Jocko Podcast - 433: What Aerial Combat Teaches Us About Leadership and Life. With "Good Deal" Dave Berke.

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Jocko, Dave Berke and Echo Charles discuss aerial combat and the lessons we can take from and bring them into our lives.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 433 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Also joining us tonight, Dave, Burke. Good evening, Dave. So sometimes Dave, you and I wander into conversations about aerial combat. It's actually surprising to me sometimes how rarely we do that because of your entire career, minus what, six months or one year that you were on the ground.

But the rest of your entire career was aerial combat. And I, it's funny, you will tell me something about aerial combat. At least this was probably two years ago, three years ago. You would tell me something about aerial combat. And I would kind of interject that, yeah, you see, that's like the, that's covered move or whatever. And as, you know, as another subject would come up, you'd explain to me how you'd do something in aerial combat. And I would always see these connections. And I thought it would be good to kind of share those connections with everybody so that they can continue to see how.

So if you see the way broadly, you can see it in all things. So, aerial combat. First of all, when we talk about aerial combat, when you hear the word aerial combat, I know some people are thinking of a dog fight right now. What are you thinking about? I'm not thinking of a dog fight. Not that you can't be in a dog fight, but when I think of aerial combat, I'm thinking about a thousand different things an airplane can do to contribute to the battlefield.

And the range of that thing is so wide. Like there's so many different things that is that I don't go to one specific thing. I just think about, and certainly what I grew up with, how much more a person in an airplane can do now than they could do 30, 40, 50, and beyond years ago. It's pretty complicated stuff. And at the same time, every time we talk about it, we find these super obvious similarities

and how simple that stuff is, too, from what we know about everything else too. So there's a lot to discuss, but in the end, there's going to be a lot of parallels. I was reading a book, and I forget which book it was. There was some book about air, and they were explaining how the machine, Like when we think of a World War II plane,

either a B-17, a P-51, a P-3, any one of them, we think of, like, we think of antiques. We think of antiques, you know? When they were going out to those planes to fly them, they were in the most modern, badass science, the edge of science aircraft ever. And it's weird to think about that.

You know, I mean, imagine Echo Charles, you're going out to, like, like a Model T Ford. And when we think of, when we see them getting into a model T Ford, we think, oh, that's just like an antique car. But for them, that was a Lamborghini. That was like the highest end,

freaking Tesla. That's what they're getting into. So it's weird. When you say, oh, yeah, 30, 40, 50 years ago, it's totally different and you can do so much more now. But for those guys, did you watch Masters of the Air yet? 100%. Yeah.

Yeah. Anybody that hasn't watched Masters of the Air, it's a, it's on Apple, TV, and it's I would say it's the band of brothers, the Pacific, and now they did one for the guys flying the B-17s and the fighter pilots. It's really focused on the B-17 guys, which by the way, my great-uncle is a B-17 pilot.

Did I tell you that? Yeah, we talked about that when it did the Bud Anderson podcast. Legendary P-51 pilot. Crazy. And then you and I did that Air Force survival and what they talked about, and they showed it well in Masters of the Air. What they talk about is like you know your plane is,

going down for 10 minutes. It's not like for you, Dave Burke, your, your plane's going down. It's like, in a lot of cases, you're getting out real quick. Well, what's the longest you would be able to have? I guess you could have,

you could maybe running out a fuel or something like this. There's probably some small scenarios by which you know you're going to be in it for a while, but it's what you're talking about like in a B-17. You know, and it's even the process of like going down is going to take a long time. Yeah,

what are they flying at 30? thousand 40,000 feet yep and so they're a glide path I mean they've got 10 15 minutes yeah to try and figure this out now sometimes your aircraft's on fire sometimes it's getting shot up still sometimes it's falling apart but that was crazy so when you think of air so when most people think of aerial combat they think of dog fight when you think of aerial combat you think of this entire mechanism that's going to take place this giant airborne machine yeah that's going to go in and do what and to that too I also don't just think of one plane against another plane. I think of how my plane contributes to all the other

planes that I'm bringing with me, same airplanes, different airplanes, and then all the other things I might be fighting against that are in the air on the ground or elsewhere too. So I think the image of like air-to-air combat as me and you were fighting in our planes is not how I think of it. I don't think any modern fighter pilot thinks of it in those terms. But certainly the roots of that are there and you still train to those things. But the complexity of what you might be doing is is so much different than it used to be. So what are we doing? Well, we're doing a lot of different things.

In fact, if you think about what it is you're doing, the start of any of this, of anything you're going to do in an airplane is you have to figure what it is you're trying to accomplish. You've got to identify what the goal is. Sometimes in simplest terms, when we talk about planning a mission in an airplane, we have a saying, and I know there's similarities,

we have a saying that you start with a target and work backwards, meaning you start with what you're trying to accomplish in the end. The target might not be a bomb on a target, but it's the outcome. What are you trying to accomplish? Sometimes airplanes are there just to make sure that nobody else can operate there. And you've probably heard some very similar, some terms similar to the phrase like air supremacy or air dominance or air superiority.

Or just we're going to fly around here just to make sure nobody else shows up to disrupt us going on the ground. The range of missions, I mean, I could probably think of 10 off the top of my head of different things you might be doing. Sometimes you just gathering information. Sometimes you are literally dropping bombs. you're shooting down on the airplanes, sometimes you're getting information to pass to other people. And so you have to figure out really what it is you're trying to do. And then of course, now, modern fighters too, like the ones that I flew, you might be doing three or four things at once on any given mission. In the end, nine times out of ten, you're there to facilitate someone else's

outcome, not just your outcome. More often than not, the way we are typically raised, and this is really in reinforced at a place like Top Gun. We are the supporting asset. We are. We are the supporting asset. We are there to support somebody else. Most of the time, some are on the ground, but in the end, the mindset for a fighter pilot, certainly a modern fighter pilot is on there to help someone else accomplish their mission. What about when you're looking at like a near pier like China? Yeah, there's some cool missions where, yeah, there's some cool missions out there when we're talking about. Probably the classic mission that, that if you were to say, hey, you can only do one thing. What are you going to go do? We would do something called

OCA, offensive counter air. I'm going to take my jets. I'm going to go fly around. in a very offensive posture, looking for other airplanes to kill them, because what we're trying to establish is that dominance. It has to be done, so at some point when the ground maneuver starts, people on the ground start moving, I have to ensure that they are safe from air attack.

And sometimes that starts with just dropping enemy fighters, offensive counter air. Sadly, that is a very uncommon mission. Most of the time, when we are flying, most enemies choose not to participate in that environment. Now, you said it in your peer, We know that's going to it has happened and it can't happen and it and it will at some point in the future again That's kind of like the dream mission. It's pretty low

Probability at least right now. So you're looking for out what your end state is going to be that's sort of the first thing that you're you're looking for which is yeah like you said in the seal teams in business we look at what's the end state we're trying to achieve and listen Can that it can that end state change over time? Yeah and if you have a closed mind that can cost you you know that's an important part about the indirect approach is it gives you an opportunity to say yeah you know this idea that I had wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be and we need to make some adjustments so but you do have to start with some kind of an end in mind once you've done that now what are you putting together the package yeah right right before the in between those two things we talked about identifying what the outcome is the goal the mission the target what you're trying why you're there and as you think about what the package is one of things you really want to take in

consideration is what is a threat what is the potential risk of doing this. And I think the reason why you want to think about the threat, if not first, at least simultaneously, is when you decide what you're going to bring, a lot of it is in response to what might be out there. If there was no, like you are operating with total impunity, you could bring whatever you wanted. That is about as unrealistic as I'm going to start a business and I'm going to have no friction in doing it. You're going to have some problems, whether it's your competitors, the marketplace, whatever it might be. You got to think about what that threat is and what their capability is. And I think if you put a generic assessment, you don't want to get too specific,

but they're a high threat, a median threat, a low threat. That'll indicate what it is you want to bring. A really high threat, risky mission, you're going to bring different assets than a relatively low threat mission that has some capability, but maybe not ones that you're super concerned about. That's going to dictate what you bring. And then once you get a sense of what the threat can do, then you put together your package or what you're going to bring to the fight. And then this starts off. So you roll in. How is it a good execute? The first thing you got to do is take out the ground defenses, right? Yeah.

And in some ways, we're speaking pretty generically. There's a whole science behind this. I mean, people in the military go to school for how to do this stuff. So we're... Wait, what school? Like the war college? Yes. To plan the air side of an operation?

Totally. And there's so much nuance in that. So, you know, every scenario, every mission is different. But generically speaking, the way you described it, that's right. You want to think about the outcome you're trying to achieve. And even that, you know, We didn't even talk to it, but you could even think it in those terms, like, even those missions vary. So if you think about World War II, like that's a total destruction mission.

You're talking about the B-17s, the B-51s. We're flying over Germany to annihilate them. Think about Desert Storm was like, we want to take this threat and move them out of a particular area. And it was like, okay, move the Iraqis out of Kuwait. And if we've done that, that was a little bit more limited objective. So even even that outcome varies a little bit in terms of what we're trying to accomplish the total annihilation scenario

Doesn't happen that often and you know you think about it. That's that's like World War II Pacific European theaters Sometimes we're not we're actually not doing that well the guys that were teaching you when you were going through the rag and stuff with all all those guys like mile of death guys from Kuwait Yeah, how many of those guys were there? So when I started flying Hornets in 97 Oh yeah that it was prime desert storm guys. They had just done it like six years earlier. So they weren't even that, they weren't like old crusty guys.

They were like senior captains and junior majors, which means like they were experienced guys, but they weren't like these old, super old dudes, like Vietnam level guys. They were fairly young guys that had awesome stories and had awesome experiences there. But even like that example was even inside that conflict, that was not a World War II scenario.

You know, what we were trying to do. And so even inside that, like what your objectives are, And sometimes the objectives is just, we did this for years. It's like, we're just going to provide a presence. We used to call those like the no-fly zone. We did that in Iraq for like a decade, which was just, we're just going to fly up in the north and south, just to tell everybody. So you don't forget we're still here. We're not really doing that much.

So the range of even what you're trying to accomplish varies from overall mission to overall mission. But eventually you're going to get to some point where you're going to execute on some kind of kinetic mission. Where you're going to do something. You dropped the bomb up there. Yeah. For what was the situation? Operates in Southern Watch. Yeah.

Dude, it's the start of my combat career. What year was that? 2000. Spring of 2000. Yep. So we're talking nine years after Desert Storm. And not quite three years before OIF. So yeah, 2000.

Do you remember what month it was? I think May. I think I was there. Yeah, you might have been. I think I was there. I think we talked about this. We definitely have talked about it, but kind of figure out what the outcome was.

And this was a situation where we had been doing presence patrols, relatively non-kinetic, meaning we weren't doing a lot of dropping at all. And we even had criteria for dropping. Like we could only drop for a certain criteria. And typically the criteria was below a certain, and I don't remember what the longitude line was, but some place that they weren't, we said you can't go south of this line,

whatever the line was. I don't remember what it was. You could Google it. And if you go south of this line, that's going to trigger what we call a response. And they brought a surface air missile south of that line. And their hope was like they could do in the middle of the night and get a lucky shot against an American fighter and shoot them down.

That was their plan. It was literally an SA3 missile. I knew exactly what it was. We found it. And we went on launch and I blew it up. It was awesome. It was like a super cool mission. I mean,

looking back, obviously, like at the time, it was probably super exciting. It was probably not the most dynamic. How many people on that deployment from your ship dropped a bomb? Not that many. I was one of the first,

interestingly for whatever reason on that that deployment once that happened mine was kind of the start of maybe a good solid month of the Iraqis just what carrier were you on I was on the John C. Stennis do you know who you relieved in there because I was on the JFK okay so the the the the JFK I think is the carrier before us you had a squadron a Marine Squadron called the 251 the I don't remember yeah there's a Marine Horned squadron there I think the JFK was the was the ship that we relieved. Yeah, so we were there for the millennium

and then we left, so we left in the spring. Yeah, so you muster relieved us. Yeah, we got there in like March, April, this thing's going off like April, May, June, and we leave in June and come home in July. Check. Yeah. So you dropped this bomb, come back,

but the guys that had taught you were mile of death guys, and now you're the big combat experience guy. Yeah, right. I've got a whole bomb under my belt. Was that your first deployment? First deployment, first bomb. That is pretty, that's good, right? For 2000, pre-9-11, dude, that was huge.

I was almost a celebrity for a little while there. I mean, it was a big deal. Oh, yeah, for sure. It just wasn't happening. We took down on that often. Like everyone was doing shipboarding over in the Gulf and we ended up taking down this big Russian oil tanker. And it was on CNN and it was a big deal at the time. And the same thing.

Like at the time, I was so stoked that we got to do that. You know, like it was awesome. Heck yeah. It was super fired up. Looking back, you're like, yeah. You go back to Afghanistan. understand and obviously the fact two are like in retrospect but at the time dude huge deal huge deal but an example of a conflict with like very limited objectives we were not going to use

oh they brought a missile south of that let's go drop bombs on that that wasn't happening so even inside of how we use airplanes it's all based on the outcome like the strategic national objectives we have airplanes even though that they're a quote tactical asset certainly on the fighter side they have massive strategic implications if an american airplane gets shot down News all over the world, obviously, as you know. An American fighter drops bombs or shoot something down. Massive strategic implications. So even down at the lowest level of a single-seat fighter pilot by himself,

he has to know that what he's doing has huge impact across the entire national strategic scope. And you have to know what it is. We're going to get to this at some point. But that's a huge thing you have to think about. Were you thinking about? How old are you at this time? 25? No, like 29.

You're 29? So you're 29 years old. No, no, I'm 27. I'm 27. Yeah. And you felt you had a pretty good grasp on that strategic implications? I had a very good grasp. I had a really good squadron that taught things in great detail, like rules of engagement,

things that a lot of legal, like things that aren't all that exciting, but are super, super, super important. And so we had a squadron that put a lot of focus and stress on the important things. So I felt very capable and prepared and I understood what I was doing. Yeah. I even expected the aftermath that I got, which was like a big prop. I have some cool articles that I printed up like a big propaganda campaign where like some article came out. Like I had literally bombed like a baby milk factory or something like that. You know, like, oh, orphans have been murdered, you know.

Yeah. And they're like, this is what's going to happen. And like, so we had a really good sense of what we're doing. I think the country and the carrier certainly were well prepared for even the aftermath of those decisions. Now, how do you think about things? Since a lot of this is much more doctrinalized, how do you think about things from an unconventional standpoint when you're thinking about like when you talk about unmanned,

when you talk about remote, when you talk about using stealth, like what does that look like from your perspective? Do you, so if you're a conventional force commander, if you're in charge of an army battalion or an army brigade or a Marine Corps battalion, you would say, oh, here's where I can fit some special operations into this thing, or here's how I can do this in an unconventional way. Yeah.

What are the opportunities for that when it comes to aerial combat? Yeah, I think that the unconventional use of airplanes, and airplanes is like UAVs, drones, regular airplanes too. I think the last several years have allowed, like a lot of pioneering of things that are very unconventional, partially out of necessity, but also partially out of mitigating the risk of like putting a person in a plane flying an enemy territory to get a relatively limited return on that things like UAVs have made a totally I think a dramatic change in how we think about operating not to say that we

look at a UAV as a like a disposable asset but it's a totally different mindset of if the risk associated with that doesn't involve a human being an American human being and so I think it opens up the opportunity for a ton of non-traditional ways of how to operate where 20 years ago we might not even think of it. Did you listen to the RFK podcast? Not yet. So I didn't know this. I knew that his, that JFK's older brother, Joe, was killed in World War II.

Do you know how he's killed? He was killed. They were thinking unconventionally and they made, I want to say it was B-17 bombers that were remote control. And they were testing this theory to take. these B-17 bombers remote control, put them up in the air, filled them with explosives, and then basically let these things kamikaze themselves into the target. So they did it. They designed it.

But they couldn't make it take off on its own. They couldn't remote control take off. They couldn't figure that out because allegedly there's a bunch of stuff a pilot has to do to get a plane to take off. So they couldn't get it to do it. The reaction time was too slow. So what they needed was they needed pilots to take the aircraft off. And then once they turned it on the final IP, arm the thing, and then jump out, parachute out.

That was the plan. And probably parachute out, you know, either in, I would say probably over the channel or something like that. So that was the plan. And so Joe Kennedy, he went up to do this and armed the thing and was getting ready to parachute out and it detonated and killed him. And like whoever else was with him, the other pilot or whatever. So yeah, this idea of unmanned aircraft is a pretty old idea. And but now, man, I mean, a six-year-old can fly drones easily, easily flying drones, take off land, hover, like do all the stuff that's incredible. It's totally different there.

Are you still, so the last time we talked about this specific subject, I don't know what time range you gave me, but I was saying like the manned fight. pilots are the man fighter aircraft and bomber aircraft are they don't have much time left you said like another two generations maybe one generation 30 years I think you said 30 years yeah have you changed yet no I think my attitude is still and I think of things generationally that's a term that we use in aviation like fifth generation fourth generation there's not a time limit on that I would say like a generation of fighters last between 30 and 50 years and so When I think like how old is F-18 right now? The F-18 first flew in like 80.

