Speaker 1: The Team House with your hosts Jack Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 1: Welcome to episode two hundred and one of the Team House.
Speaker 1: I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park and our guest
Speaker 1: on tonight's show is Dustin Ward. Dustin served in the
Speaker 1: infantry as a sniper and in the long range for
Speaker 1: conaissance teams, and then went over to the Ranger Regiment
Speaker 1: and served as a platoon sergeant in the battalion Wreckie section,
Speaker 1: amongst other positions that you had over there. Dustin, thank
Speaker 1: you for coming out here to Godless New York City.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for invite fly it up here. Man, it's awesome
Speaker 1: to have you here in person.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: So, look, we're going to start at the beginning, So
Speaker 1: tell us about, you know, kind of like how you
Speaker 1: grew up in sort of like what it was to
Speaker 1: sort of like directed towards the military.
Speaker 2: What's your origin story this story? Yeah, so I was
Speaker 2: born to a military family. My dad was in the
Speaker 2: Air Force over twenty two years. My mom was a
Speaker 2: typical stay at home mom, military spouse. I have one brother,
Speaker 2: as we always five years younger, moved around a lot.
Speaker 2: It was born in Mississippi, and then we pretty much
Speaker 2: ended up North Dakota for the majority of my life.
Speaker 2: My dad worked on B fifty two's, so mine in
Speaker 2: North Dakota a great place I got a chance to go.
Speaker 2: Towards the end of that, moved down to Texas and
Speaker 2: that's where I graduated high school and joined the army
Speaker 2: and stuff. But you know, growing up, I said, I
Speaker 2: had an awesome household. My dad was gone a lot
Speaker 2: tdy taking care of the family. My mom took care
Speaker 2: of us at home, and I just had this outdoorsman
Speaker 2: military mentality growing up, like I wanted to. I was
Speaker 2: always one of my dad's BDUs. We're outside playing set
Speaker 2: up hide and seek. We called a man hunt, yeah,
Speaker 2: make it more manly. But anytime I went back to
Speaker 2: my grandparents' house in Missouri, I was out in the woods.
Speaker 2: You know, I probably I've probably been shooting guns. I was,
Speaker 2: you know, six years old, shooting twenty two's and you know,
Speaker 2: hunting squirrels, hunting ear I always knew I was going
Speaker 2: to join the military. I think one of my favorite
Speaker 2: movies still to this day is domin As. It is
Speaker 2: is uh the Rock. It's a great movie. It's a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. It's a it's a good movie. And
Speaker 2: I just remember having like a little play MP five
Speaker 2: and I had this somewhere, this little battery charger for
Speaker 2: a game boy that had a cord and I'd put
Speaker 2: in my ear like as an earpiece. My dad freaking
Speaker 2: out shocked myself this battery charger. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I always had this, uh, this war mentality. I think
Speaker 2: every able body mail should serve their country in some aspect,
Speaker 2: and that's the route I took. I did initially join
Speaker 2: the Air Force after high school. I was in the
Speaker 2: Depth program. I was gonna pass all the prerecs. I
Speaker 2: was gonna be a PJ. But they told me, hey,
Speaker 2: we'll call you within six months to leave for Basic.
Speaker 2: And I was like, no, man, I quit my job yesterday.
Speaker 2: So I took a year off after high school just
Speaker 2: kind of enjoy after high school life. And they're like, well,
Speaker 2: that's not gonna happen because there's only so many pipelines
Speaker 2: a year, and you have to hit the pipeline at
Speaker 2: a certain time or go to Basic at a certain time,
Speaker 2: something like that. So I watched across the hall the
Speaker 2: Army recruiter and walked in. There's this big cardboard cut
Speaker 2: out of a green beret standing there, and he's like,
Speaker 2: what do you want to do? I was like, jump
Speaker 2: out of planes and shoot people. Man, how do I
Speaker 2: do that? And showed me the old cliche, you know,
Speaker 2: ranger recruiter view guy coming up out of the swamp.
Speaker 2: He's actually, it's actually my friend.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I know, it's kind of funny we have that. Well,
Speaker 2: we have the documentary VH. His name is Mike Connor.
Speaker 2: But show me that and, like I said, cliche put
Speaker 2: his arm around me. It was like, that could be you.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was like you're right. I was like yeah,
Speaker 2: I was like that could be me. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I signed here you leaving two weeks and here's twenty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. I was like, sweet, you got an enlistening
Speaker 2: bonus for that. Yeah, that's fantastic. What what year was this? Five? Okay?
Speaker 3: So the world was already kind of on fire in
Speaker 3: terms of like military and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And I remember I remember the war kicked off and
Speaker 2: O three not Afghan War obviously, but the Iraq War
Speaker 2: and my buddy and I know at the time, I
Speaker 2: think its aol. I am you know, aim. So they're
Speaker 2: message each other like, oh my god, when you hurry up,
Speaker 2: the war's gonna be over by the time we get
Speaker 2: out of high school, like won behold twenty years later,
Speaker 2: still going on, so plenty of time to enjoy the war.
Speaker 2: But uh, yeah, they gave me a bonus. It was
Speaker 2: a Special Forces intent bonus, just the intent didn't actually
Speaker 2: have to go. Oh really yeah, joined five January oh five.
Speaker 2: Now did they have an X ray program at that time?
Speaker 2: They did? I was an eleven X ray okay, dodge
Speaker 2: that bullet in eleven extra.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went in eleven X ray too. I meant
Speaker 3: an eighteen X ray though.
Speaker 2: Could you go, could you uh see dodge that bullet?
Speaker 1: What does Less say about all this?
Speaker 2: Less awesome guy?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: That's why I'm here because Less he told me to
Speaker 2: give a shout out, So I'll give a shout out Less.
Speaker 2: But yeah, did not become an eleven Charlie came love
Speaker 2: in Bravo. I don't know if eighteen X ray program
Speaker 2: was a thing. Yeah, I think it was around by
Speaker 2: that was it? So I went to I went to
Speaker 2: s AS and oh seven, and there's some eighteen X
Speaker 2: rays there, So it might. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now so for people who are watching don't know, uh
Speaker 3: in you know, in the military jobs the moss the
Speaker 3: eleven series is the infantry series, and uh the Charlie
Speaker 3: Well Bravo is riflemen, Charlie is mortarman. They also used
Speaker 3: to have eleven mics, which was motorized.
Speaker 2: That was still a thing. But when you go in X,
Speaker 2: you're gambling, you're rolling the dice.
Speaker 1: I think I think all of us were eleven X ray.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can go in specifically for oh
Speaker 1: you can. I don't think you can know.
Speaker 2: Now did you know you were rolling the dice? No?
Speaker 2: I did not. Yeah, they did not explain that at maps.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so uh so you you go to basic,
Speaker 3: do all that and then where where do you go
Speaker 3: from from there?
Speaker 2: So graduated based training. In May five eleven, Bravo went
Speaker 2: to Fort Lewis, Washington, kind of my basic training cohort
Speaker 2: at that time. There's a unit standing up in Fort
Speaker 2: Lewis called a Second Cavalry Regiment two c R. They
Speaker 2: just moved up there from four Polk I think, but
Speaker 2: they're staying there. Ended up. So we were the first
Speaker 2: lower enlisted guys there besides, you know, senior leadership. We
Speaker 2: showed up. The first question they asked was, hey, out
Speaker 2: of all you, who qualified expert in basic training? Kind
Speaker 2: of raised my hand like sniper section. I was like, hell, yes,
Speaker 2: that worked out. Yea. And the funny backstory with that is,
Speaker 2: you know, my mom would tell a story and she'll
Speaker 2: laugh about it. But I was probably in fifth or
Speaker 2: sixth grade. We're like a family reunion down in Missouri somewhere,
Speaker 2: and one of my relatives asked me when I want
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do when I grew up, and
Speaker 2: I said something about being an assassin, and my mom
Speaker 2: looked at me and looked at my relatives like dusting,
Speaker 2: shut up, do not say that. I was like sorry,
Speaker 2: But when I went to sniper section, I called my mom.
Speaker 2: I said, I was like, guess what.
Speaker 1: I made the same mistake when my my high school
Speaker 1: guidance councilor asked me what I wanted to do with
Speaker 1: my wife, and I said, I want to join the
Speaker 1: film and be a sniper. This very nice woman. We'll
Speaker 1: follow your dreams.
Speaker 3: I mean, if we're all gonna embarrass ourselves, Like when
Speaker 3: I went to the Army recruiter and asked them about
Speaker 3: special Forces.
Speaker 2: I asked them if there was a knife guy. I
Speaker 2: wanted to be the knife guy.
Speaker 1: The knife throw EXTP.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because you know, because I thought there was
Speaker 3: a demo guy, there was a gun guy there.
Speaker 1: That's what G I. Joe led us to believe.
Speaker 2: That is where G.
Speaker 3: I Joe in the eighteen is where I got my
Speaker 3: knowledge on a special forces nice.
Speaker 1: So you became an assassin for the army.
Speaker 2: Came in an assassin for the army. I did that
Speaker 2: from five to eight in that timeframe. I did a
Speaker 2: well that you and I was then reflagged to second
Speaker 2: Mstry Division and then we deployed to Iraq for fifteen
Speaker 2: months during the surge and we spent three months in
Speaker 2: uh Baghdad. That was about three months in Baghdad and
Speaker 2: then went and ripped out with a new unit or
Speaker 2: you know, replacement and U Bakuba or Bakuba everyone to
Speaker 2: say it and Fiber war Horse. We spent the rest
Speaker 2: of deployment there and that was that was a wild
Speaker 2: West was now out of curiosity.
Speaker 3: You know, you were one of the first guys to
Speaker 3: show up to the sniper session this newly formed unit.
Speaker 3: Did they send you to the Army Sniper School like immediately.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't go until it's like March of O six.
Speaker 3: And then did they have anybody with experience come on
Speaker 3: to be like the.
Speaker 2: We all went together, so there was team leader and
Speaker 2: all shooters went to sniper school together.
Speaker 3: So one of the one of the challenges with snipers
Speaker 3: sometimes is having somebody who can teach young officers how
Speaker 3: to properly employ snipers. Right, U, how did you guys
Speaker 3: manage that, especially for your first deployment.
Speaker 2: Uh? So they had this course at the time called
Speaker 2: the Sniper Employment Officer Course, and I can't remember if
Speaker 2: our PO went to it or not, but I mean
Speaker 2: he was all about letting us do our thing, and
Speaker 2: he didn't micro manage us at all. He's like, hey,
Speaker 2: whatever ranges you want, whatever shooting you have to do,
Speaker 2: you know, you guys, go do that and just be
Speaker 2: proficient at your task. And we got we got the
Speaker 2: M one on seven barretts. We got those, and they
Speaker 2: held a course kind of locally on Fort Lewis for
Speaker 2: that just to kind of break them in and get
Speaker 2: to know the weapons system. So he came to that too,
Speaker 2: kind of learned, learned, the job a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, the Squalader had at the time one of
Speaker 2: my favorite squalders over had. I look up to him
Speaker 2: to this day and kind of based my leadership skills
Speaker 2: off him. He was he had the ESF mentality of
Speaker 2: everyone needs to know everybody's job and you know, just
Speaker 2: kind of spread the knowledge. And he he was prior service,
Speaker 2: got out, came back in, so he had some experience
Speaker 2: already done a couple of deployments, but he was he
Speaker 2: let's do a thing that was good.
Speaker 1: So what was the mission up at Bakuba?
Speaker 2: So it's funny. Uh, we were at Bagdad. Uh. You know,
Speaker 2: Jaysack was obviously operating in Iraq and they were doing
Speaker 2: the at the time, the thing we called them tst
Speaker 2: missions and times since some target missions and they would
Speaker 2: get a lock in a guy and launch. Well, there
Speaker 2: were so many targets. They didn't have enough personnelity to
Speaker 2: get all these targets. So they came down and trained
Speaker 2: us how to do it. The Sniper Platoon or sniper Team,
Speaker 2: Battalion Snipers and Battalion Recky Platoon which I was in
Speaker 2: Snipers a part of Battalion Recky in the big Army
Speaker 2: trained us how to do it and how to use
Speaker 2: the assets and everything. So we tagged along in that mission.
Speaker 2: We were sharing targets with them, which was probably one
Speaker 2: of the better ways to spend fifteen months, sure, because
Speaker 2: the rest of the line companies, they were out and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, a little outpost in the middle of the
Speaker 2: city just burning pooping a barrel. You know, it felt
Speaker 2: so bad for those guys because we just got ahead
Speaker 2: of target, come back and go to sleep. Yeah, like,
Speaker 2: but that's that was our target set or mission set.
Speaker 2: What we did for fifteen months, go out almost every night,
Speaker 2: and we did you know, it varied from based off
Speaker 2: the target and based off what happened when we got
Speaker 2: to the target, you know, doing silent entries and silent
Speaker 2: clears and waking them up in their sleep and like
Speaker 2: taking their guns from them while they're sleeping. Would you
Speaker 2: like taking their guns from the whi they're sleeping and
Speaker 2: then waking them up like hey, sorry, we're here, yeah,
Speaker 2: or be a you know, court on and call out,
Speaker 2: just depends on the situation. In about what year was this,
Speaker 2: That was seven oh eight.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so people had kind of moved beyond the
Speaker 3: explosive breaching when they could do somethingthing else generally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we didn't do any explosive breaching. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: didn't have that capability in the big armor. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: think the most explosive breaching we did we'd drive a
Speaker 2: striker through the gate. Yeah. Yeah. It worked.
Speaker 1: So they kept you guys pretty busy, and I mean
Speaker 1: that was a busy time in a rack to begin with.
Speaker 2: Like I said, Baka was the wild West. When we
Speaker 2: showed up the sister unit we're replacing from thurber Gate
Speaker 2: to Day, we're fourth GD to Ida. They were thurber
Speaker 2: Gade to I D. And I think they had like
Speaker 2: twelve working strikers at the time when we showed up
Speaker 2: because they were just getting blown up. There was like
Speaker 2: seventy six acts a week when we got there, and
Speaker 2: then after us for after us being there for I
Speaker 2: don't know, three or four weeks, it dropped to like
Speaker 2: twelve sigacts a week, and we put a hurting and
Speaker 2: hurting on them so bad. I mean, the biggest ID
Speaker 2: is going off maybe pop it around the striker, and
Speaker 2: there was some suicide bombers that hit us, hit personnel,
Speaker 2: But as far as like view id's they weren't doing much.
Speaker 3: What did you guys do to change the tempo?
Speaker 2: A strict curfew and then every military age male got
Speaker 2: pretty much rounded up and then put in the bat
Speaker 2: hide system. So biometrics rounded them all up, put them
Speaker 2: in bat hide system, and then strict curfew.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: I won't say any names, but uh, I mean like
Speaker 2: an I d would go off somewhere and this wasn't
Speaker 2: my directing is another company, but I remember Ide would
Speaker 2: go off and if he saw a dude on a
Speaker 2: phone anywhere near that, he could just shoot him. And
Speaker 2: they learned like they don't mess around. These guys aren't
Speaker 2: playing and the bag Dad was a nose hot at
Speaker 2: the time too. Before we went to Bakama, we were
Speaker 2: responsible for putting in all the t walls. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you guys remember that all the t walls
Speaker 2: through Baghdad door sector, which was there's a lot of
Speaker 2: infighting between Soni and Shia. They were just murdering each
Speaker 2: other left and right and things like our second or
Speaker 2: third week during right seat rides. For the entire deployment.
Speaker 2: I mean, we just pulled up and there's like five
Speaker 2: d's hog tied and executed outside the road, like what
Speaker 2: the heck is going on? And you bang on the
Speaker 2: door like, hey, what's up with the bodies in the road,
Speaker 2: like what bodies? Yeah, this is gonna be huh. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it was. It was hot. Yeah, it's a good time.
Speaker 3: So what were what were your when you weren't working
Speaker 3: for you know, doing the TSTs. What was sort of
Speaker 3: the conventional armies? Were you guys doing a lot of
Speaker 3: presidence patrols? Was there a lot of Were there a
Speaker 3: lot of targets.
Speaker 2: That they they did just clearar and zops. So it
Speaker 2: was almost like a it's just a vicious, endless cycle.
Speaker 2: You start in this sector and start working your way
Speaker 2: around the city and by the time you go back
Speaker 2: here starting all over again because all the guys he
Speaker 2: pushed out of here are down here now, you know.
Speaker 2: So they just just kept doing that. We did a
Speaker 2: lot of palm grove clearing, Yeah, just online walking through
Speaker 2: the palm groves and one hundred and twenty degree heat,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to find cashing these yeah, ID so
Speaker 2: you find a lot. Yeah, we did. Yeah, I remember distinctly.
Speaker 2: One time it got handed over to us. We didn't
Speaker 2: find it specifically we went out and took it over
Speaker 2: because I think the people that found it, uh detained
Speaker 2: the personnel and then left with them, and then we
Speaker 2: took over the site. But I mean there was over
Speaker 2: five hundred anti tank mines double stacked like in rows,
Speaker 2: like almost in a like a farmer's field. They're just
Speaker 2: lined up, you know, like five or six fifty five
Speaker 2: gallon drums filled with initiators and timers and yeah, how
Speaker 2: many uh like two hundred and five gallon drugs and
Speaker 2: nitric acid. There's a suburban rigged with a VB I
Speaker 2: D like ready to go. I mean the funny thing
Speaker 2: is after we gathered all that and bipped it and whatever,
Speaker 2: the EOD guy he's like, yeah, we probably knocked this
Speaker 2: cell out for like two weeks. Oh wait, that's it.
Speaker 2: Two weeks like all that for two weeks. It was crazy. Man.
Speaker 1: You guys demo it insighte EOD did.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Did you now being in like the sniper was it
Speaker 3: a section or.
Speaker 2: A platoon we had It was just a section eighteen,
Speaker 2: a squad in the recky platoon.
Speaker 3: Okay, so so you were you fell under Rekie then,
Speaker 3: so how did you guys operate in that environment.
Speaker 2: Were there a lot of sniper specific missions.
Speaker 3: Were you working with Wrecky a lot, or were you
Speaker 3: just kind of folded in to.
Speaker 2: The folded in We didn't fold in with the line units.
