The Team House - Air Force 24th Special Tactics Squadron Operator | Chad McCoy | Ep. 173

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Chad McCoy served in the Air Force for over 22 years, 18 of which with the 24th STS. (24th Special Tactics Squadron). Chad has been on 17 deployments the majority of which with JSOC and earned the rank of Chief Master Sergeant.  Check out Chad here: Foxtrot3 http://Foxtrot3.com LifeLine Rescue Tools  https://lifelinerescuetools.com/ Firestorm Labs https://www.launchfirestorm.com/ Today's Sponsor: BUB's Naturals  https://www.BUBSNATURALS.com/ Use the code "TEAMHOUSE" for 20% your order! Pick up their collagen protein, MCT oil, and apple cider vinegar gummies today! BUBS Donates 10% of all profits to charity in Glens honor, starting with the Glen Doherty Memorial Foundation GO TO: https://www.BUBSNATURALS.com/?discount=TEAMHOUSE  or Use the code "TEAMHOUSE" at checkout for 20% off your order! FEEL GREAT. DO GOOD. Words that we live by. To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -2 bonus episodes per month  -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests -Ad Free audio feed 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] #24thSTS #JSOC #pararescueBecome 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. 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 Ops, espionage, The Team House, with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 173 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. Our guest tonight on the show is Chad McCoy.

Chad spent his entire career, really, in Air Force Special Operations with 24th Special Tactics Squadron, served as a PJ, Pararescuemen. And we're really excited and happy to have you here in our studio tonight, man, flying out here. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks. I didn't get stabbed today, so I'm healthy and happy. It's the rocks out here that'll get you. Yeah.

So, I mean, where to begin? I mean, we kind of like shot the shit a little bit before we started the show. And, I mean, your biography and career, I suspect, is too extensive to even fit in one interview. But we'll try to hit some of the highlights, yeah. And hit some of the things you'd really like to get into. I'd really like to hear, first off, you know, sort of what your pathway. was growing up as a kid and what like sort of took you towards the Air Force. What was your origin story that made you the superhero you are today?

You know, so you talked to a lot of kids of our generation, right? And we grew up playing in the woods, you know, sticks as guns, wearing camouflage, going in Armaged, surplus stores and buying what are we, you know, canteens are a waste. That was the culture that was what we were enamored by. I was exactly the same way. You know, my brother and I were in the woods, you know, making forts and throwing plankton grenades, you know. And so you're also enamored by movies, you know.

And so, you know, the movies that were kind of formative for me were, you know, the same as everyone else. You look at like, I want to be Rambo, right? And probably a lot of Navy sales became Navy stills because of the movie, you know, it was awesome. And so we kind of had a culture there for, for a while that was kind of glamorizing the military experience and specifically the special operations experience. And so all I wanted in my life was to wear a bala, you know, balaclava, have an MP5 in a flight suit. That's all I want. Repel through skylights. It's all I wanted in life. And,

you know, once I got the balaclava, it wasn't very comfortable and MP5 wasn't very, you know, effective. The Nomex is hot as hell. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, that was what I was what I was, what I was aspiring to be as a young man. And, you know, I had a normal, you know, semi-normal childhood. But as I grew up, I knew when to join the military, and I was probably, you know, 17 years old. I was in Hawaii. It was a surfer. It was, you know, you know, some punk kid in Hawaii, skateboarder surfer. And I was enamored by special operations. This is before the war, right? This is before 9-11. So I had no context of what war was. I didn't know how real it could be.

I just knew it was kind of sexy, right? And so, and par rescue was one of the few jobs in the military that was always kind of employed, right? You know, regardless of war or not, they were rescuing people off the side of mountains. They were jumping in the middle of the ocean. They were badasses to begin with. And, you know, icing on the cake was maybe if a war kicks off, I can go do that stuff too. But it was just late 90s, right? And so, you know, that was kind of leading up into me going to the military.

So not to get ahead of it, but, you know, that was kind of the genesis of it was I wanted to do something exciting and cool. And recruiters that are, you know, listening to this is the things I was enamored by was, you know, guys putting their kit out there and showing me scuba tanks and, you know, guns and, you know, motorcycles. I was like, that's the life I want, you know. And you can get it a number of different ways. you know, you can go be a ranger and do all the same things. You can go be a seal. You can be a green beret. You know, no one has really cornered the market on the coolness.

They all have it. It's just, you know, how accessible is it? And pararescue was the quickest way, just to be kidding with you, was the quickest way to get all those things throughout the bat. Yeah. And it sounds like cheating, but, you know, it was truly, I can go to scuba school. I can go to, you know, I went to QS, you know, Special Forces Combat Dive School.

as an 18-year-old. You don't get that in the Army, right? You're a senior guy. You cut your teeth. You proved yourself, and you actually want to do that crap. And I knew I could get those things off the bat. I went to free fall school as a, you know,

I turned 19 at free fall school. And so that's not normal. Maybe it's normal today. You know, it's more accessible today. But back in the day, it wasn't. And so that was the path I chose. Yeah, that was one of the big things, especially pre-GWAT is that CCT and Pararescue, they had that pipeline.

It was stacked. It was lined up. It was the envy of every other special operation. It was still contentious when I went through around 2008 or 2009. Because, yeah, you guys have a pipeline right in there. I mean, to have an entire Special Forces team, MFF team qualify, it's pretty difficult to do. It's not easy to get those slots. but yeah I can definitely see why it's appealing to it no so I felt that I felt that as a young guy going through scuba school with zero batters on my chest right I was a maybe I was the E2 and my I was dive team number two in scuba school it's a big deal right in one two and three and you know the guy that I was a

my my partner was a crusty like you know special forces E7 and I'm enamored by this guy right I'm like he's he's legit I am nothing I'm a punk that was in high school last year. And here I'm going to Special Forces scuba school. And I don't deserve to be there. And they reminded us that every day. You know, Air Force cubes, you know. And Air Force got a bad rap because, you know, we go in there and we smoke these things. But it was because our selection was good.

And so you had, like, really talented guys at the top of the food chain going through these courses. And they crushed them, you know. And, but we were a bunch of pricks. You know, we were young guys. We were, you know, arrogant. and but yeah for sure we probably deserved everything we get we know we had so you're you were basically seals but with the ability to back it up no no man that's a joke it's a joke i went through i went through uh the 18 delta chorus the true 18 delta course at sockham um with a bunch of seals

and a bunch of eightin deltas and there was a bunch of PJs back when we were going through there and um you know you had the seals around the periphery and they're like you know screw these guys and the $18 was like, screw all these guys, and here's the Air Force guys going, we just want to get through this, man. We go over the next step. Like, this is just a thing for us, you know. So what year did you go through selection?

So 1998, back when it was hard. Last hard course. Last hard course, yeah, last hard course. You know, I was thinking about the other day. We say that about stuff, and I think we kind of believe it, right? Because I kind of believe that. It was harder back then.

I don't know if that's true or not. you know we'll kind of go through the progression of my career but like I end up running selection training at the unit and the guys we were bringing on were better than us they were was it harder maybe not but were they better yes because we were better at selection we're better selecting right people and so it's kind of funny to look back and think like back in the day it was like who was the hardest and you could just get through hard things but does that make the best operator no it doesn't it makes the guy that's really good at carrying heavy things.

And here I was trying to blend in with those hardcore guys, you know, and fake it until I make it. But yeah, so a lot of growth through the process. So for the people who don't know anything about Air Force Special Operations, can you sort of give us the lay? And it's changed over time, too, I guess. But can you give us the layout of what it was when you were there and what it's become now? I'll give you a better history lesson. I'll try to, you know, someone will fact check me on it, but, you know, so PJs grew out of kind of necessity in Korea jumping in, jumping in docks, behind enemy lines, and moving people out, kind of like the hard way, right? And so there were, you know, I guess, kind of a crude way to put it, just guys with big balls that would jump out of airplanes and do hard stuff.

And so willing to risk their lives for others. And so that was kind of the genesis of this. And so Vietnam kind of was the galvanizing kind of environment for PJs. And they just did hard stuff all the time, man. Like you guys were in a tick, you know, a bunch of SF dudes or conventional, you know, army guys. They were going to, the guys are going to go down the hoist under fire and try to take out their casualties. And, you know, Vietnam's, you know, was a good, you know, kind of litmus test for, you know, being a spec ops guy. You know, the seals, green berets, they all cut their teeth there, right?

And so here PJs were, they were one-offs. You know, there's these guys that just were kind of, you know, kind of the rebels of the Air Force for sure. But their job morphed into protecting aircrew. And so it became this kind of safety net for aviators. So I'm an F-15 pilot. I'm flying. And here's a really good example is, you know, the Gulf War. You punch out.

A PJ's coming to get you, right? and you know he's going to come with an armada not only helicopter's a 10s flying with him and so it's a legit package come with him so PJs morphed over the years and then the G what happened and then it was the chance for the PJs to say hey man like what do we want to be when we grow up because this is no kidding the test and so not to get ahead the the conversation oh it's great yeah we're we're did I read somewhere the a lot of the the the PJs the paroruscuman in Vietnam. Were they former, did they draw on the smoke jumpers?

Is that, or am I just making that out? I never heard that before, maybe. I mean, I think that the CIA drew on some of those guys for some of their ops in like Laos during the Vietnam conflict. But I think a lot of them kind of just floated back and forth. There was a lot of that going on. Yeah. It was like, hey, man, you can do weird stuff?

Okay, let's go do weird stuff. Yeah, a lot of like sheep dipping back then. Yeah. But the larger picture of air, Air Force Special Operations also includes there's J-TACs, there's CCTs. Can you tell folks out there a little bit about how that works? Everyone knows I got a lot of love for the CCTs. And so at the 24th STS, you have CCTs and PJs.

The Air Force is terrible at branding. So we have a lot of acronyms. You have also have TACPs, right? And so as Rangers, you guys know TAC-P. Conventional forces get TACPs, but there's also soft TACPs. And so we have those. They're great. They're excellent J-TACs.

But CCTs were initially designed to do kind of austere ATC, so air traffic control, basically stand up a remote site and bring aircraft in. Like out of their rucksack on a remote airfield somewhere. Well, you look at Desert One, right? They were the guys bringing in those aircraft. And that was kind of the genesis of it. But then it became, okay, there's a necessity to have these guys call close air support. And can they do it really well at a high level?

Absolutely they can. And so they kind of repurposed them. And so over the past, you know, over the past 20 years, they repurpose them to be excellent J-TACs. And, you know, they're just badass dudes that could get the job done. They could bring in, you know, your infill-X-fill, but also call CAS, you know, manage ISR. And so kind of jack-of-all-trades as well, you know. And so, and then you got PJs who traditionally come from the rescue side.

So you have rescuing the Air Force, and their job is to rescue pilots. That's it. And so they do it, and they're the best at it. You know, they come in helicopters, they jump up airplanes, they do the NASA mission. I mean, they do the rescues off McKinley. I mean, they're everything, right? But then within SOF, you take those PJs and you say, how do we purpose these guys to support ground forces more effectively? And so in the early days, Desert One is a good example.

When you start building up J-Sog, they realize that, hey, man, we can use PJs and be these kind of, this enabling force that protects our guys. and provides confidence to ground force commanders to say, man, like, if anything happens, you guys are going to do it. And a good example that is Black Hawk down, you know, we had PJs there that went down. And guys, I had the, man, it's hard to put this into words, but like when I was a young man, I looked at, you know, these magazines, and I saw guys like Tim Wilkinson and Scotty Fills, and I was enamored by them. And then I got to meet them in person and then become, have a relationship with them. That's so cool. Which was amazing to me.

And it probably wasn't amazing to them because I'm a nobody, right? But for me, it was a big deal. And so, but those are the guys that put themselves in harm's way. They're kind of the lesser-known portion of Blackhawk down in the story of, you know, Gothic serpent. But they, you know, they risked their lives to save others and cut those guys out of those helicopters. And so, you know, then the assault force understood, holy crap, these guys are really good at this. We can use them on the maritime missions. We can use them on these as helo assault forces.

And so they became kind of necessity over time. And correct me if I'm wrong anytime I say something dumb here. But 24th STS is the unit that encompasses some of these different personnel and capabilities. Unlike maybe some of the other soft units, does they act as like the force provider and they shoot off these attachments to seals, rangers, or are there missions they do? Yes and no. So they do both, right?

And so in the early days of Iraq and Afghanistan, we were basically running combat surfing and rescue for the task force. And so I was the team leader for those task forces. And my job was to protect a certain region of Iraq. And so, you know, when you had halves going all night, you know, a lot of heat, a lot of helis flying back in the day. And the 160th was very, very busy. They were getting on more than anybody.

And my job was to protect those guys. not only the air crew but everyone else is on those you know those uh you know those uh you know those infill and exville you know uh birds and so you know that was a primary mission of our unit and then on top of that we would basically dole PJs and controllers out to the army and navy and so um and that's where it gets kind of exciting right because everyone wants to be part of that you touch that magic and there's a lot of magic there right and so uh you know PJs controllers you know it sounds like a pejorative but they were commodities for a while and so and that's It's not a bad thing to me because you're on the best missions and you're with the best operators.

And so my job is to be the best PJ with them and protect them and save their lives and think ahead of problems as they happen. And so and the combat controller is running, I mean, he's the busiest guy on the target. Yeah. You know what I mean? He's got multiple radios going, multiple aircraft. Maybe he's calling Cass. Maybe he's calling a, you know, a black HLC to bring, you know, casualties out. And the PJ has a cool job because if no one gets hurt, you got a pretty sweet gig, man.

Because you're running and gun on with the best of them. And then when someone gets hurt, yeah, you refocus, man. And that's your primary task. And so, yeah, it's a different gig, man. So with the Air Force, we'll talk about parake rescue because I don't know about CCT, but it has sort of that seal structure, right? There's the white side pararescue. who before GWAT were the busiest special operations folks anymore.

They're doing mountain rescue. Dudes in Alaska. Yeah, they're doing the mountain rescue. They're doing incredibly heroic stuff out at sea. Like, they had a real job all the time, even the guard bums. Yeah, the perfect storm, man. Yeah. I mean, Long Island, you know, guys, the guys in Alaska are the biggest badass PJs, right?

Because they're the guys that are going to jump to remote DZ and rescue somebody and like overland for three days and you know probably kill bears with their bare hands i don't know a couple a couple of them i think just last year did a free fall jump in alaska to go rescue some a dude those stranded out there jumped right out into the snow drifts they do a lot yeah they do a lot and um the guys here in long island um do a lot of jump missions out to sea um you know a lot of the uh you know merchant vessels that they call for help these guys will hang they literally risked their lives for others and so when i joined that's what i joined to do and i'm I was hoping that the combat side of it would come eventually.

And, you know, so I was first stationed, I think you guys want to talk about selection a little bit, but I was first stationed in Las Vegas, and we went out to Northern Watch, which is, you had Northern Watch and Southern Watch, and basically it was a bracket around Iraq for no fly zone. And so our job, Northern Watch in Turkey was to protect those fighters that were enforcing that. And so in my mind, I was in combat, right? I'm in full kid. I got all these magazines. I had so many magazines.

I probably had 500 rounds on me. I don't know, man. But I'm kidding. You know, I was, I thought I was John Rambo, and I was going to go save anyone who needed me. Right. But the fact is, is that you're just a safety net. And, you know, we hadn't really started yet. And so, you know, it's kind of an interesting kind of transition to what the GWAT became,

because I didn't have any experience, you know what I mean? That wasn't nobody. And so, yeah, it's interesting, man. So with, so, and I don't, I don't mean any sort of disparagement when I call everybody not in the 24th, like the vanilla side or, you know, like vanilla PJs. But what is their wartime mission as opposed to the 24th? Yeah. So they've got a great mission, man. So they're, you know, they have dedicated assets.

