UNITAF needs a bit of a kick. We have spent a long time adjusting things around the edges, but I think what we need now is enough of a spark to get people moving and changing things again.

There is some irony in me saying that because I put a lot of the structures, systems and processes we now need to question in place. But that also means I understand why they exist, what they were trying to solve and where some of them have gradually become heavier than the problems they were designed for.

My proximity to the day-to-day front line is also different now. I am not living every part of UNITAF in the way I once did, and I do not want to pretend otherwise. But I think that combination of distance, history and continued involvement leaves me unusually well placed to set us off in what I think is the right direction, then let the people much closer to the work shape it, challenge it and improve it.

We held a staff meeting in July to talk about where UNITAF is. The starting point was our vacancy rate, which has been too high for too long, but the conversation went much wider than that. We talked about community, progression and operations, and about the ways those problems are feeding into one another.

Since then I have spoken to a lot more people across UNITAF: members, contributors, NCOs and officers. I have tried to listen properly to what people think is working, what is not, why people have become less active, and why some have chosen to leave.

What follows is my view of what now needs to happen, shaped heavily by those conversations. I hope a lot of it will resonate. I also expect other people to have ideas that improve it, challenge parts of it or identify things I have missed. That is part of the point. This sets a direction, but the UNITAF that comes out of it cannot simply be designed by a handful of people at the top.

Before getting into that, I want to say thank you to everyone who has given their time to UNITAF, whether you are still here or not. Everything this Unit has, and everything it does, exists because members volunteered their evenings to build it, run it, teach it or lead it. That includes many of the systems and structures we now need to change.

This is about how UNITAF works

A recurring theme in the conversations I have had is that people can often see what needs changing, but do not feel empowered to change it.

Decisions get pushed upwards. Straightforward changes become discussions about who has authority to approve them. Leaving something alone becomes easier than trying to improve it. Over time, that drains momentum from people who are otherwise perfectly capable of solving the problem in front of them.

I do not think that is a problem with the people involved. It is a problem with how we have allowed UNITAF to operate.

If something in your area is not working, you should feel able to change it. If a process no longer serves a useful purpose, it should not survive simply because it already exists. If an idea is sensible and reversible, we should be much more willing to try it.

That does not mean structure is the only problem UNITAF has.

We are ultimately here to play missions and enjoy our time together. If we remove organisational friction but the experience itself does not improve, if people do not want to deploy, lead, make missions, teach or spend time here, then we will need to address that too.

The success of this reset will not be measured by how much we restructure UNITAF. It will be measured by whether UNITAF becomes somewhere more people want to play, contribute and stay.

How we got here

UNITAF has now been going for around seven years. In that time we have changed enormously. As we grew, we introduced structures, policies, processes and additional layers of organisation to solve the problems we faced at the time.

Most of those decisions were made for good reasons. Some were the right decisions for the UNITAF that existed then. With the benefit of hindsight, though, not all of them have taken us in the right direction.

Over time, we have become more structured, more formal and more cautious. In some areas, things that were introduced to make UNITAF work better have gradually made it harder to change.

We have also developed a habit that I think we need to consciously break: when something goes wrong, our instinct is often to add something. Another rule. Another process. Another role. Another approval.

Sometimes that is necessary. Often it is not.

We should not create permanent process to solve occasional problems, and every additional requirement should justify the burden it creates.

I think we have lost some of the qualities that helped UNITAF grow in the first place: people seeing something that needed doing, taking ownership of it, trying things, learning quickly and building the Unit as they went.

We need to recover some of that.

What people have already told us

The July meeting gave us a fairly clear picture of where some of the problems are.

• Community. UNITAF currently offers very little outside ARMA itself, and recruits in particular can find it difficult to connect with people. Leadership presence, including my own, was also raised directly.
• Progression. In July, the feedback was that the principle behind FTS3 made sense, but the implementation had become too slow and too rigid. Instructor judgement carried too little weight, experienced joiners could be blocked from contributing in areas where they already had useful skills, and progression could feel more like a barrier than development. Since that meeting, we have already changed and published the ratings system. That is a useful example of the kind of change this reset should make easier everywhere.
• Operations. Campaigns have largely disappeared in favour of theatres, variety has narrowed, and we rely heavily on a small number of FLs and IOs. Some of those people are burning out. The way feedback is sometimes given was also raised as a reason people stop volunteering to lead or make missions.

