Jocko Podcast - The Actual TOPGUN, Dave Berke, Reacts to "TOPGUN: Maverick" with Jocko

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

Reaction to the new movie "TOPGUN: Maverick" with Dave Berke and Jocko.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

So the new Top Gun movie came out. Top Gun Maverick. And I mean, we just couldn't really help but to talk to the real Top Gun. Dave Burke is here. What's happening, Dave. What's up, Jock? Good to be here, man. Dave Burke, if you don't know him, Marine Corps, fighter pilot,

Top Gun, fighter pilot, top gun instructor, top gun senior instructor, commander of the first operational F-35, Squadron on the ground with my task unit in the Battle of Vermont as an Anglico guy leading an Anglico team Air Naval Gunfire Liaison. So that's how we got to know each other initially. Now we work together. You can fly an F-18, an F-16, an F-22, and an F-35. How many people in the world can do that? I know it sounds crazy, but I actually don't know of anybody else that was qualified in all four. It may have happened in the last couple years. I don't know about it, but... Well, who would get the call now? The real kicker is...

The F-22? Yeah. That doesn't fit with both the F-18 and the F-16. It fits with one or the other, but actually, it doesn't really fit with anything anymore. So I think the chances of that happening are pretty slim. It's kind of cool. So you are... It's safe to say you're...

You could be considered a little bit of an expert on this kind of thing. Yeah, I guess so. So, all right, Top Gun, before we jump into it, what, what is Top Gun? Explain it real quick. So Top Gun, like, the real Top Gun is just a nickname for what's called the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School. It's just a school that has been around for a while since 1969. It's just a school that teaches kind of a graduate level capability for fighter pilots to be ready for war. We can certainly go in a lot more detail.

The school is called the Navy Fighter Weapon School. It got the nickname Top Gun because very early on it was literally about gunnery, like it had its origins and being able to use the airplane correctly and use the gun on the plane well. And I'm really paraphrasing, but it comes from that. And so the name Top Gun has stuck from the beginning. And it got a lot of prominence from the first movie Top Gun is where that name really kind of rung through. But Top Gun by itself is really just a nickname for the school. Mm-hmm.

So you take normal pilots from the Navy and the Marine Corps. Does anyone from the Air Force go there? No. We used to have an exchange program once in a blue moon, but no, I would say it's almost exclusively now, mostly maybe a couple of Marines. So Navy and Marine Corps, and you go there and you learn to dogfight. Among other things, yes. But that is the foundational thing you start to teach and learn up there.

And you scrap in the sky. Yes. You go up and you dogfight other really good pilots. Yes. And so if who gets selected to go there? Do you have to be the best guy in your in your squadron? Yeah, you have to be in the top tier of your squadron. There's some things you have to work at, some timing, you know, some other things beyond your control.

And you don't get ranked. There's not like a board that says Dave Burke is number one and somebody else is number two. But there's definitely a tier that you need to be in. And there are some certifications where the squadron kind of can judge you along the way. And you need to be at the top, towards the top of your peer group to be selected. So you got selected to go to Top Gun School. Yeah. Then you what, go on a couple deployments, then you get, how do you get selected to be a Top Gun Instructor?

Did you have to kind of do well at the Top Gun School? Yeah. So what's unique about that and it's, it's a very unique for Marines, which I really like because the Marine Corps has a unique selection program. The way it works for the Marine Corps is you got to get selected to go from your squadron. So your squadron just gets a billet. And so the average math is every squadron is going to send one person a year. It might be two, one year, none the next because you're deployed, but it sort of works out to one a year. the basic math. How many pilots in a squadron? 17 kind of regular pilots and then like COXO. So,

you know, just around 20 or so. Check. In that selection process, you got it, you get picked to go by your commander. Your commanding officer gets to pick and, you know, there's a process he uses. And then as the Marine, they send you up to Top Gun and you'll do the full 13 week Top Gun course. And you go right back to your squadron, which is a little bit different than Navy. You'll, you'll either stay to teach at a schoolhouse, whereas the Marine Corps, you go right back to your squadron, and most commonly you'll go back to your squadron and you'll deploy. And then at some point in there, the Marines and the rest of the staff will vote and select on which Marines they want to bring back.

