Kitbag Conversations - Episode 28: Helicopters in War

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

In this episode, we talk to Skid Row who is represented by a Marine Corps Cobra pilot. Skid Row is a group of pilots that discuss and meme army aviation on a famous Instagram account. Want to know the future of rotary aviation and what it might hold? Listen in

Music 1. Draw the line on the back of the head. 2. Draw the line on the back of the head. 3. Draw the line on the back of the head. 4. Draw the line on the back of the head. 4. Draw the line on the back of the head. 2. Draw the line on the back of the head. 3. Draw the line on the back of the head. 4. Draw the line on the back of the head.

4. Draw the line on the back of the head. I usually just did, I usually just hit record and we go from there and so we'll just stick to Skid Row because you're Batman and you don't want anybody to know your true identity. So Skid Row or Skid, why did you start an Instagram page? Essentially, the reason I started this Instagram page is because looking at that, and looking in a weird spot with the Force Design 2030 and this whole shift in the outside looking in kind of an weird spot, you know, with the forces on 2030 and this whole fifth of the Marine Corps and the DUDs, the whole towards, you know, next-to-dissure advance, you know,

basing operations, you know, trying to counter China. We're trying to figure out like where do we fit in, you know, to the big picture. And I would say our communities probably split between those who think we are completely irrelevant and that we won't have a role to play. As it pertains to countering the line, Chinese activity in the Pacific, and then there are those who think we can absolutely have a role. Pretty much in line with the way that we handle Japan via island hopping campaigns.

So I'm, I see the truth in both. And I think the HMLA just kind of needs like a shift to figure out, you know, how do we continue to support, you know, the man on the ground. Additionally, there's also because of that, because we're still in this weird, visionary period, I think a lot of people have been, kind of like forgetting about our history, forgetting about our roots. I thought the page was like a good vector

since everybody's episode from media to try and get people re-energized, keep them plugged in, motivated, and understand that. Because right now, it may be a tough time and the only kind of lucrative deployments people are doing are kind of West Coast V's, because Mews. And then you might look out and do something cool if you're on a UDP 31, but it's mostly all about the Mew right now, that what you do every day matters. And it's also kind of doubled as like a forum.

People send me a lot of things, you know, since, you know, it's kind of a, I guess, a monolithic entity, you know, there's like nobody knows who runs the page. People open up and they send, they look for advice. People, you know, send in, you know, their own advice on like how to better, excuse me. Just handle day-to-day operations, you know, out of squadron or, you know, any issues that are, you know, affecting the OR and listed maintainers and OR are the Marines, you know, in and around the squadron, people send that stuff in and basically doubles in like a forum for people to come and share ideas and, you know, help us as a whole get better.

So, I would say... and share ideas and help us as a whole get better. I was able to get a job. Not a meeting of the job. Yeah, I know when it comes to the standard Marine Corps outlook on themselves, oh, America doesn't need a Marine Corps, they want one. And so everyone on the list to be in the Marine Corps, but then looking around the last five years, tanks went away, already went away, consolidation of MOS's.

You were saying that HMLA's time was being gutted. The entire Marine Corps aviation fields going down, you just look at the... We tell you what it's called, the trailer tears and the East Coast all the way to 29 palms and all the aircraft get grounded on the way there. You get like maybe one third there if you're lucky in the first shot And then so if they give you an average, you know marine in your first enlistment, you're looking around like this sucks I don't want to do this like it's Everyone always talks about the fact that it's it's just not like a comforting environment And so like of course they always say like oh well the Marine Corps supposed to be like this outlet for the man's group, the boys group. But then if you just look at the terms of quality where if you do a MU, you could be QRF for just in case the State Department and the Army don't do their job. So you're kind of third in line, and like a KLE, an AFRA, or not doing anything

on a MU and just kind of watching to make sure everyone plays nicely with each other. And when it comes to just the overall, like retention and everything like that in the community, I think there's a big stagnant period of like, well, what now? And so it's, because, you know, Marine Corps birthdays yesterday, I'm sure you saw a whole bunch of

positive people to talk about, like all the good old days, but the good old days, a lot of people are, you know, Fallujah. So, which is almost 20 years ago now, and there's this huge disconnect between what the Marine Corps should be and what it is at the moment. I think a lot of people look at the brass, like the higher echelon guys, like the generals, more as politicians, not really Marines anymore, and so they're not getting protection from

the top down. And then on top of that, your junior Marines are just bored. And so, that boredom stagnates productivity, and then if there's no combat deployments, whichever one wants, you want to be a Marine going out, hook an in jab and in fighting in. The streets are way city or case on or something like that, but then we don't do that anymore. So then again, it goes back to the, well, what the hell?

And so quality, soldier, and kind of goes down a little bit. And then there's just that general discomfort among the entire ranks. Yeah, you definitely hit the nail on the head with that. It's kind of funny that you brought up, sitting third in line, basically on the bench, waiting to get you at that or at least hit the on deck circle. For actual mission tasking when you're deployed,

something similar happened to me in my peers when I was on a West Coast meet back in the day. But like everything else experiences may vary. In that same timeframe, we had artillery Marines in Syria supporting OIF, not OIF, but in Haribut, OIR, and, you know, they were filling the hell out of ISIS, you know, day in and day out with no relief. So, I think, you know, I try and, like, keep things in perspective, at least, you know, when it comes to making content for the page, when people look at, you know, I try and, like, keep things in perspective, at least, you know, when it comes to making content for the page, when people look at, you know, how recently

the HMLA has been involved in, you know, maybe not combat operations, but operations in general. You put back the onion that actually hasn't been all that long, you know, one of the more successful things that we've done with actual combat operations would be, you know, supporting operations from Libya back in 2016, or we were doing a bunch of stuff from the Mew there in the meb, and then in the meb, sorry, but then the very next year, we had some stuff go sideways in Yemen with the raid there in Yemen, but even just a couple years later, supporting operations in Somalia, with the active courts,

yeah, we didn't really fire on any combatives, but definitely people were extending ordinance and supporting operations with active courts there. And people look at me, right? And what's the main purpose of the commuting? This support continuesency operations, you know Um basically be a force in readiness for you know whatever they come back in the fan or needs so People always look at that and are like man like this is gonna be my shot to go to combat well

Mm-hmm. It could be a wholesome of other things man. You can you know I'm sure everybody you know He's a marine is probably seen a rules of engagement with Samuel Jackson Where you know they came off the mu and it wasn't really a combat operation, it was a NEO mission, right? It was an MSD evacuation and they came in, you know, as a protest at the MSE, fits getting hot, like I'm going to pull the MSE out, like that's been, you know, one of the main functions of Mew for decades, man. So I think I was going to say building on top of that is, I is, I don't know if I mentioned this

to you before, but I remember when I was on my new to Olivia a couple of years ago, and we were supposed to do Kaylee support between like the Eastern and Western governments and 160 is showed up with third group, and they were essentially running the show. So I remember like me and the other analysts went up to those guys like, hey, we've been here for a little bit, we can help. And they said something along the lines of, if we needed your help, you would be doing this. And so just like, that was like halfway through the deployment. So morale immediately straight through the floor. And then talking about the views, like their whole the QRF quick reaction humanitarian support. You get

guys who, what is it? Was it third Marines who got sent to Kabul to do the extract and that are just itching to fight. and then they were told not to. So if you just have those like that self-licking guy's room cone of having that dog on a leash that's phoning at the mouth but not really allowed to do anything, it really just breathes like this internal dialogue of like, God damn it, I'll just go to the army. And so that mentality, if the army is the one doing all the kinetic strikes and all the kinetic missions inside Africa and the Middle East or something like that Yeah, the Marine Corps might get an option, but oh yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead finish that. I got what I

Was gonna say well certainly Marine Corps has the option where of course we had the artillery guys in Syria We have Marsok out in East Africa, but I mean I've been out for a few years But I know that the standard was the Marine Corps is usually getting the missions no one wants to do and it's not sexy at all. So the only way to get into anything kinetic is to go to Marsoch and then you get what the Army doesn't want. And that you're not qualified as like say the Navy SEALs are qualified to do. So it's from like reconnaissance field, aviation field, infantry field, even like logistics and logistics and communications fields, you're just kind of bored.

And that's just like the horrible mentality being, because right now we're in the peace side military, and there's nothing worse than that. You're just training and then to get bored, because all you do is train. Well, the add-on I don't want to add on to that is like if you're in the 82nd or the 101st, do we have what's called global reaction force? And it's usually like an entire battalion, and it's like a battalion of infantry, some logistics, and then some guys from aviation brigade.

And so when we're talking about like exactly what you said, you show up, you're like, how can we help? And then it's like special forces, 160th are already there, and they're like, get fucked. And I mean, I've personally had the same experience in Afghanistan where it's like, you know, Green Berets tell you, like, you know, sit down and do the intel.

I'll do the fucking operations. But then at the same time, it's like, we, we were a much bigger organization. We bring much bigger firepower, a mu or a global reaction force. Any of these things. And it's just ridiculous how, I mean, exactly what you said, but what's crazy that most people don't understand is that you actually have two commanders in this scenario.

You have the soda and then you actually have the conventional force commander. So you have two competing commanders and then you have the embassy, which is the state department as well, playing a completely different game. And so it's like, it's from the perspective of like the battalion staff and up, it's just, it's, it's even worse than exactly what you're saying. And from like the ground level, which is, you know, why are they doing everything? At the top level, there's three different missions that's going on. And you have to, as an officer or a senior at CEO, you have to maintain your guys for this.

Like, exactly like you're saying, like third Marine went to fucking Kabul. Like, how do you deal with, you know, the fact that you're not special forces or you're not 160th or you're not the state department, but you've got more guys, more equipment, but less morale because everybody keeps shitting on you, day in, day out.

Like, you're like exactly like you said, Kabul, Marines couldn't do fucking shit and they got blown up when we lost an army guy and we lost the Marines. And it's like, they don't let us. You forgive the sale. Don't forget the karma. The karma, yeah. But it's like, it's exactly what you're saying

with like the morale piece, right? Like how do you keep these guys Motivated to do anything and speak in the skid row like that's another question like is the morale? Okay, cuz I know in the army. It's absolutely crushed. How would how's the marine court doing with all that? Honestly looking at the marine court. I would probably say this and this is just my opinion, though, temper what I say, but at least from what I see, it's about the same. It's very hard to validate and keep people sharp. And what I like to call plugged in, when they see all of these carnivants unfolding around them, especially what happened in Kabul, the? The whole fiasco, you know, with the congressional hearing,

talking about, you know, how there was confusion. As to who had approval of fires specifically for that mission, right? I'm sure if you go back to Onion, it goes all the way back up to, you know, the State Department, you know, has jags and they wrote the ROE for that, which essentially, you know, handcuffs everybody.

