STARRS Podcast

Reviving Warfighter Culture by Removing Divisive DEI - With BGen. Chris Petty, USA ret

• STARRS • Season 2 • Episode 26

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In this episode of STARRS & Stripes, host CDR Al Palmer, USN ret, interviews retired Brigadier General Christopher Petty who draws from his distinguished 31-year Army career as a West Point graduate, combat helicopter pilot, and battalion commander in Iraq to discuss how CRT/DEI ideology has affected military readiness and what must be done to restore a warfighting focus.

Among the topics he discusses:

  •  West Point graduate who chose aviation after seeing helicopter pilots during Ranger School
  • Discusses how DEI policies introduced under Obama's 2011 Executive Order have undermined military unit cohesion
  • Explains how prioritizing demographic quotas has resulted in lowered standards and damaged the meritocracy
  • Identifies China's superior industrial production capacity as America's greatest strategic vulnerability
  • Argues that senior military leadership failed to show moral courage in pushing back against harmful ideological policies
  • Believes the military must return to valuing warfighters who can win conflicts
  • Created Battle Digest to help today's military leaders learn from historical battles

Gen. Petty is the author of "12 Battles Every American Should Know" and the creator of Battle Digest (battledigest.com) —described as "Reader's Digest for Warfare"—to explore military history in an accessible format designed for today's officers and military enthusiasts.

Subscribe to STARRS & Stripes for more critical conversations about America's military readiness and the challenges facing our armed forces in an increasingly complex global landscape.

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For more information about STARRS, go to our website: https://starrs.us which works to eliminate the divisive Marxist-based CRT/DEI/Woke agenda in the Department of Defense and to promote the return to a warfighter ethos of meritocracy, lethality, readiness, accountability, standards and excellence in the military.

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Al Palmer:

Well, hello America, and to you, our valued listeners and viewers of STARRS and Stripes, I'm your host Commander Al Palmer, United States Navy, retired. Al Palmer, United States Navy retired. And I do this show because we're interested in making sure that our military is up to its ability to fight and win wars. It's all about war fighting and all about service to our nation. So today, to talk a little bit more about how that happens, I'm really honored to have with us tonight as our guest one of our favorite people here at STARRS. He's one of our Board of Advisors, Brigadier General Chris Petty. Chris Petty is a 1987 graduate of West Point.

Al Palmer:

He's an aviator, he's a helicopter pilot. He's commanded aviation units from battalion strength down and most notably in Iraq. He was a commander of a battalion that was involved in some very special night and aerial assault attack operations. He went on to command NATO headquarters in Bosnia. He became a deputy director of our Northern Command as a deputy in charge of ballistic missile defenses and ISR intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. He's also an author and he's done a tremendous amount of work on focusing the Army efforts and past efforts in battle to point forward to leadership and the way things probably ought to work in the Army. So, general, it's a great pleasure, sir, having you with us today. Thanks for joining us on STARRS and Stripes.

Chris Petty:

Thanks, al, pleasure to be with you.

Al Palmer:

So you've got quite a diverse background and as a fellow aviator, I'm very proud of what you're able to do with helicopters, which I usually try to stay away from because I heard they had to kind of beat their way into the air instead of flying. But having that difference, I'm glad to see that you had such a distinguished career. What got you into the Navy? How did you, I'm sorry? What got you into the Navy? How did you I'm sorry into the Army? How did you arrive there?

Chris Petty:

Well, I was a young, idealistic high school sophomore I think, at the time, and I happened to pick up my father's West Point yearbook called the Howitzer one of the finest yearbooks in the country, actually, they get awards for it all the time and I just was leafing through this thing and I live again. I'm a high school sophomore and I'm like, wow, this is like Camelot. I feel like I should be a knight in this, uh, order of Camelot. You know, it was just one of those things. And, uh, even though my father said, are you sure? I mean, I mean, it's a big, it's a big, it's a, it's a difficult road, I said, yeah, I'm going to go.

Chris Petty:

So I pointed all my energy and direction into getting into West Point. Just from looking at the yearbook and being just amazed by the images and that culture, it was just fascinating for me. So so I went to West Point, yes, and did the whole cadet experience for four years. And interesting little footnote they sent me to ranger school as a cadet, which they hadn't done for like a decade. So it was quite an extensive weeding out process. And the funny thing is they sent me to ranger school and during ranger school I'm on patrol and you know, or you get one meal a day and you're tired and you're going for five, six days and these helicopters would pick us up and deliver us, like you know, 12 kilometers. It took us, you know, all night to walk 12 kilometers through the woods and ravines and I'm thinking, wow, these guys smell like soap and they look well fed.

Al Palmer:

I think I'm gonna go with aviation instead of yeah, that's a great show, isn't it yeah?

Chris Petty:

yeah, so I was like, okay, and that actually changed my mind, no kidding. So I became so I branched aviation instead of infantry because they sent me to ranger school.

Al Palmer:

It's a funny little figuring, probably figuring like me.

Chris Petty:

You'd get shot at less that way yeah, it's kind of figured that turns out. It's not always the case that way, did it? Yeah? So that that's my little story and uh, from that on it was just an interesting career. If you want to talk about anything, let me know well so?

