Speaker 1: Special Operations, Cobert.
Speaker 2: SPI and I.
Speaker 3: The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to episode three hundred and forty nine
Speaker 1: of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy on tonight with
Speaker 1: our guest Trey Lindsay. Trey served in the Navy, first
Speaker 1: in law enforcement before he went over to Seal Team
Speaker 1: four and then Seal Team six. Served on deployments around
Speaker 1: the world, and now works as a training organization and
Speaker 1: knife company involved in law enforcement. And also he's the
Speaker 1: guy that I end up working for once or twice
Speaker 1: a year, So that's how we know each other and
Speaker 1: just know him that being all around great guy. And
Speaker 1: we're really happy to have you here on the show today.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Brother. Thanks thanks again for having me on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, So start at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about how you grew up
Speaker 1: and how that took you towards the Navy.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely so.
Speaker 3: I grew up in a small town in rural northeast
Speaker 3: Missouri called Cannon's about two hours north of Saint Louis,
Speaker 3: and I joined the Navy nine days out of high
Speaker 3: school and people often asked me like, Hey, why did
Speaker 3: you you know, how long did you you know before
Speaker 3: you wanted to become a seal or this and that
Speaker 3: where he actually did it. And for me, I was
Speaker 3: twelve years old. I read the book Rogue Warrior by
Speaker 3: Richard Marsenko. The first commanding officer is Steal Team six,
Speaker 3: and I was hooked after that. So I read it
Speaker 3: in between the summer of my six and seventh grade
Speaker 3: years and so yeah, after that, that's all I wanted
Speaker 3: to do in my adult life growing up. So I
Speaker 3: joined the Navy nine days out of high school and
Speaker 3: then the rest is history at that point.
Speaker 1: And so you went in first, you know, before special operations.
Speaker 1: Who went as a Navy police officer? I mean, tell
Speaker 1: us about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so again I wanted to be a seal, but
Speaker 3: I guess I always like kind of joke now that
Speaker 3: my recruiter got me pretty good. So after nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: mastered arm rate the Navy cops. They were like a
Speaker 3: critical source rating. So I had to go to my
Speaker 3: first duty station for a year before I was able
Speaker 3: to screen for special programs. So, I mean it all
Speaker 3: worked out in the end, and kind of like I'll
Speaker 3: cover later on in the podcast, you know, I guess
Speaker 3: really how being at Navy cop Mastered Arms has helped
Speaker 3: me a lot with what I'm doing post military life.
Speaker 3: I never dreamt it would actually come come full circle
Speaker 3: the way it has. But it's it's funny how things
Speaker 3: has worked themselves out like that.
Speaker 1: Well, tell us about what that you know profession actually
Speaker 1: entailed that you did for a year before I go
Speaker 1: into the teams.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was a very heavy and physical security.
Speaker 3: So obviously, you know nine to eleven had already happened.
Speaker 3: I joined in you know, two thousand and two, you know,
Speaker 3: right out of high school. So Afghanistan was already underway,
Speaker 3: but it was racked and not you know, the invasion
Speaker 3: I racked and happened till March of two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: So little known fact.
Speaker 3: I think the majority of the initial Shakhanah ordinance that
Speaker 3: was that was dropped during the initial initial push initial
Speaker 3: invasion actually came from one of the one of the
Speaker 3: duty stations I was in physical security of, you know,
Speaker 3: at the time, in the in the southwestern Pacific.
Speaker 2: So again it was.
Speaker 3: Just kind of multiple, uh, you know, multiple of shifts.
Speaker 3: You know, we were pulling you know, constantly when they
Speaker 3: were bringing ordinance to the aircraft, you know, to the
Speaker 3: some of the aircraft of the Air Force base, but
Speaker 3: also on some of the carrier battle groups that were
Speaker 3: pulling into port. They would pretty much you know, have
Speaker 3: all these weapons systems stockpiled and they would uh they
Speaker 3: would you know, take off take off from there. Then
Speaker 3: once the initial invasion happened, it was just a steady
Speaker 3: flow of that.
Speaker 2: So very heavy and physical security.
Speaker 3: Uh, some you know law enforcement act aspect of things
Speaker 3: you still have, you know, you know, things you're dealing
Speaker 3: with on base. But really was you know a little
Speaker 3: different than your typical law enforcement job you know in
Speaker 3: the in the civilian world that you know, the men
Speaker 3: and women you know, who are.
Speaker 2: Serving the communities are sworn to protect, have to deal with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's super important stuff when you're talking
Speaker 1: about these huge ordnance facilities and we're all aware now
Speaker 1: of some of these like sabotage campaigns that are across
Speaker 1: Europe and you get one bad actor in there and
Speaker 1: the whole thing goes up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, exactly exactly, So yeah, very very strategic you
Speaker 3: know location.
Speaker 1: And so you get a taste for Navy life here.
Speaker 1: But your dream since reading Rogue Warrior is still the
Speaker 1: seal teams absolutely tell us about you know, getting into
Speaker 1: Buds and kind of that experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was fortunate enough where I was at
Speaker 3: there was actually a Naval Special Warfare unit located over there,
Speaker 3: so I was able to do all my screen you
Speaker 3: know testing and like a a little bit of an interview.
Speaker 3: It really wasn't too terribly much of one to go
Speaker 3: to BUDS initially, but was able to get on my
Speaker 3: paperwork squat away passive PT test initially to get my package,
Speaker 3: and then when I got orders, I did one more
Speaker 3: PT test thirty days prior to me transferring. So from there, yeah,
Speaker 3: that pretty much takes me to Cornado, California, you know,
Speaker 3: in uh spring time of two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: How'd that treat you?
Speaker 2: I mean, the.
Speaker 3: Buds has definitely experience where no one wants everyonets to
Speaker 3: relive it again.
Speaker 2: So I mean, looking at it, you know as a whole,
Speaker 2: was just completely overwhelming.
Speaker 3: But when I teach a lot of like the leadership
Speaker 3: and team building versus now I talk about you know,
Speaker 3: just had to like, you know, how to eat an
Speaker 3: elephant one bite at a time. And I always like
Speaker 3: to use the buds analogy, you pretty much take it
Speaker 3: one evolution at a time, make it to your next meal,
Speaker 3: and then just you know, keep you know, always put out,
Speaker 3: be a good teammate, and then just you know, never
Speaker 3: uh you know, never never forget what the end state is,
Speaker 3: the end goal is. So I started with Class two
Speaker 3: five to two, like I said, checked in May of
Speaker 3: two thousand and four. Was fortunate enough to make it
Speaker 3: straight through with that same class. So I got to
Speaker 3: me through like Airborne school, and we still went to
Speaker 3: the Army Airborne School and then SQT and I checked
Speaker 3: in the Seal Team four in the fall of two
Speaker 3: thousand and five.
Speaker 1: So okay, before we move on, favorite Bud story.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh.
Speaker 3: So yeah, one of the uh one of the with
Speaker 3: the leadership and team building stuff I'm doing now. So
Speaker 3: I had this acronym, uh you know, I kind of
Speaker 3: you know, I heard one evening when I was on
Speaker 3: third phase. It's called fitfo It's saying spans for figure
Speaker 3: it you know you know what out you know, fit
Speaker 3: foam mentality. So and the backstory of that is, so
Speaker 3: I was on Watch, you know, twenty years old, you know,
Speaker 3: in third phase out of San Clemente Island, and uh,
Speaker 3: I mean, looking back, I was just I was just
Speaker 3: such a dumb ass at the time, such an immature
Speaker 3: kid still, you know, even though it's you know, get
Speaker 3: ready to graduate buds. But anyway, so I'm on watch
Speaker 3: one eating on the quarterdeck when the classes, you know,
Speaker 3: the rest of the classes asleep, and we're only getting
Speaker 3: maybe four or five six hours at the you know,
Speaker 3: very very most most of the time, it's about three
Speaker 3: to four hours of sleep per night. And so anyways,
Speaker 3: I'm on watch and I get a call from the
Speaker 3: from the instructor lounge, the quarterdeck area. The instructors had
Speaker 3: their own you know barracks, you know, birthing areas, you know,
Speaker 3: where they're kind of a lounge are or they can
Speaker 3: kind of take a little break from students when the
Speaker 3: work was over. And so maybe I get a call
Speaker 3: and it's the senior senior instructor. So uh again, he starts,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of proceeding to give me like an
Speaker 3: order of like, hey, bring so many glasses of orange juice,
Speaker 3: you know, some of the glass.
Speaker 2: And cranberry juice, you know, like ice.
Speaker 3: He starts having as a whole grocery list of items
Speaker 3: he sees want me to bring down there. I think
Speaker 3: they're making cocktails, of course, you know, so you know
Speaker 3: exact what they're doing.
Speaker 2: So having it's having some adult ever did so again
Speaker 2: just me being the dumb ass kid, you know, at.
Speaker 3: Twenty years old at the time, I started just coming
Speaker 3: up with the dumbest questions you could possibly possibly think
Speaker 3: of at the time. And it was as one of
Speaker 3: the senior chiefs, the same rank I retired as, and
Speaker 3: so he was a senior instructor on the on the
Speaker 3: island at the time. And again I started asking him like, well, well, senior,
Speaker 3: like where where where am I going to find those things? At?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm on watch and I have someone relieve me.
Speaker 3: And he stops me mid sentence and he says, hey, look, motherfucker,
Speaker 3: you better figure it.
Speaker 2: The fuck out or else.
Speaker 3: And you best to stop that mindset if you want
Speaker 3: to have any success in this community whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Click so again in that.
Speaker 3: Moment, not want to be the reason the class was
Speaker 3: woken up and putting the surf zone for surf tords here.
Speaker 3: We can talk about surf torture a little bit later.
Speaker 3: But what did I do in that moment I figured
Speaker 3: it the fuck out real quick. Let me tell you
Speaker 3: so again, I was running around, scrambling, trying to find
Speaker 3: stuff as fast as I could and get it over there.
Speaker 3: And so I finally got it all put together, not
Speaker 3: you know, ran it down with the instructor. Lounges, knocked
Speaker 3: on the door, you know, stated my name and rank
Speaker 3: and what I was there for, dropped it off, and
Speaker 3: he's like, get the fuck out of here, go back
Speaker 3: to the quarter deck.
Speaker 2: So I ran back and then enough enough said.
Speaker 3: But again, as funny as that story was at the time,
Speaker 3: looking back still to this day, is probably one of
Speaker 3: the biggest life lessons learned I have. It's basically the
Speaker 3: problem solving mindset, like you know, figuring things out. So
Speaker 3: and that was one hundred percent true as far as
Speaker 3: you have to have the fitfo to figure out the
Speaker 3: fuck out mentality to you know, have any success on
Speaker 3: the seal teams, little alone is in life in general.
Speaker 3: I'm still using the fitful mentality to this day as
Speaker 3: far as getting you know, you know, getting like keeping
Speaker 3: my training company up and running, getting our knife design company,
Speaker 3: you know, uh up over our initial release done, and
Speaker 3: also the some of the collateral duties I have in
Speaker 3: the law enforcement world, get getting my Texas Commission on
Speaker 3: Law Enforcement license as well. So again you we we
Speaker 3: could we could spend you know, hours upon hours talking
Speaker 3: about bud stories. That's probably one of my one of
Speaker 3: my favorite ones. Just as far as what still sticks
Speaker 3: to me to this day, one of the one of
Speaker 3: the life lessons learned.
Speaker 1: I got to ask you, you know, follow up, where
Speaker 1: the hell did you find cranberry juice and orange juice
Speaker 1: and all of this?
Speaker 3: A good place for it, probably of the galley, the
Speaker 3: chow hauling Okay, so okay, a couple are things that
Speaker 3: had to go elsewhere to find it. But it was,
Speaker 3: uh yeah, it was pretty It was more streamlined than
Speaker 3: I originally was worried it was gonna be.
Speaker 4: So uh and then you mentioned surf torture.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm, yeah, So surf torture all that is it's
Speaker 3: just you know, it's it's a means where the instructors
Speaker 3: can take a little break and they just let the
Speaker 3: elements do the work, you know, for the class as
Speaker 3: far as trying to get uh get get guys to quit.
Speaker 3: But it's an evolution where you just lay in the
Speaker 3: uh lay in the uh you know, Pacific Ocean off
Speaker 3: you know, the the Buds Beach or wherever you're at
Speaker 3: if you're out in San Clemente Island.
Speaker 2: And again, like the water is never warm out there.
Speaker 3: For folks who have been in southern California, it was
Speaker 3: a summer hell week, So, I mean it was a
Speaker 3: little bit warmer, but I think mid sixties was the
Speaker 3: warmest the water ever did get on us. So yeah,
Speaker 3: just again, it's just uh, just a timeframe where the
Speaker 3: instructors can take a little break and just let the
Speaker 3: elements do the work and get guys to quit if they.
Speaker 1: Want to get that attrition rate down exactly, exactly, all right,
Speaker 1: So I won't make you tell bud stories all night here.
Speaker 3: Try that's the We'll both to do a separate one
Speaker 3: just for buds story.
Speaker 1: I got plenty of them, I know. I feel I
Speaker 1: feel like we all have more stories about selection than like,
Speaker 1: you know, Oliver Stone has about Vietnam, you know, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so you check into Seal Team four, uh, tell us
Speaker 1: about that experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was a little bit different than what
Speaker 3: other guys, other brand new guys had experienced, just because
Speaker 3: Team four, Uh, Seal Team four was deployed at the time,
Speaker 3: so as me and the rest of my you know,
Speaker 3: classmates from BUDS and SQT, I mean we there was
Speaker 3: literally like I think two seals. There was like a chief,
Speaker 3: you know, it was like the mastered Orange Shock kind
Speaker 3: of doing an administrative work and there was maybe one
Speaker 3: of the guys.
Speaker 2: So we got formed out.
Speaker 3: To uh to trade at the training attachment on the
Speaker 3: East Coast with the different cells. So I ended up
Speaker 3: going to the H one of the Assault sales you
Speaker 3: know on CQB and like the in the also mount
Speaker 3: the Military Operations and Urban Trains South Special Operations in
Speaker 3: Urban Combat. So I got to do several trips with
Speaker 3: them there seeing other Seal platoons from other East Coast
Speaker 3: teams go through.
Speaker 2: So again we always when we.