And it's funny because, you know, all these mues, they train specifically to that you know non-combat and evacuation operation and you talk to anybody who's trained up for something like that and they'll they'll say the same thing it always ends up being like a giant shit show because it's so confusing you know who has command and approval over what I don't want to get into that too much because you know it's such like a huge can of words but just answer your question like yeah like and that's part of the reason why me and my you know peers basically started the page is because we need something to keep people you know people like

people in our community and that maybe not just the HMLA, but the Marine Aviation has a whole, the Marine Corps as a whole. We need to stick to our roots, we need to remember our history, we need to remember all the Marines that went before us and supported the very tough and some very important operations, not just in the past decade, but even looking back to Afghanistan with staying in, and before that, OIF with Nazaria working in, you know, on-bar province, stuff like that, Fallujah. So it seems like a long time ago, and for a lot of these guys who were born after 9-11, it certainly was a long time ago. But if you're in the Marine Corps, you stick around long enough to say,

is at some point, you're going to see combat yourself. So it's just a matter of time before the next thing in my opinion pops off. And for that, we need to stay as sharp as we possibly can. It was, it was 2-1. I just checked. It wasn't 3rd Marines. It was a first Marines. But what, I'm trying to remember the, trying to remember, the Mu has the ability to sustain itself for 30 days, SP Mag Tab is 15, Mu is 30, something like that, so a self-sufficient fighting force for plus

or minus 30 days, and then just the ability to stay ready and keep that training. Yeah, that's a lot of love. Because you can't really expect, oh shit, we have to go to Mo to Moga D issue to support humanitarian because the militias are shooting everybody like that was a ad hoc Mission that just came up or hey, there's a hurricane that rolled through the Philippines It destroyed everything you need to provide humanitarian support because that country's about to collapse So it's not so much a kinetic role because everyone wants to be the trigger polar but it's also those like second and third line effects of Entire missions and so the Marine course will job is every time they show up They're like I know who those guys are. So I got it. We're gonna chill down kind of like stabilize the region

And I think that's one thing that the Marine Corps Especially especially the younger guys kind of seem to forget because they always want to be you know dropping warheads on For his but that's not it all of the time It's everything else that goes into it the the geopolitical aspect, the humanitarian aspect, the just that you're in the AO means nothing bad will happen. No one wants to shoot them in rings because they know exactly what's coming. So that's also something I think maybe you can help validate this or like talk to it is just keeping that in the forefront of the mind because it's not always going to be you know liberating cert from ISIS in

Libya. It's more of making sure everyone plays nice. No, absolutely. And it's very hard to convey that to the junior Marines who, you know, they see all of these recruiting commercials. They see, you know, the Marine Corps message, birthday message specifically. And it's always showing, you know, pretty, you know, high speed, you know, fast operations where they got the entire Magtap, assaulting a B-Trite, doing amphibious assault mission supported by an aerosol of MB22s going to 1LC, got some MFIDS coming up, kicked out the back of

an LHD and an LPD, and they see all this and they're like, hell yeah, I do not want to be part of that. Not realizing that a lot of that stuff is still during workups, right? They're off the beach of Camp Pendleton, right? But even though we haven't done anything to that degree, on a long time, right? Like I, I kind of stand by what I said. I, I think we're just right now in this peacetime military and people need to temper their expectations as hard as it is to probably take that. And that includes myself, right? Because, you know, my own personal motivation, ebbs and floats, especially when I see, you know, just things as it

pertains to different pieces, you know, whether it be like on the internet, people are talking about, you know, helicopter relevancy, right? You start talking about all these different conflicts from Ukraine to, you know, what's going on in Israel, right, in Gaza, and people wonder, you know, our tanks even relevant, right? Like our helicopters even relevant is artillery even relevant, right? You know, in the advent of things such as, you know, small UAS and other UAS, you know, just dropping bombs, you know, from 2,000, 3,000 feet, right? And they don't even know they're there. Which we can kind of like talk about that stuff, probably a little bit later on. But I truly, and I 100%, like the reason myself and my peers continue to run the page is because

really this reason right here, as much as we try to post here to combat and compete with the piracy and the Pacific, the United States has never been able to predict realistically who they're going to be a conflict with. We've never been accurate in our assessment of who we're going to be in conflict with, at least in the near, and within the next five years. They may think it's trying to, my opinion would be, with everything that's been popping off in the Middle East, I wouldn't be surprised if we, you know, see action in places such as Africa or some other places here in the Middle East. And for that reason, it makes sense to say a shoppers you can on all your

critical skills and be ready for what's coming down the pipe because you never know when the Mew might get called to go do some stuff right there in Eastern Africa or the North of Africa. I mean, I mean, I got nothing to give the junior Marines who are probably going to listen to this and be like, oh man, what we do, the gripes and the complaints are always the same. And people say, oh, if the Marines are complaining, that's fine. It's when they stop complaining that you got to worry about.

And, you know, all the Marines downstairs, you know, they complain about the same thing. Oh, we don't have any mission sets. None of our deployments matter. We don't ever get any missions. Like, we're going to go on the mute. We're going to sit there in the Red Sea for, you know, 30 days or whatever. And, you know, what that's honestly just kind of part of the job, man, because sure, if you pick the brains or you read things like the book after action right by one of the combat pilots who supported both Afghanistan and Iraq you know they didn't know

they were gonna get pushed into you know those aOs the call came down and they had no idea especially when 9-11 happened that pretty much caught everybody's surprise so. One thing I do want to talk to when it comes to the junior Marines especially the downstairs Marines is the the FAPS that goes into, say, like a Mew where you have your ABI guys and your airframes guys, they have to give up one body per section so that if they have to go, like, cut hair for six months or a month or two, or go to kitchen or go to, like, you know, what is it? Fire watch with the Navy.

So they get fapped out, and they come back to the behind-on-quals. And so from there, they're like, I'm getting fucked over because I'm supporting stuff that means nothing to me. And so it's almost like that, I mean, I don't know if the Army has this code, but it's mission creep, or you're doing jobs. It's completely outside of your like, your T.O.

And I know a lot of the downstairs guys just get bored. They're like, I'm not even doing my job anymore. It's, I'm just doing the pointless things. And I get a nap for cutting hair for six months. And then I get back to the States and then my unit, you know, put, like, punishes me for not getting my calls or being behind or something like that. And then they can't get promoted.

And then they have retention issues. And then they have that mentality of, they don't care about me, I'm just leaving. That entire six month deployment to you know, the mediterranean was a waste for my entire career and then or okay knowledge. Yeah, the 31st Mu they just sit on what camp Hanson. Yeah, go down to the Philippines and they turn around around and go out of Korea and they come back or they sit on a boat you know for two months maybe go up to mainland Japan and kind of do nothing. Um, granted, like I said, experiences.

Hamstrouji. Yeah. Yeah. Which that's not a bad place to be. Honestly, mainland Japan is, in my opinion, is my opinion the shit. So, um, but definitely not what a marine stand up for, right? Um, yep. I got, but the thing you're speaking to, it's not only just like the the haircuts and stuff like that one of the biggest

problems that we had is Buying from like senior officers and NCOs because it wasn't that way in their day Right like some people say like poke is a mindset and it really it is It's like a negative attitude that just affects everybody and I mean we've set it on this podcast a hundred times when people are like, how do I become an intel analyst or like a really good intel analyst for like the military? If I wasn't in the military, it's like, well, you better go do some military shit because there's a big difference between drawing a trench and knowing what a trench is,

clearing a trench, having to fight a trench, having to lead a squad through a trench and realizing like this fucking sucks. And I mean, I can speak to that to a story about like one of our, and our head and CEO was an EA who was a green beret got hurt and then turned into an analyst. He didn't want any of our intel guys doing anything. He was like, I don't want you guys going to shooting schools, breaching schools, snacking like, no that stuff. He's like, you guys, he's like, if you fight a nice intel school, he's like, we'll talk about it. And he's like, no spy schools, none of this shit. And it just, it got so bad with him that we lost an E7 who had

been on like literally everything from like Ranger support in the 82nd on like a company intelligence from like Ranger Support in the 82nd on like a company intelligence mission to personal protection detail, to more intel on the ground with JSOC in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he literally was in fifth grade. He was like my counterpart, my platoon sergeant. And he left to go to the ESFAB. We had dudes leaving group to go hang out

with a brown beret on. It sucked. So, like that attitude, not just in yourself, but also in senior leadership as like officers and enlisted, like you said, that mission creep, pa, it fucking gets you. And if you're a commander with that mentality, you're destroying careers.

You're destroying the retention rate. I mean, if I had to put a number on it I would say 50% of the guys that I showed up with when I got to fifth group left because of mission creep like you're saying Yeah, and I'm so glad you bring that up because And that shit needs to go away. Honestly the whole fat program the way it's pulling bodies away from Marines that we need to learn their you know ability to to go away. Honestly, the whole fat program, the way it's pulling bodies away from Marines that we need to learn their ability to fix and maintain and troubleshoot aircraft. We

get allocated these Marines from the schoolhouse to support our T.O. Right? People with that mentality, I don't think they understand their history man like to put in perspective twenty twelve can't bassian right the harrier squadron that was there uh... the mermaids marines that were there working on her ears when the Taliban busted through the lines right of the airfield started blowing up her ears and other shit who was it that repelled that attack initially it was the maintenance marines

who grabbed the rifles ran out onto the flight line and started you know trying to pin down you know these Taliban fighters who had quite literally infiltrated the air base and they held them off you know for quite a bit of time until Asian life, 469 could get their skids up in the air to start assisting with this. It was, it was skids and empatches, you know, getting airborne right there on the airfield to try and repel these infiltrators. Time for a quick commercial break. Oh yeah, that means Patreon. So if you haven't looked at it, we have a Patreon where we have bonus episodes of Matt and I talking about everything going on in the world.

