Do you want to win some money? I bet you do. Do you care about civil affairs? Yes, I know for sure. Because you're listening to the show. Check out the call for issue papers. The new theme is campaigning and civil affairs. Some questions to answer include how can see it contribute to campaigning. Beyond policy, what changes can better operationalize and integrate C A's role in campaigning? How would CA even measure
progress in campaigning? And how would a full concept of the CA role in campaigning apply to conflict prevention, security cooperation, irregular or Gray zone warfare? So put that thinking cap on and submit your papers by Friday 15 September. For more details, visit civilaffairsasocial.org. Hi, this is Message for Jack. This is John. You're doing a great job of the show. It's really awesome. We appreciate everything you've been putting out to the
community. So some older episodes that I'd love for you to run back again. If you've got time one is the 95th CA Brigades Advanced Skills Detachment. That, of course, is John Mcellegate calling in to recommend some episodes that deserve a second listen. As you know, I use one week out of the month to bring in guest shows that I think John has a great idea to also introduce shows from the archives that complement today's topics. So let's get started. All right.
Welcome to the One CA Podcast. I am your host, Shawn Acosta, and today I have Joe Pistoric with me, who is the former NCIC of the 95th Advanced Skills Detachment. And today we're going to be talking a little bit about what 95th ASD offers for the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade and for the greater civil affairs community. So Joe, welcome to the to the One CA podcast. Really appreciate you coming on. Yeah. No thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
So Joe, before we get started, could you just kind of give give the audience A brief background on kind of your military experience and why you came over to CA what you you've done in
your civil affairs career? Sure. So join the Army in September of 2000 as a chemical operations specialist, I spent my first eight years in the 82nd Airborne Division here at Fort Bragg in, let's see when Civil Affairs Assessment Selection in 2011. I actually worked with Civil affairs in Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006. So you know glean some of the. Some of what they do and it's different. It was reserved civil affairs, but I was still very interesting to be able to you know, do the
things they were doing. So 2012 graduated the civil affairs qualification course was sent to the 91st as a team member and team Sergeant I, we deployed to East Africa and you know, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti and then.
Moved on to the as a cmark into IC or Operations Sergeant, Deployed a company to North and West Africa and served in the Special Operations Command forward in North and West Africa. And then in September of 17, I was asked to go up to the Brigade Headquarters and start the 95th Advanced Skills Detachment and that's where I worked for my last three years. And now it's on to retirement. So that's where I'm at now. Some some people may not be familiar with the Advanced Skills Detachment.
I mean, you were saying that it just stood up in 2017, so in late 2017. So really it's only been around for about 2 1/2 years. Maybe you could explain a little bit more about like how that came to be, how it was created and and some of the different things that it that it offers.
Yeah. So in 2017, I was looking to come out of the operation starting position and star Major Derek Riley asked me if I would come up to the brigade and start the Advanced Skills Detachment. The Advanced Skills Detachment, It's not a new thing, right? We didn't invent it. Colonel Burnett, the former Brigade commander, actually wrote it in to the, you know, five year plan, I want to say in 2000. 14 or 15, maybe 13 when he was up at Proponent and it takes a while to, you know, get started.
All the groups started as, you know, Sophalic Detachments and then you know, grew into advanced skills companies. So we had to start somewhere. So the Advanced Skills Detachment was I went up there in September of 2017, you know, from just an Idea. Inception to actually manning
and and beginning training. We actually started training in March of 2018, so we started with just basic committees of tactics, mobility, combatives and at the time we did a Civil Information Management slash Human Network analysis committee. And that's grown into what it is today, which we still have advanced tactics, mobility, combatives. We also manage the civilian trainer integrators up at Brigade for counter ID and
counter UAS. And there's now a civil reconnaissance, advanced Civil Reconnaissance Committee. So you know from what it started to what it is it we went through a lot. It was difficult, but I think well worth it. So you're talking about some of these committees that you began with. Has anything evolved from that? I know you, I've seen some stuff the training catalog offers you know, advanced tactics, some unconmissional warfare stuff and you guys are even getting into
some counter UAS as well. So is there there anything outside of like the typical shoot move, communicate civil affairs I guess skills that you guys offer? Sure. Yeah. So you know we started my, my goal was to really what the, the, the charter of the Advanced Skills detachment was to offer internally resourced and manned instructed training comparable
to a contracted training. So to save money a lot of the training have become you know it it's sort of infiltrated its way into the brigade and became the norm so. You know, we started with my, my goal was to start, you know, I didn't want to to move to failure too quickly.
