Speaker 1: Hey, guys, welcome to episode three hundred and ninety three
Speaker 1: of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with today's guest,
Speaker 1: Robert Leech. Robert is a former fifth Special Forces Group
Speaker 1: soldier currently works over there at the Innovation Lab, and
Speaker 1: he is also the author of I Got This here
Speaker 1: on my kindle, Wretched Descent. I hope you can see
Speaker 1: that those of you who are watching this, I read it.
Speaker 1: It's a novel that Rob wrote based on his military experience.
Speaker 1: I read it, really enjoyed it. We'll get into the
Speaker 1: book a bit later on in this interview, But first off, Rob,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us on the show tonight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it,
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So let's start at the beginning. Tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you grew up and how that sort
Speaker 1: of took you towards military service.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure. So I'm originally from Florida, born and raised.
Speaker 2: It's actually born down in Key West, so actually born
Speaker 2: on the island. Not too many people can claim that.
Speaker 2: I think I'm fourth or fifth generation born down there
Speaker 2: between the island and Bahamas, and then moved from Key
Speaker 2: West when I was probably about ten up to central Florida,
Speaker 2: about an hour and a half north of Tampa, about
Speaker 2: an hour south of Gainesville, and you know, stayed there
Speaker 2: throughout middle school, high school. Left as soon as I
Speaker 2: graduated high school, I left for the army. You know,
Speaker 2: four days later, I was out the door. I couldn't
Speaker 2: get out quick enough. That was in two thousand, when
Speaker 2: I graduated high school. So that was pre nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: pretty any kind of real war since you know, the
Speaker 2: Gulf War, and that was the only thing that most
Speaker 2: people had in their minds of what war looked like
Speaker 2: for the United States was a quick, you know, in
Speaker 2: and out overmatch and we're done. So yeah, that was
Speaker 2: kind of where I thought this, you know, military track
Speaker 2: was going. Uh signed up for the infantry, as a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, rural country Ish kids tend to go.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I went into the Army in two thousand,
Speaker 2: ended up out at Fort Lewis, where I did my
Speaker 2: first four years and my very first deployment until Iraq
Speaker 2: in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: So you were down at Fort lou or I should say,
Speaker 1: up at Fort Lewis when nine to eleven happened. And
Speaker 1: then you guys didn't do Afghanistan, but you got folded
Speaker 1: right into that big run up er rap.
Speaker 2: That's right. We went in deployed in October of three,
Speaker 2: so we weren't part of the initial invasion. We replaced
Speaker 2: thee hundred and first up in northern Iraq, so it still,
Speaker 2: you know, two thousand and three Iraq was still pretty austere.
Speaker 2: We were the first striker brigade, so we're the ones
Speaker 2: who brought strikers in them all the way from Kuwait,
Speaker 2: all the way through the country, hung out and blog
Speaker 2: for a little while, and then ended up in Missoul
Speaker 2: for the rest of the deployment. That was, you know,
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, late two thousand and three, mid
Speaker 2: two thousand and four. That was kind of the beginning
Speaker 2: of the insurgency kind of popping up, you know, small ambushes,
Speaker 2: small arms fire, small IEDs, nothing too drastic. We did
Speaker 2: have some you know, some contact things like that, but
Speaker 2: most of it was just kind of hit and run tactics.
Speaker 1: Back then, How did you guys like operating with strikers
Speaker 1: in a rap?
Speaker 2: Oh? I love strikers. So two thousand and three deployment
Speaker 2: with strikers, we'll get into it. But two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: I deployed with the infantry again in Strikers, and that
Speaker 2: was for the surge. And I mean I've personally been
Speaker 2: in say three or four ied strikes on my vehicle
Speaker 2: that I was sitting in, and you know, I've never
Speaker 2: gotten a scratch. Not everybody was as fortunate, you know, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: but you know, for me, they were a game changer.
Speaker 2: Like the armor they carried, the firepower they could bring
Speaker 2: to the battlefield, like strikers are unmatched in my opinion. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they were awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we used them in two thousand and five and
Speaker 1: yeah they were great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know they're I think they downsized a lot
Speaker 2: of the striker brigades that are out there because they
Speaker 2: were pushing real hard for him. But I mean they
Speaker 2: don't stand up to you know, kind of the large
Speaker 2: scale combat that we're talking probably with you know, tanks
Speaker 2: and big armor. But for the insurgency stuff, they were great.
Speaker 2: They were they were awesome.
Speaker 1: So anything else you want to tell us about that
Speaker 1: first apployment to a wrap.
Speaker 2: No, So that one, like I said, it was a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, small attacks, so we would get
Speaker 2: you know, small arm fire ambushes here and there. We
Speaker 2: would do. You know, it was like twelve our days
Speaker 2: of just driving, just driving and kind of you know,
Speaker 2: we used to call it fishing driving and looking for
Speaker 2: someone to shoot at us so we can go get
Speaker 2: in contact and tried to flush out who was ever siding.
Speaker 2: Lots of small IDs that we got hit by. That
Speaker 2: was the when they were experimenting with the food gas.
Speaker 2: You remember the food gas stuff like nap Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was like a napalm soap stuff. So we got hit
Speaker 2: by some of those, but they didn't really do anything
Speaker 2: to the striker. See, I was, you know, an eventful deployment.
Speaker 2: First look at combat, first look at you know, what
Speaker 2: the army life is overseas. And I was actually stop
Speaker 2: lost on that trip because I was trying to get out.
Speaker 2: So as soon as that trip got over, I got
Speaker 2: out of the Army, went back to Florida, went through
Speaker 2: the law enforcement academy, and was a sheriff's deputy down
Speaker 2: in central Florida for a really short period. It was
Speaker 2: probably six months, seven months as a shriffe, and I
Speaker 2: just you know, I decided I couldn't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: And it's not like being a police officer. Just still
Speaker 1: didn't care for Central Forwarda that much.
Speaker 2: No, I think it was more the law enforcement side.
Speaker 2: You know, my hat's off to two guys who do
Speaker 2: that and stick it out. I was just, you know,
Speaker 2: coming from four years in the Army in Iraq deployment
Speaker 2: and then going straight to law enforcement. I probably should
Speaker 2: have taken some time off because I got real jaded
Speaker 2: real quick. You know, my last training officer, he was
Speaker 2: a Marine, and he told me, he's like, man, you
Speaker 2: you feel like you're like a twenty year veteran for
Speaker 2: the police force. How jaded you are with some of
Speaker 2: these people. And it was just frustrating how the system
Speaker 2: works a lot of the times. How you know, people
Speaker 2: get you arrest someone that's a bad, bad dude, and
Speaker 2: you know they're out. You see him on the street
Speaker 2: the next day or two days later, and they're doing
Speaker 2: the same stuff all over again. It's just got you know,
Speaker 2: real repetitive, real quick. And I was like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: can't do this for twenty five years. I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: back in the Army. I prefer that you know that
Speaker 2: route anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So re enlisted after.
Speaker 2: That, Yep, re enlisted almost two years to the day
Speaker 2: that I got out. Kept my rank. So I came
Speaker 2: back in at a E five and my goal when
Speaker 2: I was coming back in was I wanted to go
Speaker 2: with Special Forces, right, that was my goal my first
Speaker 2: four years. But you know, deployment and being a young
Speaker 2: infantry guy just never kind of materialized. So I said, hey,
Speaker 2: when I'm coming back in, I'm going SF. So I
Speaker 2: signed back up infantry E five, got sent back to
Speaker 2: Fort Lewis again. So right back out to Fort Lewis,
Speaker 2: and I want to say it was six months later
Speaker 2: we deployed for the search. So soon as we got there,
Speaker 2: everybody was locked in. You weren't allowed to go do
Speaker 2: any any schools, you know, any SF selections things like that.
Speaker 2: They locked us all down. And we deployed for the
Speaker 2: Surge two thousand and seven with fourth Brigade, Second Infantry Division. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for one of the long long ones.
Speaker 1: It was very spicy during that time frame. What was
Speaker 1: that depointment like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that one was two thousand and seven of
Speaker 2: the surge. We got in and they put us just
Speaker 2: north of Baghdad and the Taji area, and we started
Speaker 2: as part of a bigger operation, but our brigade basically
Speaker 2: had from Taji up to kind of the Bakuba area
Speaker 2: and kind of south, you know, just south of what
Speaker 2: would be considered northern Iraq, and then all the way
Speaker 2: east out to Iran. And we started in Taji and
Speaker 2: it was kind of like hands across the desert coordinated
Speaker 2: Clearing operation and they moved from Taji and we cleared
Speaker 2: all the way that whole corridor of nothing but NonStop
Speaker 2: operations throughout there. I was kind of fortunate on that one.
Speaker 2: When I signed in at Fort Lewis, they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know you've got combat experience. We're looking for some
Speaker 2: NCOs to help set up this new platoon, infantry platoon
Speaker 2: that we're forming, and you're going to run the Brigade PSD,
Speaker 2: the Personal Security Detachment. I'm like, I don't even know
Speaker 2: what that is, but I guess I don't really have
Speaker 2: a choice. So I'm in and we took you know,
Speaker 2: we got handed twenty I think it was like twenty
Speaker 2: one twenty two brand new privates, straight out of basic
Speaker 2: training and like four or five of US NCOs and
Speaker 2: they're like, you have, you know, four months to deploy,
Speaker 2: get them ready to go. And it was a lot,
Speaker 2: you know, it was a lot of training a lot
Speaker 2: real fast trying to get these you know, young kids
Speaker 2: up to par for what two thousand and seven Iraq
Speaker 2: was going to look like. We're just watching videos, you know,
Speaker 2: YouTube videos of abrams tanks getting cut in half by
Speaker 2: deep buried idds and you know the large stuff that
Speaker 2: they had going on then. So we we we did
Speaker 2: the best we could and we got them ready and
Speaker 2: then we deployed. That was a fifteen month trip on
Speaker 2: that that burn. Yeah, it was rough, but you know,
Speaker 2: doing the PSD mission, it was it was going out
Speaker 2: every single day taking the kernel and the Brigade CSM
Speaker 2: out to go either do kl's or to go out
Speaker 2: and check out with the different fobs we had all
Speaker 2: over the place, so we were constantly on the road.
Speaker 2: So it was a lot of you know coordination to
Speaker 2: you know, wrote clearance and everything else trying to make
Speaker 2: sure we weren't going to catch any of these IDs
Speaker 2: that were hitting everybody out there. We ended up splitting
Speaker 2: up because we were you know, six strikers deep with
Speaker 2: the Brigade commander and the CSM and you know, all
Speaker 2: these antennas and looking like the biggest target in the world.
Speaker 2: So we ended up splitting up into three and three
Speaker 2: and I took the CSM and he, you know, his
Speaker 2: whole goal in life was to go out and check
Speaker 2: on the boys. You know, he just wanted to go
Speaker 2: out and to the different fobs and he loved walking dismounted.
Speaker 2: So we're doing dismounted, just me and the PSD and
Speaker 2: him going through you know, Bakuba and all these different
Speaker 2: areas in two thousand and Seven's not you know, my
Speaker 2: idea of a picnic, but it was. It was a
Speaker 2: rough trip. You know, we got hit a few times,
Speaker 2: we had some IDs strikes, we had you know, some
Speaker 2: e FP hits, and you know, it was just a
Speaker 2: it was a long trip to be dealing with that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff all the time. So as soon as
Speaker 2: I got back from that trip, I went to selection,
Speaker 2: like two months three months after I got back, I
Speaker 2: was like, I am not doing this again.
Speaker 1: I was how how did the brand new privates kind
Speaker 1: of adapt to their first appointment? Like you didn't probably
Speaker 1: realize this at the time, but like this is sort
Speaker 1: of like training to be a Special Forces NCO as well.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's definitely definitely uh wrangling the gen d's
Speaker 2: up in there all the time. But yeah, they they
Speaker 2: did really well. So it was a good group of kids,
Speaker 2: you know, guys. I hate to call him kids, but
Speaker 2: they were just a lot younger than me. But they
Speaker 2: were a good group of guys, and they adapted pretty
Speaker 2: quick to the environment.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We were, like I said, we were out every single day,
Speaker 2: out there in different areas, having to learn different routes
Speaker 2: and coordinate with different elements and units, and I never know,
Speaker 2: you know, where. Every morning I'd go into the CSM's
Speaker 2: office and he'd be like, well, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: you or some of your viewers might know. Commands are
Speaker 2: Major John Troxel. He was the Chairman of the Joint
Speaker 2: Chief Senior and Listed Advisor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he was. He was the sergeant major of
Speaker 1: the Army, wasn't he.
