The Team House - Apache Pilot Turned CIA Officer | Ryan Fugit (throwback episode)

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

original airdate Dec 3, 2021Before becoming the host of Combat Story, Ryan served in the Army as an Apache attack helicopter pilot and then joined the CIA where he became an ops officer.Support the show here and get ad free epsidoes!https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

The Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 123 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. Tonight, our guest on the show is Ryan Fuget, who served as a Army Apache attack helicopter pilot and then transitioned over and became a CIA operations officer. Ryan today is also the host of Combat Story, which is another channel on the the YouTube's that you can go and find.

And if you watch the Team House and you like it, you should really go and check it out right away because I can guarantee you that if you found something here you like, that you'll find something on Ryan's channel that you'll like. Actually, there's an episode that Ryan interviews me on, and soon there's going to be an episode where tomorrow, tomorrow. Yeah. So all your dreams have come true.

So, yeah, go check it out. And we're going to put Ryan on the other end of the microphone this time around and hammer him with our questions. All right, Ryan, back to you. You know what I'm going to ask you right now. Tell us about your origin story, where you grew up, what your upbringing was like, and how that sort of set you up on a path that brought you into the Army. Yeah, sure thing. I will just say, I appreciated how David very casually just tied a knot there like it was no big deal with the rope. So very cool. These are a lot of, that was a lot of gear that pilots. just never had to touch or worry about, so that was cool to see.

For me, I grew up kind of weird overseas. I spent my childhood in Zimbabwe in Africa. I was in Pakistan during the first Gulf War. We got evacuated out and brought back afterwards. I was born in Belgium. So I lived the first 13 years of my life overseas. So were your folks spies or missionaries? Or gypsies?

They were legit state department. Really? I like how you say it. Yeah. Yeah. It was the first person I checked out when I got into the agency, when I got to CIA to see if my dad was actually in and had been lying to me all this time. And he's a legit state. Yeah.

So did he look down on you for? No, no, no. He had, interestingly, he had some really good friends over the years who ended up being pretty high up at the agency. So you just get to be close with folks in the State Department when you're at the agency. You're in the same communities in these places where there aren't a lot of Americans. So you get pretty tight, and he had a few of those. And my dad, look, honestly, there's a lot of stereotypes for State Department folks as kind of pencil pushers. They're the policy wonks.

But my dad flew Huey's in Vietnam. So he was a combat guy from the start. And then his true call him was the State Department. He loves to say he was a terrible pilot, although I will say he has a silver star and a DFC, which is no joke. Wow. But he really found his calling with the State Department. And he had, I think, when he would go and work with different military commands and just with the agency, I think they had a lot of appreciation for the time he spent in uniform. Of course, right?

I think as you might expect. Sure. When you were growing up like that, I mean, obviously the environment of the world, the world, were in as normal to us, but did you realize that like your upbringing was different than many, than most Americans? I did a little bit because we'd go back every two years maybe for a month over the summer. And so that would be like my taste of what America was. And I had no idea. I was literally in Africa, like in the middle of Southern Africa, running around with no shoes, very few Americans there.

So that was what I knew. Occasionally, like a Nintendo game would just drop in when somebody came to visit. But we'd go back to the States and like I'd go to a ball game in Chicago. Like I'd go watch the Cubs play or we'd run around Northern Virginia, seeing friends and family. And that was my exposure to the U.S. And how different it was where I was growing up, in particular the third world. Right. And I know you guys know it better than anybody, the stark contrast of the third world to the true first world problems we deal with here in the U.S.

And so I certainly, like I recognized some of those early on, but it certainly wasn't until I came back for high school and we moved to Tampa, Florida for my dad's last role at Centcom. And that's where I really noticed how different my upbringing was compared to everyone else. And how was that for you? I mean, did you have a hard time fitting in? Did you just? I didn't. I didn't really, but I think it's because of sports. You know, I think sports can be a huge equalizer for people, whether it's, you know, because you're on a team or you just understand how to do something.

And I had never played American sports, but I grew up playing rugby and I swam and tennis and squash and all these other sports. So I had good coordination. And I came in and I started playing football. I ran track. And so I immediately had this group of friends and was accepted. because I was pretty good. I was all right at it. Yeah.

So I didn't, that wasn't that hard, but I will say, like, academically, it was much easier coming back to the U.S. from these, like, international schools. So, you know, I started out in basic classes and then kind of worked my way up to the honors programs and trying to find my way.

But early on, I was able to get in because of sports. And then culturally, like, did you, when you would hear people talking about first world problems, as you said, did you have sort of an opinion to that or did you kind of adapt to that pretty quickly? I think I adapted quickly. And I will say this became really helpful when I was at the CIA, like trying to assimilate in and being liked and other people liking you and that sort of thing. I think I just picked it up for moving around, especially coming back to the U.S. and trying to make friends. So I tried not to dwell on that. I think the disparity between first and third world problems

And I think the frustration a lot of us might have when you've seen what it's really like in these other places came a lot later, maybe coming out of the military and getting into corporate America and then the agency. Okay. So I'm sensing that you are a pretty worldly dude as a young man. And your dad being a Vietnam veteran and helicopter pilot, am I wrong in sensing that this was sort of the aspirations building within you that sort of took you on that on that route? You were not wrong. I, you know, my dad would keep, he'd have his like a little case with his couple of his medals in it just off to the side. He wasn't ever showing it off or anything. But, you know, I'd see it. I remember seeing it when I was young in Africa and we'd drive around back in the States and we were back home and I'd ask him to tell me like what was Vietnam like.

And he would tell me these stories about flying into hot LZs just like you see and we were soldiers. It's exactly the way he described it was how you read about it and see it in that movie. So, yeah, like I kind of had that growing up. I had two older brothers who ended up going into the military. One flew Kiwas. The other was an armor officer. So I think it was a pretty clear path for me that that's what I was going to go do coming out of high school, at least, and getting into college. Cool.

So what was that like? Did you go in enlisted or you went in as an officer? Yeah. So I went, so my dad was an officer for whatever reason. That was the route I took going in. Both of my older brothers were. So I did ROTC at Georgetown to kind of get my foot in. They paid for school.

Thank God, because that place is expensive. I did ROTC there. I played football there. So I was busy as hell during college. But it was good. You know, there's another group of guys that I got to meet a whole new set of folks, both on the ROTC side and on the football side.

And that was the first time. truthfully, I was exposed to NCOs, or like the NCOs that were running our ROTC program and impressing on us like how important it is to listen to an NCO and like giving us the non-college side of that experience and what we were getting ready to go into. How did the NCOs treat you like recruits? Did they treat you like future officers? They treated us way too, way too well, like way you nicely. You know, like, I'm sure it's really tough. You got an 18 year old kid with nothing but

tons of opportunity and these guys have come out of, you know, this was just pre 9-11. So there wasn't a lot of fighting, but, you know, they've had a tough life being in the military and move in and putting up with young lieutenants. And here they are faced with like, this is the origin story of these dumbass lieutenants I had to deal with for so long. And so actually, they were really kind. And, and you could tell they were just trying to impart as much knowledge on you before you left as you could like great example for me you know you compete when you're in rotc to get to these um some of the courses over the summer airborne air assault dive whatever and you know i worked hard to get into air assault school i went to that and i still remember this guy a staff

sergeant roper he went through my packing list like every single item and he came out of the hundred and first and you guys know like it's the home of the air assault folks And no kidding, like you stand there on day one, they get all your gear out, you're in these long lines, and they just go through your packing list, and they're checking for everything, and guys get dropped because they don't have it. And I just remember thinking, like,

how lucky was I that this guy was there looking out for me at that time? And a lot of these guys just didn't have that. Right. Was there a reason you went officer instead of warrant, and was there more risk that you wouldn't become a helicopter pilot as an officer? Yeah. So I never considered warrant. I just didn't know about it.

It just didn't come up with my dad, you know, at all, even though he was in the aviation community. He was only in there for a few years of Vietnam. But I was more set on, like literally to the night before I had to choose what branch I wanted. I ended up picking aviation, but it was down to that in infantry. Okay. And I very easily, it's one of the reasons I love doing the show, like talking to you guys who've been on the ground, because that could have been me.

in a lot of cases. And I think back on that night a lot when I made this decision, all right, I'm going to go the aviation route. And I think back on it because I have a bit of regret, but I would have regretted it either way. You know, my dad flew, I can connect with him on a level. I never could had I not been in the cockpit flying, same with my brother. But I have so much respect for dudes on the ground running around who we were covering when I was up in the air and thinking like that could have been me down there. So that was the reason I went the officer route was I was going to go either of those. The Warren officer track just never came into play for me.

So where were you when 9-11 happened? I was in Georgetown. So I was in D.C. when it happened. And we had a, because I played football, we had early morning like workouts and game review and like from the previous season and that season. and I had just come back from that and my I room with three other guys on the football team so I was a senior at the time and they they did not do ROTC so I was often the dude like coming home as they were you know I was going out the door to do PT as they were coming back from the bars and so to see them up this early watching TV I knew something was going on so we sat down and we were watching it

and then later that day we all had mopeds because that's kind of people we were we drove down so we could see the smoke coming off the Pentagon later that day. And Jack, I can't remember if you and I were talking about this, but I remember in the months after that, or the weeks after that and months, like every day I'd read the Washington Post about these SF guys riding on horseback out in Afghanistan and how cool I thought that was. And just trying to follow that as as closely as I could, you know, with the internet being what it was at the time. Yeah, yes. And now you get your shot to go into the military, as you said,

you choose aviation over infantry. What was it like? You tell us a little bit about the kind of like training process to become an Apache pilot. Yeah, I know you guys have had another, at least one age guy on here. I mean, I went, I commissioned in the summer of 2002. And I was, I asked everybody on my show, almost everybody about this. But like for me, the amount of FOMO or whatever you want to call it, like the absolute fear I had that I was going to miss the war was staggering. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, flight school is like a year long, plus that's just kind of for your basic work. And then you got to go and do your advanced aircraft and patchies take longer. So I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to be here forever. This war is going to be over. I'm going to be the only due without a combat patch. And obviously now you look back and it's completely naive. to have thought that that was the case. But at the time, you just don't want to be that guy.

Right. Coming out without one. Yeah. And based on, you know, the first goal for, there was no reason to think that it wasn't going to be like a quick in and out, you know. Exactly. Exactly. So for us, like we go to Fort Rucker.

Sorry, David. No, go ahead. Please. No, I was going to say, we go to Fort Rucker. And, you know, it's in the middle of nowhere in Alabama. You got all these students coming in. and we had to wait probably four months, maybe three months, to start our training. There was like a backlog of pilots going through the course.

And so we just sat there and did almost nothing all day for three months. And I was petrified about just waiting any longer. Like I looked up, could I go to the CIA now? What can I go do to get my ass into this war somehow? But I stuck around and I got put into a class. You're in a flight school class of about 30 guys and girls. And I was one of two ROTC guys. So it was me and 28 West Pointers.

And it was like the 28 West Pointers who have finished one through 28 in their order of merit going, you know, coming out of school that year. They all get to pick like when they want to start class. And this is like the most time you could have off to start was this. So like the people who ranked highest took the most time off in the summer and then started course with me. So I was in there with all these West Point dudes. and I'm good friends with a lot of these guys now. But you're with them every day for a year, and every single day is an evaluation.