Speaker 2: We did our own thing with the TST missions with
Speaker 2: Wrecky pretty much overwatch as the Wrecky platoon was hitting
Speaker 2: a compound or if a if a line company was
Speaker 2: doing like a med cap, we would go out there
Speaker 2: and do overwatch while they're doing like ad med cap,
Speaker 2: or hand out soccer balls at a school. We'd pull
Speaker 2: over watch while they're doing that. Platoon leadership changed out
Speaker 2: through deployment and we had one one p L that
Speaker 2: he was He was an EXSF guy, enlisted SF guys,
Speaker 2: but he he was all about us doing what snipers do.
Speaker 2: And he's like, hey, I don't care where you guys go,
Speaker 2: what you do, as long as you follow are we
Speaker 2: give me attention to grid and have a radio. So
Speaker 2: we would trunch off into the hinter lands with three
Speaker 2: or four guys in radio. That's fantastic, I mean just
Speaker 2: for guys place nineties. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: And the reason I said fantastic people are not like
Speaker 3: and especially conventional, But in any unit there there's really
Speaker 3: a lot of there are a lot of rules, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of control. There's not a lot of freedom
Speaker 3: for you guys to do. But if you guys kind
Speaker 3: of do your own missions.
Speaker 1: A lot of younger pls don't understand how to utilize
Speaker 1: any sort of like special unit or the special team,
Speaker 1: be it mortar snipers or connaissance. You know.
Speaker 2: So it's so they don't not to bash new pls,
Speaker 2: but don't understand.
Speaker 1: They don't want to.
Speaker 2: They don't want to get in trouble. Yeah, they don't
Speaker 2: want to get in trouble either. They don't want to
Speaker 2: overstep right right, But that mission, I wouldn't say mission,
Speaker 2: but letting us go out in three or four guys
Speaker 2: do our own thing was you know, we're sitting in
Speaker 2: this house one one day and just an example, since
Speaker 2: I was over watching this river and this bridge and
Speaker 2: just waiting for something to happen. But unbeknown to us,
Speaker 2: there was a big army I think it's first Calve
Speaker 2: or something like that, whatever, the big army it is
Speaker 2: with a horse and the slash calf calf. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: were doing this big clearing operation through the pong whirs
Speaker 2: that we were in then they didn't know we were there,
Speaker 2: and they we saw them coming, we could hear them coming,
Speaker 2: and they ended up hitting the house that we were
Speaker 2: up in. Oh shit. We're yelling down the stairs like
Speaker 2: hey Eagle, yeah you know, and I remember this first tuner.
Speaker 2: He kind of like stopped in like, this is my house.
Speaker 2: Why aren't you wearing your control? Yeah, pretty much what
Speaker 2: it seemed like. But uh, he's like, who you guys.
Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, we're sniper section with this unit. And
Speaker 2: he's like, okay, what are you guys doing? And we
Speaker 2: kind of told him and it was towards the end
Speaker 2: of our mission time one day. Anyways, we're getting read
Speaker 2: to X Phil and uh, We're like, hey, you're going
Speaker 2: the direction we're going, right? He was like yeah. I
Speaker 2: was like, do you mind if we X filled with
Speaker 2: you guys? He's like a man, go ahead, thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like middle of the day.
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Speaker 1: So Dustin, you're after this deployment, you at that point
Speaker 1: you went over to worse.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, towards the tail end of that deployment, the
Speaker 2: first aren't came over and said they're standing up a
Speaker 2: core long range surveillance unit at Fort Lewis, And if
Speaker 2: anybody was interested in going and kind of a military
Speaker 2: history buff, like even when as a kid, I had
Speaker 2: like flashcards of you know, Fokker airplanes from the little
Speaker 2: World War two and everything, big military buff, so I
Speaker 2: knew what LURSE was based off Vietnam LARPs books and everything.
Speaker 2: So I raise my hand. I raised my hand and
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, I'm interested because I always wanted
Speaker 2: to go do something special and I looked at it
Speaker 2: as like the next step of the ladder. I wanted
Speaker 2: to do it right, and my eyes right was working
Speaker 2: your way up. I've been ounce for me. You just
Speaker 2: go to selection or just joined as an eighteen X ray.
Speaker 2: But uh, yes, I went to that. Uh October eight,
Speaker 2: it's when I went to LURSE like tryouts, and it
Speaker 2: was it wasn't eything crazy, just road march test, swim test,
Speaker 2: stuff like that land aff. And then yeah, I went
Speaker 2: there October eight. Then January nine, I mean went straight
Speaker 2: to pre rangury rengder school everyone, school and everything, and
Speaker 2: then deployed that next summer at O nine, I was
Speaker 2: only home for like a year, went for another year
Speaker 2: or two.
Speaker 3: Right now, can you tell us the difference between how
Speaker 3: a Rekie unit a Rocky element might be used in
Speaker 3: a LURT unit.
Speaker 2: Is there a functional difference between them compared.
Speaker 3: To the WRECKI like the reck the you know, you
Speaker 3: went from snipers, you know, kind of under a WRECKI
Speaker 3: to LURST.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So a LURSE reconnaissance detachment operates at a
Speaker 2: company level by itself. The LURS company operates at anattalion level,
Speaker 2: So at a platoon detachment level, we're doing MDMP instead
Speaker 2: of TLPs. Right, so we're mission planning at a battalion
Speaker 2: level for a six man operation warribletoon operation versus a
Speaker 2: big army regulable tune just doing TPS like a ranger school,
Speaker 2: and our reporting criterion and c ci R is going
Speaker 2: much higher than a big Army battalion wrecky is going
Speaker 2: to a brigade battlefields of ans brigade, which then reports
Speaker 2: to the core and can really shape strategically I wouldn't
Speaker 2: say strategically, but theater, right, instead of tackling strategically the ins.
Speaker 1: The and in the the worse units are interesting in
Speaker 1: that they really are other than maybe r r C,
Speaker 1: the closest to the Vietnam WORP teams six man teams
Speaker 1: going out And Uh, if you'll pardon my little digression,
Speaker 1: my little, my little rant I have and I'd be
Speaker 1: interested to hear your opinion, Dustin. Uh, the Army keeps
Speaker 1: disbanding worse units and then restanding them up. And how
Speaker 1: many times we've seen them do that just during the
Speaker 1: GWAT era. Well you kind of lived through some of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's what's your feelings about how we keep
Speaker 1: a sea song between this and and really the capabilities
Speaker 1: of worse and what you guys bring to the table
Speaker 1: as opposed to all the drones and the the SGANT
Speaker 1: and immint and all these other technological capabilities that have
Speaker 1: been great for the military. But is there still a
Speaker 1: relevancy to that six man team on the ground.
Speaker 2: In my personal opinion professional opinion, there will always be
Speaker 2: irrelevance for boots on the ground. Intelligence. Yes, you know,
Speaker 2: emmint and drones and singing and all that is great.
Speaker 2: Technology is awesome. The stuff we do with technology is
Speaker 2: mind blowing. But can a drone see through the clouds.
Speaker 1: Bad weather? Yeah, bada inside a building?
Speaker 2: Can those vehicles drive through a muddy road? You know?
Speaker 2: Can six guys walk through that muddy road? Yeah? Can
Speaker 2: six guys sit in a hide sight for four to
Speaker 2: five days at a time and watch them objective of
Speaker 2: you know, the entire time persistently? Yeah? Can a drone
Speaker 2: do that? Now it has to go refuel, it's got
Speaker 2: to bring up another drone and hopefully have a good
Speaker 2: handoff on emmett or seeing it, and then no bad
Speaker 2: weather can force them out too. I would say that
Speaker 2: the limiting factor for you know, six guys on the
Speaker 2: ground is depending on who the commander is. Just metavact.
Speaker 2: You know, bad weather obviously affects meta fact is that
Speaker 2: saying that nothing is south US military, Well, that's false
Speaker 2: lightning within fivele stop it every time, right, Yeah, the
Speaker 2: whole disbanding and restanding up and just they just need
Speaker 2: to stand them up and keep them. They're still National
Speaker 2: Guard lurcingits. I think there's one in Indiana, maybe one
Speaker 2: in California. I don't know where they're all at, but
Speaker 2: they need to stand them up and they need to
Speaker 2: move them underneath special operations. Honestly, if you look at
Speaker 2: all the other armies in the world, their pathfinder units,
Speaker 2: their loss units or special operations rights, why are we
Speaker 2: the only ones that don't have those guys with special operations.
Speaker 2: It's a special task and they go to special schools
Speaker 2: to learn how to do that, and they're you know,
Speaker 2: being asked to do extraordinary missions.
Speaker 3: Well, and it's funny and sad. Funny sad there's probably
Speaker 3: a German word for that. But but that that at
Speaker 3: the same time, the conventional army is saying these lourse
Speaker 3: units whatever like there there are other things that we
Speaker 3: can use to replace them. You have r r D,
Speaker 3: the Ranger Rekie Detachment getting bigger and becoming a national
Speaker 3: level asset where it's not it doesn't even have anything
Speaker 3: much to do with like it's not a regimental level laymore.
Speaker 3: It's a national level asset now because we're like, oh, ship,
Speaker 3: this is really good stuff, you know, and meanwhile they're like, oh, lurship.
Speaker 1: But when when you went over to Worse, did you
Speaker 1: as far as like the special train, did your team
Speaker 1: get to go to Arslic or any of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much everybody went to Arsic. We did send
Speaker 2: the first shot of guys going to Ranger School. I
Speaker 2: mean I think we sent twelve to sixteen guys at
Speaker 2: one time. It's unheard of. Yeah, to Rector School from
Speaker 2: one company, you know, touring school one time, you know,
Speaker 2: half past half recycled or whatever. And then while we're there,
Speaker 2: the rest of the guys went to ARSIC. And then
Speaker 2: after that first push, everybody just kind of trickled into
Speaker 2: D school on Arsenic.
Speaker 1: Could could you tell that the squares out there who
Speaker 1: don't know the benefit of ARSLIC what that course is
Speaker 1: and what what you were in there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, ARSLIC is the Reconstance Surveillance leadership school or leadership course.
Speaker 2: It's called something else now, I believe because it falls
Speaker 2: under a cave in it now.
Speaker 1: Really well, I thought it was like a trashoc unit
Speaker 1: attached to RENDER school.
Speaker 2: It's they transitioned because Fort Knock shut down, moved all
Speaker 2: the armor to Fort Benning. Oh so now Fort Benning
Speaker 2: is the maneuver center of excellence. Wow, so it's now
Speaker 2: part of the calve schools. I think. Don't quote me
Speaker 2: on that, it's just what I remember, what I think
Speaker 2: I've heard. Yeah, the arsenal course is awesome course. It
Speaker 2: teaches you how to operate in a six man element,
Speaker 2: teaches you how to do the MDMP process not TLPs communications,
Speaker 2: and then all your optics and observing equipment and teach
Speaker 2: how to do that, and how to build a hide
Speaker 2: site and sit there and watch a target for you know,
Speaker 2: four to five days at a time, and then how
Speaker 2: to possibly break contact as a six man element, how
Speaker 2: to land now as a six man element, just everything
Speaker 2: that can you.
Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit about the difference between t
Speaker 3: is the troop leading procedures and the m d m P,
Speaker 3: Like why is that, what's the difference in that and
Speaker 3: why does.
Speaker 2: It meaning for troop leading procedures, Internet shows company level below.
Speaker 2: That's for smaller unit operations. It's faster, it doesn't take
Speaker 2: as much planning. When you get to m D m
Speaker 2: P it's battalion echelon planning. So now you're looking at
Speaker 2: all the back like major backside support that goes along
Speaker 2: with an operation. It just takes a long time to
Speaker 2: plan that.
Speaker 3: Can I say something really sarcastic for a second, just
Speaker 3: I wanted to say that, you know, they got rid
Speaker 3: of lurse units because they don't need them, they can't
Speaker 3: afford them. But there was enough there weren't enough officers
Speaker 3: that they wouldn't fire enough general you know, general level
Speaker 3: officers to rename the arslick to something, you know, to
Speaker 3: get their get their bennies because we don't let to
Speaker 3: go general losters anymore.
Speaker 1: Or yeah admirals and yeah, yeah, uh so second round
Speaker 1: interrack with worse. What was the issue this time around?
Speaker 2: So we were on the Iranian border and the Hawasam
Speaker 2: Marshes kind of near Basara. Oh wow, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: our cob we're at a cob, not a fob. It
Speaker 2: was a cob adder. I believe it was called and uh,
Speaker 2: we would go out to the Iranian border for two
Speaker 2: weeks at a time, legit, living in a patrol base.
Speaker 2: We're at a border fort, so they were ackis in
Speaker 2: Iranians they have a border fort system. So along the
Speaker 2: entire border there's these forts and it's it's legit. Like
Speaker 2: Saddam told his guys he wants sports, and they just
Speaker 2: googled fort. It's it's a square with like four turrets,
Speaker 2: like four turret towers, and that's it. So there's all
Speaker 2: these dotted up and down the border, and the Iranians
Speaker 2: have the same thing.
Speaker 3: Just mirror almost like a DMZ animal it is.
Speaker 2: There's I think it's like a five kilometer DMZ in between.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they just Miria Shu. I'll we have another boarder.
Speaker 2: So we'd go out and link up with the border
Speaker 2: patrol Iraqi border patrol worthless, but uh, we'd go out
Speaker 2: there for two weeks at a time, living out of
Speaker 2: our trucks, you know, mrs for two weeks, no shower
Speaker 2: for two weeks, Uh, shitting in a hole for two weeks.
Speaker 2: We would take trailers attached them to our humvees for
Speaker 2: enough fuel so we can get back because as there's
Speaker 2: a three to six hour drive depending on what happened
Speaker 2: on the way there to get to where we're going.
Speaker 2: So enough fuel, enough water, enough food. We did do
Speaker 2: a couple of air aerial resupplies while we're out there,
Speaker 2: but yeah, we go out there for two weeks to
Speaker 2: live our trucks and our main objective. Our main mission
Speaker 2: was to stop lethal aid from coming from Iran into Iraq,
Speaker 2: so whether that'd be money, weapons, explosives, whatever, But we'd
Speaker 2: sit in that patrol base for two weeks and we'd
Speaker 2: kick out a six man team per night to go
Speaker 2: do a patrol and we're pretty free to plan our
Speaker 2: missions however we wanted. I don't remember there being any
Speaker 2: restrictions on how far we could go away from the
Speaker 2: patrol base. It was like, hey, as long as you
Speaker 2: got six guys, I know where you're going. You know,
Speaker 2: I trust you in your training. How's the food and
Speaker 2: that's all right? Sore? Did you get did you have
Speaker 2: it all?
Speaker 3: Any kind of interdiction mission with that or was it observations?
Speaker 2: It was in arediction? Did we interdict anybody? But did
Speaker 2: we stop them because they knew we were out there? Yeah,
Speaker 2: they knew we were out there because I remember in
Speaker 2: the middle of the day and we were looking at something.
Speaker 2: We're taking pictures, and I was like, man, that would
Speaker 2: be a good good place for heightsight over here next
Speaker 2: time we come out and the Iranian guard tower. It
Speaker 2: is a good distance away. But they had those big
Speaker 2: giant drop a quarter in binus like a statue delivery,
Speaker 2: and we could see them looking at us, so they
Speaker 2: knew we were out there. And they also lobb some
Speaker 2: mortars at us and shot some pik at us one time.
Speaker 2: I would say one of the coolest things from that.
Speaker 2: I was talking to Jack earlier about it, and I
Speaker 2: felt bad for the younger guys because they had not
Speaker 2: deployed yet. And this is towards the tail end of
Speaker 2: the war. There wasn't a lot of conflict, you know,
Speaker 2: direct engagements going on, and they just wanted to go
Speaker 2: to war, right and here we are doing this recky mission.
Speaker 2: Well cool, Like if you're getting shot at when you're
Speaker 2: doing reky, you're not doing reky properly. So we didn't
Speaker 2: get shot at it, so did a good job. But
Speaker 2: they didn't see all the bigger picture stuff we were doing,
Speaker 2: or they didn't understand it, or maybe it was our
Speaker 2: fault as team leaders not telling them, you know, directly
Speaker 2: what we're doing. But Iran was flying drones over us,
Speaker 2: and our unit, our company, not Michaeltoon, but our company
Speaker 2: was responsible for, you know, creating the first like s
Speaker 2: op for dealing with our Anian drones because we were
Speaker 2: seeing them and we were tracking them on Falcon view,
Speaker 2: like drawing their routes back in Iran, and we scrambled
Speaker 2: some F sixteens to come try to shoot it down,
Speaker 2: and these F sixteens flew out and they radio down like, hey,
Speaker 2: we can't fly slow enough to shoot these things. Sorry,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, it is what it is. We're like,
Speaker 2: all right, But when we scrambled those F sixteens and
Speaker 2: they're flying up another border trying to find this drone,
Speaker 2: Iran scrambled the F fourteen's and they're just going up
Speaker 2: and down again, marrying each other, and we're sitting there like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, we're gonna start World War three events. We
Speaker 2: got front row seats like this is cool. I was
Speaker 2: just one of, you know, one of the cool things
Speaker 2: that we did, like one of the unspoken things that
Speaker 2: we did that no one really saw or heard about.
Speaker 2: We did some other stuff. You know, me and probably
Speaker 2: three other team leaders all we're all still really good friends.
Speaker 2: Probably the only eleven Bravos that could get their Basic
Speaker 2: Aviator badge because we did some i SR missions where
Speaker 2: we flew in the aircraft. Oh cool, we actually got
Speaker 2: to fly there. Pilot was like, yeah, take over what
Speaker 2: you want to take an out?
Speaker 1: What aircraft?
Speaker 2: Uh, it's a Sesna. It's like a Cessna three three three.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a pushpool. It's like Bat twenty one. Think
Speaker 2: Bat twenty one is that aircraft? Even thought carlsim was
Speaker 2: a bat and had emblems on it and stuff, but
Speaker 2: it was just pilot us and then a sensor operator
Speaker 2: in the back really and flew out to where we
Speaker 2: were operating. So we'd go out there for two weeks,
Speaker 2: come back for two weeks. During that refit time, we
Speaker 2: would fly with ir to go continue watching. That's cool,
Speaker 2: well we were supposed to be watching again.
Speaker 1: It's like a throwback to like Vietnam era where you'd
Speaker 1: have worps flying around with bird dog bird dog right
Speaker 1: the facts, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what it was. Yeah, we liked we like
Speaker 2: to jokes say we're like, hey, we're probably the only
Speaker 2: eleven Bravos that can say that. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: So that's a good mission. Yeah, that's awesome. Now when
Speaker 2: when you guys, because you.
