Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about
a way that you can help support the podcast. If you're not already,
we would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or
Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized,
and you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate
your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to
become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that started just five dollars
a month, and when you sign up, you get access to all of
our episodes add free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean,
we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers, But this is the
biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd
like to, and we really appreciate that. So go and check us out
at patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse. You're like probably fifteen to twenty minutes,
but if it's Pekee traffic, three hours ye whatever. So not kind
of you know, normal like middle class childhood. Uh you know, played
sports, Uh you know, no, but my parents weren't the military.
I was delost of four, really had zero you know, designs or any
idea would actually be in the military, and so was playing playing pretty somewhat
competitive soccer. Got looked up by a few colleges. So then you know,
I settled on Manhattan College, up in the Bronx of all places,
even though it's coll Manhattan. But uh, you know, I thought I'd
be playing D one soccer up there. Uh ended up red shirting my freshman
year. Wasn't really a huge fan of the coach. It's kind of like
everything in the movies you see when the coach is recruiting you, he's like
Mother Teresa. Then you actually go play for the guy and he's you know,
Satan himself reincarnated. So uh so what ended up happening was I looked
at some other options to get some money to transfer to schools, because you
know, the little money that I did get from this guy was you know,
was not going to cut it at another school. So I looked at
some things like the Marine PLC. I had a buddy playing for a school
in Philly, and you know, basically they didn't have the money to put
me on until I was a junior, and so we started looking at different
ways of how I could pay for it, you know, grants, scholarships,
you know. They asked me if I was part Native American or part
something. Said nope, no, dice. So and then the one guy
goes, well, hey, you know, one of my assistant coaches said,
our school here has this thing called road Sea or rot something. Yeah,
I think it's called road Sea. And I'm like, oh, okay,
it turns out your school does too. And so the thought process was
to apply for a scholarship at my school and then basically transfer over my junior
year and play there. And again all this is literally just like could play
soccer at some like low level D one school. So it's crazy the way
things worked out. Like I had zero thoughts of what it really meant to
become a commissioned officer and enroll, and I thought like, you know,
hey, I'll do my four years and get out. And then, you
know, sophomore year was playing a little bit soccer, but slowly I started
realizing like the Air Force thing was kind of become a more important to me.
Soccer really wasn't, uh, but generally playing soccer, I was kind
of in decent shape. So then I decided to get real brave and think,
hey, ill you know, I'll go try and be a PJ or
a crow and God bless Uh Lieutenant Colonel Russell was his name, was the
colonel at my school. I think he kind of looked at me and kind
of knew better and said, yeah, I don't really see you as a
PG type, Brian, Uh, you probably could do it. It was
basically a nice way of telling me, dude, you're soft. Is not
your thing, Dude, like, just be greatful. Just you have gifts,
but it's not in that realm. So again I was looking at other
things to do, and uh, you know, it was pretty fun.
I come to now I've gone through boot camp, I come home. You
know, it's definitely changed my life. At this point, I'm still figuring
out what I think I'm going to do in the Air Force, and uh,
funny story is, uh, you know, it's probably the fall of
my journey year. And you know, for you guys, for the background,
if you go to if you want to become any sort of aircrew position
in the Air Force, you go through a board as a cadet. You
you apply generally the higher scores if you will, between grades, pilot aptitude,
all that kind of stuff, you get a pilot slot. The guys
that are sort of like your second and third tier grades wise, you'll get
a navigator spot or like a Wizow spot, which is what I got,
and then sometimes intermixing that the guys who fly a wax So those guys,
the guys that you see in the movies sort of doing the air battle management
piece abm ors. That's another sort of another rated air crew position. So
I had no designs on doing it, mostly because a it meant extra time
in the in the service. You know, I was gonna do whatever you
kid in New York wanted to do. Come right back, go work on
Wall Street, be a you know downtown dude, live live, you know,
live my best court, and get go life. And then you know,
come in one day during the year, my commander's like, hey,
I just put you in for a flight school spot. I go, weg
what and I find out is apparently some kid at UMass because they were literally
in the same region as us. I'd gotten caught skiing. So yeah,
he got dis enrolled and now he had this like flight school spot that already
been advocated to him my colonel just again. You know, you get lucky.
There's a few people in your life over your career that kind of like
really shape and kind of mentor you. And this guy was definitely my first
one. But so he signed me up for it, and I kind of
initially was like, sir, I don't think this is for me. Goes
dude, you were going to love this. You're literally gonna either fly a
B one or Inn fifteen E. And if you don't like it, you
just it's fine, you drop out and they'll find something else for you.
Yeah. So that's my junior year and then senior year, you know,
I'm starting to kind of wind down, and you know, this was like,
you know, late two thousand, mid two thousand and one, economy
is starting to kind of slow down in New York. A lot of my
friends were freaking out about like what jobs were going to get everything else,
And I kind of had it made because I already had a guarantee job now
at this point and then you know, but being in New York on nine
to eleven obviously removed any doubt that I'm going where I need to be.
If anything, I was a little pissed off because I started doing the math
and probably what a lot of us thought was, you know, I'm a
cadet at this point, at the best scenario, at least three years away
from you know, A getting my wings and b being certified to flying aircraft.
So we're thinking, like, this fight's gonna be well over by mom.
Commission, You're right, sick joke, right, little to be no,
So yeah, commission. In Mayo two, I hung around in New
York a little bit as an ad lieutenant waiting for my flight school to pop
up. From there, I went down to Pensacola Naval Air Station. So
this is back when the Air Force, I think smartly, we the two
strike school slots, which were basically at fifteen he's and b ones. They
let those gut. Basically, they kind of offloaded that train to the Navy.
So it was kind of a really cool experience where I'm an Air Force
officer, but I'm in a Navy squadron and it's all Marines and Navy guys
with me with some other Air Force guys. So that was actually a really
you know, the Navy and the Air Force are definitely different. You know,
the Air Force is very anal like you will be at work at seven
am, you will leave it four and if you start flight school in this
date, you will get your wings on this date. And there is no
like middle ground. The Air Force is very regimented it that way, which
is sometimes good and bad. Navy God Bless him is like, yeah,
dude, fucking serfs up. Bro, Yeah you're in this class and you're
supposed to graduate around this month, but you know whatever weather and you know
whatever, and yeah, yeah around you know they'd give you like a two
or three month waiver. Yeah then Ady was very like, you know,
they would throw three hundred kid debts at a training pipeline and in their mind
like if we get one hundred and fifty pilots or nabs ORF NFO is equivalent
to wizzow Naval flight officer, so like goosen top gun right, Like yeah,
dude, we get a if half you guys wash out, but we
actually get one hundred and fifty guys like cool success, We don't really give
a shit like it's it was definitely like a big boy program. Uh,
if you guys are the kind of guys that can go out and get blasted
on Pensacola Beach. But you come in and get your work done and you
pass your flights. Cool, and if you don't, you'll fail. Yeah,
and like it was very so definitely it was definitely a very big boy
from day one. And so so as a as a wizzow or like an
NFL. Yeah you said, NFL, right, do you is there a
pilot training in that for you? Do they want you to understand? How?
Yeah? So I'd probably missed this part. So before even going down,
So, the Air Force had a program where if you were going to
pilot training, you were not going to go to pilot training until you've got
your civilian license, okay. So they called it if T Intermediate or Introductory
Flight Training. And then for guys that were gonna be go that, guys
that had a pilot school slot, you got your PPL your private pilot license
before you even went okay. For the Wizzos or nabs that were going it
was called NIFT, you know, Navigator Introductory Flight Training. And really all
they gave you was about twenty hours okay, And so you know at that
point, I wasn't really thinking that far ahead, and I'm kind of kicking
I kicked myself later on down the road because for a discounted price, I
probably could have continued on and got my PPL. Sure, but once the
twenty was over, my twenty hours I did it up in Connecticut, I
was like, I'm done. I'm gonna enjoy my last few months in New
York before leave for good. Right, So probably a little bit short side
of my part, But yeah, to answer your point, at least from
the Air Force perspective, you went in with at least a good twenty to
fifty civillion hours, okay, Yeah, And then as far as the part
of your initial curriculum, so for us, it was about three to four
months of ground school, And what was cool about it was everyone did the
same ground school Marines pilots, Navy pilots, Navy, NFOs, air Force
pilots that were down there, like, everyone went through the exact same course.
So once you did that, you transition over the flight line. And
then for us, they these things have been since retired, but not the
World War Two era T thirty four, but the modern I say modern seventies
eighties T thirty four, That's what I started out in. And so your
first six to eight flights. Other than basic navigation, there is some flying
that was going on there as well. But then after that it starts ramping
up to you fairly complicated navigation, a lot of land nav a lot of
stuff where there's a hood over you, and you got to sort of do
just timing, heading that kind of stuff, see what the winds are doing
to you, you're looking back on it. It ended up none of it
really ended up ever translating into like what I did in the real world,
because there's obviously a jet, there's a GPS, there's so much else going
on in a combat aircraft where like you don't have time to you know,
clock, chart, ground or whatever that terminology was that I forget. But
but yeah, that was sort of the beginning days of it. Yeah,
so about three to four months of a prop plane then switched over to the
T one for intermediate that's kind of like a business leer jet, and it's
the same thing the Air Force uses to train up all their heavy pilots.
And then from there you went to an advanced squadron called VT eighty six,
and you started off in a T thirty nine saber line, which is like
a Vietnam era. It was probably it was actually really crazy. You flew
with active duty guys, mostly Navy Marines, but a few Rando Air Force
guys. In the T thirty four, the T one, and the T
thirty nine was all being flown by retiree contract pilots and I think literally every
single one of them. It was like a Vietnam era like Navy fighter pilot.
Yeah, like I number one crazy story where it was one of the
few Air Force guys still remember. His named Lynn Coleman. So he was
the retired Eggland Air Force Base wing commander and ended up doing a cross country
flight with him. So we were just kind of sitting there bs and he's
asking us where he got commissioned. He was an academy guy, wasn't And
this guy really was had some crazy history. I don't know if you guys
are aware who Lance side John was. Lance side John was the first ever
Air Force Academy graduate to see the Medal of Honor and he was a pow,
tried to escape multiple times, ended up unfortunately dying of captivity. So
Lance Saide John is a big deal in the Air Force. Lynn Coleman was
one of his roommates at the academy. So there's that story, and then
I'm making small talk with him and he goes, yeah, I'm retired as
the wing king at Egglin and my vice was Bud Day. So like we're
just kind of sitting there in awe. Another medal of honor. You know,
Bud Day who was a marine first and became an Air Force colonel and
you know, got the Medal of Honor poet and he lived him and became
were pretty tight from what I remember, So it was cool we had these
We had these like legends of like Vietnam era naval and Air Force aviation teaching
us. Yeah, but it was also crazy because part of your safety beep
before taking off was it's you in this seventy eighth year old pilot in the
left seat. You're in the right seat. Uh, there's a chance you
might get a bird in the face, and what are your actions? And
it's like, shit, I've been flying this plane since before you were a
niche and your daddy's crops. Oh yeah, I mean some of the stories
these guys have, Like one guy with Connie Hoffman, I still remember his
name, was a C one thirty pilot I think was a spooky pilot for
a little bit before they were gunships or AC forty sevens. I believe we
just telling a story about you know, they'd open up the back. He
Hey, dude, co pilot, you got the jet, I'm gonna go
in the back and see what the little bets up there. He's fucking,
you know, blazing weed. Yeah, casters Like, I mean, you
know, really, I thought I had done some cowboy shit in my career,
but some of the Vietnam War stories were just out of control. But
but yeah, kind of in the middle of that pro like towards the end
of that program, Yeah, you track select, you gotta go fighter or
bombers. Uh, Like everyone else, I wanted fighters. That's and I
got very intimately familiar with the whole fiscal year concert of the military. Got
called in and it's like, yeah, dude, it's early September, and
I'm like, yeah, it sure is still nice out. Yeah you're not
hearing me. I guess I'm not, because, yeah, dude, you're
not killing it. You're really doing good, but you're not like blowing away
the grade curve. And unfortunately, like we just don't have any more B
school slots for strike Eagles and I was I was pretty devastated. Yeah,
you know, life's not fair. Whate was me kind of shit? But
again, looking back on it, like had I gone strike Eagles, not
to be self deprecating, but like I probably would have maybe been like above
average, maybe middle of the road. I really would. I do have
broken my ass to sort of like maintain because it's a high performing type of
environment being a fighter guy backseat or a pilot. Yeah, and the b
one. You know, I definitely think I found my niche like, I
so correct me if I'm wrong, because it seems as though, like on
a strike on a fighter, the wisdow actually has It would seemed to me
in my mind, the wisdom has less to do than they would on a
bomber. It's like it almost seems like they control the show on a bomber.
We do control the show on a bomber. I would say for the
fighter guys, at least I've talked to and having sat in one, Generally,
if you're a wizzo on a fighter, you're not just doing air to
air, and obviously in today's environment you're mostly doing air to ground, right,
so you're kind of running that show. I believe, you know,
those guys could literally do everything that the pilots could do, I think other
than fire and air to air missile. I could be wrong, but like
you, you were still pretty test saturating. Again, if you're a fighter,
things are coming a little faster. I mean the Bone we were pretty
maneuverable for a bomber, but we were still a three G jet limited in
combat and most times to save gas when we're doing casts, which we'll get
into, you know, we were our wings forward to be as gas economical
as possible, So I mean we were Those are some rough days where we
went off dry on a nine line and it was a putt. It was
a good sold Yeah, sometimes three and a half four minutes to get back
over target. So those are those were pretty hectic times. So you know,
for us, it was the key on going off hot successfully on the
first drop. Was like it was like life or death in a lot of
cases. Yeah, but yea yeah, I mean I would say definitely ran
the show a lot more on the Bone, and it was just like a
trade off, you know. I mean, those guys at less play time
did cooler shit. We definitely in certain parts of Afghanistan could hang around for
three four hours at a time not leave. You know, initially our loadouts
in OEF and OIF were fourteen weapons, yeah, eight and six or fourteen.
Eventually we removed the bait tank and started going up to twenty and so
I mean we would, you know, there were times where we'd be the
only jet in country because of weather, and we would you know, I
think my record was four separate ticks that all went hot, like we were
the only guys in country. Wow. You know, Vipers couldn't take off
from calf strike, Eagles and hogs were like grounded for whether at Bath.
So like, you know, being the only game in town was huge for
us. Sure tell us about you know, moving from this one track fighter
track to a bomber track. What's that look like? Yeah, so once
that happens, this has all changed. The air Force has kind of redesigned
how they do their their their pipeline. But basically happens after that is so
the B one. The B one is a four person aircraft. It's an
aircraft commander, a co pilot and then uh you've got two wizzows but and
you're dual qualify to sit either seat. There's an OsO seat, which is
the offensive Offensive System officer, and then there's the DSO seat, which is
the defensive system officer. So if you guys remember Doctor Strangelove, think of
the EWO who's watching the bomb come up? You know, range gate pull
off, range gate pull off working, We actually were qualified to sit bold
seats and the reason for that was once you got your wings in Pensacola,
you then went to Randolph Air Force Base for four months of Electronic Warfare Officer
school. Okay, okay, So once that happens, now you're basically legally
allowed to go attend the B one school at Dias Air Force Base in Texas.
Before we did that, you did water survival and then full of SURVI
I a school up in Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington. So I'd say,
on all, it's probably about a year and a half process before even
allowed to go at ten Dias Air Force Base to start learning. Now the
specific that a fly your jet, and so what that looks like is you
show up similar to like flight school, where it's it's a few months of
ground school, a lot of sims, and then eventually you get kicked over
to the flight line and you start flying, you know, the line with
the schoolhouse, and it's the FTU, which is the Flight Training Unit.
And so the way I describe it is IQC Initial qual the initial qualification course
that's teaching you how to just safely operate the jet and then once that happens.
There's three combats B one squadrons in the world. There's one at Dias
Air Force Base, which is the ninth down the road from the schoolhouse,
and then there's two up north at Ellsworth Air Force Base and it's the thirty
seventh and the thirty fourth. What was cool about that was the thirty seventh
and thirty fourth. We're part of the Do Little Raiders. So like Jimmy,
like me. We called the twenty eighth Operations Group up at Elsworth.
