing that capability of the Iraqis. But you know, one of the things that I think a lot of American officers don't get and still don't get is develop that capability and then let them bleed for their country rather than our boys bleed for their country. So that was where I was at with that.

[Jocko Willink]

And were you seeing any movement in that direction from like senior leadership, from the generals of them starting to say, hey, look, we need to take a different approach here or not really, No.

[Jim Lechner]

I was not seeing that from the generals at all. No, I take that back. General Petraeus, who was a three star at the time, was, was very much on board with developing Iraqi capability. He'd had some good experience by all reports up in Mosul when He was the 101st Division Airborne Division commander and again had been my boss when I had the Iraqi army unit for a while. And so I admired his approach to things and he seemed to get that. But from the four star level, which was really driving how we were fighting the war, I did not see that. When I speak a lot of times I'll do a comparison between General Petraeus and then the general that he succeeded, General Casey. And General Casey was a smart guy. He knew what had to be done from an administrative perspective to get the forces lined up and in order and to try to, you know, create the conditions on the ground for victory, but did not have the same perceptions that General Petraeus did. General Petraeus knew I've got to go out in the field and I've got to go to this outpost and I've got to make sure they're working with the Iraqi police or whatever the case may be. So I did not see at that time a lot of positive perspective at the four star level, let's put it that way.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it's interesting for me. So I was the aide during this timeframe, 2004 to 2005. And you know, so I was in the Pentagon and I was hearing briefings and like, you kind of got the. I kind of got the impression that, well, we're not really winning, but we're not going to do anything different.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And, you know, I'd be sitting there, you know, briefing this month, briefing the next month, briefing the following month, and you're thinking, wait a second, if we're not. If we're losing? Well, they wouldn't say the word losing, but they wouldn't say the word winning, which implies that we're losing. And yet I wouldn't hear, here's our new approach or this is what we're gonna try. So, yeah, it was pretty disturbing to watch that.

[Jim Lechner]

And I can't tell you how many generals I would listen to say something to me which was completely inane, like, well, it's their country. They're gonna have to figure out how to fix it. No, it's our boys that we're losing over there. And that's what I was really concerned about. I mean, I wanted mission success for sure, but are you just gonna keep throwing our boys and girls down that hole? I mean, to me, that's ab. Absolute abrogation of what your, your duty should have been over there as a senior leader.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So you're at least aware of what's happening in Ramadi because you're in country. It's, you know, there was the report from Colonel Devlin that came out that said Ramadi na Province all but lost.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

This is not good.

[Jim Lechner]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

And then you end up. How did you get. Would you get orders to the 118? How's that work?

[Jim Lechner]

So I started talking to my bosses. Lots and lots of guys hanging around the headquarters. Lots of guys that could do my job. I knew that. So I started lining up some people, you know, that could backfill me. Because that's what you got to do. You got to Find your own replacement. So I made it known, you know, that I. That I wanted to. That I wanted to go down and be in one of the brigades as a lieutenant colonel. That was, you know, the place for me. And so I did that and I actually found a team, a advisor team to go to and had that all set, you know, my own plans. And I went to my boss and said, I've got this opportunity, and I've got a guy lined up to replace me. And he said, well, I'll think about it. And he called me in like an hour later and he said, I'm not going to let you go to that team. And I was really unhappy, you know, working the night shift, working, being a complete paper pusher while the war is going on just was not in a good, good place. And I really had to bite my tongue, grit my teeth. And he was playing with me. He was a real smart guy and he knew my deal, and he was playing with me. And he said, because I got another job for you, I'm going to send you down to 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division as a DCO that just came up. So it was one of these things where just, again, planets all come into alignment. And I was walking on air. And so I immediately packed my stuff and got on a bird and flew up to Taloff or up in the northwest. And you talked about people that were having some success. So there had been an Armored Cavalry regiment up there, McMaster, HR McMaster, who had a lot of respect for. And his unit was employing some very effective counterinsurgency. And we were starting to hear a lot about that. A brigade was coming down from Germany. 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division in its current configuration of who it was authorized to have, they were not authorized to have a deputy commander, but within the theater, they authorized that. And so that's how I got. Fell into that slot to be the deputy commander up there and got sent up and joined that unit when they changed out in Tlaufer.

[Jocko Willink]

So you were there immediately. You meet. How was. How was meeting Colonel McFarland for the first time?

[Jim Lechner]

Great.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you know about him? Did he have or.

[Jim Lechner]

I did know about him because when I was in. We were all from Germany, and I'd been on the staff in Germany. And at the time when I met him, he'd been the operations officer for 5th Corps. So pretty key figure in Germany. And so I'd met him briefly. I knew he was a real smart guy, a quiet guy, very calm, very stable. And so, you know, got to meet him early In Germany, but then again, linked up with him. He was in Baghdad for a conference, and we linked up in Baghdad and flew up to Lafar together.

[Jocko Willink]

You get on there at Tal Afar, or Talifer. How are you saying it? I always say a Talfar.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, telephara. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. And it's. You're looking at what General or Colonel McMaster done at the time. It worked. How long was it? You get orders where. All right, you guys are now going to leave Tel Afar and go to Ramadi?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah. So I joined the brigade, I want to say, in, like, the February timeframe. I'd been in Baghdad for a couple months when I got sent down to the brigade, joined them again in February. We took over the sector, and they were in. At that point, they were in what we would call now, like, phase four operations. They'd gone through the whole process and got it down to a manageable level, and they were trying to finish things up. Well, it was their time to go home. So there was still some fighting, there was still some enemy, but it was very manageable. And so it really gave us a clear picture of what could be accomplished, because Talofer had been a very bad place, kind of a mini Ramadi just a couple years before that. So it gave us a real picture of what could be done, and it gave us some time to get organized, kind of sharpen our skills up a little bit. There was just enough combat, just enough operations to do that. And then in the summer, things really started to tank out in Ramadi, and again, it wasn't a surprise to anybody. But by this time, the senior leadership knew they had to do something about Ramadi. And that's what became the surge was initially, how are we going to deal with Ramadi? They had two brigades in reserve down in Kuwait. They made the decision to commit two brigades to the surge, and our brigade was going to be redeployed. There was a Pennsylvania National Guard brigade that was down in Ramadi, and when they were coming out, they needed somebody to backfill them. And again, everybody recognized it was going to be a serious situation. So we couldn't screw around. We couldn't do any half measures. And so they selected our armor brigade to redeploy down there.

[Jocko Willink]

So you're tracking. You see what the casualty reports coming out of Ramadi.

[Jim Lechner]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

So you're, again, one of the few people that had this really significant urban combat experience right from Mogadishu, which was, well, I guess, what, 20 years earlier, something like that.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Jocko Willink]

Or. Sorry, about 15, 15 years earlier. How did that impact, like, what conversations were you having with, with Colonel McFarland about this kind of thing? Did you feel like it gave you some good insight? I mean, clearly it must have.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, I think so. Kind of one of the funny things about getting to the Armored Brigade, I mean, it's an M1 tank brigade and I tell people I couldn't spell M1, but they couldn't spell sof. So, you know, that's. And he, to his credit, I mean, he's a very perceptive guy and so he recognized that. So I wasn't going to be in charge of maintenance or anything. So he, he gave me a couple things to do. You know, one of the things about that situation, especially going to Ramadi, is it was so bad. There were so many things broken that there was just a lot to do. I mean, there was more to do than, than, you know, any of us could do. So it's just like, here, take a few things and run with it. But you can't do everything. So I would like to have influenced more, you know, some of the tactical aspect, but I just could. I had too many other irons in the fire that were critically important, but I think I was able to give him some good insight. And when you couple that with the fact that I had had an Iraqi army battalion in an urban fight in a kind of smaller scale operation in Samara, I was able to put my two cents in, I think, with some credibility.

[Jocko Willink]

And you must have felt good about the fact that we had tanks. I mean, I just love tanks. I love Bradley's. It felt so good to have those freaking beautiful machines out there.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And you know, I was, even when I was reading your book, the, the point where you're talking about the, the vehicles that are coming to get you, I remember like the, the noise, the sound of a tank, the sound of an M1 when it's moving down the street and you're so happy. It's the best noise ever.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, I really, really became a, a believer when I, when I joined the brigade. You know, I joined the army in the 90s and there was kind of a cultural thing between the infantry and armor and there was this perception that the infantry had of armor. But I will say, no matter what, to see an armor brigade in combat versus, you know, the rear in Garrison is two completely different experiences. You know, to see an armored brigade able to go out there and just fight in a city is just unbelievable. And there's, and there are some things, you know, that tanks are obviously not better suited for, but there ain't too many. And, and it's, it's a devastating, you know, impressive system to have, especially in a city. I mean, I've got. We were talking about Mike Bimer earlier on. I've just got story after story about warriors like that just using his M1 just as aggressively as you can imagine. And just.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, really, you don't get the, you don't get the nickname Main Gun Mike for nothing. Yeah, you interesting thing is in Ramadi, the streets, a lot of the streets were wide.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

So you know, I would always hear about like the Cheshan War and how the Cheshins would get the Russians kind of pinned down in these narrow streets with their tanks and they didn't have the elevation on their weapons to. And it was like Ramadi was almost an ideal urban combat for tricks. So that, so that was kind of nice. And you talked about this integration of, of infantry and armor and then, you know, you had a small element of special operations guys there. There was Rangers there, there was. They were down the street from me. They were literally next door.

