The Team House - 7th Special Forces Group Officer and SF Selection Subject Matter Expert | David Walton | Ep. 207

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Dr. David Walton is a retired Special Forces officer with 25 years of SF experience including deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and across the globe with assignments spanning the tactical, operational, and strategic levels.  In addition to his Green Beret credentials, Dr. Walton has a decade of experience in academia where he teaches National Security Studies and Executive Leadership. His research portfolio includes Security Strategy, Organizational Culture and Dynamics, and Human Performance. He is a Subject Matter Expert in Special Forces Assessment and Selection with decades of experience working specifically with the Cadre, leadership, and candidate populations. He has published multiple works on the topic and remains at the forefront of the discussion. He is a Land Navigation specialist and is a graduate of the US Army Advanced Land Navigation course. His unique skills and experience give him a scholar-practitioner perspective that provides insight unavailable elsewhere. https://www.amazon.com/Ruck-Shut-Comprehensive-Assessment-Selection/dp/B0C1J3FDWD Today's Sponsors: BetterHelp ⬇️ ● If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. ● Visit https://BetterHelp.com/TEAMHOUSE today to get 10% off your first month. 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] #selection #specialforces #jsocBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Teamhouse know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our team house. our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Oaks, espionage, the Team House,

with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hello, everyone. Welcome to I believe episode 207. I'm Jack Murphy here with Here he is David Park So D is out sick today So your pal Jack is back in the hot seat here I feel a little bit like Greta

I shouldn't be here This is all wrong I should be at school playing with my friends But here I am I'm back behind here producing the show again Pressing all the buttons And our guest on tonight's show is Dr. David Walton

He is the author of Ruck Up or Shut Up. He is a former Special Forces officer, served in a number of different positions, and is really one of the subject matter experts on Special Forces assessment and selection. We're going to talk all about your career and all the things you have going on. Wally, thank you so much for coming on the show tonight. Yeah, thanks, Jack. Good to see you and Dave. You guys are hot off of your four-hour marathon with Secretary Miller.

a podcast triumph so tough shoes to follow and uh tough shoes to fill and and uh tough act to follow so i'm uh i'm i hope i'm up to the task so free me to you live tonight from uh the center of the universe sayville fort brag north carolina i'm literally a hand grenade toss away from the airborne special operations museum so uh thanks for having me on tonight so dave uh david uh here we go here's dave Dave, T-M-up with a question. You know the one. So, Wally, what is your origin story? How did you get your superpowers?

What led you into the military? My villain story, yeah. So I joined in 1991. So I grew up very, very fortunate. Had a great, great family life. Dad was a chemical engineer for DuPont, stayed-at-home mom. I'm a middle child.

Got an older brother, younger sister, and lived a great life. moved around a ton, born in Chicago, lived in New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and including a couple of years, we lived in Brazil. So I had a chance to grow up overseas. So I got that sort of bug for adventure early on, and my dad was multilingual. And early on, I had an appreciation for language and culture. And that probably shaped me a lot later on. You know, went to high school. like every other kid, I wrestled my school, played soccer, in athletics, went off to college. I went to a little place about Slipper Rock University, which is a real college in Pennsylvania,

just north of Pittsburgh, and was there during Desert Storm. And then 91, and I felt the bug to serve. I said, you know, I always knew I wanted to do something adventurous, and I said, I got to do something. I mean, the fever pitch was high for thankful service. And I was in college, and I still wanted to stay at a cadet and continue that pathway. And I joined the reserves. And I remember I was sitting in my mind's eye, I was sitting in the MEP station as the tanks for crossing the berm for the 100-hour war. If that's probably not what happened, I'm certain it was much less heroic, but in my mind's eye, I played.

out as though I was, you know, the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor and I was rushing to the recruiting station. But it was something, something similar. Right. Yeah, so, so I joined and graduated and got my commission in 1993, was a cavalry officer, served down in the first cavalry division, had a tank platoon, a scout platoon, and a mechanized rifle platoon. And, And I was very fortunate that I was exposed to an amazing Special Forces prior service officer. He was an NCO that had gone to OCS and gotten his commission, and he was my battalion assistant intel officer. And as a scout platoon, I worked very closely with him.

And I thought, man, that special forces stuff is cool. And that was right at the time that they authorized the military free force. badge, the Halo badge. And everybody knows that halo badge is about as sexy as a badge can get. And I was like, oh, man, that, I got to touch that magic. That is, that is something cool. So, so I, I, you know, Special Forces was a pipe dream. I mean, this is pre-internet. You know, we didn't know these things existed. They were, they were, they were legendary in our minds. And, and I went to selection and made it, you know, but by the skin of my teeth. I think everybody thinks they made it by the skin of their teeth. Got selected.

went on to serve in the 7th Special Forces Group. I had a dive team and had an amazing experience. Had some great NCOs, two great team sergeants. Had a ton of experience deployed Colombia and Ecuador and Bolivia. And actually, I've had been fortunate that over my career, I've been in every country in Central and South America. So fairly well traveled. did some time mid-career at US SOC and at J-SAC,

and then retired out of the Special Warfare Center in 2013. And it was in my time in 2013 where I got exposed deeply to Special Forces Assessment Selection. It came under my leadership portfolio. Back then, SFAS was a bit of a homeless entity. There was sort of this institutional argument about who should own, special forces assessment selection should it be a separate entity that that is separate from the pipeline or should have fallen to the pipeline and there was a always a big discussion you know because there's there too much control of one

entity and how's it going to work and in that process it was it was literally just a separate company inside of SWIC and those that understand SWIC understand how immense that beast is it's you know people think that SWIC is just the special forces pipeline it is there's like I don't know something like 60-quart 10,000 students a year. It's a huge, huge beast. And that's the school house. And then there's the center that does all the proponancy and the manual writing and all that business.

And it's a huge beast of this, so the SFAAS was sort of lost for a while. And I had, was fortunate I earned the trust of the commanding general and other senior leaders. And they said, hey, we'll give this thing to Walton. He'll be in charge of this. So I got to oversee selection as part of my portfolio. And it was at a critical time that we were really examining closely what SFAS was and the whole Q course. And I got to be part of that process. So I really got to see behind the curtain how selection works.

And then I retired in 2013. I went on to get my doctorate and went into academia. I spent about 10 years as a professor of national security fairs where I specialized in human performance. research methodology and national security studies. And part of my individual research portfolio was SFAS. I wrote my dissertation on SFAS about how we teach culture to SF guys. And I just for 10 straight years, it was my personal research project. And I spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours walking out at Camp McCall,

and talking to cadre and commanders and candidates. And so I got this sort of a unique view of selection that most guys don't. And I got to see how everything works, all the machinations of it. And that led to a research project on integrating females into SFAAS, which, of course, I think people probably know now. We've had a few get selected. As a matter of fact, we just had the fourth one selected a few months ago and is now in the Q-Course. So we're now up to four total female green berets or three green berets,

female green braes and one still in the pipeline. And we'll talk more about that in a minute. And then after about a decade in academia, I got bored and went back to the operational force and I now work at Socom on Fort Braddock. And where I'm continuing my research, including the book Ruck Up or Shut Up, which is just fresh off the presses and is doing quite well and getting some great feedback.

So that's my story. Can't wait to dig into that and SFAS. And we're going to kind of go back and do sort of chronologically in the military like your experiences. But just why it's fresh on my mind. Why does it matter what's important about who owns SFAS and what are the pros and cons of that? Well, so the so the institutional argument for years and years and years that if you couldn't put so as you can imagine senior commanders are very interested in the numbers that graduate the Q-course, right?

The Q-Course supplies the Special Forces regiment. You got to have so many green berets to do the nation's business. So there's always a focus on how many guys are you graduating. And of course, whenever somebody talks about how many guys are graduating, there's always how many guys aren't graduating. So why aren't they graduating? So there's this sort of eternal conflict between the guys that do the selecting and the guys that do the training.

And so when the guy, when the same commander owns both the selection and the training, they can sort of hide inconsistencies, you know, if there were inconsistencies to hide. Here's the great news. Selection is awesome. It's not broken despite what you may hear. But if so if they are separated and you're failing guys out of the pipeline, out of the Q course, the pipeline instructors could say, well, listen, they're just not selecting the right guys. Selection is broken.

And likewise, the guys of selection can say, listen, we're selecting the right guys. The Q-course isn't training them the right way. So there's this sort of institutional, you know, conflict there. And one of the, you know, I'm happy to say that while I own selection for a good while, the best thing that I did was I put it back with the Q-course. And I gave it back to First Battalion, First Special War for Training Group, which owns the rest of the pipeline, because,

I wanted to remove that barrier. I wanted to take away that excuse that we're not selecting the right guys. You're not turning the right guys. And we just got rid of it's a, it is the is the age old institutional problem of, you know, he said, she said, pushing it off on someone. So the fact that it resides under the under one guy means that there's one guy that controls that process, right? So it streamlines it. This is unity of effort, you know, this is standard military principles that you can't have these, these warring factors. Wait a second there, Dr. Walton.

I heard, I read on the internet that it's gone woke now. They're just handing it out the kids. Yeah, you show up. So here's how it works, Jack. You show up to Fort Bragg. They issue you a two-court canteen of pizza and your green beret. And you're done. It's just like that.

It's amazingly simple. No, it's that, and that is the narrative, right? And so here's the problem is that is that SWIC doesn't want to talk about selection, because they don't want to give up the standard. So they're in a tough position in that they don't want to tell guys exactly what to expect at selection so they don't say anything.

And the people that are stuck in that in that conflict are the cadre. Because here's what happens is if selection numbers and pipeline numbers go up, then the narrative is they're giving it away. The cadre are just they're, They're handing out. No more standards.

Standards are eroded. It doesn't mean anything anymore. And then if they, if numbers go down, then the cadre are blamed for being too hard, gatekeepers. You know, they're just, you know, they're bad guys. They're horrible people. And neither one of those is remotely true. The cadre at SWIC, that's probably the hardest job in the, in the regimen. I mean, the pressures are unbelievable.

So many masters, everybody wants to get in your business. and my assessment is that those cadre are doing an amazing job. And I really came to learn that clearly when I was studying the female candidates going through selection because I thought, oh, you know, I'm an old school green bra. I come from the old army in my mind. And I thought, oh, there's, you know, if the women have gone through, I listened, I read the, I read the reports out of Ranger School. I heard how, you know, how they just gave it away.

Of course, you could never find any real evidence of that. So when I went out to selection, I was not intending to look at that problem. I was looking at the actual Q course, and I sort of stumbled on selection as part of my research. And I just happened to like, hey, there's females out here. And I was like, this is interesting. This is a unique phenomenon. This is a phenomenological study. Let's look at what this thing is.

So I got to watch the cadre interact in this unique training environment. So you have to understand selection. It is at Camp McCall, North Carolina, about 30, 40 miles west of Fort Bragg. It is an upside down world. It exists in its own universe. And the cadre are rulers of the domain out there. So if the cadre wanted to fail everybody or pass everybody, like Thanos, they can snap a finger and make it happen.

So I went out there and I saw this unique training environment, selection is unbelievably unique, and this unique training population, these females. And I was thinking, okay, the cadre, you know, something is a foot. I'm like you, Jack, I'm on social media and I see it. I'm thinking, oh, I'm going to crack the lid on this one. I'm going to, here it is. I'm going to find a smoking gun. And it didn't exist.

The cadre work. were unbelievably professional and incredibly skilled at assessing. They're like junior psychologists in the field, expeditionary and just an amazing job. And I came out of that thinking, my God, this is an unbelievable process. And the regiment is doing it right. Like we are, we have, we have cracked the code. And SWIC cannot or will not tell that story. and the cadre are just getting beat up over the head over this

in the press and in social media and I thought man this is such a cool story why can't we tell the story I wanted to tell that story and so that's what I did first in my article in the fall of last year and now with the book and the the cool thing is

is that when you know the truth and you can tell that story there is a real need for it So who tells the story of selection right now? And the reality of it is the story is told by the guys that don't make it. The non-selects. It's 64% of the guys that go to selection will not make it. And they go back to the operational force and they're disgruntled.