There's only three pilots on the staff of 25 that are Marines. So to come back as a Marine, humble brag. It's kind of crazy math by looking back on it. To come back as a Marine is a pretty narrow window. You've got to thread the needs. to be available, eligible, and meet the staff's expectations of what they're looking for to bring you back. To bring you back as an instructor. And then how hard is it to be the senior instructor there?

Is that based on, what's that based on? Is it based on your seniority? Or what's it based on? It's a combination of things. I mean, you have to be more senior pilot. You know, the most junior guys are not going to be. And the senior pilot is called the training officer. That's the pilot on the staff of 25.

That's really picked to run the class. And so that's where you were. I was, as a Marine, I was the training officer. which was at the time like the best job, because you're basically running Top Gun as a, is a relatively junior person in the military. How often do they pick a Marine to do that? Not that often.

There's a handful. I mean, I'm not the only one for sure, but it's not that common. It's pretty uncommon for a Marine to get a chance to be the training officer Top Gun. How do you know, so it's not based on seniority, so is it just you're kind of the best pilot? Is that sort of what's happening?

There is a combination of factors at play. What they really want is someone, who is a good pilot, who's experienced, who is senior, but they want someone who's got two unique capabilities together. You have to be a really good teacher. So, of course, your teaching skill is really critical, but you also have to be able to be able to lead a peer group who, even though you might be senior,

you're going to be like just a few months. It's not a big difference in seniority. So it's really, do you trust someone to be able to lead a peer group of pretty evenly matched, even capability, even experience pilots, and be able to lead them as really peers. So combination of how good of a teacher you are and how well do you think you can lead your peers, which is not easy to do. So it's a combination of things. Does it help if you shoot all them down?

It does help if your credibility goes a long way in anything, but certainly in fighter aviation. If you're good in the jet, that's going to help you for sure. All right. So that's kind of what Top Gun is. And that's where you were. The first top gun movie, what year did it come out? 86. And so you saw it in 86.

I did. And that impacted the trajectory of your life. 100%. I was 13. So if you can kind of picture the brain of a 13-year-old, I was ripe for that kind of influence. And that's 100% why you chose the path you chose. I had already, even younger than that, had, I wouldn't say just explored. I had already decided I want to be in the military.

I think, you know, when you're 12 or 13, it's. It's a little not clear as to even what or why, but I knew I was already inclined. I thought airplanes were cool. I thought the military was cool. I was already moving in that direction. When I saw that on the movie, it really narrowed this. I think I want to be in the military to. I want to fly jets around boats.

Like, it got really narrow from that. How did you end up in the Marine Corps instead of the Navy? That's a good question. Because when I saw that movie, of course, immediately you go towards the Navy because naval aviation is mostly around the Navy and the airplane was a Navy jet they have 14 Tomcat it's all about the Navy so there's not really a connection to the Marine Corps what was unique for me is I grew up right around the corner like a mile away from a Marine Base so inside of that there's a little piece of really thinking the Marine Corps was cool as a little kid kind of being enamored with

Marines and having this little sense of something about the Marine Corps to me was unique and anybody that that really migrated towards the Marine Corps there's an Intangible quality about the Marine Corps. It's really undeniable and I already had that So I saw this movie. I'm like man, I want to do that and at some point relatively soon I don't know if I was at an air show or somebody explained it somebody made the connection that Marines Fly jets off ships and when I was like holy cow I can do both of those things and I combine them marine flying jets off ships that's when it was like I'm going to do exactly that thing

Yeah, you were just hook line and sing all day all in all right. All right. So What did you do for okay so for the new movie top gun maverick what did you have to do with it you did something for it? I did it was kind of cool so You know this movie just came out Memorial Day 2022 the movie's been done for a couple of years it got delayed you know for code and whatnot So this is probably back in 16 or 17 when they really started to Come to grips with they're gonna make a sequel they knew was gonna go on and they had a couple of screenwriters had a A guy one of the guys who wrote the script for the movie movie, we had a common friend, and I don't even remember what the connection was, but I got linked up with him. What year was this?