Like you're taking a classroom test or in the aircraft flying. You know, there's no A pluses. It's either you did this right or you sucked at it. And you're just constantly evaluated over time and these different flight skills. And everybody's competing for an airframe in the end. So some people really want to go and fly Chinooks, Blackhawks, whatever.

we had Kiwas and Apaches, but there are very few gunships that are given out. So it's pretty competitive to get a slot for the attack helicopters. So I was gone in for that. Do you fly every airframe while you're in the class? No, they start you out flying a civilian version of a Kiowa. So it's a Bell Jet Ranger, unless you're like six foot five or taller, which my roommate there was and they fly hughies which is hilarious like nobody else gets in a hughy it's pretty cool to see these things still flying around so he was out flying hughies while i was in this little uh jet bill

aircraft and then that's just for like making sure that you're safe in the aircraft flying around you solo in that you learn to hover in that and then when you start doing like low level navigation routes that sort of thing they transition you into an older version of the Kiowa. And then you're in that through the end. And then at the end, you go and pick your final airframe. And then you go to a separate course just for that. How'd that work out for you that did you have to like score at a certain percentile to, because you said it was very competitive to get onto a gunship? Yeah. So they, everything just like the military, there's, you know, an OML that's running around all the time, classroom flights, you're, you know,

all the grades that you get. And then there's a little bit of, physical, but since we're pilots, we don't, we don't wait it too heavily. You know, like, we're not too worried about the fitness side of things. But yeah, so there's the order of merit, and by the end of it, we got two Apaches in our class, and they went one and two, and the third aircraft was at Kiowa, and the rest were Chinooks and Blackhawks. Wow. Wow. So it was no kidding. It's like everybody in a room, hey, number one student is so-and-so, what do you want? All right, Apache's okay. It comes off the list. And it's just like that for 30, people. So it's nerve-wracking day of, but there's a lot of like there's their personalities for

aircraft. And I don't know if people outside the flight community understand that, but like people who fly Chinooks tend to be like pretty laid back chill. You know, they don't mind sleeping with the roof over their head if they got to hang out in the back for a while. They're cool having other people watch them fly. Whereas in the Apache like you got a co-pilot. That's it. There's no crew chief watching you screw up. So everybody, every airframe has its own personality. So you do have some folks who really want to get these lift aircraft. But for us, it was like the first three were attack and recon. Ryan, actually for the people who might not be super familiar with military airframes, can you give us a rundown on the choices you guys had? Yeah. So we had five.

You're right. You know, so we have five different aircraft. So Apaches, right. So just two seat, two, engine gunships. Then there were Kiwas, which single engine, no doors, kind of cool little reconnaissance aircraft. And then you've got Blackhawks. So that also includes your MetaVac, but the classes we were in, it was just strictly like you were going to a conventional unit to fly Blackhawks, not for MetaVac. And then Chinooks. So you got your dual rotor, big old lift aircraft, you know, carrying 30 guys. And then we also had one spot for a fixed wing to go and fly VIPs. And to me, it was like, why would you want to go do that?

Like if you wanted to do that, why not go to the Air Force? But there was one guy who got it. It was a perfect fit for him. And it made a lot of sense. You could go and fly some almost like some intel work, VIP flight. He had a great career doing that. But those were our aircraft. And now they've retired, I think the Kiowa and they have a Lakota in there.

I believe it is now. Now. So then you get, actually, Jack, could I, sorry, this might be interesting at the time. So this is just after 9-11 kicked off. This is probably still the same today. 160th, which you guys worked with for sure, like the cream of the crop for the aviation community, they would come around and they would pull one or two guys or girls out of, well, guys at the time, out of flight school, like right out of flight school into 160.

It was rare, but you could do it. But you'd have to go fly Chinooks. I shouldn't say it like you have to go fly. If you had aspirations to go in and flying Little Bird guns, which is if you're flying guns at all, that's the only thing you'd ever want to go fly. Then you've got to go and do your time in conventional units. But they were pulling a couple people every now and then out of flight school. So that was something you also had to weigh like, hey, do I want to give up this gun slot to go and fly in 160th, which would be amazing. But I'm going to be flying Lyft for my future, basically.

So that was one other wrinkle that they threw in at the end. Because once you get on an airframe, they kind of like keep you on it, right? Like how does that work like with the little bird pilots? Do they come out of like, were they former conventional Black Hawk pilots? What's that normal trajectory like? Yeah. So as you can imagine, just like in your guy's career paths, you're with these folks who end up going to the elite units just like you both did. And so you end up knowing these people.

So I ended up with a couple guys. who I knew who went into 160th. And typically, like, the gun side of 160th is looking for people who had flown Apaches and Kiwis, who had experience pulling the trigger for the guns. Like, I think you could be an Apache pilot and fly a little bird where you're infilling somebody, you know, the MH version, right?

Yeah, the MH version. I think they would also take Black Hawk and Chinook guys, but I think it's pretty competitive when you're trying to get into one of those gun slots that you come from a gun community beforehand. So you hit your Apache training. What was that like learning to, you know, now you're getting into like learning your dream job, right? Yeah. No, it's funny because the pressure that you put on yourself or the pressure that's put on you

kind of changes when you come out of, like you're no longer competing for the slot. That's all done. and now you're just like now it's real in terms of I got to make myself the best pilot I can before I get to my unit because I need to be safe and I need to once I hit that unit I got to be progressing through this ladder that we have in aviation so you can kind of stand out and get to the jobs you want so as we're getting into training it's more like I had a guy who had just come out of the war zone like he was in right in the evasion of Iraq like he had combat experience, it was great learning from him. So it was really like how much can I soak up

from this guy in this very short period of time before I get out the door. And it's actually like in the basic part of flight school, there are 30 students, but here there might have been a class of six. It's really small and more intimate as you're going through it. And one of the things that, you know, if you guys have heard somebody talk about flying the bag, it's kind of an interesting story. Like it only happens in the Apache community. It's how they train you to fly looking out of just one eye. Have you guys heard of this yet? No.

So this, I think it, you just don't hear about it unless you come out of this community, but it's a really tough part of flight school. That's kind of interesting. So in the Apache, you got this thing on the front. It's your, your fleer, we call it, the forward looking infrared. So it's all thermal sites. And the only way you can see at night in the Apache, if you're not wearing MVGs, is through your monocle.

So it's like this little glass eye piece that you wear, but it pretty. projects an image of thermal signatures in your eye in this tiny little optic in front of your right eye. And you have to train yourself because as you look through that monocle, you're looking at something that's right here, but your other eye is looking out into the distance. Right. And so you've got to be able to look inside the cockpit with your other eye and out and look for other aircraft and obstacles and take shots at stuff. So to learn how to fly like that, take several hours for you to overcome the sickness that comes with it because it's so disorienting. So they call it the bag where they put this tarp over the cockpit so you can't see out. So the dude flying behind you, you're up in the front seat of the Apache, the guy flying behind you who's the instructor pilot, I think he can see out or he's using the FLIR as well because he's experienced with it.

And then you have no way to look outside the cockpit. you're 100% flying with just what you can see in this little eyepiece. And a lot of guys end up puking going through this part of it. And it's super disorienting. And it's one of the other ego crushing parts of flight school that you go through on the Apache track. Yeah. So what's that like having an instructor in like behind you?

And I don't like I don't even know an Apache does like your your co-pilot, do they have? control, can they take control in a normal Apache? And then with an instructor, do they have like a driving instructor, like the brakes and stuff like that? Yeah. So the Apache that we use in flight school is the same one that we use in the regular Army. Okay.

And so you can do everything from both seats. Okay. So you could fight technically you could fire a hellfire missile from the backseat, although it's super rare because of the way you do it, but you could. So they have all the controls necessary for which. you inevitably screw up that they can control it and bring you down to the ground safely. But a couple of the things with it, we like to joke with Blackhawks and Chinooks and Kiwis that we sit front to back so that you can't hold hands with the other pilot.

So you wouldn't like fly with us because you can't hold the hand of your co-pilot. So we'll give them, we'll haze them a little bit with that. But there is a, there's like a glass shield between you. And the only reason I bring that up between the two pilots front to back is in the co-brae they didn't have that. So almost every guy I ever talked to who flew cobras would say the instructor pilot in the backseat would like dump their ashtray on you in the front if you screwed up or they'd do something to yell at you through there.

And you couldn't do that in the Apache because you had a blast shield in between the two cockpins. That's fascinating. What did your dad, did your dad fly cobra? I forgot what your dad flew. Just Huey's. He flew Huey slick. So no armament, no guns. What did he think of you like flying?

in Apache. Did he? I think he found it pretty cool that I was going down this path. And when I was in flight school, I went to one of his reunions. He goes to a reunion every year with these pilots that he was with in Vietnam. It's awesome. And they were all telling stories about how he used to fly and some of the ops they were on. So I think to him, he didn't really care what I was flying. You know, that didn't really matter to him. He just, I think he thought it was interesting that we both flu and it truly wasn't until i came back from afghanistan that we had some no shit discussions on like it was kind of like my baptism by fire and then we started talking real about some of these events that's amazing and how long was the apache training it's probably four to five

probably four months four to five months i would say once once you come out of basic yeah you go through that apache pipeline and actually i went through i flew your We call it the alpha model. So it's like the older model Apache that they used early Gulf War, not early in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they had just transitioned to this thing called the Delta model at the time. So I did the alpha and then had to do the secondary course for the Delta, which sucked because it kept me there longer. But this thing gave us a whole host of different capabilities. But one critical one was the optics were way better.

So we could see bad guys miles out now before they could hear us, which was not the case years earlier. So that was a huge advantage by the time we got to Afghanistan. Can you give us a brief rundown on the armament that the age 64 can carry? Because it is pretty impressive, the amount of hate. Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, I bring some hate, man. Yeah.

So on the small end, it's got 30 mil rounds, which are like, you know, six or seven inches long. They're the bullets. They're like the small armament you carry. And you usually have about 300 of those. And you got this cannon that sits down just below where the front cedar sits that that is running these things through. And I mean, when that thing fires, you can kind of feel it underneath your butt as you're flying. It's a cool sound and you kind of smell it. It's awesome. And then it's also got these 2.75 inch rockets, right? So I think I've heard you guys talk about them before, like coming from an A10, which is pretty badass. But they have a different sets of warheads on them. We would carry like some white phosphorus, some more explosive type

rounds with those rockets. And we usually carried, we'd carry about a pot of, God, I'm sure an instructor pilot's going to hit me somewhere, but probably like 12 of those we'd have on board. But because of weight, we just couldn't carry that much. And then we'd have two to three hellfire missiles, which are like five foot tall, bad ass missiles that have their own internal computer system. So this is kind of like fire and forget. So you're lays into target, you fire it, that thing is going in. It's going to hit that target. And you had different warheads that could go on that as well for, you know, thermobaric and high explosive type work. And we carry maybe two of those three on a good day in Afghanistan. Yeah. And did they have to, I mean, I

I assume that there were people who figured out all the, because of the temperature and the altitude in Afghanistan, where you were going, you know, the lift capability of helicopters. So every time you loaded out for a mission, did it have to be a different load out based on all those environmental factors? Pretty much, yes. I mean, as you guys know very well, the difference in temperature in those places, whether it's Iraq or Afghanistan, you know, can be significant. So, you know, we might be able to squeeze in a few more of those. but for the most part it was a fairly consistent load. And we had some extended fuel tanks, you know, just so we could spend a little more time up in the air.

