Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Jack.
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Speaker 2: Os Espionage, The Team House with your host Jack Murphy
Speaker 2: and David Park. Hey everyone, welcome to episode three hundred
Speaker 2: and three of The Team House. We're here today with
Speaker 2: Chris Cappy. Chris runs the Task and por Task and
Speaker 2: Purpose YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: And we're happy to have you here in studio tonight.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Jack excited to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Dave. This is unstoked, so glad that you're in the
Speaker 3: studio with us too. Yes, there's something about being there
Speaker 3: in person.
Speaker 1: That's nice. It's the booze that is, that's the part
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: In the cigards. Usually on webcam, I have to hide it.
Speaker 3: I have to have it in like a juice box,
Speaker 3: but we all know what's in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: If you don't hide it, you get an article about
Speaker 5: you in New York Times talking about how debotrous you are.
Speaker 2: So uh, you went from being a US Army infantryman
Speaker 2: to being a fairly prolific YouTuber.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about this whole.
Speaker 2: Journey kind of like where it begins and where you
Speaker 2: are today. Yes, literally start Let's start at the beginning,
Speaker 2: like where did you grow up and what drove you
Speaker 2: towards the Army. I grew up on Long Island, not
Speaker 2: far from here, like an hour out east.
Speaker 3: And I don't want to say I grew up sheltered,
Speaker 3: but I did grow up a little bit sheltered, and
Speaker 3: I felt very fortunate the life that I had on around.
Speaker 3: And I needed discipline, let's say, like I needed a
Speaker 3: little bit of edge. I was going to Originally, I
Speaker 3: was going to art school in New York City, and
Speaker 3: when I was there, it just felt like I wasn't
Speaker 3: getting what I needed out of it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't challenging me.
Speaker 3: And also I did I always I loved telling stories,
Speaker 3: but I felt kind of like I had no stories
Speaker 3: to tell. I had no nothing that I was really
Speaker 3: passionate about.
Speaker 1: You're a young guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like nineteen years old and hadn't really
Speaker 3: like it sounds terrible to say, but I hadn't been tested,
Speaker 3: and I felt like I needed to be tested to
Speaker 3: find out who who I am.
Speaker 1: This was in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3: So I'm in New York City learning about cameras and
Speaker 3: it's just feeling kind of empty. And I'm sitting there
Speaker 3: in my dorm room like playing back the nine to
Speaker 3: eleven footage over and over again and kind of getting
Speaker 3: angry about it.
Speaker 1: And I'd grown up a very conservative person.
Speaker 3: My dad, we'd always listen to talk radio when we're
Speaker 3: driving through the traffic on Long Island, and that traffic
Speaker 3: is killer, so there's a lot of time to kill
Speaker 3: when you're listening to Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, and
Speaker 3: so I'm getting all these my dad and everyone is
Speaker 3: like very pro the Iraq invasion, and so I kind
Speaker 3: of felt like when I'm in this dorm room. I'm
Speaker 3: telling my buddies, like the.
Speaker 1: War in Iraq. I'm getting drunken the wart me tell
Speaker 1: you about the war in Iraq. It's a good thing.
Speaker 3: We're not there for oil, and if we are, what
Speaker 3: else is worth dying for. These art school kids are
Speaker 3: looking at me like freaking out. Yeah, They're like I'm
Speaker 3: trying to paint, man, Like what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: They think I'm crazy, and I what I am. But
Speaker 3: one of them calls me out on my bullshit. And
Speaker 3: I don't know if this has ever happened to you
Speaker 3: when like someone says something to you that you know
Speaker 3: is true and you're.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, I've been married twice, yes, yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: and like you don't you don't say yeah, you're right, honey,
Speaker 2: you now that.
Speaker 1: No, You're like, okay.
Speaker 3: So, as I'm on one of my tirades about how
Speaker 3: the war in Iraq is a good thing, this one
Speaker 3: German foreign exchange student at art school who's also there
Speaker 3: for film tells me, if you believe in the war
Speaker 3: in Iraq so much, why are you here at art school?
Speaker 3: Why don't you enlist and go fight over there? And
Speaker 3: I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about? Why
Speaker 3: would I do that? That's that's stupid. I don't need
Speaker 3: to do that. But then I, like, I actually look
Speaker 3: in the mirror. It's one of those moments where you
Speaker 3: have to look in the mirror and kind of ask yourself, like, I,
Speaker 3: that is hypocritical of me to be all for this
Speaker 3: war and not be willing to go and actually.
Speaker 1: Put myself on the line. So I should you not?
Speaker 3: Like the next week, I hit up a recruiter and
Speaker 3: I ask him, like, what's the process for going in
Speaker 3: and enlisting?
Speaker 1: How?
Speaker 3: What would that look like? And that that's what started
Speaker 3: me on that path with someone.
Speaker 5: What did the German students say when he found out
Speaker 5: that you had started.
Speaker 4: On that path?
Speaker 3: So I, it wasn't it wasn't like it's interesting you
Speaker 3: asked that, because it's It wasn't so much that I
Speaker 3: wanted that he needed like his validation, or like cared
Speaker 3: so much about what he thought. It was more like
Speaker 3: I I never actually went back to him and like
Speaker 3: told you so, which in hindsight, I probably should have.
Speaker 3: I would have been a satisfying like, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: I never went back to.
Speaker 1: To settle that score.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so.
Speaker 5: You enlisted guard and and how were you balancing that
Speaker 5: with school or would you pull a lot of school out?
Speaker 4: Did that work for you?
Speaker 3: So I was I was certain that I was going
Speaker 3: to hate the military. I was, like, I heard all
Speaker 3: those stories. There's a lot of mis you think every
Speaker 3: day is like boot camp exactly. I went into it thinking,
Speaker 3: for sure, this is not going to be something that
Speaker 3: I like or I'm gonna I was worried that I
Speaker 3: was going to commit to like eight years active duty
Speaker 3: and end up like getting dishonorably discharged because I hated
Speaker 3: so much or something. So I did the minimum amount
Speaker 3: of initial commitment to see if I kind of liked it.
Speaker 1: And so I.
Speaker 3: Did National Guard Infantry with the plan of if after
Speaker 3: boot camp, if I if this seems right, then like
Speaker 3: I'll just deploy, do my time in Iraq, get back
Speaker 3: and that'll be like I feel like, because me finish
Speaker 3: the point type the story of what I was saying earlier,
Speaker 3: which is that like I felt like I was very
Speaker 3: fortunate that what this country gave me and whether really
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, whether the war in
Speaker 3: Iraq was right or wrong, I wanted to kind of
Speaker 3: do my part when the country asked something of us,
Speaker 3: like I wanted to give back because of all the
Speaker 3: opportunity that I felt like I'd been given. So the
Speaker 3: plan was like get in, deploy, and get out kind
Speaker 3: of it. So happened that I ended up loving it,
Speaker 3: and I'm like tism levels of obsessed with the military
Speaker 3: and weapons systems now. But so once I got back
Speaker 3: from boot camp, I'll spare everybody the boot camp stories.
Speaker 3: But once I got back, I volunteer because in the
Speaker 3: Guard you can volunteer to go. So I went to
Speaker 3: my commander and I said, hey, can you sign this paper?
Speaker 3: The first unit that's getting out of here is the
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania National Guard? Can you release me to go to them?
Speaker 3: So he was like, I'll sign this, but like, dude,
Speaker 3: we're not deploying for two years. You can chill. You're crazy,
Speaker 3: what are you doing? Why would you want to go?
Speaker 3: And he signed it and released me. So then I
Speaker 3: got with a couple of other dudes that I went
Speaker 3: to boot camp with. We all backfilled into the Pennsylvania
Speaker 3: National Guard who needed bodies because it was two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight and they just needed people with a pulse.
Speaker 3: So that that takes me to that part.
Speaker 5: And so let me ask you though, because what was
Speaker 5: the New York Guard?
Speaker 4: What was you were infantry? Was that striker or was it.
Speaker 3: The New York Guard is light infant trade there. I
Speaker 3: was an Alpha company in Lexington. There's very few infantry
Speaker 3: units in the National Guard, right, No, there's actually a lot.
Speaker 3: The Reserve has no combat on this, right yeah, the
Speaker 3: National Guard has.
Speaker 1: That's that's why I went Guard.
Speaker 3: Was because when I went to the reserves, they were like,
Speaker 3: we have logistics, we have am I, which are great jobs.
Speaker 3: In hindsight, I wish I'd done one of those cool
Speaker 3: ones like that. But only eleven Bravo units are in
Speaker 3: the Guard. So that's how I ended up switching from
Speaker 3: the New York unit is a long history, great unit there.
Speaker 3: The guys at the Lexington Armory if you ever checked
Speaker 3: them out, like they went from their stories they went
Speaker 3: from responding to the nine to eleven attacks to then
Speaker 3: going to Iraq like two years later.
Speaker 4: This was very personal for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but an incredible unit there. And and also the
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania unit was like I just lucked out that I
Speaker 3: happened to be what I what I thought were good
Speaker 3: Guard units.
Speaker 5: So was because for people, why not know the and
Speaker 5: this is how it used to be and you can
Speaker 5: correct me if it's changed.
Speaker 4: Is that there was eleven Bravo which was.
Speaker 5: Line uh standard infantry, eleven Charlies which were the mortars,
Speaker 5: and eleven Mics which were the mechanized right, mechanized infantry,
Speaker 5: which I guess you learned how to work the systems
Speaker 5: and get on and off a vehicle when you went
Speaker 5: to the striker unit were they were they eleven mics
Speaker 5: or were the eleven Bravos or what?
Speaker 4: What was that?
Speaker 3: When I was getting in, they had switched it to
Speaker 3: where it's just eleven bros.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, they used to have eleven hotel, which
Speaker 3: I think was toe right. They still have eleven Charlie more,
Speaker 3: but yeah, it was just they kind of collipt which
Speaker 3: I don't know if they're now changing that and going
Speaker 3: back to.
Speaker 1: Designators.
Speaker 2: So you're crazy ass the size to jump on this
Speaker 2: deployment with the Pennsylvania National Guard because you want to.
Speaker 1: Get out the door.
Speaker 2: Uh So, I mean this it's also a bit of
Speaker 2: a mystery to me too. I mean, what's it like
Speaker 2: kind of changing states in the National Guard. Is it
Speaker 2: really just like a military transfer and you go over
Speaker 2: there and you start training with the unit and begin
Speaker 2: that process.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It was kind of surreal and it all seems like
Speaker 3: some someone else's life now. But it went from just yeah,
Speaker 3: you're in the New York Guard and then you get
Speaker 3: kind of title ten as it orders, where Okay, you're
Speaker 3: on active, you got to be here at this time,
Speaker 3: at this date. And then so we went to Camp
Speaker 3: Shelby for MOBOP, which is like three models of training
Speaker 3: with the get familiarized with the strikers, and we do
Speaker 3: like in the box where you're Camp Shelby was was terrible,
Speaker 3: terrible place, just an awful experience. And during MOBIP, we're
Speaker 3: in those briefings and they're showing you these videos and
Speaker 3: it's like NonStop, just videos of dudes getting blown up
Speaker 3: by IDs or like snipers shooting shooting guys and then
Speaker 3: they're they're like pulling their buddy away and then getting shot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so I'm one one month, I'm in art school,
Speaker 3: drinking and learning about brothers. Stanley Kubrick's film and give
Speaker 3: Can you give me an essay on Stanley Kubrick's movies
Speaker 3: and like pretentious art school stuff. And then two months
Speaker 3: later I'm watching videos thinking like what have I done?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're gonna be up in the bell tower reciting
Speaker 2: verses from the Bible.
Speaker 5: Was there a point to the videos or was it
Speaker 5: just other conceived moto session or was it more like
Speaker 5: attacks overview of like this is how they're going to
Speaker 5: hit you.
Speaker 4: Don't fall for this, I do, dave.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you that was the commander's intent, like, hey.
Speaker 3: Let's show these videos so that again let's and give
Speaker 3: them analysis and kind of teach them to not get
Speaker 3: blown up and how.
Speaker 1: To avoid this.
Speaker 3: I guarantee you that was some command captain's probably good idea.
Speaker 3: And if if the class was taught by perun this
Speaker 3: is like great YouTuber if he if he did the
Speaker 3: rundown of that PowerPoint briefing, we would have gotten something
Speaker 3: out of it.
Speaker 1: Instead, it was some E four that could give a ship.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: He's like, he's like, yo, it was crazy, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: holy shit.
Speaker 4: And then you learn about are you so what rank
Speaker 4: are you when you? Did you get credits for your
Speaker 4: school and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: No, it was the lowest ranking, youngest guy in my company.
Speaker 3: He was nineteen years old when I got to mobile.
Speaker 1: I was fuzzy. I think maybe any one And.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sitting there just thinking I've made the biggest mistake
Speaker 3: of my life.
Speaker 4: I'm going to get.
Speaker 1: Killed, like.
