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Major General Joseph Hilbert · Five Questions for a General

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:03
  Speaker B: You're listening to Five Questions for a General, a production of the modern Morris Institute at West point. I am Dr. Charles Feint, the team lead for this podcast series which features interviews of senior military leaders conducted by specially selected and trained West Point cadet hosts. These exchanges produce timely, relevant and inspirational insights for professional development of leaders at all levels.
• 0:24
  Speaker C: Welcome back to another episode of the Five Questions for a General Podcast. I'm your host, Cadet Zach Olson. And Today's guest is Major General Joseph Hilbert, Commanding General of the 11th Airborne Division. General, welcome to the show.
• 0:35
  Speaker A: Thanks, Zach.
• 0:35
  Speaker C: The 11th Airborne Division, which you now command, was activated and deactivated many times over the years. Most recently, it was activated on D Day, June 6, 2022 in Alaska. How would you describe the division's current role in America's war fighting responsibilities?
• 0:48
  Speaker A: Incredibly exciting. You can look at us in three venues. Number one, we're globally deployable. Number two, we're assigned to the Indo Pacific and we're the Army's Arctic experts. And so that's a pretty exciting and diverse portfolio if you think about it. But it works out extremely well. We're the Army's newest division. We've got a unique capability in that or we are trained to fight in extreme cold weather, high latitude environments. And so we are the Army's only Arctic division. But we can't rest on that and say, well, we only do Windows and we only do the Arctic and so therefore we can't go anywhere else. So that's what puts us in the global force management pool and the ability to deploy worldwide and then to be in the Indo Pacific in the priority theater like that is the absolutely incredible for us. We get to participate in pathways with our allies and partners across across the Pacific. We're in a pretty dynamic environment where our challenges are very active and we get to be a part of the response to that activity. And then we get to, as the Army's Arctic and high altitude or high latitude force, we get to stay connected with our Arctic allies across the globe. So it's a great time to be in the Levitt Airborne Division.
• 1:52
  Speaker C: Before becoming a general, you were a field artillery officer, nicknamed the King of Battle. Artillery seems to have a similarly noble role in the war in Ukraine. With the advent of AI and the ascendancy of drone warfare, what role do you believe tube and rocket artillery will have in the future of ground combat?
• 2:05
  Speaker A: If you look at what's happening in Ukraine and you look at what's happening elsewhere, there's absolutely still a role for indirect fires and Support of maneuver forces. Right now, that's with tube artillery and in some cases rocket artillery. That. We often think of that as a little bit more at the division level. But that responsibility, that role is not going away. The ability to support maneuver, we've been doing it since the catapult and the trebuchet. And candidly, nothing gets me more excited than support and maneuver forces and enabling their success through indirect direct fires. So I don't think that role goes away. I think what Ukraine has shown us is the importance of that role and the importance of synchronizing fires and maneuver to that end.
• 2:44
  Speaker C: Sir, what does it look like to lead a division through its infancy, being started so recently? What is the unique challenges that come along with that?
• 2:53
  Speaker A: It's super exciting. But you're right, there's a lot of challenges. On the one hand, you get to create the culture, the legacy of the organization. You kind of get to start almost from zero. Now, we didn't start from zero because we've got the legacy of the 11th Airborne Division from the 40s. We've got the legacy of the Airborne Division as the pioneers for air assault. And so all that innovation and all that culture and energy that's behind there, you know, you see it in our headquarters as you see the different acknowledgments of our history in there. And what I hope that drives is our soldiers and our leaders in the division to realize you've got a. You come from a legacy and a history of innovation and being unique and so captivating that inside the division and being able to. To use that to our advantage. That's incredibly exciting that there's challenges associated with it as well, though, because you've got to build systems that sustain the division. What I would tell you is, is my impression of the division. I often say we're two years old and we're going on 40. In the two years that the division's been created under originally Major General Brian Eifler and Sergeant Major Vern Daly, they built a culture that is just great. When you look around, people feel like this division, this division's clearly lasted for 40, 50, 60 years. The reality is it's two years old. And so there's systems and processes that we still need to build as a division. And so being in on the ground floor of helping build out those processes and build out those systems, you know, it's both challenging and it's a lot of hard work, but it's rewarding on the end because you get to do that in an environment where you get to think a little bit differently and say, okay, well, how do we want. How do we want to operate that's different than maybe other divisions? So it's a good time.
• 4:28
  Speaker C: That sounds like a great opportunity. And you really get to build something with it.
• 4:32
  Speaker A: Right.