It's called the Do Little Raiders because we direct lineage from Jimmy Doolittle. Yeah,
if you guys go back and look at some of the pictures and I'll
show you. You know, there's pictures of Jimmy Doolittle sitting there in the
carrier and the guys sitting next to him. We're all war And the thirty
fourth Bomb Squadron Patch, which is the same one that I wore. Yeah,
so that was really cool, like, you know, for being the
youngest service, right, only been around since forty seven, to be in
to be in a squadron, I had like a direct reach back to like
the World War two hour. It was was actually really cool. Yeah,
So did that again about a year and a half or so, I'd say,
to learn the jet and a lot of it was mainteninstitute to be one
historically was definitely a maintenance problem child. So we got up there and I
got up to Ellsworth and Lado five to join the thirty fourth bomb Squadron.
And kind of similar to what we I'd said before at nine to eleven.
You know, at this point now we probably know better than I do,
but I'd say, oh, four ish five, Iraq was still a mess,
but Afghanistan was kind of quiet. You didn't really see a lot of
the insurgent tactics make their way, like you know, IED's I think we're
pretty much unheard of Fastan, you know in the early days. Yeah,
like it just did We're not heard of. Uh, but you know,
we obviously shifted resources to deal with Iraq, and so obviously the Taliban were
allowed to sort of you know, we're kind of allowed to regroup, re
armed, if you will. So when our sister squadroned in Texas went back
to start servicing targets from Davo Garcia, you know, we we started hearing
like, hey man, it's starting to pick up again, like it's getting
busy. Uh. And the problem is though, back then, bones were
launching off a dgar so do U Arcia. And I think if this was
nuts. You take off with a tanker in tow, essentially in tandem.
They get you out to about three hours post launch, they would give you
every single bit of guest they had, they'd go home. So that was
another two hours. And so it was taking guys about five hours just to
get to Afghanistan. Wo yes, and that's about if you look at a
map, that's about including about forty five to an hour transit of what we
call it was called the Beach Road, and it's Haid southern. If you
look at the map, you know, Pakistan kind of does that reverse l
thing to touch Afghanistan, touch i Ran, and Afghanistan is just sort of
north of this thing called the Beach Road, and it's a desolate, unpopulated
part of Pakistan, and that was the one area they let us flying because
no one really cared. And it's like, you know, pay us,
give us our aid, you leave us aloan and leave you alone. So
that was yeah. I mean, i'd like you never had to experience this,
but yeah, it was. Guys were already airborne for five hours before
we can start in their rowle. That that's wild. And just to clarify
for people listening, so they're they're not landing at like calf Or or or
whatever or bogram, they are actually like flying from Diego, Garcia five hours
to then prosecute targets, yeah, and then flying back. Yeah. And
you're so you're doing one pre we call it a pre bowl tank. You're
doing one pre Bowl tank nine times out of ten. Those guys were doing
another in country tank, and then on their way home doing a third.
So you're hitting a tank or three times. And I think somebody only started
to kind of do the math and go doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
The bone is not runway limited to at aluded like the B fifty two
was. And I think at this point now the Asian Games were either happening
in six oh seven. So at the time the CEA fact, the three
star Air Force airman that was, you know, under the samecom commander.
At that point, he experimented with, hey, what let's see what two
jets, let's split the squadron up a little bit. And at this time
it was the Texas Squadron, the ninth and so they had sent I believe
two to three jets to the deed to see what the feasibility was. And
once they realized like, hey, we can actually operate out of here,
at that point the decision was made. Digar is gone. Bones will now
be operating at a AU deed. And you're al you did Cutter? Yeah,
Cutter? Sorry? Yeah? And and so how far was that flight
then from Cutter to target? Yeah? So this was I'd say, to
get to Afghanistan, it was probably a solid hour to go directly east.
You'd fly over UAE, you'd check in with Muscat Control, which was Oman.
Once you did that, maybe five to ten more minutes you checked in
with Karachi and then Karachi really just didn't give a shit about You're like,
oh, yeah, cool, boring whatever, like you don't care. We
hope you die, yeah, we know, you hope we die, you
don't fuck with us, won't fuck with you, and then we'd basically we'd
basically go tactical where we'd put our tactical squawk on. At that point we'd
switch everything off of Victor into uniform and we were basically talking to other military
aircraft for deconfliction. And once you got within range, you were really starting
to listen in on j tech freaks to figure out what was going on in
the country, right, and then you know, you every now and then
you'd pass one of the other b ones going in and you get like a
set rep where the action was if they had done anything, and then yeah,
I mean that was That's kind of how Afghanistan went, I think for
most of my deployment. So so when when units were doing like ground force
planning, when you like operational planning, would they know that you guys would
be on station or would you guys? Would they just plan their op with
whatever was in theater, and then you guys would kind of in and say,
hey, like we're here, does does anybody anybody needed any bombs?
No? I mean the most I mean, I think some of that happened
in the early days, like some of the Cowboy days. Yeah, the
uh, the it's killing me a carnt of the name of this now,
but the there was a process where uh, the J tax and the the
asoce guys, whether it was Big Army, whether it was you know,
the combat controllers with the ODA teams. And I think at this point too,
my first deployment, OD eight CCTs were still supporting the White Seal teams.
That eventually changed because either they're their own j tax but no, you
you would put in ASR. That's what it was called Air service request,
and you would submit an ASR prior to the ATO cycle. And you know,
like everything else, the a SoC would rack and stack what's a high
priority mission, what's general? You know, they had their own sort of
algorithm, for lack of a better term one determining who would get what.
Uh huh. Obviously, distance and geography played a part. You know,
we had the legs to get in some fairly remote parts of the country,
so that would play a part as well. But now I really was I
mean, there was always a plan. Okay, very rarely would we take
off without a like basically a JTAC and a kill box to check into.
Right, every now and then there was nothing really the service, so you'd
do what's called X casts. Yeah, you know, the joke was it
was extreme casts, like you know, they give us cansa mountain dukes.
It was so extreme flame joke. But at that point, really it was
just just be in country. God forbid, something happens, right, and
they would position you. You had to be careful when they positioned you,
because like you didn't want to like intrude on somebody else's airspace, but you
kind of wanted to be like at a jumping off point where like hey,
you know, uh, Kundu's has been pretty hot lately, like be somewhat
around there. Yeah, uh, you know for a long time. On
one of my deployments, unfortunately after seven and oh eight with uh you know
cop keating and uh the other copy could overrun, you know, we had
this thing called we had one hundred percent armed overwatch where those guys in the
corn gall would have a jet overhead twenty four to seven period dot. Yeah,
and then we actually did a lot of that stuff overnight because uh,
we just we had the legs to do it, we had the gas to
do it, and so you know, some of those missions were really kind
of tedious and tough. But the cool thing about those things was, uh,
you know. We talked to j Tax afterwards and say, dude,
I know it sucks. I know you've keyed the mic six times total in
six hours, literally like checking in okay, cool, two hours of nothing,
checking off to go get gas, okay cool, See you come back
in and forgetting gas, checking out a guess again. So there we was.
There was there was a few stories where over corn Gal we'd literally key
the mic six times over seven hours and it was like I just described checking
in, checking out, check and check it out. But from what we
heard from those guys at all, like the fobs like that was the only
time those guys could actually get some sleep because us us just making noise generally
was at least enough of the turrent. Yeah a lot, yeah, guys
for ship heads, not to like trying to pop something. Yeah, so
that that actually made us feel good. Let me take a quick segue here.
I need to pimp out the podcast and remind people that we have a
Patreon and there's a link down the description. If you guys go and subscribe,
you'll get access to all these episodes. Ad free. Really appreciate you
guys supporting the channel. We do some bonus episodes on there, and YouTube
doesn't like YouTubers for some reason recently, so we're trying to transition to the
Patreon a bit. And thank you everyone who already subscribes, We appreciate it.
And if you haven't, it's also free just to subscribe to the YouTube
and hit the bell icons so you get notified when we go live. Oh
yeah, The eyes On is our secondary podcast, which is national security current
events with Jason Lyons and Andy Milburn. So that's on the same channel.
So thank you guys. So, Brian, just to back up a little
bit, I want to ask you about the quote unquote traditional or the doctrinal
role of the B one bomber. I mean that is I believe it's our
only supersonic bomber. Yes, it's a very unique aircraft. Tell us about
like what that thing's designed for, what it's designed to do. And then
now you guys obviously had to change modalities there to fight a counter insurgency or
counter terrorism miss yeah, absolutely, so yeah, the B one, you
know, originally was a program in the late seventies. You know, heigh
of the Cold War, and you know, the original design of it was,
you know, this thing, you know had a terrain following radar still
does. We just can't execute anymore unfortunately, to try to extend a life
of the aircraft. But you know, terrain following radar, you know,
so basically hands off the jet could fly at two hundred feet flying curvature of
the earth type thing. And the thought process was it was nuclear cable when
it was first you know, designed, and really the mission was two hundred
feet under early warning radars in the mother Russia, pop up to a safe
release altitude, you know release you know the shrams or you know the nuclear
weapons at the time, and you know, basically pray for the best so
you can sort of do an out maneuver, not get blinded, right and
basically make it home safe. That was the original mission. You know,
President Carter killed it based on budgets concerns and some other reasons, and then
you know, Reagan reignited it. So the jet was only produced in two
years eighty five and eighty six. So whenever you stepped to a jet,
the tail number is either going to start with eight five or eight six.
That was the only two years it was built. It was early, originally
designed to have two hundred that of course got cut down to one hundred and
then I think at its height, I want to say, there was maybe
seventy five to eighty something jets, so it was kind of a maintenance pig
initially. It actually did not play at all in Desert Storm one, and
so yeah, you had a lot of a lot of angry sort of you
know Cold War warrior types that pretty much felt like they got shut out of
it. You know, Go War one was a really big, you know,
B fifty two fight from a bomber perspective in the one seventeen I think
also minutes to view then too, So really, you know, the Bone
really had to kind of search around for a mission for a lot of years.
I might be screwing the years up here, but an old wing commander
of he retires a two star general Tolliver. He luckily was deployed, I
want to say, were deployed to England when Northern Watch and Southern Watch were
a thing in ninety six, we decided to respond I think to some incursions
by Saddam and so the first ever use of the B one I believe was
for Southern Watch in ninety six and it's a cool video. This is also
back when we had no GPS weapons. Everything was unguided, so we were
literally releasing you know, at its height unguided the B one could carry eighty
four marke eighty two's so eighty four five hundred pound unguided weapons. So that
was cool, kind of like showed that like, hey, we actually have
a place here and we actually have a role. Once the jet finally got
GPS guided weapons available to it. This is right around the time of Kosovo,
so ninety nine. It also played in Kosovo with some with some pretty
good success. And so when nine to eleven happened, the B onees were
one of the first jets to respond. We sent jets out to Digar to
some other areas too, which either can't remember them or mile to talk about
them, but I mean they're probably places we've heard of, right, Yeah,
So you know, they were one of the early jets to respond.
You know, I want to say nine to eleven happened that I've talked to
guys that you know, basically, by mid November we're we're dropping weapons in
country support and fifth Group and the guys up north. So yeah, basically
they just you know, we adapted to the role that was required. You
know, you could argue that there really is no perfect cast platform other than
the A ten and even the A ten and you know most A ten weapons
school, where I will tell you, like that thing was designed to kill
tanks and the fold the gap during the Cold War, but it's turned.
It's basically it's made itself essentially the King of Cash. From a doctoral standpoint,
the fact that it can do Type one I can see the target,
I can see the friendlies, like that thing is amazing. Yeah, but
you know not this sort of paraphrase, you know, Rumsfeld, but you
know, you go to war with the Air Force, you had so basically
our frontline stuff, which was designed for near peer we all had to sort
of figure out how we're going to be an optimal CARES platform, right,
And like I said, you know before, like we had some pros and
cons. You know, we had shiploads of gas, shiploads of weapons,
and then really just the issue with us sometimes is we're high really can only
do type two control casts, right, I'm never going to see the friendlies.
Maybe if I'm lucky going to see the bad guys. Yeah, but
a lot of times I'm really kind of releasing on cordinates only. But we
definitely had persistence and gas to you know, stay over ahead for three four
hours at a time and you know, beat it overwatch for guys. So
yeah, I would say our role definitely evolved over time to where you know,
we were happy that guys could just execute basic cast in the beginning to
like three four years later, like you know, we're getting into the nuances
of like you know, you know this is you know, do I do
this sort of a maneuver after cast for optimal placement? Like we started trying
to get into the finer points of conducting casts like the fighters and and you
know, and the rotary guys would could could you take us a little bit
through like what it's like, you know, sitting there in the hot seat
as a weapon sky and how you're putting those presumably you're the guy that has
to put the weapons on target. So funny story. So O seven,
Uh, you know we were still radar only. We had no targeting pod.
Oh wow, so O seven, which was my first apployment, like
LADO six oh seven. Uh, we were literally a rate our only platform.
Yeah, it was scary. So which was funny was being at the
deed. So being at the deed, even though I rack at this point
was an effing mess. Like the early parts of seven like eventually led into
Petraeus coming in, uh, you know for this for the reawakening and him
kind of turning the tide against this, you know, with with the the
tribal leader piece that he advocated for. But you know, if you went
to Iraq, you knew you weren't dropping unless it was pre planned because we
had no targeting pod and everything that was urban. Afghanistan was a different story
obviously, a lot more spread out, not as much focus as there as
we've talked about, Like the fight was Iraq Afghanistan, I had to say
it at that point, was you know, was really more of an afterthought
like, hey, it's we went there for good and yeah, can we
kind of took out off the ball a little bit? Like that's just my
opinion. So I'll give you one story where it's my first combat sortady.
Ever, I'm a little nervous, hadn't really slept that great. Uh so
we check in, we go all the way towards Jalalabad, and I'm sitting
in the left seat, which is not the weapon seat, and uh,
you know, I kind of tell the other wizzo to my right sky auto.
Uh. And he had been on his third deployment, but because his
previous two deployments were de guard appointments, he never d have to single weapon
either. So we're both like two neophytes in the back. So we're checking
in with the j tack. Uh. He's not answering, not keying the
mic. So we figured like, okay, it's a no show, no
big deal, will hang out here. So I kind of go to aut
I'm like, hey, dude, I really didn't sleep ah a lot.
Man, Like I'm gonna like wedge my checklist, you know, and like
in my ejection seat and kind of like try to like you know, homeless
sleep it off a little bit. He goes, h Ude, all good.
I want to say I got about maybe fifteen minute power nap and he
cracks me in the arm, like, dude, we got a tick.
Yeah. And you know, back then, before mc crystal came in and
before we really started kind of really tying up, how we went kinetic.
I mean six oh seven you said the word tick. It was like the
three star, like legally letting you drop weapons. Yeah, we we had
some situation. I mean, there were definitely some of my thinking since is
where we probably abuse that authority where guys just drop the magic word tick.
I think I'm threatened, And that was all the excuse you need to go
connectic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we had. I'll tell
you some some I'll take one or two stories in that. But so we
get I get punched in the arm, all right, shit, okay,
cool, all right, where are we going? And I'm like all jazzed
up and then I realized it, you know, and at this point now
we're running the math in the back. We're figuring out okay, if we
go point nine down to this tick in Helmet Province, uh, we'll show
up there in about forty minutes and we'll still about two hours of playtime.
So you get it amped up, and then it's like a fuck, like,
you know, I'm going from jbad down to helmet right, it's still
forty minutes, right, but you know, you get you know, get
your time to get your act together, get checked in. And I want
to say generally on a uniform freak. We could generally start reaching ja tax
set about if you were lucky spending, if they especially if they had an
extender on the UH. I think it was the one seventy twos they were
running around with. But around forty to fifty miles you can start getting camps
with the j A tack. And so I first took ever, I'll never
forget it, Widows seven eight, and it was a British j tech assigned
to the Royal Fusiliers. And I love working with the Brits because you know,
I'd work later on with Americans and it's hectic and its cast. The
Brits were the most they could be in a life threatening situation. It's like
there in three four it's Widow seven eight. I saw to be a ball
the sub but we are taking a heavy fire from these. I stand by
grid alright ready four one Sierra papod Remia and then like boo, yeah,
and this is back in the days where like you know, sang in Province,
this is you know, And obviously Helmand and Kandahar were like the spiritual
home metal band. That's kind of where they made their reawakening. And so
the Brits that were there really got into it big time. So those guys
were constantly getting into contact and it flew by. But I kid you not.
We stayed with these dudes for about eight hours. Yeah, and at
the time, we were carrying a bay tank six GBU thirty eights in the
interner media bay, which was a five hundred pound GPS skided weapon, and
we had eight thirty ons and we know, shit, we we released all
eight two thousand pound weapons. Wowcame this effing close to go in Winchester,
and I could tell the j tech was really trying to make it work.