Speaker 2: I don't remember, but I know he ended up like
Speaker 2: the senior enlisted advisor of everything. Yeah, he was the
Speaker 2: Brigade CSM. So he's got like this gravelly voice, you know.
Speaker 2: So I'd go in there every morning and he'd be like, Leach,
Speaker 2: you know, here's where we're going today. So I was like,
Speaker 2: all right, let's go figure out what that looks like,
Speaker 2: you know, and we're getting indirect fire, you know, on
Speaker 2: our fobs all the time, and we were just staying
Speaker 2: in open air tents basically no hard structures, and it
Speaker 2: was it was a rough trip. You know. They adapted
Speaker 2: well and I kind of hated. I felt bad. You know,
Speaker 2: we got back, but going to selection, I got picked
Speaker 2: up and I was gone, you know, months later, so
Speaker 2: I didn't really get to stick around and help them
Speaker 2: de transition and kind of settle back in. But you know,
Speaker 2: they had some good NCOs to help them out, so
Speaker 2: it worked out. I think.
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Speaker 1: so you went to selection by now, by this time
Speaker 1: it must be two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: It would have been late two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what was your experience like you know, going
Speaker 1: through selection in the Q course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so selection when I went through, I think we
Speaker 2: started with like four hundred and five you know, roughly
Speaker 2: class size, and it was I want to say, it
Speaker 2: was like October and you know, beautiful Fort Bragg Camp
Speaker 2: McCall and we started and it was probably in the
Speaker 2: upper eighties, and then it rained for two days, and
Speaker 2: then it was in the twenties, and then it rained,
Speaker 2: and then it was in the nineties. So it was
Speaker 2: like an up and down roller coaster of weather, which
Speaker 2: I think broke a lot of people off, Like they
Speaker 2: people were dropping left and right because we were constantly
Speaker 2: wet or freezing or hot. But selection, So my biggest
Speaker 2: you know mistake going into selection for those out there
Speaker 2: that might be interested, was just came back from a
Speaker 2: deployment and I bought new boots coming back because my
Speaker 2: boots were so trashed from that fifteen month. So I
Speaker 2: got new boots and went to breaking them in and
Speaker 2: these were just regular army issue boots back then, that's
Speaker 2: all you could wear. So my feet got destroyed like
Speaker 2: day two immediately, they were just trashed. So I had
Speaker 2: to deal with you know, blisters and you know, toe
Speaker 2: nails falling off and all that good stuff from the
Speaker 2: miles and things were you know, I wasn't performing as
Speaker 2: well as I thought I could, mostly because I couldn't
Speaker 2: hardly put my feet on the ground. You know, made
Speaker 2: it through the I think it was three weeks back then,
Speaker 2: and like I said, we started with a little over
Speaker 2: four hundred. I think at the end of the three
Speaker 2: weeks there was like one hundred and fifty people left,
Speaker 2: and out of that it came out to be like
Speaker 2: one thirty ish got selected. You know, making it to
Speaker 2: the end is always a boon for your survival chances.
Speaker 2: But some people still didn't make it. Hopefully they went
Speaker 2: back and tried again. But you know, I got picked
Speaker 2: up on my first go. You know, at the end
Speaker 2: of selection, you sit down with your counselor whoever they are,
Speaker 2: and they tell you, hey, you did you know you
Speaker 2: have this GT score, you did this well on your
Speaker 2: language aptitude tests, and they're like, we want you to
Speaker 2: you know, you did really well in your language test
Speaker 2: and you have a high GG score. We want you
Speaker 2: to be a delta and we want you to do
Speaker 2: I forget what they said Arabic or Mandarin or something
Speaker 2: right off the gat and I was like, if you
Speaker 2: put Delta down, I am not coming back. I got
Speaker 2: no desire to be a Delta. That's hard. I am
Speaker 2: not a medical guy. I like guns. So I was like,
Speaker 2: I want to be a Bravo weapon sergeant. And I
Speaker 2: remember the guy looked at me and he's like, i'll
Speaker 2: give you weapon sergeant. Well originally I said I want
Speaker 2: weapon sergeant, and I want Spanish, and yeah, he looked
Speaker 2: at me and he's like, I'll give you a weapon sergeant,
Speaker 2: but you are not doing Spanish. You don't get to
Speaker 2: two or the easier side. You're gonna you want to
Speaker 2: do weapon sergeant, you gotta do Arabic. And I was like,
Speaker 2: all right, whatever Arabic it is.
Speaker 1: So then get into the Q course in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, right.
Speaker 2: Yep, it would have been to the early two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, spring of two thousand and nine probably, yeah,
Speaker 2: and uh yeah, so back then it was structured. You
Speaker 2: started with language school. Uh so we did language first.
Speaker 2: So that was six months of Arabic, which I sucked
Speaker 2: at Arabic. I got better longer I stayed in the army,
Speaker 2: but back then I was horrible at it, and then
Speaker 2: it was out to McCall for small unit tactics and
Speaker 2: seer school and then weapons and then you know, the
Speaker 2: final stage portion of it. I think that's the order
Speaker 2: they did back then. I think it's all different now, but.
Speaker 1: It changes like year to year almost.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think they do language at the end now,
Speaker 2: after they get their braves and tabs and everything.
Speaker 1: When I went through it in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: it was split up. You would have like two week
Speaker 1: blocks here and there language in between the other phases,
Speaker 1: and then I think you had like one four month
Speaker 1: block or something like that, five month block before you
Speaker 1: took the test. Yeah, I don't know. It was weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that would be tough. I don't think I
Speaker 2: could do it Arabic split up like that. I had
Speaker 2: to just like head first in the deep ending on
Speaker 2: that one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a language like that, you really do need to
Speaker 1: be immersed in it, at least someone like me. I
Speaker 1: need to take some time to put my uh wrap
Speaker 1: my head around that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you have Arabic? Yeah yeah, yeah, And you
Speaker 2: know I did. They teach you the modern standard Arabic
Speaker 2: and the Q course and I stuck with that for
Speaker 2: a couple of years a group, and then I found
Speaker 2: a dialect, you know, eleventeen, And I thought I just
Speaker 2: sucked at Arabic all these years on my deployments until
Speaker 2: I switched to eleventeen, and I'm like, they're speaking another language.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't even know why they teach the
Speaker 2: modern standard anymore, Like just go leventeen because it's what
Speaker 2: they actually understand and what they talk.
Speaker 1: It was a game ting for meil He dialect itself
Speaker 1: has also had some unique words and PHRASESM.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there, it definitely does. Yeah, the modern standard they
Speaker 2: need to do away with that.
Speaker 1: So you graduated the Q course, get assigned a fifth group.
Speaker 1: Of course, because you're an Arabic speaker, what team did
Speaker 1: you land on?
Speaker 2: So I would landed on five four one three. So
Speaker 2: that was when Forur Battalion had Odas. I was out
Speaker 2: Company four Battalion and when I got there, we were
Speaker 2: a mountain team. And then I want to say it
Speaker 2: was six months after that or something they took away.
Speaker 2: They did away with a lot of the mountain statuses
Speaker 2: and kind of changed it.
Speaker 1: That's funny, Rob, because I was on the free fall
Speaker 1: team right down the hall there oh are you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you must have been getting there right as I left.
Speaker 1: It was about twenty ten. Oh yeah, I got there
Speaker 1: in late twenty ten.
Speaker 2: Yep. So I got there, and I want to say
Speaker 2: it was like October November twenty ten I signed on.
Speaker 1: There were good guys on that team.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, there was a so when I when I
Speaker 2: got there, the team had been together for probably four
Speaker 2: years roughly, and like what right as I got there,
Speaker 2: a lot of them started switching out and going on
Speaker 2: and doing different things. So you know, it wasn't six
Speaker 2: months on the team and I'm the senior Bravo, Like
Speaker 2: I don't even know how to set up you know,
Speaker 2: a range or do any of the stuff. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, I'll figure it out. But yeah, a lot
Speaker 2: of the guys switched out. I want to say a
Speaker 2: handful of the originals stayed there throughout the time I
Speaker 2: was on the team. So they were lucky and dodged
Speaker 2: a lot of the schools and whatever else they get
Speaker 2: pulled for.
Speaker 1: What was I mean you mentioned it briefly, but like
Speaker 1: what was fourth Battalion kind of going through at that
Speaker 1: time as far as like its mission and how it
Speaker 1: was oriented?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so I got there late twenty ten.
Speaker 2: We deployed in twenty eleven to Iraq. Again. It was,
Speaker 2: you know, right when I got there that they had
Speaker 2: just come back from I think a trip to Iraq.
Speaker 2: I don't know that might have been if you were
Speaker 2: on that one. So because when I got there, everybody
Speaker 2: was on leave. And then we had I forget when
Speaker 2: in twenty eleven, but we took off again and this
Speaker 2: time we were in cal Siou so just south the
Speaker 2: bag Dad and this was you know, Operation New Dawn,
Speaker 2: so we operation we're not allowed to go do anything.
Speaker 2: But well, what was happening in Calsiu specifically, like we
Speaker 2: were getting hammered within direct fire, so I mean rockets,
Speaker 2: not really mortars then, but it was a lot of rockets,
Speaker 2: a lot of katushas and some of the bigger ones.
Speaker 2: But it was like a nightly event to the point
Speaker 2: where like I would I remember, I'd sit in my
Speaker 2: chew and our chos lined up and there's bunkers in
Speaker 2: between the choos, So like right outside my door was
Speaker 2: a bunker and you had like blasted blankets and sandbags
Speaker 2: and everything else on these on these bunkers, and I
Speaker 2: would sit there and I have a little TV, you know,
Speaker 2: and I'd be playing video games or watching TV at night,
Speaker 2: and I would set my foot flops up at a
Speaker 2: runner's stance so I could hit them and stride and
Speaker 2: not even have to slow down because that alarm would
Speaker 2: go off like every single night, and they were coming
Speaker 2: in close, like hitting in the compound to the point that,
Speaker 2: you know, we finally got the green light and tough
Speaker 2: to do in twenty eleven, but we got the green
Speaker 2: light to go unilateral without partners, without anybody, and we
Speaker 2: were able to go roll up I think most of
Speaker 2: those cells pretty quick. I mean, we knew who they were,
Speaker 2: we just weren't allowed to go out and do anything
Speaker 2: about it. So I think, I don't know if someone
Speaker 2: got wounded on the base or if the command had
Speaker 2: enough and they got approval. But yeah, we had a couple,
Speaker 2: you know, a month or two month period where we
Speaker 2: were doing ops like every night and just rolling guys
Speaker 2: up until that area is settled down for a while,
Speaker 2: which was great because I had enough of you know,
Speaker 2: the rockets every night.
Speaker 1: How did you guys go about that? As far as
Speaker 1: like rolling up these indirect fire networks.
Speaker 2: So It's hard for me to remember because I was
Speaker 2: just the Bravo at the time, and I was kind
Speaker 2: of inundated with like trying to be you know Bravo stuff,
Speaker 2: so keeping all the guns ready and all the stuff.
Speaker 2: So I wasn't part of any of like the network
Speaker 2: exploration or development. I just know, you know, we got
Speaker 2: would go out, we did, you know, just standard vehicle hits,
Speaker 2: and we'd pull in some other sister teams in the
Speaker 2: area to come help us on some of the bigger targets.
Speaker 2: We'd go out and set up you know, sniper operations
Speaker 2: to kind of do like train denial stuff, watch for
Speaker 2: any of these teams that were coming in and trying
Speaker 2: to set up their rockets. It was a it was
Speaker 2: a mixed bag of things. We end we did go
Speaker 2: out a few times with some partner forces, were able
Speaker 2: to find some partner forces that wanted to work and
Speaker 2: went out and kind of rolled up some of the
Speaker 2: bad folks out there in the areas. But it was
Speaker 2: a little mixed bag of different types of looks. Just
Speaker 2: to even get out there and doing presence patrols, you know,
Speaker 2: at some point, just to let them know we were
Speaker 2: allowed outside the wire even though the big army folks
Speaker 2: weren't at the time, So it's just us.