Al Palmer:

so, going back to your years at West Point and I think this is true of most military academy cadets it probably changed your life dramatically from when you got in. Yeah, how did life look differently after four years at West Point than it did as you were going in in.

Chris Petty:

Well, you do tend to. After four years of that crucible of leadership and you know pretty intense academic environment and you're surrounded by the concept of duty honor country. I mean it does change you at a very impressionable time, so it's really positive change. So, yeah, you come out of that place. I mean you come out of that place really well prepared to lead a platoon at whatever branch you choose. You know whether you're an infantryman or an aviator and so very well prepared and very eager to take on the role of a platoon leader at some unit somewhere.

Chris Petty:

But I will say there's a little downside which you probably are familiar with is because you've been trapped in this prison for four years, you do tend to have a little bit of a wild streak and you want to experience like the year of college. You never had but young 20 year old or 21 year old kid going out and partying and driving down to you know what was it? The beach down in the panhandle of Florida where I went to from Fort Rucker, alabama. But you know you're still getting that out of your system too. But yeah, it's a, it's a good, it's a good transition. You're ready and you're eager to take on that role.

Al Palmer:

And about that point in your life there is an issue of commitment. Isn't there, you know? All of a sudden, this isn't just a job, or just a way to get something on your resume. All of a sudden, you're kind of committed to doing this, or you're not.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, you really are, but you've thought about it for four years, so it's not a surprise to you. I mean, yeah, I forget what it, what it is now, but I think after your sophomore year in West Point, you're a yearling. You know it's called yearling. After that you take the official oath of service, like if you quit now you're going to join here, you're going to be sent to the army as this you know an E4, or you know you're in. So yeah, you're, you're going to be sent to the army as this you know an E4, you know you're in. So yeah, you're. You're thinking about it the whole time. It's exciting.

Al Palmer:

It is, and I think that's kind of typical. Those of us who come through either that route or just coming from a military family. We have a little bit more of a view of that that's inside than it is outside, particularly by, I could say, by the time you finish a couple years of training and then figuring out what's happening around you.

Chris Petty:

Yeah.

Al Palmer:

So, as you got out as a new brown bar in the Army, what was your first experience? Did you learn a lot that first year or so?

Chris Petty:

Yeah, After you got into training training, I learned a ton after flight school, which is still obviously the training environment, and you know, army flight school at that point lasted almost a year.

Chris Petty:

But after flight school I went to my first assignment, which was Fort Irwin, california, the national training center. So for a young aviator I mean it was ideal at At the time I didn't think so because I was stranded in the middle of the Mojave Desert and I'm thinking to myself, oh God, who did I? Did I anger you in such a manner that I will never find a wife here in the desert? You know that kind of thing. But it worked out beautifully because not only did I find a wife who was a schoolteacher nearby, but I was flying my butt off and as a young aviator really developing the stick and rudder skills that I had no idea at the time would be, you know, so foundational to my role, even as a battalion commander in Iraq. I mean brownout landings in the desert in QH1s transferred directly to Black Hawk brownout landings in Iraq, and just developing that technical and tactical expertise as a young lieutenant flying 50 hours a month was just amazing.

Al Palmer:

Yeah, well, that, and as we know that flying time is important in your development and all that, and I kind of sometimes worry that that's now been reduced a lot. Of course we've got simulators and all which are supposed to augment that, but I still like you go back to thinking about the basic skills that you have. You just got to keep repeating.

Al Palmer:

Yeah, so anyway, so, so that was very valuable yeah, well, let me talk to you though today, going fast forward here to today's recent environment. You've written pretty intensively about the effects on the Army with things like diversity, equity, inclusion, critical race theory wokeness is the popular term likes to call it. Tell me a little bit about how that affected you, to the point where you were ready to write about it and talk about it.

Chris Petty:

Well, as your listeners know, it's just, it's a poisonous ideology that maybe some had good intentions with introducing it. But once it was injected and I'm talking about the entire diversity, equity, inclusion worldview I'm not just talking about DEI as a program, I'm talking about this worked worldview that says now we must discriminate and separate by race and gender, to create, to make up for all the past sins of Western civilization, and somehow that's going to create greater unity and cohesion in military units. I mean, it's absolutely antithetical to creating any kind of cohesion and unity, so it's actually one of the worst things you could do for an organization that needs to be unified. So I saw it right away. And the funny thing is, you know, this all happened after I was, you know, in the. I was a general officer doing my last couple assignments. This didn't really show its face in the military until Obama's executive order in 2011. I think it was 2011, august of 2011. 11 where, yeah, that's, that's that's where it started officially in the military, because his executive order was broad enough that all federal departments would incorporate, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion concepts, equity across the federal government. So from that moment on, the camel's nose was under the tent and it just grew and grew because, you know, I saw the top of the Army, I saw the top of the joint staff.

