Immediately after 9/11, said Major Matthew Boal, then Headquarters and Headquarters Company commander with 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Division, at Fort Riley, there was a "very rapid requirement to provide a standing quick reaction force" to, if necessary, guard key infrastructure, provide stability and respond to any additional terrorist attacks. With most of the battalion's companies at the National Training Center, Boal - an armor officer by trade - was responsible for quickly task-organizing and then commanding a rifle company that, if called upon, could have performed a wide range of security and possibly even kinetic functions. In this interview, Boal also discusses his insights and experiences as part of an Intrinsic Action exercise in Kuwait that was held just prior to Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Beginning, then, in September 2002, Boal was assigned to Fort Rucker as a small group leader - and the only non-aviator instructor - in the Aviation Captain's Career Course. He taught the Military Decision-Making Process, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield and helped incorporate these into a number of Warfighter exercises using the latest computer simulation programs. From this vantage point, Boal talks at length about the effects – both positive and negative – of the highly intense operational tempo that Army aviators have experienced post-9/11, the importance of maintaining a deep-strike helicopter capability, and how while the Army “talks combined arms and joint integration,” the schoolhouse needs to do a better job of exposing students to a broad range of service perspectives.

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