Speaker 3: Got back to UH, you know, we checked back in,
Speaker 3: you know, to Team four after the you know, the
Speaker 3: guys got back from deployment, it was you know, the
Speaker 3: new guy games all over again at that point, like
Speaker 3: we figured it was gonna be.
Speaker 2: But uh, it was really it was really interesting.
Speaker 3: I think overall, looking back, it was a good experience
Speaker 3: just getting to know different guys from your team and
Speaker 3: it's you know, being a kind of role players out
Speaker 3: for for them and just kind of actually doing some
Speaker 3: of the runs with them as well. So it really,
Speaker 3: at least for me, that definitely helped out just kind
Speaker 3: of get a jump start on at least the assault
Speaker 3: seek be portion.
Speaker 4: A little bit of uh O j T before you
Speaker 4: really started.
Speaker 2: No exactly exactly, so it was good. It was really
Speaker 2: good overall.
Speaker 1: So the guys come back, and at what point do
Speaker 1: you get put on a platoon?
Speaker 2: So almost immediately we were we were pretty much we're
Speaker 2: gonna be slated.
Speaker 3: I knew I was going to three troop and uh
Speaker 3: in a fox drop platoon, so uh sorry echo platoon echotune.
Speaker 2: I ended up switching on my second go round.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so we knew what platoon what you know,
Speaker 3: troop you're going to is called tasking at the time,
Speaker 3: we uh it transferred over to troops right after that.
Speaker 3: But uh again, you know, looking back, it was, you know,
Speaker 3: like the guys came back in for like flate fall
Speaker 3: time frames. We had a couple of months of of
Speaker 3: kind of like you know, the pro dead professional development.
Speaker 3: We didn't have a whole lot going on, and after
Speaker 3: the first of the year we start our UoT our
Speaker 3: unit level training. So we were hitting the road early,
Speaker 3: you know, you know of two thousand and six, you know,
Speaker 3: we were, uh, we were you know, going to Fort Chaffee,
Speaker 3: you know, in other places. You know, it's UNDO our
Speaker 3: ground Mobility out in the out in the Nevada area,
Speaker 3: one of our training sites. So it was just a
Speaker 3: NonStop and it's I mean still to this day, I
Speaker 3: still have a crazy work schedule and you know, with
Speaker 3: what I'm doing and kind of people tell me. I
Speaker 3: asked me like, how do you how do you like,
Speaker 3: you know, travel so much. It's like it's all I've
Speaker 3: known since two thousand and five. I've never been in
Speaker 3: one location more than like six months out of the year. So, uh,
Speaker 3: it's just a constant, a constant flow. It's I guess
Speaker 3: I'm just you know, used to it. So that's all
Speaker 3: I know now. So I don't know what I would
Speaker 3: do if I was, you know, in some place for
Speaker 3: several months. Trade I know, if I was home here,
Speaker 3: I would absolutely drive my wife and saying, you know.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, you know, like what type
Speaker 1: of dudes land on a seal platoon? Like who are
Speaker 1: some of these guys. You know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: mention anyone by name if you don't want to, But like,
Speaker 1: what are these personalities?
Speaker 2: Like, I mean, it's.
Speaker 3: Definitely type A personalities across the board. You know, that's
Speaker 3: kind of be expected. You know, you have to be,
Speaker 3: you know, a type A to have any success in
Speaker 3: the seal teams. Really, like everyone had, you know, somewhat
Speaker 3: of an athletic background, some more than others. Definitely, everyone
Speaker 3: had like a huge sense of patriotism, camaraderie and just
Speaker 3: wanted to really be a member of the of the team.
Speaker 2: Look down to the individual.
Speaker 3: Shooter level, the platoon level, you know, tasking a troop
Speaker 3: level across the board. So I just, like I say,
Speaker 3: highly motivated, very for the most part, you know, very
Speaker 3: trustworthy guys and uh just guys that you'd want to
Speaker 3: you know, go down range with, you know, serving your country,
Speaker 3: you know, and in harm's way.
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Speaker 1: I mean, at what point did you find out where
Speaker 1: you guys were deploying to.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until I want to say, probably springtime.
Speaker 2: We deployed the fall of two thousand and six. So yeah,
Speaker 2: my first one was to Felujah, Iraq.
Speaker 1: So oh wow.
Speaker 3: It was a you know a little a little bit
Speaker 3: like your average you know, a little over six months deployment.
Speaker 2: We had a condensed you know, UoT and.
Speaker 3: PRODEV and also said, you know, let's throat into integrations
Speaker 3: training just because of like kind of the deployment cycle.
Speaker 3: I After that we went back to like the East
Speaker 3: and West Coast teams went back to two year like
Speaker 3: you know, all every six months.
Speaker 2: It was pretty got back from deployments.
Speaker 3: It was pro DEEV, then u l T Unit level training,
Speaker 3: the you know kind of squatter integration training but still
Speaker 3: called that, and then deployment. So but we only we
Speaker 3: were on eighteen month cycles. It was just that much
Speaker 3: that much faster.
Speaker 1: So you guys got to Fallujah, if my uh chronology
Speaker 1: is right, a little bit after the Marines went in there,
Speaker 1: and kind of like cleaned the place out absolutely. So
Speaker 1: what was it like when you arrived in Fallujah sort of?
Speaker 1: What was the atmospherics?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the guys that were already in country
Speaker 3: coming to convoy to pick us up, you know, on
Speaker 3: the humbies and other other armory equipment got hit by
Speaker 3: I D and our our lead Turt Gunner got you know,
Speaker 3: fragged pretty good from it. So that was kind of
Speaker 3: a it was kind of like, hey, you know, all
Speaker 3: the new guys, welcome, Welcome to Iraq. You know you're
Speaker 3: in the war zone now this we're playing for keep.
Speaker 3: So that was definitely you know, not that I didn't
Speaker 3: I wasn't already thinking that to begin with, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it definitely kind of was a realization immediately right when
Speaker 3: we uh, right when we permitted at the deck saying
Speaker 3: like hey, you're you know, the guy in the airfield
Speaker 3: had already you know, gotten word you know, some of
Speaker 3: it from our our Joint Operations Center had like let
Speaker 3: them know that, Hey, like a convoy's gonna be late
Speaker 3: because they got hit with an I D and they
Speaker 3: had to do a you know, a cast a back bird,
Speaker 3: you know, casualty evacuation bird for our lead turt.
Speaker 1: Gunner and what was the mission like when you guys
Speaker 1: got there.
Speaker 3: So we were we had a Iraqi partner for us.
Speaker 3: We were training, but it was mostly direct action raids
Speaker 3: we were doing. So they wanted us to have, you know,
Speaker 3: so many Iraqis they would take, we would take out
Speaker 3: with them, or they could take out with us. And
Speaker 3: so they had like a couple of guys doing the
Speaker 3: training of them and another guy. The rest of the
Speaker 3: guys were doing operations, you know, some some like kind
Speaker 3: of sniper over on stuff. It was mostly like it
Speaker 3: was the direct raid, the kill capture operations.
Speaker 2: We were doing.
Speaker 4: Any that kind of stand out in your mind.
Speaker 3: I mean, there were several of them that definitely, uh
Speaker 3: definitely you know, could have got a little little little sporty,
Speaker 3: little spicy, But it wasn't until after I left because
Speaker 3: I was on the first rit bird out and the
Speaker 3: read from Place bird and then so I was like
Speaker 3: probably about half of our platoon or half of our troop,
Speaker 3: other guys from Team ten and contingent.
Speaker 2: That we're gonna be ripping ripping out with us.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: So they uh, they went out on target with the
Speaker 3: rest of our guys, and then a good buddy of
Speaker 3: mine was killed that you know, evening literally like a day.
Speaker 2: After we left.
Speaker 3: So that one, I, you know, I talk about that
Speaker 3: every so often a little bit at that one still
Speaker 3: kind of stings this day as far as you know,
Speaker 3: cause we hit just so many compounds over the UH
Speaker 3: over the course that six months, and then sure enough,
Speaker 3: you know, we lose we lose a guy in one
Speaker 3: of the last ops you know of the UH of
Speaker 3: the deployment, let alone with not even like almost you know,
Speaker 3: almost half the.
Speaker 2: Guys being gone not there for either.
Speaker 3: So uh, you know, kind of looking back, I say,
Speaker 3: if I could have I told this story before as well,
Speaker 3: if I could have one redo in my entire career,
Speaker 3: I would go back and ask not to be on
Speaker 3: you know, the first rip bird flight out because again
Speaker 3: I totally understand like my leadership point of view, because
Speaker 3: I would I would definitely would wanted to. I wanted
Speaker 3: to stay, but I was gonna be going to sniper school,
Speaker 3: you know, within like you know, less than a month
Speaker 3: of getting back, and then straight into lead preacher explosive
Speaker 3: breaching school. So my professional development I was and be
Speaker 3: gone for a good portion of it, so ended up
Speaker 3: ended up you know, taking you being my first deployment
Speaker 3: with a busy prod of being one of the first
Speaker 3: guys that had rip out you know, which again it.
Speaker 2: Was about half of us.
Speaker 3: But if I could have you know, I said, I
Speaker 3: could have one redo over again, I would turn back
Speaker 3: time and make sure I was on that off for
Speaker 3: when everything went down.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That sucks, man.
Speaker 4: It always seems like it's the last damn mission on
Speaker 4: the deployment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, we had a guy you know, you know,
Speaker 3: you get fragged pretty good, you know, from the I
Speaker 3: D first, uh, you know first, you know, and one
Speaker 3: of the I think maybe the first night we were
Speaker 3: in country.
Speaker 2: I think it was the second convoy they did overall.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, like in the direct action right, they
Speaker 3: were going after a group of all kind of militants
Speaker 3: that shut down an American helicopter the previous day.
Speaker 2: So it was just just bad. But hey, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm bringing lessons learned, life lessons learn at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man. And so you get back and go to
Speaker 1: the Sniper Corps. Is that the one in Indiana?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Great, Yeah, so some of it's you know, they do
Speaker 3: like the East and West coast will do like they're
Speaker 3: again it's different now. I think it's all like one
Speaker 3: big school, but like you know picked like photo image capture,
Speaker 3: and they had like the scout it's almost like a SNYP,
Speaker 3: you know, scout sniper like sniper light and then if
Speaker 3: you pass both those then you would go on to
Speaker 3: the full you know, sniper training pipeline in UH in Indiana.
Speaker 4: And what was the sniper course like.
Speaker 2: It was definitely challenging.
Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, the shooting itself was was was you
Speaker 3: know hard at times, but it was the easiest. It
Speaker 3: was like some of the stocking. Just the overall like
Speaker 3: field craft.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I was you know, born and raised, like I said,
Speaker 3: in rural northeast Missouri, so I spent plenty of time
Speaker 3: out in the field, you know, hunting and into it
Speaker 3: just like my grandparents, you know farm they had UH
Speaker 3: in rural northeast Missouri close to where I grew up.
Speaker 3: But it just the overall like field craft and like
Speaker 3: being you know, you know, covert clandestine about things too,
Speaker 3: is probably one of the biggest things.
Speaker 2: Again, the shooting.
Speaker 3: Stuff was was challenging by all means, but I'd say
Speaker 3: like the actual field craft for me, especially some of
Speaker 3: the stocking was what I uh, you.
Speaker 2: Know, it was the most challenging.
Speaker 1: And at that time where you guys still like building
Speaker 1: out the big bear suits, the Gilly suits and oh
Speaker 1: yeah yeah you.
Speaker 3: Had your Gilly Gilly shawl, your Gilly Gilly suit. You know,
Speaker 3: had had several different options depending on what you wanted
Speaker 3: to wear. So again, like we were fortunate enough, I
Speaker 3: was going through in the summertime frame, so we had
Speaker 3: know thick vegetation.
Speaker 2: It was a whole lot easier than guys.
Speaker 3: That have to go through in the the winter time
Speaker 3: with no folage everything else. Of course, we got to
Speaker 3: worry about poison ivy at that point in time. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, probably two thirds of the class ended up
Speaker 3: getting poison ivy really bad. But again just the price
Speaker 3: of doing business. It's the nature of the beast.
Speaker 1: So biggest takeaway from sniper school, aside from stalking, I
Speaker 1: guess tactical patients.
Speaker 3: Definitely learned tactical patients there, you know, in an extreme way.
Speaker 3: So in your you know, doing your stock, you're in
Speaker 3: your high sight. You're just waiting for that right moment
Speaker 3: to h when you need to uh we need to
Speaker 3: execute when you need to do it, do an engagement,
Speaker 3: I'd tell yeah, definitely, Tactical patients was the overall biggest
Speaker 3: lessons learned in theme from going to snipers.
Speaker 1: School, and then I think you mentioned was there a
Speaker 1: master Breacher course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I went to like lead breacher course after that,
Speaker 3: and again, like guys were saying, like, hey, that makes
Speaker 3: some of the older guys that make no sense, you know,
Speaker 3: because usually like the snipers were doing their own thing, breachers.
Speaker 2: Would do their own thing.
Speaker 3: But again I was just kind of dual trained where
Speaker 3: I could be the lead breacher on an op or
Speaker 3: I could you know, be the sniper role doing the
Speaker 3: sniper Overwatch or some of the you know kind of
Speaker 3: like longer containment you know, operations.
Speaker 2: We would do.
Speaker 1: How do you like the breacher course?
Speaker 2: It was fun? I mean, explosives are always fun, you know,
Speaker 2: no matter what.
Speaker 3: So again, really I like the breaching aspect is the
Speaker 3: problem solving because they go, you know, just you you
Speaker 3: truly learned to kind of really like be able to
Speaker 3: like read the door when you like to, you know,
Speaker 3: you do like you you know, calculation of what's charge
Speaker 3: you know, our charges you need ahead of time.
Speaker 2: You know, I have it, you know, through your specific
Speaker 2: you know sps for one and something.
Speaker 3: There's a little bit of a you know, a little
Speaker 3: bit of leeway on what exactly you could use. So
Speaker 3: it was definitely kind of the ultimate you know, problem
Speaker 3: solving in the moment, figuring out which charge you use,
Speaker 3: how much explosive net weight you have, and then even
Speaker 3: what type of explosives and kind of going from UH
Speaker 3: from there, just you know, using your uh, using your
Speaker 3: trade craft, you know, when you're out out on operations.
