The Team House - 75th Ranger Regiment Recce Platoon Leader | Dustin Ward | Ep. 201

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Dustin Ward served with the 75th Ranger Regiment with the Recce section and worked on special programs in Afghanistan. Grab Dustin's Lite Sleeping Bag!⬇️ https://thelitesleeper.com/ Today's Sponsors SLNT (Silent) ⬇️ https://SLNT.com/?rfsn=7107485.9bde8d SLNT® sleeves, bags, cases and wallets are all exquisitely designed to ensure your devices become invisible, untrackable and silent. Get 10% off your order by using this link or using the promo code "teamhouse" at checkout! https://SLNT.com/?rfsn=7107485.9bde8d Thank you for supporting the companies that support the show ! To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #recce #armyrangers #specialoperationsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park Welcome to episode 201 of the team house I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park and our guest on tonight's show is Dustin Ward

Dustin served in the infantry as a sniper and in the long range reconnaissance teams and then went over to the Ranger Regiment and served as a platoon sergeant in the battalion reccy section amongst other positions that you had over there Dustin thank you for coming out here to godless New York City

I appreciate me. Thanks for you invite. Fly it up here, man. It's awesome to have you here in person. Thank you. So, look, we're going to start at the beginning. So tell us about, you know, kind of like how you grew up and sort of like what it was the sort of like directed me towards the military. What's your origin story? My origin story. Yeah.

So I was born to a military family. My dad was in the Air Force. So 22 years. My mom was a typical stay at home. mom, military spouse. I have a brother as well as five years younger. Moved around a lot. It's born in Mississippi.

And then we pretty much ended up in North Dakota for the majority of my life. My dad worked on B-52s. So my not North Dakota, a great place. There's a chance to go. Towards the end of that, moved down to Texas, and that's where I graduated high school and joined the Army and stuff. But, you know, growing up,

I said, had an awesome household. My dad was gone a lot, TDIY, taking care of the family. Mom took care of us at home, and I just had this outdoorsman military mentality growing up. I was always where my dad's BDUs were outside playing. Instead of hiding seat, we call the man hunt to make it more manly. But any time I went back to my grandparents' house in Missouri, I was out in the woods. I've probably been shooting guns, so I was six years old. shooting 22s and

hunting squirrels hunting deer I always knew I was going to join the military I think one of my favorite movies still to this day is dumb as it is is the rock that's a great movie

it's a lot of fun it's a good movie and I just remember having like a little play MP5 and had this somewhere this little battery charger

for a game boy that had a cord and I'd put it in my ear like it's an earpiece my dad freaking out he thought I was gonna shock myself with this battery charger.

But I don't know. I always had this war mentality. I think every able-bodied male should serve their country in some aspect. And that's the route I took. I did initially join the Air Force after high school. I was in the Depp program. I was going to pass all the prerex. I was going to be a PJ.

But they told me, hey, we'll call you within six months to leave for Basic. I was like, no, man, I quit my job yesterday. So I took a year off after high school. just kind of enjoy after high school life. And they're like, well, that's not going to happen because there's only so many pipelines a year and you have to hit the pipeline at a certain time or go to basic at a certain time, something like that. So I walked across the Army recruiter and walked in and there's this big cardboard cut out of a green beret

standing there. He's like, what do you want to do? I was like, I'd jump out of planes and shoot people, man. How do I do that and showed me the old cliche. you know, Ranger Recruiter View guy coming up out of the swamp. Oh yeah. It's actually my friend now.

I know it's kind of funny. We have that, well, we have the documentary over there. The VHS state. Yeah, the VHS state. His name's Mike Conner. But, uh, show me that. And as like I said, cliche, he put his arm around me.

He was like, that could be you, man. Yeah. I was like, you're right. Got another one. Yeah. I was like, that could be me. He's like, yeah, sign here. You leave in two weeks and here's $20,000.

I was like, sweet. you got an enlistment bonus for that oh yeah that's fantastic what year was this was 05 okay yeah so the world was already kind of on fire in terms of like yeah yeah military and yeah yeah and I remember I remember when the war kicked off in 03 not the Afghan war obviously but the Iraq war

and my buddy and I you know at the time I think it was AOL I am you know aim so they're messing each other like oh my god when you hurry up the war's gonna be over by the time we get out of high school like long be old 20 years later still going on so plenty of time to enjoy the war but uh yeah they gave me a bonus it was a special forces intent bonus just the intent didn't actually have to go oh really yeah um join the army 05 January 05 now did they have an x-ray program at that time they did I was an 11 x-ray okay dodged that bullet oh an 11 x-ray yeah I went

an 11 x-ray too. I meant an 18 x-ray though. Could you go, could you enlist straight into it? So you dodge that bullet. What does Les say about all this? Les, awesome guy, man. That's why I'm here. He told me to give a shout-out. So I'll give a shout-out of us. But, yeah, did not become an 11 Charlie. Can't 11 Bravo. I don't know if 18 X-ray program was a thing at that time. Yeah, yeah. I think it was around by then. Was it? Okay. So I went to S-VAS and oh, seven. And there was some 18 x-rays there. So, my, I don't know. Yeah. Now, so for people who are watching, don't know, in, you know, in the military jobs, the MOSs, the 11 series is the infantry series. And the Charlie, well, Bravo is riflemen. Charlie is mortarmen. They also used to have 11 mics, which was motorized. That was still a thing. But when you go in X, you're gambling. You're rolling the dice. I think all of us were 11 x-ray.

I don't think you can go in specifically for a broad. Oh, you can. I don't think you can, no. Now, did you know you were rolling the dice? No, I did not. Yeah. They did not explain that at MEPs. Yeah.

So you go to Basic, do all that. And then where do you go from there? So I graduated basic training in May of 05. And you got 11 Bravo. Got 11 Bravo. Went to Fort Lewis, Washington. Kind of my basic training cohort at that time, there's a unit standing up at Fort Lewis called a Second Cavalry Regiment, 2CR. They just moved up there from Fort Polk, I think.

But they're standing that unit up, so we were the first lower enlisted guys there besides senior leadership. when we showed up the first question they asked was hey out of all you who qualified expert in basic training kind of raised my hand like sniper section I was like hell yes sweet

that worked out yeah and funny backstory with that is my mom would tell the story and she'll laugh about it but I was probably in fifth or sixth grade we're at like a family reunion down in Missouri somewhere and one of my relatives asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up.

And I said something about being an assassin. And my mom looked at me and looked at my relative. It's like, Dustin, shut up. Do not say that. I was like, sorry. But when I went to sniper section, I called my mom like next day. I was like, guess what? I made the same mistake when my high school guidance counselor asked me what I wanted to do with my life.

And I said, I want to join the military and be a sniper. Yeah. It's a very nice woman. She said, well, follow your dreams. I mean, if we're all going to embarrass ourselves, like, when I went to the Army recruiter and asked them about special forces, I asked them if there was a knife guy. I wanted to be the knife guy. The knife throwing expert.

Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, because I thought there was a demo guy, there was a gun guy. That's what GI Joe led us to believe. That is where, GI Joe and the A team is where I. Got my knowledge on special forces. Nice. So you became an assassin for the Army.

Became an assassin for the Army. I did that from 05 to 08. In that time frame, I did a, well, that unit I was then reflagged to 2nd Infantry Division, and then we deployed to Iraq for 15 months during the surge.

We spent three months in Baghdad. I was about three months in Baghdad, and then went and ripped. out with a new unit or unit replacing and a bakuba or bakuba every one said and five war horse we spent the rest of the deployment there and that was uh that was a wild west that was a now out of curiosity uh you know you were one of the first guys to show up to the sniper section this newly formed unit um did they send you to the army sniper school like immediately no i didn't go

until it's like march of o six and then did they have anybody with experience come on to be like the we all went together so there was team leader and all shooters went to sniper school together so one of the one of the challenges with snipers sometimes is having somebody who can teach young officers

how to properly employ snipers right how did you guys manage that especially for your first appointment so they had this course at the time called the sniper employment officer course okay and I can't remember if our PL went to it or not

but I mean he was all about letting us do our thing and he didn't micromanage us at all he's like hey whatever ranges you want whatever shooting you have to do you guys go do that and just be proficient at your task and we got we got the M107 Barrett's we got those and they held a course

kind of locally on Fort Lewis for that just to kind of break them in and get to know the weapon system. So he came to that to kind of learned, learned the job a little bit. Yeah. But yeah. The squad leader I had at the time,

one of my favorite squad leaders ever had. I look up to him to this day, kind of base my leadership skills off him. He had that SF mentality of everyone needs to know everybody's job and just kind of spread the knowledge. And he was prior service, got out, came back in. So he had some experience

or he'd done a couple deployments. But he was a, he let's do her thing. It was good. That was awesome. So what was the mission up at Bakuba? So it was funny. We're in Baghdad. J-Soc was obviously operating in Iraq.

And they were doing the, at the time, I think we called them TST missions, and time-scent target missions. And they would get a lock on a guy and launch. Well, there were so many targets, they didn't have enough. personality hit all these targets so they came down and trained us how to do it the sniper platoon or sniper team battalion snipers and battalion recqie platoon which i was in snipers are

part of battalion recie in the big army um trained us how to do it and how to use the assets and everything so we tagged along on that mission we were sharing targets with them which was uh probably one of the better ways to spend 15 months sure because the rest of the line companies they were out in a little outposts in the middle of the city, just burning, poop in a barrel. You know, it felt so bad for those guys. Because we just got hit a target, come back and go sleep. Yeah. But that was our target set, our mission set.

What we did for 15 months, go out almost every night. And we did, you know, it varied from based off the target and based off what happened when we got to the target, you know, doing silent entries and silent clears. and waking them up in their sleep and like taking their guns from them while they're sleeping legit like taking their guns from while they're sleeping and then waking them up yeah like hey sorry we're here yeah um or it'd be a you know court on and call out just depend on the situation in about what year was this that was oh 7 08 okay yeah yeah so people had kind of moved beyond the explosive breaching when they could do something else generally yeah yeah we didn't do any

explosive breaching. Yeah. We didn't have that capability in the big army. Yeah. I think the most explosive breaching we did, we'd drive a striker through the gate. Yeah.

Yeah. That worked. So they kept you guys pretty busy. And I mean, that was a busy time in a rack to begin with. Like I said, Baca was a Wild West. When we showed up,

the sister unit we were replacing from third brigade to ID. We were fourth brigade to ID. They were third brigade two ID. and I think they had like 12 working strikers at the time when we showed up because they were just getting blown up. There was like 70 Cigax a week when we got there. And then after us being there for, I don't know,

three or four weeks, it dropped to like 12 Cigax a week. And we put a hurting on them so bad. I mean, the biggest ID is going off, maybe pop a tire on the striker. And there was some suicide bombers that, you know, hit us, hit personnel. But as far as like vehicle IDs, they weren't doing much. What did you guys do to change the tempo? A strict curfew. And then every military age male got pretty much rounded up and then put in the batheide system.

Yeah. So biometrics. Yeah. Rounded them all up, put them in batheide system. And then, yeah, strict curfew. And then I don't say any names. but uh i mean like an iED would go off somewhere and this wasn't my directing as another company

but i mean i'd you go off and if he saw a dude on a phone anywhere near that you'd just shoot him yeah and they learned like don't mess around yeah these guys aren't playing and uh bagdad was uh that was hot at the time too before we went to bachima we were responsible for uh putting in all the T-walls. I don't know if you guys remember that. All the T-walls through Baghdad door sector, which was,

there's a lot of infighting between Sunni and Shia. They were just murdering each other left and right. And I think it's like our second or third week during right-see rides for the entire deployment. I mean, we just pulled out and there's like five days hog-tied and executed on the side of the road. Jesus. I'm like, what the heck is going on?

And you bang on the door and like, hey, what's up with the bodies in the road? They're like, what bodies? Yeah. This house's going to be, huh? Yeah. It was hot. Yeah.

It's good time. So what were your, when you weren't working for, you know, doing the TSTs, what was sort of the conventional army? Were you guys doing a lot of presence patrols? Was there a lot of, were there a lot of targets that you were? They, they did just clearance ops. It was almost like a, it was just a vicious. endless cycle. You start in this sector and start working your way around the city.

And by the time we get back here, we're starting all over again. Because all the guys he pushed out of here are down here now, you know. So they just just kept doing that. We did a lot of Palm Grove clearing. Yeah. Just online walking through these barn groves and 120-degree heat, you know, trying to find cashies. Yeah. IEDs and stuff.

Do you find a lot? Yeah, we did. Yeah. Yeah. I remember distinctly one time it got handed over to us. We didn't find it specifically. We went out and took it over

because I think the people that found it detained the personnel and then left with them and then we took over the site. But I mean, there was over 500 anti-tank mines double-stacked. Like in rows, like almost in a farmer's field, they're just lined up.

