#206: Building The World's Best Special Operators - USAJFKSWCS Command Team MG Jason Slider, CSM Jeff Bochey, CW5 Gary Ostrander

The Jedburgh Podcast

This episode of The Jedburgh Podcast features an in-depth conversation with the command team of the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare

Key takeaways

• SWCC's core mission is to develop the world's best special operators through rigorous selection, training, and continuous professional education.
• The organization is evolving from counterterrorism-focused training to preparing for large-scale combat operations against peer adversaries.

Main topics

• The mission and evolution of SWCC
• Training for large-scale combat operations

Notable quotes

"Build the world's best special operators. Then continue making them better."

Conclusion

SWCC remains central to maintaining U.S. Army Special Operations Forces' edge by continuously adapting its

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:01) Every Green Beret, civil affairs, and psychological operations soldier starts somewhere. Before they can operate in the world's most complex environments, they have to prove they can think, adapt, lead, and perform when the standard is uncompromising. At the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, the mission is simple to say and extraordinarily difficult to execute. Build the world's best special operators. Then continue making them better. In this episode, I travel to the center of the universe, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to sit down with the command team responsible for that mission. Major General Jason Slider, Command Sergeant Major Jeff Boucher, and Chief Warrant Officer 5, Gary Ostrand. Together, they lead the organization responsible for assessing, selecting, training, and educating the next generation of Army Special Operations Forces, while ensuring that today's operators remain prepared for tomorrow's fight. The battlefield is changing rapidly. After more than two decades dominated by counterterrorism, SWCC is adapting its training for large-scale combat operations and peer adversaries capable of contesting American forces across every domain. That means integrating robotics and autonomous systems, preparing operators for the digital and information fight, and understanding how artificial intelligence can enhance the force without allowing technology to replace the mastery of the fundamentals. But modernization also raises a harder question. How much can we ask one operator to do? As new capabilities emerge, SWCC has to determine what belongs in the baseline skill set, what requires specialized expertise, and how to give operational units new capabilities without adding another burden. From the development of robotics expertise to the evolution of psychological operations and information warfare, the institution has to adapt as quickly as the battlefield. We also examine the relationship between SWCC, 1st Special Forces Command, and USASOC. and why lessons from the operational force must move rapidly back into the schoolhouse. Training can't prepare soldiers for the war we just fought. It has to produce leaders who can arrive at their teams on day one, contribute immediately, and adapt to a fight none of us can completely predict. Technology will change. The enemy will change. The battlefield will change. But the standard cannot. The responsibility of SWCC is to ensure that whoever earns the right to join Army Special Operations has the confidence, character, discipline, and adaptability to win whatever fight comes next. The Jedberg Podcast is brought to you by OneCrew, enabling military leaders to make innovative, informed, and deliberate decisions faster than ever before. Superhuman command wins wars. Follow the Jedberg Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge. Speaker 4 (2:51) General Slider, CSM Beauchesne, Chief Ostrander, welcome to the Jedberg Podcast. Thanks for having us, Fran. Thank you. Thanks for bringing us back. All right, so let's start there because we're here in the Special Warfare Museum here on SWCC's campus, which has come so far since my days here. We were here a couple of years ago, so Chief was on the show. He's a YouTube sensation Speaker 2 (3:12) now, Speaker 4 (3:13) by the way. Speaker 2 (3:13) That's right. Speaker 4 (3:14) I've heard. You know you're in the presence of greatness. Speaker 2 (3:17) Yep. Well, I'm looking forward to living up to the standard he's already set. Yeah. Millions, millions, millions Speaker 4 (3:22) of views. That's right. From some of his comments, there's YouTube warriors out there who are looking for him. And there was a lot of folks out there who had never seen a Speaker 2 (3:32) CW5. Before I took command, Gary Ostrand is the first CW5 I've ever seen in 36 years of service. Yeah. So I'm- It's a great privilege to be in my company, sir. Speaker 4 (3:44) He is truly a unicorn. And what I said to all of those people is that they didn't have a coffee pot in their organization, so they wouldn't be able to see a CW5 hanging out by the coffee pot, pontificating everything that should be right in the universe. Sure. Sure. Pretty sure. Yes, any time. We've known each other a long time. But it's great to be back here. And special thanks to Roxanne Merritt, who runs the organization as the director and the curator. She's standing back there. Yeah. But always... So welcoming to us and our team to open up the museum. And so we love coming here and thank you for allowing us to continue to use this Speaker 2 (4:22) every time we ask. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Speaker 4 (4:25) We're going to talk about SWCC. So we're at, we kind of have a little bit of an inflection point because Sir, you're, Gary's also coming out of his role. And so we almost have an opportunity to kind of reflect and think about, you know, where the organization has come from over the last couple of years. have your vision for the organization and be able to think about where was it, where's it going, and where's it going to be in the next couple of years. So we came earlier today from USASOC headquarters where we were able to sit down with the command team there, General Ferguson and CSM Waldo. Always a pleasure to sit down with them that they're so good. The command team was able to talk about the importance of this organization because this is where it starts. And a few minutes ago, we had the class that guys that just graduated, the 18 x-rays who just graduated from selection are getting ready to go now into the course and doing the SUT. And I'm going to tell you, I was jealous. I Speaker 2 (5:22) was absolutely jealous looking at these guys Speaker 4 (5:25) going, I can't. They have no idea the journey that they're about to embark on. And I would do anything to be one of these guys. So, you know, for you, sir, as you look at SWCC as an organization and kind of where it stands today, and not only the schoolhouse, but the center of excellence, how do you define their mission, the mission of the schoolhouse and what it's here to truly do? Speaker 2 (5:46) Yeah, no, I appreciate that. You know, you thanked us, but thanks for also being here and giving us an opportunity just to talk about not only the organization, but. the phenomenal people that are part of the Special Warfare Center and school. And just to note, you brought up Roxanne Merritt. So Roxanne reminds me not just how far any one commander or command team has brought the organization, but back in 1951, the Psychological Warfare Center and school was established in Fort Riley. It was brought here to Fort Bragg in 1952. And Roxanne reminds me that it was established at maybe the most inhospitable piece of terrain here on Fort Bragg. It was swampy, it was brackish, etc. And you go right outside this museum today and you can see the entire Swaik campus, right? And you talked about the 18 x-rays. Jeff may talk about, probably he was out running Ardennes this morning with a bunch of candidates in brown t-shirts and black shorts. This is a fantastic job. And what Roxanne Merritt does and continues to do for the organization making this museum, it's not just for visitors, but it's actually part and parcel of how we educate, indoctrinate, and keep the history alive for not only our new, you know, Special Forces candidates going through the pipeline, but also our veterans and graybeards that remain attached to the organization. So it's a great place to have this discussion. You know, I think the, in short, you know, we build the world's best special operators and we make operators better. You know, most fundamentally building the world's best special operators, that's our special forces qualification course, our psychological operations qualification course, and our civil affairs qualification course. And most of that, if not all of it, resides inside of our first special warfare training group. We also make special operators better. And so routinely throughout their career, they'll come back for professional military education at our non-commissioned officer academy, at our warrant officer institute, or one of the many advanced courses that we have, whether it's free fall in Yuma, Arizona, combat dive down in Key West, or range 37 with building snipers and breachers here on Fort Bragg. So we do a lot, but fundamentally, it's about producing the world's best special operators. Speaker 4 (8:11) The CSM, when you look at the role that SWCC plays in the development. Our leaders right and I say leaders in place of operators because we're gonna ask these guys You know these young folks we just talked about are gonna go through the Q course here over the next year year and a half You know two years if they're 18 deltas, but whatever they come out as whether it be civil affairs psyops or an 18 series They're gonna lead from day one And so when you look at the ability of SWCC to produce leaders, what are you looking for out of them when they leave here? Speaker 1 (8:48) So I think the things that we're looking for out of them to be leaders are the same things that we've always looked for. From the moment where they come into the organization, when we started training them and preparing them for any of the A &Ss that they go to, and once they pass through that gate, they have all the attributes, all of the skills necessary for us to shape to turn them into those leaders. And throughout the different qualification courses, what we do is we give them the tools, we give them the sets and the reps through training and everything else. So they can develop all those skills while learning their craft in either psychological operations, civil affairs, or special forces. So that by the time they get to that culmination exercise, they can demonstrate all of those things. And we can certify, put our stamp of approval on them and say that they're capable of leading inside of our force today. Speaker 4 (9:37) One of the important... parts of SWCC kind of writ large is the doctrine side of things, you know, being able to understand what is and defining the core tasks for our various organizations and then putting together that doctrine that then drives our, how we conduct operations. Chief, when you look, when you think about the development of the center of excellence, because that it's kind of been there, but I think when we've termed it center of excellence is newer, you know, What is the role of the center of excellence that's different from the schoolhouse? Yeah, I would Speaker 3 (10:14) say looking at we are the Army's special operations center of excellence, just like other centers of excellence, the maneuver center of excellence down in Fort Benning. You got aviation down in