Speaker 1: At this point in time, I guess we're still in
Speaker 1: like two thousand and six, two thousand and seven. Around then,
Speaker 1: was the training starting to move more towards like urban
Speaker 1: environment to sort of simulate the environment you guys were
Speaker 1: going into or were still like trying to blow down
Speaker 1: trees to build an apty and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: It was definitely heavy in the h the urban aspect
Speaker 3: of things, but we still never went away from the
Speaker 3: field craft you know aspect as well though, especially what
Speaker 3: happened in the you know, a summer of two thousand
Speaker 3: and five in Afghanistan with the UH you know, the
Speaker 3: the loan survivor incident with the you know, the you know,
Speaker 3: upper Red Wings on that one. So yeah, again, always
Speaker 3: lessons learned on that one, because yeah, we were doing
Speaker 3: a lot of direct action rates and more built up areas,
Speaker 3: but we still could find ourselves out in a rural
Speaker 3: environment or even a rule into an urban environment, uh
Speaker 3: and getting an engagement there.
Speaker 2: So definitely definitely.
Speaker 3: Had to be proficient in all aspects of the operation
Speaker 3: you could come across.
Speaker 1: So you're you're moving along at a pretty steady clip
Speaker 1: here as a young seal going from being doing your
Speaker 1: first platoon sniper breacher and then going back to your
Speaker 1: platoon and going through the whole train up cycle again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, correct, And the actually I did an augment with
Speaker 3: Seal Team eight as well to Iraq for a little
Speaker 3: bit when we were doing some of the counter on
Speaker 3: rating insurgency stuff you know, back during that time frame.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I ended up doing a little bit of
Speaker 2: an augment with them.
Speaker 3: It was a good experience, and then deployed again the
Speaker 3: fall of two thousand and eight to back to Iraq,
Speaker 3: and you know, it was different, different troop than a
Speaker 3: while I was assigned to initially, but there was like
Speaker 3: a contingent of guys from our troop that we're gonna
Speaker 3: go augment the guys of our troop, and then our
Speaker 3: troop was in kind of doing the Yukom deployment. So
Speaker 3: that was that was actually again it all worked out.
Speaker 3: It would have been nice to stay longer in the
Speaker 3: in the war zone and get more experience, but you know,
Speaker 3: being able to do some of the stuff throughout throughout
Speaker 3: Europe and really kind of get get ready for our
Speaker 3: selection course for for the command coming up.
Speaker 2: You know, I started in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about the counter Iran
Speaker 1: mission because that's a that's an interesting one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's I mean, obviously Al Qaida, Iraq, you know,
Speaker 3: they were the they were the big, you know, big
Speaker 3: ones there going after. But this had such a negative
Speaker 3: Iranian influence, especially some of the areas where we were
Speaker 3: working around, like the you know, the eastern eastern side
Speaker 3: of Iraq and also even Bagdad itself. So I know
Speaker 3: a lot of guys who did uh you know operations
Speaker 3: in Solder City. You know, it was pretty much you know,
Speaker 3: the slums of Baghdad. I mean, most a lot of
Speaker 3: guys that did any work around Bagdat are familiar with
Speaker 3: Solder City, UH and it really it was some of
Speaker 3: the some of the like the explosives that like they're
Speaker 3: you know, they were coming up with. The Iranians were
Speaker 3: coming up with specifically designed to defeat some of our
Speaker 3: armor systems. So we were we were on hot and heavy,
Speaker 3: you know, doing the Accounter Iran Iranian you know, insertaincy mission.
Speaker 1: So you guys were trying to like disrupt the i e.
Speaker 1: D networks.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was a biggest thing. You know, we got
Speaker 3: up a lot of like the financiers and like the
Speaker 3: senior leaders. But again it's just you know, the more
Speaker 3: the more you know, operations we would do. It was
Speaker 3: pretty It's pretty crazy to see just how how some
Speaker 3: of these senior leaders you know that the counter Iranian
Speaker 3: are they the Iranian surgency were tied in with the
Speaker 3: UH current government in Iraq. It was probably a sticky
Speaker 3: situation all around, depending on depending on what you know,
Speaker 3: part of the country you're in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did the politics interfere with your operation? I
Speaker 1: mean sort of the local politics, like did they try
Speaker 1: to like shut down some of these missions or did
Speaker 1: you run into.
Speaker 3: That they tried to a little bit, but it seemed
Speaker 3: like we were definitely were we were insulated from from
Speaker 3: a lot of that aspect of things, just because it
Speaker 3: was it was so important the time, and like I,
Speaker 3: RACK had already been kind of spiraling out of control
Speaker 3: for for a while from probably you know, two thousand
Speaker 3: and five on, and didn't you know, even if you
Speaker 3: wantn't call it stabilized, it didn't really didn't stabilize till like,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty ten, twenty eleven. And then obviously during
Speaker 3: the troop wud draw, the whole world saw that under
Speaker 3: the UH, under the current administration at the time, when
Speaker 3: they are going to pull everyone out, and then like
Speaker 3: little Isis just came in there and started wrecking shop.
Speaker 3: And then sure enough, contingent of UH Special Operations were
Speaker 3: right back in there saving you know, you know, saving
Speaker 3: what was left of Iraq at the time.
Speaker 1: And then you mentioned going over to European Command. Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: what what were you guys up to over there?
Speaker 2: So we were doing a lot of like just training
Speaker 2: operations more than anything.
Speaker 3: It's like bi lads, like bilateral exchanges other UH I
Speaker 3: can't I can't remember some of the acronyms, but it
Speaker 3: was basically like working with our.
Speaker 2: Our NATO allies over there.
Speaker 3: So I went to Poland for for a solid month,
Speaker 3: you know, work with the Polish DROM awesome, awesome dudes.
Speaker 3: And it went to Estonia for three weeks after that,
Speaker 3: you know, within a matter of a couple of days.
Speaker 2: So again, really good experience.
Speaker 3: And uh you always have like your you know, your
Speaker 3: embassy evacuation that could could come up, you know, you
Speaker 3: could you out of there among other operations, but really
Speaker 3: you more than anything focusing on training and then for
Speaker 3: me just getting you know, making sure I was in
Speaker 3: good shape and right, you know, mindset, getting ready to
Speaker 3: start the selection process for the command coming up.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, what was it?
Speaker 1: What was it like working with some of the NATO partners, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, Groham is known to be very professional. The
Speaker 1: the Baltic States also are known to be pretty hardcore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, like I would, I would deploy with the
Speaker 2: Graham guys in a heartbeat.
Speaker 3: You know, And I was, uh, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: fast forward years later, I did a little exchange with
Speaker 3: the SBS guys and I was gonna be deployed with
Speaker 3: them when I was a team leader at the at
Speaker 3: the command and one of the squadrons, and I was
Speaker 3: having to have one of my of my junior guys
Speaker 3: go with me as well, but that didn't getting shut down.
Speaker 3: Let our shut off last minute, which is a which
Speaker 3: was a bummer. Like I told guys before, there's again
Speaker 3: there's two units I really would like to have deployed with.
Speaker 3: Number one is our Delta Forest you know brothers, you know,
Speaker 3: our counterparts from the army, and then and then also
Speaker 3: our our SBS, you know, our UK brothers as well.
Speaker 3: So I had like we we had it all lined up,
Speaker 3: but at the same timeframe we were gonna be uh
Speaker 3: you know, having it having a contingent of our of
Speaker 3: our troop deployed with some of the de boys down
Speaker 3: you know, south from where we were at. But again
Speaker 3: it got with the some of the manning issues and
Speaker 3: kind of like the withdrawing of forces. You know, they
Speaker 3: didn't even deploy all their guys, so we were the
Speaker 3: first ones to get cut. But like my number two,
Speaker 3: my assistant team leader, he just deployed with the strike
Speaker 3: for us too, you know, doing like the Iraq you
Speaker 3: know in Syria, you know, kind of direct actual age.
Speaker 3: And now he said that was one of his best
Speaker 3: deployments he ever had. So the guys were great, super talented.
Speaker 3: You know, it's just very again looking back, if I could,
Speaker 3: I would really like to have, you know, one ended
Speaker 3: up deployment with them, and then also deployment with our
Speaker 3: our SBS brothers which came close both times, were with
Speaker 3: both units, but just didn't didn't know. It wasn't quite
Speaker 3: how the cards were gonna fall for us unfortunately.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like in this time you're already thinking
Speaker 1: about screening for the command. You had this you had
Speaker 1: this idea in mind really since the moment you joined
Speaker 1: the Navy. It sounds like exactly.
Speaker 3: Like I said, like when I from I was twelve
Speaker 3: years old when I read read the book Rogue Warrior Senko.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I screened in the summer of two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight, you know, screen positive. It was made uh
Speaker 3: still a team for the rest of my deployment cycle there.
Speaker 3: Like I mentioned before, I deployed Iraq and then you
Speaker 3: come for a little bit and then checked in to
Speaker 3: start a start the selection course in the springtime of
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: Uh so what was the screening process like.
Speaker 3: Again, it's you know, you know, PT is obviously a
Speaker 3: big factor on there. But like when when guys you know,
Speaker 3: ask me what what was harder? You know, like you know,
Speaker 3: a green team, the selection course for development group or
Speaker 3: or BUDS uh met personally for me, I would rather
Speaker 3: do at a minimum, I would do first phase of
Speaker 3: BUDS including helliwek again before I did the six weeks
Speaker 3: of the basic you know, close quarter battles. Fa. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just again, it's looking back, it's all the stress you
Speaker 3: put on yourself, you know again, like it's you're you're
Speaker 3: not learning anything that it's technically some stuff, it's new, yes,
Speaker 3: but the instructors are demonstrating and telling you only once,
Speaker 3: but they're telling you exactly how you want they want
Speaker 3: you to do it, and then this perfection is demanded
Speaker 3: and then so again you're doing you know, hell, just
Speaker 3: pets of a morning for you know, a couple several
Speaker 3: hours and you're just getting right into doing the house
Speaker 3: run after a house wrong and a run, and then
Speaker 3: classes divide in the half half guys in the house,
Speaker 3: half the guys in the range doing drills, and we
Speaker 3: would flip flop in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I've heard guys say even even dudes that
Speaker 1: are not super fond of the Seals, say at Development
Speaker 1: Group they have a very robust, you know, counter terrorism
Speaker 1: CQB program.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So again it's it's that's one of the biggest
Speaker 3: things we are judged on.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, you have to have other you have
Speaker 2: to be confident in other you.
Speaker 3: Know, core seal skills skill sets, but the CQB aspect,
Speaker 3: you know, again like kind of people ask me all
Speaker 3: the time in the civilian world, what's CK be mean?
Speaker 3: Like at this like room clearing, you know, like structure clearing,
Speaker 3: you know, how to do it safely with potentially you know,
Speaker 3: you know, heavily armed packs inside there too.
Speaker 2: And again this you know kind of you know, coming
Speaker 2: full circle.
Speaker 3: Never when I was going through the selection and then
Speaker 3: you know, you know, just doing you all, you know,
Speaker 3: staying on the on the deployment grind at the command.
Speaker 3: I never thought, you know, it would it would off
Speaker 3: the way it has post military life, being able to
Speaker 3: do something I'm doing with the civilian law enforcement training.
Speaker 3: So again, yeah, it's just kind of funny looking back,
Speaker 3: you know, the you know, twenty plus years, all the
Speaker 3: lessons learned, just kind of how I where I got
Speaker 3: to where I'm at today, and it's all just kind
Speaker 3: of the cards is fill in.
Speaker 2: Place, you know, one one by one over over the years.
Speaker 1: So other than the CQB, what other kinds of training
Speaker 1: do you go through in Green platoon as you're kind
Speaker 1: of getting spun up for you know the top level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you're doing you're doing you know, integration stuff
Speaker 3: with the the one sixtieth you know, the helicopter you know,
Speaker 3: squad of the one sixtieth Special Operations Aviation Regiment. So
Speaker 3: again you talk about guys that are the top of
Speaker 3: their their tradecraft right there.
Speaker 2: The guys are absolutely phenomenal, from.
Speaker 3: Forty seven pilots to the you know the Hawks, the
Speaker 3: little birds, you know, to mention all the adapts, the
Speaker 3: direct action penetrators, you know crew for the Blackhawks rigged
Speaker 3: as gunships and also the a's the AH six is.
Speaker 3: So doing a lot a lot of integration stuff with
Speaker 3: them on certain aspects, and then you're doing quite a
Speaker 3: bit of a jumping skydiving with certain like military freefall profiles.
Speaker 3: So against I say probably besides the CV portion jumping,
Speaker 3: we usually get a couple of guys per class as
Speaker 3: well that cannot meet the standards and have to either
Speaker 3: get recycled through or they they go back to their
Speaker 3: you know, their original command, you know, within the sealed
Speaker 3: teams they came from.
Speaker 4: What do you think it is that gets them on
Speaker 4: the free fall course?
Speaker 3: Usually it's zing out the exits. And I mean I've
Speaker 3: told this guys before too. I had a fairly healthy
Speaker 3: fear of jumping, like one of the biggest I guess
Speaker 3: failures if you want to talk about, you know, I
Speaker 3: wouldmit during my career, I went to O Tai Lake's
Speaker 3: military free fall school that the Navy put on and
Speaker 3: I failed out of it.
Speaker 2: So I was ze in the exit.
Speaker 3: So and that was definitely in the back of my mind,
Speaker 3: you know, going through our green team the selection course
Speaker 3: when we were doing our uh are jumping there.
Speaker 2: But again it is just and I.
Speaker 3: Think I hopefully I was able to help a few
Speaker 3: guys that were struggling potentially as well.
Speaker 2: Throughout the years.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until I truly understood the relative wind and
Speaker 3: how you're exiting the aircraft, whether it's a side door
Speaker 3: or a ramp, and either you're symmetrical or you not,
Speaker 3: and how you like an arch you know, I can
Speaker 3: hit the relative wind is what really kind of like
Speaker 3: it just it just all clicked for me at one
Speaker 3: point in time. So again I was still you know,
Speaker 3: struggled a little bit, do you know, during a selection
Speaker 3: course for the command not doing the jumping stuff. But
Speaker 3: I was able to end up going making it through.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't until I got to the squadron and
Speaker 3: start doing a lot of jumping to where I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: it all it's all starting to make sense now as well,
Speaker 3: and even more so when I went to like freefall
Speaker 3: jump Master school and definitely kind of like tied everything
Speaker 3: in together at me.