But yeah, for the most part, it was a consistent load set based on in Afghanistan, not just the heat, but the altitude, which sucks it out of these aircraft. Correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan, but I mean, the Apache is designed to be like a tank killer, right? That was the initial conception behind it. Can you talk to us a little bit about what the Apache was designed for versus what it ended up being used for during, you know, your deployments? Yeah. And actually this, like this brings up just a very important memory for me.

So we were truly when I was in flight school and we went out and did our gunnery. So we go out to the range and actually shoot for the first time. We did it like we were Cold War Apaches, which is how they were designed, exactly like you said, Jack, going out. Like, you should go out as a battalion with 18 to 24 Apaches at the same. time on a line behind a tree line everybody at the same time pops up but just enough so you could get like your radar above the tree line scan 90 Russian tanks and all of you fire missiles because you pretty much only have 16 missiles at these tanks and hit them all at the same time without ever exposing yourself so you're at a hover pulling up not exposing yourself firing and leaving that that was the plan behind it So early in Iraq in 2003, there's a significant date, March 23, 2003 in Iraq, when the Apache community was supposed to have this, like, it's got all this new armament on it. It goes out.

It goes to a hover, and it hover, like this battalion goes out. Some of them crash on takeoff because they brown out. They're not used to the weight restrictions. And so some don't make it out. They get online. They're hovering right above enemy positions. They're getting shot up. They limp back to base.

It's kind of like a black guy for the Apache community early on in the war, which is not good. So they immediately start changing the tactics to what everybody is seen in Vietnam from Cobra is basically like moving while you shoot. But it's not normal. It's not how everybody has been trained for the past 15 to 20 years in this airframe. So they didn't even train us on that in 2004. as I was coming out of the pipeline. When I went to Germany, which was my first duty assignment,

our second gunnery run, we started doing these tactics. So we're shooting on the run. And it sounds easy. And after you get the hang of it, like, it's easier. But when you're in like a 10 to 20 degree dive, but 10 degrees doesn't sound like a lot, it's significant. Like you're pulling G's, it's a totally different experience than like pulling up to a hover when you're really low,

popping up and shooting. So we would do these gunnery exercises out at Graffinvere for those, like, tons of people here. I'm sure you guys probably spent time there, one of the other training centers. Anyway, like we're out there, we're shooting. And actually, it was the first time I had done gunnery as a pilot and command. So you get to a unit, you're a nobody, you work your way up to when somebody says, okay, you're safe enough to put another human's life in your hands.

You're a pilot in command. So I was a PC, we call it, for this round of gunnery, and it's day and night shooting. And we went out at night. And I mean, it was like white knuckle flying for me. Just I'm flying at night, you know, Fleer, this other human's life is in my hands. We're firing downrange. Like, we just don't fire a lot. So we went through and did fine on our gunnery runs.

But one of the nights, one of the air crews, a CW3, a senior warrant officer. and then a W-2, a guy who had just made W-2, both former Rangers who had transitioned over to be pilots, which is not uncommon. They went in on a gun run, got fixated on a target, and weren't able to pull up and flew straight into the ground. Oh, my God. And so, like, just disintegrated.

There's just nothing left after that type of crash. It's really bad. So that was, you know, I was a junior lieutenant at the time, and it was like a rude awakening of what can happen. if you don't appreciate how dangerous flying is. And they were good pilots, and they just got fixated on targets. Yeah. Straight into the ground.

Now, when you're doing that type of the run, are you actually, because I know, you know, helicopter can move in different, several directions. Are you actually like a plane diving towards your target? Or are you angled and still moving forward? Yeah, you're diving down towards. like a plain analogy, as you would have said. And you do that for several reasons.

One is like, I mean, you get up to altitude and you come in quick, but you cut all of your rotor wash that's coming down is going behind you. So it's not distorting or disrupting the munitions as they're coming off the aircraft. And it just gives you a better alignment with the wind as you're trying to take shots. So it serves several purposes, but it's necessary. So you've got to come in pretty hot. And target fixation is no job. Yeah. Every pilot's had to deal with it.

Yeah. Ryan, I want to ask you about, you know, getting deployed overseas and, you know, not missing the war, as it turns out. Tell us about your first time getting deployed overseas, Ryan. Where were you going? What was the mission? Yeah, so I was in Germany as my first assignment and the unit I got to had just redeployed from Iraq. So I was sitting there doing nothing and desperately wanted to go down range. And it just wasn't, our unit just didn't get tapped. So I went back to our. career course. So instead of going to the aviation one, I went to the infantry one. So that was actually interesting seeing what guys like you do at Benning as you're running around on a regular

morning because it sure as hell is not what pilots are doing at that time of day. We're not doing combatives by any means. So anyway, I went through that, but it was great because I got to meet a lot of guys who ended up being company commanders on the ground in Afghanistan when I was overhead flying. And it was awesome to know, just to know them personally, but to understand how they're thinking through, you know, breaching a target or their scheme of maneuver on the ground. So I found that really valuable. I went to Campbell and then we deployed to Afghanistan in just at the end of 2007. So I was there throughout 2008. Right. Just out of curiosity, how does that work? Because you would think as a helicopter officer that you would go to a helicopter career course or whatever, like, what's the

difference in why did you get to go to the infantry career course so they they keep a couple slots at all of these career courses for other branches so like if there's anybody listening who's going that direction i would highly recommend jumping out of your current branch to go try something else for the career course just to learn from other folks now at the aviation career course it's notorious for doing frisbee golf like that is the exercise of choice there and ultimate frisbee and that sure as hell was not what we were doing at benning like there was a whole set of guys who were going to s f and they were going to be team leaders i was put with all the tankers and heavy meck guys because i was an apache guy so we played we did we played the sf dudes in

ultimate frisbee one day and got annihilated like it's not even fair to put these guys with a bunch of tankers and heavy meck and pilots but anyway no so it was really good there were only a couple slots and there were marines there a marine was the number one dude coming out of the Army infantry career course, which I thought was amazing. But anyway, so it was good cross-pollination. And you know, you just completely learned how they thought and operated. Yeah. Did, do you think that having gone to that, it helped you when you did have your first combat tour?

100%. Yeah. I thought it was huge. I mean, truly, like, I was on the radio one time and a guy goes, hey, is that fugitive, is that you? And it's like, yeah, it's me, man. and he told me who he was. And so we just had that connection. Yeah.

Or guys who I knew when they were in contact, like it meant a lot to me to get overhead if there was a dude on the ground on you. Not like I wouldn't try if there was someone else, but there's this personal connection that you have. But also, like there was like the worst event that we had and we can get to this later, but it was more of like a deliberate operation into a valley.

And when we were doing the briefings and everything, I was a company commander. So we were kind of going through the briefing. And as the ground battalion commander's briefing, I understood everything he was talking about. It all made sense why you want to put positions. Like we got a block here. We have to move here.

You know, all of that made sense to me at that point in time. And it never would have from an aviation perspective. Yeah. Well, let's start talking about that. Any significant operations that you were involved in overseas as an Apache pilot. Yeah. How about your first combat, your first encounter? Yeah.

So, Jack, I think when you and I were talking, you may have brought up one that I was in because I was at Salerno and you, I think you asked me, you were like, hey, were you there when the base got attacked? So anyway, so we could talk about that. That wasn't my first one, but my first one, and I asked everybody this as well, like, what was your first time going outside the wire? And some people, it's crazy, you know, violent. For me, it was not. I was just out on a day flight, daytime flight, going out to ship. And there was some contact on the ground, but it was kind of in this area that had a bunch of compounds with pretty dense foliage inside compound walls. So the enemy had moved into that position where we couldn't really see them.

And there was a ground unit moving on them. And so we covered them for a while before we had to break station. and it just wasn't that kinetic, so we left. But I will say, like that first time outside the wire, I thought, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking I'm going into like World War II here because that's just, that's my feeling at the time was thinking like, oh, my God, what's going to happen? We're going to be shooting off all of our rounds.

We're going Winchester here in a minute. Yeah. Yeah. And Winchester, for those of you don't know, is just going dry on ammo. And I will just take a second to mention in the intro, the Team House intro, there's a clip in there of an Apache doing a gun run. That's actually something I filmed in Iraq of Apache's coming in and doing gun runs to support a Ranger operation outside Missoule. That's awesome.

Now, and to your point, so as I just kind of alluded to, so I was at Salerno, and there was Chapman nearby, which everybody knows from the unfortunately 2009 big attack there on some CIA folks. but they weren't too far apart. But in July of 2008, when I was at Salerno, I was on our QRF, so our quick reaction force, so we had two aircraft at all times that were ready to launch and go help people throughout like five provinces. And like pilots, so we're on a night cycle. So we wake up late at night.

We go to the chow hall to eat midnight chow. And four dudes sitting there. we're all eating way too much food and then we get a call on the radio like hey base is getting attacked everybody you know get to get to the aircraft you do not want to see four pilots run period but certainly not after eating like eggs and bacon and all this stuff so so we get in some gators you know we're drive they're driving us out closer to the airfield before we start our or like 200 meter sprint you know if we even made it in it without having to stop but this was the first time i had been this close to fire like this. So like,

Salerno is a pretty big base, you know, comparatively, certainly from where you've been, I'm sure Jack out in the middle of nowhere, say it and you, David. So it's got a pretty big perimeter. Tons of air, not tons, a lot of aircraft there. So as we're running out to the flight line, like we could, we could hear rounds coming in like mortar rounds. We could see tracer fire. And when you launch it in an Apache, you have a crew chief who sits on the wing with you or who's outside the aircraft connected with a mic. So it's the two pilot, co-pilot, and then you've got your crew chief who owns the aircraft, basically. And they're checking you off as you're ramping up. And it was the most intense I'd seen. Like I'd never had people shooting

to me like this when I was outside of an aircraft, just getting in. So we're getting into the aircraft, rounds are coming in. Our crew chiefs are still on the line. And I'm the company commander at the time. And I'm telling these guys, I'm like, guys, disconnect and get in. We'll be all right. We can take off on our own. And they stayed with us, which I just thought was badass. I loved seeing it. Like, crew chiefs in the Apache side of the world, they don't get to fly with you.

Like, there's no room for them to fly. So they're kind of confined to the base. And this night in particular, I just saw some serious bravery from these guys. I loved seeing it. And they're unsung heroes in this community. But we finally took off. And it was insane. So the base that we, at Salerno at the time,

was kind of owned by an artillery unit. When was this? Infantry guys. 08, 2008, so July 2008. And what settled this off was a V-Bid that hit our front gate and then like a basically a coordinated attack on the base, which had really not happened that often. It was rare for that to happen.

So we took off and artillery folks are manning the perimeter, but they're not, you know, they're not infantrymen. So they're not used to like moving outside and closing with the enemy the same way an infantry unit is. So when we got in the air, we're trying to get situational awareness on the ground. And it was mayhem. So we got night vision. Usually in the Apache, one guy will be flying Fleer. So the thermal and one guy will be up on night vision goggles, depending on what the moon and illumination is.

And we're just initially, like usually we take off and we fly for 15 minutes at least, sometimes. an hour before we're in contact. And here it's immediate. And the radios are blowing up. You got different units trying to like defend different parts of the base and you got folks trying to move when they're not tactically used to doing that. And then we got Chapman, Bob Chapman nearby, which has all these kickass operators there.