Speaker 3: And I'll share this just because you know. I So
Speaker 3: the whole point of the reason why I make content
Speaker 3: about the military is I want there was, like I
Speaker 3: wish that as when I was an infantryman, when I
Speaker 3: was a young guy, Like I wish that there was
Speaker 3: a resource out there for me to learn about the
Speaker 3: geopolitics of these conflicts that were asked to go and
Speaker 3: maybe die in, and like the weapons systems an interesting
Speaker 3: entertaining way to learn about these things. And because I
Speaker 3: think it's scary. It's freaking scary when you're young, right.
Speaker 2: It's so different than like when I joined the military,
Speaker 2: and certainly when Dave joined the military.
Speaker 4: Back when we had cavalry.
Speaker 2: You go you go to you go to like borders,
Speaker 2: buy a book and it was like a Vietnam memoir.
Speaker 1: I mean there's just like no information really available. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you got.
Speaker 3: Remember like dudes there in the barracks reading like a
Speaker 3: book that some guy who had been deployed, like his
Speaker 3: experience and everyone's sharing it. But there's now with the
Speaker 3: way YouTube and like it has changed everything, you can
Speaker 3: really kind of teach people things. And so it was
Speaker 3: so scary for me during MOBIP that I literally wanted
Speaker 3: to quit. I went to my chaplain and I said,
Speaker 3: I was like, and this is hard for me to admit,
Speaker 3: but I told him, I said, I can't do this.
Speaker 1: Send me home.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't be here, like I'm going to quit because
Speaker 3: I'm terrified. I feel like I'm gonna go there and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna die. And he, the chaplain said to me,
Speaker 3: he was like, take a breath. I you know, if
Speaker 3: you want, I can get you out. I can send
Speaker 3: you back home, but I want you to take one day,
Speaker 3: go back home or go back to the barracks.
Speaker 1: Think about it.
Speaker 3: And if tomorrow you feel the same way, I will
Speaker 3: start the paperwork and we will get you out of here.
Speaker 3: And like you won't You're not gonna be dishonorably discharged,
Speaker 3: like you're just gonna go back home.
Speaker 1: We'll get for you know, medical or whatever. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was big of him to do. That really was this
Speaker 1: dude changed my life. And I said okay, and he said, listen,
Speaker 1: I if I don't see you again, like I want
Speaker 1: you to know, I think you're gonna do this deployment,
Speaker 1: and I think you're gonna be You're gonna be happy
Speaker 1: that you did, and you're gonna be okay, for better
Speaker 1: or worse like this is, I think you're going to
Speaker 1: be happy that you made this decision. I went back
Speaker 1: to the barracks, spend time with my squad, the guys
Speaker 1: that like I actually care about, and the next day
Speaker 1: I was like, I can do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can do I don't want the shame of
Speaker 3: not being not doing it. And so I feel like
Speaker 3: a lot of people probably have would for reasonable reasons,
Speaker 3: but have trouble admitting that, Like you have those second thoughts,
Speaker 3: and because a lot of people right now I'm sure
Speaker 3: are commenting like you pussy, and uh.
Speaker 2: You know those are those are real thoughts. But then
Speaker 2: you're a real human being with real fears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that are not illogical or irrational.
Speaker 5: And and and there there's there's something inspiring about somebody
Speaker 5: who had those thoughts and still did it, as opposed
Speaker 5: to somebody who was.
Speaker 2: Just your your pals an art school. They're sitting on
Speaker 2: the couch eating grito's.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, yeah, out of curiosity. Did your family have
Speaker 5: any history of service? What did your parents think about this?
Speaker 5: Like drastic detour you took.
Speaker 3: They begged me not to go. They begged me after
Speaker 3: all the especially I love my family.
Speaker 1: They're they're very like raw rah Iraq.
Speaker 3: But when I said I was going to go, they're like, well, no,
Speaker 3: not it changes, yeah, not you like and they and
Speaker 3: they said wait until you're an officer. Once you're an officer,
Speaker 3: then go in and it'll be better. And they're right, yeah,
Speaker 3: that would have been better. But no, but my grandfather
Speaker 3: he was twenty fifth sorry second I date artilleryman in
Speaker 3: the Korean War and always have so much respect for
Speaker 3: my grandfather and what he did. I mean, and he
Speaker 3: was drafted into it. But that was the service that
Speaker 3: I had my family. And also his brother actually passed
Speaker 3: away in World War two. He was flying Easy Company
Speaker 3: and he wanted he was one of the planes that
Speaker 3: got shot down in World War two, but not much immediate.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, but they but they they were not happy.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, they wanted they they they and they
Speaker 3: wanted me to serve in a different way. Yeah, which
Speaker 3: and I believe in that that there's a million ways
Speaker 3: to serve your country. It's just for me specifically, the
Speaker 3: way I needed to be of service was that way.
Speaker 4: And you have to do that.
Speaker 5: I mean, if that's what you think about, you don't
Speaker 5: want to get to thirty and have ash in your
Speaker 5: mouth about I wish I would have.
Speaker 3: That was a thought going through my mind. And I
Speaker 3: feel like a lot of my life is based around
Speaker 3: like either way, it's gonna suck, right, no matter what
Speaker 3: path you go down. But that, to me was the
Speaker 3: type of suck that that I could live with.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily a bad thing, And I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know how you feel about it in like retrospect,
Speaker 2: but when I look back on it, yeah, they're good
Speaker 2: and bad for sure. But like you think that kid
Speaker 2: that had that dream that they were going to be
Speaker 2: an astronaut, I kind of got to do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, So no regrets, And it's easy. I
Speaker 5: think it's easy to talk shit about your time in
Speaker 5: the military when you did it.
Speaker 4: You know, when you did it, like it's like I
Speaker 4: get it. And then you know you can look at
Speaker 4: kids and go, I fuck, I don't do it. But
Speaker 4: if they have that same drive. Why would you discourage
Speaker 4: that because you did it and you know, and I can't.
Speaker 5: I mean, look, I'd probably have a family and and
Speaker 5: be you know happy that way too, But I can't
Speaker 5: imagine what my life would have been without the military.
Speaker 3: To me, it gave me a sense of community and
Speaker 3: a sense of principles and values to try to not
Speaker 3: not been successful in doing it all the time, but
Speaker 3: like as really yes, yeah, and having that for me
Speaker 3: was needed. I don't know about you guys, but like
Speaker 3: there were a ton of times where they're paying me
Speaker 3: to do this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to go in.
Speaker 3: A Chinook, a Blackhawk, this, this Striker is ours?
Speaker 1: Where this is just for our squad? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: Those moments, I like, so shoot us.
Speaker 2: Forward to to the deployment and you know, working with
Speaker 2: the Strikers. I mean those vehicles were relatively new at
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 1: What did you think of them?
Speaker 3: I know, okay, so for the purposes of counterinsurgency coin operations,
Speaker 3: I thought the Strikers were amazing. And also from what
Speaker 3: I heard about the dudes that had Bradley's that for
Speaker 3: our purpose, Like, I don't know if i'd want to
Speaker 3: be in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Deployed with a Striker necessarily.
Speaker 3: I mean I've heard good things there too as well,
Speaker 3: but for my purposes, yeah, okay, there were problems. The
Speaker 3: problems were the bottom of the vehicle was like a
Speaker 3: thin sheet of aluminum for armor on the bottom, and
Speaker 3: underneath that is the gas line. And so what we
Speaker 3: did was we laid down in large and also the
Speaker 3: hydraulic lines for the rear door.
Speaker 4: My pin.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, so you don't want to get out there,
Speaker 3: do you, because I don't know if you were thinking, well,
Speaker 3: if the vehicle gets blown up, you might actually we
Speaker 3: want to get out.
Speaker 4: Of it real quick.
Speaker 5: Can you for the viewers from mind, I know, can
Speaker 5: you tell us what a striker is totally?
Speaker 3: A striker is an eight wheeled not an infantry fighting vehicle,
Speaker 3: but they call it an armored fighter fighting vehicle or
Speaker 3: an interim fighting vehicle. So it's got a ramp in
Speaker 3: the back that goes down and you can fit between
Speaker 3: eight to eleven guys, depending on how comfortable you are
Speaker 3: with like sitting on each other's laps, so you could
Speaker 3: we at one point we had thirteen people in the
Speaker 3: back when we had a general come with us.
Speaker 1: But it's a fast moving goes up.
Speaker 3: To like I believe, eighty kilometers per hour, and it's
Speaker 3: got either a fifty caln on top or a Mark
Speaker 3: nineteen okay. And really the thing that sets it apart
Speaker 3: from like the Russian BTR is it's suite of sensors
Speaker 3: and communications devices.
Speaker 1: So the striker.
Speaker 3: Has the Blue Force Blue Tracker, which this thing was
Speaker 3: crazy when they're selling it to me. It's got it's
Speaker 3: basically well it's probably not that crazy.
Speaker 5: Now, but stuff like flear and and even pluggers like.
Speaker 1: It because it's to be encrypted. It's all got to
Speaker 1: be encrypted.
Speaker 3: Is it's so having everyone has GPS in their on
Speaker 3: their phone in their pocket, but but to have a
Speaker 3: GPS that is safe from being hacked into, and you
Speaker 3: can see where your friendly vehicles are on a map
Speaker 3: in Iraq, like there's the satellite systems are supporting all
Speaker 3: that that was crazy. And you've got comms where you
Speaker 3: can push to you can talk to your battalion headquarters
Speaker 3: and they can feed you in live intelligence as they're
Speaker 3: getting this info. Like it's this it's not just an
Speaker 3: armored vehicle, it's also the electric the systems that come
Speaker 3: with it, and right, we were just talking about FBCB
Speaker 3: two and how like, yeah, okay, kids might not be
Speaker 3: I think it's crazy, but it's it's encrypted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nuts, that's right. And Falcony was amazing at the time.
Speaker 3: FLEAR two is nuts because you can see your driver
Speaker 3: can see what the gunner can see. You could switch
Speaker 3: between views like and it's a remote control weapons system
Speaker 3: so it's got three sixty you know, just with a
Speaker 3: joystick and it's stabilized. So yeah, it's And we were
Speaker 3: the first guard unit to get strikers and we had
Speaker 3: full spectrum, so we were running our whole AO.
Speaker 1: We did everything from.
Speaker 3: Patrols to guard duty to you know, we we ran
Speaker 3: that that little piece of Route Tampa based.
Speaker 1: Like key leader engagements all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: So, uh, Fleer is forward looking IR Infra red, which
Speaker 5: it's the heat signatures and you can buy it off
Speaker 5: the shelf now, but back in the day, like it
Speaker 5: was magic.
Speaker 4: It was like, this is incredible.
Speaker 5: You know you can see, you know, the silhouettes of
Speaker 5: the people in front of you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys ever, I'm sure you've
Speaker 3: probably seen some tech that you're like, wait, we had,
Speaker 3: we can do that. There was the one thing that
Speaker 3: bugged me out with FLEAR was we also had I
Speaker 3: don't know if you guys ever had.
Speaker 1: This eagle eye. We called it the sphere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And so everyone in while we
Speaker 3: rotate through operating the Eagle Eye, and it's this like
Speaker 3: three hundred thousand dollars insanely high fidelity thermal camera that's
Speaker 3: hoisted up excuse me, like I don't know, two hundred
Speaker 3: feet in the air or whatever, and then you can
Speaker 3: see out three kilometers or something like that.
Speaker 1: There were blimps, but this is it's on a telescoping Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, it's so big, like a
Speaker 1: tent pole almost.
Speaker 4: That was like a periscope in a way.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, And it's up two hundred feet in the
Speaker 3: air or whatever, and we could and you could see
Speaker 3: out all the way down Route Tampa and every night
Speaker 3: you'd see dudes run out try to plant an ied
Speaker 3: out on the highway and then so you'd spin up QRF.
Speaker 3: But that was I'm like, wait a second, if we
Speaker 3: have these abilities, how long until this stuff like comes
Speaker 3: back home or like our government can we.
Speaker 1: Can do this?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Because you're looking into people's houses kilometers away. And as
Speaker 3: a nineteen year old back in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 3: I was like, this is magic, Like you said, it's yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a comment on how the technology diffuses and how
Speaker 2: quickly that happens. That back in those days, you know,
Speaker 2: we had this huge advantage because we were the only
Speaker 2: ones that had night vision, the only ones.
Speaker 1: Who had thermals.
Speaker 2: Once in a while you might pick up like some
Speaker 2: you know, like civilian bought version of night vision that
Speaker 2: you know, came out of a Cabela's catalog or something
Speaker 2: like that, but really we owned the night right, and
Speaker 2: I think for Ukraine and some of these other conflicts
Speaker 2: today that's no longer true.
Speaker 3: I talk about this a lot of times because this
Speaker 3: fascinates me, this idea of how do we get continue
Speaker 3: overmatch at night. And it's interesting what you see them
Speaker 3: doing with the XM seven and with the FWS or
Speaker 3: the XM one fifty seven, where they're now moving to
Speaker 3: where you're no longer using a Peck fifteen laser pointer.
Speaker 3: Everything is now thermal or piped into your optic so
Speaker 3: we no longer have to hopefully give away our position at.
Speaker 2: Least with the Peck I mean, is that networked with
Speaker 2: the other guys in the unit or is it just
Speaker 2: to help that one soldier with his marksmanship.
Speaker 1: So no one is using peck fifteens anymore, is the way?