Speaker 2: And so when I was getting ready to turn.
Speaker 3: Over my team with the incoming team leader actually one
Speaker 3: of my guys, you know, it was really awesome dude
Speaker 3: I had a lot of respect for.
Speaker 2: But I kind of.
Speaker 3: Recommended that to him because he was he was you know,
Speaker 3: he was proficient at jumping, but you can just tell
Speaker 3: he just was not as confident as I would like
Speaker 3: to see him, you know and be. And then so
Speaker 3: I kind of suggested that to him and say, hey, man,
Speaker 3: I would really I would really go, you know, recommend
Speaker 3: you go through military you know, the freefall GM at
Speaker 3: some point in time jump master school.
Speaker 2: The Command puts on just because I think it will
Speaker 2: help tie things.
Speaker 3: In to do a lot a lot, but you know,
Speaker 3: better better for you, and you'll just be more confident jumping.
Speaker 3: And He's like, and the only reason why I notice,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't think you have, you know, as
Speaker 3: much confidence as you could have because I was you about,
Speaker 3: you know, six seven years prior to that.
Speaker 2: So uh, hopefully, hopefully I was a semi positive.
Speaker 3: Influence on him as far as that that aspect.
Speaker 1: And after getting through all this training, you signed into
Speaker 1: the command. Uh, now you're now you're in the big leagues.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: What's it like making that jump from a seal team
Speaker 1: to development group?
Speaker 2: And so people ask me that a lot, like what's
Speaker 2: the difference? You know?
Speaker 3: So you know, I mean Steal Team four versus you know,
Speaker 3: like Team five or even you know obviously the command
Speaker 3: you know de gu Steal Team six.
Speaker 2: So I would.
Speaker 3: Say this, So if you have you know, two or
Speaker 3: three platoons deployment cycles underneath your belt and the you know,
Speaker 3: the East and West Coast Seal teams or STV Team
Speaker 3: one still Delivery Vehicle Team one, you're considered like a
Speaker 3: very experienced guy, Whereas again I did my two platoons,
Speaker 3: you know, started the selection process going through a through
Speaker 3: Green Team, and then I get to my you know, squadron,
Speaker 3: and I spent the majority of my career out over there,
Speaker 3: and I was a brand new guy again.
Speaker 2: You know. It's just like literally I was like the
Speaker 2: least experience.
Speaker 3: So I just I think it's over all the experience level,
Speaker 3: just the mission set itself, and just really like the
Speaker 3: for the selection process, you know, on Green Team, it's
Speaker 3: just perfection is demanded, you know, and it's they have
Speaker 3: so many, so many you know, just you know sets
Speaker 3: of eyes watching you, like you really can't get away
Speaker 3: with with a whole lot, especially early on doing some
Speaker 3: of the the initial readout phase of things.
Speaker 2: So I'd say just over.
Speaker 3: Again, it's it's it's like when I was having my
Speaker 3: interview board, you know, when I was doing like my
Speaker 3: screener initially to try to get orders to go, uh
Speaker 3: to go to Green Team, go through the Command selection process.
Speaker 3: I kind of like on my interview paper work, like
Speaker 3: I said like, hey, like why do you want to
Speaker 3: come to Command. I'm like, it's it's the natural progression
Speaker 3: for strong operators to to kind of just keep keep
Speaker 3: going up in that that trajectory. So again, like the
Speaker 3: quite a few guys I know on the East and
Speaker 3: West Coast team is.
Speaker 2: Definitely kind of plateaued out a little bit.
Speaker 3: They had the talent level, they definitely could have went
Speaker 3: to the command and been very successful over there. So
Speaker 3: again it's just, you know, it's it's just when one
Speaker 3: big competition as far as you know, the trajectory up
Speaker 3: as far as experienced level goes. And again it's just
Speaker 3: you know, you're you're you know, you're one of the
Speaker 3: tier one units. You know you're gonna be, you know,
Speaker 3: to be getting the call when things really you know,
Speaker 3: when shit really hits the fan or some of the
Speaker 3: higher profile operations happened.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: What's it like, I mean, you've partially answered this, I think,
Speaker 1: but already like, like, what's it like getting to a squadron?
Speaker 1: And again, I imagine all of these guys are A
Speaker 1: type personalities, like they're super dialed in, super intense all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 4: What's it like hitting the ground running on a squadron?
Speaker 3: So even to your point, Jack, even more as far
Speaker 3: as hitting the ground running, So like I was just
Speaker 3: our squadron was deployed when we when we got through
Speaker 3: our our selection process. So yeah, like the command master chief,
Speaker 3: he wanted us to take the holidays off, so ra
Speaker 3: after the first year, we deployed overseas with a squadron.
Speaker 3: So uh, again you talk about just being thrown right
Speaker 3: to the fire and being like you are a Tier
Speaker 3: one operator like you are, you are expected to know,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: What's going on.
Speaker 3: So it's definitely definitely you know a lot of things
Speaker 3: we've you know, covered some and Green Team, but but
Speaker 3: not to the extent with.
Speaker 2: The high level of training.
Speaker 3: And again just talk about the experience level you know,
Speaker 3: from like you know, the troop chief, you know, the
Speaker 3: team leaders on down. It's just like I've told so
Speaker 3: many people this before too, Like looking back, it took
Speaker 3: me a couple of years to get removed, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of in the in the civilian world and kind
Speaker 3: of looking back and like that, the talent level that
Speaker 3: that place possesses is unreal. Everything from like the operators
Speaker 3: you know, like you know, the leadership, the you know,
Speaker 3: even like the supporting assets you know, all the different
Speaker 3: different various departments like everyone at that at that place,
Speaker 3: at that command is truly at the the tip of
Speaker 3: the spear, at the top of their game and in
Speaker 3: all facets. So if you're not, you can't pull your weight.
Speaker 3: You have to move on.
Speaker 4: So all right, So tell us about gearing up for
Speaker 4: that first deployment.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, again, it was we went through the selection
Speaker 3: process and any through and the little time you know,
Speaker 3: for the holidays, and then it was it was, you know,
Speaker 3: I think the second no, it was, it was, you know,
Speaker 3: I guess it was a couple of days after the first. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we we caught a rotator bird and and I'm over
Speaker 3: there and flew over and joined our joined our squadron.
Speaker 3: So it was you know, kind of what I what
Speaker 3: I we were kind of talked about, you know, where
Speaker 3: we were told, you know, what was gonna be expected
Speaker 3: of us and everything everything else.
Speaker 2: So it was it was quite the experience, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: Definitely, you know, just you talk about just you know,
Speaker 3: walking in some place where you are just you know,
Speaker 3: you feel so small, even though you just went through
Speaker 3: one of you know, considered one of the hardest selection
Speaker 3: you know courses in the US military, you still feel
Speaker 3: like you don't know anything, you know, when you're there
Speaker 3: just because of the.
Speaker 2: Talent level of guys that are that that you're working
Speaker 2: with U.
Speaker 1: And I mean is again the big jump from the
Speaker 1: sealed teams to development group is that now you guys
Speaker 1: are charged with going after like nation level hvts as
Speaker 1: opposed to like these are the bad guys in town.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I say, like a lot of like the national
Speaker 3: being like one of the national mission forces. It's it
Speaker 3: just gets ups the game that much. And also the scrutiny,
Speaker 3: the scrutiny that comes with it as well. So yeah,
Speaker 3: like I said, like when we were going through Green Team,
Speaker 3: perfection was demanded, and yeah I was, you know, perfection
Speaker 3: was demanded in the squadrons, you know, to the to
Speaker 3: the highest extent for ever, from your team leader, from
Speaker 3: you know, your your other senior leaders, all the way
Speaker 3: down to you know the guys that were just you
Speaker 3: know a year or two you know ahead of you
Speaker 3: as far as as you know time in the command.
Speaker 3: You know, you just you don't you don't let your
Speaker 3: teammates down. Like when I talk about some of the
Speaker 3: leadership and team building aspects, you know, I covered in
Speaker 3: the civilian world and some of the domestic law enforcement
Speaker 3: world too. But I talk about peer pressure, peer pressure
Speaker 3: being the ultimate double edged sword, you know, like where
Speaker 3: you had guys that were you know, like we're negative
Speaker 3: peer pressure completely I saw like just ruined, derailed, you know,
Speaker 3: completely derailed careers you know before that matter. But then
Speaker 3: positive peer pressure like okay, you can accomplish extraordinary feats
Speaker 3: just because you don't want to let your teammates down.
Speaker 2: So again, like Doug about the ultimate ultimate double edged sword. Yeah,
Speaker 2: or peer pressure, it could.
Speaker 3: Be a be a hell of a hell of a
Speaker 3: positive or an extreme negative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's the pressure, but there's also the aspect of
Speaker 1: like you're my boy, Blue, you got this, you.
Speaker 2: Know exactly you don't you don't want to let your
Speaker 2: teammates down.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Can you say where you went on that first trip?
Speaker 3: It was an East East East Afghanistan. It was one
Speaker 3: of the one of the strike forces over there. So
Speaker 3: with the with with the squadron, I was.
Speaker 1: In cool and from that timeframe, like now that you're
Speaker 1: in the big leagues, any missions that kind of like
Speaker 1: jump out at you that were interesting or noteworthy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we did several diployments to Afghanistan. The roys
Speaker 3: could be spicy at a moment's notice. But for me,
Speaker 3: I was I was very fortunate if I was in
Speaker 3: the troop that conducted the Justin Bichannan hostage rescue raid
Speaker 3: in Somalia in January of twenty two Will though, again
Speaker 3: it was just just how it worked out with the rotation. Again,
Speaker 3: very very fortunate. Everything went very well that night. It
Speaker 3: could not have gone near nearly as well as it did.
Speaker 3: And uh, I'm just out of respect for the for
Speaker 3: the guys you know, still going in harm's way doing
Speaker 3: the job.
Speaker 2: I really don't like to cover very you know, you.
Speaker 3: Know, the specifics of the operation, but I do like
Speaker 3: to talk about a lot of the lessons learned. I'll
Speaker 3: do that a lot when I'm teaching in the Law Enforcements,
Speaker 3: but I'll just close a little more in a closed,
Speaker 3: closed environment to really kind of hit home some of
Speaker 3: the points. But I always like to talk about you know,
Speaker 3: I'm doing my initial PowerPoint slide for some of the
Speaker 3: c CB courses I teach, is you know the definition
Speaker 3: of advanced tactics.
Speaker 2: We heard that in Green Team all the time.
Speaker 3: All advanced tactics are is knowing the basics, knowing when
Speaker 3: it makes sense to break the rules and then be
Speaker 3: able to articulate why you broke those rules.
Speaker 2: So it was definitely like.
Speaker 3: That operation really highlighted because I'll cover again without without
Speaker 3: saying too much. You know, even though we had you know,
Speaker 3: the most state of the art military aircraft, you know,
Speaker 3: Werconstance aircraft overhead, we have the latest and greatest of
Speaker 3: weapons systems optics mbgs.
Speaker 2: The wrecked guys had thermals.
Speaker 3: But even though we had all that, the tactic we
Speaker 3: used to clear that objective and save those two hostages
Speaker 3: was one of the most basic tactics at every infantry
Speaker 3: soldier is taught at a young age and every small
Speaker 3: unit you know, special operations tactician is taught at a
Speaker 3: young age with some of the kind of the small
Speaker 3: unit tactics we work on. So that always mentioned when
Speaker 3: I'm teaching the courses. As far as I hate, never
Speaker 3: interestimate the importance that tactical team leader position. Like when
Speaker 3: when things went very kinetic, you know, very dynamic, very quick,
Speaker 3: I still remember hearing our my true chief's voice in
Speaker 3: my ear, like cool, calm collected saying like hey target
Speaker 3: ID damn it, guys, target I d just because your buddy,
Speaker 3: shooting doesn't mean needed to be shooting. So again we
Speaker 3: got to count, you know, we got to own every
Speaker 3: round we send down range because we had two innocents,
Speaker 3: two hostages we were saving. And then also kind of
Speaker 3: talk about the the personal SOPs always talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: with the courses you know, personal standard operating procedures, they
Speaker 3: never miss an opportunity to learn from either your mistake
Speaker 3: or somebody else's mistake, whether it's.
Speaker 2: A real world operation, training, you name it.
Speaker 3: So, uh, my biggest personal lesson learned personal standard operating
Speaker 3: procedure lessons learned from that one is I never left
Speaker 3: the wire from that point forward without some sort of
Speaker 3: a handheld thermal because we had zero loom. We had
Speaker 3: a thick cloud cover rolled in right the last you know,
Speaker 3: you know, like from our from a r p our
Speaker 3: operational rally point, and so we we pretty much you know,
Speaker 3: I had to uh you know, we're you know, kind
Speaker 3: of fanned out in a certain you know formation where
Speaker 3: we knew the pilots were sorry pirates holding the two
Speaker 3: hostages were roughly in the same type of a formation.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the REKI guys were with either their.
Speaker 3: Handheld thermals or their fusion goggles or night vision and
Speaker 3: you know thermal combined you know goggles, you know capable. Uh,
Speaker 3: they were kind of calling out heat sources, you know,
Speaker 3: with the rough direction of travel and rough distance. But
Speaker 3: it was it was fairly helpless feeling not really being
Speaker 3: able to see even like we're we're we're heat segnisures
Speaker 3: right out there. So that was my biggest lesson learned
Speaker 3: on that one is I definitely wanted to from that
Speaker 3: point forward, I v left the wire without a handheld thermal.
Speaker 1: And if they dividing because it was because it was
Speaker 1: so foggy you couldn't see anything under night did the again.
Speaker 3: It was zero loom cloud covered rolled in and there's
Speaker 3: a ampient light in the country of Smali, in the
Speaker 3: in the in the in the bush, you know, in
Speaker 3: the middle of nowhere, and just like the vegetation was
Speaker 3: super thick. So again even like looking just underneath your mvgs,
Speaker 3: looking at your buddy to your left and to your right,
Speaker 3: you know, or even in the formation, uh, you couldn't.
Speaker 3: You could see like the glow from them and maybe
Speaker 3: a little bit of an outline, but you'd have to
Speaker 3: shine your laser illuminator to really be able to see them.
Speaker 2: So really I couldn't, you know, most of us could not.