So I thought if we start with the basics with shoot, move, communicate, medicate, that was the the way to success that has grown into aside from those things that are still running and still, you know, doing great things and evolving every day. Now we added the silver reconnaissance piece and I said we started with the H and a kind of committee the idea. Was to you know offer training that that generally was it's really one of our core tasks but it was you know difficult to get
a lot of people in the training. It was expensive. It didn't really work what we did we we ended up just facilitating training for a lot of the for social network analysis and critical infrastructure vulnerability assessment but that. Through into what is now civil reconnaissance which is you know it's it's growing rapidly. So one of you know commands on Major Swaggert's initiatives in in coming up to be operations before he was the brigade.
So our major was to figure out how to offer the civil reconnaissance training we have Civil reconnaissance is one of our core tasks right. But there was really there really wasn't any any formal training that you could.
You could participate in and come out of it and say okay I'm trained in civil reconnaissance it was just kind of well all these things we did Now I I know civil reconnaissance but adding in the you know army reconnaissance and the principles of reconnaissance and then adding in like you had talked about the the UAS and counter UAS as a reconnaissance. You know resource was very important to us and it's actually worked out really well. They're they're doing a lot of
training now with. Units from all over uses are you know, especially now with you know the way things are there's you know well over 80 students that sign up for these courses from civil affairs, SIOP, special forces groups, you know a WG from everywhere. So it's it's really grown into something pretty special. That's great to hear, especially with the the Silver Constance piece. I know being at Special Warfare Center in school like we teach.
A very and and I'll just be frank a very a rudimentary form
of civil reconnaissance. I was happy when the additional 10 weeks for soft civil affairs was implemented into the pathway They they were able to go into a little bit more in depth talking about the you know principles of reconnaissance and so on like you guys are like you were discussing and I think one of the biggest issues that we've had in CA is not having a. I guess an additional course, I'm hesitant to say advanced course, but an additional course for those currently serving that
come back on it and kind of refine or hone those additional skills like social network analysis etcetera. I think a lot of times we focus a lot on gathering the information, but then we don't focus so much on, on analyzing and then refining and modeling that information so that we can use it for targeting and other things later on and sharing that
with other communities. And that's one of the things we figured out was you know civil reconnaissance, when you say that and you tell people we do that, it really encompasses a lot of different things, right. It's so Army reconnaissance is they they have their principles and how they train. What we did was we got former 19D Cav scouts and said you know reconnaissance right now you also know civil affairs.
So let's let's meld these two things together and figure out the best way to do it And we've added. PAO does photography training during the course. The bargaining officers do non lethal targeting and targeting principles. The S2 comes and does intelligence integration. So it's all really it's it's really, you know all the plethora of things that go into when you add the civil in front of reconnaissance. It's it's a really good course and I think it's only going to
get better. I think you brought up another good point too with ASD and what it offers. And that was the like the being able to kind of steer away from the contracting portion. I know when I first came to CA and got to a unit 2012, like people were talking about how we need to do this training. Let's go to Griffin group for this. And in my head as a young NCL is like, why aren't why aren't we doing this? Like, I thought this was a whole purpose of having
noncommissioned officers. So, like, it's for me. I only have positive things to say about ASD and and what what you guys have done. I think that it's it's giving the onus back to the Nco's inside of our regiment which is great. You know as you see the guys that are get trained on this either at the unit level and they can spread that knowledge or the the instructors themselves once they're once they're done with their time at
ASD go back to the operational. You know all this knowledge is now institutionalized or becoming institutionalized in the brigade. So I think that's great and. That's that's really. As like you had talked about as a not a young NCO but a young civil affairs specialist, I I realized that and I'll say a quick story. I went to a company to do training for predeployment. It was basically and a requirement to deploy.
We went out and had a, you know, a guy from the Delta Force and he teach you basic pistol marksmanship and it really bothered me that. You know NC O's train and lead soldiers, what we do, I've invented my whole career and I didn't understand. There are certain things you know that that require some some outsourcing. But for the most part the things that we've been doing in civil
affairs could be done by NC O's. And the added benefit is that not only can NC O's do this on several fronts, it improves our force. So you have the NC O's that are being trained and highly specialized areas of of training and instruction. So as you said, they go back to the force that much better. We already have, you know, instructors that have gone back to units and they they train those units at a higher level than they've ever been trained.