[Jim Lechner]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

And then you had us there and we integrated very deeply with, with the armor.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, was that surprising to you?

[Jim Lechner]

A little. A little. We'd had some as a brigade, we'd had some bad experiences with some, some special forces guys up in the north. And, and again, this goes back to. I've been on that side of that. So, you know, special operations units, not wanting to integrate with the battlespace owner, not wanting to, you know, be part of that team or whatever the case may be. But you know, that's one of the things that was so incredibly impressive down there in Ramadi is I think we all recognized, hey, this is going to take every one of us. We've learned enough lessons over the last 15 years. Years that this is how it's got to be approached. And I, I was really impressed with, with your approach to it. I mean it was very obvious to me that you just wanted to go get the job done and it was going to and maybe in some ways be a non standard way of integrating in with a tank company or whoever the case may be, but whoever was going to get you in the fight was who you're going to go with. And so that was very refreshing to see.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, everything that we did, you know, you can't plan to go into, you know, Firecracker or South Central Almaty. You can't go in there without having a really good Plan of getting out of there if you have wounded, if you have casualties, if you need fire support. And so we knew, and we had such good relationships with the army, with the Marine Corps, that we knew it. If something happens, we'll get the help that we need. And you know, the amount of times that the 11 AD, you know, any one of those battalions, the 1st, the 506, the 3 7, the 135, the 38 Marines, the 137, the amount of times that we were supported by them, even though we were always the. And I don't want to make anyone freak out here. There's a big deal in the military Echo Charles, between being the supported element and the supporting element. And the supported guys are kind of like the main effort.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And the supporting guys are here. We're. We're subservient to you. Which I had no problem with it. Right. You guys have 5,600 soldiers and Marines. I remember when we went into Put in combat. Outpost Iron is the first big push in to put a combat outpost in. And there was 50 armor pieces.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And they were all lined up. And I said, yeah, this is pretty cool. This is pretty awesome. And you know, the lead little element going over there to kick this thing off was my guys.

[Jim Lechner]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

And we would not have been able to take that risk without having the reliable support. Again. I'm using that word. Even though we were the supporting element, it was a mutually supported effort across the board.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah. I think a couple different things came together that were unique in Ramadi. And one, again, it was such a bad situation and we all knew we were going to have to give way together. I mean, nobody was going to solve that on their own. And so one, everybody had to pitch in. It was so bad. We're going to have to cooperate. You know, the other thing is the. I think we just were very fortunate in the keen nexus of leadership. You know, not everybody was perfect over there, but the key decision makers just were able to gel together because all it would have taken is one guy saying, I'm not going to let seals lead my unit or I'm not going to have my tanks waiting on. You know, it would have taken one. And we. We've seen that throughout our career. I mean, I can't tell you how many times one attitude like that derails operations. And thank God we did not have anybody in the flow that I came across that that impeded that.

[Jocko Willink]

One of the things that was good about what we brought to Table. Because I always looked at what, how can we complement what, what the army has.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

What the Marine Corps has, and the. Luckily, again, there's a. You talk about the luck that you have in your career, and one of the luckiest things for us is in our task unit, normal task unit, you might have, you know, you got 30, 35 or 40 seals, you might have five snipers, maybe six snipers. We had 13 snipers, which was a lot of snipers for a SEAL task unit to have. And the opportunity that presented itself in Ramadi with being able to have snipers out in positions that can take these precision shots with no collateral damage.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

Was such a benefit. And I think that's one of the things, you know, the support that we got from the army in the Marine Corps was like the army would get hit with a mortar and, you know, we'd be able to kill those people with the mortars.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And, you know, somebody be putting IEDs, IDs were so terrible, and we'd be able to just go out there and kill the people that were in placing IEDs without causing any collateral damage, which was what made it so effective.

[Jim Lechner]

I agree. And I just want to say again, too, without blowing too much sunshine, your approach to that was critical because again, a lot of times, and we experienced with other aspects, other JTFs, they had what they wanted to do, and they basically would coordinate with us to the point that they had to, but they were going to go try to do things. You came in and said, in essence, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm trying to wrap this all up or not wrap this up, but I'm trying to make a synopsis of this. You essentially want to go down and get in the fight. And we had some things that we needed, but as long as they were contributing to the fight, you know, that worked together. And so I think it was a win. Win. And does that make sense?

[Jocko Willink]

No. Yeah. No, it's, you know, as I said to Carl McFarland, he reminded me, because I didn't really remember. He's like, the first thing. When I met you, the first thing you said was like, how can, how can I support you? What do you guys need from us? And yeah, that's, that's what I said. It's what I meant. And he needed various things. You know, he needed Iraqi police to get trained. Okay, we'll train some Iraqi police. We need some special Mission Unit Iraqis to be trained. Okay, well, we'll do that. We need sniper overwatch over in this combat outpost that's been, okay, we'll do that. We were there to support and give what we could. Again, when you have 5600 soldiers and 100 armor pieces inside of a city, like, we're, yeah, we, we try to figure out what we could do that would give the best support to the situation.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, I think that's one of the leadership lessons learned here is, you know, as long as you have an idea of what you want to accomplish, but you're not dogmatic about how you're going to accomplish, if you have some flexibility and if both units come together like that and give a little bit, as long as they're both giving way together, that's. That's when you're going to get the synergy like we, like we achieved there. I mean, again, a lot of units would come in and say, no, I, I'm going to do this the way I want to do it. And you're just going to either get out of my way or you're going to, you know, do whatever. But, but I didn't see that. That's. You guys wanted to get downtown and get in the fight. And there were some things that we wanted done and you said, well, if that gets us in the fight, we'll do those things. And so we worked out.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And Colonel McFarland or General McFarland now. But the attitude that he had of working together.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, when you mentioned that, we didn't really get to. We didn't see people that had a bad attitude about it. And clearly that's leadership from the top. You know, he wasn't going to. Not, not that he didn't put up with it. I'm sure he wouldn't have put up with it. But because of the example that he set.

[Jim Lechner]

He set the Tom, then everyone was.

[Jocko Willink]

Just like, okay, that's what we're doing. We're not worried about. It's not the army versus the Navy versus the Marine Corps versus the Air Force. None of that. It's not this battalion versus that battalion. It's none of that. It's not this company versus that company. It's like, it's us against the insurgents, which is what it's supposed to be. And he just set such an incredible example in, in everything that he did. Every meeting that we had, you know, that guy, he just had such a great, open mind to new ideas and listening to what people had to say and very decentralized, you know, very decentralized. You, you heard Colonel Dean on here. You Know, Colonel Dean's like, hey, I. I don't need you to run my. My brigade. I'm not going to tell you how to run my. Your battalion. You go make it happen.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And he, like, Colonel Dean, was kind of shocked by that level of decentralized command. Like, oh, go do what I want. Yeah, just as long as it supports the overall mission. That's what we're doing.

[Jim Lechner]

Well, and just to springboard off that and take it even a step further is. You know, we talked about, by this point in the war, by 06, you know, we were not getting guidance from the generals on how to fix things. You know, we weren't even getting recognition that things were going wrong. We were getting just more troops. Just keep doing things you're doing. And here's your. Here's your plan that was developed in Baghdad on paper. You go and execute that. Just work harder is basically what they would say. And General McFarland really saw that was not working, and he really was open to new concepts. So when Tony Dean and Sheikh Sitar came on board and we started thinking about these things and trying to think of different ways to accomplish the same thing, you know, none of that would have mattered if General McFarlane had not had the fortitude to accept that. That we're not going to do things the way Baghdad's telling us. We're going to deviate from that significantly, but we're going to win. That's what this is about. And we did.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. It was crazy when he came on the podcast, the fact that we were putting in those combat outposts, like, every three or four days, because they were so. They were such huge operations.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And in my mind, they all seemed to be separated by for, like, two, three weeks at a time. And. And then I looked at the dates, and sure enough, it's like, boom. This combat outpost is going in.

[Jim Lechner]

Right?

[Jocko Willink]

50 armor pieces moving, 200t barriers getting put in position, flatbed trucks, generators, troops getting housed down there now Iraqi soldiers in the. In the building, living there. Oh, oh, we're done with that. Okay. It's been two days, three days. Oh, we're doing it again.

[Jim Lechner]

Right?

[Jocko Willink]

And we did that over and over again. And it was. Honestly, it was kind of miraculous.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, it was amazing.

[Jocko Willink]

Even just from a logistical standpoint, where did all those TEA barriers come from? Like, even. Even when he was on the podcast, he's like, I don't really know.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

He's like, they were just showing up 200 concrete tea barriers. And by the way, there's Simultaneous operations going on as well.

[Jim Lechner]

Right, right.

