Barno was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry upon graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, Class of June 1976. He started his career with the 25th Infantry Division, where he served as a rifle, weapons and scout platoon leader. He commanded companies in the 25th Infantry Division and the 1st Ranger Battalion, leading a Ranger Rifle Company during the invasion of Grenada in 1983. In 1988 Barno returned to the 2nd Ranger Battalion as S-3 where he parachuted into Panama during Operation Just Cause. He subsequently served as the aide de camp to the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. General Barno commanded the 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, followed by command of the 2nd Ranger Battalion at Ft Lewis, Washington. Following attendance at the Army War College, he commanded the Warrior Brigade, a multi-functional support brigade at Fort Polk, Louisiana, which supported the Joint Readiness Training Center and was then the largest brigade in the Army. He then directed the Joint Task Force training program at Joint Forces Command, Norfolk, Virginia. With three Ranger Battalion tours and command of the 3rd Bn, 505th PIR in the 82nd Airborne Division, he accumulated over 110 parachute jumps during his career, to include a 500-foot night-time parachute assault into Panama in 1989, during which 11 of 15 jump aircraft were struck by enemy fire. He holds the coveted Combat Infantryman's Badge as well as the Ranger Tab and Master Parachutist Badge with Combat Jump Star. Following selection to Brigadier General, General Barno served as the Assistant Division Commander for the 25th Infantry Division as well as Deputy Director of Operations, U.S. Pacific Command. Barno was promoted to Major General in 2001 and served as the Commanding General, Ft Jackson, SC, the Army's largest training base. During his time at Ft Jackson, he led Chief of Staff Army Task Forces on the Future Force Soldier and Warrior Ethos. Barno was the principal author of the Army's 2003 culture-changing which dictates: "Mission First, Never Accept Defeat, Never Quit, and Never Leave Behind a Fallen Comrade." In January 2003, Barno was deployed to Hungary as the Commanding General of Task Force Warrior tasked to train Free Iraqi Forces in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. General Barno was promoted to lieutenant general in 2003 at age 49, becoming the first member of his West Point class of 1976 to achieve that distinction. In October 2003, he deployed to Afghanistan where he was designated to establish a three-star headquarters in Kabul and ultimately command over 20,000 Coalition Forces for 19 months as the first Commander, Military Operations-Afghanistan. During his tenure, he forged a close relationship with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, co-locating his command at the US Embassy compound and creating an integrated civil-military Counter-insurgency campaign plan for Afghanistan focused on the Afghan population. Without an official post-Vietnam COIN doctrine by the US military, he based his counter-insurgency strategy off his U.S. Military Academy Revolutionary Warfare class notes and COIN works by T.E. Lawrence, the USMC Small Wars Manual, Sorley's A Better War, and John Nagl. After commanding in Afghanistan, General Barno was reassigned to The Pentagon in Washington, DC where he served briefly on the Army Staff as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management until his decision to retire in the spring of 2006.
Recent endeavors
Following his retirement from active duty, Barno served as the Director of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. for four years and joined the Center for a New American Security as a Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow in May 2010. From 2007–2009, he served as the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans and Families for the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs. He has testified numerous times before Congress on counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Qaeda and Joint Professional Military Education, and lectures and writes often on those topics. His articles and opinion pieces have appeared in Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute of Strategic Studies. From 2006 until April 2009, he served as the Director of the Near East South AsiaCenter for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. From 2007-2009, he served as the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans and Families for the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs. He testifies frequently before Congress on counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Qaeda and Joint Professional Military Education, and lectures and writes often on those topics. Barno often travels throughout the Middle East and South Asia region and has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Tufts, Johns Hopkins SAIS, West Point, and the US Army and Naval War Colleges.