Speaker 3: I assume you were pretty far from the nearest air base,
Speaker 3: how long would it take like F sixteens to get
Speaker 3: to you when you guys called them or scrambled them.
Speaker 2: I couldn't even give you a guess mine on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't remember did you have air air assets
Speaker 3: if if the Iranians.
Speaker 2: Or or we did we had a patches on call
Speaker 2: F sixteen's obviously it's funny to bring that up because
Speaker 2: I remember the I remember this guy's name, General Cohne.
Speaker 2: I won't say bad things, but I'm not a fan.
Speaker 2: He flew out one time to visit us. He was
Speaker 2: like the our m NCI South general, gotcha, Yeah, he
Speaker 2: came out to visit us, and he was just he
Speaker 2: was flabbering acid. He's like, you guys have this support
Speaker 2: and this support. I'm like, yeah, he's like, I don't
Speaker 2: even have that. Well, you're a general, you're in a jock.
Speaker 2: Yeah you're not. You're not thirty guys out here sitting
Speaker 2: by yourselves. Yeah, you know, but yeah, we did have
Speaker 2: that support. That's good.
Speaker 1: So that deployment winds down, and uh, when does the
Speaker 1: ranger regiment start to enter into your peripheral vision?
Speaker 2: Oh, towards the end of that deployment, probably the year
Speaker 2: after we kind of got in that training mindset, you know,
Speaker 2: the war pretty much over in Iraq. I was still
Speaker 2: trying to keep my guys in shape and ready to
Speaker 2: go for Afghanistan. So we're doing a lot of rocking
Speaker 2: and a lot of hill climbs and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But the Lauris Unit at Fort Lewis was the only
Speaker 2: other airborne unit besides First Group and two seven five.
Speaker 2: So a lot of guys that got rfs from two
Speaker 2: seven to five came to the Lars unit because it's
Speaker 2: the only other airborne unit. They don't want to lose
Speaker 2: their jump pay. And then we keep doing you know,
Speaker 2: ranger things. So I'd say, you know, like seventy percent
Speaker 2: of our leadership, senior leadership at the Lauris unit was
Speaker 2: two seven five. MYLP Petuniasar was a two some five guy,
Speaker 2: and you know, and so and so, and they pushed
Speaker 2: that ranger mentality, you know, which I loved the discipline,
Speaker 2: mentality and the respect and everything that you don't see
Speaker 2: another units. Honestly you don't. And then I had a
Speaker 2: Platuna sarn't Zach who was a wreckie guy at two
Speaker 2: some five, super awesome mentor. I mean, he just texted
Speaker 2: me the other day talking about, you know, just how
Speaker 2: proud he isn't me and everything, and he's a he's
Speaker 2: a good guy, and he talked about two and recky
Speaker 2: Rekie that forced us to have an sp book and
Speaker 2: just all the little things that people don't think about,
Speaker 2: you know. And then RC came around and gave a
Speaker 2: recruiting brief for RC and I set in on it,
Speaker 2: and uh, I was like, I'm gonna go do that
Speaker 2: because that's like the next step in my Rekie path,
Speaker 2: you know. So I went to r C selection and
Speaker 2: I went to Spring selection in twenty twelve, did not
Speaker 2: make it, and then I went to the Fall selection
Speaker 2: that same year and got picked up. And then immediately
Speaker 2: following r C selection, you go to RASP to get
Speaker 2: selected for a regiment. Which that's an interesting what is
Speaker 2: r is RC? Like rope?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: The new.
Speaker 1: RASP two is what replaced rope?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, and I would like to just talk about this
Speaker 1: for a moment because I think it's really interesting that Again,
Speaker 1: another little digression, but RRD was the Regimental Reconnaissance Detachment,
Speaker 1: then became the Regimental Reconnaissance Company and for the longest
Speaker 1: time from when did it stand up, like nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: it was the nineteen eighties, it was like eighty four,
Speaker 1: I think, and their job was really just to do
Speaker 1: reconnaissance for airfield seizures. So there were three teams. Each
Speaker 1: team was for each battalion, each of the three battalions,
Speaker 1: and then they kind of grew, especially as the war
Speaker 1: kicked off, they grew into something else. But those guys
Speaker 1: were always drawn from within the regiment. And then you
Speaker 1: were I think about probably the first like generation of
Speaker 1: guys that they started recruiting from the conventional military.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'm not trying to put words anybody's
Speaker 2: mouths or anything, but I think they realized, like, there's
Speaker 2: some good dudes in the big army that, right, it
Speaker 2: could be beneficial, right, right, just like any you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like gag. I mean, they recruit from everybody, right,
Speaker 2: you know, So why weren't they doing the same thing
Speaker 2: and I think that's what they realized. And maybe because
Speaker 2: some guys went from big army to regiment and then
Speaker 2: r D, that might be a reason. I don't know
Speaker 2: why specifically. I'm not gonna put words anybody's mouth, so
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean back then it was just because
Speaker 3: it was, it was, it was. It was regimental like
Speaker 3: it was, it was someplace. She went from battalion like
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Uh, then I think it
Speaker 3: got bigger and then they.
Speaker 2: Also yeah, so it was a r D was a
Speaker 2: detachment from regimental headquarters. Right then they became a company
Speaker 2: under rs TV Special Troops of Battalion and went from
Speaker 2: you know, the three teams to eight, eight teams maybe six.
Speaker 1: Now I don't know what was I'm interested in, you know,
Speaker 1: your experience. What was it like going to selection for
Speaker 1: for that course or for that unit.
Speaker 2: I won't get into the specifics of selection because I
Speaker 2: don't want to ruin it for right other people going
Speaker 2: like a spoiler. It's part of the fun. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: probably signed an NDA too, I don't know, but no,
Speaker 2: it was. It's fun as your typical army selection, a
Speaker 2: lot of rocking, a lot of rocking. I would say total.
Speaker 2: If you don't get lost, you're probably looking at two
Speaker 2: hundred miles you're walking total for the three weeks. But
Speaker 2: I mean it's the typical you know, your twelve mile
Speaker 2: road mars, you're PT test, your Ranger PG test, now
Speaker 2: Army PT test, some psychological testing and IQ tests and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, and then you have, you know, a
Speaker 2: practice week where you know, you learn how to land
Speaker 2: have because I'm pretty sure CAG does it the same way.
Speaker 2: It's they're going under the assumption that nobody knows how
Speaker 2: to land a right, so they want to make sure
Speaker 2: everyone's on the same playing field, and they teach you.
Speaker 2: It's like two three days of land and a classes.
Speaker 2: They teacher land have and you go out and do
Speaker 2: some cadal lead and uh there's another road march in
Speaker 2: there that's disguised as you know, another training event. It's
Speaker 2: a timed event. And then uh yeah, then move on
Speaker 2: to stress phase and you're doing land half every day
Speaker 2: and sleeping out in the woods with the culmination event
Speaker 2: that I won't spoil.
Speaker 1: And after you on the second time around get getting selected.
Speaker 1: Uh and then you go and then you had to
Speaker 1: go to RASP so that's an interesting thing too. You
Speaker 1: had to go to two selection courses essentially to get
Speaker 1: picked up for the regiment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the rd selection RC selection was for the
Speaker 2: company and then RASP is for the regiment and uh
Speaker 2: yeahs sucked. You know it was ras to like. It sucked. Man,
Speaker 2: it was not fun. What can you tell us about
Speaker 2: it because it wasn't. So it wasn't a gentleman's course
Speaker 2: at all. I mean it was there's no yelling and screaming,
Speaker 2: yea thing, but it's just it's physical, physically and mentally training.
Speaker 2: At the time when I went through, I don't know
Speaker 2: what it's like now, but a lot of class learning
Speaker 2: about the regiment and the history of the regiment and
Speaker 2: how the regiment operates because you're a you known commissioned
Speaker 2: officer or officer officers too, so you're learning how the
Speaker 2: regiment operates. And then you know again you're going out
Speaker 2: and doing land alf. The land alf piece is interesting
Speaker 2: because you they parry up with the RASP one guy,
Speaker 2: so rip guys, they pay up with one of them
Speaker 2: or two of them, and it's your job as an
Speaker 2: n c O to teach them how to land out.
Speaker 2: So you're doing land A with GRASP one, so if
Speaker 2: they suck, I was just like, it's a nightmare. But
Speaker 2: I was good and we got all our points and
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, guys, sit down, sit down.
Speaker 2: He didn't worry. Let's hang out. There's a couple other
Speaker 2: physical events. Yeah FTX. You do an FTX as a class,
Speaker 2: and there's some stressful events during that, and you really
Speaker 2: kind of see who can handle being an NCU right
Speaker 2: in the regiment or an officer under a stressful situation.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because the the so I use it's rasped too.
Speaker 3: It used to be rope, which was different than RIP
Speaker 3: because so for people who don't know for a lot,
Speaker 3: the way regiment works is you're a private eighteen years
Speaker 3: old or twenty seven, however old you are when you.
Speaker 2: Go in and.
Speaker 3: You know, you go to your infantry basic, you go
Speaker 3: to the Ranger and Doctrination program or now it is
Speaker 3: rope one right, Ranger Orientation.
Speaker 2: Program, Ranger Assessment Selection.
Speaker 3: Program, rangers okay, and then you go to Range Battalion.
Speaker 2: Can you grow up in Range Battalion?
Speaker 3: You go through private and you know, to specialists and
Speaker 3: you know whatnot and ready battalion, but they also have
Speaker 3: opportunities for people who did not grow up in battalion
Speaker 3: to come into battalion.
Speaker 1: Well, the interesting thing is they're really the regiment's really
Speaker 1: strict about making guys go back through selection to get
Speaker 1: back into the regiment. So even if you were an
Speaker 1: enlisted ranger, you go green to gold, become an officer,
Speaker 1: and now you go do your pl time in the
Speaker 1: eighty second wherever you're at. And now you want to
Speaker 1: come back to the ranger regiment and take a ranger platoon,
Speaker 1: you got to go back through RASP.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a thing.
Speaker 1: They don't mess around.
Speaker 2: So that's his thing now too with NCOs started twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen Abrams Charter, which is why officers went out
Speaker 2: and came back, went out and came Now NCOs also
Speaker 2: have to go.
Speaker 1: Out and they're bringing that back. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So every time you go from my platusar in to
Speaker 2: first Art and a first arm to ops or whatever
Speaker 2: you're taking the next leadership position. As an NCA, you
Speaker 2: got to go out for a year and come back. Oh,
Speaker 2: you have to go out to the big army. So
Speaker 2: I say big army going desk.
Speaker 1: So comm Still Abram's charter was, you know when they
Speaker 1: stood up the Ranger Regiment in the eighties or no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, in the seventies. It was supposed to be
Speaker 1: like a role model for the rest of the supposed
Speaker 1: to Vietnam army exactly. Yeah. And so the idea, I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to lecture you, dust, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: just tell folks out there who maybe don't know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about that the idea was that you would
Speaker 1: grow this nucleus of highly skilled, trained soldiers and then
Speaker 1: they would go out into the larger army and spread
Speaker 1: that knowledge and those skills around.
Speaker 2: And that's yeah, that's why they brought back NCO's going
Speaker 2: out was to do that. Right. Two problems though, is
Speaker 2: some guys are going out to the big army. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's not that bad, right, I can kick it. I
Speaker 2: can just sit back.
Speaker 3: And I'm kind of a legend here, exactly. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: kind of a legend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guys would go out and not come back like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm a big fish in a little pond
Speaker 2: instead of a little fish.
Speaker 1: If they're chilling down at McDill and Tampa, they're like
Speaker 1: beach is pretty nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And the other problem was Regiment realized that
Speaker 2: guys weren't coming back by choice, and numbers started kind
Speaker 2: of getting depleted. So instead of sending guys out to
Speaker 2: the regular army to spread the knowledge, guys would go
Speaker 2: to Socom or Jay Socker us of Sock and do
Speaker 2: an ops job for a year instead of doing what
Speaker 2: they're supposed.
Speaker 1: To make them miserable on staff. They'll come right back.
Speaker 2: So that's what happened to that. I love Regiment death,
Speaker 2: I will always love Regiment. It's the best time in
Speaker 2: my life. But Regiment is a snake eating its own tail.
Speaker 2: Just you know, it keeps moving and keeps getting rid
Speaker 2: of good guys, keeps moving, keeps getting ready. Because you
Speaker 2: can have a guy that gave his whole life to
Speaker 2: the Regiment from private to sixty seven, he steps on
Speaker 2: his dick one time, Yeah, a minor thing, yeah, and
Speaker 2: then gone, yeah, dude.
Speaker 3: I was actually going to bring that up because you
Speaker 3: mentioned that when you were at like the Lurch unit
Speaker 3: that you had I think a lur unit or a
Speaker 3: recommend but you would have guys who would rfs now
Speaker 3: in range of battalion in the regiment, RFS is released
Speaker 3: for standards. And what that means is you did something
Speaker 3: and it may have been something heinous, but generally something heinous.
Speaker 2: Will get you kicked out of the military.
Speaker 3: Subjective, yeah, but generally it's something that that you know
Speaker 3: you might you might get RFS forgetting.
Speaker 1: It could be got into a bar fight, a bar.
Speaker 3: Fight and you had had a drink, even if the
Speaker 3: fight wasn't your fault, it was an alcohol related incident.
Speaker 3: Like and it really depends on what your chain of
Speaker 3: command feels about you and feels about covering their ass
Speaker 3: at that point in time or not you get released
Speaker 3: for standards. And so when you get released for standards,
Speaker 3: it's not you. You don't get kicked out of the military.
Speaker 3: You're just like you can't be arranging more. You gotta
Speaker 3: go down the road. Uh And and second or like
Speaker 3: in Fort Lewis, down the road is larse or hopefully
Speaker 3: hopefully it's lurse because they could be condemned to.
Speaker 1: Like Korea a fate wret exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, like another another example of the whole go
Speaker 2: to RASP thing. You know, one of my guys I
Speaker 2: worked with at the LURT unit to go RFS. He
Speaker 2: spent twelve years that two seven five. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: he had to go to RASP again because he made
Speaker 2: his seven he's gonna take him two star job and
Speaker 2: and the board they said no. And the reason was
Speaker 2: he's not aggressive enough. His mentality wasn't aggressive enough to
Speaker 2: be in regiment. I was like, what because he's like us,
Speaker 2: Like he's just laid back. Yeah, you don't need to
Speaker 2: be a chest beating all the time. Right.
Speaker 1: Well, when you when you say it's a snake eating
Speaker 1: its tail, it's exactly what you're alluding to there is
Speaker 1: that you recruit and select and breed a generation of
Speaker 1: soldiers that are really tightly wound and really intense, and
Speaker 1: then it's like you cut them loose on a three
Speaker 1: day weekend. It's like no ship, they got a d
Speaker 1: U y Yeah yeah, yeah, you know, you stress these
Speaker 1: guys the hell out.
Speaker 3: They got in a bar fight Seattle.
Speaker 1: I'm shot. I am shocked.
Speaker 2: How did Yeah? The thing the thing of being a
Speaker 2: regiment too, is it's there's only so many positions available.
Speaker 2: Someone's always trying to get your job, but no one,
Speaker 2: no matter what position you're in, someone's waiting for you
Speaker 2: to mess up or for you to leave. So it's
Speaker 2: almost like you're always kind of walking on eggshells all
Speaker 2: the time too, Like is this It's a stressful place
Speaker 2: to work, honestly, especially when I was there the position
Speaker 2: I had no I was we haven't got there yet,
Speaker 2: but I was the youngest platoons are in the most
Speaker 2: senior between starting position, and it was just every day
Speaker 2: I felt like I was gonna just mess up. Get sound.
Speaker 1: Let's yeah, let's walk towards that. You make it through
Speaker 1: RASP and then the next step is there's the RRC
Speaker 1: has its own sort of like operator training course.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, they call it RTC, the Reconnaissance Training Course.
Speaker 2: Roughly ten months long, right, I think it's ten months long.
Speaker 2: Started that in January of thirteen. It broke up into
Speaker 2: three phases. Phase one ended in May. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to get into what the training is for their training course,
Speaker 2: but arslicon steroids and a bunch of shooting programs and
Speaker 2: in free fall school and all that stuff. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: made it through Phase one and the Phase one board.
Speaker 2: I got the thanks, but no thanks, not really. They
Speaker 2: don't give you a reason why. They don't tell you
Speaker 2: why you're not a good fit. I think I know why,
Speaker 2: but yeah, So I left there, went to the three
Speaker 2: Shop at rs TV as the r n c O
Speaker 2: for a couple of weeks, and then the Stormy major
Speaker 2: came over and he's like, hey, I think I got
Speaker 2: a job where you are you interested? I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: what you got? And he said three some five Wrecky
Speaker 2: And that's where I went? And so what are you?
Speaker 2: What rank are you right now? No master or retired master? No,
Speaker 2: not right now at this point in time, he's six
Speaker 2: and what year is this? Thirteen?
Speaker 3: Okay, so things are still hot, relatively hot, like things
Speaker 3: are still happening, and you get offered this job for
Speaker 3: Reki your knee six?
Speaker 2: Is that a? Is that a t L? And Recky?
Speaker 2: What a Joe? Okay? I showed up to three some
Speaker 2: five WRECKI the platoon staring at the time. My buddy
Speaker 2: Matt he uh, he's a prior RC guy too, except
Speaker 2: he got out of the army, went National Guard, realized
Speaker 2: real world sucks, came back in the army and it
Speaker 2: was it three sent five Wrecky now. But I showed up.
Speaker 2: He kind of knew my background, did an interview with me,
Speaker 2: and you got to know me, and then I was like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: I need your help, like, I need your help shaping
Speaker 2: this platoon and what it should be into a wrecky
Speaker 2: balltoon not I call it a senior squalor hang apple tune.
Speaker 2: A lot of guys did their squalor time and their
Speaker 2: reward was to go to recky and go do uh
Speaker 2: yeah mega thing and stuff like that. Yeah, go grow beard. Yeah.
Speaker 2: How old was Reki at this point in time and
Speaker 2: in regiment and here there? And they stood was it?
Speaker 2: Oh three?
Speaker 1: Yeah? The battalion Rekie was two thousand and four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was on. I was a sniper, but I
Speaker 1: was on the first apployment with the battalion Recki guys. Yea,
Speaker 1: so just about ten years old, okay. But the guy
Speaker 1: was talking about Matt when he was in the National Guard.