I think it came to the fleet in 83. Okay. So I just did an Instagram post like, happy birthday to the F-16, it turned 50. Now the F-16 is still like a super relevant airplane too. So 50 is like, it's going to be around for another 20 years at least. So when I think of generations of airplanes, I don't necessarily think of how long they're going to last.

I think about what happens to the design of those planes. designing and building a generation of airplanes takes a long time. We just started really fielding aggressively in the last 10 years, our fifth generation, which means the next generation, the sixth generation is all being thought of, design, contemplated, and eventually going to get built here relatively soon. How much faster is that? Is the six generation manned? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wouldn't it be faster just to go unmanned right now? Well, my basic assumption would be is they haven't made that. They haven't gotten it to do what they can't get it to do what they wanted to do unmanned yet. I think the confluence of those things. My point behind that is they're going to build another generation of fighters. We'll just generically call it the sixth generation fighter. It's coming. I don't know, 10 years, whatever, 15 years, something like that.

My belief is that they won't build another generation of man fighters. That doesn't mean the 6-gen plane won't fly for 30, 40, 50 years and you'll have some declining usage. of ban like this plane when they build them however many they build like somebody will be flying that until it's no longer useful but i i would not be shocked if the next generation of airplanes they no longer putting a person in the cockpit now dude i had people when i said that on this podcast like you know guys like you're crazy and other people are like no that makes perfect sense of course i don't know but i think about how long it takes and what they're trying to do and what it's and the next generation is going to be and then i think of the generation after that and the

fact that these planes last 30, 40, 50 years, the seventh generation of fighters is probably not going to have a person in it. Is it what I think? I think, again, I'm a total idiot novice over here, but I'm going to chime in anyways because I'm feeling like it. It seems to me like there will be another sort of like another line of evolution that's going on right now with unmanned aircraft. Then that line is going to overtake.

Supply, yeah? Yeah, it's going to supplant and overtake the sixth generation. They're going to live together. And the man world is going to be in a decline and the unman world is going to be in an incline and eventually one way job. Because also you look at what is the ultimate objective, right? That's what you started with? Totally. Like what's the goal?

The goal is to do this. Well, you don't. There's ways to do it without even having that type of aircraft. You could do with 40 little drones that can fly in that are expendable and it can create as much havoc or deliver what you need to deliver and zero risk to human life. And I think it's people don't we don't do a good job predicting the future. And I think oftentimes it's hard for us to we, I think, typically underestimate how how quickly things can evolve on the technology side. And typically things evolve faster than we imagine. And it's not hard for me to imagine a world where the remote AI virtual world just accelerate so much faster than we think, I think 30 years from now. Like it's not hard for me to picture like, dude. But we're going to be doing things nobody, there are a few people can imagine. And that the need for a person flying around like I did is going to be far less necessary. Now here's another debate from the air world that can come up from time to time.

And it really does relate to everything that we do as human beings. Multi-roll versus single-roll aircraft. So first of all, explain what a multi-roll versus single-roll is. And then we'll get into it. Dude, it's really how it sounds is for years and years, we built what we called single-purpose airplanes. by design, you know, a fighter would be designed to shoot down other airplanes. A bomber would be designed just to hit targets on the ground. And at some point, and what's really interesting, too, is like even single-purpose airplanes

quickly evolved into multi-role airplanes. But it really met the person or the people inside the machine, had to be proficient in a lot of different things. The F-18 that I flew, at least on paper technically, was the very first aircraft designated as both a fighter and an attorney. attack, meaning it was built from the ground up with the expectation that the pilot will be able to conduct fighter missions and attack missions, air to air to air to ground. Now, at the same time that the Hornet was being built and proliferated, there was an airplane

called the F-16, which technically was a fighter, very quickly evolved into a multi-role machine, so fighter and attack and surface, suppress some enemy defenses, multi-mission thing. So we've had several of those for many generations, but the Hornet technically was the first one designed to do that. A classic example would be at the same time the horn is coming on to the scene in the late 80s, you know, late 70s, early 80s, what an airplane called the F-15 Eagle, which to this day only does air-to-air missions. Now there's several different things you can do air-to-air, but it is strictly a fighter. That's one of the reasons why the eagle, which is they couldn't even, they don't provide ground support? Zero. It is a single mission

aircraft, the fighter mission. Now again, there's a bunch of different things that sit inside that, but they are not doing anything air to ground. There's no attack capability in that machine. Basically, everything has been built since the early 80s has had multi-mission capability. The debate is, and by the way, there are some other airplanes that were built just for air to ground. Like the A10 is a great example, like the classic ultimate cast airplane. Cannot shoot down other airplanes. Can't shoot a gun or a missile at another fighter. That's a Single mission, of course there's several missions that's inside that, but the debate is Should we have a whole bunch of different airplanes that do all these different things? Because if you're just an airground guy, you can specialize that and be really really good at that or do you need a machine

That does a whole bunch of different things and the risk is what they would say is oh, you're a jack of all trades You're a master of none, which means you're going to be deficient in all of those. Did the F-15? Would the F-15s flying missions in Afghanistan and Iraq then? No The Eagle? Yeah, no Damn. None. In fact, the Eagle community, which had done really, really well in Desert Storm, when Iraq, OIF was kicking off in 03, the Eagle community was like, here we go. And we had spun up the Eagle community to go to Iraq to go get some again. And not a single aircraft from either Iraq or Afghanistan was launched against the American forces and very quickly they literally just sent the Eagles home to create ramp space for other other platforms. Eagles had no engagement in OIF, no engagement in Afghanistan and have not had any involvement in either those conflicts. The 15C. It's a single mission platform, unbelievably good

at it. But no place, no relevance in those conflicts. Doesn't mean it's a irrelevant airplane. In fact, there's a really strong argument to be made that the reason nobody, the Iraqis didn't launch an aircraft is they knew the eagle was there. So while they might not be getting any kills, it's serving its purpose as a deterrent, but there's no like objective missiles getting launched and planes getting blown out of the sky, so you can't show what you're doing. But every Eagle pilot knows out there that the reason, the main reason the Iraqi Air Force didn't fly against the Americans is because how well the Eagle did in desert storms.

So they're like, we just won't do this. They just pulled them into the desert and put them in the sand. F-18 versus F-15, same pilot, which one wins in a dog fight? in a dog fight Yeah God I'm a little biased If you're taking these two airplanes Configured just for dog fighting

And these two are equal pilots the hornet should win Every eagle pilot listening right now is gonna just his head's gonna explode by hearing this I flew against the eagle a lot It is an unbelievably good airplane If you were just doing dog fighting and the airplane is just Slicked off for dog fighting the hornet should beat the eagle How come It's it's it is a it is a more maneuverable

It is not as fast is not as powerful It doesn't pull as many Gs doesn't have as good turn rate These are all words of the eagle guys will hear and go yeah, he's right But it is a more men nimble a more maneuverable airplane and if I'm gonna get behind you before you get behind me I'm gonna do that in a hornet faster than I'm gonna do it in an eagle So why do we make why are we still have it in the inventory? It's aging out there's not much there's not many it's been a replace the raptor replaced the Eagle and the Raptor has a lot of air to ground capability, even though it's technically just a fighter, but it has a ton of air to ground ability. The Eagle has aged out. And it's around because it has,

it still serves a purpose, but that purpose is dwindling a little bit. Again, I attribute a lot of our air dominance in the world to the fact that that airplane exists. So there's still a reason to have it. It's, it's like having an arsenal on your shelf and you're thinking about coming after me. And I'll go, hey, before you do this, just take a look over there and you go, well, maybe this isn't a good idea. That's everybody's effective as if you come at me and I, and I use those weapons against you, that deterrent ability is everybody's useful. In fact, maybe even better. It might be better for you to go, I don't want to mess with you because you know it's there. The problem with that is it's really hard to account for that.

The Eagle community has suffered from that because they're so capable, they're so proficient and so few threat adversaries are interested in messing with it that they just stop flying against. it doesn't help their cause but I think it's true. I'm a huge proponent of the C model community. So it seems that the debate that I was bringing up has already been solved, which is single roll aircraft just don't really make sense. And I am a firm believer in a multi-mission aircraft, multi-role machine. There is still a debate that if you put too many mission responsibilities on a pilot, that it makes him less effective in all those, that is an ongoing debate.

I think that debate will always continue. I sit squarely on one side of that debate. Which is where? A multi-mission fighter pilot can be as good at every one of those missions when trained correctly. And I was thinking about it, thinking we might talk about this when I think about a seal. It'd be only saying, hey, listen, you can be a sniper and you can do a beach assault. But you can't be really good at both. You'd be like, we could.

And I'd say, well, okay, Jocko, if I told you how to be really good at being. being a sniper and being really good at like a room clearance and being really good at a vehicle patrol and being really good at a shore, a sea to shore assault. And then I said, but I'm going to take this other guy. I'm taking Echo. All he has to do is be a sniper. Who's going to be a better sniper? There's an argument that says, oh, he only has to be a sniper.

He's going to be a better sniper than you. That's a fair debate. My experience tells me that you can actually be really good at all of those and actually, I've seen guys be every bit as good as a sniper having multiple missions. I was going to say, I agree with that. And there's, you could get into a point where you can find some outlying missions that are so far. If you were like, hey, Echo, I want you to be good at all these things that you just mentioned. And I want you to be really good at tennis.

Yeah. Right. That's going to be tricky because this is not related. But look, being a sniper and being doing CQC, which close quarters combat and doing beach assaults, like those are all. things that are all interrelated and when you get better at one. Have you ever heard this thing in the book Outliers? I think it's an outliers, but they take, and I forget the exact experiment, but it has something to do with this.

So they're training kids to throw a ball into a basket that's six feet away. And they have a test where you're going to take this ball and you're going to throw it in this basket at six feet away. And they take one group of kids and all they train is putting into the basket that's six feet away, throwing it in there and throwing it in there and throwing it in there and They take another group of kids and they train them. Sometimes they put the basket at two feet. Sometimes they put it at eight foot.

Sometimes they put it at four foot. Sometimes they put it at six feet. Day of competition, who wins? It's the people that had to do the multiple different tasks, right? Because they got better. And the reason that this experiment exists was to talk about the fact that if you're training, if you're raising a child and you go, oh, I'm a kid to be a good baseball player. Baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball.

there's a decent chance if he does baseball, football, soccer, and tennis, that that combination, especially in the formative years, is going to make him a better ultimate baseball player. Now look, these days at a certain point,

you've got to be like, all right, my kid's going to really go for it in baseball. He's got to dedicate himself to baseball. I would guess 13, 14, maybe 15. Echo, yeah? Yeah, sounds right. I also think you've got to watch out for burnout.

I mean, we're getting into a totally different subject here, but, you know, you can burn out a kid, and I had a bunch of conversations about this at ADCC. But so, so as long as these things are interrelated, and it seems to me like in an aircraft, look, doing a bombing run, which I've done before in an F-18, backseat gets some, dogfight, which I've done before in an F-18, backseat gets some.

All those things, those are skills that are, but you're doing the same basic skill set. Well, you now know where I stand on that multi-mission versus single-mission debate as well, which is, and that's really one of the reasons why I think Top Gun has maintained such a detailed focus on dogfighting and pure air-to-air, even though objectively it's very low probability we're going to do that is what we have known and discovered decades ago.

I didn't come up with this. This is something that organization that we have figured out that we believe is that if you are really good at those things, that translates in all these other things. In fact, if you're really, really good at the complexities of air-to-air, you're very likely to be a really good bomber, too, because they're so interoper. related. Is there an argument that says if all you ever had to do was is master just bombing? Yeah, there's an argument. And that's a debate. To your point. And also, I think it might even be like, if I was going to measure a Navy SEAL sniper that was good at 10 different things.

And also like a sniper, maybe he'd get a 98 out of 100 score on his test. And if I told a guy like, oh, all you ever do is being a sniper and you don't have to do anything else, he might get a 99 out of 100. it that disparity is so minor that to me it's much better to have you having the flexibility of being able to do five, six, seven mission sets than only being able to do the one, which is why the multi-mission platform and a single-seat pilot is how aviation is now, meaning all the planes being built, just about all the planes being built, the cruise has gone from 10 in the B-17 to 4 to 2 down to 1. Everything is being built with one person.

It's not because single-seat pilots are any better. it's because they've created this platform where one individual actually is capable of being really, really good at all these mission sets because they all translate. And the point is, is that you could get airborne

in your Raptor or your F-35. You don't know what you're going to do on that mission. Even if you plan it perfectly, the enemy gets a vote, the environment gets a vote, the world gets a vote, and you better be able to be flexible.

You don't want to have someone go, Hey, Jock, I only know how to, I'm only a sniper. I can't go clear that room. I don't know what to do. And you're like, dude, you've got to clear that room to get up on the room.

roof, you don't want someone calling back saying, I don't know how to do that. That multi-roll capability is important, but you also want that guy clearing the room to be really good at clearing that room. You don't want him to just fumbling his way through to get to his primary mission said. You want to be really competent in all those. And it's, I think, very possible for a single-seat pilot in a multi-mission aircraft to do that. 20, 30 years ago, massive debate over that. Now, even though your single-seat pilots working alone, there's a massive amount of decentralized command that's got to happen, right, for this to work. Yeah. I mean, so now we're going back to this whole idea of aerial combat. You have this giant mission going on. Even though you're a single seat pilot, you're not,

you're not king of the world because you're, you're out there on your own. As a leader, you've got to understand what the mission is. You're leading your aircraft. You're leading your part of the mission. So it's, it's a extreme form of decentralized command. Yeah, I mean, you're pretty much reading my mind right now because I'm thinking of the question we talked earlier about, like, how do you win? and what does aerial combat look like? And the long answer is decentralized command, is ultimately you get down to this individual in this machine somewhere out there doing something

where he's going to, he or she's going to end up making an independent decision by themselves, doing something that's going to have massive implications, and they have to really understand what is they're doing, why the outcome is going to be, and how does it support the larger objective? And then that's happening hundreds or thousands of times in these combat scenarios all the time.

I mean, that's what's happening. Decentralized command is how you win. And that's a very short way. We can talk about this for as long as you want, but that's the shortest answer is that's how you're successful. Person in a plane doing a mission, eventually is going to make a decision by themselves that's either going to support or undermine the objective.

So from your perspective, you're dropping one bomb in 1990, or sorry, in the year 2000, you're a frontline guy on your first deployment. you're doing a strategic operation that you are solely responsible for getting that thing shot, getting dropping that bomb. 100%. Fast forward, however many years, squadron commander. Yeah.

And now you've got to convey all that information. This is like decentralized command, right? It's kind of like me with snipers. Like, I've got a sniper guy. He's going to make the decision on whether he pulls the trigger or not. Yep. He's got to understand all the implications that he's got. You know, you go out into in Ramadi, if we have a sniper that kills an innocent person,

kills a civilian, kills a woman, kills a kid, it's going to be a disaster. Totally. For everyone involved. And they got to know that. They got to understand that. And that's our job as leaders to convey that. Yeah. So when you were squadron commander, did you remember what it was like as a 27-year-old that's dropping

this bomb and say to yourself? That's the reason I ask that question because I, because you've got to think, man, when you're 27 years old, And I've seen pictures that you've seen pictures of 27 year old Dave Burke in video you can see that guy read you're thinking yourself Hey this guy's fired up man. He's ready to drop some bombs boy Especially like there it is here's your chance to do it and you're gonna be one of the few guys on this deployment Gets to drop a bomb and one of the few guys in the military yeah that has combat experience And you've got to be able to harness all that now you're a squadron commander now you got to be able and I thought the same thing like I got these young guys They're ready to get after it if I don't harness that properly

You can have issues dude the similarity is even down to the sniper mission is there's so much overlap there because on the all the way extreme on one side is like you know how bad I wanted to drop a bomb when I got into an airplane how bad like I would almost like I'll do anything to drop a bomb and then with a recognition of anything goes wrong forget it even if it goes even a hundred percent right I alluded to this even when we do everything right there's still going to be some version of that story and that potentially has risk of, we did 100% correct, exactly right, and there's still going to be somebody out there saying you did it wrong. And so the implications of that, even if you find the right target at the right time, use the right weapon,

cover everything you're supposed to do, there's still risk of something, some other problem being created, even if it's just a media problem, public relations problem. And now you take, and not to diminish, I mean, dude, I was really lucky because I don't know how many hours I spent

sitting next to Chris Kyle, but it was a lot. Because when I was with you, he and I had very similar, I don't know of missions, the right word, but we were thinking a lot of the same things. I was up there with you guys talking to airplanes about how can we protect all the people moving around. That was a way to do it. Chris Kyle was doing the exact same thing.

