← Off the Radar, Special Operations Training Detachment
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- [00:01]
A
Special Operations Training Detachment, SOT D West Burrow Team coming at you from ntc. Off the radar. This is off the radar. I'm your host, Captain Connor Mang, an observer coach trainer for Special Operations at the National Training Center. How's it going everyone? This is Captain Connor Meng, a observer coach trainer for Civil affairs at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California. Today we have the great opportunity to talk to a Borough alumni via Zoom, Captain Weston Rich. And if I could have you go ahead and introduce yourself, give us a little background on your experience here at Borough Team, where you're at now in your career and kind of, kind of how you came to, to, to the, to the Borough team.
- [00:57]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it Connor. So yeah, Western Rich, I'm husband and I got two great step kids, also been in the army for 11 years and first infantry, then went Special Forces and did my Special Forces detachment time at first group prior to going to the National Training center and joining the Borough Detachment. That kind of was, hey, somebody's getting put on this marketplace thing. And I was the guy that ended up being in that and it was a blessing in disguise because I got down to NTC and worked with the best people that I've probably ever worked with in my entire army career on the Borough detachment. And I got to see a lot of exposure of how not only Special Forces but civil affairs and psychological operations, how they operate, how we operate together and how we operate with the conventional course. So it was a really eye opening experience and I really enjoyed it. I was an observer coach trainer for about a year, just, just a little over a year. And then I was a plans officer for the second year that I spent at the National Training center. And while that wasn't as hands on, that was also rewarding just getting to see the behind the scenes like how you actually shape the scenario and how much buy in units can have in what their rotation looks like versus when I was a infantry officer just going to jrtc, hey we got a jrtc, you know, this month of the, the year you do your home station training but you're like, I don't really know what it's going to be like. And you show up and you just, you do it. Whereas soft units can actually make sure their mets are baked into the scenario and they can get a lot of things accomplished as well as the collective training at the company level and with the Commissioner force. Now I've PCs and I'm actually part of the Artificial Intelligence Scholars program which you can find in the broadening opportunities catalog. It's part of Army Futures Command, but it's open to any branch. If you so choose to want to come to a master's program in Pittsburgh at the at Carnegie Mellon University, I highly encourage you to apply. I'm just starting out, so I can't speak very much on what the program actually entails, but it is related to data science, analytics, artificial intelligence, and I'm going to learn over the next two years what all those things actually mean and then bring that back to the force. Because the plan is after this I'll
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be
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a field grade officer and I'll be returning to the Special Forces Regiment to do my key development time and hopefully bring the skill sets that I've learned at grad school along with me and better the force in that way and then bring this the tools and the skills that I learned as a observer coach trainer as well. So that's long winded, but there you go.
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A
That's a great rundown for people who have listened to off the Radar in the past. You probably recognize West's voice. He was our old host. He's done a lot for this podcast, getting it off the ground, him and Micah. Talk to me a little bit about your initial kind of desire or plan for off the Radar as to where it is now. I know when you came here, we talked earlier before I kind of came on board, that this was your project to kind of maybe inform the the masses of soft before they come out here. Kind of, kind of walk us through what was your, what was your background in podcasting, if anything, and what was kind of your intent for creating this?
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B
I'll start with the background. I had none, zero background in anything related to podcasting, audio production or even talking into a microphone. I'd never really done it before. I wanted to take the lessons that I was going to learn as an OCT and help distill those and send that out into a more palatable way for the force to use. And I thought to myself, like when I got the job as an observer coach trainer before I arrived, I thought what, what would I do to prepare myself? Prepare my detachment for a rotation at one of the combat training centers and knowing myself, I wasn't going to dig through a bunch of ars and I probably wasn't going to dig through a bunch of doctrine and I would have forgotten to go to the group lesson learned and ask them for some assistance. But that's a great place to start. So I thought, you know, I like, I like podcasts, I like learning and the good Thing about podcasts, in my opinion, is you can. You can put them on, you can exercise, you can clean your house, you can drive, you can, you know, you can listen to them while you're accomplishing something else. So it kind of feels like you're multitasking effectively. And I've always enjoyed listening to. To books and the music and stuff, so that part kind of just came naturally. So I looked around, and I didn't find anything at all about special operations at the combat training centers, and I didn't really find anything about the combat training centers, but I guess the idea of, like, a military podcast, I can thank my first operations officer at Group for. When he gave me my initial counseling, he gave me some professional development advice, and among that was, hey, here's some podcasts to listen to about military leadership.
