Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 1

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

Full Auto Friday is a "rapid-fire" format of Q and A submitted by listeners.  6-8 topics from all walks of life with a 5-minute cap on all answers.  Round 1 is in the breach... Q1: The origin of the audio from the podcast intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWrgUZbuhiw&t=23s Q2: Foreign Special Forces Units Q3: Why are so many damn "operators" writing books?  Q4: Leadership while struggling with mental health or substance abuse. Q5: How am I supposed to protect myself if my gun is locked up at night?  Q6: Philosophical differences with Lt. Col Grossman Enjoy!

Okay, got to red smoke. Smoke, west of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. All right, here we go. Round one, volume one of full Auto Fridays, the Friday content edition to the Cleared Hot podcast. And before I get started, let's lay out the ground rules, I guess they would be, or why I'm doing this.

Pretty simply. I cannot keep up with the volume of. of Q&A and Q&A is probably my favorite part of the podcast other than sitting down and talking with interesting people, which actually that statement. In and of itself doesn't make much sense because those are the two things that I do. I've been lucky enough recently to sit down with a bunch of interesting people and I'm missing the Q&A. That's what I wanted to say. So, Full Auto Friday is designed around Q&A. It's going to be six to eight topics.

and I have my phone here, my trusty, handy-dandy iPhone. I figured out how to turn off the auto screen lock, and I'm going to give myself no more than five minutes per topic. And if you know me, you'll know why I do that. And I do that because sometimes I can't really shut up effectively. So we're going to dive right in. I got six questions, and I'm going to start with the number one question that I get over and over and over again. Here we go, question one.

And I'm going to paraphrase because I get this in many different ways. But it is essentially, please explain the audio at the beginning of every podcast episode. So if you're a listener to the podcast, you will know specifically on the audio-only format. I'll do the ad reads in the beginning. And then I'll introduce the guest and then I'll hit the button that plays the introduction audio. And then we're often running into the episode. If you consume the content on YouTube, you'll see that I... Basically just start with that audio.

Another version of the question that I will often get is, are you the person talking on the radio? That's the easier one to answer. The answer to that is no. That is not me on the audio of that call for fire. And what you're listening to is basically, I would describe that as ECAS or emergency call for fire. There's a controller on the ground,

and he's doing everything he possibly can to get an aircraft overhead to release ordinance. The audio itself comes from YouTube. I found a YouTube video, and it shows this engagement and a much longer audio version of the communication from the perspective of the A10s that he was talking to. I believe he was talking to a flight of two. And what I'm going to do is in the podcast description, I'm going to put in there the actual link to the video. And you'll notice that I had to pull from sections and cut out others. I basically scraped the audio from an unclass publicly available call for fire mission or at mission and made it into something that was about 15 seconds because I thought that was about as long as people would be interested in listening to that particular audio. So it's not me.

That's where it comes from. And to explain what's actually going on, you are hearing somebody on the ground talking to an aircraft pilot. And there are a few people, service dependent, that can be. qualified to do so. The first one is a J-TAC. This is a term that I've used before. I don't know if I've explained it, though. J-TAC stands for Joint Terminal Attack Controller, and it is a school that you go to, and it allows you, I can actually read for you the definition right here. A joint terminal attack controller is the term used in the United States Armed Forces and some other military forces for a qualified service member who directs the action of combat aircraft engaged in

close air support, CAS, and other offensive air operations and from a forward position. Now, overseas, at least when I was deploying overseas, you needed to be a JTAC or other qualified individual and you would be known to be qualified because you would be issued a very specific and unique call sign to just you. So when you were talking to the aircraft, they knew that they were talking to a qualified person and the time required to talk on the radio and get an aircraft to release ordinance is generally, in my experience, relatively complex. It is a very synchronized back and forth. There is required information relayed from both the ground and the air, which is, of course, why there is a school. And it takes a little bit. In an emergency

situation, you can compress that timeline, but it's a very beautiful, almost like a symphony of back and forth of information. And then the last radio call that you give from the ground to the pilot is you're cleared hot. Hence the name of the podcast, because that's my absolute favorite radio terminology, because right after you say that out of the radio, shit is about to blow up. Now, other than J-Tax, and I'm going to list off a few other people that are qualified to do these type of close air support missions. This is not an inclusive list, and I'm sorry if I skipped a military occupation that is able to do so. But there are also forward air controllers. And in addition to that, there are Air Force CCT, United States Air Force Combat Control Teams. And I'll