Speaker 1: He was in alerts in it yea. So I went
Speaker 1: from RC to National Guard Alurse and then came back
Speaker 1: to three five Reki.
Speaker 2: So he knew what Lurse is and what Reki is
Speaker 2: and had a very good understanding of what it should be.
Speaker 2: And me and him kind of molded this platoon into
Speaker 2: what it should be. And I'd say about three to
Speaker 2: six months later, I was just be bopping down the
Speaker 2: hallway and going to my office and he stopped me
Speaker 2: and he was like, hey, man, did did First Turn
Speaker 2: talk to you yet? I was like no, why. He's like,
Speaker 2: well him, Starry Major talked and he needs to talk
Speaker 2: to you. I was like, fuck, I just got here, man, Like,
Speaker 2: what's going on now? So I go to First Arm's
Speaker 2: office and I walked in and he's like, hey, what
Speaker 2: do you think about being Platoon's art? You want to
Speaker 2: take over Reki? And I was like, oh shit, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna turn it down, you know. And that's
Speaker 2: that's when I became the potinion aren't for three five Recky,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't for three and a half three and
Speaker 2: a half years, so.
Speaker 3: So Reki wasn't new, it was ten years old. But
Speaker 3: you guys sort of created this thing, is it because
Speaker 3: at that time or during that time, there wasn't that
Speaker 3: Lurst experience that nobody knew what Rocky should actually look like.
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly what the problem was. Okay, they
Speaker 2: didn't have a a good Reki background, as you said,
Speaker 2: and there just wasn't a there wasn't a mission for him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know overseas, it was a strike forces going out
Speaker 2: and hitting targets, like, what's what's reck you gonna do? Right?
Speaker 2: You know you got you know, you got the prids right,
Speaker 2: you know every ir asset you can think of for
Speaker 2: all task force over your target? Why do you need
Speaker 2: Recky out there? That was the mentality, and they didn't
Speaker 2: have a.
Speaker 1: Mission when when I mean this is like ancient history,
Speaker 1: you know, taking baby steps. But that first deployment, I
Speaker 1: remember the guys doing some ctrs, uh, doing some you
Speaker 1: know on foot kind of reconnaissance stuff. And then when
Speaker 1: we did get some strike operations, I remember the guys
Speaker 1: going out and like doing like because actually we started
Speaker 1: doing FID too with a SWAT team out in cowst
Speaker 1: and so taking those guys out and doing like VPS
Speaker 1: and you know, black side security and so that that
Speaker 1: was sort of but it was all very like a
Speaker 1: nascent sort of form, right yeah.
Speaker 3: And I mean like if you're doing CTR, so CTR
Speaker 3: is close hard connaissance, and in that environment, if you're
Speaker 3: doing CTR, you're either like in a vehicle or you're
Speaker 3: tasking dage to do it.
Speaker 2: Like it's very hard sometimes to do it. And that
Speaker 2: wasa that was our mission was the CTRS. Yeah, like
Speaker 2: an airfield. Yeah, that would drive by in vehicles and
Speaker 2: film or do whatever would do.
Speaker 1: But now we're at the point where are our c
Speaker 1: is out doing secret squirrel stuff And so you're you're
Speaker 1: saying that when you got there, sort of the battalion
Speaker 1: reckie teams were sort of in limbo that not quite
Speaker 1: sure they were in limbo.
Speaker 2: We had the Inner Agency Mission program and then also
Speaker 2: had guys tasked to r C to help them with
Speaker 2: their program. So they were filling billets for RC as well.
Speaker 2: And that was a funny story too. Well. I left
Speaker 2: r C went over three some five. When I showed
Speaker 2: the three some five, I mean like the next day,
Speaker 2: he's like, hey, you need to go over r C
Speaker 2: to talk to them about this deployment coming up. And
Speaker 2: I was like, what the fun go back over there
Speaker 2: and knock on the door and uh, guy that was
Speaker 2: on my board, Terry, he answered the door and he's like,
Speaker 2: what's up.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: I was like, I was told to come over here.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm working with you now, and he's like huh.
Speaker 2: He was like that worked out, didn't it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yes?
Speaker 3: So yeah, so was there are you formal uh And
Speaker 3: Jack Hugan asked me, was there a formal because like
Speaker 3: in the cniper section you went to SODIC right, you know,
Speaker 3: at least SO two if not Stotak one, but you'd
Speaker 3: go to SODIC H the Special Operations Target and Addiction
Speaker 3: course for Reki when they stood them up.
Speaker 2: Was there a formal training program for them? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, back when they stood up, it was like again
Speaker 1: they were all, you know, building an airplane in flight.
Speaker 1: But they did have a training program that they were
Speaker 1: standing up. Yeah, but it was in house training, yes, okay.
Speaker 1: And I can't remember if they went to Arsenic or not. Mean,
Speaker 1: I would have to hit up some of those guys
Speaker 1: from back in the day and talk to them. But
Speaker 1: I mean, what was it like when when you got there?
Speaker 2: When I got there, when I was a petween start,
Speaker 2: I didn't send anybody to Arsenic because I could teach Arseny. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's what I did with my guys. Yeah, taught
Speaker 2: the squaladers how the team leaders how to do it,
Speaker 2: and then they taught their guys how to do it
Speaker 2: the way the army should work. In my in my
Speaker 2: mind at the time, all Arsenic would do for me
Speaker 2: is yeah, cool, gave them an identifier, but I also
Speaker 2: lost I just lost that guy for three or four weeks,
Speaker 2: you know, So I would rather instead of top down training,
Speaker 2: I would go bottom up, like, you know, go to
Speaker 2: my team leaders, what does your team need to learn?
Speaker 2: What do you guys need? You know, you have the manuals.
Speaker 2: What do you not know in the manual? And then
Speaker 2: we would go.
Speaker 3: Over Now, was taught like a tradec school? Was it
Speaker 3: taught like a soft school?
Speaker 2: Trade school? Trade x? Okay, trade school? And again that's
Speaker 2: another reason, like we don't want to go do that, right,
Speaker 2: not saying we're better than that, but.
Speaker 3: But you are, and and and and so when we
Speaker 3: talk about trade doc and soft we're talking about training and.
Speaker 1: Doctrination, training in doctrine, doctrine in doctrination, doctors, all the
Speaker 1: schools all so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's very formalized process that's been put together
Speaker 3: up by an officer who may or may not know
Speaker 3: what they're doing. And like, it's very formalized training that
Speaker 3: teaches to standard, not to or whatever it is like,
Speaker 3: but but they don't necessarily always teach things the way
Speaker 3: they need to be taught. So you're sending somebody to
Speaker 3: a school that is an army taught school, which means
Speaker 3: it's a bureaucrat taught school exactly, and not saying that
Speaker 3: the artick instructors aren't great at their job or or
Speaker 3: anything like that, but but the curriculum itself has been
Speaker 3: laid out.
Speaker 2: By the bureaucracy. It's been laid out by the bureaucracy,
Speaker 2: and seventy five percent of south they're teaching is from Vietnam. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which I mean, it's still applicable, you know, but I
Speaker 2: would rather teach my guys what I know and what
Speaker 2: has worked right and what does work right versus what
Speaker 2: trade dock is telling me to teach me. So when
Speaker 2: you guys.
Speaker 3: Turn the or when you sort of you know, developed
Speaker 3: this recky element, this rocky section, how do you impress
Speaker 3: upon the command what your new improved capabilities are or
Speaker 3: or get sort of operational okays.
Speaker 2: So that was well, you have a couple of different avenues.
Speaker 2: You got your TFTs, your Task Force Trainer missions, and
Speaker 2: you've got m LAT Multilateral Training Missions. TFT is just
Speaker 2: kind of a smaller m LAT per se minus the airfield.
Speaker 2: We're not seizing an airfield during TFT. But the real
Speaker 2: big kind of kicker for us. We went to NTC
Speaker 2: and it was like the first time regiment's gone to
Speaker 2: NTC and who knows how long. And we were supporting
Speaker 2: a big army unit that was going through their rotation
Speaker 2: as a soft capability enabler, so we were we were
Speaker 2: separated from them, but we knew what their mission was.
Speaker 2: We had I think our our BC and a small
Speaker 2: staff was in their jock with them, and then they
Speaker 2: tasked us. I think we had one or two line
Speaker 2: platoons there and then wrecky platoon and the BC called
Speaker 2: us in. The called me in and he was like,
Speaker 2: dust and check it out. He's like, I don't care
Speaker 2: what we have to do. We're here to win. Like,
Speaker 2: so do you gotta do to win? I was like Roger,
Speaker 2: thatsked her? But we did our thing. We went and
Speaker 2: we got our four wheelers and our m raisers and
Speaker 2: drove out. Climbed up a mountain, the biggest mountain we
Speaker 2: could find. I think it's t Fert Mountain in NTC.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I remember the name, but because
Speaker 2: it was big, we climbed up there and we climbed
Speaker 2: up there knowing our four is not coming up there.
Speaker 2: No one's climbed this mountain to come find us, Like
Speaker 2: it's a pain in the ass. It took us, you know,
Speaker 2: all night to get up there and set up our
Speaker 2: hid sight and we're observing the battlefield and the battlefield
Speaker 2: we could see the battle space we could see was
Speaker 2: the staging area for the OP four before they moved
Speaker 2: into the engagement area with the rotational unit to start off.
Speaker 2: Before the war, the simulated war even kicked off. We
Speaker 2: could see something way off in the distance and me
Speaker 2: and my JA attack are sitting up there and I'm
Speaker 2: like looking through the spotting scope and looking at a
Speaker 2: map and just looking at We probably spent thirty minutes
Speaker 2: an hour just kind of you know, just just guestimating
Speaker 2: where it was at the found We just fat finger
Speaker 2: around the map, was like, whatever, whatever that is is
Speaker 2: right here, and it's not friendly because the friendly is
Speaker 2: over there, and he tells a big development and so
Speaker 2: we called up a simulated high mar strike and it
Speaker 2: ended up being the enemy brigade like their their talk,
Speaker 2: their staging area and uh did the simulate Harmar strike
Speaker 2: wiped out their Bria Talk. Task Force launched a strike
Speaker 2: force in Osprey's to go clear through, and I remember
Speaker 2: the NTC General whatever general's in charge of NTC came
Speaker 2: storming in the talk and I was like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: like they're still alive. Send them back, like brought the
Speaker 2: strike force back, like they didn't even get to land
Speaker 2: and clear. It's sort of like when you're playing like yeah,
Speaker 2: like we just won like our twelve of this war,
Speaker 2: Like what's what's the problem anyway, So they came back
Speaker 2: alive whatever. And then uh, they were staging in that
Speaker 2: little court, the court where I was talking about, and
Speaker 2: they just had all their armor, abrams, paladins, Bradley's, everything
Speaker 2: just in a line. And we took pictures of it
Speaker 2: all and sent it up via h p W sat
Speaker 2: to the talk with reports and everything, Intel report, and
Speaker 2: then they struck that alive again. Anyways, say all that
Speaker 2: to say, we Xfield got back to our talk and
Speaker 2: as soon as I walked in my office, the phone
Speaker 2: rings and it's the BC who's at the rotational units talk,
Speaker 2: and he's like Ward, He's like that was awesome. He's
Speaker 2: like this unit is eating up everything you're giving us.
Speaker 2: Can you go back out in twenty four hours. I
Speaker 2: was like, oh my god, that's what you get for
Speaker 2: me A good Yeah, we just spent four days out there, like,
Speaker 2: you know, freezing our butts off. So yeah, we went
Speaker 2: back out, you know, twenty four hours later to the
Speaker 2: other side of that corridor I was talking about, and
Speaker 2: did some more stuff back there. I think that was
Speaker 2: a real proving point for us, Yeah, because they saw
Speaker 2: what we were capable of doing. On top of that,
Speaker 2: when he said, uh, you know, I'm here to win.
Speaker 2: Do what you gotta do for us to win, I
Speaker 2: sent my guys to go do a you know, low
Speaker 2: viz Afo type operation. I was like, you know, go
Speaker 2: put your civilian clothes on, take one of our beacons,
Speaker 2: go into the enemy motor pool and tag their triple
Speaker 2: A pieces, which they did. So I was like, give
Speaker 2: me a plan, don't just go out there and wing it.
Speaker 2: So they gave me a plan, and they went out
Speaker 2: there and tagged their triple A pieces, their anti air
Speaker 2: and we just tracked them all through the box at NTC.
Speaker 2: As soon as they stopped, we.
Speaker 1: Struck those the form mafia strikes again.
Speaker 2: So we eliminate their anti air like ra off the
Speaker 2: rip and it was. It was pretty awesome. It was
Speaker 2: even better was when the war was over and the
Speaker 2: fours back in their motor pool, you know, downgrading whatever
Speaker 2: they're doing, and sent my guys back over to recover
Speaker 2: the beats, right, and they didn't put on civvies and
Speaker 2: just walked in. It was like, hey, there's something that
Speaker 2: vehicle I need to get and the guy's like, who
Speaker 2: are you? Like, what what are you getting? He's like,
Speaker 2: don't worry about it, just like pull this pelican box
Speaker 2: off them.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you guys did the AAR for NTC,
Speaker 1: I mean, they must have been fairly pissed overall of this.
Speaker 2: I didn't sit out on it, but I'm sure it was. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so to catch people up. So NTC and it's j
Speaker 2: RTC right in Louisiana. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they're basically war games. And I never went to
Speaker 3: either of them, but they're basically war games. And the
Speaker 3: op for the people who are actually stationed on those
Speaker 3: bases are good. And it doesn't necessarily mean they're great combatants.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but they're good at wargaming. It's like
Speaker 3: it's like going it's like a swat team going up
Speaker 3: against professional paintballers.
Speaker 2: I mean, those guys are probably the most well trained
Speaker 2: unit in the army realistically, because they're doing it all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 3: All the time, right, and they know that they know
Speaker 3: the train, they know everything else like that. So, like
Speaker 3: I said, I don't know about combatants because I don't know,
Speaker 3: but but they're good at what they do there, and
Speaker 3: it's very hard to beat those units in these war games.
Speaker 3: So and you guys basically beat him three times.
Speaker 2: They they weren't used to fighting a special operations unit
Speaker 2: because we had ISR, which big army units typically don't
Speaker 2: have all the time, we had high mars, we had casts,
Speaker 2: we had everything, and we just I mean we just
Speaker 2: sat there and called it in all day. And I
Speaker 2: remember watching there was one unit that was close enough
Speaker 2: to us when I called in a strike on him.
Speaker 2: I remember watching him through just binos like look up
Speaker 2: in the sky and like throw his hands up, yeah,
Speaker 2: and like a guy come to gi him a couchy card,
Speaker 2: like you're dead. Then they packed up and drove off,
Speaker 2: and I was like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So meanwhile back at battalion, Uh, your your platoon's
Speaker 1: getting deployed now, So walk us through some of that,
Speaker 1: like what's going on in the war at this.
Speaker 2: Point twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Twenty thirteen, least start where you want to start.
Speaker 2: Twenty thirteen. I didn't. I did not deploy as a
Speaker 2: platoon start. I was a jockeencio, and then I went
Speaker 2: out to a coast to do the interagency thing for
Speaker 2: a little bit. Twenty fourteen, the strike force is still
Speaker 2: going out. I don't remember how many platoons we had
Speaker 2: over there. Companies wasn't really involved in that. I was
Speaker 2: the wrecky platoon was tasked with an interagency mission, and
Speaker 2: we supported that by sending, you know, five guys to
Speaker 2: five different locations, so as platoons aren't Like, not only
Speaker 2: did I have a platoon to manage, but now I
Speaker 2: had to manage you know, four to five different teams
Speaker 2: right at four to five different outstations, and what those
Speaker 2: outstations were doing. Granted, those guys that I sent out there,
Speaker 2: they were there their own team leader out there, which
Speaker 2: is cool. I was very hands off as a leader,
Speaker 2: like only hit me up if you need something, bro,
Speaker 2: you know, like, I'm not going to micromanage you. You're
Speaker 2: a big boy. Do your thing. But the recupe tune
Speaker 2: to the inn the interagency mission for that deployment or
Speaker 2: every deployment I did, and I mean we were going
Speaker 2: out every night just about hidden targets.
Speaker 1: Could could you describe that mission as far as you're
Speaker 1: you're able to like what it entailed? What what you
Speaker 1: guys were tasked with?
Speaker 2: Yeah, with the inter agency mission. Again I say interagency,
Speaker 2: it is conglomerate of agencies, right, You got any three
Speaker 2: letter acronymy you can think of, or three letter agency
Speaker 2: you can think of that we're working with. It's just
Speaker 2: a it is a task force. And as the big
Speaker 2: not big army, but as the army representative of that
Speaker 2: task force, our team was responsible for being enablers to
Speaker 2: provide capabilities to those civilian agencies because civilian agencies don't
Speaker 2: have a hatchies, they don't have F six teams, they
Speaker 2: don't have you know, ISR as much as we do.
Speaker 2: They have ISR but not as much as we do.
Speaker 2: And we provide further intel support, more targeting abilities. You know,
Speaker 2: it's you always want as many tools and a tool
Speaker 2: bag as you can have, and that's what we did.
Speaker 2: The team leaders, including myself at each ouse station was
Speaker 2: we're the eyes and ears and voice of the task
Speaker 2: force commander for that inner agency commander.
Speaker 3: So like if you're going out with for instance, maybe
Speaker 3: maybe I like the FBI as there because there's a
Speaker 3: poppy field they want to investigate. They can't talk to
Speaker 3: the military, they don't have air support, they don't have whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I I'll just say I talked to somebody who
Speaker 1: is part of a other governmental agency and he was
Speaker 1: describing me how when they tried to call, the only
Speaker 1: thing they really could call, he said, was ecasts like
Speaker 1: emergency close air support, which takes you know, who knows
Speaker 1: how long that's going to take. But when you have
Speaker 1: rangers out there on target with you, clos air support, METAVAC,
Speaker 1: all this sort of like good army stuff supports stuff
Speaker 1: that comes along along with you guys, is suddenly available
Speaker 1: and drastically shortens the amount of time that all of
Speaker 1: these things take.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because our teams that we had at each outstation
Speaker 2: was comprised of you have the team leader, an assistant
Speaker 2: team leader, and then he had a j tech, a medic,
Speaker 2: and rto in an e guy. So you have pretty
Speaker 2: much every capability and think of in one team. Not
Speaker 2: everyone you know, not everyone's Leven Bravo, and not everyone's
Speaker 2: a trigger puller, but everyone's either a ranger or better
Speaker 2: and can really bring some hurt to the battlefield and needed.
