Speaker 1: Special Operations, Cobert Ops Espionage, The Team House with your
Speaker 1: hosts Jack Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to episode one and seventy three of
Speaker 2: The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park.
Speaker 2: Our guest tonight on the show is Chad McCoy. Chad
Speaker 2: spent his entire career really in Air Force Special Operations
Speaker 2: with twenty fourth Special Tactics Squadron served as a PJ
Speaker 2: para rescue men. And we're really excited and happy to
Speaker 2: have you here in our studio tonight.
Speaker 3: Man find out here. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks,
Speaker 3: I think you stabbed today, so I'm healthy and happy.
Speaker 4: It's the rocks out here that'll get you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, uh, I mean word again, I mean we
Speaker 2: kind of like, uh shot the ship a little bit
Speaker 2: before we started the show. And I mean your biography
Speaker 2: and career, I suspect is too extensive to even fit
Speaker 2: in one interview, but we'll try to.
Speaker 3: Hit some of the highlights. Some of the highlights, yeah,
Speaker 3: and talk.
Speaker 2: Hit some of the things you'd really like to get into.
Speaker 2: I'd really like to hear first off, you know, sort
Speaker 2: of what your path was, you know, growing up as
Speaker 2: a kid and what like sort of took you towards
Speaker 2: the air force?
Speaker 4: What was your origin story?
Speaker 3: The superhero your you know, so you talk to a
Speaker 3: lot of kids of our generation, right, and we grew
Speaker 3: up playing the woods, you know, sticks as guns, wearing camouflage,
Speaker 3: going to armonies, serve for the stores, and buying where
Speaker 3: we could, you know, canteens a waste. That was the
Speaker 3: the culture, that was what we were enamored by. I
Speaker 3: was exactly the same way, you know, my brother and
Speaker 3: I were in the woods you make, and forests and
Speaker 3: throwing pinklaan grenades, you know. And so, uh, you're also
Speaker 3: an amorurby movies, you know, and so you know the
Speaker 3: movies that were kind of formative for me were you know,
Speaker 3: the same as everyone else you look at like I
Speaker 3: want to be Rambo, right and uh and probably a
Speaker 3: lot of Navy seals became Navy seals because of the movie.
Speaker 3: You know, it was awesome, and so we kind of
Speaker 3: had a culture there for a while that was kind
Speaker 3: of glamorizing the military experience and specifically the special operations experience.
Speaker 3: And so all I wanted in my life was to
Speaker 3: wear all you know, ballaclava, hav An MP five in
Speaker 3: a flight suit. That's all about rappel through skylights all
Speaker 3: I want in life. And you know, once I got
Speaker 3: the balaklava, it wasn't very comfortable, and MP five wasn't
Speaker 3: very you know effective.
Speaker 4: Them is hot as hell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but but you know, that was what I
Speaker 3: was aspiring to be as a young man. And you know,
Speaker 3: I had a normal, you know, semi normal childhood. But
Speaker 3: as I grew up, I don't want to join the military.
Speaker 3: And I was probably, you know, seventeen years old. I
Speaker 3: was in Hawaii. It was a surfer. It was you know,
Speaker 3: you know, some punk kid in Hawaii, skateboarder, surfer. And
Speaker 3: I was enamored by special operations. And this is before
Speaker 3: the war, right, this is before nine eleven, So I
Speaker 3: had no context what war was. I didn't know how
Speaker 3: real it could be. I just knew it was kind
Speaker 3: of sexy, right and so and pair rescue was one
Speaker 3: of the few jobs in the military that was always
Speaker 3: kind of employed, right, you know, regardless of war not.
Speaker 3: They were rescuing people outside of the mountains, they were
Speaker 3: jumping in the middle of the ocean. They were badasses
Speaker 3: to begin with, and you know, icing on the cake
Speaker 3: was maybe if a war kicks off, I can go
Speaker 3: do that stuff too. But but it was this like nineties, right,
Speaker 3: and so you know that was kind of leading up
Speaker 3: into me going to the military. So not to get
Speaker 3: ahead of it, but you know that was kind of
Speaker 3: the genesis of it. Was I wanted to do something
Speaker 3: exciting and cool and and recruiters are you know listening
Speaker 3: to this? Is that the things ours was enamored by
Speaker 3: was you know, guys putting their kid out there and
Speaker 3: showing me scuba tanks and you know, guns and you know, motorcycles,
Speaker 3: Like that's what That's the life I want, you know,
Speaker 3: and you can get it in a number of different ways.
Speaker 3: You know, you can go be a ranger and do
Speaker 3: all the same things. You can go be a seal,
Speaker 3: you can be in Green beret. You know, no one
Speaker 3: really has really cornered the market on the coolness. They
Speaker 3: all have it. It's just you know, how accessible is it.
Speaker 3: And and per rescue was the quickest way just to
Speaker 3: be canning with you was the quickest way to get
Speaker 3: all those things grafted the bad Yeah, and it sounds cheat,
Speaker 3: It sounds like cheating, but you know, it was truly.
Speaker 3: I can go to scuba school, I can go to
Speaker 3: you know, I went to Key Wes, you know, special
Speaker 3: Forces Combat High School as an eighteen year old. You
Speaker 3: don't get that in the army, right, You're a senior guy.
Speaker 3: You've cut your teeth, you proved yourself, and you actually
Speaker 3: want to do that crap. And I knew I could
Speaker 3: get those things off the bat. Went the free Fall
Speaker 3: School as a you know, eighteen. I turned nineteen at
Speaker 3: Freefoll School, and so that's not normal. Maybe it's normal today,
Speaker 3: you know, it's more accessible today, but back in the day,
Speaker 3: it wasn't. And so that was the path I chose.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was one of the big things, especially pre
Speaker 5: g Watt is that CCT and Para Rescue. They had
Speaker 5: that pipeline line. It was stacked, it was lined up,
Speaker 5: and it was.
Speaker 4: The envy schools. It was the envy of every other
Speaker 4: special operation.
Speaker 2: It was still contentious, you know when I went for
Speaker 2: sure around two thousand and eight or two thousand.
Speaker 6: And nine, because you know, you guys have a pipeline
Speaker 6: right in there.
Speaker 2: I mean to have an entire Special Forces team MFF
Speaker 2: team qualified.
Speaker 3: It's pretty difficult to do.
Speaker 2: It's not easy to get those slots, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: can definitely see why it's appealing to it.
Speaker 3: No, so I felt that. I felt that as a
Speaker 3: young guy going through school school with zero batters on
Speaker 3: my chest. Right, maybe I was an e too, and
Speaker 3: my I was dive team number two in Scooba school.
Speaker 3: It's a big deal, right in one and two and three.
Speaker 3: And you know the guy that I was, my my partner,
Speaker 3: was a crusty like you know, Special Forces E seven
Speaker 3: And I'm a namur by this guy, right, I'm like,
Speaker 3: he's he's legit. I am nothing. I'm a punk that
Speaker 3: was in high school last year and here I'm going
Speaker 3: to Special Forces scuba school and I don't deserve to
Speaker 3: be there. And they reminded us that every day. You know,
Speaker 3: Airport fuge, you know, and air Force got a bad
Speaker 3: rap because you know, we go in there and we
Speaker 3: smoke these things. But it was because our selection was good,
Speaker 3: and so you had like really talented guys at the
Speaker 3: top of the food chain going through these courses and
Speaker 3: they crushed them, you know. And but we were a
Speaker 3: bunch of pricks, you know, we were young guys, we
Speaker 3: were you know, arrogant and uh but yeah, for sure,
Speaker 3: we probably deserved everything we get. You know, we had,
Speaker 3: so you're.
Speaker 4: You're basically seals but with the ability to back it up.
Speaker 3: No, man, that's a joke. It's a joke. I went
Speaker 3: through I went through, uh the eighteen delta course, the
Speaker 3: true eighteen delta courses soccam with a bunch of Seals
Speaker 3: and a bunch of eighteen deltas and there was a
Speaker 3: bunch of pjs back when we're going through there, and
Speaker 3: you know, you had the Seals around the perif why
Speaker 3: they're like, you know, screw these guys, and the eighteen
Speaker 3: dollars was like, screw all these guys. And here's the
Speaker 3: Air Force guys going, we just want to get through this.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: We went back step like this is just the thing
Speaker 3: for us, you know. But so what year did you
Speaker 3: go through selection? Uh so, nineteen ninety eight, back when
Speaker 3: it was hard, last hard course course, last hard course.
Speaker 3: You know, I was thinking about the other day. We
Speaker 3: say that about stuff, and we I think we kind
Speaker 3: of believe it, right because I kind of believe that
Speaker 3: it was harder back then. I don't know if that's
Speaker 3: true or not, you know, we'll kind of go through
Speaker 3: the progression of my career. But like I ended up
Speaker 3: running selection training at the unit, and the guys we
Speaker 3: were bringing on were better than us. They were. Was
Speaker 3: it harder, maybe not, but were they better? Yes? We
Speaker 3: were better at selection. We're better at selecting the right people.
Speaker 3: And so it's kind of funny to look back and think,
Speaker 3: like back in the day, it was like who is
Speaker 3: the hardest? And you could just get through hard things?
Speaker 3: But does that make the best operator? It doesn't. It
Speaker 3: makes a guy that's really good at carrying heavy things, right,
Speaker 3: And here I was trying to blend in with those
Speaker 3: those hardcore guys you know, and you know, fake it
Speaker 3: till I make it. But but yeah, so a lot
Speaker 3: of growth through the process.
Speaker 5: So for the people who don't know anything about Air
Speaker 5: Force Special Operations, can you sort of give us the
Speaker 5: lay And it's changed over time too, I guess, but
Speaker 5: can you give us the way out of what it
Speaker 5: was when you were there and what it's become now.
Speaker 3: I'll give you a better history lesson. I'll try to.
Speaker 3: You know, someone will fact check me on it. But
Speaker 3: you know, so PJS grew out of kind of necessity
Speaker 3: in Korea, jumping in, jumping in docks behind me lines
Speaker 3: and moving people out kind of like the hard way, right,
Speaker 3: and so there were you know, I guess, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of a crew way to put it, just guys
Speaker 3: with big balls that would jump out of airplanes and
Speaker 3: do hard stuff and so willing to risk their lives
Speaker 3: for others. And so that was kind of the genesis
Speaker 3: of this. And so Vietnam kind of was the galvanizing
Speaker 3: kind of environment for pjs, and they just did hard
Speaker 3: stuff all the time. Man like you guys are in
Speaker 3: a tick, you know, a bunch of SF dudes or
Speaker 3: conventional you know, army guys. They were gonna the guys
Speaker 3: are gonna go to the hoist under fire and try
Speaker 3: to take out their casualties. And you know, Vietnam's you know,
Speaker 3: was a good, you know, kind of litmus test for
Speaker 3: you know, being a speck ops guy. You know, the Seals,
Speaker 3: Green Berets, they all cut their teeth there, right, And
Speaker 3: so here pj's were. They were one offs. You know,
Speaker 3: they're these guys that just were kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of the rebels of the Air Force for sure,
Speaker 3: but their job morphed into protecting aircrew, and so it
Speaker 3: became this kind of safety net for for aviators. So
Speaker 3: I'm gonna fifteen pile I'm flying. And here's a really
Speaker 3: good example is you know the Gulf War, you punch out,
Speaker 3: a PG is coming to get you, right, and you
Speaker 3: know he's going to come with an armada. Not only
Speaker 3: Hilicotter's a tens flying with him, and so it's it's
Speaker 3: a legit package come with him. So pj's morphed over
Speaker 3: the years and then the g what happened, and then
Speaker 3: it was the chance for pj's to say, hey, man, like,
Speaker 3: what do we want to be when we grew up?
Speaker 3: Because this is no kidding the test and so that's
Speaker 3: going to have the conversation, Oh it's great.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're we're did I read somewhere that a lot
Speaker 5: of the the pjas the power rest uman in Vietnam
Speaker 5: were they former Did they draw on the smoke jumpers?
Speaker 5: Is that or am I just making that I've never
Speaker 5: heard that before movie.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that the CIA drew on some
Speaker 2: of those guys for some of their ops in like
Speaker 2: Laus during the Vietnam conflict, But.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of them woul kind of just
Speaker 3: floated back and forth. There was a lot of that
Speaker 3: going on. Was like hey man, yeah you can do
Speaker 3: where it's up, Okay, let's go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of like sheep dipping back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the but the larger picture of Air Force
Speaker 2: Special Operations also includes there's j tax, there's CCTs.
Speaker 6: Okay, tell folks out there a little bit about how
Speaker 6: that works.
Speaker 3: Everyone knows. I got a lot of love for the CCTs,
Speaker 3: and so at the twenty fourth stso CTS and pj's.
Speaker 3: The Air Force is terrible at branding, so we have
Speaker 3: a lot of acronyms. You have also have tag pece, right,
Speaker 3: and so as ranges you guys at attack pees conventional
Speaker 3: forces get tack pece. But there's also soft tag piece
Speaker 3: and so we have those. They're great, They're excellent, they're
Speaker 3: excellent j tax. But CCTs were initially designed to do
Speaker 3: kind of austere ATCs air traffic control basically stand up
Speaker 3: a remote site and bring air aircraft in like out
Speaker 3: of their rucksack. Yeah, remote airfield. So well, you look
Speaker 3: at Desert one, right, there were the guys bringing in
Speaker 3: those aircraft and that was kind of the genesis of it.
Speaker 3: But then it became okay, there's a necessity to have
Speaker 3: these guys call close air support and can they do
Speaker 3: it really well? A high level absolutely can, And so
Speaker 3: they kind of repurpose them. And so over the past,
Speaker 3: you know, over the past twenty years, they repurpose them
Speaker 3: to be excellent j tax and you know, they're just
Speaker 3: badass dudes. They could get the job done. They could
Speaker 3: bring in you know, your your infil Xville, but also
Speaker 3: called casts, you know, manage ir and so kind of
Speaker 3: jack of all trades as well, you know, and so,
Speaker 3: and then you got pjs who traditionally come from the
Speaker 3: rescue side. So you have rescue the air force, and
Speaker 3: their their job is to rescue pilots, that's it. And
Speaker 3: so they do it and they're they're the best at it,
Speaker 3: you know. They you know, come in helicopters, they jump
Speaker 3: out of airplanes, they do the NASA mission, I mean,
Speaker 3: they do the rescues off McKinley. I mean, they're everything, right.
Speaker 3: But then within soft you take those pjs and you say,
Speaker 3: how do we purpose these guys to support ground forces
Speaker 3: more effectively? And so in the early days, Desert one
Speaker 3: is a good example when you start building up jsock.
Speaker 3: They realize that, hey, man, we can use pjs and
Speaker 3: be these kind of these this enabling force that protects
Speaker 3: our guys and provides confidence to ground force commanders to say, man, like,
Speaker 3: if anything happens, that you guys are gonna do it.
Speaker 3: And a good example that is black Hawk Down. You know,
Speaker 3: we had pjs there that went down and and guys
Speaker 3: I had the the man It's it's hard to put
Speaker 3: this into words, but like when I was a young man,
Speaker 3: I looked at you know, these magazines and I saw
Speaker 3: guys like Tim Wilkinson and Scottie Fails, and I was
Speaker 3: enamored by them. And then I got to meet them
Speaker 3: in person and and and then become have a relationship
Speaker 3: with them. That's so cool, which was amazing to me,
Speaker 3: And it probably wasn't amazing to them because I'm a nobody, right,
Speaker 3: but like for me, it was a big deal. And so,
Speaker 3: but those are the guys that put themselves in harm's way.
Speaker 3: They're kind of the lesser known portion of black Hawk
Speaker 3: Down in the story of uh, you know, Gothic Serpent.
Speaker 3: But they, you know, they risk their lives to save
Speaker 3: others and cut those guys with those helicopters, and so
Speaker 3: you know, then the the Assault Force understood, holy crap,
Speaker 3: these guys are really good this. We can use them
Speaker 3: on the maritime missions, we can use them on these
Speaker 3: helo soft forces, and so they became kind of a necessity,
Speaker 3: you know, over time. Yeah, and correct.
Speaker 2: Me if I'm wrong anytime I say something dumb here,
Speaker 2: But twenty fourth STS is the unit that encompasses some
Speaker 2: of these different personnel and capabilities. Unlike you know, maybe
Speaker 2: some of the other soft units does this do they
Speaker 2: act as like the force Provider and they shoot off
Speaker 2: these attachments to seals, rangers or their missions.
Speaker 3: They do yeah, yes and no. So they do both, right.
Speaker 3: And so in the early days of Iraq and Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: we were basically running combat certain rescue for the task
Speaker 3: force and so I was a team layer for those
Speaker 3: you know, those those task forces, and my job was
Speaker 3: to protect a certain region of Iraq. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: when you had halfs going all night, you know a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of helos flying back in the day,
Speaker 3: and the one sixtieth was very, very busy. They were
Speaker 3: getting on more on anybody, and my job was to
Speaker 3: protect those guys, not on the aircrew, but everyone else
Speaker 3: is on those you know those uh you know those
Speaker 3: infill and x fil you know birds, and so you know,
Speaker 3: that was a primary mission of our unit. And then
Speaker 3: on top of that, we would basically adule pj's and
Speaker 3: controllers out to the Army and Navy and so, and
Speaker 3: that's where it gets kind of exciting, right because everyone
Speaker 3: wants to be part of that. You touch that magic,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of magic there, right. And so
Speaker 3: you know pj's controllers. You know, it sounds like pejorative,
Speaker 3: but they were commodities for a while. And so and
Speaker 3: that's not a bad thing to me because you're on
Speaker 3: the best missions and you're with the best operators, and
Speaker 3: so my job is to be the best PJ with
Speaker 3: them and protect them and save their lives and uh
Speaker 3: and think ahead of problems as they happen. And so
Speaker 3: and the comic controller is running. I mean he's the
Speaker 3: busiest guy on the target. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: He's got multiple radios going multiple aircraft. Maybe he's calling casts,
Speaker 3: maybe he's calling you know a black HLC to ring.
Speaker 3: You know, casually is out and the has a cool
Speaker 3: job because if no one gets hurt, you got a
Speaker 3: pretty sweet gig man because you're running down on the
Speaker 3: best of them, and then when someone gets hurt, you
Speaker 3: refocus man, and that's your your primary task. And so
Speaker 3: so yeah, it's it's a it's a different, different gig man.
Speaker 4: So with the Air Force.
Speaker 5: With we'll talk about periscue because I don't know about CCT,
Speaker 5: but it's has sort of that seal structure.
Speaker 4: Right, there's the white side.
Speaker 5: Uh, Para rescue who before GAT were the busiest special
Speaker 5: operations folks were. They're doing mountain rescues in Alaska. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they're doing the mountain rescue. They're doing incredibly heroic stuff
Speaker 5: out at sea like they had a real job all
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 4: Even the guard bums.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the perfect storm man. Yeah, and Long Island. You know, guys,
Speaker 3: the guys in Alaska are the biggest badass pj's right,
Speaker 3: because they're the guys that are going to jump into
Speaker 3: a remote DZ and rescue somebody and like overland for
Speaker 3: three days and you probably killed bears with a bear hands.
Speaker 2: I don't know, a couple a couple of them, I
Speaker 2: think just last year did a free fall jump in
Speaker 2: Alaska to go rescue some a dude that straded out
Speaker 2: there and jump right out into the snow drifts.
Speaker 3: They do a lot, they do a lot, and the
Speaker 3: guys here in Long Island do a lot of jump
Speaker 3: missions out to see you know a lot of the
Speaker 3: you know, merchant vessels that they call for help. These
Speaker 3: guys will hang. They literally risked their lives for others.
Speaker 3: And so when I joined, that's what I joined to do,
Speaker 3: and I was hoping that the combat side of it
Speaker 3: would come eventually. And you know, so I I was
Speaker 3: first stationed. I think you guys want to talk about
Speaker 3: selection a little bit, but I was first stationed in
Speaker 3: Las Vegas, and we went out to Northern Watch, which
Speaker 3: is uh, you had Northern Watch and Southern Watch, and
Speaker 3: basically it was a bracket around Iraq for no fly
Speaker 3: zone and so our job Northern Watch in Turkey was
Speaker 3: to protect those fighters that were forcing that. And so
Speaker 3: in my mind, I was in combat, right, I'm in
Speaker 3: full kid. I got all these magazine I had so
Speaker 3: many magazines. They had under rounds on me. I don't know, man,
Speaker 3: but you know I was. I thought I was John
Speaker 3: Rambo and I was going to go save anyone who
Speaker 3: needed me right, But the fact is that you're just
Speaker 3: a safety net and you know, we hadn't really started yet,
Speaker 3: and so you know, it's kind of an interesting kind
Speaker 3: of transition to what the GAT became because I didn't
Speaker 3: have any experience, you know what I mean, I wasn't nobody,
Speaker 3: and so yeah, it's interesting. Man.
Speaker 5: So with so, and I don't I don't mean any
Speaker 5: sort of disparagement when I call everybody not in the
Speaker 5: twenty fourth like the Vanilla side or you know, like
Speaker 5: Vanilla pjs, But what is their wartime mission as opposed
Speaker 5: to the twenty fourth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they've got a great mission, man. So there,
Speaker 3: you know, they have dedicated assets. You have h A
Speaker 3: sixties h hh being the Air Force variant of rescue, right,
Speaker 3: you have dedicated SE one thirties, you know, HC one thirties.
Speaker 3: You have basically these task forces deploy to become stand up,
Speaker 3: turnkey rescue recovery. And so you know, for the past
Speaker 3: twenty years they've been everywhere, you know, they've been co
Speaker 3: located with US, and so my job would be protect
Speaker 3: task force assets. Those would be to convention, you know,
Speaker 3: protect everybody, right, And so if it didn't fall under
Speaker 3: our purview, they would be the ones that take care
Speaker 3: of it. And so it's not necessarily like I'm better
Speaker 3: than you. It's a different mission. And so you know,
Speaker 3: you know, we we use the term you know, White
Speaker 3: Side for you know, kind of conventional soft where Seft's
Speaker 3: not conventional. But you know that's the term we use.