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And.
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And at the time, they included indigenous approach by 1st Special Forces Command and the soft cast by USAS, or, excuse me, by SOCOM. And, yeah, so all that kind of together made me think as I was about to move to NTC and be an observer, coach, trainer. Like, I think that would be a really easy, palatable way for the force to learn about what rotations are and how to prepare for them. And fortunately, when I got here, after some time, I met Micah Pop, who had all the skillset and equipment to make it a possibility. And there was a lot of leadership that was supportive and let us, you know, run with it and try to make it happen. And we. We did. So that's the genesis of off the radar.
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A
That's awesome, man. I'm super thankful to be a part of it. I appreciate all the. The mentorship you've given me. Kind of as we've transitioned this. I. I was wondering, me and Micah were talking about kind of, where do you see this going? I know it's in a weird spot now where it's developing as we're developing out here at Borough Team. Where do you think if, like, perfect, optimal conditions, where would you like to see this go as a. As a product? I mean, is this something that, you know, we want to keep just at the NTC level? Is this expanded maybe potentially to. To other locations where soft is training? Where. Where do you think? And I know that's kind of hard to answer right now, but just curious, kind of your. Your opinion on that.
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B
The. I mean, the majority of the episodes we recorded were focused at the National Training center because that's where Micah and I worked. However, it was never. It was explicitly supposed to be the Special Operations Training Detachment Podcast which is inclusive to the Joint Readiness Training center and the National Training Center. And that's not, that's. That was the goal was to focus on those two because that's where Special Operations Training attachment has its footprint with some overlap into the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Training Center. I might have mis. Rearranged some of those words. Yeah, yeah. Because SAT D will cover down on Alaska and Hawaii when they have rotations. But it was just so easy to do the National Training center because we were sitting, you know, on Fort Irwin 24 7. So that's where the huge majority of our focus was. I'd like to see it expand to include more commentary on jrtc. And we tried somewhat. We did. When I was in Oct, I did one rotation, I did that first group level rotation with seventh group out at jrtc. And that was a good eye opening experience at the similarities and difference between the two training venues and then talking with some of the role players that, that work at both. You know, they've shared the similarities and differences on the episodes that, that we've had with them. And then in behind the scenes we worked with, well, and published an episode with Pineland Underground. But through that behind the scenes we were, we had a connection that could be revisited with Special Warfare Journal and the Joint Readiness Multinational center in Germany because there are SOF operations that are trained on there with our NATO allies and such. So that would be another great venue to like get some feedback and pick people's brains on how they integrate how they operate and what, what they see. And that would probably be a very, your EUCOM focused environment, which is totally understandable. I mean they're in Germany and they focus on EUCOM things so holistically and, and you could say like the White Sands Missile, missile range, the, the soft training that happens at Soft tech there. But I would say the key thing is to keep it 80, 90% focused on what D provides to USASOC through the training venues, namely JRTC and NTC and then auxiliary at Alaska and Hawaii. And then you could venture out 10 to 20% of the time and talk about other soft training. If you get a good connection with JMRC or soft tech at Wismer or somebody else. But I think keeping it focused on, on SAT D training would be probably ideal. But if it grows to something else, that's totally fine and I'm supportive and I'm happy. The other thing I'd say is like Pineland Underground has a rotation of hosts annually because people come into Special Warfare center in school and work there for a year or two and then they PCs to somewhere else. I mean, Burrow's got the same thing. So I just love it if it, even if it stayed 90, focused on the national Training center. You know, if we just have a new host every PCs season and just call it, hey, here's season one, two, three and whatever, because the base principles are fairly timeless, but we have new audience, new perspective, new, you know, leaders as time moves forward. So I think new voices would be beneficial for that conversation to continue.