read you their definition as well. And this is from Wikipedia. And if you're a CCTV guy, and I get this slightly wrong, I apologize, I'm not a CCTV guy. United States Air Force Combat Control team's singular combat controller are American Special Operations Forces, who specialize in all aspects of ground, of air ground communication, including air traffic control, fire support, and command control and communications in covert, forward, or austere environments. Now, I don't know if they go to a JTAC school or they get that schooling with their pipeline to become a CCT. But what I can tell you is when there's aircraft overhead, much like when you're bleeding, you want a PJ, CCT, damn, they're good on the radio. And that is almost five minutes of an explanation

on question number one. Nailed it, resetting the timer. I actually have a timer in front of me because if I don't, it would be horrendous. Okay. Question number two, time begins. This comes from Instagram. Aeron, I'm going to say Aeronagade. I don't know. I'm going to put this up on YouTube so you guys can read it yourself. The question is the relationship between American spec ops and that of foreign spec ops. Polish, Grom, British SAS, German KSK, thoughts on their capabilities, the camaraderie between you guys, how often you interacted? Thank you, Andy.

Well, thank you. It was A-A-A-R-RON for the question. And I get this one often as well, which is why I'm kind of front-loading these topics. Hopefully people can work their way through and seek the question that they desire the answer for the most. And I'm also going to list these out in the podcast description. I personally do not have a lot of experience working with foreign special operations. I do, I have zero experience in a combat environment other than sharing the same fob or the same base that we might be launching from, but I have zero experience on an actual

combat target and limited experience in a training environment. So I'm actually not the best person to answer this question, but what I do feel qualified to answer about is the quality of the individuals in each one of these special operations forces. And I would say, without a doubt, that they are incredibly highly capable soldiers. And I know that I know They have, some have male and female. But I have nothing but great things to say about any of the allies that I have trained with or seen overseas. And I do know people that have worked with them at a much deeper level. They also have nothing but great things to say.

I think that as you narrow the pool of individuals that are working in any organization, and the narrowing that I'm talking about in this situation would be a crucible of some kind, a training program, a selection program, something that tests people on both an emotional and mental and physical level, you start selecting for people of generally higher character and work ethic and integrity. And no selection process is perfect. Anybody who knows me or has heard me speak for long enough will know that I consistently try to reinforce exactly that, that no selection process is perfect and that there are weeds in every lawn, regardless of the size. But in general, the people are phenomenal.

They're capable. Commertery, like I said, I wish I could give you a better answer on that. I don't have enough experience to truly dive in. But what I can say is in the limited times that I have spent with them, both in a training environment and then in a R&R type environment, specifically Australia is where I've spent the most time. It was phenomenal. And at the end of the day that we, the communities,

the units that were all listed, I suspect that they are defined by their similarities and not their differences. They might wear a different uniform. They might come from a different country. But at a capabilities level, I think they're probably pretty close. At a quality of individual level, I think they're probably pretty close. And I have absolutely nothing but respect. Not only for everybody who serves in the military of any kind or in any capacity that is giving of themselves to serve others. But especially the allies that are going overseas with us, nothing but great things to say. I wish I could be more specific, but this is kind of the reason that I have avoided this question in the past, I suppose, is I just didn't have a great answer. 3.42. I'm nailing full auto Friday.

Here we go. Question number three. Patrick Anderson asks, why are American operators putting out so many books and being in the limelight, but hardly any other country's operators do. I thought everyone had strict rules against talking about what they do. I struggled to even find pictures of my country's SF, the Swedish SSG. And I'm ashamed to admit, I don't know much, if anything, about the Swedish SSG. So I'm going to have to dig into that a little bit. And I think maybe I'll answer this question in reverse with the strict rules against talking about what they do. I cannot speak for any other community other than the SEAL community. And inside of the SEAL community, in my experience, and this only counts for my experience,

there are things that are obvious that you are not supposed to talk about. probably the best example would be TTPs, specific TTPs. Those are tactics, techniques, and procedures. You know, you probably shouldn't talk about the exact specifics of how we prosecute or engage a target. And, you know, perhaps even more sensitive than that would be the mechanisms by which the U.S. military determines, you know, find and fixes the individuals that we're going for, whether that be a collection of humant or sigant, that being human intelligence or signals intelligence. There are a lot of incredibly sensitive topics inside of both of those. And you know at all times that you're not supposed to talk about those things. And I'm sure there's a time period that will pass that will make it more acceptable to talk about those. I have no idea what that time period may be.