Why shouldn't they be? They just had their dreams dashed. And so these are the guys that are the tellers of the story of selection. And they have a completely incorrect view of it or certainly inadequate view of it. And so the narrative in the operational force, which carries out into the retirees like me, excuse me, and others is that selection is broken, the regiment's given it away, and, you know, the commune is so many. And that's just, and it's unfair.

It's unfair to the regiment. It's unfair to the cadre, and it's unfair to all the candidates, both current and future candidates. And that's a real problem, if you, if you, particularly if you've got like a recruiter, rooting problem like we're kind of facing right now. Guys aren't going to want to go to selection, which is damn near impossible in a good day, and the narrative

is every day is a bad day. It's like, well, I guess I won't go to selection. And I thought, man, that's a real crime. Maybe there's something I can do this. Swick can't or won't. I can, and I will, and I did. And the response has been huge. So, so that's, that's, that's, you know,

there's, there's the truth. There's, there's the story. It's, it's fantastic. We're going to, uh, go more into your book and more into selection in a bit. Do we want to, do you want to kind of rewind to tell us about your, your cab unit or what was that like when showing up as a boot, you know, about a new lieutenant and.

Brutal. So I was a, I was an armor guy and I was in an infantry brigade. My brigade commander was General Casey who went on to something, if not it or a few. And, uh, and I was a, I was, we were the lone tank unit in an infantry brigade. And this is at the time of the light, heavy imperative. So if you guys remember, think back, there used to be a, and to some degree still is, there was a mandate that infantry officers had to do a heavy tour and a light tour, or a light tour and a heavy tour.

So all of the captains in this infantry brigade were prior light infantry guys, 1001st, 82nd, 25th, and a whole bunch of rounds. Ranger Regiment guys. And they got sent to the first cab division. Flankety Clank, I'm a tank. And they were pissed. They were just pissed at the world, pissed that they had to come deal with operational ready rates and services and motorpool and oil samples. And so every tanker was in the crosshairs of these disgruntled captains. And here comes little old Lieutenant Walton who says, hey, I want to raise my hand and go to special forces and they looked at me like

who do you think you are you are not like you son of a bitch like you're not better than us and in you know in their mind they're they're just angry because they got stuck on a on a on a on on on on foot and in the back of a track

they want to be jumping out of airplanes and pass ripping out of helicopters and doing cool guy stuff and that was not cool guy stuff and so so it was a hostile working on it but I was incredibly fortunate I had great NCOs and we stay busy.

God Almighty. We, we, the operational tempo of that unit was unbelievable. For, for three years, we, we would go to the field on a Monday morning and stay out and maneuver all week until Friday, like, three o'clock. You'd literally park the tanks and the Bradley's out in the woods and they truck you back and you, you, you, you, rest and recuperate over a weekend and then Monday morning they'd drive you right back out to the woods and we did that for three years I literally slept more in a Humvee a Bradley or a tank that I did my own bed and we deployed we got to so we did NTC I did multiple gunneries we got I got to field the M1A2 tank which was the newest amazing thing and so I was a I was all in on on the mechanized life

and deployed to Kuwait on Inherit Resolve or Desert Wolf or one of those deployments and got to do amazing things and came to the very quick realization that this sucks. Like, you wreak of diesel fuel and your life is the product of how good your mechanics are. And while it was cool, I learned a ton. I got to do all those lieutenant things that you want as a platoon leader and got to do some amazing stuff. I also realized, like, I don't want, this is like, I've done it all now. These last three years, I've literally done everything cool you can do. What's next?

And that's why Special Forces was such a beacon on the hill. And I thought, oh, man, like, that's going to be cool as hell. And I remember the day. So they used to have, if you guys remember, the 82nd used to have the M551-Sheriton, armored reconnaissance vehicle. It was not a tank, but it was the 80 seconds tank. And I thought, oh, that's going to be cool. I'll go do that. I'll go do that

armored tank thing. That's unique, and I can get behind that. And then, like, they pulled the carpet out from under me, and they canceled the armored gun system, which was the replacement for the Sheridan. And so any opportunity to do anything other than regular tank

stuff was vanished overnight. I was like, well, fuck this. I'm going, I'm going special forces. I'm not doing this. for the rest of my career. So with special forces, you know, like, I either going to do special forces, or I'm just going to be stuck in a motor pool forever, and nobody wants that.

So that's my, that's how I sort of, and of course, I met that, that the prior service, Green Bray and saw those halo wings, and that was the icing on the cake. I said, baby, that's what I want to do. And so I sprinted it towards that. Morale, I mean, with a, with a field schedule like that,

morale must have been horrible. horrible, right? I mean, like, there are a lot of upset Mamas at home. It was the, I have never been in a unit that was more excited. In matter of fact, it was interesting. Man, guys love to go out there and do that. Well, you had weekends off. You always came home for the weekends. Unless you were doing tank, tank guard, you were, you were home on the weekend. So it was, it was actually, it was kind of cool.

It was kind of like you joined, it was all the best parts. you joined to drive tanks and shoot, shoot the bang guns and 50 Cal and, you know, do movement to contact and scouting missions and all that stuff. And then you got to go home every weekend. So it was like, this was pretty cool. I could sustain that. Guys were excited about that. As a matter of fact, there was a point.

I think it was General Funk was the Corps commanders. So three Corps commanders down there. There's two divisions on four days. There was second hour in division and first Cab Division and some separate brigades. And we had, it was, you know, a huge installation. And we, General Funk was the Corps commander. And the soldiers were getting abused in Killeen, Texas, which is the town right outside of Fort Hood.

You know, predatory loans and businesses were just very hostile towards soldiers. So General Funk took the entire Corps, both divisions, every vehicle. He said, everyone goes to the field. And he kept, we literally took all the vehicles out of the motorpool. drove them across the cattle guards into the training areas and parked them. There was no room to maneuver them. And he just kept the soldiers in the field.

And the town leaders in about four days that destroying the businesses, we give up. We're on board. We're going to be helpful. And overnight, it was like the veil has been lifted and now we're all rock stars. It was unbelievable.

You guys get there for the weekend. It's like, welcome home, troops. Yeah, it was like, it was like the greatest homecoming ever. Yeah. You know, now it's free chips and salsa everywhere you go and, and tops aren't harassing anybody. And all of a sudden all the all the off post-alding started, you know, they were, you know, painting the painting walls and changing out fixtures. So it was a game changer. But the morality unit was unbelievably high.

Guys love that stuff. And so, but that's not sustainable, right? I knew that I came to the unit in the unique time. I got, you know, I spent all that time to field. And all my armor seniors were telling me, hey, this isn't normal. Like, this is, like, live it up while you can because this is amazing. And so I sort of hooked. I was like, yeah, they gave me a little taste of that smack.

And I was like, hmm, I need more of that. And I knew I was going to get that in armor. So it was like, you got to go s. And I always knew from a kid, I remember, I tell the story in the book. I remember as a kid going swimming, like in a pool or a lake or stream. And I remember, you guys probably did the same thing. And this sounds weird, but we all did it, where you practice slipping in and out of the water as quietly as you could. Like you go into water and you try to surface real quiet, right?

And the water would trickle off your ears and you tried to, like you were just a commando and you were on the mission. And so that was me as a kid, you know. I lived outside building bike ramps and dangerous stunts on bicycles and dirt-clod wars and forts in the neighborhood. And so, like, venture was how I was raised. And, of course, overseas, I could remember growing up in Brazil, I was, you know, 10 years old. And my brother is three years older than me. We would leave our little sequestered, boistered American apartment complex, you know, with armed guards. and we go out to the barrio and to the favela and like to the to the favela and like buy illegal fireworks.

And I think to myself, Jesus Christ, if my kids did that as a father and I knew my kids were doing that, I would lose my mind. We would do that like routinely. It was like, that's just what you did. Yeah. And so like adventure was just like normal. Like this is kind of, it has always been part of my background. So like the army was a natural step. I always know I wanted to serve.

I didn't know. I didn't know what a green beret was. I just knew I wanted to do something in the military and I wanted to do something special. And I got to do that as a tanker and then I knew that wasn't going to last. And so in the back of my mind, I always thought I want, you know, hey, I want to be a commando. I don't think anybody realistically joins the Army and wants to be a supply clerk, right? Nobody wants to go be an administrative specialist. You want to jump out of airplanes and shoot guns and blow shit up.

Well, you know, there's not a whole lot of things in the Army that get you to do that. Being a green gray is one of them. So I kind of always felt like I was going to do that thing. I just didn't know how I was going to do it. And when it sort of appeared in front of me, you know, in a manner of like six months, you know, I got this mentor, this green gray. They canceled the armored gun system. My time as lieutenant was coming to an end, and I was going to have to go off and do something less, less enjoyable. and I was like, man, I still, I need that adventure still.

I want to serve, but I need that adventure. Where's that adventure at? It's at Fort Bragg, baby. So let's go to Bragg and let's test ourselves. So I got here as fast as I could. You wrote the authoritative work on SFAS getting through SFAS, but you didn't know all this back then. What did you do to prepare?

You'd been working in a tank. What did you do to prepare for SFAS? I did it all, almost a whole. wrong. So, so SF, so this the regiment used to publish SWIC and the recruiters used to publish this little white pamphlets. It was about about 20 pages long. And it was the, it was the official SFAS prep workout. And, uh, and I think it was about six weeks long. And it was kind of standard boilerplate stuff. And I, so I did that. And the deal was, and it was sort of this like this plasticy waterproof material and you had to fill it out, you know, this day I did my

push-ups and my pull-ups and my run and my rock and and and and the instructions were when you report the selection at camp mccall you're gonna you have to have this booklet and on the cover was the you know your name and the date you finished it and your signature like like you're you know signing a lease and and so you had to turn this this thing in so that that was how i prep like the internet didn't exist you anything about selection i remember there was a on for hood there's the the main one main drag essentially goes through the entire post and all the that's the that's the road that everyone runs on PT and I remember one day I was I was out there rucking during PT hours and another kid came rucking at me and of course this is fort hood this is tanker tanker

territory there ain't a whole lot of ruckers out there so you do look like you were a goddamn commando if you had a ruck on your back and you were walking so I was walking he was walking And of course, you start queuing each other. And we're going by. And he says, you go into selection? And I was like, yeah. He goes, and he was carrying a big four by four, you know, in lieu of a weapon. And he said, make sure you get a weapon.

And I was like, that's my prep. That's my G2. That's what I know. That was it. So I had no idea what I was doing. I went in totally blind. I think I read a book where I recall my expectation of selection. was the tar paper shacks.

So Camp McCall used to be this austere back hole, just a dump in the woods, and they were famous for their tar paper shacks. And that's what candidates left in. And that was the only thing, that was the only infrastructure out of Camp McCall. So when I showed up to Camp McCall, and I couldn't find any of the tar paper shacks,

I was like, well, that's all my G2. I'm trying to Y4, and I'm looking for tar paper shacks. And 50% of what I know is, incorrect now. So I'm screwed. But I was lucky that, you know, fitness was always a thing for me. I grew up wrestling and fitness was just, you know, when you're a young lieutenant, you don't know shit. Like, like, you know how to do PT and you know how to do like platoon level troop leading procedures. And that's it. Like, and you pray to God that your platoon sergeant is not going to let you kill anybody. So I showed up to my platoon and I was good at troop leading procedures and PT. And so I

focused on PT so I was just naturally I was fortunate enough to be fit just because that's the only thing I knew how to do and so when I showed up I was actually well prepared I had developed this in a little workout routine that I called a five by five it's a you do a five mile rock a hundred squats with your ruck on your back drop off your ruck do a five mile run then do another hundred squats and and and I thought this is the coolest thing I'm going to smoke it. And actually, at the time, nobody knew exercise science. Like, this is what, you have to remember, this is 1994-95 timeframe that when you did the daily dozen still, you'd stand out the first company, you do the cherry pepper and the jumping jack. Yeah. So I didn't know what I was doing.

