Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 125 - Mike Glover

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

Mike spent 18 years in the US Army and as a government contractor for OGA (Other Government Agency). He served as a SGM (Sergeant Major) in Special Forces in various positions and deployed multiple times to combat theaters. He is an expert in Counter-Terrorism, security, and crisis management operations and is the host of the Fieldcraft Survival Podcast on iTunes, and Soundcloud. Mike is an avid outdoorsman, overland and traveler, and hunter. He has a bachelors degree in Homeland Security and resides in Prescott, AZ where he is the CEO of Fieldcraft Survival. Fieldcraft Survival Fieldcraft Survival Podcast

This episode of the podcast, number 125, is brought to you by On It. On It is your landing page for total human optimization. And if you're interested, go to onit.com slash hot. You will know you're in the right place because you are going to see the podcast artwork, front and center up top. And just above that, you're going to see some options, beginning with supplements, nutrition, fitness, apparel, sale and more plus content. And that's why I say there your landing place for total human optimization. You could put your cursor over the top of any one of those, and your options, I can't say endless. But there's quite a few.

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Go there, look around, surf around on the internet of things, and find something you're like. Or don't. Choice is yours. My guest today is Mike Glover, and we connected over social media. I believe it was actually initially through somebody else making a comment that they would like to see him and I link up for a podcast episode. And I'm pretty sure I went on there and I said that I'm game and then we started communicating directly. And damn, I'm glad. that we did because Mike is awesome. We recorded this episode during the social distancing time.

So he took the time out of his schedule to drive all the way from Arizona up to Montana where I live. And I'm incredibly thankful that he did. He is a fascinating man. So quick bio, and I won't get too deep into it because we go very deep in the episode. But he spent a combined 18 years in the U.S. Army and as a government contractor for the OGA. And to save you a little bit of time on Google, that generally means the agency. But it stands for other government agency. He served in special forces while in the Army, a variety of positions deploying multiple times to combat theaters. He, during his experience in the military, and throughout became an expert in counterterrorism, security, crisis management operations.

And he's using all that for what he does now in the outside, or post-military and contracting service, as the CEO of Fieldcraft Survival. Now, I highly recommend people go over to fieldcraftsurvival.com. And again, I'll get into it briefly because we cover it in the episode, but at a broad brush, Fieldcraft Survival is designed to teach citizens to be prepared for worst-case scenarios, right? to expand the capabilities to educate to train and equip.

So you cannot just survive because obviously you want to do that. But your goal should be to actually thrive. So he's the CEO of Fieldcraft Survival. They have a podcast, Fieldcraft Survival Podcast. You can find it on iTunes and SoundCloud. In addition to doing that, Mike is an outdoorsman. He likes to overland, which is something I'm actually going to start doing. I just got the pop-up tent for my truck.

He's a traveler. He's a hunter. He's got a bachelor's degree in Homeland Security. Like I said, he came here from Arizona. And what else can I say about the guy? He's awesome. I am glad that we finally linked up. And for those of you getting ready to listen to this three-plus hours, we go pretty deep.

And I don't think this is a good one for young kids. We talk a lot about the realities of war. And this episode, we dive deeper. than I think I've ever gone with somebody on this particular topic. But in my mind, it was a fantastic conversation. We blew through three hours before even realizing how much time we had spent. And now I'm going to shut my mouth and let Mike speak for himself. So cleared hot, episode 125 with Mike Glover.

Coming at you. Enjoy. At the red smoke. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. What a minute. Well, percentile-wise, we have the largest brains. The largest brains are the largest heads?

The combination. Because I think you could have a large head and not a large brain. That's true. I've seen big-headed dudes, but low altitude. Yeah, you're like, you're doing some dumb shit, dude. You got a big head, though. So let's get you a double-exel helmet, and we're going to put you in the back, and here's a ladder you're going to carry. So true. So true.

You've got to be Asian, though. The Asian thing brings it all together. I think the ratio gets squared away with that. I don't feel like I can actually make any calls. comments about that. I think that you are the only one who can make any comments about that. And I'll leave that to you. Asians are super racist. We're just, that's how we are. It's also a very broad statement. I think maybe some Asians. Are you racist? Are Asians racist against other Asians or against horribly? Horribly. Where is that from?

Imperial China and Japan. And it goes all the way down to every Asian race. My, my mom, she, like I had a buddy and his name's his his nickname is fink but he was half Japanese and half German and I went through him with all training that we went to in special operations we went together and she knew he was half Japanese and she said you cannot let him beat you at anything and I was like why would you bring that like what does that even mean like why are you saying it so intently she goes you you cannot be beaten by a Japanese person I was like mom you're joking tell me you're and she wasn't joking. That is some deeply ingrained shit there. It is. Holy fuck. It's super, it's super ingrained. It's the, the Koreans against the Japanese and the kind of the

Japanese and Koreans against China, it's known. I'm going to be honest with you. I didn't know we were going to open with this. Oh, is this an opening? Oh, we're recording. Sweet. Oh, awesome. That's, we can, no, I'm not going to. I'm not even going to say that I'm going to edit it out. I have learned that the best thing to do is when you get the headset on, immediately hit the button and make sure that it's red. That's it. You got to you. And it gets even better

when the person you're talking to you doesn't know that it's red. Because there are people that I have sat down with who are very different in their personality. They're the microphone off, like having a blast. And they switch on.

Yes. I'm not that. Yeah, I'm kind of the same way. I make a fool of myself and conduct myself as a moron with the microphone on or off. I'm the same way. I can't.

There's no switch for me. I'm not a politician. I'll never be. Do you people ever hit you up about going into politics? Yeah, I've been asked before. I think I'm like the guy who loves the sheriff because he's that one elected official who has power, but he has influence, but he's at a tactical level. Yeah. But I've never had an aspiration politically to be on top.

That's what I was going to ask is whether or not you have a desire to do that. People will reach out to me occasionally like, oh, you need to go into politics. And my response generally is, I can't think of something I would rather do less than be a politics. Yeah. I just, maybe you'd have the ability to have some impact, but I don't know. Yeah. I don't, when I see like Dan Crenshaw or some of the guys from the teams. I put him through buds.

That's, no, really? Yeah, he had two eyes then. Really? That's awesome, man. He seems like a good dude. He's awesome. And I actually had him on the podcast, and he was, God, he was telling me about, you know, his eye injury. I was like, yeah, but I had PRK, my eyes heard a little bit.

And he literally just looked at me, deadpan, and was like, like, really? Like I said, I conduct myself as an idiot at all times because he's talking about being blind for months. I was like, yeah, man, I had some dry eye when I got this PRK done. My new contacts are killing me right now. He's a unique one. I wouldn't, so let's see, he was the class OIC.

So I went from the East Coast and dropped into buds for about 18 months and was an instructor there. You do, did you ever go back to the schoolhouse as a teacher? No, I dodged it. Yeah. Most people... Hardcore. I tried to dodge it, too.

I ended up being, I think, my most rewarding tour. I hear that a lot. You get to... It's really... You can actually see and physically feel how much you can mold the community. Because the students are super malleable for one. They want to be there post-9-11 world. It's not like they're, oh, hey, I saw this movie, I think.

Yeah. They might be doing some cool stuff. They know what they're getting into. They know what they're getting more than I did in 96. I watched Charlie Sheen jump off a bridge. I was like, I did. That was so epic, man. That made everybody.

but nobody wanted to be a seal yeah but nobody ever does that in the community really not once uh there was a seal got in trouble for base jumping off the cornotto bridge he was caught later on because his uh you know extract plan was just it was subpar i feel like you're talking about yourself when you say no i'm not because my extract plan would have been awesome it would have involved shitkinning that rig in a boat with the dragger and i would have you done that one yet the cornetto bridge or the drager the coronado ridge no i have not jumped the cornautta bridge are you still jumping i'm jumping substantial financially less, but I was just talking to a guy who lives down in Missoula. Apparently there's some really good wingsuit jumps pretty proximal to where we are within an hour to two drive.

