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Brigadier General Matthew Ross · Five Questions for a General

• 0:03
  Speaker A: 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.
• 0:25
  Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Five Questions for a General Podcast. I'm Cadet Zach Koloski, your host, and it is my pleasure to be here today with Brigadier General Matthew Ross, the commander of Joint Interagency Task Force, or JIATF401. General, welcome to the show.
• 0:40
  Speaker C: Thanks, Zach.
• 0:41
  Speaker B: So, General Ross, firstly, welcome back to West Point. What brings you to campus today?
• 0:45
  Speaker C: Yeah, I actually came to talk to you guys. I love what MWI does, listen to your podcasts, pay attention to everything that's been coming out of the academy and specifically mwi, for years.
• 0:55
  Speaker B: Well, thank you for your kind words, sir. It's very nice of you. Before we get into the meat of the interview, I'd like to start our discussion with a quick origin story. What was your path into the Army? Why did you choose West Point and infantry as a branch?
• 1:06
  Speaker C: Yeah, so I grew up in the Midwest. The son of an electrician, always knew that I wanted to join the military. And so I went to the recruiter when I was in high school. I was also an avid wrestler. And so when I heard that there was a chance to wrestle in college and still end up in the military, I took a trip out here to West Point and met Coach Jack Effner, who was the wrestling coach at the time. And I decided to come because of
• 1:30
  Speaker B: that and into the infantry branch. Why infantry specifically?
• 1:34
  Speaker C: Yeah, so I actually originally commissioned into the field artillery. And so I commissioned in 2001, June of 2001, just three months before 9 11. And I was joined in a peacetime army. Chose my branch based off my experience at ctlt, chose my unit or base based off location. And so I was headed for Fort Carson, Colorado. And then on September 11, just three months later, I was at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, working at the West Point prep school. And our community was directly impacted by September 11th. And so on September 12th, 2001, I drove back up to West Point and I met the superintendent and said, hey, if we're going to go to war, I think I made a mistake. I want to be an infantryman and I want to be one of the first units to ship out. And so being a wrestler, I've got cauliflower here. You guys can't see that if you're listening. But he looked at me one time and he said, you look like an infantryman and I think we're going to need people like you. I'll make the change. And so I ended up going to the 101st to 2nd Battalion, 187 and 3rd Brigade Rocassans and deployed with them soon after.
• 2:35
  Speaker B: Now, can you paint us a little bit of a picture surrounding your experience on 9 11? Clearly, it was very impactful to your career path. So what happened that day? What were you doing, and how did that change your mindset?
• 2:48
  Speaker C: Yeah, so I was at the, like I said, at the West Point prep school dealing with a bunch of young men and women who were trying to make sense of what they were seeing on tv. I believe they had class that day. And so there was one day room with tv. Nobody really had cell phones. And so over the course of the morning, after the first plane went into the tower, cadets just started coming into the day room and asking what was going on. My wife worked off post at a daycare. And so some of the families who had dropped off their kids that morning didn't come back in the evening to pick them up. And so we had a long talk that night just about what had happened and what it means to us in our and how it was going to shape our future. And I didn't know it at the time, but a lot of the things we talked about on the evening of September 11, 2001, shaped the next 25 years for us, certainly.
• 3:39
  Speaker B: So now you're in charge of JIATF 401. Can you please briefly explain to our audience what a JIADF is generally and what JIATF 401 does specifically?
• 3:49
  Speaker C: Yeah, so Joint Interagency Task Force 401 is a Jiata specifically focused on counter UAs. And so we stand up a joint and interagency task force anytime when a problem exceeds the scope of any one service or one department. And so we've done this a few times in the past. There's a few other GIADFs that are out there. In this case, we focus on sharing what we've learned internal to the Department of War with specific counter UAS technologies across all of the services, with the combatant commands, and then with other federal agencies. So the Department of Justice, who's responsible for the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Patrol, US Secret Service, Department of State, Diplomatic Security Service, who's responsible for securing all of our embassies and missions abroad, we want to make sure that they have access to all of the technologies that we've tested and evaluated, make sure that they use their limited resources in a responsible manner. And when they've got a question or need a resource, we want to help solve those problems with them.
• 4:53
  Speaker B: Sir, what is your measure of success? Internal to jiata, or in other words, how do you know you're getting the job done?