Speaker 3: So we still, I think, have overmatch at night, but
Speaker 3: it's not the same anymore.
Speaker 1: That's not what it was. You're not going to have
Speaker 1: the IR strobe on your helmet, like yeah, yeah, yes.
Speaker 3: Or I used to walk around all the time with
Speaker 3: I had the PVS fourteens, which I see now what
Speaker 3: dudes are using with the white phosphorus and everything incredible.
Speaker 3: Whoa yeah, yeah, I'm walking around like falling into ditches
Speaker 3: and like almost shooting at cows because I can't see
Speaker 3: like three hundred meters ahead of me.
Speaker 4: So let me catch it real quick.
Speaker 5: So when we're talking about Pack fift team, we're talking about,
Speaker 5: you know, a laser pointer, but it's infrared, so you
Speaker 5: have to be wearing night vision in order to see it.
Speaker 5: So when you're rolling up on a target and their
Speaker 5: dude standing out, they have like fourteen lasers on them
Speaker 5: and they have no idea. It's amazing. But now night
Speaker 5: vision is cheap. It's a couple hundred bucks if that sometimes,
Speaker 5: And so you can't really do that anymore. So we're
Speaker 5: moving into this new arena of using the thermal imaging
Speaker 5: and things like that to do it fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: We just when we had we just walked around like
Speaker 1: with impunity.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I always the way I feel about it is
Speaker 1: like we.
Speaker 3: I was so lucky in this war because I didn't
Speaker 3: have to worry about airstrikes. I didn't have to worry
Speaker 3: about shooting at dudes with body armor.
Speaker 1: Like it's just the it was on another level.
Speaker 4: It was yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And a lot of times I would say, I'm like
Speaker 3: these guys, they're they're cowards. They're hitting us with IDs
Speaker 3: and then they're running away. They're not standing and fighting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of my squad.
Speaker 3: Mates said to me, he was like, dude, they're not
Speaker 3: Are we cowards for dropping bombs from forty thousand feet
Speaker 3: in the sky on them and not standing in the fight?
Speaker 3: Are No, They're they're smart. Yeah, Like, don't underestimate the anime.
Speaker 3: And when he said that, it like, like, oh, that's.
Speaker 4: Kind of happen. I fought the British a lot, you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: exactly right. Yeah, So.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, you know, talking about thermal
Speaker 5: makes me think of like kill TV. You know when
Speaker 5: you're watching like I don't know if you ever got
Speaker 5: into like a talk or a jock and we're able
Speaker 5: to watch like the AC one thirties or the A
Speaker 5: tens out there, and you know, seeing bad guys moving
Speaker 5: out out through a field thinking that they're completely you know,
Speaker 5: imper visible, invisible as they're like crawling along the ground
Speaker 5: or whatever, and it's like, we see you.
Speaker 3: So I called in an air strike one time, okay,
Speaker 3: or helped called in an air strike one time at
Speaker 3: a at our fob. So, I lived on a little
Speaker 3: joint JSS Joint Security station or cop combat outpost right
Speaker 3: outside Camp Toadgy. It's about the size of a football field.
Speaker 3: There's six guard towers around it, surrounded by tea walls,
Speaker 3: about forty Americans one hundred Iraqi police on it. And
Speaker 3: one night, well, I'm operating the Eagle Eye and I
Speaker 3: see guys out digging about two hundred meters away from us.
Speaker 3: And then the cop calls me up and they're like, hey, Cappy,
Speaker 3: you see guys digging out there, And yeah, Roger, I
Speaker 3: see them there looks like they're digging and they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: gotcha Roger that. Then I hear helicopters overhead over there,
Speaker 3: and suddenly I see like the sky rips open. It
Speaker 3: just it sounds and looks like lightning coming from the sky,
Speaker 3: and the apaches go full send with their thirty mic
Speaker 3: mic and they turn these guys to dust. And I'm
Speaker 3: watching through the eagle eye as they just get pasted.
Speaker 3: And later on that Age sixty four thermal camera makes
Speaker 3: the rounds around the unit and everybody's looking at it
Speaker 3: and like it's just crazy to see what the US
Speaker 3: military when, like when they take the gloves off, it
Speaker 3: just they one of the squads had to go out
Speaker 3: and like pick the pieces.
Speaker 1: Of these dudes up.
Speaker 5: So you've mentioned I want to get into you like
Speaker 5: you're moving to the cop because that's that's a unique experience.
Speaker 5: But I want you to tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about Route Tampa, Like what what does that mean and.
Speaker 4: What's the big deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's this popular meme about Rick and Morty where
Speaker 3: Rick asks this little robot for butter and the robot
Speaker 3: comes over and just gives him butter for his pancakes.
Speaker 3: And he's like, is this my purpose in life? And
Speaker 3: Rick is like, yeah, it is, and so my purpose
Speaker 3: in life, our whole unit's entire purpose, and why the
Speaker 3: US government spent whatever millions of dollars to keep us
Speaker 3: on Route Tampa is because that's the main supply route
Speaker 3: that runs north to south in Iraq. And if that
Speaker 3: route shuts down, then you know, if ID takes out
Speaker 3: that route and stops it, then all the supplies that
Speaker 3: get run through Iraq shuts down, so that there really
Speaker 3: isn't I mean, there's probably alternative routes that you can take,
Speaker 3: but as you know, there aren't many hardball roads through Iraq,
Speaker 3: so you're risking ending up stuck in the mud. And
Speaker 3: the supply trucks the logy. Really they got to go
Speaker 3: through Tampa because that's the paved highway.
Speaker 2: We were cool with Kuwait, but not so much with
Speaker 2: Turkey in regards to the war.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: With the supplies, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, because it's
Speaker 3: coming from the south. I'm guessing all the like the Rippets,
Speaker 3: because we're running on Rippets, running.
Speaker 5: On Copenhagen, and Rippets was the energy drink out there,
Speaker 5: and it was everywhere.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of warnings on the back of that,
Speaker 3: although worth every year that it took off my life, Yeah, slammed.
Speaker 3: But so yeah, it's like a monster if you injected
Speaker 3: some cocaine into it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you ever try a wild tiger? No? Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's another one.
Speaker 2: It's uh actually I wear the t shirts sometimes, but
Speaker 2: it's another energy drink in Iraq and uh on it
Speaker 2: is a tiger and it's like jumping off like and
Speaker 2: the little wine on it. It's total activation. And I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure there's stuff in there that's like illegal in
Speaker 2: the United States, you know, if we were to definitely yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: there are health codes being broken.
Speaker 5: So one of the challenging things about Route Tampa, like
Speaker 5: you said, it was the main road and for suplies
Speaker 5: and stuff, so you didn't just have like infantry on
Speaker 5: there like doing moved to contact. You had truck drivers
Speaker 5: out there, you had maintenance people out there, and they
Speaker 5: would get these massive firefights that would get hit by
Speaker 5: IDs vb IDs like.
Speaker 4: It was a very dangerous road a lot.
Speaker 3: So doing full spectrum operations, it was you know, three
Speaker 3: three days a week you're doing QRF, so you're responding
Speaker 3: to when they get hit. And that was one of
Speaker 3: the great things about the Strikers compared to the Bradley
Speaker 3: is they can roll out fast and there's not as
Speaker 3: much maintenance and the tracks aren't getting thrown as much,
Speaker 3: not as much.
Speaker 1: Wear and tear on them.
Speaker 3: So it was great for quick respond quick reaction force.
Speaker 3: And so a lot of our missions were a logistical
Speaker 3: train or logistical movement would get a convoy would get
Speaker 3: hit by an I D and then we would go
Speaker 3: out and respond, and that that's how so my company lost.
Speaker 1: We had one k I.
Speaker 3: A and that's that's how it happened. I wasn't on
Speaker 3: the mission that ended up with that KIA, but there
Speaker 3: was a response to to an I D and that
Speaker 3: was their TTPs. Basically, the enemy would hit the soft targets,
Speaker 3: they would hit the Iraqi police, the Iraqi Army, they
Speaker 3: would hit the logistical convoys. And a lot of our
Speaker 3: job was also route clearance. So we're just driving up
Speaker 3: and down that stretch.
Speaker 5: Yeah, looking for like kind of the old Polish mind
Speaker 5: sweeper type of thing, right, like route clearance, looking for
Speaker 5: IDs by running over them.
Speaker 3: And guess guess who is the guy that the Captain's
Speaker 3: like hey, go kick that can to see what that is.
Speaker 3: It's a hotspot in my thermal. The lowest ranking, youngest
Speaker 3: guy is the guy that they send out to go
Speaker 3: kick that that. So a lot of our missions would
Speaker 3: be the blimp. The blimp with the thermal would spot
Speaker 3: a hotspot and they would just roll QRF up at
Speaker 3: three in the morning, go check out that hot spot.
Speaker 3: And sometimes I would walk right past an ied and
Speaker 3: my squad leader in front of me spotted it and
Speaker 3: he was like, Cappy, stop, that's an ID. And it
Speaker 3: just I was just the luck of the dice. There
Speaker 3: wasn't they're all command wire, so it just happened. The
Speaker 3: guy wasn't on the other end of the wire waiting.
Speaker 1: For a vehicle, not a person. Well, so we followed
Speaker 1: the wire, no one was there.
Speaker 3: He was probably what we think is that he was
Speaker 3: waiting for probably the next day. So when it was
Speaker 3: daylight out, they were probably going to come the next day.
Speaker 1: I got I got.
Speaker 3: Lucky, so we didn't get hit on that. Just safari
Speaker 3: out into the hey go what is it called recomby fire?
Speaker 2: So let me take a quick break to let folks
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Speaker 2: And please also go check out We Defied the Lost
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Speaker 5: I also want to give a shout out to our
Speaker 5: our Tier one artist, Invader Girl Art over here. Check
Speaker 5: her out on Instagram, check out on Twitter. I promise
Speaker 5: you not just the painting. She has prints, she has swag,
Speaker 5: badass t shirts, she has a lot of stuff.
Speaker 4: You will not be disappointed.
Speaker 5: And as our resident art experty, we.
Speaker 1: Were just we were just all I was asking about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, but definitely check out Invader Girl Art.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Invader Girl Art dot com. Uh So, take us
Speaker 2: through the rest of that deployment. I mean, you had unfortunately,
Speaker 2: unfortunately a casualty on that deployment, but I mean what
Speaker 2: happened after that.
Speaker 1: That was very early in the tour.
Speaker 3: We had the he was shot in the head and
Speaker 3: it was pretty instant he returned fire.
Speaker 1: He was I mean, he went he the thing that
Speaker 1: he had two kids.
Speaker 3: It was upsetting for the whole unit in the Guard.
Speaker 3: It's like everyone had been training together, they'd been I
Speaker 3: believe they went to Kosovo deployment together, like he they'd
Speaker 3: all known each other in civilian life and for years
Speaker 3: and years. I was a refill into the unit, backfill.
Speaker 3: Like my whole squad, fourth Squad heavy Weapons. We were
Speaker 3: considered like the kind of ragtag spare parts army thrown
Speaker 3: together guys who had been reclassed from combat engineers and
Speaker 3: from cav scouts to make up this infantry unit. And
Speaker 3: just like yeah, put him in fourth squad. The guys
Speaker 3: from New York and Massachusetts. Toss him in the fourth squad.
Speaker 3: They'll go there with the two forty bravos, mak him
Speaker 3: carry that, and you know, put the FO and the
Speaker 3: medic with them too, and they'll be the MEDICAVAC vehicle.
Speaker 1: So my vehicle.
Speaker 3: Whenever there was a casualty, we were the ones that
Speaker 3: would then have to drive them to what was at
Speaker 3: Level three trauma care that was at the FOB because
Speaker 3: we had Level one.
Speaker 1: So there's only so much you can do there.
Speaker 3: So when guys, the first time I saw somebody killed
Speaker 3: in action was an IED strike that happened right outside
Speaker 3: the base.
Speaker 1: Woke us all up. Boom, shook the whole base.
Speaker 3: Then I see them running in dragging this Iraqi police officer.
Speaker 3: His brains are coming out the back of his head.
Speaker 3: And our medic who had been deployed before to Ramadi,
Speaker 3: was like really high speed, great type of medic that
Speaker 3: just lives for it, is very good at it his job,
Speaker 3: and he he treated the guy and then they would
Speaker 3: put him into our vehicle to drive him to the FOB.
Speaker 3: And I wasn't the CLS guy. That was my buddy,
Speaker 3: and he would do like they put the tube down
Speaker 3: the guy's throat, breathe for him. And that was early
Speaker 3: in the tour, because you know, they hit you early
Speaker 3: and then they hit you before you go. And the
Speaker 3: my my deployment in general, I always say, was kind
Speaker 3: of like I was really the average infrenchman.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a stellar soldier. I wasn't terrible.
Speaker 3: I was I was a regular grunt and I wasn't
Speaker 3: doing the super squirrel missions. I wasn't out, you know,
Speaker 3: I went on raids and kicked indoors, but it wasn't.