And the other thing is I think people kind of misses when when you send a team or a company to arrange as an example and they see these, these instructors from their own unit that guys that they've known and worked with. And they see them teaching these, you know, very highly advanced tactics and and weapons training and different things that they do. And they're so impressed by it. And what that does is it empowers those NCO's to also realize that hey, I can do that stuff too.
I can, I can actually do what I'm supposed to do. And it gives them confidence and instills that, that that idea that. You know, you don't have to to figure out who you have to pay to be trained. For the most part you can do it internally and that's that's really an added benefit of the advanced skills attachment A.
100% agree. And I think that's that's key to what you're saying, like instilling that confidence not only in themselves, but you know, when the other guys in that unit look around, they're like, okay, yeah, we've got some guys in here that are knowledgeable. They know what they're talking about. And I think this continues to professionalize the regiment.
Absolutely. And those guys, they want to, after they attend ASD training, I get, oh, I did get emails constantly, three or four a week of guys saying, hey, how can I come to the ASD and be an instructor. I was, you know, I have this experience and I want to do this and so many that we actually turn people away and say, hey, you know, we have to actually do packets and have a select, which is not how it started, right. So that's really good.
It shows you that you know, people want to train and people are interested in taking ownership of the training for their team. So it's it's really good. I'm sure Battalion Csm's love that, all their guys trying to come up to the ASD. Yeah, there's a. There's a point of contention at you know, you got on the one hand, they're like, why do you need the ASD to train you? You should be doing this yourself, which?
Is the goal right? It's not train the trainer in the sense of certifying guys to train, but it is giving them the tools to be better trainers and better NCO's and officers. So yeah, you know, like anything, all the summer ages, they're not looking to go with their best people to leave. So it's it can be tough, but we've had pretty good support
over the years. So you guys not only train 95th, but I saw I think it was a few months back where you guys are trained at 412th CA Battalion as well, which is a part of KPOC. Was that a, was that coordinated or was that by chance or how did that, how did that training event work out? Yeah. So from the beginning of the the Advanced Skills Detachment, what we found very quickly was that.
The brigade was not the only unit that were looking for, you know, this sort of training and we forget sometimes being in special operations that not a lot of units just have all this money to throw around to, to pay for, you know, $25,000 for some some weapons training for three days.
So. We started out, you know, very quickly training units from all over the United States, actually getting, you know, requests to. You know send our guys down to you know, Savannah, we sent our guys to San Antonio, we sent our guys to Fort Sam Houston. You know our instructors have gone all over the place and part of that you know that the networking and marketing that you have to do with the new unit of the the you know the 83rd was an I I saw it as very important
to offer this training. And to be successful, the ASD would have to market itself. We would have to advertise and market and prove that it was a viable, a real option to be comparable to contracted training so that commanders and and everyone else would know that this is a legitimate, you know programs of instruction that they could use to actually validate teams. The 412 CA battalion which we've trained with twice now that came out of.
Of the brigades validation exercise, the operation Stockham. So what had happened as the 4/12 was participating in Stockham once they learned that the advanced skills attachment, the tactics instructors were going to be there. They you know asked if you know they could they could participate in a range and we thought it was very important to to help them and show their commander and their their NCO's that. What the 95th is offering in terms of a SD and training.
So yeah, they did go down there. They got advanced skills or advanced tactics training and combat management, marksmanship system and low visibility training with concealed pistol training and a lot of training that they don't get to get very often. And what was really good about it is, you know, aside from the glowing. You know the glowing review of of the training and how how well it went and how much they liked it.
We actually had tangible scoring data to show their commander how they improved from day one when they did these marksmanship tables to the last day when they actually it was a 99% improvement. So only one one of their members didn't get worse but didn't improve markedly so.