But what I can't say is that there's no one in the SEAL community chain of command anywhere that is pushing guys to come out and talk. talk about the things that they do. You know, the term quiet professional is definitely used very often inside of the SEAL community. And I think a legitimate argument could be made that that's getting pushed back on a little bit by some people. But I'm also, I mean, I have to put myself into that category as well. I try not to lead with my past, but my past is also inescapable for me, and I don't think of myself as a public figure at all, but I did used to be a seal, and I will often talk about at a broad level the things that I used to do. But what I can say is

I haven't received any pushback on it, and I would suspect it's because I try to talk about it very broadly, and I don't get into specifics. Now, as far as being in the limelight, this, I believe, is a combination of two things. One of them is that other people are putting the seal community in the limelight. When Obama got up and announced that SEAL Team 6 had killed Osama bin Laden, that is, in my knowledge, the first time that any specific unit like that had been called out directly by name. It would have been very easy to just say American Special Operations Forces, and I'm not saying this is a pejorative against President Obama. It was just something that I found to be atypical. And the main thing that I'm not.

media and news organizations latched onto that. And I feel like, and again, this is my opinion, that they are looking for people to throw into the limelight. Now, those people are also whitting, but it's a push from external organizations that are looking for people to thrust into that limelight. And the other side of that coin is that individuals from these communities are being rewarded, I would say from a notoriety or fame, if you want to use that word, but specifically and probably the most powerful is a monetary perspective from being in the limelight.

And because there has been such a vacuum or void of information, I feel like there is an insatiable desire for information. And it creates an environment where people can get creative with the truth. And there are plenty of seals who have no problem bending the narrative to suit what they want it to be as opposed to telling it how it actually was. And if you're out of the gate early and you get your message out early in an environment where people are looking for individuals to thrust into the limelight and you're getting paid to do it, I can understand how it happens.

It's a paradigm shift, I would say, both inside of the seal community and outside of the seal community. And personally, I think both would be better served if it went back to the way that it was. Damn it, I'm out of time on that question. I could have gone on for longer, but that's all I'm giving myself. Next question, here we go. 911 buddy check, awesome Instagram name, by the way. Leadership slash mentorship guidance for those struggling with mental health and substance abuse. And you want to talk about a real issue?

This is one right here. And I don't hear this getting talked about very often. and I think that is something that many communities, firefighter, law enforcement, first responder, military, I think that that's something that we could do a lot better job of addressing, because I believe it will help both the junior and senior personnel and perhaps the communities as a whole. Struggling with mental health and substance abuse in a leadership position. Well, let's talk about a leadership position for myself, and again, I can always. speak for myself, I found a leadership position to be the most rewarding position or positions that I held while I was in the military, but I also found it to be the most challenging because

I was constantly trying to figure out ways to make sure that the people that I was working for and with and those that were working for me were taking care of. And I was especially overseas, far more concerned with their safety than I was my own. And if you were to layer on top of that, substance abuse or mental health, it's going to get even more complicated. Because people are looking to you to set the example. And in some communities, you know, mental health issues, they come with the stigma. Substance abuse issues, I'm sure they probably come with the stigma in all communities. Some may do a better job of addressing them than others, but it can be a problem.

And the first thing that I will say to people who are in any position, whether it's a leadership position or you're the most junior personnel on a team, if you are struggling with mental health or you identify and recognize that you have a substance abuse issue, the first thing that you have to do is get help. You have to own that issue and you need to reach out and get help. And that might seem easier for junior personnel because you will think that you have less to lose. And I would say you probably do have less to lose when it comes to a career perspective. But if you don't address this early, it might derail your career anyway. So everything else I'm going to say is based on somebody who's in a leadership or mentorship position. You're probably not going to want to

raise your hand and say, hey, I'm fucked up. I have a problem because I suspect the individual asking this question, you know, 911 buddy check, I'll assume you come from the first responder world. In my experience, most of the people lean towards A-type personalities. There's a competitive nature when it comes to working around your peers. And it is extremely difficult in a group of your peers who are looking to you for guidance and relying upon you for your experience and decision-making to raise your hand and say, I am struggling with something. But it could be the most powerful thing that you do.

But it all starts with that. You have to get to a place where you're comfortable reaching out for health. And if you do that, I suspect that most people will be surprised at how much help people are ready, willing, and able to provide. There are countless organizations probably outside of the one that you work for that you could go to if you don't feel comfortable seeking help internally. There's always a chance that you could go externally if you're just truly so incredibly worried about. the consequences inside of the community with which you work. So you always have that option. I'm not necessarily recommending that, but it is an option to think about. But if you can address an issue that you have and deal with it, you're going to come out a better leader or mentor on the other side of that struggle.