Speaker 3: But they did a lot of great things, and especially
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan, you know, they did a lot of rescues,
Speaker 3: a lot of notoriety with you know, special Forces teams
Speaker 3: that they came in and save. But when you talk
Speaker 3: about you know, kind of the tip of the spear,
Speaker 3: when you kind of neck it down to mission, it
Speaker 3: becomes a little bit more exclusive, right, and so it's
Speaker 3: a smaller club of people, and you know that's by design.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a different selection process, which I'm sure
Speaker 3: we'll talk about, different training, and also different understanding of
Speaker 3: assets available. And that's usually the differentiator between White Side
Speaker 3: and Tier one, right, it's assets. You know, operators. You know,
Speaker 3: you can teach a guy to shoot really well and
Speaker 3: do all these things, but what assets do you have
Speaker 3: available to you? And so when you have dedicated casts
Speaker 3: every every target, you have a one thirty every single night,
Speaker 3: which people don't have and and I'm used to that.
Speaker 3: I'm like, we don't have ac went there. How we
Speaker 3: gonna go out right? And how do we do this
Speaker 3: because you know what we're gonna tick, you know and comment.
Speaker 3: You know, White Side guys are like, yeah, man, we'll
Speaker 3: just fight through it, and you know Tier one guys like, well,
Speaker 3: we got to just drop it and we'll move on, right.
Speaker 5: But yeah, that's that's already strike exactly. So tell us
Speaker 5: about like, did you did anybody warn you what selection
Speaker 5: was gonna be, did you work up, did you train
Speaker 5: for it?
Speaker 4: And what did you think when you got there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's it's kind of funny. I'm my own
Speaker 3: worst enemy. Everybody knows me, knows that. And when nine
Speaker 3: eleven happened, I was in the I was in Okinawa.
Speaker 3: I was actually with a good buddy of mine. We
Speaker 3: had a we're having a typhoon party. It's what you
Speaker 3: do in Okinawa when you have typhoons. And my buddy,
Speaker 3: Nick mccaskell is a good friend of mine. He was
Speaker 3: like a E five at the time and I was
Speaker 3: a E four. His family was on the mainland and
Speaker 3: invited me over. We're gonna have a typhoon party. And
Speaker 3: so we're drinking these things called white dogs. It's like
Speaker 3: like Koreean yogurt and like soju, and we're tearing it up, man,
Speaker 3: just the two of us. You know, no purpose, just
Speaker 3: that's what you do, right, And we watched the world
Speaker 3: Trades that happen wow and together, and remember sitting on
Speaker 3: the couch watching it. I'm like and I'm trying to
Speaker 3: rationalize it. I'm like, oh, I must be beacons and
Speaker 3: the towers and I'm like trying to make sense of it.
Speaker 3: And then you start see more and more like holy crap.
Speaker 3: And then he starts getting all these phone calls and
Speaker 3: I didn't. So I was at a rescue squadron and
Speaker 3: he was at a special tactic squadron in Okanawa, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, you're getting calls. I'm getting calls like you
Speaker 3: guys don't want me. And here I was this, you know,
Speaker 3: I thought I was this pipeiting guy, and when nine
Speaker 3: to eleven happened, I assumed i'd be a part of
Speaker 3: whatever the response was. And I was in the Pacific
Speaker 3: and I wasn't. And we started doing oh yeah, Philippines,
Speaker 3: which was a thing okay, And we had a U
Speaker 3: A forty seven out there that crash, Yes.
Speaker 6: I remember it was a one sixtieth bird went down.
Speaker 3: I had, you know, a couple of friends on there,
Speaker 3: One Riddell and Bill McDaniel. Bill McDaniel was a teammate
Speaker 3: of mine in Vegas, and uh, it was a big
Speaker 3: moment for us, right because it was I was the
Speaker 3: young guy. I never dealt with tragedy, right, and I
Speaker 3: was like, holy shit, these guys are dead and h
Speaker 3: Then they said, hey, when did you guys go to field?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I'm in and I'm going to war,
Speaker 3: you know again probably you know six hundred magazine. I
Speaker 3: don't know whatever it had on me. And we go
Speaker 3: out there and we think we're going to war, and
Speaker 3: it was this kind of like posture and it was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: there's things going on here, but we don't know what
Speaker 3: you guys can do. How do you contribute to that?
Speaker 3: And so it was really frustrating for me as a
Speaker 3: young guy because I started reading Stars of Stripes when
Speaker 3: nine eleven happened, and I started, you know, reading about
Speaker 3: these SF guys they're going with like, you know, shooting
Speaker 3: forty millimeterre of the mountains and getting these ticks and
Speaker 3: pulling back, and I'm like, that's what I signed up
Speaker 3: to do. And I'm in the Pacific, and so I
Speaker 3: did a you know, I was stuck out there. I
Speaker 3: was stuck. I was PCs out there. I had a
Speaker 3: you know, another at a commitment for another year, and
Speaker 3: I was miserable and ended up getting an ulcer. Like
Speaker 3: I end up getting ulcer as a you know, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty year old or twenty whatever whatever it was.
Speaker 4: Do you think you were going to miss it?
Speaker 3: I was just I just want to be a part
Speaker 3: of it. Yeah, And I was like, this is the war.
Speaker 3: This is I mean, and war is romantic, you know,
Speaker 3: to a young guy who was playing war in the woods.
Speaker 3: I wanted to test my metal. I wanted to see
Speaker 3: what I was worth. And so there was only one
Speaker 3: way to get there, right, I could roll the dice
Speaker 3: and PCs and hopefully go to a unit that was deploying,
Speaker 3: where I could get out and go contract to Blackwater,
Speaker 3: right because black Ward was the thing back then. Or
Speaker 3: I could go to twenty fourth Sts, which I knew
Speaker 3: was going to deploy. You knew you were going to
Speaker 3: war if you went there. The problem was I wasn't nobody.
Speaker 3: I had no experience. I was a young guy. I
Speaker 3: had nothing to give them. And traditionally the twenty fourth
Speaker 3: sts was taken like, you know, guys in their thirties,
Speaker 3: they were the best of the best. And here I was.
Speaker 3: I was barely twenty one. I was like twenty two,
Speaker 3: I think at the time. And so I put in
Speaker 3: a package and they're at war already, and I put
Speaker 3: in this package and I was up in Alaska. Actually
Speaker 3: I was doing some rescue stuff with the Alaska guys
Speaker 3: for a month. It was great. And I flew from
Speaker 3: Alaska to Fort Bragg to do selection by myself as
Speaker 3: a nobody, and you know, do you like do a
Speaker 3: PT test? And actually a funny story, uh PT test.
Speaker 3: So I'm I'm super nervous, like I'm an like I
Speaker 3: got no shot coming up here. They're not gonna pick me.
Speaker 3: And so I wake up with three in the morning.
Speaker 3: Got a pttest, I think at five, wake up with three.
Speaker 3: I'm stretching, like doing random stretches before HP was a thing.
Speaker 3: I'm like like touching my toes and I'm like I
Speaker 3: need to take some multi items because that'll make me
Speaker 3: run faster, right, figure some gatorade. I'm doing everything wrong.
Speaker 3: And I show up at five and this multi vedom
Speaker 3: in my stomach is I have no food in my stomach.
Speaker 3: And I know that I know better now, but you know,
Speaker 3: you have to do this three miun to running and
Speaker 3: it's like show what you got. And so the chief
Speaker 3: that was there was this runner. He was like a
Speaker 3: marathon guy. He's like, do you mind if I run
Speaker 3: with you? What I'm gonna say no? So, of course,
Speaker 3: so he's running with me and I'm running. He's talking
Speaker 3: to me the whole time. I'm like, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: run a six minute mile, which is hard for me,
Speaker 3: and he's talking to me, and my stomach's turning and
Speaker 3: I got to vomit, but I'm not going to stop.
Speaker 3: So I keep running and start vomiting on myself and
Speaker 3: I'm puking on myself and he keeps talking to me.
Speaker 3: I'm like talking to him puking and I puked three
Speaker 3: times on this run. And I run, I get a
Speaker 3: good time, and he's just like this kid's crazy, right,
Speaker 3: And so I go to the other events do all
Speaker 3: this other stuff, and then I go through this board,
Speaker 3: and the board just gets you in the door to
Speaker 3: go to the further kind of next selection. And they
Speaker 3: used to call the murder boards back in the day,
Speaker 3: and they were not friendly. It was everybody. It was
Speaker 3: all it's in uniform. I'm in uniform, and they just
Speaker 3: trash you. They rip you apart. And again, I'm a nobody, right,
Speaker 3: I'm a twenty something, the kid who's never done anything
Speaker 3: in my life. And I come in there and they're like,
Speaker 3: first of all, we never see anybody vomit on themselves
Speaker 3: on this run the whole time. That's kind of weird.
Speaker 3: Like I get it, kid, Like you want to be
Speaker 3: here like you do. And I told him I was
Speaker 3: very honest with him, and I said, listen, guys, and
Speaker 3: I wasn't. There's no ego attached to it was no.
Speaker 4: Pravado and it's Air Force, so you can't say, guys.
Speaker 7: Now, you cant no, I'm smoking a cigar, right, So
Speaker 7: I said to him, I said, you know, if you
Speaker 7: guys don't take me, I'm probably gonna get out of
Speaker 7: the military because I'm getting out.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I had my service commitment was up in like
Speaker 3: eight months. I was like, I'm getting out the military
Speaker 3: and I'll go fight somehow, I'll figure it out. And
Speaker 3: they knew how serious, and uh, I said, I just
Speaker 3: want to be busy. I just want to fight. I
Speaker 3: want to go to war. And they selected me and
Speaker 3: so I came. You know. So I ended up going
Speaker 3: back to Okinawa and we had it. So I had
Speaker 3: to do one more deployment. I went to Korea. It
Speaker 3: was a short diploma, is like thirty five days, forty
Speaker 3: five days. And this is what I was telling you
Speaker 3: about you two crash. Yeah, And so I'm out there.
Speaker 3: I wasn't an alert. We didn't fly alert for the
Speaker 3: U twos because they're like high high stuff, like very
Speaker 3: low probability and shot down, and so we're not alert
Speaker 3: for them. And it's like, I forgue, what time was
Speaker 3: in the mornings, like seven eight? Maybe I'm hungover, maybe
Speaker 3: I'm not. I don't know the holy to it. And
Speaker 3: they knock on my door like Chad, hey, you two
Speaker 3: just punched. You gotta go rescue this guy. I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, cool, yeah, let's go. And so we went
Speaker 3: out there and the you two. This funny story. Has
Speaker 3: actually met the pilot recently. He lives in my town.
Speaker 3: Oh really yeah, awesome story. But he basically limped his
Speaker 3: YouTube across the border ejected in the space suit.
Speaker 6: So he took eighty a fire or something, and it
Speaker 6: was he.
Speaker 3: Had a malfunction one of the interests of that and
Speaker 3: he punches. He played it cool, and I talked to
Speaker 3: him in person about it just recently. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, like I knew how to get it over.
Speaker 3: It was on fire like whatever, you know, real real
Speaker 3: cool pilot, the old school Air Force pilot, like the
Speaker 3: guy the kind of guys from like World War two, right,
Speaker 3: and he limps it over, crashes his plane to with
Speaker 3: gas stations as a fire. It's it's a mess. He's
Speaker 3: in a space suit, breaks his back. We go down
Speaker 3: to him this mudfield, litter him out or put him
Speaker 3: in stakes, litter raise him out and rescue him, you know.
Speaker 3: And then I behind and like I'm gonna go like
Speaker 3: secure this crash site. Don't tell I'm doing No one
Speaker 3: taught me how to do this stuff. And I ended
Speaker 3: up finding this black box. This recorder is a giant,
Speaker 3: real recorder that there's two Koreans are pulling out this
Speaker 3: apartment complex and I got a gun on you right,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, and Chad now knows I could have
Speaker 3: like locked these dudes up and like zip tied them
Speaker 3: and like probably took them away because they're probably.
Speaker 6: Because of North Korean like classified piece right exactly.
Speaker 3: There was a van waiting for it out front. Yeah,
Speaker 3: holy shit. And so I didn't know how the gravity
Speaker 3: this at the time.
Speaker 5: I'm like a twenty something kid, you know, I'm like,
Speaker 5: I'm surprised that the air Force didn't sound like a
Speaker 5: forced hit it like the Ravens or.
Speaker 3: They sent some cops eventually, but uh yeah, so we
Speaker 3: we we do this and then you know, I'm like
Speaker 3: high five myself. I like that it was kind of cool.
Speaker 6: Wait wait wait so did you get the box?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Okay, so how did you get it? Did you negotiate?
Speaker 4: Did you draw down on them?
Speaker 3: When I'm like, I'm an American, you're not, And you know,
Speaker 3: they probably all both knew Kara. They probably could have
Speaker 3: kicked my ass and zaid tight knee, but thank god
Speaker 3: they didn't. So if you're watching, thank you for like
Speaker 3: beating me up. But uh yeah, so we recovered everything.
Speaker 3: You know, he comes out fine. It was a big deal,
Speaker 3: you know, But I was thinking about the war. All
Speaker 3: I wanted to be was in Afghanistan And did.
Speaker 5: You get did you get a recognition for that? Did
Speaker 5: you get a medal for securing the Black Box from
Speaker 5: the Korean?
Speaker 3: Wow? Well there's more to that. It's just kind of
Speaker 3: my career. But it's fine. It's a lot of wards, right,
Speaker 3: but so it just kind of stabbed a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we see you go back to twenty fourth
Speaker 2: sts and like I did some of the guys, Yeah I.
Speaker 3: Did a good thing. Yeah, so you know, you fast
Speaker 3: forward a few months and I fly out to Fort
Speaker 3: Bragg and then unit's gone. There's no one there. It's
Speaker 3: a ghost town and it's a really eerie like thinking
Speaker 3: about now, it was crazy to see it was no
Speaker 3: one there. There was some admin folks there, but everyone
Speaker 3: was Ford. And they said, hey, we don't have enough
Speaker 3: to man this C star position in Afghanistan with the
Speaker 3: Navy supporting, you know, specific squadron. Will you deploy in
Speaker 3: a week? I'm like hell yes, Like that's all I
Speaker 3: want to do. And I had no training, So you're
Speaker 3: supposed to go through training, right, you have a year
Speaker 3: of training there, like we're gonna we want you to go. Now.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, man, I'm in like, I have no gear,
Speaker 3: I have nothing, you know, like we got you. So
Speaker 3: I go to the arm ring and they got this
Speaker 3: little shorty M four and I never seen one. Now
Speaker 3: it's normal, right everything whatever, it's ten in. I never
Speaker 3: seen one for like, that's the coolest thing ever. And
Speaker 3: they had painted it for me. I'm like, dude, I
Speaker 3: am bigger, I am, I am varsity I now yeah,
Speaker 3: I can any I can kill anything, like I am
Speaker 3: the man, Like this is to your one right now right,
Speaker 3: and we got the rain. We sit in and I'm like, dude,
Speaker 3: this is everything. It's a culmination of everything I want
Speaker 3: in my life.
Speaker 4: Was it suppressed?
Speaker 3: Did you have? Oh yeah, I haven't seen a suppresed.
Speaker 3: How does this thing go on? Yeah? Yeah yeah, So
Speaker 3: I get that. You know, uniforms had all kit it
Speaker 3: out for me, and I'm like, dude, this is insane.
Speaker 3: You felt like a professional athlete coming to a team
Speaker 3: and here's your uniform, right, and so all brand new kit,
Speaker 3: which is not cool in retrospect. It's not cool to
Speaker 3: have brand new kid down range. But I was that
Speaker 3: guy all the price tags on and.
Speaker 4: Everything trying to not get it dirty.
Speaker 3: It's like the hat with like the sticker on the front. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you know, so I go down range to Afghanistan
Speaker 3: and I do nothing. I mean, we support all these ops.
Speaker 3: It was a part of the task force. I was learning.
Speaker 3: I didn't do anything sexy, I didn't do anything hard,
Speaker 3: but I was exposed to kind of a new world
Speaker 3: and I was I was really impressed by the guys
Speaker 3: I was with. They're extreme professionals, They're very capable, and
Speaker 3: I was a nobody and it was very humbling, right.
Speaker 3: It was like, you know, I thought it was the
Speaker 3: man before and now I know I'm not, and I
Speaker 3: know I need to grow to this. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: that was a pretty formative experience for me. And so
Speaker 3: I come back home from that deployment and I start
Speaker 3: Green Team, right, so Green Team is our selection.
Speaker 5: So before we go into Green Team, because that was
Speaker 5: the training that you should have done, right, the training
Speaker 5: selection that you should have done if you hadn't a
Speaker 5: deployed immediately a pair of rescue already has just off
Speaker 5: the get go.
Speaker 4: Is it about a two year Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yes, I was about to say the same, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 5: So no, that's Okay, so when you go to pera rescue,
Speaker 5: it really is maybe outside of like an eighteen delta.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, do you guys have the longest pipeline?
Speaker 3: You might, I think I'm not in the competition with
Speaker 3: other tiers. I get it.
Speaker 2: But like you said, you're getting so many things, You're
Speaker 2: getting so many schools that that are all front loaded.
Speaker 5: So you do two years two years of training just
Speaker 5: to get on the job.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you don't know anything when you graduate two years.
Speaker 3: That's the sad thing is that. And even now you
Speaker 3: go through all this training and you're not capable to
Speaker 3: go deploy if you have top up training to get
Speaker 3: to your unit. And so you know there's a there's
Speaker 3: a breakdown there. But the pipeline basically is all these
Speaker 3: employment schools and basically foundational schools to put it all
Speaker 3: together at PJ school to make you a PJ. Right,
Speaker 3: and so but before that you go to selection, and
Speaker 3: I guess I kind of super glossed over this. It's
Speaker 3: pretty important. So our selection used to be it's not
Speaker 3: the same. Now it's completely different.
Speaker 5: And we're talking about just selection to get into the rescue.
Speaker 3: So you used to be PJS and controllers together would
Speaker 3: go through selection together. And so you go through basic
Speaker 3: training and if you were a guy who had you know,
Speaker 3: basically done a past test, which is like a physical
Speaker 3: assessment to go Hey, you want to go here? Okay,
Speaker 3: you met the basic criteria to go there, you start
Speaker 3: with a lot of guys. So we started, I mean,
Speaker 3: just for easy math, I'll say one hundred people. Maybe
Speaker 3: it was like ninety, I don't know whatever. So one
Speaker 3: hundred people out of basic training come there and they're
Speaker 3: all eager to be PJS because it's sexy. Right. You
Speaker 3: see this guy, he's got blouse, boots, cool bret, he's jacked,
Speaker 3: you know, he's probably taking a ton of rooids, and
Speaker 3: he's briefing you guys, and you're like, I want to
Speaker 3: be that guy, right, And here I am, you know, scrawny,
Speaker 3: like one hundred and forty five pounds going yeah me man.
Speaker 3: So I came in the Air Force to be that guy. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had already made up my mind. So I had
Speaker 3: already done the passes before it came in in Hawaii
Speaker 3: and Honolulu, I did it with a prior controller. I
Speaker 3: was committed. And so the stakes are high, right, because
Speaker 3: you come in and a lot of guys don't make it.
Speaker 3: Most of them don't make it, and so you're come
Speaker 3: to be a PJ. You're probably gonna be, you know whatever,
Speaker 3: a load master or a cop or something. My motivation
Speaker 3: was to not be that. My motivation was to be
Speaker 3: what I wanted to be, and so I came in
Speaker 3: to do that. I finished basic training.
Speaker 5: Which which Air Force basically training everybody knows gets you ready.
Speaker 3: For Yeah, it's the hardest basically training. No, I learned
Speaker 3: how to full shirts and do and make my bed
Speaker 3: really well, which has not paid off in my later life.
Speaker 3: That I'll make my bed. No. Air was basically trains
Speaker 3: a joke, I mean, no offense, but it is, you know,
Speaker 3: and it was, you know, you act your feed through
Speaker 3: the process. You're doing the slow runs. I should have
Speaker 3: been doing, you know, hard stuff, right, And they change
Speaker 3: it now. So now they break guys out and they
Speaker 3: actually you know, build them up to go pre selection.
Speaker 4: Okay, so they have like cohortes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they fix it. Okay. Back in the day, it
Speaker 3: was like, hey man, you better be ready from go.
Speaker 3: And so you go to selections there at San Antonio
Speaker 3: and it's a lot of running, swimming and beating your
Speaker 3: ass in the pool. Okay, a lot of calisthenics and
Speaker 3: that's it. Not a lot of weightlifting. It wasn't a
Speaker 3: lot of any of that. Really scary instructors or paying
Speaker 3: the ass. You know, there's a funny story, but one
Speaker 3: of them I'll tell you later. But but yeah, so
Speaker 3: I'm enamored by these guys. I'm scared of them. I
Speaker 3: was a young kid. I didn't never done anything hard
Speaker 3: in my life. You know. I was a kid from Hawaii.
Speaker 3: I was a surfer. I was good in the water.
Speaker 3: I was comfortable being, you know, uncomfortable in the water.
Speaker 3: That was my saving grace. I wasn't super fast, you think,
Speaker 3: being that skinny of you fast. I wasn't fast. I
Speaker 3: wasn't strong. But I would go through every day knowing
Speaker 3: that I had to get to the end of the day,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't thinking about it in the week or
Speaker 3: within the month. I was sitting at the end of
Speaker 3: the day. And that was the only thing that saved
Speaker 3: me through the process was that I took it very incrementally,
Speaker 3: and so I'm like, I'm gonna get through this run,
Speaker 3: and then I know I'm gonna go to a water
Speaker 3: confidence session. I'm gonna get through that, and I'll get
Speaker 3: to the end and I'll get to eat dinner and
Speaker 3: I'll go to sleep, and I'll do it again. And
Speaker 3: it got me through the whole process. And I was unassuming.
Speaker 3: If you, if you had a lineup of guys, you
Speaker 3: would never have picked me to get through it. There's
Speaker 3: no way. Because the guys are big, buff guys. They
Speaker 3: all quit. They all quit, and they quit from runs,
Speaker 3: they quit from swims, they quit from water confidence. And
Speaker 3: the water is a great equalizer, right, And the Navy
Speaker 3: knows that. The seals know this is that when you
Speaker 3: get the water and you're uncomfortable and you can't breathe,
Speaker 3: you're gonna quit unless you can reprogram your brain to say, man, listen,
Speaker 3: I got this. And so one of the things we
Speaker 3: do is buddy, breathe in. But every readings really hard.
Speaker 3: You pass a snorkel back between your buddy. You have
Speaker 3: an instructor. You beat the crapety the whole time, and
Speaker 3: the guy you're with can screw you because if he's
Speaker 3: a spas and he wants you're not getting a breath.