I don't know how many times Chris went to me and go, hey, dude, come over here and look through the scope of my rifle and tell me what you see. I mean, I have vivid memories of that. And that was his way of telling me, this is him really thinking about what he sees and how it's going to affect the larger mission. That takes a lot of maturity

because in the back of my window, I want to shoot my gun, I want to drop a bomb. And I've always remarked at that and that experience with me with him, with your seals, is so similar to the experience I had as a young fighter pilot by myself with an airplane where I could press the pickle button,

the bomb was going to come off. And I mean, that's what I wanted to do. Fast forward to being a squadron commander, I've got all sorts of different experiences reminding me not just how important decentralized command is, but how often you have to emphasize it to the young front line will call them a shooter, whether they're shooting a sniper rifle, dropping a bomb off an airplane, or any of those frontline or Marines or solar, like, you know what those frontline guys are like. They always have to be thinking in the back of their mind, how is what I'm about to do

can affect the bigger mission? And if they don't understand that, they're going to do something wrong. They're going to make a mistake. They're going to make a bad decision that in the end does more harm than good. the maturity it takes to do that and then the leadership it takes to do that is not just so difficult. It's what sets us apart as a country

and why our military is so good is that we believe in that and we train and teach to that and then we ultimately cut our people loose to go execute with that. And that's how we win. That's literally the whole point. That's how we were successful.

Man, that is hard to do. I mean, that's the same thing with business. Like, this is a hard thing to do, but that is what we do and that's how we have to do it. So yeah, as a squadron commander, all day, every day, That's all I'm thinking about is how do I let my young front line folks do their job knowing how what they're going to do is going to affect The biggest the most expensive most scrutinized program in the history of aviation maybe even the military

That I'm the first operational CEO getting the Department of Defense breathing down my neck Knowing I got a corporal that's going to determine the fate of my squadron Yeah, that's what we're doing and that's that was you know you bring up Ramadi there it's like that was one of the The one of the differences in that battlefield was we were so embedded. Like everyone was so, like I mean, you're literally sitting up there next to Chris,

Lex the Leif, next to the rest of the snipers, the machine gunners, that's you. We got an army guy up there. We got army scouts in the thing next door. We got Iraqi soldiers with us.

We got an interpreter. Oh, by the way, CNN's down in the bottom of the cop right there. They can actually see everything that's happening. Yeah. It's just total visibility for everyone that's out there. And it was so obvious that if you, you know,

when a shock gets taken, if it's a bad shot, it's going to be a disaster and it's going to be known about it's going to be on Al Jazeera. Everywhere. So yeah, having that, having that decentralized command, making sure that people not understand not just what to do, but why they're doing it. Why they're doing it? Why is this important? What are the ramifications? What are the strategic ramifications of what you're doing? Because if you make a mistake right now, it's not just this old, this little mistake happened by you on the front line. You drop this bomb and you shouldn't have. You hit the milk factory

or whatever it is you said. Or you shot this a mom or you shot this, you know, a school teacher. I mean, in Ramadi, there's 400,000 people in Ramadi. Yeah. 400, there's probably, what, 4,000 or 5,000 enemy fighters was the estimate. So when you're looking down the street, you're seeing, yeah, you're seeing regular civilians,

but also you see that the enemy really stands out. 100%. They really stand out. And to that point, too, like part of that is decentralized command is me realizing if I do something wrong, It's not just going to be me that gets scrutinized, my flight lead, and then my squadron commander and the carrier. Like, it goes all the way back up.

That scrutiny, you know that you're not operating by yourself. You're operating independently on behalf of everybody else. And I think part of what decentralized kind of why the word why is so important in that is that if I squeeze that trigger, and that's also crazy too, because I like, shooting my rifle in Iraq, like squeezing the trigger on my rifle is a surreal experience as a fighter, part of you is like, what am I doing? This is crazy. And then, you know, some combat flying airplanes, but also seeing guys much younger than me, much less, and I say experience, I don't want it to be in somewhat a critical sense, but I saw a lot of

the military as a major in the Marine Corps before I got to Iraq, a lot, you know, in different ways and different strategic impacts, you know, a fairly broad understanding of just warfare and combat in general and then seeing young guys on your team and young soldiers, young Marines, that are squeezing triggers, knowing that they're doing it, not just by themselves, but it might as well be your CEO pulling the trigger.

It might as well be. It might as well be, you know, the chairman of the joint sheet. They know that. And so, and that weight, when done correctly, isn't like a burden. It's a sense of obligation,

but it's also, it empowers them to do the right thing, which is awesome. And that's what we do. Again, that's how we win. Yeah, I just, I just wrote down exactly what you said.

The note I took was burden of command, because part of decentralized command, is passing the burden, passing that weight. And look, ultimately when you're in charge, you're the one that's going to bear the burden, but they better recognize your team better recognize the burden that they're carrying and what's going to happen. And that's why I got real lucky because I was the Admiral's Aid

prior to being the Task Unit Commander. So when NSW at large did something that was messed up, I saw that the weight go all the way up the chance, up the chain of command for what some dumb ass seal did in Iraq or Afghanistan. I saw that. I saw that weight go all the way up to my boss, the admiral in charge of all the seals. I saw the scrutiny would come on him. And I was like, oh, I need to make sure my guys understand that every little thing that we do is going to get is going to get scrutinized, looked at. And that's why you have to have the right intent and everything that you do. And they need to feel what that is.

And that's a huge part of decentralized command. And it's a weird thing. It's a weird, I'll have to figure out how to phrase this because you can't, of course, pass on the burden itself, but they've got to understand what that weight is. They've got to feel it. Look, at the end of the day, if one of your, one of your snipers or one of your fighter jet jockeys goes out and drops a bomb in a wrong spot, you're the one that's ultimately going to burn for it. And look, they might burn too. But you are both going down at a minimum, you know, it's coming on you. So you can't really, you can't really give the burden, but you have to show them what the impacts are of what they're doing and make sure they understand it.

Otherwise, you're going to have significant issues and real problems. So, well, I literally wrote down, feel the weight about 10 seconds before you said that exact phrase. And what I was thinking when I'm saying that is, is, and you've described this in different ways, that weight is supposed, you're supposed to feel that weight, but it's not supposed to like crush you. It's not supposed to be debilitating. It's it's it's it's you have to be aware of it but the way that you put the weight on them Also has to allow it has to give them the flexibility to do that But the feeling of that weight can't be so overwhelming that they decide oh I'm not going to do anything because if I make a mistake then all these things will happen is the weight has to be felt

But it can't crush them and and and that's what the commander can't you can't you can't just like oh this is on you There's this old saying when I was first learning to be a forward air controller in getting ready to go to our Iraq, that when you say cleared hot, which is the phrase that we use, we go all this coordination, all this planning, and in the end, I'm on the ground, you're in the air, I say cleared hot. That is the only cue that you have to be approved to release the bomb. And the phrase that got thrown around, at least when I was in training, I don't know what they still use it, was it's called the fact buys the bomb, is the saying, which was like, okay, now you is the fact. You now own that outcome. And I fully understand that logic, which is, don't you dare say cleared hot,

unless you are ready to take that responsibility. But the other side of that is there were times that I would see that early in aviation. And I thought about this as I became a commander is what I didn't want that for the pilot to go, well, that's not on me. The fact bought that bomb. It's like absolutely not. Like the, and if you're a pilot, you don't ever want to feel, oh, the fact buys this bomb, which means you are now no longer responsible for that.

You have to feel that same weight that he feels, which means you're the one, in that button and if it ends up being wrong, we're going to come back and go, well, that wasn't my fault the fact said A, B, and C, like negative. So the fact buys the bomb is a great logic of wanting that forward air control to feel the responsibility, but you don't want to relieve the pilot of that either.

And so as a commander, I wanted guys to understand when we're doing that, nobody can take that burden off of you on either side, even if I'm the one saying, I approve you do this, you're cleared hot, you still have the ownership too. So there's so much overlap. Yeah, I know there's a ton of overlap there

because check it out your machine gunner, you're a squad leader and your machine gunner shoots in the direction he shouldn't a shot at or whatever. And you, it's the same exact thing. Because listen, guess what you tell the machine gunner? Hey, dude, you bought that bullet. You pull that trigger, that's 100% on you. And guess what you tell the squad leader?

Hey, your freaking machine gunner shoots, that's 100% on you. It's overlapping and interlocking fields of extreme ownership. And that's what you need. That's what you need in those situations. Actually, JP tells a, uh, uh, he had a, a situation where he didn't take a shot because he was, he wasn't quite sure. And it wasn't that he wasn't quite sure he had a bad, he had a good target, but he was like,

wait, should I, this was like literally his first or second mission. And he was like, hold on a second, is this, can I shoot right now? And he had to crawl over and ask stoner like, hey, I got a guy over here carrying an AK or RPG. Can I engage him? And that's like, yeah. And you know, Seth realized like, oh, I've done a bad job like my snipers feel like they shouldn't shoot a literal

Mujahideen fighter maneuvering through the streets so that's the situation where again if you put too many constraints on somebody they're gonna be like oh I don't want to take the shot if you don't if they don't understand what that burden is they might go buck wild and by the way there's a hundred percent ownership by the guy that pulls the trigger or drops the bomb and there's also a hundred percent ownership because I'll tell you, one of my snipers takes a bad shot. Like, oh, I'm not just mad at that.

I mean, I'm not just going to hold that guy kind of a little. I'm going to be talking to the platoon commander. And by the way, guess who it ultimately falls on? Yeah, you guessed it. It's me because I didn't convey that information. I didn't convey that burden properly. Totally. So these are things from a decentralized command perspective we have to think about.

And that, you know, how does this supply to business? Well, the cashier in your store and you've got 38 stores. You're a franchisee owner. and one of your cash register guys talk smack or does something stupid. And you say, oh, you fire that guy. It's not on me. Okay. You can say that.

Oh, the store manager goes, well, it's not me. It's that we had it. The guy was a jackass. Okay. So what did you change? Nothing. Problem doesn't go away. Problem doesn't go away.

If you say, hey, listen, store manager, I don't do a good job of conveying the fact that we have to treat our customers with respect. Yeah, but I mean, I can't control this jackass. Why'd you hire him? How did you train him? What are you doing with him? How often do you monitor him? Do you check in with him? Is he disgruntled? Do you have a person that's at your store that's working as a cash register that has a bad temper? Because if that's what you're doing, look, you're in that store every day. You see what the person's like. So these are the things that have to come into play. And that's decentralized command. Totally. Now listen, I know you and I were talking about doing this and you sent me some words, some vocabulary. I also put together some vocabulary that I wanted to run through. So getting us some, some, some, some.

terms from the aviation world and I think it's always good look I do this all time with jiu-jitsu like I'll take oh what we're gonna sweep them we're gonna maneuver we got to set them up oh we got to cover move so we use these things for everything that we do but some of these some of these terms from air combat and really just from flying I think are usable first one pitch what's pitch is is it's literally your nose moving up and down so if you think about it like the horizontal axis, your nose is going above or below the horizon. You're pitching the nose up or pitching the nose down.

It's where you're moving the nose of the jet. So you're either gaining altitude or you're losing altitude. Your nose is going up or nose is going down. It doesn't necessarily mean. You can have your nose up and be losing outside. That's called getting ready to stall and die. We might get to that. Ironically, like, maybe the larger question is like when to do that.

Like if you're stalling, people want to pull the nose up. Oh, because they want to go up and then they want to pull the nose up because I'm going down like that's actually usually a mistake so it is just where your nose is going so it doesn't necessarily mean climbing or descending see again this is why I wanted to talk about this because that's so important because how often do you see people they're trying to correct themselves by moving in a direction that's actually not helping them at all right oh we're not doing well in our marketing put more money in marketing it's like okay you're just adding more fuel to the fire and and the word that always comes to mind is and I think about this when I teach leadership which we do all the time is

the counterintuitive nature of leadership. If you want to go higher, you don't always pull back on the stick. And that can be so difficult because if you're going to stall, actually what you're supposed to do is push the nose forward means you've got to go down even more. Like, wait a second, this doesn't sound right. But that's how it is sometimes. And that perfect example is, oh, we're not getting enough return on marketing, put more money in that might be a mistake.

Or from a human aspect, like, oh, Echo's not doing a good job right now. I need to take away as responsible, take away more responsible. from him. That might be the wrong move. Yeah. I might actually want to give him more responsibilities. Let him step up. I remember like, I hate to say even rolling with you, but I remember like the first time you and I were rolling. Oh, Jiu-Jit-T walk. Yeah, you made a joke.

You said something like, which you were just mocking me, but you said like push harder, which was like, oh, if I push harder, I might be able to move you. Which you obviously, and I knew when you said it was like, you're such a jerk. But your point to that was, and this is a standard thing. Like, if I want you to move backwards, I should push on you. And if you don't go backwards, I should just push harder, right?

Like, that's how our brains work. But you know as well as I do. That is not always the right answer. So inside that it's countered to like, oh, I shouldn't keep pushing harder. It won't solve this problem. Pulling back in the stick doesn't make you climb all the time. So it's, it's, there's a ton of parallels.

All right. Roll. What's roll then? Roll is just a different axis. So it's the wings go, instead of the nose going up and down, it's the wings going up and down. It's how you turn left and right.

So rolling, you know, which is the long axis of the plane, wing goes up, airplane turns, wing goes down, airplane turns. Is there anything that can be counterintuitive about that? Well, there's not, it's not quite as counterintuitive as the pitch, because the pitch,

people in airplanes learn like pulling back in the stick is not always the smart thing to do. Rolling, when you roll, the drawback to rolling is that whichever wing goes in whatever direction, one wing is going to get more lift and one wing is going to get less lift. So if you roll and you roll too much, you will start to fall out of the sky.

So there is a drawback to rolling, which is the wing is most efficient when it's flat. You move it off the level and you move it up or down, which you need to to move. You can, you can descend. Do you lose altitude then on every roll? In theory, unless you put your nose up. That's exactly right. Yes, you got to coordinate that. You can't just roll by itself or you're going to fall out of the sky to some degree.

Brod Captain Charlie Plum and I, Echo and I went up to do a pon. with him up in San Diennes and then he and I flew back and we did it with Jim Jim Conkel and and Charlie Plum and so then it's me and Charlie Plum in it I forget what the aircraft was open cockpit cloth aircraft and I got you know me right I get in there and I'm kind of like thinking hey if something happens I'll just take over it's no big deal you know I got controls back here I'll land this thing we took off in like a massive crosswind and the plane was sideways and I'm like if something happens I'm gonna die like I can't I won't be able to fly this thing my getting in that thing I thought I'll be able to fly this I flew

F-18 echo Charles I flew an F-18 bro I was like oh I can do this I got in that thing the the what is it mechanical steering and mechanic like everything is totally yeah there's no computers I had one I had to freaking like leather helmet on with goggles like that's the kind of scenario I was in and I thought to myself when I when I was walking out there I was like something goes wrong dude I got this something happens to Cap and Plum I got this no factor I'll land this thing by the time we took off I said to myself if something happens to him I'm dead dude this ain't happening that was the most sketch takeoff I ever seen it was crazy video real life the whole deal yeah you

you probably did I think I might have yeah but brad you guys were like like they were taken off sideways yeah it was not echo if you remember this is one of my what I call like classic jaco is he comes back he goes oh dude we just flew up and did this awesome podcast with this legendary fighter pilot and he took me on a flight i should have seen if you wanted to go and i'm like dude that would have been super cool if you would ask me before the podcast yeah yeah no i definitely should have called you on that one so yeah you would have enjoyed that i think so yeah you would enjoy the tour of his condo up there with all of his and then going into jim conkel's a oh where he's just like got all kinds of

dude i'm glad you had a good time man It's no big deal. He's a P38 pilot got shot down over France. No, good for you. Walked out. That's cool. No factor. All right.

So roll, that's going to turn us left or right. How about, so this is, I kind of knew what pitch was. I kind of knew what roll was. Yaw. Yeah. Speaking of taking off in a high wind, right? This is a Yaw scenario. Yeah, so all these things are connected.

Pitch roll and Y'all are like, none of it happens by itself. It's just a three different axes you can move. And this is the third axis where the jet essentially you can slide the nose back and forth or like rotates around itself where, you know, up down, left, right, and then back and forth is yaw. Again, all these things happen together. If you pull the nose up, you're going to lose lift. Like, all these things are all connected, especially when you're turning. But the yaw is like keeping the nose pointed straight.

And then you have a thing called a rudder, which sits in the back where you use your feet to keep the nose pointed either straight or into the wind. Okay. Then what's adverse yaw then? So this, that's like, this is the term that we use. is if you put in too much yaw, meaning you move the nose too much, eventually that will disrupt how the plane is flying,

and its response will be to counter your maneuver, meaning if I push left on the rudder to move my nose to the left, the jet might at some point, based on like the wings and things that go, I can't do this anymore, the lift doesn't work correctly, and it will whip your nose back around.

And what you typically hear it called is an adverse yod departure, which means it stops flying. So in all three of these control directions, all of them have done incorrectly, the reaction will be the plane departs, does not fly, which means you have the risk if it's low to the ground and you were just talking about this. Where this stuff is always the most difficult is taking off and landing. Like that's the hardest part, especially landing.