[Jocko Willink]

So it was, it was even when Colonel Dean came on, you know, on August 2nd, when Mark Lee was killed, it was. For us, it was huge battle with the 137 down there and in South Central Ramadi. And I had literally almost forgot that that day. We had also supported a massive operation over at the Album, our university, and had seals over there, and that battalion did a huge operation that was critical. And so you just had so much going on. The decentralized command and the trust that Colonel McFarland put in the leadership to make things happen and get things done was astounding.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, that's a great, great point. Because everybody in Ramadi had a lot to do. You kind of focused on your neighborhood that you were fighting in, but there was so much synchronization going on across that whole city. And for not that relatively big a place, the amount of things going on simultaneously, just amazing. So, you know, we saw the method on how to do the counterinsurgency, and, you know, it's a step by step process. But we couldn't do a step by step process. You know, we had to go down and fight like Stalingrad in certain places. We couldn't bring police down there, even though that's what Baghdad told us to do. And so we were able to figure out that if you can't bring police into Stalingrad, well, where can you bring them? And at least that's a start. And so while the combat units are fighting a battle of that intensity, we're off parallel in the suburbs developing police and developing those programs. And like you said, there might be three different combat operations going on. And I'll also say, you know, the Marine headquarters above us was very, very supportive. General Kneller was a brigadier at the time. Later comment on the Marine Corps. Brigadier General Kneller was my counterpart that I worked with or my boss that I would work with at that level. And they were very supportive again, to this out of the box thinking, but that's what it took. You couldn't just take this recipe and go step by step. And if somebody like General McFarland hadn't, hadn't, you know, authorized us to do that or undersigned, that we wouldn't have been able to do it.

[Jocko Willink]

Now you're, again, you had the experiences in Mogadishu. You're. You're one of the combat leaders at the time that had served in that intense combat, had, had, had casualties lost guys, as you're rolling into Ramadi and you see this is starting to unfold again. How did you. How did you talk to guys about that kind of thing?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, unfortunately, I hoped that we would get in there kind of like I experienced in Samara and do a big surge and push everybody out. But I really realized it wasn't going to be that way. It was going to be months and months of just grinding it out. And that's not where you want to be in a meat grinder. And that's what it was. I mean, it was just going to be months and months. And you remember the cycle. I mean, we would go out and do operations. We would come back to the hospital, into the morgue and deal with guys. And then we would go down to the airfield at night and fly the bodies out home and just repeat and then go to memorial services the next morning. I mean, it was that way for weeks and weeks and weeks. And I really had hoped that would not be the case, but I was pragmatic enough to know that it was. So I told my guys, you got to mentally prepare yourself right now. We're going to get hit, we're going to lose guys. Be prepared for it. But what I tried to do was tell them it's not just so we can roll around the street and show the flag for a year. Here's what we're trying to accomplish. And I try to keep them informed. It's very difficult to get them to see, you know, the long term effects that they're fighting for. But I try to explain to them, here's what we're trying to achieve. We've got a recipe for success. We saw it until offer. We're bringing it to Ramadi. It's just going to take a long time and be prepared. We're going to lose guys.

[Jocko Willink]

And we did the. Yeah, the, the extension. So were you part of the extension when these guys got extended?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, yeah. I was actually home on leave and I just hugged my family goodbye, walked through TSA and I came up to a television monitor, literally said, one, one AD is extended through February. So, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

How was the impact of the troops there? What did you see?

[Jim Lechner]

Everybody, at least in my experience, was positive because by that time, this is by like September. By that time, we were getting traction. We could see, you know, that it was going the right way, it was going our way. I wouldn't say it was the tipping point yet, but we definitely were getting traction. We definitely were achieving what we wanted to achieve. I mean, there was obviously guys were disappointed and frustrated that they weren't going to go Home. But I think a lot of us, I certainly felt like this was bigger than just our individual desires. This was a major contribution to the campaign and my view to the war. And so I was. I was. I was happy to be staying.

[Jocko Willink]

So as you get towards the end of deployment, because I left. I left in October, October 21st. So it was still pretty freaking hardcore at that time. But by the time you guys are going home, it started. You started seeing more of that transition.

[Jim Lechner]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, the conditions were really set. We weren't. We weren't having a parade down Main street yet, but the conditions. I mean, it definitely was turned. You know, the old PowerPoint slide. So we had two or three different PowerPoint slides that could show you graphically. I mean, the change. Like, I had one was a map of Ramadi with the number of police stations when we arrived, which was two. And then I had one, I showed by the December timeframe, which was like 23, 200 policemen versus 5,000 policemen. And these weren't just guys on the rolls. These were guys down in a neighborhood making a difference, and usually from that neighborhood. That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

Huge difference.

[Jim Lechner]

Again, one of the big. One of the big things that we put into effect to do that way, as opposed to what Baghdad was telling us to do. But, you know, even. Even my driver, you know, could see it was very quantifiable. You know, we would fight and we would lose guys, and we hated that. But then we would come in and put a police department in, and that neighborhood would change. I mean, almost overnight, that neighborhood changed. When we put police in and they could see we were moving across the city, and we were. We were, you know, pacifying different areas of the city. So it was. It was very clear to us that we were winning. And I think that made it worthwhile to guys.

[Jocko Willink]

What was your major. Any major lessons learned that you brought home?

[Jim Lechner]

A lot of things reinforced the whole intelligence piece from Mogadishu. I was a young lieutenant, so I didn't have a lot of access to the overall intelligence systems. But I learned in Ramadi, you really got to trace, like you were talking about, you got to trace that intel report all the way back to its source to verify it and validate it and give it fidelity, being very careful on that targeting. Time and again, we would hit friendly houses for various reasons, and that's just a tragedy that I often had to deal with the ramifications of that. So that aspect of it, the interoperability and the quality, how would you deal.

[Jocko Willink]

With the Ramifications of hitting the wrong target house. Talk us through that, just so people understand.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

A lot of people, when they think about the Americans going in, they think of this beast that just doesn't care about the civilian populace, doesn't care about collateral damage. And I always try and explain the effort that we went through to secure that was literally the mission was to secure the civilian populace and make sure that they were safe. So, guys, go out, hit a wrong building, hit a wrong house. What do you do?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, tragically, you know, we. We. I think we did a better job at this than most armies in history, like you're alluding to. And I think our brigade did a very good job of this. But war is war, and we killed some civilians and we made mistakes and accidentally killed some civilians, but to our credit, we owned up to it. So, unfortunately, as the Deputy Brigade Commander, it often fell on me to be the face that had to go down and interface with these families and say, we made a mistake. I will never forget one husband that I had to go apologize. We killed a sniper, killed his wife just because she happened to look up over a wall at night and. And they couldn't identify as a female, but they took the shot and killed his wife. And she was just looking up over the wall at something going on in her neighborhood. So, again, very difficult to have to go down and face that husband, that father, and say, I am sorry. My apology is no way going to address the situation. But we had to deal with that, and we had to show that we were sincere. And it was a very difficult thing to do, but we did that.

[Jocko Willink]

Mm. And then the building of relationships with the local populace, with the Sheikh Bazia, Sheikh Sitar that you mentioned. And then in each one of these neighborhoods, the battalion commanders and the company commanders are out there shaking hands, and they have to make sure that they're doing everything to protect the populace as well.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, same thing. And that was, you know, General McFarland did a great job setting the tone, but it was a constant effort to make sure it was not just getting to the battalion commander. It has to get down to that lowest ranking sergeant that he's executing in the right way. Because it's so easy in that environment when you're losing guys to just go in and say, you know, screw them all. We're just going to kill them all. I don't care what, you know, if I make them mad. But you got to be able to make sure they understand you're affecting the battle negatively when you do that, you know, you've got to understand, and whether you like it or not, you've got to do things the way that are going to be conducive to this counterinsurgency effort. So that took a lot of effort across five battalions, again, to make sure that was being done right, to address issues. And I can't emphasize enough how important the tribes were, because it doesn't matter how many times I would show up with some sort of payment or some sort of apology. What they would do is turn to their tribal leaders, you know, culturally and literally, and their tribal leaders would say, no, these, I trust these Americans. They're trying to do the right thing. His apology is really sincere. You need to accept that. And so that tribal aspect was really the glue that held our counterinsurgency effort together. I can't overemphasize that enough.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And again, the leadership was just set from the top, and everyone just got on board with that's how it's got to be. You wrap up that deployment, come home. How's the transition? Coming home?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, that was a real tough one. I mean, Mogadishu was, again, it was my first time. I was. I was young, but it was one 18 hour fight. Ramadi was nine months of it. In a lot of ways, Ramadi was. Was tougher because I lost so many guys and it was just a continual process. So very similar to Mogadishu. I lost half of the guys and girls that I had that worked for me. And, you know, just to come back to that office and just start seeing empty chairs and, you know, there was one chair that we finally threw in the dumpster because three people in a row that occupied it got killed in the space of about six weeks. So probably a tougher fight for me personally than Mogadishu was. You know, one of those things where I went home on leave. I was glad to be home. I was glad. Glad to be with my family, but I just couldn't stand the thought of the unit being over there in that fight without me. And so I was very anxious to get back. So a bit of a transition. And again, it's one of those things where you can't really articulate that. You can't really describe that to your family back in Georgia or wherever you go home to go from one extreme to another. So that was a bit of a tough transition. But I went from there to SOCOM and, and tried to sink my teeth into that assignment.

