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If you've been paying any attention at all really to the news, you've been hearing about
how drone warfare is changing, how the Ukrainians and the Russians are both using drones to
advance their military purposes.
Well this has come a long way in a short period of time.
We've done programs when drones first came out and the U.S. was the only one way at them.
They were deploying them for intelligence and then ultimately for offensive weaponry.
So we've got an expert on who's going to talk about the status of drone warfare, what
he calls drones 2.0.
Very interesting.
And then we're going to reach back into a little history at that time.
We should talk about the Montford Point Marines of America.
They have an association as an upcoming gala.
But let's get a little history going too.
So we're going to start with the modern and go back to the history.
I think you're going to enjoy it.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today James Padden Rogers.
I should say Dr. Rogers actually.
He holds a Ph.D. on the history of the precision warfare from the University of Hull in the
United Kingdom.
He's been a fellow at Stanford University, Yale University, the University of Oxford.
He was a visiting scholar at the United States Air Force Air Command and Staff College.
And with all that expertise, we have him on today to talk about how drones, if you will,
have evolved in warfare.
And really we're seeing them applied here in Ukraine.
And James just reminded me or told me that don't forget there was something similar in
Vietnam.
James, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thanks for having me.
Great to be here.
Well, as I say, you're an expert in sort of a unique area and you've recently issued a
new book called Precision, A History of American Warfare, being published by Manchester University
Press here in 2023.
But as you've looked at and been studying and watching what's been going on in Ukraine
with Russia drones and the Ukrainian drones, give us some insight of how you see this has
evolved for the use of this sort of unmanned vehicle platform.
I think that when it comes to specifically Russia's offensive war against Ukraine, we've
seen that Ukraine harness drones very early on as a way to try and hold Putin's forces
back from taking the capital of Kiev in those very early days, early weeks of the war.
We know that Turkey sent over their Bay Ractea TB2s.
These are medium altitude long endurance systems that you would be more familiar with.
Perhaps it's a bit like the U.S. Predators and Reapers that we know the U.S. used during
the global war on terror, although they're slightly different systems, but they fulfill
a similar role of being sent up into the air to conduct precision strikes against targets
on the ground and also to provide that vital intelligence surveillance and target acquisition
for other systems that Ukraine possessed.
Now, that started to change very quickly as Russia brought in their own air defense systems
and their electronic jamming.
What you've seen ever since then really is this cat and mouse game, this offensive, defensive
game between Russia and Ukraine about who can innovate their drones faster and who can
break through each other's defenses.
One way that Ukraine has tried to keep up with their drone innovation is not only to
get supplies brought in from the international commercial market, so they brought up around
60 percent of the world's supply of DJI-reduced Mavic drones, different types of Mavic drones.
These are the smaller quadcopter systems, so far different to the much larger medium
endurance, but also to develop their own drone industry and to invest millions, if not billions,
into that to create tactical battlefield drones that help with their fight in the trenches
on the front line.
It seems like, you know, Beck, I think the last time I had somebody on talking about
drones was right at the start of their use in Afghanistan.
It was all intelligence gathering, but it's really changed since then, hasn't it?
I think when we look back to, especially the Obama administration, and that administration's
reliance on the use of drones, then we can characterize that period as what we call the
first drone age, the first nation, the United States, to really take on drones as a spearhead
of pushing their military force around the world.
Now, this was all part of Obama's promise to the American people that he would remove
them from the illegal war, as it was being called in Iraq, and win the good war in Afghanistan,
and sadly we know how that all turned out.
But it was also part of reducing the cost to American military lives.
As at that point, when Obama was getting elected, you know, you had 60 percent of U.S. military
casualties occurring as a result of the improvised explosive device.
And so as the war and terrorists spread globally, you wanted to reduce the footprint of American
military personnel abroad, not increase it.
And so the drone became this panacea for the Obama administration to continue to hunt down,
to find terrorists, to provide intelligence on terrorist organizations, and to kill terrorists
when needed all around the world.
So that's Somalia, Yemen, there were strikes even in the Philippines.
We know, of course, about Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a number of other countries
where drones were deployed.
But this was a period where it was the United States, and core allies such as Great Britain
and France, who were provided high-tech U.S. systems.
Very few other nations were allowed to have these high-tech drones.
The world has changed dramatically since that time.
We live in a time now that I call the second drone age.
And here, and I've been working at this with the United Nations recently, it comes to the
conclusion that around 113 different nation states, at least 65 non-state actors now have
access to weaponized drones all around the world, but pretty much at the point where
we have the uncontrolled proliferation of military drone systems.