Like if you have an adverse yard departure on landing, you're probably going to crash and die. So you have to be really, really cautious about how you do this. I like the euphemisms, right? Departure. That's a great euphemism. Like this is, it should be a yaw. That's what it should be. Because now you're going to die.

Yeah. But instead we just call it a departure. Yeah. Or even like adverse. It's like, instead is like deadly or cat. It's like adverse. It's undesirable.

Have you ever had an adverse yaw? Totally. I've had all, yes, of course. Every one of these things. Every one of these things. Every pilot that's never been trained. You will actually go up at altitude.

Maneuver to, till it happens so you can feel it. Like, hey, we're going to go do adverse yard departures today, which means you're going to step on the rudder until the plane departs in. is going to whip around and you'll feel the rumbling, you'll feel the air, you'll hear the sounds, and then you'll feel the movement and go, oh, yeah, you'll do it enough and you'll be able to preempt it and go, oh, I feel, I know what's coming, I got to stop doing this. So all those things have an adverse

response. An adverse yaw is typically the, like the most deadly because the reaction of a departure in yaw is like usually pretty violent and bad. And if you're lowered the ground, you can't recover from it. And it's because it's, you're forcing it and you keep for it. So the instinct would be, oh, I want the nose to go more left. I need to push it harder. Yes. And then it just goes, I can't do this. That's exactly right.

That's exactly right. So essentially, you as a pilot, what you're doing this whole time is you're balancing these things. Constantly. And you've got to be careful that you want to go too far in one extreme. Which is the segue of like all these things are about. And I think we talked about like trimming the airplane, which means you've got this little, you know, now it's like electronic little buttons or whatever. But like there used to be little levers. and knobs and things you'd spin, which is throughout flight constantly.

And this is more true in propeller airplanes because every time you would change the power of a propeller airplane, the torque would change, which means the yaw would change. Because propeller spin in a certain direction. And if you change the pitch of that, or change the power of that propeller, it has a different amount of yaw input, which means you're constantly trimming. The point behind that is that what a good pilot is constantly doing is seeking balance. in all three of these control surfaces the entire time to the point it actually becomes subconscious.

On an F-18 or most jets, the trim tab, or I'm sorry, the trim button, whatever they call it, is like on the control stick and it's up, down, left, right, and you do it with your thumb.

I would not be surprised if like subconsciously thousands, literally thousands of little clicks, one-click, little, one-click, up down, that you're constantly just seeking balance to the point that a pilot knows, like,

that's what you should be doing all the time is seeking balance. If you can't find a connection from back to leadership then we're missing. To leadership in life. Yeah. You know,

you sent that the plane kind of shutters. I was watching a documentary about Dave McCoy, who's the guy that founded Mammoth Mountain up in California, which is a ski area. And it's a cool documentary. That guy was a real go-getter,

to say the least. Like, he made that whole thing happen just out of nothing. And he, At one point he had this woman, and I can't remember her name right now, she was a ski racer, and she went and raced somewhere, and she crashed and she was paralyzed. But what was interesting was they were talking about when she was racing,

I think something with the wind or what she was wearing, she didn't have clothing on that normally signaled to her kind of how fast she was going. and so she entered a corner too fast. And maybe it was like she was getting a tailwind. So the wind, she didn't have that feedback of like, oh, I'm reaching a certain speed right now. And this is a problem. It just didn't have that little bit of signal.

So that's got to be a huge part of being a pilot. Yeah. Of, oh, I can feel this. I can feel something's going on right now. And you know what it is and you know how to adjust it. Yeah. The term that's using aviation is they call it. seat of the pants, meaning you can feel it like literally in your seat as you're sitting there.

One of the, one of the critiques of modern fighters is the computers like nullify all that stuff out so you don't quote, feel it. So if you got into P51 and then got it on F18, you would feel everything that P51, every little buffet, every little motion. And so that feedback of how fast, how slow, you could almost like close your eyes in a P51 and feel exactly how fast you're going, how close you were to stall speeds and things like that. Bro, I used to, in a zodiac boat, you know, the zodiac is right? So in a zodiac, so I was in from the beginning of my Navy career, I was the guy with the GPS. So when GPS's first kind of came out.

So I was always always, and we used to have this great design on this GPS. It was a huge brick to carry as bigger. It's more like a cinder block. But the control was designed by the most brilliant person in the history of the world. It was just so efficient. But one of the things, so I was constantly, when we were doing Zodiac transatlantic, I was constantly looking at that thing, and I was always looking at our speed.

And eventually, I started playing this game in my head. I'd be like, oh, right now we're going 14.4 knots. And I'd look at that thing, sure enough. And I got so good at that where I didn't even have to look. I'd be like, oh, yeah, we're doing 22 knots right now. I'd look, boom, yep, we're doing 20. Oh, we're only doing nine knots. My boss would be like, how fast are we going right now?

I'd be like, 12 knots. You'd be like, how do you know? And I'd just hold up the GPS, like, without looking at it. You'd be like, 12.7. I'd be like, there you go. So that's flying. That's a seat of your pants. Yep.

How much of that did you notice going from the F-18 to the F-35? Is it a big difference or no? It's a smaller difference. It's harder than the newer airplanes to feel them. They are designed to balance it for you, which is good and bad. You could get pretty good. Certainly in the Hornet that I have thousands of hours in the Hornet, like over 2,000. I never had that many in the other jets.

It was, and the advantage of that is, let's say I'm looking over my shoulder and trying to figure out how to maneuver against another aircraft, if I want to know how I'm fast, I'm going in an older jet without like this really fancy helmet, I'd have to come back in and look at the airspeed, which sucks,

because that means I have to take my eyes off you. And you could get to a point where you could figure out your air speed, your G, your AOA, all these really important things, by that, like, pretty darn tight, like down to, you know, five or six knots, you know, a degree or so.

Because there's optimal ways of moving the airplane with perfect angles of attack, perfect, and I don't want to stare at the gauges to get that. I want to be able to do that by feel. And you could get really, you needed to get really good at that to be good. Usable load. What's usable load? It's what you can carry.

And it's a huge measurement of an airplane now too because you don't know what you're going to do. You don't know what you're going to be bringing. And so oftentimes we have these loads of a range of weapons. You'll have a couple of pure air to ground weapons. You'll have a weapon that might be functional both in the air and all the ground. And you have weapons that are only good for the air. And so other things, fuel, all these different weights of things that go into that, even where they sit on the aircraft, you know, for like lateral.

Like if you put a really heavy bomb too far out, it can make the jet less controllable. The point behind that is you have to know what you can carry and how long you can carry it, which means you now know what capability you bring and when with this thing that you're bringing, this useful load that you're bringing to the fight. which is when I was looking through these terms, I thought about when you're in business, right? And I'm in business. And you have things that you bring on board and they're gonna provide you with some capabilities. They're also gonna cost you something.

Totally. And so, and there's times where I've worked with companies where you're like, hey, you're, you've got these assets on board. What are you getting from them? And what are they costing you? And if you don't think about that usable load, you might end up in a bad situation. You run out of fuel.

You run out of capital. The first GPS weapon that we started carrying was a thing called a J-dam, Joint Direct Attack Munition. GPS guided. GPS guidance is really good. It's actually better than my eyeball. You know what I mean?

So it's a really cool technology. Change the way warfare work because we could be really, really precise, really, really precise. And maybe a tiny bit less precise than lasers, but lasers are cumbersome and it's hard to do. And like this thing was like,

GPS, cool, go to this target. The first weapon and the only one would care of it was a 2,000 pound bomb. And for a fighter, 2,000 pounds, especially at a ship is a lot, which means like if you're carrying a 2,000 pound bomb, that's 2,000 less pounds of gas you could bring back. And so even carrying this super cool bomb that was like changing the, they didn't make any like 500 pounds versions? They eventually had.

But when this thing first came out, the first thing that came out was a 2,000 pound And I bet they're like, look, if we're going to use a GPS and it's going to cost all this money, it's going to do some freaking. They eventually came out with a thousand and a five hundred. And now it's much more, but the first one. And so to your point, though, is you take off like, oh, this is part of my conventional. This is an awesome thing. It could be a huge liability to the point that sometimes, like, I never had to, but guys would have to jettison them to get back aboard the ship, which is a total.

It was your point is these things are real strengths and they have a drawback. All of them have a cost associated with them to. All these positive things have a, have a, have a, a, a, a, a good. a counterweight associated with them. I got a term flying dirty. I might have just thrown that in there because it sounded kind of interesting. Yeah, it's probably not as exciting.

It's not as exciting. If you're either dirty or you're clean, dirty is gear down and clean his gear up. Do you ever, did you ever have to, do you ever fly dirty? Like, do you ever have to put your landing gear down because you're trying to go slower or anything like that?

No, it's not happening. You're going to dirty up to come aboard the ship. That's it and that's it. Did you ever, did anywhere ever? That's literally what they'll say. Like, hey, you know, two or six, dirty up, which means you're putting your gear in flaps down. No kidding. Yeah.

Dang. All right. Cool. I'm glad I'd brought that up. When you put the gear and flaps down, like the jets, like, loud and rum, you know, all the, the feeling of the jet changes dramatically. Flying a dirty airplane is very different than flying a clean airplane. Do you think commercial airliners, pilots say that too? Dirty up?

I don't know. That's a good question. There's got to be a commercial guy listening to this right now. You can, like, DM me or whatever. I don't know if they use that term. That is a straight up military vernacular. I don't think it's a technical term, but they will literally say,

dirty up. That means that's the word we use. Which is weird because it means put your gear down even though you're saying dirty up. Yep, yep, dirty up. That means put your gear in your flaps down. And they would sometimes, and they'll say things like,

okay, let's say I'm doing this approach to the carrier and the doctrine says at eight miles, I know that's when I put my gear down. And if nobody says anything at that time, but it slows you down by a lot. and so it changes the sequencing, they will say, hey, aircraft 203, stay clean through 10, or stay clean through 8, which is them saying,

don't do following the, you know, so the terms clean and dirty are super normal in military aviation. Check. I like it. Stay clean. Stay clean. Ground effect. Yeah.

This is a good one. Counterintuitive, man. And I'm not like an aerodynamics. expert, but airplanes actually from an aerodynamic, like a drag, you know, drag is like dragging this poor aerodynamics, like slow the plane down. It's like a negative thing. As you get close to the ground, like really closer ground, five, ten feet off the ground, the airplane, the drag reduces because the way the drag comes off the wings hits the ground. Like, it makes the plane a little more efficient. And I'm paraphrasing it, but as you get close to the ground, ground effect is you

get more lift at like the last couple of seconds, which is kind of a bit of a bummer if you're not careful because what the plane will tend to do is start to fly a little better, which means it'll float. So you've got this whole thing coming down, you're going to land. And in the last couple, literally seconds, 10 feet off the ground, just seconds before you land, the jet will start to get a little more efficient and start to fly a little bit better, which means it'll float you long. And sometimes people will get caught in ground effect. And the impact of that is you got a relative short runway, or maybe you're going to really have to really have a lot of heavy jet and you have to get stopped and you target a place on the runway you've got this

image of where you're going to land and as you're getting ready to put it on the ground the jet just floats and floats and floats because it's a little bit more efficient and you can get caught in ground effect and the jet will land much longer than you want seems obvious like oh better efficient it's not necessarily what you want so getting getting caught in ground effect can be a bad thing young pilots struggle with ground effect all the time just trying to land do you feel that like oh yeah oh yeah I've definitely felt it right I've definitely felt in an aircraft where yeah yeah I did a landing the other day in Vegas it was howling like the wind was howling and I don't mean I landed the plane but I was in a

plane and there was freaking howling wind and it was crazy was shaking like I was thinking to myself okay and and sure enough like as you said literally 10 feet off the gun the thing just went and he's and all of a sudden I said oh yeah and I've I've definitely felt that you can feel it like floating is yeah yeah yeah last like you said Now, Navy is it guaranteed? Is there anything that takes ground effect away if there's a 40 knot, like, wind on the ground? Or is it not? It's mostly associated with, like, as the vortices, I'm getting super technical, but as the vortices come off the wings, they hit the ground.

So it's literally proximity to the ground and they reduce the drag. What I was going to say, which is how you mitigate that is the Navy and the Marine Corps have a really cool way of mitigating ground effect, which is we land and, like, smash into the ground. at like literally 800 feet per minute on the carrier. So if you ever seen like a carrier landing, you are coming down on what we call like a three degrees glide slope. And we don't, like in an airliner, you guys, people probably feel this right before it lands.

Like the nose kind of pitches up and it tries to get. They want to make it super smooth. They want to like almost like you don't feel it. And if you've ever been an airliner where you've hit really hard, it startles the passengers. It's like, boom. And I always thinking, you know, that's a carrier pilot. I'm always laughing, but so most of the time in most airplanes, certainly in civilian flying,

all civilian flying, you want to make that really, really smooth because you want the people in the back to have like a very comfortable experience. We don't do that in carrier aviation. So in a normal carrier landing, there is no ground effect. You just come smashing into the ground, into the cables, or on the runway. When I first started to find the F-16, which is an awesome airplane, landing at F-16 could not be any more different than landing in F-18. It has the tiniest little thin little gear

that you have to be very, very delicate with. I would be struggling. I'd struggle with a ground effect all the time in the F-16 because it would not do what I was expecting it to do and be floating and it would wobble and it would be super uncomfortable and it's what you described is you could feel it like, oh, crap, and then you can't predict when it's going to land.

And then what the risk is, when you're in ground effect, what you should do is nothing as long as you can tolerate it. But that's not what most people do. They, oh, they feel it float and they push the stick forward And then they realize, oh, I push too much and they pull back and they get what's called PIO,

pilot-induced oscillation, and they'll bounce up and down on the run, which can be really bad. That's why I said most junior pilots struggle with that. Ground effect can be a real hassle when you're trying to land smoothly. It's not a problem for carrier pilots. Because you're just going to slam it.

You're just going to slam my ground, no factor. And the gear is built for that, like 1,000 feet per minute, no big deal. If you did a thousand feet per minute in an F-16, you'd rip the gear off. Literally. You can't do it. You got to be really careful.

How hard was your first landing in an F-16? I don't, I mean... Do you have an instructor in there with you teaching you to fly that thing? Yeah. Is he like, like, Dave, okay, remember, bro, you're not in a hair of your team anymore. Like, your first flight in an F-16, you know, the guy in the back is like, expect you know how to land an airplane. And there's a saying in the F-16, it's easy to land, it's hard to land good.

Any viper pilot listening to this knows what I'm talking about. They were probably all, like, crappy landings, but nothing was, like, unsafe or dangerous. They probably just laughing when I go, that's... But it wasn't like, oh, hey, that was dangerous. So you never trashed the gear? No, no, nothing like that. Is it possible that a pilot trashed the gear? Yeah, so like.

Because it seems like to me it'd be a habit. Classic F-16, like, if you're, like, the classic F-16, quote, mishap, landing mishap, would be if you, the way the speed brakes work on F-16, the speed breaks are all the way at the very back. Any F-16 pilot listening to this is laughing right now because they know exactly what I'm going to say. In a Hornet, like you could flare if you wanted to. If you don't want to do a carol landing, you just flare, which is a standard landing where you bring the nose up and you make it smooth landing. You could flare as much as you want in a regular fighter.

In any other fighter, the F-16, the way the speed brakes are, they open up up and down. And if you flare too much, the bottom of the speed break was scrape along the runway. And they also had a little thing, like a little speed break override, where if you're trying to slow down, you'd pull the button back and open up the speed break even more,

like another five or six degrees. a lot of Navy pilots learning to fly the F-16 would be presented as a gift upon graduation, a speed break with the bottom just shredded down. So if you were to screw up an F-16 is probably not ripping the gear off, it's scraping the speed break

because you flared too much, trying to be smooth, and you screwed it up. I fortunately never did that, but I saw it happen many times. I figured it had to have been a thing. Oh, it's got to be crazy. Like, you got all these instincts from the F-18 that things that you're no longer thinking about,

and you're talking about this button over here for this special thing that is totally different. How did these guys like Yeager just go and fly a different aircraft like every day? Dude, those guys were incredible. I mean, going, I mean, we're getting way in the weeds here. One of the things that drove me nuts about the F-18 and the F-16 is most of it's fine, but the small things were big deals. I think there's a term called negative transfer,

which means how you're wired in your jet, you get into the other one. If you bring that habit, it's going to transfer negatively to your plane. In the F-18... That's a good one right here. In the F-18, the canopy switch was under your right hand on the canopy on the right side, and the seat switch was on your left by your thigh. For whatever reason, in the F-16, the canopy switch was on your left side by your thigh. Can you mean open this thing?