It's kind of like a current week's events roll up and then we also have stuff we didn't go on there. We also have write-ups of what we have going on. And then obviously the world famous KitBag Discord, where all of the things that we have going on in the future and dumb plans we may have talked about are in there as well. So head on over to the Patreon. Go ahead, see if you like it. You can even do a free trial. That's right. A one week free trial of the best here in my opinion, which is the $10 tier. You get the video game nights every week. You get the discord, you get the bonus episodes, and by the way, we are always in the discord. I don't think I've spent a single

day without the discord talking to guys, talking about the gym, talking about shooting, kids, anything that you want to talk about in analysis, it's all there. So go ahead, pop on over there. If you don't want to, hey, at the very minimum, reviews are free. Let us know what you think about the podcast on Spotify, on iHeartRadio, all of those platforms. Give us five stars, four star, three star, whatever. As long as there's a review and something that say, that's great. So thanks guys. Yeah, man. The reason I bring that up right is because that whole mentality of, you know, Pogue versus like, like, obviously, none of our Marines here in the HMLA

or in Marine Aviation, a lot of people look at the sub-pogs and whatever man. Yeah, we're, we're, we're pogs, right? We're air-wing, but at the same time, that doesn't mean like you can't get jumped from time to time, right? So because of that, this whole mentality of pulling Marines away

to go and do basically things that don't matter, I think is like you said, it kills morale and it needs to go away because if I could have it my way, if I could change, you know, one thing, honestly, I would take a lot of our, you know, hot shot maintainers, you know, who were CDI, CDQs, you know, from key shops where we always need help. And I would make them aerial gunners and aerial observers, man. I would make them part of the air crew because where we're going in the Pacific is, we're trying to manage signatures, we're trying to manage the amount of people that we have

with us in any given time, right? And we need that experience. We need those calls to be part of our small teams going out. So if I could take like a CDICQ, a Bionics Marine, to be one of my aerial gunners, you know, in the back of a Huey, I could take out a vision with two cobras and two Huey's or three cobras and one Huey. And I could have essentially what constitutes a small maintenance debt helping me maintain my aircraft for three to four days and handling any type of gripes that arise

while we're out there operating and support a ground force that are spread out. So, one thing I wanna touch on is you were mentioning like the relevancy of aviation, especially when it comes to after looking at like Gaza, Ukraine Ukraine and Yemen places like this is AFV Jake talked about it that regardless of who you are if you see a tank you're gonna shit yourself if you can't stop a cobra from flying in You're gonna shit yourself because they know what they're doing. They're gonna come after you if you don't have man pets If you don't have any eye-eds on deck

your defenseless so Just the thought of that in the air by itself is just terrifying to literally anybody. And same thing when it comes to tanks. If you see a tank, you can't stop that thing. Even if you have like what, a UAS or something like that, there's no way you're going to get terrified. And so it's just like the psychological aspect is a huge part when it comes to like aviation and tanks. And it's kind of like big mechanical weapons. But it's adding on to that, especially if we have something like air crew who is trained, but two through times a week to shoot while flying at an inverted angle, they know

what they're doing. And so I absolutely agree with you when you're talking about getting just every single person of the shops, at least some kind of like avionics, like flying in the air using all these tools, because you never know what's going to come up It exactly man and also by doing that the more people that we qualify in my opinion internal around shops To do these types of things and understand not just like their own like maintenance, you know You know jobs and stuff but actually like being part of the air crew and being part of the team to help keep these aircraft up and running because every time you spin one up it's going to incur like a maintenance tax. You know, it's going to require manpower to like, you know, help you shoot it, keep it running and stuff like that.

Like, I think it's going to increase morale across the board because now they're not just managing workloads in terms of the shot man. They actually have a chance to be like, hey dude, like what I do matters, I'm going to strap up, I'm going to put my helmet on and I'm going to man this gun whether it's a 50 cow or a 240 or a fucking Gau 17, right? They end up getting triple gun called and we're going to go out and, you know, we're going to fly our mission and we're going to support the Marines on the ground, right? It's basically generating that buy in that we need while also supporting, essentially what we're trying to do with forces

down 20-30 where we're trying to not just employ the HMLA in our units in their normal legacy fashion but trying to deliberately task organize our assets and our air crews and our flight elements to actually accomplish what we're trying to do with, you know. I want this next question might not be, I guess, like on topic, but I know when I was in, I would see a lot of the maintainers look at say, every time like an incident comes up with an aircraft, two out of three times, it's usually a Marine Corps asset, but you never see like an Air Force Osprey going down. And it's there's something with like maintenance hours that are allocated each asset or

Is like the Marine Corps fudge numbers to just give the thumbs up to the DOD No, we don't really fudge numbers man. I think so it's kind of funny that you say that I think For the most part I'm guessing you're probably talking about Ospreys anytime a Marine Corps has it goes down Like what's the likelihood that it's gonna be an Osprey? It's gonna be an Osprey And I think it's just because we have the most by far. I mean, Afsac has how many Ospreys man? Maybe 50, right? The Marine Corps has, you know, I can't remember off the top of my head how many VMMs we have, but it's at least 200. We have at least 200 Ospreys, right? And we fly the shit out of them, you know day in and day out and Honestly, man, when you're looking at like how the osprey is designed how it's built the systems on board at least from what I hear from my

You know tilt-roader brethren is that the number of avionics gripes that affect these aircraft is high and Because of that the workloads in order to keep these things operational is high. So how do we answer that? And this kind of feeds into things that I would change about the HMLA as it pertains to like TO, it kind of goes into that. I think we need to reassess, holistically, at least internal of the Marine Corps, how many avionics, you

know, Marines we have allocated for shop because, you know, as we start to add more and more systems, you know, right, we're basically doing system ad with a lot of these, you know, platforms that we get from Bell, Boeing specifically as it contains two, then B-22, and then when we're looking at H-1s and specifically Bell, but all these different systems that we continue to add to these aircraft, right, they're all electronic. They're all, you know, heavily avionics, right? And then just looking at the OSPRI, right, that thing can't even fly without the computer is working appropriately without all the flight controls basically talking to each other across talking to make sure that thing stays upright in the air.

So I think if we add more manpower to those specific shots that are affected with the highest workloads, namely avionics, I think we'll start to see some of those writing numbers actually go up. Because I don't think we're going to reduce our SBTP numbers or sort of base training plan or flight hours that are allocated to us from higher to actually fly and train. I don't think we're going to see a reduction in that at all.

I certainly think that when it comes to readiness and when it comes to making sure these aircraft are fully mission capable, I think just adjusting the manpower as it pertains to what we're seeing with day-to-day workloads will help answer that readiness question. And that applies across the board to the entire Marine Corps. I wouldn't even say that's just the BMM, the H&LA, or even like the BMFA. I can, well, maybe I can talk to some of the bullshit I'm hearing about F-35s as well,

and the maintenance tax incurred from that, but it's probably gonna be more the same. So another thing that the Air Force does is their culture is completely asked backwards when it comes to this, when it comes to maintenance. Their version of Pogue is non-er and it's somebody who isn't a maintainer. So the guys who are put on a pedestal for their hard work and they're the ones who day in, day out, do a grind are the maintainers. And so like, I know at least the aviation world for the army like that is

that's not how things go like you were just saying like blade hours you know how much time are we getting how many hours are you getting in your flight time because I mean that's how pilots grade each other and when I was in the aviation brigade we had a crash three months before we deployed because our fucking commander was off the hill trying to get training hours in trying to get get gunnery done, trying to get all these things done, and we had a maintenance survey done, and he looked like it was awful. I'll never forget it because like two months before the crash happened and both pilots died. He literally sat there and he was like, do you see what these soldiers are saying? He's like, we've already busted two for drugs and he's like, they're complaining that there's gonna be a crash

and that they're not getting enough time with their families and all this, he's like, we're trying and hard for a deployment out here. He's like, we've got things to do. He's like, so I need my junior leaders, I need my lieutenants to get out there and start getting on these guys, making sure that they're up to speed,

making sure they're eating right, making sure they're doing their PT, making sure they're putting in the blade or the work hours. He's like, because we got to keep this maintenance hours going so that we can keep flying. Whereas in the Air Force, it's completely driven the other way around, right? Like they've got the maintainers who are telling the pilots, like, look, this is what we need done. This is what needs to happen. And there isn't this mentality of like, well, shut up, pogue or shut up maintainer. Like it, they're, they're the cream of the crop. Like they, if it weren't for the maintainers, the Air Force wouldn't have a job.

So it's, it's weird to me to, to come to that because that's where my brother is. He's a maintainer on the B 52 program. And so it's like, that's different. And he's just like, well, he's pulling 12 hour shifts. He's doing the damn thing. And but I mean, they're the grunts of the Air Force world. And so it's a mentality shift also. And so it, because I mean, that's a lot, right?

Especially for rotary wing. Like we were talking about Ukraine and how they're just using aviation for artillery, essentially, but it's like that, like you said, that's blade hours, right? Like that's every, what is it? Every hour that you fly, how many hours do you have to put into maintenance?

I think it's like, yeah, it is. Yeah, it is in flows depending on the platform But I'm seeing like 12 hours right so that's ridiculous right like you can't that's that's fucking ridiculous like 12 hours like that that's a whole work day Like and that's a shitty work day a 12 hour shift just for one hour of flight and so I Think exact I think more manpower, but I also think a paradigm shift is needed. So that there's yeah. I was going to know with mingling with the downstairs Marines back when I was still in it,

especially while the ployed is they get burned out for working so much. You have the day crew guys and the night crew guys, but they usually work longer hours. They leave later on a Friday than they usually would want to. Sometimes have to come in on a Saturday. The average shows are getting pretty burnt out. And then on top of that, oh god, I just lost the trait of thought. Oh, the... How am I trying to say this?

Skid Row, I think you and I talked about it a little bit before. That's... I do know that some of the downstairs Marines don't like... I wouldn't say get along, but just almost have a certain distrust when it comes to like, especially like fixed-wing guys are mostly pilots because it's like they just use us, we're just tools for them. But the like, Osprey and Huey pilots, because they have to work with the Joe's every single day to ensure that their aircraft like works properly because of the air crewman. They have like a different relationship with the average downstairs marine than say like you're you have 35 pilot or something. And so I think like that psychological culture going through and through both feed in a negative direction because at one point you're exhausted physically and then mentally you're tired because you're like they don't even care about me.

And so if the air force is putting all the maintainers on a pedestal like this is what you should be, I guess in the Army and especially the Marine Corps, they don't do that. Yeah, I've seen it go both ways at least in the Marine Corps. I can tell you right now in the H&L, most of the maintainers downstairs is like the Huey part of some most because obviously when it comes to the crew chief quarrels and gunners, most of those Marines are pulled specifically from Flight Launcher. So they're working relationship, you know, they're flying with them day in and day out. The CRM aspect, you know, the relationship, like you said, is very strong there because, you know, they work with them,

they fly with them, you know, they live and die with them, right? Like it's all, it's all very much a same team, same fight aspect, at least in the co-worker community, right? I've seen co-worker pilots because we don't fly with any air crew, right? It's two pilots, you know, two Dicks, one cockpit, right? It's kind of a joke that gets thrown around. And I've seen it where co-worker pilots can be from time to time depending on, you know, how long they've been in, you know, or whatever culture they come from, like they can be extremely disrespectful

to our endless maintainers. But I've also seen it start to change and go the other way. There's a lot of Marines, especially co-oper pilots now, who are sort of adapting that more, you know, Huey pilot mentality where, you know, they're starting to, you know, really get along, not say, I don't want to use a turn, get along, it's not the right word, but they trust, they respect, and they have a, not just like a personal driving factor to, you know, have a good rapport with the enlisted maintainers, but they truly do look to them, you know, for their guidance, and their advice and suggestions, especially when on pre-flight, you walk around the aircraft and you see something

that just doesn't look right. You pull the plane cap and over, you pull a call over and take a look at it and be like, hey dude, am I crazier as a thing? I actually fucked up on the aircraft, right? And a lot of times, the dudes that have a good rapport with the maintainers, they're gonna get the real answer. They're gonna be like, hey sir, yeah dude,

this thing is fucked. I would not take the aircraft, man, just roll with the back up, they're gonna get a real answer. They're gonna be like, hey sir, yeah dude, this thing is fucked. I would not take this aircraft man, just roll with a backup. You know what I mean? I'm seeing that more and more. And that's within the last five years, right? Because before then, you know, you talk to maintainers downtown, they hate interacting with co-oper pilots, right? Because they have almost a pseudo-fixing mentality.