Speaker 1: Do you want to explain that for the viewers a
Speaker 1: little bit about you know, what it was like in
Speaker 1: Iraq at that time. You joked about it being Operation
Speaker 1: Do Nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Operation New Dawn was the finals. You know,
Speaker 2: things were shutting down in Iraq in twenty eleven. We
Speaker 2: were getting told, hey, you know, start decluttering your fobs
Speaker 2: and bases, start turning excess equipment in. Get ready, we're
Speaker 2: going to shut this thing down at the end of
Speaker 2: this deployment. Your team house is going away. So we
Speaker 2: start you know, inventoring and turning things in and you know,
Speaker 2: like I said, every day we're still getting rocketed while
Speaker 2: we're doing all this like administrative tasks and stuff and
Speaker 2: kind of the bigger pictures like we were trying to
Speaker 2: hand over Iraq back to the Iraqis at the time,
Speaker 2: and what a lot of people don't know what that
Speaker 2: looks like is it's a lot of State Department back
Speaker 2: and forth of you know, how many US soldiers are
Speaker 2: even loud in the country at the time, Like that
Speaker 2: was like a real issue, is we couldn't even bring
Speaker 2: in certain enablers, if you know, that added to the
Speaker 2: total number of the US footprint because they didn't want
Speaker 2: any more numbers. Like they had a cap they couldn't
Speaker 2: go past it. So we were constantly, you know, back
Speaker 2: against the wall of we're tearing everything down, we're turning
Speaker 2: everything in. This teamhouse had been there probably since the invasion,
Speaker 2: so it was packed full of junk and gear and
Speaker 2: confiscated weapons and like all you name it, and we
Speaker 2: had to get it all out of there. So it
Speaker 2: was a lot of a lot of the uh, you know,
Speaker 2: packing things up and then you know, getting told, hey,
Speaker 2: never mind, you're not you're not closing this one down,
Speaker 2: this one staying, you know, open it back up. They're
Speaker 2: like okay, and then a month later like, no, you're
Speaker 2: closing down. We changed our mind. Uh, you got to
Speaker 2: close it up.
Speaker 1: So but on the.
Speaker 2: Political side, it was, you know, US forces were on
Speaker 2: these bases, but they didn't want to see US vehicles
Speaker 2: out on the streets anymore. You weren't allowed to go
Speaker 2: out unless you were with a partner, and the partners
Speaker 2: weren't trying to do a whole lot of operations. They
Speaker 2: were trying to stay you know, safe on their end also,
Speaker 2: so there's a lot of kind of lethargic feeling of
Speaker 2: not wanting to continue to do missions and operations. You know,
Speaker 2: Like I said, these rockets were legit problems because they
Speaker 2: they got big, you know, they the Katooshas were like
Speaker 2: the smaller ones and what I forget what those are,
Speaker 2: you know, bad bravo that I am, but you know,
Speaker 2: one fifties or whatever they are, and they just kept
Speaker 2: going up till we were getting like the two hundred
Speaker 2: millions sized rockets coming in. And those are large, large
Speaker 2: explosions that you feel, you know, even when it's on
Speaker 2: the other side of the FOB. So it was, you know,
Speaker 2: we're lucky, you know, on our side and the FOB
Speaker 2: to not get any of our folks hurt.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I think some of the big army unit that was there,
Speaker 2: I think it might've been First calv I think they
Speaker 2: took some injuries, and I think that's what freed us up,
Speaker 2: you know, to let us go out there and do
Speaker 2: the operations. So, you know, I don't know if they
Speaker 2: wouldn't have hit anybody hit they might have. We might
Speaker 2: have just kept sucking them up and having to wait
Speaker 2: but luckily it worked out that, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: think anybody was killed, but we were able to go
Speaker 2: out there and clean up the area for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I know that was really frustrating times for all
Speaker 1: the guys that were over there because of exactly that
Speaker 1: dynamic that you described that. There's also this like weird
Speaker 1: thing where we were trying to prepare the Iraqis to
Speaker 1: take over their country, as you say, and so the
Speaker 1: special forces guys were like really trying to push that hard,
Speaker 1: like you guys, go out and do ops and we'll
Speaker 1: support you and this and that, whereas the conventional military
Speaker 1: was kind of like, our mission here is to just
Speaker 1: not die. Yeah, so we're not going to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: We're not going to do anything. Keep the Iraqis off
Speaker 1: our base. When you bring them on, you have to
Speaker 1: take their guns because we don't want them to shoot out.
Speaker 1: It was like really like a conflicting missions that felt like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I remember on one we were getting dropped
Speaker 2: off by the first Calve guys and their m wraps.
Speaker 2: They were going to drop us off and we're going
Speaker 2: to go perch out in the woods somewhere, and they
Speaker 2: pulled up and opened the door and we got out
Speaker 2: and one of the piece of equipment or something fell
Speaker 2: out of the back of the truck onto the ground,
Speaker 2: and we're getting ready to walk out and to go
Speaker 2: into the woods. We're getting in filled right, and I
Speaker 2: remember like one of the first calve guys like, hey, hey,
Speaker 2: can you pick that up and hand it to me?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, what the hell?
Speaker 1: Like you pick it up?
Speaker 2: And he's like, I'm not allowed to put my feet
Speaker 2: on the ground.
Speaker 1: So what happens if you have to change a tire?
Speaker 1: How's that going to work?
Speaker 2: Hang upside down?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: They're out of luck. Yeah, it was twenty eleven. Was
Speaker 2: a rough time. It was a shorter trip compared to
Speaker 2: my last one. You know, I think it was only
Speaker 2: like four months. No, it was I'd been six months.
Speaker 2: Might have been a six month trip, but either way,
Speaker 2: once the rockets settled down, things sailed down. We was
Speaker 2: focused on closing down the fobs and the operations and
Speaker 2: getting everything ready.
Speaker 1: To hand over.
Speaker 2: Less eventful other than getting rocketed, And you know, I
Speaker 2: was glad to see that one done. So now that
Speaker 2: was irack trip number three for me and hoped I
Speaker 2: had never ever have to go back was not to
Speaker 2: be so, but that was my last like combat operation
Speaker 2: was So that'd been twenty eleven to twelve, was the
Speaker 2: last like actual combat.
Speaker 1: So then you're back at a fifth group, continuing with
Speaker 1: your special courses career.
Speaker 2: Yep, so we're back. You know, lots of training, you know, SODIC,
Speaker 2: the sniper course, a Special Operation Target Interdiction course. I
Speaker 2: did the level two there at Fort Campbell Cephauic, the
Speaker 2: Advanced urb Urban Operations Course there with fifth group. You know,
Speaker 2: I ended up going to the eighteen Foxtrot Corps. So
Speaker 2: I was an intelligence sergeant for the team. Lots of
Speaker 2: lots of training opportunities, UH. Kind of bounced around and
Speaker 2: then we had you know, deployments every year or twice
Speaker 2: a year to j sets UH joint combined Exercise training
Speaker 2: events UH with partner nations over there in the Middle East.
Speaker 2: For me, so I did trips to Lebanon. I think
Speaker 2: I've been to Jordan probably four or five times. Got
Speaker 2: to do UAE for a while, which was nice. That
Speaker 2: included by rain on that trip. You know, spend some
Speaker 2: time in Kwait back in the day. So I feel
Speaker 2: like I've been to almost all of them in the
Speaker 2: Middle East. I don't know, there's many left to pin
Speaker 2: on my map, but lots of short trips for those.
Speaker 2: So those are two months, four months, you know, here
Speaker 2: and there once a year, twice a year, depending on
Speaker 2: what's going on. And that was from you know, we
Speaker 2: got back in twenty twelve from Iraq and then the
Speaker 2: team as the fourth Patalions started changing their structure, so
Speaker 2: the team got disbanded in twenty fifteen, late twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: I think early twenty sixteen, somewhere around there. So you know,
Speaker 2: everything changed in the Fourth Paalions then and they weren't
Speaker 2: doing straight odas anymore, and then everybody had to kind
Speaker 2: of go their own ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, before we get into that, I mean, I'd love
Speaker 1: to hit you up about, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: j sets that you went on. I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: to start exactly, but like Lebanon. I think the first
Speaker 1: MTT that Special Courses did and Lebanon was like in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two or nineteen eighty three, and so we've
Speaker 1: had kind of like a low key presence there off
Speaker 1: and on.
Speaker 2: What was your experience like, Yeah, so I went to
Speaker 2: Lebanon as a singleton from my team so I was
Speaker 2: the only one from my team that went. I linked
Speaker 2: up with the AOB that was there, you know, the
Speaker 2: company level headquarters for Special Operations that was running all
Speaker 2: the partner force training and stuff in the region, and
Speaker 2: I went there and I had just done the sniper course,
Speaker 2: so I went there and helped do a designated marksmanship
Speaker 2: course for the Lebanese Special Operations. It was kind of
Speaker 2: a mixed bag of their Marine Special Operations and they
Speaker 2: have their Navy Seal equivalent types and some other rangers.
Speaker 2: So ran a target interdiction designated marksmanship course for them.
Speaker 2: That was my first exposure of Lebanon and Lebanese So
Speaker 2: it's definitely an interesting country. If you've never been, you know,
Speaker 2: you'll drive down. I was up in the Hamat area,
Speaker 2: so north of be Route. There's an air base training
Speaker 2: area up there. But you know, you're driving through the city,
Speaker 2: small town, whatever you want to call it, and it's
Speaker 2: like one city block. You drive down. It's what you
Speaker 2: would think of the Middle East, as you know, traditional
Speaker 2: Middle East attire, and the women are wearing you know,
Speaker 2: the full head to toe coverings and then you turn
Speaker 2: a corner and it looks like you're on a beach
Speaker 2: in California and women are wearing you know, barely anything
Speaker 2: and the men are in you know, board shorts and
Speaker 2: flip flops, and it's like, I don't know what's happening
Speaker 2: here right now. But you know, the neighborhoods are so like,
Speaker 2: you know, Muslim to Christian to you know, Druze, like
Speaker 2: they're just right on top of each other and everyone
Speaker 2: has its own flavor. But I really enjoyed that trip.
Speaker 2: You know, the Lebanon's beautiful. All the history is amazing,
Speaker 2: the culture and everything they have going on there. You know,
Speaker 2: the soldiers that we worked with were their quality, you
Speaker 2: know there I don't think there's enough of them, uh
Speaker 2: to kind of go around on the quality side, but
Speaker 2: you know, they were pretty good shots and they they
Speaker 2: caught on pretty quick. I remember we're up so when
Speaker 2: you're up in the Hamad, it's at kind of the
Speaker 2: top of like a hill mountain area and if you
Speaker 2: go all the way down, you're down at the beach
Speaker 2: and that's where the shooting range was with the beach,
Speaker 2: and we would you know, drive down there every day.
Speaker 2: Some days we'd walk down with the soldiers as kind
Speaker 2: of a road March, and one day we had the
Speaker 2: idea of, hey, let's do a you know, a stalk.
Speaker 2: Let's have them stalk down and we're gonna try to
Speaker 2: see them coming towards the beach with bino's and stuff.
Speaker 2: And I tell the Lebanese captain, I'm like, hey, I'm
Speaker 2: going to walk with the with the boys down there.
Speaker 2: I want to follow them and see how they do.
Speaker 2: And he just kind of laughed. He's like, all right,
Speaker 2: good luck. He's like, they're a part mountain goat. I
Speaker 2: just warning you, And he wasn't kidding. Those guys like
Speaker 2: I have never seen like mountain movement like that before.
Speaker 2: They had rucks on, they had long rifles, they had
Speaker 2: all their gear, and they were just hopping foot to
Speaker 2: foot from like, you know, boulder to boulder all the
Speaker 2: way down. You know, one wrong step is you know,
Speaker 2: a broken leg or they didn't. They didn't seem to care,
Speaker 2: so they left me in the dust. I had to
Speaker 2: end up pitting on the road, as embarrassing it is,
Speaker 2: But I don't know how they got down that quick.
