Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Hydrophobia and Heartache

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Today we are tackling some listener-submitted questions, shedding light on the seldom-discussed operational use of scuba gear in real-world missions, the intricate balance of combat training, and the innovative development side of the SEAL teams, and of course, some relationship advice. 1. A deep dive into the waters of SEAL operations, exploring the real-life application of scuba gear in the field, the emphasis on shooting and CQB, and the vital role of development within the SEAL community. From parachuting innovations to sharing cutting-edge tactics with the broader SEAL teams, and the role of NSW Development Group in shaping the greater SOF community.  2. After nearly a decade together, a man's world is rocked by his wife's revelation that their futures may not align. They stand at the crossroads of differing passions and life goals, love, personal growth, and the quest for mutual fulfillment. Can a relationship weather the storm of divergent dreams? How does one support a partner in discovering their true desires while facing the potential end of a shared journey? Check out the new Cleared Hot Flannel and Sweatshirt: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/collections/podcast-gear Wolf 21- Check out what they have to offer for the best sleep of your life: https://www.thewolf21.com Use Code: "clearedhot" for 30% off of your 1st order The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/  

Well, hello and welcome back. It's Friday. I have some questions in front of me. One of the questions I commonly get asked on every social media platform is what is the best way to submit a question. Let's answer that before we begin. It's my email, which is my name, Andy Stumpf, 212 at gmail.com. If you have a question, send it to me. Shall we get into this? We shall. Here we go. I'm looking at danger close now. All right. I have some Q&A for today. I was thinking about stuff. Even things going on in my own personal life.

This is where I get some of my food for thought topics. And I had a quick one. And what I mean by that is it's going to be very quick. And maybe the question is simple or the topic to think on would be simple, I guess, to talk about. Maybe a little bit more complex, depending on who you are and what it means to. you. But here's a question for everybody. What does it mean to be a friend? When you think of what you are looking for in a friend and when you think internally about what you mean to others as a friend and the things that they may expect of you, what are those things? Are they

the same? Are they different? How do you view friendship? Is it something that is continuous? Is it something that can fluctuate like a sign wave? Is it incredibly meaningful? Do you have a lot of friends or do you have very few? I hear the term friendship thrown around a lot by a lot of people. I've probably thrown the term around quite a bit. I'm just curious and your own food for thought and maybe you can answer to me In the comments section, what does it mean to you when you say somebody is your friend? And what does it mean to you when somebody says about you that you are their friend? What do you expect from them? Do you expect the truth, even if you don't want to hear it?

Do you expect a cheerleader, regardless of what it is that you are doing? Do you expect their unabashed support? Do you want honest feedback or a combination of all those things? No right or wrong answers. Just something I've been thinking about recently. Okay, let's get into this. I have basically two emails today, again. If you want to email, feel free to do so with the email I gave at the beginning.

This one's a six-parter, but it's pretty straightforward, and they shouldn't be that hard. The topic of the subject line? Hydrophobic. Of course I'm going to read that. There's one topic I have not heard you volunteer, Norbin asked about, so I thought I'd go for it. One, how many times while at the East Coast Command did you ever put on your your Scooby gear operationally or in the real world. Appreciate you had to maintain and train your dive qualifications.

I will answer this. But for everybody listening, my answer is almost 20 years in the rear view mirror. I spent the minimum amount of time required at Development Group. I do not claim to have been the most seasoned operator. I don't even claim to have been good at my job. I made it through selection. I spent time there, but my time there is super dated. two decades, which is wild for me to even say. I was thinking about it the other day. I went through

selection in 2002 over 20 years ago, which is wild how it can seem like a lifetime ago and then also yesterday, depending on where you're at in your headspace. So I can answer from my own experience in this. Who knows what it looks like there now? The operational tempo, I'm sure, is different. The training tempo is different. But I will answer this from my own experience. How many times while at Development Group did you ever put on your scuba gear operationally or in the real world? Let me answer the real world portion for you. A zero. If there was a real world combat swimmer operation, you would be much better off calling an SDV team, which is a SIL delivery vehicle team.