Now some of these have been deliberately proliferated by hostile nation states, such as Iran, who
provide groups to the so-called axis of resistance across the Middle East, a number of different
actors, including Houthi terrorists, who then use those drone systems to either recast them
and make their own local drone industry, and to tap into the global commercial market
of drones and different commercial systems to then make those drone designs work for
themselves.
Or they may simply use the Iranian design systems to do Iran's bidding for them.
And we've seen this with attacks in the Red Sea recently, with a major impact on international
shipping.
So we live in a dramatically different world, a world of proliferated drone threats, where
when I do my interviews with military personnel from the United States and from our allies,
we've reached a point where we've lost that tactical air superiority.
And we have, for the first time in maybe two generations now, this very potent, increasingly
lethal and powerful threat from the air against U.S. military lives and the lives of U.S.
allies.
And we saw that most tragically and most recently with the death of three U.S. military personnel
at Tower 22.
It is really amazing how, and to me at least, how quickly the world caught up on this.
And we're talking to Dr. James Padden Rogers, he's the executive director of the Cornell
Brooks Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University.
Is it because the hardware became so available around the world or the software became so
available, how did this explode so fast?
Yeah, it's a really good question.
I mean, I would say it's a combination of the innovations in commercial drone technologies.
So let's pick up that point first, we of course know that these have been used on mask.
The think tank in the UK, the Royal United Service Institute says that Ukraine is losing
up to 10,000 of these commercial drones each month.
And it's these systems that have been designed by a number of different commercial drone
manufacturers to make it easy for even simpletons like me to get their drone license and to
use these to assist.
And for them to be used by real estate agents, wedding photographers, agriculture, all of
these different drone systems have been incredibly useful for different industries.
The trouble is, is that those technologies are also dual use.
And when taken up by militaries or terrorist groups, they can be put to nefarious ends.
So let's think about ISIS.
ISIS will be first terrorist group to be able to link into this commercial drone market,
smuggling thousands of drones over the border, buying them up through shell companies around
the world.
I'm talking about shell companies in Britain, in Spain, in Sri Lanka and in Denmark actually,
and smuggling them over across the border so that they could work on their drones and
create an effective ISIS drone force or an air force for ISIS.
And they would use these en masse against US and allied forces during Operation Inherent
Resolve.
I mean, when I was conducting my research back then, you know, there was as many as
83 drones in the sky within a 24-hour period.
And it's been anything, it's only got worse since then because drone companies have made
their drones much more high-tech.
They can fly further, they can shift frequencies, they can carry heavier payloads.
And now these drones, of course, are being utilized by a number of different terrorist
groups around the world.
And let me have you expand on that because this idea that you can have an army of drones
up in the air at the same time, networked and operating in concert is sort of an amazing
thing to think about.
And if you're a military planner and you've got to defend against it, it's got to be quite
harrowing to think about these networked armies of drones.
And I think they've been used in the Ukraine-Russian conflict.
Yeah, so there is a kind of a technical definition of what we might call this network of drones
in the sky.
This would be a true drone swarm.
And any engineer that's listening or any computer scientist listening will know that
we're not quite there yet in terms of a true drone swarm.
This is, you know, think of a flock of birds in the sky, like a memorization of starlings
that are being attacked by an eagle, let's say.
They will work together, all that wants to move in synchronization to make sure they
keep together as that giant flock to increase their security.
They communicate with one another and they become almost one symbiotic life form in the
sky.
Now we would not reach the point where we have individual drones that have that sort of connectivity
and the ability to react to external stimuli.
We will do, and the US is investing very heavily in that, and that's deeply worrying as well
into the future because China's doing the same.
And so we will have drone-v drone swarms and likely thousands of drones in the sky above
zones of active conflict.
What we have at the moment is we have these more rudimentary drone swarms where drones
are sent in in their multiples, so these are multi-drone deployments, tens, maybe 20s max
at a target to saturate their enemy's air defense systems or to use up their enemy's air defense
systems so that when they then do send other systems in, maybe rockets or missiles, they
will have more chance of breaking through and hitting the target.
And so when I mentioned the fact that ISIS had these multiple drone systems in the sky,
we're looking at maybe 10 at a time, but 83 over that 24-hour period.
And as I say, it's all about trying to overwhelm air defenses.
Interesting.
I like this concept, your outline of sort of the first drone age, the second drone age.