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Yeah, absolutely. For those that don't know, SOT D is just gone throughout the summer months. PCs season, we've done a major overhaul pretty much on all leadership positions. Our 07, our 40 position of both incoming as well as our op sergeant, we have pretty much full turnover on all the field teams with ocs. And like you said, Wes, that, that happens pretty much on a yearly basis. The NCOs seem to stay here a little longer, two to three years and, and they get the continuity and they build kind of the culture of Burrow for what I've observed. And then the officers are really, they're here. It's very know, lightning in a bottle. You, you get the experience and exposure to the RTU rotations while you're here, but then you're very, you're gone very quickly. It's, it's a really cool dynamic one that I haven't been a part of in my army career. You touched on something that I wanted to kind of pick your brain. So Colonel Gonzalez, the new SATI commander, came by during Foundations week in July. And then he was actually here for the last rotation. He said something which I think we all kind of understood, but hearing it from his mouth, really concrete, kind of solidified it with us, which was, you know, here at Sat D at ntc, our primary job is to train SOF to support Joint Force Maneuver. But we're not here to support pmt like we're not here to support pre mission training. We're not here to support specific mets that you want to get after. We're here to prepare for war. And I think that a lot of RTUs come through and I'd be curious to see kind of what's your opinion. A lot of RTs come and maybe don't understand that. They come here with the understanding that they're going to get to train very specific tasks or this is kind of their open play playground to do some more experimental things, which is definitely encouraged within what's doctrinally sound and or Doctrinally accepted and doctor and tactically sound. But did you as an OC or in plans kind of see the disconnect there or could you shed some light on, you know, a lot of RTUs, do they come here not understanding like this place is sole purpose is to prepare for war, not to get you ready for your, your SIFI rotation to East Africa or a CEA or CD to go to ucom. Like those are things that you guys do at your home stations. Those are things that you do at specific exercises that are geared towards those like your Sage Eagles, your, your tridents, your, you know, things like that.
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B
The short answer is yes there so. And there's content in earlier episodes that discuss kind of the pre mission training versus what a CTC is supposed to be. But it is not a pre mission training in my opinion. At the tactical level you have left and right limits where you can experiment on tactics operations. And if you bring, you know, gadgets and new technology, as long as you have somebody on your detachment, on your team that understands how to use that, you're not going to have a civilian, I'm blanking on the term. But you're not going to have a person from the company that made the product out there in the field with you showing you how to use it. You're going to have to be able to use whatever piece of kit that you brought if you want to try a new piece of kit. However, you can do met, you can hit mission essential tasks while you're at a combat training center. And the first step of that from my perspective is in the planning phase when the rotational training unit is working with the PLANS team. Because the plans team is, is the personnel that build the scenario to ensure that the special operations scenario is meshed with the conventional force scenario. And it makes sense overall for the big picture of the conventional unit maneuver and the soft unit maneuver. And everything makes sense in our fake land, whatever scenario we're doing. But within that there are a menu of options that the soft rotational training unit can pick from or request to have added. Because we have a lot of realistic military training. And there's an individual that works, a contractor that works in the plans office that handles all that. And he does a phenomenal job setting up whatever kind of realistic military training somebody wants, whether it's an infill mechanism, whether it's having a target somewhere outside of the military national training center footprint. I mean we have lots of land that we've used across multiple rotations for special reconnaissance, for civil reconnaissance, for you know, direct action for anything that a special operations force of the three tribes could use and integrating cyber and space as well. But the first big thing is typically it's a SF company with added civil affairs and psychological operations soldiers to it. They need to be participating in all the planning. So if they get on board like 270 days prior, they can then have the most influence over how they their training objectives are met while the the scenario is crafted to meet the scenario. Because Soft plans works alongside the planners for JRTC and NTC whichever venue you're at and they take the USASOC command guidance and the G3 guidance and they bake that into the scenario. So you know, SF company, whatever has XYZ Mets they want to do well the USASOC commander has ABC training objectives that that he that Soft Plans is going to ensure they do. And when there's freedom and communication like time in the scenario stream wise and then there's communication