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https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/d9fcb0fcb4469f2fbaa250a9deeaeb01.pdf
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Text
Name:
Branch:
Years Served:
Date of Interview:
Lieutenant Lyndon Bartlett
U.S. Air Force
2009- present
October 13, 2012
Seth Chesson: Alright my name is Seth Chesson and I am here with First Lieutenant Lyndon
Bartlett. The date is October 13, we are in First Lieutenant Bartlett’s home and I am conducting
an interview for an oral history project for Professor Brownings class. First Lieutenant Bartlett, I
would like to ask you where you received your training to be an officer in the Air Force?
Lyndon Bartlett: I graduated Air Force academy class of 2009.Colorado Springs.
Chesson: And as an academy graduate have you noticed any prejudice toward or against you by
other officers or enlisted personnelsince you’ve been in the military?
Bartlett: Yes, if you work with academy grads and commanders you know it just depends if
your boss is a grad or not. There’s definitely a good ol’ boy network between the USAFA grads.
But other than that…there’s some good, good natured ripping you could say between ROTC
guys and USAFA guys but the mutual respect is within everybody so no, no real prejudice, just
you know, friendly competition.
CHESSON: So have you had any commanders who were academy graduates who you noticed
favored you more or gave you more praise or gave you more awards or anything?
BARTLETT: No, no, not at all, not at all. There’s…my commander now is a grad and the
commander I had before was not. There’s no…any good commander not gonna show favoritism
from your commissioning scores.
CHESSON: And How long have you been with the Air Force?
BARTLETT: 3 years.
CHESSON: 3 years..
BARTLETT: 4 years reserve 3 years active duty
CHESSON: And you’re...are you currently looking towards a career or serving out your
8…your term?
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�BARTLETT: I’d like to do career. Everybody…I mean its always good to plan to do a career
and if something happens along the way you can get out. You should always practice like you’re
going to be in the game for the long haul.
CHESSON: Lets see…and…what do you currently do? When you graduated from the
academy…well I guess what I shouId ask is when you graduated from the academy did your plan
to do change from what you are actually doing or did you….is your job reflective of what you
went to the academy to do?
BARTLETT: Definitely. When I was a junior at the academy I..I lost my pilots license.
They…the goal at the academy wasto be a pilot. That’s why you go to the Air Force academy
because you do get favoritism as to who gets the pilot slots. They go to the academy first, so
that’s why I went there. And then junior year I found out that I was born with a particular
condition which is disqualifying for pilots in the Air Force. So that was pretty rough, there was a
little cynicism on my part after that…but once I actually got out and I got my…I’m in cyber
warfare that’s my actual career field, once I found out that career…once I got that and found out
what it was actually about and the leadership aspects to the job and how many people you get to
supervise and all that stuff it was….I really enjoyed it a lot.
CHESSON: And cyber warfare, what exactly does that mean? I mean sounds pretty cool but
what exactly does that kinda job entail?
BARTLETT: There’s two branches, one branch is….is…either you have attack and
defense….there’s one branch, the ASHRED, that is network defense, intrusion detection,
aggression against enemies. So like China or…other 3rd party organizations in the Middle East.
And then there’s the other half, the BSHRED, which is what I do, which is more leadership
oriented. You’llmanage a squad at the base level, which for the Army equates to like Company
leadership.
CHESSON: And I’ll backtrack a little bit before to what you said before about wanting to be a
pilot. So you originally went to the academy to become a pilot but when you were back in high
school your main drive, like what I guess I should say like whendid you decide in your younger
years that you wanted tobe an Air Force pilot and the academy was your goal.
BARTLETT: Well everybody wants to be like astronauts or whatever when they are kids so I
wanted to be a fighter pilot. So my dad was a pilot and that got me interested in aviation so that’s
how I got the dream as a kid and then the Air Force Academy seemed like the best way for me to
do that so it wasn’t necessarily that I wanted to be an Air Force pilot it just…the Air Force
Academy, they produced the most pilots per capita, so that’s where I wanted to go and get a
pilots license out of there.
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�CHESSON: And was your dad in the Air Force as well?
BARTLETT: No, not at all. Dad was a US airways pilot, he actually never went military at all
so he was civilian all the way through.