Speaker 1: And now we're we're also getting into another sort of
Speaker 1: like interesting role change and that yeah, there's a REKI component,
Speaker 1: but also like you guys are going out on like
Speaker 1: strike operations.
Speaker 2: Right, we were going out more more than the strike force, right. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I felt bad for the strike force and the line
Speaker 2: companies that would deploy for regiment because yeah, yeah, squalidors,
Speaker 2: the twos aren't set grew up through the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: I mean getting after it with Team Meryl, Team Derby
Speaker 2: and all these things, and then you get to the
Speaker 2: mid twenty tens and it slows down drastically, and like
Speaker 2: Taliban wasn't allowed to be targeted because we're in peace
Speaker 2: talks with them, right, right, But the Interagency Task Force
Speaker 2: was allowed to target him, so we were going out
Speaker 2: after him because we were part of that task force.
Speaker 2: But the strike force, yeah, I mean five to ten
Speaker 2: times the entire deployment.
Speaker 3: They're going out, and that's gotta be a frustrating thing,
Speaker 3: especially for a young Ranger. Oh my god, it came
Speaker 3: in to get at it.
Speaker 1: I mean they just they they did do. And we're
Speaker 1: referencing like less is when he was talking when Les
Speaker 1: was talking about doing the Nangahar clearing operation, and I've
Speaker 1: talked to other folks were like the Ranger Regiment sounds
Speaker 1: like they were involved in some like a couple really
Speaker 1: substantial large scale combat operations in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that Nangahar clearance operation happened multiple times. The
Speaker 2: first time was in I was in twenty sixteen, towards
Speaker 2: the tail end of our deployment. We actually extended for
Speaker 2: like thirty days for that operation to happen. And it
Speaker 2: sucked for us as a Jaybad during that time. And
Speaker 2: it sucked for us because task Force was saturating that
Speaker 2: Nangahar valley and jaybads right there in nangahart if not,
Speaker 2: you know, next to Nanghar. They're saturating that valley with
Speaker 2: fires high there's a high mar strike you know, two
Speaker 2: to three times a day every day. And then just
Speaker 2: I SR and so they took all of my assets.
Speaker 2: As Inneragency team leader, I'm like a man, I can't
Speaker 2: do anything. Give my assts back. But Uh yeah, they
Speaker 2: flexed over. Man. I think we pushed over the rest,
Speaker 2: like the rest of the battalion, So almost all the
Speaker 2: three seven five was there for the operation Less was
Speaker 2: talking about. And before that operation kicked off, the SAR
Speaker 2: Major and some other first arms came down to Jbad
Speaker 2: to kind of do a PDSs because that's where the
Speaker 2: warm base was that they were gonna launch. How them
Speaker 2: and asked my opinion. He's like hey, He's like, you know,
Speaker 2: what do you think about this? And I looked at him.
Speaker 2: I was like, the you're gonna die? Man? He was
Speaker 2: like what. I was like, It is hot, this is
Speaker 2: middle of July, and you're gonna send an entire Ranger
Speaker 2: battalion quote unquote online right through that. Like, we are
Speaker 2: not built for that, right. We are a direct action
Speaker 2: hit a target and leave, yeah, not get online and
Speaker 2: walk right for a valley, you know, and well wehold
Speaker 2: guess what happened? You know, guys had I mean there's
Speaker 2: multiple heat cats. Yeah. I think one dude had kidney
Speaker 2: failure because his heat cat was so bad, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: And it was just terrible personal professional opinion. They can
Speaker 2: chalk it up as a success because we killed some isis, guys,
Speaker 2: but like the grand scheme of things of a failure,
Speaker 2: like it was just an utter failure. The fact that
Speaker 2: we had to do it, you know, version one, version two,
Speaker 2: version three, there were version of four. Should be it
Speaker 2: should just be version one, you know.
Speaker 1: And if you guys go back and watch the episode
Speaker 1: with less Sian dusky, you'll hear the sort of like
Speaker 1: boots on the ground the account of it.
Speaker 2: We tried to get boots on the ground from where
Speaker 2: I was at as the interagency task force that we
Speaker 2: had there at Jabad, because we to provide with our
Speaker 2: task force, you know, all the stuff that we talked
Speaker 2: about earlier, providing as far as fires and metavac. But
Speaker 2: with the indigenous personnel that we had, we would be
Speaker 2: able to be able to provide you know, one hundred
Speaker 2: one hundred trucks and dishkas and RPGs and mortars, anything
Speaker 2: on a sunny you can think of, and we can
Speaker 2: just drive there is right down the road instead of
Speaker 2: flying guys in and not be able to leave unless
Speaker 2: the birds came back. That was a big problem. But
Speaker 2: we got shut down. We couldn't couldn't go because of
Speaker 2: inner agency Higher said no.
Speaker 1: So could can you talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: indigenous force that you worked with.
Speaker 2: I will say it is a conglomerate of Afghans from
Speaker 2: the entire country, and it's really awesome to watch them
Speaker 2: work together. That was one of the coolest things I've
Speaker 2: seen in country, because there's a lot of infighting, you know,
Speaker 2: those tribes and cost and Dari and who's Beck's and
Speaker 2: tajeeks and just everybody hates everybody. But those guys that
Speaker 2: I worked with genuinely wanted Afghanistan to be better, and
Speaker 2: they genuinely liked each other and they worked together. And
Speaker 2: sounds bad to say, but they hated the the typical
Speaker 2: Afghan almost more than we did. Like they would put
Speaker 2: boots to the head and mess these guys up, you know,
Speaker 2: the Taliban and Isis and everybody, and they would they'd
Speaker 2: rough them up good and make it a point like, hey, quit,
Speaker 2: you know, quit fucking our country up.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you told me, you know, as sort of a
Speaker 1: point of reference that it reminded you of like the
Speaker 1: American military in the sense that it's like some dude
Speaker 1: from North Dakota and some cat from New York working together.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly it was. Yeah. So they worked so
Speaker 2: well together. They're paid very good. We'll say a Afghan
Speaker 2: in that unit, a private in that unit made about
Speaker 2: nine hundred dollars a month, good money compare in Afghanistan. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you compare that to Afghan National Army in general,
Speaker 2: he got nine a month. So we paid them very well.
Speaker 2: We treated them very well. They had good food, that
Speaker 2: air conditioning, good barracks, and uh worked on the referral program.
Speaker 2: So I vouch for you, you vouch for me, like, hey,
Speaker 2: Jack's a good guy, he should come work here. But
Speaker 2: if you mess up, I'm gone too. Yeah. And that's
Speaker 2: how you keep them loyal along with the money. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, you know, some of those guys didn't make
Speaker 2: it out. A lot of them did, thank goodness. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know where they're at. They might be sitting
Speaker 2: in some other country right now, wait to get their
Speaker 2: visas or whatever. But a lot of them made it out.
Speaker 2: Some didn't. And it's terrible.
Speaker 3: What uh what was was there a minimum rank to
Speaker 3: go to reki at at the time.
Speaker 2: Uh? I tried to put E five on it, so
Speaker 2: they at least had to be tabbed. They had you
Speaker 2: had to be tabbed. So is that? Why is it?
Speaker 2: I was trying to figure.
Speaker 3: Out why RECKI got this essential essentially len o job,
Speaker 3: basically right or less liaison job. Was it because of
Speaker 3: the overall maturity of the RECIE elements?
Speaker 2: I think it was the maturity and mentality, because those
Speaker 2: interagency jobs you got to have the right personality and
Speaker 2: the right person in those positions. If you know anything
Speaker 2: about ranger regiment, you know you're from private on up,
Speaker 2: you know it's ranger injury. I'm just I'm just trying.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of the words of that offending somebody,
Speaker 2: but just chest that you know, fire fire breathing team leader.
Speaker 2: You know you don't you don't want that in those positions.
Speaker 2: You need somebody that can it's kind of mellow, can
Speaker 2: read the room, speak intelligently and know when to talk
Speaker 2: and when to listen, not embarrass the regiment or the army, right,
Speaker 2: you know, because you never know when you're working with
Speaker 2: a bunch of civilians.
Speaker 1: You never know who's right.
Speaker 2: So I think that's why we got that that.
Speaker 3: Job, and and what works great as a t L
Speaker 3: or a uh you know, uh squad leader or whatever
Speaker 3: on the line, like get you know, flighting a fire
Speaker 3: under people's asses, like getting them, especially when you're dealing
Speaker 3: with you know, eighteen year olds fresh off the street,
Speaker 3: Like there's nothing wrong with that there.
Speaker 2: It's great for that job, they need it, right.
Speaker 3: But sometimes it takes a different sensibility to work in
Speaker 3: each other in these other positions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then we're not. When I was, dudes aren't Like
Speaker 2: I I pride myself when I was a pudens aren't
Speaker 2: to not have a single incident, not a single incident,
Speaker 2: alcohol related or other. And I think a big part
Speaker 2: of that was treating them like men. And then also
Speaker 2: I don't think I yelled one time. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: think I smoked anybody one time. I did more of
Speaker 2: the the disappointed dad leaders right right, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, you treat you treat a boy like a
Speaker 2: man and the man up right.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: Also, the I think one of the keys to avoiding
Speaker 3: alcohol related incidents incidents is like a tight team and
Speaker 3: a hasty X film like like combat part Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right. I mean it was like two weeks after I left,
Speaker 2: there's a du you know, two weeks after and they're like,
Speaker 2: why did you leave us?
Speaker 1: It's not my choice.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: So, as you're going on these deployments, I mean, and
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's really cool to hear about this
Speaker 1: because I think that the cliche about Rangers even to
Speaker 1: this day with some folks is that Rangers are like
Speaker 1: a blocking force for you know, delta force operations, and
Speaker 1: it's like, well the truth. Yeah, the boys have gone
Speaker 1: off and done all sorts of interesting unique things, be
Speaker 1: it direct action or otherwise with.
Speaker 3: The Arkansas National Guard like the Rangers.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, uh, you know, as you were going off on
Speaker 1: these these sorts of unique missions, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: any of them that kind of like stand out in
Speaker 1: your mind that you know, you'd like to talk about.
Speaker 2: Uh. I would say one of the one of the
Speaker 2: most impressive ones we did was a kind of proof
Speaker 2: of concept, a national strike proof of concept, you know,
Speaker 2: for that the deployment of stationed just outside Cobble and
Speaker 2: we wanted to see, want to prove that we could
Speaker 2: go as far as we can go Mez, which is
Speaker 2: you know, northern Afghanistan. So we uh came up with
Speaker 2: a plan, found a target that was still active up there,
Speaker 2: and we you know, we sent some guys in civilian vehicles.
Speaker 2: They drove all the way up there Afghans, our indigenous force,
Speaker 2: and then we flew some guys commercial air up there undercover,
Speaker 2: you know, and then the rest of us took a
Speaker 2: private jet, which I thought was ridiculous. It's like, are
Speaker 2: we really in a private jet right now? And the
Speaker 2: pilot was like, it's a it's a ninety three model.
Speaker 2: I was like, it's still a private jet, dude, Like,
Speaker 2: are you kidding me right now? You guys are?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's about as bowler as it gets
Speaker 1: me and you're like, uh u Ranger, Hunter, killer teams.
Speaker 1: It's like a private jet.
Speaker 3: It's like running in a two thousand and five limousine.
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't care to do that still lim Yeah,
Speaker 2: he got a booze carte. And then when we sent
Speaker 2: it's like a civilian see one thirty is called one hundred.
Speaker 2: So we loaded up some called scooby vans. It looks
Speaker 2: like a mystery machine.
Speaker 1: Excuby doo.
Speaker 2: Loaded those on there and flew those up there, and
Speaker 2: uh we all linked up up there. Me and one
Speaker 2: of my interagency partners. We walked up to the gate guard.
Speaker 2: There's a big army like probably a National Guard guy
Speaker 2: or something, and you know, here I am, or here
Speaker 2: we are, you know, looking like this, and I was like,
Speaker 2: hey man, and you know, like fifteen minutes you're gonna
Speaker 2: have you know, about twenty Afghans show up in civilian
Speaker 2: vehicles with weapons, so you can't stop them. Don't search
Speaker 2: them there with us, just let them through. They're coming
Speaker 2: over here. And he's just like just sir. I was like,
Speaker 2: thank you as easier and I thought it was gonna
Speaker 2: be go talk to somebody else, but uh, we all
Speaker 2: link up their vans, vehicles, guns and everything together and
Speaker 2: we go out and hit this target out in Mez
Speaker 2: that I mean, no one's operating a mez and probably
Speaker 2: five years ish, so he had no idea we were there.
Speaker 2: We show up and you know, banged out his door
Speaker 2: and scoop him up, and he just looked at us like, well,
Speaker 2: who the hell are you know? Where'd you guys come from?
Speaker 2: I haven't been bad, like I stopped being bad, you know,
Speaker 2: and uh, detain him, take him back to the hangar.
Speaker 2: And kind of felt bad for the guy because he
Speaker 2: honestly hadn't done anything bad. In a couple of years
Speaker 2: and I don't know what he did before that, you know,
Speaker 2: he was still a target, so whatever. And uh, but
Speaker 2: he sat in the corner of that hanger, you know,
Speaker 2: ear muffed, blindfolded and handcuffed for probably about twelve hours.
Speaker 2: Like it was kind of I felt bad. I was like, man,
Speaker 2: this guy has no idea what's going on right now?
Speaker 2: And then we load him up on the l one
Speaker 2: forty five minute flight back to Cobble and he's peeing
Speaker 2: himself and pooping himself and throwing up the entire time
Speaker 2: because he has no idea where he's going. By first
Speaker 2: time he's ever been on a plane ever, landing Cobble,
Speaker 2: take him off that we get on I seventeen helicopter
Speaker 2: fight our base. Again, he has no idea what's going
Speaker 2: on where he's going. He just lost and saw us
Speaker 2: and take him back there and debrief him and I
Speaker 2: think they just putting on a commercial air and blew back.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the concepts, Sorry, broh, but that was pretty
Speaker 2: cool to be a part of that.
Speaker 1: It shows, Uh, you know, I think we're talking a
Speaker 1: little bit before we started the show. I mean, it
Speaker 1: kind of shows like what could have been and you know,
Speaker 1: like in full disclosure. I was like, definitely in favor
Speaker 1: of US pulling out of Afghanistan. But on the flip
Speaker 1: side to it, what you guys were doing shows I
Speaker 1: think that there could have been a very light footprint
Speaker 1: American presence in Afghanistan maintaining that sort of residual counter
Speaker 1: terrorism force large or really almost entirely working through Afghan partners.
Speaker 1: And that operation shows, Yeah, it could have been a
Speaker 1: national asset, not just regional.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Another another mission that comes to mind. You know,
Speaker 2: my my j Tech he got he got shot up
Speaker 2: one night, We got shot four times and we were
Speaker 2: going after this svest facility. So we hit hit the
Speaker 2: suspected s facility and there's like a legit family in there,
Speaker 2: and he's like, not us, I might want to talk
Speaker 2: to the guys across the street though, So we go
Speaker 2: across the street and uh, as we were maneuvering, they
Speaker 2: squared it out the back and took off running. We
Speaker 2: had a passes overhead already we collapse collapsed him in overhead,
Speaker 2: so they had eyes on. We're kind of chasing after
Speaker 2: these guys in the the farm fields in Afghanistan, you
Speaker 2: have a field and then there's like an irrigation dish
Speaker 2: that runs through or it's raised for a walkway, So
Speaker 2: either one it's either sunking down or raised up. And
Speaker 2: we were getting ready to come up to a cross
Speaker 2: section or intersection where these irrigation dishes and walkways crossed,
Speaker 2: and my jay Attack was standing up on the race
Speaker 2: section and he's talking to birds and he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: do you have you know, eyes on hotspot. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's about twenty five meters in front of you. And
Speaker 2: as soon as he said that, they just started ripping
Speaker 2: rounds at us. And he was the first person they
Speaker 2: could hear and see because yeah, there's probably a full
Speaker 2: moon for all now. But he was lit up. You
Speaker 2: can see him playing his day standing on this berm,
Speaker 2: and you know, he took it on the thigh, the abdomen,
Speaker 2: the ribs, and his helmet and he didn't have his
Speaker 2: chin strap buckled, which I think saved his life honestly,
Speaker 2: because that round was sticking through the inside of his helmet.
Speaker 2: So if it was tight, it would have had something
Speaker 2: to right, some type of what's the word I'm looking for,
Speaker 2: some type of resistance would push stabilized. Yeah, but his
Speaker 2: helmet was unbuckled, so it knocked it off. And you know,
Speaker 2: I was about fifty meters to his left, a couple
Speaker 2: of guys.
Speaker 1: Down from him, so he got a full burst.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean straight eyes. Yeah, and uh, I said,
Speaker 2: knocked his helmet off. He's yelling I'm a hit. I'm
Speaker 2: shooting back and yelling him to put a tournique on it.
Speaker 2: The rest of the team is shooting back, yelling for
Speaker 2: the medic, shooting back, yelling for the medic again because
Speaker 2: he's shooting so he can't hear me, like, come over here,
Speaker 2: you know, medic, because he was probably about twenty five
Speaker 2: meters my left, so he's running across all these all
Speaker 2: this fire to get to him. Meanwhile, my j Tach
Speaker 2: had the wherewithal to scoop his helmet back up, put
Speaker 2: it on his head, key up to the birds, you know,
Speaker 2: while he's bleeding out, and tell them that he's hit.
Speaker 2: Take all commands from two to one. Who was me
Speaker 2: the GFC, And I thought that was pretty cool that
Speaker 2: he had the Yeah, he was able to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he could think through things. He wasn't freaking out. But
Speaker 2: as he's yelling I'm hit, I'm yelling at him to
Speaker 2: put a tourniquet on him. I'm like shooting, like I
Speaker 2: can't help you right now, man, trying to kill these
Speaker 2: guys first started trading grenades back and forth. I was
Speaker 2: like playing hot potato with grenades. I mean, legit, like
Speaker 2: the grenade landing from me to you, and you know,
Speaker 2: the entire time you've you've grown up in the army.
Speaker 2: When the grenade comes at you, what do you say,
Speaker 2: You're supposed to jump awaynade you when you throw when
Speaker 2: you say frag out, one comes into yogrenade my buddy.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was like the stress of
Speaker 2: the moment or something, but he was like fragging. I
Speaker 2: was like, what.