Yes. And your seat adjust was on... So they were literally exactly opposite. it. And as you're thinking about landing, sometimes you would adjust the seat position from a fight to regular flying. You'd move the seat up or down and get more comfortable. Well, as you're coming in for a landing, like, it would be not uncommon to raise the seat up to get a little bit better view. And the number of times, like, I've talked to people and myself, like, reaching for the canopy button and trying to activate the canopy switch to lower your seat in an F-16 as a

Hornet pilot is an example of negative transfer. Doesn't actually open, though, what it? Oh, wait, 100% would open. Oh, really? You will like, you'll, if you're, you'll go. oh my God, like you'll hear like, you'll hear the motor of the canopy. Or you would like, right before you, like, oh my gosh, I'm about to, you would catch it. Yeah. But your instinct, the subconscious is you would just do your old habit. Those things called negative transfer when you're talking about the guys like Yeager, if you have a lot of habits in your jet and you go to another jet, you're going to, you're going to struggle.

I don't know if it's like, picture like getting to a car. Like, you know, cars have an electric start buttons now. Like you press the start. No more key. My wife has a car where the press button is on the dashboard and we have a car where the press the start is in like the and I'll get in the car and I'll take like four or five seconds to try to remember that's what negative transfer is When you're reaching and there's nothing there and you don't know where it is You didn't have that problem when you every card you put the key in the thing and you turn it didn't matter what it was Now every car's got this own little thing the parking break is here's so annoying

That's what it's like flying different fighters should be standardized Here's one you probably wondered when you saw this on a list knee board yep here's one why okay I always thought the kneeboard looked really cool and as a calm guy occasionally I'd break out a kneeboard like if I was doing Cass and like an administrative situation I'd be like oh my freaking kneeboard to talk about a wannabe but the reason I brought this up is are these digital now because I've seen pilots with digital kneeboards and what's your opinion like are we sticking analog do we need to have digital okay or is it just we're doing both. Yeah. So a kneeboard is literally like a little clipboard strapped around your thigh,

typically on your right leg so you can write literally a piece of paper and a pencil that's like tethered to that thing so you don't drop it. Everybody, everybody flies with a kneeboard. Now just about everybody, certainly a lot of people are flying, well, I shouldn't say everybody. A lot of relatively modern fighters, they're flying with iPads, straight like straight up. iPads and they're strapping that so all these like charts and we have to fly with like four or five different books of different airspace like it's all digital now now the most modern airplanes you don't have to carry that iPad it's up on the screen so most people are flying with both the drawback to digital and

you probably know this is digital although it relieves a lot of stuff digital can make things more cumbersome so the best example I have of that is like turning down the volume. If for whatever reason, the volume, you know this as a calm guy, you got two radios going. One's chattering, one person is talking and you need to hear it.

You just turn the volume down for three or four seconds of the other one. And if it's analog, you just rotate the knob. If it's digital, it's like, calm, you're pressing buttons, calm button, audio button, volume button, volume down, down, down.

And you're like pressing these buttons, it takes you 13, 14 seconds to turn the volume down. And so this idea of like, Digital is easier, not always true. Sometimes digital is a huge pain in the ass. F-35 was built with these two iPads up on the screen. Literally, touchscreen, voice active, like the most modern technology.

After about a year of flying the F-35, it was advocated so hard they installed like a 50s vintage volume knob that sits in the airplane now, which is just a little wheel that you would just turn up and down because it was so difficult just to change radios. Digital's cool, the old school kneeboard, the old school. analog is required in flying. Another word barricade, which is when you're going to land on an aircraft carry without a tail hook for whatever reason and you're going to hit a freaking net. Correct. Did you ever have to do that?

No, dude. Thank God. What causes that? The most common thing would be like a massive hydraulic problem by which you literally could not put the tail hook down. Got it. The other is like an engine problem that prevented you from. You couldn't let's say like a normal landing you had a problem you just go around

If you have an engine problem like hey this is a one-shot thing there is no like going long and and doing a touch-and-go or we'll call it a bolt turn try it again You had a one-shot thing they would do what's called rigging the barricade It's happened in the Hornet a couple of times one was in my squadron right before I checked in You mean ever it's only happened a couple times in the hornet? Yeah just a handful okay much more common in the past very very uncommon now but still a thing one was a hornet where they had a massive hydraulic problem where eventually when he put the hill hook down the hook wouldn't come down like literally there you cannot stop so you got to take a barricade the other is a massive engine problem and in that engine recovery they deemed like the only safe way is just get them into the into the barricade and is a literally what you said it's a massive

net that sits right between the two and the third wire of a carrier and you fly right into the net and it's strong enough to stop you it's crazy if you're bored you Google or you YouTube Hornet Barricade. There's some cool videos out there. It's probably two or three. And is that, that's more of like an emergency measure? It's not like totally. It can never be a strategic thing.

Hey, let's do it this way today. 100% of one-time use. You bring everybody else down. It's the last thing you're going to do. And if it doesn't work, it's going to be a catastrophe. It's super dangerous. Very uncommon. We were on the boats where the, I think it was the Marine Corps,

fly their UAVs into those big nets. Basically fly them into barricades. Yeah. They did the same thing. You just see these freaking, this is back in the day when UAVs were just piloted by some kid, like no digital AI making anything easy. He's like, wha! Big giant net sitting up there, boom! You're like, yo, these guys are crazy.

Total pilot error. I almost went down a rabbit hole, and I probably should at some point. I started looking on all these aviation accidents yesterday. But one of the things that came up was just total pilot error, meaning. Meaning this is 100%. And I read some of them. One of them was like, they didn't realize that this switch, the auto whatever switch was off.

And they're focused on this other thing, and they just crash. Yeah. Total pilot error mishaps read really badly, because it's things like that. You're like, dude, what is going on here? Perfectly good airplane doing everything it's supposed to be doing.

And the pilot is the sole cause of the mishap. It's actually very rare. when they think about the factors, they call them factors. When they do an investigation, they try to think of the factors that cause the mishap. Is that where no factors come from? No factor? Probably. Or at least it's, it's, terminology is correct.

Almost always pilot error is a factor, but almost never the sole factor. The coroll error is also almost always true. Like, especially in modern airplanes, it's almost never just the airplane. The pilot contributes some way. So it's usually a combination of both. So when you read a total pilot error, it's usually heartbreaking because as you're reading it, especially if you know the machine and know what that switch does or understand it, you're reading it because you already know the outcome, you're like, oh my God, I can't believe that they misunderstood or lost track or stop paying attention.

The most common one is something we may talk about, and we've talked about it before, is where you fly a perfectly good jet into the ground because you're looking at something else because you got distracted or nothing. That's a C-Fit. That's a C-Fit. Controlled flight into direction. That's like the classic total pilot. You take a perfectly good airplane functioning 100% correctly, and the pilot flies it directly into the ground for some other reason.

He's not dealing with a malfunction. He's not dealing with an issue with the jet. He just control flight, meaning everything is perfectly fine, and he flies it into the ground. And it could be that they couldn't see, right? I mean, does fog, if I'm flying through the mountain range and it's foggy and I just slam into a mountain? Yeah, I mean, yes, you could have sea fit.

in bad weather, but even then, like, you have instruments and, and, and, like, information available to you by which that shouldn't happen. And to the point, like, the plane is not causing that problem. You are. So a C-FIT is generally a total pilot error? Almost always. The worst part about C-FIT is what you described is a bummer. Like, oh, it's fought.

It's adverse external conditions. Seaf-fit happens under perfect conditions as well. Like day sunlight, no fog. And so those are the ones of the most heartbreaking, which is where it typically the most common things that it happens is either on like a low level where you're flying in this and that's not that common because you're usually paying attention. It's when you're diving towards the ground like in a dive bombing scenario. And in that bombing, you're looking at something to like make sure your target is you have like a good site on the target and you get focused on making a perfect little. they call it like a target designation. You're putting a little reticle, a little sight onto the target,

and you want to keep improving it as you're in this dive, and you get so focused on the displays, you forget, or you lose track of the ground. And I've seen videos of guys literally will just fly directly onto the target in perfect weather, clear day, beautiful sunlight, because they're focused on their targeting and now focusing on the ground, and they'll literally see fit in the ground.

Target fixation. Target fixation. That's exactly what it is. And I forget where this came up. Isn't this what happened with Kobe Bryant's helicopter? It was foggy and it was just sea fit into the ground. Yeah, that's weather. Yeah.

I don't actually know the details on that, but to my knowledge, and I should be cautious, but I do not believe there was a problem with the helicopter. Now, obviously, weather's terrible. Weather sucks. When I think of sea fit in a good weather scenario, that's what you were described. where you're like, oh, I'm looking at this gauge or I'm doing something else, and then I just hit the ground.

That's really hard to reconcile because you're typically, the pilot is overwhelmed. Why I, well, what do you mean typically the pilot's overwhelmed? Because it's not like there's a bunch of different things going on, right? It's not like they're like, oh my gosh, I got this, I got that, I don't know what to do and they hit. Yeah. It's more like, oh, I really want to get this target dialed in.

I'm looking, boom. Yeah. Right? So they're not really overwhelmed. in the classical sense that someone would think of like, oh, there's all this chaos going on, and now I hit the ground. It's more like, oh, there's one little target fixation

that I've got right now, and this is going to make me burn in. Yeah. And the, am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. There's, there's, the target fixation is probably the most common one. And when I say overwhelmed in my mind,

there may be a better word for it. It's not overwhelmed that I'm trying to do 30 things at once. It's that I'm unable to prioritize those things and I tend to focus on just that one thing and I forget that there's other things to think about Not that I'm just too busy. I just get and there's a word I think that I'll we call it getting bore sighted It's the same thing as target fixation That's the most common thing This struck such a cord with me

This this idea of controlled flight and terrain and the reason is because I've worked with leaders civilian leaders and military leaders where it's so obvious you're like watching them destroy themselves they're watching them plummet to the earth and you know they're going to crash and you're just like in an aircraft I mean when when you've seen a guy a target target fixated and trying to get that thing get that little screen he's getting warnings in his ear that are going altitude and he's not even hearing it and it says warning warning I mean that's all that stuff is happening And he still hits. I've had guys where I'm telling him like, listen, you cannot behave like this.

If you behave like this, you are going to get fired. And they're like still going to doing the same thing. Yeah. People, this is a classic case of when you're unaware of what's happening. You're not detached. You have to be able to detach. Otherwise, you're going to see fit. You're just going to control flight into the ground.

That's what's going to happen. I've seen people do this with not only in leadership positions, but they do this with our lives. Yes. Right? They start going down a path. It's so obvious that it's the wrong path to go down to everybody that's around them. The warnings, altitude, like wrong woman, like bad job, like drinking too much. Like all these things.

The warnings are so clear. Yeah. And yet they just stay on that path and boom, they explode and their life gets ruined. So this idea that you can have these things going on in your life where you can stop them, you can correct them. But you have to take a step back and look around and say, oh, yeah, this relationship I'm in is a disaster. This job I'm in is a disaster. This alcohol that I'm using, this drugs that I'm using, this whatever I'm doing is this iPhone that I'm scrolling on, these things that

I'm getting caught. All these things are a disaster and I can't do them anymore. And you're hearing the warnings and you're not paying attention to them. So this can happen. And I, it's so often I see this with leaders. I'm looking at them and like, do you not freaking read the room? You know what I mean? Do you not see what's happening right here? Take a look at What is the people's faces right now? People's faces do they look engaged in what you're saying? Do they see are they nod in their head like hell yeah or are they looking at you kind of with a blank like hmm? Are they are there questions like hey how can I move forward with this or other questions like what are you talking about I'm not really sure we what do you want us to do? Because if that's what you're getting you got to read the room you got to pay attention to the altitude out because you're gonna burn in so you need to be careful see fit watch out. Yes. Other human error air traffic control improper loading fuel contamination improper maintenance do we should do a podcast there's a really good aviation disasters to look at I've almost done one in the past two with the Challenger yeah like there's so

many little things that led to these crashes these airline crashes and they're so well documented because they got the black box that's recording what they're saying totally and it's got all the instruments they know exactly what happened and you and like You said it's heartbreaking to hear these things or read about these things because it's so obvious But here's the thing. Here's the thing I'll tell you. That's what life is like. You're in the cockpit and there's all kinds of things that you can pay attention to and look around and be like, oh yeah, this is a problem over here.

And we don't pay attention to the warnings. We get too focused on one thing. We don't listen to the other people like those, I forget which I think it was Korean airline or Japanese airline, but the co-pilot is like, sir, I think, Maybe this is probably. He's like, hey, hold on a second. I'm working. Like, hey, be quiet. You're subordinate.

Yep. And so he's like, okay, I'll be subordinate. Yep. I won't say anything else. I'm obviously wrong. And that's not good. It's floating to the ground. Yeah.

Middle of the day. Yep. 100%. And, and only two things, you're spot on. And the only two things to say about it, just to add from that perspective on it is typically, those lead to catastrophic problems.

The discovery of that is usually catastrophic. Like, you literally hit the ground and blow up kill everybody, which means they're not like gentle life course corrections of like, oh, that's a good lesson learned. I'm going to not do that next time. That's not usually how these things go. And the other part too is sometimes when you talk about the power of detachment and we talk about detachment as a superpower because we're telling people it's not just that it's really, really hard, is that if you can do it, it can change your life. Is what I have seen, and I've seen this obviously not always after the fact. I've seen it with guys where I've actually

had guys where I've not let them fly airplanes anymore where I'll watch a video of them flying and they'll be flying around at 200 feet and the altimeter will be going altitude altitude altitude altitude and we'll say are you hearing that and he's like I don't hear that where the warnings are being shouted into his ear and he cannot process that it's it's a level of of not being attached that's so extreme that even sometimes the warnings cannot be heard like man I got a guy in an airplane who can't hear the airplane say we're about to crash. I can't let this guy fly an airplane. I'm trying to help him.

But sometimes that can be so debilitating that they don't even hear the warnings. And in real life, you see those people where they have, I don't know if they've convinced themselves, but they've become so unaware of the warning signs that they're no longer registering, which means they're not actively ignoring them. They don't even hear them. and typically the discovery of that is a catastrophic episode. Something catastrophic is going to happen in your life. Like you can't hear what your wife is saying.

You can't hear what your kids are saying. You can't hear what your teammates, your coworkers are saying. You don't even hear it. So by the time you discover there's something wrong, it's not like a gentle tap on the shoulder of, hey, jockey, you need to adjust something. It's over. Okay, you know, when you're driving a car and, you know,

you get in a near accident for whatever reason, and you get that, like, full adrenaline thing, shoots down your hands and arms and everything. Did you ever suddenly become aware prior to the catastrophic event taking place? Yes. I was fortunate. I never had it. Obviously,

I never crashed, but I never had an injection. I never had a, quote, catastrophic event near misses? Oh, yeah. Like, I don't know if it's a lot,

but I've had more than enough to remember. And what you described that feeling, that's the feeling. I know that feeling extremely well. And you look back like, holy cow, how did I got lucky or I dodged a pull it or I can't believe I got away with that or I can't believe I didn't see those things happening. That feeling of the adrenaline rush often is it's when you just avoid the outcome somehow or you just figure out beforehand like, oh my God, pull up or turn or whatever might be. Yes, absolutely know that feeling. I was parachuting and I wasn't very good.

And I never really got great at it. But I was parachuting in. But of course, I wasn't good at it. But guess what I was? Freaking arrogant, cocky. and thought I was a badass. And so my buddy, we were gonna get, you know, one of the guys had like a camera.

Like, and I'm talking, you know, like the click, click, like wind up. And he was a good parachutist. So we were like, oh, get a picture. I'm gonna link up with my buddy. And this guy's like my best friend. This is a guy I've talked about before. Like I went through buds with him, did three platoons with him and we lived together and we lived together the whole time.

I mean, this is like my brother, right? And so he goes out first. And for whatever reason, I was pretty far back. And so I come out of the aircraft and I freaking go into like a full track, which means you put your hands like behind you. And you're doing like, it's as fast as you can go because I'm trying to get to him. And I'm hauling ass.

I mean, I'm probably going 200 miles an hour. And he's, but he, you know, what he did when he got out of the plane was he like went what we call flat dumb and happened. He's kind of like slowing himself down like our hugging the air so that he can be as slow is so instead of going the normal speed which is probably 120 miles an hour of flat dumb and happy he's probably slowed down to like a hundred so I'm trying to catch him and I'm going like 200 miles an hour in a full track and when I went to like slow down I way way way was too late and I flew by him really fast and I was like dude you're a freaking idiot and luckily I didn't hit him because if I

to hit him I'm going I'm definitely gonna die and I'm probably gonna kill him too and I was like dude like I'm an idiot But the feeling that I had was you know I just avoided the the see fit right I almost did a controlled flight right into my friend and killed him and killed me And look am I maybe dramatizing this a little bit yeah, I'm probably drama I had enough steerage where I didn't hit him I wasn't like out of control I still could steer my track, but I definitely knew that I was stupid Yeah Do you have any examples where you were target fixated and all of a sudden you're like, what's that noise? Oh, it's the alpha. Oh, my God.

Yeah. I mean, yes, a decent amount. You know, especially at the beginning of the career because all the stuff you do, you're doing missions. You're going to have to do stuff. And what you want is to come back and like, I did this mission. I dropped the bomb. Whatever. I found the target.