[Jocko Willink]

And what was your job when you got to socom?

[Jim Lechner]

I started out working at a place called the Interagency Task Force. So springboarding off Bosnia, springboarding off. A lot of the different things I'd done. We were taking a kind of strategic level approach to the counterinsurgency, trying to focus on a lot of the insurgent networks coming from Syria, the foreign fighters coming from Syria into Iraq. And again, I think you probably have a similar perspective. I mean, those foreign fighters are the ones that there's only one solution for them. There's no counterinsurgency going on with them. That's hardened Al Qaeda, what later became isis. So I got a lot of good experience doing that. I got out of that position. I got sent up to the agency for a year. So I worked at CIA. I was still in the military, but I worked in a CIA interagency task Force and again got a lot of incredible insight into how that organization works.

[Jocko Willink]

And then what comes after that.

[Jim Lechner]

Then I got. I did my year at the Agency, which included working down with the National Security Council, the White House. So, I mean, pretty incredible experience. One of our battalion commanders from 11 AD had become the Iraq desk officer on the National Security Council at the White House. And so I would go work with him sometimes at night, kind of freelancing. But pretty incredible experience for him to be asking me for input. And he's typing and I'm asking, well, what are you typing there? And he goes, this is a point paper going to the President tomorrow. So that was, for me, that was a pretty amazing experience. But I went from there, went back to SOCOM after my year at the Agency and then volunteered to go to Afghanistan. I had not been to Afghanistan yet. I'd done. Done four tours in Iraq and other experience before that, but I had not been to Afghanistan. So I wanted to get in that fight. And so I volunteered to go over with the Special Operations Command over there.

[Jocko Willink]

And what was that tour like?

[Jim Lechner]

Again, it was at the policy level. General McChrystal had taken over. We were trying to put it. We were trying to put a counterinsurgency effort into place. We were focused. I was running a program called Village Stability Operations, which was. Which was focused on securing villages and turning the tide village by village and leveraging Afghan culture to build local militias and got to work with a PhD named Seth Jones. And so he and I were the directors of that. And it was pretty, pretty ironic because I'm a Ranger regiment guy, but this is a Special Forces oriented program. And I would have to go down to the Special Forces groups and try to convince them to get back in the villages and, you know, do their thing, engaging the villagers and building these strike forces. And they just wanted to go hit targets. And I'm like, guys, this is the Ranger telling you that you probably ought to do that Special Forces thing. So anyway, it was kind of funny, but did that for about a year. And then I got offered command of the Afghan commando base at Camp Moorhead outside of Kabul. I was basically the mayor, but I was in command of the base, the SF guys, and a variety of different. Different units were in there training Afghan commando battalions, and they were training these commando battalions to be, like, rangers. And so I really enjoyed that, and it was a great tour. I did that for about six months.

[Jocko Willink]

And what was your assessment, strategically, of the war effort that was going on in Afghanistan at this time?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, in my view, much more difficult for a variety of reasons. Afghanistan didn't have near the educational level or infrastructure that Iraq had. You know, you're dealing with a population and a culture that was not as conducive to some of the things that we were trying to do. Like, at least with the Iraqis, we could pretty rapidly build an army. We could pretty rapidly build, you know, a municipal, a mayor and officer that could run a city. That wasn't the case in Afghanistan. In my experience. It was really dealing with really backwards, uneducated culture. Not that the people weren't good, but they just didn't have the education. You couldn't build a city administration out of the people. They were, you know, goat herders and all these types of things. So very difficult. And again, I saw the senior leadership just did not grasp what needed to be done. What they held dogmatically to this idea they could build a government in Kabul, and that government would be able to have municipal branches and execute down at the city and lower level, and just wasn't going to happen. And. And what we focused on is you gotta build these local militias, you gotta build these local tribes and let them run the area. And I just. Very frustrating to see people at the senior level not grasp really what we were trying to do there. I mean, were we trying to build a very viable country, or were we trying to make a place that was not gonna facilitate another Al Qaeda threat? And I just saw time, again, people lose sight of what we were trying to do.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I always talk about the fact that it's very difficult to impose things on people, even in the military. I always tried to not impose my plan on the team. I tried to not impose things, even with my kids. I try not to impose. Like, this is the way it's going to be. And for some reason, and this is what made me realize it. In Iraq, we were, you know, we had these officers that were skimming the Iraqi officers that were skimming the pay from the enlisted guys. And some people were freaking out. We got to stop this. We got to have these guys arrested. Like, it was full bore. And I talked to the enlisted guys. Finally, my interpreter has, like, really good interpreters that were from Iraq or from Jordan. So they knew what was happening and, you know, sat down, like, get feedback from the soldiers, the Iraqi soldiers. And the Iraqi soldiers were kind of like, well, yeah, of course the boss could. To take a cut. That's. He's the boss and when I'm boss, I'm going to take my cut.

[Jim Lechner]

Right, right.

[Jocko Willink]

And what I realized is we, in some cases. Well, in, in some cases, like, that's a very specific case of we're trying to impose our culture and our values on these people. It's like, you can't do that. You can, oh, maybe if you spend generations, you can, you can make that happen. If you spend literally generations letting people understand the way you operate and seeing the advantages of it. But if you think you're just going to impose a new way of living on these people, it's not going to work. And like you said, what can we get done? What can we, what, what, how can we, how can we sort of guide their culture, their existing culture in a way that's cohesive or at least not obstructive to the way that we want to live? So you guys live the way you live, that's okay. And we're going to live our way. Just, you don't bother us, we won't bother you. Are we good? Can we be copacetic instead of, you need to. We're going to impose our way of life and our values and our culture on you. Doesn't work.

[Jim Lechner]

Absolutely. And I can't, you know, just to emphasize or reemphasize that point time and again, you would have like a list of 10 things that you were mandated to do. Right. I'm not just being relatively arbitrary, but I always have to say that to parts of the military, but usually to the other parts of the US Government, you know, how about we achieve two of those? Wouldn't that be nice to achieve two or we'll lose and not achieve any. And if you look at Afghanistan now, women, women back, being oppressed, you know, you just go through the whole social scale and we've achieved none of it. And again, that was my point to them is how about we just achieve a couple? Because we can achieve a couple and then don't. Let's not worry about maybe rights for certain groups this year. And if we win five years, 10 years down the road, we can start working on that. But right now you're just going to sink the whole ship. And that's what they do, they sink the whole ship.

[Jocko Willink]

So you end up with that coalition base. You're the commander of the camp Moorhead, you do that. What comes after that?

[Jim Lechner]

Came back to the, to the U.S. it was time to retire. So I retired, took a job and with 3rd army in South Carolina, got my family set. I had talking to my oldest daughter, you know, she was going into her sophomore year in high school and she told me she'd moved 12 times. And I didn't realize that, you know, I just hadn't kept track of it. So I thought, yeah, it's time to prioritize that a little bit. So I got them stabilized in a place, got her into high school so she could start and be stable. And then I went back to Afghanistan. I was a contractor, so I immediately started being a counterinsurgency advisor. Again, kind of, kind of ironic with the Ranger regiment background, but I was a counterinsurgency advisor at the, at the General McChrystal at the four star level. And that was another fantastic job. It was a job where we could talk strategic stuff, we could talk geopolitics and counter insurgency and effect policy. But then the next day you could be down with an infantry platoon patrolling in the mountains and getting a firefight. And so that really was one of the favorite jobs I've ever had because we were advisors and observers and our job was to write reports from the ground if units were executing the policies they were supposed to and how effective they were, find the good and the bad. So again, it allowed me to be down with an infantry platoon in a firefight and then a couple days later I'd helicopter up to Kabul and be able to briefly the commanding general. So it was a great job.

[Jocko Willink]

How long did you do that for?

[Jim Lechner]

Did that for about two years.

[Jocko Willink]

Were you there the whole time for when McChrystal was in charge?

[Jim Lechner]

No, actually, by the time I took that job, that's something that he put into place. By the time I took that job, it was the next four star was General John Allen, who had come into Ramadi as a one star.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Jim Lechner]

So I knew him from that.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. So you get done with that job. What's next?

[Jim Lechner]

So then I got another opportunity to go work for the agency. So I was. I have an air background, so I'd known guys. Some guys in the Ranger regiment connection got me hired there. So I got to go as a contractor working over there in Afghanistan. I ran some of the air operations out of Kabul, and then I got to go to one of the forward bases down in coast, and I got to run that from an air perspective. So I wasn't carrying a rifle on one of the strike teams, but I was as close as you can be and then got heavily involved.

[Jocko Willink]

So you're just helping control their assets and whatnot?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, I had. I had helicopters, and I had drones that worked for me and so. And ISR platforms, and so I helped run all those operations, and I did everything except fly or turn wrenches, and then actually, I had instructor pilots that worked for me. So I actually did get, like, six hours flying a helicopter. So that was. That was a lot of fun, too, but got it.

[Jocko Willink]

Got addicted to Afghanistan.