Man, I'm really trying here. We think we you're all dead. You've
done too good of a Joel, but I didn't think we can get connected
with your loss. Thank you so much, gents, appreciate it, you
know, Like then I blink, I'm like, oh, fuck, do
you We've been airborn for like seven hours. Wow, We've been in this
tick for seven hours. Yeah, So that was like story that was like
my first ever drop, and you know all that like regret of like not
going fighters, not going eagles. I'm like, you know what, this
is where I was meant to be for you. Guys, do you recall
what the danger close was for the five hundred pounders and then for they know
it's yeah, it's it changed the initial days and seven uh. An impact
GBU thirty eight was three hundred and five meters, a impact GBU thirty one
was three sixty five. Uh. And then I'll be honest with you,
some of my old students, if they listen, that's gonna be giving me
shift not remembering if I went airburst on the thirty eight, it bumped it
up by thirty meters, okay, And if I went airburst thirty one,
it bumped it out to like four oh five okay. Now after that for
almost almost one hundred extra meters, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So
after that though, they did a lot more research, they sort of dial
on them down. And I want to say, my last deployment, the
thirty eight's I remember being two sixty five for impact, three zero five for
airburst, And I want to say, for some weird reason, three fifteen
and three eighty five or three fifteen and three sixty five for thirty one says
that's how I kind of like obviously the the air burst because the spread would
go out right on the nose cone that would generally put it out for about
forty fifty meters on top. What was the standard height for an airburst when
you guys would drop, So the DSU thirty three was twenty feet plus or
minus this plus or minus six feet. Okay, so it would go anywhere
from fourteen feet all the way up to twenty six feet with the impact point.
That's quite a that's quite a shit. Yeah, we had one about
it. Well, we had a couple of sorties where a number one fucker,
this was eight, and the call was, uh, we dropped the
g W thirty to air bursts on this guy and this guy I really hope
this guy lived in whet to go cure cancer or something. But it was
not too far from Kandahar. They had caught him plant an I D and
we literally watched this My our targeting pod screen went poof, like we hit
him. But this guy literally must have served. They called it like the
Coner Survival, right. The guy literally was underneath and all the frag went
out. Yeah, this guy actually did one of these in the pod and
like sprinted off. Yeah, and we couldn't get cleared for a reattack.
Uh. So Yeah, there was. There's a few times there were we
really advocated for unless the guy is offset or unless you won't be hitting guys
in trees. Yeah, you know. We'd actually tell the j Tax over
the radio like, hey, copy all recommend me go impact and we'll and
we'll connect. If we'll, we'll readjust from there for and you're saying,
because with an impact, it hits and it goes out with the air bursts,
it goes out, which gives you a wider spread. It does,
but but there's actually like underdirectly underneath the cone. It's the weird you wouldn't
think it. Yeah. Now, granted there was a few times where talking
to guys afterwards or like that guy probably is gonna die the next day,
just based on the the uh the compression, Yeah, that he's getting off
the BOTMB. Yeah. Yeah, I'll send you guys the video. There's
one video. Uh, the British Jay Tax and O seven would like this
is this is before iPhones? He's like the Sony digital cams. Yeah,
they call in strikes from us. They'd like, you know, overcover And
there was one where we dropped to thirty one and they were well outside of
danger close but you can hear the guy coughing and hacking because he's talking as
the shockwave goes. Yah, he's like you know, yeah, the guy
like he's hacking up. He's hacking up along. So yeah, yeah,
that overpressure must must have been immense even if he didn't catch Yeah, there
was a few guys where it's like you didn't want to get into like an
argument the groundcourse commander, but it's like, dude, yeah he's walking with
like that guy's not surviving. That guy's bleeding from every orifice he has and
probably something that we just created, like this guy's not gonna live. Yeah,
no, he's moving like if we'll drop another seventy K for they or
like why not? Yeah, it reminds of your major pain. It's like
if he's in there, he ain't happy. Yeah, that was a big
part of it for Jesus. Yeah, that was yeah, but yeah,
that was so ill. I'm kind of getting off on tangency, but yeah,
right, so seven was crazy because uh you know right when uh,
right before I'd say about a month before we transitioned out. That's when Portrayus
came in and like the floodgates of Iraq just opened like I think betrays gave
a lot of the ground force commanders sort of uh like license like hey dudes,
uh, there's been something you've been meaning to shwack, Like now's your
time. Yeah, So we had we had one sorty where uh you could
usually hit Basra in about forty five minutes, the southernmost point. The Britz
were control of that. Remember taking off, We took off to the north
and so like basically hit Iraq and like record time, And if you look
on a map, it was a killbox south of Bagad. I forget the
specific town, but we literally was lined up. We were hitting Olive Grove
that was historically like you know, insurgent staging area. And I think I
don't think we changed our heading more than five degrees. We just flew straight
for forty five minutes, opened the bay doors. We had all twenty weapons
off on one pass, all three fours Winchester Missigon complete. And then you
know somebody at the talk is looking at their like all right, your Winchester
go home. So yeah, I went Winchester in like under four hours after
dropping twenty weapons. And that that was just like the portrayal, Like the
that like month I think our bomb total like we were on track. Maybe
they dropped like five hundred over the course of six months, and I think
by the time we left in July oh seven, we were up to like
seven and change. Wow, And that was just Afghanistan was still hot.
Obviously the spring fighting season was in full force at that point, and then
the Iraq just being there for the beginning of the of the Awakening. I
feet what the terminology was when Portray showed up, that was Yeah, that
was a huge game changer. So got home, went back out the next
year. I actually went a little bit late because I went to instructor school.
But that second deployment we actually had the the sniper targeting pod. And
everyone had warned us like, dudes, you're gonna drop less of this thing,
marked by words like no, no, no way, man, Like
do you know many targets I could have found to fight a poly gull?
Right? Shit? Had? Okay, fine, you know better? They
were right, you know, we had the targeting pod. That's like an
appointment. I think we dropped our drop went down to like three eighty five.
For why is that? I mean a lot of that point now it's
the onus is really on the air crew and for them, you know,
whatever possible, like it probably should be, right, Like you're a tool
for the guy on the ground. You know. The biggest thing, at
least I would say from the b Ones perspective, was most guys got it
that, Like, dude, I don't care if we fly a three hundred
million dollar jet, like the mission is the guy on the ground. Sure,
Like is there like a quantity over quality kind of aspect or vice versa
that the sniper pod made you more accurate? I mean that was definitely a
part of it. It was also I think, uh, I don't want
to go back and look and say, maybe some of the bombs we dropped
in O seven maybe were maybe overkill or there was really nothing there, or
you're also working with what you had it. Yeah, but yeah, the
sniper pod definitely like you could not some guys got into trouble because you could
not definitely tell like what a dot was, right. Sure, And if
you looked at the you know, the John Chapman Medal of Honor MQ one
video right like that that that is about as graining as it effing gets.
Yeah, the Lockheed Sniper Pod was ten times better but I still couldn't discern,
you know, child from man right, woman from man. All I
could basically tell is I've got movement, And if I really was starting to
stretch the limits here, I have a possible Like there were certain cases where
if your clarity was good enough, I could see like a shorter blip and
an adult sized blip right, and you'd get Dude, I'm not saying definitely,
but I've got some half size returns with some full size returns. I
really was up to the guy on the ground to sort of make that judgment
call, right. But you know the uh pretty much that we were there
as a censor and we were there as a tool for them, but for
a tick, I mean with this sniper pod, especially if if you know
the enemies were and for people who might not know tick. When we say
tick, we're talking about troops in contact, uh so ground force you know,
engagement and usually like when they call in a tick, it's more than
just like a squirter or like somebody shooting pop shots. It's like you're you're
you're effectively engaged by enemy. Yeah right, so what what like what not
only from your level but also from the air force level with these sniper pods
coming online, what would happen if there were discrepancy between what the jatach was
saying and what you were seeing on the sniper pod. I mean really,
you just you know, you know, guys got into trouble when they sort
of thought they were they were doing leading calm, you know, almost like
being like a jailhouse lawyer. You really. And that's the thing too,
like everything's getting recorded, right, So we would tell our young guys like,
dude, like, you're not there on the ground, I know that,
you think you can discern that. So some lied underne of your crosshairs,
but it's probably not right. So just just effing tell the guy what
you see, right, and don't bullshit, don't, you know, because
listen. The other thing too, is like there were times where you know,
guys were using ROVER and you know, I forgive me for forgetting the
acronym, but you know, ROVER was the link I think it was remote
operated video enhancement something radio, that's what it was. And ROVER was the
j tax ability to see what my snipper was saying. Remember that. And
there were times where they used it with drones too. Yeah, they drones,
if you had like the raid cams on a base where and some of
the pictures from those things were like it was like HD, it was amazing.
But there were times where like guys were convinced that they were staring at
the same thing and they weren't because I mean, let's be honest, like
every mud hud looks pretty ef and similar. Most guys are wearing the same
style of Man Jammy. Right, there's like two Man Jammy producers in Afghanistan,
you know, like it's either Calvin Klein or this other guy. So,
yeah, there are a lot of times where you really got yourself into
trouble if you talk to yourself. I mean I get it. Like you're
sitting in a jet, you're moving in a mile a minute. You want
to keep the guys safe because you'll hear incoming, you'll hear contact on the
radio. But when you're on the ground and you're the instructor and you're reading,
you're watching their sniper pod, you're like, ah shit, I know
where at ground speed zero you could see where guys from a comms perspective would
talk themselves onto like the wrong targets. Yeah, so the thing we would
tell guys is just dude. It doesn't have to be sexy. I don't
care if the comm sounds like garbage. Just tell the guy what you see.
Yeah, and then you know, and it sucks in a lot of
ways. But if there's any doubt, there is no doubt, right because
I mean, this is kind of hard for us, but you know,
like so twenty fourteen is a perfect example of I can't come into a lot
of it, obviously because a lot of it's still I think classified, But
you know that the frat we had unfortunately to be one of the on the
fifth group guys. You know, I've listened to some of those tapes and
it was I'll just say that there was. There was definitely I'll kind of
dance around a little bit. There were a few comments to the tune of
like I'm either gonna get a fucking weapon out of you guys, or I'll
find somebody who will give me. It was kind of like, dude,
we're taking fire, and I think, you know, unfortunately we sort of
let and I know personally some of the guys in that jet, So I
don't want to say much more of it, but that's an example I think
of kind of getting browbeating and doing something normally you wouldn't do. Actually it's
Bean zero. Yeah, so really that's how we would try to keep Which
incident are we talking about? So twenty fourteen? Uh, and actually conn
it might have been, but it was the one where they interviewed the Uh
he ended up going to Georgetown Law School. The captain of the Fifth Group
ended up they did a CBS report. I mean, but you're saying twenty
fourteen, Yeah, I'm thinking the fifth Group. I'm thinking Jason and Green
and the You're you're thinking like the Bee fifty two, so early on in
the you're thinking, you're thinking, oh, to where the guy reset his
radio. Yeah, twenty fourteen, there was a twenty four two was okay,
yeah, if you go back and look my bad like this, you're
all good. Okay, I'll put it up higher. Is that is that
better? All right? Cool? Yeah? Twenty summer of twenty fourteen,
unfortunately, we had a blue on blue and it was you know, basically,
uh, you know, Dismounts guy got separated and you know, essentially
we're firing our each other. Didn't know it, and then a bone showed
up and responded and unfortunately, we think we lost four guys. That's just
like one example. I think of what country was this in Afghanistan? Okay,
but what sucked up? I mean, again my personal opinion, not
you know, official air force position, but when that's happening was CBS did
a special on it, and if you read the CBS special, it's b
ones with targeting pods are unsafe, and it's like, it's like, dude,
there were some fuck ups, don't get me wrong, but like there
were a fuck up whole around. And that's kind of one of those things
where as an aircrew guy, you don't feel right sometimes passing judgment on a
guy getting shot out on the ground. But it's also like, dude,
like similar to everywhere. Sure, you know when I when I was thinking
about Kundus, I mean that's where the Doctors Without Borders Hospital was. Oh,
that's another one. There was a number of different things that like led
up to that, and it becomes like the perfect storm. So it's funny.
Yeah, And that's that's the comment for guys who've listened to that tape
that I do the after action report. You know, obviously, uh,
I remember talking to a couple of fifth Group guys because for a while,
they're like a lot of B one guys, Like if you were around you
kind of didn't let Fifth Group dudes know that you were a bone dude,
because it was definitely a touchy subject. But I met one or two Fifth
Group guys that just kind of like, hey, dude, listen you guys.
The one guy actually kind of made us feel really feel a little better.
He goes, I've got two personal stories where you guys have saved my
ass, and he goes, it just it sucks. It wasn't just you,
if you know, CBS kind of threw us out of the bus a
little bit. Yeah, it was literally, like you said, cascading events
and it's happened in the past, where like that was kind of one of
the benefits for a long time of us being a four person jet. Like
one guy could cry uncle and go, well, dude, something's not sounding
right here right, and you'd reassess, go fuck dude, like I miscarried
the one yeah, the wrong great identify or whatever. That was just unfortunately
one of those stories where like the moon's all aligned in the wrong spot.
Yeah, it's horrible, you know, I feel terrible about it. It
was the nature of the war. But it's unfortunate because that sort of fog
war like it happens on the ground between blue on blue also, so it's
it's not you know, it's not as if it's something that is solely limited
to be ones with sniper pods. And that was the funniest thing about it,
was like, dude, it's the exact same sniper pod on every other
calf platform, right, So like the fact that they were trying to tie
it to us, it's like the micron like the physics of the pod don't
change on a fighter. It's still the same micron range in IR Like that
was kind of where a lot of us cried bs. But it kind of
gave us a black guy for a little bit unfortunately, and you know,
for a lot of us. Again it's my personal opinion. I think it
felt like the Air Force is doing everything their power to justify getting rid of
the bone because we're not nuke anymore. You know, it really had no
problem I think running us into the ground simply to make you know, slides
of green for cast coverage, right, But uh yeah, and it's it's
wild because you know, you're talking about the Air Force trying to get rid
of the B one. Meanwhile, we know that, you know, they've
tried since Vietnam to get rid of the A ten. They've tried since Vietnam
to get rid of the AC one thirty like and and these these platforms come
out and proved to be incredibly viable and important platforms in these wars. And
yet even after these wars, the Air Force is still determined to get rid
of us, like they have the next great, greatest and best thing.
I think, luckily, at least the rumor that I've heard is again this
is just open source. But you know, I think the B one's gonna
probably get a little of a stay of execution. If you guys saw I'll
get a shot out. But my old squadron, uh, you know,
unfortunately we lost the uh we lost our three with the drone and a taff
garrison. Well the bone is what responded again. And one of my old
students texted me to give me grief, like, hey, I broke your
record like you you the libyas the Libya crew had the record for combat sorty
from Konis yea. We just we just killed it like eat, thank you
all, young wise when I've touched you well, but yeah, we continue
to prove that. Like right when you think like the old way of doing
war is done, it's like the old golf other thing. Just when I
thought I was out, they pulled me back in. Yeah, we just
cannot extricate ourselves from at effing theater. It seems like. Yeah, and
I also think too, like just from a sheer number standpoint, you know,
you know, God forbid something kicks off the Pacific, like it just
becomes a number. It literally becomes just basic math. I e. R.
I've got x number of combat B fifty two's, they've got X number
of weapons station. I've got x number of bones, x number of B
twos, And then you literally just start doing the math of available weapon station
per bomber, how many platforms with the fuel range that can actually reach out
exactly? You know, I want to get back to sort of your story,
man, but since you brought it up, you know, can you
tell us can we talk about the other sort of bomber platforms and what they're
like, what advantages they have and why the B one you know, was
thought to be outdated but then yeah, to be so obviously the BFT two,
which again, you know, there's sort of like a you know,
bomber rivalry syndrome if you will, And I know I just missaid that word,
but you know, the thing, the thing is a marvel of of
aircraft engineering. That thing possibly will fly for one hundred years. I'd say
the edge it has over us right now is it can fly higher. It's
I don't know this is an advantage per se, because I want no part
of the nuke mission ever, but it is. It is nuclear capable.
