Speaker 1: The Team House with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 2: Hello, everyone, welcome to episode one hundred and twenty three
Speaker 2: of The Team House.
Speaker 1: I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. Tonight.
Speaker 2: Our guest on the show is Ryan Fuquet, who served
Speaker 2: as an Army Apache Attack helicopter pilot and then transitioned
Speaker 2: over and became a CIA operations officer. Ryan today is
Speaker 2: also the host of Combat Story, which is another channel
Speaker 2: on the youtubess that you can go and find. And
Speaker 2: if you watch The Team House and you like it,
Speaker 2: you should really go and check it out right away
Speaker 2: because I can guarantee you that if you found something
Speaker 2: here you like, that you'll find something on Ryan's channel
Speaker 2: that you'll like. Actually, there's an episode that I'm Ryan
Speaker 2: interviews me on and soon there's going to be an
Speaker 2: episode where tomorrow tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so all your dreams have come true.
Speaker 2: So yeah, go check it out, and we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: put Ryan on the other end of the microphone this
Speaker 2: time around and hammer him with our questions. All right, Ryan,
Speaker 2: back to you. You know what I'm going to ask
Speaker 2: you right now? Tell us about your origin story, where
Speaker 2: you grew up, what your upbringing was like, and how
Speaker 2: that sort of set you up on a path that
Speaker 2: brought you into the army.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure thing.
Speaker 4: I We'll just say I appreciated how David very casually
Speaker 4: just tied a knot there, like it was no big
Speaker 4: deal with the growth.
Speaker 1: So very cool.
Speaker 4: These are a lot of that was a lot of
Speaker 4: gear that pilots just never had to touch or worry about.
Speaker 4: So that was cool to see for me. I grew
Speaker 4: up kind of weird overseas. I spent my childhood in
Speaker 4: Zimbabwe and Africa. I was in Pakistan during the First
Speaker 4: Golf War. We got evacuated out and brought back afterwards.
Speaker 4: I was born in Belgium, so I lived the first
Speaker 4: thirteen years of my life overseas.
Speaker 1: So were your folks spies or missionaries?
Speaker 5: Are gypsies?
Speaker 1: They were legit State Department?
Speaker 5: Really? I like how you say that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was the first person I checked out
Speaker 4: when I got into the agency, when I got the
Speaker 4: CIA to see if my dad was actually in and
Speaker 4: have been lying to me all this time and he's
Speaker 4: a legit state.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so did he did he look down on you?
Speaker 1: For no? No?
Speaker 4: No, he interestingly he had some really good friends over
Speaker 4: the years who who ended up being pretty high up
Speaker 4: at the agency. You just get to be close with
Speaker 4: folks in the State Department. When you're at the agency,
Speaker 4: you're in the same communities in these places where there
Speaker 4: aren't a lot of Americans, so you get pretty tight.
Speaker 4: And he had a few of those and my dad. Look, honestly,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of stereotypes for State Department folks is
Speaker 4: kind of pencil pushers, they're the policy wonks. But my
Speaker 4: dad flew Hughey's in Vietnam, so he was He was
Speaker 4: a combat guy from the start, and his true calling
Speaker 4: was the State Department. He loves to say he was
Speaker 4: a terrible pilot, although I will say he has a
Speaker 4: silver Star and a DFC, which is no joke.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: But he really found his call in with the State Department,
Speaker 4: and he had I think when he would go and
Speaker 4: work with different military commands and just with the agency,
Speaker 4: I think they had a lot of appreciation for the
Speaker 4: time he spent in uniform. Of course, right, I think
Speaker 4: as you as you might expect.
Speaker 5: Sure when you were growing up like that.
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, the the environment that we're in is
Speaker 3: normal to us, but did you did you realize that,
Speaker 3: like your upbringing was different than many than most Americans.
Speaker 4: I did a little bit, because we'd go back every
Speaker 4: two years, maybe for a month over the summer, and
Speaker 4: so that that would be like my taste of what
Speaker 4: America was. And I had no idea. I was literally
Speaker 4: in Africa, like in the middle of southern Africa, running
Speaker 4: around with no shoes, very few Americans there, So that
Speaker 4: was what I knew. Occasionally, like a Nintendo game would
Speaker 4: just drop in when somebody came to visit. But we
Speaker 4: go back to the States and like I'd go to
Speaker 4: a ball game in Chicago, like I'd go watch the
Speaker 4: Cubs play, or we'd run around northern Virginia seeing friends
Speaker 4: and family, And that was my exposure to the US
Speaker 4: and how different it was where I was grown up,
Speaker 4: in particular the Third World, right, and I know you
Speaker 4: guys know it better than anybody, the stark contrast of
Speaker 4: the Third World to the true first world problems we
Speaker 4: deal with here in the US. And so I certainly
Speaker 4: like I recognized some of those early on, but it
Speaker 4: certainly wasn't until I came back for high school and
Speaker 4: we moved to Tampa, Florida for my dad's last role
Speaker 4: at CENTCOM, and that's where I really noticed how different
Speaker 4: my upbringing was compared to everyone else.
Speaker 5: And how was that for you? I mean, did you
Speaker 5: have a hard time fitting in? Did you just?
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 4: I didn't really, But I think it's because of sports,
Speaker 4: you know. I think sports can be a huge equalizer
Speaker 4: for people, whether it's you know, because you're on a team,
Speaker 4: or you just understand how to do something. And I
Speaker 4: had never played American sports, but I grew up playing rugby,
Speaker 4: and I swam and tennis and squash and all these
Speaker 4: other sports. So I had good coordination and I came
Speaker 4: in and I started playing football, I ran track, and
Speaker 4: so I immediately had this group of friends and was
Speaker 4: accepted because I was pretty good, you know, I was
Speaker 4: all right at it. Yeah, so I didn't that wasn't
Speaker 4: that hard. But I will say, like academically, it was
Speaker 4: much easier coming back to the US from these like
Speaker 4: international schools. So you know, I started out in basic
Speaker 4: classes and then kind of worked my way up to
Speaker 4: the honors programs and trying to find my way. But
Speaker 4: early on I was able to get in because of sports.
Speaker 3: And then culturally, like, did you when you would hear
Speaker 3: people talking about first four problems, as you said, did
Speaker 3: you have sort of an opinion of that or did
Speaker 3: you kind of adapt to that pretty quickly?
Speaker 1: I think I adapted quickly.
Speaker 4: And I will say this became really helpful when I
Speaker 4: was at the CIA, like trying to assimilate in and
Speaker 4: being liked and other people liking you and that sort
Speaker 4: of thing. Like, I think I just picked it up
Speaker 4: from moving around, especially coming back to the US and
Speaker 4: trying to make friends. So I tried not to dwell
Speaker 4: on that. I think the disparity between first and third
Speaker 4: world problems, and I think the frustration a lot of
Speaker 4: us might have when you've seen what it's really like
Speaker 4: in these other places came a lot later, maybe coming
Speaker 4: out of the military and getting into corporate America and
Speaker 4: then the Agency.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm sensing that you are a pretty worldly
Speaker 2: dude as a young man, and your dad being a
Speaker 2: Vietnam veteran and helicopter pilot. Am I wrong and sensing
Speaker 2: that this was sort of the aspirations building within you
Speaker 2: that sort of took you on that route.
Speaker 1: You were not wrong.
Speaker 4: I you know, my dad would keep he'd have his
Speaker 4: like little a little case with his couple of his
Speaker 4: medals in it, just off to the side. He wasn't
Speaker 4: ever showing it off or anything, but you know, i'd
Speaker 4: see it. I remember seeing it when I was young
Speaker 4: in Africa and we'd drive around back in the States
Speaker 4: when we were back home, and I'd ask him to
Speaker 4: tell me, like, what was Vietnam like? And he would
Speaker 4: tell me these stories about flying into hot LZ's just
Speaker 4: like you see and we were soldiers, Like it's exactly
Speaker 4: the way he described it was how you read about
Speaker 4: it and see it in that movie. So yeah, like
Speaker 4: I kind of had that growing up. I had two
Speaker 4: older brothers who ended up going into the military. One
Speaker 4: flew kaiwas the other was an armor officer. So I
Speaker 4: think it was a pretty clear path for me that
Speaker 4: that's what I was going to go do coming out
Speaker 4: of high school at least and getting into college.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: So what was that like, did you go in and
Speaker 2: listed or you go went in as an officer?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I went so my dad was an officer
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, that was the route I took going in.
Speaker 4: Both of my older brothers were So I did r
Speaker 4: OTC at Georgetown to kind of get my foot in.
Speaker 4: They paid for school, thank god, because that place is expensive.
Speaker 4: I did ROTC there. I played football there, so I
Speaker 4: was busy as hell during college.
Speaker 1: But it was good. You know.
Speaker 4: It was another group of guys that I got to meet,
Speaker 4: a whole new set of folks, both on the ROTC
Speaker 4: side and on the football side. And that was the
Speaker 4: first time, truthfully, I was exposed to NCOs or like
Speaker 4: the NCOs that were running our ROTC program and and
Speaker 4: impressing honess like how important it is to listen to
Speaker 4: an NCO, and like giving us the non college side
Speaker 4: of that experience and what we were getting ready to
Speaker 4: go into.
Speaker 3: How did the NCOs treat you? I mean, did they
Speaker 3: treat you like recruits? Did they treat you like future officers?
Speaker 4: They treated us way too way too well, like, way
Speaker 4: too nicely. You know, like I'm sure it's really tough.
Speaker 4: You got an eighteen year old kid with nothing but
Speaker 4: tons of opportunity, and these guys would come out of
Speaker 4: you know, this was just pre nine to eleven, so
Speaker 4: there wasn't a lot of fighting, but you know, they've
Speaker 4: had a tough life being in the military and moving
Speaker 4: and putting up with young lieutenants and here they are
Speaker 4: faced with like this is the origin story of these
Speaker 4: dumbass lieutenants I had to deal with for so long,
Speaker 4: And so actually they were really kind and you could
Speaker 4: tell they were just trying to impart as much knowledge
Speaker 4: on you before you left as you could, Like great
Speaker 4: example for me. You know, you compete when you're in
Speaker 4: ROTC to get to these some of the courses over
Speaker 4: the summer, airborne aerosault dive, whatever. And you know, I
Speaker 4: worked hard to get into aerosoult school. I went to
Speaker 4: that and I still remember this guy, a staff sergeant Roper.
Speaker 4: He went through my packing list like every single item,
Speaker 4: and he came out of the one hundred and first
Speaker 4: and you guys know like the home of the ari
Speaker 4: assault folks, and no kidding, like you stand there on
Speaker 4: day one that you get all your gear out. You're
Speaker 4: in these long lines and they just go through your
Speaker 4: packing lists and they're checking for everything, and guys get
Speaker 4: dropped because they don't have it. And I just remember thinking,
Speaker 4: like how ucky was I that this guy was there
Speaker 4: looking out for me at that time and a lot
Speaker 4: of these guys just didn't have that right.
Speaker 3: Was there a was there a reason you went offscer
Speaker 3: instead of warrant And was there more risk that you
Speaker 3: wouldn't become a helicopter pilot as an officer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I never considered warrant. I just didn't know
Speaker 4: about it. It just didn't come up with my dad,
Speaker 4: you know, at all, even though he was in the
Speaker 4: aviation community. He was only in there for a few
Speaker 4: years in Vietnam. But I was more set on, like
Speaker 4: literally to the night before I had to choose what
Speaker 4: branch I wanted.
Speaker 1: I ended up picking aviation, but it was.
Speaker 4: Down to that in the infantry, okay, and I very easily.
Speaker 4: It's one of the reasons I love doing the show,
Speaker 4: like talking to you guys who've been on the ground,
Speaker 4: because that could have been me in a lot of cases.
Speaker 4: And I think back on that night a lot when
Speaker 4: I made this decision, all right, I'm going to go
Speaker 4: the aviation route, and I think back on it because
Speaker 4: I have a bit of regret, but I would have
Speaker 4: regretted it either way.
Speaker 1: You know, my dad flew.
Speaker 4: I can connect with him on a level I never
Speaker 4: could had I not been in the cockpit flying. Same
Speaker 4: with my brother. But I have so much respect for
Speaker 4: dudes on the ground running around who we were covering
Speaker 4: when I was up in the air and thinking like
Speaker 4: that could have been me down there. So that was
Speaker 4: the reason I went the the officer route. Was I
Speaker 4: was going to go either of those. The warrant officer
Speaker 4: track just never came into play for me.
Speaker 1: So where were you when nine to eleven happened?
Speaker 4: I was in Georgetown, So I was in DC when
Speaker 4: it happened, and we had a because I played football,
Speaker 4: we had early morning like workouts and game review and
Speaker 4: like from the previous season and that season, and I
Speaker 4: had just come back from that and my room with
Speaker 4: three other guys on the football team, so I was
Speaker 4: a senior at the time, and they they did not
Speaker 4: do r ATC. So I was often the dude like
Speaker 4: coming home as they were, you know, I was going
Speaker 4: out the door to do pts.
Speaker 1: They were coming back from the bars.
Speaker 4: And so to see them up this early watching TV,
Speaker 4: I knew something was going on. So we sat down
Speaker 4: and we were watching it. And then later that day
Speaker 4: we all had mop heads because that's kind of people
Speaker 4: we were. We drove down so we could see the
Speaker 4: smoke coming off the Pentagon later that day and Jack
Speaker 4: I can't remember if you and I were talking about this,
Speaker 4: but I remember in the months after that or the
Speaker 4: weeks after that, and months like every dad read the
Speaker 4: Washington Post about these SF guys riding on horseback out
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan and how cool I thought that was, and
Speaker 4: just trying to follow that as as closely as I could,
Speaker 4: you know, with the Internet being what it was at
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, And now you get your shot to go into
Speaker 2: the military. As you said, you choose aviation over infantry.
Speaker 2: What was it like you tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about the kind of like training process to become an
Speaker 2: Apache pilot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, you guys have had another at least
Speaker 4: one age guy on here. I mean I went, I
Speaker 4: commissioned in the summer of two and I was I
Speaker 4: asked everybody on my show, almost everybody about this. But
Speaker 4: like for me, the amount of fomo or whatever you
Speaker 4: want to call it, Like the the absolute fear I
Speaker 4: had that I was going to miss the war was staggering.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean flight school is like a year long
Speaker 4: plus that's just kind of for your basic work and
Speaker 4: then you got to go and do your advanced aircraft
Speaker 4: and patches take longer so I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be here forever, this war is going
Speaker 4: to be over. I'm going to be the only dude
Speaker 4: without a combat patch. And obviously now you look back
Speaker 4: and it's completely naive to have thought that that was
Speaker 4: the case. But at the time you just don't want
Speaker 4: to be that guy, right coming out without one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and based on you know, the first goal for
Speaker 3: there was no exactly I think that it wasn't going
Speaker 3: to be like a quick in and out, you.
Speaker 4: Know, exactly exactly. So for us, like we got we
Speaker 4: go to Fort Rutger. Sorry David, go ahead, please, Now
Speaker 4: I was going to say, we go to Fort Rutger,
Speaker 4: and you know, it's it's in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 4: in Alabama. You got all these students coming in and
Speaker 4: we had to wait probably four months, maybe three months
Speaker 4: to start our training. There was like a backlog of
Speaker 4: pilots going through the course, and so we just sat
Speaker 4: there and did almost nothing all day for three months.
Speaker 4: And I was petrified about just waiting any longer. Like
Speaker 4: I looked up, could I go to the CIA?
Speaker 1: Now? What can I go do to get my ass
Speaker 1: into this war? Somehow?
Speaker 4: But I stuck around and I got put into a class.
Speaker 4: You're in a flight school class of about thirty guys
Speaker 4: and girls, and I was one of two ROTC guys.
Speaker 4: So it was me and twenty eight west Pointers and
Speaker 4: it was like the twenty eight west Pointers who have
Speaker 4: finished one through twenty eight in their order of merit going,
Speaker 4: you know, coming out of school that year, they all
Speaker 4: get to pick like when they want to start cl
Speaker 4: and this is like the most time you could have
Speaker 4: off to start was this, So like the people who
Speaker 4: ranked highest took the most time off in the summer
Speaker 4: and then started course with me. So I was in
Speaker 4: there with all these West Point dudes. And I'm good
Speaker 4: friends with a lot of these guys now, but you're
Speaker 4: with them every day for a year, and every single
Speaker 4: day is an evaluation, like you're taking a classroom test
Speaker 4: or in the aircraft fly in. You know, there's no
Speaker 4: a pluses. It's either you did this right or you
Speaker 4: sucked at it. And you're just constantly evaluated over time
Speaker 4: in these different flight skills. And everybody's competing for an
Speaker 4: airframe in the end, So some people really want to
Speaker 4: go and flash knooks, blackhawks whatever. We had Kaiwa's and apaches,
Speaker 4: but there are very few gunships that are given out,
Speaker 4: so it's pretty it's pretty competitive to get a slot
Speaker 4: for the for the attack helicopters.