And they're coming out to play also because they're like, oh shit, there's a fight. And it's here. We're coming out. So we spent at least 20 or 30 minutes, just trying to, figure out who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. Right. And one of the things we do when we're on a tight target like this is, so the Apache is one of the most advanced aircraft you have. So you've got different displays up in the cockpit, different screens. And so what we'll do is we'll drop these different boxes on the screen and basically text them to the other aircraft. So it shows up

on their screen. Oh, cool. And we'll basically drop a line that says, hey, don't. don't cross this line. Like you guys stay north of this, we'll stay south. And then we can kind of focus on what's going on around us without having to stay in a formation, right, which we'll do in other scenarios. But in this case, it was like, let's drop a line. You stay over there, we'll be over here.

And we got lined up to take a shot. So I'm in the front seat, which is where you do most of the shooting from. And you got this system with these like handles, joysticks basically to do all your shooting. And my backseater, who's the most experienced dude in the unit is flying us around. And actually, sorry, no, no, no. So this is, I was in the backseat. He was in the front seat. So the most experienced guy was in the front seat and I was in the

backseat because we thought like, hey, we're on QRF. It's unlikely we'll launch. But we're getting complacent here. So let's switch up seats. So I was in the back where I'm flying mostly, where as the company commander, I'm usually the guy directing the fight. I shouldn't be flying. I should be taking shots and coordinating. So I'm in the back. We're flying around. I clear him for a shot. And like a second before, I'm like, you're clear. And just as I say that, our wingman flies right in front of us. So like if he had pulled the trigger, we potentially could have shot down our wingman. It was one of the worst experiences in my life. So I am like, I'm shook at that point. 10 seconds.

Yeah. So I pull out and when I just start coasting for a little bit to re to regain. And this guy, J.T, I interviewed him. He was the dude in the front seat. He was the second interview I ever did. And we talked about this on air. And he, like the amount of poise he showed in not tearing my ass apart. And he's a warrant officer, right?

So he's a CW4. So technically I outrank him, but not in reality. Right. Like the hierarchy there is he's an incredible pilot and I'm a newbie, basically. And he's like, hey, are you good, sir? You ready to go? And, you know, we took like maybe 10 seconds. And he was like, yeah, let's get back in.

And we got back in. And so we ended up helping here. We took some shots. I don't think we actually, I doubt we would have killed anybody there. Like it was a really chaotic scene. But we got back in and helped kind of like calm the situation down, landed. But I still remember that as, like, we did what we were supposed to do. But, man, like, it was, it was another ego check for me that you just can't be, you've got to be on the details of everything.

And I couldn't be trying to run the battle from the backseat. And I was really appreciative of how he handled that situation with me. It could have been worse. Was that a result of your wingman breaking in that line? Or it was. That was me losing situational awareness. Yeah. And Jack, I think back to you telling me that story about the first time you pulled the trigger and almost having a friendly fire and you're like owning up to it. Like, I don't want to tell this story. It makes me sound like I don't know what I'm doing. Right.

You know, but it's chaotic in combat. Yeah. People who want to know what it's like, it is chaotic, man. Right. Especially, you got all these radios blowing up. We got air to air. We're talking to our talk. We're talking to the artillery talk. We got new guys coming in from spooky land from Chapman who are all parts of different organizations. we're not allowed to know about. We've got artillerymen trying to move like infantry units, and then we're just trying to deconflict. So it just gets crazy, but it's reality out there. Yeah, I think, you know, for people who've been in combat, they understand what the fog war actually is.

I think that if you haven't been that situation, like it's conceptual, like, oh, things can confuse a bit. You're making split second decisions that might cost you your life or somebody else's life. And, you know, and it's easy to get target fixated. It's easy to, you know, make the wrong call. It's just easy. Yeah.

And as Ryan points out, I mean, when we tell these kind of like war stories and deployment stories, we have a tendency to talk about the ones where things went really good and we feel really good about. But we all wish that the way it worked was you go in and it's nice, clean headshots on some Al-Qaeda terrorists and the bad guys die and the good guys get home to the fob in time for hot sandwiches and soup, but the reality is it often doesn't work out that way. Yeah. So, yeah, no, I absolutely agree that, you know, it's important to tell some of these stories.

Yeah. And so it's interesting. So generally, you said that the more senior person generally or the more experienced person generally sits in the back. And are there, are they responsible for flying? Are they, can they, are they elevated where they can see out the cockpit as well as the person in front? Yeah.

Yeah, so they're elevated. So they're sitting behind and up from the guy in the front seat. So they can see everything and they're in a better position to fly. In the front seat, you're kind of down like just behind this, your panel, your instrument panel. It's got all everything on it. So you can kind of see out, but it's not as, it's not as natural. So the natural place to fly is the backseat. And the front has a set of systems on it that are designed for target acquisition and firing,

that it does not, it's not available in the backseat. So you want to put the pilot in command in the back, responsible for just flying and making sure the flight is safe, and the person coordinating and shooting is up front. That's really interesting. It reminds me of a like a sniper team because most, like, most people think that the most experienced person is the one shooting, but that's not the case.

Really? Yeah, the spotter is the most experienced one because they need to be able to read the way, wins, retrace, you know, like they're the ones dialing the person in because anybody can be trained to pull a trigger. But all the mechanics of it actually fall on the spotter generally. So were there any other like significant operations that noteworthy operations, good or bad, that you think are worth discussing? Yeah, I do. So there's one that comes to mind. And for me, like this was the craziest off I was ever on.

And when I interviewed this same guy who was in this flight with me, this senior warrant, I interviewed him and I asked him, you know, so he had, I think, 4,000 flight hours. He did four deployments. And I said, what was the worst day you ever had? And it was this day. So it was a daytime flight. We infilled, so it was in Wardak province. So near Gosni, you know, like, I don't know if you guys ever spent time there.

It was in this valley called the Jolres Valley. and my aviation battalion commander was West Point classmates with the infantry ground space commander, right? So the battalion commander on the ground. And so they were paired up pretty tightly and he wanted to support him all the time. So this guy on the ground wanted to go in and go into this area and pick a fight. And every time we went into this area, we picked, like somebody got shot in this place. Anytime we ever flew in there, someone was getting shot. So they infilled a company in on the ground and kept them there for a week.

And then the idea was they'd pick a fight, find out where the bad guys were and then come back out. So after this, so this was 2008, like I think in nine or ten, they ended up putting a fob in this valley. But at that time, there was nothing. Like, it was the end of the world as far as we were concerned. So we infilled this infantry company one week, completely quiet infill. nothing going on. We drop them off. Like Chinooks, they ground infill.

They drove in half the unit. Half of them we infilled by air. Nothing happened for a week. And then we went to X-Fillam. And we just knew this was going to be bad. And I went with this guy to our battalion commander. And I was like, hey, if there's a way we can change up how we're doing this, like we think we need to.

We think somebody's going to get killed here. Like we just, what we know about this area is bad. We shouldn't be going in here. But we went in anyway. And so I stacked the. teams for this base this one mission with like who I thought was the best in our unit so we had multi ships but we had two apaches going in with two Chinooks and and then we would rotate because it was going to take hours it was it was probably an hour and a half flight just to get there from

our base and get them back home and then we'd have to refuel it was going to take all day so we stack the teams we fly in and as we're flying in we started getting So it's two Chinooks and then two Apaches behind them. And we started getting airburst RPGs coming up, broad daylight. And it's probably probably like three or four thousand foot mountains in a pretty narrow valley with a single road in and out. And maybe like 300 meters of terrain on either side of the road. Right. So it's single road, high, steep valley, like steep, steep,

steep mountains and we're flying in and we're already taking air bursts. The Chinooks are able to ex-fill folks. So we ex-fill with them and then we come back to cover the ground convoy. And there's been no contact on the ground, just us getting shot at as we fly in. And then as the ground convoy is ex-filling, we're overhead. And again, like it was a clear blue day. And we're talking with the ground convoy. Everything's good.

They come up to this like area that has an overpass and they get ambush. And so it's starting out here. Like we're scanning hell out of this area. And one of the dudes who's on the other front seat. So I'm in the front seat. And our other front seater is a guy who has gone on to be a little bird gun pilot, like flight lead in 160. So an incredibly gifted pilot.

He used to find people when no one else could see him. And he couldn't find anybody. And so already we're on the back foot. It's a no-shed ambush. They initiated it by hitting a dude and one of the hum, these like directly with an RPG. So dude took it in the chest in an RPG. So it's immediate chaos. Like you got to you got to call in a medevac got to get out of these guys out of the kill zone. And we could not see any enemy guys on the ground. No one. Like we just could not see them.

And so we're flying around overhead for a couple minutes and it's insane on the radios. Like I don't know if you guys were ever in this scenario, but there were a few times where I heard guys on the ground like screaming into the radios because it's no shit life or death at this moment. You know, it's not we're observing this. Like we're taking fire. We've got to get out of the kill zone. Put some lead down here. So we're incredibly frustrated in the air.

We just can't see anyone and we don't want to pull the trigger and hit one of our own guys. It's truly danger close. So at one point, the same guy, J.T, says to us, we're talking air to air. And he says, hey, guys, we can't, we can't get a shot off. let's fly down low and see if they'll shoot at us instead of these guys and get them out of the kill zone. So he's like, I want to make sure you guys are okay doing it because we might get killed. And so we said, yep, let's go ahead and do it. So we come in and we did a couple passes low.

And we were coming in low on one of them. And we could feel our aircraft like bump up a couple feet, which is rare. And it was small arms fire hitting us. And then we saw an RPG fly out our left window like, I don't know, I don't know if it was 10 meters, but we just, me and my backseater were joking afterwards. It looked like an Acme rocket. It was so slow, like it was Wiley Coyote or something like just cruising by us. And if it had an airburst, I don't know what would have happened.

But this guy had a beat on us and just missed us. So like for me, that was probably the closest I came to dying. And it was, you know, to me it was nerve-wracking. So we got back up. We're flying. And in the Apache, when you're sitting on the controls in the front seat, it's designed to be like a long range shot. So you're shooting missiles and rockets usually from the front seat. And you can shoot the gun.

But usually you have like more freedom to maneuver and space to shoot. But we were real tight on this one because of the terrain. So the guy in the backseat ended up taking the gun. And in the Apache, like wherever you're looking with the monocle, you can pull the trigger and shoot 30 mil. So he started putting rounds down just looking at targets and pulling the trigger, which was rare. Like daytime, like shots from the back seat kind of in that scenario are rare from what we had seen. So we were just trying to put some rounds down. And we ended up getting some hits and getting these guys out of the kill zone.

But this ended up being a 10-hour day for us. Like we needed a general order approval, a general officer's approval to continue flying because we had to go back in so many. times to get these guys out. Metavac came in. They got shot up on the way out. And then just making sure, like, everybody was safe back at their base before we landed. So at the end of the day, we landed back in Coast in Salerno. And I hopped out of the aircraft. We turn it off. Me and the co-pilot, we jump out. And as soon as the pressure leaves the aircraft, like, there's not all the stuff circulating, like the fluid can settle. And it just, started pouring out of bullet holes that we had all over the airframe.

And then the crew chiefs, they're like, God, damn it, sir. Like, I got to, you know, they, it's, they're glad you came back. Like, it's all good, good natured fun, but they're like, God, you got my aircraft shot up. What the hell? But they would go and they pulled out, they pulled out rounds and they pulled out one from our fuel cell. And this was pretty damn cool. So, like, I still have this, this, uh, AK around that we got hit with in our fuel cell,

in our fuel bladder. So the bladder was designed so that it would seal, it would self seal as a round came in so that you didn't get any air into the fuel system to combust. And I never believed it would work and that shit worked when we needed it.