Speaker 3: And then when he gives back to breath. They cover
Speaker 3: your smoke, but you're not getting breath either, and so
Speaker 3: you got to like mentally prepare for not breathing. And
Speaker 3: so I was pretty comfortable. I was like, man, you know,
Speaker 3: if you surf the north Shore Hawaii, that's worse than
Speaker 3: any water concession you ever have in the military, right,
Speaker 3: you know, like getting held down at sunset is a
Speaker 3: big deal. And when you get held down for two waves,
Speaker 3: you are gonna die, right if you survive it. Man,
Speaker 3: life is life is good. So I came straight from
Speaker 3: you know, surfing big waves, going to in doc and
Speaker 3: like they would do drownproofing, which sounds really dangerous, but
Speaker 3: like I would like I pretend like it was a dolphin.
Speaker 3: I make noises and go down and take a little
Speaker 3: piss in the bottom and come back and breathe. It
Speaker 3: was comfortable. I was like, this is like meditation was
Speaker 3: early before mindfulness was the thing. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: so yeah, so you know you do that, you do
Speaker 3: you know, increment, Like it's harder, harder every week you
Speaker 3: do a six mile run at the end, a ton
Speaker 3: of push up, some of the pull ups instead of
Speaker 3: all that crap. And then you graduate and so once
Speaker 3: you graduate that you're in the pipeline. And so then
Speaker 3: you do that two years you're describing, and so you know,
Speaker 3: you usually start off at scuba school. You go to
Speaker 3: we used to go back and you go to Key West.
Speaker 3: We have on school of school now. We go to
Speaker 3: Key West with all the SF guys and we would
Speaker 3: crush it because we were so comfortable in the water, Like,
Speaker 3: you couldn't beat us, man, you couldn't crush us. And
Speaker 3: these open water swims were easy. We'd crush everything. Man.
Speaker 3: The runs, you know, runs were hard for me because
Speaker 3: I wasn't the good of a runner. But we were studs,
Speaker 3: you know. And you go from that. You got a
Speaker 3: scuba bubble, which means nothing to anybody except guys have
Speaker 3: been to scuba school. And you go to airborne school
Speaker 3: and people like, what is that because it looks like
Speaker 3: a little astronaut. You a welder?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well it look like an astronaut on the Space.
Speaker 3: Show exactly, some stupid stuff like yeah, and uh, but yeah,
Speaker 3: you go to all these schools, right, so it's you know,
Speaker 3: just really basic schools get basic airborne free fall survival.
Speaker 3: The hard one for PJS was going through eighteen delta course.
Speaker 3: So going through socc them that's hard for anybody else. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 3: we had a lot of guys that you know, wanted
Speaker 3: to be Pj's end up not staying with it. They're like,
Speaker 3: screw this, can't.
Speaker 4: Do it now.
Speaker 5: At that time, were you guys, were you guys doing
Speaker 5: the full eighteen delta or were you just doing the
Speaker 5: sock import part of it.
Speaker 3: Now we just did the sock them. You know, the
Speaker 3: eighteen delta portion on the backside maybe would have been
Speaker 3: more of a gentleman's course on the backside, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: more long term care and stuff like that. But they
Speaker 3: didn't like us there. Yeah, and the SF guys that
Speaker 3: were there, old krusty dudes, and they did not want
Speaker 3: us there, and so they made their lives.
Speaker 5: Hell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'd fail us on stupid stuff. I mean, I
Speaker 3: still it's like memory now, it's like bs I scene
Speaker 3: safe is what used to say is like by service isolation.
Speaker 3: If you say all these things, they would fail you.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't a part of your ability to treat somebody.
Speaker 3: It was all about your ability to recite things. And
Speaker 3: even anatomy physiology was like super stressful because it was like,
Speaker 3: how can you memorize these things right now? I didn't
Speaker 3: understand medicine when I left there. I was clueless, Like
Speaker 3: if you were shot in front of me after the soccer,
Speaker 3: I'm likes, I seen it safe. You're like, what do
Speaker 3: you keep saying that for? I'm like, my glove's on. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know. Pharmacology was foreign to me and it never
Speaker 3: made sense to me until someone explained it to me
Speaker 3: in a way that I could understand it. And the
Speaker 3: process is so much better now, man like, and so
Speaker 3: everything's improved after the war, everything improved.
Speaker 5: So for our viewers and listeners, the entire eighteen Delta,
Speaker 5: which is a Special Forces medic course, has the trauma portion,
Speaker 5: which is the sock them and you come out of
Speaker 5: there basically with skills equal tour or exceeding a paramedic,
Speaker 5: right or that's the idea. And then for eighteen deltas,
Speaker 5: there's there's the long term care because it's based also
Speaker 5: around like being in a village isolated treating village.
Speaker 2: As I recall, they learned stuff about like animal husbandry,
Speaker 2: They learned things about like what if there's a viral
Speaker 2: outbreaking and how well, yeah that kind of.
Speaker 3: They're excellent medics, and I have a lot of love
Speaker 3: for Athan Deltas. They're awesome medics. They understand pharmacology, they
Speaker 3: understand wound care. They're great, they're I mean, they're I
Speaker 3: think they're better than a lot of the nurses, you know.
Speaker 3: And so I was not that okay, so just full transparency,
Speaker 3: it was not. I was good enough to get by.
Speaker 3: I passed the course first try, and I was like,
Speaker 3: thank God, get me out of this place. And truly
Speaker 3: it was. And so, you know, I go through all
Speaker 3: these courses and then I get to PG school and
Speaker 3: they put it all together that you climbing and some
Speaker 3: hyngle rescue stuff, but it's real, it's real basic, you know,
Speaker 3: because it's hard to make someone an expert hiengele rescue
Speaker 3: in a few months. It takes years, right because that
Speaker 3: I mean that alone is especially skilled. But to be
Speaker 3: a good medic, to be a good parachutist, to you know,
Speaker 3: to be able to do you know, we do rams jumps,
Speaker 3: which is basically folding a zodiac up and pushing on
Speaker 3: the back of a plane, getting the ground, you know,
Speaker 3: get to the ocean, pop it. You know, a scuba cylinder,
Speaker 3: inflate it. You know, all these things, and you're supposed
Speaker 3: to get all of them. Right, You're not good at
Speaker 3: any of them, right. You're you're you know, you're competent,
Speaker 3: but you're not an expert. And so medicine is make
Speaker 3: or break. All these other things aren't like they're all
Speaker 3: make or break, right, because they're all dangerous, right, But
Speaker 3: medicine is what you're it's your bread and butter. It's
Speaker 3: what you're asked to do, right, And if you don't
Speaker 3: rocket at it, like someone's gonna die in your arms.
Speaker 3: And so when you go to the twenty fourth, they
Speaker 3: know you need to top off, and so they start start,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of finessing those those technical or tactical
Speaker 3: skills of medicine and make you a really good medic.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, tell us then about about uh what
Speaker 2: was it Green Platoon? And I mean you've had all
Speaker 2: this you're already dragging around dragger systems and MC six
Speaker 2: parachutes and all this other crap that you've been trained on.
Speaker 6: What is this additional training? You know, attacking on that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so green teams is really cool? So it again,
Speaker 3: so I ran Green Team later on my career, and
Speaker 3: it was a way better process than what I went through.
Speaker 3: What I went through was a bunch of courses. It
Speaker 3: was like really high end courses, right, the best of
Speaker 3: the best, I mean millions of dollars of training, but
Speaker 3: there wasn't there was never an FMP to like all
Speaker 3: put it together right. And so it was like, hey,
Speaker 3: I went They've sent me to swift water rescue courses
Speaker 3: in like West Virginia, and I would become an expert
Speaker 3: swift water rescue. But what does that mean? Right? And
Speaker 3: you know, they send me to these mountain rescue courses
Speaker 3: and I would do all this high end like you know,
Speaker 3: very complicated technical rescue. What does it mean? You know
Speaker 3: our jump trip? Yeah, you're you're getting very proficient at jumping,
Speaker 3: but how do you put it all together tactically? And
Speaker 3: so it's crazy to think my Green Team vice the
Speaker 3: Green Team today. Those guys that graduate Green Team today
Speaker 3: are freaking studs like they are. And I can say
Speaker 3: it's not about me, it's about them. They are studs
Speaker 3: because they get the training. So what I went through
Speaker 3: is you know, I go through advanced free fall. You know,
Speaker 3: we learned how to jump. You all kinds of equipment.
Speaker 3: I don't actually know. Maybe we were jumping nods at
Speaker 3: the time, which is a big deal GYP nods. People
Speaker 3: weren't doing it, right. I'm trying to think we you know,
Speaker 3: really crazy dive trip where we do three weeks of
Speaker 3: you know, just getting back into draggers and doing you know,
Speaker 3: line dives, which suck, you know, and f m P
Speaker 3: is doing CB, which CQB for every other service is
Speaker 3: very like foundational for us, it wasn't. And so I'd
Speaker 3: never done CQB when I came up there. You know,
Speaker 3: it was a good shot, but I did CGB is
Speaker 3: very difficult. It's a different game, right, Like, it's a
Speaker 3: different way of thinking and processing information very quickly, and
Speaker 3: so you're learning all this stuff within a year and
Speaker 3: so you pop out of there and you're a Tier
Speaker 3: one operator now right, Well not really because I've never
Speaker 3: been in combat, right, So I've been to common that
Speaker 3: you know, quotations, but I never you know, fired my
Speaker 3: weapon with your magazines. Yeah yeah, And so when I
Speaker 3: popped it on the backside, they sent me to a
Speaker 3: Tier one unit. And here I am with the best
Speaker 3: of the best, and I'm a.
Speaker 5: Nobody, Now what year is this that you get to
Speaker 5: the twenty fourth?
Speaker 4: Will you finish your Green Team?
Speaker 3: And I finished in two thousand and three.
Speaker 5: So to be fair, at that point in time, very
Speaker 5: few people had, like because obviously started in two thousand
Speaker 5: and one, so people had combat experience. Yeah, some guys did,
Speaker 5: but combat experience was not something that was like, nobody had.
Speaker 3: Combat experiments bar that Panama.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you'd see like grenade raiders or pan dudes with
Speaker 5: the Panama Scroll and you know you'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: he seen legend.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But so the guys that did the initial push into Iraq,
Speaker 3: and I've been these tics and I was on Green
Speaker 3: Team with them. They're telling me the stories. I'm like, dude,
Speaker 3: that's insane, and I'm enamored by it. Yeah, I'm like, dude,
Speaker 3: how would I know? How would I handle this? And
Speaker 3: the irony is is that, you know, everyone thinks that
Speaker 3: training prepares you for combat. You know, to a certain extent,
Speaker 3: it does, but there is a there's a next step,
Speaker 3: and it's under fire when the stakes are really high,
Speaker 3: and that's when things get get real. Right. So my
Speaker 3: first big ap I was with the Navy and full
Speaker 3: compromised gunfight and I'm like, oh man, we're are we fighting?
Speaker 5: We're fighting somebody somebody shooting, We're shooting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can shoot that, right, And you're looking at
Speaker 3: other people and they're shooting. I'm like, oh, I can shoot.
Speaker 3: Gets on, And you know, people think it's You're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I've got this training, Like it doesn't matter unless you're
Speaker 3: with guys that have been there, done that, and watch
Speaker 3: what they do. There's some guys that are just naturally
Speaker 3: they're that right, we call them way grows right. They
Speaker 3: just want to get it on. But for the most
Speaker 3: most of us, it's like it's a process and you're like, okay,
Speaker 3: this is normal, Okay, this is how you act to this. Okay,
Speaker 3: this is when you escalate force. And it's not as
Speaker 3: intuitives you think. And so thank God is with the
Speaker 3: best of the best. Right, they were the best of
Speaker 3: the best. And there were guys that have been on
Speaker 3: two rotations before of combat. They've been there, done that,
Speaker 3: And here I was a new guy going enamored. I'm like,
Speaker 3: holy shit, like, yeah, I want to hang with you guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think a good way to frame that, at least
Speaker 5: for me, is like, you have a lifetime of cultural
Speaker 5: conditioning of not killing people that you know that are
Speaker 5: in front of you, and so when it first goes down, you, yeah,
Speaker 5: you might react, but there's also potentially that thought process
Speaker 5: at am I really going to kill this human?
Speaker 4: This person in front of him?
Speaker 3: Allowed to?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Right?
Speaker 5: Am I making the right Am I making the right decisions?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah? It sounds silly, it Yeah, it's true, man like,
Speaker 3: and the guys that don't have that that limitation in
Speaker 3: their psyche, the guys their liabilities too. You know, like
Speaker 3: if a guy just his weapons free from the start,
Speaker 3: you're like, dude, what's going on your brand? Right? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3: It should be a measured approach. And and my job
Speaker 3: is to save lives, right, and so you know it's
Speaker 3: also you know, to take lives in that respect, but
Speaker 3: also it's my job is to save lives, and so
Speaker 3: there's a humanitarian aspect to my role. And you know
Speaker 3: you have to be both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you steal the eyed killer, but also guy, you
Speaker 2: can hold someone's hand while they're maybe dying.
Speaker 3: And I take that very seriously man. And so you know,
Speaker 3: later on in my career when I would get into
Speaker 3: other operations that were not necessarily PJ focused. I never
Speaker 3: took it for granted. Like I was like, man, humanity
Speaker 3: is important, and it's important in combat. And the guys
Speaker 3: that I saw that could balance that very effectively where
Speaker 3: guys are respected and you know, Kenley, it is kind
Speaker 3: of easy to be a killer man like to be
Speaker 3: that guy to have to be measured in your approach
Speaker 3: is a very mature reaction. And then the guys that
Speaker 3: respect the most. And I saw it, I saw it live,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, holy crap, you didn't do that because
Speaker 3: this and so you share processes information, and so when
Speaker 3: I would talk to young guys that were like, you know,
Speaker 3: you said Whiteside and you're like, well, what's the difference,
Speaker 3: I'm like, there's a difference because I am seeing things
Speaker 3: that are very high level where people are making very
Speaker 3: good decisions and bad decisions. But I'm learning from it
Speaker 3: and now I'm competent and capable to make decisions on
Speaker 3: my own. And so, you know, I said this before
Speaker 3: to some other folks, is that, you know, being the
Speaker 3: first person to shoot is something I never wanted to
Speaker 3: do because you never know if you're right or wrong.
Speaker 3: But as I got more mature. I'm like, Okay, I
Speaker 3: know this is right, this is the right thing to
Speaker 3: do because we are compromised and that guy is a problem.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna shoot that guy. And but that is not
Speaker 3: that is not an intuitive thing. It's something that's learned.
Speaker 3: And so you know, the high level soft forces, you know,
Speaker 3: Army and Navy, the guys that are very senior, they're
Speaker 3: they're wired that way, they understand it, and they're the
Speaker 3: guys that I want to be next to because they're
Speaker 3: going to make very good decisions. They're not gonna make
Speaker 3: it radic decisions, aren't to make emotional decisions. They're gonna
Speaker 3: be very you know, deliberate decisions. And that's a very
Speaker 3: high level skill. And that's what separates White Side from
Speaker 3: Tier one.
Speaker 5: It's interesting because both in because both the fields that
Speaker 5: you were in, combat and medicine, both of those fields,
Speaker 5: I think the easy route is to dehumanize the person
Speaker 5: in front of you, to compartmentalize and to become jaded
Speaker 5: about it, right, that's the easier that to be, Like
Speaker 5: you mentioned mindfulness earlier, to remain mindful in those situations,
Speaker 5: to whether you're in a medical situation and don't just
Speaker 5: shut it off, because here's another human being who's suffering,
Speaker 5: and it's easier to just you know, to live in
Speaker 5: a black and white world, right and just to you know,
Speaker 5: shut off the emotion to it. And same with combat,
Speaker 5: it's easier just to shut out the emotion to it.
Speaker 5: As you know, then too, I'm I'm in front of
Speaker 5: the human being who stuffering. I'm in front of him
Speaker 5: being who's triab to kill me. So I'm gonna kill
Speaker 5: them first without without necessarily taking away their humanity or just.
Speaker 3: Here's here's an example of humanity. I was at a
Speaker 3: like a really remote outstation in Afghanistan, really remote. I mean,
Speaker 3: we ran out food and water, that kind of remote, right,
Speaker 3: you guys have probably been there before. And we had
Speaker 3: a couple of prisoners, you know, we call them, you know, pucks.
Speaker 3: We had a moff target and they were in our
Speaker 3: makeshift prison and we would basically, you know, we'd wake
Speaker 3: up and it's like, okay, it's my turn to watch
Speaker 3: the prisoners. So I go in there and I feed
Speaker 3: them and I treat him humanly. We're not we're not
Speaker 3: on target. There's no violence here, there's no emotion. You're
Speaker 3: you're in captivity. I'm taking care of you. I'm not
Speaker 3: gonna I'm gonna treat you humanely. You wanna go to
Speaker 3: the bathroom, will take the bathroom. Yeah, it's business. If
Speaker 3: you want to. You want to get crazy, like, we
Speaker 3: can deal with that. But like at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, like if you're bum respectful. And we had
Speaker 3: this guy who was there for two days, and I
Speaker 3: remember he was like really appreciative that I would give
Speaker 3: him food. I wasn't giving him, you know, benefits. I
Speaker 3: was like feeding him. I was doing what I should do, right,
Speaker 3: He's a human being. And turned out he was just
Speaker 3: a legit farmer. And me and the Master Chief took
Speaker 3: him down to the gate. We gave a bunch of money.
Speaker 3: You know, he blew his door off. He no, he cried,
Speaker 3: and he thanked us and he got on his knees
Speaker 3: and and I'm like, man, you know, this could have
Speaker 3: turned out totally differently if I had treated him, you know,
Speaker 3: like if I had been a prick, because there's a
Speaker 3: group thing that goes along in the military, and but
Speaker 3: I knew better. I was like, man, this is a
Speaker 3: human being. And even if he has a terrorist like
Speaker 3: he's going to face his punishment. There's no punishment I'm
Speaker 3: going to put on him now. My job is to
Speaker 3: be ethical with him, right and to watch that reaction
Speaker 3: when it turned out it was a mistaken identity, like
Speaker 3: thank god, you know, like thank god that you know
Speaker 3: we treated him well. And you know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of mistakes that happened in the early days of Iraq
Speaker 3: and when we saw Abu Grave and all those things
Speaker 3: that were for guys that had been around for a while,
Speaker 3: like that's disgusting. You know, those were nobody's they did
Speaker 3: that crap.
Speaker 5: Right, and they and they weren't even like they can't
Speaker 5: even stand behind enhanced interrogation.
Speaker 4: They were just nobody around guards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and it was terrible because look at the
Speaker 3: repercussions from that of things that we we face on
Speaker 3: the battle of because of that. And so you know,
Speaker 3: humanity exists, you know, despite combat. And uh, you know,
Speaker 3: as I got older and as I retired, you know,
Speaker 3: as I got more senior, and I was like, you
Speaker 3: start to understand life in a different way. But when
Speaker 3: you're young, and again, group thing is is really important
Speaker 3: because that's what happens. You think that's what you should
Speaker 3: be doing the behaviors should be doing. If you're with
Speaker 3: a group of people that behaves that way, you're gonna
Speaker 3: be here that way, right because you want to fit in.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a it's animal behaviors, right. And so
Speaker 3: you know, for my saving grace was I was the
Speaker 3: mature guys that it had been around for a long time,
Speaker 3: and that were you know, I saw bad things in
Speaker 3: my career, but like for the most part, very professional guys,
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, it helped me become the professional
Speaker 3: that I became and helped me lead effectively later on
Speaker 3: my career.
Speaker 5: So, how did you maintain or how did her rescue
Speaker 5: maintain especially the twenty fourth the other skills that like you,
Speaker 5: like you mentioned before, you guys had a plothoro of
Speaker 5: skills that you had to the hire a rescue, the swimming,
Speaker 5: the scuba that all that stuff. Were you able to
Speaker 5: maintain that or did it all? It became a combat
Speaker 5: unit at that point.
Speaker 3: Well, it's kind of like the Navy. I mean, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, the Navy kind of blew off diving for
Speaker 3: a long time, right, they were just there fighting in
Speaker 3: the desert, right, And so you know Pj's is funny
Speaker 3: because pj's are we have so many skills that we do,
Speaker 3: and so a lot of guys gravitate to a skill, right,
Speaker 3: And see if guys are really good at climbing, and
Speaker 3: they're awesome climbers. I hate climbing personally. I hate it.
Speaker 3: It's scary to me. I hate being one hundred fet
Speaker 3: off the ground and being off one, you know, drinking
Speaker 3: piece of pro and looking down like this is gonna
Speaker 3: not only am I gonna die, but I'm gonna fall
Speaker 3: along the way and I'm gonna Yeah. But I like jumping, right,
Speaker 3: So there's Scot Evers that really like jumping, and there's
Speaker 3: guys that were like medicine. Guys were like shooting, and
Speaker 3: so you gravitate to a certain kind of discipline. You
Speaker 3: have to be good all of them kind of, but
Speaker 3: you're gonna be good at one really well, right. And
Speaker 3: so you know we have the guy I hate. You're
Speaker 3: the jump guy, right, You're the guy loves jumping tan
Speaker 3: you know, Bundles, You're the guy loves medicine, right, and
Speaker 3: so you're.
Speaker 4: The guy who knows all the knots.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And and so PJS, it's it's really hard
Speaker 3: for PJS to you can't be good at everything. There's
Speaker 3: enough time in the day. And also there's people that
Speaker 3: have propensity to certain things. And so you know, for me,
Speaker 3: I really, I really I appreciated medicines. They knew how
Speaker 3: important it was. I didn't like it, but I knew
Speaker 3: how important it was, so I had to be good
Speaker 3: at it. Right. I love jumping, right, So I was
Speaker 3: a big sky to ever a couple of thousand jobs.
Speaker 3: So tanna masters, you know, a f fi allose things.
Speaker 3: I also love shooting, right, But you know, how do
Speaker 3: you put all those things in to become a good operator?
Speaker 3: And so what does the customer need you to be?
Speaker 3: If we're commodities, you know, what does the navy ask
Speaker 3: me to be? They're asked me to be really good
Speaker 3: at medicine. They asked me really good rescue and not
Speaker 3: be a liability on everything else, right, And so to
Speaker 3: not be a liability, you have to be good at
Speaker 3: those other things too.
