Building the Human Weapon System: A 3-Pillar Approach to H2F

Building the human weapon system requires a different way of thinking. Traditional Return on Investment (ROI) models don't fit our mission. We aren't a corporation maximizing profit; we are tasked with forging more lethal soldiers and maximizing human readiness. This is a complex challenge, one that requires a clear framework to prove its value to leaders and soldiers alike. Through trial, error, and countless hours studying my soldiers' needs and my commanders' demands, I’ve come to rely on three pillars to build a successful H2F System: Narrative, Products, and Pollution.

After years of leading soldiers into combat on four deployments, 10 cycles as a Drill Sergeant, and later as an H2F system manager overseeing 3,500 service members across seven time zones, I’ve learned that the biggest threat to this weapon system isn’t always on the battlefield. It’s often inside our own formations—a slow erosion caused by preventable injuries, poor habits, leadership anxiety, and a system that has historically struggled to see the soldier as the sophisticated asset they truly are. The Army's investment in H2F is a monumental step towards correcting this, but resources alone don't guarantee success. A successful System must be sustainable, win over users and leaders, and genuinely develop better warfighters with better skills.

1. The Narrative: Winning the Attention War

The success of any H2F System hinges on one critical decision made by leadership: the narrative the Commander chooses to champion. In today's attention economy, Narrative is capital. It directs flows of money, policy, and sentiment. Within a military unit, the Commander's narrative is the most valuable capital there is. It dictates what gets attention, and whatever gets attention gets resources—be it training time, funding, or simply the focus of every leader down to the team leader.

If the Commander’s narrative is, “We have H2F to get our AFT scores up,” the System is already hamstrung. It becomes a compliance task. The narrative must be a warfighting one, focused on lethality. The goal is to get leadership to see H2F not as a cost center, but as the R&D department for our most critical weapon system. As my own briefing slides stated, this is about being a "force multiplier in high intensity situations" and "increasing the life cycle and skill level for the current & next generation of soldiers."

But a commander's intent is only effective if it reaches the end user. This is where the H2F team becomes a critical asset in the information campaign, playing their part in spreading that narrative to all parts of the unit. We are the translators. While the Commander sets the strategic narrative from the top, the H2F strength coaches, Dietitians, Cognitive Specialists, Advisors, Integrators, Chaplains, Religious Affairs Specialists, and P3T Program Leaders are on the ground, interacting with Soldiers every single day. They bring the high-level concept of 'lethality' and make it a reality. It's the coach explaining how a specific lift prevents a back injury that could take him out of the fight. It's the dietitian showing how a better meal choice at the DFAC translates to more energy on a 12-mile ruck. They become the trusted and credible voice that carries the Commander's narrative into every corner of the formation, ensuring it doesn't die in a headquarters briefing but lives in the daily actions of our Soldiers.

Understanding this narrative is to understand a fundamental shift in how we value readiness. For decades, tracking readiness statistics was like investing in a railroad or a cable company—the returns were predictable. Investing in human performance is different; it's equal to investing in Google, Amazon, or Bitcoin. While the high potential for growth also brings the risk of unknown predictions, the potential for exponential returns in combat effectiveness is undeniable. When the Commander owns this narrative, everything changes. The ROI of the narrative is buy-in and institutional will, measuring the distribution and reach to all parts of the command is a key indicator of system success and the essential foundation upon which positive behavior change is built.

2. The Products: Delivering Actionable Tools, Not Just Ideas

Soldiers have a finely tuned radar for time-wasting activities. If an H2F System consists only of abstract briefings and posters in the hallway, it will be ignored. To gain credibility and achieve results, the System must deliver tangible Products—usable tools and services that Soldiers see as valuable to their personal and professional lives.

These products are the practical application of the H2F domains: Physical, Mental, Nutritional, Spiritual, and Sleep readiness. They are not just concepts, but deliverable assets.

• Targeted Physical Programming: A generic PT plan is an ineffective product. A valuable product is a training program built on sound principles like undulation (Power, Strength, Endurance) and the 7 Principles of Movement (Squat, Hinge, Push, Pull, etc.), tailored to the specific demands of a scout platoon versus an artillery crew. It directly addresses the "needs analysis and design fundamentals" required for real improvement.