Their core competency is diving, technical and complex diving, longer duration. if there is something that is coming up that would require that other than probably a mass shipboarding or an operation that would terminate in a clearance problem of some kind, I would go with the people who specialize in it. How often did we put it on? Again, I was racking my brain trying to think back through 20 plus years of this. I would say we put it on enough time to maintain our pay. I don't know if I would add currency in that. But at the time that I was there, there were no waterborne audoperations going on.

I mean, you might encounter water in the forms of maybe a stream or a river or, yeah, stream of a river or a lake, perhaps. That was about it. And if I'm being totally honest, when we met our pay requirements, sometimes we were diving with a pen and paper, if you know what I mean. Did we get wet? It's hard to say. Did the paperwork get signed? It did. And that's just the way it goes sometimes.

Allegedly, of course, I would never admit to or throw anybody else under the bus for doing something that we would call in the military pencil whipping or gun decking, depending on who you are. Very, very infrequently. It just was not a core competency. That would be very similar to military free fall operations. That would be the school bus that you would get on to arrive at where you actually did your job. We oftentimes were going there via a vehicle or helicopter, and we worked a lot with those assets. Diving, not so much. Two, if not, meaning if I didn't put on scuba gear operationally in the real world, did you know, did anyone you know of do so?

Again, I would point you back towards the SDV commands that I am aware of prior to 9-11. there was a combat swimmer operation, and I might be speaking out of school or getting these confused. I think it was in Panama. They put a limpid mine on a vessel, if not more than one limpid mine on a vessel. It exploded. That is the only real-world combat swimmer op in the SEAL teams that I am aware of pre-9-11. Post-9-11 and all the things that have happened since then, especially with the advent of the SDV teams. I have no idea.

I know that they're very busy. I know that they're a national mission asset level organization. I'm not even going to hypothesize. But for myself, personally, no, I don't know of anybody. Actually, I take that back. I did know the person. I met him one time in my second deployment to Guam. He passed through the training debt.

He was on that combat swimmer operation. I knew him extremely peripherally, not personally. So I guess I have crossed past to somebody who's done a real world combat swimmer operation. Part three. Interested to understand the balance. My understanding is that at that command, you spend the majority of your time getting better at shooting and CQB, which would stand for a close quarters battle. It's been changed to CQC, close quarters combat. Who knows what it's being called right now?

And that is also where the majority of public accounts come from. I would say, by and large, yes. And people ask me this question all the time about what is the difference between a conventional seal team and a J-Soc element? I can only talk about the Navy side of the house. I have a little bit of knowledge about the Army J-Soc units and how they select. but asked somebody who worked in that world on those things. The difference between a conventional seal team and development group, in my words, in the way I would describe it, one, it's populated by exactly the same people. So it's not as if the people at that particular command are created in a test tube somewhere else.

They are people who make it through traditional seal training. I said traditional because there's no non-traditional. There's no online course, even though some people have said in the past that their Bud's class number was classified. And yeah, that's not true. So there is just seal training. You go to your team. When I was in, you had to do two platoons, which is going to run you somewhere probably between four to five years to get through those. You can put your hat in the ring for selection.

You're going to do a PT test, an oral board, and you may or may not. picked up for selection. A group of people from both East and West Coast are going to come together at the command. They're going to go through selection. Some of those people make it through. Some of them don't. I would describe the selection process is more you're being tested on your tactical prowess and abilities as a seal, not your mental toughness, physical fortitude like you are in seal training. Some people make it through. Some people don't. Some people, it's a tactical or technical reason and some people have personality conflicts with the staff. Both of those are true. both of those are possible.

