NCOs without joes: What it's like to serve in the Army’s new adviser brigadeBy: Meghann Myers  

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Capt. Justin Alexander, a combat adviser team leader, walks with an Afghan National Defense Security Forces role player during training at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, La., Jan. 13. (Pfc. Zoe Garbarino/Army)

FORT POLK, La. — The Army has been training, advising and assisting foreign partner nations for the better part of a century.But in 2017, for the first time, the service announced that it would stand up an all-volunteer brigade for noncommissioned officers and post-command officers to spend two or three years training and deploying for that mission only.The Army offered a handful of cash and administrative incentives, but for many, the chance to share and sharpen their skills — and deploy — was motivation enough.“My personal interest and loves are culture and language,” Capt. Christopher Hawkins, the executive officer of C Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, told Army Times on Jan. 18. “The way this was pitched is, this is a way to marry that tactical experience with language and culture, to a bigger extent than you would in a typical deployment.”

Interested in joining the Army's newest brigade? Here's what you can expectThis fall the Army is standing up a new brigade that will deploy around the world to train foreign troops, and they're looking for about 500 seasoned officers and NCOs to man it.

The plan resembled a handful of forebears, like the Security Force Advisory and Assistance Teams and the Military Transition Teams of earlier years, temporary solutions that gave many soldiers a taste of combat advising as a job.

“This is the type of mission that I do believe in, I’ve enjoyed it in the past,” said C Company commander Maj. Jason Moncuse. “And you can actually see changes, and that’s what I like about it.”And a solid organizational structure means that his higher-ups are invested in the work that he’s doing, because it’s their main objective as well.Sign up for the Army Times Daily News Roundup Don't miss the top Army stories, delivered each afternoon

“The way it was before, you were just kind of an isolated team. What I like about this concept is, now you have higher echelons to report to,” Moncuse added. “In the past, you would just go out, you would do your thing, you would send a report — you didn’t really have interaction with higher, you didn’t have that support network to reach out to.”

The hope is SFABs will give the Army a chance to make a lasting impact on developing militaries while conserving its readiness for its own brigade combat teams, who have been sending their headquarters elements downrange for the advising mission while the rest of the formation kicked around back home.“The struggle then was maintaining continuity,” B Company, 3rd Battalion commander Capt. Justin Shaw said of his previous combat deployment. “We’d go out once a week, maybe very two weeks. So it was hard to establish that rapport from persistent advising.”Others wanted to come back and finish what they’d started all those years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq, a time punctuated by pain and loss.

“It wasn’t all for nothing,” said Capt. Daniel Jansen, an engineer construction team leader. “Part of the SFAB, in my mind, and the reason that I wanted to go here was to contribute to that unfinished business.”

The right stuffMembers of the SFAB are required to have completed the key leadership positions for their ranks, which means that everyone has already been a battalion commander, a company commander, a team or a squad leader.For many, the next tick on their career timeline would have been an instructor job or related broadening opportunity.And for them, joining the SFAB was a way to stay in the fight.“Once your platoon sergeant time is over, they’re not really in a hurry to send you back out to be a platoon sergeant, because there are other people who need it,” said Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Mayzik, C Company, 3rd Battalion team NCO-in-charge.“I could go back out, be with soldiers, be in the field, do all the fun stuff that I signed up to do,” he added.

For some younger NCOs, it was time to branch out.“It was a point in time in my career when I was ready to move into something new and this was it,” said Staff Sgt. Robert Senn, a cavalry scout and adviser. “This is one of the only opportunities to broaden yourself and still be a deploying part of the Army.”For others, working in a smaller, more elite unit has already sharpened their skills.“We get to go to a lot of courses that are not normally open to us,” said combat medic

Staff Sgt. Jarrid Lovenburg, who completed the Tactical Combat Medical Care course. “Unless you’re an actual treatment NCO working at Role 1 [like a battalion aid station] or higher, you normally don’t get to go to that.”Like any brigade combat team, members of the SFAB are predominantly male. Women have only been allowed to serve in infantry and cavalry units — two of the biggest sources of SFAB soldiers — since 2016.But in addition to small teams of 11Bs and 19Ds, the SFAB also has the full complement of gender-integrated support staff, from medical to personnel to supply.