beforehand, then the soft planners can take XYZ Mets and put them into the scenario. So it's not a PMT in the sense that they the observer coach trainers are evaluating you as a go or no go and it's not a PMT in the sense that you're going to get recocked and you're going to, you know, I'm going to do bay planning, go out and do my short deranged mission of 12 to 24 hours and then go out and do another mission. Because the scenario is 10 to 14 days constant throughout, ever evolving with a live free thinking enemy. And you're going to have to react to the scenario as it develops. We have in the past and I don't know if SAT D leadership has changed this have told rotational training units like if you want to validate your unit you can by providing additional people from your unit to be validators. So hypothetically third group is going out to the national Training Center. They have to then send people to validate those that company or those detachments, the OCTs that work at Burrow team won't be validating them but they will be observing, providing feedback through enroll and out of role coaching and mentorship as well as our retired soft personnel that act as role players that in this scenario are various things. Host Nation Military, NGOs, Host Nation Government and whatever other things they want to be cast as in the scenario design. So long winded answer. It can be used to hit mission training objectives, mission essential tasks, but it is not a pre mission training like we leave that to battalions and groups to conduct at home station or wherever they so choose to if they want to go to Wismer to do it or something. Because the goal or the, the reason for combat training that SOF is involved in combat training centers is to ensure that SOF units are meeting those use of SOC command training objectives and integrating with the Commissioner force.
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Yeah, it's spot on with kind of what we're. The, the identity and culture here at SATI is, you know, we're here to serve that OCT role. A lot of people come here. I don't think they realize that there's no E in that oct. There's no evaluation. And you are spot on this upcoming rotation. We have units that are coming and providing outside personnel to support evaluation. And this is a good venue for that I think because you're going to get a lot of left and right limits like you said, or a lot of leeway to have freedom like you said, free thinking enemy. And it's just a lot of units I know use this kind of as their culminating exercise in their validation. However, we do not provide that. And I think there's some. I didn't know that prior to coming out here. I really thought OCS served as evaluators as well as safety and coaching and mentorship. But there's a different, it's a different dynamic whenever you remove that and say, hey, I'm not here to evaluate you. I'm not giving you a yes or no. I'm not rolling down teos and giving you checks or minuses. You know, I'm not here. That's not what I'm here for. We're really here as a professional development tool for you guys to make sure you get the most out of the scenario. And like you said, you're treating it like a LISCO fight and not a PMT exercise. So I think you're spot on with that, man.
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Yeah, no, I'll definitely agree with you. Like before, good getting there and working at Borough, that was my kind of expectation or thought that like what octs did and that, you know, I think comes from conventional army experience because they are more, they're not, I mean they're not called evaluators, but there is some like feeling of that. I mean, back when I was in the infantry was like, well, if we don't perform well at jrtc, we're never going to deploy. We're never going to get rated to go to deploy. But it's definitely not like that at SAT D. When you're at JRTC or NTC and the October there to give you an outside perspective. And they're there to encourage you if you want to try something, try something. And the last thing I'll say on like why it's not a pre mission training is while you may have specific missions where you go do direct action, you may do advise and assist or you may do special reconnaissance or something of the like, it's not necessarily guaranteed that you're going to do any specific method because the scenario is going to develop. They're going to have, you know, Connor as a observer, coach, trainer. You know, like before the rotation you, we sit down and we get a brief on, okay, this is how we think the scenario is going to go. But the enemy black horse gets a vote, the soft RTU gets a vote and the conventional RTU gets a vote. And if they don't all act in the way that we're anticipating, then things get changed. And they get changed on a daily basis. Like the number of times where I thought my detachment that I was observing was going to hit a specific target and then it changed hours beforehand because the AOB commander was getting the intel and making decisions and decided, you know, team one instead of team two is going to do this versus and we thought okay, for whatever reason I was observing a team and they were, you know, closer on the battle space. But the AOB commander gave it to the other team for some reason and that's their prerogative. That's one of the beauties of a combat training center is they're making decisions that have second and third order effects and they get to see that play out in real time across the 10 to 14 days of the rotation.