Speaker 2: I think probably because they've used that route, you know,
Speaker 2: one hundred times and I've never done it. But uh yeah,
Speaker 2: they were. You know, it was an interesting trip. Learned
Speaker 2: a lot from those guys and hopefully taught a lot,
Speaker 2: made some good memories and some friends over there that
Speaker 2: you know, last a while.
Speaker 1: So and then it sounds like you're bouncing back and
Speaker 1: forth to Jordan quite a bit. And Jordan features in
Speaker 1: your novel a good deal also.
Speaker 2: Yep, no, Jordan's you know the made it into the
Speaker 2: novel as the location because I spent probably other than Iraq,
Speaker 2: I spent more time in Jordan than anywhere else. I
Speaker 2: do think I've probably been there four or five times.
Speaker 2: A lot of time in northern Jordan. Most of the
Speaker 2: time in northern Jordan UH training with you know, the
Speaker 2: Jordanian Special Operations guys, the hundred First and a couple
Speaker 2: of the other units I can't think of now, but
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of time in Jordan, a
Speaker 2: lot of downtime in Jordan. I've seen all there is
Speaker 2: I think to see in that country at this point,
Speaker 2: and spent a lot of time there. But I was
Speaker 2: doing Jordan trips. We did a j set I think
Speaker 2: was the Jay said to Jordan was before I went
Speaker 2: to Lebanon. It was my first trip to the Middle
Speaker 2: East when it wasn't like a combat deployment, you know,
Speaker 2: so it was a kind of a cultural shock for me.
Speaker 2: You know, we get a rental car and we leave
Speaker 2: the airport and we're driving through you know, Aman, and
Speaker 2: when you're in some of the outskirts of Aman, like
Speaker 2: it looks like Iraq. You know, it's the same kind
Speaker 2: of buildings and writing and everything is in your like,
Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't six months ago I was fully
Speaker 2: kitted up with a gun in a place like this,
Speaker 2: and now we're in civilian clothes going through the same neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: and you know, it kind of makes you a little
Speaker 2: nervous first time experiencing that from the other side. So
Speaker 2: it was a good, good trip and you know, eye
Speaker 2: opening and seeing that there's more to you know, special
Speaker 2: Forces than just combat operations and you know, working with partners,
Speaker 2: and you know, I've been fortunate enough to travel a
Speaker 2: lot to a lot of countries and meet a lot
Speaker 2: of interesting people over there, and Jordan was definitely high
Speaker 2: on the list.
Speaker 1: And they have like pretty extensive training facilities over there too,
Speaker 1: don't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do, so they're you know, the main training
Speaker 2: facility Casotic that's what King Abdulah Special Operations Training Center
Speaker 2: in northern Jordan has, you know, all the bells and whistles,
Speaker 2: shoot houses, shoot villages, you know, mount city villages, sniper ranges,
Speaker 2: machine gun ranges, all the all the bells and whistles
Speaker 2: you need out there for doing any kind of training
Speaker 2: you want to do. Uh, then you can you know,
Speaker 2: head out from the city and you have open desert,
Speaker 2: open terrain, you can drive around, do vehicle maneuvers, live fires,
Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff out there. You just have to
Speaker 2: watch out for the bed one that also came up
Speaker 2: in the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how what what did you think about the Jordaining
Speaker 1: and Special Ops guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're you know, they're I cannot remember the
Speaker 2: nomenclature of their kind of premiere special operations unit now,
Speaker 2: and I apologize for those out there listening. But we
Speaker 2: did a lot with the hundred first, so that was
Speaker 2: like a mixed bag of you know, entry level two
Speaker 2: more senior special operators. So you know, we come in,
Speaker 2: we get handed a lot of the entry level folks
Speaker 2: who need to learn how to shoot better and to
Speaker 2: move and communicate and you know, move through building. So
Speaker 2: but even then they're you know, they're motivated and they're trying,
Speaker 2: and you know they want to be more proficient at
Speaker 2: ITU and then their premiere one. You know, those guys
Speaker 2: are top notch counter terrorism operators. We had nothing but
Speaker 2: respect for them.
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Speaker 1: In around this time frame, I'm just sort of, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of imagining in the back of my mind here
Speaker 1: are we starting getting into, like the rise of Isis
Speaker 1: and the Syrian Civil War? And is that sort of
Speaker 1: stuff starting to play into these deployments at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's starting to hit. And you know, as a
Speaker 2: you know, eighteen Fox for a lot of these you know,
Speaker 2: Jordan trips and some of the other ones. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm keeping an eye on things that are going up
Speaker 2: in Syria and you know, Egypt and Libya, you know
Speaker 2: kind of you know, Yemen was hot at the time,
Speaker 2: you know, so there's a lot going on in the
Speaker 2: whole region with that whole Arab Spring kind of movement
Speaker 2: pushing around and all the riots and protests, and you know,
Speaker 2: seeing what was going on in Syria with the you know,
Speaker 2: the civil war hit the southern Syria first, right, so
Speaker 2: that's where it kind of started, and the Dara government
Speaker 2: down there in the south, and you know that's right
Speaker 2: on the border with Jordan. It's really you know, stones
Speaker 2: throw from where we're at in northern Jordan, if we're
Speaker 2: at that cosotic location, and you know, the Jordanians definitely
Speaker 2: worry about it, you know, because that their country can't
Speaker 2: handle a whole lot of refugee uh you know, crisis
Speaker 2: at you know, any given time. They just don't have
Speaker 2: the capabilities or the resources to handle a bunch of
Speaker 2: refugees and absorb a bunch of refugees. So I know
Speaker 2: they were setting up and trying to push like refugee
Speaker 2: camps on the Syrian side of the border of Jordan,
Speaker 2: but just near Jordan, so they could funnel resources and
Speaker 2: food and water to them, but keep them in Syria
Speaker 2: because Jordan didn't want that influx down in their own territory.
Speaker 2: So there was a lot of border stuff going on
Speaker 2: up there. You know, drones and you know, those kind
Speaker 2: of technologies weren't really prevalent yet. I mean, large scale
Speaker 2: ISR type birds were up there, but nothing, nothing small,
Speaker 2: that's nothing that we would use or that that we
Speaker 2: teach them how to use to keep eyes on their border,
Speaker 2: because their border, for you know, for most of the
Speaker 2: whole stretch of it, it's just a dirt burn right,
Speaker 2: there's nothing to it, so anybody can get over it.
Speaker 2: They do have border guards and border patrols and all
Speaker 2: that stuff, but it's just such a large border to
Speaker 2: patrol and keep everybody out. So that was definitely you know, happening.
Speaker 2: Weren't seeing ISIS at the time yet, you know, that
Speaker 2: was more starting to see some of the beginnings of
Speaker 2: Neustra front so al Kaeda type stuff, but you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't seeing a whole lot of Like I don't
Speaker 2: remember when ISIS finally emerge. I forget what year that
Speaker 2: was now, but maybe yeah, thirteen fourteen, so yeah, that
Speaker 2: was yeah, I'm trying to remember now, but I don't
Speaker 2: remember seeing a lot of ISIS stuff on the Jordan trips.
Speaker 2: I think we kind of disbanded as a team, right
Speaker 2: His ISIS was starting to get going, turning to emerge
Speaker 2: like a as a real threat in the area.
Speaker 1: And then tell us about the trip to the u
Speaker 1: A A. Uh spending time over there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd like to, you know, give a sob story
Speaker 2: and say it was horrible, but it was not. So
Speaker 2: I was my position there. I was there by myself.
Speaker 2: My team was spread out doing different missions, but we
Speaker 2: were working for the joint headquarters in Bahrain, and I
Speaker 2: was the liaison to the Imirati Special Operators Special Operations Command,
Speaker 2: So my job was to you know, sit in there
Speaker 2: with with them and liaise with them and set up
Speaker 2: training for you know SME, SME events and other units
Speaker 2: to come down and work with them. Uh. If there
Speaker 2: was you know, VIPs or guests coming in, I have
Speaker 2: to meet him at the airport and get them in
Speaker 2: and get them to a hotel and kind of show
Speaker 2: them the later. But yeah, it was a four month
Speaker 2: trip living by myself and u AE. It was definitely
Speaker 2: not rough in it. You know, they had us put
Speaker 2: up in a very nice hotel for those four months,
Speaker 2: so I cannot complain about that one.
Speaker 1: Well, it's oh, I'm glad that you know that you're
Speaker 1: telling some of these stories about some of these experiences,
Speaker 1: because people think Special Forces is about you know, rocking
Speaker 1: through the swamp with a knife in your teeth or
Speaker 1: something like that, and really so much of the job
Speaker 1: is about being a coordinator, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. You know, you got to be the
Speaker 2: you got to go from one hand, you know, one trip,
Speaker 2: you might be the guy with the knife in your
Speaker 2: teeth and then you know, four months later, you're you know,
Speaker 2: wearing a suit talking to you know, three or four
Speaker 2: star general and picking them up from the airport and
Speaker 2: then introducing him to an emmorati general who doesn't speak
Speaker 2: much English and you're trying to help out so they
Speaker 2: could at least say hi to each other, you know.
Speaker 2: So it it's definitely you know, on the special forces side.
Speaker 2: And I talked about this on a different show is on,
Speaker 2: But you know special operations right large, everybody has a specialty.
Speaker 2: You know, seals, you know have the water, you know
Speaker 2: mar sok is, you know Marine Corps, you know in
Speaker 2: the Navy and you have you know, everyone has their
Speaker 2: little piece of the pie. But I think, obviously I'm biased,
Speaker 2: but Special Forces I think has the largest piece of
Speaker 2: the pie because we have to be, you know, so
Speaker 2: good at so many unexpected things. You just have to
Speaker 2: be a thinker and a problem solver, and then you
Speaker 2: get put into the problems and you have to decide
Speaker 2: is the solution, you know, violence, or is the solution
Speaker 2: diplomacy And you have to be able to balance those
Speaker 2: equally and apply each one equally, you know, on a
Speaker 2: moment's notice.
Speaker 1: So we get up to twenty and sixteen, and you
Speaker 1: mentioned that the team gets to standard, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to even ask, because I sort of know
Speaker 1: the answer. I mean, well, was that like to be
Speaker 1: on the team for so long and put so much
Speaker 1: work into it and then kind of get told like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys don't exist anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was rough. You know, we were the last
Speaker 2: standing ODA and fourth Time, so we have that to
Speaker 2: our title. But eventually they all had to go away,
Speaker 2: you know, Fourth Time got restructured. Everyone had to kind
Speaker 2: of make decisions where do they want to go next?
Speaker 2: Do they want to go find another ODEA, do they
Speaker 2: want to go to a specialty team? They want to
Speaker 2: go to Swick. You know, what do we what do
Speaker 2: you want to do? Some guys chose, you know a
Speaker 2: little mix of everything, and everybody kind of went their
Speaker 2: own ways. We're still stay in touch, you know, we
Speaker 2: were on a team, close team for quite a while.
Speaker 2: We still talk pretty regularly. Yeah, everybody just had to
Speaker 2: pick what their next adventure was going to be. For me,
Speaker 2: I went, I was ready for a break, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd been going pretty heavy for most of my career.
Speaker 2: So I went and joined up with the Special Warfare
Speaker 2: Planning Detachment out of Fourth Time. We're responsible for, you know,
Speaker 2: doing operational level kind of planning for Fifth Group predominantly,
Speaker 2: but really Special Operations rit large. So I went down
Speaker 2: to Special Operations Command Central sockscent down in Tampa, took
Speaker 2: a break down there for about two years doing you know,
Speaker 2: larger scale planning. Got to see behind the curtain a
Speaker 2: little bit, got to learn what you know strategy and
Speaker 2: you know operational tactics and maneuverability and you know logistics
Speaker 2: and how all this comes into play on the big
Speaker 2: scale and the big picture piece of it. As before,
Speaker 2: my you know, my wheelhouse was very small, very niche
Speaker 2: like I was the eighteen Bravo was the eighteen Fox.
