Colonel Chester Phillips is the gruff, no-nonsense officer who oversees the Strategic Scientific Reserve's super-soldier program. A career military man, he is skeptical of Erskine's faith in a scrawny recruit from Brooklyn and makes plain he would rather give the serum to a proven soldier. To test the trainees, he tosses a dummy grenade into their midst, then dismisses Steve Rogers even after the young man throws himself atop it to shield the others. When Steve is ultimately chosen and the experiment succeeds only for the assassin to kill Erskine, Phillips writes off the lone super soldier as a lost cause.
His opinion of Steve turns when results speak for themselves. After Rogers marches back into camp with hundreds of rescued men of the 107th, the Colonel gives him a proper command and the freedom to wage his own war on Hydra. He interrogates the captured Arnim Zola and squeezes out the location of Schmidt's last base. From there he leads the Allied push while Captain America takes the fight aboard the Red Skull's aircraft.