If you don't, you're displaying poor leadership and mentorship up front, but you're also setting an incredibly poor example for the people who are working for you. And there is a better, a not chance, I would say that they probably realize that something is going on with you anyway. It's a lot like your kids. You know, if you're in a leadership role, everybody is watching what you do, how you conduct yourself, and they're listening to what you say. And if it's starting to come off the rails for you in between the ears or you have something that it just has this gravitational pull, whether it be alcohol or a different substance, if your behavior changes, I'm telling you

right now your people are seeing it because I've seen it in the leaders that I work for. I noticed one things were different. And the best leaders are the ones who are willing to identify a problem themselves, go seek help, be open and honest about it. And then you have another tool in your tool belt with which you can mentor and empower people beneath you or even above you if you need to if they're going through those same struggles. But it all starts with your ability to sit there, raise your hand and say, hey, I'm fucked up and I need help. It was exactly five minutes. Jesus, this is much harder than I actually thought it was going to be. Two more.

Two more. 198 underscore P, lowercase P at that. If guns are locked up at night, what should I do if there is a break-in? This is a good question. And I often would say the answers to this are common sense. But I get asked versions of this enough, or I see P. people making comments about safe storage of weapons versus ease of access enough that perhaps there's something to be learned from this. So our gun's a great tool to protect yourself in the

middle of the night if there is a break-in. Absolutely. Undoubtedly. And my answer to this is predicated on my belief of what guns are by design engineered to do. And in my opinion, guns are designed, expressly designed to kill. And I will often hear people who will answer this in a different way. They will say guns are designed to protect. And I personally feel that that is an intellectually dishonest position. It's a way to try to round the edges on the gun justification argument. And I don't think that you need to.

I think you can be very honest. And I think the more honest you are, the more it strengthens your position. So guns function in one of two ways when it comes to protecting yourself. It is the threat of taking somebody's life or the actual action of taking somebody's life. That is the two mechanisms by which guns actually work and compel people to do things. So that's where it starts for me. I have an item that is designed to kill, which is totally fine. Like I said, I don't think that weakens your argument.

So if I'm going to have an item that's designed to take life, I believe it should be treated accordingly. So it should have a place to be stored when I am not in positive control of this item. The last, I don't know, probably two decades, maybe the last decade, if we want to, you know, keep it a relatively short time period. The advancement in technology has just been leaps and bounds. I mean, if you were to put it on a graph, I'm sure it would exceed a 45 degree angle in its trajectory. And that's true of safes as well. You know, if you look at a modern safe,

before you do a little bit of research on even Amazon, or don't use Amazon if you're anti-Amazon person, but go online. And what I would recommend is to look at biometric safes, specifically a probably a right index finger. I'm actually not an expert on exactly how they work. The ones that I have is a right index finger, my trigger finger. And I have access to the weapon in that safe in one second, one and a half seconds.

point being the barrier to getting a gun in my hand is not a substantial amount of time that is going to put me at risk. There are so many other situations that I can think of where having a firearm unsecured becomes a danger to everybody in the house. One of them would be if you have children, right? Everybody would say, oh, you know, I teach my kids gun. safety, so my kids are safe. And I have taught my kids gun safety as well. But they also have friends that will come and go from the house. And the second that somebody is interjected into that situation that I don't know of or know their proficiency with a gun, I no longer am being a responsible gun owner if it is unsecured. And, you know, there will be people who say,

well, I need to have ready access to my gun at all time, because what am I going to do if I'm in the kitchen and I have to go to a safe and get my gun out before I need to use it. And my answer to that is, do you wear it around your waist when you're taking a shower or you're taking a tub? I mean, there's just times where you're not going to have your gun on you. So don't define the norm with the anomaly, that crazy situation where you're just not going to have your gun. Because for every other situation out there, given the biometric ability of both rifle and gun safes and the ease of access to it, there is absolutely no reason not to have your firearm secured at all times that is not positively controlled by you. And I will say that in my mind, positively controlled by you

means a concealed carry holster or open carry, if that's what you're into, on your body in positive control. Anytime it's not like that, it should be in an environment that is inaccessible to anybody other than yourself or those that you deem trained and competent on that weapon system. Put a pistol biometric save directly by your nightstand. Put one in your kitchen. There are about a hundred bucks, a couple hundred bucks on the internet. The solutions are out there and it's not going to do anything other than make your household safer while giving you peace of mind so you can actually go to sleep in the middle of the night. Damn it.