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Yeah, that's, that's a great point. We, I think one of the best parts about borough team for my short time here is as a soft officer or an nco. The exposure you're going to get to that like you just kind of alluded to that constant change in plan. It really nests within the LISCO kind of mantra that we're pushing here. And I'm seeing it more. We just finished rotation a couple weeks ago. I'm seeing it more. And obviously being here you're going to get exposed to it but like getting out of that G WAT mindset that everybody keeps saying get out of the GWAT mindset. This isn't gwat. And it's really eye openening to see when you watch rotations like how much freedom and how and also how sometimes the restrictions and restraints that you have as a unit actually provide freedom for you really come out if you're able to like explain and use commander's intent. Perfect example is watching like an AOB commander telling ODAs like you just said, hey, yes, this is your next 24. This is, this is what I'm tasking you to do with. But there's a very good chance within 24 hours when we hit our next comms window, it could completely change. And it may be one or two sentences based on an intel update that you never will see. And hey, you've been repurposed from a direct action mission to pushing into a. A special recon mission. And it's really cool to watch units even though they struggle with that ambiguity. We were talking about it before we started. You know, soft has a lot of ambiguity and we like to operate in that gray. And here is. It gets highlighted so perfectly when, you know, we send cats and Sidets and ODAs out and say, okay, you're gonna do you have left and right limits, Commander's intent. You have to understand what assets are available to you and then most importantly, what is your purpose out there? If it's not supporting that joint force maneuver, then you probably need to ask yourself, do I need to be shooting this Javelin at this tank, or do I need to be driving across the box to go meet with this guy to get a cell phone or maybe introduce myself to a network? All these things that we're now seeing NTC really, really get highlighted, really get exposed in our planning prior to coming out here and then during execution. So talking about, you had mentioned earlier kind of the planning process and kind of where success starts is before the rotation, before the R2 gets here. When I talked to Goldminer 07 and 40, they really emphasized the importance of LTP, the leaders training program. What is your opinion on that? I think we both can agree it's important. But as a soft, you know, as somebody on the soft side, for those that are listening that are getting ready to come in the next six months or kind of in their LTP window, what can you advice can you give them as far as who. Who should be coming? Is it just your key leaders? Is it enablers? Is it people that you know, if you're coming and you're on the guard side, you know, I know that's also a different dynamic for people that aren't compo one kind of give me your opinion on LTP and how vital is that for success here at ntc?