Yeah. I mean, obviously the topography and geography here is pretty amazing. There's a glacier national park. You probably, if you were staying in summers. I've driven through there before. Okay. Insane. It's unbelievable.

Now, obviously, in a national park, it's not exactly what they call legal, you know, so you've got to deal with those issues. Yeah, yeah, you've got infill. And I'm not a fan of jumping in place. places where it's illegal because there's enough stuff on your mind as it is. I don't have to, I don't want to have to be looking around for law enforcement. Yeah. In addition to standing on the edge, like, okay, I really need to nail this exit. Yeah. So, so there's places where it's designated legal? You can jump BLM land. That's how, you know, Trevor, we were talking about. Yeah. Trevor,

no, he's not going to kick me in the dick. He told me. Yeah. Social distancing. Our dicks could only be so close together. I know. And it's weird. Why does it have to be about the dicks all the time? I know. That's the first thing he goes to. I know. Trevor, man. He's probably drawn to him, I would say, in a variety of ways. He just likes the dick. I don't know what that is. Yeah. Good dude.

I love Trevor. But he, yeah, he's awesome. He jumps down in Moab. And they can jump, I think, within sight of, I've never jumped there, but I believe they're jumping in sight of the actual town of Moab. Because it's BLM land. And I don't think necessarily says it's allowed. I think it just doesn't expressly say it's not allowed. Yeah.

It's kind of a great. So nobody's enforcing. Nobody's enforcing. I actually just don't think it's illegal. National parks, though, they have, you know, Yosemite, you know, Haftilm, is unbelievable. Like, you want to talk about it, and crazy clist face to jump,

and it's been jumped probably thousands of times. But I believe it's in the regulations. It's like an anti-parachute drop, something in there specifically. It specifically designates parachute activities inside of national parks. Oh, okay. So National Parks are no-no.

BLM land, to my understanding, are, it's fine. And then I assume private property or, you know, most guys are just look, I mean, most guys just look at stuff and they're like, yeah, I can get away with it. And they just do it. And they kind of do it. Yeah. Yeah.

And I don't, you guys, that's just another thing. Like, I don't even know. Because I, you know, I was a Halo Jumpmaster and I got into it for a period of time. And I'm like, I can go down this rabbit hole. Yeah. And get into it. But wingsuit flying is just, it's not even in the same genre. It's just something different.

That was years down the road for me, though. I went, I don't know how it was in the SF community, but in the SEAL community, when I got in, getting good schools was completely based off seniority. And Freefall is now part of this SEAL pipeline. So you go... You guys get your own school. We have our own school.

So it goes, Buds, six months. Then you have STT, SEAL Tactical Training. No, it's SQT, SEAL qualification training. And at the end of that, you get your tried, which the teams used to give individually. And the teams used to do geographic specific training pre-9-11. Like there was a desert team and a jungle team. So you'd be assigned and get your extra additional training?

You would. And each team kind of had their own curriculum. And you can obviously see the problem with that, right? Like, you know, seven, eight different teams, seven, eight different products, specialties in one area. And then they're like, hey, all you go to the same place and play well together. That doesn't work. I could see that.

So now it's Bud's SQT, but I believe before SQT is straight to static line. a literal walk across probably a hallway into free fall. But when I got in, that was not the case. And we went to static line, Benning, get some. Oh, yeah, did you attend that lovely court? I did, unfortunately. I did it after Ranger's school, too, so I was broken and hungry, and I was just happy to eat, but I hated that course.

Sergeant Airborne did not like us because they took my entire Bud's class and put us in one class, which was an incredibly poor decision. because we went from an environment where we were just getting our dicks kicked in every single day to an environment where even when they tried the best to kick our dicks in, we're like, this is awesome. Yeah, it's so weak.

It's so weak. Stand on your cables or whatever the hell they used to say. Yeah, airborne shuffle and running to everywhere. So I did that, did five jumps there, checked into Team 5, and my first platoon, we had a guy who just loved doing air-ups. So we did a couple, a few, two-week, chunks of air. And the reason he loved it is because he was on the right-hand side of the C-130.

The dude's going to altitude. So the rest of us were on the left-hand side of the C-130, also going to altitude, but triple-digit altitude, not, you know, 12, 13,000 feet. So I have like 80 static line jumps. Oh. And you know the deal. Like you just hear people screaming for help in the ground. Just like, oh, God, oh, God. There's nothing about that. It's just, it's, it's funny there's even a course for it. It's, you can't even, like, why even train something. Just tell people to jump out of the bird, tuck their feet and knees together, and just you're going to eat it. And relax. The best advice they could give you is just right before you hit, tell yourself that you're a drunk driver. Yes. And just,

yeah, I didn't get that advice and bruise my ankles on my first jump. I would heel's head on my first jump directly backwards. And I laid there for a long time watching other canopies open, thinking, I don't know if I can do the next four of these. But I, I saw how much, I mean, like, these guys were getting down like, woo, woo, do you see me out doing backflets? I'm just sitting there like, you know, nursing my calf or trying to put my shoulder back in the socket. I was like, fuck this. I went out to a civilian drop zone and actually learned on my own over the course of a weekend because there's only seven jumps. And I did the class on a Friday.

I was jumping on my own by Sunday. And then just started jumping because I loved it. And I actually challenged the military course out in Yuma. Oh, really? Yeah, a message came out. That's rare. That's rare. And I don't think they've done it that many times, but it's like, hey, if you got, I think it was 250

jumps or something like that. It might have even been lower. But you come out and you basically just did the jumps, the graded jumps. And they had to teach you how to pack the gear, obviously. So I did that. And then when I got out to the command on the East Coast, I went from no air qualifications. I went static line jump master directly to a JSOC free fall jump master, directly to AFF, directly to tandem. In a course of like four months. You did JSOC's tandem course? Yeah. Oh, that was, that's brutal. That's scary. I've never been that, but that's, that's scary. There were a few moments in that course where I reconsidered the decisions that I had made in

life. Yeah. The first one was when you, you know, of course, in the military, the best way to teach you to jump out of an airplane with another human, having two people strapped together who have never done it is just to strap together and hope for the best. Yeah. Do it. So we did it.

And I had more jumps than my partner, which we were ratioed up by height, weight. and had some horrendous experiences on the front of that individual, just drastic instability, and much like the top gun scene where, you know, Goose has to eject because he's corkscrewing out into space. Oh, that's horrible.

And then you strapped. You were the piss passenger. Yeah, we would alternate back and forth. So it would be like, okay, I'm in charge on this one to just sit in there. And, you know,

your thumbs are just in the harness. You're like, oh, fuck. Damn. Is there any EPs for you guys that are being harness? Um, they do not teach.

you EPs from the person in front in that harness. But what I can tell you is you can reach and manipulate each of the handles. Oh, okay. Okay. Are you pulling, so you're going to go back and reach. You have to contort yourself. You, yep. You have the main.