Those are not side issues and they affect the actual experience of being in UNITAF.

I do not prescribe a missions program, determine the future of training or decide what Community should become here. The people responsible for those areas, alongside the membership using them, are better placed to develop those answers.

What this reset must do is give them the authority, support and opportunity to act.

If that happens and the problems remain, we change the answers again.

Why I am intervening now

I stepped back from the day-to-day running of UNITAF and moved into the role of Chairman, because my own circumstances meant I no longer had the time to be consistently active in running the Unit, and I did not think it was right for me to continue occupying an operational leadership position that I could not give enough time to.

I am very aware, that I am asking for a greater emphasis on activity while personally being much less active than I once was. That is not lost on me. It is precisely why I stepped away from an operational role.

The Chairman is deliberately not intended to run UNITAF day to day. Part of my reason for moving into the role was to step away, but another part was accepting a responsibility to step in if I believed something fundamental was no longer working.

Having listened to people across the Unit, I believe we have reached that point.

Leadership inactivity is clearly part of the problem, but I do not think it is as simple as saying that people are not doing enough. In many cases, inactivity itself appears to be a symptom.

People become paralysed by decisions they do not feel empowered to make. Straightforward changes become lengthy discussions. Issues are passed upwards rather than resolved by the people closest to them. People lose momentum, contributors become frustrated and eventually some stop trying.

We track almost everything in UNITAF, and the direction is clear: activity has fallen, turnover has increased and too many operational positions remain vacant, as compared to historical data.

We are a volunteer organisation. Nobody has to give UNITAF their time. We cannot rely on hierarchy, obligation or titles to make people contribute. We need to create an organisation where contributing is rewarding, where people can see the impact of what they do, where good ideas can become reality and where volunteering to help does not mean becoming trapped inside unnecessary process.

I also understand that after seven years, and after other attempts to improve things, some people may read this and wonder whether anything will really change.

That scepticism is fair.

This cannot be another minor adjustment to the organisation chart or another policy review. We need a genuinely radical change in direction, and one that becomes visible quickly enough for people to believe it is real.

The objective is a simpler, faster and more active UNITAF: one where people are trusted to make decisions, where trying something is easier than debating it indefinitely, where active contributors have genuine power to shape the Unit and where the organisation itself changes frequently enough to keep improving.

Here I set that direction. I do not dictate every implementation detail.

Flatten the organisation

We will simplify UNITAF into three practical levels.

We do not need Personnel Command, Operations Command and Training Command sitting as another layer between the people doing the work and the leadership of the Unit.

The functional work those commands coordinate will continue. Existing J-Groups and functional areas do not necessarily need to disappear either. What changes is the hierarchy surrounding them and the authority held by the people actually doing the work.

We should also stop assuming that every team or group has to be permanent. Some functions will always be needed, but the structures we use to deliver them should be much more flexible.

A team might exist because UNITAF needs to maintain an ongoing function such as recruitment or training. Another might be created for a particular project, capability, campaign or problem, bring together the people needed to deliver it and then close when that work is finished.

We should become comfortable with teams being created, changed, merged or wound down as UNITAF's needs change. A group does not need to become a permanent part of the organisation simply because it was useful once.

For example, rather than assuming J3 Operations must always exist in exactly its current form, we might create a team specifically to develop and support Reforger operations, open the relevant contributor positions, deliver that work and then change or close the team when the need has passed.

There will be two officers in UNITAF: the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer.

What we call things

We will also stop using ORGCOC as a term. The people responsible for running functional areas will simply be the leads for those areas, supported by contributors who can own substantial work in their own right. The exact rank attached to those responsibilities does not need to be decided in this document.

Clear leadership and continuity

Each functional area should have clear leadership and a clear answer to what happens when the person leading it is unavailable or steps away. Normally that means a named lead and somebody able to support them, provide continuity and potentially succeed them.

Those positions do not both need to carry rank. A deputy may be an experienced contributor with a named responsibility rather than another layer of organisational rank. The important thing is that responsibility, continuity and succession are clear.