You know? Like five or six, 55-gallon drums filled with initiators and timers and, God, how many like 2005 gallon jugs of nitric acid there's a suburban rigged with a VBID ready to go

I mean the funny thing is after we gathered all that and bipped it and whatever the EOD guy he's like yeah we probably knocked this cell out for like two weeks oh wait that's it two weeks like all that for two weeks it was crazy man

you guys demo it in sight EOD did yeah yeah Did you know Being in like the sniper Was it a section or a platoon? We had It was just a section Two team is a team

A squad In the Rucky platoon Okay so so you were You fell under Rucky then So how did you guys operate In that environment Were there a lot of sniper specific missions Were you working with Rucky a lot

Or were you just kind of folded in To the line units? Folded in We didn't fold in with the line units. We did our own thing with the TST missions with RECI. Pretty much Overwatch as the Rakey platoon was hitting a compound. Or if a line company was doing like a med cap, we would go out there and do Overwatch while they were doing like a med cap

or had out soccer balls at a school. We had pulled overwatch while they're doing that. Paltoon leadership changed out through deployment. We had one PLO that he was. He was an ex-SF guy, enlisted SF guy, and went OCS. But he was all about us doing what snipers do. And he was like, hey, I don't care where you guys go,

what you do, as long as you follow ROE, give me attention to grid and have a radio. So we would trunch off into the hinterlands with three or four guys in radio. That's fantastic. I mean, you know, just watch for guys in place in IDs. Yeah. I mean, and the reason I said,

fantastic for people to know. Especially in conventionally, but in any unit, there's really a lot of, there are a lot of rules. There's a lot of control. There's not a lot of freedom for you guys to do. But if you guys kind of do your own missions. A lot of younger PLs don't understand how to utilize

any sort of like special unit or special team, be it mortars, snipers, reconnaissance, you know, so it's cool that. Yeah. I'd say they don't, not to bash new PLs, but they don't understand. They don't want to get in trouble. Yeah.

They don't want to get in trouble either. They don't want to overstep. Right. Right. But that mission, I wouldn't say mission, but letting us go out and three or four guys to do our own thing was, you know, we were sitting in this house one day, just an example. Sent this house over watching this river and this bridge and just waiting for something to happen. But unbeknownst us, there was a big, you know, we're sitting there was a big, Army, I think it was first

cav or something like that. Whatever the big army unit is with the horse and the slash calf. They were doing this big clearing operation through the Palm Gros that we were in that they didn't know we were there. And we saw them coming.

We could hear him coming and they ended up hitting the house that we were up in. Oh shit. We were yelling down the stairs like, hey, eagle, eagle, eagle. Yeah. And I remember this first one he kind of like stomped in. Like, this is my house. Why aren't you wearing your patrol belt?

Yeah. Your PT belt. Yeah. Pretty much what it seemed like. But he's like, here you guys? I'm like, hey, we're sniper section with this unit. He's like, okay. What are you guys doing?

And we kind of told him. And it was towards the end of our mission, time window anyways. And we're getting rid of X-fil. And we're like, hey, you're going the direction. We're going, right? He was like, yeah. I was like, do you mind if we X-Fill with you guys? He's like, no, man, go ahead.

Thank you. Just keep that rolling on your cap. Yeah. It's like middle of the day. That's awesome. It's a good time. Dave, you want to give a shout out to our sponsor tonight? Yes.

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don't have inappropriate hiccups in the stream and also keeps us in the booze more more that so Dustin you're after this deployment you at that at that point you went over to Lurz, right? Yeah, towards the tail end of that deployment, the first Army came over and said they're standing up a core long-range surveillance unit. At Fort Lewis and if anybody was interested in going and kind of a military history buff, like even when I was a kid,

I had like flashcards of, you know, Fawker airplanes from World War II and everything. Big military buff. So I knew what Lurz was based off Vietnam Lerps books and everything. So I raised my hand I raised my hand and I was like yeah I'm interested because I always wanted to go do something special. I looked at it as like the next step up the ladder. I wanted to do it right and my eyes right

was working your way up. I'm going to ask me you just go to selection or just join as an 18 X-ray. But yes I went to that October 2008 is when I went to Lurce like tryouts and it was

It wasn't anything crazy. Just road march, PT tests, swim test, stuff like that, Lanf. And then, yeah, went there October 08,

and then January 09, I mean, went straight to pre-ranger, Ranger, Ranger School, airborne school, everything, and then deployed that next summer in 2009. I was only home for like a year,

went for another year to Iraq. Now, can you tell us the difference between how a Rucky unit, a rece element might be used in a lurchy unit is there a functional difference between them compared to the recie like the you know you went from snipers you know kind of under a recky to lers oh yeah um so lurs reconsorscence detachment uh operates at a company level okay by itself the lurchs company operates at a battalion level okay so at a platoon detachment level we're doing mdmp

instead of TLPs. Right. So we're mission planning at a battalion level for a six-man operation or a platoon operation versus a big army

in Reky Blatoon just doing TLPs like a ranger school. Right. And our reporting criteria and CCIR is going much higher than a big army battalion Riqui is going to a brigade battlefields surveillance brigade

which then reports to the core and can really shape strategically. I wouldn't say strategically, but theater instead of tactically. Strategically, theater in terms of theater. And the worst units are interesting in that. They really are, other than maybe RRC, the closest to the Vietnam group teams, six-man teams going out.

And if you'll pardon my little digression, my little rant I have. And I'd be interested to hear your opinion, Dustin. the Army keeps disbanding worse units and then re-standing them up and how many times have we seen them do that just during the GWAT era? You kind of lived through some of that. I mean, what's your feelings about

how we keep seesawing between this and really the capabilities of worse and what you guys bring to the table as opposed to all the drones and the SIGINT and Imit and all these other technological capabilities that have been great for the military but is there still a relevant?

to that six-man team on the ground. In my personal opinion, professional opinion, there will always be irrelevance for boots on the ground intelligence. Yes, you know, Emmett and drones and SIG-int and all that is great. Technology is awesome. The stuff we do with technology is mind-blowing. But can a drone see through the clouds? Bad weather.

Yeah. Bad weather. Inside a building. Can those vehicles drive through a muddy road? No. Can six guys walk through that muddy road? Yeah. Can six guys sit in a hide site for four to five days at a time and watch an objective, you know, the entire time persistently?

Yeah. Can a drone do that? No, it has to go refuel. Right. It's got to bring up another drone and, you know, hopefully have a good handoff on Emmett or Shingant. And then no bad weather can force them out too. I would say the limiting factor for, you know, six guys on the ground is depending on who the commander is, just MetaVac. Right.

You know, bad weather obviously affects Medabak. There's that saying that nothing can stop the U.S. military. Well, that's false. Lightning within five will stop it every time. Right, right, right. Yeah, the whole disbanding and re-standing up and just, they just need to stand them up and keep them. Right.

They're still National Guard Lursey in us. I think there's one in Indiana, maybe one in California. I don't know where they're all at. But they need to stand them up, and they need to move them. underneath special operations, honestly. If you look at all the other armies in the world, their Pathfinder units, their Lerce units,

are special operations. Right. They're Yager units. Why are we the only ones that don't have those guys of special operations? Right. It's a special task, and they go to special schools to learn how to do that. And they're, you know, being asked to do extraordinary missions.

Well, and it's funny and sad. funny sad there's probably a German word for that but um but that the same time the conventional army is saying these lers units

whatever like there are other things that we can use to replace them you have RRD the Ranger Recki detachment getting bigger and becoming a national level asset where it's not it doesn't even have anything much to do with like

it's not a regimental level asset anymore. It's a national level asset now because we're like oh shit this is really good stuff you know and meanwhile they're like oh Lersheon is

but it when you went over to worse did you as far as like the special training did your team get to go to Arsillic or any of that? Yeah. Pretty much everybody went to RISC. We did send

the first shot of guys going to Ranger's school I mean I think we sent 12 to 16 guys on one time. It's unheard of. Yeah, yeah. To Ranger's School from one company.

To Rainier School one time, you know, half passed, half recycled or whatever. And then while we're there, the rest of the guys went to Arslich. And then after that, first push, everybody just kind of trickled into Ranger School and Arsluk. Could you tell the squares out there who don't know the benefit of Arslic what that course is and what you were in there? Yeah, Arsick is the Reconstant Surveillance Leadership School or Leadership Course. It's called something else now, I believe, because it falls under a, a cab unit now. Really?

I thought it was like a Tradoc unit attached to Ranger School. They transitioned because Fort Knox shut down and moved all the armor to Fort Benning. Oh. So now Fort Benning is the maneuver center of excellence. Wow. So it's now part of the Cav schools, I think. Don't quote me on that. It's just what I remember, what I think I've heard.

Yeah, the Arslett course is an awesome course. It teaches you how to operate in a six-man. element teaches you how to do the MDMP process not TLP's communications and then all your optics and observing equipment

and teach how to do that and how to build a hide site and sit there and watch a target for four to five days at a time and then how to possibly break contact as a six-man element how to land nav as a six-man element

just everything that can you Tell us a little bit about the difference between a TLP as the troop leading procedures and the MDMP. Like, why is that, what's the difference in that? Why is it meaningful? Troop leading procedures, in a nutshell, is company level and below. That's for smaller unit operations. It's faster.

It doesn't take as much planning. When you get to MDMP, it's a battalion echelon planning. So now you're looking at all the major backside support that goes along with. an operation. It just takes a long time to plan that. Can I say something really sarcastic for a second? Just, I wanted to say that, you know, they got

rid of Lersch units because they don't need them and they can't afford them, but there was enough officers that they wouldn't fire enough general level officers to rename the R-slick to something, you know, to get their, get their bennies because we don't let go of general officers anymore. Or, yeah, admirals and

yeah. Yeah. So, Second round in Iraq with worse. What was the mission this time around? So we were on the Iranian border and the Hawaza Marshes, kind of near Basra. Oh, wow, yeah. I think our Cobb. We're at a Cobb, not a Fob. It was a Cobb Adder, I believe it was called.

And we would go out to the Iranian border for two weeks at a time, legit living in a patrol base. We're at a border fort. So the Iraqis and Iranians, they have a border fort system. So along the entire border, there's these forts. And it's legit, like Saddam told his guys he wants forts. And they just Googled Fort. And it's a square with like four turrets, like four turret towers.

And that's it. So there's all these dotted up and down the border. And the Iranians have the same thing. Just mirror. It's so short almost like a DMZ. It is. I think it's like a five-kilometer DMZ in between. But yeah, they just mirrored show.

I'll wave another border. So we'd go out and link up with the Border Patrol, our Raki Border Patrol. Worthless. But we'd go out there for two weeks at a time, living out of our trucks, you know, MREs for two weeks, no shower for two weeks,

shitting in a hole for two weeks. We would take trailers, attach them to our home vies. for enough fuel so we can get back. Because there's a three to six hour drive, depending on what happened on the way there to get to where we're going. So enough fuel, enough water, enough food. We did do a couple aerial resupplies while we're out there.

But yeah, we'd go out there for two weeks with our trucks, and our main objective, our main mission, was to stop lethal aid from coming from Iran into Iraq. whether that would be money, weapons, explosives, whatever. But we'd sit in that patrol base for two weeks, and we'd kick out a six-man team per night to go do a patrol.

And we're pretty free to plan our missions however we wanted. I don't remember there being any restrictions on how far we could go away from the patrol base. It was like, hey, as long as you've got six guys and how where you're going, I trust you in your training. How's the food and tay we're on? It was all right. So were, did you get, did you have it all any kind of interdiction mission with that or was it observation?

No, that was our mission. It was interdiction. Yeah. Did we interdict anybody? No. But did we stop them? Because I knew we were out there. Yeah.

They knew we were out there. Um, so I remember it was the middle of the day and we were looking at something. We're taking pictures. And I was like, man, this would be a good, good place for a hide side over here next time we come out. and the Iranian guard tower is a good distance away, but they had this big giant drop a quarter in, binos, like on Statue of Liberty. And we could see them looking at us.

So they knew we were out there. And they also lobbs and mortars at us and shot some Piquet at us one time. I would say one of the coolest things from that. I was talking to Jack earlier about it, and I felt bad for the younger guys because they had not deployed yet. And this is towards the tail end of the war. There wasn't a lot of conflict, you know, direct engagements going on. And they just wanted to go to war.

Right. And we are doing this RECI mission. Well, cool. Like, if you're getting shot at when you're doing RECI, you're not doing RECD properly. So we didn't get shot at it. So did a good job. But they didn't see all the bigger picture stuff we were doing or they didn't understand it. Maybe it was our fault as team leaders not telling them, you know, directly what we're doing.

But Iran was flying drones over us. And our unit, our company, not my platoon, but our company was responsible for, you know, creating the first like SOP for dealing with Iranian drones. Because we were seeing them and we were tracking them on Falcon View, like drawing their routes back in Iran. And remember we scrambled some F-16s to come try to shoot it down. And these F-16s flew out and they radioed down like, hey, we can't fly slow enough to shoot these things. Sorry, you know. Yeah, it is what it is.

We're like, all right. But when we scramble those F-16s and they're flying up and down the border trying to find this drone, Iran scrambled the F-14s, and they're just going up and down, again, marrying each other. And we're sitting there like, oh, shit. We're going to restart World War III. Yeah. We've got front row seats. This is cool.

That was just one of the cool things that we did, like one of the unspoken things that we did that no one really saw or heard about. We did some other stuff. You know, me and probably three other team leaders. We're all still really good friends. Probably the only 11 bravos that could get their basic aviator badge because we did some ISR missions where we flew in the aircraft. cool. We actually got to fly there. Pilo was like, yeah, take over.