Like, I got the missile off. And the fixation is oftentimes wanting to, I'm going to run. I got to run a view with my buddy here. or whatever it is you're trying to do. Some of it just dumb luck in my career, just like you described like, oh, man. And other times, like, you catch it just in time. Like, oh, man, I'm lucky I caught it at a certain time.

Not my best story of like not hearing, not hearing the warning is I think I've talked about on the podcast like the zero zero landing, where you're going to land in the carrier and the weather is so bad you can't see in front of the plane at all. So there's zero visibility, which means you're not going to see this ship. And of course, amazingly, the jet flies the same. The jet doesn't care.

It's you that care. So you get all freaked out. You get all worked up. You get all nervous. You get all anxious. And all those emotions, emotions keep you from detaching from just flying it. All these little indicators like the altimeter warning, they're all set up. They're actually never supposed to go off.

So a perfect thing is, oh, I'm going to set it at 500 feet. And in my mind, at 520 feet, I'm going to reach down and like tell the airplane, I know I'm at 500 feet. And if it goes off, it's telling you, hey, you're behind. This thing shouldn't have gone off. You should have caught it right beforehand because you know what's coming. So I don't want to get surprised by my altitude. I want to set it up or I got one at 500, one at 200. And I'll at least go, okay, I'm about to hear it.

Cool. I heard it move all. And I'll silence it. When you hear it, the first one, you're like, oh, man, that, that. If it surprises you. If it's surprised. You're like, oh, that's a bad sign. I should not have been surprised by that.

But there are times that you can hear it. And it's kind of like you ever woken up from a dream and you go, oh, that was a dream. And like you can replay back that this thing had been happening for a while where I hit the 200 foot altimeter. And it goes off. And by the time I heard it, I was able to go, oh, that thing's been going off for four or five seconds. Like I didn't just get surprised by it. It was in the background somewhere. Like picture like your alarm clock going off in a dream.

You're like, oh, that thing's been going off for 30 seconds. seconds, I've had moments where I've, I've hit the 200 foot altimeter and then when I hit it, I go, oh, crap, and I'll be at 70 feet, 60 feet, something like really, really low. Like, like, obscenely, dangerously, like this, like, how are you still alive? This doesn't happen very often. It's the ones where you are, the ones that are surprised are bad. The ones where you can look back and go, that thing alerted me 10, 15 seconds ago and I'm just now catching up.

Those are the worst. Those ones like, I don't know how I'm even here right now. Again, it doesn't happen very often. Those are the most nauseating of, dude, I am so lucky. Because you can account for, dude, that thing's been going off in my head for 10 seconds now. And I would say that's an overwhelm. Like, you got this, you're looking to pay in attention to that,

and there's some signal coming in that you're not even paying because you're just too much stuff going on. That's right. That's right. It was crazy when I worked a tradeette. Like I would just watch guys just be overwhelmed and they're just not hearing. They don't hear anything. They don't hear anything.

Like I have the platoon or the troop radio. Like I can hear that, you know, someone calling the the platoon commander or the troop commander like, hey, hey boss, we need fire support down here. We need. And the guy's just sitting there totally overwhelmed freaking out. Just nothing happening. We talked about it during when we would turn over. Remember the new units would show up and you get these firefights and they'd be standing there and bullets. Like I remember watching another officer.

We talked about this one. And he's standing up and there's like bullets going past hitting the wall. false and everybody is doing what they're supposed and he's staying there not being brave and like he just he cannot acknowledge he's not able to keep up with what's happening like get down get got to get down but he's overwhelmed that he can't process bullets going past him so this is a real thing it happens in a lot of different not just an airplane some of the words that you brought into the play here um redefine yeah freaking great words I wanted to think about some, we were talking about the connection to flying to leadership and just life in general.

And the word redefine as a term that we use, I'll go into the game plan, I'm going to fight against you. I got a plan. My plan will be whatever it is. I'm going to turn across your tail, go up and go down. It doesn't matter. I got a plan. And I want that plan to work. And I have maybe a turn or two to figure out, like, is this working?

And if I go around once and it didn't do anything, maybe I'll go around again. But at some point, I got to acknowledge, I'm not getting, I'm not. This is not, my plan is not working. And if it's not working, I have to do something different. We call that a redefinition, which is you have to change your plan. And we were redefined by if you're going to go up, you're going to go down. And again, I'm simplifying it. If you're going to go level, you're going to, I'm going to do something.

I'm going to redefine what I'm doing. It's an acknowledgement of what I am doing to this point has not worked. I mean, I think about Ramadi. Like, we redefined how we were going to fight in Ramadi, mostly based on what I was doing up to this point. Does not work. Did not work. And I also think about like, I'll come back from fights. And I'm like, hey, is there any reason why you didn't redefine on this second turn?

And they're like, well, I really wanted to stick to the plan or I wasn't quite sure. Like, hey, let's go backwards. Do you have any information telling you need to do something different? Yes, all sorts of good information. Nothing's working. Your outcome isn't the way you want. The redefinition seems super straightforward. Very, very hard to do.

But a term that we preach all the time is redefine the fight, redefine the fight, redefine the fight. is what you're doing is it working? Card passing, Echo Charles. Yes. Something everybody in the jujitsu gets caught up in. I'm trying to pass whatever. I'm trying to get a knee slice on you. I'm trying to get a knee slice on you.

I'm trying to get a knee slice on you. I'm trying to get a knee size on you. I'm trying to get a knee size on you. And it's not working. It's not working. It's not working. What I do? Keep trying the same thing.

It ain't going to work. And when there's that much defense in one area, you've got to go to a different area. You've got to do a different move. That's my recommendation to you on the guard patched. That's such a good word. I think this will actually apply to the whole deal where even you can do, or then again,

I should ask you, is there such thing as like a little micro redefined? Because look, if I'm passing Joaqua's guard or trying to. Yeah. There's a difference between an adjustment and a redefinition. When I use the word redifference, that's a pretty,

you're changing your plan. Yeah, like I go for footlock or something now. But if I make an adjustment, I don't need the reaffinionion. redefinitions, you know, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm, I'd say it's a small, it's a, it's a micro redefinition, I would say, something like that.

Yeah, that's what I thought. But it opens up a pretty big part of the game, right? Sure. And by the way, this happens with people as well, like, oh, Dave's not performing. What do I need to do? Counseling. Oh, he does, just still unperforming.

What do you counsel him more? Counsel more, counsel him more, counsel them more, counsel them more, counsel, it doesn't work. Guess what I got to try giving him some responsibility. So now I'm gonna take responsibility. Like, there's a bunch of different ways you can approach something. And if you don't, you're not going to get the same results. Yes. So whether you're dealing with people, whether you're dealing with business, whether you're

dealing with jiu-jitsu, whether you're dealing with aviation, sometimes you've got to redefine ref. I use the word reframe a lot, but I think it redefine is better. I'll say I'll reframe this question or let me reframe. Usually I think of reframing as my perspective on something. Like, let me reframe what I'm seeing right now. Like honestly, if we're doing jiu-jitsu, it's like, oh, I can't pass your guard. I've redefined a couple times. I need to reframe like, hey, maybe I should, maybe I should pull guard myself. You know what I mean?

Like, let me just reframe this whole thing. Like we're going, like I can't pass your guard, I can't pass your guard, I can't pass your guard. And we go five, five-minute rounds and I haven't passed your guard. Guess what I might do? Pol guard. Let's see how your passing game is. Maybe, you know, maybe I can get something from the bottom.

So I might have to actually reframe the whole thing. And redefined to me is a little bit more micro and then we probably have a micro reframe. So I dig it. So pivot, would you say is that like a normal civilian term for redefine like pivot? You know how like you know, I think so pivot. I think it's a good one totally. I think it's a good one. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's a good one because I've used that term to describe like at Eshlam Front. We pivoted when COVID hit and we had to do virtual engagements with clients. it was a pivot. It wasn't like a total change. It wasn't, and I would almost go so far as to say, if we would have reframed what we're doing, it's like, hey, we're going to go from doing leadership training

to doing something else. You know what I mean? For me, a reframe is a bigger thing. But just to redefine, like, okay, we'll redefine this situation. We're going from mostly in person to mostly virtual. Well, going to all virtual for a few months. So, yeah, pivot.

I've used that word. I'd say they're pretty interchangeable. But redefines a little bit better. Sounds way cooler for sure I think it actually has a better Although I will say pivot means there's a still a connection And I think redefine also has a connection Yeah

In my mind it felt like very similar Cool very similar All right fluid mutual support I mean obviously this one's good to go This is so good to go I mean it's like it's a classic cover move This is a like a bit of an advanced concept In the idea that first of all

The word mutual support is you and I are supporting each other You know the word You've used a word a thousand times. Mutual supporting Overwatch positions. These are two things that are working in concert. I think what makes us complex or what makes us challenging is the word up front, which is fluid, which means it's going to adjust. It's fluid.

It's going to move around. So in aviation, you and I, okay, I'm aircraft one, aircraft two. We've got four of us out there today. You and I together, we're going to support each other. But old school used to be like, I want you one mile away from me, one thousand feet above me. We call that combat spread. Like that worked decades ago. It does not work anymore,

which means sometimes you're going to support me from nice and close. Sometimes you're going to support me five, six, seven, eight miles away. Sometimes you'll be in front. Sometimes you'll be behind. But the point behind the fluid mutual support is all your movements in the sky,

keep in mind what you have to be able to do is provide support for me or be in a position for me to provide support for you. So you can't just move autonomously. You can't just move around in what might seem best for you if you lose the ability to provide or receive mutual support. So it's that concept that cover and move, neutral support,

it varies constantly, three-dimensionally throughout the flight. It is fluid. It changes all the time. And if you're not thinking about step one is, can I provide cover, move, or can I receive cover and move? Your movement may seem optimal to you. It's actually a bad move. Yeah, there you go.

That was definitely a development. because like went to do immediate action drills with Stoner and Stoner was like, oh, here's where we're supposed to be according to the standard operating procedure. These guys are here. We need to be 20 meters to the right and 40 meters back. It's like, no, bro. You got cover. Where's concealment? Where are those guys?

Where can you provide a lane for? Like there's so many other things to calculate and that's why it's fluid mutual support. That's right. Tethered. What does this mean? It's connected to this. And the way I typically explain it is like, okay Jocco you and I are tethered meaning I'm the one that you are linked to like I got

we have like a tether a leash between us and during the flight I might have this plan like okay I want to stay tethered to Jocko all day so I'm going to move in relationship to you and keep it on you it might be that in the middle of the fight go dang it really doesn't make sense for you to have to stay tethered to me I'm going to now switch you're going to now be tethered to echo and so the point behind that isn't like who's going to be tethered to who it's the concept that everybody has to be tethered to someone else during nobody can ever be untethered because then I got oh dude there's someone on their own job alone and unafraid he's on their own we can't help him we know that's going to be bad so the concept of tethering is I always

have to be thinking about not just conceptually mutual support but also that individual is going to be required oftentimes it's I'll get a young guy and like oh dang is it is it official like a verbalized like oh Dave and I are tethered we will we don't not during the flight but we will that is a that is an actual word where we'll talk about when we build formations like hey these two aircraft are tethered these two aircraft like we'll talk it's an official thing yes this is a real word absolutely yep no I'm not just saying a real world but like an official thing like hey Dave on this flight you're tethered with echo it'll be like these two aircraft these two aircraft in these positions

and those positions in the in real time might swap so it might not be you jaco and two informant but tethering is absolutely yes got out of plane out of phase what are these things all about yeah these are cool things too like this really the origin of this is dogfighting like relationship to another aircraft you and I are fighting together when we're in plane or we're fighting together oh I'm sorry on the same team no we're good we're fighting against each other god what it origin is really a one against one I'm fighting you you're fighting me our aircraft our aircraft the classic way of thinking of it is like we're going to be turning circles around each other.

Whoever does a better job gets behind the other person I win or whatever. That's in phase. You're turning left? I'm turning left. You're turning right. I'm turning right. You're going up. I'm going up.

It is a much harder thing to do, but becomes a much harder problem for the enemy to solve when I maneuver what's called out of plane, out of phase, which means if you're going to go across, I'm going to go down, which now makes the two-dimensional, this flat problem. And any problem in an airplane is relative. If I'm going up and you're going up, we're in phase, we're in plane, like it's a flat problem. It might seem weird from the outside, but from in the cockpit, you're just directly across from me. It doesn't matter if up, down, left or right. It's only two-dimensional because we're doing the same thing.

If I now move in a different direction, like out of plane, it becomes a three-dimensional problem, if that makes sense. Because we're now opposite flow from each other. If you're going up, I'm going to the side. That's a very complicated thing to figure out geometrically where things are going to go. a picture like two circles not working together. You're forecasting movement. It's very complex, out of plane, out of phase. We teach and train, especially in an airplane like a Hornet,

which from a pure power standpoint is an inferior machine. You show up in a jet with more thrust and we are in plane. Sooner later, you're just going to get behind me. You're faster. You got more energy. You're more powerful. You're just going to get there. It may take some time, but in the end it's not going to work out.

What I have to do is work out of plane and out of phase with you and make this a very complicated problem for both of us, but also for you, or I'm just going to die. Out of plane, out of phase maneuvering is what makes fighting so dynamic, is it's in three dimensions in doing that. It can be very, very complicated. When you have an inferior machine on paper,

you have to do that or you will lose, period. It's almost like saying like, okay, we're going to arm wrestle. And if you're stronger than me, let's say all technique being the same, but if it's just pure strength against strength, you will just push my arm down. Let's say, like I said, everything else is the same. Well, then this is dumb.

I need to come up with something else. I need to maneuver differently. That's out of plane, out of face. You have to maneuver. You have to maneuver. Meneuve differently. Differently. Situational awareness.

It's like the most important thing in the world. You have to know what you just said like, can you read the room? It's like saying like, bro, do you have no, we call it essay. We just abbreviate an essay. Dude, if I were to go to Echo and if I want to like make one of like most critical comments about you, I'd be like, dude, that guy's got no essay. That's my way of saying like that guy does not know what's going on.

It is, it is a highly critical comment. So you're saying in the fighter world? In the fighter world saying this dude's got no essay is like the worst. If I say you got no essay, it's like probably one of the worst things I can say. Because if there's one attribute that we place a premium on is you. You go out in this totally complex three-dimensional world with 30 different airplanes, all going different directions. And if you can come back and tell me what's going on, I'm like, dude, that guy's got freaking high essay, man. He knows what's going on, which means he's got good decisions.

He's a good leader. He's all these positive attributes. And if I go like, dude, he came back from that flight. He had no SA the whole day. That means you didn't know what's going on. There's nothing more important than knowing what's happening. If you had no essay, like, let's say you're a platoon commander and I was at trade at. and I'm putting you through training.

And I grab the platoon commander like, hey, we're all your squads. And he was like, I have no idea. That's way worse than, hey, I don't know if this decision to put your machine, I made this decision, it wasn't good decision, maybe think about a different location. Okay, okay, but like, I don't know where my guys are.

Okay, well, do you know what the enemy was? Oh, I didn't know where the fire was coming. Like, situational awareness is the most important thing. And without it, you actually can't make good decisions. Now, if you have high essay, you make bad decisions, we can talk about it. Yeah. And you go, okay, cool, I learned from that.

No essay, dude, that is the worst. And I'll go ahead and throw this out there. No detachment, no essay. If you're not detached, you're focused on that freaking one thing that's right in front of you, you have no idea what's going on around you. Totally. So be careful. Yeah. Simultaneous or sequential.

Yeah. This is how we decide how we're going to move forward. And you can think of moving forward. Like, it doesn't necessarily technically have to be in a straight line, but we're going to progress. Whatever our progression is going to be. We have a choice. We can either do it. This is also in relationship to problems, adversaries.

We got people out in front of us that are enemies. We got to get rid of them. I can either do it simultaneously. Like if you and Echo are both my enemy and I'm fighting against you, I can attack you at the same time, pointing at you and putting you side by side. Or I don't have enough people to do this. This is not good to be fighting you two at the same time.

I'm going to go all the way around and change the geometry where I do it sequentially. I'm going to start with you and then go to you. as you know, classic P&E, there's pros and cons to both. It can take longer. It could be more,

in theory, time depending, and I need to pick who's a higher priority. There's a lot of things I have to do, but if I'm just going to go straight because I said I'm going north and the problem presents itself, and I say,

I said we're going north, we're going north, and I have too big of a problem to handle, I can lead to real problems by being committed to the direction I'm going rather than saying this is not a good problem to handle simultaneously. I'm going to go sequentially,

which means I need to move around. I have to make that decision in real time. How do I handle the challenges in front of me? We would hit targets, sometimes sequentially, sometimes simultaneously. And like you said, advantages and disadvantages to both. So that's what you've got to pay attention to. You also got to be, I think it's good to have a contingency to,

like you just said, switch and be going into the target thinking we're going to do it simultaneously and then get there and think, oh, a second there's more enemy overheads reporting that there's more enemy on this target okay cool we're going to go sequential now let's hit that hit that contingency sticking to the plan is not a good plan if if the information tells you you shouldn't yeah yeah we were rolling up in a target in bagdad and as we're rolling in like the overhead reports some you know there's 40 people in the street outside and we were going to like stop off you know whatever four blocks away and for patrol the And I was like, let's roll.