16, maybe. 16? Yeah, I think 16 is probably right. So kind of early on in the development, and he had written an initial script. And he, I think, on behalf of the Navy, on behalf of Tom Cruise, on behalf of a bunch of people, they really wanted it to be authentic. So he actually came out and spent a couple days with me. And we went through that thing. and what he was looking for was,

is this how it would be? Is this what they would do? Is this how they would say it? So I got a chance to go through kind of beginning to end and help contribute. And listen, my contributions were small, but I got to contribute to the authenticity of how you'd go about doing it.

And if you haven't flown it, it might be hard to understand some of the nuance. And they really wanted to get the nuance right. So I got to help with that, which was really cool. Is there anything, was there any scene? Was there any words?

Was there any lines where you're like, that's right there. That's me. Any movements? I don't think I made the connection to me individually, but there were things that they, there's a key theme that I really liked that comes out, and I'm going to assume that most people now have seen the movies,

I'm not going to give anything away. But there's a theme about as technology moves on, as technology gets better, a lot of people buy into the idea that, oh, better technology wins. Now, you and I both know that is not true. Now, technology helps. Technology is awesome.

But in the end, especially when you're fighting, one against one or force against force, it comes down to the person flying the machine. And that's the cool thing about aviation is it's airplanes are really good equalizers. They wanted to keep with the theme that they, you know, the person in the box, the man in the box. And so they, they understood and I helped get to the idea that it's not that the airplane is better than ours or vice versa. It's the person flying it.

And that was a theme that we talked about and it really made its way into the movie, which is cool. Humble brag coming at you again. Hey, it's not about the machine. It's about me, Dave Burke, best pilot ever. I'm so glad I'm here right now What was your overall? So now you've seen the completed movie

I saw it too I saw it so we could do this Because I didn't want to be completely blind And it was very fortuitous In the fact that my wife I made it into a date I was like oh you know I'd really like to see this And she was like she was all happy

Because you know I'm like the worst person For doing fun things or whatever She was all excited so we went She was EAE As we went to go see it So we've seen the movie. I've seen the movie. What was your overall impression?

How did they do? Dude, I thought it was awesome. I loved it. Now, I also knew I was going to see a movie. So in terms of what I was thinking and my criteria for it, for the baseline I was expecting, dude, I thought it was awesome. It's a Hollywood movie and we have to take our knowledge

and kind of suspend it a little bit for these type of situations. I think that's a movie like this. I think that's the best word. You got to suspend it. some of those things. I was not there looking at how they laid out the tactics in the format. I looked at it as this is a movie, but it's also a movie that's connected to a world that I know really, really well. And there was elements that I wanted to see how well they could depict that. Not about the tactics and the moves in the airplane, but what it's like to be in an airplane.

And there's also some cool themes in there, too, that I really liked. Like, America is awesome when we build really cool stuff. And we can go anywhere and do So there's a lot of things about the movie that I really liked and overall for what I was expecting I loved that movie Yeah, I thought it was good too and another thing you have to take is when you're watching these movies Whether it's a war movie or this guy guess this is allegedly a war movie or kind of a war movie You have to take that they've got to get all these Different complicated things into an hour and a half two hours

Personality's emotion like they gotta do it so they're gonna do it so they're gonna to make some they're going to make some adjustments in reality to make it to make it hit the way it's supposed to all right so uh the pilots in the movie the various pilots in the movie how did they how are those personalities did they did they nail it yeah it's funny because you know had this movie come out 10 years ago i probably would even look at it differently than i do now because half of the way i'm looking at this now is through the lens of leadership and personalities and the stuff that we talk about at Eschlon Front all the time. So, like I said, kind of going back in one sense,

I saw the first one I was 13 or 14. And so part of me is looking at this movie thinking, what does 13 or 14-year-old Dave Burke think of this movie? And part of the reason why I'm so positive about this movie is I think any 13, 14-year-old influential kid watching this, what I said the other day was millions of kids are going to want to join the Navy and fly airplanes, which to me is a huge win.