Speaker 1: Blew up right there in front of this.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god. And we started start
Speaker 2: throwing him back. I watched some guy just like limprous
Speaker 2: one had to you know, kind of die from that.
Speaker 2: But uh, we ended up, you know, taking care of
Speaker 2: that problem. But those guys actually had like a defended,
Speaker 2: fortified sandbag position. Yeah, Like they ran to it waiting
Speaker 2: for us to come to that. And it was a
Speaker 2: near ambush. We were within twenty five meters. I mean
Speaker 2: we were you can see him. It was a fallback position. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we end up smoking them worked on the J tag.
Speaker 2: He Uh. I remember him like laying on the stretcher
Speaker 2: and he like passed out and I was like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: he just died. And he was like, you're my best friend.
Speaker 2: I was like fuck. I kind of look at him,
Speaker 2: look at the medic. I'm like, medic's not freaking out,
Speaker 2: Like what the hell man? And I kind of slapping
Speaker 2: on the face my Trevor. Come back to me, man,
Speaker 2: and he uh stayed pasted out in the medical is like, hey, dude,
Speaker 2: he's in He's in that k hole. Yeah, kennymine. He's like,
Speaker 2: just let him go. He's in a good place. I
Speaker 2: was like, all right, if you say so. But uh,
Speaker 2: he had pop back up. He like woke up, like
Speaker 2: pop back up, and he's like dusting. I was like,
Speaker 2: what's up. Stop you going, man, what's up? He's like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: make sure you eat big, lift big, get big, and
Speaker 2: you like passed back out. I was like, seriously. They
Speaker 2: woke back up again, and uh called out to our
Speaker 2: r t O Jeremy. He's like Jeremy, He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: what's up. He's like, give me a dip. He's like,
Speaker 2: I looked at him, like, you're not getting a dip
Speaker 2: right now, You're not You're not getting a dip. Sorry.
Speaker 2: He's like all right, passed back out. Doc Bowman at
Speaker 2: that time did a freaking phenomenal job saving that guy's life. Man,
Speaker 2: I mean from TARNI kits to freeze dried plasma. I
Speaker 2: don't know if anybody, I ef anybody knows the freeze
Speaker 2: dried plasma. At the time, it's still we're the only
Speaker 2: ones using it. It was kind of experimental. We're the
Speaker 2: guinea pigs. It's French. It comes in two glass bottles.
Speaker 2: One's powdered plasma, one's the solution to mix it, and
Speaker 2: you gotta like suck it out of the string. His
Speaker 2: vacuum stilled. And now I was pulling on that syringe
Speaker 2: as hard as I could, trying to get as much
Speaker 2: solution as I could and shoot it into the powder
Speaker 2: mix and the other glass bottle. So Doc always had this.
Speaker 2: It was like a see a less bag with these
Speaker 2: two glass bottles. And you think carrying glass bottles on
Speaker 2: like a mission, like they're gonna break, you know, but
Speaker 2: they're like bubble wrapped and everything but then you swirl it.
Speaker 2: You can't shake it, you gotta swirl it. So I'm
Speaker 2: sitting there like swirling the solution like a drink, like
Speaker 2: swirling the solution, like waiting like is it good yet?
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, give it to me. Gave them the
Speaker 2: freeze dried plasma. You know, like I said, turn quits
Speaker 2: addressing is freeze dried plasma? Uh, the fennel pop ketamine.
Speaker 2: Just everything was awesome. Doc did a phenomenal job.
Speaker 1: You guys did, Like I mean, I know there's a
Speaker 1: difference between blood and plasma, but essentially you kind of
Speaker 1: gave them like a blood.
Speaker 3: So it's it's like an infusion, so it can carry oxygen.
Speaker 2: It's exactly unlike an ivy fascinating. This amazing. Really, when
Speaker 2: you give something an iv all you're doing is increasing
Speaker 2: their blood, right, so right, but the plasma actually carries
Speaker 2: the oxygen. Right. So bird came in pissed me off
Speaker 2: because the lz were lazing. They said they couldn't land
Speaker 2: at they said it was too small. They're like, hey,
Speaker 2: we got to push over some ls This was a
Speaker 2: conventional bird. Then ye regular dust off and they landed
Speaker 2: like two fields over which was the exact same size
Speaker 2: that fills out. Frankly pissed me off. It was is
Speaker 2: like that field wasn't cleared right. They could have landed
Speaker 2: on an id or something, you know. So they land
Speaker 2: and we you know, come walking over there to like
Speaker 2: try to clear a path as best as we could
Speaker 2: visually to bring the casualty over loaded him up. The
Speaker 2: doors are off the the the black Hawk, the pilot
Speaker 2: and copilot doors, the cockpit doors they had off, and
Speaker 2: the pilotte sitting there, you know, looking down at his screens,
Speaker 2: just waiting, and I kind of walked up and I
Speaker 2: slapped him on the shoulder and scared the ship out
Speaker 2: like what I was like, Hey, I was like thank you,
Speaker 2: like shook his hand and they took off. Yeah, got
Speaker 2: back to uh go back to Jabad Bass and uh.
Speaker 2: You say, you know, he's a life today.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: He's a really good dude, really good friend. It was
Speaker 2: exciting at the time because I said he was shot
Speaker 2: and he said, take all commands from two to one.
Speaker 2: I'm not a j tack. Yeah, but when you call
Speaker 2: up the task force, you say eagles wounded, they're pushing
Speaker 2: everything they have to you. Yeah, Luckily me and him
Speaker 2: and worked together for three years. He had been my
Speaker 2: personal j tag for three years and we had this
Speaker 2: bond and we were always kind of cross training, like
Speaker 2: keep you quiz me on things, and I've just listened,
Speaker 2: just listened to him talk to aircraft. You learn, you
Speaker 2: know what to do and how to talk to him
Speaker 2: and h Once he gave me control of the assets
Speaker 2: and task force pushed me every asset. So like I
Speaker 2: was in control of like three I s R Birds,
Speaker 2: two apaches, two F sixteens, two A tens at AC
Speaker 2: one thirty. I just had all this stuff and I
Speaker 2: was like instead of stressing out, yeah yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 2: I knew what to do. Yeah, it was cool and
Speaker 2: I was thankful.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, yeah, well when we blown up today,
Speaker 1: it fell on you then to like smoke check that position, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Smoke check it. And then the apaches left with the
Speaker 2: dust off. I left them escort, yeah because they're pretty
Speaker 2: much being go anyways. But then just controlling all the
Speaker 2: sensors like watching us on the way back and if
Speaker 2: something happened on the way back, how to control them
Speaker 2: as well. And it was yeah, that was so cool.
Speaker 2: It was just cool. To be able to do like
Speaker 2: know how to do that paying attention to him because
Speaker 2: the first time me and him worked together and got
Speaker 2: into an engagement, I think I was an E six
Speaker 2: at the time. Yeah, I was knee six at the time.
Speaker 2: We had some guys maneuvering on us, and he came
Speaker 2: over and he's like, hey, we got guys you know
Speaker 2: coming up. Can I shoot? I was like, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: tell the apaches tell him to shoot. And he walked away,
Speaker 2: came back like a minute later, he's like, hey, are
Speaker 2: you sure. I was like, yeah, dude, like as long
Speaker 2: as you don't hit any civilians or blew up in
Speaker 2: civilian buildings, like I don't care shooting. And uh He's
Speaker 2: like okay, I just I just never had an E
Speaker 2: six clear me hot before. I was like, you have now. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like it was at that point, like our synchronicity whatever,
Speaker 2: you know. It just kind of just kind of mind
Speaker 2: melded and worked worked together very well after that because
Speaker 2: he knew what my expectations were and I knew he
Speaker 2: wasn't gonna do anything stupid, and we just I mean
Speaker 2: half the time we use fires. That's just like having
Speaker 2: you know what I want, man, yeah, I just do it.
Speaker 3: And and and those guys, and we've talked about on
Speaker 3: this show before, whether they're J tax or CCTs or
Speaker 3: TACPs or those guys were so good at their job.
Speaker 1: Here's here's the interesting thing. Tell tell them who this
Speaker 1: J attack was.
Speaker 2: Though he was an Army jtack, he's a ranger, he's
Speaker 2: a fister. Yeah.
Speaker 3: To get to that level like calling an artillery and
Speaker 3: calling a naval gun fire, I mean it's it's one
Speaker 3: thing calling an aaron a in an engagement like that,
Speaker 3: You've just got to be cool as a cucumber to
Speaker 3: be able to do that.
Speaker 2: It was weak and they're just he was awesome. And uh,
Speaker 2: I said he was an Army J attack, which for
Speaker 2: people out there far and few in between. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it's usually an air force job, but regiment has their own.
Speaker 2: He's thirteen fox so he's an artillery Yeah, artillery man.
Speaker 2: So he was a fish in the regiment. He wasn't
Speaker 2: an attached attack. Now he's a fister in the regiment.
Speaker 2: That's amazing, But we don't have artillery assets, so that's
Speaker 2: their job there attacks, which kind of screws them talking
Speaker 2: to him, you know, throughout our time together. Kind of
Speaker 2: screws them career wise, right, because they're artillery exactly going
Speaker 2: to like he's seventy eight boards, right, and the start
Speaker 2: of major and charge of boards is like, I don't
Speaker 2: give a shit about you j tax stuff like that
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with being an artillery man, right,
Speaker 2: which is stupid because it's better than being an artillery man.
Speaker 2: Like they're they're they're actually more like they sound more like.
Speaker 3: They're Anglico guys. You know, they're more like the marine
Speaker 3: Anglico there gunfire leaves. Yeah, it's interesting because I had
Speaker 3: a similar experience early on in Afghanistan. Nobody got injured, fortunately,
Speaker 3: but it made me realize that there are no like squirters.
Speaker 2: There are only maneuver elements like style. Yeah, yeah, is
Speaker 2: uh I was saying. I showed him a picture earlier today.
Speaker 2: You know, he took a round to the helmet. There's
Speaker 2: a p K round and if it wasn't for his
Speaker 2: helmet being unbuckled, it probably would punch all the way
Speaker 2: through because in the picture you can it's sticking through
Speaker 2: his helmet. It scratched his head. There's a scratch. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And what's crazy is the offscore helmet. It's only rated
Speaker 2: to nine milimeter and there's a p K round.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a light weight yeah yeah round yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It punched through and stopped when it touched his head.
Speaker 2: But I mean it was right here in his temple,
Speaker 2: like I went through where the rail is on the helmet. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if anybody knows what I'm talking about. And uh, I
Speaker 2: mean if he would have been looking to the left,
Speaker 2: to the righter up and he would have took you
Speaker 2: to the face.
Speaker 1: It looked like either the bullet came at like maybe
Speaker 1: an upward angle or or or the round keyhold through
Speaker 1: the helmet. I wasn't there. I have no idea which
Speaker 1: it was, but it was interesting, the hole in the
Speaker 1: side of the helmet.
Speaker 2: I think what it what happened was because obviously he
Speaker 2: got hit here first, second, third, Yeah, I think it
Speaker 2: zipped up as that one hit he you know, flinched,
Speaker 2: yeah or whatever.
Speaker 1: In his end that Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: This is a fraction of a second that saved his life.
Speaker 3: What did you said that the that the the Afghanians
Speaker 3: that you worked with, that they got along, how were
Speaker 3: they in terms of combat?
Speaker 2: I would say I I trusted them with my life.
Speaker 2: I still do. I mean I did. I had to
Speaker 2: trust them all my life because there's five of us
Speaker 2: and five interagency people and then you know one hundred
Speaker 2: Afghans or avermenting we had and sitting they're the ones
Speaker 2: that are hitting the targets, their their primary breach, their
Speaker 2: primary everything. We are technically advisors and to kind of
Speaker 2: sit back a couple of times, you know, every now
Speaker 2: and then and just watch them put a ladder on
Speaker 2: the wall, climb up the ladder, pull security, go over,
Speaker 2: open the gate from the inside, everybody flow in and
Speaker 2: secure everything. It was awesome. It's like watching us hit
Speaker 2: a target. They're well trained, they know what they're doing,
Speaker 2: and they need to be utilized still to this day,
Speaker 2: like we need to be utilizing those guys. They're very
Speaker 2: well trained. I'll caveat it with if one of those
Speaker 2: Afghans has been carrying a ladder for ten years, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if you can go hit a tent in
Speaker 2: the middle of the desert, he's still going to carry
Speaker 2: a ladder because if you take that ladder away, he
Speaker 2: didn't know what to do. Yeah, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: They were very good at what they were trained.
Speaker 3: On but if there was a complex problem or if
Speaker 3: something was out of the ordinary that they might Something
Speaker 3: I would also.
Speaker 1: Like to point out is to as far as I'm aware,
Speaker 1: that program that you guys were working on pretty large
Speaker 1: a lot of Afghans throughout twenty you know, essentially twenty
Speaker 1: years of war, I'm not aware of any Green on
Speaker 1: Blue incidents, zero at all. Zero, Yeah, which I think
Speaker 1: I think speaks a lot to the efficacy of the
Speaker 1: program and whatever you guys were doing, it was working
Speaker 1: in that regard.
Speaker 2: Man, there's zero Green on Blue. We thought we might
Speaker 2: have had one one, not an actual green on blue,
Speaker 2: like a developing Green on blue. We were able to
Speaker 2: nip it in the bud and fired both those guys
Speaker 2: and got them out here because the refer program. Yeah
Speaker 2: they were gone. But uh yeah, not a single Green
Speaker 2: and Blue incident. And even you know, some of those
Speaker 2: outstations that we had shut down, like the one in
Speaker 2: a Sadabad shut down, However, those guys stayed there and
Speaker 2: operated on the Really, those Afghans stay there and operated
Speaker 2: on their own with no American help. They finally did
Speaker 2: get some American help towards the end of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: through Uh, just some just some funding and weapons here
Speaker 2: and there. But they stayed there and police their own community,
Speaker 2: and they would come down to Jabad like once a
Speaker 2: month and kind of give us a debriefing of what
Speaker 2: they've been doing. And they're still getting after it on
Speaker 2: their own.
Speaker 1: Did they ever get to the point where they were
Speaker 1: able to have their own j tax and like talk
Speaker 1: to Afghan helicopters?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, I mean even talking to Afghan course.
Speaker 2: Uh, I'm sure the KKA probably did a regular Afghan army,
Speaker 2: but our guys weren't Afghan Army, so they wouldn't talk
Speaker 2: to them anyways.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. Oh yeah, I see what you're saying. So answer
Speaker 1: your three years as Reckie platoon sergeant or winding? Now
Speaker 1: what's sort of the next step for you?
Speaker 2: Got finished? Star, got moved to the three shop, you know,
Speaker 2: a glorious three shop. Spent about a year there as
Speaker 2: the AOPs and c O. And I was just miserable
Speaker 2: if the guys deployed again without me, And I even
Speaker 2: emailed Sarmer Major. I was like, hey, I'll go just
Speaker 2: as a trigger puller. I won't be in charge of anything.
Speaker 2: Just let me go. Yeah, And he's like, no, we
Speaker 2: need you back here. And I was like, this sucks.
Speaker 2: Like working an office job is my nightmare, Like that
Speaker 2: is my nightmare. And I like working with my hands.
Speaker 2: I like being in the field. I like teaching. I like,
Speaker 2: you know, being with the guys. And uh, that was
Speaker 2: just miserable. My job performance was probably not great. Like
Speaker 2: I tried to go to work as less as possible,
Speaker 2: like I just some days I I won't even show
Speaker 2: up whatever, and uh it showed, not ashamed to say it.
Speaker 2: And I finally got the I got the invite to
Speaker 2: leave regiment, Like the the ops arm major pulled me
Speaker 2: in and he's like, hey, man, like, you know, I
Speaker 2: think it might be time for you to find somewhere
Speaker 2: else to go.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your service.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I asked him. I was like, am I
Speaker 2: being an r FST. He's like no, no, no, He's
Speaker 2: like you're not being an r FS. Don't take it
Speaker 2: that way. He's like, you personally need to find somewhere else.
Speaker 2: He's like, you're miserable. I was like all right, So
Speaker 2: I kind of went and uh hunted around. I went
Speaker 2: to Ranger Training Brigade where Ranger school is, and this
Speaker 2: arm major of the brigade was my previous arm major
Speaker 2: of Italian. Awesome guy Vic is one of the best
Speaker 2: armators you could ever work for, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: just cold knocked his office. Actually I knocked on his office.
Speaker 2: He wasn't there. I waited in the park lot U
Speaker 2: till he got there, watched him walk in and I
Speaker 2: walked in behind him and I was like, hey, what's up.
Speaker 2: But I told him what was going on and he
Speaker 2: can give me a job because the retention guy of
Speaker 2: Italian was like, hey, man, you're either going to go
Speaker 2: to the s FAB which screw that, or go to
Speaker 2: Fort polp j r TC. And I was like, I
Speaker 2: will go a wall before I go to J I
Speaker 2: was like, there's always another way. I was like, I
Speaker 2: refuse to let the army tell me what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 2: And uh, someone talked to Vic and he was like, hey,
Speaker 2: what do you what do you want to do. I
Speaker 2: was like, I'll be a ranger instructure man, like I
Speaker 2: don't I don't care. I'll be on the woods. And
Speaker 2: he kind of looked at me and he's like, he's like,
Speaker 2: you don't want to do that. I was like what
Speaker 2: He's like it sucks. He's like, you're gonna be out
Speaker 2: there rain, shine, snow, heat, holidays away from your family
Speaker 2: twenty four on, like forty eight off. Like he's like
Speaker 2: it's not fun. I was like, all right, well never mind.
Speaker 2: Then then he goes, but we just took over a
Speaker 2: jump Master, Airborne and Pathfinder. Okay, so that all funds
Speaker 2: falls under ar TV. Now, oh really airborne ranger training.
Speaker 2: And I was like, well, I'll do jump Master. A Pathfinder.
Speaker 2: That's a nice badge and you haven't had it before.
Speaker 2: So I went to be a idead pathfinder.
Speaker 3: You did, well, can you tell us about the Pathfinder school,
Speaker 3: because it's not it's it's a coveted school and not.
Speaker 2: A lot of people get it still exists.
Speaker 3: It's gone, it's gone, no longer coveted. Well now it's
Speaker 3: doubly covet. You go back in just to wear that badge.