Speaker 3: I wasn't like SAF. I was the guy guarding saf
Speaker 3: and I was really there during a weird point of
Speaker 3: the war where it was the occupation phase. So we're
Speaker 3: not leading at this point. The whole messaging of coin
Speaker 3: is out. Petraeus's theories on coin are really sticking, and
Speaker 3: it was right after the surge. So it's more how
Speaker 3: do we, you know, work by with and through our partners,
Speaker 3: and how do we facilitate that. And if the mentality
Speaker 3: was we can't win this with bullets alone, it's the
Speaker 3: hearts and minds approach.
Speaker 1: So that's the part of the war that I'm.
Speaker 3: Really in and I'm not, you know, going out there
Speaker 3: and mercan dudes left and right. My my experience in
Speaker 3: Iraq is the occupation and the counter insurgency.
Speaker 1: Fase.
Speaker 3: So what we're doing is some of the missions are
Speaker 3: going out and handing out literal bags of one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars of cash, so we're giving that to.
Speaker 1: The Shakes so that they they don't come and kill us.
Speaker 1: And that was illegal as fun as we're doing, by
Speaker 1: the way, and.
Speaker 4: You weren't the only and actually FBI should be here
Speaker 4: in ten minutes.
Speaker 1: I didn't. Yeah, no, I kept a lot of the
Speaker 1: money myself. Don't worry that. I think it's legal when
Speaker 1: I pocketed. It's not like to put it on you
Speaker 1: or just on your unit, for sure.
Speaker 2: But the when Congress authorizes funds for reconstruction, its specifically
Speaker 2: for that issue. And what happened was that units did
Speaker 2: exactly what you described, is that they're hanging off shakes like, hey,
Speaker 2: don't go off for a unit, yeah, my picture go ahead.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, like my.
Speaker 3: Perspective and picture on it as a E two or
Speaker 3: three that I was mate, uh yeah, two or three.
Speaker 3: I didn't make specialists until after the tour, so like
Speaker 3: my perspective, I don't see you.
Speaker 1: Or I wish I had eyes into the whole.
Speaker 3: They're like they're like, hey, we're going to hit We're
Speaker 3: gonna hit this house. Yeah, and you're going to do this,
Speaker 3: and I like have the only thing I see is
Speaker 3: two feet in front of me. And that's the part
Speaker 3: of the reason why I love doing what I do.
Speaker 3: And the YouTube channel is like talking more about four
Speaker 3: feet in front of me, right, And what you're talking
Speaker 3: about is like, was that really a good idea?
Speaker 1: Was that good or bad?
Speaker 3: Because like I can understand the argument that we went
Speaker 3: in and we disbanded their military and we had maybe good.
Speaker 1: In the short term, bad in the long term.
Speaker 3: Well, it's just we should have created some opportunities for
Speaker 3: these people. We go in and we disband their army
Speaker 3: and we basically we're like, you have no way to
Speaker 3: make a living. And so, uh, when Iran and the
Speaker 3: Syrians come in and they say in the Chechen say like,
Speaker 3: if you fire at the Americans, we'll give you two
Speaker 3: hundred bucks. That so I'd rather you know, it's messed
Speaker 3: up because it's a huge waste of money and there's
Speaker 3: a ton of corruption and fraud that goes into that.
Speaker 1: Those shakes they give how much of that? How much
Speaker 1: did they keep?
Speaker 3: Because I saw their houses, Yeah, and I also saw
Speaker 3: the houses of the people that should have been getting
Speaker 3: the you know, the farming money.
Speaker 1: Indeed. Yeah, And so it's like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, what do you do? Like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: uh fucked.
Speaker 5: I'd like to I'd like for people to have some
Speaker 5: appreciation of what you guys were going through. Because both
Speaker 5: theaters had their own flavor, and then different areas had
Speaker 5: their own flavor and everybody had challenges, but but the
Speaker 5: challenges were kind of unique sometimes in those areas and
Speaker 5: Highway one, you know, when you guys are going out,
Speaker 5: were the where the Iraqi cops rolling with you guys
Speaker 5: most of the time.
Speaker 1: Yes, was almost always at.
Speaker 4: So they were were they?
Speaker 5: Because that's one of the things is is it's a highway,
Speaker 5: right it is it is the main highway. So when
Speaker 5: you're out there, so is the rest of the Iraqet population. Now,
Speaker 5: vehicle borne I with suicide bombers was a very big thing,
Speaker 5: and they they had no problem driving right into a
Speaker 5: convoy convoy and clacking off. So so it's a very
Speaker 5: it's it's a very stressful situation. You know, obviously probably
Speaker 5: the cops where you're out of perimeter and they would
Speaker 5: try and keep people back or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 5: you have a car coming up and you have to
Speaker 5: make a decision, right your gunner whoever's on there, has
Speaker 5: to make a decision do I shred this car?
Speaker 4: Is Is it a threat?
Speaker 5: It's it's they're not they're not paying attention to signs
Speaker 5: to say stay fifty meters back or is it a
Speaker 5: family and the dudes not just not paying attention and
Speaker 5: they don't care because they don't like you make up
Speaker 5: your own rules in Iraqi trafficking right, Yeah, Like it
Speaker 5: was a it was a very stressful situation. You see
Speaker 5: a bag on the side of the road, is that
Speaker 5: an id like you know, it's it's one of those
Speaker 5: things where that that route, that highway was a nightmare.
Speaker 5: And if you guys are on that all the time
Speaker 5: and operating all the time, like you never get a
Speaker 5: chance to relax.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the base, our base was right on the highway,
Speaker 3: so between Tampa and the tea wall is ten feet
Speaker 3: it's right there. It's a form a rocky police station.
Speaker 3: And there's a bunch of former Baptist government buildings around
Speaker 3: there that there's all like jade Am strikes into them
Speaker 3: from the invasion part of the war that you see
Speaker 3: the whole every building in Mushada is just shot to
Speaker 3: shit or collapsed roofs.
Speaker 1: Tampa, Yeah, Tampa is and we were right at.
Speaker 3: Like a junction between Tampa and Tarmia, which led to
Speaker 3: where the not the Euphrates, what was it?
Speaker 1: What's the river? Maybe it is the Euphrates.
Speaker 3: The river is about twenty kilometers so about headed towards
Speaker 3: that way was where our second cop was. So my
Speaker 3: tour I split between Tampa and then the second cop which.
Speaker 1: Was towards I might get it wrong. I think it's
Speaker 1: the Freddy's River.
Speaker 3: So we set up another patrol base in between basically,
Speaker 3: and this patrol base was, Oh my god, it's like
Speaker 3: it made it made Mushata look like luxury. Yeah, this
Speaker 3: patrol base was brand new setup. So we set up
Speaker 3: the tea walls, were burning our ship out there. We're
Speaker 3: getting one hot meal a day, which is rice that
Speaker 3: we cook in a pot, and we're sleeping in a
Speaker 3: chicken coop that has been gutted, and we've got a
Speaker 3: bunch of like cots on the ground really roughing it
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, Remote operator.
Speaker 2: So start to walk us through the conclusion of this
Speaker 2: deployment and redeployment back home.
Speaker 4: I have won that question during there.
Speaker 5: So you guys, doing a raid on a house is
Speaker 5: not something at least in the day. I don't know
Speaker 5: if it changed, you know, due to the war, but
Speaker 5: it's not something that you learn in infantry. Aiit right,
Speaker 5: that's all movement to contact or did you guys do
Speaker 5: compound type stuff in aiit.
Speaker 3: So by the time I went through boot camp in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, they're doing you know, Bawdrill six,
Speaker 3: they're doing close quarters combat okay, and raids are huge.
Speaker 4: Okay, So you guys didn't have to learn there on the.
Speaker 1: Ground, not entirely.
Speaker 3: No, So when we were in the box during mobile
Speaker 3: we practiced raids. And you know, because by the time
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight happens, like post surge, they know
Speaker 3: what we're going to be doing. They know we're going
Speaker 3: in and hitting houses, right, and raids to me are
Speaker 3: fascinating because it's I don't I want to say it's
Speaker 3: kind of a unique part of the war in Iraq
Speaker 3: and Afghanistan is these things that used to just be
Speaker 3: kind of an sfnician kind of get.
Speaker 4: Everybody has that. Everybody has it, yeah.
Speaker 3: Because and it's out of necessity of just there isn't
Speaker 3: just enough bodies and the stress that they put on
Speaker 3: SF and the pace that they worked them at. It
Speaker 3: just started being like this should be done by SF, really,
Speaker 3: but since we don't have the manpower for it, it's gonna
Speaker 3: also be done by like reclassed artillery. Men, so like
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like that's kind of what happened.
Speaker 3: It was like a backdoor draft almost where you've got
Speaker 3: National Guard dudes, because that was never really the idea
Speaker 3: for National Guard either was to be doing going and
Speaker 3: kicking indoors and making decisions that I feel like split
Speaker 3: second decisions like that you kind of want them to
Speaker 3: be made by by s at least, just like I'm
Speaker 3: talking off the top of my head. But those are
Speaker 3: tough calls and nothing is more stressful than a raid.
Speaker 3: The first raid I went on was a freaking nightmare
Speaker 3: of a clusterfuckus.
Speaker 1: As my view of the whole thing is.
Speaker 3: Just they show you like a map kind of print out,
Speaker 3: and they say the strikers are gonna come here and
Speaker 3: they're gonna drop you off. About the strikers, they're they're
Speaker 3: quiet compared to the Bradleys, so less likely, although the
Speaker 3: dogs will smell you from two miles away and they're
Speaker 3: barking already, So the ramp drops local dogs are barking,
Speaker 3: so everyone knows you're there. You get out of the
Speaker 3: vehicle and the first thing you see is your squad
Speaker 3: leader just yelling like, oh this way, go this way.
Speaker 1: And so we just kind of.
Speaker 3: Like run through a backyard and then you get up
Speaker 3: into the way the buildings are in Iraq. It's kind
Speaker 3: of like a courtyard. And the squad leader is saying,
Speaker 3: kicking that door. So he goes and and like you
Speaker 3: think in the movies that you just kick it and
Speaker 3: like it's just smooth as fuck, it's choreographed, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Now he kicks it and he's like, damn it, that
Speaker 1: doesn't open.
Speaker 3: And now you see like lights are turning her on.
Speaker 3: And on the second kick he gets the door in.
Speaker 3: And so I'm I think like the third guy in
Speaker 3: the stack, and we all go into the room and
Speaker 3: you think it's gonna be there's like bad guys and
Speaker 3: this and that, and it's just there's like kids, yeah
Speaker 3: and there, and they're like crying and you've got your
Speaker 3: your mag light on your flashlight and you're yelling get
Speaker 3: the fuck down.
Speaker 1: And really what you're doing is you're.
Speaker 3: Like like separating kids from their parents and trying and
Speaker 3: then them I guy that's attacked, she is going in
Speaker 3: doing the bats and hides and trying to look for
Speaker 3: the bomb, the bomb maker, because that's what the raids
Speaker 3: were we were basically getting intel that like there's a
Speaker 3: bomb maker here at this house. So we go in
Speaker 3: and then they tell us after we've gotten like we've
Speaker 3: locked down the house, and then they're like, okay, this
Speaker 3: was the wrong house, but I'm pretty sure it's like
Speaker 3: that one over there. So then we go we do
Speaker 3: it again. We kick in the door, they find some guns,
Speaker 3: they find the guy in the second house that we hit,
Speaker 3: and it's just I want to say, we're on the
Speaker 3: objective for like maybe what felt like twenty thirty minutes,
Speaker 3: and we got four dudes, blindfolded them, put them in
Speaker 3: the back of our striker, went back to our little
Speaker 3: patrol base and that's like that's all right.
Speaker 5: Well, would you pass them off to the Iraqi police
Speaker 5: at that point in time.
Speaker 1: Or Dave, I have a funny story for you.
Speaker 4: There you go, I'm down.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, we passed them off to the Iraqi place.
Speaker 4: They were back on the street the next day.
Speaker 3: No, please tell us almost worse. Like So, like I said,
Speaker 3: we're doing the rotating through the different roles. One of
Speaker 3: the jobs that you do is CP, where you're just
Speaker 3: sitting there doing guard duty basically for the command outpost
Speaker 3: at the bottom of the stairs. That station, which you do
Speaker 3: for like eight hour rotation, is right next to the
Speaker 3: Iraq Iraqi Police officers prison where we would have the guys,
Speaker 3: so they were torturing them there for like eight hours.
Speaker 3: You would hear them yelling and screaming, but it wasn't
Speaker 3: us doing it, it was the Iraqi police.
Speaker 1: And then to your point, the weird part is we're
Speaker 1: also truck bus.
Speaker 3: Loads of former insurgents are getting brought in the next
Speaker 3: day and then getting released because we're in the part
Speaker 3: of the war where it's like the draw down phase,
Speaker 3: so they're bringing as we're going and arresting guys. They're
Speaker 3: bringing in busloads of dudes that had been arrested before
Speaker 3: and then letting them go. And again this is what
Speaker 3: so I told you like that growing up, I was
Speaker 3: very pro Iraq war, and now by the end of
Speaker 3: the tour, I'm starting to feel more weird about it
Speaker 3: and not I never felt like screw America or whatever,
Speaker 3: like I'm gonna throw my right, you know, my uniform
Speaker 3: away and burn it or something. I'm proud of my service,
Speaker 3: but at the same time I felt weird about about
Speaker 3: because what we're gonna hold them indefinitely, right, because in
Speaker 3: war you don't do that. You don't just if you're
Speaker 3: fighting an opposing force, you don't just hold them prisoner forever,
Speaker 3: like it's a criminal are you fighting? It just started
Speaker 3: to feel when you're hearing them being tortured, what are
Speaker 3: we doing here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 4: And also seeing like bad guys back out on the street.