That's amazing. So it was awesome. And we got a bunch of pictures of like where the rounds came in and we got to keep some of them. But to me like that was a huge deal. Personally, that was the worst I'd ever been in.

Why did you guys need a general officer's approval to, was it because of the length of the operation or? It's flight time. So I'm sure you guys have both been in situations where you've had aircraft and been like, we got crew rest, we got to go. It's an unfortunate part of flying, I think. Yeah.

We had basically, when Clay Huttmacher was on, he talked about it. He was the 160th commander. And at a certain point, the pilots would get to a certain point. And he'd have to either ground them or bless off. on extending the amount of time they can fly. And he was like, yeah, sometimes I extended it. And then if the pilot, you know, his rear rotor clips the side of the hangar. It's like, well, that's my fault.

I shouldn't have authorized that. Exactly. And so it goes up the chain of command. So if you're flying daytime, you can fly for like eight hours, I think. If you're flying night vision, it's six. If you're flying just Fleer, I think it was like four or five because it just, it's, it mentally drains you from having to be on the ball like that. And look, man, I mean, talking to ground guys, you're going through much worse.

But they're just so worried about a catastrophic incident with an aircraft that they don't want to mess with it. So as you start like breaking those thresholds, you kind of have to go to your battalion commander, then to the brigade. And then eventually it gets up to like general officer level where they have to say, all right, keep them flying because they're in some serious shit. Yeah. Did you guys have a problem? Was it situational whether you could. fly daytime office because I know that was a huge issue with the Air Force trying to get them to fly daytime operations? I think for us, no. So we would fly daytime. We do convoy escort.

We'd be QRF. I don't know why that is with the Air Force. I mean, certainly, you know, AC130s, I know are only going at night and obviously 160th is operating at night. I feel like every time I've talked to a 160th guy who got shot down, it was in the daytime. Yeah. So I see why they go at night. But no, for us, we were going daytime. And I will say at night, and you guys know this in Afghanistan, like you can operate with MBGs a lot.

But because of the terrain, if the moon isn't very bright or it's behind some of those mountains, NVGs don't do a whole lot. Right. Because you've got to be able to see. So if you have Fleer, you can get out there and fly at night. It doesn't matter what the illum is. So Apaches could go out and operate at night when a lot of others couldn't. Really, it was us.

and Metaback birds, like C-SAR birds from the Air Force that always had Fleer. So we were usually out on moonless nights. Were there any other deployments as an Apache pilot or the Army before you started getting a bug in you about transitioning to other governmental agencies? No, no, that was it. So I did one deployment. I can't even believe it because it was almost eight years post-9-11 and just the luck of the draw, that's where I was. And I will say I regret that to this day that I didn't do more. You said that some of your viewers had asked you about like the whole close support,

like what it was like on your side versus like what it was like on our side. Can you tell us what it was like? What was that feeling? Man, yeah, that's a great way to put it. So, yeah, a lot of people who listen to combat story have asked, hey could you talk to somebody who's been on the ground when there's an Apache up overhead not like talking to the Apache but just like what it's like and you can talk about kind of what it's the feeling is for you and the aircraft and them on the ground so for us like the whole reason

we exist is to support you guys 100% which is why I went to that infantry course like I just wanted to know how you operated what your weapons could do how to be better partners when we're up in the air like it sounds corny but like you guys were our customers how do we make your life easier and getting your work done and keeping you safe. So for us, it was very, it was very much this idea of, we're there to keep you guys alive, and if you need us, we will be there. And that's why we love 8-10 pilots, too. Like, we felt like those were our cousins or something,

the type of work they used to do with you all. But, you know, I'd be curious what it was like for you guys on the ground, seeing an Apache. Yeah, as I was, we were talking a little bit before we started the show. I got to call in gun runs from Cobra's. in training. But in combat, there was somebody much more qualified than I was doing that. We had in Iraq, we definitely had Apache's doing gun runs for us, doing support. And I mean, it's awesome to see them come in and start, you know, a lot of times reducing targets that we had

actually hit as infantrymen. And then just because it was kind of a scorched earth campaign against AQI at that point in 2005. So it wasn't uncommon to have like AC130 or Apache's come in and just destroy the target after we rated it and got everyone out of there. But yeah, it's a good feeling to know those guys are overhead. We had, I don't know if you had an opportunity, we had Lewis Fernandez on who was 82, right? And he talked about when he was on, you know, he could like, they could hear the guys talking, you know, they were that close, the bad guys and called, you know, and I believe it was an Apache

that came in. and he's talking about, you know, he can't hear the Apache. And the Apache's like, no, we're right out. You know, and when you guys are flying the nap of the earth and masking the sound and then that feeling of the Apache. And my heart was like racing because like close air support, having those guys come in, especially when, especially when you're like looking to your buddy is like, well, we're going to go to the last round.

But like this feels like it. And having close air support come in, it's like a, it's like a, spiritual experience. I mean, it's it's like on a really cold, cold night. You know, you've been and then the sun, you know, Bob, the big orange ball comes up over the horizon, starts warming you. That's exactly what it's like when, when you guys show up on station, when it's, like, when it's down to the wire. And, you know, and your, your optics, your ability to see people, your ability to engage. It,

like I said, I can't describe it as anything other than a spiritual experience to, to like be pulled out of that by these guys that just roll in. And you guys are always so calm, cool, collected on the, on the radio, you know, no matter what we sound like when we key the mic for you guys. Yeah, no matter what's going on, it's like, yeah, we got this.

Dave and I have had the conversation too, which I think most like ground guys have had it or have experienced. when suddenly you're on target in a place like Afghanistan, and suddenly you hear like a woman's voice come over the net, and everyone starts looking around the target. Like, who the hell? There's a girl out here? And then you find out later, oh, she's in the air.

Like, I remember we had a, I think it was a female AC130 pilot, actually. And once in a while, you'd hear her come over the net. And everyone's like, she sounds cute. Where is she? Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like in Lord of the Rings when, when they're, I don't remember the battle,

when they're coming out of the castle and then get off and the, the cavalry's up on the mountain, they come down. It's like, oh, my God, thank God. So, Ryan, what does this idea come into your mind like, okay, I'm a pretty badass Apache company commander here, but I think I want to go and try something different and serve my country in a different way. What was that sort of like progression like for you? So for me, it was early on in life.

I really wanted to be, you know, I followed my dad's footsteps very closely, as you can see, like I went into combat. And actually, the day that I was just talking about, that nasty operation was the same day of the year where my dad got his Silver Star and your guide. So it's really weird, like 50 years apart, 40 years apart, 40 years apart. Anyway, so that meant a lot to me. But growing up, I love living in these different places. I liked the idea of these embassies and this lifestyle,

but I really thought that the CIA side of it was cool. I just always thought that there was something neat and interesting about it. But when I got out of the military, it was really like, I'm making a clean break. I had gotten an MBA. I was like, I'm going to go and do something normal, make some money, and probably three months in, I hated my life. I hated it.

So anybody who has been in the military and has come out and had to try to fill this void knows what I'm talking about. But I just, I was still young. You know, I felt young. And I wanted to do more. And I threw everything I had at getting in to the agency. So I applied. It takes a long time to get in with security clearances and background checks.

So for me, it was a year, start to finish. But, you know, I was living in North Carolina. And I just told my wife, like, I'm miserable. We're moving to D.C. We're going to move to the epicenter. And I'm just going to get closer to it. So I ended up doing consulting work. for an army client.

I went back to school and got another master's degree in D.C., like whatever I could do to get me closer to people in this world, I wanted to do. And, you know, I finally got picked up by the recruiter, and it took a year to get in the door. But it was from childhood for me, like wanting to get into this world. You were kind of set up for it pretty well, too. I mean, with all this experience abroad, do you speak any foreign languages? No, at the time I didn't.

So I got trained when I was there to pick up French. But growing up, I took Spanish. When I was younger, you know, I could speak Flemish because we lived in Belgium. That was it. You know, I lost that. And not surprisingly, it's not a language that you really need. Did you have a desire with all the different jobs in the agency? Did you have a specific focus?

Did you want to get into aviation or operations or? So this war on me a little bit because, well, first of all, like many people, you don't know anything about the agency because it's so shrouded in secrecy. So I didn't know what the hell I was doing. They just said, hey, you're coming in. You're going to go do this job. Does that sound okay? And I was like, I'll go and mop floors and toilets for you if you will let me come into this building. So I'll do whatever you want me to do to get my foot in here.

But yeah, hell, yeah, I'll go do odds. You're like Forest Gump going through the farm. Oh, man. Oh, man. Do whatever you tell me to, Jill Sargent. Yes, whatever you want me to do, I'm going to go do. But yeah, there's, as you guys know very well, there's a paramilitary side to the agency that's usually hunting down people who have any, not any type of military, like specific skills. In aviation, it's kind of rare to get a pilot in the agency because usually pilots want to fly and all they want to do is fly and they stay in and they have bonus structures set up.

to keep them in service flying. So it's not often you get folks who are. Yeah. When we first talked, Ryan, I asked you, I was like, well, were you an air branch, like flying spooky undercover helicopters? And you're like, no, as an ops guy. Like, whoa. Polar opposite.

Yeah. No. So for me, though, there was this like, God, I would love to go over to that side of the house and do that because I just loved, I would have, if I could have gone back to Afghanistan as a PMO and, you know, like supported that mission again, like all the guys. guys I had served with were back down range again, and I hated myself for not being there. Right. And I was thinking, God, I'm going to go somewhere and just watch this happen.

So it really wore on me, but their deployment cycle is rough. You know, it's a tough deployment cycle for those guys. And they're in difficult places. And I think a lot of them want to go and do traditional roles on the opposite so they can take a breath. So it's probably a blessing. I didn't end up doing that, but it weighed on me heavily as I started out there for sure. For sure. Yeah. So you went, so you went to ops and you got accepted and you went to the farm, I assume? Yeah, and I should say, because you guys did introduce me as an ops officer. And if there are people who know me, they would say, no, no, you weren't actually an ops officer. So I was a collection manager.

So it's separate. We get trained in the same way as ops officers, but we have different roles. And folks will reach out to me who are, you know, interested in getting into the agency. And we'll talk through some of this. and we can because it's all on the website. Like, I'm not giving away secrets here. But it's a different role where ops officers are out there meeting assets, collecting intel.

That is their job. Like 100% that's what they're working on. In my role, I was trained to do that, and I did that as part of my job. But the other part of my role was to understand, for whatever issue I was assigned to, if we just say, like, hey, you're working on terrorism, right? In this particular country, if we set Afghanistan. You know, my job is to understand where our sources are in Afghanistan on this target set. So I need to know where they are and what they have information and access to.

And then I need to understand what the people who are reading that intel in the end, what they need to know. Like what are their intel gaps? And then I need to close those gaps. So if somebody like a military customer or somebody on the policy side is thinking, what is the situation with this terrorist group in Afghanistan? It's my job to then go and say, hey, Bob, the ops officer, you're going out to meet with this guy. I know you've got a meeting coming up. When you go meet with them, if you can only ask two questions, they need to be these two questions.