But at least in the last five, six years, from what I've seen, it's changing, right? Like both co-repilot and Huey pilots, at least internal to the LHMLA, have a good working relationship. And it's not to say that like, fix-winging co-repilot are just like, you know, through and through Diggs, I think it's just like a generational cultural aspect that maybe it's all over from Vietnam or something, but, or especially like the war on terror, but it's like I think it's just like ingorained in I don't know what they teach at the maintainer schoolhouse, but it's just like in there and I think it's again we were talking earlier about the older guys the old hats that have just been who are still running around pretending like oh back in the old day, those are the guys that really reinforce that negative attitude, where you could have a like a full bird kernel with that attitude or, you know, an E7, E8 who's been in and out of words for 20 years, who's just like, fuck pilots. He's like, they made us.

So again, that's something that absolutely needs to get addressed because it's just a toxic work environment for lack of a better term. And then just that distrust where you need the trust for the aircraft to work, that distrust is definitely a negative aspect, both cone as an okay as well for an deployment. Exactly right. And that's one of the main messages that I try and convey with my basically that my peers and I try to convey on the page all the time is that we don't do things in a vacuum, right? pilots do not fly we do not train we do not shoot we don't support the Marines on the ground unless we have the support of The rest of the team it takes a team to get an aircraft ready for the flight schedule It takes a team to get the backup ready for the flight schedule for preposition ordinance to draw from the ammunition supply point on base, to trouble suit your ASE on board the aircraft

to keep your ass alive if you take a man-patch shot. We do not do anything. It doesn't matter how much time we put in the flight planning, it doesn't matter how much time you study at home. It doesn't matter how many flight hours you have. You didn't earn any of that by yourself. You did it because of the team. So it was something like an after-school special. There is no eye in team. Right. So, and I'm sure, you know, some people hear that and I'm like, all geez, that sounds

like very bleeding heart, right? But I know. It's true, man. It takes a team. Everybody has a specific role to play on that team. Some people fly the aircraft, some people man the guns in the back of the aircraft. Some people have the professional expertise to specifically troubleshoot things like your missile warning system or your radar warning receiver for things that nature right. Because of that expertise, it makes us all collectively more lethal and more survivable, you know. On the battlefield, should we go forward? So I think it's very important to try and convey that message because I understand

that we put in super long hours, you know, I think everybody in the H. Malay works typically 12 to 14 hour days, whether you're a maintainer or a pilot. Obviously, some of that is more physical than other aspects of the job, but everybody's, you know, a part on the team. Everybody's role on the team, you know, really fucking matters. So, I hope that message is being conveyed appropriately to the Marines downstairs because we can't do it without them. When we were there in Candahar, one of the things that we implemented was a weekly roll-up of what was going on from the Intel shop. So like, you know, we'd have two to three missions a night and so like, dudes were getting a fucking pervert out. Yeah. But it was great because like,

I remember the first one we did and it was like halfway through deployment when I started doing these they we started telling them like hey this is what's going on. This is the operations we did this is how much heroin we you know child trafficking, human trafficking guns all this stuff like how many HVTs we eliminated and like one of the the echo company which is the maintainers he was just like thank you like it He came up like as you know as a lieutenant to get an e8 to fucking you know first arch and to be like this was One of the best things you could have ever done because you've got these wrenched earners down there like the you guys call them the guys down Stairs like it's fuck bro like they're like what's up going on in the daylight like in like you said like it's

It's all this effort that goes into making sure that not just the pilots, but you know, the, what you're carrying, right? The helicopter assault force, the half and making sure all of this comes in. I mean, if you've ever seen, it used to piss me off so much, man, like you'd get an ODA or a Marsocteme or whoever you're flying, they'd hand you a slide for the ground scheme of maneuver and they'd be like, you know, this is kind of roughly what we want, like a frago. Here's like where we want to have our infill. Here's what we want to do our ex fill and then like the intel guys have to talk to the crowd guys and move this and we got to do blade hours and see, okay, what frames

do we have available? Who's going? Who's on shift that night? When do you want? And it's like, they hand you a one slider, which in turn becomes 45, 50 slides of like, okay, this is the 15 minute mark. This is the 10 minute, this is the SP. This is where the infill HLZ ground scheme and maneuver. And then, I mean, to say like well on one hand that's

that's beneficial the x-checks are definitely beneficial because you have to make a mission is running on time you can't just say that yeah well it it's it's absolutely necessary especially in like I mean when I was in the reconnaissance commuter even in the infantry community everyone has those x-checks so it's you absolutely need those to make sure that it's running on time and properly regardless of the field, but yeah, just the bloating of... It's a... What could be one slide to now, like, 75 and now the pilot in the cockpit on his kneeboard has this book to flip through while he's also trying to work on it.

Well, I bet I was... His job essentially is... Yeah, I was... It even went like a step further because I was telling the cognitive high because he was like when that Apache The Israeli Apache killed those people on accident. I was like, you know You got to know how to like change the attitude and work with the mindset of like lift utility like you know shinnooks He raised black hawks cobras of patches, and it's like you got to like fucking shinnooks are you know They're very humble and those

guys are you know they're the magic school bus you know they're the biggest target out there and so it's you got to change that attitude of like hey like the comfort levels that you have that they have is going to be real you know like who's who's my escort tonight is it fucking Dave Dave's a pussy man Dave's you, you know, we had one guy Carter. Carter would shoot anything. Like when Carter was in the overhead man, everyone was like, like you could see the room relax. And then we would, you know, we changed the narrative

on that, we started going from like, okay, you know, Carter's in the overhead to like, okay, Carter likes to play games, like, hey Carter, this house right here, I'm pretty sure has a guy. This is a T.A.I. And so it went from like, oh we're in filling guys to like the intelligence section that I was in, like we were aggressive.

Like there were tons of, like hey, this is the T.A.I. you wanna look at five minutes out. This is the egress rap, this is this. And I remember, I still have it. There's a flag back here from like one of the missions I did, he killed eight dudes who were coming up from a goat trail to come into the half. He's like, hey, LT, you're fucking right.

They were there. He flew me a flag that night. And he's like, there's eight kills on that flag. And I was like, fuck yeah. And so I mean, like you're saying, it's not just everybody's in it to win it, but I mean, you can change. I was like, hey, I want the black hawk to land

at like this degree angle and it's like, why? And it's like, well, there's a caress here. I want the 240 facing that. And like, even the door gunner's like, oh, you're thinking about me. You're thinking about where to put my gun. I'm like, yeah, like, we're not here to like, fucking dump dudes off and get out.

Like, we're fucking, we're the suppressing fire. Like, you're not the escort You're something you're hunting the first five minutes that you're on station before the fucking you know the party bus gets there and I mean that I mean exactly like you said you can take it from being like oh where the skids or where the aviation brigade to oh we all work together to like no This is a choreographed deviation per gay to oh we all work together to like no this is a choreographed Mission a fucking annihilating the enemy From from the minute those fucking Apache's get in the stack or the cobras to the minute we leave

We are aggressive and we're murdering mother fuckers like when the helicopter show up It better look like the in arm like we were soldiers guns blazing people fucking dying. We're hunting We're not the fucking Skids and we're not the fucking Skids and we're not the aviation brigade like oh yeah get on the helicopter like you want us to stay an extra five minutes I'm having fun fuck these guys like I'm on the same side right now oh I'm gonna just just just an answer or to address everything that you just said I'm gonna say that mentality right there that you describe that aggressive You know everything that you just said. I'm going to say that mentality right there that you describe that aggressive, you know, not sitting back, just waiting for things to happen, not sitting back, waiting for things to develop. That's the type of mentality that I would say we need right now, and that we

probably are going to need forever, at least as pertains to planning for like the next fight. I think we've allowed ourselves to be come way too lax with, you know, I don't want to use the term restrictive R O E, but basically like sitting back and letting things develop instead of being in a mindset to where everything, you know, part of the IP and bound, right, is a DAS environment. If you see anything that looks like it's going to be a threat for the half going inbound, you need to light it up. And the only reason we know that is because of like the intelligence, you know, that's being fed into the detailed planning for the specific mission.

So I'm really happy that you elaborated on that specific experience because just, you know, from my personal experience, I haven't seen an intelligence section be nearly as aggressive ever in my time like in the Marine Corps or I Want to build on top of that because when it comes to cone of space training

I'm sure you've seen it. It's just a cane scenario. It's usually the same every single time and I remember when I was at the HMLA can't scenario is usually the same every single time. And I remember when I was at the HMLA, they're like, hey, uh, hey, Corporal, make this a realistic scenario. I was like, all right, this building's a mosque and there's man pads in there. What are you going to do? They're like, this is a real world. And I was like, that's what Hamas does. It's what ISIS does. They understand that American are a weekend target schools, churches, mosques, humanitarian centers, everything like that. And that's what they do. And that's where they shoot at you, because you know they can't shoot back.

So what you're playing, and they're like, what we're going to do is not that. We're going to find another guy who will give us a better brief. And I'm like, well, you're not doing yourself any favor, Sam. No. Your infill is going to go next to a high rise as rigged with RPGs and manpads. How you get S-A-7s, S-A-14-16s. How are you going to stop that? You probably can.16s. Like, how are you gonna stop that? You probably can't.

So, what are you gonna do? And then, I remember, I forgot who it was. I definitely gave that mission, like, gave that brief. And it was pulled to the side by, I think it was like the exo, he's like, you can't do that anymore. Like, our guys are trying to get like, their flight hours in. And I was like, well, I understand, but also,

these are real world things. American plays by the rules in certain stonet. So, right. And then it becomes a well, I understand, but also these are real world things. American plays by the rules in search of stone. Right. And then it becomes a question, you know, on behalf of the crew, right, are you going to take the information operations hit from, you know, putting two by November Hellfire into that specific building when you see somebody up up on the tower and you're going to let them affect basically the half going in or you're going to sit back and, know wait for the first shot to go off and you know maybe maybe your ASE works maybe it doesn't I don't know but

they can see that Christmas tree and just kind of figure it out you got a few seconds so yeah you got it yeah exactly so I and this again this is just my opinion I think we need more of, we need more of that buy-in, we need more of that aggression. I would say throughout the force, Matt, because guess what? G-Wat, this whole G-Wat mentality where we're trying to win hearts and minds, I don't think it's going to be sticking around for much longer. And we kind of need some of that like restrictive, you know, ROE handcuffs, you know, or not really what it comes down to is not understanding realistically like what the ROE buys you, right? Well, you can also say that it's almost like a golden handcuffs because nobody likes when Americans die, but also

No. You don't want to have, you don't know what happens tomorrow because you didn't pull the trigger. So it seems like that regardless, which rather to be one guy today or four guys tomorrow, like take a pic, someone's going to have to go. Yeah. I would add out to that because, you know, coming from a very, like, I was very fortunate. I got a very unique set of training to my deployment on my exo was one-sixth. My BC was one-sixtieth. So they were like, because they do two years or one to two years with the conventional forces, then they go back to the one-sixtieth aviation regiment.

