{"id":84941,"date":"2025-12-12T02:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T02:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/84941\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T02:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T02:38:12","slug":"1st-armored-division-talks-leadership-through-people-and-innovation-with-iron-summit-2025-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/84941\/","title":{"rendered":"1st Armored Division talks leadership through people and innovation with Iron Summit 2025 | Article"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Retired Gen. Vincent Brooks speaks at the Iron Summit conference in downtown El Paso, Dec. 10, 2025. Brooks, who retired from active duty in Jan. 2019 as a four-star general, spoke at Iron Summit, a two-day conference held in downtown El Paso that brings together leaders and soldiers to discuss leadership, readiness, and modernization. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Russell Savage)
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Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss commanding general, speaks at the Iron Summit conference in downtown El Paso, Dec. 9, 2025. The Iron Summit is a two-day conference held in downtown El Paso that brings together leaders and soldiers to discuss leadership, readiness, and modernization. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Russell Savage)
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Leaders from across 1st Armored Division host a panel to answer questions at the Iron Summit conference in downtown El Paso, Dec. 10, 2025. Iron Summit is a two-day conference held in downtown El Paso that brings together leaders and soldiers to discuss leadership, readiness, and modernization. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Russell Savage)
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Leaders from across the 1st Armored Division browse booths set up to help them learn more about various programs and services available to their Soldiers at the annual Iron Summit conference held in downtown El Paso, Dec. 9, 2025. The Iron Summit is an annual two-day conference held each year in downtown El Paso that brings together leaders and Soldiers from the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss to discuss leadership, readiness, and modernization across the U.S. Army.<\/p>\n

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EL PASO, Texas – The 1st Armored Division held its Iron Summit 2025 at the Abraham Chavez Theatre in downtown El Paso December 9-10, bringing together more than 1,000 leaders from across the Fort Bliss and El Paso communities.<\/p>\n

The Iron Summit is an annual leadership forum 1st AD and Fort Bliss leaders use to provide operational updates, set expectations, develop leaders, build team cohesion, and foster unity, particularly through Operation Ironclad.<\/p>\n

Operation Ironclad is a division-wide initiative that ensures Fort Bliss leaders have the knowledge and resources to develop cohesion, trust and expertise in their respective units through clearly defined lines of effort.<\/p>\n

In his opening remarks, Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commanding general of 1st AD and Fort Bliss, articulated a key update to the division objectives that enable his leaders to prepare their units for future combat.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, we had three priorities; lead, maintain [equipment] and train. This year, we added a fourth priority \u2026 innovate. Really that was driven by the changing character of war,\u201d said Taylor.<\/p>\n

Command Sgt. Maj. James Light, senior enlisted advisor of 1st AD and Fort Bliss, in his comments to the audience, focused on the actions that he expects leaders to take and the impacts that effective leaders have on their Soldiers.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Through] maximizing technical and tactical expertise, building trust with our teams, we raised confidence and reduced fear. Reducing fear will change how Soldiers respond to the experience [of war],\u201d said Light.<\/p>\n

This combination of the definitive lines of effort for the division and the effects of leadership, demonstrated the thematic line of discussion for the Iron Summit, which can be viewed as the intersection of people and technology as it relates to unit readiness. This year\u2019s summit was meant to help division leaders begin to think through the challenges they face while confronting those aspects of their duties.<\/p>\n

Day one of the conference focused on the people aspect of leadership. Guest speakers featured bestselling author James Kerr and NBA Performance Consultant David Nurse who spoke about leadership, team culture, and optimizing self-performance by getting into the flow state.<\/p>\n

There was also a panel discussion with senior NCOs about how to connect and care for Soldiers in a way that balances the discipline required for war and the engagement necessary to treat Soldiers with respect and foster trust. In particular, the panel discussion emphasized the repeated topic of having clearly identified purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders have to understand their purpose in order to provide purpose to their Soldiers,\u201d said Sgt. Maj. Janina Simmons, panel member and the first enlisted female to earn the prestigious Ranger tab.<\/p>\n

Day two focused on the human aspect of leadership and innovation. It started with a talk from retired US Army Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, former commander of US Forces Korea, who addressed establishing leadership practices and connecting with subordinates on a human level.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to get the best out of your Soldiers, get under their skin [get to know them personally]\u2026 Lead the way you would want to be led,\u201d said Brooks.<\/p>\n

While Brooks maintained that the human aspects of leadership remain constant, he acknowledged that the job of military leadership has become more complex with the evolving character of war. New technology and expanding areas of operation have added layers of complexity to the work that leaders must do. This problem is one that the latter half of Iron Summit also addressed.<\/p>\n

Subsequent day two speakers focused on topics such as how to leverage data systems to improve Soldier and unit readiness as well as lessons learned from the technological evolution that is occurring in modern conflicts, which included a live First-Person Drone flight inside the theater.<\/p>\n

Iron Summit\u2019s final speaker, bestselling author P. W. Singer, clearly defined the challenges that evolving technology presents to military leaders on a multi-domain and global scale.<\/p>\n

Singer closed his comments by suggesting that it is imperative for leaders to think about technological innovation in the context of what has gotten leaders through past wars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future winner of tomorrow’s war will be the general who figured out how to bring together the best of tradition with the newest ideas,\u201d said Singer.<\/p>\n

Overall, Iron Summit reinforced the division\u2019s culture and promoted conversations among all echelons of leaders who attended. And, as James Kerr noted in his address, \u201cCulture is created in conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The key take away from this year\u2019s summit is that success for the 1st AD will depend on leaders\u2019 ability to understand how their most precious resource, Soldiers, overlaps with the challenges and opportunities for innovation on future battlefields.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we’ve got to do is find those folks, unleash their incredible talent, and give them the opportunity to plan and execute,\u201d Taylor stated. \u201cAsk them how we should innovate for an unrestricted future. If we do, we will continue the 85 Year Legacy of this Division.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1 \/ 4 Show Caption + Hide Caption \u2013 Retired Gen. Vincent Brooks speaks at the Iron Summit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-84941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}