So I just, I discovered this five by five and it just felt right. I remember I'd do this workout and I would just be absolutely smoked. I'd be like, God, I'm on my legs feel like lead and, but I'm getting better. Right. You know, so I muscle through it. It turns out now, you know, 25 years later, the science is actually pretty clear that the five by five workout is like the superior method. Yeah. Yeah. Literature on it and like, I was like, you know, so I'm not saying I invented exercise science for green braes, but I'm not not saying it is. Yeah. So, yeah, so I stumbled through. I got lucky when I got out there. I was in naturally good shape, but I had no G2. I,

I did not know what to expect. Zero understanding of the operational environment. And I think like most guys, I got lucky and got through. Dave, I give a quick shout out. Our sponsor of the show tonight is BetterHelp. Dave, could you give a little shout out to BetterHelp today? Yeah. So BetterHelp is a, you know, it's a website app that allows you to

find a counselor and mental health is important for everybody, especially veterans, but not just veterans. Everybody goes through rough patches. Everybody has dark periods. Everybody has conflict in their life, you know, and finding a good therapist is tough. You have to shop around. You have to find the right person. BetterHelp puts all that at your fingertip. So check out our friends at BetterHelp. Jack, is there a... Yes. So if you guys go to BetterHelp, that. com slash teamhouse today you'll get 10% off your first month that's better help help.com slash team house so thank you guys for sponsoring the show and uh since we're here and i'm sorry to

interrupt uh Dave I will give a little shout out to us uh the team house if you guys want to get access to these episodes ad free check out our patreon it's up on the screen now or the link is down in the description so thank you for joining us I'm going to go out of order here and read one of the comments that was a donation okay just because now is a good time global media thank you very much global media says get those likes up for the team house yeah everybody give us a like subscribe to the channel okay back to you doctor dave yeah so so i was saying you know i had no g2 i know i i prepped by by instinct and i just i just happened to get it right um so i remember so i had that that that pt pamphlet that was advanced uh uh uh uh

fitness programming back then. And I remember I reported to brag and I handed my little booklet and I was all proud. I was like, oh, I passed the first test. And I handed it to the cadre and he looked at it and chucked it in the trash can. I was like, I was like, man, did like, we're in it now. Like, this is upside down the world. I thought I was doing the right thing. And so immediately, you know, back on your heels and trying to figure out selection.

And it is, it was, you know, a non-21 days of. complete confusion and chaos and and fascination. I think that's probably the best way to describe it is I was fascinated by this, this process. And I was just like, and when you go through selection, and so most guys' understanding of selection is that they've been through it. So you've been a gunshot wound. You've had a gunshot wound.

You're now supposed to be an expert in trauma medicine. So guys that go have been to selection, but haven't studied it beyond that, have a very incomplete understanding what selection is. But I was fascinated by it. And I can remember, so I was in seventh group when they were here at Fort Bragg, and they had just started the 18 X-ray program, which is the SF baby program. And the rumor, you know, history repeats itself. The rumor was, oh, they're giving it away out there. You know, the standards are gone, letting these young kids in. What's going on?

And the SFAS commander at the time was Tony Fletcher, who's now general Tony Fletcher. And he happened to have been, he did his time prior to going out to selection in my company in A17. And so a couple of us decided, hey, let's get in a car on this drive off the selection. We're going to get to the bottom of this. Like we're going to crack this code. So we literally drove out to Camp McCall. Back then it was an open, like you could just drive on to Camp McCall. And we drove up to the selection hut, knocked on the door, said, hey, Tony, what the fuck, man?

What's going on out here? And he was like, he's like, why? What do you guys hear? And, you know, you're out there and isolated. We had no idea what the rumors were. And we told him, and he took us around and we talked to Cadre and he showed us the books. And, I mean, this is old school here. This is when everything was still, you know, paper copies of the records.

Yeah. And I was like, well, this is not, this isn't what I heard. Like, this is, selection is like this cool thing. So early on, I had this exposure to it in this unique way. And I thought, so in my mind, I always had this idea that if you want it done right, you got to do it yourself. So I drove out to McCall with my boys and we figured it out. It was done right. Mystery solved.

You know, the controversy is over. Let's go back to doing team stuff. And I put selection out of my mind. Yeah. You know, it always stays in your mind because it's part of your, part of your deep. and A, but in my mind, selection works. It's good to go. And I didn't come back to it until years later when I owned it. And I was again, fascinated by that. So what was your time in seven group like? How was it when you got there? And what were some of the first things you did?

Yeah, I was a, I was a pre-GWAT guy. So I was actually deployed with my ODA on 9-11. So I had team time about half my team time, pre-9-11, half-my-team, post-9-11. So I got to see the best of both worlds. And I think that being a green beret pre-9-11 was harder than post-9-11. Because you didn't have tons of sexy equipment. You didn't have all the wasta and all the credibility, and you were just sort of left to your lonesome. So that was the golden age of being a green gray. you would take your ODA and you'd deploy downrange to, you know, whatever, you know, pick a country.

And you were the only dudes in the country. There was the, there was a mill group up in the embassy. And you were, you and your ODA were out in the, out in the hundlea, mixing it up, doing, and this is, so when I graduated the Q course in 2000 or in 1999, everyone said, 2000 is the year of the CIB in Columbia. This is, this is before 9-11. was counter narcotics. Right. Everything was counter drug.

And so if you want to do counter drug stuff, where do you go? Latin America. Right. Everybody wanted seventh group. And I was fortunate I had a language rating already because I've grown up in Brazil and spoke a little bit of Portuguese and then had some Spanish in a high school and reinforced it. My hometown is a big migrant Latin community.

So I had a little bit of a language background. And I said, I'm getting seventh group, baby. I'm going to where the action is. In 2000 is the year of the CIA be in Columbia. Let's go get some trigger time. And got the seventh group. And within a year, 9-11 happens. And now everybody, nobody cares about counter-drug.

Right. And now it's counterterrorism. And in matter of fact, they switched so quickly that they stopped calling it counter-drug. And they had to call it counter-narco-terrorism. Right. So you get money. Now, because of the GWAT, I mean, do we just sort of by default win the war on drugs? Did that just?

Yeah. No. By every metric possible, the war on drugs continues. And I spent significant time there. So I did my team time. We were deployed during 9-11. Came back to, did my team time, did some three-time. And then I went back to Latin America as to.

chief of counter-narco terrorism for JTF Bravo down in Sotomair Base, which is where Ali North trained his contras. And so I spent another year down there doing counter-narcotics and ended up as number three on the MS-13 hit list. We had been so effective. So we, Sotomos and air base and there's a helicopter battalion there, and I ended up getting my own helicopter task force with no ground forces. I was the ground force. So we would deploy to other countries like Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and we would get a host nation Merck force. And they'd be, you know, SWAT guys or special operations guys. And so they had the troops.

They didn't have the aircraft. We had the aircraft, didn't have the troops. I ended up leading the helicopter task force when we'd go get drugs. And we would catch millions of dollars in drugs. The way it works is the drugs are mostly manufactured on the end. Ridge and they take off from from Columbia and they'd fly north across the Caribbean and then hook dog leg in west go right across Belize and land in the area of Guatemala and Mexico called the Petan region and it's a you know it's a it's a remote jungle area and they would literally just

crash land these planes full of drugs and then somebody would at the jungle jungle strip would drive a vehicle out load them up and they'd be gone so we would track we would get these these radar tracks and get in our helicopters and go fly off and chase these guys down. So we're flying across the jungle in the back of our CH-47s and Blackhawks with host nation dudes and chasing these drugs. And we'd wait for that aircraft that we'd be following the little, little, little, little, a little fixed-wing aircraft. It would crash in the jungle and then we'd land in the helicopter.

You had to get there within like minutes because a couple of jingle trucks would pull up. they load all the drugs off and take off. And we got so effective at it. We were catching millions of dollars in drugs every month. And I ended up on the MS-13 hit list. Like, they found out who I was. Dave, was that part of us, no cap? No, it's not.

It was totally separate. So it's a, it's run out of Jada South, out of Key West. And that's just a bunch of staff guys. It's like, I think it's like probably Coast Guard heavy because of nature. And, and it's just a. bunch of staff dudes and then the only action on they have is the me as the chief of counter knocker terrorism in Honduras and a helicopters and whoever we can scrounge up so we would spend you know we'd spend a couple weeks talking to talking to mill groups across Latin

America saying hey can you guys rustle up a ground force for us I'll be the ground force commander I got aviation assets you give me your Bubba's you guys got less restrictive ROE we'll go chase down these drug guys and And you guys will get all the credit. And so I spent a year doing that. And we, like, bizarre a world. I mean, it was like, getting back of this, CH47 with no SATCOM communication.

This isn't, this isn't 160 a sore. This is like, you know, conventional aviation unit. And, like, fly off in the middle of night, chase down these helicopters, these planes full of drugs. They're going to crash land in the jungle. We're going to hover over as close as we can get. and drop you guys off and go get them. And it was like, holy shit, man.

Like, this is not, there's no, there's no manual for this. Who was, who was generating the intelligence and developing the target packages for that? So they was purely off radar tracks. So we'd have a picket line of, of naval vessels in the Caribbean, and they'd pick up these. So what would happen is, is an aircraft would take off from an airfield in Venezuela or Columbia or Panama and what would happen is is they would file a flight plan for something local and then they would deviate from that flight plan and turn off their beacon and that was like okay that's that's the trigger something's going to happen so so one of our host nation partners would sort of report this up

sometimes we'd get it in time something that that information would then go to jadda south up in kews and they would radio that into one of the picket uh ships and they would start radar tracking these aircraft. And they would, you know, flying, you know, low, trying to avoid radar. And they would just shoot up and we would track them the whole way. And then they'd start dog-legged in to cross the Belize and land in the pretend. And it was sort of like a, it was like a, maybe we'll catch him, maybe we won't. Yeah.

But we're going to give it a shot. And we could literally just pile a bunch of dudes on the back of these helicopters and take off in the middle of night and hope we could intercept them in time. So it was like, did a mouse? Did you ever have any dust-ups with the drug traffickers on the ground? Jack, that is against the rules of engagement. Americans are not... Come on.

It's the team house, Dave. But I would tell you, but the host nation forces today that you observed. Well played, Dave. Well played. Routinely. I would marvel because I just come from team time and deployed all over. and of course very, very strict rules of engagement with your ODA. Like, you can't have an international incident.

So I was used to like, like, that'll shout not. And then I show this conventional unit and I'm like the lone guy. And it was like, do whatever you want. The host nation guys, it's their rules of engagement. I was like, holy shit. Like, this is a goddamn international incident every time we go out. Like, yeah, let's go lump some dudes up. And they were just, I mean,

Let's just say that the technique for an EPW search for a Belizean SWAT guy is not the same as it is for young Rangers. Yeah. It was like, holy shit. So routinely dustups, I got shot at way more in Central America than I did in Afghanistan or Iraq. So, like, I was like, I can't wait to get to the Middle East so I can get some peace and quiet. It was bizarre. And we would deploy. So I would tell you we would, so we deploy about two weeks out every month.

We do this mission. And then the other two weeks of the month, I was traveling around all the embassies and the middle groups to convince them to put together a package of ground force so we could come to their country and do the same thing for him. And so I'm traveling as a civilian, as a singleton, and routinely get death threats and the DEA guy would knock on my door in the middle of night saying, hey, don't leave the hotel tonight. like there's probably not safe you to go out but yeah okay yeah no problem here like i'm here by myself and i don't have a whole oda stacked up on the other side of the wall here like it was it was the wild wild west and i can't imagine having that experience without a special operations background like i was really really confident uh in my you know my personal combat skills my ability to manage manage risk and and do all that you know detailed planning on that stuff but holy shit

That was just a bizarre time. And not long after I left, they stopped doing that sort of thing. I think because the guy that followed me was a conventional guy, and I don't think he fared very well. And so I escaped by the skin of my teeth, but I did really well, and it was an amazing experience. Tons of trigger time, tons of, you know, on the ground, like just weird tactics.

and like you want to learn how to advise and assist. You'd be the only guy that speaks English, except for the helicopter pilots and the crew. And everybody else in the back only speaks Spanish. So my broken Spanish is what's keeping us from, you know, violating international law. And somehow we made it through. And that sounds like every SF guy's dream job right there. It is. Absolutely.