Speaker 5: So we're teams put together with that sort of aspect
Speaker 5: that hey, this guy like he's got a high rent,
Speaker 5: high angle.
Speaker 3: This guy's in the early days, we're so we're so busy.
Speaker 3: We had Afghanistan in Iraq. I did back to back deployment.
Speaker 3: I would go from my rack to Afghanisan. Wow. We
Speaker 3: were so busy. It was just like hey man, can
Speaker 3: you go yes? And you fake it till you make
Speaker 3: it right and you show up and you're like, oh crap.
Speaker 3: And so I remember I went to an outstation one time.
Speaker 3: This was like my sixth seventh deployment, I don't know,
Speaker 3: and this o G A guy had a had assistance armpit.
Speaker 3: It's like day two. I'm in this outstation roal remote outstation.
Speaker 3: I'm like, he's like, hey man, hey chet, you cut
Speaker 3: this out of my armpit. I'm like, you want me
Speaker 3: to cut it out your armpit? He's like yeah, how
Speaker 3: can that be? Like like I understand, Like I got
Speaker 3: to do minor surgery.
Speaker 5: There are no nerves or anything that I used to
Speaker 5: carry these books on me.
Speaker 3: I had all these books and I looked at the book.
Speaker 3: I could do that, just do deep sutures. Okay the
Speaker 3: igator and I got it, and so I put him
Speaker 3: down this table. I put chuck a chuck, which is
Speaker 3: like a basically a drape, you know. I cut it
Speaker 3: out his armpit and clean it off real good eye
Speaker 3: die clean it and he's got a big old dip in.
Speaker 3: He was xt ranger too by way of course, and
Speaker 3: so he's like, yeah, man, do your thing. So I
Speaker 3: you know, I numb it up real good and I
Speaker 3: lighted open just plus comes all everywhere. It's just like
Speaker 3: so much, it's like an ice cream cone, like and uh.
Speaker 4: I'm supposal to remove this act right, Well.
Speaker 3: I did, but I'm like, I'm like clean everything and
Speaker 3: breeding it. I'm like like, maybe I shouldn't be doing
Speaker 3: this grade right right, I'm like, yeah, I got it.
Speaker 3: And so you know, I clean up well, I sew
Speaker 3: them up great, stitches great and my my saving rist
Speaker 3: I did good sutures and I'm like, hey, dude, you
Speaker 3: have to keep this clean. And we had we didn't
Speaker 3: have great showers there, and so hygiene was an issue.
Speaker 3: I'm like, dude, you're gonna if you get infected, I'm
Speaker 3: screwed because I probably shouldn't be doing this. And you know,
Speaker 3: he's like, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 8: I catch him out the next day playing basketball sweating
Speaker 8: and I'm doing man. I was like, this is me,
Speaker 8: you know, this is my credibility and so uh but yeah,
Speaker 8: that's just how it was man, and in the.
Speaker 3: Early days it was a free for all. In the
Speaker 3: early days it was wild. You could do whatever you wanted.
Speaker 3: It became more jiminta more disciplined later into the war,
Speaker 3: but in the early days any went that's.
Speaker 5: Just did you feel like a champ though, like like
Speaker 5: taking out a sis You'd never done that.
Speaker 3: No, I felt very nervous.
Speaker 4: Did you ever get an opportunity again? Like you're like
Speaker 4: I got Oh.
Speaker 3: I did a lot of stuff later, but I was
Speaker 3: very confident, Like you know, I feel like I feel
Speaker 3: like I could take out your opendon marketing.
Speaker 4: I got a book.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I love that self confidence.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So as time goes on, you're going you did seventeen
Speaker 2: combat rotations serving in the squadron from age twenty two
Speaker 2: to forty one, getting up the senior enlisted guy and
Speaker 2: super impressive career. I'd like to talk about some of
Speaker 2: the some of the activities and things we were involved
Speaker 2: in during that time.
Speaker 3: One of the things we had mentioned to one crash
Speaker 3: and bagdad. Yeah. So, like I said we would do
Speaker 3: back in the day, we had to do CSAR and
Speaker 3: then also the assault rotations with the Army and Navy,
Speaker 3: and so I would go from one to the other. And
Speaker 3: so I I was in Ballode, which was kind of
Speaker 3: like our hub. We had the helos and daytime I
Speaker 3: get a call that a British one thirty got shot
Speaker 3: down north of Baghdad. And the one safety guys like,
Speaker 3: we're not flying daytime over Baghdad, like not happening. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, I need a ride, Like someone needs
Speaker 3: to take care of this. It's bad. And you know,
Speaker 3: they asked me to do it. I took responsibility for it.
Speaker 3: It's mine now, it's my project. And I'm trying to
Speaker 3: find a ride. I can't get I can't get to
Speaker 3: where I'm going. And so there was some British uh
Speaker 3: they were called super Pumas I believe, and so we
Speaker 3: jumped on those. I mean they had M sixties in
Speaker 3: the door daytime flight and we flew down and this
Speaker 3: is when Bagdad was kind of gnarly, you know, And
Speaker 3: so we dropped on the ground. Had my ranger we
Speaker 3: call them SSTs or Star Security Teams, and they're basically
Speaker 3: my security perimeter. And I had my team, my PG
Speaker 3: team and comic controller and so we get down there.
Speaker 3: I'm the team leader and you know, long hair. At
Speaker 3: the time, long beard, I was wearing real tree camis,
Speaker 3: which was cool because it was back in the day.
Speaker 3: It was cool to looked different, and so I wanted
Speaker 3: to be this different as like a look, and so
Speaker 3: I was doing that. It's so stupid to think about now.
Speaker 3: But again, on the ground and this wreckage is like
Speaker 3: strewn for you know, as far as you can see,
Speaker 3: and on fire. There's fire in this river and this ditch.
Speaker 3: It's a mess. And so I'm like, okay, guys, here's
Speaker 3: what we're doing. And my half my rangers we were
Speaker 3: talking about radios. Half my rangers had radios, half of
Speaker 3: them didn't. I'm like, okay, so I need radios in
Speaker 3: every VP. So we're gonna split get heavy upon here
Speaker 3: because that's where the you know, most of the city is.
Speaker 3: And we're gonna do this. Okay, it don't matter. We
Speaker 3: don't have security. We're gonna do this. We didn't have casts,
Speaker 3: so the controllers trying to get on call casts. You
Speaker 3: guys were the first on the ground. Yeah, first, And
Speaker 3: in my mind I knew the city was gonna start
Speaker 3: waking up to what was going on, and you know,
Speaker 3: potentially tunists like terrorists because this is back when there's
Speaker 3: like a lot of different tar cells. They're gonna come
Speaker 3: and like and they're trying to punch at us, you know.
Speaker 3: So we we get on the ground and my team
Speaker 3: was you know, I had a great team of guys,
Speaker 3: my controller. You've got falcon view up. Back in the day,
Speaker 3: we have falcons. Oh yeah, you know, you center plot
Speaker 3: and we had no security. And they're they're bringing back bodies,
Speaker 3: right and so but it's not bodies like you think,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not bodies. It's pieces. And uh be
Speaker 3: super respectful to kind of you know, because these are
Speaker 3: all British. There are some says folks and some uh
Speaker 3: you know, some British uh you know, aviators, and we're
Speaker 3: bringing back these bodies. And I told the team, I said, listen,
Speaker 3: we're gonna start putting bodies together based on like, okay,
Speaker 3: right hand, left hand is a body you've got you know,
Speaker 3: you have a torso it's a body. And so we'll
Speaker 3: get accountability eventually. And I want you guys to get
Speaker 3: the weapons all those things and we'll get this done.
Speaker 3: We'll get out of here. And it turned in to
Speaker 3: a huge event and it was it was massive and
Speaker 3: so excuse me. So guys are bringing back stuff and
Speaker 3: we talked about compartmentalizing information. I did very well. It
Speaker 3: didn't it didn't mean anything to me. I was very professional.
Speaker 3: It was very processed, like here's what we have to do,
Speaker 3: we're gonna do it. And so we're about six seven
Speaker 3: hours into this. The guys are doing great. My rangers
Speaker 3: are hole in their positions. No one's pushed on us yet,
Speaker 3: and they bring another super Puma down. Maybe it's a
Speaker 3: links I forget which bird. It was with some SCS
Speaker 3: guys and two two guys and they're like, you know, hey,
Speaker 3: am I, what do you want us? And uh, I'm like, hey,
Speaker 3: we have some vulnerable positions over here. Some there's apartments
Speaker 3: or some buildings. I was like, if you guys could
Speaker 3: go do some soft knocks, it'd be great. And they're like, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: and they're guys right, They're like, yeah, we're in and so,
Speaker 3: you know, it didn't They didn't ask any questions, like
Speaker 3: we got it. And so they went out there in
Speaker 3: the city and they started doing their things. They all
Speaker 3: spoke Arabic. They was doing a thing and you know,
Speaker 3: the sun goes down, you know, my guys hadn't eaten,
Speaker 3: you know, in a day, and I I knew there
Speaker 3: was bodies in the ditch. So there was like a
Speaker 3: basic you know, in Iraq there was all these like
Speaker 3: irrigation ditches and it was on fire, was diesel and
Speaker 3: burning and ord JPA whatever, and like, you guys gotta
Speaker 3: get your dry suits on it. It was winter time
Speaker 3: in Iraq. I was like, you got to go in
Speaker 3: the ditch and dig for bodies. So I was like,
Speaker 3: put a line on them, you know, put a rope
Speaker 3: on them, and go down there and do it. And
Speaker 3: so you know, we had all our gear and so
Speaker 3: you guy puts his dry suit on, you know, young PJ.
Speaker 3: PJ goes on top to tether him, you know, fire
Speaker 3: pulling bodies and weapons out on the pitch, and the
Speaker 3: sun goes down. We're alone, you know. And at the
Speaker 3: same time there was an accident in Missoul where a
Speaker 3: teammate of mine was in a panda with the army
Speaker 3: and a Ranger striker hit That was right before I
Speaker 3: got there. They collided and my buddy Chad Gezagi was
Speaker 3: in there and his head got rocked pretty hard and
Speaker 3: he really needed to get his head drilled to releave
Speaker 3: the pressure. And you know, Chad is still you know,
Speaker 3: he's quadriplegic still to this day. The accident, but it
Speaker 3: happened right when we're in the field, and so everyone
Speaker 3: kind of turned their attention to supporting that x feel
Speaker 3: and they forgot about us in the field. And so
Speaker 3: we're just know what the Bagdad, We're doing a thing.
Speaker 3: And and it was the right call. I mean, they
Speaker 3: needed more help than we did. We were self sufficient
Speaker 3: for the most part. It could have gone really bad
Speaker 3: for us, but it didn't. And but I was like,
Speaker 3: why is there no comms? You know, but the entire
Speaker 3: task force kind of went to le leaning on Missoul
Speaker 3: and so, you know, here was on the ground. The
Speaker 3: Brits had a kit bag delivered and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: thank god, what is this? And we pull up and
Speaker 3: it's it's these flasks of tea and I'm like like,
Speaker 3: cool man, Like I might go some tea. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm drinking tea is like creamer and it's delicious tea.
Speaker 3: And I'm like it's not my thing, but yeah, let's
Speaker 3: let's do some tea. So we drink some tea and
Speaker 3: this work gets funny. So we we survived that night,
Speaker 3: and we're still we're still cleaning this crashlight. It's a mess.
Speaker 3: So day two goes in and this Marine's come out.
Speaker 3: Lav's come out to me, and I'm the team leader.
Speaker 3: I'm running the crash. It's my crash night. And this
Speaker 3: Marine major shows up and again I look like I
Speaker 3: you know, I'm like a hobo, right, you know, which
Speaker 3: is what you want to look at and soft back
Speaker 3: in the day. It's like you want to look as
Speaker 3: weird as you can look, and I look pretty weird.
Speaker 3: And he comes up to me. He's like, you're in charge.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, look, here's where I want you guys
Speaker 3: from a falcony, push your you know, your your vehicles
Speaker 3: out there, heavy weapons and basically telling him where to go.
Speaker 3: And so he listens. He puts the folks out there.
Speaker 3: So about ten hours in the next day, we're still working.
Speaker 3: He starts to figure out that I'm an listed guy
Speaker 3: because the way people the rangers are talking to me,
Speaker 3: ay bro, and he loses his mind. A Marine Corps
Speaker 3: major is a big deal, right yeah, And they don't
Speaker 3: take orders from a list of guys, and he finds
Speaker 3: out I'm listed, and he goes ballistic on me and
Speaker 3: I stay on my ground. Of course, you know, I'm like, listen,
Speaker 3: this is my crash site. Like you're in support of me.
Speaker 3: I was like, if you want to fight over rank,
Speaker 3: you can do that, but here's what it needs you
Speaker 3: to do. And you know, it was hard for him
Speaker 3: to process. And I'm like, listen, man, like I'm being
Speaker 3: respectful to you. I'm not, I'm not being a dickhead.
Speaker 3: I was like, I need you to help me, and
Speaker 3: here's what I need you to do. And it was
Speaker 3: it was like it was an inflection point for the operation.
Speaker 3: Like it was like the mood changed, right, it was
Speaker 3: like do we want to help you guys at that point?
Speaker 3: And we end up spending three days out there on
Speaker 3: the ground. We end up you know, coming back and
Speaker 3: it was, you know, it was one of those offs.
Speaker 3: It was like, it was really strange. We came back
Speaker 3: and we didn't support the task warts. The task warts
Speaker 3: stood down off because we're out there we couldn't support them.
Speaker 3: And you know, I you talk about compartmentalizing things, and
Speaker 3: I shared this with somebody else recently, is that I
Speaker 3: did a really good job of compressing or compartmentalizing my
Speaker 3: you know, whatever I was seeing, I just did a
Speaker 3: great job of packaging it really well. You know. I
Speaker 3: taped it up and I put it in the corner.
Speaker 3: It didn't exist, It did not exist in my life,
Speaker 3: it didn't exist in my mind. Nothing. And so we
Speaker 3: came back to the bee huts we were refitting. We
Speaker 3: just needed some sleep. We had to go basically sport
Speaker 3: the task force in six hours. So we're getting like
Speaker 3: five hours sleep as a chow and the chaplain and
Speaker 3: the psychedic came to a bee hut and this is
Speaker 3: before you could talk to child and the psych dogs,
Speaker 3: you know, like knocking the door and like what they're like,
Speaker 3: do you guys need to talk to us? Like why
Speaker 3: would we need to talk to you? That was my reaction, right,
Speaker 3: And I was the team leader, and I should have
Speaker 3: been more cognitizant than my guys. Maybe we're suffering. My
Speaker 3: guys maybe were dealing with stuff that I wasn't. Because
Speaker 3: I was I was maybe the problem, right, I was
Speaker 3: the guy that could just figure this stuff out in
Speaker 3: a negative way. And I said no, I turned away,
Speaker 3: And because I said, if I'm good, they're good. And
Speaker 3: years later, I I reached out to one of the
Speaker 3: guys on that mission with me and I said, I
Speaker 3: apologized to him. I said, I'm sorry, man, I messed
Speaker 3: up as a leader. That wasn't how leaders supposed to behave.
Speaker 3: I should have been cognizant of where you were at
Speaker 3: in your life and I didn't. And you know, it's
Speaker 3: one of my regrets as a leader. I learned from it,
Speaker 3: but I also I continue to compartmentalize things to my career.
Speaker 3: And so you say, you know, seventeen combat deployments. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of compartmentalization in that, right, And when you
Speaker 3: get really good at it, it becomes your process. It
Speaker 3: becomes natural to you, and it's not healthy. So it's
Speaker 3: healthy for the unit because you're still on the line, right, deployed, right.
Speaker 3: It keeps you on your job right the.
Speaker 5: Day the day you get your your yeah, don't slow down.
Speaker 3: Then you leave the military, you're like, oh, wow, it happened.
Speaker 3: What's all these boxes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, there'sh there, wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I need you all for all this.
Speaker 3: Yeah and uh but yeah, so that that was the
Speaker 3: C one thirty you know thing in Iraq. It was
Speaker 3: that I think I was two thousand and five. But
Speaker 3: life just got crazier from there.
Speaker 2: Man, there was another operation where you guys, you know,
Speaker 2: another element you were with may or may not have
Speaker 2: crossed into another place we may not mention. You said,
Speaker 2: a pretty big firefight where you guys went and took
Speaker 2: took on some bad guys, uh, in a hostile area.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if you could, you know, tell us
Speaker 2: what you what you can tell us about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, I so I've been in a few,
Speaker 3: like on a few missions. Like I wasn't like the guy,
Speaker 3: you know, I wasn't like the cool guy yet and
Speaker 3: I didn't feel like it yet. That was the first one.
Speaker 3: I was like, holy crap, this is insane. And we
Speaker 3: got compromise. We're at rp orcent of ladders and compromise,
Speaker 3: dogs barking gunfire from every compound and it was like
Speaker 3: it was on and like I said, being around confident people,
Speaker 3: they all pushed forward, and I pushed forward because they
Speaker 3: were doing it right now, because I not because I
Speaker 3: was the man, not because I had you know, big balls.
Speaker 3: I was like, we're going forward, going forward, and we
Speaker 3: push up there and you know, it was the first
Speaker 3: time I had you been in a big firefight. It
Speaker 3: is the first time I fire my weapon, you know,
Speaker 3: at another human being. And but then we had a
Speaker 3: bunch of casualties and they're like PJ. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh crap. I'm like, not only is this target chaos?
Speaker 3: Now we got people shot. And so I go over
Speaker 3: there under fire and I'm like, oh crap. So you know,
Speaker 3: guys are shot, two guys shot, and the target is
Speaker 3: supposed to be secure. Guy comes out the doors, are
Speaker 3: shooting from one of the compounds supposed to be already cleared.
Speaker 3: I'm like, holy crap, this is insane. So I'm pulling
Speaker 3: guys across a compound under fire. It's insanity. It's chaos.
Speaker 3: Other compounds are just blown up all around us. We
Speaker 3: have no clue what's going on, and we're in a
Speaker 3: hostile kind of region and the city is waking up.
Speaker 3: And we had one asset overhead and they were working
Speaker 3: it man and the CCT was working it. And he's
Speaker 3: a stud. He actually lives in close to me in
Speaker 3: my neighborhood. Now he's done, and uh, he managed that
Speaker 3: chaos very well. But I started getting more casuals. Guys
Speaker 3: like I had a guy coming to me. He's like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm shot in the head. I'm like huh, I'm like
Speaker 3: where And so I pulled off his helmet in the round.
Speaker 3: It struck the front of his head, bounce, stuck in
Speaker 3: the back of his helmet, and I'm like, holy crap.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I check his helmet. His skull is not broken.
Speaker 3: I'm like, dude, keep clearing, man. Yeah, we were so
Speaker 3: so thin. It was like, keep clearing. He ended up
Speaker 3: spraining his ankle and he was complained about spraining ackle
Speaker 3: warming his shot the head, and then that guy shot
Speaker 3: their legs and uh, it's just chaos. And so you know,
Speaker 3: it probably was only maybe an hour and a half
Speaker 3: maybe two hours of kind of conflict, but it felt
Speaker 3: like all night. Yeah, and we end up pulling this
Speaker 3: guy out. I had a I went super light because
Speaker 3: we end up pumping like eight hours to this target.
Speaker 3: So I was like super light. And this is back
Speaker 3: when none of the seals would carry any gear for me. Right,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't carry a schedcoat, they wouldn't carry it nothing.
Speaker 3: I mean they they wouldn't even carry a blow of
Speaker 3: kids on their own. Kid. It was like Chad you
Speaker 3: got it, right, I'm like, not for everybody. And it
Speaker 3: got better three years, right, it got better. But we
Speaker 3: were so lean and mean that it was like we
Speaker 3: were pulling them out on a poll of slitter. If
Speaker 3: you've ever carried somewhe on a pole of slitter, it's
Speaker 3: pretty difficult. You talk about CrossFit workouts, that's the workout
Speaker 3: of the day. And we humped him down to this,
Speaker 3: uh this road. The city was waking up there, coming
Speaker 3: on like Hunchback nor Dame kind of style, and the
Speaker 3: forty seven almost crashed on top of us because they
Speaker 3: were so hyped up. And I could have touched the
Speaker 3: bottom of forty seven when they landed. And so you know,
Speaker 3: I'm covered in blood. My uniform is covered in blood.
Speaker 3: And we get back and you know, it's when you
Speaker 3: get back from debris from big ops like that, it's
Speaker 3: it's kind of like, uh, you know, everyone's kind of
Speaker 3: chipping away. How many people are killed and number You're like,
Speaker 3: that's like four thousand people right right? That wasn't people there,
Speaker 3: but you know, and then here I was, you know,
Speaker 3: dealing with like, you know, what could I have done better?
Speaker 3: And I could have done a lot of things better
Speaker 3: and and I, uh, I have a lot of remorse
Speaker 3: from that operation for the things that I didn't do well,
Speaker 3: and I learned from it, and so I committed myself
Speaker 3: to being way better than I was on that op
Speaker 3: and I became obsessive about it. Honestly, as an operator.
Speaker 4: What were the things that you became obsessive about?
Speaker 3: Medicine? I wasn't super good at it, you know, I
Speaker 3: wasn't good at pharmacology, I wasn't good at pain management.
Speaker 3: I wasn't good all the basics. And so I committed
Speaker 3: myself to being great at it, and uh, and I
Speaker 3: and I think I became that But that was like
Speaker 3: a really formative experience for me. And then you only
Speaker 3: get a couple, you know, in your career, and you know,
Speaker 3: some guys have had a lot. I'm sure you guys
Speaker 3: have talked a lot of studs that have had a
Speaker 3: lot of crazy experiences. But for me, that was one
Speaker 3: that I could have proved myself on and I and
Speaker 3: I failed, and it was, you know, failure to me.
Speaker 3: I'm hypercritical. I'm like, okay, I could do this, this
Speaker 3: and this, but I committed myself to never make any
Speaker 3: mistakes again and you know, maybe one day walk on
Speaker 3: the street in New York. Maybe all I'll get the chance.
Speaker 6: There's another operation you were involved in.
Speaker 2: I mean, you'd say whatever you'd like to or not
Speaker 2: talk about on this one.
