Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Inside the Thunderbirds and the Cost of Getting It Wrong | Ryan Bodenheimer | Ep. 477

Episode Date: October 19, 2026

Ryan Bodenheimer spent eleven years on active duty flying the F-15E, including 70 combat missions over Afghanistan and a stint building strike packages at the air operations center in Qatar. He was selected for the Thunderbirds, flew Thunderbird 2 for two show seasons, and instructed the next team. After the Air Force he flew airliners, then walked away to build Max Afterburner, now one of the largest military aviation channels on YouTube, and to write Take Command. The thread in this conversation is rules and when to break them. He kept a loaded jet at .99 Mach so he'd arrive with something to protect a SEAL, then went down to 100 feet because 500 would have gotten the guy killed. He went off dry on a cleared-hot strafe because he saw kids, and two targets got away. My helicopter instructor put it simply: know the rules and why they exist, then you can break them. We close on Iran, drones, the withdrawal, and the limits of air power. Enjoy. Take Command: https://mysignedcopy.com/en-us/products/take-command?srsltid=AU7gw4XIeBMvDl9pxPZIhD54iTnJC5j74cMg8n-HS_7Cxx5Z4k83omYq Take the Operator Code Assessment: https://www.theoperatorcode.com   Today's Sponsors:  Montana Knife Company:  https://www.montanaknifecompany.com LMNT:  https://www.drinklimnt.com/clearedhot

Okay, got the red smoke. So the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. Earlier today, his brilliant move, the light setting was one off. So he walked over to fix it. So I said, good job. And then he kicked all the camera power outlets out of the wall. So durability test. You just got to take it back, though.

You're like, good job. No. Yeah, that's the training. Yeah. Yeah, Alex, man, that was a tough one, man. It's, uh, did you get to the part in the book yet where how I got. Notified. Essentially, it wasn't necessarily not to you.

Yeah. All the texts came up after your camping trip. Yeah. And just looking at that and like, you know what I mean? A weird confluence of friends that have nothing in common. And I just, I knew what it was in. God, those days suck. Yeah.

Sitting on the side of the road like. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then getting to talk to within about 48 hours, I was able to, he was not jumping alone. He was jumping with another mutual friend. I was able to talk with him. And he saw it happen live and actually hiked for hours to go get the video camera.

He impacted the tree at first, essentially. Wow. But he went up and found the video camera because he didn't want the footage and ended up online somewhere. So it's a lot, man. Well, the part you said too, where, you know, you had gotten him into it, the Survivor's guilt, the suit that you kind of helped them get, which obviously had no control over that day. But I could see the mind playing a lot of a lot of fucked up games. We had jumped so much together that we had had some close calls. And I was going to say, gently discussed his deficiencies with him.

But the reality is I had fucking screamed at him before. Like, what are you doing? Don't do that. And he was, I mean, he was qualified to be where he was and to be doing what he was doing. But, man, it's just such, there's no room for error there. Yeah. You know, you would understand as an aviator. people say, oh, how do you know how high off the ground you are?

I'm like, camera one, camera two. There's no dial. There's no airspeed indicator. You're going, it's tactile. You're going off the feedback that the suit is giving you because it's just got ram air inlets. Yeah. And, oh, look at that.

Good catch. Michael, give me a paper towel, please. Those are steel reflexes right there. It, uh, when you're just, when you have that thing pitched over at a steep angle of attack, it's like, riding a vibrating magic carpet because you can just feel the, you can just feel the energy. And then at the slow end, you're just, you're like, oh, God. Yeah. Sloppy. Because you can stall them. It's just like a wing. Wow. Is all it is. This is what it feels like. And there's no like altitude warning like you would have on a free fall. No. I mean, wow. I think you could

wear one if you wanted. The problem is it'd be going off the entire time. And you'd be going, you be going up above it sometimes, right? Because you kind of, or do you always constantly go down in a wing suit? You can gain altitude. You can trade airspeed for altitude. Okay. Same as a plane. Same as a plane. But just same as a plane. If you didn't have an engine and you were doing that, you're going to get to the apex,

you're going to hit your critical angle of attack and then it's going to get real, real spicy. For sure. Yeah, man. Dude, yeah, well, when you wrote that, that just hit me hard and took me back to losing friends too. What happened in, so it was in flight school?

In flight school, yeah. So my best friend in flight school, we know we were competitive before that we were in RTC together. And we made it to T-38's, which is the supersonic jet. It's like your first go at a supersonic jet. It was month one.

And so we're just getting our feet wet. What's the pipeline up to that? I'm assuming you started the classic Sessna 150. I did. Well, yeah. No, actually, sorry, 172. Got a one-up you there. Started in the 172.

Sorry, I'll go back to my, you know, pedestrian ways over here. Yeah. Not trying to brag. We had like an extra 10 horsepower from the 152. God, those planes. Dude, I've had some great times in Little Sassanus though. Yeah, me too. I know.

It's like, you can't deny. They're fun. They're fun and they'll get you in an. out of places where jets aren't getting in and out of. I mean, you could land, but it's, yeah, I look back at those days. It's, I'm very thankful for them, actually. Yeah, for sure. I mean, they're, they're so dependable for what they are.

They're a lawnmower with wings, right? And they still work most of the time. So you guys, I'm assuming so you probably go private, you're going to have to get your multi at some point. There's no benefit for a military aviator to get their commercial license. So do you even bother? No. Not until you're out.

Yeah, which is going to be a paperwork. pencil drill anyway. So private to probably multi to probably instrument. So you're talking before the military? No, just in the process of getting into that first supersonic jet. Yeah. So you don't even have to get your pilot license at all. You just, yeah, they're like, uh, you can do like a little like orientation flight and they see if you get sick basically and see if you self-eliminate. Okay. But then they send you to this little school where it's like 20 hours of time in a, I think it's a DA 20 now. But I didn't do that. That wasn't in existence when I was there. So I just went and got my private pilots license on my own. I was in college. I thought it'd be cool to take chicks on dates

in a plane. So I was like, okay, I'm going to get my pilots license. That's not a bad strategy, actually. Yeah. I mean, I was 21. I was like, how do I set myself apart from the crowd? Pilots license, done. So, and it helped to get a pilot slot. So got the pilot slot. And then from there, you go right into T-37s. So I was the last class to fly T-37s. Is that a propeller plane? No, it's a jet. Made by Cessna, actually, but it was built in like, I think they're late 60s. early 60s. And then you work your way into the 38th, which I'm assuming is just more powerful. Yep. So it's about four months in the T37. And then now that's a T6. Now that's a turboprop. Okay. They've changed. So I was the last class of T37. So things like Apollo space capsule.

Like there's like 500 switches in that thing. It's crazy, man. Crazy that it flies. So you do that for your four months. And then you make it past that. And as long as they see you have some skills to fly formation, then they send you to fighter training, which is the T-38. And I was at Ingept. You're NATO joint jet pilot training. So it's kind of sweet because it's a track where you're probably going to be a fighter pilot. But again, in the T-37, they're like, hey, is this person have the air sense? Do they have the ability to fly in formation, basically? Because some people just don't, you know, just doesn't translate to all people. So T-38's, that's supersonic, your first supersonic flight. You do that pretty early on. And then they turn you loose into, you know, high-performance aircraft type maneuvers. Like you're dropping little mini-bombs, you're doing practice straight runs. It and actually have a gun.

Are you got there's solo? Or you got something in the back? So when I lost Alec, we were not qualified solo yet. Okay. So you get qualified solo. I think it takes like two months or so. Yeah. Qualified solo.

But up until that point, you're in the front and then you got the instructor in the back. So when he died, there was an instructor in the plane, too. There was an instructor in the plane too. What happened? Yeah. Yeah. So it's an early morning flight. I'm up above.

So as a flight in pilot training, you all fly together. So like all 10 of you or so, you'll be out. kind of the same chunk of time, kind of like a hockey rink, right? Because, you know, the times are critical, right, for the ATC and all that. So ATC is air traffic control for people who don't love acronyms as much as me. But we're up there flying. It's about probably four or five of us in the pattern. And I just looked down and I see a huge explosion, black smoke, right? And I'm on downwind coming in to be the next one to land. And that was a moment, man. I don't know. I just was like time kind of stood still where I'm like,

I know something really bad happened, you know, kind of like how you were talking about how your intuition hit you with the text coming in. Just something was just off. But I'd never seen anything like that before, right? I was a kid who had the top gun posters on my wall. You know, aviation's sexy.

It's awesome. There's no tragedies, right? I wish. Yeah, I know. So they impact the ground, but what we learned later, and I learned this years after, when I finally got access to some of the safety reports,

they were coming in on final, they were doing a single engine approach, and in the T-38, that's pretty critical because it's a little bit underpowered. You really need both of those engines if you're in a bad situation to get away from the ground. But that's different from any other fighter

in the Air Force, where you can just go to millpower. Mill-power is like the setting, you know this right before after burner, right before you have to really get a lot of power. And so you can typically get away with that, but not in the T-38. And unfortunately, the instructor that day

was an F-15C pilot before that. So they're coming into land, they're practicing a single engine, and a massive hawk smashes right into the side of the canopy. Yeah, totally random. Hits my buddy Alec in the helmet. And then from the reports I read, you know, there was blood everywhere, but it was from the bird, they think. Hits his helmet, you know, helmet shards, canopy shards everywhere, pandemonium in the cockpit, trying to talk on the inner phone at that point because you need a deconflict ejection. So those seats didn't have an automatic deconflictor.

The F15E does. but those T-38s don't. So you just have to time it with your voice. Like, okay, you punch out. Okay, now I'm going to punch out. Like, yeah, it's crazy. We're going to go on three. Yeah.

Hold on. Are we pulling on three or is it one, two, three pull? Yeah. Meanwhile, you're fucking rocketing towards the ground. Yeah, exactly. You know, you're losing like, like whatever, 5,000 feet a minute or whatever. So that happened to them probably like on short final or in finals.

Short final. Yeah. And the seats weren't even zero-zero seats. So zero seats means. that you can punch out at a standstill, sometimes even in a descent and still survive. We call that video up sometimes. Yeah. I think it was in a 15, actually.

There was a guy in the back getting a ride. Oh, yeah. You told me about that. Yeah, there was some paperwork on that one. The old zero zero. I'm like, that's not the handle, buddy. Also, in that moment, if you were up front, what are you thinking about? Are you in your head and you're like, there's no way I just heard.

Yeah. But I think I heard. Also, these lights probably aren't supposed to be flashing. I know. Today's episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. A ton of stuff I want to tell you about in limited time. So let's dive into it right now. The first thing is this. The ultimate base camp four by four RV giveaway sponsored by MKC is still ongoing now. You got about 43 days from the day that you hear this to enter. You can win up to 180K in total prizes. I'm going to let you go to their website and see it for yourself everything that comes with it because it would take me five minutes to explain it.

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They release knives twice a week and sometimes they do secret drops. So you can join their SMS or email lists and you're going to get that information. And then please just go over to montanaginife company. Dot com shop to your heart's content, knowing that you are supporting an amazing brand based here in Montana, bringing jobs back to Montana, high quality production, vertically integrating the whole nine yards. Montanaknife company.com. Back to the show. Do you just like take off at that point? Yeah, do you just go straight it into the grass and just turn the like, what are you, what are you supposed to do? Just get your sharpest pen out. Be like, yeah, this is going to be a really long day.

It's going to be bad. And the pilot's going to hear about it too, because even though it's not their fault, you know, it's like, how was the brief? Did you talk to him about the seat? You know, totally. So I do a lot of incentive flights too. And it's, I mean, it's a crapshoot, man. You don't know. someone's going to mess up or grab the wrong thing. Maybe they thought it was like a, you know, when you're off-roading, you grab the handles, they're different colors and rally cars. Yeah, but they don't, I mean, I've ever been in the back of an F-15. I bet it's somewhere between your legs, though, which is. It's on the side on the F-15.

No, not normally where the rally handle is, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's not the, oh, shit handle down here. How, uh, do they have any estimate and how long after the bird impact to impact on the ground? It was pretty quick. So there was, there was two other teeth. 38's sitting there waiting for takeoff. And one of the instructors and one of those

is going to call bail out, bail out, bail out. So that's like the official term in the Air Force to go ahead and pull the handles. A guy from a different aircraft called that out. Yeah, because he said they were just doing what's called like the wing rock of death is what we call it. It's like the stall, right? As soon as you see that happening, the jet's doing this.

It's falling out of the sky. So he's going to call it. So they both basically eject at the same time, unfortunately. Front seat hits the backseat. instructor is pretty much gone right away. Alex's going to impact the ground, and then the ambulance is going to be there within like five minutes.

They get him in, they try to save his life. He's too badly hurt for them to save his life. So then I'm going to land right after. And this is when things kind of like little chunks in my memory, it's just like kachin, kachink, right? And seeing the instructor laying there with the parachute still flying in the wind, and I'm like, what? Like, why would he?

I wasn't close enough to see, you know, exactly what, happened to him, but I could see his body, the parachute flying. And that'll never leave my mind, you know, just knowing like, okay, this has shifted and changed forever, uh, what aviation is to me now. But that was trauma at the time. I didn't really know how to process. Stayed with me for a long time. I wish I'd be better, would have been better at processing it. Probably would have saved me a lot of hours, a lot of failed relationships, a lot of poor performance. But, you know, in your line of work too, as a seal. I mean, I'm sure there's processing trauma is a daily thing because of friends you've loss. And any military member or anybody in a high-stakes career, I think it's something we're

going to face. Yeah. It's the first time you're exposed to it is really difficult, though. Yeah. The first funeral I went to, I wrote about it in the book, too, I think, was my buddy Jason. He got killed in the back of a Humvee. And it was interesting fighting over in Afghanistan and Iraq, seeing the differences in tactics and how information would travel on the ground back and forth between the two. And they were messing around with those explosive shape charges essentially. And it, I mean, it almost took his head off, you know, and that funeral or just going to those funerals and, you know, watching the impact on the families or seeing the impact on the families, I don't know. I don't know if you can ever truly process that. I don't know if you should

truly process that. I mean, I think it's supposed to stick with you. It doesn't have to ruin you, but I think it's supposed to stick with you. But yeah, the first exposure to it is, jarring. Were you, so you were in the military at the time or no? Yeah. Yeah, I was in pilot training. So then, yeah, that's probably you're going to be your first experience of your dress uniform, going to the funeral. I mean, those are, dude, they're heavy. Heavy. Yeah. And I'm best friends with them, right? So I'm handing the flag to his parents, all that stuff. And then you just start to question. How do you even keep your shit together in that moment? I mean, I didn't for a little. We gave, they gave us like two weeks off. I mean, in the moment. Oh, in that moment. Oh, yeah. I don't know,

man, I think I was just running on autopilot on it, to be honest with you. So unbelievably, like, I've never had to be happening. But I've watched that happen so many times. And oftentimes, it's the, you know, it might be a commanding officer. And let's be honest, the commanding officer. And my theory was, if he knew your name, you're not doing your job. Yeah, exactly. Stay under the radar. But if it's your best friend and you know the family to be the person, transfer, and for people listening may not understand the coffins are covered in a flag. It's very ceremonial and very the way that they do it it is god the way that the flag snaps and the way that they fold it over and the 21 gun salute depending on how and where they do it if it's inside or outside

but if it goes into it essentially a triangle which is then handed to the spouse if they're married or the family yeah but the person handing them that flag i just feel like that would be not that it's easy but it would be easier if you didn't know the person i can't fathom that yeah the personal connection there yeah for sure well it's something you say in your book too with the little kid who's looking up over the coffin, right? And seeing that, you know, they don't really know what's going on. Yeah. But they're trying to get a glimpse at their dad. So yeah, families, it was something we did on the Thunderbirds, too, was we'd do on our flights. So we'd put the name of a fallen warrior on the gear well of the F-16, on the number one jet, and then bring the families out halfway

through the air show and let them just kind of share that moment with, you know, the name of their son or daughter on the plane. And then we'd fly the demonstration that day would be, you know, in dedication to that family. There'd be a certain pass. like the bottom up pass or something like that, that'd be dedicated to that fallen warrior. And so I got to, little did I know, like when I was handing that flag to Alex family, I was kind of preparing my mind and my body

to do it for no dozens of other families on the Thunderbirds. And for some reason, I'd be the guy that would go out and kind of meet them, greet them, walk them around. And like you said, I don't think it's something we should ever fully processed. I'm like, oh, no, okay, now I got this. But what I did wrong, I think,

was I compartmentalized it way too much. And so I locked it away, right? like, oh, I'm never going to look at that. Like, I don't want to see that side of death. I don't want to look at that. But I think later in life and later in my career, I started to say, like, well, what can I learn from that? That now I can carry with me.

And now the gravity of what I was doing, I think it meant more to be better. It meant more to be safer. It meant more to actually spend the time in the vault for the after action report if I messed up. Right? And I think it made me take more ownership of my mistakes. Because I knew that the stakes were high. And I knew that if I mess up or if I don't do something right here today,

I'm going to be handing a flag to another family or, you know, someone's going to be handing a flag to my parents. And so I think when I did that, I integrated the experience instead of compartmentalizing it. And I think where we get into trouble when I'm speaking about myself is I'm a pro at compartmentalization. Oh, yeah. Doctor at level. Yeah. It's amazing.

You know, look at some of my failed relationships. It's like, oh, great compartmentalization. But now I'm in a healthy relationship. But I feel like that shift happened a couple years back where I was like, oh, I'm going to integrate this and instead of never looking at it, like, oh, I don't look at the ugly stuff. I don't look at the warts.

No, don't. Everything's perfect. You know, I'm the guy who had the top gun posters on his wall. Actually, no, I'm the guy who handed a flag to a family and then help them grieve and heal from that, hopefully, eventually. So I think there's a depth in kind of understanding the gravity of what we're doing. I just didn't comprehend that early on.

And I think that forced me to compartmentalize, compartmentalize, think everything was Top Gun Maverick. And then eventually I knew that that wasn't a sustainable way forward. But I went through the bullshit of allowing it to destroy my performance for a period of time, destroy relationships. So actually, so I wrote a book as well. And in that book, I could talk about how to take command of that situation. When you start to fill yourself slipping away into that compartmentalization zone where

You know, maybe you just say to your spouse, I'm busy. How are you doing? I'm busy right now. You say that for four months in a row. Or the classic guy, like, fine. Yeah. Good. Okay.

Yep. Guys are so stupid. Yeah. It takes us a while. It takes us a long time. Military aviation demonstration teams. Which one do you think is the best and why do you think it's the Blue Angels? Oh, wow.

You're not biased at all. Actually, real question is, did you like the, Thunderbirds documentary because I fucking loved that thing. I thought it was amazing. Yeah. Incredibly cool. I mean, I really have nothing bad to say about it.

The one thing that stood out to me was, you know, they brought in some drama, right? There's always going to be drama. Which is required. You know what brings in most of it is the music? Yeah. Do you know the difference in watching those shows if it was just, if it was just the wind of the turban or whatever you guys get here?

Yeah. People would look at it and say, yeah, that's pretty cool. You get the orchestra playing in that thing. Is he going to make the link up? The best. The best. It makes the film, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

No, I loved watching. People have to watch it. So they, yeah, they're going to introduce some drama there for sure. Yeah. The one thing I would say that the only thing that I think they kind of hyped up, and I think even the team lead would say this, is it's an honor to be Thunderbird 1, right? Like you go and become Thunderbird 1, that's like epic. Nobody on Earth ever thinks they're going to make it there.

So it's this crazy high achievement. But in the film, I think they kind of made it out to be like, oh, being an astronaut would be better. be better to be an astronaut. And the one thing I would say is like, I know there's a lot less Thunderbird leads than there are astronauts. And I think the way that they, I don't know if that even stands out to the viewer,

but the way that they kind of showed like, oh, this guy lost his dream of being an astronaut and had to be Thunderbird won. I hope it doesn't come across that way because in the Air Force, no one thinks that way. Everyone's like, oh, dude, your Thunderbird won? Wow, you just won the lottery.