Speaker 1: Do you so I was gone in for that.
Speaker 5: Do you fly every airframe while you're in the class.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: They start you out flying a civilian version of a Kiowa,
Speaker 4: so it's a Bell Jet ranger unless you're like six
Speaker 4: foot five or taller, which my roommate there was, and
Speaker 4: they fly Huey's, which is hilarious, Like nobody else gets
Speaker 4: in a Hueie. It's pretty cool to see these things
Speaker 4: still flying around. So he was out flying Huey's while
Speaker 4: I was in this little jet bell aircraft. And then
Speaker 4: that's just for like making sure that you're safe in
Speaker 4: the aircraft flying around you solo in that, you learn
Speaker 4: to hover in that, and then when you start doing
Speaker 4: like low level navigation routes that sort of thing, they
Speaker 4: transition you into an older version of the Kiowa and
Speaker 4: then you're in that through the end, and then at
Speaker 4: the end you go and pick your final airframe and
Speaker 4: then then you go to a separate course just for that.
Speaker 1: How'd that work out for you?
Speaker 2: Did you have to like score it a certain percentile
Speaker 2: to because you said it was very competitive to get
Speaker 2: onto a gunship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they everything just like the military.
Speaker 4: There's you know, an OML that's running around all the time,
Speaker 4: classroom flights, you're you know, all the grades that you get,
Speaker 4: and then there's a little bit of physical but since
Speaker 4: we're pilots, we don't we don't wait it too heavily,
Speaker 4: you know, like we're not too worried about the fitness
Speaker 4: side of things. But yeah, so there's the order of
Speaker 4: merit and by the end of it, we got two
Speaker 4: apaches in our class and they went one and two
Speaker 4: and the third aircraft was a Kiowa and the rest
Speaker 4: were Chinooks and Blackhawks.
Speaker 5: Wow wow.
Speaker 4: So it was no kidding. It's like everybody in a room. Hey,
Speaker 4: number one student is so and so what do you want?
Speaker 4: All right, Apache's okay, it comes off the list and
Speaker 4: it's just like that for thirty people. So it's it's
Speaker 4: nerve wracking day of But there's a lot of like
Speaker 4: there's there are personalities for aircraft, and I don't know
Speaker 4: if people outside the flight community understand that, but like
Speaker 4: people who fly chnooks tend to be like the pretty
Speaker 4: laid back chill. You know, they don't mind sleeping with
Speaker 4: the roof over there head if they got to hang
Speaker 4: out in the back for a while. They're cool haveing
Speaker 4: other people watch them fly, whereas in the APACHE, like
Speaker 4: you got a copilot, that's it. There's no crew chief
Speaker 4: watching you screw up. So everybody. Every airframe has its
Speaker 4: own personality. So you do have some folks who really
Speaker 4: want to get these lift aircraft. But for us it
Speaker 4: was like the first three were attack and recon ryan.
Speaker 3: Actually, for the people who might not be super familiar
Speaker 3: with military airframes, can you give us a rundown on
Speaker 3: the choices you guys had?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we had five, you're right, you know, so we
Speaker 4: had five different aircraft, so apaches, right, so just two seat,
Speaker 4: two engine gunships. Then there were kaiwas which single engine,
Speaker 4: no doors, kind of cool little reconnaissance aircraft. And then
Speaker 4: you've got Blackhawks, so that that also includes your METAVAC.
Speaker 4: But the classes we were in it was just strictly
Speaker 4: like you were going to a conventional unit to fly
Speaker 4: black Hawks, not for METAVAC. And then Chooks, so you
Speaker 4: got your dual rotor big old lift aircraft carrying thirty
Speaker 4: guys and then we also had one spot for a
Speaker 4: fixed wing to go and fly VIPs. And to me
Speaker 4: it was like, why would you want to go do that?
Speaker 4: Like if you wanted to do that, why not go
Speaker 4: to the Air Force. But there was one guy you
Speaker 4: got it. It was a perfect fit for him and
Speaker 4: it made a lot of sense. You could go and
Speaker 4: fly some almost like some intel work vip flight. He
Speaker 4: had a great career doing that. But those were our aircraft.
Speaker 4: And now there's a they've retired, I think the kiawah
Speaker 4: and they have a Lakota in there I believe it
Speaker 4: is now. So then you get actually, hey Jack, sorry,
Speaker 4: this might be interesting at the time. So this is
Speaker 4: just after nine to eleven kicked off. This is probably
Speaker 4: still the same today. One sixtieth, which you guys worked
Speaker 4: with for sure, like the cream of the crop for
Speaker 4: the aviation community.
Speaker 1: They would come around and they would pull one or two.
Speaker 4: Guys or girls out of well guys at the time,
Speaker 4: out of flight school, like right out of flight school
Speaker 4: into one sixtieth. It was rare, but you could do it,
Speaker 4: but you'd have to go fly schnooks and I shouldn't
Speaker 4: say it, like you have to go fly right if
Speaker 4: you had aspirations to go in and flying little bird guns,
Speaker 4: which is if you're flying guns at all, that's the
Speaker 4: only thing you'd ever want to go fly, then you
Speaker 4: got to go and do your time in conventional units.
Speaker 1: But they were pulling a.
Speaker 4: Couple people every now and then out of flight school,
Speaker 4: so that was something you also had to weigh, like, hey,
Speaker 4: do I want to give up this gun slot to
Speaker 4: go and fly in one sixtieth which would be amazing,
Speaker 4: But I'm going to be flying lift for my future basically.
Speaker 4: So that is one other wrinkle that they threw in at.
Speaker 2: The end, because once you get on an airframe, they
Speaker 2: kind of like keep you on it, right, Like, how
Speaker 2: how does that work?
Speaker 1: Like with the little bird pilots do they come out of?
Speaker 2: Like were they former conventional black HALWK pilots? What's that
Speaker 2: normal trajectory?
Speaker 1: Like? Yeah, So.
Speaker 4: As you can imagine, just like in your guys career paths,
Speaker 4: you're with these folks, you end up going to the
Speaker 4: elite units just like you both did, and so you
Speaker 4: end up knowing these people. So I ended up with
Speaker 4: a couple of guys who I knew who went into
Speaker 4: one sixtieth and typically like the gun side of one
Speaker 4: sixtieth is looking for people who had flown Apaches, and
Speaker 4: Kyle was like, who had experience pulling the trigger for
Speaker 4: the guns? Like I think you could. You could be
Speaker 4: in a Pache pilot and fly a little bird where
Speaker 4: you're infilling somebody, you know, the the MH version, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: the MH version. I think they would also take Blackhawk
Speaker 4: and Chinook guys. But I think it's pretty competitive when
Speaker 4: you're trying to get into one of those gun slots
Speaker 4: that you come from a gun community beforehand, So you.
Speaker 2: Hit your Apache training, what was that like leor into
Speaker 2: you know, now you're getting into like learning your dream job, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, it's funny because the the pressure that you put
Speaker 4: on yourself or the pressure that's put on you kind
Speaker 4: of changes when you come out of like you're no
Speaker 4: longer competing for the slot. That's all done, and now
Speaker 4: you're just like now it's real in terms of I
Speaker 4: got to make myself the best pilot I can before
Speaker 4: I get to my unit, because I need to be
Speaker 4: safe and I need to once I hit that unit,
Speaker 4: I got to be progressing through this ladder that we
Speaker 4: have in aviation. So you can kind of stand out
Speaker 4: and get to the jobs you want. So as we're
Speaker 4: getting into training, it's more like I had a guy
Speaker 4: who had just come out of the war zone, like
Speaker 4: he was in right in the evasion of Iraq, like
Speaker 4: he had combat experience.
Speaker 1: It was great learning from him.
Speaker 4: So it was really like, how much can I soak
Speaker 4: up from this guy in this very short period of
Speaker 4: time before I get out the door. And it's actually
Speaker 4: like in the basic part of flight school there are
Speaker 4: thirty students, but here there might have been a class
Speaker 4: of six. It's really small and more intimate as you're
Speaker 4: going through it. And one of the things that you know,
Speaker 4: if you guys have heard somebody talk about flying the bag,
Speaker 4: it's kind of an interesting story. It only happens in
Speaker 4: the Apache community. It's how they train you to fly
Speaker 4: looking out of just one eye. Have you guys heard
Speaker 4: of this yet? So this I think it. You just
Speaker 4: don't hear about it unless you come out of this community.
Speaker 4: But it's a really tough part of flight school. That's
Speaker 4: kind of interesting. So in the Apache you got this
Speaker 4: thing on the front. It's your flear. We call it
Speaker 4: the forward looking Infra red. So it's all thermal sights.
Speaker 4: And the only way you can see at night in
Speaker 4: the APACHE if you're not wearing MVGS is through your monocle.
Speaker 4: So it's like this little glass eyepiece that you wear,
Speaker 4: but it projects an image of thermal signatures in your
Speaker 4: eye and this tiny little optic in front of your
Speaker 4: right eye. And you have to train yourself because as
Speaker 4: you look through that monocle, you're looking at something that's
Speaker 4: right here, but your other eye is looking out into
Speaker 4: the distance, and so you got to be able to
Speaker 4: look inside the cockpit with your other eye and out
Speaker 4: and look for other aircraft and obstacle, antaid shots and stuff.
Speaker 4: So to learn how to fly like that takes several
Speaker 4: hours for you to overcome the sickness that comes with
Speaker 4: it because it's so disorienting. So they call it the
Speaker 4: bag where they put this tarp over the cockpit so
Speaker 4: you can't see out. So the dude flying behind you,
Speaker 4: you're up in the front seat of the Apache. The
Speaker 4: guy flying behind you, who's the instructor pilot, he can
Speaker 4: I think he can see out, or he's using the
Speaker 4: fleer as well because he's experienced with it. And then
Speaker 4: you have no way to look outside the cockpit. You're
Speaker 4: one hundred percent flying with just what you can see
Speaker 4: in this little eyepiece, and it a lot of guys
Speaker 4: end up puking going through this part of it, and
Speaker 4: it's super disorienting, and it's one of the other ego
Speaker 4: crushing parts of flight school that you go through on
Speaker 4: the APACHE track.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so what's that like? Having an instructor in like
Speaker 3: behind you and I don't, like, I don't even know
Speaker 3: an APACHE does does like your your copilot can't?
Speaker 5: Do they have control? Can they take control in a
Speaker 5: normal APACHE?
Speaker 3: And then with an instructor, do they have like like
Speaker 3: a driving instructor like the brakes and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the the APACHE that we use in flight
Speaker 4: school is the same one that we use in the
Speaker 4: regular part, okay, And so you can do everything from
Speaker 4: both seats. Okay, So you could fire technically, you could
Speaker 4: fire a hell fire missile from the back seat, although
Speaker 4: it's super rare because of the way you do it,
Speaker 4: but you could. So they have all the controls necessary
Speaker 4: for when you inevitably screw up that they can control
Speaker 4: it and bring you back down to the ground safely.
Speaker 4: But a couple of the things with it. We like
Speaker 4: to joke with Blackhawks and Chinook's and Kaiwa's that we
Speaker 4: sit front to back so that you can't hold hands
Speaker 4: with the other pilot, right, so you would you wouldn't
Speaker 4: like fly with us because you can't hold the hand
Speaker 4: of your co pilot, you know. So we'll give them,
Speaker 4: we'll haze them a little bit with that. But there
Speaker 4: is a there's like a glass shield between you. And
Speaker 4: the only reason I bring that up between the two
Speaker 4: pilots front to back is in the Cobra they didn't
Speaker 4: have that. So almost every guy I ever talked to
Speaker 4: who flew Cobras would say that the instructor pilot in
Speaker 4: the back seat would like dump their ash tray on
Speaker 4: you in the front if you screwed up, or they
Speaker 4: do something to yell at you through there, and you
Speaker 4: couldn't do that in the Apache because you had a
Speaker 4: blast shield in between the two cockpits.
Speaker 3: The best fascinating what did your dad? Did your dad
Speaker 3: fly Cobra? I forgot what your dad flew me.
Speaker 1: Just Huie's Huey slicks, so no armament, no guns.
Speaker 5: What did he think of you like flying an Apache?
Speaker 1: Did he? I thought he?
Speaker 4: You know, I think he found it pretty cool that
Speaker 4: I was going down this path. And when I was
Speaker 4: in flight school, I went to one of his reunions.
Speaker 4: He goes to your reunion every year with these pilots
Speaker 4: that he was with in Vietnam. It's awesome, and they
Speaker 4: were all telling stories about how he used to fly
Speaker 4: and some of the ops they were on. So I
Speaker 4: think it to him he didn't really care what I
Speaker 4: was flying, you know, that didn't really matter to him.
Speaker 4: He just I think he thought it was interesting that
Speaker 4: we both flew. And it truly wasn't until I came
Speaker 4: back from Afghanistan that we had some no shit discussions
Speaker 4: on like it was kind of like my baptism by fire,
Speaker 4: and then we started talking real about some of these events.
Speaker 5: That's amazing. And how long was the APACHE training.
Speaker 4: It's probably four to five probably four months, four to
Speaker 4: five months, I would say once once you come out
Speaker 4: of basic, yeah, you go through that Apache pipeline, and
Speaker 4: actually I went through. I flew there. We called it
Speaker 4: the Alpha model, so it's like the older model Apache
Speaker 4: that they used early golf for not early golf, early
Speaker 4: in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they had just transitioned to
Speaker 4: this thing called the Delta model at the time, So
Speaker 4: I did the the alpha and then had to do
Speaker 4: the secondary course for the Delta, which suck because it
Speaker 4: kep me there longer. But this thing gave us a
Speaker 4: whole host of different capabilities, but one critical one was
Speaker 4: the optics were way better, so we could see bad
Speaker 4: guys miles out now where before they could hear us,
Speaker 4: which was not the case years earlier. So that was
Speaker 4: a huge advantage by the time we got to Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a brief rundown on the armament
Speaker 1: that the Age sixty four can carry, because it is
Speaker 1: pretty impressive the amount of uh hate, Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bring some hate, man.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So so this on the small end, it's got thirty
Speaker 4: mili rounds, which are like, you know, six or seven
Speaker 4: inches long.
Speaker 1: They're the bullets.
Speaker 4: They're like the small armament you carry, and you usually
Speaker 4: have about three hundred of those. And you got this
Speaker 4: cannon that sits down just below where the front seater
Speaker 4: sits that is running these things through And I mean
Speaker 4: when that thing fires, you can kind of feel it
Speaker 4: underneath your butt as you're flying.
Speaker 1: It's a cool sound. And you kind of smell it.
Speaker 1: It's awesome.
Speaker 4: And then it's also got these two point seventy five
Speaker 4: inch rockets, right, so I think I've heard you guys
Speaker 4: talk about them before, like coming from an A ten,
Speaker 4: which is pretty badass, but they have a different sets
Speaker 4: of warheads on them. We would carry like some white phosphorus,
Speaker 4: some more explosive type rounds with those rockets, and we
Speaker 4: usually carried we carry about a pot of God, I'm
Speaker 4: sure an instructive pilot's going to hit me somewhere, but
Speaker 4: probably like twelve of those we'd have on board, but
Speaker 4: because of weight, we just couldn't carry that much. And
Speaker 4: then we'd have two to three hell fire missiles, which
Speaker 4: are like five foot tall, bad ass missiles that have
Speaker 4: their own internal computer system. So this is kind of
Speaker 4: like fire and forget. So you're lasing the target, you
Speaker 4: fire it. That thing is going and it's going to
Speaker 4: hit that target. And you had different warheads that could
Speaker 4: go on that as well, for you know, thermobaric and
Speaker 4: high explosive type type work. And we carry maybe two
Speaker 4: of those three on a good day in Afghanistan.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and did they have to?
Speaker 3: I mean I assume that there were people who figured
Speaker 3: out all that because of the temperature and the altitude
Speaker 3: in Afghananastan where you were going, you know, the lift
Speaker 3: capability of helicopters, So would every time you load it
Speaker 3: out for a mission, did it have to be a
Speaker 3: different load out based on all those environmental factors?
Speaker 1: Pretty much? Yes.
Speaker 4: I mean, as you guys know very well, the difference
Speaker 4: in temperature in those places, whether it's Iraq or Afghanistan,
Speaker 4: you know, can be significant. So you know, we might
Speaker 4: be able to squeeze in a few more of those.
Speaker 4: But for the most part, it was a fairly consistent
Speaker 4: load and we had some extended fuel tanks, you know,
Speaker 4: just so we could spend a little more time up
Speaker 4: in the air. But yeah, for the most part, it
Speaker 4: was a consistent load set based on in Afghanistan, not
Speaker 4: just the heat, but the altitude, right sucks it out
Speaker 4: of these aircraft.