So you have HH60s, HHB and the Air Force variant of rescue, right? you have dedicated C-130s, H-C-130s. You have basically these task forces deploy to become stand-up, turnkey, rescue and recovery. And so, you know, for the past 20 years, they've been everywhere, you know. They've been co-located with us. And so my job would be to protect task force assets. There would be to protect everybody, right? And so if it didn't fall under our purview, they would be the ones that take care of it.

And so it's not necessarily like, I'm better than you, it's a different mission. And so, you know, we use the term, you know, white side for, you know, kind of conventional soft. Where soft's not conventional, but, you know, that's the term we use. But they did a lot of great things, and especially in Afghanistan, you know, they did a lot of rescues, a lot of notoriety with, you know, special forces teams that they came in and saved. but when you talk about, you know, kind of the tip of the spear, when you kind of neck it down to mission, it becomes a little bit more exclusive, right? And so it's a smaller club of people. And, you know, that's by design. You know, there's a different selection process, which I'm sure we'll talk about, different training, and also different understanding of assets available.

And that's usually the differentiator between White Side and Tier 1, right? It's assets. you know operators you know you can teach a guy to shoot really well and do all these things but what assets do you have available to you and so when you have dedicated cast every every target we have AC130 over every single night which people don't have and and I'm used to that I'm like we don't have AC 103 how are we going to go out right how do we do this because you know what happens we get to tick right you know and um come you know white side guys are like yeah man we'll just fight through it and you know tier one guy's like well we got to just drop it and we'll

move on. Right. But yeah, that's, that's, that's, everybody back off and call in the strike. Yeah, exactly. Um, so tell us about, like, did you, did anybody warn you what, uh, selection was going to be? Did you work up? Did you train for it? And what did you think when you got there? Yeah, so it's, it's kind of funny. Um, I'm my own worst enemy. Uh, everybody knows me, knows that. And, um, when 9-11 happened, I was in the, uh, I was in Okinawa. I was actually with a good buddy of mine. We had a, we're having a typhoon party. It's what you do in Okinawa when you have typhoons. And my buddy Nick McCaskill was a good friend of mine. He was like an E5 at the time. And I was a E4. His family was on the mainland. And you invited me over, we're going to have a

typhoon party. And so we're drinking these things called white dogs. It's like Korean yogurt and like soju. And we're tearing it up, man, just the two of us. You know, no purpose. Just that's what you do, right? And we watched the World Trade Center happen. and together. And I remember sitting on the couch watching it and I'm like and I'm trying to rationalize it. I'm like, oh, I must be beacons in the towers. And I'm like trying to make sense of it.

And then you start seeing more, and you're like, holy crap. And then he starts getting all these phone calls. And I didn't. So I was at a rescue squadron and he was at a special tactic squadron in Okinaw. And I'm like, you're getting calls. I'm not getting calls.

Like, you guys don't want me? And here I was this, you know, I thought I was this pipe hitting guy. and when 9-11 happened, I assumed I'd be a part of whatever the response was. And I was in the Pacific. And I wasn't. And we started doing, oh, yeah, Philippines, which was a thing, okay? And we had a 47 out there that crashed.

Yes, I remember. It was a 160th bird that went down. I had a couple friends on there. Juan Riddle and Bill McDaniel. Bill McDaniel was a teammate of mine in Vegas. It was a big moment for us, right? Because it was, I was the young guy, I never dealt with tragedy, right?

And I was like, holy shit, these guys are dead. And then they said, hey, we need you guys go to the Philippines. I'm like, I'm in, and I'm going to war. You know, again, probably, you know, 600 mags. I don't know, like, whatever I had on me. And we go out there and we think we're going to war. And it was this kind of like posture. And it was like, okay, there's things going on here,

but we don't know what you guys can do. How do you contribute to that? And so it was really frustrating for me. as a young guy because i started reading stars and stripes when 9-11 happened and i started you know reading about these s f guys they're going with like uh you know shooting 40 millimeter of the mountains and and getting these ticks and pulling back and i'm like that's what i signed up to do and i'm in the pacific and so um i did a you know i was stuck out there i was stuck i was PCS out there. I had a, you know,

had a commitment for another year. And I was miserable. And I ended up getting an ulcer. Like I ended up getting an ulcer. Like I ended up getting an ulcer as a, you know, 20 year old, whatever I was. Did you think you were going to miss it? I was just, I just want to be a part of it.

Yeah. And I was like, this is the war. This is, I mean, and war is romantic, you know, to a young guy who was playing war in the woods. I wanted to test my medal. I wanted to see what I was worth. And so there was only one. way to get there right I could roll the dice and PCS and hopefully go to a unit that was deploying

or I could get out and go contract to Blackwater right because Blackwater's a thing back then yeah or I could go the 24th SDS which I knew was going to deploy you knew you're going to war if you went there the problem was I was a nobody I had no experience I was a young guy I had nothing to give them and traditionally the 24th sTS was taking like you know guys in the 30s they were the best of the best and here I was I was you know I was barely 21. I was like 22, I think, at the time. And so I put in a package, and they're at war already. And I put in this package, and I was up in Alaska, actually.

I was doing some rescue stuff with the Alaska guys for a month. It was great. And I flew from Alaska to Fort Bragg to do selection by myself as a nobody. And, you know, you like do a PT test. Actually, a funny story. PT test. So I'm super nervous. I'm in like I got no shot at coming up here they're not going to pick me and so I wake up at

three in the morning I got a PTSD I think at five wake up with three I'm stretching like doing random stretches before HP was a thing I'm like like touching my toes and I'm like I need to take some multivitam because that'll make me run faster right I pop some of those I drink some some Gatorade I'm doing everything wrong and I show up at five and this multivitamin my stomach is churning I have no food in my stomach and I know that I know better now but you have to do this three-mile run. And it's like, show what you got. And so the chief that was there was this runner.

He was like a marathon guy. He's like, do you mind if I run with you? What am I going to say no? So, of course. So he's running with me. And I'm running. He's talking to me the whole time. I'm like, I'm trying to run a six-minute mile, which is hard for me.

And he's talking to me. And my stomach's churning, and I got to vomit. But I'm not going to stop. So I keep running. I'm starting to vomiting on myself. And I'm puking on myself. He keeps talking to him, puking. And I puked three times on this run.

And I run, I get a good time, and he's just like, this kid's crazy, right? And so I go to the other events, do all this other stuff. And then I go through this board. And the board just gets you in the door to go to the further kind of next selection. And they used to call murder boards back in the day. And they were not friendly. It was everybody. It was in uniform.

I'm in uniform. And they just trash you. They rip you apart. And again, I'm a nobody, right? I'm a 20-something kid who's never done anything in my life. and I come in there and they're like, first of all, we never seen anybody

vomit on themselves and this run the whole time that's kind of weird. Like, I get it, kid. Like, you want to be here? I'm like, yeah, I do. And I told him, I was very honest with him.

And I said, listen, guys. And I wasn't, there's no ego attached to it. There's no bravado. And it's the Air Force, so you can say guys. No, you can't.

No, so I'm, yeah, I'm smoking a cigar. Right, right. So I said to him, I said, you know, if you guys don't take me, I'm probably going to get out of the military. because I'm getting out.

My service commitment was up in like eight months. I was like, I'm getting out the military and I'll go fight somehow. I'll figure it out. And they knew I was serious. And I said, I just want to be busy. I just want to fight. I want to go to war.

And they selected me. And so I came, you know, so I ended up going back to Okinawa. And we had to, so I had to do one more deployment. I went to Korea. It was a short diploma. It was like 35 days, 45 days.

And this is what I was telling you about the U2 crash. Yeah. And so I'm out there. I wasn't an alert. We didn't fly alert for the U-2s because they're like high, high stuff. You're like very low probability against shut down. And so we're not alert for him. And it's like, I figure what time was in the morning.

It's like 7, 8. Maybe I'm hung over. Maybe I'm not. I don't know. To hold me to it. And they knocked on my door like Chad. Hey, you two just punched. You got to go rescue this guy.

Oh, man. And I'm like, oh, yeah, cool. Yeah, let's go. And so we went out there. and the U2 It's a funny story Because I actually met the pilot recently He lives in my town

Oh really? Yeah Awesome story But he basically limped his U2 across the border ejected in a space suit So he took ADA fire or something No no it was a

He had a malfunctioned Okay One of the interesting is about And he punches He played it cool And I talked to him in person about it just recently He was like yeah You know

I knew how to get it over It was on fire like whatever you know real real cool pilot the old school air force pilot like the kind of guys from like World War II right and he limps it over crashes his plane to a gas station

there's fire it's a mess he's in a space suit breaks his back we go down to him this mudfield litter him out or put him in a stokes litter

raise him out you know rescue him you know and then I stay behind and like I'm gonna go like secure this crash site I don't tell him doing no one taught me how to do this stuff

and I end up finding this black box, this recorder, it's a giant reel recorder, that those two Koreans are pulling out of this apartment complex. And I got a gun on me, right? And I'm like, and Chad now knows I could have, like, lock these dudes up and, like, zip tied them and, like, probably took them away because they're probably, you know,

North Korean, like, classified piece of gear. Right, exactly. There was a van waiting for it out front. Yeah. Holy shit. And so I didn't know how the gravity of this at the time. I'm like a 20-something kid, you know? I'm like. I'm surprised that the Air Force didn't sound like,

a force to, like, the Ravens or. They sent some cops eventually. But, yeah, so we do this, and then, you know, I'm like, high-five myself. I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. Wait, wait, wait. So did you get the box? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

How did you get it? Did you negotiate? Did you draw down on them? What happened? I'm like, I'm an American. You're not. And, you know, they probably all, both new karate. Probably could have kicked my ass and zip-tied me.

But thank God they didn't. So if you're watching, thank you for, like, beating me up. but yeah so we recovered everything you know he comes out fine it was a big deal you know yeah but um i was thinking about the war all i wanted to be was in afghanistan and um did you get a did you get a recognition for that did you get a medal for securing the black box from the korean wow well

there's more to that it's just kind of my career but it's fine it's not about awards right um but so it just you kind of stand up you a little bit. Yeah, yeah. We see you go back to 24th STS and be like, I did something, guys. Yeah. I did a good thing. Yeah. So, you know, you fast forward a few months, and I fly out to Fort Bragg, and the unit's gone. There's no one there. It's a ghost town. And it's a really eerie feeling. Like, thinking about now, it was crazy to see. It was no one there. There was some admin folks there, but everyone was forward. And they said, hey, we don't have enough people to man this C-Star position

in Afghanistan with the Navy, supporting, you know, specific squadron, will you deploy in a week? I'm like, hell yes. I'm like, that's all I want to do. And I had no training. So you're supposed to go through training, right? You have a year of training. You have to go through. They're like, we want you to go now. I'm like, yeah, man, I'm in. Like, I have no gear. I have nothing. You know, like, we got you. So I go to the armory, and they got this little shorty M4. And I never seen one riff. Now it's normal, right? Everyone's like, hey, whatever, it's 10 inch. I never seen one for. I was like, that's the coolest thing ever. Yeah. And they had painted it for me. I'm like, dude,

I am big race. I am varsity. I am now Rambo. Yeah. I can, I can kill anything. Like, I am the man.

Like, this is tier one right now. Right. Right. And we go to the rain, we cite in, and I'm like, dude,

this is everything. It's a culmination of everything I wanted in my life. Was it suppressed? Did you have a suppressed? Oh, yeah. Oh. I didn't even see a suppressor.

Yeah. How does this thing go on? Yeah. Yeah. So I get that, you know, uniforms, I don't want to kid it out for me.

And I'm like, dude, this is insane. You felt like a professional athlete coming to a team, and here's your uniform, right? And so all brand new kit, which is not cool. In retrospect, it's not cool to have brand new kit down the range, but I was that guy. Price tags on and everything. Trying to not get it dirty.

It's like the hat with like the sticker on the front goes me. Yeah, so, you know, so I go down range to Afghanistan and I do nothing. I mean, we support all these ops. It was a part of the task force. I was learning. I didn't do anything sexy. I didn't do anything hard. But I was exposed to kind of a new world.

And I was really impressed by the guy as I was with. They were extreme professionals. They were very capable. And I was a nobody. And it was very humbling, right? It was like, holy, you know, I thought I was the man before. And now I know I'm not. And I know I need to grow to this.

And so, you know, that was a pretty formative experience for me. And so I come back home from that deployment and I start Green Team. So Green Team is our selection. Two seconds. Yeah. We just give a quick shout out to the sponsor for the show. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. Bubbs Naturals is a health food company. Make a number of different products. They're the sponsor for the show. We really appreciate these guys. Bubbs is the nickname of Glenn Doherty, one of the former SEAL-turned-CIA contractor who sadly perished in Benghazi. And these guys work with the Glendorty Memorial Foundation. So we're really happy to work with these dudes.

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Is it about a two-year? Yeah, it is. I was about to say the same thing. I guess I kind of glossed over that, didn't I? Yeah. No, that's okay. So when you go to paror rescue, it really is, maybe outside of like an 18 Delta. Well, I mean, do you guys have the longest pipeline?

You might. I'm not into competition with other tiers. I get it, but like you said, you're getting so many things. You're getting so many schools that are all front-loaded. So you do two years of training just to get on the job. Yes. And you don't know anything when you graduate two years. That's the sad thing, is that even now, you go through all this training,

and you're not capable to go deploy. You get top-up training and get to your unit. And so, you know, there's a breakdown there. But the pipeline basically is always employment, schools and basically foundational schools to put it all together at PJ school to make you a PJ, right? And so, but before that, you go to selection. And I guess I kind of super glossed over this. It's pretty important.

So our selection used to be, it's not the same now. It's a completely different now. And we're talking about just selection to get into par rescue. So it used to be PJs and controllers together. Okay. We would go through selection together. And so you go through basic training. and if you were a guy who had, you know, basically done a pass test, which is like a physical assessment, to go, hey, you want to go here.

Okay, you met the basic criteria to go there. You start with a lot of guys. So we started, I mean, just for easy math, let's say 100 people. Maybe it was like 90, I don't know, whatever. So 100 people had a basic training come there, and they're all eager to be PJs because it's sexy, right? You see this guy, he's got blouse boots, cool beret, he's jacked, you know, he's probably taking a ton of roids. And he's briefing you guys. You're like, I want to be that guy.

Right. And here I am, you know, scrawny, like 145 pounds going, yes, me, man. So I came in the Air Force to be that guy. Yeah. I'd already made up my mind. So I'd already done the pastures before it came in in Hawaii. In Honolulu, I did it with a prior controller. I was committed.

And so the stakes are high, right? Because you come in, and a lot of guys don't make it. Most of them don't make it. And so you come to be a PJ. You're probably going to be, you know, whatever, a load master or a cop or something. but my motivation was to not be that. My motivation was to be what I wanted to be. And so I came in to do that.

I finished basic training. Which Air Force Basic Training everybody knows gets you ready for Air Rescue selection. Yeah, it's the hardest basic training. No, I learned how to fold shirts and make my bed really well, which has not paid off in my later life because I don't make my bed. No, Air Force Spacey Training is a joke. I mean, no offense, but it is. you know and it was you know you atrophied the process you're doing the slow runs i should have been doing

you know hard stuff right and they change it now so now they break guys out and they actually you know build them up to go pre-selection okay so they have like cohorts for selection yeah they fixed it okay back in the day it was like hey man you better be ready from go and so you go to the selection there at san antonio and it's a lot of running swimming and beating your ass in the pool okay A lot of calisthenics, and that's it. Not a lot of weightlifting. It wasn't a lot of any of that. Really scary instructors.

They were pain in the ass. There's a funny story, but one of them, I'll tell you later. But yeah, so I'm enamored by these guys. I'm scared of them. I was a young kid. I never done anything hard in my life. I was a kid from Hawaii. I was a surfer.

I was good in the water. I was comfortable being, you know, uncomfortable in the water. That was my saving grace. I wasn't super fast. You think being that skinny of you fast? I wasn't fast. I wasn't strong, but I would go through every day knowing that I had to get to the end of the day. And I wasn't thinking about the end of the week or in the month.