I thought time seemed quaint. Like, holy smokes. So, yeah, it was an amazing experience. And I feel like that was sort of the payoff for all the restrictive ROE when you're with your team downrange and going to Columbia and doing stuff. Like now it's like there's no rules and it's like the wob, lob, love less. And I was like, hell yeah, let's go. Yeah. Except for the Sith guys, Jack.

Their dream job was Kagg. Anyway. So did they like, you guys were very successful. Did the cartels become savvy to how. you guys were doing it and did they deploy countermeasures? It's a, it's part of the business model. Okay. Like, they're going to launch, so they would start launching two aircraft at a time.

They would go for offset, offset landing strips. Like, for them, it's just part of the business model. Listen, I land one aircraft and I get it, I get it across the border. That's, you know, that's a couple million dollars. Right. What if you catch one? I'll just send five. Right.

It's just part of the game for them. So it is, and that, that same mentality continues today. It's, it all it is. is a business. Now, it's an incredibly violent business, but it's a business. The incentives for doing that are so massive, your return on investment is immense. Why wouldn't you do it? So, of course, they're going to keep doing it. So, yeah, you promised us a war story. That was a pretty good one, Dr. Walton. What was the next assignment after that? So I came back from Latin America and went to J-Soc and lived that life for a good while.

And I got to Iraq and Afghanistan. I was in J-Socke with General McChrystal and Admiral McRaven and had some amazing experiences. Everyone thinks they know what J-Soc does until they go to J-Socke, and you're like, oh, my God, I had no idea these guys did this. So I got to do that for quite a few years, multiple deployments Iraq and Afghanistan and doing all that. And again, really eye-opening.

So I never had any idea that that world existed when I was on an ODA. You know, you thought that they do. I know what they do. And I showed up there and I was like, that's not what I thought they did. And, you know, amazing exposure. That's when I really got to understand the intel community and how, you know, guys asked me this all the time, you know, what would surprise you about, you know, my entire adult life I've been in federal service, but would surprise you.

And I would say, whatever you, you know, you should be supremely confident that whatever your good idea is, you know, why don't they do this? There's somebody somewhere doing exactly that thing. And they're doing it really well to a really exquisite level. But you should also be incredibly scared that they're probably fucking it up as well. So it's this, these units that do these amazing things, but we're like making it up as we get. go. So I remember I was in Afghanistan and we had we were weathered in I was in I was in Bago and we were weathered in and my buddy my buddy Cookie who's in the he's actually the tall guy

in the picture on the on the opener and so Cookie and I went to the queue together and he went off to do DIA stuff so I pop into Afghanistan and there's cookie and hey what's going on brother and and he says hey listen we're the weather stocked in we got this some stuff we got people and documents and intel we got to get it down to Kabul and we're going to do we're organizing a ground convoy the weather's no good we can't we're usually we fly it in totally safe we can't get it down and we got to do it and we're sure on people would you would you would you would you come with us and I said yeah you got a cookie so I get in a I joc up I get in a vehicle he's in one vehicle with a

another operator. I'm in a vehicle, and I have a female operative with me, who I've never met before. She was clearly very new at this. And we got a bunch of, you know, highly sensitive material in the vehicle with us. I put it that way. And we take off driving down to Kabul. And, like, there's no ISR.

There's no gun ships overhead. It's just us and some high-value stuff. And just two vehicles, and we're driving down there. And I'm like, this isn't, like, this isn't sophisticated. This is not like the movies. And we drive down there and it's, and my whole operational career, I'd been in Latin America. And that's driving in Latin America is a full contact sport. Like, question is nine-tenths of law.

You're, you know, cattle guard, you're digging everybody. You go to Kabul and that makes, that makes South America look tame. Like it was like, and there's two of us. And we're in up armored vehicles and we got the jammers going. And, you know, we're, you know, dressed up in our guard. supposed to look like natives. And, of course, you can see the antennas on the vehicles. Everyone knows who you are.

And it's full contact. And we're busting through, you know, traffic and roadblocks. Rubbing is racing. I mean, it was, I was like, like, this is, again, another goddamn international incident. So we pull up to the safe house in Kabul. And it's a station safe house with DIA joint. And I'm thinking, okay, we made it. Like, we're there.

and we pull up and it's like there's like weapons laying everywhere post nation guys wandering in and out no security like stacks of cash sipper drives stacked up over here I'm like I thought you guys were the pros from Dover what the fuck is going on over here

like who are these 10 dudes just like playing with their guns like flagging everybody like does anybody know who they are they're just some guys we have like who the fuck is in charge here. And I thought to myself, wow, we have this, we're this incredibly complex intelligence community that defines this exquisite intelligence. But on the ground, it's a bunch

of these Yahoo's who haven't done a sensitive items inventory ever. And who knows how much cash is laying around here. I was like, like, I was waiting for somebody to pull out a hash pipe and just like start taking one hitters off it. I was like, what is going on here? So, so, you know, you're, you go from watching the task force do these amazing things, and then you see what's backing it up, and it's this broken intel community, and then you start to realize, like, we're really good and simultaneously really bad.

You better have your shit squared away, because we were one flat tire or one RPG away from, you know, another Black Hawk Down incident. And it's me and this first-time operative who, I had zero confidence in, and we're bumper to bumper. It's literally bumper cars. We're knocking goats and donkeys out of the way. And by the luck of God, we made it.

And so we had, because there was certainly no CSAR coming for us. Yeah. Especially in the early days, it was really sketchy. No systems and processes, make it up as you go. You were just, you were moving so fast to get to the fight that we really weren't thinking about the second and third order. effects. And that's probably indicative of all of these big huge ventures, right? You just, we're moving forward. We don't care what's behind us. We're just moving forward. We were so

busy moving forward. We didn't realize all the shit that we were dropping behind us. It wasn't until probably a year later that that that, that, that, that, that was, of course, not a task force mission. That was a separate function, but, you know, related to task force. And I was just like, man, like we are so good and so bad. And we're just waiting for something to expose us. And, of course, what do we see, you know, 10 years later in the withdrawal of Afghanistan? That ugly underbelly got exposed. Right.

Underprepared. I don't say we were unprepared, but underprepared. It just, it moves so fast and it was so dynamic that all of those, all of those hidden flaws got exposed. And so, you know, if you had served there and you had seen that and you had been part of the,

had seen the dirty side before you. And you were not really surprised by the, by the disorganized withdrawal. Yeah. And so, yeah. Yeah. I mean, really, I mean, I felt like whatever prepared is, we were the opposite of that.

So if prepared as one, we were a negative one. Like, like, you know, we, there was just no plan in place for any of that. And there was no plan and there was no plan for a plan. It's just like, hey, we're leaving. Right. Like, this is not what special operations does. Yeah. You know, coming up, particularly as a green beret, I'll throw a little shade on my seal, my seal brothers.

Shade. Green beret are known for our exquisite planning. detailed down to the Nats ask. You've got a, you've got a pace plan. You got a primary and alternate, a contingency, and emergency. You've got a primary, you have a pace plan for your link up. You have a pace plan for your commo. You have a pace plan for your infill, for your MSS, like everything is planned out to add infinium.

So that when a thing happens, when a bad thing happens, it's just a battle drill. Like, hey, we had a plan for this, we're just execute the battle drill. And that's why you often see Green Berets don't make the tactical news like SEALs do. Seals are known for their incredible fitness and direct action and aggressiveness, not known for their planning. That's not a secret. Everybody knows that. So when a SEAL unit has a contact, has a deviation from the plan, it becomes a major motion picture.

when when green berets have a deviation from the plan it becomes a battle drill and you just you deal with it and and and so when you see a plan when you see that no one's even planning for a plan and you see this breakdown of like really simple things as a green beret that's incredibly frustrating so what i think is going to happen i think in that you know this is so you know back when i went through the q course you did five or six full mission profiles And you were expected to be a planning guru, even junior NCOs in the team. And we lost that during the, we were so busy fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and producing guys to do that, that we sort of lost that, that capability of that skill set.

It became more seal-like. And seals are great. I love them. You know, they serve a unique function and purpose. You can tell the truth on here. Well, I mean, that's the reality. I mean, the maritime environment demand guys. be physically fit water. Right. Right. Cold water is, you know, incredibly. So they have to focus

on different. They recruit from a younger population. They have a different mission set. It's, it's hard to keep those skill sets up. So you don't have enough time to do the detail planning. So they don't get those detailed missions that require it. Now, smash cut to Afghanistan, and they're getting those missions. And they are not as prepared as they probably would have wanted them. And that's not me saying. Now, if you talk to any SEAL, they'll tell you that as well. Yeah. So Green Berets, because we were so busy fighting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, lost some of that planning edge.

And we became more SEAL-like in that regard. And we recruited an entire generation of guys who thought they were going to do door-kicking, high-value target, kill-capture missions, right? Relentless pursuit. And that's not what Green Berets are designed for. We're designed for slow burn, unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense. Let me take my 12 guys. Let me go to a country. Let me recruit 500 guys, farmers, and turn them into a standing army.

Give you four months, and I'll build you a battalion. You know, give me three ODAs, I'll build you a brigade. You know, give me a company at ODAs, and I'll give you a division. That's what we're good at. We're the only force that is manned, trained, and equipped to do that. So we lost some of that because we were so busy doing what everyone wanted us to do. So now we are returning to that. So the Q-Course optimization, which started about 2017, which was, again, the subject of many FUD exposés,

is that is us returning back to our roots. And we took things out of the Q-course that didn't belong in the Q-Course. Marksmanship, combat marksmanship, was never supposed to be in the Q course. You were supposed to go to the Q course, learn detailed planning, show up to your ODA and have your senior 18 Bravo and your team starting teach you how to do all that stuff. That's the model that I came from. So, of course, it's the correct model. So then we go to, you know, now smash cut to middle of the surge in Iraq and Afghanistan,

and guys are graduating the Q course and the next week showing up to a team and deploying. So they didn't have time to get guys printed. So they said, so the operational force said, hey, do add a week of combat marksmanship into the Q course. Because guys can't, we don't have time. When they come to the team, they've got to be ready to deploy. So, well, of course, if you put a week of combat marksmanship in the Q course, you got to take something out. It's not a zero-sum game. Something's got to come out. What's going to come out? We'll take out one of the planning session. Just one. Well, that's good enough. Well, the good idea for it, okay, now guys need to be, We need everyone to be, you know, a trauma medicine cross-strain when they show up to a team. That's a week. So now we're going to pull out another planning exercise out of the Q-course. You know, do this times five, ten tasks, and all of a sudden the Q-course looks very, very different. Right. And we are producing a very different product.

And there's a real risk there. We lost sort of our identity. So the optimized Q-course was intended and to a great thing. extent is recreating what the what green braids are supposed to be detailed planners language and culture experts human human dynamics uh skill understanding how to read situations and all that and but that's a very different than what we advertised a whole generation of guys who thought they were going to join you know they everyone's got a social media account and they follow uh all the wrong social media accounts and they think green braes are you know strapping on the

quad tube night vision goggles and jumping off the back of the ramp and doing flips free fall down to the target cool guy sexy stuff and the reality of it is that's not what that's not what we're designed for we can do that absolutely but that's not what we're designed for we're designed to do that slow burn unconventional work doctor dave as i recall didn't they also insert a training block into the cue course uh that teaches special forces history to teach these guys about the history of unconventional warfare they did it so it used to be called the SFOC, the orientation course. It's like the first week or two or three weeks. It's going through different permeations. But yeah, it's absolutely, hey, let's get back to teaching these guys exactly what we are, what we say we are supposed to be. We're the only guys that can do it. You can't take a squad of MPs and have them do unconventional warfare. They're not trained. They're not man. They're not equipped. They're not selected to do that stuff. So part of that process was this sort of learn your history. And we started bringing in guys from the Special Forces Association,

these old retired Vietnam guys, and we'd have them come into the Q-course and sit them down in front of a class of kids and say, just sit down and say, hey, man, here's the real deal. Here's what we did in Vietnam, and here's what's expected to guys. And that was a really cool process to see,

like, man, we're getting re-blood. We're going back to our roots. And it felt right. You know, it was just like, finally we could stop lying to ourselves. We can absolutely do door kick and we can do direct action all day, long, but that's, but anybody can do that. Nobody else can do on conventional

worker. And that's a, that's an incredibly difficult mission set. Like, like, like let's, let's, let's, like, we're the only ones who can do it. Let's really do it. So the Q course is back on track. I won't say that it's that it's is where it needs to be as much closer than it was, you know, even even five years ago. It's a it is producing when we tell a geographic combatant commander or combatant commander now, if we tell a combatant commander, We're deploying special forces ODAs into your theater. This is what the capabilities are going to bring.

