With the popularity of social media, Fort Leonard Wood is using the Internet to bring one of the post's most knowledgeable assets directly to personal computers around the world -- drill sergeants.

"A lot of people communicate through social media and Facebook, so we have to change the way we communicate with Family members and even Soldiers," said Tiffany Wood, Fort Leonard Wood Public Affairs director.

Staff Sgt. Benjamin Facio, 2011 Fort Leonard Wood Drill Sergeant of the Year, spent an hour June 20 answering questions on Fort Leonard Wood's Facebook page.

"Most of the fans on Fort Leonard Wood's Facebook are Family members, friends or loved ones of Soldiers going though Basic Combat Training or One Station Unit Training here at Fort Leonard Wood," Wood said. "Most of our questions that we receive on the page are in regards to BCT and OSUT. They also have a lot of questions for drill sergeants, so we thought 'why not connect the two and have a drill sergeant directly answer all of their questions?'"

Facio said his answering questions will only help set up a future Soldier for success, as preparation is the key to any successful accomplishment.

"My favorite questions were the ones that future Soldiers asked for tips and pointers on what to do to prepare mentally and physically," Facio said.

Facio believes using technology to accomplish the Army's mission is a great idea.

"It is an excellent tool to use to put out information, and anything that we can do to help bridge the gap between family and Soldiers in the end will help our future Soldiers accomplish the mission," he said.

Facio didn't mind taking time out of his busy drill sergeant schedule to talk with people online, because this way he can reach more Soldiers than just those in his own unit.

"If I am able to give pointers or suggestions for future Soldiers to prepare physically and mentally, then in the end I am helping the success rate and the drill sergeants that will receive them," Facio said. "It is equally important for the Family members to be informed on the process that their future Soldier will be going through. Family members, whether it is a spouse, mother, father, etc., are the backbone to these young recruits. When the times get rough and they start getting homesick, letters, packages and phone calls really help keep their sons and daughters on track mentally."

Fallen Soldier recognized with building dedication

by Al Macks, Presidio of Monterey       

     

PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY, Calif. -- Representative Sam Farr, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center Commandant Col. Daniel D. Pick and Peggy Wilson Corpuz unveil and dedicate a bronze plaque in honor of Cpl. Bernard P. Corpuz June 22. (U.S. Army photo by Al Macks)

A new era for the Ordnance Training Detachment at Fort Sill began with the activation of a student company June 22.

The activation required Soldiers in the company to wear a new unit patch on their uniforms.
Previously, all 94M Firefinder Radar Repairer and 94S Patriot Missile System Repairer military occupational specialties were assigned to A Battery, 1st Battalion, 78th Field Artillery, for administrative purposes, while all of their MOS instruction was provided by the OTD. Students are now assigned to the OTD for all training and administration.

"The biggest change is the simplicity for the Soldiers," said Maj. Brian Wolford, OTD commanding officer. "Now they are under the same cadre, instructors and company their entire time here. We've had great support from the 1-78th; this just cuts out a layer."

The OTD is under the 73rd Ordnance Battalion, Fort Gordon, Ga., which is part of the Army Sustainment Center of Excellence's 59th Ordnance Brigade, headquartered at Fort Lee, Va.

Almost 120 students received their shoulder sleeve insignias from Wolford, platoon sergeants and other cadre during a ceremony outside Building 1653, Randolph Road -- the OTD's administration facility. The students had previously worn the 1-78th FA patch.

The shield-shaped unit patch features a torch of knowledge surrounded by five stars, said Pfc. Jared Shankin, a 94S student, who participated in the ceremony. The stars represent the five core functions of sustainment: supply and field services, transportation, maintenance, human resources and financial management.

"The patch promotes morale and esprit de corps by symbolizing the SCoE's outstanding contributions to the Army, the Department of Defense and the nation," Shankin said.

Spc. Nathan Poffinbarger, who is about to begin the 94S course, said he was anxious to wear the patch.

"It represents a great start to my future," said Poffinbarger, who recently completed basic training here.

"I'm very excited about fixing the equipment for the Patriot [missile] system."

The patch was created by the Army Sustainment Center of Excellence in January 2009, and has been worn by the OTD staff, or cadre since then, Davila said.

Soldiers in student companies in advanced individual training are now wearing the patch signifying the unification of all the branches under one umbrella, she said.

Editor's note: Some information for this article compiled by the Cannoneer staff. 

ROTC cadet named as one of top ten college women of the year 

by Jerrod Resweber, U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence         

As budgets tighten and the wars wind down, the Army is struggling to institutionalize the hard-won cultural skills it learned in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and to make the case for their continued relevance and resourcing to an administration whose new strategic guidance swears off counterinsurgency.

  

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey himself recently touted the importance of "the science of human relationships" as essential far beyond Afghanistan. The Army, Dempsey's own service, has already begun to "align" specific brigades with specific regions they might operate, starting with Africa, so they can bone up on the local culture, language, and politics before they deploy, in an effort to replicate the pre-deployment training now done for Afghanistan for other parts of the world. But to secure funding for such efforts in the long term, the Army needs to enshrine them in joint doctrine.

  

At the heart of the Army's evolving argument is a concept so new it hasn't got an official name. "What we're working to avoid is getting trapped into a title," said Col. Robert Simpson of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), in an interview with AOL Defense, though the leading proposed term is "human domain." What's essential, Simpson said, is "to make sure that we get into our doctrine, into our thinking in terms of the joint force and policymakers, that the purpose of any military operation is to affect human behavior." But current planning processes fixate on physical factors. What's necessary is a sophisticated cultural, sociological, and psychological understanding, he went on, of "what are our opponents wiling to fight and die for" -- and how to convince them to give up.

"It's not just COIN [counterinsurgency]," Simpson went on. "To take the extreme example, we dropped the atom bombs not to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki but to compel the Japanese people to surrender. That was purely a decision based on an intent to control behavior."

 

That may seem a cold-blooded way to talk about such lethal violence. It's uncontroversial nowadays to tout the importance of understanding and influencing foreign cultures in so-called "low-intensity" conflicts to "win hearts and minds." It's another matter to talk about high-intensity warfare as simply a way "to affect human behavior."

 

"To think of war as a bargaining process is uncongenial to some of us. Bargaining with violence smacks of extortion," wrote Thomas Schelling, one of the most influential political scientists of the Cold War, in his landmark 1966 book about superpower conflict in the shadow of nuclear weapons, Arms and Influence. "[But] coercion is the business of war."

 

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