You know, being able to show a commander a tangible, you know, the training improvement in a in a percentage, they were very impressed by that and they we've trained with them since and I've planned to train with them again. This is very good. That's great to hear because I know recently there's been a lot of talk about integrating active duty and KPOC and I think it's important that we continue to kind of integrate. Yeah, and it helps with
relationships, right? I absolutely we've reached out. So social network analysis training are suet training that we do the Unconventional Warfare exponential training. We've actually, I invite guys from 3rd and 7th and 10th and 5th group by SIOP guys, guys from the 83rd. So we try to get all these units and it's on a few levels to show that you know the cooperation is very important to me. I always wanted to. I believe we're one team.
I know people say it and they don't always, you know, practice what they preach. But I feel like it's very important to to, you know, help out these other units and especially when you get to like the 83rd is a good example. They got, you know, with Forcecom and you know, being under the MP brigade, they're the same people we are, right. So I thought it was very important to offer them some of these trains that they didn't have to pay for.
That they could get these skills and come back and you know again, hopefully, you know, spread to the word about the ASD and and and how how good the training was. So you guys, I mean we're talking about these, you know the relationships with the 83rd and then I used to kpoch, but you guys have also been able to establish some relationships
outside of that. I know from your Instagram page there's been a, it looks like you guys have developed a pretty close relationship with the Army and Worksmanship Unit. So how did that come to being? What are you? I'm assuming, probably rightfully so, that it has a lot to do with, you know, pistol and long gun stuff, but how does
that relationship work out? Yeah, so the another thing we did which was on a couple, on a couple of different levels was recruiting was something that I also kind of took hold of and as a recruiting lead for the brigade to try to liaise between the the SORB and. You know, civil affairs recruiting and make sure the brigade had a had a voice in recruiting. So I thought sending our our instructors, our tactics instructors to in combat it, we send all our guys to different things.
But the tactics instructors specifically, I thought sending them to national shooting championships and different events would help with recruiting. It would help with our guys, our instructors being.
You know, developing and improving their proficiency and also it's a good incentive and it's good to say hey the, you know a SD tactics instructor was second in the use of stock pistol championship and you know the our two instructors have, you know, developed these relationships with the AM U through these, you know through these events and what came of it was the AM U Sergeant major. Actually contacted me to tell me how impressed he was with our with our tactics instructors
during the event. And you know our our instructors really wanted to go over there and see that's that's who you go to when you talk about marksmanship and you know the the different things that they're doing, the innovative things they're doing with marksmanship. So they brought our our instructors over and they toured their facility and gave them a lot of ideas, things that we use
today. We developed a zero target system that one of our instructors was, you know, had been working on for a while and they actually adopted it and took it. And so all those things were very, very good for that relationship as well as the Army Remarksmanship Units Commission is. So for us and so affairs, recruiting is very important. So it helped on a lot of different levels and that relationship has only improved and I'm sure we'll continue for
for a very long time. That's a credit to the instructors and you know the those those instructors that went down there and and did all those things. The tactics instructors took second in the You Suck Pistol Championship. Yeah. So one of our tactics instructors was second place in the pistol and basic pistol championship are two of our two other instructors. Our tactics instructors actually
went to the. The President's 100, The annual President's 100, and up near Lake Erie, they were in the top 30% for the nation in rifle and then a little higher in pistol, but still pretty good. And one of our instructors actually was awarded the US Army Excellence in Competition badge for pistol marksmanship, and I didn't know that badge existed.
Right. So until he showed me this badge I had, I've never heard of it. I didn't know what it was and it's, it's permanent orders and it's an actual award that he gets to wear. And so that's really and that's their work. They work on their own time. They're very, very, very serious about, you know, being in front of in the level that they're at which I kind of push them to. And they, you know, are all of a sudden they're in front of
entire units and. Looking at them and you know hoping that they're the experts that they've heard they are so they take it very seriously and they they train a lot and you know civil affairs soldiers going to the Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat or Sophalic is be daunting right. Do you have all SF guys that are there and it's it's a requirement for them and they don't all pass because it's very difficult course so. Our guys are very serious.
They really want to they really want to improve themselves and it's it's really a testament to all of their all of their character and their hard work because it's yeah, they they all these instructors really they they amazed me every day that we were up there and you know being in the Detachment like that is very unique in that it's you have to be self motivated. I can't, you know, as a overseeing as the NCIC or the Detachment Sergeant, I can't. I can't be available at every
training event. There's training going on constantly, every day, every week. So those guys, you know, they, they're not the type of soldiers that sit around and wait for someone to tell them to do something. They go out and do it. And a lot of times I get a lot of credit for all these great things they do. But that's them.