Now we are actually bringing that capability. And that is an incredibly potent capability. And so we are returning, I say, we are returning to the golden era of special forces. We are going back to single teams deploying to a theater where you're the only gringoes around. And you have to rely on the wits, skills, and character of your, the other 11 guys on your team. And that's a, that's a, that's a unique mission set that is incredibly difficult to do. And, uh, but also incredibly rewarding.

You want to talk about risk management. You know, we, we spent 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan where if you got into the shit, you just, you got up on the radio and you called it a gun chip or just a, the QRF. And, and, and you had ISR overhead. And, and you had all those assets. So it was almost kind of cheating. Well, now you're, you know, you're alone and unafraid in the middle of Africa. you don't have shit for assets.

You certainly don't have a C-SAR. Your QRF is the other half of the team that's back of the team house while you're out in the hinterland. Like, you better have your shit wire, Tyler. You better have your risk-a-you-you-you-you-have a very exquisite understanding of risk when you are your own QRF. And so we are returning to that. And we are building green berets to fill that role. And that feels good. So, Dr. Dave, take us back to your own time.

special operations. If you can take us back to Afghanistan, Iraq, and tell us about the rest of your time over there. Real quick, sorry, Wally, real quick. I just want to emphasize a point that you made earlier and give some credit to where credits do. You know, you said that like the special operations and intelligence community is like the best there is and the worst there is. But a lot of time, the worse there is is at that higher level. We talked about the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And then we saw the best there is with like Scott Mann with Operation Pineapple and Mick Mulroy and Jason, was it Jason Scott? His partner with Digital Dunkirk, you know, and basically creating these networks and getting online and getting Afghan, you know, Afghans out of the country by hook by crook and whatever it takes. And that's where you see that, you know, that that planning.

that perseverance and you know you know just kind of the sua sponte and i would highlight Scott man a great American brilliant he is of my generation uh I served with Scott I've spoken in several conferences with him brilliant guy he is the of the generation that learned the the pace plan for everything right right and you had a pace plan for your pace plan so when I saw the Pineapple Express go down and And I saw the community sort of, you know, sort of coalesce around that. And it's a bunch of retirees and maybe a couple of key, key play, active duty folks and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and Govy guys.

And, like, we flipped that switch and, like, over, almost overnight built this amazing intel apparatus, rat lines, you know, detailed intelligence. And kind of, like, it was like, like, there was no top that was, you know, with, with, you know, ISR overhead directing all that. It was like dudes doing really detailed doing a whole lot of risk assessments and saying, let's go figure this thing out. And that effort saved thousands of people.

I mean, that's it. You want to talk about an amazing story. And that is, in a, in a nutshell, what special forces and special operations in general, but special forces in particular can bring to the table. These things that think differently, they don't think outside the box. There is no fucking box. It's like, we're just going to figure it out.

I can't tell you how many times as a green beret, I've gone on a mission, and the commander will turn to you and, you know, he'll hand wave over the valley and say, figure it out. Yeah. Like, figure what out? And it's like, it, like, go figure it out. So if you're not a critical thinker, if you're not a creative thinker, if you can't develop analytical frameworks and and understand IR theory like you you immediately become an expeditionary political

scientist a cultural anthropologist and an expert tactician and it's like figure what out yes figure it all out so and we lost that for a good while because we got caught up with the sexy direct action kill capture he'll get high value targets and excuse me so we're still reeling from that a little bit. You know, we are now recruiting a generation of Green Berets that I think have a better understanding that we are, we are returning back to our roots. It is a, it is a, not just an unknown mission set, in many ways it's an unknowable. There are no, there are no correct answers for these wicked problems. There are only, you have to, your job is to figure out what is the least wrong answer and that's the one I'm going to execute so you've got to have all these

systems and processes in place to mitigate that risk so you can't hire a bunch of dumb dumb guys to do that you you got to be fit yeah absolutely but you also got to be wicked smart and and you got to be you got to have you got to have your wits about you you got to be mentally stable morally morally strong and like you got to have you got to tick all those boxes And that process of figuring out who those wicked smart, crazy, strong, faster than the strongest lifter and stronger than the fastest runner, that process starts at SFAS. So we saw that on the ground for 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. We saw what it looks like when it's not done well, the withdrawal. And we saw what it looks like when it's done well.

Look at the invasion of Afghanistan. my God, Fifth Group just went through that like a hot knife through butter. And that was classic partisan warfare, linked up with partisan forces, developed the campaign. And within weeks, you know, months, if not weeks, it essentially toppled the Taliban. And it was like, okay, we were so good at it that we weren't prepared for catastrophic success. We're like, holy shit, like what's next? And then we started bringing conventional forces in and, you know, the mission got muddied. And we still went on to do amazing things.

Look at the village security operations, the VSO, which was a special operations, special forces centered around, you know, Scott Mann was actually a big part of that. Yeah. But, you know, that was old school green brain, non-commissioned officers and trusted officers coming up with this plan for, and looked, you know, looked an awful lot like what we did in Vietnam. Yeah. And we're going to go to the school Supreme Program. And that thing was, like, incredibly successful and died on the vine because it came under the auspices of conventional commanders. Right. And they, you know, they don't have the same appreciation of risk and the same fostering of creative and critical thinking that green breath.

That's what special operators do. Green Berets, like, we're just different, you know? So we think about things differently. We had Scott Mann on talking about that. And also Dave Madden, who is a SEAL officer, kind of boots on the ground perspective of how VSO worked, which is really cool. So, yeah, so Dr. Dave, if you could kind of take us back

onto like your career and your trajectory through the special operations community. Yeah, so did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, got to see all the amazing stuff did there. That's when I really got to appreciate the Intel community. You don't, you don't get that when you're on an ODA. When you're on an ODA, you just think the edge of the battlefield ends where your 18 Bravo is on the flank. And you don't really have a deep understanding of the complex structures and institutions that exist to feed your mission set. And I got to learn all that when I went off

to the task force and, you know, got to be there for for some amazing missions. I'm looking at my shelf behind me, and I have a 105 shell from an AC130 gunship, and that is the shell that killed Mullah Doudula Lang. So if those are no, no, you can

Google MDL, Mullah Doudula Lang, who's a Taliban facilitator. And I think Lange is posse to for Limp. This guy had a fake leg. And, and we, if you read the history reports, it tells, it'll

you that the special British SBS, the special boat squad, are the guys that killed Muld de Doolang in southern Afghanistan in 2007. And the reality of it is he was killed by a gunship, and that's the, that's the shell on my shelf that killed him. What the SBS did was the next period of darkness went back and found his leg. And that's a, that's a found his fake prosthetic leg with half of his leg in it. And that's how we confirmed, yeah, we got this guy. So I got to see this, you know, and I was on the gunship that night when I fired.

It was an amazing experience. So, you know, I've seen, you know, the jungles of Latin America in Wildass West, chasing cartels and through jungle landing strips all the way to, you know, the safe house from hell in Kabul to the gunship. And then into Iraq and was there for, you know, when we were making some real headway. This you have to remember the model for the task force then was, you know,

we would do, we would run 50 raids in a night. I mean, think about this. Prior to 9-11, if you were a special operator and you got to do like one mission, you got to kick in one door and, and do one,

one raid, like you built a whole career on that. That's swagger. Yeah, you would have, you would have been all swagger from there on out. That's all you once and you're done and you never buy a beer for yourself again.

And that, you know, smash cut to 10 years later, and I reckon I think he's in, and you've got guys running 50 missions a night. You know, multiple units just across the battlefield, my God, the combat power you could put down on a target, you would just turn so quickly. You were running out of terrorists, you know, before the, like, you were just, like, you would go to as soon as the sunset, you'd launch, and you'd go all night until the sun came up, and then you come back and sleep and do it again. and like just unbelievable opt tempo.

You'd have guys with, you know, 1,500 raids under their belt. You go from one raid for a whole career to 250 in a three-month pump and then go home, wash your gear, and come back a couple months later and do it again. Unbelievable. So I got to see all that, and that sort of shaped my deeper understanding of special operations

and what we could bring to bear with an appropriately sharpened tool. So I left the task force and I went to SWIC. And I didn't want to go to SWIC. I didn't want to leave the task force. A buddy of mine was taking battalion command. And he said, hey, I need an XO. I need someone to come in and steal money. We got all these programs going.

And this is when we were just starting up the free-for-all-all initiative. So you remember, free-fall-for-all. So for those that don't know, guys that go through the Q course do not all get Halo qualified. Everyone's static line, but not free fall. And we said that's not right. Like we should all be free fall qualified. So we stood up the initiative called the Free Fall for All initiative, where everybody graduates to QCourse is going to go on to Yuma and they're going to get their free fall wings. So how do you do that?

You've got to get aircraft. You've got to get instructors. It's a big that costs a lot of money. Got it figured out. And my buddy was the battalion commander, the Advanced Skills Battalion, he said, I need you to come. help me figure out how to steal money. I don't know why he thought I was good at it. But we did. We ended up, we had a $4 million budget and ended up executing like $24 million a

year. Start with $4 million. We ended up spending $24 million. And so we're stealing everyone else's money. We built this free fall for all program, you know, out of, you know, chewing gun and bailing wire. Dave, I want to ask you, you know, while we're on this topic, I mean, what do you think of that free fall for all concept? because, I mean, military free fall, of course, is for clandestine insertions. There's not really a time where you're going to clandestinely insert a special forces company or battalion. I'm just curious what you thought about that endeavor.

Well, so are we ever going to statifying guys in? Probably not. I mean, you don't have the control. You need a bigger job zone. You can't get as much weight in. I think that we ought to maintain an airborne capability in. the 82nd so we can do joint forceable entry and we can do airfield seizure

I think we ought to hold on now, we're going to get some hate here I think we should take our shival affairs and siops guys and take them off the jump status. I cannot imagine a scenario where we're going to jump in a CA or a sci up team. Why are we wasting

those slots? That costs money right. It costs a ton of money to keep those guys everyone qualified. Why are the mechanics in group in the GSB? Why are they jump qualified. What am I ever going to jump one of those guys in? If I ever need to jump one of those guys in, I'll strap them tandem onto a green beret who's free fall qualified and I'll get them in. So obviously, you know, you jump a jump a bunch of guys in. That's a high risk situation.

But it's a unique infill technique. I think we ought to have it. I don't think we ought to have any static line teams. I think all green berets should be free fall. That's the only technique that we're going to use. That's my, that's my hot take. So. And a lot of people agreed, including General Sikolic, then the SWCC commander. He has a background from Delta. All those guys out there are free fall qualified. So I had this understanding of free fall. I had an understanding how to steal people's money.

I took this job and we turned this thing to the reality. And it was held together loosely. I say a reality, but probably much more fantasy than not. But it worked for quite a few years. But what we didn't do is we didn't do. is we didn't accept that culturally that we have to, we got to, you know, we, we get everybody through the school. We can beg bar on steel. We'll, we'll get blade hours for aircraft. We'll get instructors out there. Everyone will do the training. But what we didn't do is follow that up into

the groups and buy enough shoots. So think about that. So I was on a dive team. And that's an incredibly low density skill set. And you have the lar, five, Drager, re-breather. That's a That's your re-greather circulator rig that you dive with. No bubbles, no troubles, and that's what you dive with. And each diver was assigned his own rig, and only you dove that rig. You learned the intricacies of that rig, what the sound of demand valve made, how the tanks work, how the mouthpiece felt in your mouth. That was a piece of life-saving equipment, and it was yours, and only you used it.