This is not another approval layer. The lead does not exist to approve every normal decision made by contributors, and a deputy does not exist simply to approve the lead. Routine and reversible decisions should continue to happen as close to the work as possible.

The model is intended to create succession without creating unnecessary hierarchy. If a lead steps down, somebody who already understands the area should be able to provide continuity and, where appropriate, step up. Other contributors can then be developed to support them.

Additional responsibility should normally be given to contributors rather than creating more ranked positions. Contribution should be recognised and trusted without somebody needing organisational rank simply to have meaningful responsibility.

UNITAF must not depend on the Chairman

This reset is not about replacing one approval structure with another centred on me.

Under the new operating model, UNITAF should have no day-to-day dependency on the Chairman.

Between the membership, functional leaders, Commanding Officer and Executive Officer, the organisation will have everything it needs to change itself.

Within the boundaries of this strategy, the UNITAF Way, our core purpose and the standards expected of the organisation, those people will have the authority to change processes, rewrite policy, restructure teams, remove unnecessary systems and dismantle structures that prevent UNITAF from moving forward.

Nothing continues to exist simply because it has always existed.

My role as Chairman is to provide long-term oversight, hold the Commanding Officer to the direction set out here, and intervene if there is a fundamental problem with the direction or health of the organisation.

It is not a routine stage in normal decision-making.

A successful outcome from this reset is that my involvement in day-to-day UNITAF becomes less necessary, not more.

Appoint leadership that can deliver the reset

For this strategy to work, UNITAF needs a Commanding Officer and Executive Officer who genuinely believe in this direction and can gain the confidence and support of the Unit to deliver it.

This cannot simply be about filling two existing positions.

We need people who believe in the direction set out here, are willing to challenge existing structures and ways of working, trust contributors, are comfortable pushing decision-making down, can build support across the Unit rather than relying purely on rank, and have the energy and availability to maintain momentum.

I am speaking to people who I think could do that, but no appointment has been decided.

The period between publication of this strategy and the all-hands meeting is deliberate. I want people to have time to read it properly, talk about it, challenge it and consider whether they want to play a part in delivering it.

That applies particularly to the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer roles. There are people already serving UNITAF who may be well placed to take them on, and there may be others who have not previously considered themselves part of that conversation. I want to give both the same opportunity to think seriously about what the roles require and whether they are able to commit to them.

If you read this and believe you have the time, energy and judgement to help lead UNITAF in this direction, I want to hear from you. You may already know somebody you believe you would work well alongside, or you may be interested in one of the roles individually.

The Commanding Officer and Executive Officer roles will be posted through the same positions system as every other open role so that the opportunity is visible to everyone.

Experience absolutely matters, including experience gained in existing and previous leadership roles. But the most important things for this reset are having the time to be active, believing in the direction set out here, being willing to give people real authority and having the ability to bring others with you.

The all-hands is therefore not a formality. It is an opportunity to challenge and improve this direction, discuss the roles in more detail and hear from people who want to help deliver it.

Both appointments will be made by Tuesday 8 September 2026.

Whoever takes those roles will be taking command of UNITAF properly, not simply managing a temporary restructuring project.

Once appointed, they will have a clear mandate to take this strategy forward, build the team around them and make the changes necessary to get UNITAF moving again, including the support of J10 to make required changes.

Their job is not to preserve the organisation exactly as they inherit it.

Their job is to make this direction work.

I will not run UNITAF through the Commanding Officer or second-guess normal operational decisions. I will, however, retain responsibility for ensuring that the direction set out in this document is actually delivered.

The same expectations around activity apply to every operational role, including the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer. The Chairman is responsible for reviewing officer activity where necessary. If the Commanding Officer steps down or becomes unable to fulfil the role, the Executive Officer will act as Commanding Officer while a successor is appointed.

Push decisions down

The people closest to an issue will normally be the people empowered to resolve it.

Functional leaders and their teams will make the overwhelming majority of decisions within their own areas without referring them upwards.

Officers will not act as routine approval gates.

Owning an area does not mean acting in isolation. Where a decision materially affects another area, the people responsible should speak directly to one another, understand the implications and work out a sensible way forward together.