Chris Petty:

Civilian political appointees are holding the general's feet to the fire on. You know, how are you measuring how many of this uh skin color person is in this program and how many are? How are you measuring, you know, your, your uh improvement in? You know, women joining the infantry, your women in the marine corps? You know all this kind of stuff. The generals respond to that and if they don't, they're basically going to be pushed out or they're not going to get promoted. And I know generals always like to find that next star in their future. It's a big deal, don't kid yourself, don't kid yourself. And so the generals kind of put their heads down collectively and said, well, this won't do too much damage, we can mitigate this, even though we're not really happy with this because we know it's not a good thing. But yeah, I mean, they're holding our feet to the fire. The civilians truly are in charge, as it should be constitutionally.

Chris Petty:

But the generals react to that. So they kind of they play the game, they measure things, they try to increase the no one likes to call them quotas, but they're everywhere because everything's being measured and people are being held accountable and you have to, all of a sudden, you have to brief the you know, the assistant secretary of the army on how many women are attending ranger school. You know, it's things like that that make change happen, and this change, in a bad way, is what I'm saying. So you know I understood that dynamic. You know people are shaking their heads saying why is this happening? Well, I know why it's happening because the civilians are making it happen and the generals are not showing the moral courage to stop it. So I saw the damage.

Chris Petty:

It's clear to most logical people that this is a damaging ideology, that it really has no science or anything behind it. It's just an ideology. Science or anything behind it, it's just an ideology. And it affected everything. We saw it. We saw the numbers drop in recruiting. We saw soldiers leaving the service because they were frustrated. I had a good friend who was a Navy SEAL actually best friend of my son, who's a Coast Guard Academy graduate and you know he basically got out. After all the training Navy SEAL training, all the stuff he went through he got out as a, you know, an 03 because he was just so frustrated with all these requirements, dei stuff, so he left a lot of service. He's just one of thousands that just said I'm not. I'm not doing this anymore. You know it's divisive, it's tearing apart the team. I don't feel the cohesion. It's not fun anymore. We turn off war fighters.

Al Palmer:

But, chris, isn't that the reflection of the fact that there were real problems that probably the civilians in the Pentagon didn't understand because they had not been operators, they weren't in the military for most cases, I think? Do you think maybe they just missed that and said, well, maybe it won't do too much damage, I'll go along with it for a while, see what happens?

Chris Petty:

Well, I don't know that. The civilians. If your question is did the civilians miss that? I think the answer is no. I think I think Obama appointed ideologues as his political appointees and they were intent on moving the agenda forward on these crazy leftist propaganda programs that really objectively don't work. So that's really what I think was going on, that really objectively don't work. So that's really what I think was going on. And then you know, trump didn't have time in his first term to really get into the weeds and clean the stuff out. And so by the time Obama comes around I mean Biden comes around now you're populating DOD with more of these people and this stuff happens. So I mean, I see it, I see clearly how it happened.

Al Palmer:

Yeah, yeah, we all do, don't we? So as time went on, though, what happened was standards were lowered and changed. Promotions were changed. Advancement didn't necessarily mean you were having to do it on the basis of merit. Often it was because of what you look like or other external factors, and then the really precipitous problems were things like retention and readiness that started to drop. So certainly the leadership on the military side must have been seeing that happen and did they just take a pass on it?

Chris Petty:

you think, well, bit I mean it goes back to what I said is, you know, it's amazing, it's amazing when you take a step back al that, uh, you know, um, how people can rationalize in in their, in their self-interest and I do think there was a lot of rationalizing at the senior levels in their self-interest. So they didn't stand up and say, you know, we had no four-star. Stand up and say, mr President, this is tearing apart our military. I can't stand by and watch this happen. Here's some facts, facts, facts, facts, facts. I am submitting my resignation, resignation. We didn't have that moral courage emerge any time and that was disappointing. But rationalization is a really powerful human thing. It's everywhere, so I can yeah yeah so they thought they could.

Chris Petty:

A lot of them drank the kool-aid anyway, because you know, I mean, what 20% of population is gonna drink this Kool-Aid anyway. So yeah, it was a combination of those two things.

Al Palmer:

It just let it fester and grow and the tumor just kept growing until really until Trump's new executive order, which changed everything, changed the entire landscape so there was that there was a period there where the SecDef and chairman of the Joint Chiefs got together and said look, you know, there's a problem here. We got to solve this. They did the shutdown of all the services for what a day or two and they talked about things like nationalism and white supremacy and gender identity and all that Trying to find people who were extremists. And, as I recall, out of the couple of million folks in uniform, they only found like 100 people who actually did have some issue with that. But that's a pretty dramatic thing to do to an entire force to shut things down.

Chris Petty:

Looking that kind of a problem, isn't it? Yeah, it's ridiculous. And the numbers, as you said it's, it's ridiculous. Let's stand down the entire force from training to look for a you know something. That's a less than one percent problem. I mean it's ridiculous. So yeah it Al. I mean, you and I both know it was an ideology, ideologically driven program and I'm not saying there's some puppet master pulling the strings, but there is part of our society that is ideologically driven to this stuff, this destructive, de-unifying stuff. They'll always be with us, but they got into the military, finally with Obama and doubled down with Biden, and now we're turning it around. So it's encouraging.