Right? And they're going to know those for the most part. They're going to know these better than anybody. But it's my responsibility to be tied in with the customer, the consumer of the intel, to understand what they need and make sure that when that guy's going out, he knows this is what I'm asking for if I have no. time available. Like, I got to get this Intel out. And then I help them produce the intel and get it back to the person who's reading it. So we can be in the U.S. as a collection manager. You can be

forward deployed in stations. I did both. And I'm out there handling, but I'm also, I'm kind of like almost like an editor in a newsroom, if you would imagine. And journalists are coming back with their copy. Like, all right, here's what I got. And then I'm massaging it into this thing that it needs to look like as it goes out into the community. So when we often hear about problems in the Intel community that the left hand isn't talking to the right hand, your job is to fix that. Yeah. Yes. But I would say that's, I think when people say that it's more like the Bureau isn't talking with the agency, which isn't talking to Mill. And so there is a little bit of that. Like I would be in touch with the people like me at those different organizations, making sure we're,

know, if we're overlapping, which can be okay, that we're sharing that and that they know what we're doing and vice versa. So there's no disruption of ops. Like, that's the last thing we want. And if we've already collected something, we shouldn't waste anybody's time or risk anyone's life to go and collect it again. You know, so there's a little bit of that. Mine is more making sure that the person who's reading the intel has what they need. So slightly different than the left and right time. Did you ever be in that sort of managing, in that managing role?

did you ever feel like the request you were getting from up top or from the customers was like that they were just ridiculous and didn't even know what they were asking for? I didn't. And actually, I might equate this as you were talking Jack about Colin and Cogras. One of the things on the Army side as an aviator that I often noticed was when we would go and do fam fires, you know, with ground units, the guys getting on the radios talking to us, we're so afraid to talk to us as pilots. It was like, I'm going to mess something up. I got to have this well-structured nine line

because they've heard of a J-TAC doing it. And we would tell them, like, we'd be in these briefing rooms with squad leaders and team, like, and we just say, guys, just talk to us. Just tell us, like, what you see, where you see it. Like, we are super easy to work with. It's not like calling in a fast mover that needs all these different points.

Right. And so the reason I bring that up, is it's the same thing in my role when I'm at the agency and I'm talking to a consumer. It's like, you tell me what your hopes and dreams are. We probably aren't going to be able to fill it, but I need to know like exactly what you want. Don't hold anything back. Just tell me the intel you need and let me work on getting it for you. So, you know, I don't feel like I had anything outrageous in that respect.

Right. And I will say one thing about the agency is their patience level is what was completely unlike anything I saw in the military. Like CT work aside. So counterterrorism work, that has to be very quick. But when you're doing like traditional espionage work, they have a very long time horizon and a lot of patience. So it's okay if you don't have intel right now, as long as you're getting there eventually. And I never expected that when I got in. I was just used to like everything going 100 miles an hour right away. Right. What did you have or what were some of your big? headaches as a CMO, whether they were kind of general or specific?

I should say the CMO within that community has a bit of a stigma to it. Right. So if I'm talking to folks who are in the agency, now like you were a CMO and say, shouldn't you, what, did you have like a cat next to you and you were knit in sweaters? Because the origin of the CMO is they were typically spouses of case officers, of ops officers. I'm talking cold more time. That's what Marty. That's what Marty did. Well, Marty Peterson, who we interviewed before she joined the CIA as an operations officer, her husband was a paramilitary guy doing ops and louse. And she was there as his spouse with index cards every day putting them in, putting the reports where they're supposed to go. Exactly. So oftentimes there were spouses writing up reports. So when I came in even, there was this stigma.

But for whatever reason, they hired a whole lot of older military officers or senior enlisted to do this role. Like they were, I don't know if they were trying to break it or they wanted people with, you know, war zone experience or whatever. So there's definitely that stigma, I should say. So when it comes to headaches, that's not a headache. But I would be remiss if I didn't touch on this because anybody who's a case officer would be like, ah, CMOs. They're always busting my balls because guys would come in and Jack, I know you were a journalist. So I don't know if you got this with editors, but like they're coming in. Look at this great intel.

I got. It's going to set the world on fire. And you're like, actually, they collected that over at this station yesterday. So thanks for doing this, but it's not actually that important. Or this was written by, were you drunk when you wrote this? Like, why are you using? Why would you talk like this? What about these details?

So it was usually a healthy relationship between me and the case officer because they want every they think everything is going to be earth shattering and usually as a CMO we have to break some hard news to them about how it's really going to go down when it hits hits the press thank you for your service that's funny yeah exactly exactly so did you have to sometimes massage egos like tell me it's great work it's just not needed we're going to put this in the file in case somebody wants it someday yes there's a lot of that and and they know I mean a lot of case officers, they just, I think to be a good case officer, you have to have this mentality where these types, a setback doesn't hurt you. You know, like you've got to be able to roll off,

almost like you're a goalie or something or a kicker, where if you miss, it's okay, you've got to get back up and move. And they almost have like a salesman type personality. So they can mingle, chat someone up, be really affable, and then get what they need and get on out. So oftentimes, like, I'd say, hey, we've got to change this up and they'd take what I had to say pretty, pretty easily. But there are a couple times somebody would say, no, this is how it is, has to be this way. This is what he said specifically. I'm not going to try to interpret it. And that's important. And you want somebody to stick to their guns. So, you know, there's a, there's a bit of tension there, but there needs to be. And it's, it's okay. It's healthy.

So, Ryan, can you spill the tea? I mean, what can you say? about your time at the agency. Where did they send you? What were you doing? Tell us your secrets. Yeah, so I was sent to Europe and Africa. That's all I can say. I was given French language, if you want to try to interpret. Okay. My time, I guess I would say like, you know, the farm is training, you know, as we call it. I know you guys know what this is, but for those who are listening, and I know you've had a lot of folks on from the agency who are far more experience than me. But the farm is, you know, it's kind of the gauntlet for us in getting through into the community and being blessed off, right? So just speaking at a high level about that,

I would say that thing is a mind game, in my opinion. You know, I've gone through Sear and flight school and all of this other stuff, but the farm was like another level of insecurity. You don't know what's going on. You cannot trust anyone at any time. Like, Everyone is paranoid. Anytime you're doing any act, you're like, oh, my God, who's watching me? So they really beat it into you that you've got to think through these things on your own. And I guess I would say coming from the military to this, because not everybody does at the agency, a lot of folks come straight out of college and they go right into this career.

But coming from the military where every time I went out, I at a minimum had my co-pilot, another aircraft. So there are at least four of us. And then we're usually supporting you guys on the ground. So there's just like a community of us when we're operating. At the agency, you're being trained to go out completely on your own, like 100%. No comms, off the grid. Like if you screw up another human's life is at risk, right? The asset is at risk.

So that was a huge difference for me in coming from the military to this. Like the level of responsibility, especially as you got guys coming out of college, guys and girls who are 25 doing this there's a lot of responsibility on your shoulders so the farm it doesn't cut a ton of people the way it's not like buds or ranger school for you guys but there's there's a significant triaging process and vetting process just to get there so i think they weed out a lot of folks to get to that point and then when you get to the farm i mean it's ruthless just um there there is no again no a plus, it's either you suck or you did fine and you can go to the next round. And they do

they do these cuts that are merciless. And one is on the very last day and you've been there a long time. And there are people who just get cut and they don't tell you why. And there are people you've been with for months now who are packing it up and going home. And oftentimes what I noticed was it was folks who were having trouble and didn't want to talk about it in the group, right so and you probably saw this i'm sure when you guys were going through selection and some of the different courses you went through if you don't have the self-awareness and the humility i think to just show where you're weak and and take on other people's advice you're not going to make it and they will see it and they will cut you was there anybody that was cut on the last day that you

were just surprised or shocked yeah um there was a person who was going to be basically the Intel rep for Dev grew, you know, we just assume 100% this person's getting through. We had a senior, fairly senior Marine officer quit during the course, which blew my mind. I just didn't even think that was in the DNA. And I've seen people not just get cut, but quit where I never would have thought someone would quit. but I think the older you get, the harder it is to go through these types of games. Yeah, like it's a game in the end, not a game. That's not fair because it's good training.

I will say I wasn't in the units you guys were in in the military. I was always conventional. But I had never been through such realistic training as I was at at the agency. Like never. It was not even Sear was close to this. So they put a lot into it, but they needed to because of the type of work you're going to do on the back end. Did, you have the opportunity to run any. any agents in the field?

I did. Yeah. So I handled, I handled human assets a few times. Again, because I was a CMO, it was like, hey, Ryan, is you have time you can go do this. So very much like being an officer in the aviation community, quite honestly, where your job is not really to fly. Your job is to do officer things. Like make sure that everybody has the right size boot when you deploy. as painful as that is and making sure the battle space is operated in a certain way in your

your liaising right so as a CMO my job was to stay in touch with analysts at headquarters and understand what policymakers needed and then know what our stable of assets was but whenever something came up when there was not I was like help throw me into that so you know over time you build up a reputation and they'll start throwing cases your way so I did get a chance to handle several cases. And to me, that was the real deal. And I will say, just like my first time flying outside the wire where I was thinking like it's going to be World War III here, the first time you're cruising around on your own, like you're in regular clothes, you have no comms, you're in a vehicle you've never really been in before. And you think the KGB is going to pull you into a panel

man. Oh, dude. You got like mosques going off. You're stopping because of goats crossing the road. you're questioning everything. Yeah. Like the amount, you're just so on edge for that. Like, that was the real deal for me, was doing those types of ops. It's funny because you don't have to be paranoid, but when you're doing like an SDR or something like that and when you're new, it looks like everybody's looking at you. Everyone. Right?

It's like, everybody is looking at me. You have any funny stories about, you know, sources, making sexual passes. at you or I don't know anything anything funny or we've heard some pretty good ones in the past episodes I will say to your point David of to try to kind of like knock the paranoia off of you when you're going through that training they'll they'll show you videos of people changing clothes in broad daylight down like a New York street and it'll just be somebody walking around and they change their whole outfit and nobody even gives them a second look Right.

And they're like, this is what is going on around you. You never even see. Right. And so they just try to break that mentality for you as you're going through doing, like, just learning how to do SDRs and making sure you're not being followed. Right. And then you're taking down all kinds of license plate numbers. Did I see that one before?

Did they switch that out? Like, can you write that down while you're driving and not crash? Like, are you paranoid? And they just, the more you do it, the more familiar you get. And I feel like almost everybody. gets it. A few folks maybe don't, but for the most part, you get it over time. Some get it quicker than others. On the funny, on the funny side of things, let me see. No, so no sexual passes, which should not be surprising. However, one of the ways I had to get to meetings at one point in time

required me to get massages along the way. So it was pretty, it was pretty unreal. So, so, know I'd go in I'm paying cash. I had to make a stop here to I had to sell something. Basically I had to make sure that people understood why I was in a certain area. So I would get massages. And so I would roll into these meetings like with oil all over me, all over. My hair is all slick back. Like I'm glistening. You know, I looked like I was just using manscape basically. Like I'd just come out of that. And then another time, you know, Not that it was sexual, but I was debriefing someone in, there were three of us, and we all didn't speak a common language. So I was speaking French, who was translating French to Arabic and coming back to this other guy in Arabic who was coming back to me in French.

And then you're having to translate into English in your mind. Oh, and then I have to write in English, like the amount of time it takes to ask a single question when you have this telephone game going on, even when you have time available, it's crazy. Like, those are some of the things you find yourself doing. Like, this is what I signed up for. It's awesome. I loved that. I loved it every second of it.