Pillow. Yeah. Well, actually, so you throw a drogue. You throw a drug. Because you need that. And you can reach that from the front. And I know that because I had to deploy it on one of the jumps. And, you know, you have a handle that's basically right by where your pocket would be

on your right leg. then there's another one on the back on the, let me see here, where is it? It's system check. You throw it. Check your drug. Primary. So primary is actually on your left hand side, yeah. And then you have the right hand pocket. And then you have cutaway

and reserve in the same places. And as a tandem master, you go out. You know, you set you drug, you check your drug. Primary, secondary, cutaway reserve. And you can reach all those from the front. That's crazy, man. It's not briefed, but I'm just saying, all I'm saying to you right now is you got to do what you got to do. You can reach those from the front. And then you strap yourself to a bundle

so it starts passenger and then they give you a bundle about the size of this table. Actually, you know what? It's damn near the size of this table. Exactly. If you were to round it and you know, they're like, okay, let's put sandbags in this

and you make your own and you harness it up and it looks big and you're like, this is, maybe this is the best idea. Don't rip you out of the bird? Yeah, this like isn't the best idea I've ever done? And then you go and you ride up to the you ride up to altitude,

you hook up at the six minute mark, and then the ramp comes down, and you just have these two little nylon handles. And I remember my first jump, you have a cameraman, he's giving you this, and you're like, come on, come on. And then he stops you when the bundle's about halfway off the airplane.

And I remember just standing there, waiting for him to give me the go. And all I could think of was, this is the dumbest thing I've ever done in my entire life. And literally there's the thought I had. I'm like, what in the fuck am I doing here? I have to poop right now thinking about this moment. And all you do,

because you're connected, by a tether. So you push it as hard as you can. And the classic exit is the shopping cart where guys just kind of like shove it out of the plane because they're scared. And then you seem they're like, they get it pulled out. What you're supposed to do is push it out and you hold on. So you're going out the back of the airplane. You basically hold on until the bundle gets vertical.

You let go. It drops and settles. And then you're in free fall. Yeah. And you go through your same thing. You check your drug. It pulls you into free fall. So there's no, there's no hill.

It just makes you. Well, you kind of go on the hill. what ends up happening is it'll get vertical, and as you let it go, it kind of like, brenk, and the drogue saves you. But what you also have is a drogue setter on the aircraft. But once in the course, you have to do a self-set. So you have to go out, and you have to, you know,

push the bundle and get it. And what you want to do is drop it, and it will continue to rock you forward. But as you're coming forward, you'll get that drogue out and it'll pull you back. There are some faces of death videos. of dudes who like shopping carted and then so they get tugged

and they start this orbit where the bundle's just like no, no, no, no, no. So they can't get their drug out, they can't. You can't. You can't. You still, you basically... You're just fighting it. You arch. Because the bundle falls faster than you. There's almost no drag because it will orient itself. Yeah. You know, the cylindrical, the bottom side down. And you see these guys are just like,

underneath the bundle arching as it's above them. And it'll pass them and just, wink, and then they get their drug out. Could you cut it away? You can. Um, but you don't want to. I mean, what you need to do is essentially just fly through it, but there are videos of people who get underneath the bundle and they'll set the drogue and their drogue will entangle with the tether of their bundle.

Oh, and now you're in for a rodeo ride. Oh, man. Because if it entangles enough, you're not going to be able to cut that bundle away anymore. Ooh. Oh, look can get spicy. Oh, I've heard of, I've heard of dudes burning in that course. Yeah. And I had 200 jumps when I went to that course.

Oh, my gosh. Actually, you know what? I think I had more than that. It probably maybe somewhere between 2 to 500. The average person there, I would say their logbook set around 200, but they probably had 50 to 75. Wow. The rest of them were just pencil whipped in the team. That's, yeah, that's my jump on. Yeah.

But that's what you're saying about, you know, do you want to go down that rabbit hole? I definitely, I loved it, but I didn't touch a wingsuit until I had been out of the military for three years. I don't think I put a wing suit on until I had maybe 3,500 jumps. Dang. I always feel like when it's something, when guys do wingsuit stuff, and I look at Trevor, I'm like, he's a normal dude. But then you realize there's this all segment of things that he does in his extracurricular time. And I'm like, what's the?

And I get it because there's a portion of, you know, our brains and our, you know, bodies that have been pushing limits in certain areas and arenas. And it's just an out, it could even just be an out, you know, just an outlet to, it doesn't you have to be. about adrenaline for a lot of people. Was it about adrenaline for you? No. Just like I don't think our job was about adrenaline. I liked the absolute presence of mind and the focus. Which is probably a byproduct of the adrenaline.

Yeah, but it's a process. Yeah, people always think that something like that, like we're adrenaline junkies. And I'm like, man, I don't really remember even in active gun fights having a lot of adrenaline. I mean, it's just not there. I don't think it would be a positive impact. I think you would be harder. I think, well, we also had more of an exposure to it,

and I think in a systematic and structured approach to dealing with it. But I think for most people, if they got just this bowlless dump of adrenaline, I mean, their fine motor skills are going to probably disappear. They're going to start shaking, their thought process, their tunnel vision. And I don't remember having any of those things occur either. But I do remember being able to make some of the clearest decisions of my life. Like this is obviously the call we need to make right now. Wow.

Okay, so the focus. The focus. And then, you know, when you're standing on the edge in a nylon straight jacket, you're pretty focused. You're able to arrive at that position again. And I don't know the mechanism that drives the mine there, but, you know, they've written books about it. They just call it to flow state.

And that, I think, is what a lot of people are looking for. Did you ever have an experience in the military outside of something as dangerous and as technical as wingsuit flying? Did you ever have anything in the military where you felt you were on the flow state? Was it CQB? Was it? Oh, I would hit that place all the time. I think for me, the place I'd noticed it the most was probably right at about the one minute out on the heloes.

Okay. As you approach short final or you go past, you know, your set point and you're rapidly approaching where you're going to breach. Just that, like everything kind of locks into place. That's where I would find that the most. Yeah. And I think the reason I enjoy base jumping so much is I really like. that mental and emotional state because it's clear you know what I mean it's clear the ability to make decisions you're not worried about other stuff so all of your

mental acuity is focused in on just one thing that you need to do and fuck man the ability to perform in that moment is just unbelievable it's like I'm assuming it's almost like mental hygiene where you get out of that experience and it does something for you you know whether it's like a clairvoyne experience or just something to your mental health that you get off it's like a reset button and then you just go through the process again to you accumulate. I think there's huge value. I mean, if you think about, let's use modern times right now, right?

The middle of the COVID pandemic. I think people right now are absolutely living in a state of fear for most people. Yeah. They don't know what to do. They're watching the pandemic numbers rise, which, spoiler alert, everybody, the number's not going to go down. Yeah. It will continue to go up.

And that doesn't, it shouldn't really impact your decision making process because you can't control that. but I was thinking about it last time I was in the car just driving and I was like I wonder what percentage of information that people consume on a daily basis is positive versus negative. I bet you it's at least 70% negative.

And I think that's low actually. I think it might be 80 to 90. Yeah, I agree. It's got to be the fringe. The fringe has to be negative or it won't emotionally. But that informs how you behave. Yeah.

And if all of your time and energy and effort is spent thinking about those things, No wonder people are stressed out. So if you can find a way to strip all of that bullshit away in one of those flow states, I think there's huge benefit to the, and I have no understanding of the mechanism, but I personally feel and would always feel like I would go on a two-week base jumping trip to Switzerland. I would feel different for two, three, four months afterwards. Just because of not thinking about all the normal bullshit that I would and being able to find that moment again,

I find that there's huge value there. I don't think, yeah. I don't think people should do that. I don't think anybody should do anything that I do. Certainly don't stand on the edge of a cliff in a nylon suit, but it worked for me. Yeah. It could be,

I mean, shit, it could be gardening for a woman, you know, an older lady who's in her flow. Yeah. That's her mental process. The concentration, the focus.

I mean, that's why the, I mean, bringing up the Japanese getting back to being racist. Those stone gardens, man, those guys. With the rakes?