The expectation is that people resolve those questions themselves wherever they reasonably can. Coordination should prevent escalation, not become another route into it. Only where there is a genuine deadlock after the people involved have tried to resolve it directly should the CO or XO act as a tie-breaker. That is a last resort, not an additional approval stage.

Decisions that fundamentally affect the whole Unit, involve serious conduct or safeguarding issues, or materially change UNITAF's strategic direction should also receive the scrutiny they require.

Everything else should happen as close to the work as reasonably possible.

Prefer reversible decisions

We have become too precious about decisions.

Too many relatively minor changes are treated as though they are permanent, one-way decisions. That creates lengthy discussion, consultation and approval around things that could simply be tried.

Most decisions are reversible.

Making a reasonable decision quickly is often better than making the perfect decision six months later.

If somebody makes a sensible decision in good faith, within their area of responsibility and in pursuit of this strategy, they should expect support rather than criticism simply because somebody else might have made a different choice.

That applies to operations as much as policy. Field leaders, game masters, instructors and other contributors should be able to try things without feeling that one imperfect decision will make them regret volunteering in the first place.

With authority also comes visibility. Significant changes should be communicated so that other people can understand what has changed, learn from it and challenge it where necessary.

We should review decisions after they are made far more often than we require permission before they are made.

Trust contributors

Responsibility will sit with the people actively contributing to an area.

Where practical, teams will directly maintain the systems, processes and documentation they are responsible for.

For example, the Training Team should be trusted to improve and maintain relevant areas of the Force Manual directly rather than every change requiring a lengthy approval chain.

Contributors improve things continuously. Other knowledgeable people can review those changes. Mistakes can be corrected. Significant disagreements can be escalated.

Oversight remains important.

Permission does not need to precede every action.

If somebody is motivated enough to give UNITAF their free time and take responsibility for improving an area, our first instinct should be to enable them, not create reasons why they cannot act.

Contributors are not assistants to functional leaders

A contributor may own a substantial project, system, process or area of work outright. They may contribute more time, specialist knowledge or output than the person responsible for leading the wider team, and there is nothing unusual about that.

Organisational leadership is about accountability, continuity and leadership across a team. It is not a measure of somebody's value, how much work they do or how much authority they can be trusted with.

A contributor should be able to hold meaningful authority without needing organisational rank. If somebody owns FTS3, a doctrine area, recruitment tooling, campaign planning or another function, they should be given the access and permissions needed to run that work without repeatedly seeking approval simply because they do not hold rank.

Members should also continue to have meaningful progression and recognition for their experience in UNITAF. We should separate the progression somebody has earned as a member from rank that may be attached to a current operational or leadership responsibility. Somebody should be able to step into a demanding role, carry the rank associated with it while they are doing it, and step away again without feeling that they have lost the progress they have made in UNITAF.

Exactly how enlisted, NCO, warrant and officer ranks should be used under that principle is something the new leadership should review rather than something I want to prescribe here. The important point is that rank should have a clear purpose, and somebody should not need it simply to be trusted with important work.

Equally, if a contributor is consistently carrying the leadership, coordination and accountability of an area while the person responsible for leading it is not, we should not preserve a structure that no longer reflects reality. That may mean changing who holds the leadership role, but it does not mean that every highly active contributor should automatically need rank.

Rank should reflect the responsibility being carried. Authority should follow the work.

Build systems that people can actually control

This also needs to change how we build UNITAF's systems.

The new FTS3 ratings system and the Get Involved system is a good example. Since the July meeting, we have updated and published it, but the more important change is how it has been built. The instructors and training team now have the tools to change the settings that govern the system themselves.

If they agree that a threshold, requirement, adjustment or safeguard needs to change, they should be able to change it. They should not need a developer to alter a hard-coded value or command to approve an ordinary change within an area they are responsible for.

I want that to become the default wherever it is practical. Fatigue settings, rank requirements, access rules, thresholds and similar behaviour should be configurable rather than fixed in code simply because that was the answer when the system was first built.

The developer's job should be to build the capability, sensible safeguards and visibility around those decisions. It should not be to become a permanent gatekeeper for how the system operates.

If we genuinely trust people to run an area, the systems we build for them should reflect that trust.