Speaker 2: I knew my little area of operations. I paid attention
Speaker 2: to what was happening in the region, but you know,
Speaker 2: my time at SOCKS and I was able to see
Speaker 2: what's happening in syentcom you know, Central Area responsibility and
Speaker 2: how you know, an action in Jordan effects an action
Speaker 2: and UAE and Iraq and how it's all kind of
Speaker 2: interplayed and tied together. So it was a really good
Speaker 2: time broadening. Definitely broadening for me to kind of learn
Speaker 2: some of the big picture stuff. Yeah. I did that
Speaker 2: for two years and then came back to Fort Campbell
Speaker 2: and I took over the Fort Campbell side of the
Speaker 2: planning detachment as the senior enlisted advisor. So it's technically
Speaker 2: a company, but there's only about sixteen of us. So
Speaker 2: I took over that position and then did that for
Speaker 2: the next three ish four years, I guess until I
Speaker 2: retired twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Was this like mostly contingency planning that you guys were working.
Speaker 2: On contingency planning kind of theater you know, annual theater
Speaker 2: composition planning like you name it. We would get called to, hey,
Speaker 2: you know this is coming up. We need some content
Speaker 2: contingency plans for this in case, you know, something kicks off,
Speaker 2: we need to know what that looks like. And they
Speaker 2: would bring us up to wherever that planning operation was happening,
Speaker 2: and we'd get involved with it and help out and
Speaker 2: bring our you know, expertise to it, because you know,
Speaker 2: you've got a lot of these headquarters aren't always staffed
Speaker 2: by special operations people, so you know, they would be
Speaker 2: doing planning and they would say, hey, we want you know,
Speaker 2: five o DA's next year for this, and we'd be like,
Speaker 2: that's never going to happen. You're not getting that many,
Speaker 2: but let us come help you plan it and we'll
Speaker 2: give you what's actually realistic and we'll help you meet
Speaker 2: the same objectives that you're trying to get. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of that type stuff, but it was fun.
Speaker 2: I got to learn a lot kind of big picture stuff,
Speaker 2: like I mentioned, I got to learn a lot about
Speaker 2: you know, operational design. I got to learn a little
Speaker 2: bit about, you know, the higher level military planning. Got
Speaker 2: to do a trip to Israel and hang out with
Speaker 2: the Israeli General Officer College for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: One of the instructors. There is retired general named Shimone Navay.
Speaker 2: Some people will either love him or hate him. Apparently
Speaker 2: he's a contentious guy over there, but he's kind. He's
Speaker 2: the actual architect of the Army design methodology that we
Speaker 2: use right now, So he came up with that when
Speaker 2: he worked at SOCOM for a while. So he's a
Speaker 2: very brilliant guy, real creative thinker. So I really got
Speaker 2: to see kind of behind the curtain on some of
Speaker 2: these things where it's like, we don't have to follow
Speaker 2: the military decision making process when we do these plans,
Speaker 2: because if you do nine times out of ten, we
Speaker 2: all come to the same conclusion. Right, So how do
Speaker 2: we apply creativity to planning as opposed to just following
Speaker 2: a checklist, it done and then just going over there
Speaker 2: and trying to solve it on the ground, right, How
Speaker 2: do we get the right resources?
Speaker 1: M d MP is all about, like, at its heart,
Speaker 1: really it's like risk mitigation, right, yeah, it is. It is.
Speaker 2: It's risk mitigation and then setting up the structure so
Speaker 2: you can have appropriate logistics to go with whatever elements
Speaker 2: now getting put into theater. But the some of the
Speaker 2: design stuff that I really got into was you know,
Speaker 2: how do you if you do action X, how is
Speaker 2: that going to affect you know, the other side of
Speaker 2: the equation, And then trying to play with okay, well,
Speaker 2: if if we do action X on purpose, what is
Speaker 2: that second order effect actually going to be? You know,
Speaker 2: and you know, maybe we need to do action Y
Speaker 2: instead in order to cause that second order effect, not
Speaker 2: just the first order effect we wanted. So it's really
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of layers deep higher level thinking
Speaker 2: that you know, I just really enjoyed the heck out
Speaker 2: of it. I think really that that set the foundation
Speaker 2: for me on you know, wanting to go down the
Speaker 2: pipeline of writing a book, especially like the book that
Speaker 2: I wrote. But we'll get into you know, why I
Speaker 2: did it and what what the intent is. But I
Speaker 2: wanted to be able to show what that you know,
Speaker 2: new scenario could be because I see so many people
Speaker 2: are just washing and repeating, you know, the same stuff
Speaker 2: that they're being told over and over again, and they're
Speaker 2: not applying that critical creative thought to how you know,
Speaker 2: the future could change very quickly, and so.
Speaker 1: You retire out of the group, and where do you
Speaker 1: go next?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I retired in twenty twenty three and immediately
Speaker 2: found a position with the company I'm with now. Just
Speaker 2: happened to meet a guy in Nashville at Soft's you know,
Speaker 2: special operations gathering that we do, you know, quarterly at
Speaker 2: one brewer he or another, and and uh, I was like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm retiring, I'm open for work, looking for a job,
Speaker 2: and another guy introduced himself said you know, I work
Speaker 2: for a military innovation company. And I was like, well
Speaker 2: that sounds interesting. And like I said, you know, at
Speaker 2: this point, I'm all in on this, like creative thinking
Speaker 2: and like looking at things differently. And when I heard
Speaker 2: the word innovation, I said, well, I need to see
Speaker 2: what this is all about. So talk to this you
Speaker 2: know guy for a while. Found out that, you know,
Speaker 2: what he's doing is something right up the alley of
Speaker 2: what I would love to get involved with.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: So I applied for the company and took a position
Speaker 2: the company's Civil Military Innovation Institute or seeing I two
Speaker 2: and we work different government contracts. Uh. The one that
Speaker 2: I'm currently focused on is an Army research labs program
Speaker 2: called Catalyst Pathfinder. Catalyst Pathfinder, what it is is, you know,
Speaker 2: we you see so much on the know, when you
Speaker 2: hear like innovation or big army requirements and new technologies,
Speaker 2: it's all top down driven stuff. So you got the
Speaker 2: F thirty fives and you know, new tanks and you know,
Speaker 2: whatever new vehicle or new weapons system that's getting fielded
Speaker 2: out there. But for me, like I'm more interested in
Speaker 2: what's coming from the soldiers and their ideas. So this
Speaker 2: when I heard about this program, I jumped all over it.
Speaker 2: So Catalyst Pathfinder is soldier driven tactical innovation. So we
Speaker 2: partner at the unit level and we'll set up you
Speaker 2: know what we call like dirt labs or maker spaces,
Speaker 2: So we put in three D printers, see and C machines,
Speaker 2: fab you know, textiles, whatever it is, and we'll set
Speaker 2: up these maker spaces that the unit runs with us.
Speaker 2: And then you know, soldiers come in, they have an
Speaker 2: idea for something, and we'll help them try to build it.
Speaker 2: You know, we have the CAD files, you know, the
Speaker 2: cat expertise, we have the engineer support, and we'll try
Speaker 2: to help them solve whatever problem they have, whether that's
Speaker 2: a new piece of equipment, a different type of rucksack,
Speaker 2: a new pouch, or you know, a new drone. You know,
Speaker 2: we try to figure out how we can get them
Speaker 2: the solutions they need at the tactical level. So there's
Speaker 2: no like long army requirements process. It's just here's what
Speaker 2: they want. We're going to put them under, you know,
Speaker 2: a contract to get this done as quick as possible.
Speaker 2: And we do that either down or hands getting dirty
Speaker 2: in the shop, or if it's something that hey we
Speaker 2: can't you know, we don't have the expertise, or it's
Speaker 2: two time consuming to do ourselves here in the house,
Speaker 2: then I can contract out through partnerships with universities or
Speaker 2: with small industry so you know, a smaller business, not
Speaker 2: the big prime vendors that I'll never get anything done with,
Speaker 2: but a small you know, young company that yeah, somebody
Speaker 2: who's eager, you know, or a small drone company or whatever.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, hey, this is what the unit wants.
Speaker 2: I'm willing to pay you, you know, to knock this
Speaker 2: out for us and get the answers and get the
Speaker 2: capability to the soldier as quick as possible. So that
Speaker 2: that's essentially what I do. Now. I work again at
Speaker 2: Fifth Group. Again, I didn't go far. I'm stealing forth
Speaker 2: Italian and we set up a innovation shop. Fifth Group's
Speaker 2: been all in on the innovation work, and you know,
Speaker 2: we've been just knocking project after project out down there
Speaker 2: and they've been, you know, eating it up. They've been
Speaker 2: doing amazing stuff. So really pushing the limit on capabilities.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much you're allowed to say, but
Speaker 1: I mean, i'd love to hear if you can about like,
Speaker 1: what are some of the cooler things that guys have,
Speaker 1: you know, cooler projects that the guys have come to
Speaker 1: you with that you were able to help with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so i'd say one of them that we could
Speaker 2: definitely talk about because you know there's articles out there
Speaker 2: about it now. But I had a Fifth Group soldier
Speaker 2: come in and say, hey, you know, we have all
Speaker 2: these program of record expensive drones that we get issued,
Speaker 2: but we can't do much with them because if we
Speaker 2: break them, we can't fix them. And two, we work
Speaker 2: with partners overseas, we can't let them technically fly them
Speaker 2: because they're program of record equipment, so you're not supposed
Speaker 2: to allow that. So they wanted a repairable drone that
Speaker 2: they could build and teach partner forces how to use
Speaker 2: so they can get their hands on some equipment. So
Speaker 2: I found a company out of Knoxville called Echo mav Technologies,
Speaker 2: and I came to him and said, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: this is what they want. We would love to see
Speaker 2: a three D printed you know SRR so a short
Speaker 2: range reconnaissance type bird, not like a first person view
Speaker 2: thing you see in Ukraine all the time, but like
Speaker 2: an actual like reconnaissance cloud copter. We want three D pended.
Speaker 2: We want the soldiers to be able to build it themselves,
Speaker 2: and we want it to be, you know, as capable
Speaker 2: as some of the bigger name things, but with cheaper
Speaker 2: components so it doesn't cost so much. And you know,
Speaker 2: within six months we had a working finished, you know,
Speaker 2: almost finished prototype that you know, Fifth Group has started
Speaker 2: using and fielding one hundred and first bought a hand
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred of them, I think, and they
Speaker 2: put a bunch out there and I've been testing it,
Speaker 2: so it's still a prototype, you know at the time.
Speaker 2: So it's still getting evolved and changing, and you know,
Speaker 2: the soldiers try it, they like something, they don't like something,
Speaker 2: I give feedback to the company, They make the changes
Speaker 2: and then the soldier gets the new version right. So
Speaker 2: it's like I'm the go between that usually doesn't exist
Speaker 2: between soldiers and the industry because I'm able to get
Speaker 2: those answers and those changes back to them quick. But yeah,
Speaker 2: three D printed drones have become big. That one was
Speaker 2: a big success story. And then you know, i'd say
Speaker 2: with a lot of the units now, a lot of
Speaker 2: them are focused on you know, aerial technology. Drones is
Speaker 2: what they want. And that's you know, the nature of
Speaker 2: current conflicts, that's the nature of technology, you know, evolving,
Speaker 2: and that's just where it is right now. Everybody wants drones.
Speaker 2: Everyone wants every every kind of drone you can think of.
Speaker 2: That's all they want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll talk about that too. I think a little
Speaker 1: bit more in depth. Let's start to get into the book.
Speaker 1: And where did this idea first come to mind? That, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to write a book about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'd never like had the vision of I'm
Speaker 2: going to be an author. You know, I've always been
Speaker 2: a prolific reader. I love reading. I've always enjoyed fiction.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll read the nonfiction, I read the military
Speaker 2: history books, but I love a good fiction book, right.
Speaker 2: I love just getting into a story and just kind
Speaker 2: of jamming with it, losing yourself in it. And I've
Speaker 2: always been a fan of that. I was right close
Speaker 2: to when I was retiring. I was I think I
Speaker 2: was like jotting down some notes or some ideas I had,
Speaker 2: and my wife, you know, it was all credit to her.