Speaker 3: But the Captain Phillips Rescue. Yeah, so there was a
Speaker 3: few few Air Force guys that, you know, we I
Speaker 3: was with the small team of guys that jumped in
Speaker 3: early We I was a jump master, jumped in a
Speaker 3: bunch of you know, a mixed bag of nuts, you know,
Speaker 3: into the the water, and our job was to basically
Speaker 3: turn the lifeboat around before it hits Smalia, because if
Speaker 3: it hit Samalia, they were meet gone. And we knew
Speaker 3: that the squadron was gonna blow out and they're gonna
Speaker 3: do the no Can hostage rescue. We're just gonna, like,
Speaker 3: we're gonna fix it. Right. If they get the hinterland,
Speaker 3: they're gone. And what happens with hostage and Somalia is
Speaker 3: they basically hold them for the year. They go black
Speaker 3: and they pop on the net make their demands, but
Speaker 3: it's really hard to find them. And so we had
Speaker 3: very little guidance and you know, we we went down.
Speaker 3: I was in an apartment complex and I can't tell
Speaker 3: you what country, but like, hey, guys, who want you
Speaker 3: guys to go like, all right, we got parachutes. Now,
Speaker 3: we found some parachutes in ic U ninety that were
Speaker 3: expired by a couple of years. And I'm like, parachutes
Speaker 3: don't like, they don't turn into like, you know, they
Speaker 3: don't turn to like toxic waste every two years. Like,
Speaker 3: they're probably fine, and this is pretty important. Let's just
Speaker 3: jump them. And so when you talk about oram in
Speaker 3: the military, it's a non starter. I'm like, screw it, man,
Speaker 3: I'm the jump master. I don't know if I'm allowed
Speaker 3: to make that decision, but we're gonna do it. We jumped.
Speaker 3: It was all fine. We got there, you know, and
Speaker 3: we were part of the solution. And so the squadron
Speaker 3: sent up a really small contingent of folks to where
Speaker 3: we were already, and then it resolved itself the way
Speaker 3: it did. I can promise you it didn't go the
Speaker 3: way the movie went or the TV you know, said
Speaker 3: it did. It was. It was much more any kind
Speaker 3: of low key operator stuff. You know. There were some
Speaker 3: heroics that happened that night. There's some guys that did
Speaker 3: some pretty awesome stuff. But the end of the day,
Speaker 3: it was it was you know, kind of potshots from
Speaker 3: very very close distance, you know, pulling him out. And
Speaker 3: then what people don't realize is that when we pulled
Speaker 3: him out, I flew back to the main aircraft with him,
Speaker 3: and Discovery Channel basically blurred my face and said I
Speaker 3: was an Avy seal, which is the highest praise I
Speaker 3: ever got in my career, to be called a Navy seal.
Speaker 3: My wife saw it, She's like, let's you walking. But
Speaker 3: when we did that, we came back, the pirates attacked
Speaker 3: on their ship. This never made the news, is that
Speaker 3: they attacked another ship in retaliation and they just so
Speaker 3: happened to drop off their cargo so that they were
Speaker 3: sitting very high in the water and they couldn't get
Speaker 3: on the ship. And so they called us and were
Speaker 3: like hey, it was like six of us, can you
Speaker 3: guys come help us? Like made a and so the
Speaker 3: destroyer around, like can you guys go? And so the
Speaker 3: regular squadron was going back and like high five in
Speaker 3: each other, like you know, you know, cocktails whatever. We
Speaker 3: were on this ship, and Phillips was with us. So
Speaker 3: he's with us on the smaller ship and we're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll go. And so we went and basically did hook
Speaker 3: and climb on the ship and did you take Phillips
Speaker 3: with you or no? No, okay, he's chill on like
Speaker 3: captain's bag. Okay. I was like yeah. So we went
Speaker 3: out this ship and we thought there's pirates on it
Speaker 3: because there was RPGs. They went lowerder in the side
Speaker 3: of it. I mean, it was bad. It was like,
Speaker 3: holy crap, this is legit, and maybe it was a
Speaker 3: little bit of humorist. We're like, yeah, we got it.
Speaker 3: And so me and one other seal we cleared the
Speaker 3: front of the super tanker, which is like Conics boxes,
Speaker 3: like multiple football fields. They're insanely big. I didn't know
Speaker 3: how big these things were. And we're clearing this, the
Speaker 3: two of us pining off Conics boxes, just one after
Speaker 3: the other, thinking we're gonna tick nobody, armor catches, masks, nods,
Speaker 3: and you know, we had four sixteens. We didn't have
Speaker 3: MP sevens. We had four sixteen's, and the rest of
Speaker 3: the team went to go to the superstructure, which they
Speaker 3: thought everyone was locked down in, and so we're assuming
Speaker 3: we're getting in a gunfight and there's no one on
Speaker 3: the ship and it was the eeriest thing and so
Speaker 3: it was just out there floating. No, they they attacked
Speaker 3: this thing. They couldn't hook onto it because it's so
Speaker 3: high and we didn't know this, and so the crew
Speaker 3: had locked themselves in the superstructure thinking they were under duress,
Speaker 3: and they called may day and so here we are
Speaker 3: to save the day and there's no one there, yea,
Speaker 3: So we have to we have to ride back with
Speaker 3: this ship for like two days. And they're like merchant
Speaker 3: marines on this thing. And I don't know if you
Speaker 3: guys know what these people are. They're like full on
Speaker 3: like criminals. Man, They're like they're they're making shanks. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I'm sleeping this bed. I'm more scared of them
Speaker 3: than smaly pirates. And I'm like, these guys are gonna
Speaker 3: kill me and they're gonna eat me. And but no,
Speaker 3: it was, Uh it was an interesting like dynamic. But
Speaker 3: there was so much more to the story. Eventually it
Speaker 3: will come out. I'm assuming somebody will talk about it.
Speaker 3: But uh, yeah, it was. It was cool. It was
Speaker 3: cool to be there. I didn't know it was a
Speaker 3: big deal. It was during Easter and so you know,
Speaker 3: I would call from the fantail of the ship on
Speaker 3: my my ridium. I had to readeom folks that I'm
Speaker 3: a bougie guy, right yeah, and so oh it's like
Speaker 3: she's like, what's going on there? Like nothing? What do
Speaker 3: you hear? She's like, it's a big deal back in
Speaker 3: the States. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, Oh, the thry.
Speaker 3: Was the different network. Yeah, but I had both. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so you know, you really made it. We have a threat.
Speaker 5: So when you guys were on this like two day
Speaker 5: pleasure cruise, did h what was the command?
Speaker 4: Was there anybody going where are you guys?
Speaker 3: No? Because I think they were. So people give special
Speaker 3: operations like a lot of credibility, but like they're hyper
Speaker 3: focused on getting the assault force back home, and so
Speaker 3: we were kind of like, you know extra you know.
Speaker 4: Uh, what was the port of call? Where did you
Speaker 4: guys get off?
Speaker 3: I can't tell you. Okay, yeah, but we came back.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that. The team and I.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna I'm gonna pretend it's Bali and you guys.
Speaker 3: I wish well it would be the wrong part of
Speaker 3: the world, but I don't care in this, In this
Speaker 3: know that part of the world's not very nice. But
Speaker 3: we went back there had some cocktails and it was
Speaker 3: funny because it was like nothing happened. It was like
Speaker 3: it was just another thing. And so we went back
Speaker 3: and had some drinks. Act we went to party that night,
Speaker 3: and uh, we had a good time. And it's just
Speaker 3: funny to think, how, you know, things appear in the news,
Speaker 3: how sensationalized they are, but to us it was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was cool man. We did went and did the thing.
Speaker 3: We wouldn't do another thing, you know. Yeah, So you're
Speaker 3: constantly looking for the next thing, right to kind of fill.
Speaker 5: Your bucket, and and the next thing has to be
Speaker 5: cooler than it.
Speaker 3: Has to be cooler, right, it has to be more
Speaker 3: sensational and more violent or whatever you wanted to be, right, So.
Speaker 4: What was the next thing for you?
Speaker 3: Then? On that rotation, you know, not a lot. It
Speaker 3: was a lot of prep and so my job was
Speaker 3: to kind of this is before you can imagine what
Speaker 3: part of the world it was. It was four things
Speaker 3: were built up. We were building things up. When we're
Speaker 3: building partner forces and these things doing really like the
Speaker 3: grunt work of it, you know, kind of the non
Speaker 3: sexy stuff living in safe houses, the true safe houses
Speaker 3: where you know you're eating you're truly eating what you
Speaker 3: got local food. You can't go outside because you have
Speaker 3: to be If you see a white guy there, it's
Speaker 3: a big deal. So people say they're living in a
Speaker 3: safe house, You're like, dude, when you're living in a
Speaker 3: safe house, you don't walk outside, right, So a lot
Speaker 3: of that grunt work on that.
Speaker 2: On that deployment, you said you also spent about seven
Speaker 2: years doing some of the more like clandestine operations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was doing that when Kevin Pillows thing happened.
Speaker 3: You know, we would do loavez ovs. OPE is a
Speaker 3: term to get thrown around. It's operational prep with the
Speaker 3: environment or op B, a prep for the battlefield or AFO,
Speaker 3: which is advanced forced operations. Just sexy ways of saying,
Speaker 3: you know, you're doing things that aren't necessarily tied to
Speaker 3: you know, big constructs in the military. And you can
Speaker 3: do OPE op B anywhere, right, You could do it
Speaker 3: in Indonesia, you could do it in East Africa, you
Speaker 3: can do it in Europe. But there's not a lot
Speaker 3: of people that do it. There's people say they do
Speaker 3: it because they go into country and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: I have a passport and I'm wearing a suit. That's
Speaker 3: not OPE. When you're actually doing tasks and saying hey,
Speaker 3: i'm gonna you know, I'm gonna fix this problem for you.
Speaker 3: You know, those are the problem sets that are more difficult,
Speaker 3: and it takes a more refined kind of team. And
Speaker 3: so it takes guys that are smarter. It takes guys
Speaker 3: that are able to work on their own. And so
Speaker 3: I did that for a while.
Speaker 2: OPE can invent develop like a number of different things,
Speaker 2: from like intelligence gathering to identifying landing zones to all.
Speaker 3: These sorts of Yeah, it's not one thing. I think
Speaker 3: that traditionally, you know, it's been in one vein of
Speaker 3: like I'm gonna, you know, do caches in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 3: Like okay, that's traditional, right, But yeah, that's an element.
Speaker 3: But what I what my experience was is that when
Speaker 3: you have really talented guys, you can do anything. And
Speaker 3: you say, hey, Chad, can you guys go do X? Yes,
Speaker 3: the answer is yes. And if I'm a PJ, can
Speaker 3: I go do an LZ service? Yes? I can. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're a really you know, high end competent, you know,
Speaker 3: because there's different types of seals, right, and the seals
Speaker 3: that we're with are very high functioning guys that are like,
Speaker 3: can solve problems? Can you go do X? Yes? We can.
Speaker 3: Can you work with this partner for us? Can you
Speaker 3: build this safe house? Yes? And so it's not sexy
Speaker 3: stuff all the time, but a lot of times it
Speaker 3: devolves into very dangerous activities, and especially if you're in
Speaker 3: environments that are very nascent and there's no footprint.
Speaker 5: Semi permissive to non permissive, non.
Speaker 3: Permissively yeah, yeah, so you know, truly non permissive. And
Speaker 3: not a lot of military, even soft guys have experienced
Speaker 3: this where you're like, oh, I was in Afghanistan. I
Speaker 3: was a remote, Like, okay, that's cool. What about when
Speaker 3: you're in a complete.
Speaker 6: Behind enemy lines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're in a country that you're not at
Speaker 3: war with and they want to kill you, and when
Speaker 3: they do, no one's coming to get you. When you're
Speaker 3: a tick, there's no QRF and there's no kasavak, right,
Speaker 3: And so my job would always be to figure it out,
Speaker 3: like Chad, well, if this happens, what do you do?
Speaker 3: I'm like, And so I would work commercial assets, trying
Speaker 3: to get you know, international sos to go in and
Speaker 3: like pull us out of remote regions. And it became
Speaker 3: a thinking man's game, which was really good for me
Speaker 3: because I was intellectually stimulated right and I was like,
Speaker 3: holy crap, this is fun.
Speaker 4: So let's talk a little bit about OPE and OPB
Speaker 4: real quick.
Speaker 5: We're talking about operational preparation of the environment and operational
Speaker 5: preparation of the battlefield. Some as we'll talk about like
Speaker 5: advanced AFO Advanced Force operations, and really it's it's the
Speaker 5: guys who are going in where we might have interest,
Speaker 5: but we're not sure if we have interest.
Speaker 3: And we might be at war there one day.
Speaker 5: One day, and really setting up the plumbing, setting up
Speaker 5: the environment.
Speaker 3: You know who the rock stars are. It's not the operators,
Speaker 3: it's the singing guys. It's the tech guys. Guys that
Speaker 3: can look look at infrastructure and logistics. Those are the
Speaker 3: rock stars. And you know, despite how cool we think
Speaker 3: we are, without them, we wouldn't do those jobs. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of OPE and AFO is you know,
Speaker 3: sing and ew related, and so you know, you being
Speaker 3: able to contribute to that mission set is important. And
Speaker 3: so if you're a knuckle dragger, like we don't need you,
Speaker 3: like we don't need a gun. We need guys that
Speaker 3: can do the gun work but also do the you know,
Speaker 3: the tech stuff. And so a lot of operators became
Speaker 3: kind of dual purpose where they had a basic understanding
Speaker 3: I'm not going to overinflate my you know worth, but
Speaker 3: a basic understanding of how sing it works, of how
Speaker 3: networks work, and then how to get after those things
Speaker 3: and how to how to employ you know, tactics and
Speaker 3: techniques to uh set conditions for other folks to come
Speaker 3: in and be successful. Right, and so you know, you
Speaker 3: look at the theater right now for Europe and even
Speaker 3: pay Com. You know, there's a lot of prep work
Speaker 3: that has to go on to make those those theaters successful.
Speaker 5: Now there are Army special mission units that that's sort
Speaker 5: of their Bailey Wicked, their bread and butter.
Speaker 4: But of course everybody does everything. Now, how.
Speaker 5: How did seals like get into that? That's definitely all right, right,
Speaker 5: I mean and everybody did see he.
Speaker 3: Had intelligence collection units that are really good at it,
Speaker 3: but basically within Jasak, like if you read the book
Speaker 3: Team of Teams, that was the early days of Iraq's
Speaker 3: very you know, very basic construct. It grew very fast
Speaker 3: and everyone wanted the mission, so everyone built capabilities, right,
Speaker 3: and so everyone had the same capabilities, right, And so
Speaker 3: when you had the Army and Navy, they had all
Speaker 3: the same like singing, you know, ew like they had everything.
Speaker 3: They were all you know, it wasn't joint anymore. It
Speaker 3: was like this is a bohemoth, you know, task force.
Speaker 3: They can do everything right, and this one was too,
Speaker 3: and so you know, it became kind of a dog
Speaker 3: fight for mission, you know, and so everyone could do it.
Speaker 3: And so those very bespoke capabilities you're talking about, they
Speaker 3: were important and they would definitely be involved in it
Speaker 3: was very high level. Otherwise they're like, we got it right.
Speaker 3: And so it was a really interesting dynamic to watch
Speaker 3: develop over the years. And like I said, I came
Speaker 3: in you know, two thousand and two to selection in
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, and then watched the whole transervation
Speaker 3: of the command and it became a monster, right, you know.
Speaker 5: Right, and and for you, I mean, because it's interesting
Speaker 5: that you were there. Because the Seals do have their cormen.
Speaker 3: No so well they they do and they don't. So okay,
Speaker 3: if you're a seal and you got the Green team.
Speaker 3: You're an assaulter.
Speaker 5: I see, you're not a coreminating Interesting okay, yeah, I
Speaker 5: didn't know that.
Speaker 3: You don't carry medrug. You know, there's some guys that
Speaker 3: were still interested in medicine and they would help, but
Speaker 3: they're not carrying at medrog They're carrying you know, door charges,
Speaker 3: they're carrying you know, m P seven s.
Speaker 4: They're carrying the heavier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are, No, they are, and so it basically
Speaker 3: relieves them from having to do that job. Yeah, their assaulters
Speaker 3: with the army, you have eighteen deltas and they are
Speaker 3: eighteen deltas and they are the primary medic for that
Speaker 3: that squad. And pj's will help them, but the pjs
Speaker 3: are to rescue and recovery, right, and so that's the differentiation.
Speaker 5: And so and for you, you know, sort of focusing
Speaker 5: on this fission for a few years, were you afforded
Speaker 5: training opportunities to to go learn.
Speaker 2: Skills training up with these teams before you Yeah, so
Speaker 2: you're basically attached that team.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, you live with them, you train
Speaker 3: with them, do you work ups with them? And then
Speaker 3: to get specialized training you have to be very specific
Speaker 3: on what you want to do, because you only have
Speaker 3: a finite amount of time, right, And so if you're
Speaker 3: a guy who needs a top off on medicine, like
Speaker 3: you get two weeks, what are you gonna do with it? Right?
Speaker 3: And so you're gonna spend a ton of money and
Speaker 3: get the best medical training you can get. And that's
Speaker 3: the differentiator too, between white white side and Tier one
Speaker 3: is that, like if I want to go, you know,
Speaker 3: to the best burn center in the world, like I
Speaker 3: can go there and top off on on burn injuries.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing when you talk about going into
Speaker 3: remote medicine and some of the safe house stuff, is
Speaker 3: that you have to specialize then, because I would have
Speaker 3: to do pharmacology stuff in the safe houses where it
Speaker 3: wasn't expected to be. On the on the assault side,
Speaker 3: I don't care, like just do just do good, you know,
Speaker 3: pain management, that's all we care about. If I'm living
Speaker 3: in a safe house and guy gets sick, I gotta
Speaker 3: take care of him. And so I would have to
Speaker 3: top off on those skills. And so guys like eighteen
Speaker 3: Deltas is very intuitive to them, they would know how
Speaker 3: to do it. But here I was the guy that
Speaker 3: could integrate with the assault mission, go back and forth
Speaker 3: to the IFO mission. But then I just need to
Speaker 3: top off on the medicin right here, and I can
Speaker 3: get I can get there fast, right And so I
Speaker 3: think that's the biggest uh. One of the best attributes
Speaker 3: of pjs within that world is that they're very quick
Speaker 3: to react to needs. And so you know, if you
Speaker 3: look at like a tech company, the successful tech company
Speaker 3: as the ones that can react to the needs of
Speaker 3: the customers very quickly and build a build a thing.
Speaker 3: PJS within a Tier one units are that, and they
Speaker 3: can say, oh, you want me to be in a
Speaker 3: ropes expert, gotcha, let me go to Montana real quick,
Speaker 3: or you know, get topped off and I'll become a
Speaker 3: you know, you know, elite climber. You know amg A
Speaker 3: certified and it's it's like that.
Speaker 5: And with medicine, you guys have access to some of
Speaker 5: the best hospitals in the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all the best, all the best trauma hospitals in
Speaker 3: the United States are very good with work of the military,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's a lot of folks that work
Speaker 3: habitually with them. When you work at you know, big
Speaker 3: cities like there's you know, the shock traumas, and you know,
Speaker 3: any big city has a lot of violent you know.
Speaker 3: I think New Orleans is one of them. New York
Speaker 3: is one of them where you have a lot of
Speaker 3: stabbings and shootings. You're getting reps right, and you know,
Speaker 3: you know, and I I dote on the Rangers a lot,
Speaker 3: but the Ranger medics, their medics became the best in
Speaker 3: the tiers. I I feel like they had so much trauma,
Speaker 3: whether it be internal you know, to the regiment also
Speaker 3: host nation. They were doing so much stuff, and their
Speaker 3: pas and doctors were training them NonStop. So when they
Speaker 3: come off the missions when everyone else is playing video games,
Speaker 3: they were doing classes. And that's why they became so
Speaker 3: good what they did. And so when I I, I
Speaker 3: you had to do refreshers every two years, you know,
Speaker 3: to keep your currencies up. And every two years I
Speaker 3: would go through Softness, which is at Fort Bragg. And
Speaker 3: I could have gone to like you know, the the
Speaker 3: Gucci ones like and gone skiing and like done some medicine,
Speaker 3: get refreshed, right, But I knew it was so important
Speaker 3: that had to go with the best guys. They were
Speaker 3: doing no kiddy Military Medicine. So I did every single time,
Speaker 3: every single refresher I did at Sophomass, every single one
Speaker 3: of them. I never went to New Hampshire and went skiing.
Speaker 3: I never did in my whole career. And guys are like, dude,
Speaker 3: why don't. I'm like, I want to, but I have
Speaker 3: to have to be good at this. And what I
Speaker 3: realized was when I go there Ranger Medics, these guys
Speaker 3: would teach me a ton and then they started becoming
Speaker 3: instructors of softness. And I was so impressed by these
Speaker 3: guys because they were so switched on and they'd seen
Speaker 3: so much and they were able to uh instruct very well.
Speaker 3: I was. I was very impressed by the range of
Speaker 3: medics man. And so I I championed us getting back
Speaker 3: into that program because we kind of got pushed out
Speaker 3: of it and we got pushed back in. But I
Speaker 3: have a ton of respect for him man.
Speaker 5: So and they never like asked you what it was
Speaker 5: as business, the acronym that you used, uh those basic
Speaker 5: SYSM or those systems.
Speaker 3: Oh BSI yeah, no, no, never.
Speaker 5: Hammered you on that, no, man.
Speaker 3: I mean these guys were like, you know doing you know,
Speaker 3: buddy transfusions, they've done them in the field, and they
Speaker 3: were doing high end like uh, you know, just very
Speaker 3: creative medicine, and they were so good at what they did.
Speaker 3: And I I knew that if you want to be
Speaker 3: a good combat medic, you have to talk to the
Speaker 3: best combat medics guys. I've seen it. And so, like
Speaker 3: I said in the first mission, that I messed up,
Speaker 3: like that was my chance. And so if these guys
Speaker 3: were getting chances every night, man, they are going to
Speaker 3: be the best very fast. And so when you're working
Speaker 3: with very high end soft guys, they're not getting shot
Speaker 3: all the time, you know what I mean, You shouldn't
Speaker 3: be getting shot all the time, right, So the Rangers
Speaker 3: were getting shot a lot, you know, no offense, but
Speaker 3: they were getting shot a lot because they're going in
Speaker 3: some dangerous missions. And the Rangers took over Atfghinistan and
Speaker 3: they were basically a Tier one four in Afghanistan and
Speaker 3: they were killing it. Man, they were doing so many
Speaker 3: ops and they were kicking ass. Because everyone else is
Speaker 3: so focused on everything else in the world, They're like,
Speaker 3: we got this, and so they got a little reps.