They're going out and they're they're contacting people and starting and developing these relationships and you know, like I said, coming back with badges I've never heard of. And so it's really. It's. It's pretty pretty humbling to see these, these, these instructors do what they do. Yeah, I just wanted to confirm about the second place in the pistol so I could talk crap to a bunch of BB. I have his buddy. Staff Sergeant Promotable court is He was actually the first one
of the first people in the ASD. He reenlisted. So. He came to the ASD and. He's he basically him and some first class words started that committee where they started that was the first thing we did And yeah the things that they do are he he participates in contests all the time. He's a nationally ranked shooter and yeah he's he's the one that developed that that proprietary 0 target and you know yeah he's he's pretty good. It's pretty good with a pistol and a rifle but especially a
pistol. Oh, that's great to hear. That was crazy because we have so much talent inside of inside of the brigade that it's just sitting there. And that's one thing I'm like over the past six months since the Civil Affairs Association started the, you know, me a journal. And I've become involved in that. Like the the stuff that's coming out of the woodworks now, like all this talent that's just been sitting there basically. And once they have an outlet to
do it, it's like. Really all you've got to do is give them an end state, like this is what we're looking for. And they go, you know, we just turned our the You Know Me Journal's Instagram page over to a young staff Sergeant and I was running it terribly, to be honest, for about a month. I think we had like 12 followers or something ridiculous.
I don't know. Anyways, earlier this week, you know, he's taking that from the 12 followers we had and surpassed, you know, the Brigade followers now. And you know me, a journalist and those followers on on Instagram for for civil affairs and he's done that all on his
own, you know? Well, I find, you know, yeah, you it's really and you're a good example of that all this all these things that we've been doing and if you think about it, you would have never heard any of these things when I first came to civil Affairs in 2012. Before that you certainly would not have heard any of these things. But these are all in my opinion or we you give people.
The ability to innovate and we talk about it, right, it's on our, it's on the it's on our evaluation for is it to for innovation. But you know do people really, truly have the ability to to do those things And I found that once you give them that opportunity, they will run with it. And maybe it's not always successful, but I found that, you know, I, I, I bring instructors into the ASD after they're selected. And I go over there initial counseling and I basically tell
them this is yours. Whatever you choose to do with this, I'm oversight, but this is yours. So I want them to take ownership of it and I want them to take it where I know it can go. And they really, I find once you give younger NCO's in senior NCO's that that kind of freedom, they can do amazing things and. Like I said, the ASD, I get a lot of credit because I founded it and I started it. But these instructors have done all of this work.
All these things are are a result of theirs, their blood, sweat and tears, and it's pretty amazing. So you're talking about the, you know, bringing these instructors up and you alluded to it a little bit earlier. What's the process? So if there's a guy or gal sitting somewhere in the brigade that wants to. Come up to be an instructor. Who do they? Who do they contact now, and what do they need to do in order
to try to get up there? So they usually will send out things and we talk about it all the time. We have a quarterly newsletter we send out, we have a portal page that's that's pretty user friendly and then we have the. The. What we call soft cop, which is the orientation program for the brigade that we do and what we do is and we also brief the classes, the C8, the graduating
CAQC classes. So what we do is we tell people that you know if you're looking to do something and your your time obviously has to kind of match up to just contact us. And I usually ask people to send me their ERB and some of their experience and why they want to be an instructor in the the advanced skills attachment. So it's the process is simply just send me an e-mail, I'll ask for ERB if they didn't send it
and then. Once you know you review their their file you know we'll we'll bring them in and do an interview. And the final the final decision the the ASD instructor positions as well as my position, those are command selected positions. So the command * major actually selects people and and approves them going to the ASD but the operation * major at the brigade is also involved so it's. You know, it's a it's a good process.
Now it's hard to you know, in the beginning saying that hey, we're going to interview you and you're going to interview with the command * major and people like. What is this thing? But yeah, now it's it's much, you know it's established and it's it's a real thing and. So one of the things that you just you mentioned and I briefly heard about it, but I don't know if anybody else has.
