Afghanistan veteran and author Ethan Brown shares his role with a think tank to address why only 23% of youth are eligible for the military on this week’s Tango Alpha Lima podcast.
Air Force veteran and author Ethan Brown is this week’s special guest on The American Legion Tango Alpha Lima podcast.
Brown served as a Special Warfare TACP (Tactical Air Control Party) from 2009-2020, having multiple combat deployments during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and is now the Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC). Under the CSPC, Brown brings bipartisan veteran issues to the forefront of policy makers for legislative support. An issue of concern is military recruitment.
“It’s a complex issue,” Brown said, adding that with only 23% of youth eligible for service, it comes down to an obesity, health and wellness epidemic, and the American people’s perception of the military. “There are no simple answers to a lot of questions about this issue. Bottom line, there’s a lot going on and there’s a lot we have to address to resolve this issue.”
Brown has seen the Department of Defense (DoD) make great improvements with mental health in the military, but said more can be done for recruiting.
“You may have an 18-year-old who grew up learning how to code on phones and they present on the autism scale, that’s probably somebody’s talent I can maximize putting them in a cyberwarfare capacity because of their ability to hyperfocus, compartmentalize,” Brown said. “The DoD recruiting process does not see this dynamic. They are still stuck in, ‘I want the big burly brawny dudes who can go rucking up a mountain.’ We need those people with different talents who may present a little bit differently than what we’re accustomed to seeing.”
How else can recruitment efforts improve? Copy the Marines.
“The Marines put their recruiters up on a pedestal,” said Brown, who added that if his command chief told him he was moving to a recruiting position, “I would have fought tooth and nail because the Air Force did not put that prestige on recruiting. The remainder of the DoD would be well-served to replicate the Marines model while also incorporating other components like the Army has the Future Soldier Preparatory Course.”
Then there’s how the American people perceive the military. Brown said some think the military is being radicalized or they watched a 20-year war end with “waves of the Taliban rolling into Kabul … now go incentivize that 18-year-old to go sign up for service. That’s a tough ask.”
But Brown leaves Alphas with a challenge to address the recruiting crisis. “One of the biggest challenges is overcoming the broken veteran stigma, especially those of us who deployed and went to combat, had injuries and the long-term effects. It is on us to continue to serve as ambassadors for the military to promote the value of service, to promote the individual role that citizens have in securing democracy in which we live, and national service is a huge part of that.
“So never stop being an ambassador for the great thing that we did serving this country.”
Brown is the author of “Visual Friendlies, Tally Target: How Close Air Support in the War on Terror Changed the Way America Made War.” His inspiration for the three-part book series was to tell unknown stories about JTACs (Joint Terminal Attack Controller) and TACPs during the wars and to dispel misconceptions that they were destroying villages, creating destruction. It’s not what you see in the Call of Duty game or Hollywood films, Brown said.
“All of that is errant and set all of these public misconceptions about close air support. The reality is the vetting process and the decision making that we needed to make with every single airstrike was so comprehensive and nuanced and driven by rules of engagement.”
His books also explain the evolution of warfare in 20 years with precise air strikes.
“The guys who invaded Afghanistan in ‘01 were using paper Russian maps that had been surveyed in the 1920s. By the end of the war, we had these little smartphones clipped to our chest carriers and could stream aircraft video in high resolution and tell the aircraft, ‘Hey, on the third floor of that building, second window from the right on the southwest corner, see the guy on the right? That’s the target.’ That’s the level of precision we were able to achieve after 20 years of development. It’s necessary for people to understand how that evolution occurred.”
Podcast hosts Stacy Pearsall and Joe Worley also discuss:
- Random ways people got out of a deployment, and their social media handles that will have you laughing.
- How in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, an American Legion post in South Carolina made Buddy Checks on all of its members.
Check out this week’s episode, which is among more than 280 Tango Alpha Lima podcasts available in both audio and video formats here. You can also download episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play or other major podcast-hosting sites. The video version is available at the Legion’s YouTube channel.
- Tango Alpha Lima