Speaker 4: It's like, what is the plan?
Speaker 5: Like why don't we have a pow camp like we've
Speaker 5: had them in you know, other wars where he's an
Speaker 5: enemy prisoner of war.
Speaker 4: He since the war out.
Speaker 5: You know, and but but it was just such a
Speaker 5: rotation there and it's like you know, going back year
Speaker 5: after years, like different leaders, different plans, but there but
Speaker 5: nobody really has a plan.
Speaker 2: So yeah, start taking us through like the end of
Speaker 2: this deployment and getting back home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the end of the tour.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm trying to think of how I just
Speaker 3: felt about like the last few months, and really it's
Speaker 3: just you're counting the days and you're phrasing it as
Speaker 3: like it's only fourteen more days and awake up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we when I get back home. The transition when
Speaker 3: you're in the Guard the transition is kind of weird.
Speaker 3: Any transition is is tough and weird, whether you're active
Speaker 3: duty or going back to drilling one week and a month,
Speaker 3: it's going to be a shock, and either way, more
Speaker 3: so for active duty guys, but even for guard it's
Speaker 3: weird in a different way because I'm one month I'm
Speaker 3: in the sand, and then two three months later, I'm
Speaker 3: back in college and I'm feeling the culture shock of it,
Speaker 3: and I'm feeling the hyper vigilance, I'm feeling on edge.
Speaker 3: I'm feeling the chip on my shoulder of like these
Speaker 3: students are complaining about being up at seven in the
Speaker 3: morning for class, like I had it so much harder.
Speaker 3: And it took me a while to get over myself
Speaker 3: a little bit and realize, like, oh, I went and
Speaker 3: did that, and I thought, so that they can complain
Speaker 3: about these petty things. That's ideally people are complaining about
Speaker 3: petty things and they're out at the mall, and ideally
Speaker 3: we're not spending every moment thinking about or appreciating people's service,
Speaker 3: like that's what we're fighting for. I eventually had to
Speaker 3: frame it as in my mind, and so the transition
Speaker 3: for me was difficult I you know, I went through
Speaker 3: a period of I think a lot of people you
Speaker 3: go through.
Speaker 1: Problems with drugs, problems with relationships.
Speaker 4: Were you still on the guard of this or were
Speaker 4: you out of the guard?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: First, the first day I got back to Iraq at
Speaker 3: four dicks, we fly in and my well, somebody, I really,
Speaker 3: somebody close to me, I gave me ecstasy the first
Speaker 3: day I was back and was like, this will take
Speaker 3: away all your stress and your problems. I'm nineteen, I'm
Speaker 3: not thinking about like this could also ruin any your
Speaker 3: benefits give you like this dishonorable, no zero tolerance policy screwed.
Speaker 3: I was fortunate that they didn't drug test me. But
Speaker 3: so just like years period of my life where I'm
Speaker 3: just trying to find purpose again that would even come
Speaker 3: close to matching to what I felt like the purpose
Speaker 3: I had and the community that I had when I
Speaker 3: was in the army.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's just, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I felt like I was drifting for years and
Speaker 3: years and not and feeling like really you know, feeling
Speaker 3: like they'll I'll never do something that important again.
Speaker 5: Yeah, based on what you're saying, you know, you cause
Speaker 5: you mentioned as you know, active duty I would say
Speaker 5: unless somebody comes right off the deployment on active duty
Speaker 5: and ETSS gets out of the military, I would say
Speaker 5: it's harder as National Guard, even if you're in the Guard,
Speaker 5: because you come back from a deployment acting judy. You
Speaker 5: come back from a deployment and you've got the routine.
Speaker 5: You've got your family and I mean your brothers, sisters, whatever.
Speaker 4: Like you've got.
Speaker 5: You've got your peer group and they're also your support group,
Speaker 5: so you've got that. Right, you come back off of
Speaker 5: combat deppointment of Guard and you're just Johnny on the
Speaker 5: block again.
Speaker 4: You don't have all.
Speaker 5: Those you know, you're not You're not sitting in the
Speaker 5: erics like bullshitting.
Speaker 4: With your bros.
Speaker 5: So the only thing I think that compares with would
Speaker 5: compare is that somebody came back from it to play
Speaker 5: an ETS right away.
Speaker 4: I think the Guard has a much rougher time with that.
Speaker 3: So the way I look at it is like the
Speaker 3: Guard they have higher suicide rates because of things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's I I think active duty. I would never I
Speaker 3: it's hard to compare the two. It's active duty has
Speaker 3: it's so hard in a different way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're.
Speaker 3: Right, Like that's a they specifically tell people in the
Speaker 3: Guard to not for that reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the thing about National Guard guys is they
Speaker 2: have a life outside of the military.
Speaker 5: But I think you've been gone for a year or
Speaker 5: so now you're coming back trying to reconnect to that life,
Speaker 5: and it's not easy.
Speaker 1: There's high suicide rates for that reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, yeah, the active duty has their own
Speaker 3: struggles because they've got like twenty years under the belt
Speaker 3: of just deal with that bullshor. Yeah, it's it's something
Speaker 3: that I think a lot of people didn't plan for, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because the Guard was never supposed to be or really
Speaker 3: wasn't supposed to be used in that way. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: it's something that I find interesting. I've researched kind of
Speaker 3: like the way the military, the different federalizes of the Guard. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the different kind of backdoor ways they avoided having to
Speaker 3: do a draft to support the war in Iraq.
Speaker 1: It was like contractors.
Speaker 3: People don't know that it was something like, you know,
Speaker 3: fifteen thousand or whatever, it was contractors that got killed
Speaker 3: in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was basically they just found
Speaker 3: ways to not have to make the American public feel
Speaker 3: the pressure.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, well, I mean everybody in the bureaucracy, the
Speaker 5: administrations and the military leadership were great at lying during
Speaker 5: the GWAT.
Speaker 4: You know, they lied to themselves, they light to each other.
Speaker 6: They so yeah, yeah, so so how how so you're
Speaker 6: back in art school, Like, how are you dealing I
Speaker 6: know you mentioned drugs and you know, just kind of
Speaker 6: the stark phase.
Speaker 4: How are you dealing with all this? Like what's what's
Speaker 4: your life like now?
Speaker 3: For a long time, not now now, but yeah yeah
Speaker 3: then at the time, you know, I I went to
Speaker 3: Brooklyn College, went back to my studies, went back to
Speaker 3: learning doing film again, and transferred from Brooklyn College to
Speaker 3: n YU, finished my studies to film school there.
Speaker 1: And from there I got very lucky.
Speaker 3: Got to go work at The Daily Show with John Stewart,
Speaker 3: which a lot of people don't know this, but John
Speaker 3: Stewart is huge fan, a huge like advocate for the military,
Speaker 3: tremendous nine.
Speaker 4: To eleven workers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you did a lot of work on the burn
Speaker 1: pain stuff. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He went and visited a to anytime somebody got wounded,
Speaker 3: he went and visited all those dudes that got wounded
Speaker 3: at Walter read my buddy who after my tour, went
Speaker 3: to Afghanistan. His friend got shot up while he was there.
Speaker 3: John Stewart went spent time with him, like the guy.
Speaker 3: Definitely the only reason they hired me was because I
Speaker 3: was a veteran, but just what an amazing experience getting
Speaker 3: to work there, and.
Speaker 1: So that kind of started me on.
Speaker 3: I learned there how to like churn out episodic contact
Speaker 3: content that was like, how do you keep the quality
Speaker 3: while keeping the pace, how you mix in jokes with
Speaker 3: education and you know, I didn't agree with a lot
Speaker 3: of what he said, sure, but amazing boss and amazing
Speaker 3: believes in what he says, and just incredible team that
Speaker 3: he had.
Speaker 5: I'm curious how many more years of college did you
Speaker 5: have when you came back.
Speaker 1: From you appointment degree?
Speaker 5: How like how was that for you, like relating to
Speaker 5: the students, relating to teachers.
Speaker 4: I'm very curious about that. Yeah, because you just got
Speaker 4: dropped into it right.
Speaker 3: Like there were times when there's a lot of students
Speaker 3: that you're getting you're getting very much given books on communism,
Speaker 3: and I'm not like this is just straight up we're
Speaker 3: going to learn about American history through the lens of communism,
Speaker 3: I'm as I'm saying, wait, why are Okay, I get
Speaker 3: critical lens theory, but this seems like, unless you know, you,
Speaker 3: unless you're really familiar with the material and the history already,
Speaker 3: you could very easily through critical lens misunderstand and just
Speaker 3: look at it like, yeah, wait a second, what is America?
Speaker 1: Why are revisionist history?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but we see.
Speaker 4: That now, like his very public opinion.
Speaker 3: But I think critical theory is great once you've understood
Speaker 3: the classics and you've really read all of that and
Speaker 3: you understood it and you get why what we have
Speaker 3: is the best system ever, Like at least I think that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: then okay, let's try to deconstruct it so we can
Speaker 3: make it better. But unless you have that foundation, which
Speaker 3: I didn't and most people don't, you're just left with
Speaker 3: this feeling of we're subverting and trying to tear apart
Speaker 3: this thing, and you're like, you start to question your
Speaker 3: own existence and your own like.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I found college to be frustrating.
Speaker 3: I would frequently butt heads with students, and fortunately I
Speaker 3: was still at a time when they wouldn't, you know,
Speaker 3: pull out the red card and say, you know, we're
Speaker 3: gonna tell on you.
Speaker 1: Which I hear that they're doing now.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I didn't get along and I felt like
Speaker 3: an outsider and it was a little bit my own
Speaker 3: fault for not handling it better.
Speaker 1: But I got through it. I finished it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just want to point out that that
Speaker 2: was a good experience for those students to be in
Speaker 2: that class with you and to hear a different person.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean they're right and you're wrong or right,
Speaker 1: they're wrong, you.
Speaker 4: Were right, but the communism sucks.
Speaker 2: Look, it's an important it's an important experience for them
Speaker 2: and and for you too.
Speaker 4: Did they know you're veteran.
Speaker 3: I would make people cry. They would I would, they
Speaker 3: would cry. What I was just you probably shouldn't have
Speaker 3: made them cry. But but I wasn't making them cry.
Speaker 3: I was like, I was just saying, you're just saying
Speaker 3: what I was just saying, like, yeah, it was I
Speaker 3: was never I would just say, you're you're.
Speaker 1: Having a contrary point of view.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, and that would make them cry alone, but yeah,
Speaker 3: you're you're right, And like, I'm glad that I had
Speaker 3: that experience.
Speaker 1: It's rough.
Speaker 2: It's rough that so many people because after you interrogated
Speaker 2: the topic.
Speaker 1: I saw the worst part of it. I feel like
Speaker 1: the Iraq War is one of the It's not it's
Speaker 1: not blind patriots, it's rough.
Speaker 3: It's it's a like you see the failings, yes, and
Speaker 3: yet I still feel like we have the best system.
Speaker 3: And you know, communism at this point, I think, no,
Speaker 3: everyone already knows that, Like even even the communist countries
Speaker 3: have adopted capitalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that's no longer.
Speaker 3: The argument now, I feel like is more about is
Speaker 3: authoritarian systems or its democratic systems more effective? And it's
Speaker 3: like there's an argument there, let's have that argument. Okay, valid,
Speaker 3: But so these students, it was frustrate me because like
Speaker 3: postmodernism is just so much of it in like NYU,
Speaker 3: it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's just it's like people are saying, why are we
Speaker 1: wearing suits? Isn't that just like kind of why even
Speaker 1: you know?
Speaker 3: And and I just don't even have the weaponry to
Speaker 3: articulate even and it's a good thought experiment. Why But
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that at the time, that's where everyone's
Speaker 3: head was at there, which I'm glad that.
Speaker 4: This about two thousand and.
Speaker 1: Also, I mean even from their own doctrine.
Speaker 2: It's a bit superficial to talk about the clothing, the cooking.
Speaker 4: But I don't think many of them actually know their doctrine.
Speaker 2: Like they pick up that's where it comes from, pieces.
Speaker 5: Of it and then go after whatever. Like the three
Speaker 5: meter target is a lot of times.
Speaker 3: It was the you know, so to answer your question
Speaker 3: of like when I knew that I was heading in
Speaker 3: the right direction was when I went I went to
Speaker 3: Starbucks one morning and I ordered it was like a
Speaker 3: frappucino with grande, and they forgot my whipped cream and
Speaker 3: I was upset.
Speaker 1: And I was like, you gave them a piece of
Speaker 1: your mind. I did.
Speaker 3: I was like, excuse me, you didn't put the sugar
Speaker 3: in my frapp loca whatever the hell? And I realized
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, I'm I can be upset about
Speaker 3: petty things again, right, And it was.