• 4:32
  Speaker C: Very unique. So you previously served as the Director of Force Development in the Army's G8. What kind of force structure do you believe is necessary to address the challenges of the modern battlefield? Like in Ukraine and Israel, when we.
• 4:42
  Speaker A: Look at, you know, the director of Force development right there, we're looking at equipping and modernizing the army. And generally down in the G3 shop is where you're going to find the director of Force Management, where we're going to build the structure. And we put the two of those together to build the army that we got. So what do we look like? Well, I think if you look at the way that we've built the army structure over the next several years, you see. You see kind of the answer to that question. Number one, we know that land power is going to remain relevant. It'll always remain relevant as a domain. In order to be successful with land power, you're going to need formations that can maneuver, that can close with and destroy the enemy. So you're going to still need maneuver formations, but they're going to. But they potentially could look a little bit different. How much can you augment with other things, whether it's robots or AI or what have you? But you're going to need a soldier on the ground, and you're going to need a soldier to control terrain. And then you're going to need supporting structures to enable that soldier. In some cases, you're going to see growth of cyber forces and other domains that we might not have supported before, but it's still going to be in support of that maneuver element. And then you're going to see the traditional forces that we've had in the past as well. You mentioned my own background as an artilleryman. You're still going to have fire support structures and fire support systems that are going to enable those maneuver forces. You're going to have aviation forces that are going to enable us to move at speed and scale with them. So do you see large structural changes as a result of Ukraine and as a result of lessons that we learned from Israel? I don't think you see large structural changes. What you see is changes in maybe new ways to think about employing that structure. Joe Rainey often makes the comment, and we've all said he ought to we ought to move into a world where first contact is not made with a human, but a robot. And then how do we exploit that? Those are kind of some of the things that you could change. See, changes is how do we incorporate those new technologies and those new capabilities into formations?
• 6:23
  Speaker C: So having decades of command and staff experience, how do you now see the relationship between how fast the army should be changing? Maybe in terms of force structure, but also in terms of maybe acquisitions or with different units?
• 6:35
  Speaker A: We don't have time to wait. The world that we're in is. Is volatile, and the. The environment there that we're in is changing. Technologies are emerging quickly, they're developing quickly. And so we've got to be able to respond quickly and integrate, you know, respond to changes in the environment, but also integrate some of those technologies, some of the other things, into the formation and into the force. So you asked the question, how do. How rapidly do we change? Or we've got to move quickly, I guess is the best way to put it.
• 7:04
  Speaker C: Awesome. Yeah. We've recently had an ethics conference at West Point for the past couple days. I'm interested. What kind of ethical questions do you deal with as a commanding general? What kind of questions are you dealing with?
• 7:14
  Speaker A: So say I deal with the same ethical questions that I've dealt with as a commander throughout my career, but they're maybe at a different scale.
• 7:21
  Speaker C: Right.
• 7:21
  Speaker A: So how do you appropriately handle government resources? Right. Be a good steward of the government resources. You've got that's no different for the lieutenant. That's got a formation that they've got to maintain. It's just a different echelon and a different size. So you deal with those questions. How do you, as a public servant, act in a way that is honoring to public service? Right. Those are ethical decisions that you deal with, again, at a different scope and scale. How do you act in a way that ethically represents your service, you know, as a member of a joint team, as a member of the army team, but also as a member of the joint team. And how do you act with honor? Ethical decisions, those happen on a daily basis. Right. Serve with honor. They just happen for, you know, the general officer level. It's just the echelons a little bit different. But they. But I don't. I don't think that they're that drastically different than what I experienced as a battalion commander, battery commander, platoon leader. They're just a little bit broader.
• 8:09
  Speaker C: Are you trying to instill the same morals, army values, you would say, in your current brigade commanders? As you were maybe as a lieutenant in your soldiers or how does. How does that change with the scale?
• 8:19
  Speaker A: I don't know that it changes with the scale. I mean, these are our army values, right? And we should act in accordance with the army values. So I'm absolutely trying to make sure that at their level, they're instilling them the right way. It's the same values that the second lieutenant has, that the colonel's got, that the general's got. They're our army values. And so how do you help the formation as a whole make decisions in accordance with those values? Often we think of that in terms of the military justice side of what we do as a commander, you know, when I have to make a decision about a letter of reprimand or some action in the legal realm, under what base of the army values am I making that decision? It informs our behavior and everything else as well. Right? From getting up in the morning and doing PT and doing it to standard and doing it with your formation, how do you act in accordance with the army values there? How do you act in accordance values with the armies when you're doing maintenance on your vehicle and your equipment? How do you act in accordance with the army values when you're conducting training? How do you act in accordance with values when you're. When you're deployed? How do you act in accordance with your values when you're on tdy? I think it should just kind of permeate who you are and what you do so that there's no question if somebody wants to know what the army values are, they should look and see what you're doing and say that those are the army values. How this person's behaving.