• 4:58
  Speaker C: So, inside of JIATF 401, we only have one measure of effectiveness, and that's rapidly delivering state of the art counter UAS capability to our warfighters, both at home and abroad. And delivering a capability is much more than delivering hardware. And so especially as you talk about drones and counter UAs, people get enamored with the systems themselves, but it's our ability to use them to achieve an end state that really matters. And so as we deliver counter UAS technology, we want to deliver that technology with the appropriate training, authorities and infrastructure to be able to use those systems effectively, to be able to protect our warfare fighters.
• 5:33
  Speaker B: So, sir, from the outside looking into that dynamic, in a sense, it seems that one of the hardest parts of your mission is that the drone problem crosses organizational boundaries. As you're saying with dod, dhs, FBI, et cetera. What have you learned about leading an organization when you have responsibility for an outcome, but don't necessarily have command authority or everyone required to produce it?
• 5:54
  Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question, Zach. What I have found over the past 25 years is that is not unlike other organizations that I've led. And so you're right, the overall responsibility for defending against drones crosses the boundaries between organizations. In some case, the Department of Homeland Security is the lead. In some cases it's the FBI, in some cases it's us inside of the Department of War. But I've found at every echelon when leading an organization, there are factors at play that are outside of your control. And so what we have to focus on is the outcome. And by focusing on the outcome, we can try to inform somebody else's approach to a problem to make sure that they have the knowledge, the equipment, the training, and the authority to be able to counter those threats when they manifest. And so that's one of the things we do that I wouldn't have anticipated we would do as a jiatf, but we spend a lot of time championing the efforts of other agencies to expand their authority to be able to both sense and mitigate drones across the United States.
• 6:58
  Speaker B: So, sir, would you say that's the desired outcome of the Jiatif? The concept of sensing and destroying potential Drone threats in the United States.
• 7:06
  Speaker C: Yeah, at its core, I think we stood up the Jiatif to ensure we don't have another 911 like moment. And so 911 is not a story about airplanes flying into buildings. It's a story about our adversaries using novel technology in a way that we hadn't imagined. And so we see this threat coming. We know that the proliferation of small unmanned systems is giving capability to individuals and small groups that was previously reserved for state adversaries. And we want to make sure that if somebody wants to use those for nefarious intent inside of the United States or outside, we have the ability to get ahead of it.
• 7:44
  Speaker B: Sir, that relates to something you said to the Combating Terrorism center in June, which is that when you approach the counter UAS problem, you tend to think like the aggressor and that you would rather remove the archer than simply keep shooting down the arrows. How does that offensive mindset change the way we should think about counter drone warfare?
• 8:01
  Speaker C: Yeah, so I've always thought about small UAs or defending against UAs from the mindset of an aggressor. I spent the vast majority of my career hunting down terrorists that were either responsible for 911 or wanted to replicate it somewhere around the world. And as you do that, you realize that you're looking for specific points of vulnerability. And so because of that, I know that to defend against this threat there's not going to be any single silver bullet. On the contrary, we're going to need a layered defense to be able to counter any threat of drones. And we shouldn't start and stop at the fence line for dow critical infrastructure. As an example, or one of our bases forward, we should identify the source of those drones. I don't think unmanned systems are truly unmanned. They're no more unmanned than a mortar. And when we get shot at by a mortar, we try to destroy the mortar firing point fire counter battery. And so it's not enough to do defensive counter air. We should also be inclusive of offensive counter air, which includes targeting the networks that are responsible, the launch sites, denying those to an adversary, sensing as far out as possible, classifying that drone as a friend or foe as early as possible, and then having layered effectors built into our defenses so we can attrit those systems before they get to our critical assets.
• 9:17
  Speaker B: Certainly. And sir, that seems like it would require a decent amount of novel defensive capabilities and technology on our end. So in an article published in Defense Scoop in August stated that Jiata 401 is preparing a Directed energy shoot off, where successful systems could move almost immediately towards purchase and production. What will convince you that lasers or high powered microwaves have moved from promising technology to something commanders can actually depend on in combat?
• 9:44
  Speaker C: I'm glad you asked that question, Zach. I already believe that directed energy is reliable. And so we're beyond the point of determining whether or not directed energy is effective to counter drones. We know that it works. The science works. What we need to do is we need to figure out safety control measures, tactics, techniques and procedures that make the system reliable in real world conditions with the appropriate safeguards and mechanisms to be able to use it without any other risk to our assets or unintended consequences to other assets that are in the airspace. But we've made huge strides just over the past 12 months since Striatis has been established on getting a approval to use directed energy in the national airspace system here in the United States. As you've seen in the media, it's being used now on the southern border. We also have directed energy systems deployed overseas where we're actively collecting data. So we can iterate on those systems over time to make them more and more capable as part of a layered defense.