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Fantastic question. So LTP or leadership training program, hugely important. I know that many People probably don't think that I know leadership definitely pushes for it. So it is very valuable for a lot of reasons. Maybe from. Because I ran into one person on the tactical side, you know, at the detachment team level that thought it was. Well I've done military decision making process plenty of times. Why do I need to practice again? Like yeah, they do military decision making process a whole like 96 hour cycle during leadership training program. But that's a vehicle to get integration of that conventional force staff and the special operations forces. So if there's nobody from soft there, you're missing a huge opportunity to integrate with the unit that you're going to work with. And I would say that includes the enablers namely civil affairs and psychological operations that may not know the anyone in the SF company that they're going to work with during the rotation. So get on board early, meet them. Hopefully you meet them before ltp. But if you get to LTP and have to meet this SF company and the, and the commercial forces that's fine. But yeah it's, it's very important. It happens 90 to 180 days before the rotation. I don't remember exactly. I think typically more on the 120 to 180 days before the rotation is when LTP happens hugely important. And you know, who do you bring? Well there's a lot of debate over that. It's probably more of a understanding capabilities and personalities than necessarily I have to bring this position. But you want to have war fighting functions there to integrate and people that are going to integrate with the conventional force. You also want people to have good understanding of special operations at the tactical level so that they can communicate that to the Commissioner brigade because you're doing a staff exercise and doing a planning exercise that's similar to the first order of the the actual rotation. So it could be, I mean the command team would probably be a good place to start at the AOB depending on how much integration. Like is the civil affairs team going to be doing operations? They're going to do out go out and do civil reconnaissance and network development and things away from the aob. Are they going to be co located with the aob? What's the plan for them? But might be worthwhile to bring one of the civil affairs team members to LP LTP and then same with psyop if they're going to be, if you're going to let them have the freedom that they really should have and they're not just going to be stuck on the aob. Staff doing staff things. But if they're going to be doing information operations, they should be knowing who's doing information operations on the brigade side. And those face to face interactions are hugely important. And then somebody that can do intelligence and somebody that can do communications, which you know would be inside a mission command and those would typically be from the AOB staff. So probably like the 18 fox from the B team and maybe the 18 echo or the 25 series or something to integrate with the conventional force. How are we going to have technical means to communicate? What are our non technical means if we need those? Because we all know our systems don't talk and they're probably going to use a sipper tactical server that won't even go out and touch any real network. So your liaison element's going to have a tough time communicating digital products back to the aob. And then obviously somebody from your liaison element in my opinion should go to leadership training program because that element, whatever you use to put in that element, and there's debate over that as well, but that needs to be like so somebody with somebody that's able to be a leader, whether that's a captain, a E78, you know, whoever you trust to be the representative of the, the AOB commander when the AOB commander is not present. And then you need the war fighting functions integrated on your liaison element as well. Because a good liaison element is going to integrate with that brigade staff and, and be value added. They're going to share your common operating, common intelligence, you know, civil affairs understanding of the environment. They're going to share all this information with the brigade and they're going to receive the brigade's data and analysis and stuff and they're going to be able to share that back to the aob. So you got to pick good people for the liaison element as well. So ideally somebody from the top three of the AOB or more than that, you know, maybe the commander and the Sergeant Major or the warrant and then intel rep. Commo. Rep. Maybe somebody that understands sustainment, that's really big and if somebody understands two things, that's great. But yeah, sustainment and then your somebody from the liaison element. And then if you want to bring a CA or PSYOP element as well like to ltp, that would be great. I know budget constraints and time constraints and things like that. So people have to be choosy. And then when it comes to your part with the National Guard, well the National Guard has, or Army Reserves to have personnel that are on active status and they have the majority of their personnel that are not on active status. So like the LTP for the last rotation, the, the National Guard rotation that recently happened at NTC, they had a, a captain, a warrant and a couple NCOs come out of memory serves and they were all on active status. So it was a detachment commander, a team sergeant. I can't remember where the warrant actually worked inside of the company, but you know, they represented, oh, we're the ops and we're the, the active folks for the, the Guard unit and we're the ones that are doing the bulk of the planning because our 9 to 5 regular job is army while everyone else is doing civilian work. And during drills they would do MDMP and planning to prepare for the rotation alongside of their actual like other training that they had to accomplish during drills. So that's, I'm not really envious of that. That's a harder scenario and the army is not your full time job. But it's not easy when the army is your full time job because there's a lot of requirements going on. But LTP is important. Pick the best people you have available that you trust and there's no better thing that you can do to get integrated with that, that unit that you're going to train with. Because I, right after I, I got to first group, not right after, but pretty soon a couple months later, I went to a JPMRC rotation where I served as a soft LNO to the 25th ID brigade that was going through the rotation and I had gone to LTP with, with them. So I already knew the S3, I already knew all the staff primaries and a bunch of the secondaries and, and when I got there on ground for rotation, I knew who to talk to about any issues that I had or any information that I needed to share. So it put me, you know, days ahead of, had I not gone to LTP because I had the ability a week, you know, months before to build relationships and to build trust to show, hey, I can provide value to you guys through a planning exercise. So can't say enough. It's worth it. Go. That's, that's what I got.