Speaker 2: Correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan, But I mean the
Speaker 2: Apache is designed to be like a tank killer, right,
Speaker 2: that was the initial conception behind it. Could you talk
Speaker 2: to us a little bit about what the Apache was
Speaker 2: designed for versus what.
Speaker 1: It ended up being used for during you know, your deployments.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and actually this like this brings up just a
Speaker 4: very important memory for me. So we were truly when
Speaker 4: I was in flight school and we went out and
Speaker 4: did our gunnery. So we go out to the range
Speaker 4: and actually shoot for the first time. We did it
Speaker 4: like we were Cold War apaches, which is how they
Speaker 4: were designed, exactly like you said, Jack, going out like
Speaker 4: you should go out as a battalion with eighteen to
Speaker 4: twenty four apaches at the same time on a line
Speaker 4: behind a tree line. Everybody at the same time pops up,
Speaker 4: but just enough so you could get like your radar
Speaker 4: above the tree line, scan ninety Russian tanks and all
Speaker 4: of you fire missiles because you pretty much only have
Speaker 4: sixteen missiles at these tanks and hit them all at
Speaker 4: the same time without ever exposing yourself. So you're out
Speaker 4: a hover pulling up, not exposing yourself, firing and leaving.
Speaker 4: That was the plan behind it so early in Iraq
Speaker 4: in two thousand and three, there's a significant in date
Speaker 4: March twenty third, two thousand and three in in Iraq
Speaker 4: when the Apache community was supposed to have this like
Speaker 4: it's got all this new armament on it. It goes out,
Speaker 4: it goes to a hover, and it hovered like this
Speaker 4: battalion goes out. Some of them crash on takeoff because
Speaker 4: they brown out. They're not used to the weight restrictions,
Speaker 4: and so some of them don't make it out. They
Speaker 4: get online, they're hovering right above enemy positions, they're getting
Speaker 4: shot up, they limp back the base. It's kind of
Speaker 4: like a black eye for the APACHE community early on
Speaker 4: in the war, which is not good. So they immediately
Speaker 4: start changing the tactics to what everybody has seen in
Speaker 4: Vietnam from Cobra's basically like moving while you shoot.
Speaker 1: But it's not normal.
Speaker 4: It's not how everybody has been trained for the past
Speaker 4: fifteen to twenty years in this airframe, So they didn't
Speaker 4: even train us on that. In two thousand and four,
Speaker 4: as I was coming out of the pipeline, when I
Speaker 4: went to Germany, which was my first year the assignment,
Speaker 4: our second gunnery run, we started doing these tactics. So
Speaker 4: we're shooting on the run and sounds easy, and after
Speaker 4: you get the hang of it, like it's easier, but
Speaker 4: when you're in like a ten to twenty degree dive,
Speaker 4: ten degrees doesn't sound like a lot, it's significant, like
Speaker 4: you're pulling g's it's it's a totally different experience than
Speaker 4: like pulling up to a hover when you're really low, popping.
Speaker 1: Up and shooting.
Speaker 4: So we would do these gunnery exercises out in at
Speaker 4: Grafenvier for those like tons of people here, but I'm
Speaker 4: sure you guys Paly spent time there one of the
Speaker 4: other training centers and anyway.
Speaker 1: Like we're out there, we're shooting.
Speaker 4: And actually it was the first time I had done
Speaker 4: gunnery as a piloting command. So you get to a unit,
Speaker 4: you're a nobody. You work your way up to when
Speaker 4: somebody says, okay, you're safe enough to put another human's
Speaker 4: life in your hands, you're a piloting command.
Speaker 1: So I was a PC.
Speaker 4: We call it for this this round of gunnery, and
Speaker 4: it's day and night shooting. And we went out at night,
Speaker 4: and I mean it was like white knuckle flying for me,
Speaker 4: just on flying at night, you know, flear this other
Speaker 4: human's life is in my hands. We're firing down range,
Speaker 4: like we just don't fire a lot. So we went
Speaker 4: through and did fine on our gunnery runs. But one
Speaker 4: of the knights, one of the air crews, so a
Speaker 4: CW three, a senior warrant officer and then a W two,
Speaker 4: a guy who had just made W two, both former
Speaker 4: rangers who had transitioned over to be pilots, which is
Speaker 4: not uncommon. They went in on a gun run, got
Speaker 4: fixated on a target and weren't able to pull up
Speaker 4: and flew straight into the ground. Oh my god, and
Speaker 4: so like just disintegrated. There's just nothing left after that
Speaker 4: type of crash. It's really bad. So that was, you know,
Speaker 4: I was a junior lieutenant at the time, and it
Speaker 4: was like a rude awakening of what can happen if you.
Speaker 1: If you don't.
Speaker 4: Appreciate how dangerous flying is. Like, and they were good
Speaker 4: pilots and they just got fixated on targets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, straight into the ground.
Speaker 3: Now, when when you're doing that type of the run,
Speaker 3: are you actually because I know, you know, helicopter can
Speaker 3: move in different several directions, are you actually like a plane,
Speaker 3: diving towards your target or are you angled and still
Speaker 3: moving forward?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're diving down towards it like like a plane analogy,
Speaker 4: as you would have said.
Speaker 1: And you do that for several reasons.
Speaker 4: One is like, I mean, you get up to altitude
Speaker 4: and you come in quick, but you cut all your
Speaker 4: rotor wash that's coming down is going behind you, so
Speaker 4: it's not just you know, it's not distorting or disrupting
Speaker 4: the the munitions as they're coming off the aircraft, and
Speaker 4: it just gives you a better alignment with the wind
Speaker 4: as you're trying to take shots. So it serves several purposes,
Speaker 4: but it's necessary. So you've got to come in pretty hot.
Speaker 4: And target fixation is no joke. Yeah, every pilot's had
Speaker 4: to deal with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ran, I want to ask you about, you know,
Speaker 2: getting deployed overseas and you know, not missing the war as.
Speaker 1: It turned out.
Speaker 2: Tell us about your first time getting to ployed overseas. Ryan,
Speaker 2: Where were you going? What was the mission?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I was in Germany as my first assignment and
Speaker 4: the unit I got to had just redeployed from Iraq.
Speaker 4: So I was sitting there doing nothing and desperately wanted
Speaker 4: to go down range and it just wasn't. Our unit
Speaker 4: just didn't get tapped. So I went back to our
Speaker 4: career course. So instead of going to the aviation when
Speaker 4: I went to the infantry one.
Speaker 1: So that I was.
Speaker 4: Actually interesting seeing what guys like you do at Benning
Speaker 4: as you're running around on a regular morning, because it's
Speaker 4: sure as hell is not what pilots are doing at
Speaker 4: that time of day, right, We're not doing combatives by
Speaker 4: any means. So anyway, I went through that, but it
Speaker 4: was great because I got to meet a lot of
Speaker 4: guys who ended up being company commanders on the ground
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan when I was overhead flying, and it was
Speaker 4: awesome to know just to know them personally, but to
Speaker 4: understand how they're thinking through you know, breaching a target
Speaker 4: or their scheme and on the ground.
Speaker 1: So I found that really valuable.
Speaker 4: I went to Campbell and then we deployed to Afghanistan
Speaker 4: in just at the end of two thousand and seven,
Speaker 4: so I was there throughout two thousand and eight.
Speaker 5: Right just out of curiosity how does that work?
Speaker 3: Because you would think as a helicopter officer that you
Speaker 3: would go to a helicopter career course or whatever, like
Speaker 3: what's the difference in why did you get to go
Speaker 3: to the infantry career course?
Speaker 4: So they keep a couple slots at all of these
Speaker 4: career courses for other branches. So like, if there's anybody
Speaker 4: listening who's going that direction, I would highly recommend jumping
Speaker 4: out of your current branch to go try something else
Speaker 4: for the career course, just to learn from other folks. Now,
Speaker 4: at the Aviation career course, it's notorious for doing frisbee golf,
Speaker 4: like that is the exercise of choice there and ultimate frisbee,
Speaker 4: and that sure as hell was not what we were
Speaker 4: doing at betting. Like there was a whole set of
Speaker 4: guys who were going to SF and they were going
Speaker 4: to be team leaders. I was put with all the
Speaker 4: tankers and heavy met guys because I was an APACHE guy.
Speaker 1: So we played, we did.
Speaker 4: We played the SF dudes in ultimate frisbee one day
Speaker 4: and got annihilated. Like it's not even fair to put
Speaker 4: these guys with a bunch of tankers and heavy mech
Speaker 4: and pilots. But anyway, no, so it was really good.
Speaker 4: There were only a couple slots and there were marines there.
Speaker 4: A marine was the number one dude coming out of
Speaker 4: the Army Infantry Career Course, which I thought was amazing.
Speaker 4: But anyway, so it was good cross pollination, and you know,
Speaker 4: you just completely learned how they thought and operated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did do you think that having gone to that
Speaker 3: it helped you when you did have your first combat tour.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah. I thought it was huge.
Speaker 4: I mean truly, Like I was on the radio one
Speaker 4: time and a guy goes, hey, is that huge it
Speaker 4: is that you? And I was like, yeah, it's me man,
Speaker 4: and he you know, he told me who he was,
Speaker 4: and so we just had that connection. H or guys
Speaker 4: who I knew when they were in contact, Like it
Speaker 4: meant a lot to me to get overhead if there
Speaker 4: was a dude on the ground on you. Not like
Speaker 4: I wouldn't try if they or someone else, but there's
Speaker 4: this personal connection that you have. But also like there
Speaker 4: was like the worst event that we had and we
Speaker 4: can get to this later, but it was it was
Speaker 4: more of like a deliberate operation into a valley. And
Speaker 4: when we were doing the briefings and everything, I was
Speaker 4: a company commander, so we were kind of going through
Speaker 4: the briefing and as the as the ground battalion commander
Speaker 4: is briefing, I understood everything you was talking about.
Speaker 1: It all made sense.
Speaker 4: Why you want to put positions like we got a
Speaker 4: block here, we have to move here.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: All of that made sense to me at that point
Speaker 4: in time, and it never would have from an aviation perspective.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, let's start talking about this a lot.
Speaker 2: Any significant operations that you were involved in overseas as
Speaker 2: an Apache pilot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, how about your first combat, your first encounter?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, Jack, I think when you and I were talking,
Speaker 4: you may have brought up one that I was in
Speaker 4: because I was at Salerno and you, I think you
Speaker 4: asked me, you were like, hey, were you there when
Speaker 4: the base got attacked? So anyway, so we could talk
Speaker 4: about that. That wasn't my first one, but my first one.
Speaker 4: And I asked everybody this as well, like what was
Speaker 4: your first time going outside the wire? And some people
Speaker 4: it's crazy, you know, violent, For me, it was not.
Speaker 4: I was just out on a day flight, daytime flight,
Speaker 4: going out to ship and there was some contact on
Speaker 4: the ground, but it was kind of in this area
Speaker 4: that had a bunch of compounds with pretty dense foliage
Speaker 4: inside compound walls.
Speaker 1: So the enemy had moved.
Speaker 4: Into that position like where we couldn't really see them
Speaker 4: and there was a ground unit moving on them, and
Speaker 4: so we covered them for a while before we had
Speaker 4: to break station and it just wasn't that kinetic, so
Speaker 4: we left. But I will say like that first time
Speaker 4: outside the wire, I thought, you know, in my mind,
Speaker 4: I'm thinking I'm going into like World War two here,
Speaker 4: because that's just that's my my feeling at the time,
Speaker 4: was thinking like, oh my god, what's going to happen.
Speaker 4: We're gonna be shooting off all of our rounds. We're
Speaker 4: going Winchester here in a minute.
Speaker 3: And it was like that, Yeah, and Winchester, for those
Speaker 3: of you don't know, is just going dry on AMMO.
Speaker 2: And I will just take a second to mention in
Speaker 2: the intro, the team house intro, there's a clip in
Speaker 2: there of an Apache doing a gun run. That's actually
Speaker 2: something I filmed in a rack of Apaches coming in
Speaker 2: and doing and doing gun runs to support a ranger
Speaker 2: operation and outside Missoul.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 4: No, And to your so as I just kind of
Speaker 4: alluded to. So, I was at Salerno and there was
Speaker 4: Chapman nearby, which everybody knows from. Unfortunately two thousand and nine,
Speaker 4: big attack there on some CIA folks, but they weren't
Speaker 4: too far apart. But in July of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: when I was at Salerno, I was on our QRF,
Speaker 4: so our quick reaction for US, So we had two
Speaker 4: aircraft at all times that were ready to launch and
Speaker 4: go help people throughout like five provinces and like pilots.
Speaker 4: So we're on a night cycle. So we wake up
Speaker 4: late at night, we go to the chow hall to
Speaker 4: eat midnight chow and it's four dudes sitting there. We're
Speaker 4: all eating way too much food. And then we get
Speaker 4: a call on the radio like, hey, bas is getting attacked. Everybody,
Speaker 4: you know, get to get to the aircraft. You do
Speaker 4: not want to see four pilots run, period, but certainly
Speaker 4: not after eating like eggs and bacon and all this stuff.
Speaker 4: So so we get in some gators, you know, we're driving.
Speaker 4: They're driving us out closer to the airfield before we
Speaker 4: start our our like two hundred meters sprint, you know,
Speaker 4: if we even made it in without having to stop.
Speaker 4: But this was the first time I had been this
Speaker 4: close to fire like this. So, like, Celena is a
Speaker 4: pretty big base, you know, comparatively, certainly from where you've been.
Speaker 4: I'm sure Jack out in the middle of nowhere say
Speaker 4: it and you, David, So it's got a pretty big perimeter.
Speaker 4: Tons of air not tons, a lot of aircraft there.
Speaker 4: So as we're running out to the flight line like
Speaker 4: we could we could hear rounds coming in like mortar around.
Speaker 4: We could see tracer fire. And when you launched it.
Speaker 4: In Apache, you have a crew chief who sits on
Speaker 4: the wing with you or who's outside the aircraft connected
Speaker 4: with a mic, so it's the two pilot copilot, and
Speaker 4: then you've got your crew chief who owns the aircraft basically,
Speaker 4: and they're checking you off as you're ramping up. And
Speaker 4: it was the most intense I'd seen, Like I'd never
Speaker 4: had people shooting at me like this when I was
Speaker 4: outside of an aircraft just getting in. So we're getting
Speaker 4: into the aircraft, rounds are coming in, our crewchiefs are
Speaker 4: still on the line and I'm I'm the company commander
Speaker 4: at the time, and I'm telling these guys, I'm like, guys,
Speaker 4: disconnect and get in. We'll be all right. We can
Speaker 4: take off on our own. And they stayed with us,
Speaker 4: which I just thought was badass. I loved seeing it.
Speaker 4: Like crewchiefs in the Apache side of the world, they
Speaker 4: don't get to fly with you, like there's no room
Speaker 4: for them to fly, so they're kind of confined to
Speaker 4: the base. And this night, in particular, I just saw
Speaker 4: some serious bravery from these guys. I loved seeing it,
Speaker 4: and there are unsung heroes in this community. But we
Speaker 4: finally took off and it was insane. So the base
Speaker 4: that at Sealerno at the time was kind of owned
Speaker 4: by an artillery unit, right, so what infantry guys? Oh wait,
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight, July two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 4: what set all this off was a v bid that
Speaker 4: hit our front gate and then like a basically a
Speaker 4: coordinated attack on the base, which had really not happened
Speaker 4: that often. It was rare for that to happen. So
Speaker 4: we took off and artillery folks are manning the perimeter,
Speaker 4: but they're not you know, they're not infantryment, so they're
Speaker 4: not used to like moving outside and closing with the
Speaker 4: enemy the same way an infantry unit is. So when
Speaker 4: we got in the air, we're trying to get situational
Speaker 4: awareness on the ground and it was mayhem.
Speaker 1: Just so we're we got night vision.
Speaker 4: Usually in the Apache, one guy I'll be flying flear
Speaker 4: so the thermal and one guy I'll be up on
Speaker 4: night vision goggles depending on what the moon and illumination is.
Speaker 4: And we're just initially like usually we take off, when
Speaker 4: we fly for fifteen minutes at least sometimes an hour
Speaker 4: before we're in contact, and here it's.
Speaker 1: Immediate and the radios are blowing up.
