WASHINGTON — Almost seven years into his Army aviation career, Capt. Phillip C. Fluke, AH-64 Apache pilot, was looking for a new assignment last year following his time with the 1st Combat Aviation Brigade.
“I really wanted something different, intellectually challenging and stimulating,” he said.
He said his unit leadership at the 601st Aviation Support Battalion, thought he would be a good candidate to support the Harding Project, a chief of staff of the Army initiative started in 2023 to renew the service’s professional publications.
The opportunity, a Harding Fellowship, would allow Fluke to serve as an editor for Aviation Digest and make an impact by spreading Soldiers' ideas in the aviation community.
“I think some people [in the Army] think they don't have a way of making their voice heard about topics that impact them professionally,” he explained. The journals are a way of offering solutions and making others aware of new tactics and technologies that may make their jobs easier.
The Army selected Fluke and several other Soldiers as the first group of Harding Fellows. Each is assigned to a center of excellence, serving as editor on their respective branch journals for two years.
There are 17 different publications: Special Warfare, Army Sustainment, Military Police, Engineer, Chemical, Infantry, Air Defense Artillery, Armor, Field Artillery, Association of Army Dentistry, U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Journal, Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, Applied Language Learning, The Army Lawyer, The Medical Journal, Army Communicator and Aviation Digest.
Shortly after arriving at the Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Novosel, Alabama, last summer, Fluke joined his fellow editors for a job training workshop in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The group worked on learning their new roles.
In the months that followed, the Soldiers routinely held group discussions with the Harding Project director and the deputy director of the Army University Press to get a better understanding of how to move the modernization project forward.
“For the first cohort, it’s been more of a learn-as-you-go,” Fluke said. “I enjoy the job; it’s a lot of problem-solving you wouldn’t normally encounter in the day-to-day force.”
Those problems include increasing readership of the journals and encouraging Soldiers, Army civilians, and contractors to contribute by writing and submitting their ideas for articles.
“Their thoughts, perspectives, and ideas don’t do a lot of good if no one has access to them,” he said. “By contributing, hopefully, we can move the knowledge base across the Army forward.”
To start that push, the Army moved each journal online to a centralized website called Line of Departure. Here, people from across the service have access to articles from every branch publication.
The Harding Project also started a noncommissioned officer journal in October called Muddy Boots and is working on podcasts and audio articles. These changes are part of the project's modernization initiative to bring the journals into the future and create a tool for information sharing amongst Army personnel.
“I hope by the time I leave this assignment the Aviation Digest serves as the primary outlet for discussing important topics,” Fluke said. “I also want the community to weigh in, so we can figure out problems together and make the digest a vehicle for change in the Army aviation branch.”
Anyone wishing to submit an article can contact the editor for their respective branch journal. Their information is available on the journal’s Line of Departure website.
Last month, the Army announced the selection of the second group of Harding Fellows. They will be the first cohort to attend a year-long accelerated master’s degree program for journalism and mass communications at the University of Kansas before serving as editors-in-chief for their branch journals.
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