The rakes and stuff. All those little, simple processes. That's why I think, I mean, this is outside of that spectrum, but manufacturing processes, that's why the U.S. isn't very good at it because we live in that vicious cycle of mental instability versus those countries where they want to be tuned in technically to their hands and to their eyes and this focus. And that for them is happiness. So some people go, oh, they're working for pennies on the dollar. And I'm trying to justify a child labor or bad labor rates, but there's something culturally about that. It's, it's ingrained in the culture,

especially Asian culture. Well, I think you can find that flow state through meditation. And I don't know anything about rock gardens, but I would assume that type of activity, that repetitive nature, where you're focused on the connection between mind and body. I would have to imagine that that's just another way to find that. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. I think that coming, you know, post-military, it's crazy to me that, I mean, maybe. Maybe. it's changed and I've heard this a little bit but it's crazy to me that nobody teaches us mental health processes in hygiene take to rebuild or you know dispose of all the wasting that we're developing over our minds and over our bodies that obviously has physiological effects so they don't

teach us how to find a right headspace to meditate and we find our own outlets our outlets You know, crotch rockets and free fall, skydiving and everything else. That might even, damn, teach us how to do meditation. Competitive drinking. Competitive drinking. Exactly. All the bad things or outlets when we should probably be thinking about meditation. I hope that has changed, actually.

I don't remember, yeah, I don't remember ever really having that topic broached other than it may be a scratch of the service. There was never a deep dive. There was never a lot of money allocated or time allocated or importance allocated to that perspective, the mental health and hygiene. Were you in the buds classes that had the hood and you pull the hood and you have to react or respond to something like somebody's there when they pull the hood and they could have to punch in the face and you. So you're talking about the hooded box drill. Yeah. I experienced that, but when I was going through selection on the East Coast and I'm not going to say that motherfucker's name because the fact that he was able to fool the middle. military into doing that and his little fire hands and his little need in.

Were you punched in the face? Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. And we had to do the hood of box drill. And then he's like, you can't do it again because you're forged. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, why can't I do it again?

Why is there no value to having the reps? The reps and being in an environment where you can't see anything. And then all of a sudden you have to make a snap decision based on, like, what are you fucking talking about? Man, I'm surprised there's no. I don't know of anybody who did it in buds, though, but he had a contract. for a long time. Yeah.

And there were people who dove deep into that. And I don't, I don't understand the, I don't understand how it's possible for people to believe so deeply into something that is obviously bullshit. It doesn't make sense to me. I'm aware that it happens. Yeah. I just don't know how it does.

Yeah, I've seen, I mean, there's different, man, the Navy and the Army. I think we're, our services are closer than most. services for some reason. I don't know why that is. Well, I think our communities are defined by their similarities, not their differences. Yes. The job itself is probably 99.5% the same. We probably had more of a water emphasis often than you guys had more.

Yeah. And, but then we're on the same sandbox. Yeah. Doing relatively the same thing. Yeah. I've worked with, um, multiple Silt teams. Um, I was in Afghanistan when Siltim 10 was there during Red Wings and stuff. And then, um, subsequently, had a whole bunch of joint ops with at the time I was in the commanders in extremist force and they were mating us up for doing emergency response unit stuff iCTF the iraqi counterterrorism

force and those guys i remember i mean they were young guys so was i mean i was in my mid-20s early 2000s but they seemed to have i don't know what it is and i actually use it when i brief and talk about preparedness that your community for some reason, I mean, maybe it's just indoctrinated, has a better mindset in resilience and in mental fortitude. And it's something that's like ingrained. It's like, oh, I'm a Navy SEAL. This is kind of on topic, but this, this, the notes the behavior. This one kid, he was like 22 years old. And at the time, I was a sniper and I was on a whole bunch of, I was in a team with a whole bunch of senior guys, like the most senior guys. In fact, one, one E8 or master sergeant list, I think my whole team made E8 moving on.

And one of my guys said, hey, you know, we'd like to link up later and do some stuff, maybe go through some CQB and do some different training together. And he goes, he looks him straight in the face and this kid's like 22 years old. He goes, what could you possibly teach me? And I was like, I laughed. I was like, oh shit, this is real. But he was a young kid. And I remember that mental toughness in the kids.

It's almost similar to Ranger Regiment that a lot of guys in my community didn't have initially. And I was like, is this? I think it's part of its hell week, right? Part of its hell week, like a common bond and then a common experience and trauma. I mean, that's very significant in survival and preparedness. Well, that buds is unique in the fact that, you know, if you have a Trident, you all came through the same filter. Yeah. Officer and enlisted side by side, which is unique.

Yeah. As far as my understanding in most selection processes worldwide. And I've seen it firsthand where, you know, the officers will bounce in and out of the training. And there is a rift that is created there, just between the enlisted and officer level. But there's... Oh, in buds? They do that? No, no.

In buds, they go side by side. Yeah. But that, in my understanding is atypical in most selectors. collection process globally in the military because the officers will need refinement training, right? But if you pull people out of physically arduous stuff because they need other additional training. Yeah. When they come back, it's like, hey, motherfucker, you know, no, no, like, this means something to me, but yours is like, yours is blue. It's inert. The animosity is built there. Yeah. And the cool thing about Buds is that, you know, if you

were a seal, if you've ever worn a Trident, you went through Hellweek, you all went through that same crucible. So there's a, I find there's a similessation. between a lot of the guys and their personalities. Yeah. And maybe that is it. I don't know. I've seen some mentally fucking tough ODA dudes. I mean, I've worked with every branch of the U.S. military special forces component

and had great experience as well, all of them. Yeah, I think one of the things is like ranger school. Like I went to ranger school very young. I was 18 years old. And I remember having this common bond, even as a young, I think I was an E3. I was a private first class when I went to ranger school. but even as a young PFC who had the only person in his infantry company that was Ranger qualified was my first sergeant.

And so my first sergeant bonded with me immediately because we had this sharing common experience. But when you look at Special Forces training, specifically the Green Berets, it's like log PT is one of the, you know, it's one of the gates, but it's a two-hour session or the star land navigation course, but that's one week long. And it's not a suck fest. You eat, you sleep, you just ruck and then do land navigation. I wish we had that common bond and experience that one week or that two week, whatever it is that everybody, you know, across the board equally could have a shared experience in. For SF training, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's done in phases and there's also time in between, right? Yeah, totally. Well, the first thing you do is SFAS

selection, it's special forces assessment and selection. Yep. That's, and one of the problems here inherently is it's changed because officers come in there and they're like, I want to reinvent the will, get this on my OER, let's change and manipulate it. So it's changed from three weeks to four weeks to five weeks down to 18 days. That's supposed to be the standard. And then you go into the pipeline, which is, you know, like you guys' pipeline, but it's called the qualification course. Now they go to language school and Sears School up front. Pre-Q course?

Pre-cut, pre-starting, because what they were finding, and I was this type of class, you go through 18 months, sometimes two plus years of training. If you're a medic, you're doing it for two years at least. Oh, for sure. As an 18 Bravo, a special forces weapons guy, I was 18 months, had gaps in between phases, but the last bit of training was Sears School.

It was Sear High Risk that is pretty common among special operations guys. Went there and we had guys quit. And so the question was, so what happens when you quit and you go home? They quit in Sears School? He's quit in Sears School. Was this up in Washington? This one was in, so we have our own one at Special Warfare Center. Okay.

That's liaized on by Air Force components. But it's Seer High Risk C and it's Army Special Operations, Aviators, and SF guys. Okay, because we went to at the end of. selection for the East Coast. We went to high-risk Sears well. Yeah. And I can't really imagine somebody quitting in that. I don't, it's weird.

It's, I don't know if, it's weird, man. I've seen some, I've seen the most highly trained individuals be in those kind of circumstances and just whimper and cry in the fetal, which is, which I don't understand either. I mean, and that's such an investment in time and money to get that person. Yeah, 18 months. I think by the time they put a bird on somebody. it's over a million dollars per guy. It's got to be.