So they were very nice to me and they sent me to Pathfinder School. I did a ton of training with shoot houses and stuff like that and preaching and learning how a ground force would work and then they set me down to Fort Rucker for a week to learn attack aviation and you lift aviation defense. So like ATGMs, manpads, the, you know, we got to go for like a whole day and just play with the flight simulator. And like the real one, the one that fucking lifts you up and moves you around and get to see that. So by the time I got there, I say it's speaking grunt or speaking gorilla.

Like you can speak to the infantry and that's a skill in the intelligence field all its own is to like translate shit to the infantry. But to be able to take aviation, which is, I mean, we've, I'm sure we've been talking almost an hour now and we've said so much shit that like I'm sure there's a lot of people scratching their head to take aviation intel and grunt and put it all into one briefing. It'd be like, look, this is what we're doing. This is what the enemy is doing is that's a really, really hard skill and it requires a lot of buy in like you're saying because they don't train aviation, at least in the army at the schoolhouse.

Matt can speak to that for the Marine Corps. Do they train you in the army at the schoolhouse. Matt can speak to that for the Marine Corps Do they train you guys on aviation at the schoolhouse? Where's a follow-on school? So you go through the basic and telecourse and then you will follow on scores It's called like CITIC and it's but when I went through it was hairier base They had nothing to do with it. I don't know what rotary Oh, I remember it's almost like the Marine Corps like takes a step forward in a good direction and then like immediately goes

right back because I went through the infantry the basic intel course and it was like a cancun area where we're supporting like like one three or three three or whatever. I think it was three six in Basra in like 2005 and then went to the aviation schoolhouse which was fixed wing and they were like, forget everything you just learned you're in the wing now, you're not doing grunt shit. And then go to the fixed wing schoolhouse and then you go to the rotary squadron

where they're like, forget everything you just learned this is how we're gonna do it. So you like, you get little nuggets here and there but it definitely doesn't like build that holistic environment because if rotary wing and skins or a patch user or anything like that, it's all cast and support of the grunt. You need that holistic complimentary environment to make them all work together, because I remember hanging out with a couple skid pilots and these grunts came in before I missed it.

And they were like, how does it feel to know that everything revolves around you? And the grunts had, they were like, that that school. I only think they like it thought about it But I mean, but that I was very fortunate and I had people that you know I mean they were 16 16 years into their career and they knew like you're an intel guy You don't know much like let's get you out there flying like let's do you know when's the last time you touched? Oh, there is a cargo bag go ahead last time you touched a. Oh there is a cargo back. Go ahead. Yeah there is opportunities for like Intel guys to go be earlier observers and so they go up with like you know the 22s or the

Hueis or the 53s or something but then they wear a flight suit and then at that point they're not so much doing Intel anymore. They're more just like an extra hand for the aircraft. And so again that mission creep comes in. We where especially a lot of the, the intel pilots, or the intel guys, the officers, they go to be a T.O. Or not a T.O. and A.O. And then at that point, they're like, ah, yeah, I got so much work to do with the pilots now.

Like, I don't have time to do intel. And you're like, shit, man, come on. I mean, but it is. It's, it's buy-in from, you know, not just the command team, but other pilots as well, trying to get those guys like Skid Row is exactly right like we should train these guys to be door gunners like I Didn't learn to you know nobody told me to do you know move the black Hawk this way so that the 240 on the side could shoot

You know, I figured that out on my own through going through the Pathfinder school and and going through Some of the train up at Rucker and realizing like, shit, this isn't the Apache, right? It's not guns everywhere, 180 degrees of guns forward, it's range fan. It's only got two range fans on the side, and there's small little crew serves in the grand scheme. Not that I think about it. I'm trying to think back, so I think the course was like a month long, and it was more of identifying eye ads. It definitely was six like a month long and it was more of identifying

IADS. It definitely was six-wing based. But it was how I identify like an SA-6 or something like that or like a SA-7. They always go with like the most simple one, but it's also the most prolific in the battlefield. So you're not going to train against like an SA-19 or something. You're going to train against like the SA-6 because it's common or the first-second generation, maybe third-generation manpads. It's never going to be like a fourth or fifth or anything like that. It's because of how there's not a lot. And yeah, I think we can kind of attest to that, right? Like how heavily proliferated are S-A-6s and how many fucking kills in those S-A-6s gotten on aircraft, is it? Quite a few, right?

But yeah, and I mean, we can go into this next one here, but I mean, that's, that's what it's going to take. You know, you kind of hit on that with, you know, training the guys, but if you want my opinion, when we're watching the Ukrainian more, when we're watching Israel, who does have, you know, it's kind of hard to see because nobody likes watching the man pads and, you know, watching Hamas shoot at Israel into the sky at nothing what it looks like but they are shooting at a patchy's but if you watch that you have the training in mind or like Jake at AFE is doing and all that shit you you don't get how do I put it

you don't get disheartened I don't get disheartened for aviation and rotary wing. I don't get upset for tanks. What I see is there is a massive movement of the ATGMs, the manpads, and the ZSUs and stuff like that. They are easier and easier and easier to get. And so that window of opportunity for you to be a shithead of an intel officer, an Intel officer or a tanker or a pilot is drastically closing. So this idea that like, oh, tanks and, you know, nobody hears that it just to make sure, but tanks and rotary wing are obsolete. They're not obsolete. The door for being a shithead is slowly closing and it's time to get good. Because 80 if you're fucking up as a tanker right now, ATGMs are going to get you.

Are you a shitty pilot who doesn't take your job seriously or you have an Intel section who's not mapping out man pads and ZSUs and as isn't paying attention to, you know, are we flying nape of the earth? Are we flying high? Like what are we doing? Are we flying echelon? Are we flying in line? You know, I mean, it's it, it's simple shit like that, right?

Like, we stopped flying in line because the turds were shooting at the sound of the aircraft. They couldn't see it, but they could hear it at night. So they were shooting. And so the lead helicopter would get away. But number three and number four were getting fucked up. And so it's like, okay, well, now we gotta, you know, go to a wedge so that they shoot, but it comes behind.

And then it went from like, okay, we have a wedge, but what if we do a wedge with one Apache up front and one Apache in the tail, and then when they shoot, the tail Apache, you can fuck up that guy, shoot a helicopter, and he's just hunting on the way to the objective. And so it's like, you know, you can't do level one turd stuff anymore.

You can't have a bunch of helicopters in line, lulululu to the objective. It's the, in my opinion, when I watch Ukraine, I watch Yemen, I watch Israel or Africa or any of these things, it's just, you can't be a shithead anymore. There's the technology is catching up and you better get good at your job

because I don't know how it's about you, Skid Row, but every time I see something going on, and they're like, oh, this is groundbreaking shit. It's like, no, they're not even following the basic principles of patrolling here. I mean, we could think of something as super simple as Skid Row mentioned it. The Global War and Terror mindset america is always going to be

number one no one is ever going to challenge us yeah i mean like the russian suck thank god but also figure not the same military there were two years ago they have learned and they've also trained against everything that we've given the Ukrainians which is our own tools and toys because they know for a fact that we trained them so it's not like we're changing our we and tactics

and TTPs when it comes to translating that to the Ukrainians or these Israelis are a little different, but or the Taiwanese. We're just playing all our hands now. All the cards are on the table. They're like they know how to do it. I don't know if you guys saw that new recruitment video from the Russian military, but they're standing above a bunch of, standing atop a bunch of burnt out M-reps and they're like this is all NATO has, let it burn, like something like that. And so they're just driving over a bunch of, uh, sending a top a bunch of burnt out M reps and they're like, this is all NATO has, let it burn, like something like that. And so they're just driving over a battlefield of just destroyed US assets, British, you know, German, all these things like that. And so yeah, Cody's right where you can't be a shithead anymore, you just can't wing it and kind of like, yeah, be an okay pilot or, yeah, be an all right analyst. Like that

Lance Corporal mindset just has to go away because everyone knows our tricks now. They watch Folluta, they watch Marja, they watch Helm and Provinces that everyone's seen Restrepo and then after watching our not direct military engagement side like Ukraine, but all of our tools are definitely inside there now so they're like they know how to exploit it. I don't know if you guys saw that when a German leper got destroyed in Kyruson or something when that offensive started, Putin came out and said, yeah, this is going to the parade next year. We're going to do a full diagnostics on how these things work. So now the German military needs to research her how they do everything.

And so that's, it's a second third order of effects that are really going to bite us in the ass. And so like, yeah, if you're a tanker, you best get smart because they're not obsolete. They just need to be used differently. I'm so glad you guys elaborated on that because it's not superior technology. That makes us lethal and survival with superior tactics. It all comes down to like you guys said, understanding, well, I'll just simplify it. One of the things that we try to teach right is, you know, obviously you got to have

ASC because when you do mess up, you need to save you. If you can maintain standoff, do everything you can to maintain standoff, right? So that you're not, you know, easily picked off by these weapon systems. But additionally, just doing everything you can to defeat the shooter, you know, while he's on the ground. To feed the missile, you know, while it's on the ground. To defeat the missile, you know, while it's still in the tube, right? Do everything you can to deny acquisition, right?

That's like step number one. Then if you do, if you can't deny acquisition, right, then you need to essentially be in a position to where you're shooting back, right? It's all cover maneuver concealment. It all goes back to the basics, right? So you go back to looking at all these videos of, you know, shoot downs and you cra back to looking at all these videos of, you know,

shoot downs and you crained, what does all come back to? It comes back to, you know, mediocre subpar pilots, flying stupid ass altitudes, flying and attacking out of the same piece of the sky, you know, not doing anything to deny enemy acquisition. And people look at this and they're like, oh, helicopters are irrelevant. No, man, it's just just it's very, very poor training and very, very

poor the red assessment on the part of the people that are flying those mission sets, namely the Russians, you know, it's obviously anything to watch. It's going to say if there's anything the Russians showed us is that's over confidence, we'll get you killed killed like they went in there just ready and they got some object or specifically that uh... that half aerosol they did on uh... was a key of international airport was like day one or day two the war with a reflying like a lot of the

two-door water and it wasn't like the first two or three uh... helicopters that were shot at you know the ukrainians were sitting there you know on the western side of the bank, and it was, you know, Dash 4, 5, 6, 7 that started taking man-patch shots, right? So, and that's all it really takes, man. Once you hear the sounds, once you see where the package is going, it's not hard to, like, trying to start picking off those guys. So obviously comes down to detail planning and you got a tailor, you got a tailor you're tactics accordingly.

Yeah, I mean that was, we should probably one day do that, we should do a deep dive on the helicopter assault force of hostile airport because we've met now. Well, I mean, we've talked about it before. Yeah, we've talked about it, we've talked about it a bunch and it was around this time last year. Skidder, I don't know if you read it, I'm like, it was not Crotone. I might actually just republish it on KitBag, but I met a XVDV officer who is now like an American engineer. He's just like a rando, but I interviewed him about how, not so much from the aviation side, but from the the parent sugar side side of things about how they didn't

In his own words, they didn't follow the the planning at all. They didn't follow the exact pack loadout. They went in there completely overconfident with You know what three mags on their chest and then one in their in their rifle No food enough water to sustain like a maybe a day And that's not how the Marine Corps infantry does anything. And just comparing those and then I interviewed a international volunteer who was there so shot at the Russians, he was like they were very professional, they did their job, they just ran out of all the gear. And so it's almost like a bridge too far situation where Operation Market Garden was a failure, but if we get, if I could just get my hands on a Russian aerial body that was a part of that. That would be amazing. Just a little insight.