That's awesome. in the leadership lens, I'm looking at ego. I'm looking at all these other nuanced things. And they do magnify the personalities to do exactly what you described. They got two hours to depict all these things. So they take these individual personalities and they magnify them. So they're really obvious to see. And so in some sense, I didn't have a lot of experience with people whose personalities

were that kind of, I guess, over the top in some ways. But I could identify and resonate with every single one. So I think in that sense, they still did a good job depicting. ego, complacency, a bunch of other subtle attributes you really got to think about in order for someone to be successful in difficult situations. So I thought they did a good job of that too. And then how about the mission profile? First of all, what was the reason why they needed to use an F-18 instead of an F-35 or some other mechanism of like a T-LAM or something like that? They made a comment that I think to allow them to use the F-18, which was, hey, this is the ideal

mission for the F-35, but the D-R-R-R-E-E-F-5. But the Dement... GPS jamming negates the weapons. So people have asked me, like, did you think that was a slight on the F-35 or unrealistic? And I'm like, no, they just wanted to use the F-18. So they had a reason to use the F-18. And the reason they gave was the F-35 GPS weapons wouldn't work in a GPS-jammed environment. Whether that's true or not, kind of, but it certainly was plausible enough to explain why they're doing it the way they did it. So that actually made sense.

It's fine. That said, there's pilots out. They're going to have all sorts of opinions on it. but if you again look at it through the lens of this is a movie it was totally fine why did they want to use the f8s oh because that's why you want to bring tom cruise back maverick back i think his number one criteria and i think one of the things the navy wanted to do is they wanted it to be as realistic as possible and despite how good cg i is and computer stuff is really cool you cannot replicate a lot of what you saw in the movie there are faces g forces all that stuff and if you

want to put two people on an airplane you need to fly an F-18 because there's no two-seat F-35s and you're not going to film a movie with the single Zade F-35 and make it look real at least not this real so they needed Hornets which is totally fine dang so that's legit yes they okay the physical aspect of being a fighter pilot what what's the reality there you know you got Tom Cruise you got all these people making it look like it's all hard how hard is it yeah come on the reality is I'm sitting across from jaco willing Navy seal and And the reality is, it's not like this all the time, but flying fighters is exhausting sometimes, like very physically demanding. And there are components of flying that physiologically are really, really hard.

And I think they wanted to depict those segments. Now, it's not usually quite as sustained as difficult. It is. There's elements of flight that are like, downright boring, like navigating to and from. You're just sitting there. You're just sitting in a cockpit. And then there's times that there's extreme levels of physiological challenges. that a lot of human beings would struggle with.

And I think they wanted to depict that. There are times of flying is mind-blowingly difficult, both spatially, like thinking about three dimensions and physically when you have eight or nine Gs on the airplane. And if you're close to 200 pounds with your gear, you're feeling 1,800 pounds, something like that. And you're literally feeling it having to look around and do things.

Those can be really hard. You don't do that for hours at a time. You do it for minutes at a time. But inside those few minutes, that can be tough. And I've always enjoyed taking people out and they come back and when they land, they don't know that they're going to be as tired as they are. So there's some adapting physiologically that is pretty hard.

Do you have to do? Did you guys have certain workouts that you did with? Totally. Absolutely. I mean, standard thing you got to have like strong glute, strong hamstrings, and you have to have really good technique for breathing.

