We're back with another slate of episodes!

Last fall, C2SI sat down with retired US Army infantry NCO and former Ranger Instructor (and Adrian's 1SG in the 173rd Airborne Brigade back in the day) Randy Collins. In this episode, we talk with Randy about what Ranger School is like from the RI's point of view, training up an infantry company for deployment to Afghanistan, and more.

Right now, C2SI is closely following the latest developments regarding US policy in Ukraine, but for this episode, we're going back for some historical perspective. Back in November, we sat down for a great discussion with Dr. Alex Burns of the Franciscan University of Steubenville to talk about military training, force generation, and warfare in the 18th century -- the "kabinettskriege" period.

You can follow Dr. Burns at kabinettskriege.bsky.social and read more of his work at https://kabinettskriege.blogspot.com/. His new book, "Infantry in Battle 1733-1783", is available here.

If you support Ukraine, the best thing you can do is DONATE TO HELP THE ZSU. There are many charities you can support, here are some of the larger Ukrainian ones:

https://u24.gov.ua/

https://savelife.in.ua/en/

https://prytulafoundation.org/en

For the past few years the military has experienced difficulties recruiting and retaining enough troops to meet its authorized size. While that is changing, the crew sat down last fall to talk with reporter and Army veteran Steve Beynon, who has covered the issue very closely for Military.com. The information is a little out of date, but listeners will still be able to understand the contours of the basic issues.