Speaker 3: Tell at all, and you know where roughly even the
Speaker 3: you know, heat signatures were coming, you know from distance
Speaker 3: wise and rough location unless you had a thermal capability
Speaker 3: either built in your mvgs or like a little handheld thermal.
Speaker 1: And so you guys pulled Jessica Buchanan and there was
Speaker 1: a European national.
Speaker 3: He has a Danish guy out, Paul fisted. Yeah, they
Speaker 3: were working for a danishd mining company. When uh, when
Speaker 3: when they were taking hostage.
Speaker 1: And I got to ask, like, what's that moment like
Speaker 1: when you repatriate an American and a friendly national hostage.
Speaker 1: I always think of like you know, the Kurt Muse
Speaker 1: rescue in Panama, where like all of a sudden, there's
Speaker 1: these soldiers there pulling you out and saying we're American soldiers,
Speaker 1: We're here to bring you home.
Speaker 4: Like that's got to be a good feeling.
Speaker 3: Oh no, absolutely. It was definitely the highlight of all
Speaker 3: our careers, hands down. And we were again we just
Speaker 3: you know, she ex filled her and the other the
Speaker 3: Danish citizen Paul, They you know took one of the
Speaker 3: first heilos out and we didn't you know, didn't hear
Speaker 3: anything else from her for you know, several years. But
Speaker 3: then after the fact, she end up coming back to
Speaker 3: the command and we were able to host her and
Speaker 3: kind of like have a big, big debrief.
Speaker 2: It tied in a lot of like our questions we have.
Speaker 3: Also kind of her you know, her question she had
Speaker 3: once we were able to tie the stories together. So
Speaker 3: I thought that was very beneficial and like just such
Speaker 3: a sweet girl, such a sweet gal. So that's really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just you know, just a wonderful, wonderful human being.
Speaker 1: And I bet it also offered some closure to that
Speaker 1: event for everyone involved.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, Like again, initially we did have like little
Speaker 3: meat and greet in one of our commander's conference rooms,
Speaker 3: and uh, I mean she immediately like she was gonna
Speaker 3: like start talking to begin with, and she completely just
Speaker 3: broke down and started crying and like the thing that
Speaker 3: she was able to get, you know, word, she was
Speaker 3: able to get out, you know, because we like took
Speaker 3: her to the memorial wall that she saw the pictures
Speaker 3: of guys that have been been killed throughout the years
Speaker 3: you know, at the Command and so yeah, she kind
Speaker 3: of like we were barely able to hear her get
Speaker 3: it out, the words out. She's like, I couldn't live
Speaker 3: with myself if I would have seen one of you,
Speaker 3: one of your photos up there on that memorial wall.
Speaker 2: So again we totally hey, it didn't did not work
Speaker 2: out that way, you know.
Speaker 3: So you know, yeah, so hey, everything worked out fine.
Speaker 2: We're all here and let's you know it was.
Speaker 3: We also reiterated to her the day it was all
Speaker 3: the highlight of all of our careers. So we were
Speaker 3: more than happy and more than willing to go, you know,
Speaker 3: put ourselves in harm's way to bring you back home, Jessica.
Speaker 3: So I think I definitely made her feel feel pretty
Speaker 3: good about about things.
Speaker 1: So I think she wrote a book about her experience,
Speaker 1: and I have not read it, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I needed to read it as well. Uh still too. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's called impossible odds. So I watched the sixty minute
Speaker 3: interview she she's done several times, or she did several times.
Speaker 2: It was a pretty pretty good interview. Folks have not
Speaker 2: seen that yet. So just if you just.
Speaker 3: Googled Jessica Buchannan and Hassa's rescue sixty minutes and it'll
Speaker 3: pop right up on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I'll check it out. That is a super cool story.
Speaker 1: I got it man, that's awesome. I thank you. And
Speaker 1: after that, what was kind of like the next step
Speaker 1: in your career as an operator at this point.
Speaker 3: So right after the deployed to Afghanistan again later on
Speaker 3: that that year, after we did the Hassa's rescue for Jessica.
Speaker 3: But then after that actually was for a pre team leader.
Speaker 3: I did a little a cup of professional development. I
Speaker 3: went to our Clandestine Operations squadron, so it's a good
Speaker 3: experience doing some of the unilatal surveillance stuff we were doing.
Speaker 3: Then went back to the squadron I was a member
Speaker 3: of before and did my you know rotations at assistant
Speaker 3: team leader and team leader, and then I finished my
Speaker 3: career off back at our clandestine operation squadron.
Speaker 2: So again I'm.
Speaker 3: Looking back, I really cannot you know, I really can't
Speaker 3: ask for too much more as far as you know,
Speaker 3: just being able to uh you know, you know, just
Speaker 3: getting the various experience of attitudes again talk about everything,
Speaker 3: how it's all comes full circle. The uh sevil uh
Speaker 3: from our clandestine Clandestine Operation Squadron, I do quite a
Speaker 3: bit of a like surveillance training for domestic law enforcement.
Speaker 3: So again between like the tactical training shooting something, they
Speaker 3: are like kind of a small unit, you know, small team,
Speaker 3: you know, tactics courses and also the surveillance. It keeps
Speaker 3: the schedule pretty full. And one of the gals is
Speaker 3: one of our femail operators at the pro UH at
Speaker 3: the at the our Clandestine Operation Squadron, is a good
Speaker 3: friend of mine, Jackie.
Speaker 2: She runs a Feenda Defense group. We we uh we
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Team up a lot to to uh host you know,
Speaker 3: and put on some of these surveillance for domestic law
Speaker 3: enforcement blocks. So again, I know, initially like Jackie was
Speaker 3: gonna try, I thought, Jackie, and now we are gonna be
Speaker 3: co located, We're gonna be able to both hoping here together.
Speaker 2: But I can pleatly get my dates mixed up.
Speaker 3: And yeah, she's back in California, but we are going
Speaker 3: to be linking up again coming up in the Denver
Speaker 3: area here in July for several weeks for some training
Speaker 3: we're putting on. So yeah, definitely recommend her guys to
Speaker 3: go check out a Feene Defence group on Instagram and
Speaker 3: then she's got a website. It's you know, pretty pretty
Speaker 3: well put together too. So she's an awesome gal. And
Speaker 3: when we're doing our introductions, I always bring it up,
Speaker 3: you know, I kind of say my piece as far
Speaker 3: as background is, and I said, he, I don't want
Speaker 3: to steal Jackie's thunder, but who and here has seen
Speaker 3: The Lion this series and usually about half to two
Speaker 3: thirds of the you know, the class, you know, tending raises,
Speaker 3: you know, their hands like okay, Like Jackie.
Speaker 2: Is your real life version of the Lion?
Speaker 3: Is she was in one of three programs that that
Speaker 3: you know, that that series was written based off of,
Speaker 3: so that that always gets guys his attention right away,
Speaker 3: you know, when they're like, oh gosh, yeah this guy,
Speaker 3: this gual, here's the real, the real deal. So yeah,
Speaker 3: just Jackie is an awesome, awesome gal. And yeah, it's
Speaker 3: it's it's a pleasure to work and it was. It
Speaker 3: was good to work with her while we're on active
Speaker 3: duty together, and it's you know, just as good, if
Speaker 3: not better, working in the civilian world together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, put us in touch and would be more than
Speaker 1: happy to have Jackie on this show one.
Speaker 2: Day Okay, absolutely, I highly recommend it. Yeah, Jackie is.
Speaker 2: Jackie is awesome. Jackie is I always I always joke
Speaker 2: with guys as well.
Speaker 3: So for can I compare Jackie you know, like you
Speaker 3: again being being a female and like pretty much a
Speaker 3: man's world. You know, she's definitely definitely an alcohol in herself,
Speaker 3: but as far as as trustworthy and.
Speaker 2: Uh you just you know, you know, a team player
Speaker 2: she is.
Speaker 3: So I always can make the comparison, you know when uh,
Speaker 3: you know you're you're a small, you know, tight knit
Speaker 3: group of a group of friends. I use the u
Speaker 3: that movie The Town with Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner
Speaker 3: when they're h when he goes into when Ben Affleck
Speaker 3: goes into you know, the placer's staying at and talks
Speaker 3: with you know, Jeremy Renner's character and he's just like, hey, like,
Speaker 3: I need your help. You know, you can't ask any questions.
Speaker 3: You know, we're gonna hurt some people. And he says,
Speaker 3: you know your your your car are mine? You know?
Speaker 2: Or who or whose car are we taking that.
Speaker 3: Jackie is in that same category, like Jackie, I need
Speaker 3: your help.
Speaker 2: You know, we gotta go do some stuff.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit questionable, and she would be like,
Speaker 3: all right, be taking your trucker minds, right. So she's
Speaker 3: definitely definitely in the club. You know, she's definitely within
Speaker 3: the sister within the brotherhood.
Speaker 2: That is for sure.
Speaker 1: Uh So you said you did some time as assistant
Speaker 1: team leader and then team leader.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in the squadron, I spent you know, right,
Speaker 3: quite a not quite a decade and uh overall, so yeah.
Speaker 2: Again being an assistant team leader.
Speaker 3: After being out of the loop for a little bit
Speaker 3: and our Clandestine Operation Squadron, it's it was fairly easy
Speaker 3: to come back, and it just again is how funny
Speaker 3: how things work out, Like I keep mentioning, so that
Speaker 3: when I came back, the the assault squadrons were actually
Speaker 3: taken over some of the uh you know, unilateral surveillance
Speaker 3: mission and our Clandestine Operation Squadron had been doing. So
Speaker 3: my troop was designated as the you know, the sensitive
Speaker 3: Activity support activities you know, you know, clandestine you know,
Speaker 3: capable assault troop. So I was able to help out
Speaker 3: a lot, you know, with uh, with some of the
Speaker 3: the transition just coming from coming from that world and
Speaker 3: then then deploying the same spot, you know, that with
Speaker 3: a with my Assault Squadron that I just deployed the
Speaker 3: previous cycle with with our Clandestine Operation Squadron.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of capability in one troop, isn't it
Speaker 1: to have guys that can free fall in and clear
Speaker 1: an airplane if need be. But also he can do
Speaker 1: all this sort of quaint DestinE surveillance work.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I won't mention his name because he likes to
Speaker 3: keep a very low profile with so many stuff he's
Speaker 3: still doing post military life. But one of the most
Speaker 3: well respected operators lace in my time. I was there
Speaker 3: set said it pretty good one time. You know, he
Speaker 3: was a team leader and one of the squadrons and
Speaker 3: went to our Clandestine Operation Squadron and then went back
Speaker 3: as a troop chief for that same Assault squad and
Speaker 3: then finished his career retired out of the clandestin Operation Squadron.
Speaker 3: But give the guys, you know, they would say like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's an essay, you know, it's you know, it's a
Speaker 3: uniltal surveillance troop.
Speaker 2: You know, you know, you know, sensitive activities troop.
Speaker 3: But then he's just like, no, no, no, it's an
Speaker 3: assault troop with a sensitive activities capability, Like there's a difference,
Speaker 3: you know, so it's pretty much all encompassing, so definitely
Speaker 3: a little bit different than just a.
Speaker 2: Quote unquote sensitive activities troop.
Speaker 3: So no, it's an assault troop with sensitive activities capabilities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's also interesting to have like the sort
Speaker 1: of continuum of targeting kind of encompassed and all encompassed
Speaker 1: in one organization like that that you guys can probably
Speaker 1: do the intelligence gathering, the mission planning, and then the
Speaker 1: execution of the mission itself if you were called upon
Speaker 1: to do that.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we would like the kind of the fine
Speaker 3: fixed Phoenix exploit analyze and uh even some of the
Speaker 3: deployment cycles before that, and we were doing some of
Speaker 3: like the more of the remote outstations with some of
Speaker 3: our you know, inner agency counterparts as well doing like
Speaker 3: an assistant team leader you know, you know then also
Speaker 3: the team leader during those rotations where I mean you're
Speaker 3: the senior military guy you know, on the on the
Speaker 3: ground on some of these operations as the team leader,
Speaker 3: and really from like the whole aspect as far as
Speaker 3: professional development, you know, you couldn't ask for anything more
Speaker 3: because you've understood like the targeting aspect of things. You
Speaker 3: know how you actually you know, target packages even get
Speaker 3: brought up you know from like Intel reports and various locations,
Speaker 3: you know, various even assets if you will, you know,
Speaker 3: you know technical, you know physical, you know, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: human intelligence, you name it. But you really learned the uh,
Speaker 3: the whole targeting process from like Okay, we have a
Speaker 3: bad individual we're going after. Okay, we start to build
Speaker 3: a pattern of life on him, you know, and then
Speaker 3: from there package you know, the you know, the con
Speaker 3: op concept of operations goes up and you're you're doing.
Speaker 3: All that you know is the guys are helping you
Speaker 3: with it. You know, your Intel analyst plays a very big,
Speaker 3: very big role and other uh other you know, specialized
Speaker 3: positions within the small team you're working with. But I
Speaker 3: mean you talk about like this the ultimate professional development.
Speaker 3: I mean, you understand the whole process pre damn good
Speaker 3: or you have to understand it or you're not gonna
Speaker 3: ever gonna get out the get out the door to
Speaker 3: go to the ox if you how the process works.
Speaker 1: And then becoming a team leader, I mean, what's that experience, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you're in charge?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah? No, definitely, uh definitely the highlight of my career,
Speaker 2: you know overall.
Speaker 3: So I was I was in our troop chief position
Speaker 3: for a clandestine operations squadron for a bit as well too. Again,
Speaker 3: it just did that that that would have been, you know,
Speaker 3: probably the highlight of my career, but just unfortunately it
Speaker 3: was learning like the COVID timeframe, and then it kind
Speaker 3: of had like some stuff on the personal side. I
Speaker 3: decided to retire, so didn't didn't get to do nearly
Speaker 3: as much real world operationally.
Speaker 2: I was hoping in that position.
Speaker 3: But but as far as you know, being like an a
Speaker 3: team leader of an assault team, you know, it's just
Speaker 3: it's again like talk about that the talent of that place,
Speaker 3: like just looking like every one of my guys you know,
Speaker 3: from like I was at Echo one down to like
Speaker 3: my my Echo seven, you know, at number seven. So
Speaker 3: I just every single dude just was just a phenomenal
Speaker 3: you know, physical specimen number one, number two. Just the
Speaker 3: the talent you know, overall, like whether it's like for CQB, shooting, jumping,
Speaker 3: you name it, I mean you it's they say, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, team leaders should only have to make you know,
Speaker 3: at the command like slight course corrections here and there,
Speaker 3: you know, and that's that's one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Was my my case as well.