You've clearly thought about what the third or the fourth drone age might look like.
Give us, from your expert viewpoint, Dr. Rogers, where does the next drone age take us?
Well, I've just written a piece on this called the third drone age, visions out to 2040.
I think that some of the things we're looking for here, and I should also recognize the
fact that we've just been funded by NATO SPS to work on this idea of full spectrum drone
warfare.
I think that some of the threats might occur from the use of drones, not only in the air,
but also on the ground at sea, under the surface of the water, and also underground.
And so we're looking at this multi-domain drone use, this full spectrum drone use.
And I think this is one of the things that's going to characterize the third drone age.
Now, let's couple that with the fact that it's not just going to be those systems being
controlled by human operators.
Instead, you're going to have the human on the loop of control or completely outside
the loop of control of these systems.
What do I mean by that?
Well, I mean that you can have these drones operating autonomously, picking out targets,
and then sending that target data back to a human pilot or a human operator who might
be controlling, let's say, 10, 20, or 100 of these systems at different points around
the active zone of conflict.
And then that operator will decide whether or not the data is getting from the drone
is correct and can approve that strike.
Now the next level of that, the outside the loop of control, is the one that I think that
we're reaching very quickly.
And this is the one where the drone system, be it used at sea, under water, in the air,
on the ground, or indeed underground, is able to choose off a preset list of targets built
within its algorithm.
So it's able to identify certain targets and then choose to take that strike on the target
without the human being in the loop of control.
So we're delegating, we're moving, we're placing into the hands of machines, into the minds
of machines, that decision about whether or not another human lives or dies.
We're delegating death to robots and machines.
And this is the future of war.
This is what is going to define the third drone age.
Well, you're scaring the hell out of me.
So you know, that's why guys like you have to think about this.
So guys like me don't have to.
You keep referring to drones in the sea, on the ground, and underground.
And I'm only thinking about drones in the air.
What am I not thinking about in terms of drones in the sea, ground, and underground?
Well, you think of the ability of the drone in the third dimension that is the sky, the
ability to move quite freely at different altitudes, to evade air defense systems, and to take
out targets.
So let's think about that in the third dimension.
That is the water, the sea, the ocean.
And you start to see how they become harder to detect, harder to track, and can be autonomously
to monitor, gather intelligence, surveillance, and to take strikes on naval targets, or perhaps,
you know, low and behold, undersea pipelines or vital interconnected wires that connect
the internet around the world.
We have a lot of very sensitive infrastructure under the sea.
And it's those sort of systems that can be used to defend that infrastructure, but also
to attack it.
Now, on the surface of the water, this has become one of the latest major innovations
of the war in Ukraine.
And this is the use of drone boats to take out Russian military shipping.
And we've seen this happen, the sinking of these ships from these comparatively much,
much cheaper drone boat systems.
Now, that's just the maritime domain.
Let's talk about on the ground.
We've seen the drones being introduced to Medevac, to be able to place people on these
drone structures that have tank tracks so they can just take them straight off the battlefield
as quickly as possible.
We're also looking at these remote controlled tank systems, which can be sent underneath
other tanks or sent under armored vehicles and explode underneath them.
That's something that's been around since the Cold War, if not actually the Second
World War, there might have been experimentation with those sort of remote control systems
in the First World War.
So that's not a new innovation, but it's something we're certainly seeing being put
to use.
And then underground, I only mentioned that because that's something we've seen with the
war between Israel and Gaza, the war between Israel and Hamas.
What we've seen there is the use of Israeli drones to be sent underground.
These are drones that were designed initially for mining operations or perhaps for humanitarian
release operations to go and to survey those tunnels to make sure there's no hostiles
down there and to collect that surveillance and intelligence for Israeli forces.
So we really are seeing drones being used in every facet of war.
And this is why the British government today, the Defence Minister, has announced £4.5
billion.
So that's well over $5 billion investment in the innovation of drones for the Royal
Navy, the Royal Air Force and the British Army.
We'll see if that happens or if it's just an election pledge in an election year to
try and bring the country back, which I suspect it probably is.
But either way, the attention and the intent is there from a number of nations around the
world that the future of war is drone war.
I've got two more areas I want to cover before we run out of time, but I want to back up.
You mentioned you recently wrote on the third drone age.
Can you identify where that's at?
Because I think there's probably veteran radio listeners who are going, hey, Dr. Rogers
has really thought about this.
I want to know more.
So where might we find such an article?