Yeah. I mean, so one of the things you talked about there, and I don't know too much about it, is like, we've joked about the Hines and the MI8s doing rocket dump pods, like just flying until God didn't I you were good. I have to stop myself because every time it's like, well, there's an onboard computer. I'm like, it's not that accurate. This is now it's not it's it's burning blade hours. It's burning maintenance. It's causing more harm than good. It may be a good like QRF artillery piece if like somebody's getting overrun real quick to pops up rockets. But I mean, so there's that. And then you're saying that you've seen it where or like some of the stuff coming out is like, they're just doing the same thing coming up in the same area every now and then. And then what

about the the K a fit the K a 50s the alligators that you saw absolutely destroy the Ukrainian counteroffensive columns if you want to talk about that I Mean it looks to me like they're just getting smarter right and they're actually you know sticking to what I would consider You know just like normal, you know attack helicopter tactics right It's all about denying acquisition. It's all about you know being unpredictable in the air Right or you find the correct altitudes? Are you finding through low-alcoholic tactics, right? Are utilizing all of the altitudes?

All of the altitudes, such an under-focused area when it comes to, especially when I was in aviation by itself, because aerial control is kind of how Americans run things. But again, looking at the Russians, you're like, oh, you have to do is look at that You're like, don't be that in an example, but go ahead Yeah, but basically, you know, obviously the Russians are figuring you know, they're you know

obviously examining their own TTPs and seeing you know what's lost them aircraft What's lost them pilots and getting a lot smarter and how they apply their you know assets and apply their tactics and getting a lot smarter and how they apply their assets and apply their tactics. It obviously failed because they weren't making the same mistakes. It's all what it really comes down to, right? Like, you already know what mistakes are, you know, lose you pilots and lose your aircraft. Obviously, you didn't know that, you know, for the first, you know, a couple months of the war, but obviously, you know, they're getting better at it. It just, from what looks to me, it looks like the Russians have had to learn the hard way, you know, through blood on what is not successful. It doesn't take much, obviously. So, I don't know if you look at this way, but if you,

I mean, I've watched the Russian Marines be used completely wrong. You almost feel bad. You're using them wrong. If you look at that with the aviation assets that the Russians use, just being careless, you're like, come on, dude. I don't want you to win, but come on, at least try. At least try to be better. I've seen the center of that, right? I probably need to do a little bit more deep dive on a lot of the combat footage coming

out of Ukraine, but from like the first several months of the war, absolutely. Like the effect that they were just throwing helicopters at things and thinking that they could just maneuver freely throughout the battlefield. Like it is not surprising to me at all, you know, the sheer number of helicopter assets, not just helicopter assets, but also just like the sheer number of tanks and other, you know, and between fighting vehicles, you know, armor personnel carriers, right? Like, when you think that you can just freely move throughout the battlefield and you don't, when you act as if you don't have a thinking enemy who's actively trying to counter, you know, everything you're trying to accomplish on the battlefield, that's when you're going to get jumped like that. Yeah,

the one I always think about is the, I mean, I've mentioned it a few times is the Russian Marines were an uparmored vehicles driving across an open field to a sulta city. I'm like, they're not using them properly at all. I was like, what the hell is this? I was felt bad for them. I was like, Jesus. Yeah, like fair and mere across the Pellanore just, you know, running out in that open solid plug. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a

huge token nerd. I don't know if you've seen that. But we do now. So now that, you know, we've, you know, a little bit of the Korean War and then we've seen the Apaches in Israel and stuff like that. I don't know if you saw those videos of them. Basically, they got kind of... The patches didn't do much, honestly. I mean, they... It's just been confirmed that they accidentally shot up a music festival. And that's not on the pilots, in my opinion. That's a lot on the Intel section. That's a lot on the J-Tax and the ground control who sent them there like that's all types of fucked But I did see how much shooting man pads. I did see them using Some light machine guns. I mean a dish gets not too light, but

Yeah, and then Yemen as you've said we've talked about the Middle East a bit You want you want to talk about anything in that a. O as far as Tactics techniques procedures anything you've seen coming out of there for a rowing talked about the Middle East a bit. You won't talk about anything in that AO as far as tactics, techniques, procedures. Anything you've seen coming out of there for a row, Ruin? I mean, honestly, I think what it comes down to is, I mean, I guess we can talk about Israel first, right? Like how they're applying with Ruin assets to try and like attack them off.

So what you're essentially doing is, we can look at it two ways, right? The IDF is employing like a lot of fixed-wing assets to drop, you know, bombs top down on specific buildings, right? Where they think, you know, they have, you know, weapons stores, they think they have tunnel networks and things of that nature and that all kind of makes sense to me, right? Obviously when you're dropping 500 pound, a thousand pound bombs that are trying to penetrate all that concrete and dip down and actually hit either the weapons cafe or the tunnel underneath, right? Fixing is definitely the correct asset weapon and target match for that. As it pertains to personnel in the open, working in an urban

environment, things like that, supporting ground skeim maneuver. I'm surprised I'm not seeing more patches being utilized to support that because in that urban environment, where you're trying to specifically maneuver assets and target personnel or target, you know, whether it's like mortar positions, rock of positions, you know, or just dudes hold up and a machine gun nest, right? I would say rotary wing, actually specifically launching things such as, you know, hellfire, you know, down those specific urban canyons are going to be the direct weapon target match. I've seen a couple videos of some dudes doing some, you know, like some decent gun tape, you know, where they're launching, you know, PGN specifically

at, like, you know, LPOPs along the border. I think I saw a couple videos where they're like hitting LPOPs on the northern border with Hezbollah, Lebanon. And that makes sense to me, right? I'm not seeing a whole lot though in the urban environment, which is kind of surprising. And maybe it's just because they've done a good job of keeping that stuff off of open source. But you would think that if they're getting ready for, you know, a deliberate ground assault of Gaza, and they're going to go block by block,

street by street. They would have more Apache's, basically supporting that maneuver while they push the route because having reactive fires, basically at your back or in the overhead, we're going to give you not only the ability to fire down those urban canyons, but also just give you eyes in the overhead looking down those urban canyons's for any potential threats or ambush positions you know while they're maneuvering through the city. I think God says an anomaly when it comes to a lot of things because there's like what 2.2 million people there the entire strip is it's like what two miles two and a half miles long no it's like 12 miles long it's about the size of Las Vegas as a population like a population of like what, 64,000. There's 2.2 million people, 2 or 2.3, and everyone's against Israel.

So I think their tactics are a little different when it comes to employing shock and off campaigns. Like we would have done in, you know, Fulusia or something, because they understand the collateral damage is so high, so they have to take a piecemeal and they can't just like walk into the streets and just hose everybody. Because everyone in the counter-insurgency environment knows you kill one, you kill one guy but he has four kids, you just made four more insurgency. So you got to play it very tactically. You have to be tactically proficient to do something. I think Israel is good at that because for better or for worse, Israel wants to take the moral high ground, doesn't

want to kill every single Palestinian, but they also know all the geopolitical aspects go inside of that. But I don't want to say that just employing more aviation assets into Gaza would be like a good thing because we don't know the amount of man paths that are hidden in that city. I don't even think they want to risk it. Right. Right, but at the same time though, when you're trying to accomplish, and this is just my opinion, so to take it with a grand assault, I don't think that the idea is going to be

successful in mitigating that IOPs because they've just been launching so much, they've been dropping so much ordinance on Gaza. In my opinion, it all comes down to the man on the ground holding a rifle, holding a sprout automatic weapon, and actually clearing street by street, all of these different hummus fighters that are heard up and that are intermingled with the population. And I think that's why it's probably, but again, it's just my opinion so important to do whatever it takes to try and get as many of these civilians out as possible. As I guess, how do I say this?

It's got to be deliberate. It's got to be organized. And it's got to be, you know, you still got to maintain a pretty strong security posture, right? Force protection is always like a priority. But the more people that they can get out of the equation of this, I think the more successful they're going to be. Because right now the IO campaign against Erick, like you said, is just terrible because

they've just dropped it so much, you know, fixed swing ordinance on this city. And every single time it goes up. Oh, you got it. Yeah, it's like, you know, you start dropping all these, you know, fixed wing bombs, right? Like it's going to level, you know, a building is going to cinch-rap known pressure waves everywhere, and that pressure's got nowhere to go, which is why you got such high civilian gas movies, right? And some people make the argument, well, you know, if they weren't, you know, with Hamas or they weren't for Hamas, you know, then they wouldn't move. You know, I don't know if anybody can really like holistically realistically say that, right? Because like, you know, some people either are probably going to get the message or they're

scared and you just don't want to leave because that's all they know, right? So like, like anything else, you know, examine any type of urban warfare environment, it's always ugly, it's always shitty, whether it's Gaza, whether it's Fallujah, whether it's, you know, fucking Grazny, like it's always going to be ugly. So, we'll go ahead and talk to that. There's two things I want to mention on that. So when it comes to like the rules of war or rules of engagement or something, the Middle

East is very old school. When it comes to it, they see the problem and they just want to get rid of it. Where the West, we really don't do that. We try to like take a right and left ladder limits, kind of assess the area, one of the hearts and minds, we kind of think of it like a big picture, but they just go like point A, point B, dawn, and then on top of that, so while they're fighting a war like that, that's where the mu comes in off the coast, and we have an SP Magtap and like what, Djibouti, just sitting there waiting, waiting for something like this to provide the humanitarian support, it's not going to be kinetic, I guess we're

outing back to the beginning, that's the kinetic strikes are not the end all be all. There are so many other things that go into that. And especially someone like, or something like Gaza, that's what the Mews whole job there. That's what two carry groups are there. They're not supposed to go in there and help Israel. They're there to counter the Iranians. And then number two, provide that humanitarian support.

That's why the humanitarian corridor that came out, a lot of people say that the US two provide that humanitarian support. That's why the humanitarian corridor that came out, a lot of people say that the US asks Israel to wait and it's just so they can get ready to handle the fallout because they, I don't know if they understand if or have any optimism that Israel will provide that kind of humanitarian training and that's where like the US's moral high ground comes in, it's where like we will do it. That's kind of our job. That's why the Marine Service, that's why the Carrier Strike World is there. And they're also there to counter-breath, the Iranians. But yeah, there's a few different skills to go into that. And so it's just two different world views and two different ways of attacking a situation

where the US, it's pal doctrine. We want to reduce as many US casualties as possible and kind of sustain this in like a limited aspect where the Israelis just want to get rid of it. But the secondary and third order effects are monstrously high. And again, that's 2.2 million people. There's like anywhere from like what? 100,000 to 500,000 fighters? Yeah, I don't know.