Like, this is amazing. So that's the one thing I would say just to kind of correct the Hollywood side of it. Yeah. How do they decide who's going to be the number one pilot there? I think a lot of it's based on your performance over time with leadership when it comes to the team lead. And then for everyone else, it's leadership, but everyone else, it's more flying skills. It's like, okay, what are your check rides like?

Are you someone who's done well in deployments? But for Thunderbird 1, I think they really try to find someone who's not going to create a toxic team. Same with Blue Angel 1. I got to become really good friends with Blue Angel 1 in 2017. Great dude. And the thing I saw between the Air Force and the Navy is I think they're really, focused on who's going to make this team succeed or who's going to let, you know, one bad apple or they're going to allow somebody to kind of slip from the standard and then safety fails

or the team just dynamic is terrible. So I think they do a really good job. However, they're doing it, but I think a lot of its recommendations, a lot of it's, you know, the quote-unquote bro network who's looking out for, all right, who's going to represent the military well and not make everybody hate each other at the same time. Technically, what would you say is more difficult being the number one guy who's up front who from my have never well over my skis already talking about this stuff but i've watched a few documentaries he is looking out at front and it seems like he is trying to fly the most predictable safest line for everybody else everybody else is like hey i'm going to put some paint from my aircraft as close as i can get to

your air which one of those is technically harder it's a really good question because i can't really speak to the number one spot, right? And I've, but I've put myself in those shoes. And I've, I've led at times when we're doing like, you know, a little site survey or cross countries and we show up to an airfield and they'll do a couple passes. So I don't know if you, if it's hard for you to say. You're kind of comparing apples and bowling goals. But if you look at the number one dude, again, this is just from the documentary. He's up there. He can kind of look around. You look at anybody else and their neck is basically braced into location looking at a rivet. Totally. Yeah. And again, I've flown some jenst, not those type of jets.

Very different responsibilities, but man, being tucked in that close. Yeah, it was weird. Dude, it was weird. I literally do neck stretches every night. You know, so my neck would burn. But yeah, I was the Thunderbird 2, so I was constantly looking to the right. And at a certain point, you got to just kind of lock your head into the seat and keep it right there. Yeah.

And then try not to move under G, but there's times where you have to. But yeah, man, next take a pounding. I mean, if you look at any Thunderbird a couple years after, I mean, there's some weird things going on. There's some awkward stuff with the neck, the shoulders. Except for number one. He's up there just like, oh, dude, he's just, how are you guys doing out there? Hair blowing in the wind.

Why? He's a scarf just with an ass. Like, guys, why do you guys, are you guys not doing neck in the gym? Because I'm like, my neck is good. Look at this routine. Yeah. Have you guys not been working out? Like, what's happening?

What I'm saying it. I mean, I think it's happened to both the angels and the Thunderbirds where formation goes in because of the number one. I'm not going to say because of the number one. Well, because I didn't read the incident report. But from my understanding, you guys are so locked in to where you're supposed to be flying that if that guy is off of his game and there is a piece, it's like, as if you have time to react. 100%.

I have some inside info on that if you want it. Fire away. I think the viewers would like it. But so there was this secretary at the Thunderbirds, Miss Marine. And I think she'd be cool with me saying that. She's been there like 45 plus years. She recently left, right? Yeah. And so I'd have these little, after these flights, I'd come in and talk to her about

whatever, admin, and then she would give me a little bits of life advice. Just a wealth of knowledge. She's been around Thunderbirds for 40 plus years. God bless her soul. She's the power broker. Yeah. I tell this story about the active duty officer detailer in the seal community. Yeah. Every two years, the detailer rotates out, but there was a woman who was there for decades who knew the admiral since they were ensigns. Nobody's calling to talk to the active duty guy. Right. They're just hoping. that the other person answered and then she left. But if you wanted stuff done, that's where you sent flowers. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah. No, that's exactly it. They're power brokers. Oh, yeah. You got to build

that relationship or it's going to hurt. So I'm in there building the relationship and she's like, hey, I want to tell you about the day that the Thunderbirds went in when they were in T-38's. And that's the most famous time the Thunderbirds went in. Four of them go in together. There's a huge mural in the Thunderbird briefing room where you walk in and it's people can find it online if just look up thunderbird diamond crashes mural and it shows it's pretty ominous man because it's it shows the boss michael yes shows the boss and then it shows the other three guys kind of like backs to him and this is hanging up in the the briefing room right and the story that kind of goes out to that was tried to put out by air force leadership at the time was that it was a malfunction in the t 38 you know easier to get out easier for the

public to digest. But I think that misses a really big point and that is the dynamics of a leader, right? Because if the leaders essentially not trusted by the people that are flying right on your wing, I mean, it's destined for failure. And hopefully not that catastrophic, but even just a team failing or sucking, right? Yeah. Yeah. That one right there. So you can see the three guys on the left. So she's telling me she's like, these guys had filed complaints on the boss for like For like a year. Yeah. Really?

Yeah. Because he was distracted because he was constantly trying to get promoted. Was he up there texting and flying? Probably. Yeah. Not if the picture is made in oil painting. He wasn't up there texting and flying. He might have been doing like selfies.

I don't even, that era, I don't know if they had. What year did they go in? 84, I believe. Yeah, we're not talking around there. Maybe it would have been a cell phone the size of that laptop. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

But unfortunately, this guy was just distracted, trying to make general, had the wrong priorities. and I don't know. The thing that she thought was that he was just distracted for the last week leading up to that to try to get a new promotion. And then he ended up being below altitude and took it in. Now you can see the little skid marks there on the left side.

Those are those four jets all crashing right next to each other. So yeah, you're locked in all four jets. But if someone misses an altitude, if you're off by a couple hundred feet in the T-38, you know, it could be catastrophic. Not a lot of room for error there. Are those T-38s above?

Yeah. Yeah, those are the actual jets that went in. Is that a single or a double? Click on that picture, Michael. Yeah, two engines. Probably just older, though, probably slow to spool up. Exactly. Older technology.

Yeah, you got to get the power setting in there before the jet arrives and you need it. 100%. Little tiny intakes, so it's not getting as much air as I could have 16. The best thing to do with the turbine engines is just to choke it a little bit. Yeah, exactly. Let's cut off this airflow. This should help. Man, those things do look cool, though.

Those look like the, are those the Migs or what they use is the Migs and Top Gun? Yeah. And there's a version of that called the F5. It looks very similar, pretty much the same structure. And actually Iran still flies that right now. Is Iran still flying much of anything right now? Hopefully they do. I bet every fighter pilot right now is like, please get something airborne.

When was the last time the U.S. had an airborne-to-airborne engagement? Man, I know there was some in the Iraq War. Iraq one? Desert Storm? No. Desert storm. Okay. Yeah. Well, by engagement, you mean like,

firing missiles or like... I'm talking top gun shit. Yeah. Too close for missiles, so they had to switch to guns. I see you fight in DCS smoking people with freaking... Dude, that's what I do. Yeah, that's my part-time job now. It's crazy.

Like video games with 20 millimeter, yeah. Yeah, I think they're Air Force. 2017, what? An F-18 who shot down a Syrian Air Force... Oh, nice. Really? Over Syria? Okay.

That's awesome. That is awesome. But it did drop bombs. So, yeah, Syria. the jet that they were fighting against did drop bombs near a U.S.-backed local base. Interesting. F-18 is a SU-22? Is that a modern, like what gen fighter would that be?

Ooh, man, that's an older Soviet one. What would they consider the F-18? Is that like a Gen 4? Yeah, fourth-gen fighter. So maybe like a Gen 2 for the SU? Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. F-18's going to smash that thing. Yeah. Club and Baby Seals. Yeah. But yeah, there's a, see, there's a handful that sneak-in. right? Like no one really knew about that F-18

doing that engagement. There's a few of those out there where you're like, wait, what? So it's pretty... How is that guy's day after he lands back on the carrier? We're talking high fives and like silk scarves? I think so. Yeah, I think the champagne's popped at that point. Let's go. I mean,

other than Maverick, Captain Pete Mitchell, who should be a two-star admiral by now, you know, with his... He's got to be. He's an ace. Yeah, but other than him, though, do we even have any aces in the military? Let's see. Michael. Right now.

Like, yeah, I've got to look this up. Robin Olds is like the most famous one, but he's from the Vietnam era, huge mustache. Oh, of course. Yeah. John Boyd,

I think maybe he was close. His book was fantastic. So good. Boyd, right? That's what's called. Boyd, the fighter pilot changed the art of warfare or something along those lines.

So good, man. We use the Oudaloup in special operations. People think that it was a creation of special operations. Absolutely not. Yeah. God, I read that book years ago.

I read about face. I heard Jocka recommending about face, which that book, holy cow, is ridiculous. And as you're flipping the pages, you're like, no, this came from the nonfiction section? Like, not possible. Yeah. And then I flipped over to the Boy one.

And I can see why he really pissed people off. Because his flying ability seemed to outstrip his EQ a little bit. For sure. You know? Yeah. Yeah. But how are you going to argue? I mean, that guy was just,

washing dudes in dog fights and looking at taking airplanes from my understanding that should have been able to be outperformed. But because of the way he was thinking through this Oudaloupe, he was able to beat numerically superior, not in numbers, but performance. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Like how everybody told him to shut up because they just didn't want to hear the truth? Or when he would pull up the charts and like these are the Russian aircraft. And oh, by the way, everything you see in red is them outperforming everything that we have. And everybody said, no, that's not true. No. No. And by the way, we're going to try to get you fired and court-martialed because he was attacking someone's fiefdom at the Pentagon. Yeah. Right. So there was some bureaucracy, this team of generals that wanted, they wanted to make the F-15 a swing-wing jet. Like the F-14. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're like, it's better. And he's like, no, it's not better. Look. Yeah. This shows us right here. It's not better. And they, I mean, they basically tried to bury him for it. But then luckily, there was some, a couple generals, right? I don't know if you've seen this on the teams you've been on, but there's like a couple people who can. kind of they're okay to be challenged. They're okay to think outside just a little bit where they don't have to follow

the exact company line. And that's what moves people forward. Yeah. Are those guys? Not everybody can be those guys. You gotta have some people that are okay, we got the orders, we got to move forward. But I don't know.

Did you see that a lot? Yeah, the vast majority people can't even try to be those guys. They're onesies, twosies, and I don't know what allows them to do so. For Boyd, it probably was the fact that if they had a problem, he's like, do you want to go hop up real quick? and like we can just go. I'll just can, I'll just crush you over and over and over again.

Yeah. You take the superior jet and I'm going to fuck you up. Yeah, 100%. Well, they had to fudge the numbers on the F-16 to make it look less efficient so they could get it approved through a group of generals. No, I'm serious. They had to say, oh, this thing was only a couple hundred mile combat radius. Don't worry.

The F-15 will be bigger, better. This one just made a couple hundred miles. But he had the math in his head where you could see the physics of like, okay, we can actually get a lot more fuel in this thing than they think. than they think. And then he got it signed off because it was going to be not as capable as the F-15. I mean, it's just crazy the things that he had to do to get it done. And now every fighter pilot has benefited from that decision, right? And people on the ground, too, right? Because the jet can get there fast, carry a ton of stuff. There's a lot of them. But yeah, man, so many things get tried

to shut down for ego. And it just kills me that some of these amazing programs, probably some that have never come to light because of someone's ego. Yeah. No, it's real for sure. What a So you were flying F-15s And then you went to the Thunderbirds having Because they fly F-16s F-16s, yeah How do they do this here?

Do you have to go get typerated In the F-16 first and then you Because that's a whole other thing You got to figure out. Yeah I've never flown either. I'm assuming they fly differently. Yes, much differently, yeah.

So the F-15 has a stick in the center F-16 is a stick on the side. Yeah. So my first solo in the F-16 I remember being like Oh, dude, this sticks over here. Like, I mean, your brain is programmed, right? Do they go back to, do they have F6 scenes that have two pilots with an instructor in the back?

Yeah. So I did a couple flights with the IP in the back, instructor pilot in the back. And then some Sims. But I just went through a course. It was like 20 flights, 20 Sims, something like that. And so I just got qualified basic mission qualification as a wingman. So I got, you know, just in case the Thunderverse had to go to combat. I was combat qualified, but I would have been like, they'd be like, where is number four?

he's all figuring shit out 20 hours my goodness okay so probably by the time you left the thunderbirds you had a real good understanding of what that bird could do finally yeah probably like halfway through because you become an instructor

your second year so I was an instructor my second year but right up until that point like I was still kind of figuring things out luckily that Jets really user friendly so it's the user interface on it's really nice everything's kind of just locked in right there on the stick and throttle

so it's not you know that part of it's not hard to me a lot of it was the G forces, man. I was never good. I was never good at pulling Gs. Well, in the demonstration teams, we were removing a piece of equipment from most military aviator.

Actually, probably all of them. And that's the G-suit. And the Blue Angels, yeah. But the Thunderbirds have them because our sticks on the side. So yeah. Is that why you guys have them? We've got scarves and G-suits.

I mean, it's like, I think you could put the stick anywhere and justify not having a G-suit. I see what you're doing here, though. Well, but think about this. G-suit on the leg. The G-suit inflate. inflates and you're a foot and a half away from another jet and then it bumps your hand up.

Yeah, but the guns on the Blue Angels, they're so big that their arms can't touch the right arm. Their left arm is like, I didn't know you guys flew in the G suits. Those things, man, those things are lifesavers. Yeah, literally. Insane. Yeah, man. Well, I was just just thinking the other day about going through the centrifuge. Have you heard of that?

Oh, yeah. It's a metal ball. I know, Michael. How much did I offer you to go in there? He just can read. I think that'd be a good like qualification for who's going to. work for you? Like, can you make it through 90s? I just want him to do it. Yeah. Okay. And so we pulled up people. I'm like, look, you just pass out. You wake up. Yeah, it's easy. I don't think it hurts. You get a cool video.

Yeah. I mean. So you never were good at pulling. Is that a physiological thing or you just never liked it? I know, I think it was just like a hereditary thing. Like my blood pressure is really low. So like, I'm the guy like, you know, I'm working out and I stand up too fast. And I'm like, okay, I need a second, right? So there's some guys that just have high blood pressure from biologically, right? And I just was never that guy. So for me, I went to the 7 and a half G profile for the F15E, and that's the 810 in the F15E, because, you know, it's like the bomb truck type jets. You're not pulling 9Gs in dog fights likely. The F50cany can touch 9Gs, but you typically don't live there. You know, in your dog fights, you're anywhere between

like 6 to 8, maybe go to 9 for a second. And the Viper in the F16, you're living in 9 Gs for like 10, 15, 20 seconds at a time. It can accelerate 420 knots at 9 Gs. Just point it slight, just point the nose slightly downhill and pull 9Gs at 420 knots. You're going to increase air speeds. You have to pull the throttle back. I can't even fathom what that feels like just getting smashed into that seat. Dude, it feels, okay, let me see if I can put this into terms. So when you're pulling Gs like that, 9 Gs, you're looking at another jet in front of you,

trying to focus your eyes. Everything gets a little blurry, right? Your vision comes in a little bit, at least minded. And it feels like you're underwater trying to lift weights, like fast. Like you're trying to move with weights underwater. I mean, you're the pro at that, right? I'm sure you've been in some uncomfortable situations underwater where you're like, You get that gas for air coming.

Same thing under G forces, because you can't just take a second and breathe. You've got to control your breathing. If you try to gas for air, you're done. And you're going to black out. And unfortunately, you know, it happens, right? There's been dozens of F-16 pilots who have packed it in because of that, because it's so unforgiving. Is there any way to build a system in the airplane that could help them recover from that? Yeah, I think they have.

So I think it's called auto G-Cass. And the Thunderbirds, we couldn't, it was rolling out when I was on the Thunderbird. So I think it rolled out in like 2017 or so. Yeah. So I was on the team, but we couldn't put it on our jets because we were in profiles of flight that would make it think we were going to crash. You did not accidentally want that thing to come on in formation. That would be gnarly. So we couldn't put them on our jets.

But right around then, it did go into the fleet. So I think it is on most fleet F-16s. Yeah, because if you, let's say you gray out or blackout, what are you usually out for? 15, 20 seconds maybe? Yeah, I'd give it a nice 30 seconds. That's a lot of time depending on the orientation of the aircraft. Yeah. And then you got to think about the time after that isn't crystal clear either. It's like you just put down like 10 cocktails and you're on a boat, right?

You're trying to like get back into like reality and the blood's coming back into your brain. Everything's hazy. So in that thing, that big metal ball, like I did the 7.5 G profile, not easy, right? And so I was a little nervous, especially when I realized I was going to have to do the 9G profile. So I go fly at 15th for a while and then I get the call to to become a Thunderbird. Yes, Michael. You could do this. Dude, let's go.

I'll pitch in on this. Come on. I think the Air Force would do it just for. I feel like we know enough people between the two of us. Yeah. Let's do it. I would be worried. I mean, is there a window at the front?

The nausea would make sure. Oh, yeah. That's-in-nazia. Yeah. Yeah. So when you get done, you stop, you just feel like you're falling forward. Yeah, tumbling. Yep.

Yeah. This is you, Michael. You're doing the hook drill. Oh, you got this. I believe in you. I don't know if I believe in him, but I think he's got it. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to give him a little bit of false sense of.

I did a backseat ride in a mig 29 last year. And I am thankful we had the G suit on. Nice. Jared Isaac. And so I get this, you know, people send me these text messages that are so rhetorical. Yeah. Hey, do you want to come to Bozeman and ride in the back of a mig? Why didn't just send me the address?

Why did you even ask me? But I get there, he did full, like, after burner takeoff, unrestricted climb to 180 and just rotated it up and over. Oh, beautiful. What did you think? That thing moves. God, that thing moves. Same principles, right?

Just faster and then different, like a couple different dimensions, right? Yeah. But you've done a ton of flying. Not that type. You know, they did some simulated dog fighting stuff. And honestly, I didn't even know what the hell they were looking at. I know they were trying to maintain the visual on the other. person that they were going after. It seemed like they were trying to essentially turn faster than the

other person to maneuver to a place where they could be in an offensive. But it's like, dude. Dude, I got so, yeah, so you guys did like a, oh, they full on, a dog fight? Yeah, full on. Do you remember, was it like, you see you're across the circle looking at the other jet and you guys are kind of fighting for tail position? I swear it started, they gave the countdown and he just went up and over and started to try to come around. I don't, my head was on pin at the back. I'm like, I don't know what we're doing. Dude, that's amazing. Okay, so I had this thought the other day.

Think about this. Like, thinking of the future of warfare, what if in a dog fight like that, what if you just looked out and you just saw the jet point right at you and pull weed? Because that's what advanced drones could do, right? Yeah, because that doesn't matter.

They don't have the human being, the flesh machine in there, getting smashed into the corner. A whole new concept of dogfight. Do you think it'll go that way? Do you think it'll ever go truly autonomous versus autonomous? I do. Yeah, I think there will be some humans,

maybe in certain parts of the battle space, totally disguised on where they are. You'll think that maybe a drone is a drone. It could be an F-47, so it'll just be very disguised on where the human is. But yeah, I think when we involve space, we involve F-47, we get the CCAs more online. I mean, it's like fighter pilots are going to have little canines now

to run out and do their bidding to enemy fighter jets. It's insane what could happen. Right now, are we largely limited by the little flesh machine in the cockpit? it can tolerate? Dude, I would... Could the airframes take more than what the humans can push them to? Yes. Structurally. Oh, for sure.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's certain components on it that don't need to be manufactured past 9Gs, so they just don't. Yeah. But that wouldn't be that hard to fix. The big thing is... Structurally, it's not going to come apart if you hit 9 and a half. I've got a friend who pulled 11 saving their life in an F-15, screaming towards the ground at night.

They were doing some training on someone pulled 11 Gs. Survived. The jet had some panels bent. but like the structure, you know, was fine. Fine. But it survived enough to save their life, you know. Yeah. There's no limiter on the F-15.