And what do you end up with? People from the special operations community, the what is commonly called the white side seal teams. And what then they are asked to do instead of doing 80 things. And I'm throwing that out as a number. It's not that high. But I think it's a good reference to give people an idea of why one command focuses on one thing over others. Let's say you're at a conventional seal team.

team, you have to do 80 things in your medals, the mission essential task list, which could be considered a three ring binder of everything that you're supposed to be capable of doing. It's got dive, demo, jump, jungle, Arctic, all these other things, you know, dismounted patrol operations, vehicle operations, helicopter operations, on and on and on and on. If I were to give you the choice or ask you who would be more capable, if I said, your team has to train for and focus on 80 things versus your team gets to focus on and train for five things. Which one do you think would be better when those five things came up? Right. It's a rhetorical question. It would obviously be the individuals that can reduce a lot of the other white

noise and focus specifically on what they do. And I'm trying to get to hear your question about getting better at shooting in CQB. Largly, yes, that is what they are focusing on. And I'm trying to get to hear your question about getting better at shooting in CQB. Largely, yes, that is what they are focusing on, because that is at the end of the day the job that they are going to be asked to do. And you can kind of reverse engineer from there. The support ratio is higher on the East Coast command. The budget is higher.

The equipment is a little bit more cutting edge at times. You're going to see things earlier in the iteration cycle when it comes from equipment, tactics, techniques, and procedures, all of those things. and you are very focused on a few things. You get incredibly good at them. That is not to say anything negative about the conventional special operations forces. It's a different role.

And quite frankly, if there is a mission set that comes up that is out of that five things that development group is focusing on, and again, these are numbers that I'm making up to kind of prove a point. You'd probably be better off task than somebody else because they're not as current and competent. Combat swimmer being a great example of that.

So, and just in case you will tolerate another question, here we go. As I understand it, one of the other missions of that command is the development side. That is experiment with novel techniques, try new equipment, and develop new TTPs. Well, like I just said, tactics, techniques, and procedures. And share those with the white side seal teams. So you use the commonly accepted phraseology in your own email. Part one, did you spend any time on the development side of the organization? Yes, and everybody there does because you are getting access to.

things that potentially may be brought into the pipeline. And there's a reason why the command is called Development Group. It's in their charter. They are looking at and they are developing new equipment, new tactics, new techniques, and potentially new procedures for at least naval special warfare, but potentially special operations, depending on how far that permeate. So anybody there is actually a part of that process. You might get issued gear a year or two before the conventional SEAL teams do. Just to test it out. See if you can destroy it. You might get to play with different weaponry. And that's just kind of part of being there. So if you're there, whether you want to be part of the development process or not, you are by design. Two, if so,

where did you spend your time? My guess would be parachuting or the related. I loved air operations. And when I got to that command, I had the opportunity to chase that pipeline. So I went from having essentially my basic military free fall qualification to, I would say, probably every air operations course available in the military in less than a year, which was awesome. And I was involved a little bit in testing some new tandem canopies. But again, that was only because that's what that command does. I happen to be jumping out there at that time when that was available. But I certainly was involved in testing new plate carriers, new body armor, new helmets, new night vision, all of those things.

Because, again, that's part of the job. So I didn't really focus on any one area just being there. to a degree, you're a little bit of a guinea pig. And it's kind of cool because you have flexibility over what you normally would at a traditional seal team. But a traditional seal team, what you get issued is what you get issued. At Development Group, your budget is robust. And there are ways to go outside of that and the traditional gear issue pipeline if you choose to do so. Number three, is there anything you can talk about that you developed and innovated and shared with the larger seal community. Not that I had a heavy hand in. What I can say

is what we had our hands on before the conventional seal teams did, probably one of the main things I remember, is the ballistic half-shell helmet. You can look at ballistic helmets, and these aren't designed to necessarily stop rifle rounds. It's largely for, one, you know, cracking your noodle on stuff. So there's foam and stuff inside of that to protect for a blunt force trauma injury. It'll stop fragmentation. I think you can stop up to maybe like a nine, mill or a pistol round, not that that shot at you that often. You could take a glancing hit for sure. Traditionally, they had very large earcups, and we were on the leading edge of having ones that looked like a half-shell skateboard helmet. I remember multi-cam coming