CHESSON: So the military was basically just an avenue for you to become a pilot not
necessarily… a means to an end as opposed to a final destination.
BARTLETT: Correct….Correct. But they always say in the military you join for one reason
and you stay for another. So I defiantly joined for…you know…the whole cool aspect of being a
pilot but I stayed for other reasons which is what I found out…you know the stability of the job,
the prestige of it, you get good training, you get to work with good people, you get good
leadership opportunities that are varying…you know I mean I was in charge of 45 people when I
was 24 so that’s pretty rare not a lot of guys get to do that. So that’s why I stayed in and I really
started to enjoy it.
CHESSON: So you definitely noticed and improvement in your…well I guess…you
know….your quality of life and your…you know…perception of self since you’ve been in the
military?
BARTLETT: Definitely, definitely. And I guess the military’s kinda like a microcosm if you
will…it’s like the whole society you know you got different jobs. There’s support jobs, there’s
operational jobs, and then there’s people…you know there’s real fast burners and then there’s
guys that are just in there to punch their tickets every day. So its just interesting…you can see
kinda all that within one military unit. You get a larger leadership experience through that
avenue then you could…and you get a lot….you get that leadership experience a lot faster and
you get a lot more of it at a very young age rather than at a….is the phone working alright?
Than…rather than at a civilian job.
CHESSON: …Lets see, and…so would…your cyber warfare, I’ll jump back to your current
job…are you…is that a field….you said your with the BSHRED more of the leadership
component….is that a job that you could see yourself staying in and progressing towards…you
know if you stay career… you know becoming a Colonel or a General within that field or would
you like to think of… you know switching up your branch and… you know joining some
different avenue within the Air Force?
BARTLETT: In the Air Force that’s pretty rare, you rarely switch branches, so yeah that’s
definitely somewhere I could see myself doing. The ASHRED, probably not my style, I’ve never
been a huge tech, you know, I’ve never been really into computer programing and the
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�ASHREDS, they do some pretty high speed stuff, they do a lot of top secret crap. They do a lot
of stuff they can’treally talk about but they also work in cubicles their entire career and all they
do is look at codes so I mean, it’s really cool…
CHESSON: And in BSHRED, would you get to go into a field environment in any point in
time?
BARTLETT: Yeah, yeah definitely that’s what you do in BSHRED. It’s a lot more leadership,
you know, you deal with people a lot more, it’s not necessarily as technical as the ASHRED but I
like the leadership and the people aspect of it I think that’s what I’m good at so that probably
where I’ll stay.
CHESSON: So during a deployment, what would you think that your day to day job would be
as a BSHRED First Lieutenant your , you know, your daily task in Afghanistan or Pakistan or
something would be?
BARTLETT: Well there’s literally dozens of different jobs especially as, I mean I’m a First
Lieutenant and that’s O2, in the Air Force, so as a First Lieutenantthere’s like dozens of different
jobs so you could either be at a base, a large base managing a communications squadron or you
could be at a FOB somewhere, forward operating base, I don’t know if you guys use that same
terminology, you could be at a forward operating base living in tents and stuff just managing a
radio tower or a satellite link. You could, they have, you know, airborne units that go and deploy
to certain areas, they have that aspect of the job. So there’s all sorts of different jobs you could
do when your deployed. It’s like anything, there’s literally a vast array of jobs in a certain career
field that are, you know, there’s lame ones and there’s good ones.
CHESSON: And you promoted fairly quickly upon graduating from the academy from Second
to First Lieutenant, you know, you’ve only been in for three years, and are you upcoming for
another promotion now pretty soon?
BARTLETT: Yeah, just got selected for Captain, so that was good.
CHESSON: And what entails you getting into that next rank.
BARTLETT: Okay well the way it works is you submit, it’s all based on reports, so you submit
a form, a promotion recommendation form that has the nine best, you get nine lines on this form
to describe the nine best things you’ve done in your previous career and that’s all you get and all
those, everybody does the exact same thing and a board of really high speed higher ranking guys
looks at them all and ranks everybody in order and the top, for captain its almost impossible to
not make it so like the top 92% of guys get picked.