What were you? What aircraft? It's a Cessna. It's like a Cessna 3333 maybe. It's a push pool. It's like Bat 21. Think Bat 21 is that aircraft. Even their call sign was Bat and had emblems on it and stuff.

It was just pilot us and then a sensor operator in the back. Really? And flew out to where we were operating. So we'd go out there for two weeks, come back for two weeks during that refit time we would fly with ISR to go continue watching that's cool what we were supposed to be watching yeah again it's like a throwback to like vietnam era where you'd have whirps flying around with bird dog was it the facts yeah that's exactly yeah it's exactly what it was yeah um yeah we liked it we like the joke so we're like yeah we're probably the

only 11 bravos i can say that yeah yeah it's pretty cool um so that's a good mission that's awesome now when you guys because you i assume you were pretty far from the nearest air base, how long would it take, like, F-16s to get to you when you guys called them or scrambled them? I couldn't even give you a guesstimate on that. Yeah. I don't remember.

Did you have air assets if the Iranians or... We did. We had Apache's on call. F-16s, obviously. It's funny to bring that up because I remember the... I remember this guy's name, General Cone. I won't say bad things. but

not a fan he flew out one time to visit us he was like the our MNCI South general gotcha yeah he came out to visit us

and he was just he was flabbery acid he's like you guys have this support and this support I'm like yeah he's like I don't even have that well you're a general

you're in a jock you're not 30 guys out here sitting by yourselves yeah you know but yeah we did have that support So that deployment winds down. And when does the Ranger Regiment start to enter into your peripheral vision?

Towards the end of that deployment, probably the year after we kind of gotten that training mindset. The war pretty much over in Iraq. I was still trying to keep my guys in shape and ready to go for Afghanistan. stand. So we're doing a lot of rucking and a lot of hill climbs and stuff like that. But the Lurts unit at Fort Lewis was the only other airborne unit besides first group in 275. So a lot of guys that got RFS from 275 came to the Lurts unit because it's the only other

airborne unit. They don't want to lose their jump pay and then we keep doing, you know, Ranger things. So I'd say, you know, like 75% of our leadership. senior leadership at delirce unit was 275. My opportunistrar was a 275 guy and so and so. And they pushed that Ranger mentality, which I loved the discipline mentality and the respect and everything that you don't see in other units, honestly.

You don't. And then I had a Plutonisar, Zach, who was a recid guy at 275, super awesome mentor. He just texted me the other day, talking about, you know, just how proud he is in me and everything. He's a good guy, and he talked about 20075 Recky and Recky this and recq this and rec. He forced us to have an SOP book and just all the little things that people don't think about, you know. And then R.C. came around and gave a recruiting brief for R.C. And I set in on it, and I was like, I'm going to go do that because that's like the next step in my first step in my first.

wrecky path, you know. So I went to RSC selection and went to spring selection in 2012. Did not make it. Then I went to the fall selection that same year and got picked up. And then immediately following RFC selection, you go to RASP to get selected for regiment. So that's an interesting. What is RSC like rope? Is it the new rope? RASP 2 is what replaced rope. Yeah. Okay.

And I'd like to just talk about this for a moment because I think it's really interesting that, again, another little digression. But RRD was the regimental reconnaissance detachment, then became the regimental reconnaissance company. And for the longest time, from when did it stand up like 1984? It was the 1980s. It was like 84, I think. And their job was really just to do reconnaissance. Connoissance for airfield seizures. So there were three teams. Each team was for each battalion, each of the three battalions.

And then they kind of grew, especially as the war kicked off, they grew into something else. But those guys were always drawn from within the regiment. And then you were, I think, about probably the first, like, generation of guys that they started recruiting from the conventional military. Yeah, I think, I'm not trying to put words in anybody's mouths or anything, but I think they realize, like, there's some good dudes in the big army that could be beneficial. Right. Right. Right. Right. Just like any unit.

I mean, it's like Cag. I mean, they recruit from everybody. Right. Yeah. Right. So why weren't they doing the same thing? I think that's what they realized. And maybe because some guys went from big army to regiment and then R.R.D.

That might be a reason. I don't know why specifically. I'm not going to put words in anybody's mouth. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, back then it was just because it was a, it was, it was a regimental. Like it was someplace you went from battalion. like you know what i mean uh then i think it got bigger and then they also yeah so it was a rd was

a detachment from regimental headquarters right then they became a company right under rstb special troops battalion and went from you know the three teams to eight eight teams might be six now what was uh i'm interested in you know your experience what was it like going to selection for for that course or for that unit um i won't get into the specifics of the because I don't want to ruin it for other people going. It's like a spoiler. It's part of the fun. Yeah.

I probably signed an NDA too. I don't remember. No, it was fun. It's your typical army selection, a lot of rucking, a lot of rucking. I would say total, if you don't get lost, you're probably looking at 200 miles. You're walking total for the three weeks. But, I mean, it's the typical, you know, your 12-mile roadmars, your PT test, your, Ranger PT test

not Army PT test Some psychological testing and IQ tests and stuff like that And then you have You know a practice week where You know you learn how to land nav Because I'm pretty sure Kag does it the same way

It's they're going under the assumption That nobody knows how to land now Right So they want to make sure everyone's on the same playing field And they teach you It's like two or three days of land nav classes they teach you land nav and you go out and do some cadre lead and uh you know there's another road march in there that's disguised as you know another training event

it was a timed event and then uh yeah they move on to stress phase and you're doing land nav every day and sleeping out of the woods with the culmination event that i won't spoil And after you, on the second time around getting selected, and then you go, and then you had to go to RASP. So that's an interesting thing too. You had to go to two selection courses, essentially, to get picked up for the regiment. Yeah, so the RRD selection, RRC selection was for the company. And then RASP is for the regiment. And, yeah, RASP sucked.

You know it was RAST too. It sucked, man. It was not fun. What can you tell us about it? Because it wasn't a gentleman's course at all. I mean, it was. There's no yelling and screaming. Yeah.

But it's just, it's physical, physically, mentally draining at the time. When I went through, I don't know what it's like now. Yeah. But a lot of class learning about the regiment and the history of the regiment and how the regiment operates because you're a, you know, non-commission officer or officer. Right. You're an import. So you're learning how the regiment operates. And then, you know, it's a non-commission officer.

again, you're going out and doing landf. The landf piece is interesting because you, they parry up with the Rasp 1 guys, so RIP guys. They pair you up with one of them or two of them. And it's your job as an NCO to teach them out of land. So you're doing LNAF with RASB one guys. So they suck. I was just like, it's a nightmare.

But I was good. And we got all our points. And I was like, all right, guys, sit down. Sit down, eat and hurry. Let's hang out. There's a couple other physical events. FTX. You do an FTX as a class.

And there's some stressful events during that. And you really kind of see who can handle being an NCO in the regiment or an officer under a stressful situation, you know. Yeah, because the, so I, it's RASP 2. It used to be rope, which was different than RIP, because. So for people who don't know, the way regiment works is you're a private, 18 years old or 27, however old you are when you go in. And, you know, you go to your infantry basic, you go to the Ranger Inductination Program or now it is Rope 1, right? Ranger orientation program. Ranger Assessment and selection program.

Rangers, okay. And then you go to Ranger Battalion and you grow up in Ranger Battalion. You go through private and, you know, to specialists and, you know, whatnot in regular battalion. But they also have opportunities for people who did not grow up in battalion to come into battalion. Well, the interesting thing is the regiment's really strict about making guys go back through selection to get back into the regiment. So even if you were an enlisted ranger, you go green to gold, become an officer, and now you go do your PL time in the 80-second. wherever you're at, and now you want to come back to the Ranger Regiment and take a Ranger Paltoon, you've got to go back through Rasp.

Yeah, so that's a thing. They don't mess around. So that's the thing now, too, with NCOs. Started by 2014-2015, Abrams Charter, which is why officers went out and came back, went out and came out. Now NCOs also have to go out and come out. Oh, do they really? They're bringing that back.

Yeah, so every time you go from my platoon sergeant to first arner, first arm to ops or whatever, you're taking the next leadership position as an NCO. You've got to go out for a year and come back. Oh, you have to go out to the big army. I say big army. Going to sit on a desk at Socom is still. Abrams. Abrams charter was, you know, when they stood up the Ranger Regiment in the 80s, or no, I'm sorry, in the 70s, it was supposed to be like a role model for the rest of the post-Vietnam Army.

Exactly. Yeah. And so the idea, I'm not trying to lecture you, Dustin. And I'm trying to just tell folks out there who maybe don't know what we're talking about. The idea was that you would grow this nucleus of highly skilled trained soldiers. And then they would go out into the larger army and spread that knowledge and those skills around. And that's, yeah, that's why they brought back NCOs going out was to do that. Right.

Two problems, though, is some guys were going out to the big army and be like, oh, it's not that bad. Right. I can kick it. I can just sit back and chill. One, I'm kind of a legend here. Exactly. Yeah, I'm kind of a legend. And it's easy street.

Guys would go out and not come back. I'm a big fish in a little pond. Yeah. Instead of a little fish. Even if they're chilling down at McDill in Tampa, they're like, ah, beach is pretty nice. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And the other problem was Regiment realized that. The guys weren't coming back by choice. And numbers started kind of getting depleted. so instead of sending guys out to the regular army to spread the knowledge guys would go to socom or jaysoc or usok and do an ops job for a year instead of doing what they're supposed to do you're going to make them miserable on staff they'll come right back yeah right so that's what happened to that um i love regiment death i will always love regiment as the best time of my life but regiment is a snake eating its own tail yeah

Like just, you know, it keeps moving and keeps getting really good guys. Keeps moving. Keeps getting rid of good guys. Because you have a guy that gave his whole life to the regiment from private to, you know, E6, E7. He steps on his dick one time. Yeah. A minor thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And then gone. Yeah. I was actually going to bring that up because you mentioned that when you were at, like, the Lerst unit, that you had, I think a Lerst unit or REC. But you would have guys who would RFS now. Ranger Battalion in the regiment, RFS has released for Steenards. And what that means is you did something, and it may have been something heinous, but generally something heinous will get you kicked out of the military.

Subjective. Yeah. But generally is something that, you know, you might get RFS for getting... It could be got into a bar fight down there. A bar fight and you had a drink, even if the fight wasn't your fault, it was. was an alcohol-related incident. And it really depends on what your chain of command feels about you and feels about covering their ass at that point in time, whether or not you get released for standards.

And so when you get released for standards, it's not, you don't get kicked out of the military. You're just like, you can't be arranging more. You've got to go down the road. And in St. Like in Fort Lewis, down the road is Ler's. Lerce. Or hopefully, hopefully it's Lerce because they can be condemned. to like

Korea a fake worst Korea is always the threat exactly exactly I mean like another another example

of the whole go to Rasp thing you know one of my guys I worked with at the Lurs unit that go RFS he spent 12 years

at 275 yeah and then he had to go to Rasp again because he made E-Sept he's gonna take up a two-star job and in the board they said no

and the reason was he's not aggressive enough he wasn't aggressive enough to be in regiment. I was like, what? Because he's, he's like us.

Like, he's just laid back, man. Yeah. You don't need to be a chest beaten gorilla all the time. Right. Well, when you say it's a snake eating its tail, it's exactly what you're alluding to there is that you recruit and select and breed

a generation of soldiers that are really tightly wound and really intense. And then it's like, you cut them loose on a three-day weekend. It's like, no shit, they got a DUI. Yeah, yeah,

you stress these guys. guys the hell out. They got in a bar fight in Seattle. I'm shocked. I am shocked. How did that happen? Yeah. The thing of being a regiment, too, is it's, there's only so many positions available.

Right. Someone's always trying to get your job. Right. But no matter what position you're in, someone's waiting for you to mess up or for you to leave. So it's almost like you're always kind of walking on eggshells all the time too. Like, it's a stressful place to work. Yeah. Honestly, especially when I was there, the position I had.

And I was, we haven't got there yet, but I was the youngest platoon sergeant in the most senior platoon sergeant in the position. And it was just, every day, I felt like I was going to just mess up and get sound. Yeah. Let's, yeah, let's walk towards that. You make it through Rasp. And then the next step is there's the RRC has its own sort of like operator training course, right? Yeah, they call it RTC, the reconnaissance training course.

roughly 10 months long. I think it's 10 months long. I started that in January of 13. It's broke up into three phases. Phase one ended in May. I'm not going to get into what the training is for their training course, but our silicon steroids

and a bunch of shooting programs and free fall school and all that stuff. Yeah, I made it through phase one and the phase one board. I got the thanks but no thanks Not really Don't give you a reason why They don't tell you why

It's just hey you're not a good fit I think I know why But Yeah so I left there Went to the three shop at RSTB I was the Air NCO for a couple weeks And then the summer major Come over and was like hey I think I got a job for you

Very interested I was like yeah what he got And he said 375 Recky And that's where I went And so what rank are you right now? Ambassador, a retired master. No, not right now, but at this point in time. Yeah, E6.

E6. And what year is this? 13. Okay. So things are still hot, relatively hot. Like, things are still happening. And you get offered this job for Rucky. You're an E6.