• 9:34
  Speaker C: So your official command biography shows that you held primary leadership positions from platoon leader to division commander. What actions, meetings, and relationships do you deliberately create upon taking a new leadership position?
• 9:45
  Speaker A: So the first thing that I've done pretty much as far back as I can remember, engage with the person I'm replacing. The only difference was maybe my first job as a fire direction officer, there hadn't been a fire direction officer there. So. But every time after that, I'm going to engage with the person that I'm replacing and get a sense of their view of the organization. I'm going to engage with my own leaders, right? Whether, you know, that was the battalion commander when I was a battery commander or the brigade commander or even in my current role, you know, I certainly engaged with the US Army Pacific commander and the first Corps commander and even had an opportunity because I was in the Pentagon to talk to the chief of staff and the vice and get their take on the organization. So I'm going to engage with the leaders up. Always done that. Once I set foot in the organization, I'm absolutely engaging with the senior enlisted advisor, in my case the command sergeant major. And oh, by the way, that's always the first counseling done. Whether that was my first fire direction NCO when I was a lieutenant or with command sergeant major when I took division command. That's the first counseling with them and to get a feel from them, from the organization. And then after that it's a bit of participant observation, right. Observing the organization, seeing how they're doing things. You can think maybe concentric circles out, right. So the, the first engagements are all kind of internally, who's to your left and right, that command sergeant major, the staff that's right there with you and then a little bit out like the division staff and then the brigade staffs and understand who's in those formations. And that's again, that's no different. It's just a little bit different. Echelon takes a little bit longer at the division level than it does as a platoon leader. Maybe you're a firing platoon and you got three guns in that platoon, three gun section chiefs of fire, direction center. Pretty quick to engage with all of them. Division level takes a little bit longer, but the principles remain the same. Those were the folks with whom I was engaging coming in division command and I've done that throughout my career. And then you're going to make an assessment of the organization on as you, as you go through that process. There's no maximum out there. Hey, wait 30 days, wait 90 days till you change something. I don't, I don't necessarily think that's accurate. Right. If you've got good reason to change something on day one, don't be afraid to change something on day one. But just make sure it's an informed decision and make sure you know what you're doing. And always remember, done in the course of solving one problem, don't create three others. Right. And then there's other things that like, man, this is going great. I don't need to touch anything here. And so let, let that system and process just continue to continue to thrive. If it was working great before, don't be the new guy that screws it up. Right. So, so that's how I've kind of approached coming into an organization.
• 12:06
  Speaker C: Here at West Point we have a command structure and it kind of Mirrors the Army we have from platoon leader all the way up to our first captain who commands the entire core at that high level. Maybe brigade staff, maybe first captain. How do you connect with those soldiers on the ground? Or as a commanding general, how do you connect with those soldiers on the ground while managing your responsibilities as that high level leader?
• 12:28
  Speaker A: You've got to make time to be out. You got to build structures that enable you to be out and engage. As an example, last week I was down with one of the battalions and was doing a briefing with that battalion where I had some specific requirements. I needed that battalion to brief me on and I needed some information from them. The briefing went a little bit longer than it was scheduled. Scheduled, but it needed to just that engagement. On the back end of that briefing, we were supposed to go to a motor pool and talk to some soldiers. When we got done, I had a hard choice to make, right? I mean we were over time. This could have an impact on some other things down there. But I realized I needed to go talk to those soldiers. So we absolutely. And I looked at my aide and like, hey, you're gonna have to fix the calendar, but, but I gotta get to this motor pool. Little wiser, went out a little bit of like, okay, well, you know, there's this other thing that's going to happen. But man, when I got down there, I realized that's the most important thing I did all day, was just spend time with those soldiers and find out about what they're working on, how it's working, how well they're resourced. So you've got to build structures that enable you to get out. And whether that's your own personal calendar management or if you've got a staff that can enable it, right. You've got to have times that you are out seeing your formation and then letting your staffs and letting others do the things that enable you to do that. It absolutely can be done at the division level just a little bit harder than when you're a brigade or battalion level. But, but it's the same, same kind of principles. If they're training, you're training, they're doing pt, you're doing pt. If they're in the field, you're in the field, you visit them. When you're seeing them doing the things that they do operationally for the Army. I made a comment when I came on board, took division command, people want to give you briefings and everything. And I said, look, safaris are better than zoos. So I like going to the zoo. It's nice to see animals, but a safari, when they're in there, like, real environment, that's amazing. So safaris are always better than petting zoos. Right. So don't ever, like, set something aside with your little briefing boards. And, I mean, that's got a time and a place. That's a zoo, Right. It's caged, it's fairly presentable. You know, the tiger's not going to get out, and because it's got the cage around it. But a safari, you're out there with them and you're watching what you know, you're watching what they're doing while they're doing it. How do you get out? My personal view. Go on the safari. Don't. Don't do the petting suit.