To fill some of these positions, the Army reached down into its records to find the best people in their skill areas to bring to Afghanistan.One of them is Sgt. Diego Gantivar, a wheeled vehicle mechanic who has never been in combat, but had 20 years as a civilian mechanic before he enlisted.Earlier in 2017, his sergeant major called him in to tell him he’d come up on a list of good candidates for combat advising.“I probably consider myself one of the most qualified mechanics in the United States Army,” he said.He’ll be tasked with teaching Afghan troops to repair and maintain their vehicles, starting with problem one: An unreliable supply chain.“When I went to selection, they already had notified me that was one of their problems,” he said. “On my CAT team, our clerk, he’s usually the one that gets the part in your regular motor pool. With him and I, we’re going to try to find, where’s that missed connection? Why are they not getting their parts?”

Sweeping, hauling, stackingEveryone in the SFAB is an E-5 and above. Thanks to the Army’s promotion incentive, specialists who sign up are awarded full promotion points and an automatic bump once they finish the Military Training Adviser Academy at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Army offers automatic promotions to Security Force Assistance Brigade volunteersThe Army is preparing to graduate the first class of the Military Training Adviser Academy and stand up its first Security Force Assistance Brigade. To attract talent for the next five planned brigades, there are now new incentives to volunteer.

This has its good and bad points, members told Army Times.“In this type of unit, it doesn’t matter — officer, enlisted, NCO — everybody is a high-quality individual,” Moncuse said. “No one needs extra attention.”This is rare in any formation, let alone combat arms. Multiple leaders expressed delight in commanding a unit where you tell a subordinate to do something once, and it’s done.Having a brigade full of above-average PT performers, who have experience tying up every loose end before a deployment, brings down the time the units have to spend on administrative noise.“That has given us maximum time to focus on the mission at hand,” Moncuse said. “It allowed us to go from zero to where we are now in a matter of months.”From a senior leader perspective, there are positives and negatives, 3rd Battalion commander Lt. Col. Ian Palmer told Army Times.

“The advantages are that the overall maturity of the organization is a lot higher,” he said. “There are things that you don’t have to say to an organization like this — they automatically know.”The downside, Palmer said, is that you don’t get the same mentoring relationship that leaders have with their junior soldiers.There’s also a noticeable lack of readily available labor.You see it everywhere at FOB Warrior, where the teams plan events and eat two hot meals together every day.After breakfast, a sergeant first class folds chairs and puts them up on tables.“And if you want to see two captains, a sergeant first class and a sergeant sweeping the motor pool — I’ve carried more tough boxes in the last six months than I imagined I would in my entire life,” Hawkins said.

Amid beret backlash, the Army’s SFAB soldiers focus on training, deploymentBy: Meghann Myers  

Soldiers in the Army’s new Security Force Assistance Brigade are issued a unique brown beret. (Army)

FORT POLK, La. — It’s been less than three months since social media erupted over the news that soldiers in the Army’s new Security Force Assistance Brigade would receive their own colored beret and patches.But soldiers in the unit are not focused on those uniform items, leaders said.

“Here inside the SFAB, honestly, we don’t even talk about it. The headgear, the patches, that’s not what we’re about,” Col. Scott Jackson, 1st SFAB commander, told Army Times on Jan. 19.As Army leadership worked to put the SFAB concept together over the past year, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley decided the units should come with distinctive uniform items, on top of a unit patch that reflected the Army’s legacy of combat advising.

That meant a unit tab, as well as a new colored beret. Not surprisingly, as soon as photos of the proposed items hit the internet, the Army and veteran communities exploded with criticism.

The brown beret, meant to mimic the British Royal Anglian Regiment’s infantry berets, looked too green, Special Forces veterans said. And the patch, with its graphic arrowhead and saber, looked too much like a Special Forces patch.“We say right up front, we are not special operations forces,” Jackson said. “Didn’t come from there, don’t want to go there, don’t want to do that — meaning, that’s not our mission profile.”

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The Army unveiled the Security Force Assistance Brigade uniform patch and insignia on Feb. 8, 2018. (Army)

But as the brigade trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, internet trolls bombarded the soldiers with hate — up to and including death threats.“We just continued to focus on the mission,” 3rd Battalion commander Lt. Col. Ian Palmer said. “This is such a good group of people around here. We had so many things to do to stand this unit up … that we didn’t spend any time worrying about it. We focused exactly on what we had to do as a brigade.”