And if you have the right muscles and the right technique, really anybody of any build can physiologically adapt to high G flying. How many hours when you were top gun instruction? How many hours would you fly a day? That was physically challenging. So like how many hours are you dog fighting a day? Like in a good day like a good day at Top Gun I'd get two maybe three dog fights like three would be a really good day. So we'll just say let's say it's two a dog a one against one dog fight would be 45 minutes total and of that you're probably 25 ish minutes per flight like under G like really maneuvering and bending the jet around. So that's what a BFM flight would be. I would be about 25 minutes of that. I flew in an F-18. I did the backseat ride up at Fallon, Nevada,

which is where Top Gun ended up. This was before Top Gun was there. I'm pretty sure. And pulled, I think, seven and a half Gs. And flew around and did a bomb drop and did a dog fight. So I had like a cool experience for that. The mission in the movie, they have to fly up over this thing.

And that's a normal procedure. because I've done it. And I remember this in the pop, that's a thing, right? Exactly. So talk us through that. Yeah. You're flying at low level to avoid radar, which is real.

Yeah. That whole mission at the end, every segment of that mission is things that I routinely and what pilots do routinely in F-18s on a regular basis. And not like top gun pilots, just any pilot is a routine series of pieces of a mission that you would do to include what you described, the low-level ingress,

the high G-pop, the really high climb acceleration, the rolling on your back, high G-turn. Why do you have to roll in your back? So to go from pointed high to pointed low, meaning nose up to nose down because they're diving down towards the target, if you push on the jet going as fast as they are is probably five, six hundred miles an hour,

the number of negative Gs you would, we wouldn't black out, it's called red out. Like you would put so much blood in your brain that you would, you physiologically couldn't do it. So you roll onto your back. So when you pull the apply the G it's in the right direction. It's the type of G that you want and so instead of getting all weightless and floating and just making it really slow and painful you roll inverted and you pull really hard because it's the type of G's you're designed for. So you roll inverted and you pull down to get into the dive in a way that you can tolerate when I did that the one time I did it. It was awesome how fast that aircraft goes you're you're flying right side up and boom all of a sudden you're upside down. Yes. It's like instantaneous. It is fast. Yeah. And then you're. then you can see the, I thought it was so you could see the target better. There is a component of that.

So a move like that like coming over a ridge line, it's to be able to get the jet pointed down towards the target as fast as you can. The technique of doing that you could debate all day, but the maneuver is a real maneuver that we do routinely. What about the after burner? Talk to me about that. Yeah. So you have a drink called after burner, right?

I do. Afterburn orange. Yes. Well, why did you call the drink Afterburner Orange? And what does Afterburner do to a plane? What does Afterburner Orange do to your brain? Yeah. You know, they both serve very similar functions, which is kind of cool.

I think the name for me was pretty obvious. I think in the first like seven seconds of the original movie Top Gun, there's like a jet on a, the Tomcat is on the catapult and goes in a full afterburner. And it's this giant huge orange flame, which is giving this jet a bunch of additional thrust. And most Catapult launches, you take in what's called, full after burner. And then really the technique behind after burner in general is you're flying around in a regular engine, it just spins and puts out thrust. Afterburner is where they take literally liquid fuel and they spray it in the back. So it kind of creates like a mini explosion

and just shoots an orange flame out the back, but it gives the jet a whole bunch of additional thrust. So what it gives you in somewhat limited time frames, a bunch of extra speed or a bunch of extra ability to maneuver. What percentage of extra power am I getting? This is like double power? It's like 20% more. So here's an example like when you're in full power without afterburner, they call it mill. And those engines that you saw, and I'll get close, I'll kind of use the original Hornet, you get about just under 11,000 pounds of thrust in a mill rated engine. If you go to afterburn, you get about 18,000 pounds of thrust. So it's not quite double, but it's a big jump. And if you go from two engines, so 22,000 pounds to 36,000 pounds, you're getting a big additional boost in thrust,

a lot. You can feel it. You absolutely feel it. You go back in your seat. Yes. You accelerate quick. And then you made a drink that's called that. Same thing.

It's exact same thing. There are times, my normal steady state, I'm pretty good to go for the day. I get up. I'm good till the evening. But there are times I need that little kicker and that drink for obvious reasons, the name. but you also get that little hitter that'll give you what you need to get through some more challenging times if you need that little enhancement. How about staying cool as a pilot? I talk about this a lot from a CELO perspective, you know, you always want to sound calm on the radio to make everyone else calm and make yourself not sound like you're freaking out losing your mind.