I was thinking the end of the day. And that was the only thing that saved me through the process was that I took it very incrementally. And so I'm like, I'm going to get through this run. And I know I'm going to go to a water confidence session. I'm going to get through that. And I'll get to the end. And I'll get to eat dinner and I'll go to sleep and I'll do it again. And it got me through the whole process.

And I was unassuming, if you had a lineup of guys, you would, never have picked me to get through it. There's no way. Because the guys are big buff guys, they all quit. They all quit. And they quit from runs. They quit from swims. They quit from water confidence.

And the water is a great equalizer, right? And the Navy knows that. The seals know this. Is that when you get in the water and you're uncomfortable and you can't breathe, you're going to quit. Right. Unless you can reprogram your brain to say, man, listen, I got this. And so one of the things we do is buddy breathing.

And buddy reading is really hard. You pass a snorkel back between your buddy. and you have an instructor who beats a crap out of you the whole time. And the guy you're with can screw you. Because if he's a spaz and he wants to be breathing, you're not getting a breath. Yeah. And then when he gives back the breath, they cover your snorkeling, you're not getting a breath either. And so you got to like mentally prepare for not breathing.

And so I was pretty comfortable. I was like, man, you know, if you surf the North Shore Hawaii, that's worse than any water concession you ever have in the military. Right. You know, like getting held down at sunset is a big deal. and when you get held down for two waves, you are going to die, right? And if you survive it, man, life is good. Yeah.

So I came straight from, you know, surfing big waves, going to Indoc, and, like, they would do drown-proofing, which sounds really dangerous. But, like, I would, like, I'd pretend like it was a dolphin, I'd make noises, and go down and take a little piss on the bottom, come back, I'd breathe. It was comfortable. I was like, this is like meditation. It was early, before mindfulness was a thing. Right. It's like an immersion tank. Yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah, so, you know, you do that, you know, incrementally gets harder, harder every week. You do a six-mile run at the end, a ton of push-ups, some of the pull-ups, so all that crap, and then you graduate. And so once you graduate that, you're in the pipeline. And so then you do that two years you're describing. And so, you know, usually start off at scuba school. You go to, we used to go back, you know, go to Key West.

We have our own school school now. We go to Key West with all the SF guys, and we would crush it. Because we were so comfortable in the water. Like, you couldn't beat us, man. You couldn't crush us. And these open water swims were easy. We'd crush everything, man. The runs, you know, the runs were hard for me because I wasn't that good of a runner.

But we were studs, you know? And you go from that, you get a scuba bubble, which means nothing to anybody except guys have been to scuba school. And you go to airborne school and people are like, what is that? Because it looks like a little astronaut. Are you a welder? Yeah. Well, it looked like an astronaut. Then you get your airborne wing.

Doorgunner on the spaceship. Exactly. Some stupid stuff like that. But yeah, you go to all these schools, right? So it's, you know, just really basic schools, you know, basic airborne, free fall, survival. The hard one for PJs was going through 18 Delta course. So going through Sockham. That's hard for anybody going through it. Dude, we had a lot of guys that, you know, one of your PJs ended up not staying with it.

They're like, screw this, can't do it. Now, at that time, were you guys doing the full 18 Delta or were you just doing the Sockham? part of it. Now, we just did the Sockham. You know, the 18 Delta portion on the backside, maybe would have been more of a gentleman's course on the backside. You know, more long-term carriers, stuff like that. But

they didn't like us there. Yeah. And the SF guys that were there, old crusty dudes, and they did not want us there. And so they made our life's hell. Yeah. They'd fail us on stupid stuff. I mean, I still, it's like memory now. It's like BSI seen safe. is what used to say is like body service isolation. If you didn't say all these things, they would fail you. And it wasn't a part of your ability to treat somebody.

It was all about your ability to recite things. And even anatomy and physiology was like super stressful because it was like, how can you memorize these things right now? I didn't understand medicine. When I left there, I was clueless. Like if you were shot in front of me after a soccer, I'm like, yeah, BSI seen safe. You're like, what do you keep saying that for? I'm like, I got my gloves on.

You know, pharmacology was foreign. me and it never made sense to me until someone explained it to me in a way that I could understand it and the process is so much better now man like and um so everything is improved after the war everything improved so for our viewers and listeners the entire 18 delta which is the special forces medic course has the trauma portion which is the sockham and you come out of there basically with skills equal to or exceeding a paramedic right or that's the idea and then for 18 deltas there There's the long-term care because it's based also around like being in a village, isolated, treating villagers.

As I recall, they, they learn stuff about like animal husbandry. They learn things about like what if there's a viral outbreak in the village. How do we sterilize the well? Yeah. Yeah. They're excellent medics. Yeah. And I have a lot of love for Aitin Deltas.

They're awesome medics. They understand pharmacology. They understand wound care. They're great. They're, I mean, I think they're better than a lot of nurses, you know. And so I was not that. Okay? So just full transparency, it was not.

I was good enough to get by. I passed the course first try. And I was like, thank God, get me out of this place. And, no, truly it was. And so, you know, I go through all these courses. And then I get to PJ school and they put it all together. They teach you climbing and some high-engal rescue stuff. But it's real basic, you know, because it's hard to make someone an expert at high-angle rescue in a few months.

Right. It takes years, right? Because that, I mean, that alone is a specialty skill. Right. But to be a good medic, to be a good parachutist, to, you know, to be able to do, you know, we do Rams jumps, which is basically folding a zodiac up and pushing out of the back of a plane, getting the ground, you know, get to the ocean, pop it, you know, a scuba cylinder, inflate it. You know, all these things, and you're supposed to get all of them.

Right. You're not good at any of them. Right. You're, you know, you're competent, but you're not an expert. And so medicine is make or break. all these other things are like they're all make or break right because they're all dangerous right but medicine is what you're it's your bread and butter it's what you're asked to do right and if you don't rocket at it like someone's going to die in your arms and so when you go to the 24th

they know you need a top off and so they start you know kind of finessing those those technical or tactical skills of medicine and make you a really good medic so yeah tell us then about about what is it green platoon and i mean you've had all this you're already dragging you're already dragging around Drager systems and MC6 parachutes and all this other crap that you've been trained on. What is this additional training, you know, tacking on that? Yeah, so Green Team is really cool. So, again, so I ran Green Team later on in my career, and it was a way better process than what I went through. What I went through was a bunch of courses.

It was like really high-end courses, right? The best of the best. I mean, millions of dollars of training. but there wasn't there was never an fmp p to like all put it together right and so it was like hey they've sent me to swift water rescue courses in like west virginia and i would become an expert swift water rescue but what does that mean right and you know they send me to these mountain rescue courses and i would do all this high-end like you know very complicated technical rescue what does it mean um you know our jump trip yeah you're you're you're getting very proficient at jumping

um but how do you put it all together tactically and so it's crazy to think my green team vice the green team today those guys that graduate green team today are freaking studs like they are and i can say it's not about me it's about them they are studs because they get the training so what i went through is you know i go through advanced free fall um you know we learn how to jump in all kinds of equipment i don't actually know maybe we were jumping nods at the time which is a big deal to jump nods yeah people weren't doing not every full's doing it right um i'm trying to think we you know we know we know really crazy dive trip where we do three weeks of, you know, just getting back into Dreggers and doing, you know, line dives, which suck, you know, and FMP is doing CQB, which CQB, for every other service is very, like, foundational. For us, it wasn't. And so I'd never done CQB when I came up there, you know, I was a good shot, but I didn't, CQB is very difficult. It's a different game, right? You like, it's a different way of thinking and processing information very quickly. And So you're learning all this stuff within a year.

And so you pop out of there and you're a tier one operator now, right? Well, not really. Because I never been to combat, right? So I've been to combat, you know, quotations, but I never, you know, fired my weapon. With your 50 magazines. Yeah, man. And so when I popped out on the backside, they send me to a tier one unit. And here I am with the best of the best.

And I'm a nobody. Now, what year is this that you get to the 24th? Would you finish your green team? I finished in 2003. So, to be fair, at that point in time, very few people had, like, because, obviously, it started in 2001, so people had combat experience. Yeah, some guys did. But combat experience was not something that was, like, nobody had combat experience prior to that. Maybe guys are with the Panama.

Yeah, you'd see, like, Grenada Raiders or dudes with Panama Scroll, and, you know, you'd be like, oh. Bad ass, yeah. Yeah. He's seen it. Legend. Yeah. But so the guys that did the initial push into Iraq, you know, I've been these ticks, and I was on Green Team with them, they're telling me stories. I'm like, dude, I'm enamored by it.

Yeah. I'm like, dude, how would I, you know, how would I handle this? And the irony is that, you know, everyone thinks that training prepares you for combat, you know, to a certain extent it does. But there is a, there's a next step. And it's under fire when the stakes are really high. and that's when things get real, right? So my first big op, I was with the Navy, and full compromised gunfight, and I'm like, oh, man, we're,

are we fighting? We're fighting now. Is somebody shooting in us? Yeah, yeah. I can shoot better, right? And you're looking at other people, and they're shooting, they're shooting, I'm like, oh, I can shoot. It gets on.

Yeah. And, you know, people think it's, you're like, oh, I've got all this training. Like, it doesn't matter. unless you're with guys that have been there done that and watch what they do there's some guys that just naturally they're that right we call them wayne groves right they just want to get it on but for the most most of us it's like it's a process and you're like okay this is normal okay this is how you react to this okay this is when you escalate force and it's not as intuitive as you think and so thank god is with the best of the best right they were the best of the best and there were guys that had been on two rotations before of combat. They've been there, done that, and here I was a new guy, going enamored. I'm like, holy shit. I want to hang with you guys.

Yeah. I think a good way to frame that, at least for me, is like, you have a lifetime of cultural conditioning of not killing people that, you know, that are in front of you. And so when it first goes down, yeah, you might react, but there's also potentially that thought

process at, am I really going to kill this human, this person in front of me. Am I allowed to? Yeah, right. Am I making the right, am I making the right decision? Yeah, it sounds silly, but it's true, man. And the guys that don't have that limitation in their psyche are the guys their liabilities, too. You know, like, if a guy is weapons free from the start, you're like, dude, what's going on your brain?

Right, right. You know, it should be a measured approach. And my job is to save lives, right? And so, you know, it's also, you know, to take lives in that respect, but also it's my job is to save lives. And so there's a humanitarian aspect to my role. And, you know, you have to be both. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do.

Yeah. But also, you can hold someone's hand while they're, you know, maybe dying. And I take that very seriously, man. And so, you know, later on in my career, when I would get into other operations, there were not necessarily PJ focused, I never took it for granted. Like, I was like, man, humanity is important. important and it's important in combat and the guys that I saw that could balance that very effectively were guys are respected and you know canley it is kind of easy to be a killer man like to be that yeah that guy to have to be measured in your approach is a very mature reaction

and they're the guys that respect the most and I saw it I saw it live and I'm like holy crap you didn't do that because of this and so you sure process this information and so when I would talk to young guys that were like, you know, we said white side. And you're like, well, what's the difference? I'm like, there's a difference. Because I am seeing things that are very high level where people are making very good decisions and bad decisions. But I'm learning from it. And now I'm competent and capable to make decisions on my own. And so, you know, I said this before to some other folks is that, you know, being the first person to shoot is something I never wanted to do. Because you never know if you're right or wrong but as I got more mature I'm like okay I know this is

right this is the right thing to do because we are compromised and that guy is a problem I'm going to shoot that guy and but that is not that is not a an intuitive thing it's something that's learned and so you know the high-level soft forces you know army and Navy the guys that are very senior they're they're wired that way they understand it right and they're the guys that I want to be next to because they're going to make very good decisions. They're not going to make erratic decisions. They're going to make emotional decisions.

They're going to make very, you know, deliberate decisions. And that's a very high-level skill. And that's what separates White Side from Tier 1. It's interesting because both in, because both the fields that you were in, combat and medicine, both of those fields, I think the easy route is to dehumanize the person in front of you. Yeah. To compartmentalize and to become.

jaded about it, right? That's the easy. To be, like you mentioned, mindfulness earlier, to remain mindful in those situations, to whether you're in a medical situation, and don't just shut it off because here's another human being who's suffering, and it's easier to just to live in a black and white

world. Right. And just to, you know, shut off the emotion to it. And same with combat. It's easier just to shit off the emotion to it as, you know, then to, I'm in front of a human being who's suffering. I'm in front of a human being who's trying to kill me, so I'm going to kill them first, without necessarily taking away their humanity or just...

Well, here's an example of humanity. I was at a really remote outstation in Afghanistan, really remote. I mean, we ran out of food and water, that kind of remote, right? You guys have probably been there before. And we had a couple prisoners, you know, we'd call them, you know, Pucks, we had them off target, and they were in our makeshift prison, and we would basically, you know, we'd wake up, And it was like, okay, it's my turn to watch the prisoners.

So I go in there. And I feed him. And I treat him humanely. We're not on target. There's no violence here. There's no emotion. You're in captivity. I'm taking care of you.

I'm not going to, I'm going to treat you humanely. You want to go to the bathroom? I'll take you the bathroom. Yeah, it's business. It's not personal. If you want to get crazy, like, we can deal with that. But like, at the end of the day, like, if you're respectful, I'm respectful. Right.

And we had this guy who was there for two days. And I remember he was, like, really appreciated. that I would give him food. I wasn't giving him benefits. I was like feeding him. I was doing what I should do. He's a human being. And it turned out he was just a legit farmer.

Yeah. And me and the master chief took him down to the gate. We gave a much of money. He blew his door off. He pulled your beard. No, he cried. Did he? And he thanked us and he got on his knees.

Wow. And I'm like, man, you know, this could turn out totally differently if I had treated him, you know, like if I had been a prick. Right. Because there's a group thing that goes along in the middle. military right and but I knew better I was like man this is a human being and even if he is a terrorist like he's gonna face his punishment right there's no punishment I'm gonna put on him now right my job is to be ethical with him right and to watch that

reaction when it turned out he it was a mistaken identity like thank God you know like thank God that you know we treated him well right and you know there's a lot of mistakes that happened in the early days of Iraq and when we saw Abu Ghraib and all those things they were for guys that have you know been around for a while, we're like, that's disgusting. Right. You know? Right.

Those were nobody's. They did that crap. Right. Right. And they weren't even, like, they can't even stand behind enhanced interrogation. They were just fucking around. There was guards, you know? Yeah.

And it was terrible because look at the repercussions from that. Things that we face on the battlefield because of that. And so, you know, humanity exists, you know, despite combat. And, you know, as I got older, and as I retired, you know, as I got more senior, I was like, you start to understand life in a different way. Yeah. But when you're young, and again, group thing is really important because that's what happens. You think that's what you should be doing, the behaviors should you do in.

If you're with a group of people that behaves that way, you're going to behave that way. Right. Because you want to fit in. It's animal behaviors, right? And so, you know, for my saving grace was those mature guys that had been around for a long time. and it were you know I saw bad things in my career but like for the most part very professional guys and you know it helped me become the professional that I became and helped me lead effectively later on my career how did you maintain or how did

per rescue maintain especially the 24th the other skills that like you like you mentioned before you guys had a plethora of skills that you had to yeah the high-endarm rescue the swimming the scuba that all that stuff were you able to maintain that no or did it all it became a combat unit at that point well it's kind of like the navy i mean uh you know the navy kind of blew off diving for a long time right they were just they were fighting in the desert right and so you know PJs it's funny because PJs are we have so many skills that we do and so a lot of guys gravitate to a skill right and so you have guys are really good at climbing and they're awesome climbers I hate climbing personally.

I hate it. It's scary to me. I hate being 100 feet off the ground and being off one, you know, freaking piece of pro and looking down. Like, this is going to, not only am I going to die, but I'm going to fall along the way. I'm going to be aware, though. Yeah. And, but I like jumping, right? So there's Scott Evers that really like jumping.

