In this episode, Colonel Mike Rosol joins MWI’s Charlie Faint in the West Point Class of 1974 Recording Studio to reflect on a career spanning armored warfare, multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, teaching and scholarship at West Point, interagency work, and his recent service leading the commander’s Action Group for Security Assistance Group–Ukraine (SAG-U).
The discussion begins with Mike’s recollections of the leadership lessons he learned as a young officer in Iraq, before turning to the value of education and intellectual development for military professionals and how Mike’s experiences in West Point’s Department of Social Sciences shaped his approach to strategy and war. He then describes SAG-U’s role in coordinating US and allied support to Ukraine and examines lessons emerging from the Russia-Ukraine war, including Ukraine’s rapid expansion of its military, the transformative role of uncrewed systems, the increasingly compressed relationship between reconnaissance and strike, and the extraordinary speed of technological adaptation on the battlefield. Mike also highlights Ukraine’s willingness to innovate and openly debate how it fights, warning against dismissing lessons from an ongoing conflict simply because the participants or circumstances differ from those the US military expects to face. He closes by encouraging young leaders to cultivate intellectual curiosity and intellectual courage throughout their careers—to study their profession continuously, question assumptions, engage seriously with competing ideas, and recognize that thoughtful disagreement can make both leaders and the Army better.
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Image credit: Matthew Lucibello, US Army