[Jim Lechner]

In Afghanistan? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Down in coast, that's pretty legit. You barely knew how to fly, and you got combat time in the seat.

[Jim Lechner]

I guess technically I did. We're just flying around the airfield and all that kind of thing. But I got. I got some time flying down there, and then I got addicted to using drones, so actually got to do, you know, get more. More, more BDA with drones than I had in my entire career put together before that. So that was really satisfying.

[Jocko Willink]

Just clearing hot drones to take out targets.

[Jim Lechner]

I had some drones that worked for me, so I just started the whole hunting process. I mean, I had drone operators that would fly them, but I got to, you know, kind of run that, and we would just. Sometimes we would pick a guy up in the morning as he started going to work, and he didn't look right. And the next thing you know, we got a whole convoy of Taliban, and then we'd bring in hellfires and crush them. It was just. It was really satisfying. I had some Apaches that worked direct support for me, so we got to use that. That asset, and. But again, got to have a lot of effects using our drones to pick them up. Scan Eagles.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Nice.

[Jim Lechner]

Familiar with those?

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. How long was the rotations that you would do?

[Jim Lechner]

We'd only do, like, 60 to 90 days. And it was really a good lifestyle. You know, the agency has a real good lifestyle, and a lot of times it's for a good reason, but, you know, so we would do 60 to 90 days and then rotate home for a couple months, then rotate back.

[Jocko Willink]

How many years did you do that for?

[Jim Lechner]

I did that for about four years. Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

Jack. And then what was after that?

[Jim Lechner]

I got out of that in 17 and I was home for a while.

[Jocko Willink]

By the way, your wife is a saint.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then 17, home for a while, started some, some. Some training. I started a training company doing tactical shooting and some other things. I got picked up by an AR15 company, Radical Defense, doing ARS and suppressors. Trying to sell crew serve weapon suppressors to the military. I started teaching college. I teach at Liberty University. I teach American history and military history at Liberty. I still do that. Teach about six different courses. So I started writing the book.

[Jocko Willink]

How many. How. How long does it take to teach a course? Is it like a pre recorded thing? Yeah. Okay.

[Jim Lechner]

It's mainly pre recorded. We work off a website, so I. Once you build the course, it's a lot of effort to build it and record the videos and do all that stuff. But after that it's. You just got to grade papers.

[Jocko Willink]

What are the six courses?

[Jim Lechner]

Evolution of Military Doctrine, Military Logistics. I teach US military or I teach military history from 2500 to the present. I teach another variant of US military history, and then I teach a variant of European history, and then I teach American Civil War. Not all at the same time. Yeah, those are my. That's my portfolio, I guess. Civil War, War between the States. That's my favorite thing to teach.

[Jocko Willink]

You been to Gettysburg? A bunch of times.

[Jim Lechner]

So my three daughters, whenever they graduate high school, the obligatory trip that they get is I take them to the battlefields where they're enslaved, ancestors fought, and they get to walk where their ancestors walk. And Gettysburg is one of the key places we go.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Jim Lechner]

Their ancestor, Confederate company commander, captured the town of Gettysburg.

[Jocko Willink]

So who was it?

[Jim Lechner]

John Thomas carson with the 12th Georgia Regiment. And on the first day at Gettysburg, when the Yankees retreated out of through Gettysburg, his unit pushed him out, spearheaded and captured the town.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, there you go. We get. I'm gonna have to look into that a little bit more. We go there a couple times a year with my company, Ashland Front. You got to come up to that sometime.

[Jim Lechner]

I'd love to.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, you would. You'd enjoy it.

[Jim Lechner]

I would.

[Jocko Willink]

It's awesome. And so then you're. You're working. You started at some point. You got engaged when. When Russia invaded Ukraine.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah. So I'm back doing my various jobs, having. Having fun in South Carolina. Wasn't really paying attention to Ukraine. When I was in Afghanistan, we actually had guys rotating down from Ukraine. And again, I mean, I was aware of it in general, but I couldn't tell you, I couldn't have told you at the time who the President was. And all of a sudden this war kicks off. And I started paying a little bit of attention when the news was talking about it because, remember, the buildup was almost a year, but really didn't, like I said, really didn't pay attention to it. The war kicked off and then I got real interested. And one of the interesting other parts of that is my undergrad degree in history from the Citadel. The focus is on the Eastern front and World War II. And it turns out most of that's fought in Ukraine. So got real interested, put the word out through the Ranger Regiment network. I knew there was a bunch of volunteers going over, you know, NGOs and other volunteers. So I put the word out. If somebody sees an opportunity, I'd be in. And about two days later I got a call that they wanted me to come over and take a position.

[Jocko Willink]

How'd that go?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, again, another one of these once in a lifetime experiences. I literally got the call on Saturday that Newsmax needed a security guy and a team leader for a correspondent that was over there. And by this time now the Russians have Kyiv surrounded on three sides. The war is only about two weeks old, and this Newsmax team was inside Kiev. And the guy doing the job needed to come out and do something else. He had another commitment, so he needed a replacement. And I got that call on Saturday morning if I'd be interested. A couple more phone calls, got hired, and I was literally on a plane at like 5:30 in the morning on Monday. So packed my stuff, got all my gear together, flew up to New York to Newsmax. They said, okay, we're gonna put you on a plane tonight. That means you'll get into Kiev probably like Wednesday morning, and then you're gonna be on by six. And I said, what do you mean I'm gonna be on? And they said, no, you're the nighttime correspondent. And so that was a.

[Jocko Willink]

So you went from security dude to nighttime correspondent?

[Jim Lechner]

I went from the log guy and security guy to being the nighttime correspondent. So I was actually pretty excited about that because I do some public speaking and I thought, I can do this. So I was pretty excited. But I got over there, me and another guy named Mike Grimm, former Congress from New York. He and I flew over there together and then we split right before the border again, kind of something out of a movie. We flew into Romania. This is again with just about a day's notice, flew into Romania and that's where I split from him. He had another role. I jumped in a taxi, took a three hour taxi ride to the border, tried to cross the border that night. That didn't work. They said, come back the next morning. I got through the next morning and I met my contact which was a Ukrainian guy with a rental car on the other side of the border. And he handed me the keys and said, you're driving because I can't drive. So I jumped in the SUV and then we had to find our way, drive all the way across southern Ukraine. There was one road left into Kiev that hadn't been cut by the Russians. There was actually some bypassed Russian units that we had to drive right by. But we found that road. It was, there was very little gas. And so by the time we got over there we were out of gas. And fortunately we found a guy selling black market out of the back of a truck right outside.

[Jocko Willink]

How are you feeling when you're rolling in. Yeah, into Kiev through the last open road.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

As. So this is. The Russians are still advancing at this point. I feel like the tide had turned.

[Jim Lechner]

The tide had turned. I mean, I mean by no means to the were the Ukrainians winning at this point, but it was siege and it was static. It was static. So at least where I was there was not a lot of advance going on at this point. And I was in touch with the guy that I was replacing. He's a former Ranger, actually a former Ranger from A Company 375, Chuck Holton. So I was in touch with him. He actually came out and met me in Romania. So I kind of got the debrief and he said, you know, I know it sounds crazy, but you're going to have to see it when you get up there. You know, the center of the city is stable. The Russians are about 10 miles in three directions, but the lines are holding. And so, you know, a little bit dicey, but. But he assured me that it was doable. So I said okay. And we had a whole, we had old plan, we had a bug out plan. We had safe house network established and we had vehicles, we had liaison with the Ukrainian military. So found this, found this highway, got up into the city and linked up downtown with a correspondent and cameraman and, and started, started doing operations there and started covering the fight.

[Jocko Willink]

So what can you tell us and what can you teach us about the evolution of war and what we're seeing in this, this is a, this is a new type of warfare that's happening with the drones, the robots. Like it's, it's, it's a different scenario also like very brutal. What can you, what, what do we need to learn about what's happening in Ukraine? And you know, just bit, you've spent what years now in Ukraine, various different things. So the lessons, what do we need to know? What are the young military people need to know about what's happening in Ukraine? What can we learn from it?