into the command early, the AOR 1 pattern, which is like a desert digital AOR2, which would be like a woodland digital, stuff like that coming through. Body armor plates, instead of having to have, let's say soft body armor behind and stacking a hard plate on top of that we had some standalone plates and all that stuff has worked its way well into i think a lot of this stuff is actually in conventional military units i didn't have a hand in developing any of that i happened to be there when those things were being onboarded and it was really cool because after i left that place you saw that gear arriving a few years later like holy shit that process is living breathing and working every single day and i thought it was really cool so i personally did not

innovate. I personally did not create. I just happened to be a cog in the wheel at the time. And those are some of the things that I saw when I was there. So hopefully that helps. Second question of the day, let's get right back to my core competency, all right? This is relationship advice. This is what maybe I was put on this earth for, giving shitty relationship advice based on things that I don't know anything about. So here we go. And then this is a, it's a couple paragraphs. I'm actually just break them down and go paragraph by paragraph. This week, my world has been rocked. I was blindsided when my wife of four and a half years together for almost 10 told me she didn't think our future together will work. She says she thinks we want different things for our

future. We met each other in high school through myself dating a close friend of hers, although the relationship was very short. We became great friends, best friends, I'd say. Fast forward six years into this friendship and we started dating. I love her more than anyone and I believe that she does too. but this past week she expressed she feels we want different things in our future i have become extremely uh i've become extremely into hunting and the outdoors in the past handful of years she excuse me does not share the same interest to my level and i don't expect her to follow me into my passions does that mean we can't have a fulfilling relationship i don't feel we need to have all of the same interests that's a great question

and I think that you don't have to have all of the same interests either. But what I'll add to that is, if you are spending time apart on things that interest you individually, make sure you prioritize at least to an equal level time together so you can focus on each other. It is, I suspect, far easier to grow apart than people would want to believe. And if it's left unmonitored and unmanaged, I think it might be able to get out of control out of velocity that people wouldn't want to believe either. Having said that, I don't think that you need to do every single thing together.

I also know couples that do exactly that, and they are incredibly happy. I also know couples that have very different hobbies, very different passions, very different pursuits, and they are also incredibly happy. So I don't actually think there is a wrong or right answer here. I think in this particular soup, it's the recipe that is important, not the actual end state or the taste at the end. So let's say the couples that spend a lot of time doing their activities together. The ones that I've seen have been really successful, while they are sharing time in those activities, they're also really working on time together as well. So the activity is the vehicle for them to connect in bond.

For those who I've seen who don't share those activities, I see them putting in an immense amount of effort to carve out time for each other and to find that connection in bond. And that's what I mean about that recipe. I don't think necessarily it has to go in any particular order as long as some of those core components are there. I think that you are going to be okay. it's easy to be spending time with somebody doing the same thing, but it's not bringing you any closer to each other. And it actually can create issues depending on how you view things. If you become competitive, if you become antagonistic, if you become disdainful. So there's a level of intention on both of those, I'll call those edge cases because most people I think are in between the two.

The level of intentionality is what I have seen for couples who are not only, surviving but thriving. They just make sure that they take time for each other and they prioritize it, regardless of what it is that they're doing. So you can have a fulfilling relationship, I think, with almost any dynamic, as long as that relationship is neglected. We recently purchased a house that needs to be renovated so we can keep our condo as a rental property. Awesome investment move. She pushed for this. And since moving into the property two months ago, I've noticed a change in her and thought it was the stress of the work involved in the financial limits we pushed to make it happen. Yesterday, she told me she no longer has the drive to make our marriage work.

She is unsure she wants to put the effort in because she feels we want different outcomes in life. Prior to this move, our relationship was great, arguably the best year of our marriage. I think it's awesome that you said that. What do you think she would say if she was asked about that last year of your marriage? And I asked that because it's not uncommon for two people to give very different answers to that question. Hopefully they'd be congruent and concurrent. Or I think parallel would be better. Yeah.