It has the ability to carry heavier weapons than we do. As of right
now. The heaviest weapon that B one can carry is in the two thousand
pound class. Bf T twos can carry five thousand pound class weapons. You
know, the problem right now is in a near peer fight, they'll probably
never get close enough to actually drop a five thousand pound weapon. But it
has that ability. So the BF two is is definitely very highly versatile and
capable. It's just really really old, and it's also speed limited. Like
our standard employment speed generally is pointy five mock, which roughly translates into about
five ten true. I want to say the BFT two's are pointy eighty three
and I mean the pointy three is like they're no shit limit. Like I've
employed the jet in combat up to point nine because our door we could go
faster. The only each from the B one is past point nine. Mock
the Betaors. It's a speeders regal the Betors. But I mean, you
know, we have the ability to drop weapons to get the f out of
dodge quick buffs kind of short of not so much. They have some speed
limitations, but they can fly higher, so they definitely can release all their
weapons instantaneously. There's some limitations with us doing that. So that's kind of
like i'd say modern day stuff with the B fifty two in a nutshell,
the B two think of it right now until the B twenty one comes online.
The B two is literally like our nine to one to one, like
you know, there's under twenty now. Unfortunately it's stealth. Obviously it's still
it's stealth, but like we're talking late eighties nineties technology, right, it's
starting to become less and less sealth. And fortunately it's not modular in the
sense of I can update LRUs and update parts of the aircraft quickly because it's
again where things designed in the eighties and the nineties. But again, you
know that that thing was built to be able to be launched from the States,
hit a target anywhere in the world and come back safely. So and
it's also nuclear capable. Yeah, I've had a few friends of mine that
have transitioned from the B one to the B two, So that that's I
think sort of like the probably like the the Macro thirty thousand foot view on
the big difference between us, you know, and I'd say, if you're
gonna compare us to them, depending on the weapon type, if it's a
five hundred pounds smart weapon, the B two has got us killed. We
can only drop about fifteen of those. But from some weird bay limitations,
some raclimentations, we can somehow drop twenty four two thousand pounders, which makes
no sense. You can drop more heavier than less, it makes no sense.
And obviously we at least in my personal opinion, we can integrate with
a package and fighters a lot more easily because they're a little bit more dynamic.
We're a little bit more maneuverable. And again the speed piece is not
there as well. Yeah, we don't have to speed the mattention to be
the two does so, Yeah, and yeah, I mean right now you've
got to keep a certain number of B twos on the line that they're ready
for anything U B for the q'es. Right now, we're going through a
major upgrade, of major overhaul, So i'd say b ones right now are
kind of back to being like that, like you know that that nine one
to one response force. We got to respond to something within you know,
pick a time frame, Kayak will we just saw with Syrian Iraq like about
a month ago. Yeah, what do you think the or I mean a
lot of it's probably public, I imagine, I mean, but what do
you what do you think the future is of bombers in the US Air Force?
What what is the you know, like right now we're transitioning to the
F thirty five for fighters, and there's going to be another like joint fighter
that comes at What do you see the future looking like for bombers? I
mean, I think right now it's pretty open source. But I mean,
and now this keeps changing, but probably up until a few months ago,
the game plan was, you know, we were going to start sunsetting b
ones to then start making room for B twenty ones and then the B two
is next to go. So in a crazy turn of events, literally our
bomber force on paper, by the year twenty thirty five to twenty forty is
gonna literally be B twenty ones and B fifty two's like our oldest bomber and
our newest bomber. Yeah, and the two little middle children, if you
will. The B two and the B one are pretty much getting sunseted now
I think. Now in an amazing accomplishment, the B twenty one actually flew
on timel on scheduled it looks a lot. The B twenty one looks very,
very similar to the B two, but it's on YouTube. Like the
B twenty one actually flew. It won't be mission capable I think until the
end of the decade or so. Don't want to put an exact date on
it. But but yeah, as of right now, per the Air Force,
I mean, your future bomber force is literally the B fifty two and
the B twenty one. But like I said, I think, you know,
the B one might be around for the ten years now, okay,
based on recent events, but right now there's no scheduled like intermediate step between
the two. Now that's it. You know, like that we went all
into the B twenty one. I think the difference with the B twenty one
versus everything else and even the F thirty five is it's designed to be modular,
Like it's designed to sort of be a lot more software and digital capabilities,
so as threats update, as things update, like the thought processes,
I can pull something out, swap it back in. You know, no,
no, no worries. Yeah, that's really a challenge for some of
the jets we have now just because based on their you know, when they
were built in some of the parts and stuff. So but as of right
now, that that that is, that is your future bomber Force. Yeah.
So yeah, back to your personal experience, absout worries, Yeah,
out of curious say, as a Wizzo and you know you said it on
the B one, you've got to you know, it's one thing when you're
the only game in town, but when you're on a really hot op and
there are multiple stacks of there, yeah, how how are you managing that?
I mean so funny story is generally in a lot of those instances,
the jet that's got the most weapons and essentially is prosecuting the targets is the
mission commander. Okay, so the b want actually in a lot of ops
on multiple strike ops is actually the mission commander. So it's really his job
to actually run the show, which is kind of funny because and a lot
of times, based on our lack of link connectivity or you know, sort
of where we are in the stack, you could argue we had the least
essay sometimes and everything else, but it's still you know, don't care,
fix it per doctrine, like that's your job, right. Really, at
that point it ends up you know the jokes sometimes when you have things like
weapons school events and red flag events, it's really called deconfliction flag because you
know, like prosecuting the targets and surviving is almost second to just safely managing
your stack of it, don't d yeah, Like yeah, don't drop through
something someone's altitude, Yeah, don't you know, don't get out of your
block, like you know that's that. Yeah, Really, it becomes like
honestly, at that point, it's literally the mission is either going to be
accessed or not before even stept to the jet. Like if you mission planned
good, yeah, and you mission plans safe, and you know, the
challenge sometimes at bones was you know, worth the deed and we're having a
emission plan, say with you know F twenty two's and strike Gules at al
Dafra, you know F sixteen's up north. Uh. You know, it
wasn't really a huge istrom Afghanistan. That thing you just described really became an
issue I would say during ISIS because there were multiple times where you know,
ISIS went back to feeling like, Okay, now we're actually training like it's
now I wouldn't say near peer, but we're doing things that we have never
done in the last ten fifteen years. Yeah, you know, so I
guess i'll kind of I'll kind of skip through some of the next eight deployed.
You know, first Targeting Pod one great, uh did not deploy weirdly
enough, because that was our full year off in between appointments and nine.
And then when we were I got in twenty ten, that was the birth
of the whole quote unquote TACITLE directive And that was when McCrystal was COMMISAFF and
basically Commandable Force Afghanistan. And that was, uh, you know, we
went from like if guys were under fire, taking taken taken rounds. It's
like Okay, dude, just tell me where and you're getting around. Yeah,
you know, the tactical directive was literally, you you will not go
kinetic unless you know we're gonna lose. Dudes. You can guarantee that there
are no civilians anywhere in the vicinity and or you cannot disengage. Yeah.
So it was the first time ever in my life where you're watching indirect you're
seeing the dude shoot. Yeah. But because they were near a structure and
we could not verify whether out that structure was completely clear civilians, which we
know in a lot of cases they were filled with civilians on purpose. Yeah,
like chained up. Yeah, I mean it was. It was eerie,
like there was like our dropping, our weapons released like grind into a
halt. That's deployment. I did drop once in twenty ten before I actually
I got lucky. I got seleck to go to like you know, the
Air Force version of Top Gun. It's cooled Air Force Weapons school, and
I found out half with through my twenty tenth diplointment, I got selected to
go. But it was really cool was we would you know, Baltimore God
became really really hot, like oh nine, twenty ten time frame I remember
there was a few ticks where we'd go up there. I'll never forget this
Prankster was the eighty second Airborne j Tack. We check him with him,
you know, we try to get clearance to drop, and it's like,
yeah, Bone, ground commander, we're not meeting in tent then, And
this is all in the same killbox, the kid you not. So it's
like a you know, our killbox. You guys would sort of usually operate
by, you know, district centers, villages, provinces. Aircrew for a
lot of time just thought killboxes. Yeah, So Baltimore gob was way up
in the northwest. I think it was the Turkmenistan border, and there was
one sort where like you know, Prankster, the Jay you know, Prankster
was essentially like the large division force on the ground is saying no dice,
dude, Like ground force commander is not approving. We had a Jaguar call
signed get on who's combat controller is attached to Nodier. He's like, yeah,
Bone, stand by, we're working it. But I think at this
point, now going kinetic was such a freakin like. I think at that
point it went all we have to like the O six sodaf dude for that
for that region, right, I'll never forget it. Like as this as
Jaguar is off on vozipper, you know, murk chat trying to find somebody.
Literally the Marsk dude hops on like bone yeah we're good, saying we'll
fucking kill it. So Halo was the Marsak call sign, and uh yeah,
that was that was crazy. It was like, you know, my
dad says no, My dad says no, my dad's cool as shit.
My dad says yes, so go go, go ahead, and uh I
ended up only being a warning shop, but at least it stopped the indirect.
So that was one. Actually I lot, I dropped twice and then
my last sortie before I went home again, it was Halo, who was
a Marsk team. Uh So they were taking an indirect and we basically we
had pretty shitty cloud cover, but uh we recommended we dropped three by g
W thirty one's in a triangle pattern we called the Triangle of Death but basically
we would basically look like a triangle. But they were coming down and so
unfortunately one of them ended up dutting. But you know, to four thousand
pounds of Organs going off essentially did the trick. And what was really cool
was, uh, you know, so I leave, I go through Air
Force Weapons School, I come home, and uh, it's March of twenty
eleven now, and we were setting up for uh because our biggest problem of
times was a lot of these you know some mostly was the soft guys,
and you know, working with Jaysck was almost foreign to us because we just
never got called to those things. But we really started trying to lean into
getting guys up to South Dakota to like work hand in hand with us,
to like know how we operate weird way of doing things. And so we
spent like a month organizing an East Coast MST teeny comf to Ellsworth. So
it's the week before they're supposed to come up, and then Libya kicks off,
and so we're thinking, like, all right, the beat. We
had no idea we were going to play in Libya. And so at the
time, uh, he's he was the wing he was the wing commander about
a year ago. I think he's probably he'll probably be a general some day.
But this guy scab. They decided here we're gonna play a joke on
Sloth who's me. So it's Patty's Day. I'm obviously Irish, and I'm
inviting in the you know, in the holiday of my people. And uh
so I'm at a party and uh, you know, I guess the game
plan while everyone's in on it. But they're like, hey, do you
when Sloth is really like effing like like housed, I want you to text
me. So I'm like, you know, ship faced, I'm playing you
know, the Pogue and I'm trying to like run the DJ set. Nobody
wants to listen to Irish music, but like I'm I'm fortunate too, and
actually, you know, like, hey, dude, Sloth, you got
a call. Dude. I'm like, oh, yeah, what's up?
You know, Okay, who's this? And it's you know, at the
time, he was our wing weapons off, so you know, it was
like, hey dude, it's go time. Bro, Like we're going to
Libya. I'm like fuck, and I'm like, you know, and the
whole crowd is like, you know, oh really, Oh We're going to
Yeah, that's it, that's all right. I decided to turn my buddys
bedroom in like a mobile skiff, like all right, you're allowed in,
You're not a letter I give. We're on Olivia. I need somebody driving
the bay and they'll let me ramble on for like fifteen minutes, and then
you know, finally when goes aha, asshole, you're not going to Libya.
That's a Saturday. Okay, Well, you know, joke's on me.
I'll have the laugh and then no ship that next Friday. The jokes
on him because sure enough we get called to the skiff and we're going to
Libya, where you like, stop fucking with me, dude, like,
get the fuck out of it. Well we kind of thought that, but
then when they're like, no, d you gotta go up to the skiff
up at Wing Wing headquarters, like, oh, I guess this is happening.
Yeah, so we walk in it like yeah, dude, uh the
requesting we've got a weapons bunker. Air Force is saying no more, be
two sort He's like we got to go. So you know, that was
a pretty wild I'll send you guys the pictures of it. But you know,
and I've done interviews on this thing, and you know, literally our
maintenance dudes in like sub freezing weather, gend up five green jets and like
got four airborne and we basically took off in like zero zero weather out of
South Dakota. Yeah, and so the way that works is basically what happens
is you take off every green jet available takes off and then the game plan
is the two greenish jets. By the time you get off the coast of
New Finland, those guys take gas from a tankers and those guys the ones
who crossed the park and you're going to execute the mission. So we got
four jets to the coast. This could be an entire separate podcast this this
sefent thing, but like so we you know, my jet and a Buddies
jet. We luckily all our weapons were green. Both sniperpods worked good to
go, so we take on all our gas and at that point, now
it's about other four or five hours over to off the coast to England and
then at Milden Hall they've got Casey Win thirty fives. Those guys come out
and meet us. So now we're coming down, we're going through Gibraltar.
We're hanging out in the med and this is like when Odyssey Dawn's in full
bloom, Like there's a carrier strike group there. Guys are launching from Aviano,
Like, it's pretty busy, you know, in every NATO country is
playing. So we find out let me check in. Hey dude, there's
a change to your targets. You're going to hit new targets in that same
area. Oh but by the way, the Brits have already lunched weapons at
them, so they're kind of aware. Now I'm like, oh, this
is really tactically fucking brilliant. Yeah, all right, we'll say we're ready
for your targets and then we figure out we have the wrong crypto. Oh,
I'm telling you guys offline. We got eighteen dimpies right off to us
in the red and I was I said, to this day, I said,
like, had anyone been listening in, anyone somewhat competent, Like,
we probably won't be here. Yeah. So anyway, we get our new
dimpies, we go feet dry, and we actually have two growlurs to E
eighteen's which were so you know the as a backstory, you know, the
Marines and the Navy both through Prowlers. The Navy retired prowers and now fly
basically electronic warfare version of the Super Hornet. Yeah, badass aircraft. It's
basically a hornet that jams. It's awesome and it's the first time they've ever
done embedded combat with a bomber platform. And so we're you know, it's
basically a four ship going line abreast into the southernmost part of Libya. And
what was crazy was we thought we had planned everything correctly, and right as
we're about to basically go execute, you know, these dudes launched their harms
and it's like, hey, bone, sorry dude, we're bingo. Later
we're like what, So we end up going down into Sebha. We're hit
and AMMO dump and uh, I mean we looked outside and Triple A's coming
up. But luckily it was pretty low millimeters so it's only topping out it
like fifteen sixteen thousand. We were above that, but they did launch just
based on noise and activity. They did launch a three blistically at us because
one of the pilots saw it. So we do all that, you know,
pretty successful. We reach both just go off Winchester and no big deal.
We land heroes, welcome with the deed. It's awesome and I'm thinking
like, oh, this is cool, man, Like it's like late March
chill here we'll get my three beers a day, rolling to April, get
other both of the tax free and like yeah, no, no dude,
you're you're going back tomorrow. You know, basically no, you're going back
to Libya again. Okay're basically gonna do a drive by. We think we
know where get off his sun is. So it was that sorty in the
way back was a little hairy because uh did not go as planned. We
thought a five was launching at us. We had weapons faults like that that
we had to actually earn our paycheck that sorty. But yeah, that one
was pretty crazy as well. So we get back uh and I basically left
the guy who pointed up with a joke on me, like know, hey,
you know he dude like jokes on you. I actually did go to
Libya. Yeah, so then we end up going to uh a normal Afghani
sort of that summer. That one again was fairly I'd say the one two
things out of the ordinary, and that's on that deployment happened to me.
Uh one was, uh, you know, they had told us for years
like hey dude, be ready man, like you know, Somalia can happen
anytime, and like when you're a young guy, You're like, oh,
yeah, dude, you're you're you're amped up, you're studying the airspace.
By the third or fourth time, you're like, dude, I'm done getting
cock teas about Somalia. I'm not going quit teasing me or Yemen or whatever.
Right. Yeah, So I'd done a pretty late night and I'm in
bed and we're getting a pounding on the door and it's like, no,
dude, we have to go. It's we actually think this is happening now.