Yeah. And the same has to be true of your community as well. I mean, 18 months of training, all those additional schools. So much training. Yeah. Well, that's what we're not good at, man. We're not good at, we're not good at sustainment or retention. We're not good at holding on to the investment that we put into people.

We're just, we're all about, hey, let's just surge it and get more new people to filter through the process instead of just holding on to what we got. That was the cool part, man. I mean, we opened out, I was talking to you about, you know, going back as a Bud's instructor. And even with Crenshaw, I mean, it was cool. I remember sitting down and he would have to check him with me directly every day because I was his proctor and got to know him. And he's actually one of the few people I remember because you saw some, and I don't say that negatively about the other students. I saw a shit ton of them and they saw six of us. So it's easier for them to remember me, not because I'm special, but they saw less of us.

But I could see the direct impact of the training pipeline. And a lot of the things that we did when I went through as a student where I was like, this is stupid. I was like, oh, this is why we do this. It was very deliberate. It was very deliberate. And then, I mean, truly, you had your hand a little bit on the wheel of what the future of the community was going to look like. You know, the curriculum did, I'd say the curriculum did 90% of the job. And then the other 10% is why those instructors are there, in my opinion, to sit there and look at somebody and to work with the other instructors and be like, hey, this person is not going to fit in our community.

We need to have the ability We absolutely must have the ability To make decisions for the best interests of the community That are outside of the curriculum Because other I mean well no selection process is perfect And don't get me wrong I served with some serious fuckwits We all went through the same training

You know and oh my God They're everywhere that guy is everywhere Oh yeah criminals Rapists, murderers Honor Man of My Bud's classes And jail for murder it's no big deal Wow crazy

but it's you know I was talking with Joe about it recently I'm like he's not he wasn't actually being selected for honor he had the highest statistical pass rate on all the evolutions yeah and that was the only technically proficient yeah he was technically proficient at buds by the way so he was great at flutter kicks in you know the obstacle course and swimming so

was he a serial killer or just a regular killer um he probably would have been a serial killer he and his wife would lure a couple back to their apartment and cited an argument, killed him, chopped him up, and put him in grocery store dumpsters. Wow. And got caught stealing shirts out of the Hooters. That's how we got caught? Yeah.

I believe the woman's ID in a spider co with a bunch of flesh and hair and it was in her purse. What? Yeah, high-level criminal. That was the way they got caught. Yes. They got caught attempting to steal T-shirts from a Hooters. Oh, my gosh. Wow.

You don't hear about that often. That's crazy. I've only heard about it once. we have ours though I mean let's oh let's let's be clear we all the thing is too you know to want to pursue that job

and that community the argument could be made that we potentially each have a few screws loose and some of us probably have more loose than others I'm on that train yeah well the behaviors that I find or the behaviors the activities that I really enjoy are atypical to most people

and they were not atypical in the community of people that I serve with. People were like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Oh, Scott A-Davin? Fuck, yeah. Let's do it. Not even thinking about it. Not even thinking about it. And I also understand, though, why people are like, hey, that doesn't seem to make sense. So I'm not going to try to say I don't have a few screws loose. But the problem with the training that we got is if you have more screws loose than most

and you're smart enough not to get caught at Hooters, you can cause a serious fucking problem. People underestimate that, man. And what I'm, I'm kind of fascinated by, because I'm always tracking like statistics on this stuff and trying to look into it more often, that there's not overt killers that have come out of our community. And I think maybe because they're not getting caught. I was just going to say, it might be because they're covert.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, let's be, oh my God, I sat around in team spaces. for years and just talked about how we would rob banks. Course of action development. Oh my God. I'm like, listen, you know what? We definitely need some 60s or 240s up in this elevated position. Yes.

Like this is how we would literally think about for hours how we were going to commit crimes. Oh, yeah. I'm glad to hear that happened in your community. Yeah, I actually, when I was a team sergeant, I actually told my guys, I've done training exercises off the books that were them doing, passive over and sometimes covert reconnaissance using different means, you know, on foot, CTR, you know, standoff OPs, the list goes on. But I would have them do a rekey of a bank and collect as much information as possible, bring it back to the team room, products, get

them posted and then go through a, you know, an MDMP, like a military decision-making process and have them plan a robbery based on the information that they collected in a certain window. And it's like, you're not, you know, some people call it robberies. We just call it a raid. Yeah. It's like conduct and plan or plan and conduct a raid. And that thinking outside the box and then looking at Conis infrastructure, like in the U.S. was super advantageous for them to operate in austere environments and just adapt on the fly and then think that way.

Yeah. I want them to always be going into stores and living their normal lives and be considering what if they had to take this place down because that was their job. DA, Hosses Rescue, SR, the list goes on as their job. When was the last time that you went into a building and didn't at least give it a peripheral look? Never. Exactly. Even when I came in this building. When we bought this house, I was like, oh, this is excellent.

I have some good fields of fire. We're slightly elevated position here. I could definitely flank to the way. I almost stopped at the end of the road and just kind of like looked around because I was losing spatial awareness because it's so high. Yeah. It's elevated. It's overlooking some epic tour. rain.

And it's funny, too, is, uh, I look at that the way that I'll, and I'm not, like, sitting there crazy. Like, like, I'll hear people like, you know, or ask me, do you always sit with your back to the wall? I'm like, no, I'm not paranoid. Like I don't, I'm not, I, well, I'm not talking shit against the people who want to do that. But I, I, I choose to live my life in a way where I'm not going to constantly think that

there is going to be a threat around every corner. If I'm out having pizza with my kids. kids. Like, I'm going to sit in a place where, don't get me wrong, I'm aware of what's going on in the environment, but I'm not going to have my kids, like, you will put your back on the corner, like, let's just have a nice meal. Like, it's, you know, the odds are in our favor. Having said that, I mean, I live in Montana, so I'm gunned up 24-7, which is glorious. You actually get a ticket here if you don't have a gun. Really? I don't know if that's true, but it's what I tell people. I get several. I think I'm good right now. Yeah, you're going to be fine. Yeah.

Do you do it automatically? Yeah. Yeah. What I do, things will catch my attention automatically. So we just actually traveled. And I was talking to one of the podcasts I recorded when I was on the road was with a SWAT officer who spent a lot of time undercover. And you want to talk about people who have to be tuned into their environment, right? Because they're basically a chameleon. And he was talking about, you know, the hair's going up on the back of your neck or just certain behaviors. And for me, that is probably something that I can't control that I notice now.

but body language is something that always registers with me. Like we were on the plane and this guy, probably fine, right? He's probably a totally normal person, large person, overweight, sweating a little bit, probably because he's overweight, maybe it was a little bit late for the plane. But then he sits down and he just really starts,

moving around way too much and he's digging in his bags. And I was only watching it out of the corner of my eye, but it registers. So I'm like, something is going on with this guy, and then I'm like, okay, then the active part of the brain kicks in. Like, okay, do I handle this in his seat or do I handle this in the aisle? Do I push this dude forward to the front of the plane or do we just take care of this right here?

And of course, nothing ended up happening, but I cannot shut off that portion of my brain. Yeah, that's automatic for us. Now, I don't act on it. Yeah. But I also- You're prepared to act on it. Correct. And I also cannot not see that movement.

I was literally reading a book and I just noticed, I'm like, that movement is abnormal for somebody who is in a relaxed state. This person is in an agitated state. Now I'm going to pay a little bit more attention. I think that, you know, a lot of that comes from just natural passive observation. Like if you're a glass in this hillside, you're looking for things that are outside the pattern. Yeah. And so when you're even running. Tactical movement, people slightly lowered in their center of gravity.

That's it. Anything. And I think that's what happens is we have so many experiences of observing, being conscious observers, right? which is hugely different than just glancing or staring into space unconscious. Well, you can look at something, but you need to see it. You have to see it. There's a difference between the two. Yeah, we're making a conscious connection.