Al Palmer:

So we're seeing that in places, like you say, we didn't think we would see it, and particularly places that it should never have been like in the military academies, west Point in particular and yet it got in there somewhere. So the question that we've had a lot on this podcast in future episodes is where did that come from? And then how did we allow it to get in? A lot of that discussion centered around the advent of more outside professors being put into the academies than used to be there. Say, a couple of decades ago, when I was a young guy, when I went to the officer training school, there were no civilians at all, and I think that was the same way back in the old days in West Point and Annapolis and even Air Force Academy. When they started it was all military professors for the most part, maybe a couple of advisors or something from outside. Now those figures are pretty high. With the military academy West Point I think the last time I checked was close to 26 or 27% of outside professors from mostly East Coast universities and PhDs, which is great, and they know what they're talking about.

Al Palmer:

But the problem comes up is you're still teaching people who are going to be leaders as officers. They need to know how that is contextualized within the military, not just because it's physics or English or German or whatever you're teaching them from the outside. That would be useful in the military too. A lot of that has to have the context of being a military leader and how you're going to use that information that you're learning. So that's been a big issue. I noticed Secretary Hegseth just took that on like last week or so. He said we're going to try to get rid of that, and I think that's actually started to happen at the Air Force Academy, where the superintendent says he's going to cut that by maybe 10% or something. So what do you think about that? Is that something they ought to be doing in all the academies?

Chris Petty:

I think it's a contributing factor but, going back to my earlier point, it's not the sole factor, of course. If you think about that's a three-star superintendent. He's in that rarefied air of the senior leadership in the military and the different services and those three stars are being held to account by the four stars that are now having to brief the civilian ideologue about what are you doing to increase the number of minorities in this sector? What are you doing to increase I notice your numbers here aren't very strong on LGBTQ admissions to West Point. There, Mr Three Star, what's your plan to address that? You understand what I'm saying now. That's how it works.

Al Palmer:

I do yeah.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, it's not just civilian professors. I mean, I'm all for some civilian professors. As you said, some of these PhDs in you know engineering or you know the STEM fields are very beneficial to the cadets. Yeah, yeah, I don't know that we need a lot of civilian professors in the sociology, you know humanities areas, because they're all pretty. You know pretty far left ideologues. But it's also a big part of what I said at first. It's that three star is being held to account, being measured on all these crazy metrics, and guess what? What gets measured gets done. And you know that's what the civilian leaders in the Pentagon care about. They don't care about war fighting, they care about ideology. And so if you want to ever find that fourth star, you better care about our ideology. You know the message is clear to these folks and you may think I'm simplifying it, but this is human nature and you see it.

Al Palmer:

So but isn't that kind of where the bridge was broken between war fighting and ideology, and ideology and under the premise that diversity, equity and inclusion, and particularly the diversity part of that, would increase the lethality, increase the ability of the military to do its job? That claim was made on multiple occasions, Some of that right in the yeah you're right, al.

Chris Petty:

The claim was made, but it's a baseless claim, as you and I know Exactly. It's a baseless claim. As you and I know it's a baseless claim. In fact, it's an inverse. There's an inverse relationship and we all know it. We've experienced it. You know, when you and I were in the service I know you're a few years older than I, but the fact is these things weren't an issue. I had black soldiers, hispanic soldiers, female soldiers I worked for a female general it was just never an issue. Everything seemed fine. I did 31 years of this stuff. Now, all of a sudden, everything it was looked at through the lens of gender and race and everything changes when everything is looked at through that lens. We never had that lens and everything was unifying. Everything was unifying towards the mission and the team, and that all gets changed when your lens is gender and race.

Al Palmer:

And so the result of that is because that's going to result in lower standards in order to accept those people, promote them and keep them in the force. So all of a sudden, now you've got different standards for different people.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, yeah, and people know it. Even though everyone likes to ignore it and people don't really like to shout out the fact that standards are lowered for certain groups because we want more representation from those groups, everybody knows it's happening and you can see it in your unit, your organization. I mean soldiers aren't stupid, they see this. In fact there's, you know there's plum assignments that I'm sure some of the regular, you know, conservative, white, christian officersian officers said well, I can't even compete for this because there's no chance I'll get it because I don't check any of the blocks. I mean you know that went on thousands and thousands of times across our military by people like you and I that just said, well, there's no chance I'm going to get this assignment or promotion, I don't check any of those gender or racial blocks. So yeah, I mean it really has an effect.

Al Palmer:

Well, just like in our line of work in aviation, you know the meritocracy is pretty high there. If you don't do well, sometimes people get hurt and often they die hurt and often they die. So so what you do in your job is far more important than any other factor that might enter into it at the end. Um, and in my sticky on a flying off an aircraft carrier, you are graded on your landings every time you did it. Uh, depending on which wire you caught on the aircraft carrier, if your, if your grade went too far, you got some time with the commander right away and you probably didn't get from, you probably didn't even stay in the service. So but it seems that those standards somewhat got discharged over time, or lessened, if you will, and I kind of worry sometimes that when we do that we take away the performance that goes with it, which is the meritocracy.