Well, there isn't the F-15EX, but on the legacy F-15E, F-15I, F-15S-I, a lot of these export versions. There's no limiter. So you could pull 13 Gs. I mean, at some point those wings are going to. Yeah. They didn't do it at 11 Gs. I mean, if your choice is attempting to pull out of the dive or eat the dive straight in, I'm going to go for the attempt at least. 100%.

Yeah. So as much as I would like to say, no, look, I'm going to die on this hill. We have to have a pilot. Like, I think there'll be a pilot somewhere as the quarterback of the team. But I think the team is going to look way different than having pilots out there. I mean, it's just way more predictable. You involve space assets. You allow it to, you know, have a couple of these CCAs take off from carriers,

have an F47 that can hang back. You know, 50 of these take off from different carriers. Dude, why wouldn't we go that way? I don't see a reason why we wouldn't go that way. I mean, I remember what years were you in? So I started in 2007 and then I got off active duty in 2018. So I'm still in the reserves. So I started in 96 and got out in 2013.

And I remember like the most high speed early global war on terrorism recruiting videos, a guy's night vision goggles. Modern era stuff is FPV goggles. Yeah. It's already moving in that direction. Ukraine is absolutely fascinating. The fact that they're using, I always call them DGI, even though I know they're not DGI. talking about largely off the shelf or 3D printed stuff.

Yeah. In the same battle space that they are fighting with trench warfare is mind boggling to me. Yeah. You are on two extremely far-end differences of what's going on. And I think anybody not paying attention to what's going on over there is doing exactly that. They're not paying attention. I don't see how that stuff doesn't leave. I think it already has left.

I mean, look at what's going on in Iran and their ability to reach out. I don't know if they call those things, what they would call them, drones or intermediate level missiles, whatever they are. They're hucking stuff outside of their geographic borders. Yeah, for sure. Well, same question to you, like when I look at what Andrew is building with that new helmet, you know, where they can see drones, they can task drones from the helmet and they so they can flip down the screen.

Is that going to be the next thing that seals are going to be using? So the ATAC system, when it came on board, the Android, whatever, tactical awareness, basically it's a flip down. This is probably true of you guys flying at 30,000 feet. there's a fine line between enough information and too much. Sure. And you can, if you're not careful in your own diligence of managing your information uptake, you can actually decrease your lethality on the ground because your two heads down.

Like, oh, yeah, cool, look at all this. And then like, yeah, there's a dude seven feet in front of you. Maybe deal with that first. Right. So it's tough. So can it, could it be the next evolution? Oh, yeah. So, here we go.

Probably. I mean, any version of this is what it's going to end up. Yeah. I think that could be amazing. Again, to me, it will be how do they integrate and train on this? And then the end user's ability to either dial up the amount of information or dialed down. Sure. Because have you ever watched somebody go from steam gauges to a glass cockpit?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I've done it. It nukes them at first because they're like, yeah, everything is right here. And oh, it's this information overload where you're used to just looking at a needle and you can scan. It builds in a little time. Yeah. you're looking at the old steam gauges. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you have all this information and you can just get lost hitting buttons. Like traffic, traffic. Like what? Oh, my bad. Probably should have been looking at the window. Yeah, 100%. That same type of stuff can still happen.

So I think it's amazing. But you've got to integrate it properly and have the training protocol associated with that. Yeah. Well, something I'm curious if this would be a more applicable thing in the short term for you. Like when I was in a dog fight with the Jahmix, I could look out and see a triangle over the bad guys that I hadn't selected and designated. on my my situation display and I would see a circle over the friendlies that was like huge just having that and it wasn't information overload but when I look at some of this stuff I'm thinking

like what you said before this would be better as like a briefing beforehand plotted out beforehand you know something simple when you're in close you know if you're looking at a special operations job I was talking about this to somebody not too long ago and for people listening what I'm going to talk about is the three FEEA process, which is find, fix, finish, exploit, and analyze. Which is a lot of words that basically mean like, who are we looking for? Where are they at?

How do we do something about it? Take all the information we have that they have as well and then find another target. And it goes on forever. Yeah. That's my, you can find different words to describe that online. For the job of special operations, you're at some point probably going to cross the threshold of a door somewhere.

We look this. visually way different than anybody else. I could see a benefit. And this is where I don't know, do I even want to have that other information presented to me? When I got to the point where I could tell who somebody was by what their shadow looked like at 100 yards under night vision goggles. Wow.

Because you're just so familiar with how people move. Yeah. I could tell by the silhouette of how somebody was holding their gun who they were. Yeah. The people that we were finding looked completely different. So I don't know if I would have benefited from the zero, or the ex, you know what I mean? Would it have made a difference in life and death?

I don't think so, but would I have benefited from that additional piece of information? I'm not sure at that proximity, it would have helped. Sure. What you're saying to me makes a huge amount of difference because you're looking at the sky. Yeah. I'm looking at 15 feet. Right. Yeah, we've got, you know, 50 miles between us and a Meg 29 or whatever until you get into the dogfight realm.

And then, so I think the information would be way more helpful to me at 50 miles. but then when I'm in an actual dog fight, kind of similar to what your dog fight version is you're like face to face with these guys. You know where it would help, using that same analogy is most of the time you're going to be on an insertion platform of some kind.

So let's say we're on a rotary platform, like a 47 or a 60. I used to always love to be in the front right of the Black Hawk. It would be pretty dope to be able to look through night vision because oftentimes we'd have somebody sparkling where we were going to go. But if you had your primary, secondary,

tertiary HLZs, if that was up and I could see that, it would just give me a greater situational awareness. Because I don't know if people know this. Every building in Iraq looks like the exact same thing. Yeah. And sometimes we would land and I would just get off. Like I don't know which like where are we going. Sure. Do I get it man. Yeah. We had to use trucker comms. But on the way in, you know, that would be pretty dope to be able to see that to orient yourself to the battle space. Yeah. So again, pros and cons. For sure. So you were in Iraq and Afghanistan, right,

deployed to both. Yep. What was it like being face to face there? Because I mean, my experience was, You know, I'm at 500 feet sometimes, sometimes lower. But, you know, I have that separation during combat. I mean, what was it like in Afghanistan? I'm curious about Afghanistan particularly, just from what I saw from the air, like, what that was like in person? I mean, like what the people look like necessarily or just interaction with humans at that level? Yeah, I think interaction or like what was your mindset going into like a high value target raid? I hope I don't die.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly. Yeah. It would depend. hostage rescue stuff, you know, you're willingly accepting a lot more risk for the potential benefit. Certain areas in Afghanistan, like up in the northeast by like Asadabad, Jalabad, Konar, like coast is up there. Coast, yeah. You know, when the terrain gets gnarly and you start

looking at places that are really hard to access or really hard to get to, and then you realize that the people that you find up there are up there for a reason because they know it's hard, you know. Got it. So you'll find people that you'll find a greater level of resistance. The honest truth is the vast majority of the time we had such a tactical and technological advantage. Yeah. Which is what we tried to leverage. I'm not looking for a fair fight whatsoever. I'd rather find you in your bed sleeping. Yeah. Sorry. Oh, you know what I mean? Dude, makes sense. Yeah. Like, I don't want broad daylight. Let's go sick shooters and see who can come out of the holster. This isn't the UK. Let's line up and take shots at each other.

Like, I mean, I love that you guys think that way. It's the only way I think that you can responsibly think in those environments because they will always have the home turf advantage. Yeah, good point. Yeah. But it's, uh, was it helpful having so fast movers up ahead when a lot of times what we would do is just clear your way to a target. So we would just look ahead. You know, here's two kilometers ahead of you. Here's what we see. It's always beneficial to have eyes overhead. Yeah. For sure. I trust me. Never. I was a JTAC for a good bout of my career. So always intimately familiar with what you guys could see and it was nice, especially if there was like a FACA up in the stack who can help coordinate stuff.

Sure. Yeah. The more eyes, the better. Yeah. Because the reality is you have a better perspective of the battle space that we do, especially internal in a compound. I don't know if two villages over or a village over. They're stirring up something to come try to help whoever it may be. Yeah.

And you may not know that until it's too late. And they get to some terrain where they have the advantage on you and then you're fighting your way out of it. But it's, it was an interesting job, man. Yeah. Jocko describes it as being default aggressive. And I mean, you're going out, I can only speak for myself. You are going out seeking and expecting violence.

Right. Which is a weird place to live. Totally, dude. What was your, do you have a situation that you remember where your intuition was the only reason you made it out? That's a tough one because you never know how close you get sometimes. Yeah. You know? I get it.

Yeah. I wish I had better intuition than I got shot. I'm like, maybe I should look over there in that direction. I can tell you times when my intuition didn't serve me well. You know, coming back and looking at it years in the rearview mirror, there was a lot of luck. Pure, stupid, dumb luck, especially with the number of IEDs and things that were buried. Sure. And we just, we took a different path to get there.

Yeah. Or we just didn't step on the third stair, you know? Yeah. And I don't know if that's intuition or if it's just dumb luck or the combination of those things. But it's tough to objectively view in the rear view mirror, actually. Because some parts of it are crystal clear and some parts of it are very hazy. And then you start asking yourself, well, are the crystal clear parts 100% true? Are the hazy parts?

You know what I mean? You start questioning yourself a little bit. Sure. But when you were talking earlier about just noticing a shadow and noticing what type of person that was, how big the person was, what they were carrying. Oh, I could tell you the person's name. That's how much I worked well with them. Amazing. In the, in the small units, I mean, we were just, it was our job was to be in the house and we had a 360-degree live fire kill house. They could turn the lights off so we could do, even the middle of the day, we could do night vision runs. And you're just, you're just so

used to being with the people that you're with that you just can recognize them from their silhouette. Sure. The enemy is easier to recognize from a silhouette because quite frankly, they move really differently and they're dressed really differently and their weapons are different. So again, technical and technological advantage. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I feel like our intuition helps us even when we don't know it. Yeah. But again, like I said, hard to say because I don't know how close you got. Yeah. Well, it's a great point. The very first combat objective I was ever on was the number one Kembaio target in Iraq. We were in a 47. When we got back, we found 27 holes in the helicopter. The door gunner got hit in the head at about a minute out.

He survived. But when we went back the next morning, I remember standing outside of that. And we just, there was a couple of us talking through like, where were you sitting? And we kind of, we went in there. Like, did you like lean over to scratch your ass? And you know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know if we could have stuffed that helicopter with everybody we had in there. Shoot it that many times again and not have somebody injured. Right. So, yeah. I mean, the amount of just dumb luck associated. with that was crazy. I get it. Yeah, it's crazy.

Luck's got to be on your side some of these times. Yeah, I didn't even realize we were getting shot at. Yeah. I was in mop level four. Yeah. Night vision goggles. I had routed my weapon sling over my blower hose. It was basically suffocating.

Yeah. You can, in fact, suck a gas mask so close to your face that your eyeballs touched. Yeah. What was it like being, I feel like eight, a team like or a level people seals, you guys are in a helicopter, you're not in control of it. Was that hard not being the pilot of the helicopter? No, I was just sleeping. You're just sleeping.

Now that I fly helicopters, I'm like, you sons of bitches, you almost killed us all the time. Backseat flying. Well, I mean, I have thousands of hours in the back of helicopters in, you know, a couple hundred now up front. And now I'm like, oh, that noise isn't good. Someone take a peek at that, please? Yeah. And I just, they were amazing, man. The 160th guys, what they were able to do.

putting us in places on time, on target, just stuffing it in there. And then what they would do if we called for help and needed to get out, you know, 47s with a single wheel on a mud hut where people are, and they're just rock solid. The guys are just up there just nailing it as 40 dudes are getting on the back of the helicopter, which has got to be messing with your weight and balance. Oh, yeah. And the sun's coming up.

They're like, yeah, you know, we generally like to fly at night, but we're going to come get you. I mean, it was. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. But in the back, you're honestly, you're just, you're napping. Yeah. Usually you're chilling.

Yeah. Speaking of that, the 160th, any thoughts on the Afghanistan or the Iran rescue mission? I haven't had any real specific details on exactly what happened. I mean, obviously, it was F15, right? F15E, yeah, two-seater. Were the pilot and Wizzo co-located or do they get separated? They got separated. Do you know what altitude they punched?

If I had to guess, I would say somewhere between 15 to 20,000. Oh, that's a lot of canopy time. Yeah. A lot of canopy time. Yeah. That's just a guess. I don't know. I don't have any info.

So there's a lot of drift there too. How does the F-15 work? Do they go out simultaneously? And if you pull one, do they both go? Yeah. So there's like a, I guess it's like a combat setting where you're flying with a someone who knows what they're doing. If you one person pulls, they both go.

Okay. But the backseat always goes first and then the front seat goes. So it's deconflicted in that one. That one's like the new. Best ejection seat. I think it's the Aces 2 ejection seat. Either way, though, depending on your Ford Airspeed, there's already separation between the two.

Oh, yeah. Point being, that's why I asked, you know, because that's a little bit of drift. I think you'd be lucky to come down within half a mile of each other, even on like a normal day. But then you put the fact that the jet was kind of, it had been hit, spinning out of control. So now one's maybe punching out here

and then a quarter second later, the jet's already twisted, right? And so then this one punches out this way. And by the way, they supposedly just saw a jellyfish swarm of drones. Like, I don't know if you've heard about that. No. Supposedly, there was some sort of detector.

Well, now it's coming out that there were detector drones that were pumping information to whoever had the man pad. That's the rumor that I'm seeing right now. It's all over the internet. Would you estimate, so they were hit by a missile? Yeah, it sounds like some sort of a man pad is what the reports that I've seen. Radar or heat seeking, do you think? Well, the thing that I'm thinking is, if you look at these things that the IRGC is releasing,

these graphics that are tracking like the F-35, for a while, I thought they were were fake because I was just like, oh, it's propaganda. AI is an amazing thing. AI is great. Yeah. Their AI department is pretty good. Pretty hilarious, I should say. But when you look at that F-15E wasn't maneuvering, if that was, in fact, the real footage of it. And if you're getting lit up by a radar, you're going to be doing all kinds of stuff. There's all kinds of evasive maneuvers you have as a fighter pilot. That's

step one. Yeah, because if you're getting lit up by radar, nothing good is happening after that, right? 100%. Like, you're popping out flares, chaff, all the different. things try to distract it. You're doing all kinds of maneuvers. So the fact that this one wasn't makes me think there was no radar lock. So what would that mean? Some sort of a visual tracker. There's rumors that China, you know, China's been flying their cargo planes in there. I think like 12 of them before the conflict even kicked off. So either it was advanced optical trackers or military equipment or maybe it was just TEMU. Maybe it was just fireworks and fucking TEMU deliveries. TEMU man pad. I mean, they're using and messing around with optical flying of drones in Ukraine to defeat the GPS. P.

Jamming and all. Yeah. Man. And again, this is where the front leading edge of this stuff, who knows. But yeah, so I mean, that's the job of the guys who were there for that C-Star mission is essentially what it was. Combat Search and Rescue or Recovery. Yeah. So I'm having, how did they pick up the pilot?

How did they recover him? So, because you almost only heard about the Whizzo, because he was up in the mountains, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if it was just because of where the Wissow was or maybe it was too hot. to get the H-H-60s in there, I don't know. But you have your radio, your survival radio.

And so I'm assuming the pilot just got the signal out really quick and was able to get his location really quick and was in a better position to be rescued. I'd be talking to that thing under canopy. Oh, yes. You guys aren't going to believe what just happened. Exactly, dude. Exactly.

You need to come give me rat meow. Yeah. No, and for the 160th guys, the way they did it, I mean, that's kind of just a classic. You're going to go, from my understanding, I'm not read in on this in anything other than what I've, been able to find. Yeah.

Sounds like they took, I think it was a troop from development group, and it sounds like they were purely there just for external security. Nice. They flew, I think a couple C-130s or the smaller versions of that,

pulled the Blackhawks and the, or the Little Birds off. Yep. So the MH-6s flew, grab the guy, which is exactly what those guys. I mean, for them, I'm sure, especially if his daylight,

it was probably right there, grab the dude, get back, and then get the hell out of there. It's what they do, man. It's one of the things they train for. That's who I would want to, and those MHs, God,

those things are, Awesome. Really? I mean, it's the Magnum PI helicopter. You can stuff those things and basically where you can park a car. Dude, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

Seeing the maneuvers they do around buildings and stuff and cities, I'm like, yes, I'm so glad that we have this team ready to go with this. It's pretty sweet. Sitting on the skids of those things as they are flying below rooftop level. I really hope they did a thorough wire survey, though, because wires and helicopters don't interact well. Sure. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't know.

Maybe not a lot of zip lining going on in Iran. Hopefully. I don't know what kind of amusement parts they have. It's hard to say. You know what killed a full helicopter of people recently? Actually, I think it was down in Utah, slackline. Oh, dude. Crazy.

Just someone doing slacklining. They put a no-tam out, but they attach the no-tam to an airport as opposed to the area. And so if the pilot didn't, and I don't think the pilot originated from that airport, so it was unlikely that they were aware of the not-tam, stands for a notice to airmen. Or actually, they changed that because airman is not inclusive enough. is a no tap notice to air people no it's like it might be yeah michael look up no tamp i have to know this because it used to be noticed airman which i didn't realize was in any way misogynistic or sexist but it was though yeah it's still it's noticed to air mission

yes of course notice to air mission notice to air missions so had that guy clicked on that airport you know if he was using his four flight software maybe but i don't think and it was a route that he alone before. I believe they came around a corner interaction with the main rotor disc and the slack line and that's just going to that's going to always end brutal. That's terrible. Well, there's a crash recently to the F-18. I think it was in Washington. Have you seen that footage? The F-18 pilot walking out, blood on the face. Man, I don't know this for sure. Just the reports I've seen is that he had a power line before that crash. What was he doing? Powerline that will. And again, people that watching look that up, double-checked me.

but that was just one of the news places I was doing a reaction video to. And the news agency was like, yeah, it's reported that he hit a power line prior. So if it was like low level training and they just forgot to do a specific point on the map, I mean, that's pretty rare to happen because you have a program

that shows you every single tower above 500 feet, right? Yeah, and you're going to go do it in a known corridor. I don't see the need to do that in unknown terrain, right? Yeah, exactly. Rimrock Lake in Washington State. $67 million jet. But that stings a bit. Yeah.

But this pilot, you can tell his face is all bloody. So one of the things, you're coming down in trees, branches are the worst thing. So they actually tell you to put your hands up under your chin and protect your neck. So luckily his neck didn't get stabbed. Looks like he just got hit in the face with a branch. But man, that's a real thing. The exact technical cause of the aviation mithap remains officially under investigation. Okay, there we go.

There was official investigation. Yeah. But at the same, I mean, you go out and you fly low level, you know, if someone puts a slack line up, you hope you catch the note them. Like there's systems to catch these things. But man, things happen. They do. Right.

When you were with the Thunderbirds, I mean, the stuff you guys are doing, I'm not going to say is inherently dangerous or unsafe, but you're definitely on the razor's edge. How close do accidents come to occurring? Yeah, probably less likely than people think. Yeah. Everybody kind of thinks we're going to bump into each other. Does that happen every once in a while? Yeah, every now and then do a little love tap. Just a little, hey, you get a special sticker on your helmet for that if there's a little paint transfer.

Yeah, you might get that and you might get a nice little transfer to a different squadron. Hey, here's a sticker. Go ahead and pack your bags. Yeah. I mean, people have washed out for that. Yeah. It's pretty serious because there's little things we can catch, like little trend, even if it's like six inches of movement. I could catch that towards the end of my time on the team.

I wasn't good enough to catch it at the beginning. But you start to notice a trend happening. We're like, oh, okay, I'm four inches, too close, six inches, eight inches, boom. And then you just go out. out, you go out of the formation. Yeah. But if you allow that to continue, you don't, you know, take command of that moment, grab the jet, put it, put it where you want it.