• 10:46
  Speaker B: Yes, sir. And though it does seem completely new and novel, there are obvious historical parallels between Jiata 401 today and the military's response to the ID threat about 20 years ago. What lessons did we learn from that era? And what mistakes are you determined not to repeat?
• 11:03
  Speaker C: So I'll start with lessons learned from the IED era. A lot of people will draw parallels between IEDs and drones, and some of them are useful and some of them are less useful. It's helpful to think about a new technology or a new way to target people or systems, especially in terms of our requirement to be able to adapt quickly, to be able to keep pace with an adversary who's adapting. But the argument starts to fall apart. The comparison starts to fall apart when you start looking at the proliferation. So IEDs are single use technology. They were only used on the battlefield or by terrorists or those that were inspired, enabled, or directed by a foreign adversary to do harm. When we start talking about unmanned systems, there's a commercial application that makes the problem more challenging. And what I mean by that is there's a commercial application to ensuring redundancy in the controllability of an unmanned system. If a big box retailer is delivering a package to your house, you want to know for certain that it's going to show up at your house, even if the cell network is overwhelmed during that time. And so you're going to need some type of redundant communication. And so as we think about counter UAs as compared to counter IED, we want to build an ecosystem that allows us to iterate rapidly, but we don't want to just keep pace with new modalities of control on unmanned systems. Meaning we don't want to target like their control mechanisms. We want to target the first principles of drones that will be redundant regardless of how they're controlled. So every drone has physical mass. So as we deploy new sensors, we should focus on physical mass and not the RF signatures that it's emanating. Every drone has some type of propulsion system, it's got some type of rotors. And so if we want to deny it stable flight, we should attack the rotors instead of the link back to a controller. And so by taking that first principles approach and building an ecosystem that allows us to iterate rapidly with the threat, we can incorporate some of the lessons of the counter IED fight, but do it at scale for a system that's proliferating more broadly.
• 13:00
  Speaker B: And sir, as you said about the proliferation, the rapid proliferation of these systems, sir, how do you balance that risk with accepting this new technology in a rapidly changing environment? With the dangers of moving too quick, too quickly?
• 13:16
  Speaker C: In a sense, yeah, I think about this in terms of shifting gears. And so we should go fast everywhere that we can go fast, and we should go slow where we must. And so when we face a problem that's a bureaucratic system or process that's cumbersome and slow, I do everything I can to break it down. When we face a problem or a challenge with the safety of use for a system, that's where I think we should slow down. And so that balance of speed versus risk acceptance, it's a constant adjustment over time, depending on what we're doing in the current environment. But what we really need is commanders who are comfortable accepting a reasonable level of risk to be able to get capability out into the hands of our warfighters as quickly as possible so they can start iterating with it.
• 14:02
  Speaker B: So you speak about the importance of the commander. You personally have extensive experience in both conventional formations and special operations. What did your time in Special operations teach you about experimentation, adaptation and accepting failure that you are now applying to Jiata 401?
• 14:19
  Speaker C: So the first thing that I learned in Special operations is to make sure that you're solving the right problem and there's not always just one solution to a problem. And I'll give you an Example, one of the first missions that I got when I was a troop commander as a young major was to stop vehicle borne IEDs in Baghdad. And I went back to my boss and I said, hey, you got any additional guidance? Is there anywhere you want me to focus? And he looked at me and he said, you want me to do your job for you? What I found is that he gave me a limited pool of resources and then I could allocate them against the problem on a number of different lines of effort. To stop vehicle borne IEDs in Baghdad. We focused in western Iraq where foreign fighters were coming into the country. We focused in Mosul, where there was financing hubs and they were putting resources into building VBIEDs. We focused just west of Baghdad where they were building homemade explosives for these large vehicle borne bombs. We focused on the leaders, high valued individuals who were directing these attacks. And then we focused in and around Baghdad on expanding the protective infrastructure and the active patrolling. The lesson in that is that there wasn't a single answer. Similarly, there's not a silver bullet for counter UAs. But by pursuing that problem along six different lines of effort, we were able to see measurable gains. And so that's how we're approaching it on Counter uas. So when I talk about shoot the archer instead of just shooting the arrow, it's that layered approach along multiple lines of effort to be able to protect our formations and our assets.