Fort Rucker. From the center aspect, we look at doctrine, training, leader development, and education. How do we... Communicate with the operational force to understand how the environment is changing, what tasks that we may have within courses, and compare that to the operating environment and either modify or change the way by which we are teaching. That can be including technology to create the baseline, but adjusting on the fly, if you will, how do we rapidly innovate. to be able to deliver that baseline capability for the operational force. That's a very, really good relationship that we established here recently of having a biannual conversation with the operational force, right? Take a look at what we're currently teaching. Some of those core tasks have been really good throughout the 20 years of GWAT, but the environment, our NDS prioritized adversaries. are different in the sense of we're competing with them on the battlefield. How do we reevaluate and reassess training to be able to re-baseline the quality of the product being delivered to the operational force? Speaker 4 (11:42) So we tend as coming out of special operations, we tend to at times put ourselves on a pedestal. You're laughing because you know that. And we do, right? And you can say, oh, You know, we can listen to the Ballad of the Green Beret and, you know, and it doesn't matter how long you've been out, you know, you still pump your chest up and go, you know, I'm three men, right? And the reality is, is we have to remain, especially from where you sit, extremely humble and extremely introspective to be able to start to understand what's actually working, what's not working. And we've seen... Every year it seems like oh well the Q course now does this or you know or the our selection now does this and we've seen 21 day 28 day 14, you know, it's like it's always changing how do you Keep the force and the SWCC organization humble so that we don't have people who come in and they go well We do it great. Yeah, look at us. We know we're soft. We do it great and continuously build a culture where innovating and looking at what we did with a critical eye to do it better. Speaker 2 (12:54) I'll say a couple of things. And Jeff, Gary, maybe you have some thoughts, but I'll add on to what Gary said about back earlier this year, probably the winter in January, February timeframe, Brigadier General Joe Wortham and I got together and we had this exact discussion and what that solving this problem of, you know, hey, we've got Lessons learned coming out of Eastern Europe. Now we have lessons learned coming out of the Middle East that are current and relevant. How do we thicken the communication, the relationship between the operational force and the center and school to make sure that, you know, the skills, knowledge and abilities that we're building into these Green Berets are still relevant once they arrive, you know, to the operational force. So now what SWCC and FirstSFC are doing is formally coming together twice a year and, you know, line by line reviewing the tasks for each phase of the qualification course and asking the question, is this still important? Is this still relevant? Is it more relevant than something else that we're not doing? And we've had two iterations of that. And that's really what's driving this kind of continuous improvement that you're talking about. It also helps us to stay current because we're learning things from global conflicts, you know, every single day. The other thing that I've observed is there were these unexpected intangible benefits that occurred when our two headquarters and staffs and commanders started to more frequently get together, not just twice a year, right? But all of the work that occurs between those two events when the generals come together to make sure that we're kind of pointed in the right direction. Speaker 1 (14:39) I think how do we remain humble? That's hard to do. Everyone goes out to Camp McCall and you walk underneath those pine trees and it's easy to get inundated with all of the things that you've done to get to this point. It can build you up a sense of confidence in your abilities and your capabilities and you go out to the operational force and you demonstrate all of those things. I think how we bring those cadre back, how we onboard them. how we take the skills and relevance that they bring from the operational force and combine that with onboarding them for any of the committees that they go to is how we remain relevant. It's how we remain humble. It's how we were able to continue to critically look at what we're doing and if we're doing it the right ways. So we're providing the operational force, the soldiers with the right skills and capabilities. Speaker 3 (15:32) I think, you know, as to your point, Jeff, just pulling off that a little bit is, Being humble, we may drift. And in the sense of when you went through SFAS or when I went through SFAS, the standard may have been one bar. And over time, you know, there's a perception where that standard may drift. Is it more difficult? Do you have to carry more weight? Do you have to move farther? Less work to rest ratio type of events. And so sometimes in that humility, we have to look back and say, what was the standard and re-baseline ourselves? And we can't just be so bravado and, you know, as you said, we're soft and we don't do anything wrong. We do need to look back and say, all right, well, we have a challenge. We need to be able to produce and deliver. And if we're not able to do that along the production line, where are the challenges? And we have to look at that. And so we've done that recently by not changing any of the standards, but re-baselining and looking at areas that we could improve. Speaker 4 (16:47) When standards is a conversation that I feel like is front and center eternally. We've been