So maybe have you described that a little bit you talked about soft copy orientation program at the brigade, what what exactly is that? So I've got one of the first things I did when I when I started the ASD concurrently, you know, setting up the committee's, you know, getting the instructors trained and you know, developing the programs of instruction we were going to use. One of the first things I started doing outside of that
was developing the A program. One of the things that I always thought was the brigade did not do well. Was. Bringing people into the brigade, right, an orientation program or they, you would call it indoctrination. I didn't like the idea of a green platoon or anything like that, and I didn't want it to be any kind of selection process. These people have already been selected. So I thought it was very important and something that I thought the brigade was missing.
So I started to develop this program and think about how. I would want it to look if I were I think back to when I came to the brigade which was much different. But so I developed this program and it's the soft CA orientation program which is soft cop. And what it is, is at this point with within 60 days of of reporting to the brigade and in the future hopefully before you even report to the brigade.
So while you're sitting there, you know as you're waiting to report they would actually they can. Come to soft cop and and go through soft cop and it will be a requirement for all new members of brigade and we run the pilot course last year, late last year and it went great, got all the feedback. So the next course I believe will be in after it was supposed to be after this graduating course but it'll probably be after the next one with everything COVID and everything going on.
Basically what it is, is the introduction to the brigade you get introduction briefings by. The the language lab, you get all the different staff sections and what they do. You get some training, development, the collective and individual training from the S37.
The commands are major in the Colonel address the course, we go over recruiting, obviously the ASD, the S3X things that we thought people don't know what they are and you don't want people sitting down in a battalion on a team not knowing the resources they have at hand up at the brigade because. As you know, and I know when we came to the brigade, I didn't have in the battalion, I didn't have much interaction with the
brigade headquarters at all. I didn't think, I mean, the brigade didn't provide us anything that I knew of. So the brigade, the way it's set up now with a lot of good people, you know, really transform that brigade into what it is, is, you know, supporting these battalions. So you want to make sure everybody comes and knows these things and gets a good baseline. Now the same with civil reconnaissance. You know the the, the key to these training is to get everybody baseline trained.
The advanced stuff comes later. So give everyone that baseline the knowledge of you know. A good example is I was in, I grew up in the 91st. I didn't know what any other battalion did aside from where they were. I didn't know. I didn't know much about anyone else because you're coming in your own world. So we want. People to have a more broad picture of a better picture of what the brigade does and what these other battalions do and what we offer.
So they go through, it's two weeks of training and they'll get advanced tactics introduction. They'll get licensed on M Razor and the Hilux or the nonstandard vehicle inventory. They'll go through all the staff briefings like I talked about, and they'll also do a little bit in processing things that we can take care of and the main goal. Aside from the baseline of training is to relieve the
burden of some of the companies. So these these people come to the brigade and they do advanced marksmanship. They kind of get some of the stuff out of the way. We also do the ACFT, so you know they get that, they get all those things that otherwise companies would have to scramble and kind of try to schedule which kind of gets in the way of their own training plan, so. Who was successful?
The first, the pilot iteration of it and and I'm sure the next, the next course will be even better and just continue to get better. So you mentioned recruiting. I did want to talk to you a little bit about that because I know ASD is involved in that. You're mentioning Sword and you guys have a pretty robust Instagram page. I think you. Guys are over 2000 right now.
Followers on there. And if it's been anything like the you know Mia journal has taken off to we there are people from all over that are are you know army just other MO s's that'll message us and be like how do I become CA you know what do I got to do to be soft CA and we can put them in contact with so we're recruiters or put them in contact with mentors which is something we've been doing find somebody with their prior MOS and link them in. So maybe you can help talk a
little bit about that what you guys been doing with recruiting and then maybe where they can go find the. The Instagram page for 95th ASD. It's 95th under score ASD that's our ASD Instagram page And one of the things I did when I went up to Brigade and you know at the same time of you know standing up ASD and developing that.
I also we realized there was there's a gap, right there's a gap in in recruiting and you can see it if you know if you were to look three years ago at some of the you know whether it's on Facebook or Instagram or. The different pages, even the the trifolds that you would see people hand out and those things did not represent soft civil affairs. And with recruiting you, you want to get people to want to be
civil affairs, right? And from my perspective, I didn't think any of the things that the sword were were producing were things that would make me say, oh, I want to be civil if I didn't know anything about it. And that wasn't the fault of the sword. That was the brigade not having a hand in the recruiting, right. The sword was only going to put out what they have. So the sword puts out pictures that is actually not a civil
affairs person. You know, those the famous pictures of a guy or a girl just sitting down eating with children or you know, handing somebody a soccer ball or digging a well or, you know all those kinds of things that. Was kind of a joke about civil affairs and not really showing the other side of civil affairs and all the different things that we do and what what we offer. So aside from you know just linking up with the sword, I actually established relationships with all sort of
recruiters. I traveled all over the world to the sea sword recruiters and and I briefed every sword recruiter and every sword station commander on. You know Civil Affairs and and the the real picture of what civil affairs does and is and the best way for them to explain. A lot of places don't have civil Affairs sword. Recruiters.