• 15:55
  Speaker B: Imagine a West Point cadet listening to this conversation who will be a company commander around 2032. Given what you're seeing now with drones, autonomy, AI sensors, and rapidly evolving layered technology in general, as you're saying, what should that cadet start learning today that probably isn't in the general curriculum or at least isn't emphasized enough?
• 16:14
  Speaker C: I think you would be surprised how well the current curriculum actually addresses that problem. And so I firmly believe that we will see more changes in our military in the next 10 years than we've seen in the last 50. Just the pace of change is increasing and we're seeing it throughout society. You're seeing it in the industrial sector, you're seeing it in the financial sector, and we're seeing it on the battlefield. And so in order to counter that, you can't teach people what to think, you got to teach them how to think. And so if you were to go back to World War I, the tools you had to wage war at the platoon and company level were a rifle, a hand grenade, a bayonet, a mortar, maybe a vehicle. And those tools didn't change for the next 50 years, it was the same tools. And so when you went into mil art to learn how to fight, you were learning tactics, techniques and procedures based off of those tools. And what I would tell the cadet today is that the tools that they're going to use on the battlefield today or in 5 to 10 years are unknown today. But I'm confident that since we're investing in people instead of hardware, they're going to be able to adapt those new technologies and use them in a meaningful way to achieve a commander's intent.
• 17:24
  Speaker B: So you emphasize the importance of open communication, whether it's between the lieutenants and captains and the sharing of information. How do you manage that in your organization? We touched on it earlier with these different organizational boundaries with the Dow, DHS, FBI, etc. How do you manage that breadth and that wide scale of different organizations and new technologies? How do you manage the communication in that aspect?
• 17:48
  Speaker C: Yeah, so I feel like we communicate a lot. But the way that you do it effectively is by ensuring that you have a shared understanding of the problem. And so when I'm working inside of the organization or out with other federal partners, state, local, tribal, territorial, law enforcement partners and allies, I'm looking for those areas where we have common interest and common problems. And so by focusing on those, those areas where we have a shared interest first, we can establish a solid foundation that will allow us to start gaining momentum. It's also an important lesson for cadets and young officers. I've never thought about working for a boss in terms of them having their priorities and me having mine. I've always thought that we're working on the same problem. And so by doing that, you can have a candid dialogue with your boss about how you can best get at a problem, opposed to sitting back and trying to determine how you're going to deal with the guidance you just. And having seen that from both sides, both the one being led and then the leader, I greatly value that internal to GIADA 401 today. And I'm consistently asking people for feedback on their perspective on a particular problem. Because we have about 130 people in the JIATIF, that means we have 130 different perspectives on the problem. And it's only by understanding all of those that I can get the most complete picture and make informed decisions about our direction going forward.
• 19:11
  Speaker B: Yes, sir. So how do you set that culture, the common interest, the shared problems? How do you disseminate that to your ranks and set the culture where you can have this bottom up innovation, these new lines of communication that aren't necessarily traditional.
• 19:26
  Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know if I would say they're not traditional, but they're definitely not found in every formation. And so our culture is our shared values, beliefs and behaviors. And so I just spent some time with the MX400 class and we're talking about the army ethic. And I talk a lot about culture internal to Jiadf because I think it's truly important. It's important one because we have to have shared values and a shared understanding of the problem and acceptable behaviors. And as you bring people in from the other services, from other federal agencies, that's not always the case. And so you got to spend a lot of time on it, like communicating, hey, here's what we do here and here's how we behave.
• 20:03
  Speaker B: So, sir, knowing what you know now, what advice would you offer your younger self, say, in anticipation of great changes and new technology being added to the company formations?
• 20:13
  Speaker C: Yeah. First I would say invest in yourself and try to close your gaps. You should be as familiar as you can be with new technology. You should be constantly learning, constantly doing research, talking to peers. I'm really impressed at the way I see lieutenants, captains, and majors sharing information across our force, not just within the army, but across the joint force. And I see students of warfare that are going to be be equipped to lead when they're placed in those positions of need.
• 20:40
  Speaker B: General Ross, thank you for your time today and for a great discussion about Jiata 401 and the future of warfare. On behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the director of the Modern war Institute, and Dr. Charlie Feint, the director of this podcast series, it is my pleasure to present you with this rare and coveted MWI coin. Thank you.
• 20:57
  Speaker C: Great. Thanks for having me.
• 21:01
  Speaker A: 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, 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.