What happens to the rules and processes we already have

This strategy does not mean that existing rules, policies and processes can simply be ignored. They remain in place until the people responsible change them. What changes is that those people now have much greater authority to do so.

Every team should review what it inherits against the direction set out here and the UNITAF Way. Keep what still solves a real problem. Where something would work better as guidance rather than a mandatory rule, make it guidance. Where an approval, process, role or system no longer adds enough value to justify the burden it creates, simplify it or remove it.

We should also become much more willing to remove things and see whether we actually miss them. If we cannot clearly explain why a reversible rule, process or approval needs to exist, we should not preserve it simply in case. Remove it. If experience shows that we genuinely needed it, put back the minimum necessary version.

The amount of process should match the consequence of the decision. A small, local and reversible change should not need the same treatment as something that materially affects several teams, changes an important operational standard or has consequences for the whole Unit.

The Roadmap and Force Manual remain valuable. The Roadmap gives us visibility, coordination and a history of significant work, but it should not have to become the route through which every ordinary change receives permission. The Force Manual contains years of useful knowledge and should continue to do so, but the people responsible for it should be able to distinguish between things that genuinely need to be mandatory, things that are better treated as guidance and things that no longer need to be there. Exactly how those categories are named and organised is an implementation decision for the people who own it.

The same principle applies when responsibilities overlap. J3 may own how ORBATs are constructed, but changing expected medical coverage affects the people responsible for medical training as well. J5 may own loadout standards, but changing a medic's equipment may affect how medics are trained and expected to operate. In those situations the answer is not another command approval process. The people responsible should coordinate directly, use each other's expertise and work out the change together.

Where an old process or system itself prevents people from working in this way, change the process or system. This strategy gives people authority to dismantle unnecessary machinery in an orderly way. It does not give people authority to simply pretend that machinery does not exist.

Activity is a requirement of operational responsibility

An operational leadership position exists because the Unit needs somebody actively performing that function. It cannot simply be a title.

If somebody holding an operational position has shown no meaningful activity in the role for 30 days, that should trigger a review and a conversation. The Executive Officer is responsible for ensuring that review happens, normally with the person responsible for that area.

It does not automatically mean somebody loses their position.

There may be a perfectly reasonable temporary explanation. The individual may still be contributing meaningfully in ways that are not captured by deployments alone.

The question is simply whether the role is being actively serviced.

If it is not, and there is no short-term reason to expect that to change, somebody else should be given the opportunity to take responsibility for it.

The principle is not that everyone in UNITAF must maintain the same level of activity. Flexibility for members remains important.

The principle is that roles which depend on somebody being present should be occupied by somebody who is present.

Stepping down from a position should therefore be normal and stigma-free. It should also be easy to become involved again when circumstances change.

That needs to apply to rank as well. If a rank is attached to a current operational or leadership responsibility, leaving that responsibility should be understood as the appointment ending, not as a demotion or a judgement on the person. People should be able to move into and out of responsibility as their circumstances change without feeling that they are giving up the progression and recognition they have earned as members.

Leaving an inactive person in a role that other members depend upon has consequences for everyone around them.

The Unit deserves somebody who is available to do the job.

Fill gaps quickly, but question the gap first

A vacancy should not automatically mean that we recruit somebody to reproduce the structure that existed before it.

If the answer is no, remove it.

If the answer is yes, the vacancy should open immediately.

Members should be able to apply without waiting for lengthy appointment cycles.

Where there is one suitable applicant and there are no conduct or significant suitability concerns, we should normally appoint them within seven to fourteen days.

Where several people apply, a lightweight selection process should happen within the same timeframe.

We will increasingly select for activity, attitude, willingness to contribute and ability to learn.

Existing experience and capability remain valuable, but they cannot compensate indefinitely for somebody not being available.

This should apply more widely than functional leadership appointments. If we need a field leader, game master, instructor or somebody in another role and the usual person is unavailable, we should give somebody else the opportunity where it is sensible to do so.

An active person learning a role is usually more valuable to UNITAF than the perfect person who is not there.

There will obviously be situations where somebody needs a certain level of experience before taking a pivotal role. The people responsible can use their judgement.

Where we discover capability gaps, the answer should usually be to develop more people.