Well, I do mention it in the final chapters of my new book, Precision, A History of American
Warfare.
So you go to Manchester University Press and if you use the code Warfare30, you can get
30% off and that takes it down to about $20.
Fantastic.
You can also book online for the same price, it's about $20.
But you can find that particular article for free online under the CITI Institute.
If you just, to be fair, if you just type in the third drone age into Google, I think
I might be the only person that's written on it so far.
You may have, I hope you coined it because it's going to stick.
Now the two other things I want to touch on is drone defense, right?
So you've just outlined an incredible new area of warfare, but there's always, you know,
everything's got a reaction to the action, right?
So how is drone defense developing?
Slowly, and at a pace that concerns me.
It's something that I've been warning about for a long time now, before I've been working
on drones now for well over 10 years.
And it was a warning sign that we put out because we were worried about ISIS, because
we were worried about the earlier Houthi attacks from 2018-2019 onwards.
And the key thing, and the key fact is, is that actually when it comes to the US, its
allies and Western militaries more broadly, there's just been a neglect of air defense
for two generations.
I mean, you look at the official statistics, officially the last member of the US military
that was killed by hostile enemy air power was in the Korean War in 1953.
And so when it comes to investing in air defense systems for such attacks, there isn't the
impetus to put the money into it because there really wasn't the threat.
What we were warning about was that this threat is returning.
You look at the conflicts in which the US has been fighting, and it's usually, if not
completely, comprehensively had command of the air.
The only time if you want air defense is perhaps to, you know, pot-shot some rockets or maybe,
you know, most importantly, and where the money has been is to stop intercontinental
ballistic missiles to make sure you've got a really potent and powerful nuclear deterrence
capability and air defense to make sure you can stop any incoming nuclear attacks.
When it comes down to trying to target smaller systems and varied systems that are flown
in deliberately to evade foreign technologies of radar, so they're flown in low, they're
flown in slow, they have a smaller electronic signature.
All of this is deliberately designed to evade the latest technologies of high-tech radar.
When you've got an enemy that's clever enough to do that and can innovate in a low-tech
way to get around your defenses, it still takes some time to catch up in terms of air
defense.
So that's what's happening right now.
And you can see some big-ticking items put into place, like, you know, high-intensity
lasers.
A lot of money's being invested in that to literally burn drones out of the sky and to
make sure you've got this endless amount of munitions, this capacity to take the drones
out.
But it comes down, really, to a layered defense system and to try and detect these drones
before they attack your ships, before they attack your sites.
And sadly, that's just something that didn't happen with the latest attacks on Tower 22.
What we think happened there was a Reaper drone, I think it was, a US Reaper drone that
was returning back to that base.
The hostile drone was sent to follow that in, perhaps mimic its signal, and then to reach
those air defenses.
So a lot still to be done in terms of air defense.
Well, one last area I'd like to touch on, and that is, there aren't a lot of ethics
in war, but are people out there, maybe it's the United Nations, maybe it's NATO, maybe
it's somebody else, is there an effort being put at to think about, okay, as these advances
occur, is there some set of ethics that ought to apply?
I certainly think so, and this is something I've been working with the United Nations
Security Council and previously the United Nations Special Rector and Exhibition Summary
and Arbitrary Executions to try and develop such guidelines.
For me, some of the most concerning issues are how, as drones proliferating to a number
of states with perhaps not the best human rights record, those drones are being used
to target civilians.
In brutal civil wars, these nation states are finding it suspiciously difficult to differentiate
between certain ethnic groups that perhaps are involved in a broader civil war and those
who are active combatants.
And I'd point any of your listeners out there to recent events that have been happening
in the DR Congo, in Burkina Faso and in Nigeria, deeply concerning attacks.
There are hundreds of civilian casualties.
And then when it comes down to the future of drone warfare, I'm sure that your listeners
will agree that the process of delegating that decision about whether or not a human
lives or dies to a machine is something that should never be allowed to happen.
And this is something that President Biden and President Xi say that they agree on, that
China and the US are working towards this.
But then at the same time, they're both developing these systems as well.
And there's a lot of talks happening at the UN.
And one of the first resolutions to work on a resolution, so nothing solid, was passed
just at the turn of the New Year to try and work on these issues.
And I just hope that the policy can keep up with the technical developments.
Well, we really appreciate your expertise and spend some time today with veteran radio
listeners, Dr. James Padden Rogers, Executive Director of the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy
Institute at Cornell University.