It's like a grayer. I don't think there's any actual number. But yeah, that IO campaign against Israel's rough. And they're never going to escape it. They've always just been like this target of opportunity when it comes to like who's stalking shit? Israel? Perfect. And so I think when it comes to the IO campaign, it's not so much that people are pro, pro, pal, san or homo, is that their anti-Israel? Which makes it even worse for Israel to do anything. Which again, when it comes to something like Gaza, it's really difficult to have like a full-on ground evasion level the whole city

because you're like they'll never recover from that. And so, which again, we could talk about like the religious aspects where the Iranians are the ones propping up Hamas and his Bala, and then at that point if a rancor's moving here, Saudi Arabia could start to do on this, then no one's looking at Syria, Turkey could move down. There's so many different parts moving at once. And again, that's why the Mew is there, just to make sure everyone

plays nice. Yeah, for sure. And I agree with that, like completely. And I think that's what probably all the guys that are on 26-year right now, is probably prepared for, is definitely, you know, planning permissions to support them. I'm sure they probably are. I've got myself, or none of my peers, I've talked with us now, is out there, but I'm sure they probably are. I've myself or none of my peers have talked to this and I was out there, but I'm sure they're probably got two, three, four different coas that they're currently developing for whatever they eventually get tasked with. But yeah, man, I didn't really look at it like that. I see when it comes to achieving military objectives,

I feel like this is just my opinion. You can't achieve anything without actually inserting some type of ground force. Where the ground force goes, rotary wing, rectifiers need to follow. That's just again the way that I've been trained. As much as that's going to be run counter to the I.O. campaign in favor of Israel, my opinion is that if I was Israel, I wouldn't care about that man, because that's what it's going to take. You're going to have to go in there and actually like fight, you know, each and every single Hamas fighter, street to street, block to block, and in order to do that,

you're going to need some cards, or not Marines on the ground, but you're going to need soldiers on the ground, you know, with your ground assets, with your tanks, with your, you know, reactive fires, you know, in the overhead, giving you the support that you need in order to try and manage and mitigate as many casualties that you possibly can because it's going to be high in urban environment. Yeah, I do think it's, I don't want to say funny, but very comedic, the way they approach, the Israeli-supposed Gaza is they came out and they're like, you have 72 hours to leave the city, you're going to be considered a combatant. That's what we did in

Fallujah. They're like, if you're in the... That's exactly what we did. Yeah, and so everyone's like, how could the... how could Israel make a call like this? We're like, we do it. It works. Like, it's not a nice way to doing things, but it definitely works. So, I don't think the Russians did that with Mary Opal though. They just went in there, So I don't think the Russians did that with Mary Opal though. They just went in there and the city, the size of Flucia, took months to clear. And then on top of that, sustained thousands of casualties. Were the Americans like, like, what?

118 guys was a couple of hundred other wounded? Like, it's pretty good to take a city. Like, Way City, I can't think of the numbers right now, but Way City was pretty intense. And then if we look at something like Gaza, like Israel has got a whole other, they're doing it the same things we do. And they have the wrong entire other TTPs to work with. Cody, I don't know if you want to like build on top of that, but. Now you guys, I mean, it's keep in mind like a fuck. The thing, the thing is, I get so much shit in the Discord because I'm actually ethnically Jewish.

And I look at this from a military perspective. And it's like, you know, Sotter City, Fallujah, these things, like, Hamas in Gaza is a different beast altogether. It's like Vietnam, it's Sotters City, meets Fallujah, meets Mariopal. It's this, you know, it's the tunnels, man. Those tunnels are everywhere.

And I've seen it, I've seen just, you know, and what kills me is I've got a shout out to Zinger for that clip is that there was this guy who posted like, oh, they, you know, Matt said it. They build tunnels and they put caches around hospitals. They put them in these areas because they know we won't bomb them. And I'm 90% sure the ROE for Israel is out the window right now. Once all these videos are out, they love, I mean, I'm, I'm from that perspective it's just really tough for me to kind of put this in the words like they've thrown out the book

and at the end of the day that's something that like I'm very fortunate to have is that you know we never pulled a fucking 80 second in Kabul where we got targeting authority and then we blew up a fucking orphanage right like that's in the heat of the well you can you could look at it something like, what was it, the British Army in Basra? They had to secure that entire AO and they kind of, I mean, they lost in Basra, but they were trying to like mitigate,

like both like shock and awe and then like we're strict at ROE, which really just had them get eaten up. I mean, all the, everyone knows that famous image of the challenge you're burned out in the street. He was like, he was just an open target. I don't really know the entirety of the British R.O.E. But Bosnia was completely all the situation where both the British Army and the American Marines got eaten up because it was just such a difficult

environment to work in. They already think they had tunnels. Those things are everywhere. There's miles worth. Yeah, and they're deep in their reinforce reinforced and they're put a lot of money in them, that's for sure. Yeah, I don't know if you guys watched the documentary by a SIVDIV. He was that American infantry marine that went and worked with the YPG and then went to Ukraine, came back and did a whole, like, a 20-minute video on how tunnels work. And he's like, this is just from what I know of the YPG. And we build these, they say something like it takes 50 contractors 12 hours to build

like a miles worth of trench or something, or a tunnel or something like that without any additional support. And so the way he was talking about how tunnels work inside Gaza, he was just theorizing. And then I thought about the American Marines in the Iwo Gima, that whole, that whole mountain was a tunnel system. And so the Marines had to go inside there and actually clear them out. The flamethrowers and everything like that, I know that's not a humane way to fighting wars, but sometimes you just gotta do it.

I guess the only way to get rid of them. It's, yeah, it's disgusting. Is the only way to put it with what's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, LIDAR, ground penetrating radar, the targetters in Israel know what they're doing. They're very good at it. And so this, you know, we've, I've seen videos where they're like, oh, they're blowing

up a hospital and they're blowing up shit around a hospital. And I'm not going to say the name of the page, but he really showed his ass when, you know, singer was like, there's, you can literally hear bullets cooking off after the bomb drops. And he's like, no, no, no, they're, they're cluster munitions. I'm like, you're, and it just takes a little bit of like, just like just the video, right? Like, why is there black smoke coming out of this? Is that, you know, that I've, there's probably HME there. There's probably arms there.

And they're, it's everywhere from hospitals to orphanages to like city planks and stuff like that and it's all coming down and I don't blame Israel for doing it. They could do a better job but right now isn't probably after you know people were burned alive, gutted, fucking you know babies were pulled out of the food. Yeah, they don't give a shit anymore if they're like, girls are off the table. They broke it. Yeah, they're they're gonna need like if they're like, worlds are off the table. They broke it. Yeah, they're, they're gonna need like 30 days and then maybe we can be like,

Hey, man, you really got to chill like, and Netanyahu, Netanyahu comes out and looks at Palestine. Like, I asked you, do you want total war? And that's the other thing is like he did. He fucking told them. Like I declared, like we've done and and that's the other thing is like Where do we get into the ethics of war and you know Netanyahu said it and and that's a and I don't think anybody Really respects that term anymore is that Netanyahu declared war He is and that is that's a big big meaning that that has at least to me

It has a lot of meaning to sit there and go no as a country country This is war like this is annihilation is what you have brought upon yourself And we haven't seen that in the 21st century. I think you know, we have Russia doing we have Russia doing a special operation We did you know a Police action here a police action there, but this is no shit war and you know I mean even Armenia and Azerbaijan are sitting there calling it like a you know with Artech they said it's a policing operation against separatists which I mean on paper it could not and that who literally said fuck it this is this is war and that's you know that's fire bombings that

you know Japan fire bombings you know know, white phosphorous. That's a whatever it takes situation. Yeah, yeah, and so like, and I'm trying not to let the bias show, but I mean like at the same time, if you've ever read the Hamas charter, like they've always been at war. Like one of their main tenants is the destruction and death of Israel. So it was, it was Hamas declaring war against Israel, Israel just like, hey, get the fuck back. And then this happened in Israel declared war. And I mean, if I could, if you really wanted to have a class with some Marines and have the Jag actually do something

besides be it buzzkill, like have the Jag, yeah, have the Jag explain the meaning of war to somebody. Like, and not just just like oh, you know It's two nations, you know fighting look no Show exactly like you guys were saying well when a mother and a father love each other really much They create cluster munitions right just right how do you explain to kids like yeah, will you pee that shit that we shoot over for you know like Illumination rounds we used to carry grenades of that shit and just throw it into caves on the Japanese you know flame throws like you guys are talking about

tunnels that went on for miles in the mountains and it's like it's so wild that people I mean we've talked about it before that go ahead I have to look at something like like the photo bombing or the photos of the fire bombings of Dresden and how the entire city was leveled. Yeah, or Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Like, I don't think anyone wants to ever do that again. And so that's why God is such an interesting situation because the entire strip is a city. And so like they're moving like their Sherman's march to the sea and a condo plans and

God's and they're taking a piecemeal. Exactly. But yeah, it's. So, right. I mean, it should Exactly. Yeah, it's... Right. I mean, the issue is... Yeah, go ahead. Now I was gonna say, it's exactly like you said, like war hasn't really changed at all, you know,

but the problem with the 21st century is that everybody has a phone, the video tape at now. Yeah. And because of that, now everybody feels like they have an opinion on how people should conduct actual warfare when they declare war you know they're calling you know just a nation declaring war on you know a boss as you know oh it's a genocide oh it's ethnic cleansing right no no no no no it's that's what happens when a nation's government declares war on another

and that's all it is well it's insane is the Houthis declared war on Israel and no one gave a shit. They were like, yeah, but I think it's because they're so far away. But they're also like in prox, they're proxies by the Iranians, which were probably just like a, which is kind of funny to me, because like another country declared war in Israel and everyone's like There's those fucking doorks in their music video where they declared war yeah, right? The guy the other side of the street if you come over here I swear to God um final final question and then uh any any exiting remarks but um I'll lump them all together because like that's something that I guess nobody really wants to talk about or think about but

you know we're gonna have a podcast hopefully soon on Myanmar, Burma. You know, you've got South America, you've got Africa, you know, these dense jungles and these mountains. And I mean, I'm in the opinion that aerosol airborne, they're kind of, you know, the Marines, they're all shock infantry, they're all kind of in the same boat, you know, getting in planes, getting in helicopters, seizing ports on boats and shit like that. In your opinion, for, you know, attack aviation utility lift and stuff like that, when you look at Africa, when you look at South America, when you look at Burma and things like that, is that, I mean, everybody wants the war in Europe, right?