After the controversy, Milley went back to the drawing board, unveiling a new, unquestionably brown beret and star-spangled unit patch just ahead of the brigade’s deployment.

Rather than decorating their uniforms, SFAB soldiers said, they’re concerned about creating a unit culture and legacy.“It’s interesting, but for me, personally, looking at what we’re influencing — it doesn’t matter what I’m wearing,” team leader Capt. Justin Shaw said.

Maj. Jason Moncuse, a company commander, agreed.

“Once we accomplish this mission and come back, to me, that’s where the lineage starts,” he said. “We’ll start that esprit de corps, we’ll have that stronger bond, and, hopefully, that will resonate through the other SFABs that come up.”

First of its kind: Army’s newest advisers prepare for SFAB’s maiden deploymentBy: Meghann Myers  

FORT POLK, La. — The days are numbered for the Army’s Universal Camouflage Pattern, which has a wear-out date approaching in 2019, but there was a whole lot of it walking around the Joint Readiness Training Center in January.It was not because soldiers were putting off replacing their uniforms, but because with an Afghan flag slapped on the shoulder, they made the perfect costumes for 10th Mountain Division soldiers to play the role of Afghan troops.JRTC has trained dozens of brigades for Afghanistan deployments, and keeps a retinue of both local Louisiana and native Dari and Pashto-speaking actors to simulate in-country villages.But for the soldiers of the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, who are preparing for their first deployment as combat advisers to local national forces, the contractors weren’t enough.

So 10th Mountain sent a bunch of its 1st Brigade troops to play Afghan forces, and in a choose-your-own adventure type of scenario, help the SFAB soldiers develop their allies and guide them through key leader engagements and high-level target captures.Rather than their previous training center rotations, when units were largely planning for combat operations, soldiers said, members of the SFAB’s Combat Adviser Teams are vastly outnumbered by actors as they plan and execute missions during this rotation.

“Last time I was here, it was definitely different,” Staff Sgt. Robert Senn, a cavalry scout by trade, told Army Times. “It was more of a direct-action rotation. Not a lot of interaction with higher-ups on the other side. You were partnered but not as integrated with the actual planners and leadership.”The training is broken up into seven two-day rotations: one day of planning and one day of execution.

On Day 1, SFAB soldiers meet with their assigned Afghan kandak, the Dari word for battalion.CAT leaders meet with kandak leadership, generally native-speaking Afghan role-players — many of whom emigrated from the country to escape the Taliban, or came over after serving as interpreters for American forces.SFAB leaders speak to kandak leaders through an interpreter. The kandak’s soldiers are played by those 10th Mountain guys in UCP, and they’re speaking English — but to make it more real, they also use interpreters.

In many cases, an “Afghan soldier” is speaking English to a translator, who is slightly altering the translation for the SFAB team.Somehow, no one breaks character.“I think if it were one-sided, it would be really difficult,” Capt. Christopher Hawkins, an SFAB company executive officer, told Army Times in January. “They keep character perfectly, and so it’s really easy for us to fall into it.”At Forward Operating Base Warrior, the CAT and kandak meet up in a planning room. In one corner, the Afghan commander and his SFAB counterpart have a private meeting.In another area, kandak and SFAB officers drink tea and munch on pistachios.In the center of the room, a CAT senior adviser and his soldiers stand around a table with “Afghan soldiers” using a map to plan the next day’s mission.Each 10th Mountain soldier has a character profile, so he knows his backstory and has a handful of things about his life to discuss with the SFAB counterparts. He also has some options, as far as whether he’s squared away or more of a challenge.“The kandak, they will be much more forthcoming, much more cooperative, if the adviser team is effective in building rapport,” Lt. Col. Ryan Seagreaves, the cavalry squadron senior trainer at JRTC, told Army Times. “If they’re not very effective in building rapport, the cooperation won’t be at the same level, and they know how to adjust.”Later that day, SFAB teams will lead their kandaks through building-clearance and other exercises, as 10th Mountain troops pretend they don’t really know what they’re doing, and make decisions about whether they’ll improve along the way.“It adds another level of stress that your standard job might not have,” said Capt. Justin Shaw, a team leader. “Leading a team, advising partners, maintaining rapport.”