Is that a TL in Rucky? Yeah, it's a TL job. Okay. I showed up to 375 Recki. The platoon started at the time, my buddy Matt, he's a prior RRC guy too, except he got out of the Army, went National Guard, realized the real world sucks, came back in the Army, and was it at 375 Recky now. But I showed up, he kind of knew my background, didn't interview with me, got to know me, and then I was like, hey man, I need your help. like I need you help shaping this platoon and what it should be into a Rekke platoon not I call it a senior squaliter hangoutle tune a lot of guys did their

squalater time and their reward was to go to Rekke and go do the Omega thing and stuff like that go have a beard yeah how old was Rekie at this point in time in Rensum and you're there and they stood up was it O3 yeah the battalion Rekie was 2004 2004 yeah yeah So I was on, I was a sniper, but I was on the first deployment with the battalion reckey guys. Yeah. So just about 10 years old. Okay. But the guy I was talking about Matt when he was in the National Guard, he was in a Lursey in it.

Yeah. So we went from RSC to National Guard Lurse and then came back to 375 RECI. So he knew what Lurts is and what RECD is and had a very good understanding what it should be. And me and him kind of molded this platoon into what it should be. and I'd say about three to six months later I was just beep bopping down the hallway going to my office

and he stopped me and he was like hey man did First Earner talked to you yet I was like no why he's like well him and Sarm Major talked and he needs to talk to you I was like fuck I just got here man what's going on now

so I go to First Narns office and I walked in he's like hey what do you think about being a platoon sergeant you want to take over Reki I was like oh shit yeah absolutely I'm not gonna turn it down you know

and that's that's when I became the Poutine Sarmat for 375 Rekie and I was Pertinoff for three and a half three and a half years so so Rackie wasn't new

it was 10 years old but you guys sort of created this thing is it because at that time or during that time there wasn't that Lurse experience that nobody knew what Rucky should actually look like. I think that's exactly what the problem was.

Okay. They didn't have a good Rookie background, as you said. And there just wasn't a mission for them. Yeah. You know, overseas. It was a strike forces going out and hitting targets. Like, what's Rookie going to do? Right.

You know, you got the Prids. Right. You know, every ISR asset you can think of for, you know, all the task force is over your target why do you need rec you out there that was the mentality and they didn't have a mission when when uh i mean this is like ancient history you know taking baby steps but that first deployment i remember the guys doing some CTRs uh doing some you know on foot kind of reconnaissance stuff and then when we did get some strike operations i remember the guys going out and like doing like because actually we started doing fid too with a swathing

lot team out in Kowst. And so taking those guys out and doing like BP's and, you know, Blackside security. And so that was sort, but it was all very like a nascent sort of form, right? Yeah. And I mean, like if you're doing CTR, so CTR is close to our reconnaissance. And

in that environment, if you're doing CTR, you're either like in a vehicle or you're tasking inage to do it. Like it's very hard sometimes to do it. And that was that was RSE's mission was a CTR's. Yeah. Like an airfield. Yeah. They would drive by in vehicles and film or do whatever.

Like, RECI wouldn't do that. But now we're at the point where RRC is out doing secret squirrel stuff. And so you're saying that when you got there sort of the battalion RECI teams were sort of in limbo that not quite sure. They were in limbo. We had the interagency mission program and then also had guys tasked to RSC to help them with their program. Okay, cool. So they were filling billets for RSI. as well. Okay. And that was a funny story too. When I left RRC, went over 375. When I showed

the 375, I mean, like the next day, he's like, hey, you need to go over RFC to talk to them about this deployment coming up. I was like, what the fuck? So go back over there knocking the door and a guy that was on my board, Terry, he answered the door and he's like, what's up, man? I was like, I was told to come over here. I guess I'm working with you now. And he's like, he was like, that worked out, didn't it? Yeah. I guess so. Yeah.

So was there a formal, and Jack, you can answer this too. Was there a formal? Because like in the cyber section, you went to SOTIC, right? You know, at least SOTC 2, if not SOTIC 1, but you'd go to SOTIC, the special operations target interdiction course. For RECI, when they stood them up, was there a formal training program for them? I don't know when they stood up. Well, back when they stood up, it was like, again, they were all, you know, building an airplane and flight. But they did have a training program that they were standing up, yeah.

But it was an in-house training program? Yes. Okay. And I can't remember if they went to R-Slick or not. I mean, I would have to hit up some of those guys from back in the day and talk to them. But, I mean, what was it like when you got there? When I got there, when I was in between Sarant, I didn't send anybody to R-Slick because I could teach R-Slick. Yeah.

and that's what I did with my guys. Yeah. taught the squad leaders how to, or the team leaders how to do it, and then they taught their guys how to do it, the way the Army should work. In my mind at the time, all Arsleck would do for me is, yeah, cool, gave them an identifier.

Right. But I also lost, I just lost that guy for three or four weeks. Right. You know, so I would rather, instead of top-down training, I'd go bottom up. Like, you know, go to my team leaders. What does your team need to learn?

What do you guys need? You know, you have the manuals. What do you not know in the manual? And then we would go over. Now, was Arsick taught like a trade-ox school or was it taught like a soft school? Trade-dox school? Trade-o-school. Okay.

It was a trade-ox school. And again, that's another reason. We don't want to go do that. Right. Not saying we're better than that, but. But you are. And so when we talk about trade-doc and soft, we're talking about training and indoctrination. Training and doctrine command.

Indctrine. Which is all the schools, all the Army Schools are under that. So, yeah, so it's a very formalized process. It's been put together by an officer who may or may not know what they're doing. And like it's very formalized training that teaches to standard or whatever it is. But they don't necessarily always teach things the way they need to be taught. So you're sending somebody to a school that is an army taught school, which means it's a bureaucrat taught school. Exactly.

And not saying that there are slick instructors aren't great at their job or anything like that. But the curriculum itself has been laid out by the bureaucracy. Yeah, that's true. It's been laid out by the bureaucracy. And 75% of the stuff they're teaching is from Vietnam. Yeah. Which, I mean, it's still applicable. you know but I would rather teach my guys what I know and what has worked right and what does work

right versus what trade doc is telling me to teach them so when you guys turn this or when you sort of you know develop this recie element this reccy section how do you impress upon the command what your new improved capabilities are or or get sort of operational okays Um, so that was, well, you have a couple different avenues. You got your TFTs, your task force trainer missions, and you got MLAT, multilateral training missions. TFT is just kind of a smaller MLat per se, minus the airfield. We're not seizing an airfield during TFT. But the real big, uh, kind of kicker for us, we went to NTC.

And it was like the first time Regiments got into NTC and, who knows how long. And we were supporting a big army unit that was going through their rotation as a soft capability enabler. So we were separated from them, but we knew what their mission was. We had, I think our BC and a small staff was in their job with them. And then they tasked us. I think we had one or two line platoons there and then Reki platoon. And the BC called us in or called me in.

And he was like, Dustin, check it out. He's like, I don't care what we have to do. We're here to win. He's like, so do what you got to do to win. I was like, Roger, that's her. We did our thing. We went and got our four-wheelers and our M-raisers and drove out, climbed up a mountain.

The biggest mountain we could find, the thing is T. T.ford Mountain in NTC. I don't know why I remember that name, but breakers was big. We climbed up there, and we climbed up there knowing Op 4 is not coming up there. No one's climbing this mountain to come find us.

Like, it's a pain of the ass. It took us all night to get up there and set up our hide site, and we're observing the battlefield. And the battlefield we could see, the battle space we could see, was the staging area for the Op 4 before they moved into the engagement area

with the rotation. unit to start off before the war the simulated war even kicked off we could see something way off in the distance and me and my JTack are sitting up there and I'm like looking through a spotting scope and looking at a map and just looking we probably spent 30 minutes an hour just kind of just guesstimating where it was at and finally we just fat finger on map was like whatever whatever that is is right here and it's not friendly because the friendly is over there. And he tells a big development.

And so we called up a simulated high mar strike and it ended up being the enemy brigade. Like their talk, they're staging area. And did the simulator high mar strike, wiped out their brigade talk. Task force launched a strike force in Osprey's to go clear through. And I remember the NTC general, whatever general is in charge of NTC. came storming in the talk. I was like, no, no, no, no. Like, they're still alive.

Send them back. Like, brought the strike force back. Like, they didn't even get to land and clear. It's sort of like when you're playing war when you're kidding. I just wanted, no, I shot you. Do overs. Yeah. I was like, we just won, like, hour 12 of this war.

Like, what's the problem? Anyway, so they came back alive, whatever. And then they were staging in that little court, the corridor where I was talking about. And they just had all their arms. former Abrams, Paladins, Bradleys, everything just in a line. And we took pictures of it all and sent it up via HPW, sat to the talk with reports and everything, Intel reports. And then they struck that.

Alive again. Anyways, I said all that to say we, Exfield got back to our talk. And as soon as I walked in my office, the phone. rings and it's the BC who's at the rotational units talk and he's like ward he's like that was awesome he's like this unit is eating up everything you're giving us can you go back out in 24 hours I was like oh my god that's what you get for me a good yeah yeah we just spent four days out there like you know freezing our butts off so yeah we went back out you know 24 hours later to the other side of that corridor I was talking about and did some more stuff back there I think that was

a real proving point for us. Yeah. Because they saw what we were capable of doing. Yeah. On top of that, when he said, you know, I'm here to win, do what you got to do for us to win. I sent my guys to go do a low-vis, aFO-type operation. I was like, you know, go put your civilian clothes on, take one of our beacons, go into the enemy motor pool, and tag their AAA pieces. Which they did.

I was like, give me a plan. Don't just go out there and wing it. Right, right. So they gave me a plan, and they went out there and tagged their AAA pieces, their anti-air. And we just tracked them all through the box at NTC. As soon as they stopped, we struck those. The E4 Mafia strikes again? So we eliminated their anti-air, like, right off the rip.

And it was pretty awesome. What was even better was when the war was over, and the opt-for was back in their motor pool, you know, downgrading or whatever they're doing. And I sent my guys back over to recover the beakers. Right, right. And they didn't put on civvies. They just walked in. It was like, hey, there's something on that vehicle I need to get.

And the guy's like, who are you? Like, what are you getting? He's like, don't worry about it. Just like, pull this Pelican box off the under from. I mean, when you guys did the AAR for NTC, I mean, they must have been fairly pissed. Overall of this. I didn't sit in on it, but I'm sure it was. Yeah.

So to catch people up, so NTC and. It's JRTC, right? In Louisiana. Yeah. So they're basically war games. And I never went to either of them. But they're basically war games. And the opt for the people who are actually stationed on those bases are good.

And it doesn't necessarily mean they're great combatants. I don't know. But they're good at war gaming. It's like going, it's like a SWAT team going up against professional paintballers. I mean, those guys are probably the most well-trained unit in the Army. Realistically. Because they're doing it all of them. time. All the time, right? And they know they know the train, they know everything else like that.

So like I said, I don't know about combatants because I don't know, but they're good at what they do there. And it's very hard to beat those units in these war games. So, and you guys basically beat them three times. They weren't used to fighting a special operations unit. Right. Because we had ISR, which big army units typically don't have all the time. Right. We had Haimars. We had Cass. We had everything. And we just, I mean, we just sat there and called it in all day. And I remember watching, there was one of you knew that was close enough to us when I called in a strike on him. I remember watching him through just binos, like look up in the sky and, like, throw his hands up. Yeah.

And like a guy, we're going to give him a casualty card. Like, you're dead. And they packed up and drove off. And I was like, yeah. So meanwhile, back at Battalion, your platoon's getting deployed now. So walk us through some of that. Like, what's going on in the war at this point? in 2013 or 2014?

You tell me to start where you want to start. 2013 I did not deploy as a platoon start. I was a Jock NCO and then I went out to Coast to do the interagency thing for a little bit. 2014, the strike force was still going out. I don't remember how many platoons we had over there or companies. wasn't really involved in that. The RECA platoon was tasked with an interagency mission

and we supported that by sending five guys to five different locations. So as the platoons aren't, like not only did I have a platoon to manage, but now I had to manage four to five different teams. Right.

At four to five different outstations. And what those are stations were doing. Granted, those guys that I sent out there, they were their own team leader out there, which is cool. I was very hands-off as a leader. Like, only hit me up if you need something, bro. You know, like, I'm not going to micromanage you.

You're a big boy. Do your thing. Right. But the recoupal tune to the inter-agency mission for that deployment, or every deployment I did. And, I mean, we were going out. every night just about hitting targets. Could you describe that mission as far as you're able to,

like what it entailed or what you guys were tasked with? Yeah, with the interagency mission, again, I say interagency. It's a conglomerate of agencies, right? You got any three-letter acronym you can think of, or a three-letter agency you can think of that we're working with. It's just a, it is a task force. And as the big, not big army but as the army representative of that task force our team was responsible for being enablers to provide capabilities to those civilian agencies because civilian agencies don't have apaches they don't have f-16s they don't have you know isr as much as we do they have isr but not as much as we do and we provide further intel support

more targeting abilities. You always want as many tools in a tool bag as you can have, and that's what we did. The team leaders, including myself at each outstation, was we're the eyes and ears and voice of the task force commander for that interagency commander. So like if you're going out with, for instance, maybe like the FBI is there because there's a poppy field.