Existing contributors

The people who have remained here and continued carrying UNITAF through a difficult period deserve recognition for that.

I also want to thank everyone who is currently holding a post or contributing to an area of the Unit. This reset is not intended to sweep those people aside. Wherever possible, and where people want to continue, the aim should be to keep good people in place and give them more room to operate.

That does, however, depend on the role being carried out in line with the direction set out here. The new operating model asks for activity, ownership, delegation and a willingness to change things that are not working. If somebody wants to continue in a role, they should be willing to work in that way.

Existing contributors and NCOs are not being asked to reapply for their positions as part of this announcement. If you are active and doing the job, there is no assumption that you should be removed simply because the structure is changing.

Ultimately, though, the Commanding Officer, Executive Officer and the operational leaders they appoint will be responsible for shaping the team that takes this strategy forward. They should preserve continuity where it makes sense, but they also need the freedom to make changes where a role, structure or way of working does not fit the new direction.

Make it easier to step up and step down

We have launched a new system on the website showing what positions exist, which are open and allowing members to apply directly.

That will include the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer roles, along with every other open position across UNITAF. The intention is that there is one visible place where people can see where help is needed and put themselves forward for anything they believe they can add value to.

It also allows people who are stepping down to do that themselves. Making it easy to step away matters as much as making it easy to step up. If leaving a role is awkward, people stay in positions they can no longer service.

The same system should make it much easier to create temporary teams and projects. If UNITAF needs a group of people to solve a particular problem or deliver something new, we should be able to create that group, publish the positions or contributor opportunities, let people step forward and then close or reshape it when the work is complete.

Contributing to UNITAF should not have to mean joining a permanent staff structure. Somebody might join a project for three months, help deliver it and then move on to something completely different. Their contribution should still remain visible and recognised afterwards.

We have just been through the winter selection cycle, with some people stepping down and others moving into new roles. Any vacancies that remain, along with vacancies created as this reset changes the structure, will be visible through that system and open for people to apply.

This matters because the reset is not only about the CO and XO. It will create opportunities across UNITAF, including for people who may not previously have wanted to contribute under the old structure. I would encourage everyone to use the next few weeks to look at the open roles and think about where they could add value.

For those roles, we should look at the whole person: their experience, ability, willingness to contribute and the time they can realistically give now. We have a much clearer direction to work towards, and the aim is simply to put capable, motivated people into the places where they can add the most value.

This reset gives functional leaders significantly more authority, but it also expects them to distribute that authority. In return, the basic expectation is that they remain active in UNITAF and in the area they are responsible for, participate in the functional leadership group, make decisions rather than routinely passing them upwards, empower contributors to own work directly and communicate what is happening in their area.

The positions system should eventually support this distinction as well. Where a rank, Discord role or permission is attached to a current appointment, it should be able to change with that appointment, while the member's underlying progression and history remain intact. That should make moving into and out of responsibility feel normal rather than punitive.

The authority is the main thing.

If you are responsible for an area of UNITAF, you should be able to run it.

I also think it is reasonable that people giving up their free time to keep the Unit running receive some practical recognition. I do not want to prescribe exactly what that should look like here. That is something I want the new functional leadership group to help shape, because the people giving their time are better placed to say what would actually be meaningful to them.

Invite people back

Some good people have stepped away from UNITAF or contributed less because they became frustrated with inactivity, the pace of change or the way the organisation was operating.

If we are serious about changing those things, we should give those people an opportunity to return.

There will be a broad invitation to former members and contributors who left in those circumstances.

If somebody previously held responsibility, they should not automatically be expected to start again from the bottom. Their previous experience should count, and we should make it easy for them to contribute again.

That is not the same as guaranteeing somebody their previous position.

Roles may have changed, existing contributors may now be doing them, and some roles may no longer need to exist at all.

The objective is to reopen the door, not rebuild the past.

This does not override legitimate conduct issues, interpersonal concerns or situations where somebody is clearly unsuitable for a particular role.

In some cases, the people who became frustrated enough to leave may be exactly the people we now need to hear from.

If you stepped away because UNITAF felt stuck, and this direction gives you a reason to believe in it again, the door is open.

That includes the all-hands meeting. It is open to people who have been part of UNITAF in the past, people who are here today and people who are considering joining us in the future.