And there's guys that really like medicine, a guy really like shooting. And so you gravitate to a certain kind of discipline. You have to be good at all of them, kind of. But you're going to be good at one really well. Right. And so, you know, we have the guy, hey, you're the jump guy. Right. You're the guy that loves jumping, you know, bundles.

You're the guy that loves medicine. Right. And so. You're the guy who knows all the knots. Yeah. Yeah. And so PJs, it's really hard for PJs to, you can't be good at everything. There's none of time in the day.

And also, there's people that have propensity to certain things. And so, you know, for me, I really, I really, I appreciated medicine because I knew how important it was. I didn't like it, but I knew how important it was, so I had to be good at it, right? I loved jumping, right? So I was, you know, a big skydive, a couple thousand jumps, Tantamasters, you know, AFFI, all those things. I also love shooting, right? But, you know, how do you put all those things in to become a good operator? And so what does the customer need you to be?

If we're commodities, you know, what does the Navy ask me to be? They're asking me to be really good at medicine. They're asking me really good at rescue and not be a liability on everything else. Right. And so to not be a liability, you have to be good at those other things too. Were teams put together with that sort of aspect that, hey, this guy, like, he's got a high-angle, this guy's good. In the early days, we were so busy. We had Afghanistan and Iraq.

I did back-to-back deployments. I would go from Iraq to Afghanistan. Wow. We were so busy. It was just like, hey, man, can you go? Yeah. And you fake it until you make it, right? And you show up and you're like, holy crap.

And so I remember I went to an outstation one time. This was like my sixth, seventh deployment, I don't know. And this OGA guy had a, had a cyst in his armpit. It's like day two. I'm in this outstation, real remote outstation. I'm like, he's like, hey man, hey, Chad, we cut this out of my armpit? I'm like, you want me to cut it out of your armpit? He's like, yeah.

I'm like, how hard can that be? I was like, I understand. Like I do minor surgery. There are no nerves or anything that go bad in the arm. I used to care all these books with me. I had all these books, and I looked at a book. I'm like, I can do that. Just do deep sutures.

Okay, the ad logger thing. I got it. And so I put him down on this table. I put Chuck, a Chuck, which is like a basically a drape. You know, I cut it out, his armpit and clean it off real good. I dye and clean it. He's got a big old dip in. He's like spinning a cup.

He was an ex-Ranger, too, by way. Of course. And so he's like, yeah, man, do your thing. So, you know, I numb it up real good. And I slice it open. just pus comes everywhere everywhere it's just like so much it's like an ice cream cone like and uh yeah you're supposed to remove the sack right well i did but i'm like i'm like clean everything you're breeding it i'm like maybe i shouldn't be doing this like this is like this is above my pay

grade right i'm like yeah i got it and so um you know i clean it well and i sew them up great stitches great and my saving risk i did good sutures and i'm like hey dude you have to keep this clean And we had, we didn't have great showers there. And so hygiene was an issue. I'm like, dude, you're gonna, if you get infected, I'm screwed because I probably shouldn't be doing this. And, you know, he's like, yeah, yeah, that's good. I catch him out the next day playing basketball, sweat.

And I'm like, what I'm doing, man? I was like, this is on me. You know, this is my credibility. And so, but yeah, it's just how it was, man. And in the early days, it was a free-for-all. In the early days, it was wild. You could do whatever you wanted. it became more regimented, more disciplined later into the war.

But in the early days, anything went. That's just the reality. Did you feel like a champ, though? Like taking out a sister, you'd never done that? No, I felt very nervous. Did you ever get an opportunity to do again? And you're like, I got this. Oh, I did a lot of stuff later.

But I was very confident. Like, you know, I never let me see a sweat. I feel like I could take out your pendant. Right. How can it be? I got a book. I love that self-confidence. Yeah.

So as time goes on, you're going, you did 17 combat rotations, serving in the squadron from age 22 to 41, and end up the senior enlisted guy. And super impressive career. I'd like to talk about some of the activities and things we were involved in during that time. One of the things we had mentioned a C-130 crash in Baghdad. Yeah, so like I said, we would do,

Back in the day, we had to do C-SAR and then also the assault rotations with the Army and Navy. And so I would go from one to the other. And so I was in Balad, which was kind of like our hub. We had the Alhilos. And daytime, I get a call that a British C-130 got shot down north of Baghdad. And the 160th guys are like, we're not flying daytime over Baghdad. Like not happening. And I'm like, well, I need a ride.

Like, someone needs to take care of this. It's bad. And, you know, they asked me to do it. I took responsibility for it. It's mine now. It's my project. And I'm trying to find a ride. I can't get to where I'm going.

And so there was some British, they were called Super Pumas, I believe. And so we jumped on those. I mean, they had M60s in the door, daytime flight, and we flew down. This is when Baghdad was kind of gnarly, you know. And so we dropped down the ground. I had my ranger, we call them SSTs or Star Security teams. They were basically my security. the perimeter and I had my my team my PJ team and had a comic controller and so we get down there

I'm the team leader and you know long hair at the time long beard I was wearing real tree camis which was cool because it was back of the day it was cool to look different and so I wanted to be this different as like a look and so I was doing that so stupid thing about now right but again the ground and this wreckage is like strewn for you know as far as you can see and on fire there's fire in this river and stitch it's a mess and And so I'm like, okay, guys, here's what we're doing. And half of my Rangers, we're talking about radios, half my Rangers had radios, half them didn't.

I'm like, okay, so I need radios in every BP, so we're going to split. I got heavy weapon here because that's where most of the city is. And we're going to do this. Okay. It don't matter, we don't have security. We're going to do this. We didn't have casts, so the controller is trying to get on-call cast. You guys were the first on the ground?

Yeah, first on the ground. Yeah, first on the ground. and we in my mind I knew the city was going to start waking up to what was going on and you know potentially opportunists like terrorists because this is back when there's like a lot of different terrorist cells they were going to come and like and they were trying to punch at us you know and so we we get on the ground and my team was you know I had a great team of guys my controller you got Falcon view up back in the day we have Falcon out of topbook you know he's sitting there and plot and we had no security and they're they're bringing back bodies right and so So, but it's not bodies like you think, you know, it's not bodies, it's pieces. And it'd be super respectful to kind of, you know, because these are all British. There's some SAS folks and some, you know, some British, you know, some British, you know, aviators. And we're bringing back these bodies. And I told the team, I said, listen, we're going to start putting bodies together based on, like, okay, right-hand, left-hand is a body.

You've got, you know, you have a torso, okay, it's a body. And so we'll get accountability eventually. And I want you guys to get the weapons. all those things, and we'll get this done, we'll get out of here. And it turned into a huge event. And it was massive. And so, excuse me. So guys are bringing back stuff.

And you would talk about compartmentalizing information. I did very well. It didn't mean anything to me. I was very professional. It was very processed. I was like, here's what we have to do. We're going to do it. And so we're about six, seven hours into this.

The guys are doing great. My rangers are holding their positions. no one's pushed on us yet and they bring another Super Puma down, maybe the links, I forget which bird it was, with some SES guys, some T2 guys. And they're like, you know, hey, Mike, what do you want us?

And I'm like, hey, we have some vulnerable positions over here, some apartments or some buildings. I was like, if you guys could go do some soft knocks, it'd be great. And they're like, yeah, absolutely. And they're guys, right? Yeah, we're in. And so you know, they didn't ask

any questions like we got it and so they went out there in the city and they started doing their things they all spoke Arabic they were doing a thing and you know the sun goes down you know my guys hadn't eaten you know in a day and I I knew there was bodies in the ditch so there was like a basic you know in Iraq there was all these like irrigation ditches and it was on fire it was diesel and burning or JPA whatever and I'm like you guys got to get your dry suits on it was wintertime in Iraq I was like you got to go in the ditch and and dig for bodies so I was like put a line on them, you know, put a rope on them and go down there and do it. And so, you know, we had all our gear.

And so the guy puts his dry suit on, you know, a young PJ. Other PJ goes on top to tether him, you know, fire, pulling bodies and weapons out on the pitch. And the sun goes down. We're alone, you know. And at the same time, there was an accident in Mosul where a teammate of mine was in a pander with the army and a ranger striker hit that was right before i got there they collided and my buddy uh chad gisigee was in there and uh his head got rocked pretty hard and um he really needed to get his head drilled uh to relieve the pressure and uh you know chat is still uh you know he's quadriplegic

still to this day um the accident but it happened right when we're in the field and so everyone kind of turned their attention to supporting that exfil and they forgot about us in the field And so we're just north of the Baghdad were doing our thing. And it was the right call. I mean, they needed more help than we did. We were self-sufficient for the most part. It could have gone really bad for us, but it didn't. But I was like, why is there no comms?

But the entire task force kind of went to lean on Missouille. And so, you know, here it was on the ground. The Brits had a kit bag delivered. And I'm like, oh, thank God, what is this? And we pull up and it's these flasks of tea. And I'm like, cool, man. Like, I might want you want some tea? I'm like, yeah, I'm drinking tea.

It's like creamer in it. It's a delicious tea. And I'm like, it's not my thing. But yeah, let's do some tea. So we drink some tea. And this work gets funny. So we survive that night and we're still cleaning this crash site. It's a mess.

So day two goes in. And this Marines come out. L.A.Vs come out to me. And I'm the team leader. I'm running the crash site. It's my crash site. And this Marine major shows out. And again, I look like I, you know, I'm like a hobo, right?

You know, which is what you want to look at in soft back in the day. It was like, you want to look as weird as you can look. And I look pretty weird. And he comes up to me, he's like, you're in charge. And like, yeah, look, here's where I want you guys, I'm from a Falcon view, push your, you know, your vehicles out there, heavy weapons, and basically telling him where to go. And so he listens, he puts his folks out there.

So about 10 hours into the next day, we're still working. He starts to figure out that I'm going to list a guy. because the way the Rangers are talking to me. Hey, bro. And he loses his mind. Marine Corps major is a big deal, right? And they don't take orders from realistic guys. And he finds out I'm enlisted, and he goes ballistic on me.

And I stay on my ground, of course. You know, I'm like, listen, this is my crash site. Like, you're in support of me. I was like, if you want to fight over rank, you can do that. But here's what I need you to do. And, you know, it was hard for him to process. And I'm like, listen, man, like, I'm being respectful to you. I'm not, I'm not being a dickhead.

Right. I was like, I need you to help me. And here's what I need you to do. And it was, it was like, it was an inflection point for the operation. Like, it was like, the mood changed, right? It was like, do we want to help you guys at that point? And we end up spending three days out there on the ground. We ended up, you know, coming back.

And it was a, you know, it was one of those offices. It was like, it was really strange. We came back and we didn't support the task. towards the task force stood down off because we're out there we couldn't support them and um you know i but you talk about compartmentalizing things and and i shared this with somebody else uh recently is that um i did a really good job of compressing or compartmentalizing my you know whatever i was seen i just did a great job of packaging it really well you know i i taped it up and i put in the corner right it didn't exist right it did not exist in my life right didn't exist in my mind nothing

And so we came back to the B-Huts, we were refitting, we just needed some sleep. We had to go basically support the task force in six hours. So we were going to get five hours of sleep, because of chow. And the chaplain and the psych doc came to write B-Hut. And this is before you could talk to Chathlet's. Right, right. You're like knocking the door. I'm like, what?

And they're like, do you guys need to talk to us? Like, why would we need to talk to you? That was my reaction. Right. And I was the team leader, and I should have been more cognizant of my guys, maybe we're suffering. My guys, maybe we were dealing with stuff that I wasn't. because I was maybe the problem, right? I was the guy that could just figure this stuff out in a negative way.

And I said, no, I turned them away. And because I said, if I'm good, they're good. And years later, I reached out to one of the guys was on that mission with me, and I said, I apologize to him. I said, I'm sorry, man. I messed up as a leader. That wasn't how leaders supposed to behave. I should have been cognizant of where you were at in your life,

and I didn't. And, you know, it's one of my regrets as a leader. I learned from it. But I also continue to compartmentalize things through my career. And so you say, you know, 17 combat deployments, there's a lot of compartmentalization of that. Right. And when you get really good at it, it becomes your process.

It becomes natural to you. And it's not healthy. So it's healthy for the unit because you're still on the line. Right. Right. And it keeps you on the line doing your job. Right. The day you're, you're, uh, yeah, don't slow down.

You leave the military. You're like, oh, wow. that happened. What's all this? Well, these boxes. Yeah, there's some shit there. Oh, wow. What's this thing? Yeah. I need you all for all this. Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, so that was the C-130 thing in Iraq. It was, I think I was 2005. But life just got crazier from there, man. There was another operation where you guys, you know, another element

you were with may or may not have crossed into another place we may not mention. You said it's pretty big firefight where you guys went and took took on some bad guys in a hostile area. I was wondering if you could tell us what you can tell us about that. Yeah, so, you know, I had been in a few, like on a few missions. Like I wasn't like the guy, you know, I wasn't like the cool guy yet. And I didn't feel like it yet.

That was the first one. I was like, holy crap. This is insane. And we got compromised. We were at ORP or sent of ladders and compromised dogs barking. gunfire from every compound and it was like it was on and like I said being around competent people they all pushed forward and I pushed forward because they were doing it not because I was the man not because I had you know big balls I was like we're going forward we're going forward and um

we push up there and you know it was the first time I'd you know been in a big firefight um this first time I fire my weapon you know at another human being and um but then we had a bunch of casualties and they're like PJ and I'm like oh crap I'm like not only is this target chaos now we got people shot right and so I go over there under fire and I'm like oh crap so you know guys are shot two guys shot and the target is supposed to be secure guy comes out of the door starts shooting from one of the compounds is supposed to be already cleared I'm like holy crap this is insane right so I'm pulling guys across compound under fire it's insanity it's chaos other compounds are just stuff blown up all around us we have no clue what's going on and

And we're in a hostile kind of region, and the city is waking up. Right. And we had one asset overhead, and they were working it, man. And the CCTV was working it. And he's a stud. He actually lives in close to me in my neighborhood now. He's a stud. And he managed that chaos very well.

But I started getting more casualties. I had a guy come up to me. He's like, hey, I'm shot in the head. I'm like, huh? I'm like, where? And so I pull off his helmet. And the round struck the front. of his head, stuck in the back of his helmet.

And I'm like, holy crap. I'm like, check his helmet. His skull is not broken. I'm like, dude, keep clearing, man. Yeah. We were so thin. It was like, keep clearing. He ended up spraying his ankle, and he was complaining about spraying ankle more than his

shot in the head. And another guy shot their legs, and it's just chaos. And so, you know, it probably was only maybe an hour and a half, maybe two hours of kind of conflict. It felt like all night. Yeah. And we end up pulling this guy out. I went super light because we ended up pumping like eight hours to this target.

So I was like super light. And this is back when none of the seals would carry any gear from me, right? They wouldn't carry a Skedco. They wouldn't carry nothing. I mean, they wouldn't even carry a blowout kits on their own kit. It was like, hey, Chad, you got it, right? And I'm like, not for everybody. And it got better through the years, right?

It got better. But we were so lean to me. And it was like we were pulling him out. on a pole with slitter. If you've ever carried someone on a pull of slitter, it's pretty difficult. You tell about CrossFit workouts, that's the workout of the day. And we humped him down to this road.

The city was waking up, they're coming out, like, hunchback Notre Dame kind of style, and the 47 almost crashed on top of us because they were so hyped up. And I could have touched the bottom of 47 when they landed. And so, you know, I'm covered in blood. My uniform is covering in blood,

and we get back, and you know it's when you get back from debre use from big ops like that it's it's it's kind of like you know everyone's kind of chipping away how many people they killed and if you do a number you're like that's like 4,000 people right right that wasn't that people there but um you know and then here i was you know dealing with like i you know what could i have done better and i could do a lot of things better and i and i have a lot of remorse from that operation for the things that i didn't do well and i learned from it and so i committed myself to being way better than I was on that op.