• Actionable Nutritional Guidance: Telling a Soldier to "eat healthy" is useless advice. A valuable product is an H2F dietitian walking Soldiers through the DFAC, showing them how to build a performance-oriented plate from the available options. It’s providing a simple guide on fueling for an extended field exercise, turning the principles of AR 40-25 into a practical reality.

• Applied Mental and Sleep Skills: A long PowerPoint on resilience is a poor product. A superior one is an H2F cognitive performance coach on the range, teaching tactical breathing to manage stress between shots. It’s a sleep expert providing concrete strategies for controlling one’s environment to improve sleep quality, during shift work or in the tent at NTC.

As multiple military human performance experts have stated, a System’s data collection efforts fail if the individual Soldier feels like a "guinea pig." The surest way to get buy-in is to provide a product back to the Soldier—giving them their own data so they can see their progress and make their own improvements. The ROI of these products is measured in adoption and engagement. When Soldiers are voluntarily using these tools, they are generating a return far more valuable than any number on a spreadsheet.

3. The Pollution: Measuring Cleanup

Every command has Pollution—factors that degrade readiness, remove soldiers from the fight, and cost the Army time and money. The most obvious pollutants are things we can easily count: injuries, AFT failures, professional schooling failure rate, and body fat percentages. A data-driven approach to reducing these metrics is essential and forms the bedrock of justifying any H2F System. This is the simple math of ROI, and it's a necessary part of the conversation with leadership.

However, this is not a logistics operation. We are working with human beings, not machines, and the most profound effects of an embedded H2F team are often much more challenging to project and quantify. The truest, deepest cleanup of readiness pollution happens in the spaces between the data points. It is the System personnel’s responsibility not just to track injuries, but to capture the unanticipated positive changes in high-risk behaviors and readiness that result from having experts on the ground, building trust and creating positive behavior change with Soldiers.

Consider a strength coach who identifies a young NCO using a barbell and lifting with poor technique. The anticipated result of intervention is preventing a back injury—a metric we can track. The unanticipated result? That NCO, now educated on efficient form, corrects their entire squad during team PT, preventing five future injuries and instilling a culture of self-correction that a single H2F coach could never achieve alone. This is pollution cleanup at scale.

Or, think of the cognitive performance expert who teaches mindfulness techniques to a platoon before a high-stress live-fire range. The anticipated result is improved marksmanship scores. The unanticipated result is a Soldier using those same techniques a month later to manage his anger during a confrontation in the barracks, preventing a fight and a potential UCMJ action. The System didn't just prevent a miss on the target; it prevented a career-damaging incident.

I saw this firsthand with a young female soldier who was homeless, living out of her car, and consistently failing her ACFT. On paper, she was a liability. But our H2F team engaged with her, not just as a failed ACFT, but as a whole person. She worked with our staff to learn how to control her emotions and understand the powerful connection between planning and discipline. We helped her find an accountable buddy in her unit. A year later, she had a job as a city bus driver, was on track to complete her degree, and had passed her ACFT with room to spare. Did we prevent an "injury"? No. We helped salvage a career and a life. That is a return on investment you will never find on a spreadsheet.

These are the unknown benefits. They don’t show up on a MEDPROS report, but they represent a massive return on investment. This is the difference between corporate bean-counting and genuine human performance optimization. It falls on the H2F team to capture this second layer of ROI. We must actively look for and document these readiness changes: the squad leader who reports improved morale and cohesion after his soldiers started training together with H2F-designed programs; the First Sergeant who notes a decrease in minor disciplinary issues; the Soldier who quietly thanks a dietitian for helping them break a cycle of poor eating that was affecting their mood and energy. These qualitative observations, when presented to a commander, tell a far more powerful story than injury statistics alone.

This process turns vague goals into victories. It demonstrates that the real value of an H2F team is not just in fixing what's broken, but in cultivating a healthier, more professional, and more resilient formation. The ROI is no longer just a number; it is a fighting force that is stronger in ways we hadn't even thought to measure.

By building our Systems on these three pillars—a compelling Narrative to align the force, valuable Products to engage the Soldier, and a relentless, data-driven focus on cleaning up readiness Pollution, both seen and unseen—we create a System that is effective and defensible. We prove that investing in the human weapon system is the most direct path to creating a more durable, resilient, and lethal force, ready to win our nation’s wars.