It's going to happen. So, yeah, I think that that's always the case. There's always a chance of nicking a wing or something like that. But the bigger thing is just the ground because you're doing these maneuvers. You're rolling upside down near the ground. And so being aware and it's always daytime flying, right, which is great. And typically it's in places that have been kind of sanitized. But when we do flyovers, like for the Super Bowl, Daytona 500, you're kind of,

going through kind of unknown territory for where an air show would be. So you have to really dial in. Okay, there's power lines here. There's a big tower set here. So that's a big part of the brief. I mean, that's pretty much half of our brief is what are the ground obstacles

we're going to face today. Did you have any, or were there any incidents while you were at the team? Because it's a two-year slot, right? It comes out to close to three. So it's six months of training, two years on the road

and then six months of instructing. That makes sense. At the end. Yeah, something like that. Some close calls. So- Did you have a guy eject? while you were there? Yeah. Well, I was an instructor on the team. I was the range control officer.

So basically they send one of us out to the range to watch the show and be the safety observer. We have the radio that talks to the jets. And so you go to this little tower by creature Air Force Base out in Nevada and you just, you're a safety observer. So I was out there the day before he crashed, Cajun, great dude. His family has a really cool nonprofit called Cajun's Aviation Dream. Helps give flight lessons to want to be fighter pilots. So super cool. People want to check that out. But yeah, so I was out there the day before and he was struggling. He was struggling with the basically the high bombers. Number four, you'll see it in the Thunderbird documentary.

You know, it's like that you're pulling a little bit of negative Gs up here as you're kind of hanging in the straps. And you go from, you know, negative point one, negative point four, somewhere in that regime to then almost nine as you yank down. As you're going through the curve. As you're going through the curve. Yeah. And I was out there the day before, you know, he was learning it.

Just he was struggling with it a little bit, but that's normal. You know, you're going to have struggle with that maneuver. because it's so different to go from a negative to a positive. It's not something that you do as a fighter pilot. You do that as like a Red Bull air racer, right? Yeah. So he was struggling with that a little bit, being very aggressive on the pulldown. So we were just watching them closely.

But then the next day, unfortunately, he goes out. And from what we reviewed, it was a little more than what you would negative G, which should be up here. I don't know the exact number. Let's just say 0.5 or something like that, more than what it should be. And then from 0.5 to 9 or 0.7 negative to 9, now you're, you know, you're pulling a, that delta is above 9 Gs, right? Yeah. And if you're having a bad day anyway, that rapid onset, basically put him to sleep.

And then he just went into the ground at about, you know, 500 miles an hour. Dude, I thought he was able to eject. I didn't realize it was a fatal. Yeah, that one was a fatal, unfortunately. Yeah, there was one with the Thunderbirds that wasn't a fatal. I think it was like 2014, I want to say, at Mountain Home, where he just misjudged the altitude. It's pretty famous. he does the loop around and as he's coming down gets the ground rush he punches out like maybe a

second and a half before impact something like that apparently he was like two inches shorter for a couple months after that so people you know thunderbirds have made it out but the team has had a lot of incidents just because you're doing you know you're doing weird stuff with the jet and I think the big thing is just if you have a bad day you know being able to be like hey guys I'm having a bad day I'm gonna knock this one off which is hard for us to do yeah I'll be the first one to admit there's probably been times where I've pushed it when I shouldn't have. But it's the hardest maneuver that they do in that jet?

In the Thunderbirds? Yeah. So, like a show routine. So a lot of the rolls, so on the inside of the rolls, a lot of those are really hard. So you're a pilot. So in the inside of the rolls, you're pushing, you have to rudder into the jet next to you and then push. So you have to go a little bit negative and then rudder

a little like cross control. Yeah. And it's just like you're doing a backflip, kind of same sensation in your mind. That one's a little harder. There's when people wash out for that one. But then the high bomb burst is kind of the crescendo of the whole thing. And that's where you get the most dramatic G-forces, the fastest rejoin lines. I mean, I'm trying to think we had rejoins where we've got a thousand knots of closure at half a mile. You know, and then you, as you're coming in on that bomb burst rejoin, you use the rudder as a speed break.

And so I remember talking to Lockheed Martin. I was like, hey, can we use the rudder as a speed break? And they're like, oh, no one's ever done that before. They're like, well, these little. No one's ever done that before? Noah's been telling you about what we've been doing. Yeah, exactly. But on the F-16, those little speed brakes, like little chopsticks.

They pop out. They don't really do much. Yeah. And so as they're coming in, I just would go full opposite rudder and we started doing it on the team. As the wingmen come in from that rejoin, you know, you get a thousand knots of closure out here, screaming in. So you need a lot of break. And so we would just use opposite rudder and just slide it right into position. You can see a lot of that in the documentary if you know what you're looking for.

Yeah. I like watching to see how they're bending the airplane into the position. It is, God, it's impressive, man. Yeah, yeah, it was a lot of fun, man. I had a situation, though, when I was an instructor. And this happens to everybody. This isn't calling this person out. But, like, on the inside of that role,

there was a day where this pilot was just struggling a little bit with the role, which we all did, I did. And so you have to be really, it's a really crucial point right here to actually keep going because everything in your pilot brain just tells you to just kind of stop and stay right here. I don't know why. But then you have to push the jet further back. And so we just found ourselves like this.

And I'm in the backseat of the F-16, right? And so, again, I probably let it go too far. But I end up taking the jet. I just push as many negative Gs as a jettle pole. And we go like this. So you were in the Maverick initial. You were establishing foreign relations? Foreign relations.

Yeah. We were right there. Literally, I'm looking up. I'm like, I've seen this before. Where have I seen this? Oh, yeah. Topka. And so I push full negative Gs,

do one of these numbers, kind of roll out. We probably rolled out 150 feet above the desert, you know, because we're in that. roll upside down here and then to go negative g's here you're pushing right for the ground and it's underneath you so you can't see right where the ground is but those are only out right and that's just those are just the things that you have to work through and that's why thunderbirds crash from time to time but luckily there's been a few years here without a major thunderbird crash and I think a lot of that's leadership a lot of that's you know how good is the team taking care of themselves

you've seen it like high level performance people burn out people go too hard sometimes yeah So where's that limit? They get so used to being on the razor blade. Yeah. That it feels dull instead of sharp. And then, man, it cuts you so deep. Yeah. It's a good way to put it.

Oh. Blue Angel fly by over Florida. Thoughts? It's too high. People hit me up about that one. I'm like, I get it. Yeah. It's like, you got to look at the risk versus reward there. Yeah, 100%.

Risk versus reward. And then the thing I always say is, okay, are they trained for it? So like if I was the CEO, that squadron, I'd be like, oh, well, my guys are trained for that. Every single day we're training for that. But if it was like a gray paint squadron, you know, and someone's doing an air show and they do something stupid or they get close to doing something stupid, like that's a different story. And I think we just need to make sure and the squadrons that are out there that see that. They're young guys, you know, they're in their 20s. They're like, oh, sweet.

I'm going to try that. No, please don't try that. Please don't. Like become a blue angel or a Thunderbird then try that. Yeah. But I mean, I think it's also pretty cool. Like it's pretty amazing to showcase that. And if you're training for that low and you're able to keep that deconfliction and you got it dialed, that's America, baby.

Just keep it over the water, dude. Yeah. Okay. Because that drastically reduces the risk. You get all the reward with less risk. I see that. Yeah, man. Because it would be catastrophic, right?

If something happened, you misjudge just a little bit. Yeah. If you keep the wing tip inside of the water, worst case scenario, ball it up in the water. So it wouldn't involve anybody else. And trust me from the ground. Still going to look just as cool. Totally. That's what I'm saying. And at the same time, like, I get it.

And I guess the pilot even came in. He's like, yeah, I misjudge that turns to touch. Yeah, but like you're going so fast, it's a blink of an eye. Yeah, exactly, which further highlights your point. And there was just this Turkish F-16 crash all over the internet where he's doing a low takeoff. Have you seen that one? No. Dude.

This is the beauty. This is where Michael really shines for us. Oh, Michael, hero. Yep. So Turkish F-16, this was just like within the last week. So he's doing this low take-off. And that's normal for combat, right? You do, you know, sometimes you're 50 feet off the ground.

Yeah. Like in Afghanistan, we would stay as low as we could, maybe 100 feet and then pull up after you had 400 knots. So you could react in case someone shot something at you, right? So he's doing something like that, but clearly he's a little distracted. And then the tree line starts coming up. And you notice in the video, he notices it because you can hear the engine spool up and the jet kind of does this.

And then I don't know if he punches the tanks off or if they just scrape the trees and fall off. I can't tell. I'm assuming he punches them because that'd be kind of amazing. for them to scrape the trees. Yeah, this is it right here. Yes. This is wild, dude.

Don't tease this, Michael. Hit Bull. Oh, my. Dude. I don't think he's... I mean, if he's prioritizing, like, punching the tanks at that point, like, good on him.

But, I mean, I would have a handful of jet. I'd be going to Max after burner, rip into 9 Gs. So... I'm going to go ahead and say the trees did that You think the trees did that, dude? My man, why? I mean, he's got plenty of airspeed.

Get the nose up way before that. Yeah, he's trying. And that's why I think he's trying. Again, you talk about misjudging slightly, right? You misjudge 10 feet. These jets, honestly, they're not really designed to determine 10 feet because the HUD is in 10 foot increments. Yeah.

So that's probably like, you know, whatever this is. It's 330 feet. He's trying, he's coming in at 340 feet. Those trees are 20 feet. You know what I mean? So it's doing these low flies and all this. I mean, we're seeing more of it. So I think it's a little bit contagious.

So this is my public service announcement to fighter pilots. Like, just give us 50 to 100 feet for mom and dad. I think that's fair. I think this guy saw the Blue Angel video. I was like, hold on. I can do better. Hold my beer. I'll practice with this tree line. I mean, he basically executed a napalm strike into that tree line. I mean, this is going to be in Call of Duty at some point. Like, they're going to have this. God. Dude. How is that DCS stuff? I'm not joking.

I watch you fighting people. Yeah. Are some of the aviators pretty good? Are they using like legitimate tactics? Yeah. So I've been flying with JT. He's got this squadron called the Wet Boys. Yeah.

You know, J.T. Yeah, man. But he's full up, dude. Like the squadron's legit. They've got liverys from all around the world. Super cool. They built me a max afterburner livery.

So the jet just has like big logo on it. It's super cool. But yeah, they get together every night and fly. And it's a squadron. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Everybody's getting toasted. And they're,

they're proficient at it too by the way the more they drink the better they're flying gets they're like flying under bridges so I did some bridge underneath bridge flying with them the other day and it's it's really realistic as far as the screen as far as the beeps and squeaks of like the HUD I actually talked to DCS a little bit

when I was on the Thunderbirds and just kind of talk to them a little bit about like the thrust to weight ratio how much air speed is lost if you're in like a knife edge pass over two miles or how much altitude is lost so I tested that one down Atlantic City Beach just it was for science. Yeah, for science. Just to make sure hashtag science. Correct. Yeah, exactly.

Also probably recruited about a thousand people into the military and that one pass. So I'm not mad about it. The Air Force is grateful now that it's, you know, everything's been safe. Yeah. But yeah, man, it's fun. It's, it honestly, it keeps a little bit of that excitement. And first time I flew VR, flew with an Oculus VR. And I was like a little bit sentimental. I'm not going to lie. Really? It looked so crystal clear and so good. What kind of skills are you getting? Oh, there Other aviators, though. What kind of skills am I given to them? No, like, what are you seeing from people who have never flown before?

They give you a run for your money? Oh, yeah, dude. Some of these kids that live in their mom's basement and, like, you know, they fly this every night. They make me look like a clown. So, I mean, they'll be so dialed in because they're doing it every single day. Is that an F-16 cockpit right there? This is an F-18. So this is me doing a top-gun Maverick run.

You're getting an F-18 simulator at the coffee shop. Oh, let's go. Yeah. Aircraft carrier landing comp. You can come and participate because you never did carrier landings. Okay. Deal. But you can't wear your leather flight jacket.

That would be too much. Well, now I have a tank top. I just have my mic. Yeah, there we go. But yeah, this is the Top Gun Maverick run. But yeah, man, this game is getting huge. You know, there's something called the Strike Fighter League now where there's actually like duels going in and there's like $10,000 cash prizes.

Not only have I heard about that, I think Michael and I have pulled this up. The, oh yeah, when JT was here, we were legitimately talking shit on these people. but the online aviation demonstration squadrons. And people are taking it, I'm going to say a touch too seriously. No, no. I think a lot of them are ex-actual guys who flew in the squadrons, and they are not messing around. Yeah, yeah.

You actually did an F-15E demo on DCS. Here we are. Look at these guys, virtual Blue Angels. Dude, yeah, I did it an F-15E demo on DCS, and I got like 100 messages and they're like, you did it wrong. You did this one, we never wrong. And I'm like, okay, all right. Oh man, the 20-2016.

What do we got here? Nice. I mean. There's a digital Thunderbirds too, I think. Of course. Yeah. It's super fun, man. And honestly, there's, you know, as far as video games go, like, you're using your hands.

There's, there's hotass. Like, the actual stick and throttle are realistic. So I don't know. I mean, as far as video games go, I think it's kind of cool. It's a recruiting tool. I've flown some helicopter simulators. And I don't know if I would advocate for somebody truly. trying to learn how to fly in one of those things, but I don't think I would tell them not to get as

much time as possible. Yeah. Because it's realistic enough. You can get, especially the ones that have ATC in there. Yeah. Or the cockpits are relatively similar. So you're pushing the buttons that you need to push it, that phase of flight that you need to. For sure. I mean, it's a tool. Yeah. When I got my type rating on a Gulfstream, I never once touched the airplane before I was certified to fly it. It was all level D simulator. Wow. And then they're like, here's your license. Yeah. And I remember getting in it the first time thinking, well, first off, better view out the window. Yeah. But man, it's the first time I've ever seen the back of one of these.

Look at all these chairs. You know? Right. It's just a cockpit forward. How was your time flying? Was it boring? Was it fun? What did you think?

Part 135 flying is interesting in regards to you never know who you're going to fly and where you're going to go. But the national aerospace system, I mean, your instrument flight rule from wheels up to wheels down. So you're not not really doing. anything other than just super, you know, linear departure procedures, approach procedures. So you just, it's fun. Yeah. It was cool. But I like being able to do what I can do now, which is just go to the hangar, pull the helicopter

out and go do whatever I want to do. So cool, man. I love following your stuff on Instagram. You just, like, dropped off coffee the other day. Yeah. To a neighbor. That was awesome. Oh, so that was, no, I was down in Missoula.

I had to go do a blood draw, and they're inside the class Delta airspace for Missoula Tower. Nice. And so I just hit him up. I said, hey, you know, I'm spun up ready to go. I need to do a quick, you know, off-field landing. And I think there's a woman. She goes, yeah, what do you do? I was like, I got to go pick up a cup of coffee, she said.

And you heard on the race, she goes, okay. Yes. Everybody's brain is just exploding. You know, she's like, take off and landing. It's at your own risk. I'm like, yeah, I totally got that. So just lifted off, followed the freeway. I had texted Josh.

I'm like, hey, man, I need a cold brew. Because you have to fast before the blood. And yeah, just stuffed her right there in the grass. And then I've landed there a couple. times and he just walked out, gave it to me and back on the road, man. Dude, that's awesome. It's the cheapest cup of coffee ever for sure. Yeah, no, yeah. Two twin turbines. It's not a lot of moving parts. Yeah. No, it's been fun. Is it different flying in Montana, like in the mountains? Like, do you have to, there are certain things you're planning for or prepping for?

Um, I think mountain flying is kind of just mountain flying. It's, uh, even though it has two engines, I'm constantly always like, where's my out? Where am I going to fly? Set myself up for safety. Yeah. I voraciously consume aviation incident reports. They're fascinating to me. Smart. People don't believe me when I say it, but the vast majority of accidents are not because aircraft are not functioning properly. It's because of people making really shitty decisions. Dude, 100%.

I was just looking into one the other day. I think it was in like 71 or 72. It was in the Everglades. There was two pilots. I think there's a jumpseater in the jet two commercial plane. And a bulb had burned out on the landing gear. And so when they put the landing gear down, it just showed two down. But they were all three down.

But just the bulb was out. And then the autopilot got clicked off because they were coming into land and no one noticed at controlled flight into terrain, 100 people gone. Like, just from a little bulb. Which is gnarly. And I had an awesome flight instructor. And we would talk about stuff like that. Because the first move is this.

Unscrew two of the bulbs and put one of the ones that you know was working into the one that wasn't to see if it's a light bulb. Boom. Because if it turns green, land the fucking airplane. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Stop talking. And also, if you're in a descent and you're not in, even if you are in IMC conditions,

just stop the descent. And if you have fuel, put into a pattern. Work the issue. Use your CRM, your crew resource management. But yeah, not many people would say, oh, I'll just unscrew one of these light bulbs to check to see if it's the light bulb first. That exact scenario he dialed into my head.

Do you think that's like a thing in our human brains? I call it airplane brain when I see like passengers on a plane. Everyone's kind of like, because it's weird. You're in a metal tube. But pilots can get that too, right? Where you're just like, I want to land right now. Get it on the ground right now. It's a sick of panic.

Get it on the grounditis or something like that? Yeah. Get homeitis. skate on the grounditis. Yeah. I don't know where that comes from. I think a lot of it is rushing. And in some of the stuff, I mean, I don't know about you, but I, you know,

for flight is amazing. I am jealous of anybody who's learned how to fly in the digital age because when I was learning, it was charts. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes you didn't have all the charts you should have. Yeah. Oh, weird. I swear it was here when I got it.

And you're trying to fly, but the entire, you're like, where is the goddamn supplement? metal inflate. So now on for flight, you know, you can just have everything to include my checklist. I go first startup and shut down. In every phase, I go through a flow, but then I double check it with the checklist because why not? It takes 15 seconds. Sure. And I catch stuff. Awesome. I catch stuff. Yeah. Because you can get in a rush. And I also, one of the rules, because I only fly in 91, part 91. Yeah. If I am rushed, I don't go fly. Why? Amazing. That's awesome. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, and I think it, I think there is this thing that needs.

No one really talks about in aviators, whether telecopters, airliners, private pilots. It's nervous system regulation, man. I really think that's something that every single pilot, it needs to be a part of your day. If you're going to go fly a plane, how are you doing? Yeah. Are you distracted? Did you have a fight with your wife? The I'm safe checklist or acronym, yeah.

Dude, it's huge. And I've seen it in military accidents. You know, some of these guys were having relationship problems or their health. They just weren't doing well. They were burning the midnight oil in the vault for 20 hours. They needed a couple days off. They didn't need to go fly a complex mission. and then yeah, something happens, right?

So get in the cold plunge, get in the gym, do something. Because I think that's one of the biggest things that happens to rush in a cockpit. Someone's rushing. There's something going on physiologically that they haven't squared away or mentally. And that, I mean, your high performance, I don't know if an athlete, I guess, your high performance operator at that point. 100 people's lives are in your hands or your family's lives or your life. Like, dude, it's, and I see pilots press this all the time.

So again, another public service announcement to people watching is like, take care yourself. Like right now, drones aren't flying these planes. It's people. We're the nerves center. You're the brain cell. So I've just lost a lot of good friends who haven't taken the time to get your relationship right as best as you can. Or, you know, get in a cold plunge, do something so where you're not this ball of nerves when you get up there in the jet, you know. Yeah.

That's all I'll say on that. It's a soapbox. Yeah, no, it's a good one, though, and I hope people listen. How did you decide to get out of the military? When did you realize time was time? Yeah. So I was on the Thunderbirds and I feel like, man, I just started to see a big world. I started to see, I saw like, you know, 150 different air shows, went to air shows around the globe.