Parallel. Maybe not, though. And again, just food for thought. Stress does interesting things to people. You're in a new place. It sounds like you pushed yourself financially to get there, which is not an uncommon thing. You're like right up to that limit, maybe even a little bit. over the limit of what you can financially support because you're looking at the future,

not something that I would recommend against. I've done that many times in my life where you're a little bit over the front of your skis, but you know if you can get through that process, it's going to net something that's better in your life. It's stressful. It sounds like from somebody who only knows about the situation from the small email that you sent in, that she might be a little bit overwhelmed. If she's overwhelmed by the physical process of what she's involved with, it wouldn't surprise me that either her or anybody else is starting to feel uncertain about the future. Because if the stress is crushing you in the moment, how could you possibly have a clear optic of what the next six, 12, 18, 96 months is going to provide for you?

And you can't. So maybe she's in a little bit of a place right now where she's feeling overwhelmed. she's feeling unsure and she is vocalizing and verbalizing those things. I'm not to say, I'm not saying that that is the case, but at least provide some space for yourself where that could be the case because if it is, I think all of those issues and problems are solvable. I would take a strategic approach on which one of those you would want to attack first and maybe reduce the stress and, you know, pick what you need to work through in the moment so you can achieve your long-term goals and all of those. of those things. But if she's just overwhelmed, she might need a breather and she might need a break.

Or she may truly not be sure of what her future holds outside of the stress that she is experiencing. The problem is this. I've tried to talk to her about her goals and plans for the future, but she has not been able to express them to me. She always responds with, I don't know. Okay, that's not uncommon, but it's hard to hit a target that hasn't been defined. But it's also not your job to define her goals and plans for the future. Having said that, I think it's very important that she can at least broadly define them for herself. If you don't know which direction to point the vehicle, you're always going to be lost. How could she do this? Maybe does she have a friend that she trusts and could confide in? Does she have a mentor of any type? What's her relationship

like with her parents? Could she kick some ideas around with her parents and see what spaghetti sticks on the wall? Did she want to go and talk to somebody who's a professional, psychiatrists or psychologist, just to talk about the stress, what the stress may be causing her to feel, what the stress may be causing her to think, maybe to just offboard this uncertainty of what it is that she wants to do from a goal perspective, whether it be as a couple or as a person? What I can tell you is this. I still struggle to define. exact end states that I want to arrive at, but I can give you broad ideas of the direction that I want to move.

Perhaps that's a better approach. I also think keyholeing people early in life and saying things like, what do you want to be when you grow up? It's like, how fuck do you know what you want to be? And this is not specifically about your wife, but how often have we heard kids asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? What the fuck does an eight-year-old know about what they want to be? They want to be a unicorn and a GI gel, you know, like what do we expect from that?

And then you fast forward to 18. What do you want to be? Even then I think it's a little bit too early because how much context do you have on the world around you? And then mid-20s, right? 28, another decade to it. What if you followed down a path that you wanted to at the age of 18 and you're at a place where you realize you don't like that anymore? Is it wrong for somebody to change what they want to be in life? My answer to that's no.

I don't think it's ever wrong to change those things. And I think the pursuit of things that scare you, I think challenging yourself with things that you don't know and that you want to learn or things that you're uncertain as to whether or not you're going to be successful. I think that's the key to youth from a mental and probably physical perspective as well. So looking at myself in the mirror, I couldn't say this one sentence is exactly what I want to be in my life. And I'm 46 years old now, but I know which direction I want to go. I want to have a level of financial independence. Now, what does that mean for me?

For me, that means I want to make enough money that I can choose to do with what I want to with my time. notice that wasn't a specific amount in a bank account it wasn't a set of assets that I need to own it's an overarching principle that I keep in the back of my mind when I make financial decisions is what I'm doing leading me closer to financial freedom by my definition or farther away from it and sometimes I'll make choices that are taking me farther away from it because I'm an idiot and I'm susceptible to anybody else thinking like oh shit that looks awesome maybe I need some of that and then most of the time I take a loss on it and try to learn my lesson and don't do that stuff again. Big picture, broad picture stuff, you know, kind of like, let's just say you have like a 45 degree angle that your compass can bounce back and forth on.

I think that's amazing for somebody at your phase in life. And maybe for the rest of your life. Maybe as you get older, you can narrow that down to a 30 degree swing or 20 or whatever may work for you. But in and of itself that she doesn't know specifically what she wants isn't a bad thing. maybe she just needs to talk to people a little bit farther down the road or just a friend to offload some of this so she can develop that broader sense. I don't know how to constructively help her figure out what she wants. Maybe it's not your job to do so. Maybe it's her job to figure out what she wants.