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�CHESSON: So would you say that going from O1 of Second Lieutenant to Captain is pretty
easy for new officers?
BARTLETT: Well Second Lieutenant to First Lieutenant is automatic. There’s no evaluation at
all. If you’re alive you make it. And First Lieutenant to Captain is selective but it’s not, it’s a
high selection percentage. Then the first rank that really is competitive is Major, which is about
half the guys get selected.
CHESSON: And you said you know the 9 best attributes of you getting selected. What would
you say…well like…what would you put on your Captain recommend…your Captains sheet so
that people could look at you and be like This is…Lieutenant Lyndon Bartlett and he’s done this.
What would you say your best qualities are?
BARTLETT: ….Well usually its job centric. I don’t know how specific you wanna get there’s
3 categories on that form. There’s 3 blocks that the General in charge of your entire major
command can award you. So there’s do not promote, which if you get that block checked you
mean you either like murdered somebody or you got a DUI or something so the general is saying
do promote this guy. Very rarely does that happen unless you really jacked up. Then there’s
promote, which goes to 90% of people. Promote, if you’re in that category, that’s when you have
to put the 9 bullets on, and that’s the competitive category. And then you get do not…and then
you get defiantly promote, which if…if the top ten percent of your rank category if you get
selected do not promote then your promotion form is blank and you make it automatically. So
that was what I got so I didn’t have to put anything on there and actually like for me it was
automatic. But you normally would have to put the 9 lines on there that was just a normal…
CHESSON: Well I guess when I asked about the 9 lines…What would you have said to make
yourself stand out from other….
BARTLETT: Ohh, well the things that make you promote are stratification so if you get
selected for number one of…everything in the Air Force is ranked…or is…stratified, meaning if
you are working with 5 guys you wanna be the number one of 5 guys. Or if you’re working with
20 people you wanna be the number or if there’s…you know…and there’s different levels so you
could be ranked as the number one Lieutenant on the entire base, the number one Lieutenant in
your squadron or whatever. So that’s one thing you defiantlywanna put on there. So if you’re
good enough to get stratified by your bosses you put that on there ok? What?…(speaking to
someone off record)…Ok so if I would have had to put 9 lines on there I got selected as number
one Lieutenant on the base last year so I would have put that on there as like the biggest one, first
one on there.
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�CHESSON: You won, you won the…is that just with the Lieutenants or with all officers on the
base?
BARTLETT: No they do it in grade categories. So Second Lieutenant First Lieutenant are
grouped into one category.
CHESSON: So…
BARTLETT: So out of all the Lieutenants on base…
CHESSON: That’s probably pretty…a lot because its O1.
BARTLETT: Right, or O2. O1 O2 together. There are a lot. But you compete at the Squadron
level, which is Company for Army. You compete at the Company level, if you win that you go to
the…Battalion level, which for us is called a Group. And if you win that you go to the Wing
level which for you is Regiment.
CHESSON: Regiment or Division, or I guess Brigade is technically above Battalion.
BARTLETT: Yea our base wasn’t big enough to have a Brigade level, it was just a Wing for
us. So you put that stuff on there and again if you won any awards, if you do things, you always
wanna put stuff like that on there. So if you’ve done really well that year and you get a yearly
award you put that on there. If you’ve done…if you’ve completed some really large base wide
project like if you’ve…if you were in charge of this section you guys…and your guys got like
maintenance unit of the year you wanna put that on there. Anything that shows your leadership
is…is above and beyond the normal call of duty is what you wanna put that on there. And that’s
what their looking for to see.
CHESSON: What kinda..you know….special….like talking about special stuff that units have
done…what kinda specialty schools or special programs…has your unit or yourself been selected
to go into?
BARTLETT: My unit..its…officers and enlisted have a lot…have very different training
regimens. So enlisted do very…they do lots and lots of training over a long period of time
because its…as enlisted person your expected to be an expert in your particular field and know
the ins and outs and all the very specific regulations that are…that that entails. As an officer
you’re not expected to know that. You’re expected to be a good leader, lead by example, but
you’re also supposed to have a very broad knowledge of everything rather than have a deep
knowledge of one area. So our training is very….is very…OJT oriented. By that I mean on the
job training. So usually you just go shadow people….I did a 6 month tech school training when I
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�first got out but that was kinda just a box checker thing. For the most part when you first come
into the units as a Second Lieutenant you’ll have a whole bunch of jobs in succession. So you
will do every shop in the unit you’ll go and rotate through and spend a couple of months in that
shop so you can get a large breadth of experience in a very short period of time. So that way
when it comes time for you to be a commander of that unit you have at least some knowledge of
the workings of that area.
