Maneuver Support Center of Excellence and Fort Leonard Wood Commanding General

By Major General Christopher G. Beck

Article published on: January 1st, 2024 in the Annual Issue of Protection Journal

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Major General Christopher G. Beck

Team, I am very proud of the work that we have accomplished together this past year to develop, educate, and drive change for Protection capabilities! Although there has been much progress, a few things have not changed:

Our shared purpose is to enable the U.S. Army to fight and win our Nation’s wars with a lethal and cohesive force.
Protection capabilities include equities across the Army; everyone has a role.
Protection must include capabilities to deny the enemy freedom of action; enable access to friendly forces; and preserve our critical capabilities, assets, and activities.

I want to personally thank you for all that you are doing toward these ends and highlight a few of your incredible Army-wide efforts from fiscal year (FY) 2024:

Through institutional updates to training, leader education, and doctrine, our shared understanding of what Protection is (and isn’t) continues to improve. This common and more robust understanding—along with continued engagements with divisions, corps, Army Service component commands, centers of excellence, and senior Army leaders—has facilitated valuable Protection-related learning and outcomes in Mission Command Training Program warfighter exercises and training center rotations. Our aim remains to enable operational success.
Pilots of the Protection Integrator Course have successfully transitioned to registration on the Army Training Requirements and Resources System for FY 25. Our goal is to educate Soldiers who are currently assigned to, are expecting to be assigned to, or will be working closely with Protection cells. In addition, the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, now offers a Protection elective at the Command and General Staff College. Instructors for the Command and General Staff College elective and the Protection Integrator Course are doing a phenomenal job of following the standards while flexibly updating the instruction based on student needs and lessons from the field. I am asking my team to expand our educational efforts in FY 25 by working with the Combined Arms Center to better integrate Protection across Army professional military education.
General Gary M. Brito, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), has chartered a Protection TRADOC Proponent Office here at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The director, Colonel Joesph E. Elsner, and his team are precious and responsive resources for anyone across the Army who has input or challenges relating to the Protection warfighting function. We look forward to growing this critical capability.
With the help of other centers of excellence, the Capability Development Integration Directorate, U.S. Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence (MSCoE), Fort Leonard Wood, completed the last phase of a 3-year capabilities-based assessment of the Army Protection functional concept, resulting in the identification of gaps and the development of solutions, which centers of excellence and the science and technology community will continue to build upon. Based on needs identified during this year’s experimentation as well as Army senior leader guidance, our MSCoE Fielded Force Integration Directorate has begun to develop and will begin staffing organizational solutions related to the support area.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who contributed to the very successful inaugural Protection Senior Leader Forum and to those who attended, including more than 250 guests, 250 resident professional military education students, and international partners. Army senior leaders provided context and focus for the Protection warfighting function, including theater-specific considerations. Division and corps leaders provided priorities and planning guidance for Protection. Centers of excellence leaders discussed modernization priorities and gaps related to Protection. And U.S. Army Futures Command and Army laboratory leaders discussed how the science and technology community innovates and supports Protection capabilities development. The MSCoE team executed a live demonstration of Protection in an Army wet-gap crossing operation. A few of the many important points covered during the forum include—

Operationalizing Protection is the responsibility of the commander.
Protection planning at division and corps levels spans the depth and breadth of the battlefield and all planning horizons. It must be time-informed, activity-driven, and continually prioritized.
In current and future fights, our Army must be able to protect our forces and sustain, fire, maneuver, or converge.
Our Army must be able to articulate what capabilities we can deliver, what we cannot deliver, or what we are at risk of not being able to deliver in 2040, which increases risks to the mission and force.

I appreciate your planning for, and participation in, the next Protection Senior Leader Forum, which is scheduled for May 2025.

As we develop and synchronize the Protection capabilities our Army needs to fight and win, this great Protection community of practice offers tremendous opportunity for progress. We have strong momentum, and I ask that each of you continue to collaborate through our warfighter forums, working groups, training and education courses, experimentation, and professional discourse, including leveraging the Harding Project to write about Protection.

I look forward to another year of moving forward together. Thank you for all you do!

Victory Starts Here! Victory Through Skill