Speaker 2: They still have them for the National Guard, but.
Speaker 1: It's like a glider badge people with that.
Speaker 2: I want the Army space badge. D have you seen
Speaker 2: nothing they have that? Yeah, it's like space goes Holy shit,
Speaker 2: looks awesome. But yeah, so I went to be a pathfinder,
Speaker 2: a pathfiner, instructor. That's where I went after Regiment be
Speaker 2: a Pathfinder instructor as a drop zones instructor. So Pathfinder
Speaker 2: School teaches sling loads HLZ operations and drop zone operations.
Speaker 2: Teaches all three of those. You don't have to be
Speaker 2: airborne to go. You can get sling load certified from
Speaker 2: the Single Load Certification course it's called SLICK. You can
Speaker 2: get airt HLZ certified from Aerosolt School. But Pathfinder is
Speaker 2: the only one that teaches all three in one shot,
Speaker 2: the only one that teaches drop zone operations. Basically you're
Speaker 2: learning and the history of path Hunder School comes from
Speaker 2: World War II when the Pathfinders went into Europe before
Speaker 2: the invasion and set up drop zones for the paratroopers
Speaker 2: from eighty second hundred first to jump in. And that's
Speaker 2: why everybody goes to Pathfinder schools to learn drop zone operations.
Speaker 2: They're not going there for single loads hlz's because like
Speaker 2: I said, you can go to other schools for those.
Speaker 2: You're going there to learn drop zones and that's what
Speaker 2: we're knowing for. And you learn how to calculate width
Speaker 2: and length of drop zones and green light time and
Speaker 2: drop zones. How many jumpers and equipment you can put
Speaker 2: on a drop zone, what type of aircraft a drop
Speaker 2: zone can accommodate? Just everything along those lines.
Speaker 1: What is it? The L the L shaped with the
Speaker 1: flares that you put out when they I'm talking about bundle.
Speaker 2: Drops about it like a gm RS drop This might
Speaker 2: be more.
Speaker 1: High tech than even what we were doing back in
Speaker 1: that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a I think what you're talking about said
Speaker 2: it's a ground marked release system, right, So you pretty
Speaker 2: much make an L with via seventeen panels for the daytime,
Speaker 2: or strobes or flares at nighttime, but you make an
Speaker 2: L shape and as the aircraft flies over that jump
Speaker 2: master is looking out the door, you know, the L
Speaker 2: is this way. This is the long axis of the
Speaker 2: drop zone, so they're flying up this way. As soon
Speaker 2: as these lights get online and they're in line, that's
Speaker 2: his green light. That's when he's pushing everything so he
Speaker 2: doesn't have to talk to anybody on the radio. So
Speaker 2: for special forces or wrecky teams, gim RS is very
Speaker 2: h enticing because I can go out and set up
Speaker 2: a gm RS drop zone to receive my resupply of food, AMMO, whatever, equipment,
Speaker 2: whatever I need. I can set that up and not
Speaker 2: even have to be there. I can go back off
Speaker 2: into my hide sight or my patrol base and you know,
Speaker 2: hear the plane fly over. I don't have to talk
Speaker 2: to anybody. They're just gonna line those panels or strobes
Speaker 2: up or flares up, kick out where they're kicking out,
Speaker 2: and then I'm gonna go out and pick it up,
Speaker 2: break everything down.
Speaker 3: Do they do any adjustments for like the wind at
Speaker 3: the time or anything like that, or oh during the
Speaker 3: he did the drop?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the aircraft is not. No, that's that's on you
Speaker 2: on the ground. Okay, So so you just have to
Speaker 2: beat the villagers and everything. Yeah, yeah, I kind of
Speaker 2: wing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They're also like five hundred feet off the ground too, right, you.
Speaker 2: Can't be yeah three hundred yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now that's fascinating and that, Like I said, I
Speaker 3: they don't talk like.
Speaker 2: You don't hear.
Speaker 3: Much about what happens at the course. It's just it
Speaker 3: was always one of the most coveted badges. It's it's
Speaker 3: a beautiful badge. And you know the army is all about.
Speaker 2: They still have they still have the National Guard. We're
Speaker 2: training center at Fort Benning. Yeah, they still run their
Speaker 2: Pathfinder School. Fort Campbell still has their Pathfinder School, but
Speaker 2: the regular Army deemed it necessary to shut down the
Speaker 2: Pathfinder School. Sure, the proponent for all Pathfinder operations because
Speaker 2: like we were at that schoolhouse, we were responsible for
Speaker 2: the trainings National Guard Warrior Training Center and responsible for
Speaker 2: Campbell A. We go up and audit them, you know,
Speaker 2: but then you're gonna shut down the schoolhouse.
Speaker 1: Well, like the like the worst teams that'll be back
Speaker 1: one day and.
Speaker 3: They will hopefully they don't reinvent it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I get guys, you know, guys that
Speaker 2: came through Pathfinder when I was an instructor. They're at regiment.
Speaker 2: I mean, I had a guy hit me up like
Speaker 2: three or four weeks ago. He's like, hey, I'm doing
Speaker 2: this and this like on this drop zone. Can I
Speaker 2: do this or this? And I sat there and explained
Speaker 2: it to him, like yeah, you can do this, but
Speaker 2: think about this and whatever. And he was like, can
Speaker 2: I get you to come out here and like go
Speaker 2: over the stuff. He's like, I feel like this is
Speaker 2: a dying art and it needs to be taught.
Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, man, so if if they
Speaker 3: didn't have a specific school for the drop zone.
Speaker 2: They had it for the other things, but they don't
Speaker 2: have it. Who where do people learn those disease skills? Now,
Speaker 2: Warrior Training Center, National Guard or Campbell. They tried a
Speaker 2: pilot program. I don't know. Well, so John Master teaches
Speaker 2: a little bit. John Master teaches CARP drop zones, which
Speaker 2: is air Force drop zone. So there's Army drop zones
Speaker 2: and air Force drop zones. Army drop zones is GMRS
Speaker 2: and Verer's gm RS is ground march release system and
Speaker 2: Vier's is verbally initiated release system, so you're talking on
Speaker 2: the radio telling them when to drop. So those are Army.
Speaker 2: Air Force is CARP computed air release points, which means
Speaker 2: the computer on the aircraft that CE seventeen or SEE
Speaker 2: one thirty is calculating everything. Give them a grid and
Speaker 2: it does everything, and that's the green light. So the
Speaker 2: green light and the aircraft one something mean jump. That's
Speaker 2: all ran by a computer. John Master teaches that. So
Speaker 2: John Master still teaches KARP. Not sure if they started
Speaker 2: teaching viers or gmrs at all. There was a pilot
Speaker 2: program where they were just gonna do you think I
Speaker 2: think Pathfinder is just gonna do drop zones, which I
Speaker 2: could see be a viable option because you can get
Speaker 2: those other certifications at other schools, So why not just
Speaker 2: teach drop zones. But we fall back, and what we
Speaker 2: talked about at the beginning of the interview was pathfinders
Speaker 2: and lurse are not viewed as special right in the
Speaker 2: American Army for whatever reason. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 2: know why they don't. I think it's honestly a senior people.
Speaker 2: This is my personal opinion. Senior people went to these
Speaker 2: schools or tried off these units and didn't make it,
Speaker 2: and they're like, no, no, no, you know, they're never
Speaker 2: gonna be special. I didn't make it. No one could
Speaker 2: make it, you know, So they don't want them to
Speaker 2: be special or elevated to something higher than them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if that.
Speaker 3: Makes sense, No it I mean, look, it's sort of
Speaker 3: like giving I mean, if rangers are special, it obviously
Speaker 3: is the black that makes them.
Speaker 2: So so let's.
Speaker 3: Give you the whole army, and the whole Army will
Speaker 3: be special exactly. I mean, I get it, But but
Speaker 3: it just seems like a real lack of foresight in that,
Speaker 3: you know, we're moving to this near peer. We don't
Speaker 3: know at any given time what combat will look like.
Speaker 2: And you know, we can say that we have you know, drones.
Speaker 3: And ISR platforms and all these things, but as sigin
Speaker 3: or is like uh, signals warfare, electronic warfare, cyber warfare
Speaker 3: come online, all of those things may be counter.
Speaker 1: I think just looking at what we are planning for
Speaker 1: right now, what what d OD is looking at its
Speaker 1: potential uh expeditionary warfare on the Pacific, looking at exactly
Speaker 1: right right, very like long long range like it's not
Speaker 1: going to be these uh like a thirty minute helicopter trip.
Speaker 1: These new vertical takeoff and landing helicopters we're going to adapt.
Speaker 1: They're like much longer insertions. Having people way out there.
Speaker 1: Uh So I think that, yeah, having disease and these
Speaker 1: sorts of skills are imperative.
Speaker 2: It's like when you have this in the Indo Pacific
Speaker 2: pay calm area, an island hopping campaign, right, who's on
Speaker 2: the ground setting upright?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, you got to have somebody there, absolutely.
Speaker 3: And you know, and we can throw all the electronics
Speaker 3: in the world out there, but again, there are countermass
Speaker 3: that and even if they're just setting up like you know,
Speaker 3: isolated random EMP burst like to clear areas there. There
Speaker 3: are so many countermeasures that even when we start talking
Speaker 3: about augmented reality and and you know blue force trackers
Speaker 3: and what people might see in their headsets if somebody
Speaker 3: hacks into that, you have a lot of blue on blue, Like,
Speaker 3: we still need to have the old techniques. Well, like
Speaker 3: people still need to be able to navigate via compass
Speaker 3: and map. They still need to be able to set
Speaker 3: up uh you know uh uh you know a non
Speaker 3: computer you know, assisted drop, you know these things because
Speaker 3: the other thing is you encrypt your signal so that
Speaker 3: nobody knows what you're saying, but they still know somebody's
Speaker 3: saying it.
Speaker 2: If you're blasting out, you.
Speaker 1: Know, it might be able to jam it.
Speaker 2: Not only do they know that you're saying something, they
Speaker 2: can they can figure it out.
Speaker 3: They can get a clocked direct with AI like it's
Speaker 3: gonna they're gonna be able to try and so quickly
Speaker 3: once that comes online and is like set up that,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it amazes me that we have to
Speaker 3: relearn these lessons every single after World War two, after Vietnam,
Speaker 3: like we you know, we have to relearn them every time.
Speaker 1: But because I'm a megan NERD, I read like the
Speaker 1: publications from Fort Benning and stuff like that, and they
Speaker 1: talk about how, you know, the electronic warfare environment may
Speaker 1: become so intense that you know, Sniper Team it's using
Speaker 1: these old school techniques being both action rifles, glass scopes,
Speaker 1: making field sketches with pencil and paper that they can
Speaker 1: actually penetrate into that e W bubble and do their
Speaker 1: operations and maybe take out the jam, takeout jammers or
Speaker 1: whatever else needs to be done out there, you know,
Speaker 1: without having their their equipment interfered with. Yeah, without having
Speaker 1: a signature right right, So yeah, it's it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: So after you do your time at Pathfinder working as
Speaker 1: an instructor there and uh, what's the next assignment for you?
Speaker 2: I was a Pathfinder instructor for two years and I
Speaker 2: moved on to uh so Ranger Branch called was like, hey,
Speaker 2: are you tired of for Benning? I was like kinda,
Speaker 2: He's like, where do you want to go? What do
Speaker 2: you want to do? I was like, man like I
Speaker 2: would uh what a mind RTC if you got it?
Speaker 2: And he's like, all right, what a what region? I
Speaker 2: said Southeast, all right, I'll call you tomorrow. Calls back
Speaker 2: and he's like, hey, how does a University of Alabama sound?
Speaker 2: And I was like, dude, that sounds great like roll Tide. Man.
Speaker 2: He's like, all right, you'll have orders in like thirty minutes,
Speaker 2: and I was like, cool, I get these orders. And
Speaker 2: I look at him and it says University of Alabama
Speaker 2: at Birmingham. I was like, what is this university at Birmingham?
Speaker 2: So id to like google it. It's a whole nother
Speaker 2: university I don't know existed. It's called UAB University of
Speaker 2: Alabama at Birmingham. So not the role Tide I was thinking.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was only two hours away, and it
Speaker 2: actually worked out better, I think, than going to University
Speaker 2: Alabama a smaller program. I was the MS three instructor,
Speaker 2: so I taught the juniors and got them ready for
Speaker 2: their summer camp. I think Go too one of the
Speaker 2: most rewarding assignments I've ever been to. All the other
Speaker 2: stuff was cool, and you can write books and movies
Speaker 2: and stuff about, but teaching those young future army officers
Speaker 2: what right is and showing them the ways and just
Speaker 2: kind of making that first impression on them before they
Speaker 2: come in and be an army officer, and to have
Speaker 2: them still contact me almost daily like hey, this is
Speaker 2: an update, Like Hey, I'm an XO now you know.
Speaker 2: Are you proud of me? Yeah, I'm proud of you,
Speaker 2: but just kind of guiding them through their college career
Speaker 2: and their life. You know, I can't tell you how
Speaker 2: many times I've had a cadet on my couch my
Speaker 2: office just break down crying because something's going on in
Speaker 2: their life. So here I am again.
Speaker 1: Dad being like being a.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They looked at me as like a big brother.
Speaker 2: You know, there was still an n c O in
Speaker 2: charge of me. He was like the dad figure and
Speaker 2: he was awesome guy. I love working with him. Travis
Speaker 2: is one of the best ncas I've ever worked with.
Speaker 2: But uh, he's very professional, you know, he's very just.
Speaker 2: I told him when I left, I was like, you're
Speaker 2: so professional it pisses me off. Why do you have
Speaker 2: a high tight.
Speaker 1: We've had a couple of guys on here who they're
Speaker 1: final n c O to. Their final assignment was r O. T.
Speaker 1: C Uh. Javier Mackie and Paul Howe both come to
Speaker 1: come to mind and they had similar things to say
Speaker 1: that it's a very rewarding experience.
Speaker 2: It is very rewarding, and it's it's also you know,
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I wanted to get out of
Speaker 2: the army too, because I you know, the ones that
Speaker 2: I enjoyed teaching and the ones that were receptive awesome,
Speaker 2: but there's always ones that slipped through the cracks, right,
Speaker 2: you know, and you see that caliber of people coming
Speaker 2: in the army, and then also and they're going to
Speaker 2: be leading the army, right, and then the direction of
Speaker 2: the army was going at the time too, you know,
Speaker 2: not what we're used to, right. I was like, man,
Speaker 2: this this is gonna be my last assignment, Like I'm
Speaker 2: done after this. But Archie C was fun. It was
Speaker 2: a good I think, I think the best last assignments.
Speaker 1: I think Paul had something similar to say. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to put words in Paul How's mouth because
Speaker 1: I'm a little afraid.
Speaker 2: Of him, but U.
Speaker 1: But I think I think he had a similar impression
Speaker 1: that he loved working with the soldiers and mentoring those guys.
Speaker 1: But it was like also like not totally happy with
Speaker 1: the direction the army.
Speaker 2: Was going in because that was my last assignment. I
Speaker 2: medically retired at seventeen years and I made that decision.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a light decision to make, you know, and
Speaker 2: three three years ago, but I looked at it and
Speaker 2: I was like, can I do three more years? Because
Speaker 2: that what if I was going to do three more years?
Speaker 2: That was not going to be my last assignment, Like
Speaker 2: where was I going after that? And to that point
Speaker 2: in my career, the Army had never told me where
Speaker 2: to go. I had always chosen or volunteered, like they
Speaker 2: never told me, hey, you're going here, You're going here.
Speaker 2: So I didn't want the Army to tell me to
Speaker 2: go somewhere that I didn't want to go. And I
Speaker 2: was I don't want to spend three more years unhappy
Speaker 2: in an assignment that possibly sucks, or don't want to
Speaker 2: medically retire now and get the same benefits I would
Speaker 2: as if I retired, actually even better benefits and go
Speaker 2: out on a high note, like gout and go off
Speaker 2: and be happy and make more money and do my
Speaker 2: own thing, not be told what to do every day
Speaker 2: for out of curiosity.
Speaker 3: For the ones you say that we're like slipping through
Speaker 3: the cracks, Like what was their motivation for going into
Speaker 3: the mills, like why did they want to put themselves
Speaker 3: through money?
Speaker 2: Money?
Speaker 1: Yeah, not really the right reason to be there that
Speaker 1: kind of.
Speaker 4: Job money or just you know, to get out of
Speaker 4: where they were. Well that the army that can sort
Speaker 4: of get well the arm like that, Like the army
Speaker 4: paid for their school. They couldn't pay their school, so
Speaker 4: the army paid for which is I guess money but right,
Speaker 4: same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, DoD Do we have any questions for okay, questions
Speaker 1: for Dustin from the chat?
Speaker 2: Why are you so monotone?
Speaker 5: From Jackson?
Speaker 2: Mum hm?
Speaker 5: How much cross pollination is there between uh B and
Speaker 5: Reki and r r C. Also are B and Wrecky
Speaker 5: guys more likely on to take CAXT selection than rangers?
Speaker 2: Much cross pollination between what battalion Recky, Battalion Recky, and
Speaker 2: r C. I would say cross pollination is or was
Speaker 2: decent when I was there, like I said, we filled
Speaker 2: filled some of their billets because they didn't have enough
Speaker 2: people to fill all their teams, so natural.
Speaker 1: A lot a lot of those guys go to selection too.
Speaker 1: For r C.
Speaker 2: Uh my time there, I maybe had two guys.
Speaker 3: Go okay, Does I mean a lot of line rangers
Speaker 3: go to well not a lot, but you know it's
Speaker 3: it's a thing to go to CAG selection. Is that
Speaker 3: also with r C or do they more? I mean
Speaker 3: not RC, but RECKI U or do they?
