Major Spencer Bates sits down with Colonel Ethan Diven, the US Army Command and General Staff College Commandant, and former Commander of Operations Group at the NationalTraining Center, to explore the evolving challenges facing the operational force. From multi-domain competition to professional military education reform, COL Diven draws on a career spanning NTC, Afghanistan, Operation Octave Quartz,and Operation Allies Refuge to deliver hard-won lessons on planning, leadership, and the responsibility of field-grade officers.
Colonel Diven's key take-aways?
1. Ruthlessly protect your time to think while in PME — it is the point.
2. Leadership is always required in an operational planning team, from any position.
3. Army University exists to accelerate observations from the contemporary environment and reimagine how education is delivered — with war fighting always at the core.
Timestamps
0:50 — Introduction & Guest Background
2:13 — Current Challenges Facing the Operational Force
6:11 — Building Better Divisions: Evolving from Brigade-Centric to Division-Level War Fighting
9:19 — Multi-Domain Operations: NTC Initiatives & Incorporating MDO Challenges
12:16 — Building Jointness: Initiatives Across the Services
14:02 — Army University's Role in Developing Future Leaders
16:25 — What the Force Expects from Field Grade Graduates
19:40 — Building the Operational Artist: The Transformative Experience of PME
21:22 — Humility, Responsibility & Self-Awareness as a Leader
23:16 — Value-Added from Day One: What Graduates Must BeUpon Returning to the Force
25:43 — How PME Translates to Real-World Campaigning
26:47 — Operation Octave Courts: Repositioning fromSomalia Under Constraints
30:32 — Bridging Strategy to Execution: Critical Transitions in Joint Operations
32:21 — Operation Allies Refuge: Planning in a Contested & Rapidly Evolving Environment
35:48 — Planning Across Distributed Teams: Managing Time, Space & Coordination
37:39 — The Power of Assumptions in Operational Planning
39:53 — Key Takeaways & Closing Thoughts