[Jim Lechner]

Well, I think the first thing people should understand the context and especially for the older guys like me who've done 20 years, 30 years of war on terrorism and insurgency, you know, this is like World War II. This is like the Battle of the Bulge. This is tank, infantry, artillery attacks, attack helicopters, fixed wings, fighter strikes. I mean that you're on the receiving end of. And I would never have envisioned that I'd be in a war like that, outnumbered and all the weight of a conventional army, you know, against you. I never thought I'd be on the receiving end of an enemy navy, never thought I'd be in the receiving enemy air force. And so that's the first thing to realize. You are in a conventional fight just like you've imagined from any movie on World War II. That's what you're in that, you know, we all, we often say over there and comment that it's like World War I with drones. They don't have, they're not as neither side, the Ukrainians or the Russians are dynamic enough to use tanks in like a blitzkrieg fashion like we used in Desert Storm, the Germans used. So it's more of a slow moving static war like World War I with drones. So you've got all that high tech sensor array and you've got drones. And it's not a matter of are you going to be detected on movement, it's when you're going to be detected and then how the enemy is going to react and how you're going to react so you will be detected. I spent a lot of time at the front, almost all that time, even up to about 20km behind the front, you know, under the observation of the Russian intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, their fixed wing platforms like the P3 Orion, there are versions of that the Russians can see you and it's just a matter of are they going to be able to react. The good news is they're very slow at reacting. You just don't want to be in when they have something in position that day, you know, because then it's going to be a bad day because they will do, they will do counter fires just like we were taught way back when. And they're going to be able to see you. So that's what I think people need to look at is not am I going to be able to stealthily infiltrate without being detected? You will be detected. They're very smart, especially in defensive mode. They do some really fascinating things when they build their defenses down there with technology, the Russians do. So you will be detected. It's going to be how are you going to react to that? That's one of the first things. The second thing is it's all about combined arms warfare. And the better you're at combined arms warfare, you know, the more successful you're going to be. And I'm a huge fan of the Ukrainians and I think their soldiers are excellent. But one of the things they just don't grasp because their foundations are a Soviet style military is what counter what combined arms means. And they tend to think and the Russians definitely this is how they fight is if tanks and infantry and artillery are together on the battlefield, that's combined arms. It's not you. And I know that they've all got to work together. They got to work off the same sheet of music and it's all got to be synchronized. And if you do that, if you have a combined arms force, you can be successful. But you got to go back to my World War II statement is you're going to take a lot of casualties even when you're successful.

[Jocko Willink]

One of the things that I was surprised at, and it's just because my lack of understanding hadn't been on the ground there, but I was very surprised that the Ukrainians engaged in this type of conflict, conventional war, and didn't go more insurgent warfare and guerrilla warfare out of the gate. Is that because the Russian was just too big and would push too fast to make that effective?

[Jim Lechner]

Well, so there's a couple parts to that one. Yeah, the war moved a lot faster. One of the things I can't explain and a lot of people can't explain is when you talk to Ukrainians, most of them will tell you we just didn't think they were coming. I've talked to people in villages that have been overrun and they didn't take it serious until tanks were coming in the north end of the village and then they tried to get in their car and flee and it was too late. So I don't, I don't understand that mindset, but many of them say we just didn't think it was going to happen. The war was actually going to come. The second thing is it did move a little bit too quick for them. But the third piece is they are doing that. They do have a partisan tradition and they're executing that over there. There's organized and I would call them spontaneous partisan groups, but there is, there is an extensive behind the lines efforts or effort going on, an asymmetric effort on the part of the Ukrainians and they're very good at it. There's also an asymmetric effort on the part of the Russians and they're good at it too. But with the wartime conditions, the Ukrainians have in, in many ways gotten their areas locked down so they can find. They're good at counterintelligence. They got some good counterintelligence efforts I've worked with. So they're able to root out a lot of the Russians. But there's a robust partisan effort going on in the occupied areas.

[Jocko Willink]

What do you, what's your assessment of like the casualty levels? Because that's one thing that's neither side will talk about. You know, I've heard in the hundreds of thousands killed.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah. So, and I, and I tell the Ukrainians that I deal with this. So I'm not, not afraid to say it now from an information perspective. And they've got a job to do. Their job is to convince the west that they can win and so they should be supported. I got that. But they are putting out mainly propaganda. The casualty figures are nowhere near what they claim. And I'll give you just a couple metrics that'll underline that. The whole invasion began with a force of about 220,000 Russian soldiers. I think the last time I read the Ministry of Defense casualty sheet.

[Jocko Willink]

This is from Ukrainian Ministry.

[Jim Lechner]

This is from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense on claims of casualties they've inflicted on the Russians. They claim that they've inflicted somewhere around 700,000 casualties on the Russians. It's pure fantasy. It's pure fantasy and it's fantasy to the point where they're basically discredited. And I try to tell them that you can only put this kind of thing forward so many times till people are going to see right through the BS. They claim that they've destroyed like 8,000 tanks. I'm not sure the Russians had 8,000 tanks at the beginning of the war. So, you know, I, obviously I've not counted every tank that's been destroyed. But being a professional Soldier, I understand what types of units are getting into a fight, and I can see certain things developing on the ground. And when I identify these things, I know what size unit there are. And I have walked many of the battlefields and counted the vehicles destroyed, and it's nowhere near, it's a fraction of what the Ukrainians claim. So I know for a fact that the, that the casualties are propaganda and overinflated. One of the things that shocks me, though, is that the US military accepts these facts. And I recently was dealing with some people on the Chairman of the Joint Chief Staff Milley, and he was spouting some of these casualty figures. And I had to call my contact and say, he's, he's talking in complete fantasy. Where does he get this? And I naively thought he had some sort of top secret, you know, pipeline and assessment. Now he was taking Ministry of Defense casualty figures. So that's from the top down, accepting these claims. Now that's all sound like I'm busting on the Ukrainians, you know, but again, they've got a reason that they're doing that, to try to convince people to support them and stay in the fight. What I, what I think and what I've watched and what I've counted on the battlefield, I think the Russians are probably up around 60 to 70,000 kia, which is a huge number. Again, that's more than we lost in Vietnam. We're talking about in about just over 24 months of fighting. So they've lost, I think, probably around 65, 70, 75,000. The other tragedy of that is the Ukrainians aren't far behind. They've probably lost 45, 55,000. One of the really interesting things is, and it's brutal, I'm not saying it's acceptable, but you gotta look at how the Russians are approaching this. They're cleaning out their homeless shelters, they're cleaning out their prisons, they're cleaning out their juvenile detention halls. They tell these people, you join a unit and we're gonna give you such and such rewards or we'll commute your sentence or whatever it is. And they march those people into the machine gun fire. But to them, they're cleaning out their juvenile detention hall and their mental institutions and their prisons. The Ukrainians are losing doctors and lawyers. I can't tell you how many platoon sergeants I've met that speak English. And I'm like, what do you do in real life? Well, I'm the, I'm the district attorney in my, my state. And that guy's dead in a week. So that's who they're losing, is their doctors and their lawyers and the best and their brightest and they can't afford to keep doing it.

[Jocko Willink]

So where is it, where does it, what's your assessment, where it ends up? We got, you know, Trump is coming into presidency here. He's been elected, he's already communicating, he's communicated with Zelensky and he's communicated with Putin at this point.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

I'm thinking some kind of compromise that can be reached.

[Jim Lechner]

Well, I do, I think there's a viable peace plan, but what's not going to happen is the Ukrainians are not going to get their territory back. They'll get some back. They've the invasion that they mounted into Ukraine, into Russia, in the Kursk region. That's clearly just a negotiating position because if you look at the map, it's just a tiny dot on the map compared to the area that Russians occupy. But it's Russian soil. So strategically it's a pretty brilliant move. So there'll be some negotiation and they'll get some of their territory back, but they're not getting it all back. And it just depends on what they're willing to give up and as far as that goes. But I'm going to be very interested to see what the Trump administration peace plan is. I'm in a very tertiary way in some discussion with them and giving them my 2 cents. I think I've come up with like a 10 point peace plan that could be viable, but it's going to involve giving up territory. And I think the Ukrainian people are getting ready for that. They were so high on the victories that they achieved and what they've been able to accomplish that they thought they could get it back. But I just time and again, as a professional soldier, had to kind of burst their bubble and say it just isn't happening. Last summer I was with a unit that was up in the front trying to take some of participating in the counteroffensive, trying to take some of those places back. And in my view, I was with the best brigade in the army. They told me that they fashioned themselves after the range regiment. They were good guys, but they were fighting and dying for 100 meters. We were, we were trying to train vehicle crews. They were getting chewed up by Russian attack helicopters so fast we couldn't even get them through the whole course. So, you know, and that's for 100 meters. So for them to think that they're going to get 20% of their country back, tragically it's not going to happen. I think what's going to be important is how are we going to punish Russia for this? You know, they're going to get the territory they're going to get, but there's got to be some cost to them beyond what they've already received. And I'm really interested to see what President Trump's going to do. I think economically they're going to suffer. I think they should suffer financially. There's a lot of Russian assets tied up in the, in the various banks around the world. They're going to lose that or they should lose that. So I think there's going to be an impact, but it's got to be a harsh punishment. But unfortunately, that's not going to be liberation of the Ukrainian territory.

[Jocko Willink]

From a perspective of the war, this new war, if you were in a platoon or a company right now, what would you, what would you be trying to train your, your troops on? Yeah, different.