And I became obsessive about it, honestly, as an operator. What were the things that you became obsessive about? Medicine. I wasn't super good at it. I wasn't good at pharmacology. I wasn't good at pain management.

I wasn't good to all the basics. And so I committed myself to being great at it. And I think I became that. But that was like a really formative experience for me. and then you only get a couple, you know, in your career. And, you know, some guys have had a lot.

And I'm sure you guys have talked to a lot of studs that have had a lot of crazy experiences. But for me, that was one that I could have proved myself on and I failed. And it was, you know, failure to me, I'm hypercritical. I'm like, okay, I could have done this, this, and this. But I committed myself to never making mistakes again. And, you know, maybe one day walking on the street in New York, maybe I'll get the chance. There's a lot of enough. another operation you were involved in, I mean, you'd say whatever you'd like to or not talk about on this one, but the Captain Phillips Rescue.

Yeah. So there was a few Air Force guys in the top. You know, we, I was with a small team of guys that jumped in early. I was a jumpmaster, jumped in a bunch of, you know, a mixed bag of nuts, you know, into the water. And our job was to basically turn the lifeboat around before it hit Somalia, because if it hit Somalia, they'd be gone. Right. And we knew that the squadron was going to blow out and they're going to do the no-kid hostage rescue. We're just going to like, we're going to fix it. Right. If they get to Hintieland, they're gone. Right. And what happens with hostages in Somalia is they basically hold them for a year. They go black and they pop up on the net, make their demands. But it's really hard to find them. And so we had very little guidance. And, you know, we went down. I was in an apartment complex. I can't tell you. what country, but like, hey, guys, we want you guys to go. I'm like, all right, we got parachutes?

No. We found some parachutes in ISU 90. They were expired by a couple years. And I'm like, parachutes don't, like, they don't turn into like, you know, they don't turn into like toxic waste every two years. Like, they're probably fine. And this is pretty important. Let's just jump them.

And so when you talk about ORM in the military, it's a non-starter, I'm like, screw it, man. I'm the jump master. I don't know if I'm allowed to make the decision, but we're going to do it. And we jumped. It was all fine. We got there, you know, and we were part of the solution. And so the squadron sent a really small contingent of folks to where we were already.

And then it resolved itself the way it did. I can promise you it didn't go the way the movie went or the TV said it did. It was much more kind of low-key operator stuff, you know. There were some heroics that happened that night. There were some guys that did some pretty awesome stuff. But at the end of the day, it was, you know, kind of pot shots from very, very close distance. You know, pulling him out. And then what people don't realize is that when we pulled him out, I flew back to the main aircraft with him.

And Discovery Channel basically blurred my face and said I was a Navy SEAL, which is the highest praise I ever got in my career to be called a Navy SEAL. My wife saw it, and she's like, that's you walking. But when we did that, we came back. The pirates attacked on their ship. This never made the news is that they attacked another ship in retaliation. And they just so happened to drop off their cargo so they're sitting very high in the water and they couldn't get on the ship. And so they called us and were like, hey, it was like six of us.

Like, can you guys come help us? Like May Day. And so the destroyer were on, like, can you guys go? And so the regular squadron was going back and like high-fiving each other. like, you know, cocktails, whatever. We were on this ship,

and Phillips was with us. So he's with us on the smaller ship, and we're like, yeah, we'll go. And so we went and basically did hook and clam on the ship. Wait,

did you take Phillips with you or did you? No, no. Okay. He's chilling on the captain's master. Okay. I was like, yeah,

so we went out to the ship, and we thought there was pirates on it because there's RPGs that went lower in the side of it. I mean, it was bad. It was like, holy crap, this is legit. And maybe it was a little bit of hubris.

We're like, yeah, we got it. And so me and one other seal, we cleared the front of the super tanker, which is like conics boxes, like multiple football fields. They're insanely big. I didn't know how big these things were. And we're clearing this to two of us, pying off conox boxes, just one after another. Think we're going to take, no body armor, catchers masks, nods.

And we had 416s. We didn't have MP7s. We had 416s. And the rest of the team went to go to the superstructure, which they thought everyone was locked down in. And so we're assuming we're getting in a gunfight. And there's no one on the ship. And it was the eeriest thing.

And so we, it was just out there floating? No, they attacked this thing. They couldn't hook onto it because it's so high. And we didn't know this. And so the crew had locked themselves in the superstructure thing. They were under duress. And they called May Day. And so here we are to save the day and there's no one there.

So we have to ride back with this ship for like two days. And they're like merchant marines on this thing. yeah and i don't know what these people are they're like uh full on like criminals man they're like they're like they're like they're like they're like they're like they're they're making shanks yeah and i'm sleeping this bed with i'm more scared to them than Somali pirates and i'm like these guys are going to kill me and they're going to eat me and uh no it was uh it was an interesting like dynamic but um there was so much more of the story uh eventually it will come out i'm assuming somebody will talk about it but uh yeah it was it was cool it was cool to be there um

I didn't know it was a big deal. It was during Easter. And so, you know, I would call from the fantail of the ship on my eridium phone. I had an oridian phone because I'm a boogie guy, right? Right. Too good for a Thariah. Yeah. And so my wife's like, she's like, what's going on out there?

I'm like, nothing. What do you hear? She's like, it's a big deal back in the States. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the Thriah was the radio, right? Well, you had Theriah is in yourriad. A different network.

Yeah. But I had both, yeah. Yeah. Unless you know you really made it when you have a threat-handed radio. So when you guys were on this like two-day pleasure cruise, did, what was the command? Was there anybody going, where are you guys? No, because I think they were, so people give special operations like a lot of credibility, but like they're hyper-focused on getting the assault force back home.

And so we were kind of like, you know, extra, you know. What was the port-a-call? Where did you guys get off? I can't tell you. Okay. Yeah. But when we came back, I'll tell you that the team and I... I'm going to pretend it's Bali and you guys got off.

I wish. Well, it would be the wrong part of the world, but... I don't care. In this... Yeah, yeah. No, that part of the world's not very nice, but we went back there, had some cocktails. And it was funny because it was like nothing happened. It was like, it was just another thing.

And so we went back, had some drinks. Actually, we went on party that night. And we had a good time. And it's just funny to think how, you know, things. appear in the news how sensational as they are but to us it was like yeah it was cool man we did go went and did a thing we wouldn't do another thing you know yeah so you're constantly looking for the next thing right to kind of fill your bucket and and the next thing has to be cooler than that's to be cooler right

has to be more sensational more violent or whatever you want it to be right so what was the next thing for you then on that rotation um you know not a lot it was a lot of prep and so my job was to kind of uh this is before you can imagine what part of the world it was but it was four things were built up we were building things up we're building partner forces and those things doing really like the grunt work of it um you know kind of the non-sexy stuff living in safe houses the true safe houses where you know you're eating you're truly eating what you got local food You can't go outside because you have to be, if you see a white guy there, it's a big deal.

So people say they're living in a safe house. You're like, dude, when you're living in a safe house, you don't walk outside, right? So a lot of that grunt work on that deployment. You said you also spent about seven years doing some of the more like clandestine operations. Yeah. So I was doing that when the Captain Phillips thing happened. You know, we would do lovis Oves. OPE is a term to get thrown around.

It's operational prep for the environment or OPEB, prep of the battlefield or AFO, which is advanced force operations. Just sexy ways of saying, you know, you're doing things that aren't necessarily tied to, you know, big constructs of the military. And you can do OPEB anywhere, right? You could do it in Indonesia. You could do it in East Africa. You can do it in Europe.

But there's not a lot of people to do it. There's people say they do it because they go into country and they're like, hey, I have a passport and I'm wearing a suit, that's not OPE. When you're actually doing tasks and saying, hey, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to fix this problem for you. You know, those are the problem sets that are more difficult and it takes a more refined, you know, kind of team. And so it takes guys that are smarter. It takes guys that are able to work on their own. And so I did that for a while.

And OPE can envelop like a number of different things from like intelligence gathering to identify, identifying landing zones to all these sorts of things. Yeah, it's not one thing. I think that traditionally, you know, it's been in one vein of like, I'm going to, you know, do caches in Eastern Europe. Right. Okay, that's traditional. Right. But yeah, that's an element.

But what I, what my experience was is that when you have really talented guys, you can do anything. Right. And you say, hey, Chad, can you guys go do X? Yes, the answer is yes. And if I'm a PJ, can I go do an LZ survey? Yes, I can. you know if you're a really you know high-end competent you know because there's different types of seals right the seals that we're with are very high-functioning guys are like can solve

problems can you go do X yes we can can you go work with this partner force can you build this safe house yes and so it's not sexy stuff all the time but a lot of times it devolves into very dangerous activities and especially if you're in environments that are very nascent and there's no footprint semi-permissive to non-permissive. Non-permissive. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, truly non-permissive. And not a lot of military, even soft guys have experienced this. Right. Where you're like, oh, I was in Afghanistan, I was in a remote, like, okay, that's cool. What about when you're in a completely behind enemy lines? When you're in a country that you're not at war with and they want to kill you, and when they do, no one's coming to get you. When you're a tick, there's no QRF and there's no Kazvak.

Right. And so my job would always be to figure it out. Like, Chad, well, if this happens, what do you do? I'm like, and so I would work commercial assets, trying to get, you know, international SOS to go in and, like, pull us out of remote regions. And it became a thinking man's game, which was really good for me because I was intellectually stimulated. Right. And I was like, holy crap, this is fun. So let's talk a little bit about OPE and OPEB real quick.

We're talking about operational preparation of the environment and operational preparation of the battlefield. Sometimes we'll talk about, like, advanced AFO, advanced force operations. And really it's the guys who are going in where we might have interest but we're not sure if we have interest and we might be at war there one day. One day. And really setting up the plumbing,

setting up the environment. Yeah, you know who the rock stars are? It's not the operators. It's the singing guys. It's the tech guys. Guys that can look at infrastructure and logistics. Those are the rock stars. And despite how cool we think we are,

without them, we wouldn't do those jobs. And so, you know, a lot of OPE and AFO is, you know, SIG and EW related. And so, you know, you being able to contribute to that mission set is important. And so if you're a knuckle-dragger, like, you don't need you. Like, we don't need a gun. We need guys that can do the gunwork, but also do the, you know, the tech stuff. And so a lot of operators became kind of dual purpose where they had a basic understanding. I'm not going to over-inflate my, you know, worth, but a basic understanding of how,

how the signal works, how networks work, and then how to get after those things, and how to employ tactics and techniques to set conditions for other folks to come in and be successful. And so, you know, you look at the theater right now for Europe and even PACOM, you know, there's a lot of prep work that has to go on

to make those theaters successful. Now, there are Army Special Mission units that's sort of their bailiwick, their bread and butter. But of course, everybody does everything now. How did seals, like, get into that? That's definitely not their one to the water. Right, right. I mean, and everybody did.

So you had intelligence collection units. They're really good at it. But basically, within J-Soc, like, if you read the book, Tima Teams, that was the early days of Iraq. That's a very, you know, very basic construct. It grew very fast. And then everyone wanted the mission. so everyone built capabilities.

And so everyone had the same capabilities. Right. And so when you had the Army and Navy, they had all the same, like, Sagan, you know, EW, like they had everything. Right. They were all, you know, it wasn't joint anymore. It was like, this is a bohemoth task force that can do everything. Right.

And this one was too. And so, you know, it became kind of a dog fight for mission, you know. And so everyone could do it. And so those very bespoke capabilities you're talking about, they were important and they would definitely be involved it was very high level otherwise they're like we got it right and so it is a really interesting dynamic to watch develop over the years like I said I came in you know 2002 to selection

2003 and then watched the whole transformation of the command and it became a monster right you know right and for you I mean because it's interesting that you were there because the seals do have their corman um no so well they they do and they don't so okay if you're a seal and you go the green team you're an assaulter i see you're not a corpsman i see interesting okay yeah i didn't know you don't carry a medrog you know there's some guys that were still interested in medicine and they would help but they're not carrying a medrock they're carrying you know MP7s they're carrying you know MP7s because the m4s are too heavier yeah they are no they are

And so it basically relieves them from having to do that job. They're assaulters. Yeah. With the Army, you have 18 deltas, and they are 18 deltas, and they are the primary emetic for that squad. And PJs will help them, but the PJs are to rescue and recovery. Right. And so that's the differentiation.

And so. And for you, you know, sort of focusing on this mission for a few years, were you afforded training opportunities to go learn skills? Like you train up with these teams, before you deploy. Yeah. Oh, 100%. So you're basically attached that to you. I mean, you live with them, you train with them, do you workups with them? And then to get specialized training, you have to be very specific on what you want to do because you only have a finite amount of time. Right. And so if you're a guy who needs to top off on medicine, like you get two weeks.

What are you going to do with it? Right. And so you're going to spend a ton of money and get the best medical training you can get. And that's the differentiator too between White side and Tier 1 is that like if I want to go, you know, to the best burn center in the world, like, I can go there and top off on burn injuries. Right. And that's the thing when you talk about going into remote medicine and some of the safe house stuff is that you have to specialize then because I would have to do pharmacology stuff in these safe houses where it wasn't expected to me on the assault side.

Right. I don't care. Like just do good, you know, pain management. That's all we care about. Right. If I'm living in a safe house and a guy gets sick, I got to take care of him. Right. And so I would have to top off on those skills.

And so guys like 18 deltas is very intuitive to them. They would know how to do it. But here I was the guy that could integrate with the assault mission, go back and forth to the AFO mission. But then I just need to top off on the medicine right here. And I can get there fast. Right. And so I think that's the biggest, one of the best attributes of PJs within that world is that they're very quick to react to needs. And so, you know, if you look at like a tech company, the successful tech company is the ones that can react to the needs of the customers very quickly and build a, build a thing.

PJs within tier one units are that. And they can say, oh, you want me to be a ropes expert? Gotcha. Let me go to Montana real quick or, you know, get topped off and I'll become a, you know, a league climber, you know, AMGA certified. And it's like that. And with medicine, you guys have access to some of the best hot. hospitals in the United States. Yeah, all the best trauma hospitals in the United States are very good with working with the military.

Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of folks that work habitually with them. When you work at, you know, big cities, like there's, you know, the shock traumas and, you know, any big city that has a lot of violent, you know, I think New Orleans is one of them, New York's one of them, where you have a lot of stabbing and shootings, you're getting reps. Right. And, you know, you know, and I. I don't on the Rangers a lot, but the Ranger medics, their medics became the best in the tears. I feel like. They had so much trauma, whether it be internal to the regiment, also host nation.

They were doing so much stuff, and their PAs and doctors were training them nonstop. So when they come off the missions, when everyone else was playing video games, they were doing classes. And that's why they became so good at what they did. And so when I, I, I, I, uh, we had to do refreshers every two years, you know, to keep your currencies up. And every two years I would go through softness, which was at Fort Bragg. And I could have gone to like, you know, the, the Gucci ones, like in gone skiing and like done some medicine, get refreshed. Right. But I knew it was so important that I had to go with the best guys they were doing no kidding military medicine.

So I did every single time, every single refresher I did at softness, every single one of them. I never went to New Hampshire. I went skiing, I never did in my whole career. And guys are like, dude, why don't you want? I'm like, I want to, but I have to be good at this. And what I realized was, when I go to Ranger Medics, these guys would teach me a ton. And then they started becoming instructors at softness.

And I was so impressed by these guys, because they were so switched on, and they'd seen so much, and they were able to instruct very well. I was very impressed by the Ranger Medics, man. And so I championed us getting back into that program because we kind of got pushed out of it and we got pushed back in. But I have a ton of respect for him, man. And they never like asked you Biss, what was it, Bissim, Bismis? The acronym that you used, the basic system or the systems.