I also recognise that people who are currently inactive may not have access to the website to see the vacancies, or to the live Discord to take part in the conversation. If you want to become involved again, please reach out so that your account and access can be reactivated.

If you are reading this from outside the live Discord and cannot easily reach the right people, contact me or any active member. We will do our absolute best to get you back in so that you can see the opportunities, join the all-hands and have the same conversations as everyone else.

Establish a monthly operating rhythm

There will be a regular monthly meeting of the people leading UNITAF's functional areas.

The first will take place within four weeks of the Commanding Officer being appointed.

The Commanding Officer will be responsible for making sure the meeting happens every month, that an agenda is circulated at least 24 hours beforehand, that somebody chairs it, and that a summary is published to the whole Unit within seven days.

The meeting will be recorded and summarised, using AI where useful, so that the update can be concise and useful without creating another large administrative task.

This meeting must not become another approval board.

Most decisions should already have been made by the relevant people during the month.

Its purpose is to share what is happening across UNITAF, surface problems and opportunities, coordinate between areas, resolve things that genuinely could not be resolved directly, review progress and make sure the organisation continues moving.

Standing agenda

The meeting should follow a simple standing agenda:

• What changed? Material changes since the last meeting, not a general activity report.
• What is stuck? Anything blocked by another team, unclear ownership, lack of resource or genuine disagreement.
• What needs coordinating? Cross-team changes that affect more than one area.
• What have we tried? New ideas, experiments, policy changes or system changes, including what worked and what did not.
• People and vacancies. Open roles, contributors stepping up, succession, inactivity concerns and where teams need more help.
• What should we stop doing? Rules, processes, meetings, systems or structures that are creating more burden than value.
• What happens next? Clear owners and actions for anything that genuinely needs follow-up.

It should not become a forum for routine approvals or a place where every team reads out everything it has done. If a decision can be made by the people responsible for the area, it should normally already have been made before the meeting.

Where useful, parts or all of it can be open to the wider membership.

Every month, members should be able to see what has changed, what has been tried, what has worked, what has not and what happens next.

If these meetings quietly stop happening, or the monthly updates repeatedly contain nothing that has actually changed, we should treat that as an early warning that momentum is being lost again.

Community needs an owner

It cannot remain everybody's responsibility and therefore nobody's responsibility.

I am deliberately not appointing that owner. It should be a decision for the new Commanding Officer and Executive Officer as they build the team around them.

But it is not open-ended.

What they choose to do with that responsibility is for them to develop with the membership.

The commitment here is that somebody will own it, have the authority to act and be accountable for making progress.

How we will know whether this is working

We should not judge this reset by whether we successfully changed the organisation chart.

We should judge it by whether UNITAF itself becomes healthier.

We already collect a large amount of data.

The first monthly update following the leadership appointments will establish and publish a baseline, and subsequent updates will show the direction of travel.

In particular, we should expect to see:

• Lower vacancy rates.
• Increasing member activity. More members should be deploying, and the decline in slot activity should reverse.
• Increasing contributor activity. More people should be making missions, leading, teaching, building and taking responsibility across UNITAF.
• A consistent operating rhythm. The monthly functional leadership meeting should happen, and members should receive a meaningful update afterwards.
• Frequent visible change. Every month should contain concrete examples of things that have been improved, tried, simplified, removed or reversed.

Not every measure will improve immediately and not every month will move in a straight line.

What matters is whether a clear trend develops.

If six months from now we have changed the structure but activity, contribution and the experience of being in UNITAF have not improved, we should not declare the reset a success.

We should change what we are doing again.

The culture we are trying to create

Ultimately, this is not primarily an organisational restructure.

It is a change in how UNITAF operates.

The principles at the end of this document are deliberately principles rather than a detailed rulebook. They should give people enough direction to make sensible decisions without us trying to write a rule for every possible situation.

UNITAF has accumulated years of structure because people cared about making it better.

We should not be embarrassed by that, nor should this reset be seen as criticism of everyone who helped build those systems. They were responses to the organisation we had at the time.

But organisations change.

We need to be willing to change with them.

I do not pretend that I have every answer.

There will be people reading this who have a better idea for how part of it should work. There will be people who disagree with elements of it. I want those voices heard.