They want to investigate. They can't talk to the military. They don't have air support. They don't have whatever. Yeah, I'll just say I talked to somebody who is part of a other governmental agency, and he was describing me how when they tried to call, the only thing they really could call, he said, was ECAS, like emergency close air support, which takes, you know, who knows how long that's going to take. But when you have Rangers out there on target with you, close air support, medevac, all this sort of like good army stuff, support support stuff that comes along along with you guys is suddenly available and drastically shortens the end. amount of time that all these things take. Yeah, because our teams

that we had at each outstation was comprised of, you had the team leader, an assistant team leader, and then he had a JTAC, a medic, an RTO, and an EOD guy. So you have pretty much every capability you think of in one team.

Not everyone, you know, not everyone's 11 Bravo, not everyone's a trigger puller, but everyone's either a ranger or better. And can really bring, bring some hurt to the battlefield than needed. And now we're also getting into another sort of like interesting role change in that, yeah, there's a reckey component, but also like you guys are going out on like strike operations,

right? Yeah, we were going out more, more than the strike force. Right. Honestly, I felt bad for the strike force and the line companies that would deploy for regiment because you had squad leaders of Tunes Sartre, that grew up through the early 2000s, I mean, getting after it with Team Merrill, team Darby and all these things. And then you get to the mid-2010s and it slows down drastically. Right.

And like Taliban wasn't allowed to be targeted because we're in peace talks with them. Right. Right, right, right. But the Interagency Task Force was allowed to target him. So we were going out after him because we were part of that task force. but strike force yeah I mean five to ten times

the entire planet they're going out and that's got to be a frustrating thing especially for a young ranger who came in to get at it they did do and we were referencing like Les's when he was talking when Les was talking about

doing the Nangahar clearing operation and I've talked to other folks where like the Ranger Regiment sounds like they were involved in some like a couple really substantial large scale combat operations in Afghanistan. Yeah, that that Nangahar clearance operation happened multiple times. The first time was in 2016 towards the tail end of our deployment. We actually extended for like 30 days for that operation to happen. And it sucked for us as at J-Bad during that time. and it sucked for us because task force was saturating that Nangahar Valley and J-Bad's right there in Nangar, if not, you know, next to Nangahar.

They're saturating that valley with fires. There's a high mar strike, you know, two to three times a day every day, and then just ISR. And so they took all of my assets as inter-agency team leader. I'm like, I can't do anything. Give my assets back. but yeah they flexed over man I think we pushed over the rest like the rest of the battalion

so almost all of 375 was there for the Operation LES was talking about and before that operation kicked off the Surr Major and some other first sergeants came down to J-Bad to kind of do a PDSS because that's where the warm base was that they were going to launch out of

that's my opinion he's like hey he's like warden you know what do you think about this and I looked at it and I was like I think you're going to die, man. And he was like, what? I was like, it is hot. This is middle of July. And you're going to send an entire Ranger battalion, quote-unquote, online.

Right. Through a fact, like, we are not built for that. Right. We are a direct action. Right, hit a target and leave. Yeah. Not get online and walk for a valley, you know, and long of behold, guess what happened? You know, guys had.

Right. I mean, there's multiple heat cats. Yeah. I think one dude had kidney failure because his heat cat was so bad. Oh, my gosh. And it was just terrible. Personal, professional opinion. They can chalk it up as a success because we killed some ISIS guys.

But, like, in the grand scheme of thing, it was a failure. Like, it was just an utter failure. The fact that we had to do it, you know, version one, version two, version three, version four. It should be an indication. It should just be version one. And if you guys go back and watch the episode with Les Sandusky, you'll hear the sort of like boots on the ground account of it. We tried to get boots on the ground from where I was at as the interagency task force that we had there at JABAD because we could provide with our task force, you know, all the stuff that we talked about earlier providing as far as fires and medevac. But with the indigenous personnel that we had.

we would be able to provide you know a hundred trucks and dishkas and RPGs and mortars there's anything under a sun you think of and we can just drive there it's right down the road instead of flying guys in and not be able to leave

unless the birds came back that was a big problem but we got shut down we couldn't couldn't go because of the interagency hire said no so could you talk a little bit about the indigenous force that you worked with? I will say it is a conglomerate of Afghans from the entire country, and it's really awesome to watch them work together. That was one of the coolest things I've seen in country, because there's a lot of infighting.

There's tribes and Pashtun and Dari and Uzbeks and Tajik's, everybody hates everybody. but those guys that I worked with genuinely wanted Afghanistan to be better and they genuinely liked each other and they worked together and sounds bad to say but they hated the typical Afghan almost more than

we did like they would put boots to the head and mess these guys up you know the Taliban and ISIS and everybody and they would rough them up good and make it a point like hey quit you know, quit fucking our country out, man. Yeah.

You told me, you know, as sort of a point of reference that it reminded you of like the American military in the sense that it's like some dude from North Dakota and some cat from New York

working together and... That's exactly what it was like. So they worked so well together. They're paid very good. I'll say a Afghan in that unit, a private in that unit, made about $900 a month.

Good money. Yeah, in Afghanistan, yeah. Yeah. If you compare that to Afghan National Army General, he got $900 a month. So we paid them very well. We treated them very well. They had good food. They had air conditioning, good barracks.

And worked on the referral program. So I vouch for you. You vouched for me. I'm like, hey, Jack's a good guy. He should come work here. but if you mess up, I'm gone too. Yeah. And that's how you keep them oil along with the money.

Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, some of those guys didn't make it out. A lot of them did. Thank goodness. Yeah. Don't know where they're at. They might be sitting in some other country right now waiting to get their visas or whatever. But a lot of them made it out.

Some didn't. It's terrible. What was, was there a minimum rank to go to Reki at the time? I tried to put E5 on it. E5? Yeah. So they at least had to be tabbed. Yeah.

They had to have time in. You had to be tabbed. Yeah. So is that why is, I was trying to figure out why RECI got this essential, essentially LNO job, basically, right? Or this liaison job. Was it because of the overall maturity of the Recky elements? I think it was the. maturity and mentality because those interagency jobs you got to have the right personality and the right person in those positions if you know anything about ranger regiment you know you're from private on up you know it's ranger ranger yeah i'm just ranger i'm just trying to think of the words without like offending somebody but ranger smash just chest beaten you know fire fire breathing team leader right you know you know you don't

You don't want that in those positions. You need somebody that can, it's kind of mellow, can read the room, speak intelligently, and know when to talk and when to listen. Not embarrass the regiment or the army. Right. You know, because you never know when you're working with a bunch of civilians, you never know who's who. Right. So I think that's why we got that job. And what works great as a TL or a, you know, a squad leader, whatever, on the line, like, get, you know,

lighting a fire under people's asses, like getting them, especially when you're dealing with, you know, 18-year-olds fresh off the street. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. They're great for that job. They need it. Right. But sometimes it takes a different sensibility to work in these other, in these other positions. Yeah.

Yeah. And then when I was abtoots aren't, like I, I pride myself when I was buttoons aren't to not have a single incident. Not a single incident, alcohol related or other. And I think a big part of that was treating them like men. Yeah. And then also, I don't think I yelled one time. Yeah. I don't think I smoked anybody one time.

I did more of the disappointed dad leadership. Right, right, right. You know what I mean? Yeah. You treat a boy like a man and they man up, right? Yeah. Well, also, I think one of the keys to avoiding alcohol-related incidents is like a tight team and a hasty X-fil. Like, like.

Combat Park. Yeah. Get up for it. Pre-prior planning. Right. I mean, it was like two weeks after I left. There was a DUI. You know, two weeks after.

And they're like, why did you leave us? Yeah. It's not my choice. I'm sorry. So as you're going on these deployments, I mean, and I mean, it's really cool to hear about this because I think the cliche about Rangers even to this day with some folks is that Rangers are like a blocking force for, you know, Delta Force operations. And it's like, well, the boys have gone off and done all sorts of interesting, unique things, be it direct action or otherwise. Yeah, that was the Arkansas National Guard. Like the Rangers became, yeah.

So, you know, as you were going off on these. these sorts of unique missions. I mean, are there any of them that kind of like stand out in your mind that, you know, you'd like to talk about? I'd say one of the, one of the most impressive ones we did was a kind of proof of concept, a national strike, proof of concept, you know. For that deployment, I was stationed just outside Kabul, and we wanted to see, want to prove that we could go as far as we can go

Mez which is you know northern Afghanistan so we came up with a plan found a target that was still active up there and we you know we sent some guys in civilian vehicles they drove all the way up there Afghans our indigenous force and then we flew some guys commercial air up there

undercover, you know. And then the rest of us took a private jet, which I thought was ridiculous. Super baller. I was like, we were really in a private jet right now? And the pilot was like, ah, it's a, nah, it's a 93 model. I was like, it's still a private jet, dude.

Like, are you like, are, I mean, that's about as ballers it gets, man. You know, like, uh, Ranger Hunter Killer team. It's like riding around in a private jet. It's like, it's like riding in a 2005 limousine. It's like, I don't care. It's a two thousand, right?

Yeah. You got a booze cart. Yeah. Um, and then we sent, uh, it's like a civilian C130 is called L100. Um, so we loaded up some, we call them Scooby vans. Looks like a mystery machine. Scooby do. Loaded those on there and flew those up there.

And, uh, we all linked up up there. Um, me and one of my inter-agency partners, we walked up to the gate guard. There was a big army, like probably national guard guy or something. And, you know, here I am. or here we are, you know, looking like this. And I was like, hey, man, and, you know, like 15 minutes you're going to have, you know, about 20 Afghans show up in civilian vehicles with weapons. He can't stop them.

Don't search them. They're with us. Just let them through. They're coming over here. And he's just like, yes, sir. I was like, thank you. That was easier than I thought it was going to be. It doesn't have to go talk to somebody else.

But we all link up and get our vans, vehicles, guns, everything together. And we go out and hit this target out in Mez that I mean no one's operated in Mez and probably five years ish. So he had no idea when we were there. We'd show up and banged out his door and scoop him up and he just looked at us like, who the hell are you? Like where did you guys come from? I haven't been bad.

Like I stopped being bad, you know. And detain him, take him back to the hangar and kind of felt bad. for the guy because he honestly hadn't done anything bad in a couple years and I don't know what he did before that you know he's still a target so whatever and uh but he's set in the corner of that hanger you know ear muffed blindfolded and handcuffed for probably about 12 hours like it was kind of how felt bad I was like man this guy has no idea what's going on right now and then we load him up on the L-100 a 45-minute flight back to Kabul and he's peeing himself and pooping himself

and throwing up the entire time because he has no idea where he's going. Probably the first time he's ever been on a plane ever. Land and Kabul take him off that. We get on an MI17 helicopter flight of our base. Again, he has no idea what's going on, where he's going. He just lost in the sauce.

And take him back there and debrief him and I think they just put him on a commercial air and flew back. He gave him a few hundred bucks. Yeah, thanks for the proof concept. Sorry, bro. Yeah. But that was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. We're a part of that.

It shows, you know, I think we're talking a little bit before we started the show. I mean, it kind of shows like what could have been. And, you know, like, in full disclosure, I was, like, definitely in favor of us pulling out of Afghanistan. But on the flip side to it, what you guys were doing shows, I think that there could have been a very light footprint American presence in Afghanistan, maintaining that sort of residual counterterrorism force large or really almost entirely working through Afghan partners. And that operation shows, yeah, it could have been a national asset, not just regional. Yeah, absolutely.

Another mission that comes to mind was, you know, my J-TAC, he got shot up one night. He got shot four times. We were going after this S-FEST facility. So we hit the suspected S facility and there's like a legit family in there. And he's like, yeah, not us. You might want to talk to the guys across street though. Yeah. So we go across street and as we were maneuvering, they squirted out the back and took off running.

We had Apache's overhead already. We collapsed, collapsed him in overhead. So they had eyes on. We're kind of chasing after these guys. And in the farm fields in Afghanistan. And you have a field and then there's like an irrigation dish that runs through them. Or it's raised for a walkway. So either one is either sunken down or raised up.

And we were getting ready to come up to a cross section or intersection where these irrigation ditches and walkways crossed. And my JTAC was standing up on the raised section and he's talking to the birds. And he's like, hey, do you have eyes on hotspot? like yeah it's about 25 meters in front of you and as soon as he said that they just started ripping rounds at us and he was the first person

they could hear and see because he was probably a full moon for all I know but he was lit up you can see him playing his day standing on this berm and you know he took him the thigh the abdomen the ribs and his helmet and he didn't have his chin strap

buckled which I think saved his life honestly because that round was sticking through the inside of his helmet so if it was tight it would have had something to right some type of that was what I'm looking for some type of yeah it would have been stabilized yeah yeah but his helmet was unbuckled so it knocked it off and uh it was about 50 meters to his left a couple guys down from him so he got a full burst yeah i mean straight up is it yeah yeah yeah yeah and I said knock his helmet off he's yelling I'm hit

and I'm shooting back yelling him to put a tourniquet on it the rest of the team is shooting back yelling for the medic shooting back yelling for the medic again because he's shooting so he can't hear me

like come over here you know medic because he was probably about 25 meters to my left so he's running across all these all this fire to get to him meanwhile my JTAC had the wherewithal to scoop his helmet back up,

put it on his head, key up to the birds, you know, while he's bleeding out, and tell them that he's hit, take all commands from 2-1, who's me, the GFC. And I thought that was pretty cool that he had the... Yeah.

Wearwithal. Yeah, he was able to do that. Yeah. He could think through things. He wouldn't freaking out. But as he's yelling, I'm hit. I'm yelling at him to put a tourniquet on him.