Speaker 4: Great, you can be. You can be you can have
Speaker 4: first world problems.
Speaker 1: Yes, you can have first and it was amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was like, Okay, I get it now,
Speaker 3: Like there I get that I shouldn't walk around with
Speaker 3: this chip on my shoulder and feel like I'm different
Speaker 3: than everyone else and like be a little.
Speaker 1: Bit I was in a way, I was acting like
Speaker 1: a victim in a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And victim mentality, I feel like, is the worst thing.
Speaker 4: And it's it's like self indulging. It like, yes, you
Speaker 4: get in a loop.
Speaker 3: Arah, Yeah, it's really it's ah, it's mastabatory. You're just
Speaker 3: like getting off on how hard you had right or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's self destructive. And do you know how I
Speaker 3: know it was self destructive was because living that out
Speaker 3: I was leading to just like shittier and shittier relationships
Speaker 3: and my life was it just like it wasn't leading
Speaker 3: to better outcomes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that's how I knew that. When I realized that,
Speaker 3: oh I can you know, not be so self indulgent,
Speaker 3: things were starting to get better for me.
Speaker 5: Did the teacher or not the teachers, well, the teachers, professors, whatever,
Speaker 5: But did the students know that you were a vet?
Speaker 4: Did they know? And did and how did? I'm curious how,
Speaker 4: especially in New York, because I've.
Speaker 5: Had some experiences in New York where I felt like
Speaker 5: people were actually afraid of me because they still think
Speaker 5: the uh post traumatic stress is like the nineteen seventies
Speaker 5: made for TV movie that dude goes postal.
Speaker 4: Did you, like, what was your experience with them knowing
Speaker 4: you were that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody knew that it was a veteran.
Speaker 3: Because I didn't let anybody not know, Like that was
Speaker 3: my that was my personality for a while.
Speaker 1: How can it not be. It's like such a huge
Speaker 1: part of your life.
Speaker 3: You're nineteen, that's you know, a pretty big fraction of
Speaker 3: your adult life.
Speaker 5: And not a peace time veteran either. You would just
Speaker 5: come back from a life changing event.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I I talked about it, and you know,
Speaker 3: I let people know I'm on ARAQ veteran. That's what
Speaker 3: That's what makes me special. That's like, yeah, that's my thing.
Speaker 3: That's that's how I get laid in New York City
Speaker 3: for a while.
Speaker 4: That worked.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because you're you're like, that's you're a little
Speaker 3: bit different, and you know you went over there.
Speaker 1: It's it to some people. Sure, sure, to enough.
Speaker 4: People, I guess, so.
Speaker 5: We're we're I'm sure there were, because obviously there's not
Speaker 5: a monolithic student.
Speaker 4: But did you find that they were open to it,
Speaker 4: resistant to it? Did they judge you positively negatively?
Speaker 5: Do they seek your wisdom, your guidance, your counsel, they
Speaker 5: call you baby killer.
Speaker 3: Now I butted heads with some people about it, but
Speaker 3: I was still trying to figure out how I've even
Speaker 3: felt about it.
Speaker 1: Right at the time, right.
Speaker 3: Most people really, God bless these the students, because you know,
Speaker 3: coming back from the Vietnam War, I'm sure a lot
Speaker 3: of those guys are getting told whether they're green cold,
Speaker 3: baby killers or whatever, they had it a hell of
Speaker 3: a lot worse than me, which is a lot of
Speaker 3: people at least go through the charade of I know,
Speaker 3: thank you for your service has been given a whole
Speaker 3: like I don't want to hear it, but I I
Speaker 3: love it in terms of like because whenever I meet cops,
Speaker 3: I realize that a lot of times I ask them
Speaker 3: uncomfortable questions and I realized, I'm like, oh wait, I'm
Speaker 3: asking I'm doing the same thing to this cop that
Speaker 3: like I didn't want. But really, what it is is
Speaker 3: just people are trying, they're stumbling through.
Speaker 1: These kids have no frame of reference.
Speaker 5: Give them a little bit of not just kids, but
Speaker 5: adult and nobody. If they haven't served, they don't know.
Speaker 5: Give them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 3: If they ask you if you killed anybody, don't be like,
Speaker 3: don't ask me, Just like they're trying to get to
Speaker 3: know you, and they're they're stumbling through doing it imperfectly.
Speaker 3: And so I try, especially now, to like let people
Speaker 3: be bad at talking about this, you know, let them
Speaker 3: like be awkward.
Speaker 2: It's kind of it's kind of incumbent, especially what all
Speaker 2: of us do today. It's a kind of incumbent on
Speaker 2: us to tell that story.
Speaker 5: And give them some grace, you know, give them some
Speaker 5: grace because these yes, I always you know, like there
Speaker 5: are the three standard questions, uh like were you in combat?
Speaker 4: Yes? Did you ever kill anybody? How did you get
Speaker 4: over it? You know?
Speaker 5: And I feel like I feel like I see it
Speaker 5: coming a mile away when somebody because there's that timidity
Speaker 5: or you know, they're they're kind of shy it up.
Speaker 4: They really want to.
Speaker 5: Know because it's it's an experience so far outside of
Speaker 5: anything they've ever known.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just that's you're right, Like they're just trying
Speaker 3: to learn more about it. Yeah, So help them learn
Speaker 3: more about redirect the question if you want redirected to
Speaker 3: a question that you want to answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe maybe they saw a couple movies and.
Speaker 7: Like that's the extent of Yeah, absolutely, And that's a
Speaker 7: huge part of the YouTube channel now that I do
Speaker 7: is is trying to bridge that gap between the civilian
Speaker 7: and the military and give the like you said, give
Speaker 7: people the grace, give.
Speaker 3: Them the leeway, and like the slack to ask stupid questions.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: You know, it's funny because you mentioned like the Vietnam vets,
Speaker 5: and I feel like there was so much like generational
Speaker 5: shame for the way they were treated that people were
Speaker 5: almost people were afraid to say anything like derogatory about
Speaker 5: service members.
Speaker 4: They might say, I don't like the war, but.
Speaker 5: I respect you because because I don't want to be
Speaker 5: the civilian, you know, spitting on a Vietnam vet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is to me, it's ironic because like, if
Speaker 3: you're gonna hate somebody, you actually should hate the Iraq
Speaker 3: Afghanistan veterans because we all volunteered to go do that shit,
Speaker 3: whereas like the a good portion of the Vietnam veterans
Speaker 3: got drafted. Right, So like, if you're gonna hate somebody,
Speaker 3: who actually should hate me? Yeah, because I volunteered and
Speaker 3: like full well knowing what I was.
Speaker 1: If anyone's guilty, it's.
Speaker 5: Me, And you know, I mean going out there and
Speaker 5: using babies as target practice.
Speaker 1: When we did, we didn't have you know, yeah, why
Speaker 1: do we do that? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think one of the things that people find interesting
Speaker 5: because you guys, you worked with the Iraqi police. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and like there's this idea, oh, out there killing brown people,
Speaker 5: like No, we were like working next to them to
Speaker 5: help them rebuild their country.
Speaker 1: That's how I wrote my That's why they took me
Speaker 1: into n y Us. I wrote that. That was my essay,
Speaker 1: was like we worked that.
Speaker 3: My my greatest ally was the Iraqis. Yeah, like I
Speaker 3: I have nothing but respect for the Iraqis. They wanted
Speaker 3: a better life for themselves and their their people. Like
Speaker 3: our interpreter, his name was Fox. He now lives in America.
Speaker 3: And what an amazing dude. I did a I did
Speaker 3: a tour. He did six years right as an interpreter.
Speaker 1: Just he didn't get to go home. No, he was
Speaker 1: what he was right, Yeah, like on the weekends or whatever.
Speaker 5: He didn't an to worry about like getting dimed out,
Speaker 5: getting tortured, right, getting rolled up?
Speaker 1: Right, So why he went by Fox? Fox wasn't his name?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And now God blessed that they did a lot of
Speaker 3: work to get him to the States. But yeah, the
Speaker 3: Iraqi people, you know, they weren't they weren't my enemy.
Speaker 4: So mentally, when does it start?
Speaker 5: I know you mentioned the I can have first war
Speaker 5: problems again, but when does sort of the burden of
Speaker 5: the war start to lift or does it like, how
Speaker 5: does that?
Speaker 1: I had hyper vigilance problems for a long time.
Speaker 3: I you know, I tried to fill the void with
Speaker 3: drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't because like.
Speaker 3: I killed people or I uh, you know, saw my
Speaker 3: friend die. It was because you're on edge for a
Speaker 3: year and you're you're living in this you might get
Speaker 3: killed reality, right, Yeah, yeah, And so it took me
Speaker 3: a long time to get over myself. It took me
Speaker 3: a long time to basically the most important thing is
Speaker 3: just finding that sense of purpose again. You know, it's
Speaker 3: very hard I think for veterans to replace something as
Speaker 3: as just monumental being a part of that. How do
Speaker 3: you again feel like your purpose is remotely as important? Like,
Speaker 3: and so you have to find a mission, whether it's
Speaker 3: your kids, your wife, your whatever. It is, like you
Speaker 3: have to have a purpose. Yeah, I learned, and I
Speaker 3: know that's cliche.
Speaker 4: But but it needs to be said again and again
Speaker 4: and again.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, because that really is there's no transition,
Speaker 5: there's reinvention, right that you have to you have to
Speaker 5: find something new.
Speaker 1: What was that for you?
Speaker 2: Like, how did that start to come about where you
Speaker 2: sort of found your way in the civilian sector tasking purpose?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was. I was a absolute.
Speaker 3: Mad man until the YouTube channel, until I started getting
Speaker 3: to interact with the viewers and put out when the video.
Speaker 1: I did the video, I would I don't care if
Speaker 1: three hundred people are watching. When three hundred people were watching,
Speaker 1: I was stoked. I was excited. That was amazing. Three
Speaker 1: hundred people were watching the videos.
Speaker 2: So you had your film background and then you apply
Speaker 2: for this job at task and purpose.
Speaker 1: That's why I applied because I was.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 3: So I did marketing for years for Cisco and IBM,
Speaker 3: and I was doing tons of videos for them, marketing,
Speaker 3: messaging and like just for the the top technology companies
Speaker 3: in the States, creating their marketing videos for like all
Speaker 3: of their biggest products for IBM and Cisco for years.
Speaker 3: After I left the Daily Show, and I felt empty because.
Speaker 4: So you're still going through it.
Speaker 3: Oh ye years, Oh God, through Cisco and IBM. Yeah
Speaker 3: I can say this now, but like I was a
Speaker 3: total drug addict and just mad man through my years
Speaker 3: of creating marketing videos for some of the biggest companies
Speaker 3: in the United States, like doing interviewing their c suite,
Speaker 3: doing all their biggest product launches, doing marketing for them,
Speaker 3: and I felt so empty inside because, like I just
Speaker 3: I didn't have much control over what I was saying.
Speaker 3: It's a IBM is a tremendous brand, Like you cannot
Speaker 3: be the voice of IBM, right, Like so, I when
Speaker 3: I saw this ad advertisement for do tasking purpose like
Speaker 3: a huge pay cut to go work for temp to
Speaker 3: uh do whatever you.
Speaker 1: Were merging film in your military back.
Speaker 3: That's why when I saw that advertisement, I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, this is a match made in heaven.
Speaker 3: Like I can use my film skills and I can
Speaker 3: also marry it with this my military background, and I
Speaker 3: had spent many years not wanting to talk about the military.
Speaker 1: Not I had never for years like I was the
Speaker 1: guy that I have.
Speaker 3: One time, my squad leader asked me, what's the name
Speaker 3: of the grenade launcher on top of the striker? And
Speaker 3: I blanked and he was like it's Mark nineteen, you
Speaker 3: idiot start pushing And I didn't, so like I wasn't
Speaker 3: the guy that was obsessed with military equipment. But when
Speaker 3: I started working for TMP, and I realized I love
Speaker 3: this stuff, like I love the maximum effective range of
Speaker 3: a weapon. I want to memorize that now, like and
Speaker 3: there were guys that had the Ranger Handbook and had
Speaker 3: that memorize. But once I started working for TMP was
Speaker 3: really when like I felt like I had a real
Speaker 3: purpose again because I was I was of service again.
Speaker 1: And it didn't start off that way.
Speaker 3: Like I was hired there as just an editor and
Speaker 3: I was putting together news hits of just b Roll
Speaker 3: and not even my voice. It was just like a
Speaker 3: text and b Roll put together for their Facebook channel.
Speaker 3: And I said to them, I said, hey, we should
Speaker 3: do some YouTube stuff. This thing is people are doing
Speaker 3: stuff on YouTube. It's just and they were it was
Speaker 3: like startup phase, so they were like, do whatever the
Speaker 3: hell you want. So I hated being in front of
Speaker 3: the camera.
Speaker 1: I hated it.
Speaker 3: Didn't want to do it, but I was like, I'll
Speaker 3: try it. And when I started, I was terrible at it.
Speaker 3: It was so bad, so.
Speaker 1: I couldn't read. I couldn't. I was trying to memorize everything.