CHESSON: So…you know…you’ve done…mostly what you’re saying is that you’ve got, you
know, a lot of…mostly I guess you’re in more of a management position, you know, guiding
your enlisted personnel who are trained specifically for the job and you’re just kinda there to
supervise, refine, and make plans and stuff.
BARTLETT: Absolutely, and that’s the same for any officer in any career field, especially in
the Army. The Army is huge about that so…in fact you would be looked down upon if you tried
to do an enlisted job because they would get…you would offend not only the chief of that
section but you would offend that Airman or that Soldier because you’re saying to them I can do
this job better than you even though you’re highly trained in that area, so yes, you’re supposed to
manage the team, make sure they have their resources that they need, make sure they have the
training that they need and the manning that they need and get out of their hair and make sure
they’re staying on task.
CHESSON: would you say that you’re pretty successful in doing that with your…do you work
with many enlisted personnel?
BARTLETT: Yeah my flight had 45 people, so that’s pretty average.
CHESSON: Average…that’s about the size of an infantry platoon, about 44
BARTLETT: Yeah, yeah platoon leader…so exactly, that’s what I was, its occasionally rare for
Lieutenants to do that but Lieutenants and Captains are usually platoon leaders…or flight leaders
for us, flight chiefs.
CHESSON: Did you notice as a, you know, working closely with the, did you work very
closely with the enlisted personnel when you were a flight leader?
BARTLETT: I had four senior NCO’s that worked right under me, and with those people I
worked very closely with. But other than that I tried to stay out of their hair. If they were
performing to par, I usually stay out of their hair and tried to take care of their people and make
sure they were getting awards put in for them and taking care of patted on the back and there was
one section…
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�CHESSON: Tell them what to do not how to do it kind of thing?
BARTLETT: Exactly, exactly. And they know what to do, usually they know what to do way
better than I did cause I was so new and so fresh, I was just kinda there not to jack anything up.
So I did have a problem with one section and, you know, then I had to get in their business a
little bit.
CHESSON: Do you want to go into that at all or is that kind of a private…
BARTLETT: Okay, yeah sure, there was…its not private, there was one section that, when you
first enter the Air Force as an enlisted person you take what’s called the ASVAB and I think you
do that for the Army too…so when you do that you get branched out into a certain career field
and there’s certain career fields that are harder to get into than others that require higher
aptitude…well there’s one part of commof the enlisted version of communications where it’s a
very low aptitude career field. It’s called knowledge operations. And all they do is manage
records for the whole base, they just manage these large warehouses and its extremely boring and
its one of the lowest aptitude jobs in the Air Force,it’salmost as low as cook. So, know,
inherently by that you know that you’re probably going to have more problems with that section
than with another section because you have lower aptitude folks that have less drive that don’t
want to perform as high and that usually don’t get held to as high of a standard as everybody
else. So the challenge is you have to motivate them either by the carrot or the stick to still
perform well up to that hard level so I ended up having to, you know, punish several people, give
out paper work, that sort of thing to certain people. We would have credit card issues, credit card
fraud, poor financial management, there’s one guy that’s beating his wife, there’s a lot of
personality issues that go on that you have to deal with as an officer that, you know, you’re kind
of supposed to be the bad guy in that situation for that kind of an issue. That kind of stuff we had
to nip in the bud pretty quick it was getting pretty bad reputation for that section in the unit so
that was one of the challenges is dealing with that where you don’t want to crush the moral of the
section but you want to find the people that are not performing and get them out as quickly as
possible.
CHESSON: And I guess as an officer you kind of, you know, have to look at it and like you
said, kind of be the bad guy but at the same time you have to be the person that they look up
to…you know…how difficult is that being the inspiration but at the same time being the
disciplinarian?
