With the conception of the Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFAB) in 2018, the U.S. government signaled an enduring commitment to building capabilities within partner nations’ security forces as an investment in global security and shared interests. An adaptable instrument for conflict mitigation and stability, security force assistance (SFA) can occur throughout the competition and conflict continuum. SFA with NATO allies in Europe may take the form of Phase 0 investments in force professionalization or advanced capabilities like cyber. Whereas it may entail advisory missions alongside allies in combat settings, such as with the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Indeed, SFA is a broad and complex undertaking, and as new entities with this mandate, SFABs must cultivate a commensurate array of skills and knowledge within their formations. For one, SFAB personnel must understand the political nature of their missions, the country context in which they operate, and align their efforts with broader U.S. and partner interests. Key to this is that SFAB personnel must understand the role and function of U.S. embassies in the nations where they deploy, appreciating that an embassy is the focal point of strategic interests and a portal to powerful interagency resources & relationships that can make or break an SFAB mission.

This January and February, the 4th SFAB gave Motive the opportunity to build this understanding among their personnel when they contracted us to provide embassy role players for their validation exercise ahead of a deployment to the European theatre. Military customers often seek Motive out and ask us if we provide “embassy 101” training or interagency role players. We’re quick to clarify that we’re not in the business of delivering PowerPoint instruction on embassy org charts or lectures on how to mind one’s Ps and Qs with American diplomats. Instead, we explain, Motive provides bona fide SMEs to simulate, educate, and prepare your personnel not just to navigate a U.S. embassy while deployed, but to leverage embassy resources & relationships in support of their missions. For the 4th SFAB this month, we mobilized Mike Megeath, a former Regional Security Officer (RSO), and Jeff Schroeder, a former Defense Attaché (DATT) – each with years of prior service at U.S. embassies abroad --  to do just this.

Aligned to exercise training objectives, 4th SFAB asked Motive to simulate interactions between the RSO, DATT, and SFAB training audiences so they would be ready to interact with embassy personnel upon their real-world arrival in-country. But this presumed SFAB personnel already understood or didn’t need to understand the roles and functions of the multitude of embassy sections they might encounter, and their relevance to an SFA mission. Having previously supported a 5th SFAB pre-deployment exercise, Mike knew that few unit personnel had been exposed to this information in a meaningful way. So, the former-SEAL-turned-diplomat created a realistic country in-brief that oriented SFAB soldiers to the roles & functions of the RSO shop, the political and econ sections, an embassy “front office,” and more, while infusing the brief with SFAB-relevant content like existing relationships between the embassy and local security forces, an overview of the country’s governance model and threat profile, and importantly, of U.S. strategic priorities in the country, and how SFA fit in.

But recognizing that learning is most effective when it is engaging and challenging, Mike and Jeff went beyond basic briefs on State Dept. culture or interagency programs to develop a multi-day, problem-based curriculum integrated throughout the exercise. This curriculum was built around increasingly complex scenarios requiring SFAB personnel to interact with the RSO, DATT, and other members of the Country Team to solve realistic problems. One scenario involved a car accident involving deployed SFAB team members that compelled interagency crisis management coordination. A second identified gaps in the host nation’s security capabilities, prompting SFAB personnel to hold meetings with various embassy sections about potential new security cooperation programs and authorities. Mike and Jeff turned up the heat with higher-stakes scenarios as the curriculum progressed through briefings and role-play interactions, giving the training audience the opportunity to build-upon newly gained knowledge on embassy operations, interagency resources, and mission-aligned problem-solving.  

By the end of the two-week event, Motive earned widespread praise from the most senior and junior members of the training audience, including the unit commander who said our contributions had “far exceeded my expectations.” A field-grade officer who lamented that military exercises often involve “embassy role player” contractors who have never actually served in an embassy, commented: “I’ve been to several U.S. embassies and this is as good as it gets - very realistic.” An SFAB team lead about to deploy for the first time said, “I feel as though I could walk into any embassy in the world and do my job effectively because of what I learned.” Others described Mike and Jeff’s scenario-based instruction as among the best training of their Army careers.

With the demand for SFAB deployments only increasing, we hope this unique community will demand excellence in all their training and exercise events. We urge SFAB exercise planners and training OICs to prioritize interagency familiarization in their event planning by building robust embassy role player elements in exercise designs and devoting pre-mission training time to challenging, SME-delivered courses that integrate this important topic. For contracting officials who support the SFABs, we urge you to recognize the imperative of contracting qualified firms who can mobilize personnel with bona fide embassy credentials, and caution against lowest-priced awards that routinely mobilize unqualified contractor personnel. The SFABs’ mandate is too important and complex to short-change with training or exercises that fail to prepare personnel for strategic engagement at U.S. embassies while deployed. 

You can read more about Motive’s robust training and exercise support portfolio on our website. When you are ready to learn more about how Motive subject matter experts can enhance your upcoming training event, please contact us today!