So having the government pay for your massages? That's right, man. Those things are expensed. Your tax dollars hard at work, folks. You heard it here first. So what was it? some pretty good trips it sounds like with the agency and learning your job and having a good time doing it why did you end up leaving it was so hard for me to leave that place even the bureaucracy

of it i loved it i love everything about that place so in the military i didn't have the same impression i enjoyed being downrange like when i was out flying in combat i loved it but the garrison environment in the military i didn't like at the agency even if you're at headquarters which is kind of like being banished to Siberia. Everybody wants to be out in field and stations. But even at headquarters, like every day you're dealing with front page news, like the issue of the day and what's going on. And you're reading about stuff that's happening that just blows your mind. Amazing ops, right? So for me, it was really tough to leave. But I'm married to an attorney who has a great career and moving every two years is not easy.

I have three boys. The oldest is 14. When we moved here to California for my last job, he had moved 11 times. So to me it was a little bit of, all right, and I do, like I would ask you guys the same question. Like for me, I feel like I am one of maybe 5% of the human population that's gotten to do the job that they love to do.

You know, even though I only did it for eight years, I wouldn't pass that up for anything else. And at some point, I felt like I had to move on and put some other people's lives ahead of mine. But I would ask you guys if you feel that way about your time and service. Yeah, it was like a little kid that wants to be an astronaut. I got to walk on the moon, you know? That's how it feels like. So, but like you, I felt like I did the right thing in listing and doing the job.

But when I got out, it was also the right time for me to get out. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Like, I live pretty much. dream I had. And also like you, and one of the things we've talked about before is, you know, there's this idea of thank you for your service, but everything that we did ultimately, I'm not saying we didn't want to serve, but there was also sort of a selfish intent behind it.

We did it because we wanted to, like we were living out our dreams. And yeah, at a certain point, you know, you have to wonder if the people in your life, if that's fair to them. Sure. and, you know, like, you know, and you have to make decisions based on other people. Yeah. So I still miss it to this day. Like I'd take anything to go back and do that.

But, you know, it's a one-way door. You can't go back in there. Right. Right. Well, and the other thing is, is you did leave for a reason. And even though you miss it, that reason wouldn't change. If you went back and, like, started living again, then, the other than the people you're attached to would also go back to.

Oh, no, I'd be divorced. That's how it would go down. So the only thing I like more than the agency is my wife. So yeah. Let's, let's hit up some of your viewer questions. And then we'll talk about, you know, getting out in your kind of post-service life and combat story and what you're up to now.

So, Dickie, thank you very much. He said, great guests looking at his background and great guests. Yeah, absolutely. I think he meant the background of, you know,

you're your I love me wall um that's right yeah the i was cool once wall yeah yeah i mean we all have them um Jackson thank you Ryan did you ever work with uh brown branch or special activities what were your experiences like with them also did you have any interest maybe trying out for them we talked about that a little bit I did yeah so I worked with them and there were days when I was at the agency where there there's one guy that kind of control their pipeline. And because I had this aviation background, like, I was a really good fit. And I very easily could have walked in there. And this guy, I mean, he's been around a long time. He's a good reputation. So it was hard for me not to join. But again, like, I would have been away from the family

and I wouldn't have had this experience that I did. So I elected not to do that. And I often wish that I did. But I worked with those guys. And I was impressed as hell with them. Like, it's a really great crop of officers. I mean, from where they came from, they, I think the impression is they all come from Delta, but that's not the case at all. Like you got a different special operators. You've got a lot of Marines in there. They just, for whatever reason, they do great work in this place. And seeing them operate both in the PMO role and then when they go over to traditional case officer roles every, you know, few, few cycles, you know, they do great work. And some of, some of, some, Some of my best friendships were with those guys, I would say.

And they're crazy. They get to do some crazy stuff. One guy was like, he rolled into his very nice apartment in this part of the world and had his like parachute gear. You know, like I sure as hell was not doing anything like that. And I thought that was super cool. RD, thank you very much. He said, 8-10 was my weapon system, avionics engineer. That's smart guys there.

And Jackson, thank you again. Is there a soft slash CT unit member that you haven't interviewed covered yet that you really want to? And he said also, thanks for all the work, you, Jack and Dave. Yes. So from my podcast, basically, from Combat Story. Yeah. Yeah. So I will say every single person who leaves a comment asks me to interview Pat Mac.

So I don't know if you guys have interviewed him or not, but I have not. So actually he taught a shooting course to my brother's company once. And that's the first time I heard of him. And I would love to interview him just for many reasons. But he's great. I interviewed him on a previous podcast years ago. He's really good. He's a really good guy.

Yeah. He just seems like it. So I think I think that's out there. But I would say, and just, David, just to make sure you were saying a soft guy or a non-soft guy. Is there a soft or sweet team member? But really, we can open this. up. Is there anybody? So my, the number one person I want to interview is the guy who wrote no easy day. So the guy who was number two in the stack to kill bin Laden. I think his,

when he published the book, which the Navy did not authorize, I think the name was like Matt Bissinette. Bissinette. Yeah. So I loved that book. I just really enjoyed the way it was written. I mean, it goes into like getting into dev grew. It shows the conventional, whatever, the non-dev grew seal life progression. And then I think he comes back from this op from killing bin Laden. And he goes to a Taco Bell drive-through, like in his pickup truck. He's got his country music on. He cruises up.

He gets his Taco Bell. Like 24 hours before that, he's in Afghanistan, Pakistan, killing UBL. So I just, there was some. something about that that I thought was so amazing and I would love to interview that guy. Was there for you when you did your combat tour as a helicopter pilot and then coming back to the States, was there a decompression period for you? Was there a like sort of this surreal juxtaposition time for you? I mean, I had a lot of trouble coming back and I had lived in a lot of these places. I mean, we were in Afghanistan. I spent four years of my life. I spent four years of

my life in Pakistan. So like I knew this place. I almost fired a hellfire. I think I fired one into Pakistan actually. So if we want to regroup on that one day, you can. Yeah. No, it's all good. It's all recorded. So you couldn't get away from it. But yeah, coming back was tough for me. I think. So I had a year old son at the time that day where I thought I was going to die. Like, you know, that meant a lot to me. I came back and I wrote an email to a friend of mine, my best man on my wedding. And I said, hey, man, I don't know if I was going to I'm going to make it back, like make sure that Owen, my son, like, grows up to be like a normal kid and does all right and look out for him. Like, I just resigned myself that I might not make it.

So coming back, I think I still had that in my head. And my wife noticed it immediately. Like, she has known me since we were 15. She's seen me do everything stupid I've ever done. She's seen it. She knows me so well. And she saw it right away. And for years, I was like, nah, there's nothing going on until it really got dead.

So I would say we had a couple days of decompression, David, but it was, you know, I didn't do well coming back. And how long to take you or, I mean, how did you deal with that process? Do you feel like you've come back from it? Poorly. I dealt with it poorly is the answer. So early on, like it came to a breaking point. My wife just said, hey, you're going to see someone or we're done. And I will say, like, this is an interesting part about the 80s.

agency. The hardest training I ever went through, like, bar none was an advanced course at the agency. Like, it's very small classes and incredibly intense. I was in there with like a Marsock G.B guy. And he was, he said to me, he goes, I would go through Ranger School. And he had done Ranger School. He's like, I would go through Ranger School three times before I do this again. It was just soul crushing. And at the time, like my wife, I came, it was all from your home, which made it even worse. Like it wasn't even you were deployed or gone. You were coming home at night and not helpful at all. And my wife was just crying like, hey, I need help here. And I left. You know, I was like, no, I got this thing to do. You know, like that's what my headspace was at the time

until she just put her foot down. I went and got help. I saw a psychologist. And I will say, like, I know you guys interviewed Greg Coker, who's awesome. And you did a fantastic job at that interview. I ended up interviewing him after seeing your guys interview with him. But like he is the pinnacle for me. Like he was a little bird gun pilot. You know, he flew cobras and Apaches. And to hear him talk about PTSD, I hated like I would never in my life have said to guys like you, I could have had PTSD because I wasn't kicking down doors. But to hear a guy like Greg say it, I feel more comfortable. Right. Right. So I dealt with it, man. I know like I would never hold that against any other pilot. If they had it, I never hold it against them, but that's just how all of us are.

We feel like we're, we weren't Delta guys, so we can't have PTSD. So I definitely, I dealt with it. I'm in a great spot now, but I hid that thing from the agency as I went in for sure. Yeah. Now, when you were going through that process, were you cool with the first psychologist you found? Or did you sort of have to shop to find somebody who you felt rapport with? So I went in. I did the, I did the,

VA's program, which I mean, I don't know if you guys went through this at all. You don't have to talk about it, but it takes a while to get into the pipeline. So I was really lucky that I had a paying job where I could pay my own way to get a psychologist in the meantime. So I found someone local who worked out. And then I went and did like a eight-week VA program, just one-on-one, which was really helpful. And to this day, like probably changed everything for me. But then I went back to this local psychologist who I stayed with for a couple years, quite honestly. And I will say, and I'd be interested to hear your guys take on it. But for me, I was an extremely high functioning person at work and a train wreck at home because of this. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely became that. Yeah.

For sure. Yeah. And I mean, I don't, I think everybody like manifest or deals with it differently. I think avoidance is a common thing. You know, where we just start avoiding. The workaholic mentality is a way to Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. No, I think it's really common.

And I think that, you know, it's funny that you say that as a pilot, because you weren't kicking in doors, like, it would be hard to say that. But even I think if you were to, you know, talk to guys and Delta or whatever, it would always be, well, these people had it worse. So who am I? Right, right. Like, there's always that next knots where you're always like, well, this isn't, you know. Yeah, it's just one of those things. So where did combat store? Like, where did you go from there?

So when we decided we were, we as a family, like, hey, I'm getting out of this lifestyle. We got to find something else. It took me a long time to wrap my head around. What am I going to do next? And one of the cool things about the agency is you go visit some really cool places. So I was in a unique, really nice resort in between ops. and I was just sitting there looking at this amazing view and writing down, like I took a whole day just sitting there writing out,

what else could I go do? And I thought, if I could just sit around and talk to folks who did this who were in it, like no shit in it. And what it was like for them, I'd be happy. Like, I could do that for the rest of my life. I know you guys do that.

So you get it. You understand it. And so that's what I wanted to do. So I asked the agency if I could do it. They said I could record these things, but I couldn't air them. So until I was out. So I did three interviews, got out, and then a year after I was gone, I was able to release

these things. So I kind of went into it full on after that. So I started it in 2017, but didn't release my first one until November of 2020. Wow. And how, who is your first guest? So my first guest was Elliot Ackerman. And I don't know if you guys have interviewed him or not. Have you guys interviewed him?

So he's written several best-selling books, but he was a Marine. He was Marine officer of Marsok, and then he was a PMO. And he did all of that in eight years. So real tight grouping, but he was a platoon leader in Fallujah, too, as a Marine. And he went down to like 50% strength on his first 24 hours. Like he's on a rooftop and half his platoon is wiped out, like literally combat ineffective. And it was funny because we met up and I was like, hey, I'm actually at the agency. And he's like, oh, funny because I was too.

And we went into a hotel room because it was before Zoom stuff. It was like we were doing an asset. Like I had little food set out so he felt comfortable. And it was in person. We recorded it. But it was audio only. But I just, I got hooked on it. And the second guy I interviewed was this dude.

I was talking about J.T. Snow, who was this warrant officer. And that was almost like a release for me to hear him say, hey, the worst day I ever had in 4,000 hours of flying for the same 10 hours I was with you. You know, like that meant a lot to me to hear it from a guy who was that season. Right. Yeah, that's fascinating. I miss one question I want to get through. Jim G8, thank you very much. He said, how much do you miss flying?

