COLUMBUS, Ga. -- Col. Andy Hall, a 23-year Army veteran with vast experience in leading soldiers in battle, faces his greatest challenge yet. The commander, along with 182 soldiers from the 648th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade of Columbus, Ga., will deploy to Afghanistan in December 2011. In this interview with Georgia Department of Defense Public Affairs reporter David Howell, Hall discusses the foundation and strategies he and his staff have prepared for this mission.
Q: Colonel, what is a Maneuver Enhancement Brigade?
A: A Maneuver Enhancement Brigade is a multifunctional brigade that is designed to be tailored and force packaged for particular missions. A Maneuver Enhancement Brigade has habitual relationships (and) endoctrinally tries to line up with three disciplines, and those disciplines are engineers, chemical and military police. However, we do have the ability to assume other units and other missions. We have a robust brigade headquarters with a tremendous amount of talent and skills in a wide range of mission sets and skills at our headquarters level.
Q: What are the 648th MEB’s current missions?
A: Well, the 648th, as most know here in the state of Georgia, is preparing for deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. In addition to that, we have other units that we’re responsible for (that are) getting ready to deploy. We have some that are currently deployed and some that are currently reintegrating, coming back from deployment. What’s going on here today, and (what’s) most of our focus right now is on the headquarters element leaving the state of Georgia and deploying for a year to Afghanistan.
Our mission in Afghanistan is going to be area support operations for the Kabul based cluster…that’s the capital. And there’s eleven base camps and FOBs (forward operating bases) and garrison commands over there that we’ll be responsible for. What we have to do for those is we have to resource them. We have to provide force protection for them. We provide the basic services for our soldiers and contractors that are living on those bases. We do military construction projects, and we’ll do some projects for the Afghan people themselves.
Q: How does one develop strategies for such a complex brigade structure?
A: Well, you know, it is a multi functional brigade, and there’s really no one in the Army that has the breadth of knowledge to be an expert in all (of) the disciplines that we have in this brigade. So, while my background is an infantry officer, and commands (have been) in an infantry battalion, it doesn’t completely transfer over. What we have to do is make sure we’ve got the right people in the right positions and the right experts, and that’s really what we bring to the battlefield is a breadth of knowledge and experience, all packaged under one command. While that’s not unique, it certainly is an advantage that we have as an MEB, is the ability to go in and deal with diverse mission sets, and we do that with our headquarters that has all of these disciplines in it. So I wouldn’t say that I bring, uh, you know … I’ve had of a background of that is perfectly suited me for this brigade, but neither has any of our staff. What we do is manage and we run a decision cycle that gets us to the right decision through diversity of thought and bringing people together and ideas, and produce timely, and hopefully, on target decisions for the brigade