We're imprinting things in our brain. But all as it takes is that one indication. You know, you see that black tail or that white tail, and immediately you start paying, or you see movement, and then you start honing. And so even in an environment like an airplane, which has happened to me, and that was a long story, but I was in a circumstance where I saw movement, it caught my eye, then I started becoming a very conscious observer. Then I'm taking in information, developing courses of action. And for a lot of people, I get asked all the time. They're like, well, how would you create

that kind of paranoia or that level? It's not paranoia. It's not paranoia. It's not preparation. It's not preparation. It's so easy. It's like doing a five-paragraph op order. We have the structure in the formation. So for us to ad lib and just take information and plug it in, it's easy for us. We streamline the process. Yeah. And so I'll go and, you know, I don't go into restaurants. I'm like, stay here, children. I must identify each of the exits.

That's dumb. And people do do. They do. They get over the top. So, but the thing is, I just, I pay attention. And I've worked, I've played angles for long enough that I pay attention to them, you know. Yeah. I'd look at my entire environment outside and inside.

In fact, on the way up here, there's a semi-truck in front of me. And this dude had a, we were going like 60, 70 miles an hour. And, you know, my truck, I got a 14-inch lift on 37s in my truck. You're rolling pretty high up there. You might have been eye level with the satellite. I am. Typically, I am. So I'm behind him.

And then I see the sheet of ice roll off the canvas. And it flies to the air. And I'm like, that's a pretty big sheet of ice. And it smashes on the side. And then I'm like, okay, that's one. If there's any more, I'm going to start backing off. And then as he comes around a corner, another piece slides off. And it hits the ground so violently.

I was like, man, if there's a person right there, they'd be dead. And so I back off and then right a state trooper drives by. And then right when he drives by, a piece comes off and lands right behind his patrol car. He must not have seen it. But I'm thinking like little things like that, even in non-tactical situations, just natural disasters or potential disasters, if you're not paying attention, you just make a mistake and then you die. It's how it's easy. Well, you're also forced into a reactive mindset.

What you're talking about is positioning yourself into a place where you can be proactive. Exactly. And the difference in survival, like, let's just look at it in a gunfight. The difference between ambushing somebody or being ambushed, fuck me. Completely different. There's a difference. Right. And you can get out of an ambush.

Yeah. But what do you have to do to get out of an ambush? Overwhelming fire maneuver. And what does that do? That puts the other party on the reactive side. And now you are being proactive. Yeah. Action's always faster than reaction.

And, you know, I, I remember the first time I was in combat and killed a dude. He was behind a door and he was hiding behind the door. And immediately, I reacted so fast because I had no time to think that I didn't get an opportunity to look through my optic. I didn't get an opportunity to really align my gun with my eye. I had a 10.5 inch barrel. I used that barrel unsuppressed to pry open a door that he was hiding behind.

so there was no time. So as I just reacted and flicked the safety semi and sort of gunning them down, after I did the afteraction on that, I'm like, man, this whole process that we teach people to look at a circumstance that might be a paper target and training that has hands that have something bad, and then we process that information,

and then we manipulate our gun to our eyes, and then we look at our eotech, and we make sure that we account for a hold-off and we break those shots. It doesn't happen like that in real life because we don't have the time in most circumstances. Only if you have the distance, we have the time. That's it.

If you're moving surreptitiously to a breach point and you have your mates with you and they're picking up slivers of the pie and you're behind your optic because you're offensive and you're deliberate, then yeah, you have the opportunity. But in this reactive state, you just don't have time to do a lot of things

that people have talked about. You do. And I've never understood it. I've gotten tactical arguments over it. And what I find most often is the people who argue never have killed anybody or never been in the gun fight reactively in real life. Yeah. And you confirm that bias one time and then you realize I've interviewed hundreds of police officers

and dozens of my own teammates that everybody experiences the same thing because you have one options. You can give them the gas and live to fight another day or you could try to manipulate your gun and align something consciously being satisfied with that solution. and then by time you get to probably the second part of that, it's too late. Yeah, and I think if you give them, and again, you know, distance plays into this as well too for your reaction time. Yeah. And up close, if you give them the gas, it will actually buy you the time.

So as you are gunning, you can align your sights and buy you that time because, again, you're proactive. Yes. Whereas that person is responding to the gas that you're giving them. And then your odds, I mean, if you just look at it from a math perspective, your odds are looking awesome. Their odds are looking like a cliff. Yes.

And I think that's so important. And we actually line that out as the evolution of a gun fight. Because if I'm aligned and I have the gun oriented in the direction of the bad guy, and I have to react because my barrels, it's like the Apache gunship, right? The Apache gunship has a monocule aiming sight on the guy's eye, who's the weapons mate, who's linked his gun system to his thumb. And then when he orientes his head, the gun manipulates where his eye is. that's because if he sees a guy on the edge of a ridge line about to shoot an RPG up a Chinook's ass,

he could react sooner as soon as he does the observation stage or the PID stage of identifying I can't even imagine trying to slave that manually. Can you imagine? No. Under stress because you know he's about to take down a CH 47. Yeah, because you'd have to do winded elevation and Ford. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

The intuitive nature of that, you know, we talk about flow state, but being tapped and being like a part of something mechanical and it feels like us. That's the same feeling I think we had when I had an M4 aligned and I was in short proximity and distance and my reaction was breaking a shot. That's my first. It wasn't oh shit. It was oh shit. Pop. And then as I'm breaking the shots, I'm aligning and driving my gun offensively trying to upgrade my situation or scenario by bringing the optic to my eye. Yeah, you're still getting it to the proper shooting position. You're just doing some things along the way. Exactly. Did you guys, we would actually practice often shooting without, like, instinctive fire, essentially, where you're that close, you know, pistol driving with your thumbs.

You know what I mean? Up close. Because, you know, you can start shooting the second you're out of cleared leather. Yes. You can orient your pistol. And I'm not saying you're going to be knocking the freaking the dime out of an X-ring. Yeah. But like you said, you can give them gas.

Yeah. And then it's as the hands come together, guess what, you can still be shooting. Yep. And then maybe the last sight picture you get your done. but you're at least oriented on the threat. Yeah, that's so important. Same thing with the rifle, we do that a lot of the time too. It'd be so close or so fast, you would instinctively shoot,

and then you would finish with your sights align the way that it should be. Was that on the teams, or was that on the J-Soc side? I think I experienced it first on the J-Soc side, but when I went back to the teams, I did my last rotation in 2010 with Team 3, it was part of the training. That's what I'll love to see,

because that full circle thing. Which is actually part of the mission statement of J-Soc. You know, development group is legitimately, They're tasked with developing. I mean, I remember wearing half-shell ballistic helmets two, three years before it made it down to the conventional teams or the body armor or, you know, cry the AOR-1. Nobody was, or multi-cam.

All that stuff. That, to me, I love seeing that. Yeah. I think it's, you know, Comite application is the same group, is the same scenario and the same infrastructure. But when it comes full circle, I love to see the training apparatus as well. Yeah. A lot of the teams at the groups,

don't get the opportunity to see that training thing. And I did see that, J-Soc, but also when it was taken back, I've seen the SIFs do it and some of the teams do it. And, um, well, that stuff should be passed down because there's no, there's no actual line item expense to it. I know. You already have the ammo. You already have the range time.

You already have the guns. Now you're talking about is you're, you're aggregating information instead of equipment. Yeah. But, I mean, there are, even in the community I come from, there's some people like, this is my time. tactic. Yeah. This is how we do it over here. I hate that, man. Like, hey, dickbag.