Speaker 4: You got different units trying to defend different parts of
Speaker 4: the base, and you got folks trying to move when
Speaker 4: they're not tactically used to doing that. And then we
Speaker 4: got Chatman Fob Chapman nearby, which has all these kick
Speaker 4: ass operators there, and they're coming out to play also
Speaker 4: because they're like, oh shit, there's a fight and it's here,
Speaker 4: we're coming out. So we spent at least twenty or
Speaker 4: thirty minutes just trying to figure out who the good
Speaker 4: guys were and who the bad guys were. Right, And
Speaker 4: one of the things we do when we're on a
Speaker 4: tight target like this is the Apache is one of
Speaker 4: the most advanced aircraft you have, so you've got different
Speaker 4: displays up in the cockpit, different screens, and so what
Speaker 4: we'll do is we'll drop these different boxes on the
Speaker 4: screen and basically text them to the other aircraft so
Speaker 4: it shows up on their screen. Cool, and we'll will
Speaker 4: basically drop a line that says, hey, don't cross this line,
Speaker 4: like you guys, stay north of this, we'll stay south
Speaker 4: and then we can kind of focus on what's going
Speaker 4: on around us without having to stay in a formation right,
Speaker 4: which we'll do in other scenarios, but in this case,
Speaker 4: it was like, let's drop a line. You stay over there,
Speaker 4: we'll be over here. And we got lined up to
Speaker 4: take a shot. So I'm in the front seat, which
Speaker 4: is where you do most of the shooting from. And
Speaker 4: you've got this system with these like handles, joysticks basically
Speaker 4: to do all your shooting, and my back seater, who's
Speaker 4: the most experienced to do in the unit, is flying
Speaker 4: us around. And actually, sorry, no, no, no, so this is
Speaker 4: I was in the back seat. He was in the
Speaker 4: front seat. So the most experienced guy was in the
Speaker 4: front seat and I was in the back seat because
Speaker 4: we thought like, hey, we're on QRF, it's unlikely we'll launch,
Speaker 4: but we're getting complacent here, so let's switch up seats.
Speaker 4: So I was in the back where I'm flying mostly
Speaker 4: where as the company commander, I'm usually the guy directing
Speaker 4: the fight. I shouldn't be flying, I should be taking
Speaker 4: shots and coordinating. So I'm in the back were flying around.
Speaker 4: I clear him for a shot and like a second
Speaker 4: before I'm like, you're clear, And just as I say that,
Speaker 4: our wingman flies right in front of us, so like,
Speaker 4: if he had pulled the trigger, we potentially could have
Speaker 4: shot down our wingman.
Speaker 1: It was one of the worst experiences in my life.
Speaker 4: So I am like, I'm shook at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 4: ten seconds, So I pull out and I just start
Speaker 4: coasting for a little bit to regain. And this guy JT.
Speaker 4: I interviewed him. He was the dude in the front seat.
Speaker 4: He was the second interview I ever did, and we
Speaker 4: talked about this on air, and he like the amount
Speaker 4: of poise he showed in not tearing my ass apart.
Speaker 4: And he's a warrant officer, right, so he's a CW four,
Speaker 4: So technically I outrank him, but not in reality, right,
Speaker 4: Like the hierarchy there is. He's an incredible pilot and
Speaker 4: I'm a newbie basically, and he's like, hey, are you good, sir?
Speaker 1: You ready to go?
Speaker 4: And you know, we took like maybe ten seconds, and
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, let's get back in, and we
Speaker 4: got back in and we and so we ended up
Speaker 4: helping here. We took some shots. I don't think we
Speaker 4: actually I doubt we would have killed anybody there. Like,
Speaker 4: it was a really chaotic scene. But we got back
Speaker 4: in and helped kind of like calm calm the situation
Speaker 4: down landed. But I still remember that as like we
Speaker 4: did what we were supposed to do. But man like
Speaker 4: it was it was another ego check for me that
Speaker 4: you just can't be You got to be on the
Speaker 4: details of everything, and I couldn't be trying to run
Speaker 4: the battle from the back seat. And I was really
Speaker 4: appreciative of how he handled that situation with me.
Speaker 1: It could have been worse.
Speaker 3: What was that a result of your your wingman breaking
Speaker 3: in that line or.
Speaker 1: That was that was me losing situational awareness? Yeah? You know,
Speaker 1: And Jack, I think back to.
Speaker 4: You telling me that story about the first time you
Speaker 4: pulled the trigger and almost having a friendly fire, and
Speaker 4: you know, like owning up to it, like I don't
Speaker 4: want to tell this story. It makes me sound like
Speaker 4: I don't know what I'm doing, right, you know, But
Speaker 4: it's chaotic in combat. Yeah, so people who want to
Speaker 4: know what it's like, it is chaotic, man, right, especially
Speaker 4: you got all these radios blown up, we got air
Speaker 4: to air, we're talking to our talk, we're talking to
Speaker 4: the artillery talk. We got new guys coming in from
Speaker 4: Spooky Land, from Chapman who are all parts of different
Speaker 4: organizations we're.
Speaker 1: Not allowed to know about.
Speaker 4: We've got artillery men trying to move like infantry units,
Speaker 4: and then we're just trying to deconflict. So it just
Speaker 4: gets crazy. But it's reality out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, for people who have been in combat,
Speaker 3: they understand what the fog were actually is. I think
Speaker 3: that if you haven't been that situation, like it's conceptual, like, oh,
Speaker 3: things can confuse it. You're making split second decisions that
Speaker 3: might cost you your life or somebody else's life, and
Speaker 3: you know, and it's easy to get target fixated. It's
Speaker 3: easy to you know, make the wrong call or it's
Speaker 3: just easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, as Ryan points out, I mean when
Speaker 2: we tell these kind of like warst stories and deployment stories,
Speaker 2: we have a tendency to talk about the ones where
Speaker 2: things went really good and we feel really good about.
Speaker 1: But we all wish that the way it worked was
Speaker 1: you go in and.
Speaker 2: It's nice clean head shots on some Alcaeda terrorists and
Speaker 2: the bad guys die and the good guys get home
Speaker 2: to the fob in time for hot sandwiches and soup,
Speaker 2: but the reality is it often doesn't work out that way.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, I absolutely agree that, you know, it's
Speaker 2: important to tell some of these stories.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so it's interesting.
Speaker 3: So generally you said that the more senior person generally,
Speaker 3: or the more experienced person generally sits in the back
Speaker 3: and are there are they responsible for flying?
Speaker 5: Can they?
Speaker 3: Are they elevated where they can see out the cockpit
Speaker 3: as well as the person in front.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they're elevated, so they're sitting behind and up
Speaker 4: from the guy in the front seat, so they can
Speaker 4: see everything and they're in a better position to fly.
Speaker 4: In the front seat, you're kind of down like just
Speaker 4: behind this your panel, your instrument panel. It's got all
Speaker 4: everything on it, so you can kind of see out,
Speaker 4: but it's not as it's not as natural. So the
Speaker 4: natural place to fly is the back seat, and the
Speaker 4: front has a set of systems on it that are
Speaker 4: designed for target acquisition and firing that it does not
Speaker 4: it's not available in the back seat. So you want
Speaker 4: to put the pilot in command in the back responsible
Speaker 4: for just flying and making sure the flight is safe,
Speaker 4: and the person coordinating and shooting is upfront.
Speaker 5: That's really interesting.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of a like a sniper team because
Speaker 3: most like most people think that the most experienced person
Speaker 3: is the one shooting, but that's not the case.
Speaker 1: The spotter is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the spotterer is the most experienced one because they
Speaker 3: need to be able to read the winds, read trace,
Speaker 3: you know, like they're the ones dialing a person in.
Speaker 3: Because anybody can be trained to pull a trigger, but
Speaker 3: all the mechanics of it actually fall on the spot
Speaker 3: a generally.
Speaker 2: So were there any any other like significant operations that
Speaker 2: noteworthy operations, good or bad, that you think are worth discussing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do, so there's one that comes to mind.
Speaker 4: And for me, like this was the craziest hop I
Speaker 4: was ever on. And when I interviewed the same guy
Speaker 4: who was in this flight with me and this senior warrant,
Speaker 4: I interviewed him and I asked him, you know, so
Speaker 4: he had I think four thousand flight hours, he did
Speaker 4: four deployments, And I said, what was the worst day
Speaker 4: you ever had?
Speaker 1: And it was this day? So it was a daytime
Speaker 1: flight we infilled.
Speaker 4: So it was in Wardak Province, so near Goosney, you know, like,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you guys ever spent time there.
Speaker 4: It was in this valley called the Jaalres Valley, and
Speaker 4: my aviation battalion commander was west point classmates with the
Speaker 4: infantry ground space commander right, so the battalion commander on
Speaker 4: the ground, and so they were paired up pretty tightly
Speaker 4: and he wanted to support him all the time. So
Speaker 4: this guy in the ground wanted to go in and
Speaker 4: go into this area and pick a fight. And every
Speaker 4: time we went into this area we picked like somebody
Speaker 4: got shot in this place. Anytime we ever flew in there,
Speaker 4: someone was getting shot. So they infilled a company in
Speaker 4: on the ground and kept them there for a week,
Speaker 4: and then they can't The idea was they'd pick a fight,
Speaker 4: find out where the bad guys were, and then come
Speaker 4: back out. So they after this, So this is two
Speaker 4: thousand and eight. I think in nine or ten they
Speaker 4: ended up putting a fob in this valley. But at
Speaker 4: that time there was nothing like it was the end
Speaker 4: of the world.
Speaker 1: As far as we were concerned.
Speaker 4: So we infilled this infantry company one week, completely quiet, infill,
Speaker 4: nothing going on. We drop them off like chinooks. They
Speaker 4: ground infill they drove in half the unit. Half of
Speaker 4: them we infilled by air. Nothing happened for a week,
Speaker 4: and then we went to X Film and we just
Speaker 4: knew this was going to be bad. And I went
Speaker 4: with this guy to our battalion commander and I was like, hey,
Speaker 4: if there's a way we can change up how we're
Speaker 4: doing this, Like we think we need to. We think
Speaker 4: somebody is going to get killed here, Like we just
Speaker 4: what we know about this area is bad. We shouldn't
Speaker 4: be going in here. But we went in anyway. And
Speaker 4: so I stacked the teams for this basic, this one
Speaker 4: mission with who I thought was the best in our unit.
Speaker 4: So we had multi ships, but we had two apaches
Speaker 4: going in with two Chinooks and then we would rotate
Speaker 4: because it was going to take hours. It was it
Speaker 4: was probably an hour and a half flight just to
Speaker 4: get there from our base and get them back home,
Speaker 4: and then we'd have to refuel. It was going to
Speaker 4: take all day. So we stacked the teams. We fly in,
Speaker 4: and as we're flying in, we started getting so it's
Speaker 4: two Chinooks and then two apaches behind them, and we
Speaker 4: started getting air burst RPGs coming up broad daylight and
Speaker 4: it's prob probably probably like three or four thousand foot
Speaker 4: mountains in a pretty narrow valley with a single road
Speaker 4: in and out, like there was no and maybe like
Speaker 4: three hundred meters of terrain on either side of the
Speaker 4: road right, so it's single road, high steep valley like
Speaker 4: steep steep mountains. And we're flying in and we're already
Speaker 4: taking air bursts. The schnooks are able to x fill folks,
Speaker 4: so we x fill with them, and then we come
Speaker 4: back to cover the ground convoy and there's been no
Speaker 4: contact on the ground, just us getting shot at as
Speaker 4: we fly in, and then is the ground convoy is
Speaker 4: x filling. We're overhead and again like it was a
Speaker 4: clear blue day and we're talking with the ground convoy.
Speaker 4: Everything's good. They come up to this like area that
Speaker 4: has an overpass and they get ambushed. And so it's
Speaker 4: starting out here like we're scanning hell out of this area.
Speaker 4: And one of the dudes who's on the other front seater,
Speaker 4: so I'm in the front seat, and our other front
Speaker 4: seater is a guy who has gone on to be
Speaker 4: a little bird gun pilot like flight lead in one sixtieth,
Speaker 4: so an incredibly gifted pilot he used to find people
Speaker 4: when no one else could see them, and he couldn't
Speaker 4: find anybody, and so already we're on the back foot.
Speaker 1: It's a no shit ambush.
Speaker 4: They initiated it by hitting a dude in one of
Speaker 4: the humbies, like directly with an RPG. So dude took
Speaker 4: it in the chest in an RPG. So it's immediate chaos,
Speaker 4: Like we've got to call in a METAVAC. Got to
Speaker 4: get out of these guys, out of the kill zone.
Speaker 4: And we could not see any enemy guys on the ground,
Speaker 4: no one, like, we just could not see them, And
Speaker 4: so we're flying around overhead for a couple of minutes
Speaker 4: and it's insane on the radios, Like I don't know
Speaker 4: if you guys were ever in this scenario, but there
Speaker 4: were a few times where I heard guys on the
Speaker 4: ground like screaming into the radios because it's no shit,
Speaker 4: life or death at this moment, you know, it's not.
Speaker 4: We're observing this like we're taking fire. We got to
Speaker 4: get out of the kill zone, puts led down here.
Speaker 4: So we're incredibly frustrated in the air. We just can't
Speaker 4: see anyone and we don't want to pull the trigger
Speaker 4: and hit one of our own guys. It's truly danger close.
Speaker 4: So at one point, the same guy, JT says to us,
Speaker 4: we're commute. We're talking air to air, and he says, hey, guys,
Speaker 4: can't we can't get a shot off. Let's fly down
Speaker 4: low and see if they'll shoot at us instead of
Speaker 4: these guys and get them out of a kill zone.
Speaker 4: So he's like, I want to make sure you guys
Speaker 4: are okay doing it because we might get killed. And
Speaker 4: so we said, yep, let's go ahead and do it.
Speaker 4: So we come in and we did a couple passes
Speaker 4: low and we were coming in low on one of them,
Speaker 4: and we could feel our aircraft like bump up a
Speaker 4: couple of feet, which is rare, and it was small
Speaker 4: arms fire hitting us. And then we saw an RPG
Speaker 4: fly out our left window, like I don't know if
Speaker 4: it was ten meters, but we just me and my
Speaker 4: back seater were joking afterwards. It looked like an ACME rocket.
Speaker 4: It was so slow, like it was wiley coyote or
Speaker 4: something like just cruising by us. And if it had
Speaker 4: an air burst, I don't know what would have happened.
Speaker 4: But this guy had a beat on us and just
Speaker 4: missed us. So like for me, that was probably the
Speaker 4: closest I came to dying, and it was, you know,
Speaker 4: to me, it was nerve wracking. So we got back up.
Speaker 4: We're flying and in the Apache, when you're sitting on
Speaker 4: the controls in the front seat, it's designed to be
Speaker 4: like a long range shot, so you're shooting missiles and
Speaker 4: rockets usually from the front seat, and you can shoot
Speaker 4: the gun, but usually you have like more freedom to
Speaker 4: maneuver and space to shoot. But we were real tight
Speaker 4: on this one because of the terrain. So the guy
Speaker 4: in the back seat ended up taking the gun and
Speaker 4: in the Apache, like wherever you're looking with the monocle,
Speaker 4: you could pull the trigger and shoot thirty mil. So
Speaker 4: he started putting rounds down, just looking at targets and
Speaker 4: pulling pulling the trigger, which was rare, like daytime, like
Speaker 4: shots from the back seat kind of in that in
Speaker 4: that scenario are rare from what we had seen. So
Speaker 4: we were just trying to put some rounds down and
Speaker 4: we ended up getting some hits and getting these guys
Speaker 4: out of the kill zone. But this ended up being
Speaker 4: a ten hour day for us, Like we needed a
Speaker 4: general order approval, a general officer's approval to continue flying
Speaker 4: because we had to go back in so many times
Speaker 4: to get these guys out. METAVAC came in, they got
Speaker 4: shot up on the way out, and then just making
Speaker 4: sure like everybody was safe back at their base before
Speaker 4: we landed. So at the end of the day, we
Speaker 4: landed back in coast in Salerno and I hopped out
Speaker 4: of the aircraft. We turn it off, Me and the
Speaker 4: co pilot woul jump out, and as soon as the
Speaker 4: pressure leaves the aircraft, like there's not all this stuff circulating,
Speaker 4: like the fluid can settle, and it just started pouring
Speaker 4: out of bullet holes that we had all over the airframe.
Speaker 4: And then the crew chiefs they're like, god, damn it, sir,
Speaker 4: like I gotta get you know. They it's they're glad
Speaker 4: you came back, like it's all good, good natured fun.
Speaker 1: But they're like, you got my aircraft shot up? What
Speaker 1: the hell?
Speaker 4: But they would go and they pulled out they pulled
Speaker 4: out rounds, and they pulled out one from our fuel
Speaker 4: cell and this was pretty damn cool. So like I
Speaker 4: still have this this ak round that we got hit
Speaker 4: with in our fuel cell in our fuel bladder. So
Speaker 4: the bladder was designed so that it would seal. It
Speaker 4: would self seal as a round came in, so that
Speaker 4: you didn't get any air into the fuel system to combust.
Speaker 4: And I never believed it would work. And that shit worked.
Speaker 1: Who we needed it, that's, you know, amazing.
Speaker 4: So it was awesome, And we got a bunch of
Speaker 4: pictures of like where the rounds came in.