Speaker 3: So I know some guys have to deal with some
Speaker 3: problem children that U that causes more h you know,
Speaker 3: more effort and uh you know kind of uh you know,
Speaker 3: have more of a more of a negative light. But
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's for me at least, I couldn't
Speaker 3: ask for any better guys.
Speaker 2: You know that work and work I worked with and
Speaker 2: when I.
Speaker 3: Was a team leader, so even as the assistant team leader,
Speaker 3: I got you know, quit you know, I was one
Speaker 3: of this Uh. I think the senior number two is
Speaker 3: senior assistant team leader in the squadron for one full rotation.
Speaker 2: So again it was you know, guys would come to
Speaker 2: me for a lot. I think, you know, hopefully I
Speaker 2: was a positive influence to them. And uh uh.
Speaker 3: Again it's just you know, just still still to this day,
Speaker 3: just just blows me away, just the talent of that place.
Speaker 2: Still.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they even I was fortunate enough to uh just
Speaker 3: pass January.
Speaker 2: One of the cities I'm in quite a bit.
Speaker 3: My old squadron was doing an urban training event there
Speaker 3: and I was I got to see a lot of
Speaker 3: guys and were never mind you guys when I was
Speaker 3: an you know, assistant team leader and team leader that
Speaker 3: they are now team leaders are assistant team leaders running
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 2: So's that was just phenomenal to see.
Speaker 1: So and so you finished your career in the Clindestine squadron.
Speaker 1: I know that stuff's like pretty hush, but what what
Speaker 1: are you allowed to say about that?
Speaker 3: I just it was our biggest miss set, depending on
Speaker 3: where we were at, was like being able to unilaterally
Speaker 3: conduct a conduct surveillance where it's physical technical you know,
Speaker 3: using other uh, other assets, other electronic means. That was
Speaker 3: the biggest thing that our troops specifically, and there was
Speaker 3: other troops that have other other mission sets I won't
Speaker 3: go into, but for ours specifically, it was the ability
Speaker 3: to basically you know, target you know, underneath the uh
Speaker 3: you know kind of a you know, the you know,
Speaker 3: the the cover of something you know, other completely like
Speaker 3: non you know, non uh you know action arm type
Speaker 3: of a military you know, element operation where we're referred
Speaker 3: to as But it was it was really just like
Speaker 3: the fine fix aspect of things is what we really
Speaker 3: concentrated on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then talk to us a little bit about retirement, Like,
Speaker 1: you must have had some moment in your career of
Speaker 1: like surrealism. You know that you went from being the
Speaker 1: twelve year old kid reading rogue warrior to being a
Speaker 1: team leader and then you know, master chief, troop chief.
Speaker 1: Pretty wild experience. How did retirement take place for you?
Speaker 1: When did that moment come where you're like, you know what,
Speaker 1: that's I'm ready to move on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I was a senior chief at a time.
Speaker 3: It's actually doing a big surveillance block. But uh, without
Speaker 3: going into like actual specifics, I just I just got
Speaker 3: to the point where I was, I was on the
Speaker 3: fence say hey, like I really need to figure out, Hey,
Speaker 3: am I going to be retiring because I was coming
Speaker 3: up on our I was, I was less than inside
Speaker 3: of the year from hitting the twenty year mark.
Speaker 2: I was like nineteen years in change.
Speaker 3: And uh it was actually, uh, you know where we
Speaker 3: live out now majority of the time in Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 3: We were on a work trip out there of all places,
Speaker 3: and just kind of like it.
Speaker 2: Just you know, all came to me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: At once I told my wife, I was like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, I know you said I had to get
Speaker 3: there on my own.
Speaker 2: Whenever I was going to you know, retire what I
Speaker 2: just got there.
Speaker 3: So yeah, like after that trip, when I came back
Speaker 3: the following week, I put in my retirement paperwork and
Speaker 3: then still had the position for like several more months.
Speaker 3: That's why they were doing some maning, shuffling around and
Speaker 3: everything else. But I was starting my uh my prep
Speaker 3: to uh to retire at that point, and it was
Speaker 3: a long process.
Speaker 2: So I'm sure you.
Speaker 3: Saw it as well too, where you're you know, separating
Speaker 3: out retiring for for everybody, it is it is definitely
Speaker 3: not an overnight You're you're not just giving your two
Speaker 3: weeks notice and then walking out the door like you
Speaker 3: are in the civilian world potentially so. But yeah, once
Speaker 3: I was, once I got there, I was. I was
Speaker 3: so ready I could have walked out that day, honestly.
Speaker 3: So except a hell of a ride, you know, looking back,
Speaker 3: you know, when you traded my experiences for anything. But
Speaker 3: they say, when you're done, you're done, and you'll know
Speaker 3: you when you're done. So I like, I've had several
Speaker 3: buddies since then, you know, getting ready to retire, you know,
Speaker 3: or you know, getting really you know, kind of like
Speaker 3: on short final they said like, like, dude, me, we
Speaker 3: didn't realize what you were saying, you know initially when
Speaker 3: you said, like, hey, when you're done, you're done, but
Speaker 3: like we definitely do now. So I know, again, I
Speaker 3: hope like get them some good advice during their transition period.
Speaker 1: It's really important, isn't it, to like know when you
Speaker 1: hit that point, to identify.
Speaker 3: That, because again, like there's there's definitely guys that I
Speaker 3: you know, still have you know, crazy amount of respect
Speaker 3: for that were burn out. They should have retired years earlier,
Speaker 3: but they're just like it kind of I wouldn't say,
Speaker 3: you know, you can never get comfortable at that place,
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I think guys were just,
Speaker 3: you know, they were a point where like, okay, I
Speaker 3: can pretty much hit the cruise control and like kind
Speaker 3: of ride this for a little bit longer, even though
Speaker 3: I'm you know, they're not really really all that happy,
Speaker 3: you know, they they're they're ready to move on. But
Speaker 3: there is again I wouldn't use the word afraid, but
Speaker 3: I think there's just a lot of apprehension with guys
Speaker 3: getting out when they back it out, especially when they
Speaker 3: have twenty plus years then who.
Speaker 1: Hell wants to say I don't want to be on
Speaker 1: the team anymore.
Speaker 2: I mean, you actually.
Speaker 3: Where you just you lose that fire in the gut,
Speaker 3: which I really that was really for me. I was
Speaker 3: just like, hey, man, like the juice is no longer
Speaker 3: worth to squeeze. I feel like I was going one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty miles an hour my entire career. I'm
Speaker 3: just kind of like, you know, when I got to
Speaker 3: the point, I was like, well, you know, I think
Speaker 3: I'm good. I think I'm ready to move on and
Speaker 3: try something else in life.
Speaker 1: That's cool. So you retire and tell us about post
Speaker 1: military life. I mean kind of what are those first
Speaker 1: couple of years like after retirement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I retire officially in October first of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two. But I said this before when folks have asked,
Speaker 3: and I'll say it again, like from my experience when
Speaker 3: I'm talking to a lot of other guys, I think
Speaker 3: my transition the last you know, X amount of months
Speaker 3: I was in and then transition in the civilian world
Speaker 3: was one of the smoothest and easiest really I possibly
Speaker 3: could have could have had again again, we were I
Speaker 3: was fortunateenough to do quite a few urban training events
Speaker 3: where we would be hosted by you know, local state
Speaker 3: and federal law enforcement teams throughout the area. So we'd
Speaker 3: always been trying to give back either host them at
Speaker 3: the command you know they'd come out and train, or
Speaker 3: even on location we would provide you know, training for
Speaker 3: them depending on what they want to work on, whether
Speaker 3: it's shooting, CQB, you know, you name it. So I
Speaker 3: kind of had been putting out a little bit of feelers,
Speaker 3: you know, months prior to when I was going to
Speaker 3: be dropping my you know, had to make the decision.
Speaker 3: And again this happened to be in Dallas when I
Speaker 3: finally you know, made that made that decision. And one
Speaker 3: of the good buddy of mine, he's worried for Garland PD.
Speaker 3: He's one of the SWAT or the lieutenant over Swatt
Speaker 3: and also he's the current president of the tech Astachable
Speaker 3: Police Officers Association. I told him I was going to
Speaker 3: be dropping my retirement paperwork. When I got back, I
Speaker 3: was ready to move on the first thing he said
Speaker 3: to me. He's like him, man, let me know when
Speaker 3: you just want to start teaching for us, you know,
Speaker 3: we'll get you on the on the books as soon
Speaker 3: as as soon as you're ready. So I was able
Speaker 3: to get get I started my I'd already had the
Speaker 3: idea for my company, the name, you know, everything else
Speaker 3: I wanted to be doing, you know, when I was
Speaker 3: doing my undergraduate you know program for my online degree
Speaker 3: with entrepreneurship through American Military University, but really wasn't going
Speaker 3: to like obviously you know, launch it until I knew like, okay,
Speaker 3: this is how much time I had left in the
Speaker 3: military and going from there, so I, you know, submit
Speaker 3: him in Texas. My articles of formation literally like a
Speaker 3: couple I think a day or two after I got
Speaker 3: my UH, I got my retirement paperwork approved back from
Speaker 3: Big Navy, so I knew, like this is gonna be
Speaker 3: my last day. And I really didn't do a whole
Speaker 3: lot with it for several months, but is after I
Speaker 3: want to say, April May ish timeframe of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: I put in for like the outside employment through the
Speaker 3: command you know it. So again, if you're on you know,
Speaker 3: just burning leave, there's still some employment restrictions where you're
Speaker 3: able to do quite a bit of stuff. You just
Speaker 3: have to ask permission for it ahead of time. So
Speaker 3: I was able to actually start working for myself and
Speaker 3: my company just burn, like excess termal leave. I didn't
Speaker 3: do like the skill bridge, none of the transition programs.
Speaker 3: Once I had all my VA stuff squared away and
Speaker 3: everything else, you know, I even like started working for
Speaker 3: myself even before I had my retirement ceremony, had that
Speaker 3: in June of twenty twenty two, and then like literally
Speaker 3: just burning, you know, the excess leave I had at
Speaker 3: that point in time, just coming a little bit here
Speaker 3: and there in between work trips I had lined up.
Speaker 3: So so many people told me, it's like, hey, it's
Speaker 3: some big change.
Speaker 2: You know you did you know over twenty years in the.
Speaker 3: Military, you know, right out of high school, Like you
Speaker 3: need to take some time off, you know, like six
Speaker 3: months to a year, maybe do a little work here
Speaker 3: and there, you know, and and.
Speaker 2: Really kind of figure out what you're gonna do.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't listen to any of that shit. So I
Speaker 2: literally got my retirement.
Speaker 3: I took my wife into the command for one last
Speaker 3: time on September thirtieth of twenty twenty two, got her
Speaker 3: a dependent you know, retiree ID.
Speaker 2: I had to get rid of. I had to get
Speaker 2: rid out of.
Speaker 3: Several programs in the Clandestin Operation squad and I was
Speaker 3: in and then turning my access badge, got my d
Speaker 3: D two fourteen, and then went and got my military
Speaker 3: retiree ID.
Speaker 2: At that point, they gave me a temporary badge.
Speaker 3: You know, I hate this badge out and just leave
Speaker 3: it right on the top of the the badge readers
Speaker 3: you're driving out.
Speaker 2: Did that, and literally three days later I'd already had
Speaker 2: it lined up. I did a three week work trip.
Speaker 3: That's you know, seventy two hours after I officially retired.
Speaker 3: So I went out to Denver, did some training out
Speaker 3: there for a week, and then went to Dallas Fort
Speaker 3: Word for a week, and then down to Houston for
Speaker 3: a week. Sorry not Houston, San Antonio. I'd already done
Speaker 3: a Houston trip previous to that. So yeah, again, like
Speaker 3: I totally understand, I totally get white. You know, some
Speaker 3: folks want to do you know, six months a year,
Speaker 3: you know, you know some you know sabbatical, you know, hiatus.
Speaker 2: But that was definitely not me.
Speaker 3: Like, literally seven and seventy two hours later, I was
Speaker 3: on the road again, hitting it hard.
Speaker 2: So I've been been going NonStop ever since.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you needed something to do with yourself to keep
Speaker 1: you occupied. Absolutely got your navy veteran hat from the
Speaker 1: p X and you were.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well yeah, I got my you know, company logo
Speaker 3: of that wasn't going.
Speaker 2: To get any in that.
Speaker 1: Maybe a name with you exactly, so your company, you
Speaker 1: have a training group, tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Galloglass Guardian group.
Speaker 3: And then I get asked all the time the name,
Speaker 3: what's like the namesake, you know, what.
Speaker 2: Does it mean?
Speaker 3: So so gallo Glass was a term for Scotch Irish
Speaker 3: mercenaries from the thirteenth to sixteenth century from the North
Speaker 3: Norse Gaelic armies kind of where some of my family
Speaker 3: lineage is from.
Speaker 2: You know, my dad, Dad's obviously last name Wendesay Scottish.
Speaker 3: My last name my mom was, her maiden name was
Speaker 3: was Brennan for Irish, so kind of had the tribal
Speaker 3: the tribal areas of Scotland and Ireland and the family lineage.
Speaker 3: So again the Scotch Irish, you know, you know, Galloglass
Speaker 3: warriors were Scotch Irish mercenaries from you know, kind of
Speaker 3: their version of special operations forces during that time. And
Speaker 3: once they would leave service, you know, military service, they'd
Speaker 3: go back to the tribal areas and protect the uh
Speaker 3: the chiefs and the uh the tribal villagers from criminal
Speaker 3: elements and foreign innovators, or sometimes they would be hired
Speaker 3: by another foreign uh you know, tribe to help protect
Speaker 3: the tribal areas in the same capacity. So not quite
Speaker 3: what I'm doing to the you know, to the tea,
Speaker 3: but I mean it's very similar in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: As far as some of the tactical training.
Speaker 3: We do a little bit of security you know and
Speaker 3: assessments and things like that, but really like our bread
Speaker 3: and butter is the uh the tactical training for domestic
Speaker 3: law enforcement. We do some uh some kind of civilian
Speaker 3: training as well, trying to get a little bit more
Speaker 3: involved with that, and I started doing a lot more
Speaker 3: about leadership team building talks here recently as well various presentations.
