The ERETAI Foundation

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The nation made them. The nation needs them.

The ERETAI Foundation is being formed to keep the military’s finest operational planners and strategists connected to each other, and to bring their critical thinking expertise to the public problems that need it.

Get Involved Get Community Notes

Offer expertise, make an introduction, help a chapter start, or follow along.

The Foundation is in formation and is not yet accepting financial contributions.
The ERETAI Group, LLC operates this site.

Military-educated operational planner or strategist?
Join your professional home in ERETAI Connect. Request Your Invitation

How support becomes public good

ERETAI ConnectOperatingThe community’s online private network.

ERETAI ChaptersFormingThe community’s local private network.

ERETAI CommonsPlannedThe community’s public forum.

How the three work together

Uncommon by design. Alone by default.

In 1983, the Army opened the first school built to turn a leader’s intent into a plan a large organization could carry out. Shortly thereafter, the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, and then the Joint Force followed suit. Every year another class graduates, made unique in a uniform world, only to serve where the problems are most wicked.

Eventually, everyday life creeps in: a new assignment, a new location, a new team to lead. Day by day, the people who learned together lose sight of each other. Bit by bit, each one figures it out alone. The Fog of War surrenders to the Fog of Life. It is the isolation that settles in so slowly that no one notices its arrival.

Meanwhile the public problems that need exactly that skill are planned by whoever happens to be in the room.

We could solve so many of our own problems, and create so many opportunities for ourselves, if we just knew each other existed.

Eric Fowler, founder

To each other, and to the world.

Your support pierces the fog. Connected, the community is strong and can take on challenges well beyond the battlefield. The result is planning and strategy expertise made relevant to a general public that would not otherwise know it exists.

ERETAI ConnectOperatingThe community’s online private network: a room for every school, program, and class, across services and generations.Visit ERETAI Connect
ERETAI ChaptersFormingThe community’s local private network: members near each school and in the cities alumni call home, welcoming the newest graduates, gathering the ones who came before, and hosting events worth the drive.Raise your hand
ERETAI CommonsPlannedThe community’s public forum. Online and physical events where the public can engage with guest speakers and the broader operational planner and strategist community, exploring challenges of consequence, together.Bring a challenge

Organized by its founder and an interim board. Answerable to the public.

The Foundation is being organized by its founder and an interim board. Directors are named here as they are appointed and consent to be named.

Eric Fowler, founder of The ERETAI Group, seated in an armchair, black and white portrait

During my time as a school director, I tried to keep our students, alumni, and faculty connected. While in uniform, I couldn’t align the authorities and resources to make it work. It’s just not a Department of Defense priority, and it shouldn’t be. With the right competence, character, and commitment, we can do this for ourselves.

Eric Fowler, PhD · Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Founder, The ERETAI Group
Graduate, School of Advanced Military Studies
Graduate & former Director, Joint Advanced Warfighting School

Read his letter

He speaks for himself, not for the Department of Defense or National Defense University. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense, National Defense University, or the U.S. Government.

What exists today and tomorrow.

Dated as it happens. Nothing is listed before it is done.

July 2026ERETAI Connect opened to the community.

October 2026The Foundation’s name reserved in Virginia, and this site published.

Support the cause.

Reach outLet us know you exist and you want to help.
Fit inWe call within 3 days and sort the details.
The people winA strong planner-strategist community continues to serve far beyond the uniform.

Get Involved

The schools made us smart.
Connection makes us strong.

Graduates, students, faculty, and directors of SAMS, SAASS, SAW, MAWS, JAWS, BSAP, and JADS, and the planners of JECC: your professional home is ERETAI Connect. You don’t have to lead any OPT or even log in every day. Just be findable.

Three steps home

1Submit the request
2Find & be found
3Row well, together

Request Your Invitation

Practitioners who did not have the good fortune to attend one of these schools, but have done the work shoulder-to-shoulder with someone who has, are welcome. A verified member in good standing must vouch for them.

Send the noteNow that you know we exist, there is someone else who should be here but isn’t. Tell them about us, from your own account: “You should see this. ERETAI Connect is The Professional Home for Military-Educated Operational Planners and Strategists: graduates of SAMS, SAASS, SAW, MAWS, JAWS, BSAP, and JADS, and planners from the JECC. Request your invitation at connect.eretai.com.” The link below does not share your note or the address with us.Send it from your own mail

What a member sees inside.

Real screens from ERETAI Connect. Actual information replaced for member privacy.

The ERETAI Connect home page: welcome panel, the By the Numbers tally, and new posts, with invented names — 01 / 07Home. Your home page: who is new, what is being discussed, and the community by the numbers.

The ERETAI Connect home feeds: new posts, new members, and community stories, with invented names — 02 / 07This week. What needs you this week: posts to answer, members to welcome, the latest SITREP and Gut Check.

The ERETAI Connect member finder with a world map, with invented names — 03 / 07Your Tribe. Find the planner who has done it: search by name, school, or place, on a map of the community.

The ERETAI Connect cohort directory: interest rooms and command rooms — 04 / 07Your rooms. Rooms for the interests you choose and the commands you served, each with its own feed and members.

The Find Your Seats chart: five rings from your class to the whole community — 05 / 07Your seats. Your seats run from your class out to the whole community, placed from your record.

The ERETAI Connect forums with discipline categories, with invented names and titles — 06 / 07Forums. Forums by discipline, from operational design to deterrence, where members ask each other for help.

The ERETAI Connect User’s Guide — 07 / 07User’s Guide. A guide that says, for every action, what it does, who sees it, and how to undo it.

On the web and in the ERETAI Connect app for iPhone and Android. Screens current as of 31 October 2026.

Experience is what you get,
usually after you needed it.

A community is how you get it before. One note a month, the first Monday, on what the community is building and how to help. The weekly Gut Check has its own list, on every Gut Check post.

Why ERETAI ExistsRead The Most Valuable Network You Already EarnedRead The Task You Should Give AwayRead Every Gut Check Question So FarSee all

In essence,
they were eretai.

In ancient Greece the eretai were the oarsmen: unseen, synchronized, and essential. For forty years the graduates of these schools have rowed the same way, head down, blade in the water, pulling hard for the team, and never with one name for the whole. ERETAI (AIR-ih-tie) does not create that culture. It reveals it.

The whole story, on About

The nation needs them. Help the public find them.