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Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.- For two days, Jan. 14 and 15, the senior staff of the ‘Thunderbolt’ Brigade and it’s battalions came together to discuss the command philosophy of the new commander to create a cohesive understanding of the mission and priorities of the brigade.
Col. Brandon C. Anderson, the commander of the 17th Field Artillery Bde., held a leaders summit with his staff, the battalion staff, and company/battery leadership.
“The overall concept is to come together collectively and get buy in from the individual leaders,” said Anderson. “Specifically the battery command teams, the field grades that put the processes together to resource everything, and the battalion and brigade staffs to collectively identify where we want to be over the long haul….[because] when I bring everyone together and allow them to have buy in, it gives them ownership over it.”
Anderson believes that with all the changes that have happened over the past few months within the brigade, he felt the unit needed to take a look at itsself, rethink its priorities and look to what other units are doing so as to bring the Thunderbolt Brigade and its soldiers to the next level of excellence.
“I wanted to lay out my command philosophy and what my expectations are,” said Anderson. “Then we start with saying what do good units do?”
Command Sgt. Maj. John Black, the 17th Field Artillery Brigade acting command sgt. maj. agreed that it was time to bring together the different echelons to build synergy within the brigade’s structure.
“In the three years that I’ve been here,” said Black, “this is the first time that we have brought elements from the I Corps Force Field Artillery Headquarters and Fires Support Coordination Cell all the way down to the battery level into one room. Then laid out calendars and requirements so that we can have a shared understanding of what the foxhole and aperture looks like at different echelons and what those friction points can do.
Anderson laid out five priorities: being deployable, conducting tough and realistic training, building and sustaining readiness, being and building professionals, and building a community. Through these he believes that the brigade will be able to support I Corps and its mission.
“I think those all build into supporting I Corps. When we approach every one of those priorities as a line of effort,” said Anderson.
Black believes that with so many people coming to the table that this will enhance the training and the soldiers moral.
“This synchronizes the efforts so that we can get after multi-echelon training and at the same time give back to the batteries to add predictability all the way down to the soldier level,” Black said.
As for ‘what good units do?’ Anderson said, “There is enough experience here of people who have been in good units! And if you haven’t been in a good unit, you know what bad units do and what to avoid.”
Overall Anderson felt the summit was a great benefit to the leaders of the brigade, however the true test will be when and if the unit is called to support and defend our nation.
“The test will be when we go to execute it. If we are fully deployable, if we are lethal, if we can sustain our operations. You never know how prepared you are,” said Anderson. “I asked them early on, how long will our next deployment be and the answer is we don’t know. It is easy to say we are ready but are we ready to sustain that for a year, 15 months or 24 months? So we not only need to build lethality but we also need to be able to sustain it. And that is really how we will find out how effective all of this is.”
| Date Taken: | 01.17.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 01.22.2019 14:30 |
| Story ID: | 307813 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WA, US |
| Web Views: | 123 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Thunderbolt Brigade synchronizes efforts with multi-echelon planning, by SFC Jacob Kohrs, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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