I'm like shooting like, I can't help you right now, man. Trying to kill these guys first. Started trading grenades back and forth. It was like playing hot potato with grenades. I mean, legit. Like, a grenade landed from me to you. And, you know, the entire time you've grown up in the army when a grenade comes at you, what do you say? You're supposed to jump away.

Yeah, you say grenade. You know, you know, you yell grenade. Right, right, right. When you throw one, you say, frag out. One comes in, he yo grenade. My buddy, I don't know if it was like the stress in the moment. something but he was like frag in I was like what yeah like blew up right there in front of us I was like oh my god and we started throwing it back I watched some guy just like

limp wrist one had to you know kind of die from that but uh we ended up you know taking care of that problem but those guys actually had like a defended fortified sandbag position yeah like they ran to it waiting for us to come to yeah and it was a near ambush we're within 25 meters I mean we were you could see him They had a fallback position. Yeah. We ended up smoking them. Worked on the J-Tag. He, uh,

remember him, like, laying on the stretcher. He, like, passed out. And I was like, oh, shit. He just died. And he was like, my best friend. I was like, fuck. I kind of look at him. I look at the medic.

I'm like, medic's not freaking out. I'm like, what the hell, man? I kind of slap him in the face. Like, Trevor, come back to me, man. And he, uh, stayed passed out. And the medic was like,

hey, dude, he's in, uh, he's in that case. whole ketamine. Yeah. He's like, just let him go. He's in a good place right now. He's happy. I was like, all right, if you say so. But he had popped back up.

He like woke up and popped back up. And he's like, Dustin. I was like, what's up? I was like, stop yelling, man. What's up? He's like, hey man, make sure you eat big, lift big, get big. And he's like, pass back out.

I was like, seriously? They woke back up again. and called out to our RTO, Jeremy. He's like, Jeremy, he's like, yeah, what's up? He's like, give me a dip. He's like, I looked at him. I was like, you're not getting a dip right now.

You're not, you're not getting a dip. Sorry. He's like, all right. Pass back out. Doc Bowman at that time did a freaking phenomenal job saving that guy's life, man. I mean, from Tarnikets to freeze-dried plasma. I don't know if anybody knows what freeze-dried plasma is. at the time

we were the only ones using it it was kind of experimental we're the guinea pigs it's French but it comes in two glass bottles

one's powdered plasma one's the solution to mix it and you got to suck it out of the syringe it's vacuum seal and I was pulling on that syringe

as hard as I could trying to get as much solution as I could and shoot it into the powder mix and the other glass bottle so Doc always had this it was like a CLS bag with these two glass bottles

and you think carrying glass bottles on like a mission like they're gonna break yeah but they're like bubble wrapped and everything but then you swirl you can't shake it you gotta swirl it so I'm sitting here like swirl on the solution like you're mixing a drink yeah I'm like sitting here swirl the solution like waiting

like is it good yet and he's like yeah give it to me gave him the freeze dried plasma um like I said turnicits the dressings freeze dried plasma uh fentanyl pop, ketamine, everything was awesome. Doc did a phenomenal job.

So you guys did like a, I mean, I know there's a difference between blood and plasma, but essentially you kind of gave them like a blood transfusion. So it's almost like an infusion. So it can carry oxygen unlike an IV? Fascinating. That's amazing. Really, when you give somebody an IV, all you're doing is increasing their blood pressure. Right, right, right. But the plasma actually carries the oxygen.

Right. So bird came in, which pissed me off because the LZ we were lazing, they said they couldn't land at. They said it was too small. They're like, hey, we got to push over some LZ you lays. So this was a conventional bird then? Yeah, it was just regular dust off. Yeah. And they landed like two fields over, which was the exact same size of the fields out of the way.

But what pissed me off about it was is like that field wasn't cleared. Right. They could have landed on an IED or something. Right, right. you know so they land and we you know come walking over there to like try to clear a path as best as we could visually to bring the casualty over load him up the doors are off the the uh the black hawk the pilot and co-pilot doors the cockpit doors they had off and the pilot's sitting there you know looking down and just screaming just waiting and i kind of walked up and i slapped him

on the shoulder and it scared the shit out he's like what the fool i was like hey he's like Thank you. Like shook his hand and they took off. So got back to, go back to J-bad Base. And, yeah, he's alive today. It's awesome, man. That's amazing.

He's a really good dude, really good friend. It was exciting at the time because I said he was shot. And he said, take all commands from 2-1. I'm not a J-TAC. Yeah. But when you call up to task force, you say eagles wounded, they're pushing everything they have to you. Yeah.

Luckily, me and him and worked together for three years. He had been my personal J-Tag for three years, and we had this bond, and we were always kind of cross-training. He'd quiz me on things, and I just listen to him, talk to aircraft. You learn, you know, what to do and how to talk to him. And once he gave me control the assets and task force pushed me every asset, So, like, I was in control of, like, three ISR birds, two Apaches, two F-16s, two A-10s, an AC-130. I just had all this stuff, and I was like, instead of stressing out.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, like, I knew what to do. Yeah. It was cool. And I was cool for him. I was thinking, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, when we blow it up today? Yeah.

It fell on you then to, like, smoke check that position, right? Yeah. Yeah. Smoke check it, and then the Apaches left with the dust off. I'll let them ask. squirted back because they were pretty much bingo anyways. Yeah. But then just controlling all the sensors, like watching us on the way back.

And if something happened on the way back, how to control them as well. And it was, uh, yeah, I was so cool. It was just cool to be able to do, like, know how to do that from paying attention to him. Yeah. Because the first time me and him worked together and got into an engagement, I think I was an E6 of the time. Yeah, I was an E6 of the time. We had some guys maneuver.

on us and he came over and he's like hey we got guys you know coming up can I shoot I was like yeah man tell the Apaches tell him to shoot and he walked away and came back like a minute later he's like hey are you sure I was like yeah dude like as long as you don't hit any civilians or blow up any civilian buildings like I don't care shoot him and uh he's like okay I just I just never had an E6 clear me hot before I was like you have now Yeah. It was at that point, like our synchronicity, whatever. Right.

You know, we just kind of mind melded. Yeah. And worked together very well after that. Because he knew what my expectations were. I knew he wouldn't go to anything stupid. And we just, I mean, half the time we used fires, I'm just like, you know what I want, man. Yeah. I just do it.

And those guys, and we've talked about on the show before, whether they're J-TACs or CCTs or TACs or TACPs or those guys. were so good at their job here's the interesting thing tell them who this J-TAC was though he's an army J-Tac he's a ranger he's a fister

13 fox oh really yeah to get to that level like calling on an artillery and calling a naval gunfire I mean it's one thing calling an air in an in an engagement like that

you've just got to be cool as a cucumber to be able to do that and quick and they're just he was awesome and I said he was an army J-TAC which for people out there far and few between yeah it's usually an Air Force job

but regiment has their own he's 13 Fox so he's an artillery yeah artillery men so he was a fister in the regiment he wasn't an attached J-Tac no he's a fister in the regiment that's amazing but we don't have artillery assets right that's their job they're J-TACs

which kind of screws them talking to him, you know, throughout our time together, kind of screws them career-wise. Right. Because they don't have artillery time. Exactly. Right. We're going to like E-78 boards.

Right. And the summer major insurer boards is like, I don't give a shit about your J-TAC stuff. Like that has nothing to do with being an artilleryman. Right. Which is stupid because it's better than being an artilleryman. Yeah. They're actually more like, they sound more like their Anglico guys.

You know, more like the Marine Anglico. They're in a gunfire liaison. Yeah. It's interesting because I had a similar experience early on in Afghanistan. Nobody got injured, fortunately. But it made me realize that there are no squatters, their only maneuver elements. I like your style.

Yeah, his, I was saying, I showed him a picture earlier today. He took a round to the helmet and there's a PK round. And if it wasn't for his helmet being unmuckled, I probably would punch all the way through because in the picture, you can, it's sticking through his helmet. It scratched his head. There's a scratch. Really?

Yeah. And what's crazy is the Ops Corps helmet is only rated to 9mm as a PK round. Yes, it's a lightweight helmet. Yeah. 5602 by 5.4. Yeah. 502 by 454. Yeah.

And it punched through and stopped when it touched his head. But, I mean, it was right here in his temple. Like, I went through where the rail is on the helmet. Yeah. If anybody knows what I'm talking about? And, I mean, if he would have been looking to the left, to the rider up, he would have taken to the face. It's amazing.

It looked like either the bullet came at like maybe an upward angle or the round keyhold through the helmet. I wasn't there. I have no idea which it was. But it was interesting, the hole in the side of the helmet. I think what happened was because obviously he got hit here first, second, third, four. Yeah, I think it zipped up.

As that one hit, he, you know, flinched or whatever. And it was right. Yeah, that makes sense. It was just a fraction of a second that saved his life. You said that the, that the, um, the, um, the Afghanis that you worked with that they got along. How were they in terms of combat? Um, I would say I, I trusted them with my life. I still do.

I mean, I did. I had to trust them all the life because there's five of us and five interagency people and then, you know, 100 Afghans or however many we had. Um, and sitting, they're the ones that are hitting the targets. They're, their primary breach. They're primary everything. We are technically advisors. And to kind of sit back a couple times, you know, every now and then and just watch them, put a ladder on the wall, climb up the ladder, pull security, go over, open the gate from the

inside, everybody flow in and secure everything. It was awesome. It was like watching us hit a target. They are well trained. They know what they're doing. And they need to be utilized still to this day. Like, we need to be utilizing those guys. They're very well trained.

I'll caveat it with if one of those Afghans has been carrying a ladder for 10 years, it doesn't matter if you're going to go hit a tent in the middle of the desert. He's still going to carry a ladder. because if you take that letter away, he doesn't know what to do. Yeah. If that makes sense. They were very good at what they were trained on,

but if there was a complex problem or something was out of the ordinary that they might. Something I would also like to point out is as far as I'm aware, that program that you guys were working on, pretty large, a lot of Afghans throughout 20,

you know, essentially 20 years of war, I'm not aware of any green on blue incidents. Zero. At all. Zero. Yeah. Which I think speaks a lot to the efficacy of the program. And whatever you guys were doing, it was working in that regard. There's zero green on blue.

We thought we might have had one, one, not an actual green on blue, like a developing green on blue. We were able to nip it in the bud and fired both those guys and got them out of here because the referral program. Yeah. So they were gone, but, yeah, not a single green-on-blue incident.

And even, you know, some of those outstations that we had shut down, like the one in Asadabad shut down. However, those guys stayed there and operated on their own. Oh, really? Those Afghans stayed there and operated on their own with no American help. They finally did get some American help towards the end of 2016 through, just some funding and weapons here and there. But they stay there and police,

their own community. And they would come down to Jabad, like, once a month and kind of give us a debriefing of what they've been doing. And they're still getting after it. On their own. Did they ever get to the point where they were able to have their own J-Tax and, like, talk to Afghan helicopters? No.

No, no, no, no. Hail to the no. No, I mean, even talking to Afghan Air Force. I'm sure that KCA probably did, a regular Afghan army. But our guys weren't Afghan Army, so they wouldn't talk to them anyways. Gotcha.

Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. So, as your three years as Reki Platoon Sergeant are winding down, what's sort of the next step for you? Got finished those platoon sergeant, got moved to the three shop, you know, a glorious three shop. Spent about a year there as the Aops Encio.

I was just miserable. The guys deployed again without me. And I even emailed Sarm Major. I was like, hey, I'll go just as a trigger puller. Yeah. I won't be in charge of anything. I'll be a sawgunner. Just let me go.

Yeah. And he's like, no, we need you back here. I was like, oh, this sucks. Like, working an office job is my nightmare. Like, that is my nightmare. And I like working with my hands. I like being in the field. I like teaching.

I like, you know, being with the guys. And I was just miserable. My job performance was probably not great. Like, I tried to go to work as less as possible. Like, I just, some days I wouldn't even show up. It was whatever. And it showed. Not a shame to say it.

And I finally got the invite to leave. like the officer major pull me in and he's like hey man like yeah I think it might be time for you to find somewhere else to go thank you for your service yeah yeah and I asked him I was like am I being an RFS he's like no no no he's like you're not being RFS don't take it that way he's like you personally need to find somewhere else yeah he's like you're you're miserable I was like all right so I kind of went and uh hunted around went to ranger training brigade or ranger school is and the serge major of the brigade

was my previous sergeant major of Italian awesome guy. Vic is one of the best armators you could ever work for. And, you know, just cold knocked his office.

Actually, I knocked on his office. He wasn't there. I waited in the park lot until he got there, watched him walk in, and I walked in behind him. I was like, hey, what's up? But I told him what was going on

and if he can give me a job because the retention guy of Italian was like, hey, man, you're either going to go to the S-FAB, which screw that, or go to Fort Polk, JRTC. And I was like, I will go AWOL. Right. Before I go to JRTC. I was like, there's always another way.