We rolled right up on that thing. So we had the big guns with us and everything and maintain as much surprise as possible in that scenario. So, yeah, have those little contingencies ready. Signature management. Yeah, it's a pretty good segue. Because all that is, it's really, in theory, like it's an advent of like modern stealth. A signature is just what people can see. My signature is me.

Like, what I'm putting out there is you can see me. I have a visual signature. I have a heat signature, like my engines, put out heat. That's called a heat signature. If I'm an after burner, that heat signature is huge. You can see that thing dozens of miles away. If I'm an idle, that heat signature is really, really small. You can't see it hardly at all.

Visual signature, if I'm pointing out at you, you can imagine, pretty hard to see a little tiny airplane, like an F-16 point-out at you. If I'm on a side with my wings 90 degrees to you, you can see that thing 15 miles away. You need to pay attention to this signature you're putting out into the world. Not just your heat and not just your wings. But what are you putting out into the world and what do people see? And sometimes I want you to see me.

That might be a good deterrent. Sometimes I don't want anybody to see me. But the lesson from this is pay attention to what you are emitting. What are you putting out into the world? Again, might be a good life leadership lesson snuck inside this concept. Yeah. It's interesting how if you don't have good essay, you might not. know what kind of signature you're putting out to the world.

I keep coming back to what you said. It's like the best example is like, bro. Read the room. Can you not see what you're doing? Like these people are now afraid of you. They don't want to, like how do you not know that you're doing? How do you know that you're not putting that out there? Yeah.

There's no essay. There's no detachment. Marking. And this is, they're super closely connected. If I'm flying with you, I'm like, hey, Jocco, you're marking. I'm telling you everybody can see you. Mostly it's connected to what we call cons when you get up to certain outlets. Like your engines disturb the air enough that you'll get a white line.

You see it in commercial lines. These white streaks to come from behind the airplane. And we'll get a brief that says, okay, cons today between 27,000 and 34,000. Okay. I should know that. I should be below that or above that. Or if I'm in that, they're going to see you. And you can have this super fancy airplane that's invisible to everybody.

But if you're marking, everybody can see it. And so we'll run a test and fly around and go, hey, you know, climb, climb and go, hey, Dave, you're marking. Okay, cool, 27,000. All right, everybody knows. It's also an alert like, you're emitting a signature. This is a visual one. You should be aware of that.

It's how we tell someone they're not managing their signature. Once again, no essay, and you're marking. Bad situation. Behind the power curve, we have definitely talked about this one. Yes. There is a odd regime of flight, which the phrase behind the power curve is connected to, which is a line that's used in all sorts of scenarios by which you need more power to go slower.

The power curve really is just this arcing curve that it's pretty intuitive for the first most of it, which is the more power you have, the faster you go. Like, the more you push up the throttles, the faster you go. Well, at some point, due to all sorts of different factors, mostly just aerodynamics is if you get to a place where you get behind that power curve, I mean, you're not on that curve anymore.

The jet need more and more power to stay up, which means you've gotten behind. And of course, power is limited. You don't have unlimited power, unlimited resources, unlimited energy, unlimited money. And you need more and more of that to stay airborne. If someone is behind the power curve, in some sense it can be a very literal thing.

Like, oh, man, my jet, I didn't fly it very well. I got behind the power curve. 90% of the time in aviation, we're talking about this mentally. or relationship-wise or how you're interacting, not just the mechanics of the aerodynamics of flying. If I'm talking to echo, I'm like, hey, dude, I've been with Jock on this task for a while.

He's behind the power curve. That's me saying he can't keep up with what's expected from him or he can't, he doesn't have enough energy or ability or capacity or capability to get done when he needs to get done. It's a critical sentence. If someone's behind the power curve, they're struggling. and at some point they're going to reach a limit because the more power you need to stay eventually

there is a maximum you can do like if you're exercising you get behind the power curve you're gonna push harder and harder and eventually you can't push harder anymore the weight's gonna come down on top of you it's not a good thing I had a saying before I even understood any of that but I knew what the power I knew the power curve like we'd use that expression

yeah and I would always say get as far ahead as the power curve as you possibly can so like um hey should we look we We're doing a mission tomorrow. Should we finish up the plan tonight? Or should we just get some sleep since we know? No, it's like, no, finish the plan tonight. Get ahead of the power curve.

Get ahead of the power curve. Get ahead of the power curve as you can. Oh, you know, I got a actually, here's where I fail. I failed one today. I was going to cut my hair before I got down before I came to this today. But because I got a flight tomorrow and stuff I got to do and I didn't get it done. Now, at some point, I know I'm going to get it in my mind right now. But there's times where it's like, oh, wait a second.

I still got to cut my hair that takes 20 minutes. Like all of a sudden, I'm behind the power curve. Could be a thing. What I should have done was done it yesterday. Yep. That's when I should have done it. I should have done it. So I went a little bit behind the power curve today.

Now again, it's 20 minutes. I'll catch it back. But I don't like it. I don't like that feeling of being behind the power curve. Get as far ahead of the power curve as you can. Here's the thing. Once you're behind it, like you said, once you're behind the power curve, it's a problem. Yes.

And listen, in aviation, as long as you have enough altitude, you're going to be okay, Because you just put the noise to the ground and you're okay. But when you're in life behind the power curve, something's got to get sacrificed. Yes. And you're going to drop something. Something else isn't going to happen because you got behind the power curve. And that's something that isn't going to happen could be a very significant thing. So you've got to stay ahead of the power curve.

The seal teams was great at teaching this. And I don't mean the seal teams taught it to you as like, hey, here's a course in the power curve. It was a lesson that you would learn. It's like, I remember being a young guy. It's like, well, do I, should I waterproof the radios now? Or just wait till you know for a few hours go to lunch get a workout in and then I'll just do it later No do it now get out of the power curve the lunch can do later the workout can get sacrificed The radios need to be power waterproofed right you know before we go on this mission tonight

It's gonna take an hour and half to do it I can either do it now or I can get behind the power curve And now what am I sacrificing and by the way once you get done with it it's done now if you got time you can eat now if you got time you can work out But if you don't got time cool we didn't fall behind the power curve on the most critical thing, which is the mission. So if you keep that in mind in life, get as far ahead of the power curve as you can, especially when it comes to projects and tasks and daily life. Get as far ahead of the power curve as you can. It's going to make your whole life better. It's going to make your whole life easier. 100%. When in doubt, broadcast your intentions. I've never heard of this before. What does it mean? Yeah. So this is the next phase of some

the words I wanted to throw out there was we have a set of rules. We call them training rules. and this really applies to friendly to each other. This is not like to an enemy or anything like that, but let's say you and I are working together. And I got my group, you got your group. We're working together, but we're doing our own things right now. I have a set of rules that we're both going to follow for the most part. And you probably, we know each other pretty well.

I'm hopefully predictable. You're predictable. I have a good sense of what you're going to do. At some point I'm going to go, hmm, maybe I don't know what's happening here. That's the doubt. And the default is typically, I won't say anything. We have a total, the rule is, when in doubt, broadcast your intentions. If you have any shred of an idea that this person might not know, tell them.

I'm going high. I'm going low. I'm going, whatever it is, as opposed to not broadcasting your intentions. The whole point behind that is I want everybody else to know. We have this whole thing choreographed and planned. Well, unfortunately, when we get out there, things are going to get a little crazy. Maybe this plan isn't going to work. I need to tell everybody what I'm going to do.

It's really cover and move. But when in doubt, broadcast your intentions is don't assume the other person knows what's going on. Assume that they don't and let them know what you're going to do. What are your intentions here rather than saying nothing? Yeah. And if you don't know someone else's intentions, ask them. Totally. Like, hey, dude, hold on a second. What are you trying to make happen here?

Always assume the other aircraft doesn't see you. This is kind of tied into the last one, right? 100%. As part of our, like I said, we have these training rules. There's probably 15 rules. We brief them every time we go fight. that are reminders of things to do. Always broadcast your intentions.

Always assume the aircraft. The other aircraft doesn't see you. So if I'm fighting, part of it is I want to see the world from your perspective. I want to do a good job fighting you. I want to know what, I want to picture what you're seeing. And as I do that, I don't want to get to like, oh, I know what he's going to do. He's going to do this move. He's going to do this thing.

I actually am going to make the assumption that you don't see what I'm doing. That's my mindset is going to be as I'm going to assume you don't see me. So I don't want to put myself in a position. that requires you to do something to keep us safe, to keep us from not. In this case, we're trying to avoid hitting each other. I mean, that's the simplest way to describe this, is I don't want to make a move that the safety of this move

is reliant on you seeing me. So I'm going to do everything with the assumption that you don't. Oh, that's, that is very close to something that we call extreme ownership, which is, listen, I can't count on echo. to solve this problem. Like, I need to step in there and make things happen. I can't, I need to take ownership of what's going on. As opposed to saying, well, I thought Echo was going to do it.

Like, that just doesn't work. Break off attacks prior to pushing the defender through the hard deck. Yeah. So another rule. This goes in both directions. There are two really cool ways of looking at this. One is that I'm fighting you in real life. In real life and I chase you down to the ground and you fly into the ground and I

follow you into the ground, I didn't win. So I have to break off my attack air to air. I have to, before I hit the deck, which means I have to have the awareness as I'm being aggressive in my maneuver against you. There's another disinterested third party called the ground that doesn't care who we are, what we're doing. It will kill us both. And so I have to calculate that. There's also another part of it too, like the way I think about this when we talk about this in training, if I'm fighting in training, and so you're not working together to try to figure things out and learn from each other, if you're looking up over your shoulder and you see me leave this maneuver, break off this attack, and there would be, you should wonder what, like,

oh. I'm about to, that, yes. I'm about to form a relationship with a disinterested third party. Yeah, that doesn't care. So there's a, a methodology of, I'm going to break off the attack, part, of course, in real life for my own, like, let him hit the ground. I can't do that. But I also want you to learn to do that as well, which is a way of saying, like, I'm going to give you a little bit of an out, a little bit of an opportunity to exit. Like, you can not, you don't have to hit the ground either. I'm going to break off this attack. I'm going to give you an opportunity to break off your attack as well. And if I do that in training, as the defensive person, the person looking up, learns that that that problem is every bit is important, sometimes more so than the person attacking you, which means I can't just be looking at you.

There's other things out there that are a problem. Again. I like it. If we can't find parallels to life here, like, we're missing out. Yeah. This one intrigued me. Skate versus bonsai. Yeah.

What's going on here? These are what we call flow decisions. We're air-to-air. We're fighting other aircraft. Very simply, skate means I'm going in and out. Bonsai means I'm going forward. So you can think of Bonsai like, Bonsai, I'm going in. I'm going to attack you.

Like Leroy Jenkins. That's it. Now, hopefully it's a little more control to that. Now, if you picture I've got you and then behind you as Echo and behind that as Carrie, Bonzai might seem like a really cool idea until I get past you and go, crap, what did I get myself into? And sometimes Skate is like, oh, you know, you're avoiding the enemy. And so, again, there's pros and cons to both.

The point behind the decision of Skate and Bonzai is there's risk and reward to both. Bonzai is a really aggressive maneuver. And being aggressive is a really good thing. It's a really good thing. it can catch you off guard. I could be really offensive. I can kill a lot of you if I'm aggressive. But I can also use a lot of weapons,

use a lot of gas, get really, really far away, and then find myself where I can't get home or something because I've been bonzying too much. Skates really conservative. I'm going to probably kill less of you. I'm going to do less damage to you. But I'm going to save a bunch of gas and a bunch of... I have to figure out what the balance is between those two.

If all I do is bonsai and I'm just like, here comes Dave, we're just going to attack everybody, or here comes Echo like it is conflict divertsy and never wants to kill anybody neither one of those are by themselves are good I have to have a going in plan

I have to broadcast that hey we're going to skate on this we're going to bonzai and this I got to tell everybody what we're thinking and so they understand what the intent is the worst thing I can do is have half my team skate

and half my team bonsai and that we're not providing mutual support this one I recognize pretty quickly in some prioritize and execute situation you have a saying

of aviate, navigate, communicate. This is a little diddy, a little catchphrase taught, probably like, I think, day three of flight school. And it's really associated when something goes wrong is you will aviate, navigate, communicate, in that order. Think of it as just classic peony. You got something going on. The very first thing you do is aviate is you fly.

If you got all that things sorted out and you're flying, cool. Now figure out where you're going and navigate and get to the right heading in the location. Cool, you did all that? Cool. Then you can start talking to people. What typically happens is you got a problem and you start talking. I got a problem.

You know, I got this and that. And you're not flying or navigating. That's when people crash. That's what people have problems. Mid-air collisions is I'm trying to figure out where I am, what I'm doing and how to communicate that, and I'm not just flying my jet. So it's the constant reminder of aviate, navigate, communicate.

If you get a problem, the priority is, the most important thing is fly the way. point. If you don't do that, I don't care how well you're doing all the other things, you're going to have an issue. So every pallet in the world knows this saying, a v, navigate, communicate. That's the priority in that order. If you get the matter of order, you will have a problem. But you are going to, going to aviate me. I start to pull up on my stick. Now I figure out where I'm going. I'm still pulling up on my stick. I'm still figuring out where I'm going to go in a little bit longer, but I'm still coming back on the

radio and saying, hey, I was just, I got a little low. I'm okay. And then you're going back to it. So it's like you're doing all three. It's not hard to do all three. The reason this is a thing is that when you have a problem, you get boarsighted on one of those things. You get target fixated. You get emotional. You get focused. You're not detached. Flying, navigating, communicating is easy until there's a problem. If you recognize the problem, you have to make sure you're flying first. Sea fit is people that skip the aviation part and they start doing other things. You're like, dude, did you forget to fly the airplane? And the sad part is, yes. Yeah, they did. And what happens is catastrophic. So we have a saying, aviate, navigate, communicate. It's the reminder of prioritizing and execute.

You can't skip this to get to these two. Have you got this? Cool, good to go. Get to this. And if you do it, cool, no problem. 99 times out of 1,000 times out of 1,000, no factor. But one out of 1,000, it is a factor. And if it's a factor and you get it wrong, catastrophic.

That's how Flane's people flying to the ground. And you just mentioned the last word that we had for this, which is borisited, which is target. Did you guys use the term target fixated? Or did you just use the term borisided? We typically use the word borisided because that is a target fixation we used. And actually, target fixation, we would typically use air to ground because you were literally fixated on the target. Most of the time we use the word borisided because there's a mode in the airplane, which is called borisite, which takes all your radar, all your tools, and it focuses in front of you in like a little three-degree.

circle, which means you want to get what's directly in front of you. Sometimes that's really important. It's rarely very important. But every now and then I want to just get the guy right in front of me. I push the button forward. It's called borsight mode, which means everything is focused directly off my nose. Mean all my instruments? Everything.

That's what you're saying. So it's all my instruments. When I go borsight, all my instruments are. It tells everything. Find that guy right in front of me. Got it. Get the radar on that guy. Shoot that one guy.

Borsight mode. Everything is pointed directly in front of me. Cool for about 10 seconds. what you'll typically come back and like dude I got really boresighted on that one guy which means I lost everything else that's out of me if you're gonna boresight someone you better kill him immediately

and then get right back out to a wider search being boresighted is the same thing as being target fixated but it's against something in the air so if I'm boresighted it means I'm pointed at someone in the air if I'm target fixed headed typically on the ground that's just typically how we it's the same exact thing and how often do you think in a fighter people get borsighted they're like oh it's a plane in front of me

and like cool what'd you do I locked them up and the classic is you got flanked, you guys got somebody behind you and all these other. It's usually not just one against one. It's usually 10 against 10 or something like that. If you're bored-sided, you're going to get killed. Well, there you go. Don't get boarsighted out there.

Could have some problems. Yep. Could have some significant problems. Awesome. So many comparisons, so many verbs and descriptions to use for everything that we do. and thanks man thanks for coming down speaking of systems

speaking of you know that one problem that you can have which is contaminated fuel sure hell yeah we don't want to have contaminated fuel you ever so I have these go carts Dave Burke

yeah and they go I don't know 20 miles per hour 1820 the solid for a go cart they're for the kids but I jump in there from time so from time to time meaning every day every cent

King of the block so well and my son. Mario and Dreddy out there. He's seven. So we'll go out there and we bring these boxing gloves. So you know what Mario card is, right? It's like basically battling, but you're on go-kart so you can hit them with what different weapons.

I know well. Oh, hell yeah. Is it a video game? Yeah. Okay. So this is essentially the real Mario cart. So we have these gloves, boxing gloves, and then a regular like these gloves, right, that we just have. I don't know.

So you go and you throw the gloves at them, right? And if you have weapons, the rules are if you got weapons, you get hit, They got to hit your body. You've got to, like, throw all your weapons up. Anyway, I feel like you'd be real good as that. This is the green tortoiseshell right here. I know what's going on. Yeah, exactly right.