Speaker 2: She's like, you should write a book. You should try
Speaker 2: to write a book. And I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 2: anything about writing a book. But I started just you know,
Speaker 2: just typing away and playing around. It was horrible. It
Speaker 2: was really bad. I found one of my original copies
Speaker 2: of the book that I started, like when I was
Speaker 2: getting out of the army, and it was real bad
Speaker 2: to read. But one of the things I didn't talk
Speaker 2: about when I was getting out of the army. I
Speaker 2: did my Skill Badge program with a retired Sergeant Major
Speaker 2: SF Sergeant major named Randall Searles s U r l e. S.
Speaker 2: But he's a editor and author himself, and he basically
Speaker 2: let me do a sk bridge with him, you know,
Speaker 2: remotely online, and he helped me kind of understand how
Speaker 2: the structures of books work, you know, specifically on the
Speaker 2: fiction side, like how do you structure it, what are
Speaker 2: the different acts? You know, how does the character development,
Speaker 2: character arcs, like all these words that I'd never even
Speaker 2: heard of before, and I just thought, you know, good
Speaker 2: books for good books and bad books sucked, but there's
Speaker 2: a whole rhyme or reason why some of them suck
Speaker 2: and why some of them are really good, and you
Speaker 2: can kind of follow along, and there's you know, there's
Speaker 2: some good books out there that literally are written to
Speaker 2: talk about how books are structured. So I worked with
Speaker 2: him for probably two months and you know, got to
Speaker 2: help him do some developmental editing and go through his
Speaker 2: process and really helped me set a foundation for how
Speaker 2: do you write a book? So I, you know, took
Speaker 2: that and then I took the original kind of manuscript
Speaker 2: that I had been playing around with and just started
Speaker 2: over again and took some of the same ideas and
Speaker 2: started going with it. But the basic idea of the
Speaker 2: book was really kind of came to life out of frustration, right.
Speaker 2: So I see, you know, at the last year in
Speaker 2: the army, like I said, I was focused on all
Speaker 2: the creativity, creative thinking, pushing people to get out of
Speaker 2: the box and to think of and look at things differently,
Speaker 2: or I was, you know, real concerned what you're seeing,
Speaker 2: you know, with isis and everyone else is like, if
Speaker 2: we keep thinking that the same old ways of doing
Speaker 2: things are going to work in the next conflict, I
Speaker 2: think we're going to get caught, you know, unfortunately, like
Speaker 2: we tend to do, and you know, militaries across the
Speaker 2: world tend to do is they fight the last war.
Speaker 2: And that's really what you know, frustrated me because I
Speaker 2: was pushing on, you know, in these planning sessions and
Speaker 2: everything else, trying to get people to think a little
Speaker 2: harder about issues and how do we do stuff differently
Speaker 2: than we did last time? And it was just like
Speaker 2: running into a brick wall over and over again. The
Speaker 2: idea got born there, and I started working on, Hey,
Speaker 2: what if I wrote a book about, you know, what
Speaker 2: the next conflict's going to look like?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: There's lots of them, lots, but there's books out there
Speaker 2: that are like that, but usually they're like thirty years
Speaker 2: in the future, you know whatever. I'm like, I want
Speaker 2: to know what five years from the future is going
Speaker 2: to look like. Because technology is moving so fast right now,
Speaker 2: how is it going to look in just five years?
Speaker 2: So I started writing it in that kind of context.
Speaker 2: In mind was you know, five years from now. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm writing about an ODA because that's what I know,
Speaker 2: and I want to see them in an environment that
Speaker 2: I know, you know, just doing a jay set, doing
Speaker 2: training over in Jordan, and then you know, all hell
Speaker 2: breaks loose, so the everything that you don't want to
Speaker 2: see happen happens all at once, and new technologies that
Speaker 2: I think are going to be readily available probably within
Speaker 2: the next five years. And you know, it took some
Speaker 2: creative license on some of it because it is a
Speaker 2: fiction book, but I wanted to be able to showcase like, hey,
Speaker 2: this is where it could go pretty quickly, and this
Speaker 2: is where you know, on our side could go. And
Speaker 2: there's you know, an enemy type force could put in,
Speaker 2: and like, here's the different ideas that I had of, Hey,
Speaker 2: this is what I think it might be. And I
Speaker 2: wanted to write that out in a fiction because I
Speaker 2: think fiction does a fantastic job of, you know, bringing
Speaker 2: it to reality and helping readers kind of immerse themselves
Speaker 2: in that world so they can kind of actually see
Speaker 2: what that looks like.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I could write a white paper on the future of
Speaker 2: drone technology and people will read it and they'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's probably true, but they're not going to like really
Speaker 2: live it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So if you write it in a fiction book and
Speaker 2: you build characters and you you know, people read it
Speaker 2: and they identify with a character and they feel like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I was never in that situation, but I
Speaker 2: feel what this guy's feeling right now, you know, and
Speaker 2: then all this bad stuff starts happening, and then it
Speaker 2: becomes real, you know, it becomes very real to them,
Speaker 2: And that's what I was aiming for.
Speaker 1: You know. What I really liked about the book was
Speaker 1: that you brought your Special Forces experience into it, and
Speaker 1: you said, the setting of the book is basically Jordan, Syria,
Speaker 1: and Turkey, and it's it's felt it felt very fresh.
Speaker 1: It felt like this was not you know, I read
Speaker 1: a lot of these books, a lot of them, even
Speaker 1: for this podcast. This was different. It was not a
Speaker 1: rehash of all the stuff I had read before. And
Speaker 1: I really liked that about it, and I really liked
Speaker 1: you bringing your own experiences into it. And the protagonist,
Speaker 1: the team sergeant, was an interesting character because you kind
Speaker 1: of capture that person at that time in his life
Speaker 1: that he's been doing this for a while and he's
Speaker 1: kind of jaded, kind of cynical about you know, this
Speaker 1: part of the world and about his job. And also
Speaker 1: there's like this aspect of like he's getting older and
Speaker 1: he doesn't necessarily understand the technology that the younger guys
Speaker 1: on the team take too. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was you know, I took the you know,
Speaker 2: the main team sergeant character, and I based him off
Speaker 2: of you know, other team sergeants. I've known, my own
Speaker 2: team sergeants, other just leaders I've known, and kind of
Speaker 2: morphed them all into one, you know, sprinkle on a
Speaker 2: little my own personality in there, because that's the question
Speaker 2: I get is like, you know, are you the team sergeant,
Speaker 2: are you the weapons sergeant? Like which character are you?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I'm every single one of them. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: you get a little piece of everything.
Speaker 1: I love the eighteen Bravo on the team, Like you
Speaker 1: nailed that, like this this meathead yeah with his movie quotes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was really so I wanted to because
Speaker 2: you know, I read a lot too, and you see,
Speaker 2: like people go over the top when you're trying to
Speaker 2: do like that, what is the military behind closed doors?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Brotherhood feel like and I feel like sometimes they go
Speaker 2: over the top. You know, I'm not gonna name any names,
Speaker 2: but there's some Navy seals out there like to say
Speaker 2: the word brother a lot. So so I wanted to
Speaker 2: make it like, this is what it was like on
Speaker 2: a team, Like this is the mentality. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a bunch of dudes that will die for each other.
Speaker 2: But man, they're never gonna stop fighting. They're never gonna
Speaker 2: stop picking at each other. Uh. And it's just you know,
Speaker 2: the you know, if if the Walls had ears sort
Speaker 2: of situations, some of the team room chats that you'll
Speaker 2: never talk about are probably some of the funniest moments
Speaker 2: you've ever been in, you know, in your life.
Speaker 1: So one of my, uh, one of my favorite quotes
Speaker 1: about that was from Jim Morris, who he was a
Speaker 1: fifth group team leader o D eight leader in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: I don't think they even called them odias. I think
Speaker 1: they call them eight teams. It's in Vietnam. And he said,
Speaker 1: being a team leader on a Special Force, it's a team.
Speaker 1: It's uh, you know, it's basically trying to learn how
Speaker 1: to manage eleven prima donnas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's it. The egos I don't remember if
Speaker 2: i'd so I'm winning writing book two right now, so
Speaker 2: I'm blending them together, and I don't want to let
Speaker 2: anything out, but I do talk about it at some
Speaker 2: point of like, how do you manage you know, twelve,
Speaker 2: you know, eleven personalities minus yourself? You probably include yourself
Speaker 2: in that too, but like you're managing all these different
Speaker 2: personalities and man and SF types special operations types for sure,
Speaker 2: you know, you get a mixed bag of you know,
Speaker 2: who thinks they're you know, God's gift to the special
Speaker 2: Operations mantra and who's this here to work and who's
Speaker 2: you know in between, So you get a little bit
Speaker 2: of everything, you know, good batter and different. And I
Speaker 2: try to kind of show that mentality in the book,
Speaker 2: so hopefully it sits well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I thought it was great that you know,
Speaker 1: you captured that team sergeant experience and like made it
Speaker 1: clear that, yeah, exactly, he's trying to manage these different personalities,
Speaker 1: including its captain. You know, he has to kind of
Speaker 1: keep him going too, and you know, help him do
Speaker 1: his job, but also you know be like okay, sir
Speaker 1: of relax.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so he's based off of
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of different officers I've known. You know,
Speaker 2: I've worked with some great officers. I've worked with some
Speaker 2: poor officers. Same on the NCO side. You know, you
Speaker 2: got good and bad and you know, oh D eight
Speaker 2: Captains I think have one of the most difficult jobs
Speaker 2: as an officer because they're usually the least experienced guy
Speaker 2: and they have to still be in charge because they're
Speaker 2: the captain. You know, they have to maintain that level
Speaker 2: of respect while learning and understanding and being a part
Speaker 2: of a team. So it's it's hard for you know,
Speaker 2: officers and special forces world for sure. You know, my
Speaker 2: hat's off to the good ones. You know, I've had
Speaker 2: some great ones out there. But trying to show that
Speaker 2: the captain's in charge while still listening to the team
Speaker 2: sergeant's advice and having to deal with the knuckleheads on
Speaker 2: the team who think, you know, they're in charge most
Speaker 2: of the time. But trying to put that dynamic, that
Speaker 2: family dynamic together was fun on paper, but yeah, difficult
Speaker 2: in real life.
Speaker 1: And so the I don't know how deep you want
Speaker 1: to get into the plot of the of the book,
Speaker 1: but I mean the main action of it, I guess
Speaker 1: it has a lot to do with Turkey's regional ambitions,
Speaker 1: sort of neo Ottoman mentality that they've gotten into. Do
Speaker 1: you want to talk what do you want to say
Speaker 1: about what's going on in this book?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So kind of the basic premise is you got
Speaker 2: no DA doing a training mission in Jordan. They have
Speaker 2: a you know, short lived but exciting encounter with an
Speaker 2: unknown drone that kind of crashes around their area. Then
Speaker 2: you know, regionally, you start to see things heating up
Speaker 2: in the north Turkey is you know posturing and staging
Speaker 2: and on northern Syria and on their border, and then
Speaker 2: you have a flashpoint and you have you know, without
Speaker 2: going into too much detail, you have you know, Turkey
Speaker 2: invasion of Syria with some you know, pretty futuristic technologies
Speaker 2: that no one expected. And you know, when I've made
Speaker 2: those technologies, some of that stuff is already around, right,
Speaker 2: So you know, using a large drone now just throw
Speaker 2: these teasers out there to mess with people until they
Speaker 2: buy the book. But you know, using a large drone
Speaker 2: as a signal relay or a mother ship, you know,
Speaker 2: that's happening in Ukraine right now. Right Obviously I take
Speaker 2: some license with it, and what I think is actually
Speaker 2: going to be where it could go, where you have
Speaker 2: these larger drones and you know, automation or artificially intelligent
Speaker 2: systems or whatever that are controlling smaller drones on mission sets.
Speaker 2: I do think that's where it could end up, where
Speaker 2: you have you know, not necessarily like completely autonomous, but
Speaker 2: you know, if your parameters are so big on the
Speaker 2: left and right limits of what their mission is and
Speaker 2: they're operating within them, you know, are they still autonomous
Speaker 2: or are they autonomous or are they still in control
Speaker 2: of you know, the guy who wrote the software in
Speaker 2: the first place. So that's a question that you know,
Speaker 2: see comes up in the book a few times and
Speaker 2: really trying to get trying to explore that kind of
Speaker 2: concept of when does you know, actual artificial intelligence or
Speaker 2: autonomous systems become that autonomous if you're giving them such
Speaker 2: a big parameter to operate in in the first place.