And I always had this thing of wanting to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to get into film. So right before going in the military, the military, actually right before I went, the military was like, hey, we're cutting pilot slots. Do you want to get out? And I was like, yeah, I could go in the guard. And then I had a job with Fox to go be some sort of producer, low-level video producer. Yeah. So I had the job lined up.

It was just one of my favorite subjects in school. And then I thought, well, just having seen everything I saw on the Thunderbirds, can I get out and do something with video that takes this passion I have for aviation, combines it with video? And then I create something that's impactful or at least personally satisfying. I didn't really know what I was doing or what I was going to create. But yeah, I got called in by a general and she's like, you're what? You're getting out? And I was like, yeah, man, I'm going to have this plan with video production and this and that. And she was like, get out of my office.

You just thought it was. Yeah, exactly. I was like, well, okay. How long did it in before you got out did you have to declare? Do you have to write a letter? What's the discharge process for you? Yeah, I think it's like you start prepping your leadership. Like I think there's like a two month window or something that hits.

It's like, hey, your your commitments running up at this time. And then they do what's called a seven day option. So they give you an assignment. And you have seven days to say yes or no. Hmm. And so yeah, my follow on assignment was going to be F35 since I'm like, part of me is like, ah, man, that would have been sweet. But I knew there was this side of myself that if I stayed in, for me, I was going to have

to shut down a part of my personality that always wanted to do something with media and video production. I was just going to have to lose that side of myself. So it was a tough decision, man, because they set you up, right? F-35s go into leadership after that. But yeah, I wanted to take a stab. And I know it sounds crazy, but I wanted to take a stab at video production

and changing the world in that way. I didn't know what that would look like. I mean, I was a kid editing videos all the way since I was in high school. Yeah, you see people who grew up doing that stuff and what they can produce is unbelievable. Yeah. I'm the opposite.

I wasn't editing videos at all. Everything in this room is either somebody else helping me do it, going on to YouTube and typing in how do you or what do you or fill in the blank and eight or nine iterations into it and finally figuring it out. Dude, I still have those days. I mean, it's taken me a while. So I'm on this kick right now. I'm trying to do a video every single day this year. Just, I don't know, just seems like a cool challenge of something I needed and felt like I could do and I felt like it was meaningful and impactful. But it sucks some days. Video editing sucks. But I look at it like, you know, there's days where it's

great. There's days where it's not. It's kind of like the gym, right? Just constantly getting better and moving forward in it. But maybe it's smarter to outsource it. Like you or like people watching this. I'm not saying go die on that hill. And if you want to get into media, be a video editor. No, it's crazy. Like I recommend don't do that. Yeah. But I have those skills that I gained from, you know, years in college. I majored in TV production. And so now you do it all yourself. I edit everything myself. Yeah. Hell yes. Yeah. My girlfriend helps me with a little bit. She'll edit the shorts right now. I've trained her. But I've tried to bring on people to edit it. And I'm just like, you're not telling the story right. Right? Not yet. I can't, I don't know. It's like, I'm not good enough to teach someone yet, but I think that'll come.

It's interesting. So people are not familiar with your channel, the max after burner channel is fantastic. Thanks, man. You'll hit a million subscribers probably, I don't know, a few months. Thanks, man. You can add it for six years, which is crazy. Yeah. Growth is crazy and is reflective of the effort and quality that you put into it. I've seen it go both ways. I've seen it go the path where, and I'm on the same path you are. Yeah. I mean, Michael? You and Michael. What do you do?

Let me answer for you. Never mind. Don't pull that microphone near your face. Nothing is the answer. No. Where people send me emails all the time. Hey, your team's never going to see this. I see my team in the morning in the mirror when I'm brushing my teeth.

And for, I mean, how long have you been mailing the packages now, Michael? Maybe like four or five years? Yeah. Up until that point, I was every single level of fulfillment. I was my own 3PL. Dude. And so, you know, almost 20,000 polymailers just in the off time that I had. COVID actually did help with that because I didn't have anything else to do other than stuff,

T-shirts and bags. But I have rudimentary editing abilities. And the beauty of this, though, long-form conversations is all I do is insert two ad reads and the little intro and the fade-to-black transition at the end. I can handle that. That's huge. And then it goes, but that's the type of content I make. I couldn't do this stuff with the video inserts and overlays and all of that. But I've seen people who are, who they outsource, they get traction.

And neither of, I have no judgment of either of these because I've seen both work. And I've actually seen both fail too. The person who is on the path, I'm doing this on my own. And then the person who is, as soon as traction is built, they bring on somebody else, which brings on other people and other people and other people. And they can both arrive at that massive platform space. Yeah. But I also feel like that's a different arrival.

Yeah. You know, even especially monetarily. I mean, if you want to bring on 10 people, you're going to pay 10 people. Sure. Would it take you longer to do it yourself? Would you have less time? Sure. But you would also, in the end, net more of the economic benefit.

And I've seen people bring on the wrong teams and take that positive trajectory and can destroy everything. And I've also seen people bring on teams. And my opinion, their content was trash. Yeah. And recorrect that because they knew and they brought the technical acumen and maybe the feedback that the person would listen to a little bit. So I've seen it work.

I don't think there's a wrong answer. Yeah. I respect the solo mission though. Dude. You know, solo cockpit F-16, dying on that hill. Dude, I respect it. Yeah. It's worked for now, man.

And I think once I can get to a point where I can do live streams pretty much all the time, I love doing live streams. That's more fun to me than sitting and editing a video, even though, you know, I grew up editing, but the live stream to me is just more raw. It's just kind of like this, where there's no editing. there's zero editing on that one, right? Like I just sit down, hit record, and then it's like a stream of consciousness.

And, you know, people are getting value out of it. We're reviewing the news. We're breaking down military operations, geopolitics and things like that. So I think that's, you know, because again, I don't want to be that guy who's like, I'm going to die on this hill. My family's going to suffer. I'm going to do a video every day for the next five years.

Like, I think that's also detrimental. You know, I think that's equally like it's cool. The pursuit I feel like that I'm on, but it could turn into a thing where it's like, a chest thump that just destroys other parts of my life. Do I really, is that really worth it at the end of the day? When did you notice a drastic increase in subscribers? And can you point that to anything that you did or changed?

Or did it just the momentum get to a point where the snowball just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger? Yeah, I think it, so I started to see a lot of traction in April of 2025, Operation Midnight Hammer. when I just made like a talking head breakdown of it, but I tried to make it fun, entertaining. That was a big jump. And then I started in probably December of 2025,

doing more like, hey, what's going on in Venezuela? Why are there more assets down there? You know, I would take open source material, open source information, and then just package it into super as entertaining as I could make it because I wanted people to have more of the ownership over the military and to understand what warriors are really out there doing. You know, it's not just like you snap your fingers and these jets arrive and the mission's done and a dictator's gone or, you know, Iran's economically crushed. Like that doesn't just, you know, there's so many things behind the scenes.

And so I felt like if I could package it more in a more entertaining fashion, you know, I kind of ride that line. I'll be honest. Like, you know, some of it, some people will be like, oh, that's click baity. And I'm like, well, if you watch the whole video, it's actually not. But if you look at it at face value, okay, I do see what you're saying. But I'm not running a tax office here. Like I want this to be exciting and I want people to come in and learn about our military. And so I feel like once I started kind of packaging it into this entertaining, badass format that was fun. Then I really started to see growth.

And that was just, that was less than a year ago. It was like six months ago. So I think even like eight months ago, I had like 300,000 subscribers. That's amazing, man. Yeah. Yeah, man. I'm super grateful for it. You know, people are getting value out of it.

And what I hear now, people in the comment section will say, I come to you for my news. Now it's pretty much all focused on, you know, Iran, a little bit of Cuba, a little bit of Ukraine. But it's, you know, a lot of it's Iran heavy right now. But I think people have noticed in the media there's this distrust now for certain legacy media elements because it's all bought and paid for. And, you know, I was sick of that too. I was like, I just want to tell the story what these military members are doing and where I see good leadership, you know, in the administration. Like, I'm not afraid to say that. And I'm not going to be bought and paid for by a sponsor or something like that that some of these news agents.

these are. And I think people are just craving that, man. They're not, they don't want to go to these legacy outlets that are lying to them. There's some legacy outlets that are still doing well and have kept trust. But I think that's where my opening came was when people were like, oh, this dude's, you know, been there and it's flown fighter jets before. You know, I had a middle of the road career and then Thunderbirds was exceptional, but that was a lot of dumb luck to fall into that. But I think that gives me a lot of credibility to people. And so I see that as like an honor. and I see it as like, okay, if I have that credibility, how do I spread the good word about our military?

Because I think it's the greatest force for good on the planet. And that's not really said out there. You see people trying to get political gain off of, you know, bashing the administration or whatever. And I think they're unknowingly bashing the military. And so I want to step in and be kind of that like, yeah, cool, guys. You guys do your thing over there. Let's actually talk about what's going on from open source,

you know, stuff that I can find on the open internet and then make it entertaining. What are you going to do, though, when the Iran war is over? Because I hear we haven't just basically figured out. It's going to be... It's done. Yeah, it's quick. Done. If you were in the room, when they were pitching this...

Yeah. How long do you think they told Trump it would take? Because I believe he might have gotten some bad guidance. Yeah. Well, I think there's different phases, right? And so they're going to tell him, hey, this is the phase that's going to knock out the main part of their... Air Force, the main part of their Navy, their Blue Water Navy, these main elements. So I wonder how long the brief was on the proxy forces. I know it was there because so I, so for 10 years, a little under 10

years, I worked in a plans department for my fighter squadrons and the last four years I was the chief of plans for a fighter squadron. And those are O plans, they're operational plans where you pull them off the shelf, they're all classified, but it's like, okay, here's Iran, here's North Korea, here's Venezuela, here's Russia, here's China with the Taiwan Straits. So my last assignment there was teach the squadron about Iran. And so the unclassified things that I can tell you is that the first part of the, like the first section of that book like this much is like Blue Water Navy, Air Force, all this stuff. You know, command and control nodes, things like that, IRGC headquarters. And then the rest of it is what we pretty much trained for every day.

And now it's proxy tactics. So boat swarms. I don't think, I think they've gotten really a lot stronger than what we thought they had gotten. I think that part of the O plan maybe didn't capture how much these guys have directed their money towards the proxy forces. And they realized too, right, that you're going to put a guy on an island with a $30,000 swarm of drones and you can take out a cargo ship. Like anybody can do that. You can grab somebody from anywhere, make that happen, right? So I don't know how much that conversation was had, but I do know it was had.

Because it was in the O plan that I read. And that was before they'd gotten as strong as they were. Because I was teaching that operational plan in like 2015 or so. And that's why our squadron would go and practice strafing boats. We would strafe tanks with live ammunition, moving tanks out of some of the ranges. But then we would go practice with JTACs strafing boats. So I answer your question, I know it was brought up because it's literally right there in the O plan. Literally section two is the proxy forces.

How long it's going to take? I was saying early on in my channel, like right after, right when the first thing went down, this is going to take two months minimum. And people were like, dude, why are you saying months?

Stop saying months. He means weeks. Yeah. I mean, I got a call from people that, you know, I'd flown fighters with. And they're like,

you're wrong. Like, it's going to be faster than that. And I think Iran's gotten a lot stronger than what anybody expected. And that's what happens when you let a problem fester. Also,

that area of the world is very complex. It's very complex. And we had 20 years of fighting. in that and I swear it seems like we didn't learn very much. Yeah. Well, except the thing I would push back on a little bit is what I'm seeing now is actually retrenchment.

It's a retrenchment strategy. And for the viewers out there, retrenchment is you don't go into Iraq and Afghanistan like we did before, massive force, right? Building Ford operating bases at the bottom of canyons. You do what's cut off, cut the head off the snake and then you come back. Hey, anybody we can negotiate with now? No.

Okay. Head gets cut off the snake again. And then you just keep doing that. It's kind of more of like a Syria model a little bit. more. And so to me, it's actually an advancement. Now, it's, I think another problem is Venezuela happened, right? And it was one and done. And so people were hoping for something a little more like that. If only Iran was like Venezuela. They may have some similarities, but yeah, vast differences. Vast differences. They have like 5,000 Maduro's basically if you want to think about it,

wrap your head around it. The Mullah class is like, I think it's like five to, it could be even as big as 10,000. So you'd have to get all of those 5,000. Plus they're, underlings, which is the IRGC, which is like 100 to 200,000 somewhere in there. So yeah, it's like 100,000 Maduros, basically, if you count the IRGC. So it's a different problem, but I think it also highlights the limit of aerial warfare, right? Like, got it. I'm an Air Force guy. I wish bombs could solve everything in the situation, free the people of Iran.

But do the limits, you know, everybody likes to think, right? The Marines are like, all you need is the Marines and the Navy's like, all you need is the Navy, Air Force, all you need is air power. There's limits to all those. But the big thing that I was starting to think of is all these different pressure points, right? Secretary of Treasury of Hormuz is going to become irrelevant. We've seen a big push to get everything to be pumped in pipelines or a vast majority of the oil pumped in pipelines. Just today they broke that about 20 ships a night are going through that southern corridor with the Navy protecting them.

Now, is that a like end result? No. But my question to you is, and actually heard this from a friend, you probably know him, Green Beret. Jeff Kirkham. Have you talked to him lately? Okay. Started Black Rifle Coffee with Evan and J.T. Really respect this guy and I've had the fortune to become friends with him. And we were talking about, okay, if you really want this regime to go away, dude, there's got to be some sort of a ground invasion. Sorry.

I can't point to a regime change in the history of modern warfare, at least that didn't involve that. I have not seen a regime change that only involved an air campaign. Yeah. And so his thought was, and I don't want to take credit for it, but I've been saying it a lot on my channel, is, okay, if that's the case, well, American troops, we all have PTSD from Iraq and Afghanistan. The society does, right? Nobody wants that.

And so I feel like the people of Iran, okay, if you want the ground invasion, it's got to be you. So do you arm them? Do you arm them with 100,000 handguns? Yeah. You know, the French Revolution, there's been other revolutions around the world where handguns have changed the tide. And again, back to Jeff's principle. He was saying, you know, the thing is,

some of those guns are going to fall into the hands, the IRGC. Okay. They've already got guns. But you know what? A few of them are going to be in the hands of the population. And they're going to send their little death team to a couple doors. And they're going to take some rounds to the stomach. And then that word's going to spread.

To the stomach. Jesus, dude. You savage. That's Jeff. Shooting to wound? He's a green beret, man. Damn. Shock and awe, baby.

All right. So I don't know. It's a painful way to go out. Yeah. What do you think? I mean, I think SIG's got some 320s on the shelf. They could probably send over there. Let's get 100,000 of them.

I'm just joking. I'm just joking. I love you guys. I think your 320 might have a design fall. I don't know. Yeah. Again, pros and cons is everything. Risk reward to everything.

I agree with you. I don't think that for a good amount of time, the U.S. would even tolerate or consider the populace on the ground invasion. Yeah, I really don't. Today's episode is brought to you by Element, or LMNT, depending on who you are and how you say it. I feel incredibly fortunate to have known one of the co-founders, Rob, and his wife, Nikki, for many years now. Just got to spend some time with Rob again, and I am always appreciative of who he is, how he represents himself, and just how ridiculously smart he is. We're talking about salt here.

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Really up to you. Drink elementee.com slash cleared hot. Back to the show. Which is probably good. Yeah. I'm a big fan of no big Afghanistan or Iraq ever again. Like, we learned that lesson. I'm a big fan of we need to have the most capable military humanly possible and use it as sparingly as possible.

Fantastic. I agree. You know? Walk softly carry the big stick. Yeah. You can turn a scalpel into a butter knife if you're not careful. I mean, these are still people at the end of the day. Yeah.

In systems and aircraft. I mean, I'm reading up on you. You flew an F-15 with 10,000 hours. Yeah. In Afghanistan. I mean, was that thing clapped out? I mean, you would think, man. Yeah, you would think it'd be like a POS, but no, it was solid.

I mean, I was sure it had new turbines in there and all sorts of good stuff. Oh, yeah. Totally, you know, those things get rebuilt every couple years from the ground up. I used to go look at the data plates of the C-130s we would jump out, like, 1969, which would scare you if you didn't realize the thing gets stripped down past the rivets to the, you know, the skeleton of the thing and rebuilt. You can look at the engine. I can still see the sticker on the blades. You know, but we're going to be fine. 100%.

It's like renovating a house down to the studs. Yeah. Right. Changes everything. But it is weird in aviation that these planes are so old. 10,000 hours is a lot of time, man. Yeah. On a fighter especially, because that thing's being yanked and banked, right?

So, but they do x-rays. They have like thermal imaging of the wings bars, you know, things like that. But yeah, fluid on a combat mission in Afghanistan. What was I like flying combat missions? What was your average altitude that you would cruise around at? AGL. Are you up 10,000,000 feet out of the ground? Okay.

Yeah, that's about right. Yeah, that sounds about right. But then, you know, we'd go down low a lot of times, you know, shows of force. That was probably one of the main things I would do. Every mission I would do a show force just down a valley or something. Just because everybody was like, hey, we want the enemy to know there's fighters up ahead. And a lot of times that would just help them sleep at night. So we'd be down at, you know, 500 feet.

At a situation one time where I went down to 100 feet during a show force. But that was rare. I feel like, you know, I dropped bombs on probably, I don't know, 13. 14 missions, something like that. Would that feel like the first time? Dude, crazy. Heart sunk. Like, I felt like...

Dumb bomb or GPS guided? First one I dropped. Dumbomb in air quotes. That just mean non-GPS terminal guidance. Yeah. First one, I... Yeah, it was a solid GPS because we were carrying some bombs

that could do GPS and laser guidance, but the first one I dropped was just a GPS bomb. GV-38, dropped it on a tree line full of dudes trying to hit a convoy. So... How's that's it with you? You know, I'm grateful every day that I was, you know, I kind of try to relate it to, there's probably, this is just math I've done in my head, probably 100 U.S. service members

that are back here in the States with their families because of me. And I don't know if that's the exact number. That's just what I've created to, like, help me know what I did was good. And I would do it 100% again today. Now, there were situations where I knew that dropping more bombs was actually counterintuitive. So there was a situation where we got called in to hit some guys who had just come out of a mosque. They all had those big radios, right? They're getting on the mopeds or the motorcycles or whatever.

There's eight of them. And we get cleared hot by the JTAC. And we're rolling into Strafe. Strafe has the lowest collateral damage, right? They're high explosive incendiary rounds, like little grenades going off. But that's way better than a GB38 trap. What are those things? 30mm?

20. Okay. Yeah, the F-15E has 20. Yeah, just a little big guy. It's just a starter guy. Just about the size. this can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they explode on an impact. Trust me. I'm not volunteering to be on the receiving end. Yeah. Of any millimeter type can and pointed

in my direction. Well, the A10 guys are like, yeah, 20 millimeters cute. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, these guys are walking out of the mosque and we get cleared hot. Start or actually, I don't even think I'd called in yet. They basically say like, you're going to be clear to engage. So we're about to roll in. I call dude one four in from the West, whatever that call was, we get the cleared hot. And then all of a sudden my, my whizzo pulls up the pod because the pod gets masked a little bit as you're doing turns. The pod comes up and we both at the same time see these little heat signatures on the

side of the town square there. And we both know right away, those are kids. And so I'm like, dude, one four off dry. You know, and they're like, what the what? Why are you off dry, you know? And I was like, dude. And so we get back up in the wheel and I'm like, hey man, just tell them we're going to track, track them outside of town.

and then we'll deal with them then. But we did, but two of them got away. Yeah. You know, so we weren't able to take out all eight of them. And so that one sits with me where I'm like, you know, what's the point of that war? Well, if I kill eight of those dudes and then I take out 12 of these kids that are playing soccer or whatever right here. Yeah. I've just created 24 insurgents.