Speaker 1: We got to keep some of them.
Speaker 4: But to me, like that was a huge deal personally,
Speaker 4: that was the worst I'd ever been in.
Speaker 3: Why did you guys need a general officers approval to
Speaker 3: Was it because of the length of the operation or.
Speaker 1: Its flight time?
Speaker 4: So I'm sure you guys have both been in situations
Speaker 4: where you've had aircraft and been like we got crew rest,
Speaker 4: we got to go. It's an unfortunate part of flying.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had basically when Clay, when Clay Hotmaker was
Speaker 2: on he talked about it was he was the one
Speaker 2: sixtieth commander and at a certain point, the pilots will
Speaker 2: get to a certain point and he'd have to either
Speaker 2: ground them or bless off on extending the amount of
Speaker 2: time they can fly. And he's like, yeah, sometimes I
Speaker 2: extended it, and then if the pilot, you know, his
Speaker 2: rear roador eclips the side of the hangar, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: that's my fault.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have authorized that.
Speaker 4: Exactly, And so it goes up the chain of command.
Speaker 4: So if you're flying daytime, you can fly for like
Speaker 4: eight hours, I think if you're flying night vision at six,
Speaker 4: if you're flying just flear, I think it was like
Speaker 4: four or five, because it justs it mentally drains you
Speaker 4: from having to be on the ball like that. And look, man,
Speaker 4: I mean talking to ground guys, you're going through much worse,
Speaker 4: but they're just so worried about a catastrophic incident with
Speaker 4: an aircraft that they don't want to mess with it.
Speaker 4: So as you start like breaking those thresholds, you kind
Speaker 4: of have to go to your battalion command than to
Speaker 4: the brigade, and then eventually it gets up to like
Speaker 4: general officer level where they have to say, all right,
Speaker 4: keep them flying because they're in some serious shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what did you guys have a problem? Was it
Speaker 3: situational whether you could fly daytime?
Speaker 5: Office?
Speaker 3: Because I know that was a huge issue with the
Speaker 3: Air Force trying to get them to fly daytime operations.
Speaker 4: I think for us, no, so we would fly daytime,
Speaker 4: we do convoy escort, we'd be QRF. I don't know
Speaker 4: why that is with you with the Air Force. I mean,
Speaker 4: certainly you know AC one thirties I know are only
Speaker 4: going at night, and obviously one sixtieth is operating at night.
Speaker 4: I feel like every time I've talked to a one
Speaker 4: sixtieth guy who got shot down, it was in the daytime. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so I see why they go at night. But no,
Speaker 4: for us, we were going daytime. And I will say
Speaker 4: at night. And you guys know this in Afghanistan, like,
Speaker 4: you can operate with mbgs a lot, but because of
Speaker 4: the terrain, if the moon isn't very bright or it's
Speaker 4: behind some of those mountains, MVG's don't do a whole
Speaker 4: lot right because you've got to be able to see.
Speaker 4: So if you have flear, you can get out there
Speaker 4: and fly at night. It doesn't matter what the illum is.
Speaker 4: So patches could go out and operate at night when
Speaker 4: a lot of others couldn't. Really, it was US and
Speaker 4: METABAC birds like Ceestar birds from the Air Force that
Speaker 4: always had flear, so we were usually out on moonless nights.
Speaker 2: But were there any other deployments as an a patchy
Speaker 2: pilot or the army before you started getting a bug
Speaker 2: in you about transitioning to other governmental agencies.
Speaker 4: No, No, that was it. So I did one deployment.
Speaker 4: I can't even believe it because it was almost eight
Speaker 4: years post nine to eleven, and just the luck of
Speaker 4: the draw, that's where I was, and I I will say,
Speaker 4: I regret that to this day that I didn't do more.
Speaker 5: You said that some of your viewers had asked you
Speaker 5: about like the whole.
Speaker 3: Close support, like what it was like on your side
Speaker 3: versus like what it was like on our side?
Speaker 5: Can you can you tell us what it was like?
Speaker 5: What was that feeling?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's a great way to put it. So, Yeah,
Speaker 4: a lot of a lot of people who listen to
Speaker 4: combat story have asked, Hey, could you talk to somebody
Speaker 4: who's been on the ground when there's an APACHE up
Speaker 4: over it? Not like talking to the APACHE, but just
Speaker 4: like what it's like, and you could talk about kind
Speaker 4: of what it's the feeling is for you and the
Speaker 4: aircraft and them on the ground. So for us, like
Speaker 4: the whole reason we exist is to support you guys
Speaker 4: one hundred percent, which is why I went to that
Speaker 4: infantry course, Like I just wanted to know how you operated,
Speaker 4: what your weapons could do, how to be better partners
Speaker 4: when we're up in the air. Like it sounds corny,
Speaker 4: but like you guys were our customers. How do we
Speaker 4: make your life easier and getting your work done and
Speaker 4: keeping you safe. So for us, it was very it
Speaker 4: was very much this idea of we're there to keep
Speaker 4: you guys alive, and if you need us, we will
Speaker 4: be there. And that's why we love a ten pilots too,
Speaker 4: Like we felt like those were our cousins or something,
Speaker 4: the type of work they used to do with y'all.
Speaker 4: But you know, I'd be curious what it was like
Speaker 4: for you guys on the ground seeing inn a patch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as I was, we were talking a little bit
Speaker 2: before we started the show. I got to call in
Speaker 2: gun runs from cobras in training, but in combat there
Speaker 2: was somebody much more qualified than I was doing that.
Speaker 1: We had in Iraq, we definitely had a patch.
Speaker 2: He's doing gun runs for us, doing support, and I
Speaker 2: mean it's awesome to see them come in and start.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of times reducing targets that we
Speaker 2: had actually hit as infantry men. And then just because
Speaker 2: it was kind of a scorched earth campaign against Aqy
Speaker 2: at that point in two thousand and five, so it
Speaker 2: wasn't uncommon to have like AC one thirty or a
Speaker 2: patches come in and just destroy the target after we
Speaker 2: raided it and got everyone out of there. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a good feeling when to know those
Speaker 2: guys are overhead.
Speaker 3: We had I don't know if you had an opportunity to.
Speaker 3: We had uh Lewis Fernandez on who is eighty second right,
Speaker 3: and he talked about when he was on, you know,
Speaker 3: he could like they could hear the guys talking, you know,
Speaker 3: they were that close the bad guys and called you know,
Speaker 3: and I believe it was an APACHE that came in
Speaker 3: and he's talking about, you know, he can't hear the
Speaker 3: apatching the patches like, no, we're right out, you know,
Speaker 3: and when you guys are flying the nap of the
Speaker 3: earth and masking the sound and then that feeling of
Speaker 3: the APACHE, and my heart was like racing because like
Speaker 3: close air support, having those guys come in, especially when
Speaker 3: especially when you're like looking at your Buddy's like, well,
Speaker 3: we're gonna we're gonna go to the last round, but
Speaker 3: like this feels like it and having close air support
Speaker 3: come in.
Speaker 5: It's like a spiritual experience.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's like on a really cold cold night,
Speaker 3: you know you've been and then the sun, you know, Bob,
Speaker 3: the big orange ball comes up over the horizon starts
Speaker 3: warming you. That's exactly what it's like when when you
Speaker 3: guys show up on station, when it's like when it's
Speaker 3: down to the wire and you know, and your your optics,
Speaker 3: your ability to see people, your ability to engage it.
Speaker 3: I like I said, I can't describe it as anything
Speaker 3: other than a spiritual experience today to like be pulled
Speaker 3: out of that by these guys that just roll in
Speaker 3: and you guys are always so calm, cool, collected on
Speaker 3: on the on the radio.
Speaker 1: You know, no matter what we like when we keep
Speaker 1: the mic for you guys.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no matter what's going on, it's like, yeah, we
Speaker 5: got this.
Speaker 2: Dave and I have had the conversation too, which I
Speaker 2: think most like ground guys have had it or have
Speaker 2: experienced when suddenly you're on target in a place like
Speaker 2: Afghanistan and suddenly you hear like a woman's voice come
Speaker 2: over the net and everyone starts looking around the target.
Speaker 5: Like, who the hell there's a girl out here?
Speaker 2: And then you find out later, oh, she said the
Speaker 2: air like I remember we had a I think it
Speaker 2: was a female AC one thirty pilot actually, and once
Speaker 2: in a while you'd hear her come over the net
Speaker 2: and everyone's like, she sounds cute.
Speaker 1: Where is she awesome? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's sort of like in Lord of the
Speaker 3: Rings when when when they're kind I don't remember the
Speaker 3: battle and they're coming out of the asshole and then
Speaker 3: get off on the the cavalries up on the mountain
Speaker 3: and they come down.
Speaker 5: It's like, oh my god, thank god. Thanks.
Speaker 2: So Ryan does what does this idea come into your mind? Like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm a pretty badass Apache Company commander here, but I
Speaker 2: think I want to go and try something different and
Speaker 2: serve my country in a different way.
Speaker 1: What was that sort of like progression like for you?
Speaker 4: So for me, it was early on in life I
Speaker 4: really wanted to be you know, I followed my dad's
Speaker 4: footsteps very closely as you could see, Like I went
Speaker 4: into combat and actually the day that I was just
Speaker 4: talking about that nasty operation was the same day of
Speaker 4: the year where my dad got his silver star in
Speaker 4: your eye, So it's really weird, like fifty years a part,
Speaker 4: forty years apart, forty years apart anyway, so that meant
Speaker 4: a lot to me. But growing up, I love living
Speaker 4: in these different places. I liked the idea of these
Speaker 4: embassies in this lifestyle, but I really thought that the
Speaker 4: AA side of it was cool. I just always thought
Speaker 4: that there was something neat and interesting about it. But
Speaker 4: when when I got out of the military, it was
Speaker 4: really like I'm making a clean break.
Speaker 1: I had gotten an MBA. I was like, I'm gonna go.
Speaker 4: And do something normal, make some money, and probably three
Speaker 4: months in, I hated my life, hated it. So any
Speaker 4: anybody who has been in the military and has come
Speaker 4: out and had to try to fill this void knows
Speaker 4: what I'm talking about. But I just I was still young,
Speaker 4: you know, I felt young, and I wanted to do more,
Speaker 4: and I threw everything I had at getting into the agency,
Speaker 4: so I applied. It takes a long time to get
Speaker 4: in with security clearances and background checks, so for me,
Speaker 4: it was a year start to finish. But you know,
Speaker 4: I was living in North Carolina, and I just told
Speaker 4: my wife, like, I'm miserable. We're moving to d C.
Speaker 4: We're gonna move to the epicenter, and I'm just going
Speaker 4: to get closer to it. So I ended up doing
Speaker 4: consulting work for you know, an army client. I went
Speaker 4: back to school and got another master's degree.
Speaker 1: In d C.
Speaker 4: Like, whatever I could do to get me closer to
Speaker 4: people in this world I wanted to do. And you know,
Speaker 4: I finally got picked up by the recruiter and it
Speaker 4: took a year to get in the door, but it
Speaker 4: was from childhood for me, like wanting to get into
Speaker 4: this world.
Speaker 2: You were kind of set up for it pretty well too.
Speaker 2: I mean, with all this experience abroad, are you speak
Speaker 2: any foreign languages?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: At the time I didn't, so I got trained when
Speaker 4: I was there to pick up French. But you know,
Speaker 4: growing up, I took Spanish when I was younger. You know,
Speaker 4: I could speak Flemish because we lived in Belgium. That
Speaker 4: was it, you know, I lost that and not surprisingly,
Speaker 4: it's not a language that you really need.
Speaker 5: Did you have a desire?
Speaker 3: Look, with all the different jobs in the agency, did
Speaker 3: you have a specific focused did you want to get
Speaker 3: into the aviation or operations or.
Speaker 4: So this this war on me a little bit because well,
Speaker 4: first of all, like many people, you don't know anything
Speaker 4: about the agency because it's so routed in secrecy, So
Speaker 4: I didn't know what the hell I was doing. They
Speaker 4: just said, hey, you're coming in. You're going to go
Speaker 4: do this job. Does that sound okay? And I was like,
Speaker 4: I'll go and mop floors and toilets for you if
Speaker 4: you will let me come into this build. So I'll
Speaker 4: do whatever you want me to do to get my
Speaker 4: foot in here. But yeah, hell yeah, I'll.
Speaker 2: Go do You're like Forrest Gump going through the farm.
Speaker 2: Oh man, oh man, do whatever you tell me. Yes,
Speaker 2: whatever you want me to do, I'm going to go do.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's, as you guys know very well, there's
Speaker 2: a paramilitary side to the agency. That's that's usually hunting
Speaker 2: down people who have any not any type of military
Speaker 2: like specific skills and aviation. It's it's kind of rare
Speaker 2: to get a pilot in the agency because usually pilots
Speaker 2: want to fly, and all they want to do is fly,
Speaker 2: and they stay in and they have bonus structures set
Speaker 2: up to keep them in service.
Speaker 1: Flying, so it's not often you get folks who are Yeah.
Speaker 2: When when we first talked Ryan, I asked you, I
Speaker 2: was like, well, were you an air branch like flying
Speaker 2: spooky under cover helicopters and You're like no, as an
Speaker 2: ops guy like polar opposite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no.
Speaker 4: So for me though, there was this like, God, I
Speaker 4: would love to go over to that side of the
Speaker 4: house and do that because I just loved I would
Speaker 4: have if I could have gone back to Afghanistan as
Speaker 4: a PMO and you know, like supported that mission again,
Speaker 4: like all the guys I had served with were back
Speaker 4: down range again, and I hated myself for not being
Speaker 4: there right and I was thinking, God, I'm going to
Speaker 4: go somewhere and just watch this happen. So it's it
Speaker 4: really wore on me. But their deployment cycle is rough.
Speaker 4: You know, it's a tough deployment cycle for those guys,
Speaker 4: and they're in difficult places. And I think a lot
Speaker 4: of them want to go and do traditional roles on
Speaker 4: the op side so they can take a breath. So
Speaker 4: it's probably a blessing. I didn't end up doing that,
Speaker 4: but it weighed on me heavily as I started out.
Speaker 5: For sure, for sure. Yeah, so you you went.
Speaker 3: So you went in the ops and you got accepted
Speaker 3: and you went to the farm.
Speaker 4: I assume or and I should say, because you guys
Speaker 4: did introduce me as an OPS officer, and if there
Speaker 4: are people who know me, they would say, no, no,
Speaker 4: you weren't actually an OPS officer. So as a collection manager,
Speaker 4: so it's separate. We get trained in the same way
Speaker 4: as OPS officers, but we have different roles and folks
Speaker 4: will reach out to me who are interested in getting
Speaker 4: into the agency and we'll talk through some of this
Speaker 4: and we can because it's all on the website. Like
Speaker 4: I'm not giving away secrets here. But it's a different role.
Speaker 4: Where OPS officers are out there meeting assets, collecting intel.
Speaker 4: That is their job, like one hundred percent, that's what
Speaker 4: they're working on. In my role, I was trained to
Speaker 4: do that and I did that as part of my job.
Speaker 4: But the other part of my role was to understand
Speaker 4: for whatever issue I was assigned to. If we just
Speaker 4: say like, hey, you're working on terrorism right in this
Speaker 4: particular country. If we set Afghanistan, you know, my job
Speaker 4: is to understand where our sources are in Afghanistan on
Speaker 4: this target set so I need to know where they
Speaker 4: are and what they have information and access to, and
Speaker 4: then I need to understand what the people who are
Speaker 4: meeting that intel in the end, what they need to know,
Speaker 4: like what are their intel gaps, and then I need
Speaker 4: to close those gaps. So if somebody like a military
Speaker 4: customer or somebody on the policy side is thinking, what
Speaker 4: is the situation with this terrorist group in Afghanistan, it's
Speaker 4: my job to then go and say, hey, Bob the
Speaker 4: ops officer, you're going out to meet with this guy.
Speaker 4: I know you've got a meeting coming up. When you
Speaker 4: go meet with them, if you can only ask two questions,
Speaker 4: they need to be these two questions right, and they're
Speaker 4: going to know those for the most part, like they're
Speaker 4: going to know these better than anybody. But it's my
Speaker 4: responsibility to be tied in with the customer, the consumer
Speaker 4: of the intel to understand what they need and make
Speaker 4: sure that when that guy's going out, he knows this
Speaker 4: is what I'm asking for. If I have no time available,
Speaker 4: like I got to get this intel out and then
Speaker 4: I help them produce the intel and get it back
Speaker 4: to the person who's reading it so we can be
Speaker 4: in the US as a collection manager, you can be
Speaker 4: forward deployed in stations. I did, and I'm out there handling,
Speaker 4: but I'm also I'm kind of like almost like an
Speaker 4: editor in a newsroom, if you would imagine, and journalists
Speaker 4: are coming back with their copy like all right, here's
Speaker 4: what I got, and then I'm massaging it into this
Speaker 4: thing that it needs to look like as it goes
Speaker 4: out into the community.