Speaker 1: You know, So.
Speaker 2: It's a tough question. I don't know. I've heard lots
Speaker 2: of different people talk about it, but I don't think
Speaker 2: anybody's got the real answer yet.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, I think this book also sort of
Speaker 1: alludes to this idea that you know, when we think
Speaker 1: of these like high tech, high end defense items, we think,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to be the ones that feel
Speaker 1: that or maybe you know, the Chinese, maybe the Russians.
Speaker 1: But your book is really pointing towards, you know, the
Speaker 1: multipolarity that we're moving into in the world. And I mean,
Speaker 1: Turkey isn't like an irrelevant, you know, small country, They're
Speaker 1: a regional player. But I mean, I think that that
Speaker 1: was one of the interesting things about your book is
Speaker 1: it points to one of these other countries really getting
Speaker 1: the drop on us in a way that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have expected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I kind of chose that, you know, intentionally.
Speaker 2: That's because I wanted to write in that region. Right,
Speaker 2: So I'm being that I don't say exactly like what
Speaker 2: year this is supposed to be. I allude to, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of geopolitical comments in there that make you
Speaker 2: think it's you know, five or ten years in the future. Well,
Speaker 2: I you know, I mentioned briefly the Russian Ukraine conflict
Speaker 2: in there. In a conclusion to that I talk I
Speaker 2: think I talked briefly about China and there that's going
Speaker 2: to come more in book two. But I wanted to show,
Speaker 2: you know, the ability for you know, a country like
Speaker 2: Turkey is not a small country. It is a powerhouse
Speaker 2: in the region, and they're doing some pretty advanced stuff
Speaker 2: with you know, unmanned technologies. You know, aside from Israel,
Speaker 2: I would put Turkey at you know, the number two
Speaker 2: spot right behind them for technology and unmanned systems capabilities.
Speaker 2: So picking you know, a out of left field, you know,
Speaker 2: NATO partner essentially, because now it adds a whole nother
Speaker 2: layer of you know, what would the US do? What
Speaker 2: would our response be if you know, a NATO ally
Speaker 2: invades Syria, you know, are we going to intervene or
Speaker 2: are we going to stop? Are we going to let
Speaker 2: it go? How far do we let it go? You know,
Speaker 2: how much would we let them take, you know, as
Speaker 2: a world order kind of maintainer before we step in.
Speaker 2: And obviously some more stuff happens in the in the
Speaker 2: book that I don't want to let out too much,
Speaker 2: but you know, there's complications that that would arise when
Speaker 2: that happens and there's US forces scattered around the region,
Speaker 2: like you know, what does that what does that look like?
Speaker 2: What does it look like? Worst case scenario? And That's
Speaker 2: what I was really trying to show how precarious our
Speaker 2: position could be if something like this were to happen.
Speaker 1: I think that I believe we talked to Anthony Vincey
Speaker 1: about this recently about sort of how you know that
Speaker 1: the information you're being told as a soldier is authentic,
Speaker 1: it's coming from you know, it's a lawful order from
Speaker 1: your commander there, and it does play into your book.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a pretty big rug pull on the
Speaker 1: protagonists at one point. What do you think about that
Speaker 1: sort of like information assuredness. I'm not sure what the
Speaker 1: correct doctrinal term is, but that you know that you
Speaker 1: know that what you're being told is in fact legitimate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that is. You know, I played
Speaker 2: around with that obviously in the book of you Know
Speaker 2: Who's Who kind of conflict that the characters and the
Speaker 2: protagonists has to go through of you know, trusting sources
Speaker 2: and talking with you know, different levels of leadership, and
Speaker 2: I think you know the ability that's coming, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of it's already here. I mean, you
Speaker 2: could look just scrolling through my phone before we started
Speaker 2: on Instagram, I'm like, I don't know half of these
Speaker 2: videos are real, you know which ones are fake, which
Speaker 2: ones are real. So they're only going to get better,
Speaker 2: you know, and the systems are only going to get
Speaker 2: more in vain. Maybe they'll hit a wall at some point,
Speaker 2: but you know what happens if they don't. What happens
Speaker 2: if they don't hit a stopping point and they get
Speaker 2: so advanced that you can't tell the difference anymore, Like,
Speaker 2: how would I know right now? Or how would you
Speaker 2: know that we're actually you know, you're actually talking to
Speaker 2: a person right we're digital images on the screen. And
Speaker 2: that's kind of what I try to, like, you know,
Speaker 2: get into a little bit into the book, and you know,
Speaker 2: I want people to start thinking about that is the
Speaker 2: dangers of you know, how far this could go without
Speaker 2: any handrails. You know, I'm not going to get into
Speaker 2: the argument of whether or not we should put limits,
Speaker 2: you know, on you know, is it First Amendment rights
Speaker 2: at that point or like whatever it is. I'm not
Speaker 2: getting into that, But you know, how do you how
Speaker 2: can you tell what's real and what's not on the
Speaker 2: Internet now and what's that going to look like in
Speaker 2: ten years from now? Like how does that play into
Speaker 2: the evil of just everyday life much less you know,
Speaker 2: deployed soldiers in a combat zone.
Speaker 1: You mentioned earlier, how like right now everything is about drones,
Speaker 1: and I sense there's a little bit of like a
Speaker 1: techno skepticism within you that I'd like to probe the
Speaker 1: wire a bit on. Everyone thinks that the future of
Speaker 1: war right now is quad copter drones because of what
Speaker 1: they're seeing in Ukraine. But I mean, if we go
Speaker 1: to war with China tomorrow, theoretically quad copter drones are
Speaker 1: going to be completely irrelevant for that flight. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that you hit that one, you're gonna get me.
Speaker 2: I might as well pull out my soapbox real quick
Speaker 2: and get standing up. But you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: with my current job, doing these innovation stuff I have,
Speaker 2: you know, soldiers come in from all kinds of units,
Speaker 2: or they email me, or they heard about the work
Speaker 2: I'm doing. They reach out and they're like, I want
Speaker 2: an fpv drone that can carry or drop a grenade,
Speaker 2: or I want an fpv drone that can have a
Speaker 2: you know, a shape charge or like an RPG on
Speaker 2: it or something. And my response always to them is,
Speaker 2: you know, why what are you going to do with that?
Speaker 2: And they're like, well, I saw this video. That's how
Speaker 2: they usually start, and I'm like, all right, let's talk
Speaker 2: about the video real quick, because you know, what's happening
Speaker 2: in Russian and Ukraine is shaping everyone's vision of where
Speaker 2: or what drones and combat are going to look like, right,
Speaker 2: and it should right that what the Ukrainians have been
Speaker 2: able to do against the Russians is you know, was shocking.
Speaker 2: I when I heard about the Russian stage and on
Speaker 2: the border, I was, you know, I was all in
Speaker 2: on man, They're going to roll up the Ukrainians in
Speaker 2: a week, you know, a month. Maybe I did not
Speaker 2: think that this was going to be the future of
Speaker 2: where it was going. Probably shouldn't put that bad you
Speaker 2: know guests out there, since I wrote a book about
Speaker 2: the future of war. But that's what, you know, I
Speaker 2: thought they were done for it. You know, the Ukrainians
Speaker 2: have done amazing thing with that technology. However, the doctrine
Speaker 2: that Russia uses and the doctrine that Ukraine uses is
Speaker 2: completely different than a doctrine that the United States would
Speaker 2: use in a military conflict. You know, we don't have
Speaker 2: a you know, battle drill for digging and then placing
Speaker 2: trench works as infantry soldiers like, we don't do that.
Speaker 2: We don't fight defensively. We're a maneuver, you know, army.
Speaker 2: We're a combined arms, large scale maneuver. We overwhelm the
Speaker 2: airspace and then we move in through the ground and
Speaker 2: take everything out. That's how we've done it since, you know,
Speaker 2: the Gulf War, since before it's you know, shaped off
Speaker 2: the blitzkrieg like that is how we do our military maneuvers.
Speaker 2: The war in Ukraine right now, when you watch a
Speaker 2: lot of these you know YouTube videos, one, you got
Speaker 2: to be you know, cautious of the propaganda value that
Speaker 2: you're being fed, right, because that's a big part of it. Again,
Speaker 2: I'm not taking anything away from what the Ukrainians are doing.
Speaker 2: It's amazing that they're you know, I think the invasions
Speaker 2: jacked up, and I think the Ukrainians are doing a
Speaker 2: hell of the job. But when you watch these videos,
Speaker 2: you have a single drone flying along or two drones usually,
Speaker 2: and it's a small group of Russians or Ukrainians where
Speaker 2: it's like one guy hiding in a hole, or you
Speaker 2: see like a single vehicle driving down the road, and
Speaker 2: if you stop and like zoom out and you think
Speaker 2: about what you're looking at. What you're seeing is like
Speaker 2: harassing attacks, right. They're harassing to in order to keep
Speaker 2: the Russians from massing any kind of force anywhere near
Speaker 2: the border, in order to stop them from advancing. Right,
Speaker 2: And the Russians are still advancing right now, They're still
Speaker 2: steadily advancing. It's slow going. They're losing, you know, a
Speaker 2: crazy amount of casualties. I think the twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: CSIS report was like a million Russian total casualties and
Speaker 2: like three hundred killed, like seven hundred wounded. It's crazy,
Speaker 2: it's absolutely bonkers. But you know, the United States, if
Speaker 2: we were to go in and help Ukraine tomorrow, we
Speaker 2: wouldn't just go take and plus up their positions along
Speaker 2: the front. Like, that's not how we do it. So
Speaker 2: when these guys come in they say, hey, I want
Speaker 2: this drone that does this because I saw this video.
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, if you have that drone and
Speaker 2: you're an infantry platoon leader, right and you're moving and
Speaker 2: you get contact to your front, tell me how that
Speaker 2: you're going to integrate that drone into your battle drill
Speaker 2: without slowing it down like without stopping what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Like the drones in Ukraine have only become you know,
Speaker 2: the top of the like the kill chain in the
Speaker 2: last like two years because they ran out of artillery sales,
Speaker 2: right That's why they're using them right now. If they
Speaker 2: had artillery, they'd probably prefer that, but they don't. They're out.
Speaker 2: I get it. So I do think drones are going
Speaker 2: to be you know, the future of conflict. I don't
Speaker 2: know what it's going to look like yet. And like
Speaker 2: to your point, if we were to go fight China
Speaker 2: in the Pacific, you know, where the FPV drones don't
Speaker 2: have the range to do a whole lot of damage.
Speaker 2: You know, I worry more about like fpvs and the
Speaker 2: small scale drones for insurgencies. And you know, imagine if
Speaker 2: the drone technology now was out in two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven in Iraq, you know, that would have been tough
Speaker 2: to counter. I worry about the drones, and you know,
Speaker 2: like the Ukrainian operation what was it called Spiderweb when
Speaker 2: they put those you know, snuck all those drones way
Speaker 2: way deep into Russia and then remotely launched them at targets.
Speaker 2: Like I worry more about that stuff for fpvs and
Speaker 2: their implications for it unless you know something scenario like
Speaker 2: the book and that technology comes to that. Because I
Speaker 2: haven't talked in the book. I don't talk about battery
Speaker 2: capability because that's a tough you know, batteries are tough,
Speaker 2: battery life is tough. So I do have Book two
Speaker 2: is going to get into the batteries, but I don't
Speaker 2: want to ruin that. But so like, I think what
Speaker 2: we think it's going to be is probably incorrect. I
Speaker 2: think it's going to be different and something that we're
Speaker 2: not you know, really sure of yet. And that's what
Speaker 2: you know, that's a good thing about soldiers wanting to
Speaker 2: test and play with them, because that's how you get
Speaker 2: creative and you come up with what that next solution
Speaker 2: looks like. But I just you know, people that just
Speaker 2: rely on YouTube for their tactical acumen is usually incorrect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think to your point about how the American
Speaker 1: military fights is like sometimes we forget that, you know,
Speaker 1: the Kurds in northern Syria or the Ukrainians in their
Speaker 1: own country, they're fighting with what they have and so
Speaker 1: they're relying. The Ukrainians are relying a lot on these
Speaker 1: drones because that's what they have access to. And if
Speaker 1: the United States went to war, we bring all of
Speaker 1: our military hardware with us. If the Ukrainians had all
Speaker 1: of our fighter capabilities, on bomber capabilities and all this
Speaker 1: other stuff that we bring to the table, they would
Speaker 1: be using that instead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they would. And that's to my point is
Speaker 2: like I think for the large scale military application, the
Speaker 2: FPV is going to be very limited. I think special
Speaker 2: operations side we need to be really focused on it
Speaker 2: because we can be you know, using partner forces. Yeah,
Speaker 2: partner forces, you know, to devastating effect, and we really
Speaker 2: need to.