Speaker 3: Here was this that you started twenty eighteen or nineteen? Okay,
Speaker 3: it was like right before the pandemic, and I was
Speaker 3: you want to know how bad it was. I was
Speaker 3: doing everything as a joke. I was doing everything. So
Speaker 3: I was doing like, yes, super tongue in cheek about
Speaker 3: so satirical.
Speaker 1: I was so funny and like it was going to be,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: I was just doing something on THET and somebody commented
Speaker 3: on one of the videos, and I'll never forget this
Speaker 3: comment because it changed my life. They said, why don't
Speaker 3: you tell me something useful about the striker? Why don't
Speaker 3: you tell me something about like the striker versus the BTR?
Speaker 3: And no one's thinking about the BTR back in twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen because.
Speaker 1: This was before that you wore in Ukraine. So but
Speaker 1: I took the comment to heart, some value added, Yeah, right.
Speaker 3: And so instead of just doing like jokes and just
Speaker 3: like satirical, I'll why don't I go and look up
Speaker 3: some information and like present it in a digestible format
Speaker 3: and just like swallow my pride a little bit and
Speaker 3: not do just what makes me happy and do what
Speaker 3: is of value to someone else? And lo and behold,
Speaker 3: like when you're of service to other people who knew
Speaker 3: that like that then just had some kind of reaction,
Speaker 3: and so we went from three hundred views per episode
Speaker 3: to two thousand views, and then two thousand views to fifty.
Speaker 3: We start talking about the XM seven rifle because what
Speaker 3: I did was when I was on guard guard tower duty,
Speaker 3: me and the guys, we would just kind of like
Speaker 3: bullshit about, Yo, you hear about this new rifle, like
Speaker 3: a six to eight millimeter. I don't know, six eight millimeters.
Speaker 3: That sounds kind of stupid, just you know. Or you
Speaker 3: sit there in guard tower duty and you start to
Speaker 3: talk about like who you think would win, like Israel,
Speaker 3: the IDF or the or the tenth or the tenth
Speaker 3: Mountain Division.
Speaker 1: It's just these kind of hype of you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about? Yeah, you just kind of this is
Speaker 1: what Infantrumen talk about. Yeah, you just you have these
Speaker 1: hypothetical conversations. So I started.
Speaker 3: Kind of putting those into a format and people started commenting,
Speaker 3: and the comments felt like purpose. It felt like there
Speaker 3: are people out there that are getting something out of this,
Speaker 3: and I felt like I was being useful and I
Speaker 3: felt like I had a reason to live again.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: How long did you stay in the Guard after you
Speaker 5: came back from your deployment?
Speaker 1: About three years. I got out briefly in so I did.
Speaker 3: I did a hurt, two domestic missions in New York City,
Speaker 3: did Hurricane Irene, and then Sandy. And Sandy was, oh
Speaker 3: my god, what a mess, like counter people doing looting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was at what was that hospital on the East
Speaker 3: Side on thirty third with the patient Bellvue. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: me and the Marine Reserves were in Bellevue when it
Speaker 3: got flooded for Sandy, and we're like bringing up gasoline
Speaker 3: as they're doing heart surgery on the fourteenth floor. And
Speaker 3: because the bottom generator, yeah, Sandy.
Speaker 2: Was everything like below fifty ninth Street the power got up.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So I stayed in the Guard for another
Speaker 3: I did a total of like five years in the Guard.
Speaker 1: So I stayed in.
Speaker 3: Longer because I loved it and I thought I wanted
Speaker 3: to deploy again, But the New York Guard ended up
Speaker 3: getting their deployment canceled. So I stayed in for a
Speaker 3: total of like at least another three or four years.
Speaker 1: Afterwards, When you.
Speaker 4: Were going to those drills and things. Was that like
Speaker 4: a reprieve for you.
Speaker 5: Was that because you're around the guys again, or was
Speaker 5: it bad because we're just doing a drill and it's
Speaker 5: not Iraq.
Speaker 3: The best thing about the Guard staying in it through
Speaker 3: that period was I didn't smoke weed.
Speaker 1: Like you can't smoke weed. I did.
Speaker 3: I'll I'll be honest, like I did the harder stuff
Speaker 3: because it only stays in your system for three days. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know, New York Guard had a zero tolerance policy.
Speaker 3: You're getting dishonorable or if I'm wrong, whatever, the you're
Speaker 3: losing your benefits, Like you're pretty screwed if you pop hot.
Speaker 1: So I didn't smoke weed. It kept me. It kept
Speaker 1: me with the guys. It kept me with the squad,
Speaker 1: that sense of community.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Doing doing the domestic missions was still a part of
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I did that up and I think I
Speaker 3: got out in twenty fifteen, fourteen, twenty fifteen or fourteen, So.
Speaker 5: During that time, we're still a good touchstone for you
Speaker 5: to kind of balance balance that everything else going on.
Speaker 3: It was good to get drug tested once a week
Speaker 3: or once a month. Yeah, it was good to like
Speaker 3: stay out, stay some kind of honest throughout living in
Speaker 3: New York City.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for that time period.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, get out and you you're transitioning into this
Speaker 2: video job full time right.
Speaker 3: Like three years later, right about yeah, about three years
Speaker 3: later after after working for IBM and Cisco, then at
Speaker 3: T ANDP, and it starts to blow up, it starts
Speaker 3: to just get like I still feel weird about it
Speaker 3: because I've never been the type of person that Now
Speaker 3: it's so nice where sometimes I'll I'll go to a
Speaker 3: shooting range in like Florida, and someone will walk up
Speaker 3: to me and be like, hey, do you host the
Speaker 3: Task and Purpose show? And it's the nicest thing ever.
Speaker 3: It's like it's it's it feels like meeting a family
Speaker 3: member that you haven't seen in years and you kind
Speaker 3: of have a connection. It's just it feels really great.
Speaker 4: Well, you guys have like your channel, I mean your episodes.
Speaker 5: I saw someone like six hundred thousand, Like, I'm sure
Speaker 5: you have bigger numbers than that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you are famous to a segment Internet famous.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, to a segments the distinction, but you are
Speaker 5: like if if there are like a million people out there,
Speaker 5: from all the countries whatever. A million two million people
Speaker 5: out there who know who you are. That's not nothing.
Speaker 1: My uncle doesn't know what I do. And there is a.
Speaker 3: Being Internet famous is like being not famous, and I
Speaker 3: the thing I like just about it is that it's
Speaker 3: I feel like, if you're like famous, famous, then a
Speaker 3: lot of people who, like anybody comes up to you, right,
Speaker 3: But if.
Speaker 1: You're Internet famous, the people that come up to you
Speaker 1: are the people. They're your people. Yeah, They're the people
Speaker 1: like you want, They're the people that you would love
Speaker 1: to hear from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And and they're the people that are going to
Speaker 3: come up and ask you about like, what do you
Speaker 3: think about the five five six versus the six eight
Speaker 3: by fifty one?
Speaker 1: Is it really a good idea? It's it's the nerds.
Speaker 3: That like, that's my people, that's my team.
Speaker 4: So what is your demograph? Your chief demographic?
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: So we're now at one point seven million subscribers, and
Speaker 3: there's a significant portion of that is the American audience,
Speaker 3: big also European audience and Southeast Asian audience as well,
Speaker 3: people from all over the world, people that are concerned
Speaker 3: about what's happening with China and Taiwan, people in the
Speaker 3: Philippines that are concerned about what's happening with their country
Speaker 3: and their borders and their economic exclusive zone. There's also
Speaker 3: people in Poland and in the United Kingdom who are
Speaker 3: worried about you know, like if you're in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 3: imagine I might get this rb you're France. Imagine if
Speaker 3: in Florida there was an invasion happening right now, that's
Speaker 3: like the same distance between the border of France and
Speaker 3: the border of Ukraine, about that same distance, Like you
Speaker 3: could drive that to Florida from if you're in New York.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people, yeah, all.
Speaker 3: Over the world who are concerned about different things that
Speaker 3: that that I find fascinating. I think in America, in
Speaker 3: the Western audience, we reasonably so don't worry about what's
Speaker 3: happening around the world because we kind of don't have to.
Speaker 1: We have that remove Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, there's uh, it's been, it's been amazing, it's.
Speaker 5: Are are there are there milestones or events that you know,
Speaker 5: like really stand out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So when I started talking about the NNGSW next Generation
Speaker 3: squad weapon that's replacing the M four and uh that
Speaker 3: those that was the first viral video when I started
Speaker 3: talking about that because that's something we used to talk
Speaker 3: about in the guard towers. And then six hour reached
Speaker 3: out to me and I got to be the first
Speaker 3: civilian to go and test fire. That got to go
Speaker 3: and test fire the true velocity the polymer cased ammo,
Speaker 3: which I was fell in loved with.
Speaker 1: That was really sick.
Speaker 3: I got got to test fire these webs I got
Speaker 3: to learn about like procurement, what even, what even is?
Speaker 2: The idea behind it is that the ammunition is lighter, right,
Speaker 2: so for.
Speaker 3: True velocity, their value add is that the ammunition is
Speaker 3: about thirty percent or I might get it wrong, but
Speaker 3: like it's lighter than brass casing, so you can carry
Speaker 3: more of it. But at the same time it's still
Speaker 3: same high powered weapons. So they're they're testing that with
Speaker 3: SF guys and firing off. Basically, what's because the advances
Speaker 3: in polymer technology and in manufacturing for polymer casings is
Speaker 3: you could now have instead of a brass casing, polymer
Speaker 3: case ammo, which is fascinating. There's a whole thing that
Speaker 3: goes into it about it.
Speaker 2: It's interesting too with the concept of like green ammunition
Speaker 2: that there have been a couple I think there have
Speaker 2: been a couple of different efforts to replace lead in
Speaker 2: the bullets with something that is quote unquote green and
Speaker 2: they but they haven't been able to find something that's
Speaker 2: as consistent.
Speaker 1: I thought they did it. I thought graphite.
Speaker 3: Really, I don't think the I don't think our bullets
Speaker 3: are made of lead anymore.
Speaker 1: I think it's graphite, really, so they replaced it.
Speaker 3: I might be wrong, but my understanding is that they
Speaker 3: replaced all because we could look it up. But I
Speaker 3: believe they replaced a lot of it with GRAPHI yeah,
Speaker 3: you could be Yeah, I mean exactly what you're talking.
Speaker 1: It's not just so a lot.
Speaker 3: The thing that's funny about like the environmental concerns is
Speaker 3: the environmental a lot of time aligns with economic concerns,
Speaker 3: and I think you would find shocking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, anytime the defense industry. I have a theory.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go on record and say that I
Speaker 3: have a theory that any time that a environmental concern
Speaker 3: you hear from the military industrial complex probably also aligns
Speaker 3: with economic concern I.
Speaker 1: Don't think that's so far.
Speaker 5: So to bullshit, and like game do game theory here,
Speaker 5: Like you know, we're always sold on the idea the
Speaker 5: five five, six, seven six two.
Speaker 4: It's a NATO round, so everybody has it.
Speaker 5: So if a big war pops off logistics procurement, you know,
Speaker 5: supply like it's not an issue.
Speaker 4: Do you feel that, with these new.
Speaker 5: Rounds coming on online, this explointing stuff like that, that
Speaker 5: they still have that manufacturing capability to back up a.
Speaker 4: You know, is this something that NATO might move to eventually?
Speaker 5: Do you think that they had the manufacturing capability to
Speaker 5: back up a major push Somewhere?
Speaker 3: Lake City, Utah is where they produce about five billion
Speaker 3: rounds of five five six a year, and SIG is
Speaker 3: now moving to produce more of the six to eight
Speaker 3: AMMO at scale, and they're creating new manufacturing processes in Jacksonville.
Speaker 1: Oh god, where's Jacksonville? Is that Kentucky?
Speaker 3: But they're setting up new plants to basically start to
Speaker 3: produce at scale the six to eight. And so I
Speaker 3: want to tell you about some feedback that I got
Speaker 3: from the guys on the ground. I put out a
Speaker 3: video recently about the six eight and the feedback from
Speaker 3: the soldiers, and it's fascinating in that So the PAOs
Speaker 3: they published this guy, this guy, They gave out the
Speaker 3: six to eight and GSW a bunch of troops test
Speaker 3: fired it. The PAOs are the ones that are kind
Speaker 3: of the gatekeepers of the feedback. They published in Army Times,
Speaker 3: Military dot Com, a bunch of other bunch of publications,
Speaker 3: all of the positive feedback about how it blasts through
Speaker 3: cinder blocks and the troops love it.
Speaker 1: For the X Y and Z.
Speaker 3: I published this video and then I get a you
Speaker 3: could look it up. I get a bunch of hate
Speaker 3: from a couple of dudes who are like, why did
Speaker 3: you cherry pick my quotes? Why did you only mention
Speaker 3: the positive things that I said? And I'm like, dude,
Speaker 3: I'm only open source. I only look at what the
Speaker 3: pos published. What only the military dot Com and Stars
Speaker 3: and Stripes and all these publications get access to.
Speaker 1: So somewhere along the line their negative feedback.
Speaker 4: Was interesting, Yeah, shocking. Yeah.