So we walk into the mission room and uh, if you guys remember
you know once Bin Laden got killed, uh Anwar Alwaukie, who was the
Yemeny was American born, but he was the Yemeny cleric. He's the guy
that actually uh radicalized the underwear bomber of the Chris bomber Row nine. Well,
they had a beat on them, and what was crazy was they had
actually parked the Marine LCS off the coast of Yemen simply for the purposes of
killing this dude. And weird you know, whatever agency was tracking them,
just the moons aligned the day that they had a beat on him. This
Marine LCS squadron was down for maintenance. So we got launch out of the
deed and it was a huge cock t's because they could never get a beat
on them. But like the fact that I got woke up out of bed
to it at that point to go target the potus is number one objected with
the f and cool. You know, they have us sextra go pills that
day because we might be eirborn for thirty hours, so that it was kind
of fun. But so that was that happened on that deployment and then unfortunately
also this was really eerie. You know, we're on a mission north of
Bath, pretty quiet, nothing's happening, but it's August and I don't want
to get the date wrong because it's a pretty bad date. But uh so,
usually what happens is, you know, you'll check out with the j
tach. Hey, dude, sorry it was tonight, but no workman,
Thanks for the help. Appreciate yep bone three four you guys stay safe,
switching freaks cool. So you check in with essentially like the you know,
the combat version of the FAA or ATC. Really, so it's a you
know, it's either at the time it was either an Air Force or a
marine ground control unit. But so we're clear two three five back south and
you know, at that point, now like the sorties over, even though
you're still in country, practically you're done. So you start kind of doing
admin work. We're typing up our Missrup on the laptop. You know,
guys are stretching, figuring out which movie we're gonna play in the way home.
Guys are breaking out like you know, food whatever, and next you
know, we start getting screamed out over guard like you know, Bone three
four, avert, avert avert, you know, like like so we know,
we get the fuck out of Dodge and like, what's what's happening?
And you know, we find out like you guys just flew through a hot
rose. We're streaking operating zone and we're like, yeah, dude, Bone
three four, we'll check the tapes on landing, but like we got cleared
here, dude, Like, yeah, know, my bad, no harm,
no foul. So when we land unfortunately find out that it's Extortion one
seven that we just blew. Yeah, And I remember at the time the
the guy it was a team based in the East, so I won't say
which base was at, but when I landed that the team one of the
team leaders called me screaming at me, like how basically like the gist of
it I got was that they either had a beat on the RPG team or
they thought they had a beat on either way, like in his mind us
blowing through his ras and really fucked something up. And so I'm sitting there,
you know, he's a FOURM and O three and I'm like, sorry,
I'm so sorry. I don't know what's happened, but like we'll look
at our tapes. I swear to God, like we were cleared, and
I you know, not to knock the JASOT guys, but those guys were
those guys were not tories for doing pop up roses and not telling the rest
of the big fight. If you and I get why. You know,
they were generally taking down HBI's objective names. So but they're they're kind of
I bequeath you respected restricted airspace, but not telling any of that. That
was. Yeah, some units were different than others. Yeah, this one
in particular, I guess I'd never had an issue with before, but it
just pretty So it's kind of one of those historical things. I did not
want to be like Airborne four, but I was sure so that deployment wrapped
up. You know, at that point, I was actually selected to go
back and teach it weapon school. Sequestration is remember happened in twenty thirteen,
they shut down weapons School. I went into the ground job up in Kabul,
up at the airport, which was kind of eerie. You know,
we saw the pull out. I'm seeing videos of like the Thai restaurant on
Twitter and the airport like, oh shit, you know we ate there.
Yeah, shit, we took a rocket attack there. So I'm kind of
fast forwarding. And uh so this point, now, like I'm in New
Yorker, I'm living in West Texas, and I'm kind of like starting to
like, okay, you know what, the the cool factor of flying the
B one is not really compensating for me not being happy socially, right,
And so I was kind of ready to like, you know, jump ship,
go to the guard. You know there's there's a rescue unit in Long
Island, the one oh six, Yeah, the PJ unit in the eighth
one thirty unit. I was pretty con so I was gonna jump ship to
that unit. And they basically said, dude, just give a one more
shot. We're to try and get you back to the East coast. Just
just stick with us too. We're working for you. And so luckily we
did. Okay, I did. And then I ended up volunteering off cycle
for deployment right after the ground one. And you know, this was like
early twenty fourteen, and so the news wasn't really picking up a lot of
the activity of the Middle East. Jet like Afghanistan was cured, right,
that's on my downslope. I rack was Iraq, And so I'm thinking,
like, you know, I'll get out to the DEED. I'll fly once
a week. I'll be a wing weapons officer. I'll study from my geam
out of my gre and if I don't have an assignment waiting for me when
I come home, I'll come here. I'll try to get into a grad
school here, I'll work part time, I'll do the guard thing whatever.
I'll never forget. It's the summer, and my buddy is like, uh,
yeah, dude, you might be a little busier than planned. Things
are starting to ramp up here, and I said okay, And then that's
when finally a new started picking it up, you know. Uh, unfortunately,
you know, and the journalist James fully got aheaded uh Sinjar Mattin happened
uh with the aziddies, and so you know, I got out there two
weeks after OYR and hew it resolved officially kicked off and so you know,
kind of back that whole thing, like things happened for a reason. I'm
getting ready to launch on my first SORTI, and I go and check my
email and it's like, hey, congrats, you've been seking for an airstaff's
side of the Pentagon. And I'm like, oh dude, like, guys
are high five of me, Like this is great. So then now it's
my first isis SORTI. So the way this one works is uh forty again
forty five minutes ont to Basra, about another maybe hour to get like northwest
of missoul And at this time we had a tanker track literally right outside the
Iraqi border. You do a pre bowl tank and then you pretty much press
in. And I'd say for the first three months all we were doing was
Kabani because Gabani, if your remember, was Syria, yep, and the
and this is why you have the Curds to this day are the bravest,
most amazing people we've ever supported. Why we keep finem Over is beyond me.
But uh so, Cabani was at one area where it's like, you
know, everyone is fleeing Syria, everyone's fleeing Isis is weak. And the
Kurds were like, come at me, bro, like we're not leaving,
Like you know, they got the women and kids out, but like the
Caabat, you know, the Curds that that were a fighting age and even
their women they stayed and it was essentially like trench warfare, like they were
fighting block to block to block. So my first sorty there I remember actually,
now that you mentioned this, I've actually seen footage shot by some of
the fighters in Cobani, the Kurds and some of the foreigners somefing there with
them, not not military like people who volunteered crazy enough to go and do
that. Yeah, but I mean it is fucking insane to see like airstrikes
like five hundred feet in front of them, buildings just being demolished. I'll
do. I'll give you a comparison story real quick after this one. But
like so, and as I described before, right, I'm used to like
Afghan casts bone three four contact on two by movers, you know in this
vicinity kby wing through four monitor and you'd track a guy for a while,
seev the nefarious right that could. That could sometimes turn into an hour,
sometimes two. Happy to do it. I will never forget. We rip
out a two ship of vipers, we do a swap, they do a
target handoff into like this area, and it's like, hey, we saw
activity in this block, so we're you know, we're searching. And then
I was the new guy, so I sat the left seat, not the
bomb seat, but I'm running the radio. And you know this, Syria
was actually back to the defensive guy. There is no longer there just to
support the O, Like, dude, we're actually you know, Syrian Air
Force is still active. The Turks are friends. Every now and then the
fuck with us would light us up just just just because they could, because
you know, we're helping the people they hate. So and they still had
an active three. Every now and then the five, the SA five would
go on. So like you actually to be a dso because Syria could pop
off at any moment. But and apparently it was even completely different. The
Russian showed up even worse. But so it's funny like I'm being the d
and I and I'm taking the radio for the guy because it was weapons heavy.
I'll never forget it, you know, talking to the JTAC and it's
like, you know, hey, Bone three four contact two by packs and
fcinity thirty seven year dot alpha and I And before I even got the ending
grid out Bone three four, they're there, cool stand by nine line and
I'm just like what what Like, We're not gonna fow these guys for four
hours? And everyone else in the jets, dude, shut up, it's
go time. Like it was literally like at that point, Phase Line Broadway
I think was the name of the road. If you got a map aa
Bannie, there was like this northeast of southwith running like major Highway slash major
road, and it was called Phase Line Broadway. And for a while,
if you were southeast of Phase Line Broadway, you were bad, right because
you were most likely coming off the main road leading from Raka because that was
like there were Saint Petersburg for isis like, oh, you're a new guy,
welcome to the you know, welcome to our new heavenly state. Get
the fuck up to Gabani and you know, do your job, yea and
please come die, Yeah, thank you and yeah that was that shift of
no, dude, this is like no questions asked, like there was no
tactical directive. There's no coin here, like if they are on this grid,
right, they e fing die. And for context, you asked before
right about the danger close Now. Granted, a lot of this is also
because every building in Cabani just seemed to be created with reinforced concrete. Because
sure enough I found out on another deployment, a future deppointment, there was
literally a cement factory in the town south of Cabani, Lafront Cement LCF.
So there was the two landing zones right. There was KLZ, which was
Cabani land Zone after we you know, cleared it, and then l CF.
LCF became one of our big bases in there. Yeah, exactly,
I was at. I never made to LCF. I made the KELZ once,
but uh so. Yeah. But the craziest nine line I ever got
was, uh it was like watching a street fight. It was two small
buildings with thatched root not that route but like you know, short roofs,
and we were watching the YPG, the People's Protection Unit, the CURD organization.
You're watching the YPG, and isis trade shots and the nine line comes
in and it's literally you know, uh, you know line one through three
and a line four elevation was pretty low in that area. You know,
line six the gridline started with thirty seven zero to the alpha. No shit,
line eight west four zero meters and they wanted to thirty eight wow,
And I'm like, dude, And we found that afterwards, like dude,
don't ask questions. Yeah, the minute you call inbound, we we somehow
get word to them and they seek shelter and like basically like if you don't
drop, they're going to die. Yeah, So I mean that went on.
I mean, Cabani was insane, and Cabani was a challenge because you
know we're going up there. Originally, we're going up there with a cast
load out, so like you know, we're all doing like air burst on
the nose cones, which are great, but like if you're doing buildings with
any sort of like structural integrity, those things are eating our bombs alive because
they're moving the hard cone of them. So we finally figured out that like
you change that on the bird, do you got dial I can change from
impact air burst, but like the physical cone that's on the ground. So
the problem is, like, even if I'm dropping something impact, if it's
got a quote unquote flangible nose cone, because you've seen those things, Yeah,
they look like a like it's a black little sensor. If you're dropping
those things on there, like it's essentially were moving, like I hate to
say it, like part of the structural insecrity the weapon on the nose of
it, so that there were times where like their buildings were like eating our
weapons alive. And you know, it's interesting that, you know, I've
talked to quite a few military warriors in the past about like rules of engagement,
and they've explained that in American the American military, there's basically no such
thing as a free fire zone. Yeah, but there always has to be
some sort of intel that directs you that there's suspected enemy activity here. Good
intel or bad, that's debatable, but it sounds like this is a case
where actually this this I don't want to use the term free fire, but
I mean, this was the cleared bad guy land. It was. It
was funny, it was it was probably the closest thing to type three casts
that I've ever like World War II to basically leveling this place. Yeah,
like you know, if I go back and read and hopefully some of my
CCT budies aren't listening. But you know, Type one cast is you can
see both the friendly and the enemy. Type two is you got to see
one or the other. Type three was literally like that whole area is bad
and it's it's Type three is the one engagement where they don't clear you hot,
they go call and engagement complete. Yeah, Like go engage and you
tell me when you're done moppingh up. Right. Yeah, so you're winchestering
every road pretty close. Yeah, and I still had to get eyes on
because there were still Curds running around. But I mean, what I think
was happening was so here's the craziest part about it, too, is I'm
getting cleared hot over Sackcom by a guy on the East coast. I'll just
say that. So we think we pieced together what was happening. It was
either uniform or non uniform guys on our side running around the Kurds passing intel
to guys across the border that was getting back to again a certain area on
the East coast, probably via sat phone, and those guys were literally clearing
us hot from some desks somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there were
like fire direction centers in Iraq. Yeah, but still a very gnarly convoluted
process. And then it got to the point where like we were giving like
iPads to the Kurts, right, oh yeah, like yeah, you know,
basically we started doing a matching buildings to numbers. So the entire and
we did is a lot Afghanistan too, but we were creating grid systems based
on the buildings. Yeah, like bad guys are in building fifty five in
this grid. Yeah. And then the worst was you know there's times where
like the cloud cover was just I couldn't see shit. Yeah, and I'm
basically having a release on magers grids or he doesn't e the term piss off.
The Precision Strike Suite for Special Operations Forces, it was basically mansarrated grit.
It was mensarted graphics that I could actually derive CAT one cord it's for
to drop. Oh like it sounds like what we would have called GRG's back
in the old days. It was. It was basically a GRG. There's
computer program you could you could actually drive a Cat one cor off using that.
But yeah, it was it was insane because I think the comment that
I made one time was those days in Cabani, it was it was inner.
We were we were basically doing air and addiction, but we were calling
it casts either for simplicity, because all the aircrew in that time were just
trained to do casts. So I was getting like, you know, doctrinally
speaking, getting cleared hot from a guy four thousand miles away for a guy
that I can't see, Like that's not cass right, uh. And a
lot of cases too, like on objectives. Because the cool thing about this
too was as we're supporting the Kurds, you know, every now and then,
like you get a guy jumping on your radio from that same organization like,
hey dude, you're being redirected. We have objectives so and so in
sight. So that same organization was both doing the support for the Kurds,
but they were also doing their HBI targeting like and that was it was that
unit that owned that portion of the world, right. Yeah, So like
those guys were like and they're all coming from the same op center. I
mean, they had some forward guys obviously in certain areas, right, but
it was a few stories were like I mean, Beck just to like take
us back in time. This is like the twenty forte. This is literally
this is this is literally like months two and three of issis. Yeah,
this is so there's there's really no American uniform service members in serious There's no
one wearing I'll just say this, there's no one wearing flags on the uniforms,
right for sure. Yeah. I mean if we had anyone over there
was very very minimal. Yeah, I mean that. That's I said that.
The we'd call the j tax too when we land on a Vosa phone
and they were back in the States and you know, and you know how
those guys are, like if you call one of those fires as you know,
fires, this is Chris. Actually, no fires, is Joe.
I think the French were over there before us. They probably, Oh,
I remember for a while we got better intel, especially in Iraq because you
probably do remember this. Even our Tier one units were restricted from that.
They could not get within one click of an act of his own. So
literally the Canadians, the French, some other countries I think maybe the Brits.
I think so they were the ones so we were seeing, well the
crazy things they saw was I think he's now the I know he's the one
start at the time. But Gorilla, I remember the name. I think
he's a four star now journal Gorilla. He was the one star in the
North and he wanted to be one for a strike. And it was some
entrenched thing near Missoul And I'll never forget. We're in the chaok and we
see pictures and it looked like polaroids but it was literally the cansoft dudes low
crawling it digital camera shit. And there's one point where like you see like
the dirt flying over the guy's shoulder in the photo and it's an icis dude
digging a trench? Like those guys got that close shit? Talk about close
RECKI yeah, so like and I think I think legally we were restricted,
like our guys couldn't go do that. That sounds right about that time frame.
Yeah, Like the like I said, the the the fall of fourteen
was like, I mean, Kabani was just like a free for all.
Like it was kind of one of those things where like if you supported Kamani
and came home and only released six weapons, you were like kicking yourself with
just saw as me what. Like it was that insane, right, Cobani
was out of control and then wee the coolest thing. I wish I would
have caught this on iPod. You know. This was actually because if you
guys remember, like I think, like I Kirby was still active duty.
Uh Kerry was the Sect Secretary of State. We had said right at the
beginning, like, hey, there's we really can't help these people. Like
they're like we we can't get involved. It sucks, but like we can't
keep coming involved this area. And I think not to presume to know the
inner workings of the government, but like I want to feel like between the
Cinjar Mountain thing and James fully getting beheaded, that seemed to sort of turn
public opinion. That's when we got involved. And so like Cabani went from
being like this lost cause to like through like again probably thousands of weapons over
the course afforded you know, three or four months. Like those guys,
the Kurds beat those dudes back, blocked by block by block. And one
of the coolest things I ever saw was the high ground southeast of Cabani was
this area called Mischion or Hill, and the strike Egal guys got it on
camera, which I would have, but there's this cool video of it's a
sniperpod footage where the strike he was doing like a loop around the you know,
the village, just for like Reki, and you literally see the YPG
storm up the hill, toss the ice it's almost like eu GM, but
they throw the iceis flag off and they plant like the yellow YPT flags.
Yeah, I wish I would have flown. It was really jealous. I
wish I would have seen that. Yeah, but that was that seven months.