Chris Petty:

Well, of course, and not only do you take away the performance, but you take away the incentive structure for performance. So people basically are like why should I go to that extra school? Or why should I take that hard job as the brigade S3, you know, and grind it out for three years, you know, not coming home to my family until 10 o'clock at night. Why should I do that job? You know you, you start to change the whole incentive structure for people. Let me tell you a quick story out, if you got a minute, because I didn't even.

Chris Petty:

I believe in affirmative action. The last thing I want to create is this impression that you, you know, here we are two white guys going. Hey, you know we don't care about this. We do care about this stuff. We've always cared about this stuff and the military has been the best integrator of racial and gender equality in the world I mean organization in the world and I'm very proud of that. I'll tell you a personal story that, okay, this is years and years ago.

Chris Petty:

I'm a battalion commander. I get to hold flight boards to select soldiers to compete to actually get a slot at flight school. So I remember distinctly one board that I held and you know, typically a board will have I don, I don't know, in this battalion we had five or six candidates that were e5 sergeants, maybe in e6. They want to compete for this valuable slot to go to flight school. You know we might get one or two a year and these people would have to become warrant officers and go through the whole process if for Rucker Alabama. So this is a regular occurring event.

Chris Petty:

I remember one board I have eight candidates, all sharp, the best of our battalion, and it came down to a black guy and a white guy. At the end you do all the evaluation of schools and performance and evaluation reports, blah, blah, blah and it came down to a black guy and a white guy and you know they were basically equally qualified and the board basically agreed these two are equally qualified. Well, guess who got the slot? The black guy, because they were equal. They were equal. So we said you know this is this guy, you know he deserves it. He probably had a little bit of a harder time with some of these things with family structure, whatever. The tie went to the black guy. I'm fully supportive of stuff like that and I did it personally. I mean that's why I like this story. I I mean it's real, it's a real story. So I mean it's kind of an affirmative action approach to things like this. But it wouldn't have been given to that young man if he wasn't as good as the white guy. You know what I mean.

Al Palmer:

Like flipping a coin.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, this stuff, you know, tie goes to the runner in baseball, whatever. But those things are positive, those things are good, we can do those things. But we can't lower the standards to create these artificial quotas that oh, just because 14% of the US population is black, then therefore 14% of the 06s in the Army are supposed to be black all of a sudden. I mean you just don't do that stuff.

Chris Petty:

But, that's where they were going in everything. That's where they were going in everything, in every area where they were going in everything in every area.

Al Palmer:

And so too, I think again the downturn in retention and recruiting may have led to some of that in changing standards, because now you're pressed to hold on to the people that you can get right and maybe lower the standards a little bit just to make sure they stay in. I was reading something not long ago about army doctrine and war fighting and how they train, and part of the things I was reading were they were changing some of that over time to make the stress a little less, even to the point where they weren't doing large-scale operations that were at a higher echelon, because it was taking people away from families for weekends. Well, weekends don't count when you're at war and when you're operating a large force, particularly under a field exercise, it seems the last place when you want to stop for a while, take a weekend off and then come back. I don't think that works well in the army is, does it?

Chris Petty:

no, I'm not. I'm not familiar with your story, but but let me just say in general, I'm surprised to hear that because if you're if you're on a major field exercise, I've I've never heard of uh taking a taking a break to go with families. I mean, one thing I will say about the military in general and across all the services, because I do know this is they're pretty good about long weekends and making sure that you get home to the family, you can go to that kid's baseball game, et cetera. I think the military does an exceptionally good job these days about trying to make sure soldiers spend time with their families. So that story is one I'm not familiar with. I'd be surprised if you're on a big field problem and you just take a break for a weekend in the middle of it. That just sounds odd.

Al Palmer:

Well, I think that was written by an Army colonel, an infantry officer, but I think maybe what he was trying to say was a lot kind of a war rather than a skirmish. When they were doing that, they were taken away from some of the traditions that they'd had in the past. Uh, well, like I will say.

Chris Petty:

I will say, though, with a small army which you know we still have, kind of a small army, if you look at the requirements across the world, there is an uptempo. You know the operational tempo. There is a challenge across the entire force about, you know, how many months can I stay home versus how many months am I actually literally gone, like, out of the state, out of the country. That is a challenge when you and this is something we wrestled with at the Pentagon, you know, even in the army, staff is, you know, how do you, how do you address all of your requirements around the world with a limited supply of force structure? That's a, you know, demand outstrips supply in our military.

Chris Petty:

And you know, I think that's one of Trump's, I think that's one of the things Trump's trying to get a handle on, because everyone talks about it, but we haven't really done much about redistribution, reallocation of forces across the globe. You know, we only have so many brigades in the army and the requirements are really high, really high. So, yes, you know we are taking a toll on families and relationships and continuity just by putting these guys into Europe and putting them into the Pacific and rotating them into the Philippines and you know, and National Training Center to build that, that larger scale competency across a brigade. I mean, that's all time away from the family. So yeah, that's a, it's a challenge.

Al Palmer:

I mean that's all time away from the family. So yeah, it's a challenge. I think that was the focus was battalion larger restaurant level versus the smaller units within an operating base? But the other services have the same kind of problems, don't they? I mean, the Navy is running short on ships. They're also running short on people to man the ships. It's the same problem. I think the Army has. The Air Force isn't a whole lot different either.