Speaker 3: If you look on Reddit, this one soldier has a
Speaker 3: ton of negative feedback and he was pissed at me,
Speaker 3: and understandably.
Speaker 2: Shockingly, here the Public Affairs is just putting out army propaganda.
Speaker 1: Who can't believe it? Who knew? And in my video,
Speaker 1: I mentioned the same thing.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I got the I got the three three
Speaker 3: twenty grenade launcher, and I was like, this thing's a
Speaker 3: piece of garbage.
Speaker 1: But I doubt that Army Times or whoever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but but you read like the stories and
Speaker 2: yeah in the Army Times like this is a game changer,
Speaker 2: This changes everything.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean to I don't mean to dump
Speaker 3: on like any publication, but all I'm saying because I
Speaker 3: don't really I really don't think it's Army Times or whoever.
Speaker 3: I just think that it's like the PAOs that control, right,
Speaker 3: because the.
Speaker 1: Army Times are only getting quotes from the PAOs. So basically, the.
Speaker 3: Public affairs officer is only publishing the positive. The one
Speaker 3: line that this guy was like, it's fucking is amazing
Speaker 3: at this thing, right, And he was rightfully pissed at
Speaker 3: me for parroting this quote without digging deeper.
Speaker 1: And so, okay, here's what I think.
Speaker 3: XM seven soldiers love that has extra range, extra firepower,
Speaker 3: but they hate that it's a pain to maintenance. It's
Speaker 3: a pain in terms of recoil and in terms of way.
Speaker 3: So but you're not going to read that in Stars
Speaker 3: and stripes po is never going to let that go through.
Speaker 3: And of course, like if you look at the M sixteen,
Speaker 3: the teething problems that it had, they kind of like
Speaker 3: swept that under the rug, but the.
Speaker 1: M sixteen worked out. Yeah, so it's tough. It's tough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's one of these things, like the M
Speaker 2: sixteen is a good example right now, also the Vetoll
Speaker 2: vertical takeoff and landing with the osprey. It's like, are
Speaker 2: these technologies that are going to pay dividends in the
Speaker 2: decades to come. You know, right now it might be
Speaker 2: kind of a shitty capability, but ten years, twenty years
Speaker 2: from now, like it actually is a game change or
Speaker 2: it actually does change things in the wars of the
Speaker 2: future hopefully.
Speaker 1: What would you think about the five five six Do
Speaker 1: you like or how do you feel about the six
Speaker 1: eight by fifteen?
Speaker 2: I have some boomer views about this stuff. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think the seven six two is kind of where
Speaker 2: it's at for a rifle. I'm not a huge five
Speaker 2: to five to six guy. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: five five six there is a lot to be said
Speaker 2: for it. Uh, it's lighter, so you can carry more
Speaker 2: of it. It has been great for the types of
Speaker 2: wars we've been in the last twenty years, you know CQB,
Speaker 2: not not just the round but also the platform, the
Speaker 2: M sixteen platform. It's been great for that type of fighting.
Speaker 2: But at range, I think you might want a little
Speaker 2: bit something more, uh than the.
Speaker 1: Five five six.
Speaker 2: But then there are all sorts of like arguments and
Speaker 2: counter arguments about like is the is the rifling in
Speaker 2: the barrel over accuratizing the round? Is the is around
Speaker 2: moving too fast for what we're trying to accomplish, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're getting range, but it's not doing the type of
Speaker 2: damage when it enters the body, like it's just zipping.
Speaker 1: Through with minimal tissue damage. There's all the all these
Speaker 1: different arguments. But yeah, I'm I'm more of.
Speaker 2: A seven six ' two and maybe maybe six point
Speaker 2: five is the compromise.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you another question, so, uh, if I'm
Speaker 3: not mistaken, did you did some sniper work?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So what are your thoughts on training and average inforturement
Speaker 3: to shoot out to eight hundred meters or six hundred meters?
Speaker 1: Are that reasonable?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I think that I think six. I think that it's
Speaker 2: completely possible, but that is advanced marksmanship training. It takes
Speaker 2: some time, and absolutely I think that you could take
Speaker 2: any infantryman and get him to that point, but that
Speaker 2: takes advanced training beyond what we can teach in basic training.
Speaker 3: Even with the x M one fifty seven scope, Like,
Speaker 3: no matter what scope you get, So I feel like
Speaker 3: you're absolutely right that even if you give them this
Speaker 3: like insane computerized scope, the fundamentals of shooting in terms
Speaker 3: of like in terms of like trigger squeeze, heart rate,
Speaker 3: and breathing. I don't care how good of a scope
Speaker 3: you give, if you give the right scope to somebody
Speaker 3: who understands those fundamentals, because I'm somebody who's not a
Speaker 3: great shot, but like you're, you've done sniper school and
Speaker 3: all that. If you give an infantryman who doesn't understand
Speaker 3: those fundamentals, like a six scope, are they gonna be
Speaker 3: able to hit?
Speaker 2: I I totally believe you can get them there. I
Speaker 2: think that you can train them to do like dual breach,
Speaker 2: multiple teams CQB on a house, like, you can get
Speaker 2: them there, but it takes additional time and training, And
Speaker 2: the question is always is the army willing to invest
Speaker 2: that is the Army.
Speaker 5: Gonna are you talking about when you said infantrymen, are
Speaker 5: you talking about every infantryman coming out of a.
Speaker 3: Tue Dave David, I'm talking about every infant so every
Speaker 3: swing not even like so snipers. We don't like talk
Speaker 3: about this, but like there's a lot of there's a
Speaker 3: lot of dummies that are in eleven Brava there are
Speaker 3: they're like, there's also a lot of incompetent troops. There's
Speaker 3: a certain amount of infantrmen who can be snipers, who
Speaker 3: can hit targets at eight hundred meters. They're they're the Army,
Speaker 3: I feel like is hedging their bet that, like the
Speaker 3: fifty seven is gonna let so the a COG, for instance,
Speaker 3: let people who have no business hitting targets.
Speaker 2: As Americans, we love technological solutions, We absolutely we love technology.
Speaker 5: So I'm going I'm gonna approach this actually from a
Speaker 5: different angle because the Marine Corps boot camp is four
Speaker 5: weeks longer than the Armies. But the Marine Corps does
Speaker 5: because I went through both Army and Marine Corps boot camp,
Speaker 5: and the Marine Corps does marksmanship right. You spend a
Speaker 5: shit ton of time snapping in which is just learning
Speaker 5: the formations for your slings and sitting in front of
Speaker 5: a barrel and dry firing or you know. And I
Speaker 5: think if you wanted to have that capability of consistently
Speaker 5: not everybody, because some guys were just bad shots, they
Speaker 5: just are, but teaching the proper fundamentals, I think you
Speaker 5: can do that in four weeks where with the right platform,
Speaker 5: the right scope, stuff like that. And again we're not
Speaker 5: talking about calling wins or anything else like that right
Speaker 5: on a perfectly still day, I don't know about I mean,
Speaker 5: what's the M A for the for the rifle and round?
Speaker 1: So this was the other thing.
Speaker 3: This was the other thing that people So this guy
Speaker 3: got so pissed at me for publishing this video, and
Speaker 3: I told I get it. I fuck, I get it,
Speaker 3: man like so he h, so the m A for
Speaker 3: the XM seven is between a three and a four.
Speaker 3: Well no, but he said he also said he was
Speaker 3: like a lot of times it's a one point eight.
Speaker 1: So the way he said it was that the m
Speaker 1: A was a one point eight.
Speaker 3: But sometimes it'll throw a random shot, It'll just throw
Speaker 3: it because the PSI on the thing is yeah, eighty thousand,
Speaker 3: So he would he said that every like third or
Speaker 3: fourth shot, this is just he said. He qualified it
Speaker 3: by saying that, like he's not an amazing shot, and
Speaker 3: his buddy was shooting like a two point eight, but
Speaker 3: that occasionally he would see a shot thrown at like
Speaker 3: three or four MA, which the M four is a
Speaker 3: four M a weapon and the XM seven supposedly between
Speaker 3: like I know this is a big range, but between
Speaker 3: one point eight and three.
Speaker 5: So for people who might not be aware of the terminology,
Speaker 5: MLA is a minute of angle, and it's one inch, right,
Speaker 5: one inch or one one inch for every hundred yards
Speaker 5: or a mile. Yeah, yeah, one inch for every hundred
Speaker 5: yards of accuracy. So if you shoot one hundred yards,
Speaker 5: you're round based on that that uh, that round and
Speaker 5: that rifle combination is going, it'll have a one inch
Speaker 5: spread of where you may hit.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a cone that is opening up the
Speaker 2: further you get. So one inch at one hundred meters,
Speaker 2: two inches at two hundred meters, and.
Speaker 5: So so it's a four MA four minutes of angle
Speaker 5: would be four inches at one hundred right, that's kind
Speaker 5: of unseat, yeah, and then yeah, and then eight inches
Speaker 5: at two hundred and then then we start Yeah, he says,
Speaker 5: it's like a one point one point between.
Speaker 1: A one point eight two point eight, and then also
Speaker 1: there's like a random throut. So so here's the thing.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because the M sixteen was a piece of
Speaker 3: garbage when it first came out right total trash, but
Speaker 3: then over the decades became a really like refined weapon.
Speaker 3: So it's tough to tell are they refining it? Is
Speaker 3: this the teething problems, It's really tough to tell.
Speaker 5: It's I mean, and then and then like even on
Speaker 5: the like the M four platform, where you start getting
Speaker 5: you know, different upper you start getting different things that.
Speaker 4: Because you you can hit six hundred with an M four.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, do we have questions for uh
Speaker 2: from mister Chris.
Speaker 4: Are there a lot of in your opinion?
Speaker 5: Are there a lot of parts of this gun that
Speaker 5: can be improved?
Speaker 3: The way I would look at the XM seven is
Speaker 3: that it's a platform, it's a system, and it's also
Speaker 3: a bet on what the.
Speaker 1: Future of the future war is going to look like.
Speaker 1: So what we.
Speaker 3: All experienced in g WATT is like very different than
Speaker 3: what the near peer war is going to be. The
Speaker 3: army is betting that we're not going to be kicking
Speaker 3: indoors and yelling at kids saying get down, get down.
Speaker 1: That's not the future of war.
Speaker 3: The future of war against China and Russia is that
Speaker 3: building has already been flattened, and that you're not doing
Speaker 3: CQB is that you're in combat right, and your standoff
Speaker 3: is your advantage and your overmatch, and you might be outnumbered,
Speaker 3: but you can see not only with drones. Drone warfare
Speaker 3: is going to allow you to identify targets way further out.
Speaker 3: So now your platoon, through your little drone that you
Speaker 3: shoot up, sees that the enemy's eight hundred meters away,
Speaker 3: and now because of that, you can engage the enemy
Speaker 3: for three three hundred meters before.
Speaker 1: They can even engage you.
Speaker 3: That's the idea they're making a bet, I think is that,
Speaker 3: and if they fully adopt the XM seven, it becomes
Speaker 3: the seven and it's fully adopted two hundred thousand rifles.
Speaker 3: If that happens, the army believes that that bet is
Speaker 3: worth it, and that that's what the future of warfare
Speaker 3: is going to look like. They might be wrong, they
Speaker 3: might be right. Whatever I don't I don't know, but
Speaker 3: that's what they think. And I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people forget that it's not just the XM seven, it's
Speaker 3: the XM two to fifty.
Speaker 1: XM two fifty is.
Speaker 3: Four or five pounds lighter than the saw has a
Speaker 3: minute of angle that's easily you know, it's a three
Speaker 3: minute of angle versus the saw is like a twelve or.
Speaker 1: Something minute of angle. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Six it's like this. It's not just a rifle, it's
Speaker 3: also a whole squad. So to me, the NNGSW.
Speaker 1: Program is about betting on the future of warfare more
Speaker 1: than just a rifle. It's a system.
Speaker 5: So do you think that when these because pas are
Speaker 5: geting their marching ordership somewhere right, do you think that
Speaker 5: it's that that they just want to give this because
Speaker 5: I don't know. I get kind of cynical about the
Speaker 5: government sometimes, like okay, who has the contract is trying
Speaker 5: to butter this up? But do you think it's just
Speaker 5: more a matter of wanting to give this time to breathe?
Speaker 1: There's billions of dollars on the line.
Speaker 3: We can't attend we can't pretend like there isn't billions
Speaker 3: of dollars on the line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look at where these cgs retire to and boards
Speaker 2: of directors that they get on board with afterwards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't end up with the UCP camouflage pattern
Speaker 3: for no reason, Like you don't end up with a gray,
Speaker 3: weird camo pattern instead of like multiicam is amazing now,
Speaker 3: But how did we end up that.
Speaker 2: This week that they're talking about replacing the Army pt uniform?
Speaker 2: Like there should be a Department of Justice investigation on
Speaker 2: the Department of Defense and these uniform changes that they
Speaker 2: make every year and a half, two years, Like it
Speaker 2: is straight up criminal negligence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: The there's always the balancing act between the military industrial
Speaker 3: complex is a real thing. Yeah, and also there's real
Speaker 3: threats to us, so it's like, uh, you always got
Speaker 3: a balance