I would say, like doing that mission was probably like the coolest seven
months of my life. Yeah, because that happened. You were just pounding
the shit out of some assle. Yeah, it was. It was you
know, Afghanistan. You'd still go over there just to make them, let
them know you're still there. But this is fourteen. I don't think anyone
thought Afghanistan would devolve into what it evolving into. Like uh and then that
was the focus. But then also the Jasak guys really started to you know,
that was the big rumor for a while was hey, save all your
low collateral weapons because like Missolo's gonna be hot and heavy. The Missolo offensive
eventually took what happened like six months after it was planned, But like you
know, we'd do some reki work in Missoul, and it was like,
you know, I dropped twice in Missoul. But like you talk to like
some of the soft birds, like the U twenty eight's and some of the
other things, like and those guys were dropping like the really really really low
collateral precision weapons. I mean, those guys were doing like assassination missions,
you meaning like health fires. Not even I'm talking like things called like you
can google them, but like I'll just say google the word griffin. I
mean, these are essentially like little pneumatic things pop out of a tube and
it's essentially like a fifteen or twenty pound warhead. The point where like you
could be HBI number one, I'm Matrid number two. We're having a conversation.
Next thing, you know, like I black out and I look up
and you're dead because just like Shotgun Show on Royds just went up over your
head. Like, yeah, it was sexy to watch. It was a
few times I wish I had low collateral weapons, but I was happy with
my five hundred pounders. So but yeah, I mean that was like I
said that deployment alone could probably go into a separate, complete hour long story
about some of the stuff we saw there, but like, yeah, it
was. It was amazing because we were generally the only platform that could get
there, hang out for three or four hours at a time and just effing
work. The one or two close calls I had was this is pretty funny.
So we're we're doing work and if you look at a map Assyria daris
Are, which now was the side of that that does or south? Yeah,
so it was right. It was near the Iraq border. It was
like maybe a killbox two wealthy Iraq border, so like sixty miles if that.
But uh, that was one of the last places aside still at a
presence there and he still had an Air Force bace there. So there was
one night where we're working, We're going connetic a lot and we're getting ready
to get ripped out by a two ship of vipers. And this would happen
every now and then we're like they show up on station or like bone we
actually blew out of gas getting through somewhere to get up here, dude,
like would you mind hang would you mind covering the first part of our role.
We're going to go tank Like yeah, of course, we'll stay and
drop more weapons of course. So this one night, you know, they
go off, think a gas and then next thing you know, we start
hearing a bogie call. And so if you know geographic on the map,
like Cabani, we would always fly solo. The roots skis weren't there yet.
They weren't there yet. No, so this is still like late fourteen,
early fifteen, but occasionally you'd randomly get like a mid twenty three,
a mid twenty nine Alissade, Yeah, a side bird. So what happens
is it's kind of tough to describe geographically, but like you know, Kabani's
in like the north almost like northwest part of the country. I imagine the
viper pilots jagging themselves off over this opportunity. Yeah, it was a few
of them that were like just itching for something. The spin said, like,
unless you're getting threatened, dude, let them fly, like real,
Yeah, oh dude, it was very There was definitely some behind the scenes
like cabinet level conversation probably happening, but like from our standpoint, it's like,
dude, unless you are getting engaged, you leave them alone. Yeah,
Like, I don't care if it's a mid twenty nine, I don't
care if it's like, you know, they're version of one thirty, you
stay outside of this certain range for the spins like you were here by ordered,
right. Yeah. So like so we're flying, we hear a bogie
call and like, yeah, bone, we got a bogie. You might
want to not be in Syria anymore. Like all right, so like your
Darzar is here, We're in Cabani and it's kind of setting up one of
these things where it's like, uh, you know both before says had us
a bogie, you know, bogey bra you guys talk to them and the
clear uh though this is in the green, but we're talking not those guys.
No, And I don't think this syeriones even listening to guard right,
Okay. So it's like but I'll never forget. Like we're going and I'm
like enough of this ship. I'm like, yo, blah blah blah,
say status a viper flight, VIPRA flight. We aggress into Iraq as the
bogue. I'm like and I'm like, so we at this straight. You
egress the two ship of fighters right because there's a bogie, right, and
we're here and you're there and I and I felt bad because I found out
way that I think it was a lieutenant on the bird and you and you
hear like the ship and so we had a decoy on our We had the
ability to watch decoys on our jet, and so I tell the young guys
sitting next to me, go do decoy out. And at this point now
like I might necessarily the angle cut off. I think we would have probably
beaten him into Iraq Himan, Okay, but he started to inching up this
way, and it's like does this guy know where we are? Like now
and at this point now it's like, dude, we might have this.
We might have to basically run at this turkey crying like please don't shoot us,
but like you're a you're a NATO ally here ques. That was like
in my head, like as the mission commander, like I'm we might have
to literally squawk like emergency and go like beg for forgiveness in Turkey. Yeah,
and we're luckily have gone over well it probably like a fucking fart in
church. But like luckily it didn't happen because at some point now, like
the guy eventually just turned away and then we found out later like it was
an L thirty nine, like just doing a night flight like the night Reki,
Like, I don't think you even realized we were there. Oh okay,
so that was a pretty funny like close call. Do you I mean
and you can tell like I don't want to ask you something that is restricted
classified, But do you guys have any kind of countermass? Are you completely
reliant on fighters? No? We so they're on paper, yes, but
there's also just some realities of like, dude, if it's a certain threat
with a certain missile, like where you know, speed, speed of running
away. Now, the one thing we do have on a lot of fighters
is like we have we have gas to blow and uh like you know,
like those guys trying to chase me down, they're gonna go bingo. I've
survived more red flag and weapons school events just by simply running away now,
like generally had an exercise, I would run away and go low to get
lost in the clutter. We could not do that in Syria because you know,
they had surface to air. The surface to air wasn't really the worry.
It was the like we ended up getting visual conference. I actually we
wasn't me personally, but we ended up getting visual confirmation of an actual man
pad of Cabani and it was misidentified initially as an RPG. And then I
go back and look at the table. I'm like, whoa, stop,
dude, that's this is the problem is. You know, we had hogs
doing shows of force. We had done a show a force and we're like,
dude, there's an effing like s A fourteen equivalent thing out there,
Like this is a problem. Right, So we after we found that out,
we stopped doing that. But you know, yeah, like I said,
the cool thing about it was, you know, we were integral.
I think in you know, Kabani went from being sort of like a lost
cause to like, no, we actually beat these guys down and liberated it.
Yeah. And then you know the next few months after that that I
was there was it was like, okay, now it's the war in the
Kabani suburbs. Like every little feeder town that I was using to feed in,
yeah, we would target those at some point too. This is this
was crazy and I didn't so the whole time this is happening. Right just
west of Kabani was the tomb of Suliman. So it's it's the tomb of
one of their ancient Sultans, the Turks. It just happens to now being
what was called you know, Syria, and this is this is insane.
That thing was guarded by a contingent of Turk special forces, and at some
point when we were there, they had caught intel or whatever like Iis was
threading to like basically invade it and desecrate his body and all this. So,
uh, I didn't get to fly this night, but uh, the
Turks ended up launching like a sixty or forty vehicle convoy into Syria to take
the remains of sue him on the great is that The third of the I
forget, I think, go google is that when they went in the Drobiless.
I don't know if that was a specific town, but you can it's
on Wikipedia. Like, and I remember seeing this thing in the pod.
It looks pretty cool. It's like this. It's a bridge that leads into
like this little like miniature peninsula. There's like a gatehouse for like where the
soft dudes live, and then literally the tomb of like this dude from like
centuries ago. Yeah you know, but Iis was claiming to like they were
gonna come in and like invade it and kill all the guards and you know,
so I think we did a diversion every strike south there and uh and
one my buddies' was airborne for it, and that we stayed away, so
I think their bipers came in to provide air cover. Yeah. He just
kind of like, you guys, do what you want. Yeah, we'll
be over here actually, like you know, helping the courage. You guys
can you know, uh take like your George Washington and Brigham homes there.
Yeah, just the fact that it was just like a weird little cool historical
thing, like there's this weird little like it's almost like the Vatican, Like
there's this weird piece of quote unquote Turkish land in the middle of Syria that
like you guys like protect with like this like contingent of soft dudes living in
like Indian countries. So yeah, So that was like I would say,
the first three or four months of that deployment, and then a lot of
stuff started shifting back into Iraq. Like that point, I think we had
a bigger presence. Uh, you know, we had a lot more white
soft dudes running around with like Iraqi Soft and Iraqi you know national police.
Some of those dudes I got a little dicey at times because you guys remember
seeing some of those YouTube clips of like, you know, the Shia militia
guys that were like, you know, the butchers of ISIS. They hate
us just as much, probably, but I definitely I can't confirm or deny,
but there were definitely a few strikes we took part in that I think
inadvertently helped those dudes. Yeah, but like you know enemy and my enemy
is my friend for the time being type shit. So well, I mean
in Iran was the same deal, right, Yan was very much against ISIS,
but Iran it's never on our side now. And that was It was
funny because there was that one guy I remember what his name was, Isaiah.
It was the one guy that had like you know, it was a
six two bodybuilder. He carried an axe with him. He had some huge,
bushy black beard. He was like, you know, I feel what
his name was, but he was like I guess the per the Farsie way
they described he was the Angel of Death. I think it was what his
nickname was. But you know, nice guy. Now, Yeah, like
I arrooided up due with a black beard pirate field, which militia he was
a part of but uh it was it jshl shoppy. It might it might
have been, but I lost track of all, you know, the jam
because the jam came back when I was there. The Mahdi Army came back
when we were there. But yeah, that it was actually crazy too.
Because you were a fifth Group guy, you can probably appreciate this, you
number in seven. Unfortunately, the uh, the three guys got kidnapped and
eventually got you know, uh, there we one hundred and first guys.
They weren't Fifth Group guys, but they were. There were there were four
Campbell guys. This was O seven in Iraq. Yeah, it was.
It was in that we were. They called it the Sunni Triangle. Yeah,
it was one of those areas. But the first time I really got
shot at was the unit out looking for those guys got hit by an ID
and I guess the EOD troop whoever it was, was pretty sharp. You
could tell was a command wire. So the guys were around, So we
did one show of force icon chatter got generated and then this was really dumb
on our part. We did a reattack show of force, but we came
back to the same heading and as we're coming back for the second go around,
Like we look over and like you know, and thankfully it was an
RPG, but like that was the first time, like oh shit, like
yeah, and then every time we would do shows a fourth night area like
the jam would shoot at us, you know, the but you know,
it was kind of funny, like we joked at like every show of force
we did, we made him pissed through the AK. But let's because we
were literally just shooting up with an AK hope for a golden BB just following
our jet noise ye. Meanwhile, the things were like you know, hopefully
falling out of the sky and hitting him back on the rebounds. So we'll
see. But yeah, that was but yeah, that was. I came
home June of fifteen, so I did I missed the Russians, and then
I did two more weapons School stories as an instructor and then you know,
basically became a dirty staff when he after that, you know, went to
the Pentagon did weapons requirements, which is actually a really cool job. It
was actually able to uh, I guess one of my cool stories if you
need to really have a cool story in the Pentagon was a you know,
we realized after too many years that uh, you know, having a hell
fire or having a a two hundred and fifty pound SDB is not really quote
unquote loc collateral. We really needed some sort of a forward firing ordinance,
and so BAE had actually built this thing called APKWS Advanced Precision Kill Weapon.
And what it is is it's a laser guided rocket on the front of a
two seven five. I'm sorry, it's a laser guidance kit on the front
of a two seven five rocket. It's actually pretty genius because apparently we have
like hundreds of thousands of two seven five rockets at our arsenal, and so
the Marines were the first to acquire them. We were kind of trying to
like beg, borrow and steal from them. And I'll never forget. For
anything to happen in the Air Force, I would probably need to go one
or two stars approval right right. The guy in the Marines that was controlling
this stockpile, he was operating on standing orders from his three star like I
can't go below a certain number, but anything after that, dude, you
want to hop in front of our production line, feel free, that's awesome.
So I never going down the bar because I actually was lucky enough to
work in the fighter bar. We got him down to the bar and Thriller
was his call sign. Ryan Shill, I just want to say, Yah,
Thriller was his call sign. He was a Cobra guy. I'll never
forget, like we actually got the deal done just when he give him a
six pack and we're able to get uh thirty rockets to bath for the vipers
to use on some Jaysock targets. So that was actually a pretty cool,
like depending on war story. And then the next seven years, you know,
just just I just punched the clock and you know, did weapons stuff.
So do you guys like, what what's the nature of like electronic warfare?
Because you talk about the icon chatter? Yeah, did you guys have
and we're used to like the EW birds. But as EW becomes more advanced
and the suites become more compact, are they able to squeeze like an EW
suite on bird psych yours? That's what we're well, i'd say for the
legacy stuff in theory, yes, but the problem is, as you can
imagine, there is like zero appetite to upgrade legacy systems that are not going
to play in the Pacific. Sure, so I would say right now,
the one thing that they're going to work on for the super Hornet is going
to be a digitized version of something that could be upgraded modually. Uh,
you know, there is there like, there is, there is the ability.
The problem is there's just no appetite to spend a few hundred million in
NRA non recurring engineering to refurbish basically what is a legacy system, right because
at some point, even if you gave it unlimited power, and even if
you gave it like the greatest electronic attack techniques, at the end of the
day, if it's not stealth, it's a honking huge platform. And and
the threats that are getting developed right now are just to the point where,
like I don't even think you have a chance, like if you're a fourth
generation platform getting within a certain range of something like you're like the PK of
them getting a hit on you is pretty high. Yeah, now that being
said, that's what we sort of train to. Yet I think you look,
I mean, I hate to say it, but you know, even
before what's happening right now in Gaza, I think these Raelies routinely prove that
there is a way I've ran that these rallies are flying f thirty fives and
doing some amazing stuff. But it's like, you know, it's there's beyond
paper capes and then I guess there's like you know, the push to test,
right, Like you know, you're talking about all these drones that they
shot down the other day. It's that I'm even talking about like waking up
and finding out like they got into like downtown Damascus, in downtown here that
are protected by fairly advanced Russian stuff, most likely with some Russian merch operating
it. Possibly, Yeah, and somehow they're still getting through. I don't
I'm not reading any more of that stuff, but it's like I'm wondering how
much of it is a combination of the aircraft the weapon types. But like
you know, on paper, that really shouldn't be happening, but somehow they're
proving it to happen. I mean, look at Ukraine, you know,
like they worried us for a long time on you know, but the Ukrainians
are literally with like spitt and glue and elbow grease and ingenuity like you like,
for instance, I don't know the specifics of it, it was open
source though, but like you know, we gave a bunch of a GM
eighty eights harms that we were at a decommission anyway, they literally Jerry riggim
to work on their MiGs, which is an American weapon on a Russian fighter
and made it work. So you know, there's the capability piece, and
then I think, honestly, just the application piece. So you know,
you could you mentioned like the chance of ag or generation for like you know,
platform getting to target. Do you think that even with Gen five or
moving forward? You know, when we look at like hypersonics, when we
look at things like that, do you think that there's a point where if
it's not like an orbital platform or a or an atmospheric platform, that that
we're gonna move past the idea of bomber. I think, I think,
and I'm not smart at the cond of this up, but like at some
point right, like everything that we're doing right now, let's be honest,
it's evolutionary, it's not revolutionary. So we're we're adding a few more extra
miles on a weapon, We're adding a few more layers of quote unquote low
rcs, right, but we're very rapidly maybe not very rapidly, but at
some point we're gonna we're gonna basically get to like the cost curve where like
it's gonna take me in the billions to get you like a degree maybe two
of better rcs. It's gonna take me in the billions to get you know,
a few hundred more miles on this missile. Like at some point,
like like we're just gonna get to like this standoff of you know, a
near pier in the Pacific with tyranny of distance is building systems that are gonna
keep us out like base to Hawaii, right, and then we're gonna spend
in the billions to like fight away. So at some point it's gonna be
like, I like, what do you do here? And that's when I
think what gets worrisome is that's when you start seeing the shift to let's just
say other like other other planes, you know, LEO, this that the
other thing. Like that's that's truly like you know, I think a lot
of people sort of scoffed, maybe me included when the whole space force was
created, but like, I mean you really, I think the world is
evolving to a level where space you can no longer have space sort of be
a subcomponent of a service, like and maybe the first few years until like
that, Like I don't think and even some people in the military probably don't
realize like what a problem that area is going to be and how contested it's
going to be. So maybe some guys like why do we need a space
force, Like it's kind of one of those things where like it will probably
it will more than it will more than prove it's worth I think in the
future, because you really can't afford to have like why have the air force
in the army and the Navy and we have a space expertise or a space
command of that, Like that's just not going to cut it. Like you
essentially need a dedicated service, sure, kind of the same way like the
Marines, right, Like you know, I can't just have like a specialty
part of the army do the amphibious small unit self contained new meth concept,
Like you actually need a service to do that, right, So the difference
between like from a counterinsurgency or counter terrorism mission to fighting you know, if
another global war happens and our stuff that's in space gets shot down, all
those modern capabilities we've been describing for the last few hours, who are like
kind of off the table, they go away. Yeah, I mean,
and that's the thing, Like, no matter how many times we try to
train to it, it's going to be a rough go of it. When
if we are truly GPS out, like we you know, part of our
training syllabus is we would train GPS out and you know we had an I
and S inertional navigation system. We would train how to actually keep that thing
working without GPS crack hits going to it every six seconds. But I mean
there's a difference between doing it on a training mission to check off a training
versus like doing it for real, right right, I mean, and I
mean you guys are probably will not remember like the Thomas guys, like who,
like who knows how to use the Thomas guy? Now I don't Yeah,
yeah, like that, I don't even know how to like do like
like you think about too, Like it's one thing doing it like overland or
in vicinity of land, right, but you look at the guys that have
to do like celestial navigation. Yeah, because you're like your your feet wet
for six seven hours. Yeah, that's gonna happen. Yeah, And that's
the thing. Sometimes when you describe the current like the next fight possible,
you hope it doesn't happen. But you know, when you try to put
it for scale, it's like, dude, imagine trying to go from New
York to California over nothing but water with no frame of reference, right,
And that's like the distances we're talking about when we think we're going to quote
unquote operate in that area, right, Like, you know, it's,
yeah, it's gonna be an interesting you know, from what I've seen,
at least from when I left the service. You know, when I got
back from my deployment in nineteen, it was twenty thirty five, twenty thirty
five, right, and then it slowly started to shift to like, dude,
we're not going to get to thirty five if we can't fix today in
twenty seven and thirty and then at least now from the Air Force perspective,
now, like I walk around all these trade shows and it's like a lot
of the young airmen and a lot of the young operators now are all wearing
like on their flights to the uniform they're wearing twenty twenty seven pen tabs is
like a constant reminder like yeah, dude, this is like around the corner.