And I cannot imagine another diver using my rig. I'd have lost my fucking mind. Get your dirty whore mouth off of my mouth. So take that understanding of free fall, and it's the same thing with a guy's free fall rig. Guys are really personable. Each free fall guy is assigned his rig. There's only X amount of rigs in the unit,

and each guy's got his own, and only he jumps that. So when we started the Free Fall for All initiative, we did the production, but we didn't do the sustainment. So we didn't buy enough rigs in the operational force for everyone to have their own rig. So we started seeing, and when I was in academia, I had a student, he was a PJ,

and he was a free fall instructor out of free fall school. He came and did his master's program with me, and he wrote his thesis on, here is why free fall for all will fail. And he listed out the three main reasons. And he was very specific. They're going to fail in this specific. exam in the free fall course, and then we're going to start seeing these types of malfunctions

in the rigs, this specific snowman module and this, you know, this activator, we're going to start seeing wear and tear on those, and you're going to start seeing a bunch of riser separations and cutaways and all these accidents. And he published this thesis, and it was not without controversy. And when he published it, we sent it out to the Operation of course, and went up to Usasok and I remember I got a phone call one day from a one of the G3 action officers call me up cussing me up and down you motherfucker how dare you let your student print this thing there is no way we're gonna let this happen that's bullshit you're this is you let this kid lie I can't believe you passed him holy shit I said hey listen

academic freedom it's a great it's a great research project he's got all the all the qualities you need it's got the research question thesis statement good analytical framework, great references. I mean, it was an honors thesis. It was really, really good. And this kid went off, and I think he went off the Milden Hall first and fall on assignment. And it was sort of forgotten. I took an ashtoan, and it was sort of forgotten.

And then like four months later, the accident started happening. And it was like exactly like this kid laid out in his paper. He was an expert free fall instructor. He had served at the schoolhouse. He had done the analysis. And he wrote the script. happening line by line by line. Exactly those those malfunctions were being induced, started seeing injuries, and finally someone said, I think someone up a useless dust it off that thesis and said,

you know, this kid predicted all this and his conclusion was, and someone is going to get killed, and this is how that death shall occur. Right. Somebody put the plug before those deaths happened. We had quite a few injuries, quite a few cutaways, quite a few malfunctions, and it was laying out like a script, And they cancel the free fall for all, and now it's only select guys go. But it's a missed opportunity. Green Berets will should never jump static line. They should only jump free fall. Number one, it looks cooler.

That fucking free fall badge is sexiest shit. Yeah. But number two, that's the operational reality. We're not going to jump guys static line. We're only going to, it's a much more complex. You accept much more risk. Let's go in free fall. Cancel the airborne slots for the mechanics.

and the CA and SOTICs guys. And let's get back down to the business and legality. And that's, so that's my take on that. To your knowledge, either of you, have Greenbray ever jumped static line into a combat operation? In Iraq, yeah. A 10th group team. Say again? There was a 10th group team that did.

In Iraq? The ugly baby. Well, no, that was the invasion. Wasn't there a 10th group team that jumped in like 2000? 2004 or something like that. Right. It was up north. It was in Kurdistan area.

Something like, yeah. Now, did they free fall or static, they, they static line? Free fall, as I recall. Oh, why isn't it? I thought it was static line. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I am and we all need to go, you know, do a Wikipedia check.

I think so. But they went scuba. We both got it wrong. Yeah. But Wally, what you're saying, though, is even if it were static line, it could have been served. just as well had it been a halo. Absolutely. You have, I mean, what's the, what's the min,

size of a, of a static line DZ? I think it's 200 by 200. And I think the min, men, min size of a DZ for prefall is 50 by 50 meters. I mean, so you could, but just by default, you, I mean, I mean, you definitely have a lot more control on, on, you know, your team, you know, yeah. And you can offset, you can do a hay-ho. Yeah.

I mean, I've done the canopy for 45 minutes, you know, 30 clicks off target and flying in, you know, completely, completely off the radar. Like, like, you can't do that with static line. Yeah. And so, so I just think, I think it's a missed opportunity. I think we'll eventually get there. It's a culture change. Good luck trying to convince. I mean, imagine if you went to CIA and Siaf's and said, okay, we're getting rid of the red berets.

You guys aren't going to be airborne. my god, you'd have a, they'd shit a brick and they'd have strikes at Eusuf. I mean, they would just quit working. And so, you know, that's culturally, I don't know, you get there. And frankly, a lot of, you know, a big recruiting point for C.A. and size is you get to come and be in an airborne unit, right? It's cool, it's sexy. You get the cool gray.

But the reality of it is, is we're just not going to jump those formations. We ought to concentrate at what we're going to do, free fall. So then what was after free fall for all, what was the next stop? for you. So I, uh, I was actually supposed to go back to J-Soc and I was literally the, you know, you know, you know the union's sitting in the command of staff meetings and they, they put up the slide gains and losses and they say, these are the guys coming in, the guys leaving. And I was on the losses and I was getting ready to go back to the task force and go do cool guy stuff. And General Sokolik was the SWIFT commander. And he happened to be paying, God help me,

he happened to be paying attention in that command of staff and saw that. that slide and said, where the fuck is Walton going? And they're like, oh, he's going back to the, you know, going back to J-Soc and they, and he said, no, he's not. I got this new initiative, uh, regional studies and education. I want to have an education program. I want, in 10 years, I want Green Berets to be the most educated force in the DOV, civilian education. And, uh, and he said, and Walton's my guy. And I, and I remember I went to his office, you know, hat and bray and hand, sir, please, let me go back to the, to the, the union. And he said, I said, sir, I mean, I barely graduated my undergraduate degree.

I got my master's degree while I was at Leavenworth. Like, I don't know shit about education. Like, you tagged the wrong guy. Like, I'm the free fall for all guy, brother. Like, I don't want to shoot people and kick in doors stuff. I don't want to do this education stuff. And he said, pound sand, motherfucker. You're my new education guy.

You're in charge. So I was like, I don't know shit about education. Like I said, I barely graduate. I graduated my undergraduate with a 2.35 GP. I mean, I skidded across the finish line. So he said, you're in charge. So that's when I started, I said, okay, I got to fund a doctor program. I got to learn about education.

I hired a GS-14 who had his doctorate. He was a prior service ranger guy, and he had his doctorate in education, and he mentored me across through the process. I got into a doctoral program and started learning about education. And that's how I got into this business of academia. And it was an amazing experience. So simultaneously, while I am on active duty getting my doctoral degree, I am also in SWIC while we are going through this transformation of realigning the Q-course and looking at selection. And I mean, we took the whole unit, we did the off-site out at Camp McCall, all the senior leaders in all SWIC, we're out at Camp McCall.

and we're doing our off-site strategy session. And General Suclick's giving us guidance. I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to do that. I want to do the other thing. And he had four lines of effort. And for some reason, I ended up being the briefer for three of those lines of effort. You know, we break out in your little workout groups and you figure all that stuff. We come back and I'm the guy, and I'm now briefing General Sikolic.

Hey, you told us to look at this shit. We looked at it. Here's our plan. And in classic fashion, we had catastrophic success. And he turns to me as we're briefing these, and he says, okay, you're in charge of them now. So I was in charge of three of the four strategic lines of effort. One of them was education. We've got to develop these education programs.

One of them was priority placement for instructors. How do we get the right instructors in the SWIC? And then the other one was this Q-course real. lineman and in that process so he turned to me and said you're in charge now and I remember after that I was I remember we sort of everyone's breaking up and everyone's going ha ha you got stuck with all the shit and and I was like and so called general Sucluck came up to me and said he said you know walton you're you're a hell of a used car salesman and I said to him yes sir but you're buying a used car today so I did spend in the next three years running all these initiatives including

the education program and getting my doctorate and and just brutal staff work, you know, endless hours running up against institutional malaise. And and we redefined what the Q-course was. We cut out all the bullshit. Got that, got that, this was the, this was Q-course optimization before Q-course optimization. And that's when I owned selection. That's when that came to me. And I got to, I got to, I got to crack that thing open and look at it and learn about not just what selection is, but how it's run and what we test and why. So I was very, very fortunate I had a really excellent company commander out there, Brian Decker, who now works, I think, for the NFL doing player development

and some incredible sergeant's major that ran that for me. And I just said, hey, tell me what you guys need. Tell me what you're doing. Tell me what I can get you and tell me what battles I can fight for you. but I learned so much during that time. And that's really what sort of got me into this idea of selection. So I do that for three years. I burn into Canada, both ends.

I retire, get a job in academia, and continue my research. And I'm out of the Army, and that's a career well served, you know. Did my 20 years in two weeks. And I'm off to this now second career where now where I was purely operational, had, you know, education, I spelled with a, I misspelled half the time I wrote it. Now I'm a doctor in education, and I am becoming a subject matter expert in this incredibly unique field of selection. And I'm learning more and more about it, and that's what leads me to where I am now.

If you're going to tell me that N is not for knowledge, I'm going to be very heartbroken. Only capitalized. So, well, out of curiosity, because I'm really interested in the commander's idea of making special forces the most educated unit out there. Like, it's a great idea. But how does that become a reality? I mean, can you mandate that? Do you incentivize it? How do you get the individual soldier across that finish line?

Yeah. So that, so here's the problem. We are, at that time, that was. like 2010, we pulled the data. We worked with HRC, and we pulled the data. And if you were a special forces, non-commissioned officer, you were half as likely as your conventional Army counterpart to have your degree, whether it be, whatever level, associates, a bachelor's or master's or whatever.

So, and the reason was is because we were so busy doing our jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan, you didn't have time to go get your degree. Like it wasn't possible. So here's what happens. A soldier, any soldier, shows up to his unit, and the mantra is education is good. Go to the Ed Center, go to the Base Ed Center, and sign up for classes. Great. So you go to the Ed Center and you talk to an education counselor and you sign it for some classes, you use your tuition assistance, you take a couple of classes at the local college, and then you PCS and you go to another installation.

And you go to that, and the mantra is repeated. education is good. Do you go to the ed center? You take some more classes. Only a few of your credits transferred and rinse and repeat. And now 10 years later, you've got 120 credits and none of them count towards any degree. Only doesn't work on your transcripts. And you wasted all this time and effort. And it's not because guys didn't want to. It's because they just didn't have a plan. Right. And so we came up with a plan and we started working with Fayetteville, community college. So you have to understand the role of community college is in America. The role of community college, everyone thinks the community colleges are, you know, that's where you take arts and crafts and welding classes.

And they do offer that. But community colleges are, you know, as designed, part of the higher education system, are to meet the community's needs. And in North Carolina, in particular, the community college system is incredibly robust. We have the UNC system, which is, you know, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, ECU and NC State, so on and so forth, but we also have a very robust community college system. So we leverage that to our advantage. And we know that the Q course is a year long. You do a shit ton of learning in that year. But what happens is we would go to the system and we'd say, hey, give us credits for this learning that guys do. And they would say, and the colleges would say, well, show us your lesson plan.

And we've got Treydoc lesson plans. And they're written like Treydoc lesson plan, which do not look like a college syllabus. So what we did is we took all of the lesson, all of the syllabus, all the P-O-Is across all of SWIC. 60,000 pages of documents. And we translated that from Treydoc speak, SWIC speak, into academic speak. Wow. Literally like monkeys on typewriters. Like, like, it was like, when it's, so think about this.

Think about your, your average college kid who does his wake and make, and he rolls out of bed and goes to his geography 101 class. And he learns about mountains and rock formations and geological processes. If you compare what that guy learns compared to what a green beret learns in his land navigation training, which we think of as, you know, distance to direction, shoot an asthma, reading a map. But the reality of it is is that what a Green Beret learns in the Q course in land navigation training exceeds the learning outcomes of what that college kid got in his Geography 101. We just hadn't done the homework of translating the POIs into syllabus. So we spent about doing that nug work as monkeys on typewriters hammering that out. And we brought, we brought deans and presidents and faculty from the FTCC campus on to Fort Bragg. and let them watch training and sit in classes and watch our cadre give this this incredibly

detailed and quality education. And we got them to say, we got them to recognize that we were actually doing a whole bunch more education than we were getting credit. Right. So what we got every kid that graduated the Q course earned 48 credit hours towards his associate's degree. So an associate's degree. Which is 60. Right.