We're all going to be. We're on the same fight, man. I might be on the same objective with you potentially one day, and you want me to be honed up on these skills. Yeah, and if I see you not paying attention, I'm going to kick you in that little shit river. Yeah, it's it. Like, I'm sorry, I tripped. My bad. Booby traps. They're all over. I think it's

comical. I mean, I've been, you know, I guess you can call me part of my, what I teach is tactics, but now I have guys who teach tactics. I don't do a lot of it. But guys in the community used to attack me, and be like, why would you teach civilians that? I'm like, bro, I'm not teaching them HR.

I'm teaching how to manipulate a firearm and defense of their life or their family's life. And that I always reference, if I'm allowed to go deploy overseas and train a foreign country and enable them in every way, find fix, finish, the operational cycle, equip, mentor, advise, it's like, I'm doing that for them to defend their countries

which means defending their lives and their family's lives, but you have a problem with me teaching somebody to defend their life and self-defense. And I'm like, well, we don't teach them everything. I'm like, yeah, no, shit, I'm not teaching them everything either. It's crazy. Yeah. I had a guy recently who saw a video of mine, and I won't call him out,

but I will tell you he's from a unit that I served in, from the unit I served in. And he said, he's like, bro, what are you teaching them? Like, I'm teaching them a way to think about fundamentals and self-defense. He goes, that's not what we taught. That's not how we learned. I'm like, bro, these guys are not operators in a special operations unit. I have to change the archetype and the way I disseminate the information.

They're not even military. Some people don't even understand the context of what a firearm in relation to your hand or your eye or any of that means. So I have to start bare level. And he's like, well, I would just think that you would focus on the basics that we focused on. And I'm like, it's the military. It's not the same, man. You have to be a multi-tool when it comes. to teaching people outside of the military because you don't know their defined end state either.

Yeah. I mean, absolutely right. And let's be honest, everything is evolving to include teaching methodologies. I mean, I got taught to, you know, to dive open circuit twin 80 scuba tanks. Jacques Cousteau could have retired that fucking technology in the 1960s, right? Yeah. And they're still teaching it in largely the same way with the guy, the same regulator only because you can tie knots in it. Yeah.

better ways to teach people how to dive. There's better equipment that you can teach them on. And the people your teaching will be better served if you evolve with the information too. Absolutely. Everybody, I think a lot of people don't understand that just because our community produces war fighters doesn't mean that we are set up to be teachers. I actually think far fewer people who have successfully made it through the pipeline can articulate and teach well. A small percentage of the people. There is a difference, and I see this in every physical skill, whether it's martial arts or skydiving or shooting a gun. There are those who are incredibly proficient and can teach, and then there are those who are incredibly

proficient. And if you can't teach, I actually think you have less, you still have a value, both, but I think the person who can teach and articulate and raise up another group of people has far more value than just the operator who's only good behind a gun, because you're going to time out eventually. Yeah. Or you might get hurt or you might get calm. You're going to go break your leg. Like, hey, dude, you're off for six months.

What are we going to do with you? You can't teach. Yeah. Yeah, I do remember operating early on in the GWAT with SIL teams from the West Coast. And a lot of the young guys wanted to, they only wanted to do unilateral ops, which is part of what we were doing. Yeah. But we were doing CT-Fid, counterterrorism, foreign internal defense, essentially training. people in direct action, Hoss's Rescue, SR, etc.

And then going out and doing the ops with them, which to me is the most satisfying part of the job. Like if I had to train, I've never been, I've never done a J-SET, which is this basically a training mission. I'm always done combat and warfare each every year that I served in special operations. And I just got lucky timing-wise. But part of that cycle was going in, teaching, and then operating, right? and then coming back full circle and fixing the things that they messed up

and making them an actual better fighting force for that. But everybody wanted to kick in doors unilaterally. And I always told people who, you know, sometimes who got offended that they were associated with us as Green Berets and training, that eventually it's going to dry up. And then global pursuit and the access to global pursuit across the world, how we get in is we train. Yeah.

And so the same guys who are naysay and me, decade before are now in all across the continents, the problem continents, which is every continent has a problem. Yeah. We should probably start listing the ones that don't. That would be the shorter list. Yeah. So everybody is doing that now.

They're going in. They're working with liaisons, with State Department training. It's interesting, yeah, because you look at both theaters when it first kicked off. I went, I finished selection early. We cleaned up the tail end of the Carzai detail we got there after he had been shot at. So it was largely handing it over to Dinacore, which should be known worldwide for their amazing handlebar mustaches. Yeah.

Those dudes, that's all I can really comment on was their handle. I'm going to leave it at that. They had some fucking legit stashes. And then rotated over for OIF 1. So I got to see both theaters pretty early. Yeah. And yeah, it was unilateral at both. And then you see the partner force creep in.

And it was, you know, one to five, one to 10. And at the J-Soc level is one to go fuck yourself. right it was yeah yeah but then go back to 2010 it was one to one yeah at convention at team three that was by paper i mean there was some ways that you could articulate and navigate around that if you needed to like you know if you're load limited on helicopters you know stuff like that cut away you can cut away a little bit there was a slight tolerance for it but then you know i talked to my buddies over still on the jocs side of the house and now they have a dedicated partner force as well too so like you said it's kind of the keys to the kingdom i i i i start so i

I started operating in J-SOC with the Afghan partnering unit. This is Afghan-specific, but that was our partnering force. It was stood up by the Ranger Regiment. And then I remember seeing the email, the J-Soc commander. It might have been the CSM saying everybody will have buy-in, meaning you will provide packs to go, people to go train these guys and run their selection and run their, because the Rangers were just eating in. Nobody wanted to mess with them.

And I've heard these stories. I've been involved with guys of, you know, obviously at that level doing unilateral operations, when you integrate an indigenous host nation where there's a lot of unknowns, you don't trust them. You haven't had enough time to trust it. Yeah, there's an inherent level of distrust.

Yeah, and so when I ran APU on the objective, I knew like the rapport building cycle because I was a green beret, but a lot of guys didn't understand that. They're like, why is Mike? Did you learn that in the training pipeline? or where did you learn that? In the training pipeline, for sure.

Yeah, I think it starts with small unit tactics where you're just honing the skills, but then there's blocks where you're honing skills and teaching. And then it culminates in Robin Sage where you're in this fake environment. You know, you jump into the back country of North Carolina and your indage could be West Point cadets. Isn't like a whole town in on that?

The most insane shit I've ever done in my life. Was it Robin Sage? Robin Sage. I jumped a 120-pound ruck as an 18 Bravo machine gunner. We infilled all day. I hit, I think for my culmination, we did a hostage rescue on a radio station. I shotgun breached a glass door. And I remember running up to this. And there was, this is the craziest shit. There's people in lawn chairs drinking beers off the back of their pickup trucks. Watching this whole thing. And when I got out, we're running to the breach point. it was like a mobile assault, and I look over, and my OC's right behind me, because he's observing me with this breach. And, you know, the observer controller is trying to manage the crowd, but he's looking at me. And I look at him, and I'm like, do you want me to still go? Like, the people, because I didn't comprehend, like, what the- I've never seen a training environment like this. Are we still okay? Dude, it looked like a flea market. And so I get up to this door and I go to breach it, and I'm,

I'm looking at him, and some of the people are kind of close. And he's like, breach it, breach it. So it gives me the commands to breach it. So I smashed this glass door and it blast glass everywhere, which I wouldn't have done in real life. As glass doors do. Yeah, as glass doors do. And I'm like, am I supposed to be doing this? So I open it up. The next door, I do a mechanical breach. I use a sledgehammer. We make entry. We do a Haasus rescue. We get into a scenario where we only have a horse trailer and a vehicle. So we exfil the horse trailer. I'm on the back of a horse trailer with a saw. So I got a 249 that's that one of the guys had in the back of it. We start driving down the road.