I mean, put yourself in that position, right? You're going to become an insurgent against the United States if a U.S. fighter jet killed your kid. So that was one that was hard because. there was a little bit of, you know, I was an internal moral battle of, you know, those two dudes that got away. What did those guys do? You know, I'm sure that I don't know. There's no way out of that situation where you're not going to what if for the rest of your life. Yeah. Because you could what if if you had gone hot. Right. And what if you didn't? Right. What could those two guys do? But you would have to sit with knowing that you had identified those kids and still continue on. And you would have been legally justified to do so

via the rules of engagement. Right. But that's the difference. side. That's the morality piece that I don't know how, I don't have the vocabulary to describe that. Because what you said is true. You can, I mean, probably the biggest thing that I got out of Afghanistan and Iraq is that if you're not careful, you can't fight your way out of an ideology. But you can make it worse. Yeah. You know, the bigger hammer. Well, the big hammer worked, get a bigger one. It'll be even more effective. Not really. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. You know, it's, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm glad you were up there and we're able to make that decision. That is a tough one, especially when the guys on the ground are calling for it. But then also, if they're not in contact and you know what I mean, you can't like.

Yeah. Yeah. If that was, if they were in contact, that'd been a different situation. That's a different situation. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have one where I didn't use a bomb, but I wanted to, you know, I had those situations too where we just couldn't get the clearance. We didn't know where the friendlies really were. Uh, that. Uh, that. one I was told was a Navy SEAL, but we get a call and someone was separated from their team. So I mean, the J-TEC said it was a Navy SEAL. And so shot in the foot and we get the call. We're probably like 30 miles out, you know?

And we had GB-12s on the jet so we couldn't go supersonic. So those things limit you to Supersonic. But they're like, hey dude, there's a crowd closing in on this guy. You guys need to get here now. And I'm like, well, shit, if I go Supersonic and I break all these bombs, I'm going to show up with nothing to protect him with. So we stayed at like 0.99 mock. And I'm literally like, is there rattling?

Yeah, I know. Yeah, they have little secret cones for the folks out there. And if those break, now they're not, they're just going to fall off the jet and go immediately down. And so that one was, and I'm curious your thoughts on this. Like some rules are made to be broken, right? And I don't want to willy-nilly say like, oh, yeah, I broke the rules. I'm a rebel. But I think there are some rules that are made that you're like, no, I got to break this today.

Because following this rule is going to get someone killed, which is kind of weird to think about. But I think you only can make that decision when you really know your jet really well or you really know your profession really well. You don't make that on day one, right? But I'd been flying in combat for a couple months. I was, you know, a flight lead combat qualified for a year and a half or whatever. So I had the experience to at least, I don't know, shift and bend the rules a little bit. And so as we're coming in, you know, we're getting updates. And I realized if I flew over that crowd or whatever, whoever was approaching him at 500 feet, I've flown over people at 500 feet.

I've flown over people 500 feet. It's like, oh, yeah, neat. That's cool. You know? And these guys supposedly had weapons, you know, and they're approaching this team member. And so I was like, no, you know what? What if I flew over them a lot lower?

I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what that is. I've never done that. Can I do that? And 500 feet was our rule. Don't go below 500 feet. However, I think that rule would have gotten that seal killed that day. And I was like, no, we're going to change it up today.

So we came in to the valley. there's actually a helicopter on our radar that was at 300 feet so then i'm like oh yeah if i was at 500 feet i would fly over that helicopter anyways and not be able to see him he'd come underneath my jet and maybe he's climbing and hits me so actually 100 feet is smarter today or somewhere around that i think i was bouncing between 100 and 200 feet and so we get in there the wizzo gets his pod a little bit on that crowd i mean it's hard at low altitude but we see that there's a crowd they've got long objects that they're carrying and i went over right right over top of them plugged it into max afterburn and just stood the jet up right over top of them. I looked back and just saw dust like

everywhere, right? And they all dispersed. They all ran off. But I, if I would have waited then, no, I want to kill these guys. Let me get a bomb on these guys. Now maybe they're in danger close or, you know, maybe someone would have already gotten to them. Sometimes it can take five, six minutes to get a bomb off. Right. But that was a proud day for me. I think that was a moment looking back and seeing all that dust come up. I was like, all right, this is, I'm doing exactly what I should be doing right now. But yeah, they got, and then the helicopter came in. Was they able to get them?

Yeah. The guy who taught me to fly helicopters who I got my type rating with in the 105, the one that I have, has said something that stuck with me. Because when we were learning, he's always talked, you know, things that you do at certain altitudes and air speeds. These things will save your life. You don't make a downwind turn until you are out of the green beyond 60 knots. It's going to help you stay in that height, velocity curve.

so you have the airspeed and altitude to, you know, if you lose an engine, you can make the corrected procedures. If you lose both, at least you have enough so you can get an auto rotation in. So I'm fine with him. And he goes, yeah, just turn down wind. And I said, hey, man, no downwind turns until we're out of the green. And he's just posited. And he goes, once you know the rules and why they exist, then you can break the rules.

Wow. Yeah. But not until then. And that is the difference. I agree with you that all rules, there is probably not a rule that exists, that you couldn't find a situation given long enough where somebody would say, okay. Yeah, exactly. But if you didn't know the rule, they would say okay to everything.

Right. You have to know, again, risk versus reward. If you're not even aware of the risk that you're absorbing, you're now gambling, which I refuse to do with my life or the lives of other people. But I will accept risk. And again, it was just an off-the-cuff conversation because he literally was just like, I got to take a piss, dude. Let's go back to you. Yeah. That's awesome. And I'm like, I'm waiting until I'm out of the, he's just like, dude, once you know the rules you can break. I'm not telling you to

break all the rules, but at least you know why it exists. Right. I'm like, I'm so happy that just about everybody I meet is smarter than myself. Well, that's almost comforting, right? Because now you're in a place where you're not a robot. You can make decisions. You don't want to be a robot in aviation or in life in general. Yeah. It's not about being a robot. It's actually, that's why I wonder if robots can fully replace everything completely. Because they could, well, first of all, I guarantee you a robot could fly a helicopter better than I could. Hands down. I'm going to go ahead and give that too.

Same with a dog fight. Yeah, they can do it better than a fighter pilot, supposedly. Yeah, but I wonder what a robot would do with the heat signatures of a kid. If their data input that they're being fed is they visually identified via whatever GPS allays and they got the cleared hot call. Yeah. It's tough, man. Yeah, man. No, it is for sure.

Well, something that said out to me in your book was the drop zone that wasn't briefed. And the guy that's like, we're going because this is fun or like, whatever, you know. Fucking Iceland. Like the priorities aren't there, right? The priorities were like. And that was an example of absorbing risk that he didn't understand. That was not having an understanding of the device, the AAD, automatic activation device that's attached to your reserve, constantly stiffing airspeed and barometric pressure

and if the two criteria met, it fires. But you can set it and we were going to jump up into a higher DZ. So you need to have your reserve parachute if you're unconscious and they have hundreds of documented saves because people crack their noodle on things skydiving and they go tumbling or as bizarre as it is,

people lose complete altitude awareness because they are having so much fun that they don't realize in about 10 seconds the durability of their skin is going to be very tested. At 120 miles an hour, the skin suit's going to be flattened. And it is gnarly when that does happen. Yeah. So it goes off and it saves their life.

But if you set that thing to jump into a higher altitude and then you readjust and you go back lower and you don't brief everybody and let them know, like you need to re- because there's decision altitude. You go out normally, you'd pull at 3,000 feet. And by 1,500 feet, you need to have your hands on your handles and execute your cutaway procedures. Well, what if your reserve is set to fire 2000 now? And you haven't briefed that and you haven't modified or said, hey, instead of pulling at 3,000, you need to pull it four. Your new decision altitude is 2,500 feet instead of 1,500 feet. So the shoot, the reserve could fire

into the main shoot. It could fire into your main. If you meet the criteria, and this has happened before. So your main parachute deploys, so you're horizontal, it pulls you vertically just because the drag of the parachute. But you're still falling at a rapid rate of speed. If you fall, all through the firing criteria. It can go off. And if it does, now your reserve is going into your, and sometimes they both open cleanly and you have a little biplane configuration

or side by side. It's an emotional event. I bet. Sometimes though, both of them go, nope, and they just, oh, man. But again, nobody in the airplane knew that. Yeah.

That was never discussed. Yeah. Let's just jump into this, this airfield and that's gambling. Yeah. Unacceptable, in my opinion. Yeah. the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

What are you gaining from that? Oh, we get to have fun? Like, what's going through that guy's mind? Like, that's a good question. It was a Frenchman. So hard to say. It tells us everything we need to know. He was actually awesome, but he fucked up in that moment.

And is the juice worth the squeeze? Why put everybody at that enhanced level of risk? It is not worth it for a trip that they paid to be on to kind of just jump around Iceland. And at the end of that, I mean, that's, the guy I was with, we had talked about a variety of things that we had seen, small things that were growing into bigger things, the error chain was growing. And they didn't listen to the feedback. And so my only metric was, I'm out. Like, I'm not going to be a part of this. And if you guys hurt somebody or kill somebody, I don't want my name associated with that. Yeah. I mean, that's all you could do in that moment. Pretty much. You couldn't change it besides just walk away. Turned into a dope trip. Spent 10 days on the ring road. Have you ever been to Iceland? No. We drove the whole circumference of the island. It was amazing.

Hot springs everywhere, right? Yeah, but they smell like farts. Oh, okay. Is it weird that that doesn't dissuade me? No. This is what might, though. We went to one of those, and this is probably what Michael will want to go. But we're in there, very European.

Dude's just walking around with his shafts and balls everywhere, which whatever lived your life. I don't really care. There was a guy standing in the middle of this changing room with a plugged-in hair dryer, just blow-drying his pubs. Oh, dude. Just getting it. Yes.

And I'm sitting there. What? Listen. Just proud. He's just proud. I don't even know. Did he have the leg up like the captain's? No, he was in the middle.

It was like he was doing a partial jumping jack and just standing there just and was he proud. He just, his bucket of fucks was so empty. Yeah. That he was just going for it. That was just a whatever. It was a Tuesday for him. Yeah.

Just another day. And then you go under that water, which legitimately smells like sulfur and furs. and they had champagne. And so these people had these champagne flutes. They would drink the champagne. And I watched several people just scoop up some water and just gurgle it. I'm just like, oh, dude.

The guy with his pubes is like, yes. Cheers. So yeah, you go ahead of Michael's like over there Googling the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. He's like, what? Flites right now. Reckivik. That's where you want to go in, Michael. Oh, so there was a dude who looks like he was some sort of German,

in the really skilled skydiver. I don't know if Michael has that, but he jumped out at low altitude and the shoot just didn't open at all. Have you seen that video? No, is this recent? Recent, yeah. Fatality?

Yeah, yeah. Just smoked it right in. I mean, the shoot's kind of like blowing in the wind a little bit, but. Oh, man. Because when you're base jumping or you're jumping out of an aircraft low altitude, there's no reserve, obviously.

It's just to jump out of an airplane, they're going to make, you have to have a reserve and a main parachute. Okay. It would, reserves open quickly. And I'm not giving anybody any jumping advice here. Depending on the altitude.

First off, why would you be getting out of that airplane so incredibly low? Because you should be getting out probably, I forget the exact altitudes, but I think at a thousand feet you could consider getting out on your reserve. Myself personally, I would get out lower than that and go right to my reserve, but that's based off my own comfort level. Yeah. Again, not jumping advice for anybody, nor would anybody else on the plane likely let me out. the aircraft and I totally get that.

I'm just saying my personal comfort level, especially at the base jumping side of it, I would trust my reserve more than riding an aircraft into the ground. Yeah. But yeah, with base jumping, it's just one parachute. It's packed like a reserve.

Okay. But yeah, I don't know why that person would be getting out of the airplane that low. Very limited response time. So all of the normal things you would maybe potentially think through need to be reduced down to go no go instantly and then make a decision. That's the only chance you're going to have at survival. Gotcha. Yeah, it looked like it was some sort of like air show or something, like some demonstration that he was doing or something like that.

Michael, have you found this? I found a French guy in February, I think. Pull it up. Yeah, I didn't, there's no video. These French guys, I see a theme happening here. It's Frenchmen. One of the first guys to test a wingsuit tried it off the Eiffel Tower. No way. Yeah.

Dude. So what's it, what's it feel like on the wingsuit? Like when you jump off, is it you pretty much instantly get forward motion? No, you get about three. seconds usually before you do. So there's a dead air start. Okay. And the guy, Michael Polis, this is like old black and white. This guy died, by the way. He impacted directly underneath where he jumped off. This was in, I think, the 1800s. Oh, dude. So he was the OG. This is the first attempt at the wingsuit. Emphasis on was. Yes. Yeah. It's very briefly, the godfather of

it's awesome. And again, I had a bunch of aviation time before flying a wing suit, which I don't think made it any. Yeah, there we go. This is my man. Franz. Franz. The godfather. Yeah. 1878. Yeah, died 1912, 33, sent it off the Eiffel Tower. That's what he was wearing. Wow.

I don't know exactly. Believed. Yeah, wow. Wow. Imagine just him walking out there, that moment of glory. And everyone's like, yeah. He's just like, this is going to go great. I know it.

I mean, there wasn't any other way to test that. Yeah, who's going to test it? How you test it? We couldn't, like, simulate that with some sandbags or whatever technology. was back at the damn it i mean look at the wool trousers something i don't know what those are like the knee level is that like a boot of some kind yeah some sort of boot with like a little flare you just those are just for show obviously shiny little shiny parts powerful stash oh yeah the stash yeah the wing suit like i said it feels like you're laying on an energized

magic carpet you can feel the energy and so from people for people who fly it's it's a wing you can treat it like a wing you can trade airspeed for altitude. You can stall the suit. And that's actually what Alex, what killed Alex is he stalled the suit. Yeah. Damn. You can see he had a rear facing camera that survived. And I haven't seen the footage, but I've talked to people who have. You can see the angle of attack increasing, increasing, increasing. And then he flipped to his back right before he impacted. But it performs in the same way. Like you say in the rocking, you know, you'll see that. And there's no way to judge that other than the feel of it. And it's, you know, the angle. And you can really taught and tension the suits

and you can glide without losing a lot of airspeed. You can dive at the ground. Sometimes the better move is to dive at the ground to get more energy to get altitude. Yeah. Because you can do, you mean, you can emergency pitch.

Yeah. I'd rather try to get something out than, you know, and then, you know, at least fight it on the way in. But yeah, it's awesome until it's not, man. Yeah, man.

Small margin for error, dude. Sorry, you lost your friend in that. I am too, but I'm grateful for the time. Yeah. I have with him. Alex was, God, he was awesome. Yeah.

I miss him. Yeah. Sounds like a great dude. What do you do now to get that? You fly helicopters. Is that kind of solve that little, like making time stand still? Nope. No, doesn't do the same thing.

No, I try to be really present when I'm flying a helicopter. I try to fly more with my butt than anything, not like manipulating the controls. I don't have a butt plug that I use for like the collective, you know, like be very innovative. Yeah. I try mostly to fly with tactile sensations, meaning I'm listening to and feeling what the helicopter, the feedback is given me. But I don't get the sensation of time. standing still. I definitely respect the hell out of it. I realize it's, it's dangerous.

The disassociation you're talking about a little bit, I find that a little bit with Jiu-Jitsu. Nice. The five minutes on, one minute off, five minute on, one minute off where you're having, you know, Michael and I've rolled with each other for years. And do you still get that, Michael, or has it waned for you a little bit? I actually find that I'm completely in the moment. Is that what you mean? That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Yeah. That's the disassociation from the larger concepts of life outside of that five minutes. Yes.

Yeah. So I think some of that. And for me, if you think about it, I went from the military job into that skydiving, base jumping world. So I think I might have needed a little bit more powerful stimulus. I didn't realize how powerful it was what I was getting from the job. Yeah. But being later in life and, you know, different season, different phase of life, I'm not looking

for that level of amplitude anymore. Yeah. That's cool, man. That's a good, like, knowledge of self. I feel like you don't always need to keep pushing the limit. it shifts. I know a lot of people who never stop pushing the limit.

Yeah. And that becomes a lifestyle in itself where you, what are you giving up? Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe it's a great way to live the rest of your life,

but it's not what I want to do. Like, I want a family. I want good relationships. But I find it myself, if I find something like that, I might be apt to allow other things to slip. Just my personality. Yeah.

What keeps you from wanting to keep going back into something like that? Is it a constant check-in or are you just like, I'm good? Risk versus reward. Yeah. One of the biggest things about base jumping, because you are relying largely on feel, again, this is my opinion, is that currency is incredibly important.

And when we moved up here, I don't really have access to a drop zone anymore. So I could skydive eight, ten jumps a day out where I lived in San Diego. So I could be incredibly current in the suit and that tactile sensation was just a razor's edge. Then you switch out the parachute system and you can send that off of a cliff. Because once you get it flying, it does feel the same. Nice. Once you can get energy into the wing, it feels like a wing. Yeah.

And you can practice that slow speed approaching stalls, stall it just to see what happens if you can recover. Obviously at altitude skydiving. And you can translate all of those skills. It's just like aviation stuff, you know, like helicopters you practice, auto rotations, a bunch. So it never happens for real. You're prepared to do so. And you hope it doesn't and you try to avoid it.

But absent that currency, the risk ratio goes off the roof. And the reward, I don't see it. Yeah, personally. Oh, that's good, man. That's cool. Yeah. A lot of guys, I think it's stuck in that cycle. I mean, I don't know about you if you felt this leaving the steel teams. When I left the Thunderbirds, I felt like an addict. Like, I felt there was a drug that I was getting from flying those jets twice a day. Yeah, you were. It's called adrenaline. Yeah. I mean, dude, it was full on doping. Twice a day you guys got to fly those things? Sometimes, yeah. In training season is twice a day. And then as an instructor, you're flying, you know, twice a day sometimes. How many pre-flight inspections did you do? Just say it. Thousand. Zero. One of the blue angel guys in the documentary said, in my entire time,

the team I did zero because they trusted their crew chiefs so implicitly that the guys came up to him. It was like, your jet's good. He's like, Roger that, getting in the jet. Yeah,

that's fair, man. Bringing me back to that moment. There was times when we would do it on cross countries. Yeah. But like, you know, there's no crew chief there.

Sometimes we'd land or if we go to Creech or something like that. But yeah, they were so, I mean, those guys were solid. And they're jacked. Yeah.

That was like part of the qualification. I don't know. I just trusted them more that they were jacked. I'm like, you're at the gym, you do hard things. Jacks, and let's be honest, tailored flight suits. Tailored flight suits, the perfect tattoo placement. Of course. The best recruiters that the Air Force could ever want

and the Blue Angels could ever want. But yeah, those guys, they, you're right. That Blue Angel was right. Especially in the shows, you walk out there. You just salute them. You're good. You're good. You're good to go.

And yeah, I never had any issues with the engine, flight controls, nothing while I was on the Thunderbirds. dude insanely. Like, I can't say that for the F-15E. You know, it was a little different. There was some things, but that team is insane. I forgot about the transfer flights in between the air shows. Yeah.

You guys dick off at all or is it all just buttoned up profess the whole time? Oh, we dick off. I almost died on one now. Like, you know, that's what, like, after all this, like, death-defying stunts, that's what almost kills me. But yeah, I almost died in one. But yeah, typically it's just we have four flight open, you know? We were flying from point to point, doing an,

the airline thing basically, but you're in a six ship of fighter jets. But I had a depressurization, a slow depressurization that then turned into a rapid depressurization. You want to hear about it? Mm-hmm. Okay. So he probably already had your oxygen mask on, though, right? So I had the oxygen mask on. And there's a couple points where you check the altimeter, 10,000 feet, 18,000 feet's typically where you check it.

And so that's what I did. Checked it. Yep, looks good. That's the cabin altimeter. It's shown whatever, like 6,000 feet, whatever. Good to go. But it's like a four hour trip, right? We're headed, I think we're headed to Louisiana or something like that.