Speaker 3: I have a big power point. I can do uh,
Speaker 3: you know, almost a full full day of stuff, or
Speaker 3: I could do like, you know, kind of blocking in
Speaker 3: it's just several hours at a time, just depending on
Speaker 3: what the what the clients are, you know, wanting, what
Speaker 3: they're asking for.
Speaker 1: And uh.
Speaker 4: There's also a knife design company. Oh yes, I actually
Speaker 4: have a couple of them right here.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so TSG Blade so good, buddy, mine I
Speaker 3: knew from uh from Seal Team four or we just
Speaker 3: we've kind of been working on this for a while.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, we just had our The website is
Speaker 3: not live just yet. It's gonna be TSG Blades. I'm
Speaker 3: actually gonna have a phone call hopefully tomorrow the next
Speaker 3: day to follow up with our web designer. But this
Speaker 3: is our initial initial knife we hadn't made right here.
Speaker 3: So this is the TSG Blades Overt, the large it's
Speaker 3: a little over five inches, one hundred percent American made.
Speaker 3: Our knife manufacturer is out of the Denver, Colorado area, Revo,
Speaker 3: Indy Nids. And so yeah, it's got you know, the
Speaker 3: un clip sheath, you know, a whole Kai Dex thing else.
Speaker 3: So that one, and then we have.
Speaker 2: Then we have the TSD Blades Covert. That's the smaller one.
Speaker 3: So that this one is not beneficially released yet, but
Speaker 3: the other one is going to be hopefully released on
Speaker 3: on the website here very soon.
Speaker 2: I have some of I've been selling in person.
Speaker 4: That's awesome, man, Yeah they look great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then so the for the third one.
Speaker 3: Again, this is literally just a prototype our our manufacturing
Speaker 3: made after we design This's gonna be a folder basically
Speaker 3: the size of the this TSG blades, the covert, this
Speaker 3: was gonna be the the clandestine and a folder.
Speaker 2: So and it's a pretty printed prototype.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we're gonna be hopefully starting to take orders
Speaker 3: for those very soon as well.
Speaker 1: Cool man. And uh, then let's also talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about some of the other stuff that you've gotten into, like, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a bit of your police law enforcement work that
Speaker 1: you're getting into. And then I mean there's also how
Speaker 1: we met doing some security work exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess again I've we've joked before. We got
Speaker 3: to like, you know, start linking up, brother, you know,
Speaker 3: more than like once a year like work. You know,
Speaker 3: So either you got to come down when Jaymed comes down,
Speaker 3: you know some of the boys boys week in North
Speaker 3: Carolina or meeting Dallas or all hit up head up
Speaker 3: north in.
Speaker 2: The you know the NYC to meet you guys.
Speaker 3: So no, So I'm a fully commissioned reserve deputy in
Speaker 3: the State of Louisiana through Richmond Parish and again just
Speaker 3: you know kind of help out with training works some
Speaker 3: you know coming and going when I'm traveling through there.
Speaker 3: But I'm in the process of getting my Texas Commission
Speaker 3: on Law Enforcement license as well.
Speaker 2: I'll be a reserved through Allen Texas PD.
Speaker 3: I again talking about like the the Navy cop Mastered Arms.
Speaker 2: How it all, you know, kind of came full circle since.
Speaker 3: I had that, you know that any seed enable listening
Speaker 3: code in addition to being a seal, I was able
Speaker 3: to get approved by the from the Texas Commission on
Speaker 3: Law Enforcement to go the Military Police credentialing route. That
Speaker 3: really saves a lot of in person academy times. So
Speaker 3: that would I would normally have to do, even though
Speaker 3: there's a special Operations route. You can go a special
Speaker 3: Operations veteran and then a military police veteran. And I
Speaker 3: was able to kind of get shave a shave even
Speaker 3: more time off. So I've already done all my line
Speaker 3: so I'm all of my online requirements. I've done all
Speaker 3: of my in person academy except for I need eight
Speaker 3: hours two different four hour blocks that I'm getting knocked
Speaker 3: out next next Thursday on June fifth, and one of
Speaker 3: the regional academies in the Dallas Fort Worth area. And
Speaker 3: after that, I put in my my affliction to take
Speaker 3: the exam and just hopefully knock it out the excuse,
Speaker 3: you know, the first time knock out the the test,
Speaker 3: you know, then I'm then I'll be be able to
Speaker 3: get the fully commissions and license at that point in time.
Speaker 3: So again a lot of guys have asked me, you know, like, hey,
Speaker 3: why why why you doing the law enforcement you know,
Speaker 3: like actual you know, commissioning, Like you don't need that
Speaker 3: in your military experience.
Speaker 2: But for me, I'm all about just being like a
Speaker 2: lifelong learner, you know.
Speaker 3: And again, when I set out to do something, I
Speaker 3: really truly intend to try to be of all possible
Speaker 3: the best in the world at it. And I think like, okay,
Speaker 3: how do I how can I set myself apart from
Speaker 3: other guys doing with similar backgrounds, doing the you know,
Speaker 3: the training gig as well. So kind of my my
Speaker 3: thought process was like, hey, if I can have as
Speaker 3: many different credentials and licenses, is domestic law enforcement where
Speaker 3: I'm when I'm working a shift, you know, helping the
Speaker 3: guys out, you know, guys and gals out, I'm held
Speaker 3: at the same standard, you know, saying you know, like
Speaker 3: you know use of force, you know in in the
Speaker 3: same uh, you know, restrictions and guidelines, you know underneath
Speaker 3: the you know, the Texas Commission Enforcement or Louisiana Peace
Speaker 3: Officers standing and training, Like how I got to set
Speaker 3: myself apart, Well, if I have as much real world
Speaker 3: experience as I possibly can, I'll be able to help
Speaker 3: translate that to a lot of the training blocks. We
Speaker 3: do that much more and kind of put that domestic
Speaker 3: law enforcement spin on things, because I mean I've heard
Speaker 3: a lot of times before people compare like, hey, special operations,
Speaker 3: you know forces, you know, doing overseas operations versus domestic
Speaker 3: law enforcement. Is is comparing apples to oranges. But if
Speaker 3: you really want to break it down, there's a lot
Speaker 3: there's a whole lot of similarities as well. So one
Speaker 3: of the biggest onesdays, Okay, you have, like the military,
Speaker 3: you have your commanders intent, you have your rules of engagement.
Speaker 3: In domestic law enforcement, you have your you know, your
Speaker 3: chiefs intent, your sheriffs, your director, whatever organization you're working for.
Speaker 3: You have your use of force guidelines, the US rule
Speaker 3: of law. So you still have your left and right flanks.
Speaker 3: You have to operate in and again if I can,
Speaker 3: if I can, you know, continue to hopefully you know,
Speaker 3: help out you know, the you know, local, uh, state
Speaker 3: and federal law enforcement agencies and kind of really like
Speaker 3: you know, curtail even if they don't take exactly you know,
Speaker 3: how we're you know, some of the things we put
Speaker 3: out to them as far as different tactics, techniques and
Speaker 3: procedures for various operations. If I could just help put
Speaker 3: a little of a spin and more things for them
Speaker 3: and it fits within their department rate seats of policies
Speaker 3: or guidelines and saves one of their life, one of
Speaker 3: their buddies' lives, or an innocent civilians life. I mean,
Speaker 3: that is worth every second, you know, you know, I
Speaker 3: mean all the effort I'm putting into it. So again
Speaker 3: I have gotten you know, uh, you know, texts and
Speaker 3: phone calls from guys. You know, it's definitely at some
Speaker 3: point in time, I really need to do like a
Speaker 3: h a testimonials to get the up the website updated
Speaker 3: a little bit more. But guys hitting me up saying
Speaker 3: like dude, like some of the stuff you showed us
Speaker 3: literally saved our lives.
Speaker 2: This is what happened.
Speaker 3: So that's a good feeling you talk about like job
Speaker 3: satisfaction at that point. So again, yeah, hopefully if I
Speaker 3: can make you know, I can do that and really
Speaker 3: do something I enjoy and make a good, you know,
Speaker 3: good living for myself, you know, my family. That's you know,
Speaker 3: acting on the cake, but literally just receiving text messages
Speaker 3: or phone calls from from guys that's saying like, dude, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know I'm sitting here, Like one guy recently
Speaker 3: was he was involved in two separate shootings. I put
Speaker 3: through multiple courses and he like to hit me up,
Speaker 3: you know, two separate events about like you know, two
Speaker 3: years apart, and he hit me up, you know, saying
Speaker 3: as hey, I'm sitting here with my you know you know,
Speaker 3: you know young their two or three year old daughter,
Speaker 3: and like my wife is you know, X amount of
Speaker 3: months pregnant. He's like, I honestly don't know if I'd
Speaker 3: be sitting here right now if it wasn't for you
Speaker 3: and some of the stuff you put out.
Speaker 2: So so I just wanted to say thank you. So again,
Speaker 2: getting getting calls and texts like.
Speaker 3: That is like is it just I mean, it's it's
Speaker 3: worth every bit of the uh you know, the effort
Speaker 3: and the struggle sometimes being a small business owner you know,
Speaker 3: running it, you know running you know, you know post
Speaker 3: military life here.
Speaker 2: But again, you know, talk about just you know, always
Speaker 2: one of the lifelong lessons learned. Right now. I always
Speaker 2: like to break things down, like.
Speaker 3: They just said, the uh you know you know uh,
Speaker 3: you know, tactical, operational, and strategic, uh you know levels
Speaker 3: of things. Right now, I'm really concentrating more on the tactical,
Speaker 3: like the boots on the ground, the end user getting
Speaker 3: a little bit is like operational stuff when you have
Speaker 3: multiple you know units, you know, inner agencies you know,
Speaker 3: working together in a mutual aid capacity. But if you
Speaker 3: have when you want to start bringing are talking about
Speaker 3: the strategic level things those your policy makers and whether
Speaker 3: it be like you know, you know, state or federal
Speaker 3: you know, like you know, congressional your members helping get
Speaker 3: legislation you know across or even like you know, senior
Speaker 3: leaders from you know, your various various agencies. You know,
Speaker 3: like you're your chiefs, sheriffs, directors, you know, folks that
Speaker 3: are really like affecting policy and writing policy. So I
Speaker 3: would like to get to the point where I have
Speaker 3: enough experience across the board where I can really start
Speaker 3: hopefully affecting at the strategic level as well, and like
Speaker 3: really really helped kind of set some policies to where
Speaker 3: it would keep officers in the general public, you know,
Speaker 3: say that's really it's all it's all about. It's all
Speaker 3: about safety in the general public and safety for the
Speaker 3: for the officers doing the dangerous job trade.
Speaker 4: There's something you mentioned that I'd like to kind of
Speaker 4: key you off of.
Speaker 1: You talked about being a lifelong learner, and I'd love
Speaker 1: to ask, you know, someone who worked at your level today,
Speaker 1: what are you still learning about marksmanship? What are you
Speaker 1: still learning about reaching? What are you still learning about tactics?
Speaker 2: They're they always evolved.
Speaker 3: So when I teach in the teaching one of the
Speaker 3: UH one of the like the the CQB portions, I
Speaker 3: always talk about bangs used to like bangs, you know,
Speaker 3: distraction devices, the visionary devices.
Speaker 2: In the civilian the world, we.
Speaker 3: Would call them crashes in the military that I made
Speaker 3: the exact same things. A lot lot of times it's
Speaker 3: exact same manufacturer, depending on UH, which agency is buying
Speaker 3: from which which manufacturer.
Speaker 2: But again talk about just.
Speaker 3: You know, on O J T and always trying to
Speaker 3: like make the course you know, better with with various
Speaker 3: you know, various uh you know kind of critiques you know,
Speaker 3: you know, you know kind of you know, you know,
Speaker 3: aar points guys would come up with. And so I
Speaker 3: remember I was actually down at Houston teaching a course
Speaker 3: for a Region two of the Texas Tactical Police Officers Association.
Speaker 2: I do a lot of a lot of work with.
Speaker 2: And again, like it was interagency class.
Speaker 3: You know, he had guys that are like, you know,
Speaker 3: full time swat guys from major metropolitan area. And then
Speaker 3: you had guys that were, you know, you know, within
Speaker 3: like less than two years as a as a police officer,
Speaker 3: they got sent to instructor level of CQB Corps.
Speaker 2: So you have like huge training disparity.
Speaker 3: But so anyways, so when we're talking about implementing bangs,
Speaker 3: and there was like we were doing a deliberate style
Speaker 3: clearance and.
Speaker 2: Like one of the guy, a couple of guys, like
Speaker 2: one guy that was actually the one man in the doorway.
Speaker 3: Guys were getting a little frustration because the gears are grinding,
Speaker 3: not working together. For the first time, I think it
Speaker 3: was the first day when this happened. After we had
Speaker 3: it did like some classroom portions of things and really
Speaker 3: like the one guy you know on the number number
Speaker 3: one man was like, guys, what do you want me
Speaker 3: to do? You want me you know, you're gonna bang
Speaker 3: and want me to hold You want to banging clear deliberately.
Speaker 3: You want to be bang, you know, bang and take
Speaker 3: it dynamically. And I'm just like stop right there, you know,
Speaker 3: like I literally got on my phone. I'm like, I
Speaker 3: have to add that to the UH, you know, the
Speaker 3: the bang portion of the UH of the calls us
Speaker 3: you know, you know, the presentation doing the distraction and
Speaker 3: are utilizing the distraction devices. So and that's just one
Speaker 3: of like, you know, many many examples I could give
Speaker 3: of our far as just just listening to guys, you know,
Speaker 3: from from the domestic law enforcement standpoint, how they do
Speaker 3: things and how it's like, Okay, I can totally see that,
Speaker 3: Like maybe I should like more for a least at
Speaker 3: least cover that in different aspects. You know, it's always
Speaker 3: always you know, evolving and making making the curriculum better
Speaker 3: and better. And again, like I've I've told a lot
Speaker 3: of folks this as well. I'm of the mindset of
Speaker 3: everything I teach, everything I put out in a domestic
Speaker 3: law enforcement training course, I need to be able to
Speaker 3: prepare myself and be able to be accountable if things
Speaker 3: do not go right, even if the officers did everything
Speaker 3: correctly things if not they do not go right, I
Speaker 3: could get called to the carpet and get on the
Speaker 3: witness stand, and I have to justify why I, you know,
Speaker 3: put you know, the certain training objectives and the curriculum.