And then to your point about the fourth gen piece, like, I
think there's probably sometimes a miss. There's probably a mischaracterization of what we think
our four structure are gonna look like. Like, dude, even if it's
twenty thirty twenty thirty five, like, AB, we don't have the money
to do it, and b we're not gonna have the range to just have
an entire fifth gen force, Like the buff is still gonna be here,
it sound like to be one might still be here like a large chunk.
I think of our aircraft, our combat air force is still going to be
fourth gen. Yeah, I mean the Navy. I mean you know what
like the super hornets like that things you saw top gun too, like that,
I mean that thing will probably fly to the twenty thirties and beyond.
Yeah, Like just because we A, I would say the third five is
a little range limited. It's one engine. Uh, the load out is
not what we need it to be. So like you, even again,
if money was no object and and you gave Lockey Martin a blank check,
like we ate an entire all thirty five force is not the right answer.
Right, So that's kind of like the that's sort of like the science.
You know, it's like an art and a science. They say about like
you know, force design planning is like what is the right high low mix
of like fourth to fifth gen stuff? And that's been like that debate is
raged off like the last decade. I would say at least well, and
I mean would you, and not being an expert in this field, I
would say that things like A tens and AC one thirties are are are you
like third gen? But but you still have function? And so many times
the Services or Congress like they outrun their headlights, yeah, by trying to
mock all these things when they still have even see SOCOM getting their little crop
duster. Oh that yeah, that that thing's actually be pretty cool to watch.
It's and it has it does have a use in it in a counterinsurgency
conflict. It does. And that's the thing. Well, it's funny bring
that because uh, you know, for years I was a little bitter towards
big big Air Force, you know, big Blues. It's like, you
know, we we ran our b one into the ground, right, like
we just we beat the piss out of it. It's we had to get
rid of a bunch of jets, you know when I joined, when I
when I went at the duty and sort of flying I want to say we
had sixty two or sixty three A b ones. We're down like forty five
now because we've had a mothball a lot of them. We had to like
get rid of the hangar queens to redirect assets of the flying ones. And
one of my really good friends, I won't knock them out here, but
uh, pretty brilliant dude. And on one of our deployments, just because
he was bored, he ran the numbers on you know, a cost for
flight hour, the maintenance call like and he goes the cost in six months
that it took to have a bone squadron and an F fifteen squadron. That
money, you literally could have outfitted let's say Harat and mez up in the
north with like eighteen or twelve either eighty sixes or super Dacanos, right,
and you could have had fighter pie. I was doing a six month tour
doing those things we did with other aircraft. Yeah, and sure enough we'll
end up doing ten years later, we bought the Afghans a twenty nine.
Yeah, so it's like we yeah, I don't. It's like we you
know, the US Air Force and like you know any you know in the
Navy, Like they were not designed to do coin, right, They're designed
to fight a near peer, right. And but unfortunately think for US is
you know, I don't think any of us thought it would be twenty years
of coin right, and it just really bled down these things that we're gonna
need night one. Yeah, so hit questions, yeah yeah, yeah please.
So you definitely know about like the next generation air dominance Yeah yeah,
I mean that's supposed to replace F twenty two, F fifteens for the most
part, right in a way. Yeah, I think it's going to be
a comp like I think A and I have to kind of unremember something I
got men in blacked, you know when I left that. But I would
just say, and YAD is going to be this the fancy buzz term is
this thing called family of sistan. I think en goad is going to be
the initial transch in a family of capabilities, if you will. Like,
I don't think it's gonna flat out replace anything in all honesty, like I
think when the f when the twenty two goes away. Unfortunately. I think
it's gonna be more because of money and manning and funding. I think the
I would kind of equate End God in a little This is my opinion that
could be wrong, but kind of in the way that hypersonics are not gonna
replace all weapons, right, They're gonna be complimentary because a we can't afford
to be an all hypersonic force. It's gonna compliment in existing force structure,
if that makes sense. So I think End God is gonna kind of come
on in small batches and end Goad. I think B twenty one maybe won't
be this that exquisite, but like, those are the things you're gonna see,
Like I don't even mean like night one that's gonna be like minute one,
hour one. Like those are gonna be the things that like literally do
like break Like they're gonna be like the safe breaker for like the first few
hours. Yeah, and it's like, Okay, God's gonna be manned and
unmanned, right, Like that's the thought process. They kind of keep going
back and forth on that, but yes, that that's at least the initial
thought, uh, the production line on whatever they're going to use for endgad
in theory could eventually be a souped up version of this thing called the c
CIA, the collaborative combat autonomous thing. That's the thought process with CIAS is
I could have one F thirty five force multiplying itself by controlling five or six
of these unmanned ccas to sort of do its bidding, if you will.
It's carrying weapons, it's going forward, it's doing forward launch, and it's
sort of being like a loyal wingman to a fighter, right slaved off to
the human offen. Yeah, pretty much. You know, one thing we
talked about, like we talked about sort of the policy, you know,
the how the close to our support and things like that, but you can
hill rucks time became a lot more restrictive. And we've talked on the on
you know, to guys like j tax before and people who are like,
yeah, I had to have like a free page, like a three page
thing prepared to justify a call for fire. Yeah, we've talked about that.
But one of the things that we didn't talk that I'd love to hear
from you is like one of the things that frustrated a lot of ground troops
and I think a lot of pilots and air crews with at least the Air
Force in the latter parts of the war was like AC one thirty couldn't fly
during the day that there were people in high level positions that were placing the
the the airframe above the troops on the ground. Yeah, did you guys
have any experience with that? We did so, Like here here's like a
B one nuanced example. The first two or three deployments when I did shows
of force, we were restricted to five thousand feet over the ground. And
it took us like a deployment or two to convince the leadership like you're actually
making me a bigger target at five thousand feet, like simply from like a
Trigg standpoint, Like I mean actually eventually we eventually got the goos to get
it down to a thousand feet in combat. But you think about it,
like if I'm you know, I'm the best guy, and you know we
want to you know, scare him generated ICM chatter on trying to fix on
him, Like if I'm flying at five thousand feet, it's like the equivalent
of seeing like the team house thing. That fucker could beat me all day,
and I think we just assumed that all the capable you know, SA
seven equivalents like I R Man pads were gone by that point. But it's
like you're actually giving that you to a better chance to kill me higher than
if you let me literally scream up on him at five hundred one thousand feet
right. So there that was. That's like no joke, a b one
specific jample. That was real. That's one, you know, trying to
think of some other ones, like you know, for a while, if
it was in defense of a guy on the ground, like you know,
if my wing happened to clip Pakistan, like okay, whatever should happens,
like my third and fourth deployment, you encroached on Pakistan like by a millimeter
you were going home? Wow, Like it was Yeah, And I think,
I mean, I think some of that's politics that some of that sort
on the time of like the Torqum Gate incident, where I mean, again,
I've talked to some guys that were involved in that, and I think
when you're doing body searches afterwards and you're finding pack mill IDs on bad guys,
you might have had a reason to engage, right, but you had
to kind of eat it because it's a political thing and you guys remember like
that that actually fucked a lot of the guys in country for a while because
like they did not I mean, you can only get so much inbound to
Afghanistan via the air, Like most of that stuff was like the trucks,
so that stuff was colded. That was a problem. Yeah, when they
would close the when they would close the betro do us, like that was
a problem because like at that point, now like the guys in country are
restricted to like like anyone that was in country, Like that's all you're getting,
Like bones aren't coming, yeah, fifteen. At that point it moved
to dafferd like they're not coming. Yeah, the boat guys aren't coming like
so that like that's sort of a different argument. I apologize, but like
yeah, but it leads into like you'd almost have to like people want to
put your wings on the table, going like yep, cool me home,
take my wings. But like that guy was gonna get a weapon whether you
like it or not. Yeah, I mean one story was you guys remember
Marja twenty ten, and that was in a crystal thing too. But like
they told us for three months leading up to it, like you will not
drop on that like you bones, you're there to like prevent Somalia from happening,
but like the whole basically it's like we don't even want you here because
you're ruining our whole message of like people outreach everything else. But it's like
the war's over, bro. Yeah yeah, and then no shit, sure
enough night one Marja Marines took a tick and like my buddy was flying God
bless him. Yeah, like no, no, you're getting a weapon and
I don't care if I have to give my f and wings up, Like
this guy's getting a weapon. Yeah. And what was nuts about that was
like because it was such a high profile op. It was literally a single
thirty eight and I think when the time, by the time he landed,
there was at least two gos hanging around trying to get in his shit.
It's the debrief for a single weapon was like three four hours, whereas like
I've gotten Winchester and been in and out in like forty five. I mean,
so that was that was I mean, I think to your point what
you asked was about like arbitrary restrictions on the aircraft. I think the two
like that I can think of really as like the the border incursion shit,
and then again the show of force thing blew us away for a while.
It's like, dude, you're painting, you're basically screaming at like I'm making
it easier for you. Yeah, because now I'm at a twenty thousand,
I'm at five thousand, I'm like, please come kill me, like yease
fucking take a shot. When they finally smartened up and let us go down
to one thousand, that's when we actually started getting better effects. So I
think for years we had desensitized the enemy to like, okay, cool,
the infails are flying, they'll put on an air show, then they'll leave,
and then we can go back to doing what we do. And we
started doing that tactic like that's when like they like everything else that they adapted
to that. But there was actually a cool six month period where like the
icon got scary again, like, oh, show they're that fucking around,
Like, yeah, they're letting the infidels come down. And because they thought
for a while like we were like a hog, like I could shoot you
with a yeah. Yeah, So we let them think that obviously, but
you know there were times where like we would change and yeah to give Hi
credit, like those guys could adapt like like sure and we would take you
know, they figured everything out pretty quickly. It took it. You know,
I never Gates is quote when he was the sec deaf. You know,
we're being out propaganda by a guy in a cave and we have an
entire you know, billion dollar public affairs machine and messaging and synops and stuff.
So which I don't think was the fault of our guys. It was
it took the first six your train to come in to approve something. Meanwhile,
the local Taliban you know, fucking platoon sergeant equivalent was like, yeah,
cool, get it out there. Yeah yeah. So questions from viewers,
what's the story behind Brian's called sign of slot Oh shit, wow,
okay, So so the way like at least in our squad, you know,
so when naming ceremonies like what you see like in the movies, like,
it's not like cool call signs, it's usually something dumb and stupid.
You did so in my early days ball duster, yeah, you know,
or you know fucker yeah or Murkin or something. You So what happened was,
uh, I would I had a habit for in South Dakota. Obviously
the elements are not really in your favor if you want to get smashed and
make it home safely. Sometimes so I would find some ingenious places to sleep.
Mostly it was atm dwellings and bank. But I had a gift.
I could nap anywhere anytime, So between exhibiting sloth like behavior when they did
our ceremony uh at the time, I was the deputy mayor of our bar
and the mayor was Chunks. So then somebody decided to super impose my face
on the sloth from the Goonies. So the combination of like slothy animal because
I was napping and moving slow all the time, that was, you know,
being a lush and then Chunk you know, uh, sloth from the
Goonies baby rooth. For like about a month under that name, I was
finding fucking baby roots and like my flight bag, my helmet. I would
love that personally, it was but it was like get on the net.
Here you goes like like your an deployment. You're in meat head mode,
right, you getting shape. You're not boozing as much os as indeed,
but it's like, you know, I'm like, dude, get this fact
boy katy away from me. Yeah, I gotta I have a girl.
That's the point when I come home. Yeah, I like have like a
three pack, if you know, for the deppointment. So yeah, but
that's yeah. Like like like most aircrew things, it's generally like either something
you did stupid once or just like the repeated demonstrational behavior between the And this
is back before the days of like really good this is like six o seven
now it was actually it was six So I never the guy who did the
photoshop. It was like Rembrandt, like how he did this photoshopping, Like
it didn't look like it was fake, Like the guy made all the creases
work in the coloring. So it's like the guy misses calling. Yeah,
but yeah, sorry was I was. There was a better story behind it.
Alex, Thank you very much. Do you think non self bomber platforms
will have a future in near peerer symmetrical conflicts in the future or will everything
be uh uh like uh durak uh drones and stealth aircraft. No. I
definitely think at least for the next decade or more. I think for two
reasons. A, we just we don't have the number of jets to do.
I think right now, drones based from aircraft capability, We're pretty limited
to what we could do with those things. Like I mentioned before, I
think the CCA cop concept is still a few years away. But I would
argue from a well A, it's going to think about two like the cost
of just retiring everything but then regenerating a new platform from scratch is going to
be pretty impossible. That's going to create at least a multi year gap.
So yes, but I would say obviously, as the threats increase and push
you out further, it's going to demand. So the role I see for
fourth generation aircraft, especially bombers, is in the initial phases of a conflict
in a near peer it's probably going to be your cruise, missile and hypersonic
carrier. That'll probably be the first couple of days of the war or whenever
they're able to get in. And then, like most things, I don't
really know if we have a good example in recent history of what we can
compare what we think the next one would be be. But like everything else,
right, like you know Iraq was you know, Iraq was hot and
heavy with a traditional eye ADS takedown, and then within a few weeks or
so, like it transitioned into we pretty much own the air. Their fighters
are gone, their SAMs are gone. Now we're just sort of doing like
you know, uh, air superiority, sort of complete dominance of the air
where I can, I can kind of come and go as I please and
just do either HBI takedowns, systems takedowns like you know, kind of what
you know, the old scud hunts and deserts from one. Yeah, but
that that comes after the initial sort of like door kick phase right where we
have to kick down their eye ads, make make air. You know,
we have to basically have air supremacy. I don't. I think the days
of us ever having air supremacy ever again are probably over. Yeah. I
think we will probably have momentary time slices of air superiority for a little bit,
but dominance and supremacy probably never gonna happen again. Contested Yeah, yeah,
And I think we'll have fleeting moments of it. But then they're going
to regroup, regen, and we hope that we've accomplished what we wanted to
target and we get out of dodge. Yeah, Bear Holmes, thank you
very much. Say China invaded Taiwan tomorrow, what aircraft in the current inventory
would be the most important. I want to say it's a loaded question.
It's it's probably because we don't I would say it's a really good question.