How much detachment do you have to have as a pilot to remain calm in pressure situations? A lot. I mean, the concept of detachment is something that's kind of universal. We talk about it in leadership. It's no different than an airplane. The way you communicate and the way you sound is, I think, two things. One, it's a reflection of how detached you are and you want to be detached because you want to see as many things as you can, especially in a jet. You want to look around and see a lot of things.

You don't want to be looking at just one thing. But you also want to give the impression that despite the amount of chaos that's going around, you want the people that you're talking to to think that you're calm. And if they think that you're calm, like, hey, this isn't that bad, this isn't that stressful, we're going to be okay. They tend to react the same way. Now, there are times that on a radio, and it's not all that common, but there are times I want to convey a little extra emotion to get you to move quicker, and I might elevate my voice or speak in a kind of a higher octave or a little faster or louder. Those are typically calculated times when I really need a reaction. And I don't think it's much different than the way you described.

being a seal and it's really no different in any leadership role is the times that I do that I'm pretty judicious about doing that and it's because I want to get a reaction the rest of the time I want to sound cool calm collected and just like hey this situation this situation is no factor we're good um I got some general notes from the movie uh one thing that was interesting was there was one part where a pilot would screwed something up and he's like this is my fault is that standard Taking ownership? Or did you put that in there? At Top Gun, it's pretty standard.

By the time you get there, you have figured out early on your career that the standard litany of excuses that you're going to make. First of all, they haven't been tolerated by anybody else. Nobody wants to hear your excuses. And after a while, you come to realize that anything that didn't go well

is actually your fault. It's doubly true if you spent your life by yourself in an airplane. I mean, who else are you going to blame for anything that's gone wrong? So the best pilots early on come to grips that any problem that's been created out there is your fault and, you know, a little humility and whatnot. But yeah, despite what you might see, the humility that most aviators have to be successful is recognizing it if something went wrong, it's your fault. There's a scene where, or there's actually a couple scenes where this happens, where Maverick is going against the other top gun pilots.

He's just slaughtering them, like time after time after time. And I know you and I have talked about this. That's pretty realistic. I was thinking of myself, if I was watching this, I'd think, oh, if I didn't know anything, I'd be like, oh, that's unrealistic that he would just go kill everyone. But he actually would. Yeah. If you're that much better of a pilot. Now, he's a top gun instructor and these guys are just regular top gun pilots.

So it's still as realistic that he would just slaughter them all. Yeah. Not really competitive. I don't think anybody inside of Top Gun as a student or an instructor would say that the most proficient instructor is significantly better than the most proficient student. Like a big, big, big difference. Okay, so the best instructor is way better than the best student. Yes. And so that was an accurate depiction.

He's just up there murking people. Yeah. I mean, the students come through, even students that are graduates, they're good. I mean, these are good pilots. This is not that they're not good in the airplane. But instructors are getting so many reps. They got so much experience. They've seen it so many times that the difference between sort of the senior BFM

or dog fighting pilot at Top Gun versus, you know, even a Top Gun graduate, there's a huge disparity there. How about G-lock? Talk me through G-lock. What happens? That's a thing. Absolutely. Fortunately, in the F-18, it's not quite as prominent as it is in some other airplanes. I think the most notorious G-lock plane out there that's flying is the F-16, which is just the coolest jet. It's an unbelievable machine, and it is a very, very high G platform.