Speaker 3: And so that's why I am That's why I love
Speaker 3: what they did and I respect the hell out of them.
Speaker 6: So you also mentioned, uh, there're some OTV ops that
Speaker 6: you were on.
Speaker 3: So in everyone's career, you want to do an OTV, right,
Speaker 3: so you want over the beach op? It sounds cool.
Speaker 3: I went to a theater and there was a team
Speaker 3: back in the States that were training for a mission.
Speaker 3: And I was already in theater and I was doing
Speaker 3: my thing. I was during cocktails and parties, and they're like, well,
Speaker 3: there's a PJ controller in theater. Like yeah, like okay,
Speaker 3: well we could just use them, right, And so these
Speaker 3: guys came out and was like I forget five or
Speaker 3: six guys and they're like, hey, you guys go to
Speaker 3: this OTV, Like, how hard is it. It's a swim
Speaker 3: into the beach. It's not rocket side. And so we
Speaker 3: did one one shakeout swim. They'd done like weeks of
Speaker 3: work up, we had done zero. Me and the controller like,
Speaker 3: how hard is this gonna be? It's like, it's a
Speaker 3: swim and so we uh we go into a destroyer.
Speaker 3: We go into a rib uh noel h X ribs,
Speaker 3: but uh we go to zodes and the zodes kick
Speaker 3: us off and we swim in, and we swim in
Speaker 3: to the hinterland in this remote region. We walk in
Speaker 3: and uh, I'm not on a night schedule, so I
Speaker 3: was really tired. And they were doing something. There was
Speaker 3: an activity. There's like a terrace camp right next to us,
Speaker 3: and uh, it's like our wreckie. We were doing something.
Speaker 3: I can't tell what, and I'm like bored out of
Speaker 3: my mind. It was the most boring. I mean, there
Speaker 3: was like a hundred guys sleeping like down a ridge line.
Speaker 3: You can see him, and like, we can't do anything
Speaker 3: about them, but we, uh, we do. We do our thing,
Speaker 3: whatever we're doing, and then we pull out to patrol out.
Speaker 3: And so I'm in the back of the formation. And
Speaker 3: if if there's any Navy you guys watching this, they'll
Speaker 3: know maybe you guys are not really good at like, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, patrolling, like the basic fundamentals of like you know, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, line formations or passing signals back and forth.
Speaker 3: They just kind of wing it right, So they're patrolling.
Speaker 3: Everyone's got their heads down, all in MP seven's and
Speaker 3: I'm walking in the back. I'm the second man. There's
Speaker 3: Roos security and these guys go to this ridge line
Speaker 3: and there's this uh there's just like this animal pen.
Speaker 3: So in this region they have like these they built
Speaker 3: these walls with those sticks to keep the lines out,
Speaker 3: and they have one entrance and so they know when
Speaker 3: the line's coming or whatever. And so and these guys
Speaker 3: rustle because these birds kick up and they come out
Speaker 3: and I see them nods. I'm like, holy crap. So
Speaker 3: I put my laser on them, and I stop, and
Speaker 3: I I'm like you no, no one's gonna look at
Speaker 3: it like this, and no one stops. They could keep going.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay. So it's me and him and we're
Speaker 3: about to get a tick, and so my laser's on them.
Speaker 3: These guys get up. They got weapons, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, of course, what's gonna happen right now?
Speaker 3: And the guy behind me sees it, puts his laser
Speaker 3: on it. So two of us and we stop. We're
Speaker 3: holding these guys know something's going on outside, and you know,
Speaker 3: like people in movies, you're like, oh, it's you know,
Speaker 3: two or three guys. It's easy to clean up. Like no,
Speaker 3: it could be very nasty, right, and so, but our
Speaker 3: entire force has gone over the beach to get their
Speaker 3: fins on to go swim back out, and we're standing there.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, and so we just stop and we wait.
Speaker 3: We'ren't there for five minutes, which is an eternity or not.
Speaker 3: Those guys never came back. They don't even notice we're
Speaker 3: even there. And so these guys finally chill out. They
Speaker 3: turn back around their weapons and go back down and
Speaker 3: you can see the ever little candle in there, and
Speaker 3: we patrol back out the we go back to the beach.
Speaker 5: I'm like, dude, what the hell are they gone?
Speaker 3: No, they're like where you guys A dude? There was
Speaker 3: two you know, yeah, And we swim back out and
Speaker 3: but there's so much like comedy within operations, within soft
Speaker 3: that we just get lucky so much, you know, and
Speaker 3: we swim back out. And it was funny when we
Speaker 3: swim back out to the destroyer. They had a they
Speaker 3: had a dip tank on the back of the fantail
Speaker 3: or like dipping our weapons you in fresh water, and
Speaker 3: all the gear and all these navy folks, like you know,
Speaker 3: conventional navy folks on the back and this chick's on
Speaker 3: the back. She's like, I know, y'all out there killing
Speaker 3: black folks, like we didn't kill anybody different. She's like
Speaker 3: going off on us, and one of the master chiefs
Speaker 3: there rips her new one, and I'm like, do people
Speaker 3: really say that kind of stuff? Like we come off
Speaker 3: an op like it's fucking crazy. No one has no
Speaker 3: idea what we're doing. And to make that comment is like, dude, like, no,
Speaker 3: we're actually really civilized people or doing some very gentlely
Speaker 3: stuffed in the inter lendstage, you know.
Speaker 6: I mean she's in the same military you are.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the other thing is the military is like us.
Speaker 3: There's this cognitive dissonance of what the military is like.
Speaker 3: The military is designed to fight and kill, right, that's
Speaker 3: what it is. Right. It's not there to win hearts
Speaker 3: and minds. It's not there to be shurew A force
Speaker 3: is there to kill. And if you don't process that
Speaker 3: information and come to terms with it, you're not a
Speaker 3: part of the solution. And so I think a lot
Speaker 3: of military folks because within the past twenty years, there's
Speaker 3: only handful of people that went to combat, right, the
Speaker 3: lot of people deployed. Within the people that deployed, there's
Speaker 3: only handful people actually went outside the wire and fought.
Speaker 3: But to the civilian, they look at it like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're in the military. I think of your service. You're like, oh,
Speaker 3: you went to Afghanistan. No, you're you're a bogram and
Speaker 3: you're a logistics person and you'd never left the wire,
Speaker 3: like and you had you know, you had coffee every
Speaker 3: day and good chow haul. And there was certain people
Speaker 3: that went and fought. And it's a very small group
Speaker 3: of people, and that's hard for people to understand, Like
Speaker 3: it's a small group man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now is you know, you're going on all
Speaker 2: of these you know, clean DestinE operations, you've done the
Speaker 2: more conventional operations, rescue operations, like you're becoming pretty like
Speaker 2: salty senior guy in the unit at.
Speaker 3: This point, and then you accidentally make grand great right right.
Speaker 5: And the Air Force, I mean, I know it used
Speaker 5: to be, but the Air Force used to be very hard.
Speaker 4: It was probably the hardest service to make rank in
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 3: And so if you've seen the movie like Pure Luck,
Speaker 3: like I dumb luck fall into things and so I
Speaker 3: meet E eight and I'm like, oh my god, and
Speaker 3: the Air Force is a big deal. You're like, oh,
Speaker 3: your career's over. And I'm like, if I can just
Speaker 3: hide as an E eight, maybe they'll still deploy me.
Speaker 3: I can just hang out here for a while. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, I deployed a couple of times in EAID,
Speaker 3: which is a big deal in the Air Force. And
Speaker 3: then finally they're like, hey.
Speaker 5: Dude, cause you're supposed to be managing people, you're supposed
Speaker 5: to be go into ops, right, you gotta go to ops, man,
Speaker 5: you got to pay your penance.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I want to go to OPS. And
Speaker 3: so I went out and did a thing as an
Speaker 3: EA and it was like a big deal. They're like,
Speaker 3: you can't be doing that stuff anymore. I'm like, this
Speaker 3: is all I want to do in my life, right,
Speaker 3: this is what I what I'm designed to do, This
Speaker 3: is what I trained to do. Is what I want
Speaker 3: to do. And they threw me in OPS and this
Speaker 3: is funny. I mean it's not comment really, it's not sexy.
Speaker 3: But I went to OPS and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like super Bad or what's the movie? When it's
Speaker 3: like FML, It's like this is my life now. And
Speaker 3: so I did that for six months and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: Green Team Selection open up and we need a senior
Speaker 3: guy to go there. Do you want to go do that?
Speaker 3: I'm like, yes, yes, absolutely, give me out of ops.
Speaker 3: And so I went there and and that that was
Speaker 3: really formative for me as a leader. I learned how
Speaker 3: to lead in a different way. I had been leading
Speaker 3: the past, leading the way I saw other people lead,
Speaker 3: and I thought that was where it would do it,
Speaker 3: and it was not authentic for me. And so I
Speaker 3: got a chance to kind of reset for myself and say, listen,
Speaker 3: I'm not a hard ass. I'm not. I want to be,
Speaker 3: but I'm not. I'm never going to be. I'm a
Speaker 3: nice guy. You know. I can connect with people, and
Speaker 3: so that's what I need to do. And so when
Speaker 3: I ran selection training, I got to kind of cut
Speaker 3: my teeth doing that. And then from selection training I
Speaker 3: went to twenty fourth sts and became the chief there
Speaker 3: as the senior you know enlisted.
Speaker 5: So this is kind of putting you on the spot
Speaker 5: and take your time in answering this. But if you
Speaker 5: had to pick like a fictional or a real character.
Speaker 3: Chuck Norris, there, you go, okay.
Speaker 5: No, but based on how you thought you were supposed
Speaker 5: to lead. Yeah, And then how you actually became a leader.
Speaker 3: Where you see hard asses and you know in TV,
Speaker 3: and I grew up with hard asses right as leaders
Speaker 3: and I was and Kenniley they were, they were great. Man.
Speaker 3: I was like, those guys are bad, you know, bigger
Speaker 3: in life and and in the Rage of Battalion. You
Speaker 3: guys know, if you're you know, seen a guy in
Speaker 3: the Rage Attalia, you're a hard ass, right. But what
Speaker 3: I realized was that my superpower was you know, connecting
Speaker 3: with folks and being empathetic and having high IQ with folks,
Speaker 3: and so I could still be just as effective and
Speaker 3: not have to be that guy. But it took me
Speaker 3: a while to figure it out because I was immature,
Speaker 3: you know. And so as I became more mature and
Speaker 3: became more self aware and comfortable in my own skin,
Speaker 3: I realized that I could lead a different way. And
Speaker 3: you know, is that a kind of gentler you know,
Speaker 3: military maybe. I mean, you know, I still have a temper.
Speaker 3: I can still get mad.
Speaker 6: I think you put your thumb on it pretty well.
Speaker 2: That the screaming and the yelling and like that's a
Speaker 2: lot of like trying to throw up a smoke screen
Speaker 2: to compensate for an inability of leadership.
Speaker 5: I think there, but there's also a time for that,
Speaker 5: maybe like when molding people. But you're also but even
Speaker 5: Ranger Battalion changed dramatically from like the time I got there,
Speaker 5: when I was there, which was pre g WATT and
Speaker 5: when as from what I understand, as you know, through
Speaker 5: the g WATT as it became more professionalized that you know,
Speaker 5: people started treating your leaders started treating it was a
Speaker 5: professional organization.
Speaker 4: You know, it was very capable when I was there.
Speaker 3: But I remember the stories the rate of attalian where
Speaker 3: they like throw fire excus you guys, you just walking
Speaker 3: back and forth and then throw extinguishers. I mean I
Speaker 3: heard the stories.
Speaker 4: From them were just ranger games.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but you understand, you understand the dynamic of
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, it's doggy dog, right, and you know,
Speaker 3: if you're a if you're the Tier one operator, supposed
Speaker 3: to be a little bit moreture.
Speaker 4: Right, right.
Speaker 3: And so here I was leading these guys that were
Speaker 3: very capable and they're all extremely competent. They were all
Speaker 3: you know, combat hardened guys. They didn't need me to
Speaker 3: be right, like I had my reps right, But Kimly,
Speaker 3: it didn't matter. My job was to support them where
Speaker 3: they were at right and be a good leader for
Speaker 3: them and be the leader that I never received. And
Speaker 3: so you know, it's easy to say that I will.
Speaker 3: I can be very honestly and tell you that I
Speaker 3: did the best I could to be that guy, and
Speaker 3: I think I did a decent job of doing it.
Speaker 3: But it was it was an inflection point for me personally,
Speaker 3: and it was a big growth, you know, moment for me.
Speaker 4: I just to clarify a point when you talked about
Speaker 4: going to OPS.
Speaker 5: That sounds really sexy, but for people who don't know,
Speaker 5: OPS is like operational planning.
Speaker 4: It's not sexy.
Speaker 3: Doing sit revs and like sending gear to guys overseas,
Speaker 3: like it's terrible. Yeah, I mean someone's got to do it,
Speaker 3: you know, it's an important job. I just felt like
Speaker 3: I felt like I was the pony in the in
Speaker 3: the in the you know, the paddock that was like
Speaker 3: a kicking and I wasn't ready to go into the stable.
Speaker 3: I was like, I want to keep dancing, and uh,
Speaker 3: probably the best knowledge I could figure, you know, but
Speaker 3: for me personally, I just wasn't ready to hang it up.
Speaker 3: But in the Air Force, when you get to that
Speaker 3: point a senior, you're done. And in the Army especially,
Speaker 3: you know, within the tier one unit you can be
Speaker 3: an E nine and running gun right until the day
Speaker 3: you retire, right, And I think that's awesome. In the Navy,
Speaker 3: you can do it to a certain extent, but they're
Speaker 3: not the same as the Army because there's a lot
Speaker 3: of nines in the Army and the Air Force there's
Speaker 3: not a lot of E nines. And so if you're
Speaker 3: in A nine, it's like, holy crap, we need you
Speaker 3: to go here, and we need you to manage you know,
Speaker 3: this this program with this unit, and it's not sexy,
Speaker 3: it's grunt work. We need guys to do it. We
Speaker 3: need good guys to do it. And so I you know,
Speaker 3: when I wasn't one of those guys, I was really
Speaker 3: excited about going to twenty fourth to be the chief.
Speaker 3: I never aspired to be that A lot of guys did.
Speaker 3: I never did. But when they asked me to do
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, I'll do it for them. And
Speaker 3: and my wife knows this, she was like, I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't know how I can do all this stuff.
Speaker 3: And I was like, I want to be a good
Speaker 3: leader for them, and so I really tried. I tried
Speaker 3: really hard to be well. I should have been in
Speaker 3: that unit, but it was not prestigious for me. There
Speaker 3: was no like, uh, it wasn't like meeting my chest.
Speaker 3: I was like I made it. I was like, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, crap at this job and it's gonna
Speaker 3: be hard, and I have to deal with all these
Speaker 3: people issues and all these guys are in harm's way.
Speaker 3: And we were non stop deployed and we never stopped
Speaker 3: deploying our unit, just like a lot of these units
Speaker 3: were deployed since nine eleven into perpetuity and so until
Speaker 3: just recently they stopped deploying. Right, you know, Afghanistana racks
Speaker 3: draw down Syria their home, and that's when the real
Speaker 3: problems come in, Right, that's when guys are like, now
Speaker 3: you're getting duys. Now you're getting the guys with you know,
Speaker 3: domestic issues. I didn't have those issues.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I just had a bunch of pipe hitters. They're doing
Speaker 3: great things, and they were very mature and they were capable.
Speaker 3: I had the best, you know, I had the best situation.
Speaker 4: So what year did you take over? Like the Green Team.
Speaker 3: Was it maybe twenty seventeen.
Speaker 5: So and you went in two thousand and three, two
Speaker 5: thousand and two, two thousand and three, Oh not not
Speaker 5: to Greene yeah Green Team.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 5: How had by the time you got there? How had
Speaker 5: it changed over them so much?
Speaker 3: So here's the biggest thing that changed how we selected folks.
Speaker 3: And so if you guys came to us in the unit,
Speaker 3: you put your package in, you know, we're like, okay,
Speaker 3: you got a duy here, it was five years ago.
Speaker 3: Have you learned from it? Okay, keep your nose clean? Okay,
Speaker 3: maybe we'll talk to you. Okay, you get through the
Speaker 3: front door just from your package, you know, interview, come
Speaker 3: to selection, and then we do this process where we
Speaker 3: we really get to know the person, the individual, their psyche.
Speaker 3: When you're saying, how they make decisions. We put them
Speaker 3: in situations, ethical dilemmas, We do all these things that
Speaker 3: really breaks down the individual and how they think, which
Speaker 3: is way more important than how much you lift. Do
Speaker 3: We still want you to be a stud absolutely, You
Speaker 3: got to right, You got to you gotta do the
Speaker 3: long ruck, you gotta run fast, you gotta care eavy things.
Speaker 5: You got to keep up with the seals. You got
Speaker 5: to keep up with the rangers.
Speaker 3: You get, that's an expectation. But here's what we're asking
Speaker 3: you to do. We're asking you to have a very
Speaker 3: clear ethical compass. We're asking you to make good decisions
Speaker 3: under stress. We're asking you to have a high EQ
Speaker 3: and IQ like we're looking at those things. Okay, we're
Speaker 3: not taking dummies. We have very smart guys within the
Speaker 3: special the Air Force Special Operations side. They're they're very
Speaker 3: competent dudes, and we test them and we test them
Speaker 3: amongst their peers. And so one of the questions, it's funny,
Speaker 3: like I was thinking about, you know, talking to you
Speaker 3: guys about this, is that you know, one of the
Speaker 3: questions is would you want to be in a car
Speaker 3: with this guy for I think it was like eight
Speaker 3: hour car? And that's a good question, right, Do I
Speaker 3: want to ride in a car with you for eight hours?
Speaker 3: What does that mean? Does it mean I like you?
Speaker 3: Doesn't mean I can get along with you? Can you?
Speaker 3: Can you blend into a team room? Can you deal
Speaker 3: with other folks? Can you do that and also keep
Speaker 3: your moral compass? Because that's an ethical dilemma that exists
Speaker 3: going with other tears and so our guys have done
Speaker 3: a really good job of staying above afray, and I'm
Speaker 3: really proud of them.
Speaker 5: So wasn't that a question that beck With had had
Speaker 5: was do I want to paddle upstream with the guy?
Speaker 4: With this guy?
Speaker 5: Could have been yeah, yeah, when we talk to Dan Coulson, yeah.
Speaker 6: Beck With, Uh, that's a whole other story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But that's but that's important, right in the sense
Speaker 5: of outside of this person being a high performer, Like
Speaker 5: if it's just if it's just he and I out
Speaker 5: there for three days, I.
Speaker 3: Don't care how fast you run. I don't I don't
Speaker 3: care how much weight you can lift. I want you
Speaker 3: to be able to carry your own weight. But I
Speaker 3: also want you to make good decisions understress. And so
Speaker 3: that's not very it's it's a hard thing to tease out.
Speaker 3: And so we we would have psychologists in their non
Speaker 3: stop with us looking at our bias, right, because I
Speaker 3: have bias, and so if I'm hiring somebody, I want
Speaker 3: some probably to look like me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And you probably do the same thing, and you're like,
Speaker 3: hey man, he's you know, he's a puss, Like he's
Speaker 3: not like me, And so you're going to basically dismiss
Speaker 3: that guy, or if you're an extrovert, he's an introvert,
Speaker 3: like he can't be like me. Yeah, And what we
Speaker 3: realized was is that, you know, when we talk about
Speaker 3: diversity in the military and people roll their eyes at
Speaker 3: it because it's been it's been miscategorized, it's diversity of thought.
Speaker 3: And we want people to think differently and can solve
Speaker 3: problems differently, differently than me because it makes me stronger, right,
Speaker 3: And so if we can do that as an organization,
Speaker 3: you can be successful. And all of the units are
Speaker 3: kind of changing their selection models to tease these things out.
Speaker 3: You know, back in the you know, eighties and nineties,
Speaker 3: it was like how fast can you run? How good
Speaker 3: can you shoot? We need more than that now, and
Speaker 3: we need guys that can operate in their own And
Speaker 3: so I think the soft operators of today are far
Speaker 3: superior than of my generation. And I think that's fair
Speaker 3: to say because I am that. You know, I think
Speaker 3: we were pretty good and we're pretty damn hardy because
Speaker 3: we did a lot of combat. But were we prepared.
Speaker 3: I don't think we were. I wasn't prepared. We prepared
Speaker 3: these guys because we looked at all the gaps in
Speaker 3: our lives and our careers, and we said, we're going
Speaker 3: to fill those in with training, and we're fill us
Speaker 3: in with experience. And so you know, when guys get
Speaker 3: selected to be Green Toy instructors, there are guys that
Speaker 3: are combat hardened dudes that can come in there and
Speaker 3: sit down with you. Go listen, dude, this is why
Speaker 3: you're messing up. And this is what you need to change.
Speaker 3: If you're a combat con troubler, here's what you need
Speaker 3: to think about when you run a stack, and here's
Speaker 3: why you have to think about it this way. If
Speaker 3: you're a PJ, this is why you can't do medicine
Speaker 3: this way. This is why you're gonna get someone killed.
Speaker 3: And we finally finally have the experience to sit there
Speaker 3: and say that very you know, emphatically and with a
Speaker 3: position of authority, which we didn't have in the nineties.
Speaker 3: So when I went through sock them, there was a
Speaker 3: bunch of guys never went to combat. Right they're telling
Speaker 3: me about how to treat a casually. They never treated casually.
Speaker 3: Right now, when I go through soft miss with it
Speaker 3: ragio medic and he's saying, hey, Chad, you're messing this up.
Speaker 3: I'm like, holy crap, and knows what he's talking about, right, right,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna listen to him, right, And so I think
Speaker 3: that's a pretty important distinction. But here, here's the butt
Speaker 3: is that we're losing it, and we're losing it today
Speaker 3: because all senior guys are getting out and leaving because
Speaker 3: they're pissed off. Right, And you're gonna have an atrophy
Speaker 3: of experience, and the next fight is gonna be way
Speaker 3: harder than the g WAT Right, It's gonna be ten
Speaker 3: times harder than what we did in Afghanistan Iraq. When
Speaker 3: we're talking about great power competition, guys fight with nods
Speaker 3: and lasers and aircraft overhead. Dude, you have to be
Speaker 3: the best. And you know technology will tip the scale
Speaker 3: to a certain extent, we still have to be a
Speaker 3: very confident operator that knows how to make good decisions
Speaker 3: and stress.