So we get up, I click my mask down, start to take a drink of water or whatever, eating a little bit. And then literally probably 30 seconds after that, I'm just like, whoa, I'm like, what's going on? Like, I feel a tingle on my hand. I'm like, did I not sleep? Time for a nap. Yeah, exactly. So did I go too hard last night? What's going on?

And then I looked down at my cabin altimeter and it says 31,000 feet. And I was like, oh. Oh shit, no problem. Masks is going to come up. This will be over in 30 seconds. I'll get the mask up and I'll be good. This is all happening in the course of like two seconds. So I go to lift my right hand or left hand up.

So the oxygen regulators on the right side, I go to lift my left hand to click my mask up and move the oxygen regulator. My left hand doesn't work. And so I'm like pretty sure I told my left hand to go up and put my mask up. Nothing's happening. But I was able to move my right hand to 100% oxygen. And so there was just oxygen starting to flow out of the mask. And dude, the last thing I remember is seeing all the lights as I'm reaching my right hand up for my mask.

So 100% oxygen. And then I'm like, go for the mask. Go for the mask. Go for the mask. And then I woke back up. And my mask was on. Woke up. And I'm like looking around.

See my formation. No one else knows what's been going on. Like a war zone in my cockpit for my life. Right. And the oxygen regulator is like struggling at this point. And so it's like, I can feel myself gasping for air. And my body had basically shut down for a split second. You know, now I can talk about this because you can't talk about having like a time

where you actually, all the lights went off in the military and still go fly fighter jets, you know. Yeah. But all the lights went out and that, I'll never forget that feeling and that sensation. And my radio call was like, boss, I'm descending. I'm hypoxic. And then I just, there was a cloud deck. And so the cloud, if you go into clouds and you're disorienting,

hypoxic, you're going to probably die because you're going to get disoriented. So I waited for the cloud deck, but I'm sitting up there like 31,000 feet. Like just that regulator is just struggling, right? Because there's no pressure in that cockpit at all. And dude, it was you know, it was a crazy

moment. Get past the cloud deck, start my descent down. Wingman rejoins on me. My buddy was like, dude, because we've lost multiple fighter pilots did that exact same thing. Really? Oh yeah. Yeah. Multiple. And sometimes the sometimes that'll happen.

And even with the mask up, if there's a little failure in the auction system, I think that's what happened to an F-22 pilot in the mid-2010s. Same thing happened. Canopy seal.

Mask went up, but the auction regulator failed. And then you're done. It's over. Fight into terrain. For sure. But my buddy, and this is the level of team

that you're at on this team. My buddy was like, dude, I was ready to try to write, like tap your wing and get you to like, try to like balance on jet and try to guide you down to altitude to allow the oxygen to come back into your plane.

He's like, I was about to do that. And I was like, thank you, man. That's the level of brotherhood on that team. It's insane. But we get down the cloud deck and then I was, I was just, I felt like I had had the worst hangover of my life. Yeah. We've all been there, right? You wake up and you're just like, I need to sleep for another 12 hours. Yeah. That's how I felt. It was just like this disgusting feeling. Get down and I'm like, can I land this plane right now? Because I just felt so, I'm of it like seeing stars everywhere it was crazy but I just I don't know 100% oxygen I just started doing like little like squeezing my butt and then legs and I'm like flexing my body trying to wake my cells back up it was like everything had like died and I was trying to bring it

back to life it was weird so we come into albuquerque yeah spatial or you were scheduled to land or did you declare an emergency declared an emergency nice into albuquerque yeah they move everybody out of the way everybody's out of the way Delta's holding high whatever Like who's this Wahoo? Sorry boys. So I land. They pull me out of the cockpit, connect up my heart and everything.

And then I was, I don't know, apparently not exposed long enough to have to go into the decompression chamber, but I had to be monitored by a doctor for 24 hours. So I just had to sleep in a hospital for 24 hours, which sucked. But yeah, man, that was a moment where I think that was probably one of the closer ones.

And that was just like literally a drink of water and a sandwich that almost took me out. Did they determine, were the mechanics able to determine what the failure was? Yeah, so they flew a team in, they inspected it, and there was just those ladders that the Thunderbirds put on the jet like that. Yeah. Yeah.

It had scraped the metal part of the canopy. And then when the bladder inflated at pressurization, it just started a slow rip. God. And then it was a rip that was like, you know, probably ended up being about that big. So yeah, man. Damn. Okay. Yeah.

What the boss say when he said you were descending? I mean, I was kind of the wild man in the team. So at first he was probably like, God damn it. What are you doing? What are you doing now? And I'm like, no, I'm seriously. Sometimes you can hear the tone of voice. You're like, yeah, okay, go ahead and do whatever you need to do.

Yeah. And that's what he said. You know, we were kind of button heads at the time, which is normal for a wingman and a boss, a new wingman and a boss because you're figuring it out. The boss doesn't have as much patience because he's done it for a year. And anyway, but yeah, in that moment, you could just feel that he was like, got it. you have the lead, I'm your wingman, and he took my wing. But it was my other buddy, number six, Nick Eberling, who was like, dude, I was ready to come in and just like, if I saw your jet, just take a deep dive for the clouds, I was going to try to find you and try to adjust your jet upright and get you to level off at an altitude where you can get oxygen.

And I was like, dude, that was, I mean, it's just amazing, that level of camaraderie on that team. I'm sure you felt it on the SEAL's similar things. Man, I saw people do some things that were just the most risky for their own life in the attempt to, something beneficial for somebody else's. It's wild. And you'd see something like that. And you're like, wow, I don't know if I've ever been in a position like that. And if I ever am in a position like that, I hope I have the stills to pull it off.

100%. Yeah, man. What was it like when you're in Afghanistan? You drop that first bomb. You get back to the squadron or wherever you were at in Afghanistan. How was that viewed inside of those combat aviation squadrons? Is that celebratory? Is it somber?

I mean, it is a line in the sand that people in a profession, of arms, whether or not they want to talk about it or not. A lot of people, maybe even most people, are looking for ways to cross that line, especially in mature theaters of war. Yeah. I think it's all the above. I think I saw all of those emotions play out in the course of like 30 minutes to a couple hours after the flight all at the same time. Because, you know, there is this like you're doing your job, right? We're dropping bombs today. We're protecting American forces. Like, we're doing our job. We're doing the Super Bowl. This is what we're trained for. So I think there's a little bit of that where it's a little bit of like, yeah, like we did it. We dropped bombs today that

protected people or took out the enemy. And then I think there's quieter conversations that happened maybe with a tighter group of people that's more like, hey, man, here's what we actually did today. You know, I would, we would, sometimes I wouldn't know who I was talking to, right? It's just different team members or whoever CT or whoever was, you know, on that app. And then they would send us the SSE, like some of the photos from the sites. And I, and weirdly enough, like, I wanted to look at those. So not all the time, but there's a lot. there's a lot of times where I was like, I want to know what I'm doing.

I want to know what I'm actually doing to these people. And so, I mean, that was gnarly. I mean, that's what guys like you saw a lot, I'm sure. It's up close and personal. Yeah. And so seeing those photos and images of the SSE, it really made me think like, okay, every time I take a human life, like is that something that I'm processing

or am I just doing it and thinking it's just this normal thing? Cause I don't want to get to that point. So I don't know, I tried to reflect on it, but it was more with like a tight group of people. There was like two or three other aviators where, you know, we would kind of celebrate sometimes the bombs we didn't drop. And I think everybody would in certain ways. But, you know, the main, you didn't want to like, be like, yeah, we didn't drop bombs today. Cool.

That wasn't like what was said in the main part of the squadron, right? But in smaller groups, it was definitely a part of it. And then the commander we had at the time, incredible. Feng Moeller, super great dude. And he always told us, he was like, look, if you see civilians enter the frame and you've already got a bomb in flight, just drag it off. drag it off into a field. He's like, we got more bombs. He's like, this war is about hearts and minds.

And I hope that all the leaders in the other squadrons had that same perspective. But yeah, I remember, I mean, targeting especially up, probably more by like Jalalabad and Assadabad, like that border with Pakistan area. The valley is gnarly, dude. I bet, man. I couldn't imagine being down in some of those valleys

that I was flying over. Balls of steel, my friend. Or lack of options when you were growing up. Yeah, I can see that too. A little bit of both. Yeah. Maybe just aiming low in life. Yeah.

Dude, I remember though when they got the technology. I don't know if they had this when you were over there, but it was like these little mini blimps that would go up on cables. And that would be at some of the outposts. And they had, oh, I do remember those. Yeah. Those cameras, like high resolution imagery is almost like the same imagery of like an MQ9. censor ball up on one of those. So I remember targeting a lot of teams coming from

Pakistan into Afghanistan. And the crazy thing about that is it wasn't typically like insurgents. It was like Iranian cudd forces or Chechen rebels like contracted to go and just cause mayhem in Afghanistan, you know, but a lot of the times what we saw those guys doing was just carrying huge backpacks full of IED stuff. So when we would light them up, it would just be like, well, like just you would just see the secondary explosions all over the place. And that felt really good. To me, those were the missions that I was like, okay, like, yes, this is going to keep a service member from getting a roadside bomb for sure.

So, yeah. I watched a senior IED emplacer one time teaching a junior IED impacer. And they forgot where the pressure plate was. Oh, good. And they were both just assholes and elbows into putting it all together when it went off. Perfect. I was quite pleased by that. Yes.

Yes. That is the way that should end. Because we were putting together a plan of what we were going to do. about it and then all of a sudden, I'm like, well, I mean, let's go check it out. Like that guy was riding a sweet motorcycle. That's probably going to look good in the fob. We're just going to take it for research purposes. I mean, why leave it out there? Yeah. I don't think anybody's going to call the one 800 number missing it now at this point. So yeah, that was a dope motorcycle. How was, good. How was life like outside the wire, right? Because when I'm at Bogram, I lived on the

base. We lived in those little like container shipping things, you know, so we had like a little cheetah metal. I used your 90s. Yeah. But that was way better than what you guys had. So what was life like outside the wire? So the last appointment I did was in 2010 and we were there from February until August and we built the fog by we. We were there while other people built the fob. But I mean, empty hescoes that gravel got put into in plywood, just plywood little huts, eating the, I think there were tea rations with this, you know, boil water underneath and just peel back. Wow. It was, it was good.

You know, the bathrooms were pretty luxurious. There was a wooden hole with a bucket that you put a bag in and then shit in, which was fun. That's, that's great. It is good, you know. Better than nothing. Sh showers were, you would leave bottles out in the sun and, you know, and go take a shower in the evening time. Yep. But it is what it is.

You know what I mean? You get used to what it is. Yeah. So right now there's that huge, I guess it's like a controversy with the legacy media saying that. Oh, Aircraft carrier. Yeah. And that's normal. I mean, it's normal.

People, it's not luxurious being in. It's a hard job. People do jump off the carriers. I've told this story. We were riding an aircraft carrier, the Nimitz, from Guam to Australia, pre-9-11. And when we're on an aircraft carrier, we meaning a seal platoon, we don't have anything to do. I got so lost. What's awesome?

No, there's fucking hieroglyphs on the wall. And I know they mean something to somebody. I don't speak that hieroglyph. Yeah. And, you know, if you have all day off, a 100% chance I'm going exploring. So I'm walking around. Dude, you would see people just coming out of these workspaces like,

hey, man, are you okay? Yeah. I bet, dude. Covered in just, they're down there working. I mean, there's 5,000 people in a carrier. What I try to remind people is, that's a full city in society that has every problems of every city in society. So I'm sitting there on an elliptical machine working out probably with the walkman at the time because this is pre-2000.

And I watch a guy in one of those huge hangar bays where they keep the aircraft, walk over, grab a fire extinguisher, and run off the aircraft carrier. And I don't know if he thought it was negatively buoyant or positively buoyant. It ended up being positively buoyant. He, they man overboard, go get him with the helicopter, bring him back. and yes, she got removed from the ship, as he probably should be, to get his emotional state checked out. Yeah. It happens. Yeah.

That was, I think, a 12-day transit. Life happens, right? There's full on every, I mean, there's crime syndicates, prostitution rings. Wow. Society is doing society stuff. Sure. Those jobs aren't easy. Yeah.

They knew that going into that. Somebody was saying it was a record for an aircraft carrier deployment. It's not, I mean, the records are way back from like World War II and, you know, like Pacific Theater and things. things like that. And I'm not saying we need to try to beat those records, but it's also not blow things completely out of proportion. Is it fun? No. Is it the job? Yes. Yeah. So I don't, I don't know what to say about that other than consider the source. And people say, well, we're hearing it from family members. I'm like, I bet that you probably are. Yeah. And I bet that there are a group of frustrated people on that boat that are being very vocal about their experience.

And I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. Oh, yeah, because both things can be true at the same time, right? It can be hard, but it's also like, this is what you signed up for. Yeah. At the same time, which, you know, make it as good as we can. But again, you guys at the fob, like, what are they going to do? Like, fly in, like, those, like, gator trailers with bathrooms. Like, I don't know if that's worth, you know what I mean? It's just like warfare is messy.

And we ended up giving the fob over, like, three rotations later back to the Afghans anyway. So it's probably an ISIS training center. Dude, exactly. Yeah. There's like a black hawk sitting right there right now. Like, yeah, what do you think about that whole thing? the withdrawal. I mean, right now, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you,

but right now there's this, a lot of, on Instagram, Kagan Dunlap, a couple other people are posting. I like Kagan. I met him a few times. Yeah, it seems super cool. Yeah, we're going to a podcast together at some point. But anyway, they're posting a lot of stuff from the Kabul withdrawal. Yeah.

You know, and it's, dude, I have so much, I mean, I had a lot of respect, obviously, for those Marines that were there before this, but seeing this, I'm like, dude, this is, this is really serious shit. Like the babies that are being handed around, the things they're having to do. So anyway, just mad respect for them.

But what are your thoughts on that, the withdrawal, all that? It's tough. A lot of veterans, I think, are unintentionally tying the value of their service to the few days or weeks of that really horrifically planned and executed departure. And I don't mean that from the perspective of the people that were on the ground. That clearly was a really shitty plan. Yeah. I don't understand why it was force fed and executed as planned. Like if you're in the leadership role, like you're back on the Thunderbirds and you see that,

hey, this is what we need to accomplish. And you look at a plan to accomplish that and you say, we need two X this amount of time. Yeah. Or we should have started planning for what you want to accomplish eight months ago. Right. And you realize it's untenable. Why would you force that? It was so from a leadership.

And I mean leader at the highest level. of our government. Anybody wants to blame it on Biden. And there were four administrations that spanned Iraq and Afghanistan. Yeah. And I don't think any of them did a good job on planning on how we were going to leave. Sure. So I actually have a lot of blame associated with all of those.

The person who was in the seat at the highest level at that time that forced that plan, you get to eat the consequences for that decision. Whether it was your plan or not, you gave it the go. Right. So if the plan sucked, like if I'm in a leadership role and somebody, to give me a shitty plan and it's going to be like that with an incredible risk of life to my people, I'm going back to get a different plan. Oh, yeah.

Especially if I'm the decision. If you let me decide, no, hard no. Right. We have to be by this timeline. Says who. Yeah. At what cost? And it was such a shit show, but I understand why people attach their value of their service to

that. But I think that's a mistake. Yeah. Because it had nothing to do with the way that. We exited. It was a catastrophe. It seems to be from soup to nuts. That doesn't mean that every bit of an ounce of service and sacrifice that the service member spent 20 years in those countries doing had anything to do with that exit. That was a leadership failure to me. 100%. Yeah. That's a really good way to look at it to remind everybody watching. Like if you served over there, this doesn't mean your service wasn't valuable. It was a strategic choice that was dog shit. Yeah. I worked at the lowest rung of the tactical ladders. I never got consulted. strategic decisions, probably for the best interest. You know what I mean?

It would have been more fun if they asked you. I actually do wish I could have had some insight into those rooms just because I'm fascinated about how decisions are made at a strategic level. Yeah. At the highest level, what are they really talking about? Sure. What are they, what are you considering? What is your risk versus reward at a nation level?

Yeah. How do, how are these conversations come? I'd be fascinated to know that. So I have, and again, this is just like a secondhand account. if you're cool with me bringing it up. It's a jag. So a guy who's a good friend of mine, he was a JAG to the assistant secretary of defense at the time

during the withdrawal. And he said that the timeline came down from the very, very top, the highest level, which would be Biden at the time. No real military experience doesn't know how long a plan like that would take. Just like, nope, we're going to be out by this day. And who knows what that was tied to.

But I went back and looked at some of the dialogue between Biden and Ghani. that was published, talk some of the phone calls just prior. And it was pretty, it just made my stomach hurt. Because I feel like if you don't, something that a leader should do,

if you don't have all that experience, is bring in someone you trust that does, right? Someone who can advise you who does. Have them sit in on the calls or someone with who's going to have skin in the game for the plan. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent com commander,

whoever it is, have them on those calls so they can actually speak truth to you. But on those calls, people can look it up on the internet, the transcripts. Biden's like, hey, the American people, us in the U.S., we need to get the perception that you're in charge of Afghanistan when we pull out. Can you do that for me? You've got, and the numbers are a little foggy, but he's like, you've got 100,000.

They've got 30,000. They've got 30,000. You've got 100,000 Afghan army, which you and I both know, Afghan army. Yeah, good luck. They're mostly like, you know, reservists or they come every two months. If they show up, Afghan soldiers jumping jacks. Michael, I think you've seen this in it. Maybe you do have 100,000. Yeah. 100,000 of what? Right.

And I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm just being honest. Exactly. Well, and then, but you've got to think 40 Chess here too, right? Because you're talking to Ghani. Ghani was the president of Afghanistan's name. He's now in like Dubai, like living in a high-rise mansion, right? Yeah, they are.

Oh, yeah. Hit it, Michael. This is what was going to protect Bogram, Air Base. Yeah. And again, there were like special operators from Afghanistan that were solid people you could trust, but that was the exception. This was the 100,000 that Biden was talking about. But again, if you're the CENTCOM commander, sir, POTUS, let me just show you something real quick. These are the 100,000 that are going to potentially hold Bogram and Kabul.

Are we okay with that? Or here's a better option. Here's a better technique. Let's take a year. Let's phase it out slowly. Let's bring in a whole bunch of contractors. Let's bring in some triple canopy guys or whatever. to just make this process a little smoother,

we'll save lives, and it'll look better on you for the election cycle. Whatever you've got to say to get him to understand, these 100,000 are not going to get it done. But again, you're dealing with politics. And at the time, who knows who was actually pulling the strings, right? But the thing that makes my stomach turn is someone not being aware of what that Afghan president, too,

is saying to them, right? Because the Afghan president is like, yes, sir, yes, sir, of course. We got it, we got it, we got it. Because he's getting millions of dollars a month, probably personally as well. And so to not know that when you're covering a plan with someone who has an ulterior motive to tell you yes, or to be a yes man to you. Yeah. That's something you, as a leader, you have to spot, right?

Then we've all been in groups where there's been the yes men that are just saying what we want to hear. And that's, that gets people killed. It's dangerous. Dangerous. But the fact that they left the computer systems with the names of all the different people who had been helping the U.S., I mean, just little things like that, NVGs, Blackhawks. Like, it is maddening, but I love the way that you put it. And that doesn't define the people that went there and dedicated their lives to doing their best.

They could there because none of us were consulted on how we were going to leave. Exactly. And if it was more of a righteous exit or even more of, I would just say even more of a righteous war. Like a war where it was not a 20 year elongated war like that, they would have served there too. They're doing the bidding on the politician. And so I hope that removes some guilt from people. I have a lot of friends that feel guilt or they've been through some dark, dark times

recounting those days of the withdrawal. And I'm like, hey, man, even if the withdrawal was good or it was a whole different war, you would have done that too. You were just doing your best with what you had in front of you, which is, you know. It's tough when that's the last optic. Yeah, that is.

And it's so public. And people are clinging on to the outside of C-17s and falling off in flight. Like, dude, that's the best we can do as a country. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and the position that those Marines were put in, right?