So one of the things that came out of that was some disappointment in in our social media footprint and I actually have to credit some first class deal one our senior tactics instructor and he. Decided hey, we're doing all this cool training like all the things that we do that we have video and pictures and those are the things people want to see. So he went to the PAO and started the the Instagram page, the ASD Instagram page and very quickly was over 2500 followers.
He's getting recruiting like requests for information from you know just. People that are interested in civil affairs and want to know what it is, you know, getting contacted by use of stock and first special forces command and it's really grown into something, you know, pretty big and originally just started because he said. I want, I want to put out these these pictures. I want people to see what we're actually doing and it turned into something that's actually turned into.
A. A valuable. Recruiting tool and you know so that's it's. You know I think it's it's again a testament to that if you give them the freedom and they have the opportunity to to you know look at you know how can I improve the branch and how can I, how can I make these things better. And they get to actually implement the things that they they innovate and think of it's pretty amazing.
So again 95th under score ASD is the Instagram page and encourage everyone to go and at the very least see what the ASD is doing and see if you know these are. You know, these are guys that work very hard and pretty special. Joe, I just want to say thanks for coming on in 95th A SD in general what you have done and what what all the other instructions done has been incredible over the last couple
years. I feel good about what we're doing as a branch, you know the way that we are moving forward and I think that 95th A SD has has had a huge role in that and improving you know. I guess our not our own perceptions, but just and not even improving, really just getting the word out about what it is that we do and what we offer. And that's I think that's helped immensely with with soft CA recruiting.
And I and I honestly think that it's helped the other tribes and 1st SFC understand what it is that we bring to the table. Like you're saying, it's not soccer balls and wells, there's so much more. It goes back to the old, you know, leave, leave everything better than the way you found it. That's. I was taught. That at A. Young age as a young soldier. And it's once you get the opportunity to actually do it and you can look back, and I can
now, right. I'm retiring and I look back at what we did and it's pretty amazing right, that you know me a journal, the 1C, a stuff that the advanced skills detachment, the silver reconnaissance, all of these things. You know. People can take for granted while you're in it, right? You're just doing a job and you're doing the best you can and you're trying to do all these things, but you look back. And people are changing the branch, people are changing the army, people are changing civil
affairs. And it's it's really amazing. You get to look back and see that you did something that I really believe all these instructors. And I tell them, you know when when people would come to the ASD to be an instructor, I would say you have the chance to change this brigade, to make this brigade everything you've complained about for. You know, who knows how long you actually have the chance to change it to to affect change in a real way. And I'm in it and looking back,
it's pretty amazing. And seeing all the things that have just happened in the last couple years, it's, I mean it's it's big and I hope people realize all the things that that people are doing and it's really a testament to to the quality of people that are coming into soft civil affairs.
And it's. Yeah, it's it's pretty cool to see and I'll be very interested to come you know if I come back and you know five years and just see I, I I'm can't imagine what it'll look like if it continues on this trajectory. So a. 100% agree. And you know, thank you for all the the hard work that you put into the branch. I don't think you realize what an impact you've made and I hope that you enjoy retirement down in Florida. And soaking up some some rays, maybe getting on a boat, fishing
a little bit. And I won't be far from you still hit me up if you ever want to get out on a boat and go fishing sometime. So thanks again man. I really appreciate you coming on the One CA podcast and for all you've done for the branch. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for listening. If you get a chance, please like and subscribe and rate the show on your favorite podcast platform.
Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an episode, e-mail us at capodcasting@gmail.com. I'll have the e-mail and CA association website in the show notes. And now most importantly to those currently out in the field working with a partner nation's people or leadership to forward US relations. Thank you all for what you're doing. This is Jack, your host. Stay tuned for more great episodes, one CA podcast.