Speaker 5: Is there any way in your opinion to not lose
Speaker 5: it because we lost it after War two.
Speaker 3: It's already it's already been lost. And so you know,
Speaker 3: every service will tell you that I talked to see
Speaker 3: a lot of time to say the same thing. And
Speaker 3: we're losing it, and we're pushing people out because we
Speaker 3: want people to comply. Right. I know we're not getting
Speaker 3: political in this, but there is there is an element
Speaker 3: of like, hey, you need to play ball or you
Speaker 3: need to leave. And so a lot of people are leaving.
Speaker 3: They don't want to play ball like that. It's incongruent
Speaker 3: with their values. And so you have this, you know,
Speaker 3: in in industry they call it what the Great resignation
Speaker 3: and people just you know, or people silently quitting. You
Speaker 3: have that in soft too. People are leaving. And so
Speaker 3: who stays behind? You know, who stays in the senior positions.
Speaker 3: It's the people that you really want to be senior
Speaker 3: guys to beat their chest, and not all of them,
Speaker 3: that's that's not an absolute.
Speaker 5: Sure, But it's the people who enjoy who don't mind
Speaker 5: the political the political game that that happens at that senior.
Speaker 3: I never wanted to be in a nine. When I
Speaker 3: got it, I was like, oh crap, I make a
Speaker 3: little bit more money, not a lot, but I got
Speaker 3: to be a good e nine. And but if your
Speaker 3: motivation is to have more stripes or all those things,
Speaker 3: you're you're the wrong guy. And so how do you,
Speaker 3: how do you suss that out? That's a that's a
Speaker 3: hard question to answer. I don't have the answer.
Speaker 5: You got a questions for Chad, Yeah, we do, and
Speaker 5: just out of curious before we get to the questions,
Speaker 5: like you had this real sort of breadth of experience
Speaker 5: because taking somebody that's a shooter and a medic and
Speaker 5: then all the ancillary skills, but also putting them into
Speaker 5: more of an intel oriented like the you know, like
Speaker 5: the OPE and O p B, which requires tradecraft and
Speaker 5: is more of a thinking man's game. As supposed as that,
Speaker 5: that's very fluid in a lot of ways. Can you
Speaker 5: select people that or do you try to select people
Speaker 5: that encompass all that or do you recognize that some
Speaker 5: people are going to be good at certain things.
Speaker 3: For that mission? Yes, I mean I'm like in Green Team. Well,
Speaker 3: yet we have we've we've found guys like holy Craft,
Speaker 3: that's the guy for this job. Yeah, okay, And we
Speaker 3: pulled guys straight from Green Team. They've never done the
Speaker 3: salt side. They went straight to the other side because
Speaker 3: they're just that they're super you know, cerebral, you know,
Speaker 3: super talented. But you know, maybe they went to a
Speaker 3: school and got an engineering degree, and they might be
Speaker 3: too smart for the job. They're about to go do right,
Speaker 3: and we're like, yeah, guy, listen, I get it. You
Speaker 3: want to go run again, you probably need to go
Speaker 3: do this right. And so that exists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's cool that they're recognizing that so early on. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because yeah, I mean, as you alluded to, I mean,
Speaker 2: when I left the military in twenty ten, the guys
Speaker 2: who had engineering degrees, who had I mean everyone, they
Speaker 2: were all getting out, you know, guys who had opportunities
Speaker 2: to get a full ride to med school, Guys who
Speaker 2: had putting in flight packets.
Speaker 3: I mean, all kinds of stuff happening. So innovation is
Speaker 3: a big topic is brought up in the military all time.
Speaker 3: And the folks that are like innovators and the folks
Speaker 3: that think that way usually get out after their first
Speaker 3: and listening because they're soill frustrated, right, yeah, And that's
Speaker 3: the folks that we need to they and for two
Speaker 3: enlistments to change the world. Right. So it just it's
Speaker 3: the weird di echonomy of the military.
Speaker 5: And it's interesting too because the military resists innovation so hard.
Speaker 3: Well, they don't like failure, they like innovation because it sells.
Speaker 3: But failure is incongruent with what you know, the model
Speaker 3: of success, and so you have to accept failure to
Speaker 3: have innovation. You can't have one with you the other. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can't have Oh we're going to innovate, but we
Speaker 3: always have to be successful, like you never.
Speaker 6: Get the zero fail or risk aversion.
Speaker 3: And so I understand that now on the outside, now
Speaker 3: that I'm in industry, that you know, all the successful
Speaker 3: tech companies are taking a lot of risk and failing
Speaker 3: and they're going to find success because they're failing so
Speaker 3: much r Right, they're learning from it.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, learnt a product and find out that it
Speaker 5: doesn't do what they thought it was going to do,
Speaker 5: but it appeals to a different market that they never
Speaker 5: even imagined. Yeah, it's very interesting. Okay, let's get to
Speaker 5: these questions here. Uh, Anthony, thank you very much. What
Speaker 5: has been your experience is working with soft tax Peeh,
Speaker 5: what's your take on the restructuring for tech pe moving
Speaker 5: forward strike teams, reconteams and if you can also lead
Speaker 5: off with Thomas, what tac P is.
Speaker 3: So tac P is Terminal Air Control Party and they're
Speaker 3: basically the old school guys you used to call you know,
Speaker 3: naval gunfire and also you know basically sort of you know,
Speaker 3: uh the mission that CCTs do tech piece did for
Speaker 3: a long time, right, I love tech Piece. I love
Speaker 3: tech Piece. You know some of my favorite j tax
Speaker 3: or tech Piece. We had a lot of tech Piece
Speaker 3: of the unit. We started bringing them on and they
Speaker 3: were super super capable guys, their studs. So, you know,
Speaker 3: the app socks going through a kind of a reshuffle.
Speaker 3: They're trying to figure out their mission. I think allsoft is,
Speaker 3: but specifically as SoC and I think a lot of
Speaker 3: the legacy missions that were we know are going away,
Speaker 3: and so who will survive this kind of change? I
Speaker 3: don't know, that's beyond you know, but my my pay grade,
Speaker 3: I don't have pay grade.
Speaker 5: But are you attack p uh, They're potentially like on
Speaker 5: the cutting board.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not saying that, but I will say that
Speaker 3: the GAT model of like you know, calling cast is
Speaker 3: probably going to go away for the Great Power Competition
Speaker 3: because it's not gonna be a guys in the trenches,
Speaker 3: you know, on a on satcom, you know, calling and strikes.
Speaker 3: It's going to be technology empowering, you know, missions deeper
Speaker 3: in targets and illuminating them and then making decisions with
Speaker 3: semi autonomy and autonomy, and so if soft doesn't embrace that,
Speaker 3: they're going to lose the next fight. That's I mean,
Speaker 3: that's just the reality. Like, autonomy is a thing, and
Speaker 3: you know, China is doing it very well, the US
Speaker 3: is doing it, and the the military is trying to
Speaker 3: embrace it. But autonomy is scary and the opposite of
Speaker 3: what we experienced, where you know, the Golden Hour is
Speaker 3: going to be a thing of the past in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to maintain a casualty out of
Speaker 2: the field. You're not it's going to be contested. Airspace
Speaker 2: comms are going to be unreliable, yeah.
Speaker 3: And GPS denied. I mean you're talking about you know, fighting,
Speaker 3: you know near peer We say it all the time.
Speaker 3: What does that mean? That means the guy that you're
Speaker 3: fighting has the same tech that you do. Right. We
Speaker 3: fuck cavemen and got our asses kicked half the time, right,
Speaker 3: And so we need to we always have to have
Speaker 3: a competitive advantage we go into fighting, and so we
Speaker 3: our competitive advantage in the past has been aircraft. It
Speaker 3: has been and every service will tell you that is
Speaker 3: tip the scale. Every single you know, engagement has been aircraft.
Speaker 3: When things get too bad, guess what we're calling the
Speaker 3: air force and they're gonna slam this this compound. Well,
Speaker 3: if we can't do that, because those guys are in
Speaker 3: air to air fight, how do you push through, right?
Speaker 3: And And that's a really I don't know how to
Speaker 3: answer that.
Speaker 5: And particularly if we're looking at China, because not only
Speaker 5: do they have close to the technology, they have all
Speaker 5: the technology we have because there, because they're industrial, astmonage
Speaker 5: is so great, you know, Jackson, thank you very much.
Speaker 5: What do you make of APSTOC trying to become a
Speaker 5: more unilateral force. Are you optimistic or hesitant on the transition?
Speaker 3: And why? It depends. I mean, it depends who's in charge.
Speaker 3: It depends on what they want to do with it.
Speaker 3: And so what we shouldn't do is become a better mousetrap,
Speaker 3: you know. So appstocks should basically play off their strengths.
Speaker 3: You know, we are very capable in technical forces that
Speaker 3: can you know, kind of multiply the battlefield. And so
Speaker 3: if they you know, if they focus on those strengths
Speaker 3: and they flip that into the next fight, they can
Speaker 3: be very successful as a unilateral force if they try
Speaker 3: to be a better assault for US, I mean, cool
Speaker 3: man like.
Speaker 5: And this sort of goes back to the question about
Speaker 5: like the seals out there doing you know, the fo work,
Speaker 5: the you know, the prep.
Speaker 3: Is that.
Speaker 5: Every mission was sexy, right, and everybody wants the money.
Speaker 5: So when it was when it was the War on Drugs,
Speaker 5: everybody got into counter narcotics. When it was the GAT,
Speaker 5: everybody became a strike force, and then everybody started moving
Speaker 5: into the intel the trade craft you know, everybody developed
Speaker 5: even though they are units specified for that, everybody became
Speaker 5: became the master of all. And is this sort of
Speaker 5: what they're talking about with ass SoC that there are
Speaker 5: people who think that okay, well shooting CQB shooting, like,
Speaker 5: we can do that too, we can have our own
Speaker 5: teams to do this. Or is it going a different direction.
Speaker 3: So I personally don't think that we're going into that
Speaker 3: kind of conflict. I don't think that's the thing. And
Speaker 3: I think the Navy has been a pretty good, you
Speaker 3: know kind of I guess weather vane for where they're going.
Speaker 3: They're going away from some of those traittional missions, and
Speaker 3: so is SF. You know, the SF teams are going
Speaker 3: back to you know, and going back to their core skills, right,
Speaker 3: the things that are the differentiators that they're really good at.
Speaker 3: And you know, for a long time it was direct
Speaker 3: action was sexy, like you just described, and everyone will
Speaker 3: do direct action because that was kind of the bar
Speaker 3: to pass, to be you know, the guy, the cool guy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so now that we're transitioning, you know, SEF is saying,
Speaker 3: holy crap, we need to go back to our core skills.
Speaker 3: And they are the navies going back to diving and
Speaker 3: go back to the maritime missions.
Speaker 2: I've heard they have one of the NSW has one
Speaker 2: of the probably the best drone program in UH in
Speaker 2: special ops.
Speaker 4: Now, see like water drowns your air drones both both.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean well, I mean tech is empowering those things,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of autonomous you know, underwater vehicles
Speaker 3: that are doing great things. Tech is a differentiator, and
Speaker 3: so whoever can adopt early tech is going to be
Speaker 3: successful in my opinion, And it's not just because the
Speaker 3: position I'm in now, which hopefully we.
Speaker 4: Talk about we will, we absolutely will.
Speaker 3: But I think that you know, for AFT SoC they
Speaker 3: have to find their way as I find what's unique
Speaker 3: to them. You know, what, what aircraft do they have
Speaker 3: that are very unique that they can employ. They're getting
Speaker 3: rid of a lot of assets right now in a
Speaker 3: SoC they're getting rid of a lot of C twenty
Speaker 3: two is AC went thirties and so you know, some
Speaker 3: of it's a forcing function to get to the next fight,
Speaker 3: you know. So I don't know. I mean, that's probably
Speaker 3: a better question to ask the seen owlers as.
Speaker 4: SoC I hate to see the act go away. It
Speaker 4: just makes me sad.
Speaker 3: And ten and I mean a lot of leve atens.
Speaker 3: If you're if you're a if you're a ground force,
Speaker 3: you know how good the atens are and how important
Speaker 3: they are.
Speaker 4: Jackson, thanks again, uh As for Tier one.
Speaker 5: How would you characterize the difference between the Army and
Speaker 5: the Navy side.
Speaker 4: Did you have a preference with working with one.
Speaker 3: I think they're both amazing, right, you know, they're different,
Speaker 3: they're super you know, in the early days, the Navy
Speaker 3: was really good at making things happen, and the Army
Speaker 3: was very very process driven. I think the Army adopted
Speaker 3: a lot of the Navy's kind of nuances and they
Speaker 3: became just as just as adaptive. I gotta be honest.
Speaker 3: In the later years, it was really hard to differentiate
Speaker 3: the two. They had specific capabilities. They did really well.
Speaker 3: It was a maritime mission obviously in Navy. But the Army, dude,
Speaker 3: they are I mean that unit for Bragg, they can
Speaker 3: do any mission on their son and they could probably
Speaker 3: do the maritime mission too if they wanted to. But no,
Speaker 3: there's no favorite.
Speaker 5: So you're saying that if the Navy learned basic patrolling, that.
Speaker 3: They would they would right now. They could work up
Speaker 3: too if they cared about it. It was just its priorities, right.
Speaker 3: But but a lot of the Army guys, so the
Speaker 3: the guys from that unit were either former Rangers or
Speaker 3: SF so they had a very fundamental like infantry infantry
Speaker 3: background they all, and so they understood that. It was
Speaker 3: very intuitive to them. Right, maybe he's not man, It's
Speaker 3: like maybe he's like hucke it. They're they're like the
Speaker 3: full players are gonna throw hell Mary where you know.
Speaker 3: The Army is like, okay, we can get it first
Speaker 3: down by doing this right, names like nah, we're going
Speaker 3: for touchdown, you know.
Speaker 4: Ian, Thank you very much?
Speaker 5: Oh, Dave, Now is your chance to ask the only
Speaker 5: to ask about the only basic training you didn't go through. Uh,
Speaker 5: what questions do you have about it?
Speaker 4: I don't have any question.
Speaker 5: Yeah, did you guys use exercise bikes.
Speaker 3: In the Air Force and the Air Force now? No,
Speaker 3: I wish they had them. It's been great.
Speaker 4: That that was the only thing I missed, and apparently
Speaker 4: I didn't miss it.
Speaker 3: Exercise bikes.
Speaker 4: No defend you defend you CQB.
Speaker 5: So somebody with the fair baron Psykes, Kelly McCann, Carlos
Speaker 5: Stari Heritage, thank you very much for the donation. Brendan
Speaker 5: g great guest, great stories, best wishes to you all.
Speaker 5: Be Thanks Brendan Graham, thank you very much. Thanks for
Speaker 5: the great conversation. Thoughts on SWT now special reconnaissance and
Speaker 5: what role they play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this was formerly like the weather crew field
Speaker 3: we had, which is you know, the combat weather guys. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so they rebranded them as a special reconnaissance which I
Speaker 3: think is right. That sounds it sounds better, way better.
Speaker 3: The mission initially was like all over the map, is
Speaker 3: like we're gonna do all these things. You have to
Speaker 3: be specialized a couple of things, right, You have to
Speaker 3: be good at a couple of things, and so it has
Speaker 3: unlimited potential to be a really great career field. And
Speaker 3: you know, we need it now because reconnaissance is more
Speaker 3: important now than ever, and especially if you can overlay
Speaker 3: technology into reconnaissance. And so I think it's you know, potentially,
Speaker 3: it's a it's a great pathway. Obviously I'm biased because
Speaker 3: I'm a PJ. So you know, let me just check
Speaker 3: with that a diplomatic answer.
Speaker 5: Yes, it was great, Isaac. The Air Force is said
Speaker 5: to have the best tech. So does is spec Ops.
Speaker 4: Have more advanced tech than other units?
Speaker 3: Does spec Ops or Air Force?
Speaker 4: The Air Force Special Operations?
Speaker 3: Man? No, I don't think they do. I think the
Speaker 3: Navy has been really early adopters technology. The Army is
Speaker 3: really keen on us and it's the really ahead on that.
Speaker 3: And the Air Force again is going through this kind
Speaker 3: of like the teenage years of who am I? And
Speaker 3: they're looking in the mirror like what do I want
Speaker 3: to be? Do I need this? Or do need this?
Speaker 3: And so the Navy knows, hey, I need these these
Speaker 3: technology to empower our maritime platforms. So they're going to
Speaker 3: do it. And the Army is the same way if
Speaker 3: you look at some of the drone racing stuff they're doing.
Speaker 3: The Army is taking advantage of that big time, and
Speaker 3: they're bringing industry in Mayby. It's doing the same thing.
Speaker 3: The air Force is kind of like, you know, you
Speaker 3: have you have airplanes, right, So here's the dichotomy with
Speaker 3: air force. When you look at the Army and special forces,
Speaker 3: it's all about special forces right with as Socket's not
Speaker 3: it's about aircraft, and they have really small cutout which
Speaker 3: is special warfare, which is you know, air Force, air.
Speaker 2: Force, it's all about like strategic bombers and fighter jets.
Speaker 3: Within as Sock it's it's CB twenty two and like
Speaker 3: doing infox foo. But then you have these guys over
Speaker 3: here they're like, hey, we want to change the world,
Speaker 3: and they're like, got it, guys. But the money goes
Speaker 3: over here, right, And so NSW is paying to seals
Speaker 3: and they have these maritime programs that you have a
Speaker 3: lot of money, but it's to empower the seals, right.
Speaker 3: And so aspstock's the only one that's like, well, we
Speaker 3: do all this stuff for the other services, and then
Speaker 3: we have this small component of folks that do really
Speaker 3: special stuff, but we also want to help these people,
Speaker 3: and so it will never reach their potential because they're
Speaker 3: always looking outwards instead of going how do we empower this? Right?
Speaker 3: And so the first question, how do you do it unilateral? Well,
Speaker 3: you have to stop being a service provider, right and
Speaker 3: start saying what do we want to do? And if
Speaker 3: you don't want to do anything, that's fine too, but
Speaker 3: if you do, you have to do an all stop
Speaker 3: and say, listen, these TV twenty two's exist for these
Speaker 3: guys and whatever their mission set's going to dictate. And
Speaker 3: and that's a it's going to take having some special
Speaker 3: tactics guys in senior positions, which we do. The A
Speaker 3: three of ass socc right now is as a former
Speaker 3: comic controller as a comic controller general. And that's a
Speaker 3: big deal for us, you know, isn't rappen for so.
Speaker 5: And so that I mean, that makes total sense because
Speaker 5: you guys have been force multipliers, you've been adjuncts in
Speaker 5: a way to the other you know, to the other services,
Speaker 5: and without that identity of where we're the tip of
Speaker 5: the spear, right, not we're part of the tip of
Speaker 5: the spear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be they're gonna have to
Speaker 3: decide what they want to be. It's not my decision
Speaker 3: on right to tell you my experiences, and my experience
Speaker 3: was empowering those other tiers, right, you know, do I
Speaker 3: think that I was capable to do other things? Absolutely,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't my job. And if you could.
Speaker 5: Wave a magic wand and make sts what you wanted
Speaker 5: it to be, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a tough one. That's a tough thing to
Speaker 3: answer right now, because you know I have again bias
Speaker 3: is included here and my experience and so.
Speaker 4: And that's fair. I mean, I'm asking you with your
Speaker 4: bias and your experience.
Speaker 3: It's it's a numbers game, right, and so special Forces
Speaker 3: I was doing the numbers. I think it's like eight thousand.
Speaker 4: It's a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you look at the eighty second has
Speaker 3: less folks and specialize in the range of Rettalian. So
Speaker 3: the question I always had was what makes you special?
Speaker 3: And you know, I asked folks, I asked this, and
Speaker 3: when I was going through the what is it called
Speaker 3: just soft sea which is a special operations senior listed thing?
Speaker 3: And so what what makes special operations special? Is it numbers?
Speaker 3: Is it technology? Is it mission? And no one can
Speaker 3: really answer the question because when special operations are soft,
Speaker 3: he has a lot of people. And then within uh,
Speaker 3: you know, the Green Break community, there's there's thousands of them,
Speaker 3: and not all of them are like, you know, doing
Speaker 3: everything right. There's like guys are specialists in this and this.
Speaker 3: Within nsb's a little bit smaller, but still thousands of them.
Speaker 3: In our career full there's you know, there's maybe hundreds,
Speaker 3: and so does that make you special? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it does. It's just a numbers game.
Speaker 3: It's it sounds cooler, but how do you get to
Speaker 3: that point? I don't think you do it without numbers?
Speaker 3: And so if you have a Green Break community you
Speaker 3: want to go and do ex mission, you can reorient
Speaker 3: all those people to go do that with the training
Speaker 3: and money. That's a tough question.
Speaker 6: So let's hear about your transition.
Speaker 2: You finally after running and gun in and suffering through
Speaker 2: admitt and then getting to be you know, senior enlisted
Speaker 2: in the squadron.
Speaker 3: I mean you kind of had the career, you know,
Speaker 3: from a career.
Speaker 6: I mean you had the career.
Speaker 2: You went from twenty one to forty one or twenty
Speaker 2: two to forty one.
Speaker 3: From then, you.
Speaker 4: Did it all most. I mean you did it all.
Speaker 4: You did it a lot. Yeah, and you do it all.
Speaker 2: You talked more, you talked about, you know, the compartmentalization
Speaker 2: driving on in all of this, and then you finally
Speaker 2: hit that moment of retirement.
Speaker 6: I mean, what was that like for you?
Speaker 3: Transition sucked. I took a job. I was the director
Speaker 3: of an innovation institute for a year, and uh, I
Speaker 3: learned about hiring and firing, learned about dealing with, you know,
Speaker 3: people that weren't like me. It was a transition and
Speaker 3: I was super depressed. You know. We talked about before
Speaker 3: we started this is that purpose is really important and
Speaker 3: you have it inherently when you're in the military. You
Speaker 3: don't have them when you get out. And it's a reality.
Speaker 3: So just brace yourself for that. And uh, I did
Speaker 3: that job for a year. What I what I did
Speaker 3: do was I got a I got a call and
Speaker 3: there was an opportunity to go help some orphans from
Speaker 3: Ukraine to Poland. Oh wow, And I was like a man.