You've really run us around the whole world here on what's going on in drone technology
and as we move from the first to the second drone age and on to the third is pretty scary.
So we're glad guys like you are out there thinking about this and working with folks
such as United Nations Security Council to come up maybe with some appropriate protocols.
And we didn't even use the word artificial intelligence, but that's another whole scary
wrap of if these drones start making all their decisions with AI, as you say, with no human
involvement.
Boy, oh boy, we're really heading into uncharted waters.
Absolutely.
I couldn't agree more.
Yeah.
Thank you for having me on and thank you for your service.
You got it, James.
Thank you.
Always good to get a viewpoint from an expert and this drone technology and how it impacts
national security and warfare is just pretty astounding.
We've seen all kinds of different aspects of this.
We saw it when Israel was attacked with some 300 drones.
At the moment, the defenses are pretty good.
They're not 98% of those out of the air.
But technology keeps advancing and as I said, we didn't really even talk about the more
scary aspect of it when you have artificial intelligence making the decision whether or
not to send a missile and have a strike.
So I hope that opened your eyes a little bit and made you think a little bit.
What we want to do is come back after a couple of announcements from our sponsors and talk
about an upcoming national event that is occurring in the Metro Detroit area on behalf of the
Bonford Point Marines and you'll get a little history about who they are and why this is
worth commemorating.
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of veterans radio over the years.
So now we're going to talk a little bit about the Montford Point Marines of America.
You know it's one of those stories that gets lost over time but it's so important and history
is slipping away.
A gentleman by the name of Butler Martin, he was 101 years old, died recently and is
thought to be maybe one of the last Montford Point Marines still alive in the country.
So we're going to talk to the Commodant Robert Middleton of the Montford Point Marines of
America which is an organization to keep this history alive and they have an upcoming event
he's going to talk about.
So again, one of those slices of history you're only going to hear on Veterans Radio and that's
why your support is so important.
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special for you as a commercial sponsor.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today Robert B. Middleton II, the National Commodant
of the Montford Point Marines of America.
Robert, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Well, it's an honor and a privilege.
Thank you very much for having me.
Now this is an interesting group to talk about and it's got an upcoming military banquet
and awards ceremony on June 23rd of 2024.
It'll be held at Burton Manor in Lavonia, Michigan.
We're going to talk a little bit more about that.
But let's start with a little bit about you.
You spent five years in the Marine Corps and then went on to a quite incredible finance
and business consulting career.
Give us a thumbnail sketch of your background just so everybody can kind of go, oh man,
I can relate to that guy.
Oh, bless you, Robert.
Well, let's see.
It was in the United States Marine Corps, five years altogether, three years active,
two years in a National Guard.
I served during the Vietnam era.
I was, well, I served in the Republic of Vietnam, 68-69, where I conducted, I was with the
Fort Air Command.
I was in the fixed wing unit, Fort Air Command, where I coordinated fixed wing air strikes
on enemy targets near the DMZ.
And so I'm proud of that, that heritage and that background with the United States Marine
Corps.
And after that, I came back to the United States.
I attended the University of Michigan, I majored in political science, public policy and administration,
got a background in economics as well and business law.
I went on to form a successful consulting company with the background in finance and
financial services.
I was a consultant for over 25 years, specializing in marketing and management, provided financial
services and consulting services to both the private and the nonprofit sector, board of
directors, technical assistants as well.
And so here we are today.
I am now retired, well, Sima retired.
I enjoy supporting Marines, especially veterans of all military services.
And that's what I've been doing for about 15 to 20 years now.
Well, if you want something, don't give it to a busy man and you're a busy man so things
get done.
But let's do a little history.
Who were the Monford Point Marines?
The Monford Point Marines were the nation's first African-Americans inducted into the Marine
Corps in 1942.
Before that time, there were no men of color in the ranks of the United States Marine Corps.
And of course, upon being inducted, they, after Athe and I, in Washington, D.C., they
were afforded for training to a camp called, a segregated camp called Camp Monford Point,
New River, North Carolina, Camp of June, North Carolina.
And that's where the name comes from and why I want to bring out this history because folks
go, well, who are the Monford Point Marines?
Is that a city?
Where is that?
You know?
It's a camp that this first group of African-Americans sworn into the Marine Corps were sent off
to train down in, I guess, Jacksonville, North Carolina is where it's at.
And this all followed on the heels, if you will, of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
executive order to desegregate the military.
It didn't quite work out very smoothly and certainly these Marines would have faced all
kinds of discrimination as they went south for their training and, but ultimately, prove
themselves up, didn't they?