It's tough because you know, I'm not saying, is the aircraft work in
conjunction with one another? Yeah? Yeah, I really probably can't pin it
down to one aircraft, right, Believe it or not. And this doesn't
sound it's not a sexy answer, but like some of the most crucial aircraft
in this fight are gonna be your tankers, your early warning, all your
what we call have A and have it is h VAA high value how that
high value air assets is what HAS stands for. So really it's tough to
pin it down to one because unfortunately f thirty fives are not gonna have the
legs to get there bones without any sort of protection. I would say right
now, it's not necessarily the aircraft that's gonna determine it. I would say,
it's gonna be the weapons. And because there's nothing in that fight,
there's no aircraft that we have that is just untouchable. Right, So really,
and we're kind of learning this the hard way, and I'm kind of
dancing around hurt. The question but we learned way too late, a long
time ago, that we've been building amazing fifth and with n YAD and BE
twenty one six gen aircraft, but we've we've been doing it without a thought
that the weapons are gonna carry. So case in point, you know,
I had an old general one time we said that if you guys are not
irate over the fact that a big part of the F thirty five's load out
is a seventy technology weapon g WU thirty eight, like, you're not angry
enough. And that's been our problem is we've been so heavily focused, I
would say on aircraft development over the last two decades that we missed the boat
in a lot of ways. On weapons, we let a lot of the
weapons industry atrophy, in my personal opinion, and we didn't really learn the
lessons of, like what other adversaries, knowing they can't compete with us,
what they're going to do the whole term. Third offset, you know,
you could argue that Russia realized that they were going to lose that war again,
so what they start doing They started investing in the really non sexy stuff
electronic warfare, jamming, comms, dispersion, psyops, rotting us from within
with propaganda, like you know, we're probably the we're probably in the midst
of the largest counterintelligence campaign in history. Every day with just like Chinese water
torture, drip drip, drip, drip, A little lie here, a
little eye there, right, because they don't operate like us. They don't
operate in four yeatly making us hate our fellow bro and the Chinese is the
same way they operate generationally, not like every four years. Yeah, we
operate in four year chunks and hate your chunks. And anyone that can think
out to the thirties things, he's like some sort of master Tratigigno dude,
Like China's plan is the one hundred year plan. Yeah, Russia just operates
like it'll be the same guy in charge forever, which he probably will be
to you know, dies, but that's unfortunately, like we're the greatest country
in the world, but like it's also one of our downfalls is, yeah,
we have a democratic system that let's be honest, it's scary how lately
how easily exploiled it is. It feels like I don't know how we go
off on that topic, but uh, but it's kind of sort of related,
I would say in the sense of yeah, I think we we we
thought we could get away with uh just focused on aircraft for a long time
and not really doing the weapons piece. We're starting to catch up a little
bit, but we were I think we're a ways behind. Yeah, so
that's so. I don't know if I can necessarily say an aircraft. I
would argue if you put a gun in my head, it would probably be
one of the bombers, assuming that we could get a hypersonic capability with the
next two years, Yeah, that would be That would be my best guess.
JK, thank you very much. Thoughts on the bird scene on Alphabet
Soup's compound calf definitely not an are I don't wait, what was the question?
I think they called it like the Beast of candle Horn or something.
Oh that thing? What are my thoughts on it? That happened? This
only happened in twenty ten, right, I think it was a drone that
they were flying off of candle horror. Oh, yeah, you know the
Beast of Canada. Yeah, so the RQ one seventy. Like, what
do I think happened there? I guess he's just what do you think about
what do you think about, uh, thoughts thoughts on the bird? He
says, definitely not a RQ one seventy. I think the guy is probably
referencing like some black Side drone, which I that I I'm not even being
koy like I'm actually not I know, I have no answer for his question.
Yeah. The only thing I will tell him is my personal opinion.
It's kind of so related. Is how I rank got their hands on the
one seventy? Is I think they outside help? Yeah? I think I
think unfortunately, Uh, there was a back door, there was there was
a there was a vulnerability there that they probably did not put off on their
own. And with what I've found cute about that whole thing is over the
last because that happened. It happened like fifteen years ago now, I think,
right, Yeah, what's cute about it is when they put the thing
on display, they had this almost like banquet curtain underneath. If you guys
by to look at pictures on the Iranians displayed it, it add this like
banquet curtain like underneath it, like like it was like a you know,
kinseigner or something, which leads me to believe is I think that thing eight
dirt big time when landed and the undercarriage of that aircraft is fucked. Yeah,
so sorry, it's not answering his question. Yeah, I would just
point out there are black side drones that are flying operationally and not my area
of expertise. But yeah, that stuff is out there. It's pretty Oh
no, it's stuff we out there. Yeah, I mean I'll say that.
Yeah, they're like stuff that has never been revealed to the public.
Oh yeah. And I so when people say, like you think there's aliens
at fifty one, like, no, that that's where our shit gets built.
Yeah, like you know there's I'm not the first got to say this,
but uh, you know, the quickest way they go to jail as
an ACTI Duty Air Force officers is clip the container at a red flag or
a weapon school like that thing was, Like you got anywhere remotely near that
thing, Like you're you're done. So, I mean, and I don't
think it's for the reasons that people think it is right. It's not because
they don't want you to see e T. Yeah. Like I'm not saying
there's not ET. I just don't think ET's there. Yeah. I think
if there is an et, he's somewhere else. Yeah, you know council
exactly sure. Yeah from Danny. Has any of Brian's fellow aviators ever confide
it to him about experiencing a UFO encounter during a flight or mission? Wow?
Uh, the answer is no. And the only reason I would say
that is because when you when you read all the reports, and I think
there's a common theme when you read the reports, right, it's all navy
piles to see it, and it's generally all navy pile to doing it off
the water, so and again, and some of these guys are pretty credible
and they say, like, you know, I'm an arrow major from the
Naval Academy, like, things are not supposed to do that at that g
limit at that speed. So it really could be something. Again I'm not
playing koy former government worker, like, it really could be something that cannot
be explained. My theory also is is that you know, you guys right
now, if you want it to, could go online and look up pictures
of like stuff we have out in the desert. Because there's aircraft watchers with
better cameras than we have that see these things take off. There's only so
much secrecy. I think you can do with some of our really high level
PID covered programs over land. So I would not be shocked if we are
doing some next level weapons development out of the water and it just happens to
be at a time where like there's a four ship of hornets taken off from
you know, that's that's just my personal PAGs because it always happens to be.
It always just seems to be the Navy, and it always the ones
I've heard about. It seems to be over the water, So that that's
just my And I'm also if some credible whistle blover comes forward someday and says
like no, no, they're actually okay cool, I guess I'm I don't
one percent say like there's not out there, right. I just I think
the the the more realistic near term explanation is is that that's probably where we've
moved a lot of our advanced development and stuff. It's I know that a
lot of like credible pilots have reported like seeing things that they couldn't explain.
I didn't know that it was like they were prevalent, like it was Navy
primarily Navy, And that does make sense. Yeah, And if I go
back and I don't want to make a general statement because somebody will probably tell
me like, no, no, you've missed this specific case on this day,
Like you're probably right. I Actually it's kind of like almost being in
an air show when I get guys come up to me going like, why
don't you know more about what? Do I know mark your aircraft and I
than you do. I'm like, I don't know, dude, because I
like to go and party and yeah, I like, yeah, I don't
want to denigrate people who really take an interest in aviation. Yah, yeah,
that's awesome. But it's like like I've definitely been stumped at air shows
about ship about my own aircraft. Dude, that's thanks for telling me.
I'll use it as a trivia nugget now for a young guy. But like
I that nerds come out and challenge the same way as like like Star Trek
fans than the actors ride like Q like is a former Green Bray guy,
Like I mean, you know, did you know about this mission in ninety
I didn't, But thanks for telling them, Like yeah, you things all
the time. Yeah, that's kind of part of it, So I don't
need to denigrate make fun of anyone like I just the e T you know,
unexplained vehicle thing like I just don't maybe I should, I just don't
take a huge interest in it. Yeah. So it's like the ones that
I can remember from the top of my head. It just always seems to
be a Navy guy over the water. That's why. That's why I say
that. Yeah, all right, one way of saying, I don't know,
sorry, we have one more. What are some of the what are
some of the interesting ways the crew would pass time on a long sortie.
That's a really good one. So kind of like Candy Crush Bubbles was a
great one. We play that game tanks with each other because we get Jerry
rig Our laptops to see each other. Mostly to be honest with you,
it was a lot of iPod, a lot of music, a lot of
iPod playing. And it's crazy because like an average OEF combat sort he was
anywhere from about twelve to thirteen hours. Wow, the full time, you
know, the whole time of you being in country was anywhere from six to
eight So I mean really you had about a rough wag of it would be
like I had two and a half hours to actually get on station about another
two and a half to get home, and you mix in some decks,
some go pills there to be alert. Yeah, I mean we had one
guy, one guy literally completed like his masters just on drone time for a
lot of years. You guys will probably get a kick out of this.
Do you guys remember, like again, it's the Air Force, because you
know we're we have we have to be the Air Force. We have to
be those guys. Reflect the belts were like if you don't basically, if
you don't wear a reflective belt, it's the equivalents of like letting an insurgent
in the base. Yeah, it's almost you scum, you filth bag.
So it's like we had one of my buddies. I'll think the link to
this because I'm shooting. I'm shot the out right now with like it's like
the biggest fuck you to leadership. Uh. He literally by hand, he
took a reflective belt on a jet one time. So this is actually over
the course of a few sorties, and he was cutting out parts. He
was cutting off pieces of the reflective belt and by hand sewing in velcrow to
the reflective belt, and so for a while he was like, young,
we're my reflective belt. He was making like pencil patch tab reflective belts.
But it's like I looked at one time and I'm like, dude, can
you imagine if you just used your powers for good, you could fucking cure
cancer or like or like like like you can invent the next but you're hands
sewing reflective belt patches just to piss off like the local wing commander. Honestly,
I reflective belts, if I remember, like started to really become a
thing, like a bogrum, maybe around like two thousand, was it two
two thousand it was, And at that point I was like, all right,
we've already lost this war. Like when that becomes the thing, when
that becomes everybody has to Like I remember Fort Benning there, like your first
line supervisor gets fired if you're not wearing a reflector. Yeah, and Ranger
of Btown, there's a lot of angry privates angry at their team leader.
And so there's a mat in the middle of a run old gond of Jettison.
I wasn't a huge fan of the Guys comedy, but you remember there
was a video of a Carlo Smancia and he's at one of like he's at
a USO show and it was either it was either au ded or it wasn't
like an Afghan or iraqy base. But he just went off on this tangent
and he was basically like pointing out like the six that was in charge the
policy, like calling him a loot, like you fucking like an whole I
was like cheering these guys just kind of sitting there like and eat it because
it's like, all right, yeah, I'm the I'm the asshole put this
policy in place. Yeah, you know, Big Blue wants me to uh
we wrap up tonight. Do you want to talk about what you're doing today?
Uh, what you're up to nowadays? Yeah, so yeah, yeah,
you know, uh retired active duty from the Pentagon as an airstaff officer,
took a job of the defense company. It's probably one of the last
few remaining ones in the Northeast area, which is really awesome because it gets
me go closer to home. But yeah, just trying to learn the you
know, trying to not be your your classic sleazy business development or bed guy.
But in my space, I'm primarily focused. You're not a VC guy.
It's yeah, primarily focused on the electronic warfare aspect, even though my
background's more sort of weapons. But uh now, honestly, you guys probably
want through the same thing, right, Like I'm I'll be about a year
in June of sort of being out of uniform, and you know it just
it still feels not real. Yeah, I'm really just trying to, you
know, find my way and yeah, you know, still kind of like,
you know, learn the ways of uh you know what what Boots Allen
Hamilton. Yeah, not that bad, well any one who knows. But
no, honestly, really just you know, just just trying to get settled
back in the area and kind of learn the new language of And it's really
weird at times, like it's it's big boy in a really weird way.
It's like there's been a few times where I've just been like I really kind
of wish I had like a a reg or an Afi to go back to
right now, because like I craved that like structure, ycause some of the
ship today is like ah, yeah, you had a meeting with so and
so, and uh, I just show up wear a suit and like anything
else, like naw, you'll figure it out. I'm like I will,
ye there's like money apparently being discussed, like I I don't feel ready,
I just just do it. So that that part's a little weird, but
uh now yeah, so just just back in the area doing defense contracting and
uh, you know, trying to be trying to do it for the right
reasons, you know, like if my company has the solution for something,
we can help great. If not, then you know, still trying to
keep like the guys and gals and and bros That are out doing the job,
like trying to keep them in mind repitch stuff. So yeah, pretty
much that that's awesome. Two quick things. Yeah, Barret Holmes, which
fifth Gen looks the coolest? I got to say the F twenty two.
I think that thing is I've seen that thing up close. We I actually
and little known story like the F twenty two is active in Syria, like
helping me target isis Like that fucking thing is the greatest thing I've ever seen.
Yeah, I don't and it's a shame we cut it and we probably
the wrong call at the time, but like that that is the sexiest,
most capable thing I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, it is amazing.
Yeah, I think some of the like the belt, like some of
the concept helicopters look really really badass. Yeah, but of courtunate, we
just canceled the one, right, Yeah, being out in was it Nevada
or Arizona and being out on the flight line and just watching like, dude,
a dozen f twenty two's just screaming down and taking off and I was
like, they are that is gangster. They are. They are the greatest,
And yeah, I follow what's his face the OAF on Instagram? Operators
fucked that guy. He's a former marine. But uh, that's it's weird.
It's like it's it's it's mostly about like you know, soft guys and
operators. But he he he. Just occasionally I think, like once a
month or once a quarters happens to get the twenty two demo guy in there,
because like, yeah, you know, what's what's cool? Is cool?
Like that think is amazing? Yeah and then uh oh in corporate think
you match, hit the like button and subscribe. We agree and thanks fellows.
Interesting conversation. Ok, okay, and uh next Friday, we will
be back with a gentleman who served as an FBI agent. He was actually
an assistant director, not once but twice. All right, we'll have him
in studio. Really excited to talk to him. It's going to be a
fun conversation. Brian, thanks for joining us. Anything else you want to
put out this is this is awesome, Anything you want to promote or I'm
just a boring suit wearing bad guy like this is Uh, We're all just
working slobs out on the streets. I'm just happy. I'm just happy to
be one now. But no, honestly, like I said, you know,
the biggest thing I probably didn't mention was, you know, you know,
for years doing the cast mission, right like for us, like the
guys in the ground were our heroes, and you know, so it was
it was cool as like the years went on and you got to meet a
lot of those guys like one on one, like to get their perspective.
Like now, dude, let's you know, you know, it's cool that
you're a fanboy at times, but it's like, no, like you you
really pulled this out of some really shitty spots right now, so it's it's
cool to like it all comes full circle and uh, I really appreciate you
guys sort of bringing on a different perspective. I'm just happy to provide my
part, So thanks for having me, yea man, And absolutely this was
exactly like stepping outside of the soft infantry sort of space that we're off and
in and talk about some more of the strategic level stuff that goes on.
And yeah, and I think and we, like I've talked about it before,
like having Cast come on station when when you feel like you're fucked,
like when you feel like, man like this is it and having Cast come
on station, it's it's it's like it's a spiritual experience. It really is.
I only I'm only mentioning it now because I just saw him recently,
But Ski going Bestkie who wrote Level zero here. Yeah, I hung out
with him a little bit at a conference not too long ago. It's funny
Ski actually works at the Air Force Academy now, like doing something with one
of my buddies. But we always love Ski because like when he wrote that
book that was all about b MG Balimore gob when we were there and he
was the first guy ever to really like we got more the b one got
more love from like another service, another perspective than our own f and Air
Force. And it's like, yeah, it's been a few times where we've
seen our name mentioned in books and whatnot, and like it feels good that,
like, you know, guys, even if our own service didn't really
like us appreciate us, like the guys in the ground like in us,
that's all it mattered for you. So I wish I could have done it
more and definitely the highlight of my life. I bet eight ten guys probably
yeah, oh yeah, absolutely yeah, and those guys you know today,
I will say it to anyone who asks, like those guys are the kings
of cast period died like they owned the doctrine, the right way of doing
it everything, Like we take our cues from them. So thank you Brian
again for com on the show, coming in studio Mane. We appreciate him.
Yeah we so we met Brian at our Christmas part actually and uh yeah,
you came in with Josh right yeah, yeah, our friend Josh Lee's
you will have to dig deep, deep into the teamhouse archives cannon, right,
yeah, yeah, that's more. Josh was on with Zach Dude.
Yeah, okay, yeah, And Josh's story about building a water canner is
honestly one of the best stories we've ever had on this show. The world
was interesting. Man, he's fascinating, so much fun, but it's actually
awesome. Yeah, so thank you everybody, thanks for joining us, and
we'll see all of you next Friday. Of your night