Speaker 3: And so I went to my boss and I was like, hey, man,
Speaker 3: I was like, I need to take some unpaid leave.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do this, and they were good enough to say, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: I think they knew I was probably gonna quit. They
Speaker 3: didn't let me do it. But I thought I was
Speaker 3: gonna fill my bucket, you know, in my bucket and
Speaker 3: give me a sense of purpose. And I went out
Speaker 3: there and did it, and it didn't fill anything. And
Speaker 3: I came back home and I ended up resigning after
Speaker 3: a month. I was like, I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 3: And I told my wife. I was like, I just
Speaker 3: need to maybe go fishing every day and just be retired.
Speaker 3: And I was retired for six hours. Buddy buddy of
Speaker 3: mine from a big company called me. He's like chat,
Speaker 3: he goes, you need to talk to these guys from California.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, okay. I was on my back porch.
Speaker 3: I think I was probably drinking bourbon and these guys
Speaker 3: and they're like, hey man, you know, just bros from
Speaker 3: you know, California, and like we're gonna build a low
Speaker 3: cost cruise missile. I'm like, okay, I didn't expect that.
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, so what what does that mean?
Speaker 3: How do you do low cost? They told me, you know,
Speaker 3: their designs like modular like Lego set for the cruise
Speaker 3: missile at a manufacturer. I'm like, I'm in And so
Speaker 3: I joined this team and it was three of us,
Speaker 3: and it was the closest thing I felt. You know,
Speaker 3: this is called teamhouse. It was the closest thing I
Speaker 3: felt to being back into a team post military, because
Speaker 3: it was guys that I identify with, that I get along with,
Speaker 3: and that we're oriented towards a purpose with. And you know,
Speaker 3: we started this company, Firestorm Labs, and we've been doing
Speaker 3: it for you know, six seven months now, building a
Speaker 3: modular US and it's the closest thing I found to
Speaker 3: get into what you know, we've been describing this whole time.
Speaker 3: And I needed it, man, you know, because we talk
Speaker 3: about purpose. You know, purpose is really hard to find
Speaker 3: the backside. And so the guys that get out, you know,
Speaker 3: I think this is a good opportunity to talk about
Speaker 3: is that it's not the same and you will be isolated,
Speaker 3: you're on your own. It's it's never gonna be cool again.
Speaker 3: And you have to warn that career. And so once
Speaker 3: you move on from it, you can like grow and
Speaker 3: and and be better. But for me, you know, join
Speaker 3: the team that I'm on now with Firestorm, which is
Speaker 3: the company. It's been awesome, and so I've taken a
Speaker 3: lot of other jobs. I've got our you know, you
Speaker 3: know companies that I work with. One is Lifeline Rescue Tools,
Speaker 3: which is basically, uh, it's a think about glass break
Speaker 3: you know, times thousand cuts through lemonade glass, you know,
Speaker 3: first responder stuff. I'm like, that's great, I get you
Speaker 3: behind that product. Development's do it. And the other ones.
Speaker 3: Fox Trot three is a company we started with a
Speaker 3: bunch of operators Faith, Family Freedom and so that's basically
Speaker 3: family values getting back to make that cool again in America.
Speaker 3: And so things that can wrap my brain around and
Speaker 3: orient and and really push hard is all I need.
Speaker 3: And so because you're not part of a team anymore,
Speaker 3: and you get out, no one, no one cares. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like you're on your own. Yeah you guys know that,
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, yeah, you're forgotten very quickly.
Speaker 2: So I've tried, I've tried to describe the people you
Speaker 2: know that you could be, you know, the sergeant major
Speaker 2: of Delta Force, total badass dude you get out to
Speaker 2: hire walking around the streets out here. It's not that
Speaker 2: people don't like you, that they're anti military or something.
Speaker 2: But you say I was a command sergeant major of this,
Speaker 2: you know, jaysck unit, they're gonna look at you.
Speaker 6: I mean, what is jay sock? What is command sergeant major?
Speaker 3: And it's not that it's not that the experiences aren't meaningful.
Speaker 3: They're certainly right, right, and they're they're meaningful in in
Speaker 3: your brotherhood, right. And so if we sit around and
Speaker 3: we drink bourbon together, like we can have shared experiences
Speaker 3: and we have the kind of common bona fides, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you have to get over it and you have
Speaker 3: to warn it and move past. Yeah, And if you don't,
Speaker 3: you're not gonna be successful next life. You're stuck in them.
Speaker 3: But if you say, listen, I had a great run.
Speaker 3: It was a cool experience and did some cool stuff
Speaker 3: and now moving on. And you know, I do these
Speaker 3: conversations because I think they're cathartic. I think they're healthy.
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, like that's my
Speaker 3: old life, man, exactly, there's nothing to do with me.
Speaker 5: Now and that moving on though, Also, like like you
Speaker 5: mentioned with the startup, there's also the issue of finding purpose.
Speaker 5: Like if you try to move on and you're just
Speaker 5: doing some menial jobs somewhere that doesn't fill you with
Speaker 5: that same purpose. And you know, we talk about post
Speaker 5: traumatic stress, and then we talk about this idea of transitioning,
Speaker 5: which is a nebulous Okay, I was doing something meaningful.
Speaker 5: I had people to my left and right that I
Speaker 5: trusted with my life, even if I couldn't stand them,
Speaker 5: And now I'm out in this world where there really
Speaker 5: is no meaning.
Speaker 3: So here's the best way I can define it for
Speaker 3: folks that are preparing to transition or perhaps have transition,
Speaker 3: is that I felt like life was black and white.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a gray and there was no
Speaker 3: color to it, and there was no excitement. And it
Speaker 3: was a really heavy thing to deal with because you're like,
Speaker 3: holy crap, man, like life is boring. Yeah, and you
Speaker 3: know some people are like, oh, you should get back
Speaker 3: into skydiving or something like, well, let's go buy a
Speaker 3: fast car and go test myself.
Speaker 5: Right. That's changing the dragon, right, right, that's dangerous behavior.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I struggle with it for the past year and
Speaker 3: I was like, man, it's like, how do I get
Speaker 3: back to normal? And what I realized was you're talking
Speaker 3: to some really smart people and people I trust. Is
Speaker 3: that it will never be that normal. It's different. And
Speaker 3: so once you embrace that and you accept it, you
Speaker 3: say that he listen, that was a part of my life.
Speaker 3: It's exciting, it's fun, there's cool stories you can talk about.
Speaker 3: It will never be that again, and you have to
Speaker 3: warn that process. And so that's what I'm going through
Speaker 3: right now. And it's difficult, man. And like some guys
Speaker 3: are better than I am. Some guys are more mature
Speaker 3: than I am and can find success. Maybe it's financially
Speaker 3: they want it, maybe it's you know, purpose in a
Speaker 3: in a career. But for me, I found the best
Speaker 3: kind of segue is I have a small team of
Speaker 3: people that I trust. We have a we're orienting on
Speaker 3: a task and a purpose, and I can make it
Speaker 3: successful because I know how to do that right. And
Speaker 3: so I think that's the most important aspect to me.
Speaker 3: It's healthy for me. But I will tell you going
Speaker 3: back to the compartmentalization, is that guys like us have
Speaker 3: been very good at doing that and where we can
Speaker 3: walk down the street and no one will notice any difference.
Speaker 3: The fact is is that we're we're keeping these things
Speaker 3: wrap and we're doing our own detriment, right, And so
Speaker 3: until we let those things go and process them, they'll
Speaker 3: continue to be kind of the mill center on her neck.
Speaker 3: And so I've been using conversations like this is as
Speaker 3: the catharsis of letting him go, right. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna tell you guys some cool stories, cool man like,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna tell you classified stuff, but let's let
Speaker 3: it out right, and you know, failures and successes they're
Speaker 3: here man, right, but this next life is mine, is
Speaker 3: what I make it right.
Speaker 5: I absolutely agree with you, and we've had you know,
Speaker 5: I feel like I did. First off, I'll say that
Speaker 5: like I feel like Jack is one of those people
Speaker 5: that's dealt really well with that transition.
Speaker 3: I mean like he's very well adjusted. We're in a
Speaker 3: sweater now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, he's automated.
Speaker 4: I mean he has a he has a saltwater.
Speaker 5: Tanks, like he knows who he is, you know, but
Speaker 5: you know through the.
Speaker 2: Interviews, I've also been out for twelve years actually say
Speaker 2: probably helps.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there was there's is.
Speaker 6: I appreciate you saying that.
Speaker 2: I would also point out, though, like I had that
Speaker 2: period of adjustment as well, that was like quite difficult
Speaker 2: to even though I wasn't as in as long as
Speaker 2: you were. I didn't operate on the same level that
Speaker 2: you did. But just being in the military eight years
Speaker 2: as a young man and coming out, there's definitely a
Speaker 2: period of time where I had to figure things out.
Speaker 5: Well, it was eight years, but it was it was
Speaker 5: it was, it was your it was the formative year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly hard years of comment exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And you know, and we've had a number of people
Speaker 5: on the show that have have talked about whether it's
Speaker 5: post traumatic stress or whether it's just the adaptation of
Speaker 5: life after the military, because one of the things that
Speaker 5: a wartime military does for you, like you said, is
Speaker 5: it gives you purpose.
Speaker 4: Like combat is pure, right, there's you're not worrying.
Speaker 3: About fun taxes.
Speaker 4: It's fun.
Speaker 5: It It is what you dreamt of when you were
Speaker 5: when you were a kid.
Speaker 3: Throwing Yes, it turns into real grenades. Yeah, and it
Speaker 3: is satisfying.
Speaker 5: The only difference is now you don't have to argue
Speaker 5: over who shot who first, right, But it's a very
Speaker 5: pure endeavor. And then to move into a world that's
Speaker 5: very ambiguous where.
Speaker 3: You know the answers well, so I'd be remiss not
Speaker 3: to say this is and we talked about this before
Speaker 3: we started, is that I have a really deep respect
Speaker 3: for conventional forces. Right, And here's what I'll say is
Speaker 3: that soft gets all the fanfare, we also get a
Speaker 3: lot of the support. Yeah, so you know when I
Speaker 3: I tore both acls and I got you know, all
Speaker 3: this great care, had great physical therapists and feel surrounded
Speaker 3: me helping me. You know, when you're a conventional troop
Speaker 3: and you're doing hard yards and Baghdad or even a Afghanistan, like,
Speaker 3: there's not a whole hell of a lot there for
Speaker 3: those guys. And so I would tell the guys that
Speaker 3: are listening, because there's probably guys that are, is that
Speaker 3: I have a deep respect for those dudes and their
Speaker 3: service is no less than mine. We are Prima Donna's
Speaker 3: and Soft And so you know, getting on black helicopters
Speaker 3: with the best pilots in the world, right, not good pilots,
Speaker 3: the best pilots in the world that take us the
Speaker 3: X and put one wheel down and you jump off
Speaker 3: on the rooftop and you go slam a target and
Speaker 3: you get out in thirty minutes.
Speaker 4: And you're hitting when you know every ready's sleep.
Speaker 3: You know, you come back and do you come back
Speaker 3: and drinking beers and playing Xbox right right? Those people
Speaker 3: don't get is that you're you're spoiled, right and so
Speaker 3: and do you want to do Hell yeah, you want
Speaker 3: to do not because because you're gonna have every resource available.
Speaker 3: Those kids, those kids, men and women, did it with
Speaker 3: no resources. And I think there's a lot to be
Speaker 3: said about that, and I think it gets lost in
Speaker 3: the kind of the the nostalgia and the romance of
Speaker 3: soft in that you know, soft isn't any better than.
Speaker 5: Those guys or galas like you say, soft is sexy
Speaker 5: and you and and they have the budget, they get
Speaker 5: the training. But we've had like Louis Fernandez, Raymond pat like,
Speaker 5: we've had people on that and we we want more
Speaker 5: conventional you know, we're we want more conventional soldiers and
Speaker 5: uh marines on because they were living it every day.
Speaker 4: Their employments were longer.
Speaker 5: With not a lot of care on the backside, right right,
Speaker 5: They didn't have the support they they couldn't they didn't
Speaker 5: have you know an AC one thirty you know hovering above,
Speaker 5: which is a pacifier for operators, right it is absolutely
Speaker 5: you know, when you hear that lawnmower, the great lawnmower
Speaker 5: in the sky, like the bad guys hear that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I think it's it's it's pretty important to
Speaker 3: recognize and and if you don't, maybe you're you're tone deaf.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think Soft guys in general realize that,
Speaker 3: you know, we've been spoiled for a long time and
Speaker 3: for a good reason. Like we've had really hard missions.
Speaker 3: We've done most of the combat, like Soft has done
Speaker 3: almost all the combat the past twenty years. Actually that's
Speaker 3: not true towards the end end years. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: But you know, I don't take it for granted that
Speaker 3: those kids were, you know, walking the streets and basically
Speaker 3: completely vulnerable when I was sitting in a safe you know, mss,
Speaker 3: you know, drinking beers and when I wasn't supposed to do.
Speaker 5: Uh, but you weren't doing anything that any like major
Speaker 5: and above what do whatever?
Speaker 6: I can say now that's factual information.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we have just I think I need to get
Speaker 5: back to the view.
Speaker 4: We have a.
Speaker 5: Couple more questions real quickly, just popped up, So I
Speaker 5: just want to go over real quickly. I'm pulling this up. Uh,
Speaker 5: we know about launch Firestorm dot com right, that's that's
Speaker 5: Firestorm Laves.
Speaker 4: There's also Firestorm Labs.
Speaker 3: It does games.
Speaker 4: That's not them.
Speaker 5: And then you said fox Trot three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then what was the other lifeline rescue?
Speaker 4: Lifeline rescue, So they're all down in the link.
Speaker 5: And then we had one question that was, uh or
Speaker 5: when we had like two more Graham more Portanite plans
Speaker 5: for retirement, thank you for the generation, and we got
Speaker 5: that and then Jerry, oh we have two more Jerry,
Speaker 5: what would you choose, uh, wortthog or AC one over
Speaker 5: your head for what measure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it depends. I mean here, here's a story I'll
Speaker 3: tell you about A or and a tens. So we
Speaker 3: were we were doing up and we patrolled into this
Speaker 3: like wheat field and uh, we're completely surrounded by compounds
Speaker 3: and it was bad. We knew it was about to
Speaker 3: pop off. We knew it was about to pop off,
Speaker 3: like it was coming to just win. And our AC
Speaker 3: went thirty got pulled for HVI for the other task force.
Speaker 3: They're like, hey, we got HVI, we need a one thirty.
Speaker 3: They pulled AC one thirty and we're like holy crap.
Speaker 3: So we had a you know, we had an empty
Speaker 3: nine and uh, We're like, we're screwed and we're about
Speaker 3: to get in a tick. We knew it and it
Speaker 3: was coming any second and it popped off and we
Speaker 3: we were pinned down. We were fighting our way out
Speaker 3: of there the main and Salt Force was way back
Speaker 3: behind us. We were a recue team and we were
Speaker 3: just getting it. I mean, we're we're like, holy crap,
Speaker 3: bringing and die. And the controller was back to the
Speaker 3: Maine Salt Force knew we were in a tick and
Speaker 3: we're calling back like holy shit. We're like this is bad,
Speaker 3: and he got on call E tens. These guys came
Speaker 3: in literally I'm not exaggerating, one hundred feet off the ground.
Speaker 3: Two ship one hundred feet off the ground and they
Speaker 3: straighted this compound. It was the most amazing thing I've
Speaker 3: ever seen in my life. Yeah, I was like, I
Speaker 3: was a nods. I had to pull nods because there's
Speaker 3: so much fire. Like after they came in, two came in,
Speaker 3: I'm like, why don't we use these every night? I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is amazing. Have these lettering over head? They destroyed everything.
Speaker 3: There was nothing left I'm be honest, there was nothing
Speaker 3: that I'm like, who is eighty one thirty? Was? That
Speaker 3: is that thing we like? And e tens man, there's
Speaker 3: a time and place for him. But those guys, here's
Speaker 3: what I'll tell you. A ten pilots are the closest
Speaker 3: thing to operators that you will ever find in the
Speaker 3: aviation community. They are man, they are guys that will
Speaker 3: like want they'll drinking.
Speaker 5: And gals we had, yeah, chick, that's right, they'll I'll drink.
Speaker 3: You and they will they will put that thing in
Speaker 3: the dirt to help you.
Speaker 5: They they're amazing and like, I love A ten but
Speaker 5: it's and they do fly low like they they they're
Speaker 5: at risk too.
Speaker 4: But those eightens, it's yeah, we.
Speaker 3: We have a PJA or a guy went through basic
Speaker 3: training with became a PJ and then he became an
Speaker 3: A ten pol Oh wow, you guys should have him
Speaker 3: on the podcast.
Speaker 6: Jason at Yeah, We're we're definitely down for But he.
Speaker 3: Is the best of both worlds because he understands the
Speaker 3: ground component and then he is you know, big balls
Speaker 3: on the A ten side.
Speaker 5: And this also speaks to combat controllers. J tax Tac
Speaker 5: pes that when when those dudes are on like the
Speaker 5: world can be exploding around you, and they're just on
Speaker 5: their radio controlling their stacks, like doing this. Yeah, like
Speaker 5: they're just the world around they are just doing That's.
Speaker 3: Why it gets some many silver stars because they're staying
Speaker 3: there under gunfighters and they don't hear the ground snapping
Speaker 3: around them because they have two you know, a team.
Speaker 5: Pelter's yeah, and I would be like, somebody kill these
Speaker 5: people please, and they're just like yeah, no, no, no, and
Speaker 5: and calling.
Speaker 3: The tribal also taking cover and they're like up, They're
Speaker 3: like yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so amazing people. Andrew, thank you very much. And
Speaker 4: and that's it for the question.
Speaker 2: Is on Tuesday, we're gonna have Andrew Milburn back in
Speaker 2: the studio. We're gonna need to buy another bottle of
Speaker 2: Scotch for that one or two.
Speaker 3: He's coming.
Speaker 2: He's coming back from Ukraine where he's been you know,
Speaker 2: his organization, the Most Art Group, has been doing a
Speaker 2: lot of work. And then on Friday, we're gonna have
Speaker 2: Daryl Blocker on the show, whose career c I a
Speaker 2: amazing career, super interesting guy. I'm excited to have him
Speaker 2: on the show. So that'll be this coming Friday. Andrew
Speaker 2: will be on Tuesday.
Speaker 5: Excellent, and so we to where people can find you.
Speaker 4: Just one quick thing for.
Speaker 5: Veterans out there or anybody who might like be going
Speaker 5: through this, but particularly veterans, what's this step for them
Speaker 5: if they're feeling if they're starting to isolate, if they're
Speaker 5: feeling bored, gets affected done.
Speaker 3: That's a loaded question, man, I mean it's not. It's
Speaker 3: it's person person specific. So the VA sucks, that's the
Speaker 3: first thing. And you guys will learn that very quickly.
Speaker 3: So you have to find your network. I think asking
Speaker 3: for help is important. People say they're going to help you,
Speaker 3: there's only a few that will and so you have
Speaker 3: to find those folks. And I think that you know,
Speaker 3: letting the letting the stuff out is important personally. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, there's a lot of people that
Speaker 3: want to help you. It's just you got to ask.
Speaker 3: And so I have a rollex the folks that I
Speaker 3: contact all the time because I know that potentially I know,
Speaker 3: I think that they need it and I hope that
Speaker 3: they'll reach out to me when when I did it.
Speaker 3: But you know, there's a network there. So it's it's
Speaker 3: different for every community, but there's been a lot of suicides.
Speaker 3: We we haven't had a lot of suicides within our
Speaker 3: our group, thank god, but the community, the community real
Speaker 3: large has and so there's a lot of different factors.
Speaker 3: Some of it's financial, so it's personal. Some of it's
Speaker 3: you know, tv I, some of it's PTSD. There's a
Speaker 3: ton of cool treatments out there. Some of the Navy
Speaker 3: guys I was talking to you have been really you know,
Speaker 3: keyed up on hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which is HBOT in
Speaker 3: a lot of lives, were kind of reconnecting some of
Speaker 3: the the the connected tis in the brain and really
Speaker 3: mending that, really mending some of the damage that's been done.
Speaker 3: And then the other one, which is a bit controversial,
Speaker 3: but like you know, there's vets, organizations do a lot
Speaker 3: of psychedelic stuff is having a lot of good effects.
Speaker 3: I've talked to some folks that I know and trust
Speaker 3: that I've done it and it's saved their lives, and
Speaker 3: so I respect the process. I've never done it personally,
Speaker 3: but you know, I think that's important to kind of
Speaker 3: suss out whatever it's good for you.
Speaker 2: It is working for quite a few people. I mean
Speaker 2: We've had a few on the show in the past,
Speaker 2: that head. Yeah, Sam, Yeah, I spoken to quite a
Speaker 2: few pole Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know if I'm ready to
Speaker 3: do the ayahuasca.
Speaker 6: You know, you might, you might get through.
Speaker 2: There's also the d m T thing that people do
Speaker 2: down south of the border, and it's i mean, well
Speaker 2: not to scare the squares.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's like monitored by doctors.
Speaker 3: It's very professionals.
Speaker 4: I mean they're doing mushrooms or doing the md m A.
Speaker 4: They're like, there are a lot of different.
Speaker 3: There's yeah, and you know, the v will hand you
Speaker 3: out a lot of pills. Yeah, and they'll do it
Speaker 3: very you know, very easily, very quickly. And there's other solutions.
Speaker 3: I guess it would be my My bottom line is
Speaker 3: that you know, do your research, figure it out. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Be notice at the VA were like the DARPA of
Speaker 5: military medicine, right if they were out there on the
Speaker 5: condition in there and not the dark boy, they are
Speaker 5: the most there the jiffy louve of yeah right right.
Speaker 6: Even DARPA isn't DARPA.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, Chat, I really appreciate you coming out here
Speaker 2: man and joining us and smoking some cigars and drinking
Speaker 2: some whiskey and telling us a little bit about your
Speaker 2: you know, your.
Speaker 3: Story and what you went through.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's been like really informative and interesting and
Speaker 2: you know, I hope people get something.
Speaker 3: Out of it. Right now, Yeah, I appreciate having me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll hit us up next time you come
Speaker 2: through the city for sure. All right, guys, we will
Speaker 2: see you Tuesday and then Friday, So take care of everyone.