It pulls just over 9-Gs. The problem of the F-16 is you can go from one to the F-16. is you can go from one to nine Gs, and I think it's like a second, something really, really fast. Yeah. So if your technique isn't perfect, and if your physiological conditioning

and current situation that day isn't perfect, in that second, you can black out really fast. So this idea of G-lock, which stands for G-induced loss of consciousness, is a real thing. And so what they teach pilots to do is before the onset of that G, meaning pulling back on the stick,

you start ahead of time by controlling or breathing, tensing the right muscles and anticipating the pull. The problem is sometimes when you have to react, you look over your shoulder and you see you're being shot at, and sometimes you'll onset those Gs before you set it up correctly, and that's when G-lock tends to happen. But it is a real thing. We have crash planes, we have killed pilots,

and we have actually introduced technology design specifically for that because it's such a common, prominent thing where you're killing a pilot and an airplane that are otherwise perfectly functioning correctly. And we don't want that. Bird strike. That's a thing? That is a thing. That's a thing. And you have procedures that you're going to roll through. 100%. It's not common

for a bird strike to snuff out a motor like that, but it has absolutely happened. It's very uncommon. Bird strikes are not that uncommon. For a bird strike to get you to crash an airplane, very rare, but not unheard of. And she's going through. It was a female pilot there. So there's procedures. You're just going to follow these procedures.

Yeah. They were actually pretty close on that too. They weren't super far off the mark. There's a couple things that a pilot go, oh, that's not right. That's not right. But generically speaking, they had it right. And that's what you have to do. You can't freak out.

Oh my gosh. You just got to, oh, here's the procedures. Cut this engine. Restart this thing. Turn off this fuel thing. Boom. You just go through the procedures. Are those memorized?

They call it immediate action. I bet you I still know the engine fire immediate action. I could probably do it right now. Check. Don't me do it? What is the life of a pilot like just day to day? Like at work? Yeah.

Mostly not flying. So, you know, I talked about it earlier is if you go up and fly, let's say once a day, which is more than you normally would in a regular squadron. Preping for a flight takes a lot of time. But the day-to-day life of a pilot, especially in the Marine Corps, And it's also very true in the Navy is you have a job. You're in charge of a department or a division or potentially in charge of the whole squadron. So a lot of your time is dedicated towards the department you're responsible for and the individual Marines or sailors that work for you and what that department has to deliver.

So at a bare minimum, you know, you're kind of 50-50 splitting between your role as a pilot and your role as a leader in the squadron. So I watched the movie and at one point And spoiler alert Whatever sorry Tom Cruise gets shot down Now in my mind This is the point where the movie was going to get really good Because they were going to send a seal team in to get him out of there

I mean this was I said okay cool This is they're going to get this right They're going to get this right They're going to make it work And I was kind of bummed out when that didn't happen Until they stole an F-14 Right And brought the Tom cat back

And then I said, oh, you know what, we'll go with it. I still thought we might see some seals, maybe do some recovery at some point. They kind of blew that. Look, they're not going to be able to nail everything perfectly. And plus, you don't want, you know, a movie that's supposed to be about jet fighters. You don't want the whole movie to get stolen by, you know, seven minutes of a seal platoon going in there and kick an ass and take a dame. Which, you know, probably could have happened. So I think they did it right.

Just to maintain the integrity of the movie and keep the foot. on the on the on the pilots which is fine How about the next generation of fighter pilots? You talked about the fact that It's not the plane. It's the pilot, but what about what I thought? I thought there's another thing I thought As soon as the movie started I thought okay. Well, this is going to be human versus Computer human versus AI human versus drone that's what I thought it was going I was surprised that they even put pilots in the other aircraft How many generations are we away from having no more of? fighter pilots. Yeah, I got asked a somewhat similar question after the premiere. And I think I

discovered I might be, I don't know about alone. No, I don't know if I'm wrong. I mean, I'm obviously the future will be what it is. But my opinion, I think maybe is not as universally shared as I thought. So we just really in the last, you know, decade or so introduced what we call fifth gen airplanes. That's the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 lightning. Of course, the fact that I flew them and flew them both was crazy, super lucky to get to see that. And I got exposure to that whole new generation of pilots where there's still of airplanes. There's still pilots that's never flown either of those. So we just really are at the beginning of fifth generation. And I would say that those planes, the raptor and the lightning, you're going to have those things around for like 20, 30 years, a

long time. And we are now getting to the part where we're building our sixth gen, or building is a strong word, designing and starting to think about what that airplane will be. So I don't know. In the next 10 or some odd years. The next generation is to start being more of a reality. That's going to go another. That'll take 30 years. Are they putting a pilot in sixth? They are.

