Brigade Special Troops Battalions. Part 1: All the Way In

Consider the case of the brigade special troops battalion BSTB. There is no approved doctrine and no distinct approach to growing a leader for its ranks. No single branch currently owns it nor populates its leadership roles. Across the Army, it is considered a collection of specialists with no clear task and purpose a battalion in search of a mission and a meaningful role within the brigade combat team BCT. Few understand it. Fewer still have seen what happens when you unlock the vast potential that resides within the assemblage of this seemingly unrelated group of maneuver supporters. Simply put you must be all the way in. To really get the BSTB, you must fully embrace transformation and the new paradigms associated with the Army redesign. You cannot just dip your little toe in the water you have to take off the harnesses, shed completely the old way of doing business, and fully immerse in the transformation pool. Doing so reveals this battalion as a truly powerful enabler of maneuver, synchronizing and synergizing effects across the brigades area of operations AO, and delivering for its respective BCT in ways that are orders of magnitude greater than what was possible without it. More importantly, the BSTB is a battle-tested battalion that exists to address some of our most challenging combat missions, to include execution of intelligence and communications functions, assured mobility, reconstruction and essential services project management, and military police operations. It is a battalion whose success is directly linked to the success of its supported brigade. It is a battalion whose every leader and every Soldier had better, themselves, be all the way in. What follows, then, is a collection of findings and observations that describe what all the way in might look like. It is a combination of lessons learned at the National Training Center and regular dialogue with BSTB commanders and leaders in various stages of the deployment cycle.