And I see these lines. It's like this road is a designated NASCAR strip. It's like a, there's people in lawn chairs and tailgating off the back of their truck. And so they know what's going on. I have no idea. A cop rolls up on us and we're in a pursuit. And so I'm in the back of this. There's people behind me, right?

So I'm trying, you know, the whole know your target, what's beyond your target. Yeah. The cop car pulls up and I'm like, dude, my brain can't comprehend what's happening. He pulls out a gun and he points it at me and he's shooting blanks out of his M9 pistol. In a blatantly civilian police car. In a blatant civilian police car. Oh man, this is grating against like every rule you've ever, you're just like, ah. Dude, my brain.

And so I'm like, do I shoot? And there's people behind him. There's no OC with me. So I'm like, well, here we go. So I stuck the saw and had blank rounds, dumped a hundred rounds. dumped the 100 round nut sack of ammo through the grate of this horse trailer. He's looking right at me.

And the only indication that I was doing the right thing is he looks at me and he's like, yeah, yeah. He's like smiling. And I'm like, so I dump this hundred rounds. I throw this down. My M4, dump the 30 round mag, go to that, pull up this M9, which shoots wads with these blanks, empty that, put it down and I go to reload my M4

and he's behind us and it bleeds off. And after it's all said, And then I'm like, I can't believe that's legal. I can't believe that whole thing was real. Like, we just did that for real. I mean, yeah, you're talking, mixing civilian and military role players. How many years have they been doing it there? Because obviously, that's not the first time people came out to tailgate. It's not. And historically, which, you know, there's portions of this that are broken out all through like Rockingham and rural parts of North Carolina. It's been decades. It's been done for decades. And it's pretty traditional in those towns. In fact, as part of some of the scenarios,

one of the scenarios, I worked with a chicken farmer and put up conduit inside of his chicken hen, or his chicken structure. I'm like, man, this feels kind of weird because I'm doing this work, but there's no tactical play here. And then all of a sudden, right at the end of like a six-hour shift of doing this with me and my partner, these civilians roll up that are aggressors. And he's like, hey, you guys need to hide. So we break off on the wood. woods and I'm like, oh, so that's what this was. That was the rapport building right there. Yeah, it was a rapport building and he trusted us.

We trusted him. But anyways, this whole scenario, they've been doing forever in a mythical place. It's called Pine Land is the name of it. They give you fake cash. They pay off the town. Everybody in the town knows what's going on. You don't know what's going on. But they've actually had a scenario there where a student was killed.

Really? Yeah, it was a, it was a, because I, I had been through them. It was a police checkpoint. They had a police officer who was new. They hadn't informed him of what they did. This is, oh, it's horrible because the guy is in the back of the truck under a tarp, and he thinks that this is part of the scenario. He's one of the students. And the cop is asking for license registration, and the cop all of a sudden sees the tart move, and he draws his gun. Probably a real one. A real gun. Yeah. And then so the students that, like thinking, this is part

of the play. So he grabs his bag and he breaks contact. And as he's stripping the back, he's putting his M4 together because they used to make us break down our M4s. I'm thinking partly because of the lull in time it gives you just in case something like that does happen. Yeah. But also just for concealability. And he was, he took his M4 out in front of the cop. He's like, put your hand, let me use your hands. And he continues to assemble it. Oh, fuck. And then he gets shot and killed. And I'm like, what? It changed a lot of the parameters after that. started getting strenuous. I'm thankful we didn't stop, but that was fucking horrible.

Tragic. Yeah, that's what happens when the information does not pass to the lowest level. I know, that's crazy. Fuck. Can you imagine that cop? I mean, it sucks for the dude, he got killed, but that cop. He'll carry that burden for the rest of his life, for sure. He shot and killed an American service member who was just trying to train to kill bad guys

in combat. Yeah, there's no winners in that situation for sure. And I'm glad also that they didn't shut that training down. Yeah. Because I could see... It could easily, right? Very, very easily, depending on who was at the apex of that decision, I could see that going both ways.

And that would have, if they shut that down, imagine how that would have changed the community. Oh, detrimental, because that was the one course that I went through where it's like you're looking for value, and that was it. I was like, that's what this whole experience was about. I think that's truly what separates us from the other services of special operations. Why did you decide to join the military?

You know, my dad, it's funny, I wanted to be a seal. My dad was Army, grew up in a military family. My uncle, my uncle Joe, was retired Navy. And I remembered, I was at my grandma's house. I was probably seven or eight years old. And all this, the Charlie Sheen stuff was out. I had, you know, fucking Charlie Sheen. Crazy.

As I was, you know, I was just like, man, I want to fall from the sky rise. to crash through glass and be tandemed or tethered to something and shoot a bad guy at the one-handed with an MP5 SD. Correct. Just one-handed. All rounds were accurate. Right on, right in the face. Right in the ski mask.

I was just enthralled with that and I was fascinated with the water as well. I mean, I played GI Joe's in the bathtub and make them do underwater ops at the drain, those kind of things. I'm sure you could relate. Oh, believe me, I had all the GI Joe's because there was like a UDT character. there was a diver. I had all those guys. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so I at some point I asked my uncle and I said, hey, I want to join the Navy. And he understood because I think at one point he even wanted to be a Navy seal. And he said, you realize that the Navy, if you go through that training pipe or if you go to that training and you fail, you become needs of the Navy. And he worked on like the USS Four stall, like some old school battle carriers and ships. And he said most of the people, People who did the labor on my boat were washouts from the seal program. Because they're undesignated.

Yeah, they didn't have a job. They didn't have a job. They had to change that because there was so many. And you can imagine a guy who enters with that as their desire and career path. It doesn't make it. You're going to have a discipline problem on your hands. And then they're unskilled. It was basically from what I heard was like, here's your paintbrush.

You're on an aircraft carrier. You will paint the port side from the front to the rear. Then you'll paint the starboard side from the rear to the front. and you will continue that for four to six years. It's almost like it's a punishment, right? It's almost like you've washed out, so they're just going to punish you for your enlistment. Well, and it's exactly what you said, needs the military.

Yeah. And the military needs people on paint guns and paint shippers. And, yeah, I mean, those fleet vessels, I know very little about them, other than the fact they require constant maintenance. Yeah, I didn't want to be a maintainer. No. I didn't want to be a support guy.

So then I actually asked my dad about it, and he told me, about special forces and he said you want to be a green beret. That's what you want to do. And I remember this. I remember the moment. I was driving in it. We were driving in this Pinto. My dad had some baller vehicles. Yeah, classic. It's like a death trap. But he said, hey, you need to go into SF. And I said, if I, because I was all tripped out about this MP5 SD. And because of Charlie Sheen. Oh yeah. I mean, that's the gun that I need. Don't get me wrong. I've had some goddamn good times with an MP5 SD.

Yeah. But then you rapidly come to the realization it's good for like squirrels and rats. Yeah. And lights. Yeah. Take it out lights. And it's quiet and you can put it on full auto and like the sights barely raised and you're like, man, this is a nine mill round. You can almost see the rounds coming out of the gun.

It's like a Sims gun. You just see the rounds dancing. Yeah. You're like, I don't want to take this into anywhere where we're going to be, you know, engaging with 762 or any other. Yeah. It's not a great gun for that. And I bet him one of those guns and said, I'm going to go in a. SF and it wasn't my incentive right I had a

I created a vision and a focus like that MP5 and I just at 17 I went in the infantry with the idea just to do my best in the infantry get a good baseline and then immediately go SF so I went SF right after 9-11 what year did you join? 97 okay I was in 96 yeah

I was in that delayed entry program same yeah and then and then did the whole thing in 97 yeah I joined when I was a junior in high school through the delayed entry program so I did And have you come to the realization yet? All we did was hook a recruiter up because you still got to be 18.