[Jim Lechner]

That's a great question. I tell soldiers all the time, go out and buy a drone. I don't care if you buy a 25 drone from Hobby Lobby. Go out and buy a drone. Get used to it, get. Start developing that skill set. Because drones, drone warfare, you just can't overemphasize it. I get a lot of guys at the front in Ukraine tell me, well, we can't do certain things because of the drones. That's not true. Combined arms can counter it. But on the other side of the coin, other side of my mouth, I don't think the US Military has any concept of how important it is. I see some units, like we talked about, taking it seriously. But you are going to encounter drones, and it's going to be, you're going to be detected and you're going to be attacked, and no amount of electronic warfare that we have is going to be able to counter that. Because the Russians are smart. They're very smart. Electronic warfare, I would tell you the Ukrainians and Russians are ahead of us because we're moving at the speed of bureaucracy, they're moving at the speed of survival. And so Ivan on the Russian side and Ivan on the Ukrainian side, they're figuring it out because their life depends on it. So we cannot depend on electronic defenses. And so our US Units, that's what I'd tell them. Get as familiar as you can with drones, start working now on any kind of expedient measure to counter them. I don't care if that's a shotgun on full choke to blast a, a small micro Drone out of the air, whatever it is, but start working on that. And then similarly, camouflage. I think. I think we're going to get back to an era where camouflage is incredibly important.

[Jocko Willink]

In what way?

[Jim Lechner]

Like visual camouflage, individual nets, you know, every level of camouflage you can do from, from the air.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's. It seems like this is a new phase of warfare. Much like, you know, the machine gun.

[Jim Lechner]

Right, right.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, this is that much of a change. The tank, like these are. This is a new thing. And I know, you know, for instance, the DF ing capabilities, the direction finding capabilities of the Russians is like if you key your handset.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

They know where you are. You're going to be getting mortared or artillery in two minutes.

[Jim Lechner]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

So the idea that for so many years in the global war on terror, you and I were just talking on the radio, like, no factor. No. Wouldn't even think twice about it. And, and now all of a sudden it's like, no, you can't do that anymore. You can't even key your radio anymore. And now you're talking about, you know, with the, with the drones. I mean, there's thermal everywhere now.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, thanks for saying that, because I was going to springboard off that the thermal is the. One of the things that we ran into. The Russians are most effective. They have excellent thermal systems and they mount them on their armored vehicles, and so they integrate that in the defense. But they're, they're very effective at using thermal. So working on your ways to camouflage and screen from. And shield from thermal is another important thing. And, you know, we found out over there, you can't just put a poncho over you because eventually that heat will bleed out around. So the more you can learn about thermal. And there's. I was actually looking at a good website last night. There's guys that test out systems on the net. If I was advising a US Soldier, it'd be, figure out thermals. Figure out countermeasures to thermals and work on that as much as you can.

[Jocko Willink]

You mentioned that you were writing the book. So this book came out in 2023.

[Jim Lechner]

Yes. Right.

[Jocko Willink]

You. How long did it take you to write?

[Jim Lechner]

Took me about four weeks to write it. I've told the story so many times that it flowed out pretty quickly. I took me probably another two months to do research. I told you I was interviewing some guys and doing some research. And then again, I just was ignorant of the process. I thought it would get picked up right away. It took me another four years to get it published. Yeah. The association of the U.S. army. I went up to the convention and I saw they had an author's section and finally they picked it up and they kind of acted as my agent and it got published by Bloomsbury Osprey over in England. It took me four years. Yeah, got turned down a lot of times.

[Jocko Willink]

That's the way the publishing world works. And so what about right now? What are you up to? What's your latest and greatest?

[Jim Lechner]

Still trying to sell crew served weapon suppressors to the military.

[Jocko Willink]

And so where do we find those if people want to find. If people are interested in these.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, Radical Defense out of Houston, Texas. And then we make them for crew serve weapon belt fed machine guns. I'm a huge proponent of that. It's life changing and it reduces that thermal signature. So I'm big on, I'm big on that again teaching at Liberty and I will probably. I was waiting on the election, you know, thank God. And so I'm going to see now what happens with Ukraine, but I wanted to, I wanted to wait in the election until I went back. But I've got some business things and I want to go back to my unit in Ukraine. So I'm shooting to do that here after the first of the year. But yeah, my wife's done with once in a lifetime experiences, so it'll be a short, short trip. No more six months. Deplorans.

[Jocko Willink]

Awesome. Does that, does that get us up to speed?

[Jim Lechner]

That's where I'm at currently. That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

And so where can people find you? You're on Twitter X, but you don't go on there very much.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, Facebook is my main. Yeah, Facebook, I've got, I'm on there. I am on Instagram, I am on X. I'm on Newsmax occasionally. I still do some contributions for Newsmax. When I started serving in a unit, I had to become a, you know, a military contributor rather than a journalist because there's that whole Geneva Convention thing. But yeah, so I do some military contributions for Newsmax on occasion. And when I'm over there, I do. So, yeah, Facebook is my main thing.

[Jocko Willink]

And by the way, there's a Ready First Brigade Ramadi reunion that is being planned for January 2026. So if you were with us over there, if you were a soldier, sailing sailor, airman or marine, that was with the Ready first over in Ramadi. Check out the Ready First Brigade Ramadi reunion. It's going to be in January 26th. It's on Facebook.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, I look forward to this.

[Jocko Willink]

So get on There and follow it on Facebook and look for the messages. Linda McFarland and General McFarland are spearheading that. And it'll be the 20 year. It'll be the 20 year mark, so try and get there if you can. Echo. Charles, you got any questions?

[Echo Charles]

Not really, actually. I just kind of wondered, do you have. Do you fly drones still? Because you were, you were. You said one of your jobs is with drones, right? Do you ever fly the little drones now?

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, yeah. So I, when I was back in Afghanistan and coast, I, I flew a lot of the micro drones, dji, Phantom. So, yeah. And then Mavix, I fly a lot of Mavics now. So, yeah, I still try to keep that skill going.

[Echo Charles]

You know what that is? Mavix?

[Jocko Willink]

No, what is it?

[Echo Charles]

It's kind of drone.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah, they're the small micros. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I thought you were going to ask some kind of predator question because we're talking thermal, you know, echoes just real in the movies, Action movies.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, yeah, I crashed my drone in the pool.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Very sad. Anyway, thanks. Right on.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Thank you, bro.

[Jocko Willink]

Anything else? Echo? Charles, you good?

[Echo Charles]

That's it. Just the drones.

[Jocko Willink]

Jim, any. Any closing thoughts this time?

[Jim Lechner]

No, I just. Great to see you. Great to meet you, Echo. Very honored to be here and glad to tell this story and not just to honor the guys and. But, you know, talk about some of the themes that we talked about. And so I just hope. Hope people can get some stuff out of it.

[Jocko Willink]

No, it's awesome. It's awesome to see you again. Again. I can't believe it's been since 2006, since I went home and to meet up with you again and see you again, it's just awesome. Thanks for sharing all your lessons learned. You got so many of them. And thanks your service and your sacrifice. So many different battles, so many different wars. And for passing your lessons on again, you passed lessons on what you guys learned in Mogadishu that. That led me and my generation of special operations to. To move forward. And thanks for your leadership and thanks for your support in the battle of Madi and for everything else that you've continued to do and for supporting the war fighters around the world today and especially those war fighters that you support in Ukraine. Appreciate everything, sir.

[Jim Lechner]

Thank you.

[Jocko Willink]

And with that, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner has left the building. Obviously he's been a busy man for many years and staying strong, staying in the game for decades. Got on that Ranger program.

[Jim Lechner]

Sure.

[Jocko Willink]

You get that mentality that you're gonna do what you got to do it lasts a lifetime. That means you're working out, means you're staying healthy. Also means you need fuel, clean fuel.

[Echo Charles]

It's true.

[Jocko Willink]

I recommend Jocko fuel, by the way. You were starving today, were you not? We had no mulk in the office. No, you.

[Jim Lechner]

You.

[Jocko Willink]

You looked for. We had a bag of, like, mixed nuts in there.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I saw you prowling around for him. Yeah, it was gone.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And so then you found a jar of peanut butter and you started eating peanut butter. I walk. Because we took a breather.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And I came back in here. The whole room smelled like peanut butter.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, for real?

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know if you smeared it on your upper lip or something like this, but listen, that's my fault. It's my fault, because if there would have been some milk here. Nope, no factor. Literally no factor whatsoever. 30 grams of protein. Crack it open. Chocolate, vanilla, banana. Just crack it open and you're good to go. And you're full.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You ever notice how full you feel after you have a mock? It's like your whole body goes. Thank you.

[Jim Lechner]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

So, jockofuel.com go get yourself some milk protein. Get yourself some hydrate. Get yourself some. Some. Go. I'm on two. Goes right now.

[Echo Charles]

Three.

[Jocko Willink]

You're on three.

[Echo Charles]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. Rough night sleeping last night?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, Long story, but yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Echo Charles]

All good, though. Hey, we're here live. All good.

[Jocko Willink]

We are here live. Check it out. You know, another thing, I gotta say this. Get the joint warfare and get the super krill. These things is. Or how we can just continue to get after it. You and I had a roll the other day, the jiu jitsu.

[Echo Charles]

Neck still hurts, by the way.

[Jocko Willink]

Thank you for the what?

[Echo Charles]

My neck?

[Jocko Willink]

Neck, sir. Right. Okay, good. But if we're not on that joint warfare for none of that super girl, I don't know what happens to you. Yeah, get on it. Stay on it. That's what we're doing. You can also check this stuff out at Walmart. Get that pre workout. My daughter, the other day, some of her friends. Rana.

[Jim Lechner]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Hannah.

[Echo Charles]

Hannah. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

I hear great things.