Speaker 2: So when we often hear about problems in the Intel
Speaker 2: community that the left hand isn't talking to the right hand,
Speaker 2: your job is to fix that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, but I would say that's I think when
Speaker 4: people say that, it's more like the bureau isn't talking
Speaker 4: with the agency, which isn't talking to mill and so
Speaker 4: there is a little bit of that, Like I would
Speaker 4: be in touch with the people like me at those
Speaker 4: different organizations making sure we're you know, if we're overlapping,
Speaker 4: which can be okay, that we're sharing that and that
Speaker 4: they know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: And vice versa.
Speaker 4: So so there's no disruption of ops, like that's the
Speaker 4: last thing we want. And if we've already collected something,
Speaker 4: we shouldn't waste anybody's time or risk anyone's life to
Speaker 4: go and collect it again, you know, So there's a
Speaker 4: little bit of that. Mine is more making sure that
Speaker 4: the person who's reading the intel has what they need,
Speaker 4: so slightly different than the left and right talking to you.
Speaker 3: Did you ever be that sort of managing in that
Speaker 3: managing role? Did you ever feel like the request you
Speaker 3: were getting from up top or from the customers was
Speaker 3: like that they were just ridiculous and didn't even know
Speaker 3: what they.
Speaker 5: Were asking for.
Speaker 4: I didn't, And actually I might equate this as you
Speaker 4: were talking Jack about calling in Kobris. One of the
Speaker 4: things on the army side as an aviator that I
Speaker 4: often noticed was when we would go and do fam fires,
Speaker 4: you know with ground units, the guys getting on the
Speaker 4: radios talking to us were so afraid to talk to
Speaker 4: us right as pilots.
Speaker 1: It was like, I'm gonna mess something up.
Speaker 4: I got to have this like well structured nine line
Speaker 4: because they've heard of a JTAC doing it. And we
Speaker 4: would tell them, like we'd be in these briefing rooms
Speaker 4: with squad leaders and team like and we just say, guys,
Speaker 4: just talk to us, just tell us, like what you
Speaker 4: see where you see it, Like we are super easy
Speaker 4: to work with. It's not like calling in a fast
Speaker 4: mover that needs all these different points, right. And so
Speaker 4: the reason I bring that up is it's the same
Speaker 4: thing in my role when I'm at the agency and
Speaker 4: I'm talking to a consumer. It's like, you tell me
Speaker 4: what your like hopes and dreams are. We probably aren't
Speaker 4: going to be able to fill it, but I need
Speaker 4: to know, like exactly what you want. Don't hold anything back,
Speaker 4: Just tell me the intel you need and let me
Speaker 4: work on getting it for you. So you know, I
Speaker 4: don't feel like I had anything outrageous in that respect, right,
Speaker 4: And I will say one thing about the agency is
Speaker 4: their patience level is what was completely unlike anything I
Speaker 4: saw in the military, like CET work aside, so counter
Speaker 4: terrorism work that has to be very quick. But when
Speaker 4: you're doing like traditional espionage work, you they have a
Speaker 4: very long time horizon and a lot of patients. So
Speaker 4: it's okay if you don't have intel right now as
Speaker 4: long as you're getting there eventually. And I never expected
Speaker 4: that when I got in. I was just used to
Speaker 4: like everything going one hundred miles an hour right away.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: What did you have or what were some of your
Speaker 3: biggest headaches as a CMO, whether they were kind of
Speaker 3: general or specific.
Speaker 4: I should say the CMO within that community has a
Speaker 4: bit of a stigma to it, right. So if I'm
Speaker 4: talking to folks who are in the agency now, like
Speaker 4: you were a CMO, they'd say, shouldn't you what did
Speaker 4: you have? Like a cat next to you and you
Speaker 4: were knitting sweaters? Because the origin of the CMO is
Speaker 4: they were typically spouses of case officers, of ops officers,
Speaker 4: like and I'm talking for.
Speaker 1: That's what Marty did.
Speaker 2: Well, Marty Peterson who we interviewed before she joined the
Speaker 2: CIA as an operations officer. Her husband was a paramilitary
Speaker 2: guy doing ops and laws and she was there as
Speaker 2: his spouse with index cards every day, putting them in,
Speaker 2: putting the reports where they're supposed.
Speaker 1: To go exactly.
Speaker 4: So oftentimes they were spouses writing up reports. So when
Speaker 4: I came in even there was this stigma. But for
Speaker 4: whatever reason, they hired a whole lot of like older
Speaker 4: military officers or senior enlisted to do this role like
Speaker 4: they were I don't know if they were trying to
Speaker 4: break it or they wanted people with you know, war
Speaker 4: zone experience or whatever. So there's definitely that stigma I
Speaker 4: should say so when it comes to headaches, that's not
Speaker 4: a headache. But I would be remiss if I didn't
Speaker 4: touch on this because anybody who's a case officer would
Speaker 4: be like, ah, cmos, they're always busting my balls because
Speaker 4: guys would come in and Jack, I know you were
Speaker 4: a journalist, so I don't know if you got this
Speaker 4: with editors, but like they're coming in like look at
Speaker 4: this great intel I got. It's going to set the
Speaker 4: world on fire. Like actually they collected that over at
Speaker 4: this station yesterday. So thanks for doing this, but it's
Speaker 4: not actually that important or good job. This was written
Speaker 4: by we're drunk when you wrote this, like why are
Speaker 4: you using why would you talk like this?
Speaker 1: What about these details?
Speaker 4: So it was usually a healthy relationship between me and
Speaker 4: the case officer because they want every they think everything
Speaker 4: is going to be earth shattering, and usually as a CMO,
Speaker 4: we have to break some hard news to them about
Speaker 4: how it's really going to go down when it hits
Speaker 4: the press.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your service, that's fun. Mean, yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: So did you have to sometimes massage egos like tell
Speaker 3: the Maya's great work.
Speaker 5: It's just not needed. We're going to put this in
Speaker 5: the file in case somebody wants it someday.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's a lot of that, and they know, I
Speaker 4: mean a lot of case officers. They just I think
Speaker 4: to be a good case officer you have to have
Speaker 4: this mentality where these types a setback doesn't hurt you.
Speaker 4: You know, like you've got to be able to roll off,
Speaker 4: almost like you're a goalie or something, or a kicker
Speaker 4: where if you miss, it's okay.
Speaker 1: You got to get back up and move.
Speaker 4: And they almost have like a salesman type personality, so
Speaker 4: they can mingle chat someone up, be really affable, and
Speaker 4: then get what they need and get on out. So oftentimes,
Speaker 4: like I'd say, hey, we've got to change this up,
Speaker 4: and they take what I had to say.
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty easily.
Speaker 4: But there are a couple of times somebody would say, no,
Speaker 4: this is how it is, has to be this way.
Speaker 4: This is what he said specifically, I'm not going to
Speaker 4: try to interpret it, and that's important.
Speaker 1: And you want somebody to stick to their guns.
Speaker 4: So you know, there's a there's a bit of tension there,
Speaker 4: but there needs to be and it's it's okay, it's healthy.
Speaker 2: So Ryan, can you spill the tea. I mean, what
Speaker 2: can you say about your time at the agency? Where
Speaker 2: did they send you? What were you doing? Tell us
Speaker 2: your secrets? Yeah, so I was sent to Europe and Africa.
Speaker 2: That's all I can say. I was given French language.
Speaker 2: If you want to try to interpret it, Okay, my time,
Speaker 2: I guess I would say, like, you know, the farm
Speaker 2: is training, you know, as we call it. I know
Speaker 2: you guys know what this is.
Speaker 4: But for those who are listening, I know you've had
Speaker 4: a lot of folks on from the agency are far
Speaker 4: more experienced than me.
Speaker 1: But the farm is, you know, it's kind.
Speaker 4: Of the gauntlet for us and getting through into the
Speaker 4: community and being blessed off. Right, So just speaking at
Speaker 4: a high level about that, I would say that thing
Speaker 4: is a mind game in my opinion.
Speaker 1: You know, I've gone.
Speaker 4: Through sere and flight school and all this other stuff,
Speaker 4: but the farm was like another level of.
Speaker 1: Insecurity. You don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4: You cannot trust anyone at any time, Like everyone is paranoid.
Speaker 4: Anytime you're doing any act, You're like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: who's watching me? So they really beat it into you
Speaker 4: that you got to think through these things on your
Speaker 4: own and I guess I would say coming from the
Speaker 4: military to this, because not everybody does. At the agency,
Speaker 4: A lot of folks come straight out of college and
Speaker 4: they go right into this career. But coming from the military,
Speaker 4: where every time I went out, I had a minimum
Speaker 4: had my co pilot another aircraft, so there are at
Speaker 4: least four of us, and then we're usually supporting you
Speaker 4: guys on the ground, so there's there's like a community
Speaker 4: of us when we're operating at the agency and you're
Speaker 4: being trained to go out completely on your own, like
Speaker 4: one hundred percent, no comms off the grid, Like if
Speaker 4: you screw up, another human's life is at risk, right,
Speaker 4: the asset is at risk. So that was a huge
Speaker 4: difference for me in coming from the military to this,
Speaker 4: like the level of responsibility, especially as you've got guys
Speaker 4: coming out of college, guys and girls who are twenty
Speaker 4: five doing this. There's a lot of responsibility on your shoulders.
Speaker 4: So the farm, it doesn't cut a ton of people
Speaker 4: the way. It's not like Buds or Ranger School for
Speaker 4: you guys, but there's there's a significant triaging process and
Speaker 4: vetting process just to get there. So I think they
Speaker 4: weed out a lot of folks to get to that point.
Speaker 4: And then when you get to the farm, I mean,
Speaker 4: it's ruthless. Just there is no again, no a plus.
Speaker 4: It's either you suck or you did fine, and you
Speaker 4: can go to the next round. And they do these
Speaker 4: cuts that are merciless, and one is on the very
Speaker 4: last day and you've been there a long time, and
Speaker 4: there are people who just get cut and they don't
Speaker 4: tell you why. And there are people you've been with
Speaker 4: for months now who are packing it up and going home.
Speaker 4: And oftentimes what I noticed was it was folks who
Speaker 4: were having trouble and didn't want to talk about it
Speaker 4: in the group, right. So and you probably saw this,
Speaker 4: I'm sure when you guys were going through selection and
Speaker 4: some of the different courses you went through. If you
Speaker 4: don't have the self awareness and the humility, I think
Speaker 4: to just show where you're weak and take on other
Speaker 4: people's advice, you're not going to make it, and they
Speaker 4: will see it and they will cut you.
Speaker 3: Was there anybody that was cut on the last day
Speaker 3: that you were just surprised or.
Speaker 4: Show, Yeah, there was a person who was going to
Speaker 4: be basically the intel rep for dev GRU. You know,
Speaker 4: we just assume one hundred percent this person's getting through.
Speaker 4: We had a senior, fairly senior Marine officer quit during
Speaker 4: the course, which blew my mind. I just didn't even
Speaker 4: think that was in the DNA, And I've seen people
Speaker 4: not just get cut but quit where I never would
Speaker 4: have thought someone would quit. But I think the older
Speaker 4: you get, the harder it is to go through these
Speaker 4: types of games. You know, like it's a game in
Speaker 4: the end, not a game that's not fair because it's
Speaker 4: good training.
Speaker 1: I will say I.
Speaker 4: Wasn't in the units you guys were in in the military.
Speaker 4: I was always conventional, but I had never been through
Speaker 4: such realistic training as I was at at the agency,
Speaker 4: like never. It was not even SYR was close to this.
Speaker 4: So they put a lot into it, but they needed
Speaker 4: to because of the type of work you're going to do.
Speaker 1: On the back end.
Speaker 2: Did you have the opportunity to run any any agents
Speaker 2: in the field.
Speaker 4: I did, Yeah, so I handled I handled human assets
Speaker 4: a few times. Again because I was a CMO. It
Speaker 4: was like, hey, Ryan, as you have time, you can
Speaker 4: go do this. So very much like being an officer
Speaker 4: in the aviation community quite honestly, where your job is
Speaker 4: not really to fly. Your job is to do officer
Speaker 4: things like make sure that everybody has the right size
Speaker 4: boot when you deploy it as as painful as that is,
Speaker 4: and making sure the battle space is operated in a
Speaker 4: certain way and you're liaising right. So as a CMO,
Speaker 4: my job was to stay in touch with analysts at
Speaker 4: headquarters and understand what policy makers needed and then know
Speaker 4: what our stable of assets was. But whenever something came
Speaker 4: up when there was not, but I was like, help
Speaker 4: throw me into that. So you know, over time, you
Speaker 4: build up a reputation and they'll start throwing cases your way.
Speaker 4: So I did get a chance to handle several cases,
Speaker 4: and to me that was the real deal. And I
Speaker 4: will say, just like my first time flying outside the
Speaker 4: wire where I was thinking like it's gonna be World
Speaker 4: War three here. The first time you're cruising around on
Speaker 4: your own, like you're in regular clothes, you have no comms,
Speaker 4: you're in in a vehicle you've never really been in before.
Speaker 2: Well, you think the KG is gonna pull you into
Speaker 2: a panel, dude, Yeah, you got.
Speaker 4: Like mosques going off, you're stopping because of goats crossing
Speaker 4: the road, You're questioning everything. Yeah, like the amount you're
Speaker 4: just so on edge for that, Like that was the
Speaker 4: real deal for me, was doing those types of Oops.
Speaker 3: It's funny because you don't have to be paranoid, but
Speaker 3: when you're doing like an SDR or something like that,
Speaker 3: and when you're new, it's like everybody's looking at you. Everyone, right,
Speaker 3: It's like, person, like, everybody is looking at me.
Speaker 2: You have any funny stories about you know, sources making
Speaker 2: sexual passes at you, or I don't know anything anything funny,
Speaker 2: or we've heard some pretty good ones been passed that.
Speaker 4: So it's I will say to your point, David, of
Speaker 4: to try to kind of like knock the paranoia off
Speaker 4: of you when you're going through that training, They'll they'll
Speaker 4: show you videos of people changing clothes in broad daylight
Speaker 4: down like a New York street, and they'll it'll just
Speaker 4: be somebody walking around and they change their whole outfit
Speaker 4: and nobody even gives them a second book, you know,
Speaker 4: and they're like, this is what is going on around
Speaker 4: you you never even see, right, And so they just
Speaker 4: try to break that mentality for you as you're going
Speaker 4: through doing like just learning how to do SDRs and
Speaker 4: making sure you're not being followed, right, And then you're
Speaker 4: taking down all kinds of license plate numbers.
Speaker 1: Did I see that one before? Did they switch that out? Like?
Speaker 4: Can you write that down while you're driving and not crash?
Speaker 4: Like are you paranoid? And they just the more you
Speaker 4: do it, the more familiar you get, and every I
Speaker 4: feel like almost everybody gets it. A few folks maybe don't,
Speaker 4: but for the most part, you get it over time.
Speaker 4: Some get it quicker than others. On the funny, on
Speaker 4: the funny side of things, let me see no so
Speaker 4: no sexual passes, which should not be surprising. However, there
Speaker 4: one of the ways I had to get to meetings
Speaker 4: at one point in time required me to get massages
Speaker 4: along the way. So it was pretty it was pretty unreal.
Speaker 4: So you know, I go and I'm paying cash. I
Speaker 4: had to make a stop here to I had to
Speaker 4: sell something. Basically, I had to make sure that people
Speaker 4: understood why I was in a certain area. So I
Speaker 4: would get massages, and so I would roll into these
Speaker 4: meetings like with oil all over me, all over, my
Speaker 4: hairs all slicked back, like I'm glistening. You know, I
Speaker 4: look like I was just using manscaps basically, like I'd
Speaker 4: just come out of that and then another time, you know,
Speaker 4: not not that it was sexual, but I was debriefing
Speaker 4: someone in and there were three of us and we
Speaker 4: all didn't speak a common language. So I was speaking French.
Speaker 4: Who is who is translating French to Arabic and coming
Speaker 4: back to this other guy in Arabic who was coming
Speaker 4: back to me and French?
Speaker 2: And then you're having it translated into English in your mind. Oh,
Speaker 2: and then I have to write in English.
Speaker 4: Like the amount of time it takes to ask a
Speaker 4: single question when you have this telephone game going on,
Speaker 4: even when.
Speaker 1: You have time available, it's crazy.
Speaker 4: Like those are some of the things you find yourself
Speaker 4: doing like this, like this is what I signed up for.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. I loved that. I loved it every second.
Speaker 5: So having the government pay for your massages.
Speaker 1: That's right, man, Those things are expense. You're ten dollars
Speaker 1: hard working. You heard it here first.