Oh, BSI. BSI. Yeah, no, no. They never hammered you on that? No, man. I mean, these guys were like, you know, doing, you know, buddy transfusions. They'd done them in the field. and they were doing high-end, like, you know, just very creative medicine,

and they were so good at what they did. And I knew that if you want to be a good combat medic, you have to talk to the best combat medics guys have seen it. And so, like I said, in the first mission that I messed up, like, that was my chance. And so if these guys were getting chances every night, man, they are going to be the best, very fast. And so when you're working with very high-end soft guys, they're not getting shot all the time. You know what I mean?

Like, you shouldn't be getting shot all the time, right? So the Rangers were getting shot a lot. You know, no offense, but they were getting shot a lot because they're going on some dangerous missions. And the Rangers took over Afghanistan, and they were basically a Tier 1 force in Afghanistan. And they were killing it, man. Yeah. They were doing so many ups. And they were kicking ass because everyone else is so focused on everything else in the world.

They were like, we got this. And so they got a lot of reps. And so that's why I love what they did. And I respect the hell out of them. You also mentioned there are some OTB ops that you were on. So in everyone's career, you want to do an OTB, right? So you want to over the beach shop. It sounds cool.

I went to a theater, and there was a team back in the States that were training for a mission. And I was already in theater. I was doing my thing. I was drinking cocktails and parties. And they're like, well, there's a PJ controller in theater. Like, yeah. Like, okay, well, we can just use them, right? And so these guys came out and it was like,

I forget five or six guys. And they're like, hey, you guys go to this OTV? I'm like, how hard is it? It's a swim into the beach. Right. It's not rocket science. And so we did one shakeout swim. They'd done like weeks of workup.

We had done zero, me and the controller. Like, how hard is this going to be? It's like it's a swim. And so we go into a destroyer. We go into a rib. No, HXX, I forget the HX of ribs, but I'm going to go to Zodes. And the Zodes. kick us off and we swim in and we swim in to hinterland in this remote region we walk in and uh i'm not

on a night schedule so i was really tired and um they were doing something there was an activity there's like a terrorist camp right next to us and uh it's like a wrecky we're doing something i can't tell you what we're doing we're doing something and um i'm like bored out of my mind I mean, there was like 100 guys sleeping, like, down a ridge line. You could see him and, like, we couldn't do anything about them. But we do our thing, whatever we're doing, and then we pull out to patrol out. And so I'm in the back of the formation. And if there's any, you know, Navy guys watching this, they'll know.

Navy guys are not really good at, like, you know, patrolling, like, the basic fundamentals of, like, you know, you know, line formations or passing signals back and forth. They just kind of wing it, right? So they're patrolling, everyone's got their heads down, all on MP7s, and I'm walking in the back.

I'm the second man. There's Roos security. And these guys go over this ridge line, and there's this, there's this animal pen. So in this region, they have like these, they built these walls with sticks

to keep the lines out, and they have one entrance, and so they know when the lines come in or whatever. And so, and these guys guys, Russell because these birds kick up and they come out and I see my nods and I'm like holy crap so I put my laser on them and I stop and I'm like you know I'm like no no one's going to look at

this and no one stops they could keep going I'm like okay so it's me and him and we're about to get in a tick and so my lasers on them these guys get out they got weapons and I'm like oh my gosh of course this is going to happen right now and the guy behind me sees it, puts his laser on it so the two of us and we stop we're holding, these guys know something's going on outside

and you know people in movies you're like oh it's two or three guys it's easy to clean up like no it could be very nasty right and so but our entire like force has gone over the beach to get their fins on to go swim back out and we're standing there

I'm like, okay. And so we just stop. And we wait. We're there for five minutes, which is an eternity or not. Those guys never came back. They never even noticed we weren't even there. And so these guys finally chill out. They turn back around with their weapons and go back down.

And you can see they have a little candle in there. And we patrol back out of the, we go back to the beach. I'm like, dude, what the hell? Are they gone? No, they're still there. I'm like, where are you guys at? Yeah. Dude, there was two.

You know. Yeah. And we swim back out. But there's so much, like, comedy within operations within soft that we just get lucky so much, you know? And we swim back out. And it was funny when we swim back out to the destroyer, they had a dip tank on the back of the fantail. We're, like, dipping our weapons in freshwater and all our gear. And all these Navy folks, like, you know, conventional Navy folks on the back. And this chick's in the back, she's like, I know.

know you all out there killing black folks and we're like, huh? Like, we didn't kill anybody. No, right. She's like going off on us. And one of the Master Chiefs there just rips her new one.

And I'm like, do people really say that kind of stuff? Like, we come off and off. That's fucking crazy. No one has no idea what we're doing. Yeah. And to make that comment is like, dude, like, no, we're actually really civilized people. We're doing some very gentlemaning stuff

in the hinterlands. Yeah, I mean, she's in the same military you are. Oh. Well, that's the other thing is the military is like, there's this cognitive dissonance of what the military is. Like, the military is designed to fight and kill. Right. That's what it is. It's not there to win hearts and minds.

It's not there to be show of force. It's there to kill. And if you don't process that information and come to terms of it, you're not a part of the solution. And so I think a lot of military folks, because within the past 20 years, there's only a handful of people that win. went to combat, right? They're all people deployed. Right. Within the people deployed, there's only a handful people actually went outside the wire

and fought. Right. And, but to the civilian, they look at it, like, oh, you're in the military. I think of your service. You're like, oh, you went to Afghanistan. No, you were at, you're in Bogram and you were a logistics person and you never left the wire, like, and you had, you know, you had coffee every day, you had good chow hall. And there were certain people that went and fought, and it's a very small group of people.

And that's hard people to understand. Like, it's a small group, man. Yeah. Yeah. And now is, you know, you're going on all of these, you know, clandestine operations. You've done, you know, more conventional operations, rescue operations. Like, you're becoming pretty, like, salty senior guy in the unit at this point. And then you accidentally make rank, right?

Right. Right. And the Air Force, I mean, I know it used to be, but the Air Force used to be very hard. It was probably the hardest service to make rank in it. It is. And so if you've seen the movie, like, Pure Luck, like, dumb luck fall into things. And so I'm 80. And I was like, oh, my gosh.

And the Air Force is a big deal. You're like, oh, your career's over. And I was like, if I can just hide as an E8, maybe they'll still deploy me. I can just hang out here for a while. And so, you know, I deployed a couple times in the EA, which is a big deal in Air Force. And then finally they're like, hey, dude. Because you're supposed to be managing people. You're supposed to be going to Ops.

Right. You got to go to Ops, man. You got to pay your penance. And I'm like, I want to go to Ops. And so I went out and did a thing as an EA. And it was like a big deal. like you can't be doing that stuff anymore. And I'm like, this is all I want to do in my life.

Right. This is what I, what I'm designed to do. This is what I'm trained to do. This is what I want to do. And they threw me in ops. And this is funny. I mean, it's not comment really. It's not sexy.

But I went to ops and I'm like, you know, it's like super bad. Or what's the movie when it's like FML? It's like, this is my life now. And so I did that for six months. And they're like, hey, green team selection, open up then we need a senior guy to go there do you want to go do i'm like yes yes absolutely give me out of ops and so i went there and um and that that was really formative for me as a leader

i learned how to lead in a different way i had been leading the past leading the way i saw other people lead and i thought that was the right way to do it and it was not authentic for me and so um i got a chance to kind of reset for myself and say listen um i'm not a hard ass i'm not i want to be but I'm not, I'm never going to be. I'm a nice guy. You know, I can connect to people. And so that's what I need to do. And so when I ran selection training,

I got to kind of cut my teeth doing that. And then from selection training, I went to 24th, SDS and became the chief there as the senior, you know, enlisted. So this is kind of putting you on the spot and take your time in answering this. But if you had to pick, like, a fictional or a real character,

Chuck Norris. There, go okay no but based on how you thought you were supposed to lead yeah and then how you actually became a leader well you see hard asses and you know in TV and and I grew up with hard asses right as leaders and I was and candidly they were they were great man I was like this guys were bad you know bigger in life and and in the range of battalion you guys know if you're a you know senior guy in the range of time you're hard ass right but what I realized was that my superpower was

you know connecting with folks and being empathetic and having high IEQ with folks. And so I could still be just as effective and not have to be that guy. But it took me a while to figure it out because I was immature, you know. And so as I became more mature and became more self-aware and comfortable in my own skin, I realized that I could lead a different way. And, you know, is that a kinder, gentler, you know, military? Yeah, maybe.

I mean, you know, I still have a temper. I can still get mad. I don't know. I think you put your, your thought. I'm on it pretty well, the screaming and the yelling. Like, that's a lot of, like, trying to throw up a smoke screen to compensate for an inability of leadership. I think there, but there's also a time for that, maybe, like, when molding people, but you're also, but even Ranger Battalion changed dramatically from, like, the time I got there when I was there, which was pre-GWAT. And when, as, from what I understand, as, you know, through the G-WAT, as it became more professionalized that, you know, you know,

know, people started treating, leaders started treating, it was a professional organization. You know, it was very capable when I was there. I remember the stories of the Ranger Battalion where they, like, throw it fire extinguers you guys, you go to walking back and forth

and they throw extinguishes. I mean, I heard the stories from Ranger games. Yeah, yeah. But you understand that dynamic, it's like, you know, it's doggy dog. Right. And, you know, if you're a, if you're a, if you're a,

the Tier 1 operator, it's supposed to be a little bit more sure, right? Right. And so here I was leading these guys who were very capable. And they're all extremely competent. They were all combat-hardened guys. They didn't need me to be bad. Right.

Like I had my reps, right? But, Camley, it didn't matter. My job was to support them where they were at and be a good leader for them. Right. And be the leader that I never received. And so, you know, it's easy to say that. I can be very honestly and tell you that I did the best I could to be that guy. And I think I did a decent job at doing it.

But it was an inflection point for me personally. And it was a big growth moment for me. Just to clarify a point, when you talked about going to ops, that sounds really sexy. But for people who don't know, ops is like operational planning. It's the worst. It's not sexy. Yeah, doing sit reps and sending gear to guys overseas. Like, it's terrible.

Yeah. I mean, someone's got to do it. You know, it's an important job. but I just felt like I felt like I was the pony in the, you know, the paddock that was like dancing around, a kicking. And I wasn't ready to go into the stable. I was like, I want to keep dancing. And probably the best analogy I could freak over. You know, but for me personally, I just wasn't ready to hang it up.

But in the Air Force, when you get to that point, you're done. And in the Army, especially, you know, within the Tier 1 unit, you can be an E9 and running gun until the day you retire. Right. And I think that's awesome. In the Navy, you can do it to a certain extent, but they're not the same as the Army, because there's a lot of E-9s in the Army. And the Air Force, there's not a lot of E-9s.

And so if you're in E-9, it's like, holy crap, we need you to go here. And we need you to manage this program or this unit. And it's not sexy. It's grunt work. We need guys to do it. We need good guys to do it. And so I, you know, when I, I wasn't one of those guys that was really excited about going on the 24th to be the chief. I never aspired to be that. A lot of guys did.

I never did. But when they asked me to do it, I was like, yeah, I'll do it for them. And my wife knows this. She was like, I don't know how I can do all this stuff. Right. And I was like, I want to be a good leader for them. And so I really tried, I tried really hard to be what I should have been in that unit. but it was not prestigious for me.

There was no, like, it wasn't like meeting my chest. I was like, I made it. I was like, oh, crap. We had this job, and this is going to be hard. And I have to do all these people issues. And all these guys are in harm's way. And we were nonstop deployed. We never stopped deploying.

Our unit, just like a lot of these units, were deployed since 9-11 into perpetuity. And so until just recently, they stopped deploying, right? So, you know, Afghanistan, Iraq, drawdown, Syria. they're home. And that's when the real problems come in, right? That's when guys are like, now you're getting DUIs, now you're getting the guys with, you know, domestic issues. I didn't have those issues. I just had a bunch of pipe hitters. They're doing great things. And they were very mature and they were capable. I had the best, you know, I had the best situation.

So what year did you take over, like, the green team? Was it maybe 2017? So, and you went in 2000? 2003, 2002, 2003. Oh, not to Green Team. Oh, yeah, it's Green Team, right? Yeah. 2002, 2003.

How had, by the time you got there, how had it changed over those 14 years? So much. So much. So here's the biggest thing that changed, how we selected folks. And so if you guys came to us in the unit, you pick your package in, you know, we were like, okay, you had a DUI here. It was five years ago. Have you learned from it? Okay, keep your nose clean. Okay, maybe we'll talk to you.

Okay. You get through the front door. just from your package you know interview come to selection and then we do this process where we we really get to know the person the individual their psyche we understand how they make decisions um we put them in situations ethical dilemmas we do all these things that really breaks down the individual and how they think which is way more important than how much you lift right do we so want you be a stud absolutely you got to right you got to do the long rock right you got to run fast you got to carry heavy things. You got to keep up with the seals. You got to keep up with the

Rangers. That's an expectation. But here's what we're asking you to do. We're asking you to have a very clear ethical compass. We're asking to make good decisions under stress. We're asking you to have a high EQ and IQ. We're looking at those things.

We're not taking dummies. We have very smart guys within the Air Force Special Operations side. They're very competent dudes. and we test them and we test them amongst their peers. And so one of the questions that's funny, like I was thinking about, you know, talking to you guys about this, is that, you know, one of the questions is, would you want to be in a car with this guy for, I think it was like an eight hour car ride? And that's a good question, right? Do I want to ride in a car with you for eight hours?

What does that mean? Does it mean I like you? Does it mean I can get along with you? Can you blend into a team room? Can you deal with other folks? Can you do that and also keep your mind? moral compass because that's another ethical dilemma that exists going with other tiers and so our guys have done a really good job of staying above the fray and i'm really proud of him wasn't that a question

that beckwith had as it had was do i want to paddle upstream with the guy with this guy could could have been yeah yeah when we talk to dan it colson yeah beckwith uh that's a whole other story yeah but but that's important right in the sense of outside of this person being a high performance like if it's just if it's just he and I out there for three days I don't care how fast you run I don't I don't care how much weight you can lift I want you to be able to carry your own weight but I also want you to make good decisions under stress and so that's not very it's it's a hard thing to tease out and so we we would have psychologists in there non-stop with us looking at our bias right it's because I have bias and so if I'm hiring somebody I want some probably to look like me

right I mean and you probably do the same thing you're like yeah man he's a you know he's a you know he's a puss like he's not like me and so you're gonna basically dismiss that guy or if you're an extrovert he's an introvert he can't be like me yeah and what we realized was is that um you know when we talk about diversity in the military and people rolled our eyes at it because it's been it's been miscategorized it's diversity of thought and we want people to think differently and can solve problems differently differently than me because it may makes me stronger, right? And so if we can do that as an organization, you can be successful. And all of the units are kind of changing their selection models to tease these things out.

You know, back in the 80s and 90s, it was like, how fast can you run, how good can you shoot? We need more than that now. And we need guys that can operate on their own. And so I think the soft operators of today are far superior than my generation. And I think, that's fair to say because I am that. You know, I think we were pretty good, and we're pretty damn hardy because we did a lot of combat. But were we prepared? I don't think we were.

I wasn't prepared. We prepared these guys because we looked at all the gaps in our lives and our careers, and we said, we're going to fill those in with training or fill us in with experience. And so, you know, when guys get selected to be greening teachers, they're guys that are combat hardened dudes that can come in there and sit down with you. Go, listen, dude, this is why you're messing. up and this is what you need to change if you're a combat controller here's what you need to think about when you run a stack and here's why you have to think

about it this way if you're a PJ this is why you can't do medicine this way this is why you're gonna get someone killed and we finally finally have the experience to sit there and say that very you know emphatically and and with position of authority which we didn't have in the 90s so when I went through Sockham it was what the guys never went to combat right or tell me about how to treat a casualty they never treated a casualty right Now, when I go through soft miss with a Ranger medic and he's saying, hey, Chad, you're messing this up? I'm like, holy crap.

