Difficult Steps

By SSG Ben Betts

June 1, 2026 | Field Artillery, 2026 E-Edition

Read Time: < 9 mins

Spc. Taggert Miller, 11th Airborne Division, ascends H Rock during a Prusik Ascent class in the Rock Site during Basic Military Mountaineering Course at Black Rapids Training Site 10 July. The purpose of the 14-day course is to train Soldiers on how to maneuver through mountainous terrain, and then go back to their units and provide the units with Soldiers capable of getting across the mountainous terrain of Alaska. (Photo provided by Staff Sgt. Christopher Dennis/ 11th Airborne Division Public Affairs NCO)

This article is a follow up to SSG Betts’ article "The Way Forward" published April 28, 2026, in the Field Artillery 2026 Edition.

This article reflects the author’s professional opinions and interpretations. It does not represent official views, positions, or policies of the Field Artillery Commandant or Field Artillery School.

You know one. Maybe you had one. That non-commissioned officer (NCO) who didn’t need to raise a voice to fill a room. The one who knew when something was wrong with a Soldier before that Soldier knew it personally. The one who stayed late, showed up early, and never once asked for credit. That NCO is the reason Soldiers make it through their first deployment, their first real crisis, their first brush with the kind of darkness that doesn’t show up on any training schedule. Officers pray they have one in the unit, and senior NCOs rely on them every day to bridge the gap to the Soldiers.

They are the backbone of the Army. And right now, we are breaking them—not with enemy fire but with impossible expectations and no real tools to carry those expectations out. We expect them to handle everything we give them without giving them enough training or tools. They are expected to figure it out on their own.

Identifying a problem is easy. It’s taking the next step that’s hard. That’s where the friction is. No matter what solution we dream up, putting it into action is where so many fail.

We lost more service members to suicide than to combat over the last 20 years. That fact should hit you in the gut. Since 9/11, 30,177 active-duty personnel and veterans died by suicide—compared to 7,057 killed in combat over those same 20 years.1 That is more than four times as many. A Pentagon report covering Army deaths between 2014 and 2019 found that Soldiers are nearly nine times more likely to die by suicide than in combat.2 We feel the pain of losing our brothers and sisters. That pain pushes us to raise our voices and to bring awareness to the problem, but awareness isn’t enough.

A Soldier’s mental and physical stability is like a three-legged stool. When the legs are strong, the platform is solid. However, that stability is threatened by the same old stressors: money problems, bad relationships and substance abuse. One of those can make the stool wobble. Two or three at once? The whole thing becomes unstable. That’s when the destructive behaviors start. Our mission isn’t to fix the stool after it collapses. It’s to reinforce a leg before it breaks.

And who’s in the best position to see that first wobble? The NCO, but here’s our problem: The NCOs today aren’t the NCOs from the 2000s. According to Army data reported by Military Times, the average recruit entered service at 21.7 years old during the 2000s.3 With promotion to E-5 typically occurring at three to four years of service, that placed most new sergeants in their mid-twenties—Soldiers with life experience, often combat-hardened, forced to grow up fast and become the leaders we needed them to be. Today, we’re short on people. Our NCO Corps is younger and less experienced, promoted faster under waiver authority, and with less runway to develop before they’re asked to carry a squad. A recent analysis found Soldiers as young as 19 to 21—with no prior jobs, having just left their parents’ homes—earning sergeant promotions within months despite having no experience helping others navigate life stressors.4 The Army itself acknowledged the gap when it expanded its temporary promotion policy, allowing NCOs to promote before completing required professional military education just to keep pace with demand.⁵

Mountaineering instructors from Northern Warfare Training Center, hold a class about basic anchors with 11th Airborne Division Soldiers at H Rock at the Rock Site during Basic Military Mountaineering Course on Black Rapids Training Site 10 July. (Photo provided by Staff Sgt. Christopher Dennis/ 11th Airborne Division Public Affairs NCO)

It’s normal to see a Soldier make NCO in their first contract, sometimes before they’re even 21. We’re asking them to carry the weight of their Soldiers’ lives with almost no life experience of their own. That’s not their fault. It’s just the reality of the force. So, no, the responsibility isn’t on them to magically get wiser. The responsibility is on us—senior leaders—to give them the tools that they need.

I have seen it with my own eyes and in my own formation. A young, motivated PFC shows up early asking for knowledge of how to do better in PT, staying late to practice job knowledge, and constantly studying and getting stronger in the position. Slowly and seemingly unrelated, that PFC started showing up late to first formation, customs and courtesies lacked, motivation dropped, and we heard from their peers that alcohol became a daily habit. It was a young, passionate sergeant who noticed and stepped in, not a counselor or medical professional. This NCO didn’t make a difference. That sergeant made ALL the difference. That Soldier needed resources. What made the difference was a leader who knew how to use them.