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Yeah, that's, there's so much in there. You know, if we had, if we had the ability to get this out to everybody. I think that your answer really encompassed a lot, a lot of which you've, you've covered in previous episodes. The, the liaison officer for, for example and lno, I think, you know, Wes did a great, I think a two part episode. Yeah, on LNOs. So if you get a chance, if you're listening, to go back and actually refer to that. There's a lot of valuable insight from an RTU and Wes's perspective on what an LNO should be doing and what makes a good LNO and how that can really enhance an AOB or, or just a commander in general, enhance their ability to make decisions because of that, that connective tissue with the conventional force and then how it actually trickles down to the ground force commanders, the ODAs, the cats, and the side that's that are out there. We saw with this past rotation, the LNO that was picked was extremely competent. He was one of the individuals you were speaking of that was on AGR status. So he actually came to ltp, I believe, and then was selected as the LNO for the brigade. And we just saw that develop into a very fruitful relationship during the exercise. So a lot of times, you know, communication was, I don't want to say was. Wasn't stovepipe, because it wasn't in a negative sense, but it was, it was funneled through that LNO from the AOB to the straight to the brigade commander, because that trust was developed, I think back even starting in ltp. And this unit was CO located geographically with their brigade combat team they came with. So that was added bonus. But for units that don't have that, I think that's another thing we don't.
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B
We.
- [39:42]
A
We haven't really touched on. But a lot of times when soft units come here, you might have a first group ODA or an AOB which is coming out of JBLM. And then you have a 97th company from Civil affairs that's coming from Fort Bragg. And then your psyopers are also coming from where, so they don't have the opportunity to train together like that IBCT that's coming here, that's usually co located. You know, 1st Armor Division's coming here and they're sending an ABCT or an MBCT now is what we call them. They're usually together at home station. They know each other's SOPs between their maneuver units, their BSB. They're engineers, I think, something that you touched on as well, a valuable lno. And then also LTP provides that opportunity for units to actually reach out and start making network and connections with the conventional force to understand like, hey, your enablers, or what is your BSA going to consist of? You know, like, can you actually recover some of my vehicles that I'm bringing? You know, if I want to use JLTVs. And I'm really, that's one of the tasks that we really want to get after as an ODA is to use JLTVs. Can your equipment at your, you know, your mobility section, can they actually recover that? So that's where ltp, I think for units that are listening like that, that is another opportunity for you to start talking with the conventional force and understanding like hey, how many engineers are you bringing? What does an IBCT or what does an ABCT bring to the fight? Fight as far as like how many tanks are in your companies, how many tanks are in a platoon, how many rally fighting vehicles are you guys bringing? Things like you mentioned, like bringing your supply ncos and bringing your commo guys, they'll get here and understand very quickly like the ankle biter things that I can solve now so I don't have to spend calories and time during the rotation during our son. I like am I getting pre PO vehicles or am I what am I bringing? Am I getting and you know, short term rentals? That was something we had talked about at Borough team just during this last rotation. I think LTP is an opportunity to solve a lot of problems and obviously not everything will be solved and things will develop and new problems will arise when you get here during rsoi. But creating that network with your assigned conventional force as well as like you said, your CA and your psy opers really sets the stage, I think for success. This wraps up part one of our conversation with Captain Weston Rich. In part two, Weston will continue to discuss his opinions on Arsof and Lisco and we'll wrap up with his final thoughts on his time here at Burrow Team. If you are interested in being a guest on the off the Radar podcast or have a topic you'd like us to cover, please contact the off the Radar team@offtheradar podcastteammail.com thank you for listening to off the Radar, where RSoft prepares for conflict like subscribe and share on your listening platform.