I was like, I refuse to let the Army tell me what I'm going to do. And someone talked to Vic, and he was like, hey, what do you want to do? I was like, I'll be a ranger instructor, man. like I don't care he'll be on the woods and he kind of looked at me and he's like he's like you don't want to do that I was like what he's like it sucks he's like you're going to be out there rain shine snow heat holidays away from your family 24 on like 48 off like it he's like it's like it's not fun I was like all right well never mind then then he goes but we just took over jump master airborne and pathfinder okay so that all falls under ARTB and that

Oh, really? Airborne Ranger Training. Oh, interesting. And I was like, well, I'll do Joe Master or Pathfinder. That's a nice badge if you haven't had it before. So I went to be a, I already had Pathfinder. You did? Well, can you tell us about the Pathfinder school?

Because it's not, it's a coveted school and not a lot of people get it. Does it still exist? Nope, it's gone. It's gone. No longer coveted. Well, now it's doubly coveted. You should go back in just to wear that badge. They still have them for the National Guard.

It's like a glider badge. Yeah. of that. I want the Army Space badge. Have you seen that thing? They have that? Yeah, it's like space ghost. Holy shit.

Looks awesome. But yeah, so I went to be a Pathfinder. A Pathfinder instructor. Okay. That's where I went. After a regiment, be a Pathfinder instructor. I was a Drop Zones instructor. So Pathfinder school teaches sling loads.

Okay. HLZ operations and Drop Zone operations. teaches all three of those. You don't have to be airborne to get. You can get sling loads. certified from the single-ed certification course it's called slick you can get air assault hLZ certified from air assault school but pathfinder is the only one that teaches all three in one shot the only one that teaches drop zone operations and basically you're learning and the history

of pathfinder school comes from war two when the pathfinders went into europe before the invasion and set up drop zones for the paratroopers from 82nd and hunter first to jump in and that's why everybody goes to Pathfinder schools to learn drop zone operations they're not going there for sling loads or HLZs because like I said you can go to other schools for those you're going there to learn drop zones and that's what we're known for and you learn how to calculate width and length of drop zones and green light time of drop zones how many jumpers and equipment you can put on a drop zone what type of aircraft and drop zones and green light time and drop zones how many jumpers and equipment you can put on a drop zone what type of aircraft and drop zone can accommodate everything along those lines what is it the L the L shaped uh with the flares that you put out when they they I'm talking about bundle drops talking about like a GMRS drop this might be more high tech than even what we were doing back in that this at that time now there's a I think what you're talking about it's a it's a ground marked release system right so you pretty much make an L with VS17

panels for the daytime or strobes or flares at nighttime but you make an L shape and as the aircraft flies over that jump master is looking out the door you know the L is this way this is the long axis of the drop zone so they're flying up this way as soon as these lights get on line

and they're in line that's his green light that's when he's pushing everything so he doesn't have to talk to anybody on the radio so for special forces or Reki teams GMRS is very enticing because I

go out and set up a GMRS drop zone to receive my resupply of food ammo, whatever equipment, whatever I need. I can set that up and not even have to be there. I can go back off into my hide site or my patrol base and hear the plane fly over. Don't have to talk to anybody. They're just going to line those panels or strobes up or flares up, kick out where they're kicking out. And then I'm going to go out and pick it up, break everything down. Do they do any adjustments for like the wind at the time or anything like that?

Oh, during the drop. Yeah. The aircraft is not. No, that's on you on the ground. Okay. So you just have to beat the villagers there. Yeah, yeah, I kind of wing it. They're also like 500 feet off the ground too, right?

You can be. Yeah. 300 to 500. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's fascinating. And like I said, they don't talk, like you don't hear much about what happens at the course. It's just, it was always one of the most.

it a badge. It's a beautiful badge. And, you know, the Army is all about it. They still have, they still have the National Guard Warrior Training Center at Fort Benning. Yeah. They still run their Pathfinder School. Fort Campbell still has their Pathfinder School. But the regular Army deemed it necessary to shut down the Pathfinder School. Sure.

The proponent for all Pathfinder operations. because like we were at that schoolhouse we were responsible for the trainings we're at national guard we're a training center and responsible for camillate we'd go up and audit them you know but then you're going to shut down the schoolhouse well like like the worst teams it'll be back one day they will okay no they'll reinvent it yeah I mean I get guys you know guys that came through Pathfinder when I was an instructor there at regiment I mean I had a guy hit me up like three or four weeks ago he's like hey I'm doing this and this like on this drop zone can I do you

do this or this. I sat there and explained it to him like, yeah, you can do this, but think about this and whatever. And he was like, can I get you to come out here and like go over the stuff? He's like, I feel like this is a dying art and it needs to be taught. I was like, yeah, man. So if they didn't have a specific school for the drop zone, they had it for the other things, but they don't have it. Where do people learn those DZ skills now? Warrior Trains Center.

National Guard or Campbell. they tried a pilot program I don't know well so Jumpmaster teaches a little bit Jump Master teaches carp drop zones which is Air Force drop zones so there's Army drop zones and Air Force drop zones

Army drop zones is GMRS and VIRS GMRS is ground marked release system and Veers is verbally initiated release system so you're talking on the radio telling them when they drop so those are Army Air Force is carp computed air release points which means the computer

on the aircraft that C-17 or C-130 is calculating everything Oh, interesting. Give them a grid and it does everything and that's the green light. So the green light in the aircraft and the C-130 or C-17 we jump, that's all ran by a computer.

Jumpmaster teaches that. So Jumpmaster still teaches carp. Not sure if they started teaching beers or GMRS at all. There was was a pilot program where they were just going to do, I think Pathfinder is just going to do drop zones, which I could see be a viable option because you can get those other

certifications at other schools. So why not just teach drop zones? But we fall back in what we talked about at the beginning of the interview was Pathfinders and Lerce are not viewed as special in the American Army. Right. For whatever reason. I I don't know. Right. I don't know why they don't. I think it's honestly senior people, this is my personal opinion,

senior people went to these schools or tried out of these units and didn't make it. And they're like, no, no, no, no. They're never going to be special. I didn't make it. No one can make it. You know, so they don't want them to be special or elevated to something higher than them. Yeah. If that makes sense.

No, I mean, look, it's sort of like giving, I mean, if Rangers are special, it obviously is the Black Beret that makes them so, so let's give to the whole army, and the whole army will be special. Exactly. I mean, I get it. But it just seems like a real lack of foresight in that, you know, we're moving to this near-puremberance. We don't know at any given time what combat will look like.

And, you know, we can say that we have, you know, drones and ISR platforms and all these things, but as Sigin, or is like, like, signals warfare, like, like, you know, we can say that. electronic warfare, cyber warfare, come online. All of those things may be countered. I think just looking at what we are planning for right now, what DOD is looking at is potential expeditionary warfare in the Pacific, looking at exactly where I was going to go. Very long range, like it's not going to be these like a 30-minute helicopter trip.

These new vertical takeoff and landing helicopters we're going to adapt. They're looking at like much. longer insertions having people way out there uh so i think that yeah having dz and these sorts of skills are right imperative it's like when you have this in the endo pacific paycom area an island hopping campaign right who's on the ground setting up right these hosz and dz yeah yeah exactly you got to have somebody there absolutely and you know and we can throw all the electronics in the world out there but again there are countermations that and even if they're just setting up like you know, isolated random EMP burst to like to clear areas.

There are so many countermeasures that even we start talking about augmented reality and, you know, blue force trackers and what people might see in their headsets, if somebody hacks into that, you have a lot of blue on blue. Like, we still need to have the old techniques. Well, like, people still need to be able to navigate via compass and map. They still need to be able to set up. a you know a non-computer

assisted drop you know these things because the other thing is you can encrypt your signal so that nobody knows what you're saying

but they still know somebody's saying it if you're blasting out you know it might be able to jam it not only do they know that you're saying something they can direction they can figure it out they can get a clock direction

and with AI like it's going to They're going to be able to try and so quickly once that comes online and is set up that, you know, it's, it amazes me that we have to relearn these lessons every single after World War II, after Vietnam. Like, you know, we, you know, we have to relearn them every time. You know, because I'm a mega nerd, I read, like, the publications from Fort Benning and stuff like that. And they talk about how, you know, the electronic warfare environment, it may become so intense that, you know, sniper teams using these old school techniques being bolt action rifles, glass scopes, making field sketches with pencil and paper, that they can actually penetrate into that EW bubble and do their operations and maybe take out the jammers or

whatever else needs to be done out there, you know, without having their equipment interfered with. Yeah, without having a signature. Right, right. So, yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah. So after you do your time at Pathfinder, working as an instructor there. And what's the next assignment for you? I was a Pathfinder instructor for two years.

And I moved on to, so if you, a Ranger Branch called, I was like, hey, are you tired of Fort Benning? I was like, kind of. He was like, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? I was like, man, like I would, I wouldn't mind an RTC if you got it. and he was like all right what uh what region and i said southeast he's like all right i'll call you tomorrow calls back and he's like hey how does uh university of alabama sound i was like do that sounds great like roll tide man he's like all right you'll have orders in like 30 minutes and i was like cool

i get these orders and i look at him and it says university of alabama at birmingham i was like what it says University at Birmingham so I'd like Google it it's a whole other university I don't even know existed it's called UAB University of Alabama at Birmingham so not the roll tide

I was thinking but it was only two hours away and it actually worked out better I think than going to University of Alabama a smaller program that was the MS3

instructor. So I taught the juniors and got them ready for their summer camp I think go to. One of the most rewarding assignments I've ever been to. All the other stuff is cool and you can write books and movies and stuff about. But teaching those young future army officers what right is and showing them the ways and just kind of making that first impression on them before they, come in and be an army officer. And to have them still contact me almost daily like, hey, this is an update like, hey,

I'm an ex-o now, you know. Are you proud of me? Yeah, I'm proud of you. But just kind of guiding them through their college career and their life, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've had a cadet on my couch, my office, just break down crying because something's going on in their life. Yeah. So here I am again.

Dad. Yeah. Being a mental. Yeah, yeah. They looked at me as like a big brother. You know, there was still an NCO in charge of me. He was like the dad figure. And he was an awesome guy.

I fucking love working with him. Travis is one of the best Enceos I've ever worked with. But he's very professional. You know, he's very just, I told him what I left. I was like, you're so professional, it pisses me off. why do you have a hind tight we've had a couple guys on here who their final assignment was rotc

Javier mackie and uh paul how both come to come to mind and they had similar things to say that it's a very rewarding experience it is very rewarding and it's there's also you know one of the reasons I want to get out of the army too because I you know the ones

that I enjoyed teaching and the ones that were receptive, awesome, but there's always ones that slip through the cracks. Right. You know, and you see that caliber of people coming in the Army, and they're going to be leading the Army. Right. And then the direction the Army was going at the time to, you know, not what we're used to.

Right. And I was like, man, this is going to be my last assignment. Like, I'm done after this. But RTC was fun. It was a good, one of the best last assignments. I think Paul had something similar to say. I don't want to put words in Paul Howe's mouth because I'm a little afraid of him. But I think he had a similar impression that he loved working with the soldiers and mentoring those guys.

But it was also like not totally happy with the direction the Army was going in. Because that was my last assignment. I medically retired at 17 years. And I made that decision. And it wasn't a light decision to make, you know, three years to go. Yeah. But I looked at it and I was like, can I do three more years? Because if I was going to do three more years, that was not going to be my last assignment.

Right. Like, where was I going after that? Right. And to that point in my career, the Army had never told me where to go. Right. I had always chosen or volunteered. Like, they never told me, hey, you're going here, you're going here. so I didn't want the army to tell me to go somewhere that I didn't want to go

right and I was like I don't want to spend three more years unhappy in a assignment that possibly sucks or don't want to medically retire now and get the same benefits I would as if I retired right actually even better benefits and go out on high note like go out on high note yeah yeah and go off and be happy and Make more money and do my own thing. Yeah. Not be told what to do every day. Out of curiosity, for the ones you say that were like slipping through the cracks,

like what was their motivation for going into the mills? Like why did they want to put themselves through it? Money. Money? Yeah, not really the right reason to be there. That kind of job. Money or just, you know, to get out of where they were. Well, that I can sort of get.

Yeah. Well, I don't mean like that, like the Army paid for their school. They couldn't pay for their school, so the Army paid for the school, which is, I guess, money. Right. Same thing. Do, Dee, do we have any questions for, okay. Questions for Dustin from the chat? Why are you so monotone?

Mr. Jackson. How much cross-pollination is there between BN, Recki, and RRC? Also, are BN-Rke guys more likely to undertake CAX selection than Lion Rangers? How much cross-pollination between what and what? Battalion Rucky and RRC. I'd say cross-pollination is, or was decent when I was there. Like I said, we filled some of their billets because they didn't have enough people to fill all their teams.

So a natural. A lot of those guys go to selection too for RRC. My time there. I maybe had two guys go. Okay. Do, does, I mean, a lot of line rangers go to, well, not a lot, but, you know, it's a thing to go to CAG selection. Is that also with RSC or do they more, I mean, not RSC, but RECI? Yeah.

Or do they? Because you still, you still have that mentality. Sure. You still have that, I want to go kill shit mentality. Right, right. I want to go be the best of the best. Right. You know, I had a couple guys go, a couple peers go as well while I was there.