• 14:49
  Speaker C: Earlier in your career, you were selected to become an Olmsted Scholar. What does that program entail, and what value has it brought you? Your family and your soldiers?
• 14:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. So the Olmsted Program is an amazing program started by General Olmsted, who was a 1922 graduate of West Point in World War II, kind of the long and the short of it. He made the observation that our leaders are very tactically proficient, but they need a broader education. And his belief was the best leaders are broadly educated. So he was an entrepreneur and a banker. He used his resources post military to create the Olmsted Scholarship. So what that does is in its current configuration, in its current status, every year, the services nominate a handful of scholars to the Olmsted foundation, and then they select, generally speaking, five army, five or six from the sea services, and five or so from the Air Force, with about 18 total pluses and minuses. Here you get to about 18 total scholars a year. And from all of the services that then you learn another language, and then you go abroad for a master's degree, with the intent being that you gain an appreciation for or an understanding of just how other people think. So unlike our FAO program that you're going to create regional experts when you certainly have that in your Olmsted experience. But the idea is like, how do you think differently? How do you approach a problem differently? So, and then from there, the intent of the Olmsted foundation is that once you're finished with your scholarship, it's back to go be an S3 in the army, go be an XO, you know, go back to a fighter squadron or bomber squadron or whatever you did for your service. You go back and you. You go do that at the appropriate level, mostly at the major level. And then Go on and command battalions and command brigades. And so in my case, I went to the University of Leipzig. I'd learned German. I went to University of Leipzig. I got a master's in European Studies. And then I was a Battalion S3 and XO or I'm sorry, Battalion S3 and the Brigade S3. And how did it influence me? Well, I thought differently about problems. If you think about it, if we all come from one place and we all have only one way of looking at things, we're all going to come up, the groupthink problem comes into play. And so the Olmstead Scholarship gives you an opportunity to get beyond the groupthink and to think differently about problems and then to bring a different perspective to how you solve things and then continue to apply it. And then candidly, we see the benefit of that regional expertise later in your career. I mean, I commanded 7th Army Training Command in Germany and was the COG at JMRC in Germany. And that experience in Europe as an Olmsted Scholar absolutely paid off for me in that assignment. Regional expertise was incredibly beneficial there. And again, that experience, to think a little bit differently and approach problems differently, I think that helps me as a division commander today. And I think that regional expertise still influences or informs how I act today as a division commander.
• 17:34
  Speaker C: The Army's commissioning sources, especially here at West Point, have this constant balance between academic and military. Where do you see that balance for developing leaders, whether in ROTC or here at West Point?
• 17:44
  Speaker A: I think that's a good tension, and I think that it's a matter of balancing that tension at the right place at the right time. And I think you got to have that academic basis because what we want you to do as a leader is we want you to use that space between your two years to solve problems and to think about things. If you could just follow something rote, I don't need need you to think. But the academics, it's incredibly important because what that does is you're building experience and you're building your ability to look at and solve problems and to think about different things, and then you've got the military side of it as well. And if you look at the way we do our military education progression and you look at our institutional military education, whether it's at ROTC in West Point or when we go through your Bolex and then on to Triple C and through your PME process, what that institutional education is supposed to do is to give you the right skill sets to then apply when you get to your Formations, you know, for the cadet center at rotc, the cadet center here at West Point, you're heavy in that academic environment, and you're building a little bit of that basis for the military environment through your summer programs or through, you know, what the ROTC students are doing through their weekly labs and then their quarterly or monthly FTXs. We're building you up so that then when you get to your bullet course, now we can focus on the technical side of what we need you to do, the technical tactical side of what we need you to do as a lieutenant, regardless of branch. And so we're. Right now you're building the foundation that those bullocks can then build on. I think it's a great tension, it's a great mix, and then it's a challenge, admittedly, for all of us to try to figure out how to balance that. Right. Because I'm certain you all have had tests that have tester projects or whatever it is that's distracting you today, and you got an FTX or you've got some sort of Sandhurst competition that you got to focus on, and you're making, you're making hard choices, but I promise you'll be better on the back end when you work that balance while you're here.