Chris Petty:

Right, I agree.

Al Palmer:

There's only so many problems, and the only guys that probably have it sort of straight seem to be the Marines these days.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, and because they've always been, they've always specialized in more of a niche and that's worked to their advantage. So, yeah, I think the Marines are on top of it, is specialized in more of a niche and that's been that's worked to their advantage. So, yeah, I think the marines are. I think the marines are on top of it, although they've had a lot of uh, you know, consternation about their development of their new war fighting strategy and lightning, lightning the force and all that stuff. But that's a whole, nother tangent, but yeah too much, too much demand, not enough supply.

Chris Petty:

That's going to be a problem until it's not a problem.

Al Palmer:

Oh yeah, and maybe that's improving a little bit with the changes in things like getting rid of the Mickey Mouse stuff that go with wokeism and all. Hopefully that will help a little. Yeah, what about the other problems, though, that I know the other services have an issue these days with the defense industrial base being able to provide things like munitions, equipment, aircraft, ships, tanks, striker vehicles, things like that. How is the Army positioned in that now, do you think?

Chris Petty:

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, al, because actually strategically, I think that's our biggest problem. You know well, we won world war ii on the backs of industry. It was the production of america that won that war. I mean you, we were producing hundreds of ships a year, thousands and thousands of tanks a year. I mean you couldn't even match that. So I know things have changed, but you still have a relative calculation there. You know, china can produce lots of things very quickly and they're actually decent things. They're not like in the old days where they were not very good things. So China can outproduce us. And if China can outproduce us, whether it's ships, planes or tanks, if they're outproducing us five to one, six to one, ten to one, we are in a strategic mismatch. That's what scares me more than anything actually. So I'm glad you brought that up.

Al Palmer:

It's a problem is how do you get what we have to their theater of operations, either in the South China Sea? If you're the Navy and Marines or the Air Force working out of places like Guam or Japan or Okinawa, and the Army forward based out in Hawaii and Philippines, wherever, how do you get those forces into theater with a smaller number? Right, you're outnumbered already and you're going into their backyard.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, that's a challenge, but I will say you bring up Al, you bring up one of our strategic advantages, though that offsets the other one I talked about. Nobody projects power like the Americans. Nobody, nobody is even close Moving, you know, whether it's bombers or brigades or ships or tanks, or, uh, ships or tanks. I mean nobody does it like the U? S. So we have a significant advantage in that actually.

Chris Petty:

I know, eventually it comes down to ship tonnage and you know how many flag carriers do you have and all that stuff. But the U? S really has an advantage there and that's. That offsets some of what I talked about as a disadvantage earlier.

Al Palmer:

Maybe that's what's keeping the Chinese at bay for a short while, otherwise they could have taken over.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, it could, we do move force pretty well.

Al Palmer:

And I know that there's been an emphasis on Pacific operations, particularly in all the services in recent years, which I think is a really good thing. And then the joint service exercises that we still do out there in that part of the world seem to be working too.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, yeah, I can't fault the strategy and the approach of the. You know the Indo-Pacific command and all that stuff that's going on out there. I don't think they're doing anything wrong. But we do have to build up our industrial capability. We do have to get more ships, more transport ships, but they're experimenting. You know they're experimenting out in the Pacific and I think it's positive. You know smaller nodes of combat instead of bigger formations and you know rapidly displaceable forces and all those things. I think it's smart. I think what they're doing smart, it's going to be a missile drone war and you got to be able to move quickly. So I think, I think they're heading in the right direction, but the but the sheer production in the right direction, but the but the sheer production.

Al Palmer:

Every war becomes a world of attrition in some, in some aspect, every single war becomes a war of attrition, so that one does scare me. Well, that is the problem. I mean, if you don't have enough tanks and other armored vehicles and artillery or whatever else you need, uh how do you, how do you fight a protracted war that way? I mean, look, ukraine is having trouble keeping up with a huge supply of our munitions that they never had. If they hadn't had us, they'd have been toast by now, I'm sure yeah, that's a great example.

Chris Petty:

Ukraine is showing once again that every war becomes an attrition war and you better have the capabilities to produce and outproduce your enemy. And right now we don't have that capability with China. We have we have some real advantages against China, but China seems to have the advantage in out producing us and, and that really bothers me.

Al Palmer:

I don't know how their Army structure is, but within their Navy they now have more ships than we do, I know, but they do. And now the challenge is, like everything else, how do we match that quality versus quantity and do it in the right way, which gives us still a winning advantage wherever we go? Well, listen, let me ask this question. So we talked a little bit about the good things that are going on, and I'm happy to hear more of that's happening in all of our services, but there are still some issues left that we need to get to, do we not? In the wake of the problems that we just started to solve, can you talk a little bit about your concerns with that?

Chris Petty:

You're talking about the DEI and all that stuff.

Al Palmer:

Post-DEI, post-wokeness is that now a dead duck, or is there something underneath that that's still resonating somewhere, Is it?