Absolutely.
That is absolutely correct, sir.
And they were segregated.
Although discrimination had been abolished by Franklin D. Roosevelt, segregation still
remained.
And of course, in a place, if you will, where segregation, bitter racism existed and was
very prevalent throughout their training on base as well as off base.
So no matter where they went, they were subject to bitter racism and racial segregation.
So yeah.
And I think it's, you know, this is particularly good that the association that you're the
head of is keeping this history alive so that our young Marines and our young people can
appreciate that history and see where we've come to and where we need to go.
And I don't think we could imagine today a Marine Corps that didn't have the valiant
service of so many African Americans in it.
It's just unimaginable, isn't it?
Yeah.
Very much so.
It is different Marine Corps now.
As a matter of fact, the Marine Corps professors that the Monfort Point Marines, you know,
have established the Marine Corps and turned it into what it is today, you know, which
is an integrated oil, oil, green machine, you know, that picks on all ethnicities and
men of color and turns it into the most elite fighting force in the world.
Just to give our listeners some context here, and we're talking to the National Commandant
of the Monfort Point Marines of America, Robert Middleton, just to give you some context listeners,
between the seven-year period of 1942 to 1949, more than 20,000 men, this would be African
American men were trained at Monfort Point.
So it gives you some idea of the size of the impact that this initial cohort of men coming
forward to say, not only I want to serve, but I want to be a Marine, would have on today's
Marine Corps.
That was kind of recognized to the significance of it by the awarding of a Congressional Gold
Medal, which is a pretty big deal, Robert.
You want to talk about that a little bit?
Yes, of course.
In fact, I played an integral role in helping that come about.
I collaborated closely with the Marine Corps and the Pentagon to arrange for travel arrangements
and lodging for those World War II Black Marines across the United States of America.
They were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Barack Obama and the 112th United
States Congress in the year 2012.
At that time, there were approximately 450 of those men from all over the United States
who had come to Washington, D.C. to participate in that ceremony.
Some of them had even checked out of hospice in order to be present for that ceremony on
that hot summer day.
It is an amazing tribute to a community when it receives the Congressional Gold Medal,
obviously not lightly given out, often given out when there has been historically overlooking
the service of various people and communities.
This goes to the whole Montford Point Marines.
Those who were awarded the medals, we've had Congressional Gold Medals issued to Nisei
Japanese Americans who were in World War II who got overlooked in a lot of accommodations.
There have been other groups like that.
This must have been just an incredible day back in 2012 when this was awarded and all
your hard work paid off, Robert.
Well, I would say teamwork as opposed to my hard work.
We certainly had the cooperation of the United States Marine Corps, various legislators in
the United States Congress, including Miss Corrine Brown, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi,
and numerous others.
So it was really a tremendous thing to see in a once in a lifetime situation, one of
those unique parts of history.
It was really an honor to be a part of.
Really something.
I'm going to read what is the sort of organizational mission for Montford Point Marine Association.
But after I'm done with that, I'm going to have you put some bones, flesh on these bones.
The Association supports educational assistance programs, veterans programs, community services
with an emphasis on improving the social conditions of the growing population of military veterans
who are disabled or senior citizens.
Almost every organization has a really good mission statement or vision statement.
Put some flesh on the bones of that.
Tell us what the Association's able to accomplish these days.
Well, number one is our mission is to preserve the historical legacy of America's first
black United States Marines.
In fact, I wanted to add that since that time of receiving the Congressional Gold Medal,
we continue not only to preserve their legacy, but also to seek and identify others who missed
the opportunity to receive that award and or their family members and to make the presentation
posthumously.
And as a result of that, we found a number of those Marines who had not, in fact, received
those honors.
At our banquet, as a matter of fact, in June, we will be awarding six Congressional Gold
Medals to designated family members of those first black United States Marines.
So that will certainly be it all.
Oh, that's incredible that you're still able to find family representatives to reach out
to.
And as I say, it's a big deal for the community, not just the individual who Marine or family,
but it's really a community recognition.
So good transition.
Let's talk about it, the annual Heritage Military Banquet and Award Ceremony is coming
up on June 23rd.
It'll be held at Burden Manor in Livonia.
You have a very interesting program.
Start with telling us, you just told us a little bit about the Congressional Gold Medals
that will be handed out.
But tell us what else is planned for that evening.
Well, we will begin with our program.