I had another guy He was on the fence of Should I go to RSC selection or should I go to CAG selection? Yeah And one of my buddies that's the RSC guy I told him like go to CAG selection dude Like why not go varsity if you can go varsity Right

Go try out for varsity And I think that's one of the biggest issues In today's society As a whole Civilian and military is it's so easy to be a rock star because mediocracy is just rampant

like God's honest truth like people are so mediocre they will self-select and like oh I'm not good enough they'll never select me right like you don't know that man

just go try yeah like go I can't tell you how many selections I've been to right I've tried out for everything under the sun I've been told numerous times you throw enough shit of the wall eventually something a stick right you know so it works out in the end and you got to do some of the coolest stuff that the army had going on in my humble opinion yeah for sure and you know that's one of the things that we've talked about on the show before is like we've had some people from the conventional side on before but like the conventional army and the marine corps like they were out there hooking and jabbing like non-stop on these long

ass deployments. I've been there. And they do not get, they don't, right? Like, they don't get the credit that they deserve at all. And I have a lot of guys that I did the long 15 month or year long deployment with. And then they got out afterwards. Yeah. And, you know, that's what they have.

They have that 15 months. Yeah. And that no one gives them enough credit for that. Yeah. And some of the best dudes, I mean, I have a group chat on my phone. It's like six of us from my very first. tune and we talk every day yeah you know bullshit that's cool and uh that's what they have and they deserve the credit yeah and uh because they went through some shit man yeah yeah you spend 15

months somewhere you get to know someone you you learn somebody and also in that environment you kind of lose your community a little bit yeah and it takes a little bit to get it back yeah and some of them didn't get it back yeah how was it for you when you went uh when you went to regiment because like I was in Rangers during a peacetime military and is and it's very different but there was always this stigma until a guy earned his like it earned his way right like until he showed that he was a good leader and and you know was a good uh I don't say operator because at the time like the Rangers were still you know like CQB and stuff like that were just coming on board like it was still the premier light infantry and you know we still did patrol bases and and and so like

like that but but there was that stigma of being an import right how was it for you when you first showed up i never had that impressed on me yeah i'm sure it was there um the only time i ever saw it happen um is our very first it was like the first month or so i was at the platoon and we're doing team live fire exercises and there it was just a hot mess. And the platoon center that I was talking about earlier that was like, I need your help. Yeah. I was like, hey, man, can you go grab those guys and like teach them how to really break contact as a team?

I was like, yeah, man, sure. So I kind of had to, you know, kind of nut up and overstep the other team leaders that are already there. Right. And pull all their teams in. And it's like, hey, guys, like, bring it in. Let me show you guys how to do this, you know. And those team leaders, they kind of stepped up. off to the side and I was like...

Yeah, they're fueling you out. Yeah, who the fuck is this guy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it was like, you know, the week after that, I was sitting in the team room in the cages and I was back there and had my big old SOP binder that my platoons aren't forced me to make as a team leader in Lerce. And it went everything from individual movement techniques to platoon operations.

I was just sitting there flipping through it, just kind of refreshing myself because it's been a minute. and a squad leader or one of the Rekke team leaders came over. For people I don't know, a squad leader in Rekke is a team leader. It's the same same, same. It's the E6. But he came over, he kind of stood around my shoulder.

I was like, my SOP book. He was like, can I see that? I was like, just take it, dude. I was like, you need it.

I was like, just take it. You can have it, copy it, you know, whatever. Because every team should have their own SOP because everyone operates independently,

or teams operate independently. But I said as an import, like, I mean, no one is walking down the hallway, hit me in the nuts. Right, right. Like, nothing bad happened. I was kind of intimidated, to be honest, because I didn't have a scroll on my right shoulder. Right. I had my lurchs patch or my 2ID patch until I did that first appointment. And I put a scroll on, never took it off.

And people got my respect. It was interesting because I didn't grow up in regiment. Yeah. So a lot of the E6 is in below. had no idea who I was because I didn't go to rip with them I didn't do platoon operations with them I wasn't in the line with them

but everybody from like platoons aren't above or first aren't above knew who I was and respected me and it was an interesting dynamic for a little bit any more questions for Dustin job here thank you

hey all Dustin you talked about your conventional leaders but what was your experience with officers at regiment as I understand operating is really the role of enlisted. So how are they at employing your guys' enhanced skill sets? So officers in regiment. We'll talk about regiment as a whole. We can talk about Reki PL if we want.

Officers as a whole in regiment are very good at managing tasks and shielding their platoons. For lack of a better word bullshit. Their main job is, you know, be a politician with battalion, especially company level and platoon level. The PLs I had at regiment, I mean, I was there for three years. I think I went through five PLs as a platoon start. And that PLU, he was in charge of not only the recaltoon,

but also the Rist of Platoon, which is the reconnaissance surveillance target acquisition. They do a lot of tech stuff. So he kind of had, he was in charge of two platoons, but each platoon had their own platoon's arm. It was a weird dynamic. Simultaneously, K-9 and snipers had one PLU platoon platoons.

That's kind of how that was set up as far as specialty platoons. Interesting. But every PL I had was rock solid. They all, actually, they all left and went to SF. Questions for Dustin? One from Chris Ward.

I have a question. What was your favorite moment? out of your entire career outside of retirement, obviously. Chris Ward, that's my brother. Graduating Ranger School. Like that is, I would think, yeah, graduating Ranger School was probably the, not the highlight of my career,

but one of the proudest moments, because it is the premier leadership school of the Army, one of the hardest schools anybody could ever go to you. Never been to Buds, but I've ventured to say it's harder than Buds. Sorry Navy SEAL Spicy take Yeah spicy take

I mean Navy SEALs get to go home every night Not buds You have a barracks room bro Or you can go to your house Don't do that at Ranger school But yeah Because once you're a Ranger You're always a Ranger man

That's the way I look at it And I was super proud to graduate Ranger school Anything else? Yeah there's one last one from a Stacy Ward Oh boy My favorite moment was being able to present him With a flag that had been flown

on a B-52 that had a target he called for. Yeah. So that's my dad. This is where he's talking about the operation. We were talking about the big push. So my dad was in the Air Force. He's a B-52 guy. Still has friends in the B-52 community.

He's an electronic warfare officer, or electronic warfare technician guy. B-52s during that time, they were flying over and dropping bombs. The Moab, which wasn't from B-52, but it was that time Madison was in charge

and shit was just raining you know but uh my dad caught wind that we were also there in Nangahar and talked to the pilots and they flew a flag for me and gave me a certificate that's pretty cool that's amazing got some pull pins from like the the arming pins

from the bombs yeah and like the little leaflets they dropped to and he brought it to me on my birthday and stuff was pretty cool So how has post-military service life been treating you? What are you up to nowadays? Oh, man. Retirement's awesome.

Don't have to shave anymore. Yeah, when I first got out, so my actual job job, I'm a contractor for Department of State right now. He's doing stuff overseas. when I'm stateside I've started a company called the light sleeper and we make an ultra light

basically a wuby I'll explain it. It's a wubby with a sleeve to put a sleeping pad in and a pillow attachment. It's just a light sleeping system for light backpackers. It weighs two pounds so you don't got to take a whole sleep system

or a stuff sack and all that bivis sack. Start that company doing very well. We just started shipping last week. Oh, congrats. Yeah, you started shipping last week? You were showing me on your website earlier, and it's inexpensive.

It's like, what, 70 bucks? Yeah, 70 bucks. And, yeah, I looked at it. I was like, I want one. Yeah, absolutely. What's the website where people can get it? Thelightsleeper.com? The light sleeper.com.

The light sleeper.com is going to be down in the video description. Buy yourself a woebe with a sleeping pad. That's the most amazing. That's the Taj Mahooch. It is. Cavia, it doesn't come with a sleeping pad. Okay. It comes with a pocket to put your own sleeping pad in

because everyone has their own preferences, so I'm not going to... Look, you had me a wooby. You had me a movie. Like, the only piece of Army gear that ever... That's what I went with with. Did what it's meant to do. I came up with the idea because I was sitting there packing my son's nap mat for school. I don't know if you know what nap mat is.

Yeah, yeah. So I was rolling his up. Got out of the dryer. I was like rolling up, putting in his backpack for school in kindergarten. And I looked at it. I looked at my wife. I was like,

why is this not a thing for adults? She's like, what? I was like, I love taking naps. Yeah. And I kind of like just sat there and thought about it from then. I was like,

why did not have this in the field? And I hit up some buddies like a buddy on Marsock, Andy. And I was like, you think this is a good idea? He was like, dude, yeah. Why is that not a thing already? I was like, I don't know.

I'm going to go. I'm going to go on. I'm buying one. Hey, everybody. Make sure. by the light sleeper the light sleeper.com you owe it to yourself. I got

I got a scouts field trip coming up camping trip with my daughter so actually just had a guy he just bought three for his scouts. All right, all right. Yeah, we shipped over 100 orders this past week. That's amazing. We just are shipping this last week and over 100 orders already. It's been

that's fantastic. Awesome. Off to the races, man. Other than that, though, one got certified as a bounty hunter. Just kind of keep things spicy at home. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to do that. So you go and knock on people's doors, unpaid parking tickets, bitch, you're coming with me. Haven't done it yet.

Yeah, I just got certified last October, November. Okay. Me and my buddy from RFC that retired also. Yeah, we went and got certified together. I was like, dude, we should do this. I was talking to a guy overseas that used to do it. It sounded really easy. I was like, why are we not doing this?

Yeah, like, I talked to a dude who did bounty hunting at one point, and he had some wild stories. Yeah. but yeah suffice to say if like a dude that looks like Dustin comes and knocks on my door and it's like yeah yeah you're going to jail now it's like how much of a fight am I going to put up I'm probably just going to go along that's kind of what the guy was talking to said because I asked him I was like you know what's the you know it's kind of like a brocode like you don't know me so you're not going to hire me type thing yeah he's like no no no he's like if you and your buddy asked to work for me with your resumes and looking the way you do he's like I'm good to you every bounty I got. Oh, nice. Yeah, but we just got our company certified back in March. So we haven't had the ability to go out

and get anybody yet. Looking forward to. This dude, I remember him telling me a story about how he got on a flight to Honolulu and they had like 48 hours to find this guy or they were going to eat like a $50,000 bounty. I was like, holy shit. But then at the same time, the same guy told me, he's like, if I knock on a guy's door and it's like over unpaid

parking tickets or something, and the bounty is you know $2,000 and he offers me $3,000, I'm taking the money. They do. Yeah, that's perfectly legal too. Oh, is it really? It's not like you're bribing a public official. They're paying their bounty. It's perfectly legal. Oh, interesting.

As long as they pay their contractual fee. You don't have to take them to jail every time. If they can pay it right there on the spot, you don't got to take them to jail. Yeah. Nope to self. I know a guy who did it, and he said it's a lot of detect work. It's like find out who their girlfriends

were stuff like like where are they holing up you know and that's why we yeah why we haven't done anything yet because there's federal databases you can get access to yeah but you have to have a company they give those accesses to a company not a person so we had to wait for a company to get

certified yeah yeah I don't I don't know if I can wrestle a 300 pound felon but I'll be the guy with the paintball pepper pellet no the bean bag I'll do that for you I'll do that exactly I was thinking about buying a taser yeah And I said, no, I'll just go beanbag shotgun.

No, I think there's a beanbag shotgun. I can do that for you. I'll be your backup. Would you rather? Yeah, I don't know. I think I would be more rebellious against a taser than a shotgun racking. No, but I'm telling you, man, you just go and knock on the door, like, hey, come on, man. Like, let's go.

And, like, you know. If you talk to a lot about any hunters, that's the process. Yeah, yeah. Just treat them like a man. Like, it's a business thing. Yeah, yeah. Dude, like, you messed up. Right.

Come on. Right. And they've already been to court. It's not like, yeah. They're going to go spend like a day or two. Yeah. Right. Right.

Yeah. Some bounty hunting. We got some dust in the bounty hunter, live TV coming. And anything else you want to throw out there that you're working on? Nothing to think of it. Okay. That's about it. Shit, man.

I mean, it's been a hell of an interesting military career and post-service life. There's a ride. Yeah, it's a ride. Dee, was there anything on Patreon? Not that I saw, no. Okay. Well, dude, thank you so much for flying in and doing this interview. It's been super cool, man.

Appreciate you guys having me, man. Yeah, this is awesome. Absolutely. And thank you, Les for... Yeah, thanks, Les. Putting the shout out for us. Next week, I cannot... So after this whole interview,

I cannot for the life of me remember who's on next week. I'm so sorry. but I promise it's going to be cool every episode of the Tintowns is pretty cool it's going to be a thing it's going to be an event Jack will be there

I'll be there Dave will be there I'll be there if he doesn't quit on us I'll be there you somewhere else back doesn't go out again yeah Gary knows her yes Gary so Gary was an FBI negotiator he was recently on the

Netflix documentary Waco American Apocalypse He was in that documentary because he was one of the FBI negotiators early on, and then they kicked him out. There's a whole thing there that we will no doubt talk about. So, yeah, I'm excited to talk to Gary, and I'm sorry that I couldn't remember initially. So we'll see you guys next Friday episode. We're in the 200s now, so episode 202.

And also go to the light sleeper.com. If you don't, the commies win. Exactly. The terrorists win. if you don't get yourself a high-speed would-be stuff sack. And also check out our Patreon. Again, I'm going to plug it.

Go down there, get ad-free episodes, man. For less than a cup of coffee a month. Exactly. You can support our alcohol habit. So we will see all of you next Friday. Thank you for joining us. Thank you again, Dustin. Thank you, Justin.