Chris Petty:

flying under the radar. Well, there's a couple of things that come to mind. Number one is you have to make these changes permanent. So they have to be more than executive orders in the end, as Congress has the constitutional authority to essentially regulate the military for lack of a better word they need to put these things into law and they need to make sure that the appropriations and the authorization bills codify these things. So it's more than executive order, because this could be reversed. So that's number one.

Chris Petty:

And number two the military needs to, as I think Hegseth is doing. I mean, hegseth may have his shortcomings, but one thing I think he's very serious about is a war fighting focus. So everything will be subordinate to how do we improve our lethality, mobility, lethality on the battlefield. That's what it's all about. Nobody created the Department of Defense to be a jobs program. It has one purpose and that is to win wars. And if you can win wars, you will deter wars, and that's the whole point. So HEXAT's right about that. I'll tell you that. But you know, trump's only got four years and the clock is ticking. So we'll see how much of this stuff can permanently change the structure and the culture of DOD in four short years in four short years.

Al Palmer:

So the civilian force, that works really pretty hard, I think, for the services and always had. But, as you pointed out earlier, there are still some folks in higher levels that may not quite get what they need to do because they again lack experience or they lack the knowledge that they may need. They're somewhere. How do we change that? Do we go after a different kind of people that we need to bring in?

Chris Petty:

to be their advisors, yeah, but that's too difficult of a problem because every president is going to be able to appoint a whole slew of civilian appointees across the DOD structure and there's a lot of them. So I would attack the problem differently. I would. The Pentagon and the civilian staff at the Pentagon is right for cutting Nothing against them. This is not a judgment issue, but it's just.

Chris Petty:

There's so much of it you could get rid of it. For instance, low-hanging fruit for me after working there for a couple years is the entire civilian secretariats of the services are almost unnecessary because you have civilian control of the military through the Secretary of Defense. So you've met the constitutional requirement right there. You don't need a civilian secretary of the army and an entire large staff. Then all they do is talk to the chief of staff of the army's large staff to coordinate army stuff. Right now do that across four services. You know, maybe, assume, maybe soon five with Space Force You're going to build another architecture like this. You could get rid of so many redundant civilian positions in the Pentagon that that would solve a lot of this problem by itself.

Al Palmer:

Well, like you say, some of them is at the highest levels of those services, I'd point to the Army Secretary, who had never spent a day in the military or around the military.

Chris Petty:

So what is the value added of an entire civilian staff in the Army Secretariat for a civilian that really just works with the Chief of Staff, of the Army's giant staff to work on Army issues? What's the point?

Al Palmer:

and has no direct experience with what they're doing right it's.

Chris Petty:

It's kind of silly actually, and you're talking thousands of civilian positions across the services. I mean that right there would solve a lot of our problem that that may be where Hegseth is going with some of this.

Al Palmer:

I don't know, but I've heard some rumors to that effect that in key leadership jobs there may be a few changes here and there.

Chris Petty:

No, absolutely, but it would be good at least if.

Al Palmer:

But it would be good at least if somebody had some actual relevance, and particularly if you could find someone who had combat experience. Wouldn't that be a great change and at least understanding how the troops work and how life is in the military? I don't know how you can make decisions, particularly personnel decisions, if you don't know that.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, it's a tough question because you're not always going to have that perfect slate and I would say you could do it. But you've got to have the right mindset. If you've never had a combat experience, you could still be a great Secretary of Defense if you listen to the people who have the experience and the knowledge. But you have the right vision for warfighting, focus could you could pull it off, you know I mean, yeah, yeah, if we've seen that.

Al Palmer:

Yeah, one of the other thoughts on on what's happening in today's army did you want to share with us?

Chris Petty:

well, I think overall, like you I'm I'm happy that we're reversing course on the indoctrination and the poison ideology. I think there's a collective sigh of relief throughout the force and you know this stuff was never polluting the companies and the battalions too badly. It was there but it was all the higher level echelon stuff and the schools and all the training centers and all that stuff. So the Army I still have great confidence in the Army and the services, the joint force in general. Obviously I know the Army better, but I've worked with all my brothers and sisters in the other services and they're all excellent. So I've worked with all my brothers and sisters in the other services and they're all excellent.

Chris Petty:

So this is a great military that we have and I'm glad we pulled it back from the ledge of destruction, internal destruction, from this poison ideology. But it's gotta be codified, it has to be permanent.

Al Palmer:

And that is quite a great description. I think exactly what happened and for folks like you on our STARS board, you can take a lot of pride in the fact that we stood up when others weren't willing to, and I think that we were very influential in having a lot of that change. Maybe we got a little bit of wind in our back these days, but STARS is still doing a great job and I hope that we'll continue to do that going forward.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, I'm confident we will. I know the mission will evolve and we'll see how it evolves appropriately.

Al Palmer:

But yeah, STARS was a part of that and of course I'm proud to have been a very small part of that. I would say bigger than small.

Chris Petty:

No, what do you do? You know you can write some articles, you can talk to people, but, yes, it all matters, it all matters.