That's essentially what it is. I feel like you'd be really good. And a lot of times where when you describe, like, how to, you know, how to be successful when you're in dog fighting and all this stuff, it's like, dang. It's to say it's two-dimensional because you can't go up and down or whatever. But I feel like you'd be real good at that. I agree. Come over sometime with play. We'll see what.

up check but yes bad fuel is no good me need the good fuel yeah the good stuff that good on the good stuff integrity so uh the jocco fuel i guess apparently from what i understand is synonymous with integrity like people try only the good stuff well we go through great lengths to make sure we keep it that way um yeah if you guys need fuel out there go to joccofuel dot com get some hydrate get some greens get some protein get some go you finished that one already killed it killed it what flavor you got over there this is iced tea lemonade jaco style

apparently you were out of orange yeah I was out of orange sorry sorry about that we couldn't get you that um we got that we got protein both the protein powder which is freaking delicious and the RTDs now which let's face it they're super convenient let's face it dude

it's a lot easier And the sweet cream coffee is crushing. You guys out there really like the sweet cream coffee because it's selling me crazy. Yeah. So just a heads up. I'm pretty sure my wife is a large contributor to the sweet cream sale. She loves it, dude. Was she a coffee drinker?

She is a, well, she was a, I don't drink coffee. Yeah. She drinks coffee and we have supplanted significantly. Yeah. And she didn't, I hate to say it, like she didn't drink. the other molks like just wasn't her thing she crushes the sweet cream yeah it's a real thing there's a whole like there's a whole demographic of human beings that that's what they're doing man yeah like they get the caffeine in there 95 it's it's like a cup of coffee

with 30 grams of protein i mean it's let's face it you know it's freaking awesome it's true bro my daughter's into it she's into all the mulks but she i had to stop her because the caffeine or whatever but she was like she's down for that it tastes good it tastes like tiramisu Yes, it does. Hey, we got it all for you. Go check it out. Joccofield.com. Also, you can go to Wawa and get milk,

which is the protein drink. You can go to vitamin shop, GNC military commissaries, Afees, Haniford, dash stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, Shoprite,

H.E.B. down in Tehoss. Meyer up in the Midwest, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere. And by the way,

if you got a gym, whether you got a, you might have a Globo gym. Yeah, Hell yeah. You know, you might have a CrossFit gym. You might have a Jiu-Git-Tacademy. Hell yeah.

You might have a boxing gym. I don't know. I don't know what you have. Or you might go to one of those gyms. If you want that gym to have JockoFuel, email J-F sales at joccofuel.com. We're spreading across the country with that stuff. Anyways, appreciate it. Joccofuel.com.

Get yourself some clean energy. That's what we're doing. Also, origin, USA. OriginUSA.com. If you need a jihotoo-ghi, if you need a jihon, two rash guard. By the way, there was a girl competing at ADCC in day two, and I was across the, across the arena from her, and she was wearing an old school freaking trooper rash guard. And I didn't get, I couldn't find her. I couldn't like make it happen. But I mean, she was just

out there wearing a, you know, zero four 34. Yeah, just representing. And she was in the, the semis maybe. Yeah. Just out there's out there representing. And I didn't get, like, you know, look, there's a lot of people wearing origin hell yeah yeah but that was an old school representation that is hard so whoever you were I appreciate it she actually lost unfortunately but I mean look dude these are the best people in the world at grappling yeah fully so um if you need a rash card if you need a geese boots t-shirts if you need stuff and you want to support freedom and America go to origin USA.com and get something that's what we're doing also jocco has a store called jaco store new discipline

equals freedom shirt what is it's a new one I haven't seen it yet no nobody's seen it yet well actually by the time of this being released it's still gonna have a few more days so do this if you want to remind you sign up for the email list if you haven't already mm you get the email when it drops oh that what we're doing no way it's not a that goes that goes going he's lost his mind no no no no they sign up on the email list he's not all of warnings no I'm not they stopped people just stopped listening no that you're talking about drop culture seems saying that's different that's where the all your stuff is only

through drops you're into this day break negative okay so there's this way of selling stuff whatever it may be uh wait your wife drinks coffee right does you have Starbucks cups like the you know the ones you can buy and stuff so anyway Starbucks does drops with cups they'll be like hey limited edition you can only get it from this day to this day that's it it's like I'm what I'm on my new track your new track I'm gonna drop sometime soon is that different like I'm like hey echo going to drop a new track it's the same term okay kind of the same vein but it's different yes so anyway if you're so drop culture is what you sell everything

like this all limited edition you got you got to get on the email list which I dig by the way because you can find some cool stuff that's not what this is I'm saying this isn't drop culture this is a one-off drop I just use the word drop oh because it's also not gonna be unlimited no no it's unlimited oh it is it's the new one so you know how you know time goes on you know a lot of people have the old school discipline equals freedom then they got the second one which was Good, you designed that one, by the way. Oh, you're talking about when I made it more of an equal sign?

Yes, sir. You made it so that equals is the biggest word. Well, you know, spatial. Well, look, that's debatable, but hey, spatially, you know, it made sense. But hey, look, I dig it, man. I like yours as well. And then we got the third one, which we called the standard issue. Oh, yeah.

Kind of legit. Representing all the different branches if you pay attention. Now we've got the fourth one. It's been years. You know what I mean? It's just an updated one. Anyway, if you want to, you want the first edition on that one, sign up for the email list. and then we'll indicate that the day that it drops.

Yes, I use the word. Okay, and that's at jocco store.com. Check it out. Also, shirt locker. Don't forget about this. This is a subscription scenario, one drop every month. Yeah.

Not limited edition, because all you gotta do is sign up. It's a subscription scenario. Anyway, you get new designs every month. At ADCCC, at ADCC, I saw some in the wild. Oh yeah. And you know what there was? Lies, lies. Yeah.

People, a lot of response on that one. People very much liked that one. I see the one Dave Burke's representing. That's one of the shirt locker ones. True dish. Oh yeah. Also, if you need some steak, you can go to Colorado Craftbeef.com or you can go to primalbeef.com. People make an awesome steak for us out here.

That's what we're doing. We're eating steak. By the way, the beef, do you have any beef sticks from Colorado Craft beef? 100%. They're going. Yeah. Do you have to stock up on those? Dude.

Because it's like having a Snickers bar. But it's steak better yeah Yeah, yeah it's like having a Snickers bar but it's better because snickers bars junk way better yeah hey no offense Snickers bars but let's face it I appreciate what you did for me when I was nine Years old you know and it's like what's for lunch Snickers bar and a coke God growing up in the 70s bro that was this that was the deal right there That was a jam did you did they do that did you do that? No my mom was a hippie My mom is she don't she don't she was giving you like mineral water

Yeah kind of I mean not mineral water but yeah Sprouts you know like you make the sandwich with the real turkey and the sprouts in it I mean I guess you know hey man do what you did wasn't a better than Snickers and coke I'll tell you that coke That was kind of the jam when I was a kid Dave I remember like little league baseball games over you got 50 cents to go to the snack bar You get a 25 cent coke any 25 cents Snickers bar too Oh dang hey why is America having problems with obesity right now.

I'm not sure. Why do we have type two diabetes running rampant? Well, then again, no, it's not because of that. Because look, you guys are saying you guys are freaking down for the Snickers and Coke. You guys aren't obese. No, no, no, no. We were. You were obese when you were?

No, no, no, no. I'm saying that people that didn't go, hey, hold on a second, this might not be the best combination of breakfast, lunch and dinner over here. They didn't do the, what do you call the refraint re-refine. They gotta redefine. They got to redefine. Yeah, you got to redefine. Especially now you got all your other problem solved.

That phone. You gotta watch out. Redefine that whole thing. So, there we go. Beef sticks. No snickers. Stop the snickers already. And primalbeef.com,

Coloradocrapbeef.com. Check those out. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also check out jocco underground.com. We're getting ready to record one of those. So. Life advice. That way we can say whatever we want.

Answer questions. Go to joccoenderground.com if you want to check that out. We have a YouTube channel. So does, So does Jocco Fuel have a YouTube channel. So does Origin USA have a YouTube channel. So does Eschlam Front have a YouTube channel. So a bunch of different options there to see what's going on.

I would say Origin USA is sort of a behind the scenes of what is going on. I would say Jock Fuel is kind of a current what's going on. And I would say Eschlam Front is information. A little bit about what's going on, but mostly about, hey, here's some good leadership things for you to move forward with. So check those out. YouTube. psychological warfare Flipside canvass.com

Get some cool stuff that Dakota Meyer makes to hang on your wall and also we've written some books Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual The new one There's a new version that expanded a dish Talk about the Extreme Ownership Leadership Loop in there Written a bunch of other books

You guys know what they're check out the kids books for your kids How's a Warrior Kid progress coming over on the Burke front? Strong you get good insights because I send you texts when they like get a new belt or run a tournament or something but they're on the path bro they're totally on the path.

Is Jiu-Jitsu for them, for your kids right now it might be different for different kids but is it like the focus of your family or is it just part of the family is just part of what we're doing? Especially for my middle and my youngest

it's just like it's just what we're doing. Yeah. It's just it's funny because they're like oh what sports do you play and they're like oh I play soccer and baseball or soccer and football

whatever. And then like, oh, and like we also do, it's not like a seasonal. It's just, it's like saying like, do you guys like do your homework and do you guys sleep and you guys like whatever. And so for me as a parent, obviously that is the best part about it. It is not an activity that they are like, oh, it's football season or it's just, it is just part of the deal, man. It's just they're on that path. It's just what they do. I think.

And no judgment on if you're like doing soccer season, like they're doing that stuff too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But jujitsu is just, it's just a standard. It's just a thing that they do. Yep. What I was going to, where I was, didn't, you actually gave me a response I wasn't really expecting. There's people that maybe hear us talk about jujitsu and they think that it's going to be this thing that's like all of a sudden you have to dedicate your life to. And well, I guess you did be your response.

Hey, your kids still do football. They still do soccer. They still do all these other things. Play guitar. This doesn't have to be your life. Yes. But it should absolutely be a part of your life. And it's not, it's not a, it's not.

They don't there's no like to talk from something else. It doesn't come at the cost. It's just it's just part of life and it's normal and it's just what they do Do you know what a gift you're giving them? I have a small sense when a kid Is gonna get picked on and they're not gonna get picked on I mean like they're not they're good first of all they'll be able to avoid it They'll have the confidence that people won't look at them like oh I'm gonna pick on this kid over here There's just that that right there epic. Yeah and here's the thing just quickly I I guess I have a little bit of an advantage. I am closely connected to Jocko and Echo and that world. But here's the thing.

What Dave Burke is doing most days out of the year is just following the plan. Like the warder kid books, like the plan is out. I'm not doing this. I was lucky to have the secret insight into some secret world that nobody knows about. Like I'm just on the path. Just following the plan. And that plan is out there for everybody. The warder kid books just like just here's the plan.

And everybody can do that. It is not rocket science, man. And I'm not doing some crazy mental gymnastics to convince my kids to do. We're just on that path. And it's a path that everybody can follow. Dude, it's an awesome community. So, yeah, I'm just, the kids are, I'm so stoked that they have that in their lives. Get your kids or your neighbor's kids or your nephew or your whatever.

Kids around the neighborhood. Just give them the books. Give them the books. Best and you know how much nicer it's going to be when that kid turns 15 and that kid is working out, eating healthy doing jujitsu instead of he turns 15 this is your neighbor by the way and the other kid what he's at home blasting music he's getting in trouble cops are showing up like there's all kinds of mayhem going on so don't don't let that happen you know let's just get the kids on the right path you get that kid square their life away it's beautiful i couldn't find my son last week my wife

and i could not find my son for like 15 minutes on a day we're like he i should know where he Walked down into the gym. I opened the door just to, and he's, he's doing pushups. I didn't tell him to do pushups. I didn't ask him or make it. He just, I'm like, hey, bud. He's like, he's like in the pushup position, looks over his shoulders like, hey dad. And I just like, see you later, close the door.

I'm all like, I'm like super stoked. Yeah. He just ended up doing pushups. Yeah. The path is out there, man. Freaking outstanding. Outstanding. Also, so yeah, a bunch of books.

Also, we have Eschalon Front. We have a leadership consultancy where we solve problems through leadership. When you have problems in your life, they're leaders. We can help you solve those problems by teaching you leadership by teaching your team leadership We do obviously consulting we also have some big events We have one coming up sold out though sold out right Nashville is pretty much sold out Yeah, if you really want to go to Nashville reach out Okay, but do it quick that's it very quick that's two to four May and then we have

Dallas 16 to 18 October so if you want to come on to those they all sell out so and we sell out to a point now it used to be like we sold out and then someone would call the hiccup four people that really need to come we'll be like okay now it's like fire code yes scenarios yeah and we already did the thing we already did the thing where we eliminated all the seats for everybody in Eschelon front so no one has anywhere to sit we're all in the back standing or in the back of like tables with like packed in there so there's nothing else we can do so if you want to come to the muster get get signed up quickly we also have the FTCs we have council we

have battlefield the next Council is June 26th to 29th. That's up in the mountains. That is a total exercise in detachment. Are you going to that one this year? I don't know. We actually added a second one this year. The first one sold out.

We sell them out. So we added the second one and the second one's like halfway sold out. So there it is. That's the council June 26th through 29th, up in Washington State in the mountains. And then we have the Women's Assembly run by our CEO, Jamie Cochran. That's September 11th through the 13th.

It's going to be in San Antonio, Texas. So Women's Assembly, this will be the number two of those. Just incredible feedback from the women to that went to the first Women's Assembly. So if you want to learn about these principles, check out some of these things that we do at Eshlamfront. We also have an online training academy because you don't just, you don't get an inoculation. You need to go to the gym. So check out Extreme Ownership.com and learn these principles.

Go through the courses and they can apply to your business. and to your life as well. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. It's an incredible organization.

I know the people that she has helped. Well, I don't know them all, but I know a number of the people that she has helped. It's been phenomenal. Providing the medical services that the VA doesn't give to veterans. And that is outstanding. And it really just dramatically impacts people. So if you want to help out, you want to donate, you want to get involved, go to America's

Mighty Warriors.org. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org. This is Micah Fink up in the mountains of Montana, taking veterans up into the mountains so they can lose themselves and find their soul. Also, Jimmy May's organization Beyond the Brotherhood.org, helping transition guys that were in the military into the civilian sector, setting them up with mental. Setting them up with jobs helping him through that transition. He's doing an awesome job with it if you want to connect with us on the interwebs Dave is at David R Burke I'm at jocco.com got that website

Yeah jocco.com I'm at jocco willink on the social media scenario Echoes at echo channels just just be careful because there's an algorithm out there and it'll grab you by the throat And it'll do horrible things to you and you know what you won't know it You won't know it. You'll see fit. You will just collide with the earth because you won't be paying attention to what's going on. You know what?

I've talked about this experiment before, going in the cold tub. And if you go in the cold tub while you're scrolling Instagram, you're like, oh, that went by pretty quick. In a bad situation, like you're freezing. It goes by quick. It just disappears. Time goes by real quick. Guess what happens when you're in a comfortable situation? Guess what happens when you're on the couch?

Like an hour just went by an hour And don't do that while you work it Have you ever scrolled Instagram while you work out? You ever do that? I have done it before But it's a total disruptor Like if you got to look at that phone like You cannot pick up your phone

When you're working out and open it like That's just a bad thing across the board Well I did it like probably maybe four or five times In a row workouts in a row Where I'd like basically your mind is like Open is fine with it Yeah I'll just between sets or whatever Sets.

Bro. And then when I was like, okay, I got to stop doing this. I got to hurry up and really focus or whatever. And it was actually kind of hard, like habitually for that one more. So I had to force my brain or whatever. But the workout, and then, you know, then obviously I got a hold of it. Bro, your workout gets just done way quicker. Br, that thing will just suck you into like a two and three hour workout.

Bro, I'm telling me. Watch out. Think about that thing. That dopamine flowing. Yep, that's true. Disturbing. It's real. So don't let that happen.

And that's where we're at. Also, obviously, thanks to all of our military out there around the world. And I'll say today, especially in the skies, our aviators, mechanics, air traffic control, maintenance, all the ground crew and flight crew. Did I miss anybody? We got them. If you're out there, we appreciate it. Thanks for your service. Thanks to all the military.

Thanks for our air men and women for keeping the skies free for us all. Also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics, EMTs dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol secret service as well as all other first responders Thanks for what you do you do as well here at home to keep us safe and everyone else out there These are some good rules to pay attention to good things to watch out for not just while flying because you might not be a pilot but while living don't get bore sighted Be careful about how you mark your position If things aren't going right, they don't seem to be going right, redefine the situation. And you can't do any of that if you lose SA.

If you don't have situational awareness, if you're not detached, you can't make that happen. And also, if you're not detached, you might get behind the power curve. So do everything you can to stay ahead of the power curve at all times. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jocko. Out. Thank you.