Five minutes and 12 seconds. I've got two questions left here, but I've already opened with the radio call one. Okay. I'm going to go with one that references a recent podcast. The Ryan Bernaliz says or asks, start the timer. I'd like to hear a more specific breakdown

of your philosophical differences with Lieutenant Colonel Grossman, Grossman's views related to combat. I gathered a piece here and there during the podcast as you press him on some issues, but I'd like to hear more on that. So, this was a recent episode, I think, four, maybe four episodes ago. And I'm going to start by saying that I have nothing but respect for Lieutenant Colonel Grossman. He was gracious enough during this time period that we're all navigating our way through to invite me to his house, to sit down and have a conversation. So I'm going to start with that. He and I do in fact, I think, disagree at a conceptual level on some of the things that he has written about over the course of

him, you know, being a writer. His book on combat, you know, one of the disagreements that I have, his book on combat talks about, you know, human beings having a natural resistance to killing other human beings. And a lot of that is based on data derived from another author, SLA Marshall. And if you want to do some research on SLA Marshall, M-A-R-S-H-A-L, M-A-L, it could be 1-L, S-A-Marshal. He'll come up if you Google them. I'll let you do your own research on that. What I will say is that there is no doubt in my mind that this individual SLA Marshall took extreme liberties not only with his professional military record and accomplishments, but also with some of the data that he claims to have collected over decades sitting down

and talking with individuals just coming off of the front lines. And I'll leave it at that and you can do the research on your own. One of his main points was early on and in World War I and World War II. and even before that, the incidents of actually getting a human being to shoot at a number of human being was around 10%, maybe 15% at max. And that's based off of interviews. And those interviews also became the basis for a lot of the points that Grossman made in his book. And quite frankly, those are just not the experiences that I have had. And I've talked with a lot of other veterans about this from many other wars. And it's not the experience that they had.

And having said that, recommendations that SLA Marshall made were actually legitimate. They changed the way that the U.S. military trained for the better, even though I believe a lot of the information that he was using as their baseline, the polite way to say it would be that was made up. So it's a very weird situation where you can't throw the whole thing out because he actually made good suggestions. but because of the liberties that he took with specifically his own accomplishments in his own career, it becomes very difficult for me to take what he says at face value. Grossman builds on that and talks about this resistance to killing and the value of the sheepdog, you know, the person between the wolf and the flock. And if you listen to the podcast, I bring the point up that I actually think that that analogy is flipped on its head. I think the flock is the most dangerous thing

and the wolf is actually the most valuable. And Mr. Grossman presented the case often that things in this country and in this world, in my opinion, are worse than. Or he presented his case as if things are worse than I think they are. And he showed me data points. And what I will say is that, you know, the graphs were handwritten and I didn't get a,

chance to look at the source data, even though I did a peripheral look at some of that data before I went there. And I just don't think that things are as bad as he claims that they are. And I guess, I mean, I got a minute more to talk about this. I guess what I'll say is I don't think he's coming, I don't think he's coming to his opinions with malicious intent. I will give him the grace in saying that I don't believe he's trying to harm anybody, but I don't think there's any value in being a fearmonger. And I'm not going to label him as a fearmonger, but I think the way he portrays certain issues, flirt with that. And that's okay, because that's a difference of opinion. And I pushed him back, or I pushed back on some issues to the degree that I was happy with.

And other ones, you know, every day since that episode and sitting down having that conversation, I wish I would push back a little bit harder in other areas. But, you know, the man invited me into his house, and I wanted to be respectful of that. I would have liked to have taken the podcast in a slightly different direction on a few of those topics, but it didn't end up that way. And that's kind of how this game goes in my experience. You know, you have things that you want to say, and you don't always get the chance to say them. And damn it, that was over five minutes again. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

But that's it. Full Auto Friday, round one. You see what I did there? It was round one. And we'll see you next Friday. And I'll try to figure out a way to solicit for questions, even though there's about 275 more that I need to work my way through just on that one single Instagram post.

But I hope that people enjoy these episodes. If you have a question, feel free to go to clear. hardpodcast.com, click on the contact me button and send it via email, and I'll do my best to get to it. But probably six to eight per week. That's all I'm going to be able to do. See you next Friday. I'm out of here.