She made a dramatic career change and we moved across the country. She continually makes quick decisions about important choices without much thought until we have committed. Okay. I mean, that's a broad statement, specific but broad. And my question back to you would be is how have those decisions netted out? Have they largely been positive with the result? Have they largely been negative with the result? Has it been a mix of 50-50?

You know, making quick decisions about important choices is not always a bad thing. Some people have the ability to look at a very complex situation, determine what in that situation, the variables that they can control and what is actually important in the decision-making process. boom, they execute on it. And they're right. Or they make the correct decision. Maybe shouldn't use terms like right or wrong. So who really gives a shit how quickly she makes a decision? What's the end state of those decisions? If they've netted out well for her, who cares about the time? If they've netted out poorly, maybe then she should take a little bit more time. So worry less about the time I would say or suggest that she takes to make decisions and more

about the outcome that they have. At the end of the day, I want her to be happy with or without me as much as it pains me to admit. You know what that means? That means you're a good man. And that's an awesome place to be. It's easy to get vindictive. It's easy to focus on just your happiness and just the things that you want. The fact that you want her to be happy, even if that were to mean she was no longer with you. And of course, I'm not advocating for that. To me, that just means that you're a good person. And I'm glad that you're in that place. So I guess my question for you is, how do I know when the fight is worth it or when to accept it may be the end of this chapter of my life?

I do not want to give up on us. Well, that last piece right there, I think, is the biggest indicator. You will know. Well, I'm going to take that. I was just about to say you will know when it's time to give up. And then I look back at my own life and my own relationships. and I actually can say that I knew when it was time, I just didn't do it in that time. I held on for longer than I should have for my own personal shortcomings, an ego, and unwillingness to give up.

Because God forbid, especially coming from the world that I came from, I quit at anything. So let's auger ourselves in so we don't have to say that I quit or gave up. And it's like, fuck. It's actually what I should have done. So I think it is safe to say you know when it's time to give up. The hard part is actually doing it. I would say you have identified that it is not time for you to give up. You care about this person. You care about their well-being.

It sounds to me looking back at this that you are just going through a phase in your life where there are a lot of variables. You've got a lot of balls up in the air that you're trying to juggle. And it takes a lot of concentration. when you're focusing on that many things, your overall vision of the future of your life and what that's going to look like can get a little bit hazy. I would suggest that you go and get some marriage counseling, not because I think your marriage is in jeopardy, but because I think a neutral third party who can hear both sides

maybe get an understanding because they are neutral of what type of communication works best and where the hiccups may be arriving, maybe where these little areas where you might be tripping and stumbling a little bit, identifying those things. Have that person help you. It is, I've watched people who are so deeply in love be unable to agree and communicate. You get the neutral third party in the middle. and using them as a conduit, even though you're in the same room, incredibly beneficial. If you have children, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I can advise my children not to do something until I'm blue in the face and they will keep doing it. They hear one time from somebody else, and it's amazing how it clicks. Why are adult relationships any different? I don't have an answer to that, but I've seen it work time and time and time again, and it's worked for me as well. So hopefully that helps. Hopefully your relationship is actually just going through a third. phase where it is a little shaky and a little rocky. And oh, by the way, that's totally normal. The people that tell me my relationship is perfect and I've never had a fight. We've

never had a discreet. It's like, why are you lying to my face? It's okay that you've had all those things because I think we all do. The risk is, I think, not being able to talk about it because you're worried that other people aren't experiencing the same thing. And I think they are. I think we're all kind of going through an equal level of bullshit in our lives every day. The bullshit just might be different. Some's cow shit. Some's bullshit. Some may be chicken shit, which I feel like would be, I feel like that would be a lot of chickens.

I'm not very familiar with how much they shit. But before I get totally off the rails, I'll just end it for today. Hopefully the advice help and I'll see everybody on Monday.