BARTLETT: Well if you’re tough but fair, they will always…they’ll be pissed at first, it
doesn’t matter how mad they are, if you’re tough but you are equally tough to every single
person, people will respect you, and there’s nothing they can say…as long as you’re doing the
8
�same thing…if someone shows up late to work and you hammer them with paperwork, and
someone that you really like shows up late to work you better be hammering them with
paperwork the exact same way or else you’re gonna have the look of favoritism. So as long as
you avoid that and everybody knows that you’re dealing with the regulation, you’re following
the rules, you’re not trying to make up stuff on your own, you’re not favoring one section over
the other its usually okay, and they understand who the dirt bags are, some guys show up late to
work four times every month, that’s a problem, and he knows, and even he knows that was
wrong, everybody has a basic understanding of right and wrong and they’ll be pissed at first but,
you know, you just, you do what’s necessary and you keep on rolling and that’s their problem,
you know? You’re not there to make friends with anybody, you just….
CHESSON: Yeah, you’re there to do a job…
BARTLETT: Exactly…
CHESSON: And are you, you know, kinda switching gears a bit…are you looking at
deployment any time soon? Or..
BARTLETT: The position I’m in now, I’m actually an instructor at the citadel so that’s a
special duties assignment for me and its non-deployable, so no…I was slated for deployment last
December but I ended up getting this citadel job instead which over took that deployment.
So…for the rest of the year that I’m at this job I’m not deployable but I’ll probably get hit with a
deployment soon after I get to my next job.
CHESSON: And, you know, you enjoy…so basically at the citadel you would be a..kind of on
par with a college professor.
BARTLETT: Yea that’s what I am I’m a college instructor, I teach Air Force cadets.
CHESSON: And as an Air Force…do you feel, I guess, well trained for that job? You feel like
you, as an academy graduate, you have the appropriate knowledge to go in and teach other Air
Force… potential Air Force cadets and potential Lieutenants to come in and do the job that you
are doing now or do you feel like all the training you received has kind of not prepared you
adequately for that?
BARTLETT: Well, I mean I don’t know if I personally am a great teacher but I know that they
train you pretty well. They make it pretty easy for you, the guys who send down the curriculum
make it pretty straight forward, you just follow the certain…a certain set of objectives, you make
sure you hit some certain points, and the rest of it is down to personal teaching style but as long
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�as you care about it and they know you care I think you probably came across the best that you
should. And a lot of its hands on learning so you can’t really mess that up, you know?
CHESSON: Awesome, well it is great talking to you Lieutenant Bartlett and thank you very
much for participating in our interview.
BARTLETT: Perfect, glad to do it.
10
�
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/aa704530f5998f247e969c49c0f22512.mp3
37166991d96fc47c45387f62072df08c
Dublin Core
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Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project
Description
An account of the resource
Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers.
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Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC).
Oral History
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MP3
Military Branch
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U.S. Air Force
Officer Rank
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Lieutenant
Creator
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Chesson; Seth
Bartlett; Lyndon
Interviewer
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Chesson, Seth
Interviewee
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Bartlett, Lyndon
Interview Date
10/13/2012
Number of pages
10
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0:21:25
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1/2/2015
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bd89f39cb4ecaa1279fda968b737410c
37166991d96fc47c45387f62072df08c
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UA.5018. American Military History Course Records
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5018_Bartlett_Lyndon_20121013_transcript_A
5018_Bartlett_Lyndon_20121013_audio_A
Title
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Interview with Lieutenant Lyndon Bartlett [October 13, 2012]
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Oral History
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English
English
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<a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a>
Creator
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Bartlett, Lyndon
Chesson, Seth
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Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used.
Description
An account of the resource
First Lieutenant Lyndon Bartlett went into the Air Force because he wanted to be a pilot like his father who worked for US Airways. Due to a physical defect, he couldn't continue flying planes, but he went into BSHRED cyber warfare which he describes as very leadership oriented. He plans to make a career in the military.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bartlett, Lyndon
Veterans
Cyberspace operations
United States
Interviews
Military Science
Air Force
BSHRED
Colorado Springs
cyber warfare
First Lieutenant