What I feel strongly about is the direction: more ownership, faster decisions, active leadership, greater trust in contributors and a willingness to radically change things that are no longer working.

I do not want every future decision brought to me.

I do not want every change brought to the Commanding Officer.

And I do not want the next version of UNITAF designed entirely by a handful of people at the top.

The people who are active, contributing and giving their time to this organisation should have the authority to build it.

What happens next

The reset starts now, but the period before the all-hands is deliberately not empty space. It is time for people to digest this, discuss it and decide whether there is a part they want to play in what comes next.

• Now until the all-hands: read, discuss and step forward. Challenge the strategy, suggest improvements and think about whether there is an area of UNITAF you would like to contribute to under the new model. The CO, XO and all other open positions will be available through the new positions system, and everyone is encouraged to apply for roles where they believe they can add value.
• Vacancies move onto the website. Following the winter selection cycle, remaining openings and vacancies created by the reset will be published through the new positions system. Members will be able to apply directly, and people stepping down will be able to record that themselves. Selection will consider experience alongside ability, willingness and the time somebody can realistically give to the role now.
• Tuesday 1 September 2026, 1900 BST: All-hands meeting. We will talk through this direction, challenge it, improve it and discuss the open roles and expressions of interest in more detail. The meeting is open to past, present and prospective members. If you are inactive and need access restored, contact J1 or J2. If you are reading this from outside the live Discord and cannot reach them, contact me or any active member of the organisation and we will do our absolute best to get you back in and able to take part.
• Tuesday 8 September 2026: CO and XO appointed. The appointments are not predetermined. The period after the all-hands will be used to consider the people who have stepped forward, how they would deliver the strategy and which combination is best for UNITAF.
• Tuesday 22 September 2026: Community owner in place. The CO and XO will appoint somebody with clear responsibility and authority for Community.
• Within four weeks of the CO appointment: first monthly functional leadership meeting. It will continue monthly from there, with an agenda circulated at least 24 hours in advance and a summary published to the whole Unit within seven days.
• First monthly update: baseline published. Vacancy, member activity and contributor activity will be tracked so that everybody can see whether things are actually improving.
• The revised UNITAF Way takes effect with the structural changes. It becomes the constitutional reference point for how UNITAF operates.
• Existing rules and systems begin to be reviewed. Functional teams should start bringing the rules, processes, permissions and systems they own into line with the new UNITAF Way, prioritising the areas creating the greatest friction. Existing requirements remain in place until they are changed rather than being ignored individually.
• Visible change begins immediately. Community, progression, operations and other functional areas will be expected to start acting rather than waiting for another organisation-wide review.

Those dates are commitments.

If you do one thing after reading this, use the time before the all-hands to think about what this could mean for UNITAF and whether there is a part of it you want to help build. Look at the open roles, put yourself forward if there is somewhere you believe you can add value, and come to the meeting ready to challenge, improve and help deliver what comes next.

Looking ahead

On a personal note, I am away on holiday for the next two weeks. I am sure there will be plenty of discussion while I am away, and I want there to be. If I am not particularly responsive during that time, please do not read that as a lack of interest in the conversation. I wanted to publish this now so people had proper time to read it, think about it and talk about it before I return, rather than holding it back until then. That is also why the all-hands is scheduled for the day after I am back.

Finally, It is worth reminding ourselves why UNITAF exists in the first place.

We are here to bring people together to play missions and enjoy our time together.

That is the point.

Everything else should serve that.

We still have applications coming in regularly. We still have people willing to contribute if we give them meaningful opportunities to do so. I do not believe UNITAF's best years have to be behind it.

But clearing organisational friction will not achieve that on its own.

We need better reasons to deploy, better reasons to contribute and better reasons to stay.

The people running UNITAF will now have considerably more freedom to find those reasons, try things and change course when something does not work.

That is what this reset is for.

I will be actively involved in making sure this reset happens.

But UNITAF should not need me to run it.

If we do this properly, the organisation will be stronger because responsibility is spread across capable, active people who have the authority to act.

After seven years, all we have achieved and all that people have contributed together, I am not prepared to simply watch it decline.

This is a reset, and it should feel like one.