Speaker 2: Why I was covering that. That's why I'm so big.
Speaker 2: It was. It was a lot of work, you know,
Speaker 2: leading up to it.
Speaker 3: But a couple of years ago, the Texas State Legislator
Speaker 3: changed the kind of rules for some of the reporting
Speaker 3: requirements for training.
Speaker 2: Where before it said like if you if the.
Speaker 3: Course got audited, you had to provide a lesson plan
Speaker 3: with like the different training objectives and curriculum ahead of
Speaker 3: time and also the skills test. Then they changed it.
Speaker 3: I want to say it was September of twenty three
Speaker 3: they change it to where like you had to have
Speaker 3: one on file ahead of time. So again it was
Speaker 3: a lot of extra work for me, and I had,
Speaker 3: you know, work in between uh, the work trips, I
Speaker 3: was back here getting some family time in in North Carolina.
Speaker 3: But it really forced me to start making some of
Speaker 3: these you know Texas Commission on Law Enforcement template, uh,
Speaker 3: you know lesson plans where it's like at CQB surveillance shooting, you.
Speaker 2: Know, like a lot of night vision work I do
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: And so I've I've always passed those off and guys
Speaker 3: want them, you know, like the training coordinator will get
Speaker 3: a copy of it for the reporting standards.
Speaker 2: But there's even other states.
Speaker 3: So I kind of had sent that to guys and
Speaker 3: you know what I've done the course is through them,
Speaker 3: are with them and uh and they've actually been able
Speaker 3: to take it morph it to their state their state
Speaker 3: standards and like it was you know, it's like the
Speaker 3: lesson there they can make their own lesson plan on
Speaker 3: file at that point too.
Speaker 2: So that's that's definitely a benefit.
Speaker 3: And it just kind of has that that that that
Speaker 3: that little bit of extra extra backing to know that like, hey,
Speaker 3: a state governing body is you know at tracking and
Speaker 3: approved through a training coordinator at you that you are
Speaker 3: actually you know, you know, go in by the lesson
Speaker 3: plan and when I whenever I do, hope like it.
Speaker 3: You know, my test knocked out for my Texas Commission
Speaker 3: on Law Enforcement you know license, and I get commissioned
Speaker 3: with ALAN. One of the first courses I'm going to
Speaker 3: go to is the forty hour t COLE Texas Commission
Speaker 3: on Law Enforcement Instructor Training Block. So because after that,
Speaker 3: I'll be able to, like I think it's I have
Speaker 3: my own control number if i'm if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 3: and I can actually bottom line like lesson plans instead
Speaker 3: of always having to run through you know, like training
Speaker 3: coordinators for a certain department.
Speaker 2: So still a little bit more I got to figure
Speaker 2: out on that.
Speaker 3: As far as if I still have need to run
Speaker 3: through a department itself, I think that might be the case,
Speaker 3: but I just would be able to take a lot
Speaker 3: of work off, a lot of load off of the
Speaker 3: training coordinators having that qual in addition into my my
Speaker 3: t COLE, you know, like general Peace Officer's license.
Speaker 4: Trey, this has been a pretty wild ride, man. Thank
Speaker 4: you for sharing your story with us.
Speaker 1: And is there anything we haven't gotten to, anything I
Speaker 1: haven't asked that you'd really like to talk about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think we cover the majority of it.
Speaker 3: I mentioned the t t p o A, the Texas
Speaker 3: Tactical Police Office Association a lot I do. I do
Speaker 3: some stuff with the n t l A, the National
Speaker 3: Tactical Office Association, not as much, but I'm gonna be
Speaker 3: presenting their conference again this year when they're when I
Speaker 3: have it in the in the end of August and
Speaker 3: the DC area, so looking forward to that. I'll probably
Speaker 3: do it maybe like Onesies, twesdies courses of them. There's
Speaker 3: there's several other state a lot of law enforcement you know,
Speaker 3: nonprofit organizations that I hopefully get more of work with,
Speaker 3: like the H two A, the Heartland Tactical Office Association,
Speaker 3: the Kansas City area.
Speaker 2: That's another another one I've been working on hot heavy.
Speaker 2: I gotta gotta get some stuff excuse me, a schedule
Speaker 2: through them.
Speaker 3: So that and then I would like to talk just
Speaker 3: a little bit about you know, a nonprofit I'm I'm
Speaker 3: partner with and do a little Good foundation. They have
Speaker 3: the Dallas Fort Worth area, so I mean, even though
Speaker 3: they're based out of there, they kind of sponsored training
Speaker 3: and other stuff. I mean, if you you look on
Speaker 3: their website, just d a l G that already to
Speaker 3: do a Little Good Foundation, and you google that old
Speaker 3: the website will pop up. But now buddy, buddy of
Speaker 3: mine started that, you know, years ago, as you know,
Speaker 3: the founder and executive director, Russ Spears is his name,
Speaker 3: and he's just he's just one of the most phenomenal
Speaker 3: human beings that I've ever met in my entire life.
Speaker 2: He's a former Navy veteran himself.
Speaker 3: And then really he has several different several different aspects,
Speaker 3: you know, different like mission focuses where one is like
Speaker 3: you know, training domestic law enforcement. Two is kind of
Speaker 3: helping with you know, veteran entrepreneurship programs, and three it's
Speaker 3: like a knine like you know, like a you know,
Speaker 3: a service animal for kids that have you know, been
Speaker 3: like an abuse of homes and things like that. I
Speaker 3: know there's other stuff he's getting involved with as well.
Speaker 3: And again if you just go on their website and
Speaker 3: look and they just they just have some just from
Speaker 3: some phenomenal programs. So definitely wanted to want to get
Speaker 3: them some more of visibility here this evening as well.
Speaker 1: We'll have links down the description, and I think we
Speaker 1: also have a couple of viewer questions for you to Trey.
Speaker 5: Okay, this is from Corbin. How often did fitfull apply
Speaker 5: to c QB?
Speaker 2: Okay, fitful applies to all aspects of life? Tell you
Speaker 2: you know so, But now a lot of it is
Speaker 2: just I don't say, like.
Speaker 3: Hey, a quick decision like our basic tactic you know,
Speaker 3: executed quickly is usually better than an advanced tactic executed
Speaker 3: slowly or poorly. Though again, like you talk about just
Speaker 3: you know, playing pick up basketball, fill and flow, read
Speaker 3: and react, it all means the same thing. You have
Speaker 3: to have a lot of the figure out the fuck
Speaker 3: out mentalities you go. You still want to have your
Speaker 3: SOPs and you want abide by them, so you're not
Speaker 3: you know, breaking the rules. Like I talked about before,
Speaker 3: the definition of advanced tactics, just knowing the basics, knowing
Speaker 3: what it makes sense to break the rules, and then
Speaker 3: be able to articulate why you broke those rules, as
Speaker 3: all advanced tactics are.
Speaker 1: From CB. What's your opinion on the MP seven.
Speaker 5: I've heard comments from other Tier one guys that it's
Speaker 5: not liked and used as much at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it was not I had one for years.
Speaker 3: I carried it on a few ops, but there's just
Speaker 3: you heard horse stories from guys that if some guys
Speaker 3: had good success when they.
Speaker 2: Had to use it, other guys did not.
Speaker 3: And just the round itself, I think I think it
Speaker 3: could have been a little bit more up, you know, efficient,
Speaker 3: but like some of like the actual bullet designs you know,
Speaker 3: and ingrains would have been a little bit different.
Speaker 2: But again, like this, it's such a.
Speaker 3: Small market, like kind of talking with some of the
Speaker 3: ammunition manufacturers are like, you know, when we try to
Speaker 3: try to get additional, additional you know, rounds with the
Speaker 3: heavier grain bullets for that, just like guys man, there's
Speaker 3: only two units out there that's really using it. It's
Speaker 3: just it's not worth our time for we'd have to invest.
Speaker 3: So again, it was super lightweight, it was it was
Speaker 3: freaking so much fun to shoot. I'll give it that.
Speaker 3: But again, like I only carry it, you know a
Speaker 3: handful of times when when I was doing some of
Speaker 3: the Overwatch type missions where I had like a long
Speaker 3: gun on my back, I wanted to try to make,
Speaker 3: you know, be as light as I possibly could be. Again,
Speaker 3: it's just some guys liked it, but the majority guys
Speaker 3: just weren't super super you know, big fans of but
Speaker 3: so I think some better options now, even though it's
Speaker 3: a you know, the pistol caliber versions, but like the
Speaker 3: the MP X, I have one of those three sig
Speaker 3: love that thing, the the Nemo Arms mongoose that just
Speaker 3: came out and just got released. Good buddy of mine,
Speaker 3: we were at the Command for together for quite a bit.
Speaker 3: He works for Nemo Arms. So yeah, just haven't a
Speaker 3: chance to shoot that yet, but just feeling it, you know,
Speaker 3: hands on like I would. I would carry one of
Speaker 3: those before I carried an MP seven for sure overseas
Speaker 3: or even domestically.
Speaker 5: One more, what was your favorite rifle or gun while
Speaker 5: you were in the teams?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so my H and K four sixteen will always
Speaker 3: be near and dear to my heart, just because you know,
Speaker 3: never never let me down when I needed it do
Speaker 3: or it was hoping it did not let me down.
Speaker 2: I should say we got the noveskis.
Speaker 3: I think in twenty gosh, what year was it, twenty
Speaker 3: seventy I was still in our assault squadron, so got
Speaker 3: the Noveskies. Those were definitely you know, a good upgrade,
Speaker 3: but again really didn't you know, really didn't get a
Speaker 3: chance to deploy that much with it.
Speaker 2: Enjoyed the hell out of shooting it for sure.
Speaker 3: That phenomenal guns like some of the other awesome you
Speaker 3: know American manufacturer you know AR companies, AR manufacturer companies
Speaker 3: are but I'd say, yeah, just the H and K
Speaker 3: four sixteen will always be near and dear to my heart,
Speaker 3: just because it was. It was the workhorse for the UH,
Speaker 3: for the tiers, for the Tier one organizations for many
Speaker 3: years during the height of the gquat.
Speaker 4: That's it for questions. Try one more time. Let folks
Speaker 4: out there know where they can find you, where they
Speaker 4: can find your company.
Speaker 3: Okay, absolutely, Yeah, So it's my website is uh three
Speaker 3: G Strategic Consultants dot com. This is exactly how it's
Speaker 3: listening spelled out. Also on Facebook, I do some stuff
Speaker 3: work related on there, but yeah, you just look at
Speaker 3: my name, Trey Lindsay, you know, should be able to
Speaker 3: send me a free request for Instagram.
Speaker 2: I have Galloglass three G.
Speaker 3: It has my company logo on there as well, so
Speaker 3: I do a lot of like, uh, you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of work work related obviously to the three G
Speaker 3: company on there. Also have a TSG Blade. You should
Speaker 3: be able to look that up on Instagram, but I
Speaker 3: haven't posted a whole lot. I'm waiting for our website
Speaker 3: to go live before we do kind of our official
Speaker 3: online launch, and then also for for Instagram v t
Speaker 3: L three. That's uh, you know, that's just my personal
Speaker 3: one of the walls I usually tag. If I'm sending
Speaker 3: a post on one, I'll tag the other one so
Speaker 3: guys will be able to pick up on that. And
Speaker 3: also guys are interested in getting swag. It's out of
Speaker 3: the Dallas, Texas area, my swag company just you know,
Speaker 3: on the website three G Merch just you know, it's
Speaker 3: how it's spilled out, like three G then M E
Speaker 3: r c H dot com. It should pop up all
Speaker 3: the different you know, various various you know hats, you know,
Speaker 3: t shirts. Just got some hoodies in as well, got
Speaker 3: a like, you know, like little like you know, kind
Speaker 3: of yetti style you know, koozy cups, and have a
Speaker 3: have a platform of other things we're gonna be.
Speaker 2: Adding as well. So again, yeah, just if guys are
Speaker 2: interested in that, just three G merch dot com.
Speaker 5: Awesome, Hey Trey, if you want, you can send us
Speaker 5: all those links and they will be in the description
Speaker 5: of this video in the show notes. So if you
Speaker 5: guys want to follow Trey or any or get some merch,
Speaker 5: check out the Knives anything.
Speaker 1: The links are in the description.
Speaker 2: Got it, Yeah, say so?
Speaker 3: The on the on the Knife website, it's gonna be
Speaker 3: We already owned the doname. It's gonna be TSG blades
Speaker 3: dot com. It's just not live yet. We're having our
Speaker 3: web designer do the do the final kind of a
Speaker 3: you know, e commerce, you know.
Speaker 2: All the stuff. He's gotta do it. But definitely sorry.
Speaker 2: TSG Blades on Instagram.
Speaker 3: You'll be able to follow me there, and then TSG
Speaker 3: Blades you know dot com will hopefully be live within
Speaker 3: the next week or two and we'll be able to
Speaker 3: start taking orders online.
Speaker 1: Awesome, man, Well, Trey, thank you for doing this interview
Speaker 1: and spending some time with us this evening. Really appreciate it. Man.
Speaker 2: Oh likewise, brother, I appreciate y'all have me on.
Speaker 3: Like like I mentioned before, we gotta we gotta start
Speaker 3: hanging out more than once a year.
Speaker 2: Work like that.
Speaker 1: You're You're welcome up here anytime, man, and come smoke
Speaker 1: cigars together.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, like J Man's
Speaker 2: actually coming down here in a uh in in June.
Speaker 4: For a bit, you know, Okay, yeah, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 3: Saying, just just going out there and you can get
Speaker 3: a little, you know, get away for a quick, little
Speaker 3: bros trip. He's coming on Thursday evening. We're gonna be
Speaker 3: doing some shooting and uh hanging out on that Friday.
Speaker 3: Then he's leaving Saturday morning first thing.
Speaker 2: So just out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I might have to work that in
Speaker 1: there sometime this year. Yeah, thanks again, Frey, and uh
Speaker 1: for everyone else out there, We'll see you again next time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. And hey, don't forget to check
Speaker 1: out the Patreon. There's links to in the description as always,
Speaker 1: so we'll see you guys next time.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to
Speaker 1: you for a moment about how you can support the show.
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Speaker 2: Thank you,