Speaker 2: Is he still you still have that mentality? Sure you
Speaker 2: still have that. I want to go killit right right,
Speaker 2: I want to go be the best of the best,
Speaker 2: right you know. I had a couple of guys go,
Speaker 2: a couple of peers go as well. While I was there,
Speaker 2: they had another guy. He was on the fence of
Speaker 2: you know, should I go to r C selection or
Speaker 2: should I go to CAG selection. And one of my buddies,
Speaker 2: that's the RC guy. I told him, like, go to
Speaker 2: CAG selection. Dude, Like why not go varsity? If you
Speaker 2: can go varsity, go try out for varsity. And I
Speaker 2: think that's That's one of the biggest issues in today's
Speaker 2: society as a whole, civilian and military, is it's so
Speaker 2: easy to be a rock star because mediocricy is just rampant,
Speaker 2: Like God's honest truth, Like people are so mediocre, they
Speaker 2: will self select and like, oh I'm not good enough,
Speaker 2: They'll never select me. Like you don't know that, man,
Speaker 2: Just go try like go. I can't tell you how
Speaker 2: many selections I've been to. I've tried out for everything
Speaker 2: under the sun, and I've been told numerous times you
Speaker 2: throw it off ship of the wall. Eventually something stick,
Speaker 2: so it works out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you got to do some of the coolest
Speaker 1: stuff that the Army had going on. In my humble opinion, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 3: And you know that's one of the things that we've
Speaker 3: talked about on the show before. It is like we've
Speaker 3: had some people from the conventional side on before, but
Speaker 3: like the conventional Army and the Marine Corps, like they
Speaker 3: were out there hooking and jabbin like NonStop on these
Speaker 3: long ass deployments. I've been there, and they do not
Speaker 3: see they don't right, Like, they don't get the credit
Speaker 3: that they deserve at all.
Speaker 2: And I have a lot of guys that I did
Speaker 2: the long fifteen month or year long deployment with and
Speaker 2: then they got out afterwards. Yeah, and you know that's
Speaker 2: that's what they have. They have, that fifteen month Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that no one gives them enough credit for that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And some of the best dudes, I mean, I have
Speaker 2: a group chat on my phone. It's like six of
Speaker 2: us from my very first platoon and we talk every
Speaker 2: day or yeah, bullshit, and uh, that's what they have
Speaker 2: and they deserve the credit. Yeah, and uh because they
Speaker 2: went through some shit. Man. Yeah. You spend fifteen months somewhere,
Speaker 2: you get to know someone, you you learned somebody. And
Speaker 2: also in that environment, you kind of lose your community
Speaker 2: a little bit, man. Yeah, and it takes a little
Speaker 2: bit to get it back. Yeah, and someone didn't get
Speaker 2: it back. Yeah.
Speaker 3: How was it for you when you went when you
Speaker 3: went to regiment, Because like I was in Rangers during
Speaker 3: a peacetime military and it's very different, but there was
Speaker 3: always this stigma until a guy earned his like it
Speaker 3: earned his way, right, like and tell him showed that
Speaker 3: he was a good leader and and you know was
Speaker 3: a good I don't say operator because at the time,
Speaker 3: like the Rangers were still you know, like CQB and.
Speaker 2: Stuff like that were just coming on board.
Speaker 3: Like it was still the premier light infantry and you know,
Speaker 3: we still did patrol bases and shit like that. But
Speaker 3: but there was that stigma of being an import right,
Speaker 3: how was it for you when you first showed up?
Speaker 2: I never had that and press pressed on me. I'm
Speaker 2: sure it was there. The only time I ever saw
Speaker 2: it happen is our very first It was like the
Speaker 2: first month or so. I was at the platoon and
Speaker 2: we're doing team live fire exercises and there was just
Speaker 2: a hot mess, and the platoon st that I was
Speaker 2: talking about earlier that was like, I need your help.
Speaker 2: I was like, hey, man, can you go grab those
Speaker 2: guys and like teach them how to really break contact
Speaker 2: as a team. And I was like, yeah, man, sure,
Speaker 2: So I kind of had to, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: nut up and overstep the other team leaders that are
Speaker 2: already there and pull all their teams in. It's like, hey, guys,
Speaker 2: like bring it in. Let me let me show you
Speaker 2: guys how to do this, you know. And those team
Speaker 2: leaders they kind of stepped off to the side.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, they're feeling you out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who the fuck is this? I think it is?
Speaker 2: You know, like but uh, I think it was like,
Speaker 2: you know, the week after that, I was sitting in
Speaker 2: the team room in the cages and I was back
Speaker 2: there and I had my big old s op binder
Speaker 2: that Michaeltoons aren't forced me to make as a team
Speaker 2: leader and lurse and it went everything from individual movement
Speaker 2: techniques to platoon operations. I was just sitting there flipping
Speaker 2: through it, just kind of refreshing myself because it's been
Speaker 2: a minute. And a squalader or one of the Wreckie
Speaker 2: team leaders came over. For people who don't know a
Speaker 2: squad leader in WRECKI is a team leader. It's the
Speaker 2: same same, same s six but uh he came ouver.
Speaker 2: He kind of stood on my shoulder, like what are
Speaker 2: you looking at? I was like my sop book and
Speaker 2: he was like I see that. I was like, just
Speaker 2: take it, dude. I was like, you need it. I
Speaker 2: was like, just take it. You can have it, copy it,
Speaker 2: you know whatever, because every team should have their own
Speaker 2: sp because it operates independently. You know, our teams operate independently.
Speaker 2: But I said as an import like, I mean, no
Speaker 2: one was walking down the hallway me in the nuts
Speaker 2: like nothing bad happened. I was kind of intimidated, to
Speaker 2: be honest, because I didn't have a scroll on my
Speaker 2: right shoulder. I had my Lurst patch or my two
Speaker 2: EDD patch until I did that first deployment and I
Speaker 2: put a scroll on, never took it off, and people
Speaker 2: got my respect. It was interesting because I didn't grow
Speaker 2: up in regiment. Yeah, so a lot of the East
Speaker 2: six's in below had no idea who I was because
Speaker 2: I didn't go to rip with them, I didn't do
Speaker 2: platoon operations with him. I wasn't in the line with them.
Speaker 2: But everybody from like platoons aren't above or first aren't
Speaker 2: above knew who I was and respected me, and it
Speaker 2: was It's an interesting dynamic for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Any more questions for Dustin.
Speaker 5: Jopyre Thank you, hey, al, Dustin, you talked about your
Speaker 5: conventional leaders. What was your experience with officers at regiment?
Speaker 5: As I understand, operating is really the role of enlisted
Speaker 5: So how are they at employing your guys' skill enhanced
Speaker 5: skill sets?
Speaker 2: So officers in regiment, I'll talk about regiment as a whole,
Speaker 2: and we can talk about reki pl if we want.
Speaker 2: Officers as a whole regiment are very good at managing
Speaker 2: tasks and shielding their platoons. For lack of a better
Speaker 2: or bullshit, their main job is, you know, be a
Speaker 2: politician with battalion, especially company level and platoon level. The
Speaker 2: pls I had at Regiment, I mean I was there
Speaker 2: for three years. I think I went through five pls
Speaker 2: as a platoon start in that PO, he was in
Speaker 2: charge of not only the wrecky platoon, but also the
Speaker 2: risk of platoon, which is the reconnaissance surveillance target acquisition.
Speaker 2: They do a lot of tech stuff, so he kind
Speaker 2: of had he was in charge of two platoons, but
Speaker 2: each platoon had their own platoons Earn it was a
Speaker 2: weird dynamic. Simultaneously, K nine and Snipers had one PO
Speaker 2: but platoons arens. That's kind of how that was set up.
Speaker 2: As far as specialty patams. But every pl I had
Speaker 2: was rock solid. They all actually they they all left
Speaker 2: and went to s F. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Questions for Dustin.
Speaker 5: One from a Chris Ward. I have a question, what
Speaker 5: was your favorite moment out of your entire career outside
Speaker 5: of retirement obviously.
Speaker 2: Chris Ward, that's my brother. Uh, Graduating Radar School like
Speaker 2: that is I would think, Yeah, graduating Rending School was
Speaker 2: probably the not the highlight of my career, but one
Speaker 2: of the proudest moments because it is the premier leadership
Speaker 2: school of the Army, one of the hardest schools anybody
Speaker 2: could ever go to. You never been to Buds Adventure
Speaker 2: to say it's harder than Buds.
Speaker 1: Sorry, maybe spicy take.
Speaker 2: Yeah, spicy take. I mean maybe Steals get to go
Speaker 2: home every night. Buds. You have a barrass room, bro,
Speaker 2: or you can go to your house. Don't do that.
Speaker 2: Ranger school, but yeah, because once your arranger, always Rainer Man.
Speaker 2: That's the way I look at it, and I'm super
Speaker 2: proud to graduate Raind School.
Speaker 1: Anything else is one last one from a station ward.
Speaker 1: Oh boy.
Speaker 5: My favorite moment was being able to present him with
Speaker 5: a flag that had been flown on a B fifty
Speaker 5: two that hit a target he called for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so as my dad the stays of word, he's
Speaker 2: talking about the operation. We're talking about the Big Push.
Speaker 2: So my dad was in the Air Force. He's a
Speaker 2: B fifty two guy, still has friends in the B
Speaker 2: fifty two community. He's an electronic warfare officer or electronic
Speaker 2: warfare technician guy. The B fifty two's during that time,
Speaker 2: they were flying over and dropping bombs the moab, which
Speaker 2: wasn't from B fifty two, but it's that time. Madison
Speaker 2: was in charge and shit was just raining, you know.
Speaker 2: But my dad caught win that we were also there
Speaker 2: in Nagahar and talked to the pilots and they flew
Speaker 2: a flag for me and gave me a certificate.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Got some pull pins from like the arming pins from
Speaker 2: the from the bombs, like the little leafless they dropped
Speaker 2: to and he brought it to me on my birthday
Speaker 2: and stuff is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So how has post military service life been treating you?
Speaker 1: What are you up to nowadays?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man, retirement's awesome. I don't have to shave anymore.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, when I first got out. So my actual
Speaker 2: job job, I'm a I'm a contractor for Department of
Speaker 2: State right now, just doing stuff overseas when I'm state side.
Speaker 2: I've started a company called the Light Sleeper, and we
Speaker 2: make an ultra light. It's basically a woobie. I'll explain
Speaker 2: it as a wooby with a sleeve to put a
Speaker 2: sleeping pad in and a pillow attachment. It's just a
Speaker 2: light sleeping system for light backpackers. It weighs two pounds,
Speaker 2: so you don't got to take a whole sleep system
Speaker 2: or a stuff sack and all that. You know, Bivysack started.
Speaker 2: That company is doing very well. We just started shipping
Speaker 2: last week. You congrats, sure shipping last week?
Speaker 1: You show me on your website earlier and h it's inexpensive.
Speaker 1: It's like, what's seventy bucks? Yeah, seventy bucks, and yeah
Speaker 1: I want one? What?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm absolutely what's the website where people can get it?
Speaker 2: The light Sleeper dot com?
Speaker 3: The light Sleeper dot Com. The light Sleeper dot Com
Speaker 3: is gonna be down in the video description by yourself,
Speaker 3: Al woobie with a sleeping pad.
Speaker 2: That's the most amazing.
Speaker 1: That's that's the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't come with a sleeping pad. Okay, it
Speaker 2: comes with a pocket to put your own sleeping pad in.
Speaker 2: Because everyone has their own preferences.
Speaker 3: So I'm not gonna you had me a woman you
Speaker 3: like the the only piece of army year that ever.
Speaker 2: That's what I wanted. Did what it's meant to do.
Speaker 2: I came up with the idea because I was I
Speaker 2: was sitting there packing my son's nap matt for school.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know what nap mat is.
Speaker 2: So I was rolling his up, got out of the dryer,
Speaker 2: was like rolling up putting his backpack for school in kindergarten.
Speaker 2: And uh I looked at it, and I looked at
Speaker 2: my wife, and I was like, why is this not
Speaker 2: a thing for adults? She's like what. I was like,
Speaker 2: I love taking naps. Yeah, And I kind of like
Speaker 2: just said there and thought about it. From that, I
Speaker 2: was like, why do not have this in the field?
Speaker 2: And I hit up some buddies, like a buddy of
Speaker 2: marsak Andy. I was like, you good. He's like, dude, yeah,
Speaker 2: why is that not a thing already? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm hey, everybody, make sure buy the light sleeper
Speaker 3: the light Sleeper dot com.
Speaker 2: You owe it to yourself.
Speaker 1: I got I got a Scouts field trip coming up,
Speaker 1: camping trip with my daughter.
Speaker 2: So actually I just had a guy. Uh he was
Speaker 2: about three for his Scouts all right, all right? Yeah.
Speaker 2: We shipped over one hundred orders this past week. We
Speaker 2: just started shipping this last week and over one hundred
Speaker 2: orders already.
Speaker 1: It's been That's FANTASTICO off to the races man.
Speaker 2: Other than that, the one got certified as a bounty hunter.
Speaker 2: Just kind of keep things spicy at home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got to do that. So you go and
Speaker 1: knock on people stores unpaid parking tickets, bitch.
Speaker 2: I haven't done it yet. Yeah, I just got certified.
Speaker 2: Last October November. Okay, we and my buddy from RC
Speaker 2: that retired. Also, yeah, we one got certified together. I
Speaker 2: was like, dude, we should do this. I was talking
Speaker 2: to a guy overs I used to do. It sounded
Speaker 2: real easy. I was like, why are we doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I talked to a dude who did a
Speaker 1: bounty hunting at one point, and he had some wild stories.
Speaker 1: But yeah, suffice to say, if like a dude that
Speaker 1: looks like Dustin comes and knocks on my door and
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, yeah, you're going to jail now, it's
Speaker 1: like how much of a fight am I gonna put up?
Speaker 1: Probably just gonna go along.
Speaker 2: That's kind of what the guy was talking to he said,
Speaker 2: Because I asked him. I was like, you know, what's
Speaker 2: the you know, it was kind of like a bro code,
Speaker 2: like you don't know me, so you're not gonna hire
Speaker 2: me type thing. Yeah. He's like no, no, no, He's like,
Speaker 2: if you and your buddy asked to work for me,
Speaker 2: with your resumes and looking the way you do, he's like,
Speaker 2: I'm getting every bounty I got. Oh nice. But we
Speaker 2: just got our company certified back in March, so we
Speaker 2: haven't had the ability to go out and get anybody yet.
Speaker 1: But this looking forward to this dude, I remember him
Speaker 1: telling me a story about how he got on a
Speaker 1: flight to Honolulu and they had like forty eight hours
Speaker 1: to find this guy or they're gonna eat like a
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars bounty.
Speaker 2: I was like, holy shit.
Speaker 1: But then at the same time, the same guy told
Speaker 1: me he's like, if I knock on a guy's door
Speaker 1: and it's like over unpaid parking tickets or something, and
Speaker 1: the bounty is, you know, two thousand dollars, and he
Speaker 1: offers me three thousand, I'm taking the money they do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's perfectly legal too, Oh is it really?
Speaker 1: It's not. It's not like you're bribing a public official.
Speaker 2: They're paying their bounty. It's it's perfectly legal. Oh. Interesting.
Speaker 2: As long as they pay their contractual fee, you're good.
Speaker 2: You don't have to take them to jail every time.
Speaker 2: If they can pay it right there on the spot,
Speaker 2: you don't got to take them a jail.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I knew a guy who did it, and he said,
Speaker 3: it's just it's a lot of detective work. It's like
Speaker 3: find out who their girlfriends were, stuff like like where
Speaker 3: are they holding up, you know, and that's why we yeah.
Speaker 2: Why we haven't done anything yet, because there's federal databases.
Speaker 2: You can get access to it. Yeah, but you have
Speaker 2: to have a company that they give those accesses to
Speaker 2: a company, not a person. So we had to wait
Speaker 2: for a company to get certified.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't I don't know if I can
Speaker 1: wrestle a three hundred pounds fellon, But I'll be the
Speaker 1: guy with the paintball, pepper U pelicat.
Speaker 3: I'll do that.
Speaker 2: For you exactly. I was thinking about buying a taser, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I said, no, I was gonna be a backshotgun.
Speaker 1: I can do that. I can do that for you.
Speaker 1: I'll be your backup.
Speaker 2: Would you rather? I don't know. I think I would
Speaker 2: be more rebellious against a taser than a shotgun racking No.
Speaker 1: But I'm telling you, man, you just go and knock
Speaker 1: on the door like, hey, come on, man, like let's
Speaker 1: go and and like you know.
Speaker 2: If you talk to a lot of bounty hunters, that's
Speaker 2: that's the process. Yeah, just treat them like a man,
Speaker 2: like it's a it's a business thing. Yeah, dude, like
Speaker 2: he messed up, come on, right, and they've already been
Speaker 2: to court. It's not like, yeah, they're gonna go spend
Speaker 2: like a day or two. Yeah, back forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bounty hunting. We got some dust and
Speaker 1: the Bounty Hunter Live TV coming and anything else you
Speaker 1: want to throw out there that you're working on. Nothing
Speaker 1: to think of me, okay, ship man, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: been a hell of an interesting uh military career and
Speaker 1: post service life. It's a ride.
Speaker 2: Was there anything on Patreon? Okay?
Speaker 1: Well, dude, thank you so much for flying in and
Speaker 1: doing this interview. It's been super cool.
Speaker 2: Man. Appreciate you guys having.
Speaker 1: Absolutely and and thank you Les for yeah, thanks less
Speaker 1: putting the putting the shout out for us next week.
Speaker 1: I cannot so after after this whole interview, I cannot,
Speaker 1: for the life of me remember who's on next week.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, but I promise it's gonna be cool.
Speaker 1: Every episode of It's gonna be a thing. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be an event. Jack will be there, I'll be there,
Speaker 1: Dave will be there, I'll be there, will probably be
Speaker 1: there if he doesn't quit on.
Speaker 2: Us somewhere else that doesn't go out again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gary, Yes, Gary, So Gary was an FBI negotiator.
Speaker 1: He was recently on the Netflix documentary Waco American Apocalypse.
Speaker 1: He was in that documentary because he was one of
Speaker 1: the FBI negotiators early on and then they kicked him out.
Speaker 1: It there's a whole thing there that we will we
Speaker 1: will no doubt talk about. So yeah, I'm excited to
Speaker 1: talk to Gary. And I'm sorry that I couldn't remember initially.
Speaker 1: So we'll see you guys next Friday. Episode. We're in
Speaker 1: the two hundreds now, so episode two hundred and two.
Speaker 3: And I also go to the light Sleeper dot com.
Speaker 2: If you don't the commis.
Speaker 1: Win exactly, the terrorists win. If you don't get yourself
Speaker 1: a high speed would be stuff sack. And also check
Speaker 1: out our Patreon again. I'm gonna plug it. Go down there,
Speaker 1: get ad free episodes.
Speaker 3: Man less than a cop of coffee a.
Speaker 1: Month, exactly, you can come on do it alcohol. So
Speaker 1: we will see all of you next Friday. Thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thank you again, Dustin and