Where they're sitting there, you know, do they shoot these people? They're just trying to save their own lives so they don't get trampled. Like, dude, that moral dilemma in itself, like, I got just so much respect for those guys that were there, those men and women that were a part of that whole thing, man. Like, when you see the footage, I don't know. I recommend everybody to go look at it, find it, because we need to know what happens when leadership fails. And it's not just like you get to sit back, you know, those Marines didn't just get

to sit back and watch the leadership fail. 13 of them died. And those guys are forever. I mean, the things that they had to do, that's going to take a lot of time to process if you can ever process what they had to do. It's pretty gnarly. Yeah, man.

So. Did you know that your last combat mission was going to be your last one? I think I did. Yeah, so I went, so had a little break, went to Qatar to the headquarters, and that's where I helped build like the air tasking order. So for like a month, I was in Qatar, building the strike packages.

And then I knew I was going to come back fly for two weeks, two weeks of combat missions and then leave. So I knew, maybe I didn't know the exact flight, but once I showed back up, I saw the board that had the schedule on it. And I was like, oh, cool, that's my last combat flight. So I ended up getting 70 combat missions.

How's the last one feel when you were coming in for landing? Oh, dude. It felt oddly just relaxing. I feel like at that point, my whole nervous system had just fully adapted and adjusted. And so it was, It was like a little bit of nostalgia, you know, because I feel like I'd kind of weirdly, like, built a bond with that terrain. Like, I knew the terrain like the back of my hand, right?

I would study it, fly around it. I knew all the provinces by name, you know. So I feel like there was a little bit of like nostalgia of, oh, like, I'm glad to be going home. I'm like, I need to go home. Like, you know, for me, it was seven months. And I know people that listening and you, you guys have deployed for a lot more than that. So I say this, like knowing that, I don't want to speak. that, you know, I'm not respecting that.

But when you know you're about to be done, your body starts to transition, however long it is, whether it's a year, 18 months, seven months. So I think I had started to get that transition where I was like, I need to get out of here. You know what I mean? Yeah. You can feel hard to define, but very easy to feel.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But rewarding, man. I would say rewarding at the end of the day. And that country is beautiful, by the way, if they could get their head out of their ass and have some sort of like... I would like to go back and snowboard the Hindu coach.

Oh my God. Could you imagine? It's, yeah. Also, some pretty dope wingsuit base jumps over there. Yeah. I think it would be sweet grenade each hand. Just go rid and buy. What's up, bitches?

Yeah. I'm back. He goes Andy. Yes. Dude, that's part of Top Gun 3 right there. We're making another one. I think it's going to be probably drone warfare. You think so?

Captain Pete Mitchell better be a two-star admiral by now. He's got to be. Yeah, he's got to be. I'm waiting for the call. I'm pretty sure they're going to call me. Like, we need you. Can you imagine that this is, My wife, I actually am overly enthusiastic about that movie because it drives my wife crazy.

It was, I like aviation. It was a good movie. But I'm also not looking at it like a documentary. Yeah. And she's just like, why is it always Maverick? Can't they call somebody else? No, Maverick is the only one. I'm like, yeah, he's, uh, that's actually incredibly correct.

They wouldn't call somebody else. They wouldn't just find some dude test flying to all of a sudden come in and lead this. Yeah. Tell me about the book. Yeah, man. So it's called Take Command. It kind of just goes back to some of the things we've talked about. I mean, I've seen like what you've done with your book.

I look at it like, dude, it's a roadmap for resilience is how I feel when I'm reading it. I'm like, oh, this is up to my game in resilience in the first like five minutes of reading it. I have actionable things I can take to be more resilience. And that's just a skill that we all use every single day. When I look at what Jocco's done, I'm like, oh, it's ownership. Ownership of the decision you've made. Beautiful. We need that. So I tried to look at it from a fighter pilot perspective where like in my cockpit, you know, there was times I was at a thousand miles an hour, speed of sound. Can I slow this thing down and make a decision? No. Like I have to keep this thing going, even though I'm getting new information. So so my thought is there's a way to take command of your future, take command of your situation before you have to take ownership of it. So you're going to use resiliency too throughout that. But there's this moment as a fighter pilot where you're sitting in that seat.

And if you haven't done some things to develop your decision making process, you can't slow down. You're going a thousand miles an hour. So you better have built those skills beforehand. So yeah, I wanted to give a little like roadmap how I've done it and unknowingly done it for a long period of time. And integrated a lot of my experiences rather than just compartmentalizing and how you can do that. You know, the art of war talks about a lot of knowing yourself, but they don't tell you how. And so I think we're all operating this human operating system. And if we operate it while we're in command as opposed to on autopilot, we're going to win.

Our relationships are going to be better. Our business is going to be better. Military units will be better. Police departments will be better. And some of the principles talk kind of the things we've talked about so far. I integrate some of those war stories. But more so some of my failure things I wish I had done better. I was never the guy that was really good at relationships while I was flying those high performance jets.

And I can make all kinds of little victim statements about why, right? And I did for a long time. And so in the book, I kind of talk about, all right, here's some of the moments where I started to take control of that victim voice and say, no, you know what? I'm in command of you. And I want to end up in this place that this victim's not going to bring me. I want to get to hear where I have a family, where I have a great relationship with my spouse, where my unit's running incredibly well.

And I can go to bed at night and just thank God and be grateful for. for my life instead of building stories about being a victim because I lost a friend, which I did for a long time. But there was little techniques and tools that I even did then to make it through high performance situations, like breathing. I remember sitting in the cockpit. There was times where I felt like the little bolts on the T-38 cockpit were like teeth and they were going to like kill me.

Like that's where my brain went. I know it sounds crazy, dude. Like the brain does some wild stuff. It's the craziest thing I've ever heard, but it's kind of up there. It's pretty out there. Yeah. But then I started to reorient that. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do 5D breaths, center myself, get these little stupid voices out of my head. And then I'm going to do my ground ops. And so the instructor is behind me, right? And I would just do my like box breathing or whatever you want to call it. Right. And I'm like, I hope they don't see me doing this. But that was how I was regulating myself through having seen some of that experience of the crashes. I used it in other crashes when I lost other friends. But I think we're all going to go through tough times. So if you take. command before those things happen. You know how to operate this system a little better so you're not just on autopilot

and then wondering why 10 years later you've got a beer gut, your kids hate you, and you haven't gotten to the career success you want. Well, like, now's the time. Even if you're at that point, I think there's things we can do. It's going to be a lot more painful. Yeah, it only stops if you give up, man. Yeah, man. And you said it best, the first podcast we did.

Things don't get easier. Like, they get more fulfilling when you are able to make it through it. They're certainly not easier though. It's like, yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I have a little son. My son, I'm no longer with his mother. That was a really hard situation.

So I include some of the lessons that were learned from that. He was born at four pounds. He had to have an emergency surgery and had a stroke during that surgery. So he couldn't use the left side of his body. And they told us he might never crawl and might never walk. And so that was me feeling like, like I literally would, you know, felt like I wanted to just crawl up in a little ball and be like, what do I do?

You know, a special needs kid that needs me to do physical therapy with him, 90 minutes a day. Can I even do that? What is it? I'm the top gun guy. You know, I have this like top gun post for my wall. I'm the cool guy. Like, I'm not supposed to have this happen to me. All that voice started creeping in.

But then I took command of the situation. And I was like, no, you know what? What if I just fully let go of the victim voice and give this little kid the best chance at walking possible? And so I stepped away from flying for the airlines and looked at some of my. own health issues too that I was having my back, but I wouldn't have done it if I wouldn't have decided to take command for my son. That's why I do 60 minutes of physical therapy with him every day and he crawled and now he's starting to walk on his own and he's beaten the odds. But I feel like that moment could have gone a lot of could have gone totally other direction, could have gone way far

south. It could have for sure. If I threw my hands up and just said, no, you know what, I don't want to deal with this. I can't process this. Now I've integrated that. Like the son, my son's a reason why I have a YouTube channel that's relatively successful. Because otherwise, I would have probably been sitting in a cockpit, which would have been great, but I would have been ignoring some of my own issues with my health. But now that I focused on helping this little kid thrive, you know, he is thriving in his own way. And I created a YouTube channel that I feel like impacting millions of people because of that decision that I thought was the impossible one to make.

But I think there was a mindset shift that I tried to just pack into the book to give people that are going through hard things or have challenges ahead of them, which we all have something. A little roadmap, a little something extra. Do you think you would have enjoyed flying for the airlines? Well, I flew for him for five years. It was hard and it was cool. I feel like there were great parts about it, but then there were hard parts about it. A lot of time on the road.

A lot of time on the road. And you're sitting for 12 hours a day, minimum, sometimes more, right? And I think, and you're sitting in the seat shaking. So if you have any type of back, things from the military or anything, good luck. that part's rough. And then I think the feeling I got, and I'm so grateful for pilots and air marshals that do this for a living,

like it is not easy work. It looks like it might be kind of easy, but you're flying tired sometimes, right? Even though you're getting the rest you should, flying can be like playing a game of chess. And so chest, you're burning thousands of calories sitting there. And so you're flying, you're burning those calories, you're tired, and then you're starting your day at 6 a.m.

You might not until like 8, 9 p.m. or something. like that. You're away from your family. So that's stressful. You're eating not the greatest food. And so these air marshals and pilots, I have solidarity with them because I did it for five years. And I felt so ungrounded sometimes after four or five days of sitting in that little tin can. And so double, if I could give any advice, it would just be figure out your health issues now. Get your body right. Figure it out. And if you're going to keep doing it, take a little bit of time off. if you can, get the back right, get the mine right. But these people that just chase the money in the cockpit, man, it's pretty detrimental.

I mean, you see it. Airline pilots aren't the healthiest group, right? So my other public service announcement, I guess, is take care of yourself. We need you. Like, we need air marshals. We need pilots. So I was grateful that I was able to step away, get my back right. And it just led to YouTube.

So now I'm full-time YouTube, but it's not an easy lifestyle. People look at it and they're like, oh, they're just a bus driver. Like, yeah, there's times where it is. mind numbing. I'm not going to say it's not. But then there's a lot of times where it's crucial. I remember landing in crosswinds on the outskirts of a hurricane, landing in Atlanta,

packed with our aircraft was packed with humanitarian supplies that we were trying to get down to the islands, right? And that's important. That's so important getting that done. So there's days where it's not easy and challenging. But most of the time, it's pretty mind-numbing. Do you think you could barrel roll? a delta plane.

Hold my stay salty watch this. I would love to try. Keep it in a nice, just 1G, nothing crazy. I think you could do it. I think you could do it for sure. Well, there's videos out there about like the 717,

I think, doing a role and it was a test pilot. But again, when it comes to aerobatics, there's a science to it and the fighter jet is the most quick to do it. But the same principles apply. So if you watch that 717 role,

test pilot does a really smart job, powers up, you know, it's going a little faster. Nose comes up and then you unload. So if you unload the wings on those things, then it just... Snaps right over. Yeah, because there's no air pressure or there's no gravity to keep the plane from moving. So it's just kind of like it's floating. It's like you're in like a zero G situation floating.

If you have some force that exerts then, it's just there's no resistance. And so you can see the 717 pilot do the roll and it's this barrel roll. But if they would have gone into it, just like a video game and then just like, well, like this. dude, that would have not been, that would not have ended well. I don't even know how you go from an F-16. We'll just call it the Porsche of the sky to flying a commercial airliner. Yeah, it is weird. I mean, you're basically doing the exact opposite of everything that you did before,

but kind of the same, but a pace that is glacially slow in comparison. 100%, man. And yeah, I don't think it's good for a fighter pilot's mental health to go into that. Like, it takes a toll. So you have to have something you're doing on the outside. world. You know, you have to, like for me, side by sides, off-roading, skiing. Dude, I think you have to have something like that that's intense. Otherwise, you're going to go nuts. But I felt that, because it's kind of that addiction I told you about after leaving the Thunderbirds, I would feel

that itch, like just sitting up there in the plane and I feel like that was my little bit of my fighter pilot dying inside. It was just slowly, like, I'll take the take off on this one. Go ahead and turn off the bank angle indicator alert. I did a takeoff out of the Virgin Islands one time in a 737 and I was like, hey, I'm going to do a hand flown just departure. Cool with that. And he was like, yeah, okay, sounds good. And so, you know, within limits, I just like hand flew everything, which is not normal. Normally you have auto throttles or everything else on.

And I just went to like the full that the 737 could do. And I was like yawning. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop. I was like, okay. Sorry. Near. Yeah. My heart just got a little more black.

Do you feel it in the F-16 when you go Super Sonic or is it just a number that appears on a screen? You feel it more when you exit Supersonic than when you're going into Supersonic. But yeah, with Supersonic, it's kind of cool. The six of us on the Thunderbirds went Supersonic out in the Gulf of America, before it was Gulf of America. Yeah. And it was kind of a non-event. It was like, oh, okay. You're going to say, yeah, you watch a number pass.

Yeah, I felt a bow wave off of the jet next to me, which is kind of weird, like some sort of like air cushion was there, which is different than what you would feel. not supersonic what's it feel like when you're passing back through is it shutter a little bit it's just kind of like just yeah just kind of like i feel like it's a little bit of like a almost like the viscosity of the air grads you a little bit yeah yeah yeah exactly okay one of the cool things too though when you go supersonic is and i notice that's the first time i went super sonic and the t 38 is everything gets quiet so interesting even that engine noise right like you've got some engine vibration that's seeping through the frame of the jet but that noise is kind of mostly being pushed that way yeah you're outstripping the noise that's interesting yes you're outrunning your own

which is kind of mind-blowing. But yeah, just got kind of quiet and calm. And I was like, wait, we're Super Sonic now. It's like, yep, you're in the Super Sonic Club. I was like, oh, okay. That's pretty dope. Yeah. That is pretty dope.

We have been at it for almost three hours. Are you serious? Yeah, man. What do you want to leave people with? I mean, we can do this for another three hours, but we've got to do your show. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, Max Afterburner, YouTube channel. Yeah.

Fantastic. Love the stuff you're doing. The OSint stuff, which is open source intelligence for people who don't know what that means. Your book is getting ready to come out. Has the beverage already launched? Not yet. No. So that'll launch in November. What did you end up calling that thing? We're calling it Max Afterburner Energy. Yeah. Oh, yeah, talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about it. It's a huge sticker. Max After Burner Energy. The bigger than better, right? The watch, the fighter pilot watch. Like, come on, man, I got to go bigger and better. With their dog fighting, you got to shoot the

watch. I'm like, God, you guys are so gay. But no, it's the energy drink I always wanted when I was flying in combat. So it's got brain healthy, neutropics in it, a lot of caffeine, and then it's got althianine. So kind of smooth, avoid the crash. Dude, I drank rippets. Anybody who's been in the military? Who didn't? Shugged ribbets. The heartburn, the energy crash. I was like, nope, I want to build the actual drink that I wish I had. So that's what I did. We had guys, maybe I was one, maybe I wasn't, that had custom pockets for rippets. No way, dude. And we would get to the ORP or operational ready point, which is you're on the edge of getting ready to go to party town and you would hear people just, g g g g g g g g g g g g g g it's game time baby pregame ripets.

Yeah, you had about 30 minutes and then your intestines were going to turn inside out. But you're like hair on fire, let's partay. Exactly. Yeah. But if you're going to be a fighter pilot and drink an energy drink, make sure you check your cabin pressure altitude. Yes, that is key. Yeah, it could get you killed.

that energy drinking sandwich. Watch out for that. Man. And then my editor will kill me if I don't say MABbook.com. That's where you can find the book. Okay. M. M.A.B. Book.com.

Who'd you publish with? We're publishing with Brave, but they have kids books and then they have an adult division called Cedar and Stone. Okay. It's an interesting journey. People I know who have self-published

been successful and augured in, people who have done like the major publishers, successful in augured in. Yeah. I don't think it matters. as long as the quality is there. Cool. Yeah, so take the time for the quality.

I think at the end of the day, I was talking with my publisher about it. He said basically there's two spikes or two potential metrics for success. The first one is actually all about your ability to market yourself, and that's the bestseller list. Yeah.

But then it either trap doors and disappears because your first wave of marketing was enough to get the attention, but it didn't deliver on what you had to offer. Got it. And then it will dip down because books are constantly coming out, right? And so it's every single week.

it'll come down, but then it comes back up and has a nice sustained long tail. Long tail on it. That is a better metric of the quality of the work versus your ability to market. Cool, man. No, that's awesome. And something that you've done in your book that I notice is it's not just like a rah, rah, rah, me, me. It's like a practical like application.

And I think the people that I see do like the, this was me. This is how cool I am. It was like pop for a second and they die. So I kind of wanted to follow your lead and just do something that was something that for the long term people could have is like a little bit of. of a manual, go back and check in on it. Yeah. Use it for things that you could apply to your life right now,

not some esoteric type stuff. And I think you've done a really good job. My wife read it. And she had one of the first galley copies. And I don't know if she was doing this just to piss me off. I'll assume she was. No. She had it for like a month that didn't touch it.

And I think I was given six. So I'm, this one is for my wife. This is special. Everybody else that I gave one to had read it. and gave me feedback. And I'm just like, hey, honey, what did you think of the book? She's, oh, I haven't read yet. So she finally reads it on a flight.

And she says, you know, a lot of stories will start off and, you know, they'll open with maybe like a mistake. But then there's this hero's journey where they build themselves back. She goes, I think you forgot that part of the book because you just kept talking about your mistakes. She's like, I kept waiting for you to like build yourself back up. But it was mistake after mis. I'm like, yeah, haven't I not told you at least a little bit about who I am as a person in my career?

It was a train wreck. Yeah. The vulnerability, man. That's hilarious that your wife said that. Yeah. Because she sees you as a bit of a hero, right? She's like, I want to. I don't think that's possible.

I think that's her silent tell that she sees you as this badass hero. And it didn't come through in the book. But the vulnerability is what you were going for in the book. I was just trying to tell the truth. Yeah. Honestly, I wish that things were as glorious or as. romanticized in real life, but they're not. Yeah, they're not, man.

A lot of the times it's a hot, sloppy mess and you're doing the best you can with what you have. For sure. And the people that are vulnerable, to me, that's the emotional intelligence to actually get better. Well, I think people can learn from that if you're honest with it. What do you learn from if you get the eraser out and like, we won't talk about that, this or this.

Oh, look at this amazing event. Like, okay, but what did it take to get to that? To me, that's the juice, is the valley in between those two things. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're spot on. Well, I think it's also,

we all care about perception of us in some way, right? Like, but then it's understanding that maybe us trying to present that perfect perspective is actually keeping us

from real connection or keeping us from real performance, keeping us from relationships. Yeah. But your vulnerability, like the vulnerability you have in the book, dude, it's,

it's not common. And so I think that's why your book's doing so well. It was easy for me. I was like, yeah. Mike, talking to the editor, do you want like 40 stories?

of me making mistakes. How many times do you want me to reference being getting in trouble? That's awesome, dude. The Tucson story is too good. It's awesome. What I love about that is that I've had one of the bouncers reach out now. It was hilarious. This was within the last 12 months. He reached, he goes, hey, is the bar you're referencing this one in Tucson? Because I was the bouncer there. And I said, yeah, that was the one. And he writes back, you mean to tell me that I've been listening to the same dipshit for years. The guy I caught is on his driving to work every year. He's like, you're that dip shit?

I've been listening to you. There's no way you're the same person. I'm like, hey, man, you know, nice to meet you. And the cop that reached out, which I included the email of, yeah, I arrested you. I'm like, yes. Yeah. Dude, it's such a cool formula. I mean, it is pretty special when you can be vulnerable by your mistakes.

It's relatable. And it impacts. It actually makes a difference. It's the people that shield and hide who they are. That, you know, kind of stay, they stay stuck. Yeah, man. Well, cool. Let's wrap this one up.

And then we can do whatever you want to do for yours. How do you want to do yours?