Yeah. He's only got to take a couple more classes. And they were the classes that we don't do in the Q. We don't do, you know, expository writing and math and English. So all a kid had to do was take five classes at FTCC and graduate the Q course, and he'd have his associate's degree. He would have earned his associate's degree. And we developed this initiative, and it was so successful that they adopted it across the entire community college system in North Carolina. and many other states.

They realize, hey, this is a value proposition. I mean, think about it. If you're a college, you get measured on the success of your students. Who's going to be more successful with a student than a fucking green beret? That guy doesn't, he hates to lose. Right. You see what a class is going to finish it. So we developed this system where guys would graduate the Q course, take five classes,

earn their associate degree, and then we had that matriculated across multiple bachelor's degree programs. So, Dave, I have to ask, when. When I went to college, I have this recollection of my global literature teacher, Bashir, an avowed Marxist who I disagreed with almost everything he said, but it was an very interesting experience to read these novels and hear his take on them. And I have to wonder if these types of experiences are being replicated on Fort Bragg. Are students being, I mean, honestly, it's a good experience to learn like, okay, what are these other arguments, you know? And then you realize, you know, where you're, where you're.

beliefs fit. I was just wondering about like, wait a minute, Jack, you weren't very specific there. Where were your beliefs? Well, not with global communism to say the least, but I mean, I'm just sort of, I'm being a little bit sarcastic, but only a little bit as I asked this question of like, when you start interjecting, are you teaching these sorts of like the humanities, the dreaded humanities to students on Fort Bragg? And what's that experience like? Well, we only did a limited amount of classes on brag the idea was we want them to get we want this degree to be credible we want like this to be looked at as a real degree the our guys are doing real learning therefore we want it to reflect as such so the same way that you know you know give yourself some credit jack you pass that

class yeah you know you have to take the right like not every school wants to do it you're not you're not going to get every, every institution of higher education is going to want to partake in that. Well, one thing, Green Berets are simultaneously great students, incredible success and graduate students, but they're going to fucking argue with them in class. And we had a lot of former Green Berets, NCOs and officers up at Columbia who kicked ass. Yeah. I mean, that's why they got selected. They're wicked, smart guys. Yeah.

Like, no secret. So, but of course, you have to pick willing partners, but you want them to be challenged. You want them to have that liberal education, you know, and that's the purpose of education. You know, we train for the known and we educate for the unknown. And if there was ever an operational force that experienced the unknown, it's green berets, where the commander turned to the valley and said, figure it out. Like, that's the fucking unknown. Yeah.

Give me a green brain. I'm wholly convinced you give me two SFNCOs, a six-pack, and a whitey race board, and I'll have world hunger solved in about 30 minutes. We'll fucking figure it out. And Greenberg NCOs are wicked, smart people. They were so busy deploying that they were half as educated as their conventional kind of parts. And the psychologist said, enough. Figure this out, Walton, and poking me in the chest.

Go figure this out. So we figured it out. That's fantastic. Yeah. And it worked in it. Those programs exist to this day. Not a lot of guys know about them, but they still exist. Anybody who has graduated the Q-Courts since 2001 can call up FTCC, take five classes, the five specific classes they have to, the gen ed classes, and they'll have their associate's degree, just like that.

And then the program has built into it. They can go to a local school and finish out their bachelor's if they want. So, and not just go to the school and finish out their bachelors, all of those 60 credits will fully transfer and count towards that bachelor's degree. Right. So now you don't have a guy who's got 120 credits in no degree. He's got just the credits he needs. You know, he doesn't have, you know, 50 outdoor living credits for all this PT. He's got actual credits for actual classes because he's done the actual learning.

Yeah. So take that across the spectrum. And we did that all way up to the master's level. So I ran a master's program for special operators to great success and fanfare. And those programs still exist. I left the programs. You know, academia is great, except it's full of academics. Right.

And it's really boring. So, you know, like I said, I was an operational guy my whole life. I only spent the last three years in my career developing these, you know, operationalizing education. And I got bored with it. I got placement access to do this amazing research in the selection, but I got bored with it, and that's why I came back to the operation. And they're wearing a sports coat with those leather patches on the elbows. I've got a beautiful Brooks Brothers tweed coat with the leather patches.

Looks unbelievable. I got a mersham pipe. Absolutely. Speaking of which, Dave, how is that triple Maduro treating you? Oh, it's nice. Yeah, you like it? All right. So I know that regents were, it became excelsior, like they were really good at doing that too in terms of, like for my bachelors.

They, but I've been to like too many military schools because I was entering a branch. But, but like they took everything from the military and converted it into some sort of credit. And then I just had to clapendantes my way out of the rest of it. Yeah, but there's a risk in there, though. So a lot of guys like to bag on these, you know, these predatory schools, these degree mills. that, you know, there is a, and there is some merit to some of those arguments. That's us. I got it. Yeah. There is, there is some merit to these arguments of, of a degree mill.

I'm sympathetic to that. But, but not everybody needs a doctorate in education. Right. Right. Right. There are, there are plenty of great schools that don't have great reputation with great faculty that will that they give these opportunities for students from from from different backgrounds and again not every not every not every green beret needs a degree there are thousands of

incredibly successful green berets that are brilliant that have no advanced civil schooling right totally fine right right uh education is not a panacea but but it is it's a it is a way of of credentialing so think about this you want to all probably been to embassies. You go to an embassy where we do, where Greenbrage do a ton of interaction, and you walk in there and all of those foreign service officers, all the guys that you're relying on, they've all got advanced degrees. And they sit around and talk about, I went to Dartmouth and Columbia, God help them, and wherever, right? And that is the credentialing. That is how you get, that is how you establish your bona fides. The same way that when we meet a new guy, we shake his

hand and we tab check them. Right. You got a short tab, or you go to. You go to the same thing. You go to you a bitch, right? They do the same thing at embassy. So imagine if I could get a guy to a green beret with 15 years of operational experience. Get my get a, an E7, an E8, guys got multiple deployments. He knows everything about the tactical operational and strategic level and he's got a degree so he can talk IR theory. He can talk about analytical frameworks. He can talk research methodology. that's a powerful dude right so think so this think back to when petraeus wrote patraeus uh in 2005 wrote the plan for the for iraq the surge plan he wrote that plan and he pulled together his dream team of of smart folks that are going to they were going to write that plan

and almost to a man those guys all had PhDs portrays has got a PhD so you in order to get in the room to write those plans for iraq you had to have to have an advanced degree. Well, how many greenberg, so I think we can all agree that the plan for Iraq was, if not soft-centric, at least soft-involved, right? There's a huge role for soft in that. Of the 16 guys on Petraeus's dream team, how many of them were special forces or even special operations? And the answer is zero. Actually, there's one, the public affairs officer was a prior SF guy, but he had no role in it. And then there was a guy that had served in Ranger Regiment.

But that's it. So the war plans for the surge in Iraq that were soft dependent, had no soft guy in the room helping write those plans. So how well do we think soft's equities were represented in that process? I got some fat-ass tanker right in the plans how I'm going to employ Green Brays. Imagine if I could get a Green Bray NCO with a master's degree. in international relations or national security studies or what have you with his 15 18 years of experience and his degree have him sit in a room with that fat-ass tanker and explain to him here is how

sauce equities shall be represented that was the vision and so it wasn't that portrayus didn't want green berets in a room it's that we didn't have any green berets with the credentials to get in the room so we set about fixing that problem and you have you you don't see started a PhD. But I don't understand. I mean, I don't understand that. Like, what were the credentials to be in the room if not to understand soft, not to, if not to be a green beret? It was an advanced degree. You had to have an advanced degree. If you didn't go to Princeton or Georgetown or, or, you know, KU or whatever, you didn't get a seat at the table because that's the, that was the, that was the requirement. So listen, if you're an officer, it's built

into your career timeline. Right. You can't get your commission unless you have your bachelor's degree. And then when you go off mid-career to Leavenworth or ILE, CGSC, you get to earn your master's degree. It's just part of it's cooked into the system. Right. Every officer, every every every officer should have their master's degree, but we don't do that for NCOs. And soft is an NCO centric organization. I mean, that's who that's that's that's who drives the the operational culture. It's what drives everything. So we were not investing in ourselves to get our guys that credentialing

so that they could then be in the room. And it's difficult to hear that that we were, that we screwed our guys, but that's the reality. And that's not me making that. Look at the stats. Yeah. Half as educated as our conventional.

Well, I mean, but that that explains the entire war effort right there. I mean, 100%. That explains it. Somehow Princeton knows more, somebody who goes Princeton knows more about unconventional warfare than somebody who goes to the Q-Course. Just by virtue of him having an advanced civil degree. Really? That's the reality. So we can either complain about it or we can get in a fight.

It's a soft imperative. Understand the operation of violence. That's what it takes. Yeah. So we set up fixing that and we did. That's fantastic. So what, what were there any, I don't want to sort of cover your SFS training regimen yet. I want to kind of compartmentalize that so that, because we're going to have a lot of people who are going to like want to like focus on that, I think.

But when you went to SFAS, when you took that over, what were some of the realizations you had? Were there any like big ahas about it? The, the big ahas were that it works. So we have been due, so as selection started in 1988, it didn't get formalized until 1989. And we just sort of figured this thing out. And we did some, you know, there was a brilliant tiger teams of guys that pulled it together. We looked at how SAS does it and other units did it. And we made this thing called selection.

And it looked like it had some, you know, the same construct that had now, team week, or I'm sorry, a gate week with rucking and running, a land nav. and a team loop. And so we knew that it worked. It has remained virtually unchanged in the 30 years it's been around, but we didn't know why that it worked. And we had actually spent a good amount of time studying this. We commissioned in the 90s, we commissioned the Army Research Institute to come out and look at selection and tell us exactly, you know, what makes special forces special. And they pulled together a team of senior researchers and scientists, and psychologist and, you know, human performance guys.

And they came out and they studied selection and the regiment for, you know, football almost a full year. And the conclusion of their report after all these smart guys got in a room and studied it was that we don't know what we don't know. Special forces guys are just weird. Like they're just good. They're special. And it was like.

That doesn't sound like an academic conclusion. And that's why those guys should have been at the table with Petraeus because they've got all the answers. That's right. That's right. So we were just sort of continuing on with selection, knowing that it worked, but not knowing why. Right. Like what we did, we didn't know, like, what specifically does it measure?

So when I had oversight of it, we looked at what it was measuring. So in academic terms, that's called a factor analysis. So you've all taken a survey where it seems like the survey question is asking, like three separate questions all ask, be sort of getting after the same thing. And so that thing they're getting after is called a factor analysis. This is the information you're trying to find, and here is the way you're going to find it. So, for example, if you want to find out if a guy has a problem with alcohol, you'll ask him things like, how often do you drink?

That's one question. Another question is, how many drinks will you have when you drink? That's enough questions, Dave. That's enough questions. Moving on. We're moving on. Yeah. So here's the question that I always confuses, guys.

There's always a question in this cycle valve where it asks, we're going to get a little scatological here. It always asked, do you have black tarry stools? And guys, like, why are they asking me about my shit? And the reason is, is because if you have a drinking problem, you likely have an ulcer, bleeding ulcer, and that blood goes into your stool and creates black tary stool. So they asked that, they ask five different questions to figure out if you have a problem with alcohol. That's called factor analysis. So we had not done that for selection.

We knew we did these events. We didn't know really what it was measuring and why. And so we had to figure that out. And one of the ways we figured that out was we had to determine what the Rsoft attributes were. So before we used to select guys and it was based off of the, you know, SF core values. And then it was the Army values. And they were sort of these loosely defined. The SF core values had no definition to them.

the Army values had a definition, but we didn't know how do we measure that? So we know that that's Army value, but what specific activity in selection do the candidates do that we measure and how do we measure that? Right. So then we developed the Arsoph attributes, these eight attributes, and we developed the measures by how we examine that in candidate behavior. So we did that homework, really, really detailed analysis, and quantified exactly what we do and why we do it.