Speaker 1: Know how to counter it.
Speaker 2: That's you know, more important to me is right now
Speaker 2: is the arming and the speed and the you know
Speaker 2: cost is you know, going faster, and the technology is
Speaker 2: moving faster than we know how to stop it. So
Speaker 2: that's more what I'm worried about is how do we
Speaker 2: counter these things?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I wanted to ask you about that next,
Speaker 1: because if you look at you know, the official military publications,
Speaker 1: counter UAS is like huge thing, like they seem to
Speaker 1: have a huge emphasis on that right now, and everything
Speaker 1: from you know, how does a squad of infantry protect
Speaker 1: themselves to how does the company headquarters protect itself from
Speaker 1: these things?
Speaker 2: What's sort of your view on this, Yeah, so countering
Speaker 2: these drones is very difficult, right, So what you don't
Speaker 2: see in the videos most of the time over in
Speaker 2: Ukraine is how many drones get knocked out of the
Speaker 2: sky from electronic jamming, right, So that is a definite
Speaker 2: way to stop them. So most of these drones, for
Speaker 2: my drone people out there, you know, most of the
Speaker 2: ones being used in Ukraine are operating on simple two
Speaker 2: point four gigahertz bands and that's the radio signal that
Speaker 2: they use to control it, right, And that's essentially the
Speaker 2: same band as Wi Fi. Right, so if you flew
Speaker 2: it in a major metropolitan area with Wi Fi all
Speaker 2: over the place, you would get jammed just by the
Speaker 2: signals that are out there. So you see a lot
Speaker 2: of that jamming happen right now. And then that's where
Speaker 2: you know, for those that are following it, you start
Speaker 2: to see some of the fiber optic drones that are
Speaker 2: coming out. So essentially that's just a fly by wire
Speaker 2: drone that can't be jammed by a signal, by a
Speaker 2: radio signal jammer. It actually has a control wire that
Speaker 2: runs it all the way through and they can fly
Speaker 2: them for five K, ten K, twenty K. I think
Speaker 2: they're getting up there in length. Now. They have these
Speaker 2: huge canisters that they mount on the bottom of them
Speaker 2: and it's just full of fiber optic, you know, thin
Speaker 2: hair like wire and they can go everywhere and not
Speaker 2: have to get jammed. So that's another thing, because now
Speaker 2: you have to have a kinetic stop for that, you
Speaker 2: gotta be able to shoot it down on something.
Speaker 1: I mean that's basically how the toe missile works, right.
Speaker 2: It's a tow missile. Yeah, it's much cheaper, not as effective,
Speaker 2: but much cheaper tow missile. That's I'm sure that's where
Speaker 2: they got the idea.
Speaker 1: And so the book is out now. People can go
Speaker 1: and find it on Amazon. Within sort of the reception
Speaker 1: of this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've I mean it's been great. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I self published, uh, you know, publishing it is a
Speaker 2: whole nother conversation. But I self published the book. You know,
Speaker 2: did all the you know, found an editor, found all
Speaker 2: the you know, the artwork, it did all that and
Speaker 2: got it out, came out in September. I believe it
Speaker 2: was doing all my own marketing. You know, getting out there.
Speaker 2: But I've had I haven't had anybody say anything negative yet,
Speaker 2: so that's maybe they liked me, or maybe they liked
Speaker 2: the book. I don't know, but everyone seems to be
Speaker 2: really interested in it, and the concept of it kind
Speaker 2: of like to your point that you're looking to is
Speaker 2: like it is different, and I wrote it differently on
Speaker 2: purpose because you know, there's so many big, you know,
Speaker 2: name like military thrillers out there or military action groups
Speaker 2: or books, and it's you know, they kind of run
Speaker 2: a similar script, i'd say, in all of them. I'm
Speaker 2: not putting any names out there. I'm not doing that,
Speaker 2: but a lot of them run kind of similar scripts
Speaker 2: where you have like this action you know, hero type
Speaker 2: and he's in horrible situations, he does all the great,
Speaker 2: you know things, and then you're like switches to scene
Speaker 2: two and it's like situation room and like, I don't
Speaker 2: I don't want to know what's going on in the
Speaker 2: situation room. I'm not trying to go that high in
Speaker 2: my books. Uh, there will be some higher headquarters stuff
Speaker 2: in book two, but really I wanted to show like
Speaker 2: that tactical nitty gritty, like when you're the team on
Speaker 2: the ground. You see stuff on the news or you
Speaker 2: make speculations, but you don't know what's happening, you know,
Speaker 2: with the president and you know what SECTEF is doing
Speaker 2: over there, You're just like, what the hell are they
Speaker 2: thinking sort of conversation. So it's been the reception has
Speaker 2: been really you know great, been you know, selling books
Speaker 2: and getting them out there and you know, getting on
Speaker 2: platforms like this and talking about it. I appreciate that
Speaker 2: you having me on let me chat about it, just
Speaker 2: there's no other way to get it out there to
Speaker 2: the right type of people that I think will enjoy it.
Speaker 2: And most of all, like I want them to, you know,
Speaker 2: enjoy the book, but I want to take it, think
Speaker 2: about it, and start trying to like come up with
Speaker 2: your own ideas of like here's where this could be going.
Speaker 2: Like if you're a still active duty military or your
Speaker 2: law enforcement or you know, first responders, like all of
Speaker 2: this is applicable. You know, these technologies are going to
Speaker 2: change the way we do things, whether it's because we're
Speaker 2: on the receiving end of them or because we know
Speaker 2: how to counter them and we've come up with the
Speaker 2: next best thing after this. So that's what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to do with the book is like, hey, here's where
Speaker 2: it's going, Here's what I want to show about it.
Speaker 2: You know, let's have a conversation and you know, I
Speaker 2: hope anybody's out there, you know, hit me up on
Speaker 2: social media and we can we can chat about it.
Speaker 2: Read the book and let me know each thing.
Speaker 1: And for our viewers or listeners, there will be links
Speaker 1: down the description of this podcast to Rob's talk Wretched
Speaker 1: Wretched Descent. You can go and take a look. And
Speaker 1: you said there's a is it a sequel on the way?
Speaker 2: There is? Yeah, so, uh, the intent is three books.
Speaker 2: So last thing I'll probably get into about the book,
Speaker 2: but I framed the book off of the Iliad, So
Speaker 2: Homer's the Iliad. So in the Iliad, you got you know,
Speaker 2: the Greeks and the Trojans, so, and they're in a
Speaker 2: ten year struggle and they're kind of at a stalemate,
Speaker 2: and the only time when one side wins and pushes
Speaker 2: you know, the Trojans back to the wall, or the
Speaker 2: Trojans push the Greeks to the water, is when their
Speaker 2: gods show up and fight on their behalf. Right. So
Speaker 2: I tried to reimagine that as the technologies that you
Speaker 2: see in the book, and when the technologies are there,
Speaker 2: you got you know, overwhelming you know, fire, superiority or force,
Speaker 2: and you start to see that side winning. I tried
Speaker 2: to kind of tailor it off of the Iliad. I
Speaker 2: thought that was kind of a unique way to kind
Speaker 2: of play with it. You'll see there are some easter
Speaker 2: eggs hidden throughout the book, maybe some people's names or
Speaker 2: some different ideas that might help you kind of figure
Speaker 2: that out. But when I wrote it about the Iliad,
Speaker 2: you know, the Iliad stops when Achilles's cousin is killed,
Speaker 2: and that's it. So the whole trojan horse thing and
Speaker 2: all of that, that's actually in a different book. But
Speaker 2: I'm roping all that into one, and I'm taking three
Speaker 2: books as my vision to get to the end of
Speaker 2: this this particular scenario, and don't know yet if it'll
Speaker 2: go beyond that. I have some couple of different endings
Speaker 2: in mind of where it may go. It's just going
Speaker 2: to depend on, you know, what readers think, and if
Speaker 2: the storyline should continue or if I should you know,
Speaker 2: be three and done with that and then move on
Speaker 2: to my next project.
Speaker 1: Do we have a title or anything. For the second book, I.
Speaker 2: Don't have the title yet. I had, I had a title,
Speaker 2: but I've pushed it off right now so I don't
Speaker 2: want to. I don't want to get into that one yet.
Speaker 1: So it went about do you think it'll get out there?
Speaker 2: So I released this one in September. My goal is
Speaker 2: at the latest September of twenty twenty six, if not sooner.
Speaker 2: So I'm already working on it. About a quarter of
Speaker 2: the way in. This one's moving much quicker than my
Speaker 2: first one. So that's that's a good lessons learned, I
Speaker 2: guess with outlining and how to do it properly, and
Speaker 2: a lot, a lot, a lot of less wasted words.
Speaker 2: I think I have a throwaway file from book one
Speaker 2: that's one hundred thousand words of scenes and chapters I deleted.
Speaker 2: I'm hoping to not have that again.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a learning experience I find anyway cool.
Speaker 1: Anything else do you want to mention before we get
Speaker 1: going here tonight?
Speaker 2: Rob, No, I think that's it. You know again, I
Speaker 2: appreciate you having me on. I appreciate you know, all
Speaker 2: the listeners and viewers out there, you know, if you
Speaker 2: if this is interesting to you, go ahead and grab
Speaker 2: you a copy. You can find me on uh X
Speaker 2: and Instagram and TikTok our Leach underscore author. Feel free
Speaker 2: to connect. Let me know what you think about the book,
Speaker 2: Let me know what ideas you have, technology ideas you
Speaker 2: can help shape this. You know, I'm not set on anything.
Speaker 2: I know where the you know, the overall story is going.
Speaker 2: But I'm happy to you know, if you come up
Speaker 2: with some cool ideas and you want me to throw
Speaker 2: it in there, let me know, and I'm happy to
Speaker 2: try to jam that into the book somehow, whatever I
Speaker 2: can do to make it more realistic and you know,
Speaker 2: more eye opening for for people. It's kind of the goal.
Speaker 1: So the book is Wretched Descent by Robert Leach. Go
Speaker 1: check it out. We'll have links down the description. I
Speaker 1: see the hard copy behind you. I read mine on
Speaker 1: my kindle was great. On the ebook version was awesome
Speaker 1: and otherwise. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight and
Speaker 1: we will see you on the next episode. So take
Speaker 1: care out there.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys. I want to tell all of you today
Speaker 1: about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both
Speaker 1: the team House podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the
Speaker 1: high Side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor.
Speaker 1: The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's
Speaker 1: going to come into your inbox and you're going to
Speaker 1: get the most current podcasts on eyes On and the
Speaker 1: Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high Side.
Speaker 1: So it's another way for us to get the information
Speaker 1: out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy
Speaker 1: and you never really know what you're going to get.
Speaker 1: So this is a once a week email. It'll slide
Speaker 1: into your inbox and it will have you know the
Speaker 1: greatest hits of that week. It's really good checking it out.
Speaker 1: The website for it is Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Join Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com slash join. Uh.
Speaker 1: You go there and you enter into your email list
Speaker 1: or you enter your email into the little thing on
Speaker 1: the website and you're good to go and that'll be it.
Speaker 1: So we really appreciate your support and I hope you'll
Speaker 1: consider signing up. Where's the link. The link will also
Speaker 1: be down the description if you're looking for it there,
Speaker 1: and that's Teamhouse Podcast, dot Kit, k I t Kilo,
Speaker 1: India Tango dot com, backslash Join