This guy knows what he's talking about, right? I'm going to listen to him. Right. And so I think that's a pretty important distinction. But here's the but is that we're losing it. And we're losing it today because all the senior guys are getting out and leaving because they're pissed off. Right. And you're going to have an atrophy experience.

And the next fight is going to be way harder than the GWAT. Right. It's going to be 10 times harder than what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. When you're talking about great power competition, guys fight with nods and lasers and aircraft overhead, dude, you have to be the best. And, you know, technology will tip the scale to a certain extent. But you still have to be a very competent operator that knows how to make good decisions under stress. Is there any way, in your opinion, to not lose it? Because we lost it after World War II.

We lost it. We lost it. It's already being lost. And so, you know, every service will tell you that. I talked to Cee a little time to say the same thing. And we're losing it. And we're pushing people out because we want people to comply. I know we're not getting political in this, but there is an element of like, hey, you need to play ball or you need to leave.

And so a lot of people are leaving. They don't want to play ball. Like it's incongruent with their values. And so you have this, you know, in industry, they call it what the great resignation. people just, you know, or people silently quitting. You have that in soft, too. People are leaving. And so who stays behind, you know, who stays in the senior positions?

It's the people that, you know, really want to be senior guys to beat their chest. And not all of them. That's not an absolute. Sure. But it's the people who enjoy or who don't mind the political, the political game that happens at that senior life. I never wanted to be an E9. Yeah. When I got it, I was like, oh, crap.

I make a little bit more money, not a lot. but I got to be a good E9. And, but if your motivation is to, you know, have more stripes or medals and all those things, you're the wrong guy. And so how do you, how do you suss that out? That's a, that's a hard question to answer. I don't have the answer. You've got questions for Chad?

Yeah, we do. And just out of curiosity before we get to the questions, like, you have this real sort of breadth of experience because taking somebody that's a shooter and a medic and then all the ancillary skills, but also putting them into more of an Intel-oriented, like the OPEE and OPEB, which requires tradecraft and is more of a thinking man's game as opposed, that's very fluid in a lot of ways. Can you select people that, or do you try to select people that encompass all that, or do you recognize that some people are going to be good at certain things? For that mission, yes.

I mean, kind of... Oh, I mean like a green team. Yeah, we have. We found guys are like, holy crap, that's the guy. For this job? Yeah. Okay. And we pulled guys straight from Green Team.

They've never done the assault side. They went straight to the other side because they're just that. They're super, you know, cerebral. You know, it's super talented, but, you know, maybe they went to a school and got an engineering degree. And they might be too smart for the job they're about to go do. Right. And we're like, yeah, guy. Listen, I get it.

You want to go run a gun? you probably need to go do this. Right. And so that exists. That's cool that they're recognizing that so early on. Yeah. Because, yeah, I mean, as you alluded to, I mean, when I left the military in 2010, the guys who had engineering degrees, who had, I mean, everyone, they were all getting out,

you know, guys who had opportunities to get a full ride to mid-school, guys who had putting in flight packets, I mean, all kinds of stuff happening. So innovation is a big topic that's brought in the military all time. and the folks that are like innovators and the folks that think that way usually get out after our first enlistment because they're so frustrated right yeah and and that's the folks that we need to stay in for two enlistments to change the world right so it just it's the weird dichotomy of the military and it's interesting too because the military resist innovation so hard and they don't like failure they like innovation because it sells

but failure is incongruent with what you know the the model of success and And so you have to accept failure to have innovation. You can't have one with you at the other. Yeah. You can't have, oh, we're going to innovate, but we always have to be successful. Like you never get to. The zero fail or risk aversion that comes along with that. And so I understand that now on the outside, now that I'm in industry,

that all the successful tech companies are taking a lot of risk and failing, and they're going to find success because they're failing so much. Right. They're learning from it. Right. Yeah, they'll start out with the product and find out that it does. and do what they thought it was going to do, but it appeals to a different market that they never even imagined.

Yeah. Yeah. It's very interesting. Okay, let's get to these questions here. Anthony, thank you very much. What has been your experience is working with soft TACP? What's your take on the restructuring for TACP moving forward? Strike teams, RECON teams.

And if you can also lead off with telling us what TACP is. So TACP is terminal air control party. And they're basically the old school guys used to call, you know, naval gunfire and also, you know, basically serve, you know, the mission that CCTs do, tech peas did for a long time, right? I love tech peas. I love tech peas. You know, some of my favorite JTACs are tech peas. We had a lot of tech peas at the unit. We started bringing them on, and they were super, super capable guys.

There were studs. So, you know, the AFSOX's going through kind of a reshuffle. they're trying to figure out their mission. I think AllSoft is, but specifically AFSOC. And I think a lot of the legacy missions that we know are going away. And so who will survive this kind of change? I don't know. That's above my pay grade.

I don't have pay grade, but PFC. So are you saying that TACP, that they're potentially like on the cutting board? No, I'm not saying that. But I will say that the GWAT model of like, you know, calling Cass is probably going to go away for the great power competition because it's not going to be guys in the trenches, you know, on a, on SATCOM, you know, calling in strikes. It's going to be technology empowering, you know, missions deeper in targets and illuminating them and then making decisions with semi-autonomy and autonomy.

And so if Soft doesn't embrace that, they're going to lose the next fight. That's, I mean, that's just the reality. Like, autonomy is a thing. And, you know, China's doing it very well. The U.S. is doing it, and the military is trying to embrace it. But autonomy is scary. Yeah, it's the opposite of what we've experienced, where the golden hour is going to be a thing of the past in a lot of ways.

You're going to have to maintain a casualty out in the field. You're not, there's going to be contested airspace. Coms are going to be unreliable. Yeah, GPS denied. I mean, you're talking about, you know, fighting, you know, near peer, we say it all the time. What does that mean? That means the guy you're fighting has the same tech that you do. Right.

We fought cavemen and got our asses kicked half the time, right? And so we need to, we always have to have a competitive advantage we're going into fighting. And so our competitive advantage in the past has been aircraft. It has been. Yeah. And every service will tell you that it has tip the scale, every single, you know, engagement has been aircraft. Right. When things get too bad, guess what? We're calling the Air Force and they're going to slam this compound.

Right. Well, if we can't do that because those guys are in air-to-air fight, how do you push through? Right. And that's a really, I don't know how to answer that. And particularly if we're looking at China, because not only do they have close to the technology, they have all the technology we have because their industrial espionage is so great. Yeah, they stole it. Jackson, thank you very much.

What do you make of AFSC trying to become a more unilateral force? Are you optimistic or hesitant on the transition and why? It depends. I mean, it depends who's in charge. It depends on what they want to do with it. And so what we shouldn't do is become a better mousetrap. So AFSOX should basically play off their strengths. You know, we are very capable and technical forces

that can, you know, kind of multiply the battlefield. And so if they, you know, if they focus on those strengths and they flip that into the next fight, they can be very successful as a unilateral force. if they try to be a better assault force I mean cool man And this sort of goes back to the question About like the seals out there doing

You know the FO work the you know The opera prep is that Every mission was sexy Yeah right and everybody wants the money So when it was when it was the war on drugs Everybody got into counter-narcotics When it was the GWAT Everybody became a strike force

And then everybody started moving into the Intel, the trade craft, you know, everybody developed, even though their units specified for that, everybody became the master of all. And is this sort of what they're talking about with AFSOC, that there are people who think that, okay, well, shooting, CQB shooting, like, we can do that too. We can have our own teams to do this. Or is it going a different direction? So I personally don't think that we're going into that kind of conflict. I don't think that's the thing. And I think the name, Navy has been a pretty good, you know, kind of, I guess, weather vein for where they're going.

They're going away from some of those traditional missions. And so is SF. You know, the SF teams are going back to, you know, fit and going back to their core skills. Right. The things that are the differentiators that they're really good at. And, you know, for a long time, it was direct action. It was sexy like you just described. And everyone wanted to do direct action because that was kind of the bar to pass to be, you know, the guy.

The cool guy. Yeah. And so now that we're transitioning, S-F is saying, holy crap, we need to go back to our core skills. And they are. The Navy is going back to diving, go back to maritime missions. I've heard they have one of the, NSW has one of the, probably the best drone program in special ops now. Like water drones or air drones? Both.

Both. Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, tech is empowering those things, and there's a lot of autonomous, you know, underwater vehicles that are doing great things. tech is a differentiator and so whoever can adopt early tech is going to be successful in my opinion and it's not just because the position I'm in now which hopefully we'll we will we absolutely will

but I think that for AFSOC they have to find their way as I find what's unique to them you know what aircraft do they have that are very unique that they can employ they're getting rid of a lot of assets right now in AFSAC they're getting rid of a lot of CV-22s AC-130s and so

So, you know, some of it's a forcing function to get to the next fight. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, that's probably a better question to ask the seniority as Afsock. I hate to see the AC130 go away. Me too. This makes me sad. And Aetans, too.

And Aet, oh. I mean, a lot of love with A10s. If you're a ground force, you know how good the A10s are and how important they are. Yeah. Jackson, thanks again. As for Tier 1, how would you care for it for? the difference between the Army and the Navy side. Did you have a preference with working with one?

I think they're both amazing, right? You know, they're different. They're super, you know, in the early days, the Navy was really good at making things happen, and the Army was very, very process-driven. I think the Army adopted a lot of the Navy's kind of nuances, and they became just as adaptive. I got to be honest, in the later years,

It was really hard to differentiate the two. They had specific capabilities they did really well. Yeah. If there was a maritime mission, obviously, the Navy. But the Army, dude, they are, I mean, that unit Fort Bragg, they can do any mission on their son. Yeah. And they could probably do the maritime mission, too, if they wanted to. But no, there's no favorite.

So you're saying that if the Navy learned basic patrolling that they would be. I'm not saying that. That they would be right there. They could work up to if they cared about it. It was just, it's priorities, right? But a lot of the Army guys, so the guys from that unit were either former Rangers or SSF. So they had a very fundamental, like, infantry background. They're all Rangers.

And so they understood that. It was very intuitive to them, right? Navy's not, man. It's like, Navy's like, Huckett. They're like the football players are going to throw Hail Mary, where, you know, the Army is like, okay, we can get a first down by doing this, right? Navy's like, nah, we're going for a touchdown. you know um Ian thank you very much

oh uh Dave now is your chance to ask the only to ask about the only basic training you didn't go through what questions do you have about it I don't have any questions shirt folding I'm really good at that yeah did you guys use exercise bikes in the Air Force yeah in the Air Force

maybe you now no I wish they had them it was the only thing I missed in it apparently I and miss it. Exercise bikes now. Defendu. Defendu. CQB. So somebody with the Fair Baron,

Sykes, Kelly McCann, Carl Sustari Heritage. Thank you very much for the donation. Brendan G. Great guest, great stories.

Best wishes to you all be. Thanks, Bren. Graham, thank you very much. Thanks for the great conversation. Thoughts on SWT,

now special reconnaissance and what role they play. Yeah, so this was formerly like the weather career field we had, which is, you know, the combat weather guys? Yeah. So they rebranded them as special reconnaissance, which I think is really good. That sounds sexier. It sounds better.

Way better. The mission initially was like all over the map. It was like, we're going to do all these things. You have to be specialized at a couple things, right? You have to be good at a couple things. And so it has unlimited potential to be a really great career field. And, you know, we need it now because reconnaissance is more important now than ever. And especially if you can overlay technology into reconnaissance.

And so I think it's, you know, potentially it's a great pathway. Obviously, I'm biased because I'm a PJ, so, you know, I want more PJs. Let me just check. Was that a diplomatic answer? Yes, it was great. um isa uh

the air force is said to have the best tech so does is spec ops have more advanced tech than other units the spec ops or air force the air force special operations man no i don't think they do um i think the navy has been really early adopters of technology um the army is really keen on uAS and so they're really head on that and the air force again is going through this kind of like the teenage years of who am i

And they're looking in the mirror like, what do I want to be? Do I need this or do you need this? And so the Navy knows, hey, I need these technology to empower a maritime platform, so they're going to do it. And the Army is the same way. If you look at some of the drone racing stuff they're doing, the Army is taking advantage of that big time. And they're bringing industry in. Navy's doing the same thing. The Air Force is kind of like, you know, you have airplanes, right?

So here's a dichotomy with the Air Force. when you look at the army and special forces it's all about special forces right with afsock it's not it's about aircraft and they have really small cutout which is special warfare which is right air force Air Force is all about like strategic bombers and fighter jets. But within AFSC, it's CV-22s and like doing infill-expo. But then you have these guys over here. They're like, hey, we want to change the world. And they're like, got it, guys. But the money goes over here.

Right. And so NSW is paying to SEALs and they have these maritime programs that have a lot of money, but it's to empower the SEALs. Right. And so AFSC is the only one that's like, well, we do all this stuff for the other services. And then we have this small component of folks that do really special stuff. But we also want to help these people. And so it will never reach their potential because they're always looking outwards instead of going, how do we empower this?

Right. And so the first question, how do you do it unilateral? Well, you have to stop being a service provider. Right. And start saying, what do we want to do? And if you don't want to do anything, that's fine too. But if you do, you have to do it all stop and say, listen, these CV-22s exist for these guys and whatever their mission set is going to dictate. and and that's a it's going to take having some special tactics guys in senior positions which we do the a 3 of adstock right now is a former combat controller it's a combat controller general and that's a big deal for us you know it's never happened before so um and so that i mean that makes total sense because you guys have been force multipliers you've been adjuncts in a way to the other you know to the other services and

without that identity of we're the tip of the spear right not we're part of the tip of the spear yeah i mean it's going to be they're going to have to decide what they want to be who they are it's not my decision i can tell you my experiences and my experience was empowering those other tears right um

you know do i think that i was capable to do other things absolutely but it wasn't my job if you could wave a magic wand and make sts what you wanted it to be I don't know Yeah that's a tough one That's a tough thing to answer right now Because You know I have again

Bias is included here In my experience And so And that's fair I mean I'm asking you with your bias And your experience It's a numbers game right Yeah

And so Special Forces I was doing the numbers I think it's like 8000 It's a lot yeah You know I mean you look at The 82nd Has less folks

And they're specialized And the Ranger Ritaine And so the question I always had was, what makes you special? And, you know, I asked folks, I asked this when I was going through the, what is it called, Gisofsi, which is the joint special operations senior listed thing. And I said, what makes special operations special? Is it numbers? Is it technology?

Is it mission? And no one could really answer the question because when special operations, or soft, you know, has a lot of people and then within the Green Beret community, there's thousands of them. And not all of them are like, you know, doing everything, right? There's like guys that are specials in this and this. Within NSW is a little bit smaller, but still thousands of them.

And our career folders, you know, there's maybe hundreds. And so does that make you special? I don't know. I don't know if it does. It's just a numbers game. It sounds cooler. But how do you get to that point?

I don't think you do it without numbers. So if you have a Greenberry community, you want to go and do X mission, you can reorient all those people to go do that with the training and money. That's a tough question. So let's hear about your transition. You finally, after running and gun in and suffering through administration and then getting to be, you know, senior enlisted in the squadron. I mean, you kind of had the career, you know, from a career, yeah. I mean, you had the career. You went from 21 to 42 to 41 from the...

And you did it all. I mean, you did it all. You did a lot. Yeah. And you did it all. I didn't do more. You talked about, you know, the compartmentalization and driving on and all of this. And then you finally hit that moment of retirement.

I mean, what was that like for you transitioning? It sucked. I took a job. I was a director of an innovation institute for a year. And I learned about hiring and firing. I learned about dealing with, you know, people that weren't like me. It was a transition. And I was super depressed.

You know, we talked about before we started this is that purpose is really important. And you have it inherently when you're in the military. You don't have it when you get out. And it's a reality. So just brace yourself for that. And I did that job for a year. What I did do was I got a call and there was an opportunity to go help some orphans from Ukraine to Poland. Oh, wow.