[Jocko Willink]

She. She trained for, like, five hours on Halloween. And so then her and her friends were like, oh, you know, we're. We want to go out club.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. Hell, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And she. They had. They had jockey field, pre workout before rolling out.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, before going out.

[Jocko Willink]

They were all fired up. And you know why I know that? Because I went out, I rolled out and met him.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, where'd you guys go?

[Jocko Willink]

We went to the holding company. In Ocean Beach, California. The holding company, otherwise known as thc. True.

[Echo Charles]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

We went there. We went to Pack Shores.

[Echo Charles]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

And what is that, like a bar club or something?

[Jocko Willink]

Old school. Old school. It's an old stomping ground. Back in the day when. When everyone. When all the boys lived in obi. Yeah. We'd roll the Pack Shores, get after it. But here's the funny thing. All those. Like, I was out with Hannah and a bunch of her friends, and no one was drinking, but they. But a bunch of them took the pre work. The pre workout.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And they were like this. This is insane. You can see how people get addicted to that kind of thing.

[Echo Charles]

Yes, you can. Yep. Yes, you can.

[Jocko Willink]

But. No, but it's good. Like, no one's drinking. Just out there drinking water and tweaked out on Jocko Pre workout.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. I mean, it's not like. It's not like super loaded with caffeine, right?

[Jocko Willink]

No, no, it's like 200 milligrams.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. So if you drink two cups of coffee or whatever, it's like, it's literally.

[Jocko Willink]

The same thing, but it's the other ingredients in there.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, but it's like.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah, but you feel it?

[Echo Charles]

Oh, heck, yeah, bro. Trust me, bro. You know you're talking to the freaking pre workout, bro. I was in the. In the old, old school, like, with the toxic freaking. There was one called speed stack with ephedrine in it. And then there was. And then there was this one called Jacked. It was called Jacked, but instead of a ed, there was a three. It was that one.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

And, bro, I'm with you, man.

[Jocko Willink]

What about Rip Fuel? Remember that one?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I think that was a precursor. That was the original ephedrine.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. Like hydroxy.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, Hydroxy cut.

[Echo Charles]

My first one was a speed stack and then jacked, and then there was, like, one.

[Jocko Willink]

Have you tried the Jocko Fuel burner yet? Okay, so Jocko Fuel burner. So we. We made. We made a product in the past that was called Greek Fire.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So it was like a fat burner type thing. And we. When we switched everything over to Jocko Fuel, we stopped making it, even though it was a pretty good. Pretty. Like, people liked it. Well, one of the people liked it was Chris Pratt. And he was like, dude, like, what happened to that? Because I used that a lot and I said, oh, bro, we can make it. So we've made it. So we made the new fat burner. It's called Burner Burner.

[Echo Charles]

That's cool.

[Jocko Willink]

Jocko burner. But it, I've taken it. It's pretty fire.

[Echo Charles]

Is it like opera though? Like, is there caffeine or something?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, there's caffeine in it. There's caffeine in it. I want to say it's like, you know, 100 milligrams or something like that. But you can feel like the warmth.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Like you can feel your temperature rise and it, and it's, it's good. You know, when Jason Gardner turned me onto this is just like waking up in the morning and taking one or two of those.

[Echo Charles]

Oh yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And you're like, oh. So anyways, you can get all this stuff. Jockofuel.com you get it at Walmart, you can get it at Wawa, Vitamin Shop, gnc, Military Commissaries, Aphis Hannaford Dash stores in Maryland, wakefront, shoprite, HEB down in Tejas, man, you should see what they build in heb. And you go down there, there's like a wall of Jocko Fuel. It's awesome. Thanks everyone. In Texas, Meyer. Same thing in the Midwest. Yep. Go in there, there's a wall. Pallets. Same thing with Wegmans pallets. Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Lifetime Fit. One of my buddies sent me a picture of Lifetime Fitness the other day. Big pile of mulk. So there you go. Shields, small gyms everywhere. Jiu jitsu, CrossFit. Email JF Sales Jocko fuel.com get some. Also we should be training Jiu Jitsu, by the way. Originusa.com youm can get jujitsu clothing, you can get hunt gear, you can get workout gear, you can get jeans, you can get boots and all this 100% made in America, grown in America. Everything's from America. So all this fighting that we have to do around the world, hopefully we don't have to do it. One of the best ways that you don't have to do it is you just build economic power. So go to originusa.com and just invest in the security of this country by getting a pair of freaking American made blue jeans. Go get some.

[Echo Charles]

True.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Also Jocko has a store called Jocko Store. This is where you can represent discipline equals freedom while you're on the path.

[Jocko Willink]

That's what you're representing today always.

[Echo Charles]

Oh yeah. So we got some shirts on there. That's the main thing. Got hoodies on there, we've got hats on there. Kind of got a lot of stuff on there, apparel wise. Anyway, you want to represent this where you go. Jocko store.com also on jocko store.com is the shirt locker. That's a new design every month. A subscription scenario designs a little bit different, but still representative of the path. Trust me. Yes. Everything jocko store.com good deal.

[Jocko Willink]

Also, you need steak. So primal beef.com and Colorado craft Beef Calm. You can get steak. Now listen, do we always have time to cook a steak? The answer is no. So we got you covered. @primalbeef.com you can get jerky, and the jerky is delicious. It's freaking amazing. And at Colorado craftbeef.com you can get beef sticks. So we got you covered. So if you need steak, for sure, if you need beef hot dogs, if you need ground beef, if you need a big prime rib, check it out primalbeef.com check out coloradocraftbeef.com get yourself some steak or some other kinds of meat activities. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Make sure you subscribe to Jocko underground dot com. Make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channels. The. The Jocko one. What is it? Jocko podcast. Oh, and Jocko has clips.

[Echo Charles]

Clips.

[Jocko Willink]

Made the clip thing because you're over there just making things happen. And check out the OriginUSA.com or the Origin USA one and then the Jock Fuel one. Psychological Warfare. Check that out. Flipside canvas.com Dakota Meyer. Making Cool stuff to hang on your wall books, obviously the book that we reviewed the last couple podcasts With My Shield by James Lechner. Check that out. And then I've written a bunch of books about leadership, about strategy, about tactics, about washing machines and sacrifice. That's Final Spin, by the way, about kids. Way of the Warrior Kid. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. We had a movie coming. Directed by Mick G. Mc Hell yeah. Starring Chris Pratt. Also featuring Echo Charles. Dude, you're featured.

[Echo Charles]

I am featured. Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

So. Also featuring Hannah Willink. Willink's in there.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I think she may or may not say something in the movie.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. Speaking role.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Because you never know, I guess. You know, it gets edited down. So hopefully her. Her shot at the title doesn't get edited down.

[Echo Charles]

Also featuring one Jocko Willie.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yep, yep. We're in there. It's. What's cameo?

[Echo Charles]

What? Yours is a cameo.

[Jocko Willink]

You seem like a cameo.

[Echo Charles]

No, you seem like a cameo. Oh, because, like, you're known for other stuff, you know, and then boom, you appear as a cameo in this other thing. Yeah, I'm saying.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, we're in it.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Because what are you considered then?

[Echo Charles]

I don't know.

[Jocko Willink]

Are you more. That's what you're known for acting. Check Mikey and the Dragons about face extreme ownership dichotomy. Leadership. Also Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. Our next muster is in San Diego, California. February 23rd through the 25th. Our Dallas muster sold out. All of our events will sell out. The council is the next council is in June. We are doing two of them back to back. The first one's already sold out. So if you want to come to one of our events at Echelon front, go to echelonfront.com or if you need help from a leadership perspective inside your organization, we have a leadership consultancy, echelonfront.com check those out. Also we have online training can learn all these leadership principles that you can apply in every aspect of your business, every aspect of your life. With your kids, with your spouse, with your neighbor, with your boss, with your peers, with your subordinates. ExtremeOwnership.com Learn these leadership principles and if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to Americas mighty warriors.org you can also check out heroes and horses.org where Micah Fink is taking our veterans up into the back country where they can find their soul. And of course Jimmy May, he's got an amazing organization that's really helping out a lot of seals beyond the brotherhood.org Check that one out. And if you want to connect with us for Jim Lechner, look, he's a busy guy. He's on LinkedIn and he's on Facebook at James Lener. He's occasionally on Twitter at Lechner Underscore Jim for us. I'[e-mail] and I'm on social media at Jocko. Link echoes at Echo Charles, just be careful because there's an algorithm on there and it's a monster and it'll take everything that you have and burn it. Thanks once again to Jim Lechner for your service, your sacrifice, your support. It was an honor to serve with you on the battlefield and thank you for sharing your lessons learned with all of us. And also thanks to the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who are on the front lines around the world right now taking care of us, protecting our way of life. Thank you for your service. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all of their first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home and to everyone else. There's a quote in Lt. Col. Lechner's book where he quotes Thucydides, and the quote is, we must remember that one man is much the same as another and that he is best who is trained in the severest school. You hear that? We're all pretty much the same. But the best are trained in the severest school. So train hard and be ready. And in order to be ready, what you have to do is go out there every day and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.