• 19:35
  Speaker C: The yucks right now are in Ms. 200, which is our military science class, and we just completed our second op hoard, and we definitely feel the difference between the first one and the second one already. So.
• 19:43
  Speaker A: Good.
• 19:44
  Speaker C: It's good. It's very good. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger self if you were starting your career over today?
• 19:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, I. I think I would. I would tell my younger self to take a longer view. As I kind of look back, I look back at 30 years, and it went a lot faster than I thought it would. But I think if you'd asked Second Lieutenant Hilbert sitting there, I couldn't have imagined that I would be sitting in this room doing a podcast with you. As a division commander. Thirty years from then, I certainly wanted to be a career army officer, and I certainly, like, I didn't really want to do anything differently, but I had a little bit of a shorter term view in, okay, I gotta be an fdo, then gotta be a platoon leader, then you gotta be an xo and you feel a little bit of pressure to take the shorter view versus take the longer view and be patient and enjoy the time. So I'm certain, like, you guys, as yucks are like, man, I cannot wait till I'm a Cow. Or even better, when I'm a firstie, it's going to be magical. And the firsties are like, man, in a few months, I'm out of here and I'm going to be a lieutenant. It's going to be so much better. Or, you know, I can't wait to do this or that. And if you're constantly kind of saying, hey, I can't wait to, then, then you miss an opportunity to enjoy today. At the same time, if you don't take that longer view, you can be impatient and you can look for, okay, bam, I gotta rush to do something. Take the long review. Enjoy. Enjoy the pace and the opportunities that you've got today, albeit knowing that those opportunities, those might be that will help you reach an aspirational goal in the future. Realize that you might not achieve the goal today, but enjoy every step along that process that you get to achieving that goal. Be passionate about what you're doing. Invest in it, and invest in the people around you. Be passionate about the people around you. If you don't wake up every morning excited, I mean, you're going to wake up some mornings. Some mornings are harder to get out of bed, man, if we're all honest with each other, there's good days, there's bad days, but the majority, man, I cannot wait to do what I'm doing today. I cannot wait to do it. Be passionate. I'll give you the three rules that I'd give anybody if they were to ask me for advice, and they're consistent. Number one, ask to do the thing that you want to do the most. Because generally we do the best at the things that we want to do. So if you want to go do something, that's what you should ask to do. Rule number two, you do have to bloom where you're planted. We're a big army, and we need people all over. If you get an assignment, and I have had assignments where at first I was like, I didn't ask to go there. You still have to bloom where you're planted. So whatever your favorite post is that you think is a bad place to be, and that's where you're told to go after you graduate, Bloom where you plan it. Number three, you do have to know the risks. So in executing rule number one, do the thing that you want to do the most, you might ask to do something that might have career risks associated with it, might take you off a timeline, might make something else a little bit difficult. Just know the risk. And so throughout my career, in every job in every job up to Brigadier General. And this is the God's honest truth. Every time, I think it's pretty much post battery command. From post battery command on, when I asked to do something, there was some leader who said, ooh, don't do that. If you do that, you won't X, you won't get selected for battalion command, you won't command of brigade, all that right now. And I'm telling you, that was up until I got promoted to Brigadier General. So somebody told me, don't go be the COG at jmrc. They never get promoted to General. When those people told me, don't do those things. It's not that it was uninformed. They had a reason for saying that, and they had seen where there were real risks. Right. So I don't think that it was mal intent, it was advice. Right? So you have to consider that. So do the thing you want to do. Bloom where you're planted. Know the risk.
• 23:20
  Speaker C: Sir. Thank you for sharing your time with us today for the great discussion on your perspectives on leadership and the future of of the Army. On behalf of Colonel Pass Sullivan, the director of MWI, and Dr. Charlie Feint, the director of this podcast series, I'd like to present you with this rare and coveted MWI challenge coin as a token of our appreciation.
• 23:35
  Speaker A: Awesome. Okay. Hey, thanks, Zach. I appreciate it. Thanks for having us here today.
• 23:43
  Speaker B: This has been an episode of Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern War Institute of West Point. If you like what you heard today, please download like like subscribe and share this podcast to help us reach an even larger audience. All statements in this podcast represent the personal views of the speakers and do not represent an official position of the United States Military Academy or the United States government.