We have a vocalist that will be singing the Star Spangled Banner for us.
We will have a 21-Den Salute, a posting of colors and taps, award presentations of Congressional
Gold Medal, the Centenary Award.
We had one of our Mauset Point Marines is 101 years old.
He is one of our remaining approximately 350 to 400 of those first black, original black
Marines remaining in the United States.
His name is Mr. Butler Mark.
Yes.
So he will be receiving a special Centenary Award and the Spirit of Detroit Award.
So we have a young lady who was the first black transportation designer at the Ford Motor
Company.
And she, in fact, designed the 1994 Ford Mustang and Thunderbird.
She will be receiving the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Gold Medal by a gentleman from
California named Bill Montgomery who represents Hidden Pioneers.
He will be flying in here to make that award to her.
And of course, our keynote speaker is Major General Cornel Wilson, United States Marine
Corps retired former director of Manpower and Reserve Affairs.
Okay.
But anytime you get a two-star general to show up, it's a big deal.
Tell us about General Wilson.
I met General Wilson, as a matter of fact, in 2012 following the presentation of the
Congressional Gold Medal.
In fact, I met him and his son at the Martin Luther King Statute.
And so we go all the way back to the year 2012.
And we remain friends all these many years.
And so Cornel Wilson is really an outstanding Marine at the top of his career and one of
the best in his profession.
And he's certainly a credit to the United States Marine Corps.
And we honor him.
We're talking to National Commandant Robert Middleton of the Montford Point Marines of
America and their upcoming gala on June 23rd.
Robert, before we run out of time here.
Hello, folks.
Hey, this sounds interesting.
I should go to this.
I should bring my uncle to this.
I should bring my grandson to this.
How do they find out more about the upcoming banquet and participate?
Absolutely.
They can go to our website at www.moffordpointmarinesamerica.org.
They can also contact me directly at 313, our headquarters number, 300.
0165.
And or email me at armiddleton underscore at hotmail.com.
Well we think you'll have a great banquet here.
It's clearly a wonderful program.
It's keeping the history of these first Marines, African American Marines who went to Camp
Montford Point alive.
And I think that's important, as I said, for not only looking back but looking forward.
Robert, thank you for some time here on Veterans Radio and for all that you're doing for future
Marines as well.
Well, thank you very much.
We certainly think that we have a lot to offer.
All ages, all branches of the United States military.
And of course we look forward to this event on the 23rd of June and there also will be
entertainment and dancing.
We want to add that into the mix of the real, for those who not only like to come in here
but also like a little activity as well.
Yeah, and I skipped over.
There's undoubtedly food and drink as well.
I mean, it's a full banquet.
Yes, yes, it will be.
Well, again, thanks Robert for the time.
You are very welcome.
I'm very glad to have been a participant here.
We have a little time so I'm going to give you a snippet of a podcast that we're doing
with Literature of War Foundation and we're developing a relationship with them to exchange
some programs together.
Think of Literature of War Foundation as sort of a military book club for units.
But here's a snippet of that conversation.
So let's turn to this idea of the Literature of War Foundation that you started with an
active duty Marine Lieutenant Colonel that you should talk about.
But get us started.
How did this happen?
Teaching there and those experiences had a profound impact on him.
He was working with these young cadets and they were talking about literature, specifically
war literature and he started this Instagram account called Literature of War, War Lit of
War for short and he was just posting quotes, little red square with quotes from some texts
that had an impact on him and it took off.
And that's where he pulled me in and he said, you know, he's still an active duty Marine
so he had active duty Marine things to do and he's like, I can't be hanging out on
Instagram all day so why don't you take this over.
And it continued to grow and we ended up incorporating as a 501c3 non-profit through the IRS with
the idea of how do we take this to the next level.
How do we have immediate impacts on our active duty serving men and women and all the branches
like what is the best way to do that through literature.
We did some book drives.
We've done a couple of little things like that but when we did our book drives we sent
a lot of probably around 400 books out to various active duty units and it was great
except we don't know what happened to the books after they were received.
You know what I mean?
Like we don't know if they're in a library somewhere or they shoved in a closet.
We don't know.
So we had to go back to the drawing board and we came up with a book club.
Like a book club is you sitting down with your teammates, with the people in your platoon,
with your friends and you're reading the same text together.
Right, and this came about because a pretty motivated staff sergeant reached out to me
and Marine Corps staff sergeant, part of an artillery battery and he said I want to do
a specific book with my platoon.
He wanted to do Matterhorn by Carl Barland.