Al Palmer:

Yeah, you shine a light on it and I would let our audience know too that you also got your own operation going on that regard called Battle Digest, and tune into that and see more about what you're writing about and how to subscribe, and you've also written a pretty good book about battles in the past to serve as great examples 12 battles every American should know about. I had a little bit of part in some of that with my museum I built at Pearl Harbor, and folks learn a lot when they go through. The amazing thing is, chris, when you see people really understand what's happened with real people and real events, they're stunned. I mean, they really are. I've seen people just do amazing things as a result of that.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, that's nice. I appreciate Cindy putting up a few graphics. The quick story, al, is I was one of those officers that actually believed in training my subordinates on some military history, because it's so relevant, the patterns are so repetitive in history. There's a reason why. You know, 100 years ago all the great military captains knew exactly what alexander did and napoleon did, and you know george washington did. They knew all that stuff. Well, guess what, al?

Chris Petty:

they don't know it anymore and not only does it not only does it break my heart, it's going to cost us some lives. So what I did is I said to myself after 30 years, I'm going. Why doesn't the army have something simple that soldiers can just pick up and say, oh, I want to learn about the battle of frasier? Because, oh, by the way, not only should I know this stuff because I'm a professional, but I can see the lessons learned that are every bit as relevant today as they were when, you know, um, good old general burnside. General Burnside committed his infamous slaughter at Fredericksburg, and so I wanted to make it easy. I even put discussion questions on the back of these things because I wanted commanders to go. All I got to do is read this for 30 minutes and have my soldiers and subordinate officers read this, and we're going to have a great discussion about Fredericksburg and why it matters today and how it's relevant in today's operating environment.

Al Palmer:

So that's what I did with panel digest. That's all it is. You'd be like good for, like a commander's call or something you know exactly that.

Chris Petty:

That's why I created it now, lo and behold, the people that buy my product are mostly civilians that love history and and they love it, but I built it for the military honestly, have any of them been historians at the military academy? I don't know of any specifically that have purchased my product saying I was a historian at the military academy.

Chris Petty:

It's funny when I went to West Point to try to, to try to get him to sign up because it's a perfect match. You know, a lot of these big institutions are like well, you know, we already have all your. I looked at all your footnotes. You know they're all on our bookshelves, kind of like yeah you know you're. You're kind of missing the point here. You know, yeah, how are you going to get that?

Al Palmer:

to go off to the library to find that book among the thousands that are there right exactly.

Chris Petty:

You know what he can learn everything. He can learn everything he wants in 30 minutes you know, well it's.

Al Palmer:

It's it's attention and access right and and we try to do that around here on our podcast too to highlight the things that we think are important, because our website's got thousands of articles and things on it. And this is our way of sometimes trying to focus with, with important people who have something to say about it, especially folks like you, General.

Chris Petty:

Well, let me focus your listeners, or your audience, on one thing. If they want to check this out, just remember Reader's Digest for Warfare Battle Digest. That's it, and it's a great product. You'll love it, actually. So check it out.

Al Palmer:

I like your thought about our past military leaders. The other name that comes to mind is George Patton, who used to read a lot about the Greeks and the Romans, past battles, wisdom on the battlefield and others who you know followed the art of war and all that the Chinese talked about a lot. You read those things and there's a common sense approach to how to fight and win and how to work people so they can do that too.

Chris Petty:

And it's more than common sense, it's actually pattern recognition. It's like becoming a good chess player. These patterns repeat themselves in warfare. So Patton, because he was so well-read, I mean, he could see like, ah, I've been here before. Well, he wasn't there before, but his mind was there before. He recognized something from history and it was almost like he had the experience of that history. You know, if people that have served their entire lives in the military, like you and me I got to fight in one war, I'm not going to build enough experience in one war to learn all of the lessons that I can get from these guys that have fought wars and wars and wars and wars. And these patterns really repeat themselves.

Al Palmer:

So, trying to put that together so that these young officers can get these advantages without having to read 300-page books all the time, and the other part of that is that even though those people were well-read, well-educated, they still had to do it and in Patton's case he almost single-handedly won the European War. World War II won the. European war, World War II and yet at the same time was the target of all kinds of ridicule and opposition from the media and other people back home in politics.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, well, patton was an interesting character, but he was a warfighter, so that's the kind of person you need, and we need a culture that tolerates warfighters again, which is part of this whole DEI thing. We need to celebrate warfighters and realize in some cases they're slightly different people and you better value that skill set because they win wars, and so that's part of this equation we're talking about. You got to change a culture again away from DEI into warfighting, and that's that's part of this equation we're talking about. You've got to change a culture again away from DEI into war fighting, and that's part of it. You know, guys like Patton can't be kicked out in tomorrow's Army.

Al Palmer:

I think we're on to it and, with your help and the rest of the stars here, we hope to get there. Thanks for what you're doing, general, and thank you so much for being on our podcast today.

Chris Petty:

And for our viewers check out Battle Digest.

Al Palmer:

It's something very worthwhile.

Chris Petty:

Yeah, thanks, al, pleasure to be with you.

Al Palmer:

Good to have you, sir, and to our audience. Stay tuned. Next week we'll be back with another exciting episode of Stars and Stripes. And for now, we'll be back with another exciting episode of stars and stripes. And for now we'll sign off and salute you for watching us. Thank you very much.