And in that, we established a high level of confidence in exactly what selection does. So when you now know that, when you know how the engine works and why it works that way, you can monkey with that engine and get better performance out of it. And that's what we did with selection. So we refined that process. And when we came out on the other end after 18 months of this, we had a really excellent assessment tool in selection. selection and we knew exactly what it measured and and now think about that so now that we know why the Q course works and we know how it works and what we measure you remove remember that we talked

we started this earlier this argument about where does who owns selection and who owns the Q course and that institutional conflict about that process now we had we can answer definitively this is what selection does so so now we we control the inputs now we can control the outputs of what the Q-Course produces in a much more refined manner. And so there's a lot of value in that. Did, I imagine that in this,

you sort of uncovered what the core values or the core criteria were. Can you give us a few of those core criteria that you discovered that these events, that this selection measures? Yeah, I mean, it's the R-Soft attributes. It's courage, perseverance,

physical fitness, and the big one is adaptability. And so let's not think about this term adaptability. That is the essence of our earlier discussion about education. Train for the known, educate for the unknown. If you want a force that can manage the unknown, they have to be highly adaptable. And so we started measuring that. So how do you measure that? So yes, okay, so a guy is courageous. What does that mean? How is he courageous? Is he physically courageous? Is he morally courageous? What does that look like in selection? So a candidate that will, that is building an apparatus and sees that it is not being constructed the most optimal way, a candidate with high levels of courage

will speak up in that moment and say, hey, guys, this is, we're doing, we're not doing this the right way. Let's, let's adjust our plan here. A candidate without courage will not do that. So it's not courage to, you know, to charge the machine gun nest. It's the, the, the moral courage to say, I have a courage of my conviction. Hey, here's what I think. Now, so a guy that has too much courage will be the dick that goes, you motherfuckers, this thing right, and listen to me and get out of the way and fuck you. And so you don't want that.

That's too much courage. Right. The guy that won't speak up doesn't have enough courage. So what we did was we looked at those behaviors and then wrote little handbooks for the cadre to say, when you are observing these activities, these are the behaviors you're looking for, and this is what those behaviors indicate. So Cadre could,

but before they were just saying, that's a good dude. I just know he's a good dude. It's like porn. I don't know what it did. I can't define it. I don't know when I see it. Now we could say,

that's porn because it's got these things to it. That's courage because it has these things to it. And so we had much more confidence in that selection process, whereas we didn't have that before. So again, so if you're a guy who just goes through selection, all you know is that you carry heavy shit for a lot for a long time, for a long distance, and it sucks.

You don't know the machinations behind that. If you've been a cadre, you likely know that. You may not know why. You may know the specific behavior you're looking for it, but you may not know why you're looking for it. If you're one of the few people that has cracked that engine block open, you know why all those parts work together and what they're seeking to find. And there's, you know, there's a dozen people on the planet. that know that and i'm i'm happening with one of those guys i was there when we when we when we

popped the hood so to speak so i so i understand that process and that's not a hit on anybody you don't know that because you're not supposed to know it right you just didn't that process right do it's good to know that my dad had too much courage and not anger issues but but yeah do we want to jump over to uh dr dave's uh book yeah let's let's talk about oh one more thing. Did you read those studies that came out like in 2000, 2003 about neuropeptide Y? They went into, I think it was

Yale or somebody went into SFS and they studied. They're like, they thought that it was the, I think the prevalence of like neuropeptide Y that is why, not necessarily why a guy gets selected because he can make it through the course, not get selected, but why

they make it through the course is. Yeah, they measure it based all cortisol levels and all that. And that's a great point, Dave. So you just referenced this academic study. Hey, did you read this study? Yeah. And the answer to that question is, is no. Yeah.

Because it's this super nerdy academic language. Oh, we've measured that. Here's the factor analysis that we do. You're going to take a shot of your primantine mist and go have an answer. Right. Nobody wants to read that. Hold on. I mean, I'll get.

All right. Go ahead. So nobody wants to do this stuff. But SWIC has been commissioning these studies or endorsing these studies for decades. There are, you know, I cite, I cited 50 separate studies in the book of academic studies that tell this story. So if you don't have an academic background or you don't have an interest in that and you read those, that's a cure for insomnia. Like it makes no sense. It's not in context.

It's just this hyper-specific phenomenological study that, like, it is a thing. Like, so, but that data exists. That data is evidence of what selection does. So if you can take all of those You can take all those studies And examine them in context And pull out the pertinent stuff and put it together Now you can have a very refined

Understanding of what goes on its selection And it's endorsed by SWIC Like that's the that's the CREAMIC Now it doesn't talk to tell you what the standards are No one knows the standards. There's only very few people to do Right even most cadre selection don't know the standard It's that they don't this doesn't matter to them. There's only very few people to do. But if you can pull all that together, if you can read

those studies appropriately, put them in context, pull out the important data, and you have the operational background of having opened the hood and looked at selection and have studied it for, you know, and have all these observations to confirm or deny your conclusions from the data analysis. Like, you can get a really refined understanding of exactly what selection is. Now, You can count on one hand the amount of people that want to do that because that is brutal work like it's it's not sexy It's not fun and it is drudgery I happen to to have done that work I didn't for my my my I had to do it because I wanted to get my doctorate Because I like a dumb ass I chose it from my dissertation

So I started it then and just continued that and I was I'm always you know Go to go to Google Scholar and type in special forces assessment selection and they'll start popping up and then start taking you know change your keywords and start look and there's you know hundreds of studies out there not all are great some are outdated some have bad methodologies if you if you understand that stuff you can look at those studies and read them and there's you know every year we send a couple hundred sf officers off to advanced civil schooling and they got a read a thesis and a shocking number of those guys have written about selection and they like unique placement and access you can pull that data and you can look at it and if you put it all together and and and and then tell some cool war stories

and then put it in context like you can publish a book about it you can call it ruck up or shut up and that's what i did yeah and so so that that's the process that i arrived at this book so the book is ruck up or shut up and i kind of love that because i mean jack and i have both had you know we've mentored people over the years who have been i'm going to do this i'm going to do this I'm going to do this. What do I need to do? What do I need to do? And they just never, they never do it.

Like at some point, you just got to put one foot in front of the other and like, like, there's no prime, like, yeah. So there's, again, to our early discussion, there is no perfect way to do it. There's no correct answer for how to prepare for selection. There is only the least incorrect answer. Your job is to find the least correct. answer or the least incorrect answer and apply that. So how do you get to time out? The link to Dave's book is down the description, ruck up or shut up if you guys want to go and check it out. Okay.

Available on Amazon and if you if you if you go to my website tf voodoo.com the first chapter is there in its entirety for free. Read that. That'll tell you everything you need to know about the value of the book. Now you got to buy the book if you want to get all the all the good stuff. And you and you want that you want the good stuff. you do. You do. I mean, most guys, this is the G2 that I would have liked to have had when I went. All I knew was carry a fucking four by four and don't quit. That's what I once said.

How do I train for selection? Don't quit. Well, what the fuck does that mean? If I came to you, if you were a marathon, a running coach and I was training for a marathon and I came to you and I said, hey, Dave, tell me how to train for a marathon. And you said, don't quit. I was like, hey, my money back. Yeah. What is that?

Yeah. Like, that's a whole lot of obvious. So I crack open what that means. So we talk about, so the book starts out, we talk about, why the book? Why is this important? And in my mind, it's part of an information campaign. We started our discussion about SWIC can't tell the story about selection because they don't want to give away the standards.

They don't want to give up the ghost on selection. So they're in a tough position. I get that. But they ought to be doing something. Right now, all we know about selection is what the guys who didn't get selected go back to the operational force and talk about. And they got it all fucking wrong. Swick's not going to tell the story.

I'm going to tell the story. But I have a duty to protect the standards. I can't give you all the secrets. So it's a really fine line. But the good news is, again, SWIC has all these studies they've endorsed. They're out there. Let me just pull the relevant stuff from those studies, put it in the right context, and tell some cool war stories, and that's the book. So the first part of the book is why I wrote the book,

and this problem of misinformation and why it's important that we get after that. And then I talk a little bit about GreenBarray culture, and it's, listen, there's a, one of the great things about the GWOD is there's been a plethora of great books by amazing special operators. And so you can read those, and you can hear about sort of what everyone thinks of about. special operations in green berets there's some stuff that they don't really talk about and that's the stuff that i talk about and i do and i talk about that stuff in the context of greenberry culture and how that applies to s f as a so if you're a young guy and you want to go off to selection and you want to you want to be successful you've got to understand the nuances of this unique operating

environment and so i go about describing that the problem about the green beret i talk about big boy rules I talked about unconventional warfare to our earlier discussion and why that's so pivotal and how they apply to SFAS. So when a prospective candidate reads that, he has a deeper understanding of just the complexity of this endeavor he's about to undertake. And it is an incredibly complex endeavor. It's almost impossible to understand. I think I do a good job of giving guys an understanding. So that's the first part of book. Then the second part of the book is this is what selection is.

You know, here are the events as described in these articles. There have been published. I'm not giving away any secrets. They're described in incredibly refined detail in all these articles. I laid it out, you know, here's what happens week one, week two, week three, and here's what that looks like. And I go through, and because I have this unique placement and access, I can talk about candidate archetypes.

So here are the ways that many candidates present. themselves to be selected. So for example, we talk about the supervisor. So a common modality for many active duty guys that have maybe a couple years experience, guys at squad leaders, the staff starting, he's a squad leader. He has a day-to-day job. He has a squad at his disposal. He gets a task. He tasks organizes his squad and he supervises them to do that thing. So sometimes those guys show up to selection and they can't get out of that mode and they show up to team week and they start telling guys what to do supervising and don't actually do anything and what did cadre say he's a supervisor he's not doing anything so he gets so i i tell i tell respect to can about these common archetypes

and why they're important to understand and then so we described in in pretty good detail what to expect when you get out to camp mccall man i would have killed to have that kind of understanding before i went Now, I don't know that it's going to give a guy a distinct performance advantage because you still got to go out there. You still got to carry the heavy shit. You still got to find all the land at points. But at least you can mentally prepare yourself for that process. So you get an understanding of what selection looks like. And then the next part of the book.

Sorry, real quick. With that part, do you worry that people will sort of like do the whole like first day or like first month? of the relationship type of thing, knowing what the behavior types are, that they'll be that better version of themselves, knowing that that's kind of under the microscope. Well, that's the beauty of selection, is that everyone thinks that selection is physical.

It's rucking and running and carrying heavy stuff. And it is that it is all of that for certain. But what the, what the cadre are really, looking for is as we discussed those are soft attributes are looking for those specific behaviors as defined by those attributes and and how that behavior manifests itself and so yeah you if you were if you you you could hack the system and I could I could I could go to selection and I could play the role right right right but selection is so brutal right and you are so physically exhausted that you cannot act so that's why

That's why there is a large physical component to selection, not because we want to see if you're strong. You have to be strong. But we want to see you are so physically exhausted that you are raw and you can't hide your true self. So if you are a supervisor by nature, you shall be a supervisor by nature. And because you don't have the option because we're just going to kick the shit out of you. And you're going to be too busy fighting for your life. blocking punches, you know, metaphysical punches, that you're not going to have the opportunity to put up a front.

Right. You've got to fucking form. Going back to the relationship idea. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Please go ahead. Yeah. I say, I don't worry about that.

The same way, listen, you go to Ranger School, and you see a guy in Florida phase, and he's on 800 calories a day, no sleep. If he's a dick, you're going to know he's a dick. Right. If he's a good dude, he's a good dude. He's too exhausted. To hide that.

Yeah. It takes 61 days down at Camp Rutter. At selection, we do it in 21 days. And we just put the boots to you. So by the time you get the team week, when we're doing those explicit evaluations, like, you can't hide. Like, brother, we're seeing it. Yeah, so you can't act.

And so I was very cognizant of not giving away the secrets, but I could tell you all the standards. it would make a difference. You still got to make the times. Right. So I could take you out to Land Nav and I could show you every single point. I could give you the eight digit, 10 digit grid for every single landnet point out there. You still got to put 70 pounds on your back and you got a hump and you're on the clock.

So I don't know that there's a huge performance advantage. Maybe a little bit. But again, I don't tell you all the points. I just tell you there are points. Here's what points look.