Speaker 5: So what what was it?
Speaker 2: You had some pretty good trips, it sounds like, with
Speaker 2: the agency and learning your job and having a good
Speaker 2: time doing it.
Speaker 1: Why did you end up leaving?
Speaker 4: It was so hard for me to leave that place,
Speaker 4: even the bureaucracy of it.
Speaker 1: I loved it.
Speaker 4: I love everything about that place. In the military, I
Speaker 4: didn't have the same impression. I enjoyed being downrange, like
Speaker 4: when I was out flying in combat, I loved it,
Speaker 4: But the garrison environment in the military I didn't like
Speaker 4: at the agency. Even if you're at headquarters, which is
Speaker 4: kind of like being banished to Siberia. Everybody wants to
Speaker 4: be out in the field in stations. But even at headquarters,
Speaker 4: like every day you're dealing with front page news, like
Speaker 4: the issue of the day and what's going on, and
Speaker 4: you're reading about stuff that's happening that just blows your
Speaker 4: mind amazing.
Speaker 1: Ops. Right, So for me, it was really tough to leave.
Speaker 4: But I'm married to an attorney who has a great career,
Speaker 4: and moving every two years is not easy. I have
Speaker 4: three boys, the oldest is fourteen. When we moved here
Speaker 4: to California for my last job, he had moved eleven times.
Speaker 4: So to me, it was a little bit of all right,
Speaker 4: And I do like I would ask you guys the
Speaker 4: same question. Like for me, I feel like I am
Speaker 4: one of maybe five percent of the human population that's
Speaker 4: gotten to do the job that they love to do,
Speaker 4: you know, even though I only did it for eight years.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't pass that up for anything else. And at
Speaker 4: some point I felt like I had to move on
Speaker 4: and put some other people's lives ahead of mine. But
Speaker 4: I would ask you, guys, if you feel that way
Speaker 4: about your time in service.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like a little kid that wants to
Speaker 1: be an astronaut.
Speaker 2: I got to walk on the moon, you know, that's
Speaker 2: how it feels like so, but like you, I felt
Speaker 2: like I did the right thing and listing and doing
Speaker 2: the job, but when I got out, it was also
Speaker 2: the right time for me to get out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I agree, like I lived pretty much every
Speaker 3: dream I had and also, like you, and one of
Speaker 3: the things we've talked about before is, you know, there's
Speaker 3: this idea of thank you for your service, but everything
Speaker 3: that we did what there. I'm not saying we didn't
Speaker 3: want to serve, but there was also a sort of
Speaker 3: a selfish intent behind it. We did it because we
Speaker 3: wanted to, like we were living out our dreams. And yeah,
Speaker 3: at a certain point, you know, you have to wonder
Speaker 3: if the people in your life if that's fair to them. Sure,
Speaker 3: and you know, uh, like you know, and you have
Speaker 3: to make decisions based on other people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I still miss it to this day, Like
Speaker 4: I'd take anything to go back and do that, but
Speaker 4: you know, it's a one way door.
Speaker 1: You can't go back in there.
Speaker 3: Right right Well, And and the other thing is is
Speaker 3: you did leave for a reason, and even though you
Speaker 3: miss it, that reason wouldn't change. If you went back
Speaker 3: and like started living again, then the other than the
Speaker 3: people you're attached to, would also go back to.
Speaker 4: Oh no, I'd be divorced. That's how it would go down.
Speaker 4: So the only thing I like more than the agency
Speaker 4: is my wife.
Speaker 2: So yeah, let's let's hit up some of your questions
Speaker 2: and then we'll talk about you know, getting out and
Speaker 2: your your kind of post service life and combat story
Speaker 2: and what you're up to now.
Speaker 5: So Dickie, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: He said, great guests looking at his background and great guests. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: I think he meant the background of you know, your
Speaker 3: I love me Wall, but that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the IYE was cool once Wall.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, I mean we all have them. Jackson, thank you. Ryan.
Speaker 3: Did you ever work with Brown Branch or Special Activities?
Speaker 3: What were your experiences like with them? Also did you
Speaker 3: have any interest maybe trying out for them? And we
Speaker 3: talked about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I worked with them, and there were days
Speaker 4: when I was at the agency where there's one guy
Speaker 4: that kind of controls their pipeline. And because I had
Speaker 4: this aviation background, like I was a really good fit
Speaker 4: and I very easily could have walked in there. And
Speaker 4: this guy, I mean, he's been around a long time.
Speaker 4: He's a good reputation. So it was hard for me
Speaker 4: not to join. But again, like I would have been
Speaker 4: away from the family and I wouldn't have had this
Speaker 4: experience that I did. So I elected not to do that,
Speaker 4: and I often wish that I did. But I worked
Speaker 4: with those guys and I was impressed as hell with them.
Speaker 4: Like it's a really great crop of officers. I mean
Speaker 4: from where they came from. They I think the impression
Speaker 4: is they all come from Delta, but that's not the
Speaker 4: case at all. Like you got different special operators, got
Speaker 4: a lot of Marines in there. They just for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: they do great work in this place. And seeing them
Speaker 4: operate both in the PMO role and then when they
Speaker 4: go over to traditional case officer roles every few few cycles,
Speaker 4: you know they do great work. And some of some
Speaker 4: of my best friendships were with those guys, I would say,
Speaker 4: and they're crazy. They get to do some crazy stuff.
Speaker 4: One guy was like he rolled into his very nice
Speaker 4: apartment in this part of the world and had his
Speaker 4: like parashute gear, you know, like I sure as hell
Speaker 4: was not doing anything like that, and I thought that
Speaker 4: was super cool.
Speaker 3: Ardie, thank you very much, he said, A ten was
Speaker 3: my weapon system avionics engineer. That's a smart guys there,
Speaker 3: And Jackson, thank you again. Is there a Soft Slash
Speaker 3: CT unit member that you haven't interviewed covered yet that
Speaker 3: you really want to? And he said, also, thanks for
Speaker 3: all the work you Jack and David.
Speaker 4: Yes, so from my podcast basically from Combat Story. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: So I will say every single person who leaves a
Speaker 4: comment asked me to interview Pat mack So.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys have interviewed him or not,
Speaker 1: but I have not.
Speaker 4: So it Actually he taught a shooting course to my
Speaker 4: brother's company once and that's the first time I heard
Speaker 4: of him, and I would love to interview him just
Speaker 4: for many reasons.
Speaker 2: But he's great. I interviewed him on a previous podcast
Speaker 2: years ago. He's really good.
Speaker 1: He's a really good guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he just seems like it. So I think I
Speaker 4: think that's out there. But I would say, and just David,
Speaker 4: just make sure you were saying a soft guy or
Speaker 4: a non soft guy.
Speaker 5: Is there a soft or sleet team member, but really
Speaker 5: we can help this up. Is there anybody?
Speaker 4: So the number one person I want to interview is
Speaker 4: the guy who wrote No Easy Day. So the guy
Speaker 4: who was number two in the stack to Kill Bin Laden.
Speaker 4: I think his when he published the book, which the
Speaker 4: Navy did not authorize.
Speaker 1: I think the name was like Matt Bissonette. Bisonette.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I loved that book. I just really enjoyed
Speaker 4: the way it was written. I mean it goes into
Speaker 4: like getting into dev grew. It shows the conventional whatever,
Speaker 4: the non dev gru seal life progression. And then I
Speaker 4: think he comes back from this op from killing Bin
Speaker 4: Laden and he goes to a Taco Bell drive through,
Speaker 4: like in his pickup truck. He's got his country music on.
Speaker 4: He cruises up, he gets his Taco Bell, like twenty
Speaker 4: four hours before that, he's in Afghanistan, Pakistan, killing Ubl.
Speaker 4: So I just there was something about that that I
Speaker 4: thought was so amazing and I would love to interview.
Speaker 1: That guy.
Speaker 3: Was there for you when you did your combat tour
Speaker 3: as a helicopter pilot and then coming back to the States.
Speaker 5: Was there a decompression period for you?
Speaker 3: Was there a like sort of this surreal juxtaposition thank
Speaker 3: time for you.
Speaker 4: I mean I had a lot of trouble coming back,
Speaker 4: and I had lived in a lot of these places.
Speaker 4: I mean we were in Afghanistan. I spent four years
Speaker 4: in my life in Pakistan, so like I knew this place.
Speaker 4: I almost fired a hell fire. I think I fired
Speaker 4: one into Pakistan. Actually, So if we want to regroup
Speaker 4: on that one day and ken, yeah, no, it's all good.
Speaker 4: It's all recorded, so you couldn't get away from it.
Speaker 4: But yeah, coming back was tough for me.
Speaker 1: I think. So I had a.
Speaker 4: Year old son at the time that day where I
Speaker 4: thought I was going to die, Like you know, that
Speaker 4: meant a lot to me. I came back and I
Speaker 4: wrote an email to a friend of mine, my best
Speaker 4: man at my wedding, and I said, hey, man, I
Speaker 4: don't know if I'm going to make it back, Like
Speaker 4: make sure that Owen, my son like grows up to
Speaker 4: be like a normal kid and does all right, and
Speaker 4: look out for him, like guy had just resigned myself
Speaker 4: that I might not make it, so coming back, I
Speaker 4: think I still had that in my head. And my
Speaker 4: wife noticed it immediately, Like she has known me since
Speaker 4: we were fifteen. She seen me do everything stupid I've ever done.
Speaker 4: She's seen it. She knows me so well, and she
Speaker 4: saw it right away. And for years I was like, nah,
Speaker 4: there's nothing going on until it really got bad. So
Speaker 4: I would say we had a couple of days of decompression, David,
Speaker 4: but it was you know, I didn't do well.
Speaker 3: Coming back and how long did it take you? Or
Speaker 3: I mean, how did you deal with that process? Do
Speaker 3: you feel like you've come back from it poorly?
Speaker 1: I dealt with it poorly, is the answer.
Speaker 4: So early on, like it came to a breaking point
Speaker 4: where my wife just said, hey, you're going to see
Speaker 4: someone or we're done. And I will say, like, this
Speaker 4: is an interesting part about the agency. The hardest training
Speaker 4: I ever went through, like bar none was an advanced
Speaker 4: course at the agency. Like it's very small classes and
Speaker 4: incredibly intense. I was in there with like a mar
Speaker 4: SoC GB guy and he said to me, he goes
Speaker 4: I would go through ranger school. He had done Ranger school.
Speaker 4: He's like, I would go through Ranger school three times
Speaker 4: before I do this again. It was just soul crushing
Speaker 4: and at the time, like my wife I came, it
Speaker 4: was all from your home, which made it even worse,
Speaker 4: Like it wasn't even you were deployed or gone. You
Speaker 4: were coming home at night and not helpful at all.
Speaker 4: And my wife was just crying like hey, I need
Speaker 4: help here, and I left. You know, I was like, no,
Speaker 4: I got this thing to do, you know, like that's
Speaker 4: what my head space was at the time, until she
Speaker 4: just put her foot down.
Speaker 1: I went and got help.
Speaker 4: I saw a psychologist, and I will say, like, I
Speaker 4: know you guys interviewed Greg Kocher, who's awesome, and you
Speaker 4: did a fantastic.
Speaker 1: Job at that interview.
Speaker 4: I ended up interviewing him after seeing your guys interview
Speaker 4: with him, But like he is the pinnacle for me,
Speaker 4: Like he was a little burg gun pilot, you know,
Speaker 4: he flew Cobra's an apaches And to hear him talk
Speaker 4: about PTSD, I hated, like I would never in my
Speaker 4: life have said to guys like you, I could have
Speaker 4: had PTSD because I wasn't kicking down doors but to
Speaker 4: hear a guy like Greg say it, I.
Speaker 1: Feel more comfortable, right.
Speaker 4: So I dealt with it, man, And I know, like
Speaker 4: I would never hold that against any other pilot if
Speaker 4: they had it, I would never hold it against him.
Speaker 4: But that's just how all of us are. We feel
Speaker 4: like we're we weren't Delta guys, so we can't have PTSD.
Speaker 4: So I definitely I dealt with it. I'm in a
Speaker 4: great spot now. But I hid that thing from the
Speaker 4: agency as I went in for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, when you were going through that process, I
Speaker 3: were you cool with the first psychologist you found or
Speaker 3: did you sort of have to shop to find somebody
Speaker 3: who you felt rapport with?
Speaker 4: So I went in, I did the I did the
Speaker 4: VAS program, which I mean, I don't know if you
Speaker 4: guys went through this at all. You don't have to
Speaker 4: talk about it, but you know it takes a while
Speaker 4: to get into the pipeline. So I was really lucky
Speaker 4: that I had a paying job where I could pay
Speaker 4: my own way to get a psychologist in the meantime.
Speaker 4: So I found someone local who worked out and then
Speaker 4: I went and did like a eight week VA program,
Speaker 4: just one on one, which was really helpful. And to
Speaker 4: this day, like probably changed everything for me. But then
Speaker 4: I went back to this local psychologist who I stayed
Speaker 4: with for a couple of years quite honestly, and I
Speaker 4: will say, and I'd be interested to hear your guys
Speaker 4: take on it, But for me, I was an extremely
Speaker 4: high functioning person at work and a train wreck at
Speaker 4: home because of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I definitely became that, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I I mean, I don't I think everybody
Speaker 3: like manifestor deals with it differently.
Speaker 5: I think avoidance is is a common thing, you know,
Speaker 5: but a.
Speaker 2: Workaholic mentality is a way to yeah too, Yeah, yeah
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Now I think it's really common.
Speaker 3: And I think that you know, it's funny that you
Speaker 3: say that as a pilot because you weren't kicking indoors,
Speaker 3: like it would be hard to say that, but even
Speaker 3: I think if you were to, you know, talk to
Speaker 3: guys and dealt or whatever, it would always be well,
Speaker 3: these people had it worse. So who am I Like,
Speaker 3: there's always that next notch where you're always like, well
Speaker 3: this this isn't you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, It's just one of those things.
Speaker 3: So so where did combat story?
Speaker 5: Like, where did you go from there.
Speaker 4: So when we decided we were we as a family like, hey,
Speaker 4: I'm getting out of this lifestyle. We got to find
Speaker 4: something else. It took me a long time to wrap
Speaker 4: my head around what am I going to do next?
Speaker 4: And one of the cool things about the agency is
Speaker 4: you go visit some really cool places.
Speaker 1: So I was.
Speaker 4: In a unique, really nice resort in between ops and
Speaker 4: I was just sitting there looking at this amazing view
Speaker 4: and writing down, like I took a whole day just
Speaker 4: sitting there writing out what else could I go do?
Speaker 4: And I thought if I could just sit around and
Speaker 4: talk to folks who did this, who were in it,
Speaker 4: like no shit in it, and what it was like
Speaker 4: for them, I'd be happy, Like I could do that
Speaker 4: for the rest of my life. And I know you
Speaker 4: guys do that, so you know, you get it, you
Speaker 4: understand it, and so that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4: So I asked the agency if I could do it.
Speaker 4: They said I could. I could record these things, but
Speaker 4: I couldn't air them so until I was out. So
Speaker 4: I did three interviews, got out, and then a year
Speaker 4: after I was gone, I was able to release these things.
Speaker 4: So I've I kind of went into it full on
Speaker 4: after that. So I started in twenty seventeen but didn't
Speaker 4: release my first one until November of twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: Wow, and how who was your first guest?
Speaker 4: So my first guest was Elliott Ackerman. And I don't
Speaker 4: know if you guys have interviewed him or not. He
Speaker 4: was so he's he's written several best selling books, but
Speaker 4: he was a marine. He was Marine Officer MARSK and
Speaker 4: then he was a PMO and he did all of
Speaker 4: that in eight years, so real tight grouping. But he
Speaker 4: was a platoon leader in Fallujah to as a marine,
Speaker 4: and he went down to like fifty percent strength on
Speaker 4: his first twenty four hours, like he's on a rooftop
Speaker 4: and half his platoon is wiped out, like literally combat ineffective.
Speaker 4: And it was It was funny because we met up
Speaker 4: and I was like, hey, I'm actually at the agency
Speaker 4: and he's like, oh, funny because I was too. And
Speaker 4: we went into a hotel room because it was before
Speaker 4: zoom stuff. It was like we were doing an asset,
Speaker 4: Like I had little food set out so he felt comfortable,
Speaker 4: and you know, it was in person. We recorded it,
Speaker 4: but it was it was audio only. But I just
Speaker 4: I got hooked on it. And the second guy I
Speaker 4: interviewed was this dude I was talking about JT.
Speaker 1: Snow who's this warrant officer?
Speaker 4: And that was almost like a release for me to
Speaker 4: hear him say, Hey, the worst day I ever had
Speaker 4: in four thousand hours of flying for the same ten
Speaker 4: hours I was with you, you know, like that meant
Speaker 4: a lot to me to hear it from a guy
Speaker 4: who was that season.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's fascinating. I miss one question I want
Speaker 3: to get you, jim Ga, thank you very much. He said,
Speaker 3: how much do you miss flying? Have you considered trying
Speaker 3: to get National Guard or reserve flight slots?