The problem is that not every Soldier has that leader, and the reason why starts at the top.

We have all stood in a formation where the CSM or Battalion Commander spoke to 400 people, talking about the same familiar topics. Oftentimes this feels distant and unrelatable to the Soldiers. They are being addressed in a mass group, not individually. A squad leader speaking to his 5 Joes is honest and raw. That’s where trust lives, and trust is what makes a Soldier pick up the phone at 2 a.m. instead of making a decision that Soldier can’t take back. That’s the conversation that actually saves lives.

The senior leaders were all once junior leaders and lean on their experience, but it still falls short. They aren’t in the foxholes, and they aren’t on the rucks or in the shops during the grinding hours of work. They have a different mission now and that is okay. Research confirms what NCOs already know: Soldiers in crisis are more likely to reach out to a peer than a healthcare professional. Fewer than 25 percent of military suicide decedents received any mental-health services in the 90 days before their deaths.⁶ The system alone is not reaching them. The squad leader is. The difficult step is to step back and watch the young leaders take over. Their jobs become resourcing, observing and reinforcing—building the leaders who can have the conversations they no longer can.

While working with the risk management director at Fort Wainwright, we uncovered something that stopped us cold. We analyzed patterns of maladaptive behavior spanning nearly a decade. The same things were happening every year—DUIs, drug abuse, suicidal ideations—and we could narrow it down to a predictable 14-to-21-day window: same problems, same timeframe, year after year.

What made this remarkable was what didn’t change the pattern. Commanders rotate every 1-2 years. Soldiers and families may do a permanent change of station (PCS) every 3 years. Leadership changed, people changed, yet the culture remained. The problem was never the individuals. It was always the environment that they inherited.

If the problem isn’t the people, then it’s the culture, and that’s what has to change.

Culture change was the only way forward. We spent two weeks with 10 designated Soldiers. We brought every civilian agency in—not to brief them, but to teach them about warning signs of suicidal behavior, emotional regulation, compassion fatigue, and burnout. Family advocacy program (FAP), finance, chaplains and military and family life counselors (MFLCs) were all brought in. We didn’t want these leaders knowing a building. We wanted them knowing a person.

The goal was simple: Build real relationships between struggling Soldiers and the assets that already existed. The impact was immediate. Within days, these young leaders were identifying issues and walking Soldiers directly to the right people, not sending them, but walking them.

The Department of War (DoW) already spends tens of millions of dollars on resources: Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR); family counseling; behavioral health; chaplains; Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP)—it’s all there. What wasn’t there was a leader who knew how to use it. We taught NCOs to see the warning signs: showing up late, heavy drinking, the thousand-yard stare, constant conflict at home. These aren’t personal failures. They’re signals, and when a trained leader sees one, they don’t wait. They act.

That’s the difference between a resource and a result.

So what does it actually look like in your formation?

Squad leaders: Know your Soldiers’ baseline. When something shifts, you notice it first. That is not a coincidence; that is your job. Carry a resource card with actual names and numbers, not a pamphlet. Know the behavioral health technician, the chaplain and the ACS financial counselor before you need them. When the time comes, don’t hand your Soldier a phone number. Walk them through the door.

Platoon sergeants: Run a monthly friction check for five minutes at the end of sergeant’s time. Normalize the conversation before a crisis forces it. Hold your squad leaders accountable for prevention, not just response.

Command teams: Integrate a wellness rehearsal the same way you rehearse battle drills. Brief the resources, walk through the referral process and make it muscle memory. Stop treating behavioral health referrals as red flags. High utilization means your command climate is working. If the CSM has never mentioned using a chaplain or financial counselor, neither will anyone else. Model it or don’t expect it.

So what is the real way forward? It is not another program. It is not another brief or another awareness campaign. It is leadership. It is senior leaders deciding that prevention is not a once-a-year block of instruction—it is a daily responsibility. It is training our NCOs with the same intensity we train them to fight because lives depend on both.

We already have the tools. We already have the resources. What we don’t have—at every level—is the discipline to use them the way that they were meant to be used. That falls on us: senior leaders, NCOs, commanders, all of us.

The question isn’t what to build next. The question is simple: Do we change how we lead, or do we keep paying the price for not changing?

Our Soldiers already know the answer. It’s time we caught up.

References