The next generation plan, which is certainly being designed, is going to be a manned fighter. My conclusion is that I won't be in the least bit surprised if that's the last manfighter way we were built. And I'm just looking like, that's 30, 40, potentially 50 years of these two fifth and sixth generation platforms,

you know, flying that if we don't do another one after that, it won't surprise me. Now, I've come to realize that a lot of pilots don't agree with it. What do a lot of pilots think? I think there is a belief, and it might be true for some mission sets, there's a belief that you have to have someone in the cockpit. Oh, okay. I thought it was going to be the other direction.

That I'm like, that you were the one person that thought, oh, we still need people for another 50 years. No, I don't think so. And again, I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think most pilots would tell you, at a minute, well, at a minimum of the next generation, It's going to be a manned fighter. I think that's kind of a universally known thing. And that there are some people, I think, believe that you will always have to have someone in the airplane.

I think that if in my lifetime we build an unmanned fighter, I won't be surprised at all. But from your perspective, the 13-year-old, 14-year-old that just saw this movie, he's going to be good to go. She's going to be good to go. If they want to get to an aircraft and fly that thing as a fighter pilot, they're going to have that option. No problem. What's crazy is if you're in that same age I was, if you're 14 years old and you're watching that movie and you actually get on the path to do that, you'll be flying jets in 10 years. Like you'll be 10 years from now, you'll be flying a fighter. So I qualified in the Hornet. I was 24. And if I think about, you know, from 14 to 24, it's a short amount of time to have that much development from a kid watching a movie to being in the cockpit of a fighter. So if you're watching that as a teenager now and you're thinking I might want to do this, no factor. You're going to get a chance to do it. that's what I'm talking about. All right, any closing thoughts on the movie?

I liked that movie a lot. It was better than I thought for a lot of different reasons. And, you know, again, there's people out there discussing the things that are wrong. Yes, it is a movie unquestionably. But from what I was looking for, my experience, I was stoked to see that movie. When's the last time you watched the OG? Oh, dang. Does it hold?

The OG in my house is a little bit of a thing. like with my kids and stuff. And certainly with my circle of friends. So I've seen bits and to see beginning to end. I cannot remember the last time I sat down and watched the movie. The last time I saw parts or pieces or clips from YouTube, it happens like on the regular. So I know that movie well.

And it holds it holds up today? I think so. What's crazy about that movie is how many people in the last 35 years have seen that and think the movie is awesome. There aren't a lot of movies from the 80s that can keep up. just for just basic, you know, cultural stuff. Like, you just look at things like that looks old. Because there's real airplanes and because there's real flying,

I think it holds it pretty well. Did you get issued aviator glasses? Totally. Did you wear them at all times? Second lieutenant and first lieutenant Dave Burke wore them at all times. At some point, and I think people might know this from my social media posts, between that and my flat top. I outgrew them both, but it took a while.

When did you transfer to a regular pair of sunglasses from aviators? Do you ever break out the aviators at this point? I broke them out the other day. To go see Topga? To go see the premiere. My wife actually wore my flight jacket. Oh, dang. So there's a picture out there floating around her in my, you know, Dave Burke's standard issue fighter pilot jacket.

Is this, is that a leather jacket? It is. That's issued? It is. Have you got patches on it? I do. What's your most sacred patch on that jacket? The most sacred patch on that is my first fighter squadron,

which sits on like your chest. So it's sort of, I don't know how it is in the teams, but you will always hold a special place for your first squadron, and you'll kind of always go back to that first tour, that first deployment, that first experience in that first squadron. And no matter what else you do,

you're going to, that's going to stay close. So that's what's on there. Awesome. All right. Well, with that, if you haven't seen the movie, suspend disbelief a little bit. Check it out. It might not be the totally accurate movie, but it's a good time. Rock and roll. Go get some. Thanks for joining everybody.