Green-on-blueOn Day 2, the CATs and their Afghan army kandaks head out for a mission.In the Jan. 19 iteration, they’re executing a warrant in the village of Khaista for a terrorism financier who happens to be good friends with the village’s mayor.“A couple of things we’ll make them negotiate,” Seagreaves said. “One, they’ll have a break in contact with their kandak [in transit], so they have to work through linking up with them in the middle of the mission.”Before they even get to the village, they’ll face an ambush, he added.“I think that the good thing about the way that they built the scenario here and the rotation … each one of them has a kinetic piece to it,” CAT team leader Capt. William Webster said. “It’s not complex, but it’s some kinetic piece that we have to react to quickly, that takes us off what the mission plan was.”The team will also have to keep themselves safe and coordinate anything that happens to their Afghan counterparts during the mission, which is to convince the

mayor to give up the financier.“During that event, there will be a green-on-blue attack with one of the local police,” Seagreaves said. “It’s not just a green-on-blue attack. The insider threat will incur multiple casualties. There will be a U.S. casualty, a local casualty, an ANA casualty.”Each force is meant to use their own medevac capabilities, so the SFAB will have to work through getting their own guy potentially helicoptered from the area, while figuring out where to treat the local and what kind of ANA recovery is available. In many cases, Seagreaves said, the ANA will only have vehicles for medevac, or maybe one of a limited number of aircraft.“We’re focusing a lot on improvised methods of movement, how to make improved tourniquets,” said Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Mayzik, a CAT noncommissioned officer-in-charge. “Because we’re not expecting them to show up and them to have talon litters and skedcos and [combat lifesaver] bags and all of that stuff. What can we pull from around us to move this guy from the point of injury, to the point of care, to the point of evac?”Each CAT is accompanied by an infantry squad from Task Force 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, which is part of the 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Benning, Georgia. As force protection, they’re not members of the SFAB, but they will deploy with them.“When I found out they were doing something a little bit different, I was interested in going,” Staff Sgt. Nicholas James, who has previously advised Iraqi soldiers, said. “I feel like I have a lot of experience that I’d like to share.”The force protection squad kicks into high gear at Khaista when, as the kandak and CAT lead the key leader meeting without their target, they come under fire in the middle of the village.“There are indicators that the adviser team could potentially pick up on,” Seagreaves said, that would let them know that an attack is probably coming. “Sometimes, they might pick up on those indicators and take steps to end the engagement earlier and get their people out of there. Sometimes, they don’t. It’s free play, so we know what the injects are going to be, but we don’t know what they’re going to do.”And, Seagreaves said, if they’re able to anticipate the threat and head out of the village early, there will be an attack on their way home.

Building rapportThough they get some simulation time, the real challenge for the SFAB will be forging relationships with their Afghan counterparts, and hopefully leaving the ANA units more capable and organized than they found them.“You have to find the finer points in where two cultures meet. We have some commonalities, but if you think about it in the aspect of what the Army’s done around the world in the past 20, 30 years … the NCO corps, in the aspect of how we think about it, is really a Western concept,” Webster said.The European-style NCO corps as the U.S. Army knows is not worldwide, he added, and particularly in Afghanistan, the army is very officer-centric.If Afghan soldiers lack discipline, for instance, the SFAB is not there to preach the value of unit PT and marching in formation.“The way you can shape it is, you show them an option of gearing toward something, and then you show them the alternative of what could happen if we don’t go towards that direction,” Webster said.And, Mayzik said, impressing upon Afghan NCOs that discipline issues, for example, are something they can take charge of for the greater good.“We’ve had 200 years of institutionalized NCO leadership that we can draw back on,

and they’re still new to that concept,” he said. “We’re focusing on security. Establishing a legitimate NCO corps is probably something for future rotations to take care of.”

The Army plans to stand up six SFABs in all, with a second activating at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, early this year, and a third scheduled for fall 2018.“To be able to have input into the development of this, and to be able to shape how it matures and grows, has absolutely been a rewarding experience,” Shaw said.