Speaker 1: So I don't miss it that much?
Speaker 4: And I will say this is interesting about the flight community,
Speaker 4: the aviation community. When you go up for the first
Speaker 4: day that you're in the air the first time, for
Speaker 4: a lot of guys and girls, it is a monumental
Speaker 4: day in your life, like you've been watching aircraft since
Speaker 4: you were five. You just want to get up there.
Speaker 4: For me and there are others like me. For me,
Speaker 4: the only reason I wanted to be there was to
Speaker 4: support guys on the ground, Like how can I get
Speaker 4: to the front line to help these guys as quickly
Speaker 4: as possible. So I didn't have a love of flying
Speaker 4: as much as I did. I just wanted to be
Speaker 4: where the action was. So I don't have that love.
Speaker 4: But I will say my fourteen year old wants to fly,
Speaker 4: and I would love to be the one who teaches
Speaker 4: him to fly. So I'm trying to use my GI
Speaker 4: bill to get back in and get an instructor pilot certification.
Speaker 4: But it's hard when you've got PTSD. So I will say,
Speaker 4: like I didn't realize that it makes sense. They don't
Speaker 4: really want you flying, so there's a lot of hoops
Speaker 4: you got to jump through, so it's a while before
Speaker 4: I do that.
Speaker 3: Do you, out of curiosity, do you think that sort
Speaker 3: of the stigma around post traumatic stress and like you
Speaker 3: just said, it's kind of hard when you have PTSD,
Speaker 3: do you think that those types of issues, those types
Speaker 3: of stigmas make guys or make people, I should say,
Speaker 3: make people reluctant to come forward for treatments if they're
Speaker 3: going to get a diagnosis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do. I think it's more my opinion. I
Speaker 4: think it's more acceptable now for us to say to
Speaker 4: each other that we have it, we're fifteen years ago,
Speaker 4: I think we wouldn't say, like the three of us
Speaker 4: probably wouldn't say much about that. But so I think
Speaker 4: in that setting it's more acceptable to talk about it.
Speaker 4: But I will say, even at the agency or the military,
Speaker 4: I think there's still a fear that if you say
Speaker 4: you have that, if it's found out, you're coming off
Speaker 4: the line. Like nobody wants to go sit at if
Speaker 4: you're doing the jobs we were doing. Nobody wants to
Speaker 4: go sit at a desk, right, and that's where you're
Speaker 4: going to get put. So I don't know how you
Speaker 4: square that, but I will say, and Jack, you mentioned it,
Speaker 4: like you can be highly functioning and focused at work
Speaker 4: with this. It's just you have other things where where
Speaker 4: you need the outlets. So I think there's a happy medium.
Speaker 4: But right now, I think people are still reluctant to
Speaker 4: admit that they have it because they're afraid they won't
Speaker 4: get to do what they want to do right.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of that. I mean, and
Speaker 3: I'm a little bit older, and like in the seventies
Speaker 3: and eighties, there there was this thing about postraumatic stress
Speaker 3: with Vietnam veterans, and they would on TV in the movies,
Speaker 3: it would be like they would.
Speaker 5: Go they would go crazy.
Speaker 2: It was Mel Gibson sitting on the houseboat holding a
Speaker 2: Burretta to his head looking at the picture of his
Speaker 2: dead wife. That's like how we thought of PTSD.
Speaker 3: Well, and before that it was like somebody like snap
Speaker 3: having flashbacks and snapping in the office, you know, up
Speaker 3: at a belt own and not being able to differentiate
Speaker 3: their flashback from reality.
Speaker 5: And that's you know, not the case, but brad oric ass.
Speaker 3: Interesting thing you found out about your guests, Like, what
Speaker 3: are some of the most surprising things you've found out?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I will say I'd be curious to hear
Speaker 4: this from you guys as well. For the Tier one operators,
Speaker 4: one of the consistent themes I've seen there are two,
Speaker 4: and one of them is visualization techniques, which I did
Speaker 4: not expect to see and a different kind of no
Speaker 4: quit mentality. So almost every one of them I've interviewed, Right,
Speaker 4: so Dev Drew or Delta or whatever, we'll say that
Speaker 4: they had these visualization techniques where they sit down and
Speaker 4: think through operations or how something's gonna go and what
Speaker 4: they'll do to react, whether it's CQB or I don't know,
Speaker 4: but I've definitely heard professional athletes do it, and so
Speaker 4: it doesn't surprise me that they do it, but that
Speaker 4: I've heard it from almost every one of them, and
Speaker 4: not just the tier one like you know, Jack and David.
Speaker 4: I'd be curious if you guys saw it where you were,
Speaker 4: because you guys were in the elite communities as well.
Speaker 4: Was this something that was taught to you guys from psychologists?
Speaker 1: Not taught? Definitely not. But I think it's something that like.
Speaker 2: Like snipers for sure, think through the shots and visualize it,
Speaker 2: like before you're going out onto the range or as
Speaker 2: you're going out onto the range. I think there's some
Speaker 2: of that internal visualization. But and they probably should train
Speaker 2: guys to do that sort of that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's some sort of benefit there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember, Oh go ahead, no.
Speaker 5: No, no, go ahead. I was just gonna say that.
Speaker 3: I think visualization kind of comes naturally, Like even at CQB,
Speaker 3: like you you know, you, especially after our run, as
Speaker 3: you didn't do it well, you like you see yourself.
Speaker 5: Doing it well, you know, over and over again, even.
Speaker 3: If you're just kind of beating yourself up about it.
Speaker 3: Oh man, you know, but you're still seeing, you're still
Speaker 3: working that process.
Speaker 2: And the way some of the instructors work too, is
Speaker 2: they're trying to like put you in that position, like
Speaker 2: the walk through phase of it, so you can visualize, right,
Speaker 2: like this is what the right way looks like?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, I love hearing that.
Speaker 4: I haven't done that often, but I remember, like, there's
Speaker 4: there's a key phase in flight school where you do
Speaker 4: instrument training, so you're only using instruments to fly around.
Speaker 4: It can be pretty tough. And I really did that
Speaker 4: before that particular exercise. I got like a ninety eight
Speaker 4: or ninety nine on it. It's unheard of, just very rare,
Speaker 4: and I just thought through all of these scenarios, so
Speaker 4: I can see the value in it, and I almost
Speaker 4: wish I could bring it out in corporate America. How
Speaker 4: do I do that for my day? How do I
Speaker 4: ramp up for a meeting I'm going to have on
Speaker 4: zoom right right? I don't know how you visualize that,
Speaker 4: but I love to do that. But the other one
Speaker 4: was this no quit mentality. And I think I don't
Speaker 4: mean to be cliche about it, but some of these
Speaker 4: guys I've talked to have just said, yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: like I'm in selection, this other guy's about to quit,
Speaker 4: and I'm thinking to myself, like, you're going to have
Speaker 4: to pull me out of here with my cold dead
Speaker 4: hands before I quit on this thing. It's like another
Speaker 4: level of that, and and I've just felt it in
Speaker 4: all of these interviews with these folks.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because we've talked about this with previous
Speaker 3: guests too, that for most I think for most people,
Speaker 3: going through a selection, like quitting isn't even an option.
Speaker 3: Like selection is just the thing you do to get
Speaker 3: the job you want. It's not like this big obstacle.
Speaker 3: I mean, you want to train up for it, you
Speaker 3: want to be ready for it, but like quitting is
Speaker 3: never It's like it's like quitting on your commute to work.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, the drives ton to get to work.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do it. But that's what like
Speaker 3: quitting a selection would feel like. It's like this is
Speaker 3: this is just the.
Speaker 5: Commute to get to my job, you know, folks.
Speaker 2: I just want to remind everyone out there, please like
Speaker 2: the video, subscribe to the channel down in the description.
Speaker 2: You can find a link to our Patreon if you
Speaker 2: want to support us. Check us out on Instagram. What
Speaker 2: am I missing?
Speaker 5: David the Oh?
Speaker 3: Definitely check out Ryan Combat Story on YouTube and also
Speaker 3: probably every.
Speaker 4: Podcast Ptagram yep, yeah, yep, on on all the other
Speaker 4: audio what's.
Speaker 5: Your what's your Instagram title? Handle?
Speaker 4: At at Combat Story and at Combat Story right what uh?
Speaker 2: As we're start kind of wrapping it up here, what
Speaker 2: is how has Combat Story evolved?
Speaker 1: And where do you see it going into the future?
Speaker 1: What do we have? What do you have in store
Speaker 1: for us?
Speaker 4: So, I mean, first of all, I really enjoyed the
Speaker 4: team ass genuinely and the fact that you thanks you
Speaker 4: guys are talking not just to to operators but also
Speaker 4: on the intel side, law enforcement, Like I really appreciate
Speaker 4: that angle. And I've had a lot of trouble personally
Speaker 4: breaking into the intel space because it's so hard to
Speaker 4: talk about some of these things.
Speaker 1: It's just so sensitive, you know.
Speaker 4: So I do know one day I will go down
Speaker 4: that road and talk to those are my favorite stories
Speaker 4: or hearing folks who are at the agency and these
Speaker 4: things that they've done, and a lot of them will
Speaker 4: never come out they can't, but I do see that
Speaker 4: at some point.
Speaker 1: But I.
Speaker 4: Suspect For me, it'll be more it's my outlet to
Speaker 4: stay connected to the veteran community. And I think what
Speaker 4: I was surprised about with this, I'd be interested to
Speaker 4: hear your guys take from the team house. The comments
Speaker 4: that I get for the people who are reaching out
Speaker 4: about hearing these stories from others and how it helps
Speaker 4: them get through tough times, I didn't really expect, quite honestly,
Speaker 4: and I think that's really cool. So I think as
Speaker 4: long as people still feel that way about it, I'll
Speaker 4: still do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've definitely uh, we've received comments like that, or
Speaker 2: we've received comments like Viewers also feel like it's a
Speaker 2: way for them to stay connected to the veterans community.
Speaker 2: I even had a gold Star father reached out to
Speaker 2: us at one point and said, I feel closer to
Speaker 2: my son who is killed in combat through watching through
Speaker 2: watching this show and hearing these stories. I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't even know how to respond to something like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, God, I mean that's super sad, But how great
Speaker 4: is that that you guys had that impact on someone's life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it meant something to somebody in a way that
Speaker 2: I could even that I can't even really comprehend you know,
Speaker 2: and we.
Speaker 3: Just want to say we love your show too, and
Speaker 3: and we really if if you guys have not checked
Speaker 3: out Combat Story, do so you If if you enjoy
Speaker 3: the Team House, you're gonna you're gonna enjoy Combat Story
Speaker 3: like you will love it. Ryan, You're a phenomenal host.
Speaker 3: You know, you ask great questions.
Speaker 5: Really, if I.
Speaker 4: Can Jack so Jack was our episode thirteen, which I
Speaker 4: thought was hilarious based on Murphy's Law like Lucky thirteen.
Speaker 4: But some of the comments I got on that one,
Speaker 4: like god, damn, you keep interrupting him.
Speaker 1: We just want to hear Jack talk.
Speaker 4: So maybe one day Jack, you'll let me do you
Speaker 4: around two if you I'd love to talk about the
Speaker 4: journalist work he did too.
Speaker 1: Sure, Sure, there's definitely a lot to get in there. No,
Speaker 1: I'd be happy to.
Speaker 2: And like Dave said, if people like the Team House,
Speaker 2: they should go and check out Combat Story, they should
Speaker 2: go see what Ryan's doing over there.
Speaker 1: And like I guarantee you you're going to find something
Speaker 1: there you're interested in.
Speaker 3: If you mention in the comments that you're from the
Speaker 3: Team House or that you you got there from all
Speaker 3: give you you'll get a on combat story.
Speaker 1: On something yeah, Yeah, to be determined.
Speaker 3: So aside from combat story, is there anything else that
Speaker 3: you're working on, any other passions that you're pursuing.
Speaker 4: So I do want to give back a little bit
Speaker 4: more to the veteran community. And I've spent the past
Speaker 4: two and a hour years at Google, at a big
Speaker 4: tech company, running an intel team, and I work in
Speaker 4: this space that's called trust and safety. And I had
Speaker 4: never heard of it when I was leaving the agency,
Speaker 4: and I think for a lot of people who come
Speaker 4: out of military intel law enforcement, you go into corporate
Speaker 4: America and you're looking for something that has meaning, where
Speaker 4: you're doing good work and you're fighting bad actors. And
Speaker 4: I didn't really think it was out there, and I
Speaker 4: found it, So I'm in it now. I don't work
Speaker 4: at Google anymore. I left there and I'm going to
Speaker 4: another big tech company here in a month. But I
Speaker 4: want to help get veterans into that to help them
Speaker 4: fill that void. So I am working on something in
Speaker 4: that capacity. It's not related to combat story, but it's
Speaker 4: more just related to people who are in the spot
Speaker 4: like me, and places where they want to do more
Speaker 4: and they don't think they can, but there's a whole
Speaker 4: world out there that just probably haven't seen yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, super cool, fascinating, And next episode we are going
Speaker 2: to have Ken Gaudebt in studio. Ken was a warped
Speaker 2: in Vietnam and then he went and served with a
Speaker 2: Rhodesian light infantry and then he served in forty four
Speaker 2: Pathfinder Company with another previous guest of ours, Peter McAleese
Speaker 2: in South Africa. So Ken is a super interesting guy.
Speaker 2: We'll have him here in studio and it's going to
Speaker 2: be a little earlier. We're going to be live around
Speaker 2: eleven or noon, so it's not going to be at night.
Speaker 2: It's an odd time for us because we're working around
Speaker 2: Ken's schedule before he has to catch a flight out.
Speaker 1: But that will be next Friday.
Speaker 3: And I'll be on Ryan's show tomorrow. It'll be really smart, right,
Speaker 3: And who are your next guests?
Speaker 5: A couple guests coming up.
Speaker 4: So I've run several interviews recently that we're teeing up.
Speaker 4: I got a Swedish citizen of Kurdish descent who lost
Speaker 4: his uncle and cousins to Isis in Syria and just
Speaker 4: picked up and left and went in to fight. And
Speaker 4: it's pretty interesting. So I did two sessions with him
Speaker 4: about going through villages that have just been vacated by
Speaker 4: ISIS and it's horrible what he kind of saw. I
Speaker 4: also just interviewed my first this is terrible with me,
Speaker 4: the first time I've interviewed a female guest, Kim Casey Campbell, badass,
Speaker 4: a ten Fighter pilot.
Speaker 1: That's all sign Casey is killer.
Speaker 4: Chick, which I think is one of the coolest damn
Speaker 4: call signs I've ever heard. And she got hit with
Speaker 4: a SAM in Iraq and made it back to base.
Speaker 2: Awesome's she's the one that put it down safely after
Speaker 2: getting hit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's her.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, it's awesome man, she's you guys should definitely
Speaker 4: have her on if you if you haven't already. Just
Speaker 4: it's super accomplished, very understated and a badass.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I got heard from her. That's awesome.
Speaker 5: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, not appreciate it, guys, Yeah, thank you, Ryan, really
Speaker 2: appreciate you spend on your Friday evening with us, and
Speaker 2: you know, apologies to your family as we keep you
Speaker 2: out here tonight.
Speaker 3: We had one last sorry, we got one last donation.
Speaker 3: Thank you Quovidas, and thank you, Ryan Man. We really
Speaker 3: appreciate your time.
Speaker 1: Guys.
Speaker 4: I appreciate your time, and hopefully we'll get around too
Speaker 4: with you all someday. Actually, I would like to talk
Speaker 4: to you guys just about your thoughts on your podcast
Speaker 4: one time the two of you together, Less on the stories,
Speaker 4: more on like putting this together. Who you want to
Speaker 4: get on like underrated episodes one you've really enjoyed. I
Speaker 4: think your fans would really appreciate.
Speaker 2: The whole background on how this thing came into existence.
Speaker 2: It's like such a clutch, right, It's such a cluster fuck.
Speaker 2: It's it's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants to know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how do you how do you get a successful podcast?
Speaker 5: I don't know, man, You just start talking and keep talking, right, What.
Speaker 2: What in the world possessed you to do it live
Speaker 2: instead of pre recorded? These are all men, Yeah, important
Speaker 2: questions I'm still trying to resolve in my own mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll have to do like, okay, shared thing that
Speaker 3: we do on both of our channels.
Speaker 1: That'd be fun. Yeah, fun, that would be cool.
Speaker 2: Well all right, Ryan, thank you man, I appreciate it,
Speaker 2: and thank you everyone out there who joined us live.
Speaker 1: And we'll listen to this, and we will