Like it's really simple. It's fields of tanks and all this shit. When you look at that stuff, though, like the Pacific and South America and Africa, what's your opinion on that? What do you look at when it comes to that? Do you have any, like, wild opinions or do you just like, yeah, yeah it's gonna be what it is. I guess what you're asking is as it pertains to how do we fight in that type of environment is that is that kind of what you're asking? I mean we all I mean you

can talk about the book answer right like you know hey we're gonna find open areas we may use a daisy cutter cut a fucking HLC which for those that don't know a daisy cutter is a huge bomb we used to use in Vietnam to create HLCs, but it's, you know, there's a lot of things coming out of there, right? The DEA is found, cartels using steel wire in HLCs, and they'll get wrapped around the rotary blades and basically kill the entire helicopter as it just gets eaten up and steel blades. There's you know 50-cal rifle, semi-automatic rifles that the cartels are using and then Africa. Africa likes to use airborne and paratroopers and aerosols because of the rough terrain. You know we've seen executive

outcomes use MI8s and high-de, and they've been awesome with them. I mean, the HIND is probably, in my opinion, the perfect aircraft. It can drop a team down, and then it can provide CAS in all sorts of manners. Like, you could put an S-a-self propelled gun on a HIND it's got a 20-millimeter cannon, rockets, ATGM, and a grenade launcher.

Yeah, and it's got a grenade launcher on the door too, right? Like that thing is awesome and so but we don't have that right and so Africa has come out with a lot of their writings and they're finding that airborne and aerosol forces are going to be there there go to when it comes to not only counterinsurgency but fighting militaries because you know you got to go through the jungles you got to go through the mountains some even have to clear vast amounts of deserts I mean we saw the we saw the French army do an airborne operation for the first time in Mali they jumped in behind uh Boko Haram and cut them off and then slowly squeeze into death and so it's there's stuff coming on there and I was just wondering do you have any wild and crazy opinions

or have you seen anything that like you're like, no there's this too. I would say my opinion on you know fighting in these you know dense jungles and you know all these different you know tropical environments whether it's Africa whether it's the Pacific you know like I think what we're going to end up finding just again is just my opinion I think we're going to we're going to see is us going back to some of the tactics that we employed that couldn't be at norm because as it pertains to trying to find fix, like target all these different potential in making patterns in double-table canopy environments, just being able to find them is going to be like a huge problem, right? Like, how do we support a ground unit that is, you know, under, you know, these dense

canopies in a juggle environment, right? And I think re-examining how we, you know, support of Marines and soldiers back in Vietnam, which is where the whole development of, like, the original attack platform came from, namely the Cobra, namely the cobra, and before that the Huey re-examining some of those lessons learned some of the stories that came out of Vietnam and the TTPs that we essentially developed in order to support our ground forces back then are going to be the things that we need because I can tell you right now when you're looking through the soda straw of a sensor and the

relative, the absolute humidity is through the roof right where you're just looking through soup and the sensor. You're going to have to be pretty close to the ground force. Additionally, how do you even penetrate that canopy when they're saying they got potential infantry forces, roughly two kilometers north of them, right? Who found it? Like, who saw it in the sensor? Was it, you know, one of their small UAS platforms that found it?

Then additionally, if you can't find it yourself, what's the appropriate marketing plan in order to employ on where those ground forces are? And I won't go like down the rabbit hole of like, you know, the different tactics and techniques. You know, a good book that a lot of us, at least my community at Red is a little level hell which is specifically how you know Cobra and you know basically Loach little bird teams basically paired up in a mixed section to go out and find you guys are there?

Yeah I'm here. You good? Sorry, yeah, I'm just seeing my phone call. But now basically, you know, how they basically employed, you know, these mixed elements, right? To basically go out, draw out enemy fire, and then employ basically like from the overhead, up down, you know, once these guys were yielded their position. And I think, you know, some of that will definitely probably work. You know, there are some other, you know, And I think some of that will definitely probably work. There are some other pools, other techniques that will probably be able to employ specifically

in a small UAS to help us maintain that same on the battlefield. But I can tell you right now, a lot of guys that are actually deployed over in the Pacific, Okinawa working like Balakatan right now. They're trying to work through all these problem sets because we all know that the jungle environment is going to be a whole different beast and you're not going to be able to see something from 20 clicks away with absolute humidity down to two or three. We're not going to get you. I think you've heard of the HM or HM or HMM's FEMM 364's motto is give a shit because

back in Vietnam they had to work together with they understood that they have to work together. Regardless of its aviation, or anything that 364 adopted the colors from whatever infantry unit they were supporting and the attack was like, give us, no, we're here to help you. So like the cross-pollination between the integration of the infantry or the ground forces and the air count by the element is going to be crucial because I think when it comes to something like thinking about what a war should be, everyone just thinks about like Cody said, like Europe, they open fields and trees and stuff like that, but nobody ever

wants to watch the Pacific and say, I want to do that. It's just awful. And if that's where the big pivot to the Pacific is, is going back to that island hopping, controlling of the waterways and airways and everything like that, like, it's, you definitely got to give a shit and make sure that everyone's on the same page, which again, like make not just for the Marine Corps itself, more cross-pollination, because I know from an intel site, talking to the Air Force is a bitch and a half because they just still let you know. And so it's definitely like a DOD-wide movement that needs to happen is making sure this more integrated training with these other elements because you just can't do single line of effort anymore.

It's not just like a Marines AO and an Army's AO, Air Force is overhead while the providing DAS, what the Marines and the Army are providing gas. Everyone has to work together because the PRC doesn't give a shit. They have way more people than we do. And so we're definitely going to get better in that aspect. For sure, it all comes down to relationships, working relationships and understanding every basically entity within the joint force, right? What their capabilities are.

And then, you know, how do we basically fill the gaps, you know, between, because, you know, at least in the age of the way, we like to think of ourselves as not different from, like, the rest of our redroaming players were complimentary, you know, we're organic and, you know, as long as we get in the same room, and we conduct detailed planning with whether it's the BMM, whether it's a patents, whether it's C130 squeaky in the overhead. All we got to do is cross-talk, cross-pollinate and we'll make whatever objective area we're faced with work. Additionally to what you've mentioned about DAS, right? The at least internal to the HMLA, we're trying to basically find out, figure out how we're going to basically employ ourselves specifically in that maritime environment. I know we've talked,

you know, a lot about, you know, providing cash in a jungle environment. Additionally, what we're trying to do is, eventually figure out how we can be a complimentary force working together with our joint partners in the Navy, as well as like other entities that have, you know, better, better targeting and sensing capabilities than we do. We're supporting them with something we're calling Maritime Strike, where we're essentially flying out receiving targeting data from something like a PA to site and to basically go out and find an maritime environment, you know, target some opportunity. And so there's some other capabilities that we're trying to bolt on to our existing aircraft

such as at length 16 in order to not just like find and fix that thing, but actually receive like real targeting data from those better sensing platforms. Additionally, operating with dissimilar elements such as maybe 60 Romeo's with their onboard radar, basically working in tandem with them in a DAS environment to basically answer this particular problem set. That's all because it's not a chance in hell that they're dropping in the airborne without a DAS support. There's no way. Right.

So we don't do that anymore. Exactly. So, you know, it's not just CASS. I know people think, you know, river-wing skid specifically, it's specifically CASS platforms, but, you know, we also do DAS. We do SCAR. We do ARM reconnaissance. We do strike missions. Now we're just basically taking those same nets that we always trying to and apply specifically CAS platforms, but we also do DAS, we do SCAR, we do under-connocence, we do strike missions.

Now we're just basically taking those same nets that we always trained to and apply them specifically to this Pacific problem set. And we're not doing it by ourselves, we're trying to work with the Navy and with our other partners as well in order to basically solidify some of those joint relationships and make sure that we're not just answering the ERC-Pacific problem with just a Marine Corps answer, but it's like a true joint answer. Well, I think yeah, exactly. I know when I was deployed on a ship, of course, is that cultural difference between

like, oh, then Navy and Marines usually don't get a long-well on ship. It's just kind of how it is. But who gives a ship, give a ship, you have to actually put in the effort and work together because I mean even working with you know skid pilots as well as with like the Navy's What were they they were sea hawks I think they're cool like working with those guys I just don't think they liked each other either so it's like you just got to get rid of that entire aspect and be like look Do there's a war comment we got a word together. I don't care about, it's okay to have differences

between the branches and everything like that. Like the Marine Corps is a cult, but like you just got to blow right past that and be able to work together. For sure. And then where a lot of that stuff is going to come down to like the nitty gritty nitty-nitty noise is what are the requirements for us to all operate together, specifically as it contains to like seabasing, you know, expeditionary, you know, advanced bases and stuff like that, you know, our requirements are, you know, comparatively speaking to like a CR and like a Romeo or far less robust than theirs, you know what I mean. But it's all going to factor, you know, into the calculus, right, of

like who's managing, who's running these specific areas. We call them the A, Bs, what they really are, it's just pharps. Pharps spread out amongst different archipelagos and island chains. Basically being able to basically think ahead, plan ahead, preposition, specific requirements that these different entities that may or may not show up for fuel, for ordinance, for a quick tactical pause to conduct maintenance, right? Trying to figure out the logistical piece to make sure that everybody in the joint

force has what they need in order to continue to operate and then be prepared for the next mission set is something that I believe is not just a Marine Corps problem, but it's a joint problem. But I think we're moving in the right direction, just kind of like looking at some of the exercises that have been taken place both on the west coast and the east coast to ensure that, you know, we're not just still piping our planning internal to each, you know, specific, you know, branch of the military, but ensuring that, you know, whatever requirements, you know, we identify now. requirements, we identify now, we have a dress, when the time comes here in the next five, six years, with the target being 2030, we got a pretty robust, caged plan in order to operate at sea, if that makes sense. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. Anything else?

I mean, we're down to like the almost a two hour mark, but is there anything else that you want to say or put out there besides your merch and your patches and your stickers? Yeah, well, yeah, if you guys like what the page is about, the content that myself and my peers put out, go check it out, Skid Row on Instagram, hit us up in our inbox anytime. We're pretty available, pretty open, easy to contact. No matter big or small, just reach out to us. We're always down to talk with not just people

that are in the state community, but also in marine aviation or in military aviation as a whole. So the whole point of the page, honestly, is to essentially just create a place where people remember our roots and people remember that we come from a very story past and story history of Marines taking the fight to the enemy and supporting the Marine on the ground. That's what it all comes down to. That's what it's all about.

So, additionally, you know, the patches and stickers that we are selling, not of a more for-profit. They all, all the proceeds are going to specifically, the Camsex Foundation as well as the Purple Skies foundation, which are essentially two nonprofits that are run by the, basically, the Biving thousands of the victims of the Swift 11 in B22 crash last year around the West Coast. So if you want to talk to me more about that, you can hit me up in the inbox, but that's essentially where all the proceeds go. And then additionally, to everybody who's out there, you know, in the Skid community, to stay motivated, stay plugged in. All right. I know it seems this whole like march towards, you know, relevance

and being plugged in to specifically EABO and this pivot to this specific seems like you know we're not getting a lot of tasking or a lot of work but everything you do day in and day out you know to be prepared you know not just with the daily flight schedule but for the next conflict matters and it's gonna pay dividends all the you know blood sweat and essentially paying that year and year now it's gonna going to pay dividends in the next couple of years because if you, again, this is just like our opinion at the state red division, like I don't think it's going to be much longer before we see ourselves being

applied into a combat operation here in the near future. Truth is by its own.