He's like can you send me just this book instead of like a whole bunch of random books.
And at first I was like, ah, it's not really the way we work but the more I thought about
it I was like that's actually a really good idea.
So I said how about this, we'll get you 25 copies, we'll get you some notebooks, we'll
get you some merchandise with our logo on it and everything.
You guys do the book club on your own and then we'll meet up with you and we'll talk
about what the experience was like.
And that created our platoon book club initiative which has been going for four or five months
now and doing pretty cool things within the community.
Well, it's a really interesting idea because it's a military book club, right?
It's a platoon, you're operating it here at the platoon level but it could be shipboard,
it could be a department.
Now we all probably have heard about these three and four star generals and animals who
have a list of books they recommend you read.
How is what you're doing different than that?
Right, that's a great question.
Those lists are essential, right?
Those started coming about in the last couple of decades and they definitely serve a need.
Where we see that we separate ourselves is we're coming at it sort of from outside the
community a little bit.
I'm out of the Marine Corps, I've got maybe a different perspective.
I'm coming from more of an enlisted background, right?
Like a lot of those, the Commodance Reading List, it's coming from a more top to bottom.
I like to see this as stuff that maybe these guys wouldn't have been exposed to if they
hadn't partaken in this program.
It's literally, they might not have ever even considered reading if they hadn't gone through
this program.
We try and meet the needs of the unit, we also ask like what do you want to read?
We will take that suggestion as long as it has literary merit and we think they have
a reason for wanting to read it.
It's not just some random book but something that can help them bond as a platoon.
We're okay with that.
We also have a curated list and these are authors that have either done some work recently
or ancient classics that we think are of value to the community.
In that way, we're looking to support, like tell us what you need as well as like here's
a curated list if you're looking for something to choose from.
It really sounds a little less stuffy to me if you will.
Those are your words, not mine.
Okay, you don't want to get in trouble with the generals.
I get it.
I don't care.
But as you say, you're coming to meet the unit, the platoon, the department where it's
at.
I think they're interested in reading so it's kind of ground up rather than top down,
isn't it?
Yes, exactly.
The idea here is it's not just explicitly military fiction all the time or military
poems or it can be about stuff that at first glance you might think like I don't see how
this relates to the military or my experience in the military.
But then once you, if you sit there and you read it, you're going to start to see that
like these experiences that we're listing there are not exactly, they're not too far
removed than what you're going through.
Maybe it's a different time period.
Maybe it's not exactly a war, but there's something you can get out of there that you
can relate to your own experience in serving in the military.
Well the word literature is going to scare some folks off.
They're going to go, I'm not reading the classics.
I'm not reading the Greek and Roman classics here.
So help us understand what you're talking about in terms of books that have literary
merit.
But give us some examples of what's on your curated list.
Yeah, of course.
We've got, for instance, we just did our first actual debrief session where once the platoon
reads their book, right, they get a chance to sit with us on Zoom because keep in mind
these units, they're coming and going.
Some of them are halfway across the world.
So we sit down on Zoom and we say like what do you think of the book?
How was the experience?
What did you learn from bonding?
And like we just did our first one with Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield, which is a
novel that came out a couple decades ago and it's about the Spartan 300, right?
It's about the famous battle where they faced off against insurmountable odds.
They were completely outnumbered and they held against them for a prolonged period of time.
Now these were probably 1920, 21-year-old infantry Marines in Okinawa and they were
looking at this and it was interesting.
The group was all divided, right?
Some of them were like this was amazing.
There's a lot of action in it, right?
There's a lot of combat, ancient combat.
While like the other half of the room was like this has no bearing on anything I'm doing
here like I'm serving in the 21st century Marine Corps.
An interesting discussion with the co-founders of Literature of War Foundation.
If you want to hear more of it, check it out on our podcast.
We post every Tuesday at 11 a.m. Eastern time.
This one we posted back in late May so you can find it there.
But that's what we do here on Veterans Radio.
We bring you interesting stories.
You're not going to hear anywhere else.
Maybe something you want to dig a little deeper on.
We get to update you on some history like Monfort Point Marines.
But we also talk about the future like in drone technology and certainly what's happening
with the troops today in a military book club.
So we're really happy to be able to bring you this kind of information.
I'm Jim Fossone, one of the Veteran Radio hosts.
Dale Throneberry will be back next week.
And you can always check us out as I say on Facebook or veteransradio.org.
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Keep this mission going.
And until next week, you are dismissed.