And I was like, I'm in. And so I went to my boss and I was like, hey, man, I was like, I need to take some unpaid leave. I'm going to do this. And they were good enough to say, yeah, okay. I think they knew I was probably going to quit if they didn't let me do it. But I thought I was going to fill my bucket, you know, in my bucket and give me a sense of purpose. And I went out there and did it and it didn't fill anything. And I came back home and I ended up resigning after a month.

I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I told my wife, I was like, I just need to maybe go fishing every day. and just be retired. And I was retired for six hours. A buddy of mine from a big company called me. He's like, Chad. He goes, you need to talk to these guys from California. And I'm like, okay.

Those are my back porch. I think I was probably drinking a bourbon. And I talked to these guys and they're like, hey man, you know, just bros from, you know, California. And like, we're going to build a low-cost cruise missile. I'm like, okay. I didn't expect that. I was like, all right, so what?

What does that mean? How did you do low cost? They told me, you know, their design was like modular, like Lego set for a cruise missile at a manufacturing. I'm like, I'm in. And so I joined this team, and it was three of us. And it was the closest thing I felt, you know, this is called Team House.

It was the closest thing I felt to be back into a team post-military because it was guys that I identify with, that I get along with, and that we're oriented towards a purpose with. And, you know, we started this company, Firestorm Labs, and we've been doing it for, you know, six, seven months now, building a modular UAS. And it's the closest thing I found to getting into what, you know, we've been describing this whole time. And I needed it, man, you know, because we talk about purpose. You know, purpose is really hard to find on the backside.

And so the guys that get out, you know, I think this is a good opportunity to talk about is that it's not the same. and you will be isolated. You're on your own. It's never going to be cool again. And you have to mourn that career. And so once you move off from it, you can grow and be better. But for me, you know, join the team that I'm on now

with Firestorm, which is the company, it's been awesome. And so I've taken a lot of other jobs. I've got a lot of companies that I work with. One is Lifeline Rescue Tools, which is basically it's a, think about glass break, you know, times 1,000, what cuts through laminated glass, you know, first responder stuff.

I'm like, that's great. I can get behind that. Product development. Let's do it. And the other one's Fox Trout three is the company. We started with a bunch of operators, faith, family freedom. And so that's basically family values, getting back to making that cool again in America. And so things that can wrap my brain around and orient and really push hard is all I need.

And so because you're not part of a team anymore when you get out. No one cares. Yeah. Like, you're on your own. Yeah. You guys know that. I mean, you're forgotten very quickly. I've tried to describe the people, you know, that you could be, you know, the sergeant major of Delta Force.

You're total badass dude. You get out, you retire, walking around the streets out here. It's not that people don't like you, that they're anti-military or something. But you say, I was a command sergeant major of this, you know, J-Soc unit, they're going to look at you. What is J-Socke? What is Command Sergeant Major? And it's not that the experiences aren't meaningful. They are certainly are. Right, right? And they're meaningful in your brotherhood, right?

And so if we sit around and we drink bourbon together, like we can have shared experiences and we have the kind of common bona fideus, right? But you have to get over it and you have to mourn it and move past it. Big time. Yeah. And if you don't, you're not going to be successful in the next life. You're stuck in them, right. But if you say, listen, I had a good. great run. It was a cool experience and did some cool stuff. And now I'm moving on. And, you know, I do these conversations because I think they're cathartic. I think they're healthy. But at the

end of the day, like, that's my old life, man. Exactly. And it's nothing to do with me now. And that moving on, though, also, like you mentioned with the startup, there's also the issue of finding purpose. Like, if you try to move on and you're just doing some menial jobs somewhere that doesn't fill you with that same purpose. And, you know, we talk about post-traumatic stress. Yeah. And then we talk about this idea of transitioning, which is this nebulous. Okay, I was doing something meaningful.

I had people to my left and right that I trusted with my life, even if I couldn't stand them. Yeah. And now I'm out in this world where there really is no meaning. So here's the best way I can define it for folks that are preparing to transition or perhaps have transition is that I felt like life was black and white. It was kind of a gray and there was no color to it and there was no excitement. And it was a really heavy thing to deal with because you're like, holy crap, man. Like life is boring.

Yeah. And, you know, some people are like, oh, you should get back into skydiving or something. And I'm like, well, sort of go buy a fast car and go test myself. Right. That's chasing the dragon, right? Right. And that's dangerous behavior. And so I struggle with it for the past year. I was like, man, I was like, how do I get back to normal? And what I realized was, you know, talking to some really smart people and people I trust

is that it will never be that normal. It's different. And so once you embrace that and you accept it and you say that, hey, listen, that was a part of my life. It's exciting. It was fun. There's cool stories you can talk about. It will never be that again. ever. And you have to mourn that process.

Yeah. And so that's what I'm going through right now. And it's difficult, man. And like some guys are better out than I am. Some guys are more mature than I am and can find success. Maybe it's financially. They want it. Maybe it's purpose in a career.

But for me, I found the best kind of segue is I have a small team of people that I trust. we're oriented around a task and a purpose and I can make it successful because I know how to do that. Right. And so I think that's the most important aspect to me. It's healthy for me. But I will tell you, going back to the compartmentization, is that guys like us have been very good at doing that. And we can walk down the street and no one will notice any difference. The fact is that we're keeping these things wrapped and we're doing it at our own detriment, right?

And so until we let those things go and process them, they'll continue to be kind of the mills and her neck. And so I've been using conversations like this as the catharsis of letting him go. Right. I mean, I'm going to tell you guys some cool stories. It's cool, man. Like, I'm not going to tell you any classified stuff, but let's let it out. Right. And, you know, failures and successes, they're here, man. Right.

But this next life is mine. It's what I make it. Right. I absolutely agree with you. And we've had, you know, I feel like I've been, first off, I'll say that, like, I feel like Jack is one of those people that has dealt really well with that transition. I mean, like, he's very well adjusted. He's wearing a sweater now. Yeah, yeah, he's autumn.

He's autumn. I mean, he has a saltwater tank he's holding over there. Like, he knows who he is. Yeah. You know, but, you know, through the interview that we've also been out for 12 years, I should say. Probably helps. So, yeah, there was, there's, there's, is, I appreciate you saying that. I would also point out, though, like, I had that period of adjustment as well. That was like quite difficult to, even though I wasn't as in as long as you were. I didn't operate on the same level that you did. But just being in the military eight years as a young man and coming out, there's definitely a period of time where I had to figure things out. Well, it was eight years, but it was, it was, it was, it was your, it was the formative years. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The hard years to come in. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, and we've had a number of people on the show that have talked about, whether it's post-traumatic stress or whether it's just the adaptation of life after the military.

Because one of the things that a wartime military does for you, like you said, is it gives you purpose. Like combat is pure, right? There's, you're not worrying about your taxes. It's fun. It's fun. It is what you dreamt of when you were when you were a kid. throwing pine cones. Pankon grenades. Yes. It turns into real grenades. Yeah. And it is satisfying.

The only difference is now you don't have to argue over who shot who first. Yeah. Right. But it's a very pure endeavor. And then to move into a world that's very ambiguous where, you know, the answers. So I'd be remiss not to say this. And we talked about this before we started is that I have a really deep respect for. for conventional forces, right?

And here's what I'll say is that Soft gets all the fanfare. We also get a lot of the support. Yeah. So, you know, when I, I tore both ACLs and I got, you know, all this great care. I had great physical therapists and people surrounding me and helping me. You know, when you're a conventional troop and you're doing hard yards in Baghdad or even Afghanistan, like, there's not a whole hell of a lot there for those guys. And so I would tell the guys they're listening, because there's probably guys that are, is that I have a deep respect for those dudes.

And their service is no less than mine. We are prima donnas and soft. And so, you know, getting on black helicopters with the best pilots in the world. Right. Not good pilots, the best pilots in the world that take us the X and put one wheel down, and you jump off on the rooftop, and you go slam a target, and you get out in 30 minutes. And you're hitting when you know everybody's asleep. You know what you come back and do?

Yeah. You're come back and drinking beers and playing Xbox. Right. Right. That's what people don't get is that you're spoiled, right? And so, and do you want to do another op? Hell yeah, you want to do another op? Because you're going to have every resource available.

Those kids, those kids, men and women did it with no resources. And I think there's a lot to be said about that. And I think it gets lost in the kind of the nostalgia and the romance of soft. in that um you know soft isn't any better than those guys or gals it it like you say soft is sexy and you and and they have the budget they get the training but we've had like louis phrenandez ravenant like we've had people on that and we we want more conventional you know we're we want more conventional soldiers and uh marines on because they were living it every day the deployments were longer with not a lot of care on the backside right right right

Right. They didn't have the support. They couldn't, they didn't have, you know, an AC130, you know, hovering above. Which is a pacifier for operator. Right. It is. Absolutely. You know, when you hear that lawnmower, the great lawnmower in the sky, like, the bad guys hear that too. Yeah, man. I think it's, it's pretty important to recognize. And if you don't, maybe you're tone deaf. But, you know, I think soft guys in general realize that, you know, We've been spoiled for a long time. And for a good reason, like, we've had really hard missions. We've done most of the combat. Like, Soft has done almost all the combat in the past 20 years. Actually, that's not true.

Towards the end years, yeah, for sure. But, you know, I don't take it for granted that those kids were, you know, walking the streets and basically completely vulnerable. Yeah. When I was sitting in a safe, you know, MSS, you know, drinking beers and when I wasn't supposed to. And even say, you know, but you weren't doing anything that any like major and above wasn't doing whatever i can say now that's that's factual information yeah um we have a just i think uh i need to get back to the deal we have

a couple more questions real quick that just popped up um so i just want to go over real quick while i'm pulling this up uh we know about um launch firestorm dot com yeah right That's that's Firestorm Labs. There's also Firestorm Labs that does games. That's not them. And then you said Fox Trot 3. Yeah. And then what was the other?

Lifeline Rescue tool. Lifeline Rescue. Yeah. So they're all down in the link. And then we had one question that was, or one, we had like two more. Graham, a more important plan for retirement. thank you for the donation and we got that and then jerry oh we have two more jerry what would you choose uh whart hog or ac 130 over your head me for what mission i mean yeah it depends i mean

here's a story i'll tell you about ac or uh c130s and a tens so we were uh we're doing an op and we patrolled into this like wheat field and uh we're completely surrounded by compounds and it was bad. We knew it was about to pop off. We knew it was about to pop off. It was coming. It was just win. And our AC130 got pulled for an HVI for the other task force.

They're like, hey, we got HVI, we need the AC130. They pulled our AC130, and we're like, holy crap. So we had a, you know, we had an MQ9, and we're like, we're screwed. And we're about to get into a tick. We knew it. I mean, it was coming any second. And it popped off. And we were pinned down.

We were fighting our way out of there. The main assault force was way back behind us. We were a recu team. And we were just getting our, we were like, holy crap, we're going to die. And the controller was back to the main assault force and they were in a tick. And we're calling back. I'm like, holy shit. We're like, this is bad.

And he got on call E10s. These guys came in literally, I'm not exaggerating. 100 feet off the ground. Two ship, 100 feet off the ground. And they straight. this compound. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. I was like, I was on nods.

I had to pull in nods because there's so much fire. Like after they came in, two came in. I'm like, why don't we use these every night? I'm like, this is amazing. Like, just have these loitering over ahead. They destroyed everything. There was nothing left. I'd be honest, there was nothing that.

I'm like, who is AC130? What is that thing we like? And 810s, man. There's a time and place for them. But those guys, here's what I'll tell you. A10 pilots are the closest thing to operators that you will ever find in the aviation community. They are, man. They are guys that will like, want to, I'll drink you.

And gals. We had a KC. Yeah. That's right. That's right. They'll drink you. And they will put that thing in the dirt to help you. They're amazing.

And like I love A10. But it's, and they do fly low. Like they, they're at risk too. But those 810s is, yeah. Yep. We have a PJ or a guy went through basic training with, became a PJ, and then he became an A10 pilot. So a PJ and A10 pilot.

Oh, no shit. Oh, wow. You guys should have him on the podcast. We'd love to. Yeah. Jason Adaker. Yeah. We're definitely down from him.

But he is the best of both worlds, man, because he understands the ground component, and then he's, you know, big balls on the A10 side. And this also speaks to combat controllers, J-TACs, TACs, TACs, that when those dudes are on, like the world can be exploding around you. And they're just on their radio, controlling their stacks, like doing... Oblivious is what you're going to say it.

Yeah. Like, they're just... They're oblivious to the world around them. They are just doing... That's why they get so many silver stars because they're staying there under gunfights and they don't hear the round snapping around them because they have two, you know, two pelters on.

Yeah. And I would be like, somebody kill these people. please and they're just like yeah and call on the and we're also taking cover and they're like up there like yeah yeah yeah amazing people uh Andrew thank you very much and

and that's it for the questions fellas uh on Tuesday we're going to have Andrew Milburn back in the studio we're going to need to buy another bottle of scotch for that one or two he's coming he's coming back from Ukraine uh where he's been you know his organization the Mozart group has been

doing a lot of work and then on Friday we're going to have Daryl Blocker on the show who's a career CIA amazing career super interesting guy I'm excited to have him on the show so that'll be this coming Friday Andrew will be on Tuesday excellent

and so we told where people can find you just one quick thing for veterans out there or anybody who might be going through this but particularly veterans what's the step for them if they're feeling if they're starting to isolate if they're feeling bored disaffected done that's a loaded question man i mean it's not it's it's person for everyone

specific yeah so the VA sucks that's the first thing um and you guys will learn that very quickly um so you have to find your network um i think asking for help is important um people say they're going to help you there's only a few that will and so you got find those folks And I think that, you know, letting the stuff out is important personally. And, yeah, I don't know, man, there's a lot of people that want to help you. It's just you've got to ask. And so I have a role like to folks that I contact all the time because I know that potentially, no, I think that they need it and I hope that they'll reach out to me when I did it.

But, you know, there's a network there. So it's different for every community. But there's been a lot of suicides. We haven't had a lot of suicides within our group. Thank God. But the community at Rit Large has. And so there's a lot of different factors. Some of it's financial, some of it's personal.

Some of it's TBI. Some of it's BTSD. There's a ton of cool treatments out there. Some of the Navy guys I was talking to have been really, you know, keyed up on hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which is HBot, seeing a lot of lives, kind of reconnecting some of the connected tissue in the brain, and really mending. That's interesting.

Yeah, really mending some of the damage that's been done. And then the other one, which is a bit controversial, but, like, you know, there's vets, organizations, doing a lot of psychedelic stuff, is having a lot of good effects. I've talked to some folks that I know and trust that I've done. it and it saved their lives. And so I respect the process. I've never done it personally, but, you know, I think that's important to kind of suss out whatever. It's good for you. It is working for quite a few people. I mean, we've had a few on the show in the past that in the Fed. Yeah, Sam. Yeah, I've spoken to quite a few people. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I'm

ready to do the ayahuasca, you know. You might get there. There's all the DMT thing that people do down south of the border and it's i mean not to scare the squares i mean it's like monitored by doctor yeah it's a very professional it's a legit process i mean they're doing mushrooms or doing the MDMA they're like there are a lot of different um there is yeah

and you know the VA will hang you a lot of pills yeah and they'll do it very you know very easily and very quickly and uh there's other solutions I guess would be my my bottom line is that you know do your research figure it out yeah the nice that the VA were like the DARPA of military medicine

right if they were out there on the cutting edge and they certainly are not the DARPA no they are the most conservative medical they are the jiffy loove of yeah right right even DARPA isn't DARPA yeah um well chat I really appreciate you coming out here man and joining us and smoking some cigars and drinking some whiskey and telling us a little bit about your you know your story yeah and what you went through I mean it's been like really informative and interesting and you know I hope people get something out of it Right on. Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Yeah, absolutely. I hope you'll hit us up next time you come through the city. For sure. Yeah.

All right, guys, we will see you Tuesday and then Friday. So take care, everyone.