Have you considered trying to get National Guard or reserve flight slots? So I don't miss it that much. And I will say this is interesting about the flight community. aviation community. When you go up for the first day that you're in the air the first time, for a lot of guys and girls, it is a monumental day in your life. Like you've been watching aircraft since you were five, you just want to get up there. For me, and there are others like me. For me, the only reason I wanted to be there was to support guys on the ground. Like how can I get to the front line to help these guys as quickly as possible? So I didn't have a love of flying.

as much as I did, I just wanted to be where the action was. So I don't have that love, but I will say my 14-year-old wants to fly, and I would love to be the one who teaches him to fly. So I'm trying to use my GI Bill to get back in and get an instructor pilot certification, but it's hard when you've got PTSD. So I will say, like, I didn't realize that it makes sense. They don't really want you flying. So there's a lot of hoops you got to jump through.

So it's a while before I do that. Do you, out of curiosity, do you think that sort of the, the stigma around post-traumatic stress. And like you just said, it's kind of hard when you have PTSD. Do you think that those types of issues, those types of stigmas make guys or make people, I should say, make people reluctant to come forward for treatments if they're going to get a diagnosis? Yeah, I do. I think it's more, my opinion, I think it's more acceptable now for us to say to each other that we have it.

We're 15 years ago, I think we wouldn't say, like the three of us probably wouldn't say much about that. But so I think in that setting, it's more acceptable to talk about it. But I will say, even at the agency or the military, I think there's still a fear that if you say you have that, if it's found out, you're coming off the line. You're like, nobody wants to go sit at it. If you're doing the jobs we were doing, nobody wants to go sit at a desk, right? and that's where you're going to get put. So I don't know how you square that, but I will say, and Jack, you mentioned it,

like you can be highly functioning and focused at work with this. It's just you have other things where you need the outlet. So I think there's a happy medium, but right now I think people are still reluctant to admit that they have it because they're afraid they won't get to do what they want to do. Right. And I think a lot of that, I mean, and I'm a little bit older. and like in the 70s and 80s, there was this thing about post-traumatic stress with Vietnam veterans

and they would, on TV or in the movies, it would be like they would go crazy. Oh, it was Mel Gibson sitting on the houseboat holding a barretta to his head looking at the picture of his dead wife. That's like how we thought of PTSD. Well, and before that, it was like somebody like having flashbacks and snapping in the office, you know. Right. And that up at a bell tower. not being able to differentiate their flashback from reality.

And that's, you know, not the case. No. But Brad Origas, interesting thing you found out about your guests. Like what are some of the most surprising things you found out? Yeah. So I will say that I'd be curious to hear this from you guys as well. For the Tier 1 operators, one of the consistent themes I've seen, there are two. And one of them is visualization techniques, which I did not expect to see, and a different kind of no-quit mentality.

So almost every one of them I've interviewed, right? So DevGrew or Delta or whatever will say that they had these visualization techniques where they sit down and think through operations or how something's going to go and what they'll do to react, whether it's CQB or I don't know. but I've definitely heard professional athletes do it. And so it doesn't surprise me that they do it. But that I've heard it from almost every one of them. And not just the tier one. Like, you know, Jack and David, I'd be curious if you guys saw it where you were, because you guys were in the elite communities as well.

Was this something that was taught to you guys from psychologists? Not taught, definitely not. But I think it's something that like snipers, for sure, think through the shots and visualize it, like, before you're going out onto the range or as you're going out onto the range. I think there's some of that internal visualization, but, and they probably should train guys to do that sort of,

that sort of thing. I'm sure there, I'm sure there's some sort of benefit there. Yeah. And I remember, oh, go ahead. No, no, go ahead.

I was just going to say that I think visualization kind of comes naturally. Like, even at CQB, like you, you know, you, especially after a run, if you didn't do it well, you like, you, you, you, see yourself doing it well. you know, over and over again, even if you're just kind of beating yourself up about, oh, man, you know, but you're still seeing, you're still working that process. And the way some of the instructors work, too, is they're trying to like put you in that position, like the walkthrough phase of it so you can visualize it. Like, this is what the right way looks like,

you know. Right. Yeah. I love hearing that. I, and I haven't done that often, but I remember, like, there's, there's a key phase in flight school where you do instrument training. So you're only using instruments to fly around. It can be pretty tough. And I really did that before that particular exercise. I got like a 98 or 99 on it. It's unheard of, just very rare. And I just thought through all of these scenarios. So I can see the value in it. And I almost wish I could bring it out in corporate America. Like, how do I do that for my day? How do I ramp up for a meeting I'm going to have on Zoom? Right. Right. I don't know how you visualize that, but I'd love to do that. But the other one was this no-quit mentality. And I think, I don't mean to be cliche about it.

But some of these guys I've talked to have just said, yeah, you know, like I'm in selection. This other guy's about to quit. And I'm thinking to myself, like, you're going to have to pull me out of here with my cold dead hands before I quit on this thing. Yeah. It's like another level of that. And I've just felt it in all of these interviews with these folks. Well, it's interesting because we've talked about this with previous guests, too, that for most, I think for most, people going through a selection like quitting isn't even an option like selection is just the thing you do

to get the job you want it's not like this big obstacle i mean you want to train up for it you want to be ready for it but like quitting is never it's like it's like quitting on your commute to work it's like oh the drives too long to get to work i'm not going to do it but that's what like quitting a selection would feel like it's like this is this is just the commute to get to my job you know Folks, I just want to remind everyone out there, please like the video, subscribe to the channel. Down in the description, you can find a link to our Patreon if you want to support us. Check us out on Instagram. What am I missing, Dave?

Oh, definitely check out Ryan, Combat Story on YouTube and also probably every podcast. Instagram. Yep. Yep. On all the other audio. What's your Instagram title, handle? At Combat Story. at combat story.

Ryan, as we're sort of wrapping it up here, how is combat story evolved and where do you see it going into the future? What do we have, what do you have in store for us? So, I mean,

first of all, I really enjoy the team ass genuinely. And the fact that you guys are talking, not just to operators, but also on the Intel side, law enforcement, like I really appreciate that angle. And I've had a lot of trouble

personally breaking into the Intel space because it's so hard to talk about some of these things. It's just so sensitive, you know, so I do know one day I will go down that road and talk to, those are my favorite stories, or hearing folks who are at the agency and these things that they've done and a lot of them will never come out. They can't. But I do, I do see that at some point. But I, I suspect for me, it'll be more, it's, it's my outlet to stay connected to the veteran community.

And I think what I was surprised about with this, I'd be interested to hear your guys take from the team house. The comments that I get for people who are reaching out about hearing these stories from others and how it helps them, like, get through tough times. I didn't really expect quite honestly. And I think that's really cool. So I think as long as people still feel that way about it, I'll still do this. Yeah. Yeah, I've definitely, we've received comments like that. We've received comments like viewers also feel like it's a way.

for them to stay connected to the veterans community. I even had a gold star father reached out to us at one point and said, I feel closer to my son who was killed in combat through watching this show and hearing these stories. I'm like, I don't even know how to respond to something like that. God. I mean, that's super sad, but how great is that that you guys had that impact on someone's life?

Yeah. It meant something to somebody in a way that I can't even really comprehend. You know. And we just want to say, we love your show, too. And we really, if you guys have not checked out combat story, do so. If you enjoy the team house, you're going to enjoy combat story. Like, you will love it. Ryan, you're a phenomenal host. You know, you ask great questions. Really? If I can, Jack. So Jack was our episode 13, which I thought was hilarious based on Murphy's Law, like, Lucky 13. But some of the comments I got on that one, like, God damn, you keep interrupting him. We just want to hear Jack talk.

So maybe one day, Jack, you'll let me do a round two with you. I'd love to talk about the journalist work he did too. Sure, sure. There's definitely a lot to get in there. No, I'd be happy to. And like Dave said, if people like the team house, they should go and check out combat story. They should go see what Ryan's doing over there. And like, I guarantee you you're going to find something there you're interested in.

If you mention in the comments that you're from the team house or that you got there from the team house, you'll get a 20% discount on combat story. On something. Yeah. To be determined. So aside from combat story, is there anything else that you're working on, any other passions that you're pursuing? So I do want to give back a little bit more to the veteran community. And I've spent the past two and a half years at Google, at a big tech company running an Intel team.

And I work in this space that's called trust and safety. And I had never heard of it when I was leaving the agency. And I think for a lot of people who come out of military, Intel, law enforcement, you go into corporate America and you're looking for something that has meaning where you're doing good work and you're fighting bad actors. And I didn't really think it was out there and I found it. So I'm in it now.

I don't work at Google anymore. I left there and I'm going to another big tech company here in a month. But I want to help. get veterans into that to help them fill that void. So I am working on something in that capacity. It's not related to combat story, but it's more just related to people who are in a spot like me

and places where they want to do more and they don't think they can, but there's a whole world out there that just probably haven't seen yet. Yeah, super cool. That's fascinating. And next episode, we are going to have Ken Gaudet in studio. Ken was a warped in Vietnam. And then he went and served with a Rhodesian Light Infantry.

And then he served in 44 Pathfinder company with another previous guest of ours, Peter McAlees, in South Africa. So Ken is a super interesting guy. We'll have him here in studio. And it's going to be a little earlier. We're going to be live around 11 or noon. So it's not going to be at night. It's an odd time for us because we're working around Ken's schedule before he has to catch a flight out. But that will be next Friday.

And I'll be on Ryan's show tomorrow. It'll be released tomorrow. And then who are your next guest, a couple guests coming up? So I've run several interviews recently that were teeing up. I got a Swedish citizen of Kurdish descent who lost his uncle and cousins to ISIS in Syria and just picked up and left and went in to fight. And it's pretty interesting. So I did two sessions with him about going through villages that had just. us been vacated by ISIS, and it's horrible what he kind of saw.

I also just interviewed my first, this is terrible of me. The first time I've interviewed a female guest, Kim Casey Campbell, badass A-10 fighter pilot. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. Casey is killer chick, which I think is one of the coolest damn call signs I've ever heard.

And she got hit with a Sam in Iraq and made it back to base. Oh, she's the one that put it down safely after getting hit. Yeah. That's her. Oh, wow. It's awesome, man. She's, you guys should definitely have her on if you, if you haven't already. Just super accomplished, very understated and a badass. Yeah, yeah. I've heard of her. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, no, I appreciate it, guys.

Yeah, thank you, Ryan. I really appreciate you spending your Friday evening with us and, you know, apologies to your family as we keep you out here tonight. We got one last donation. Sorry, we got one last donation. Thank you, Quovadis. And thank you, Ryan. Man, we really appreciate your time. Guys, I appreciate your time.

And hopefully we'll get around too with you all someday. Actually, I would like to talk to you guys just about your thoughts on your podcast one time. The two of you together, less on the stories, more on, like putting this together, who you want to get on, like underrated episodes, one you've really. enjoyed. I think your fans would really appreciate it. The whole background on how this thing came into existence. It's like such a cluster. It's like such a cluster fuck. It's hilarious. Everybody wants to know that. Yeah. Yeah. How do you how do you get a successful podcast? I don't know. You just start talking and you keep talking, right? What in the world possessed you to do it live

instead of pre-recorded? These are all- Amen. Yeah, important questions. I'm still trying to resolve in my own mind. Yeah, we'll have to do like a shared thing that we do on both of our channels. That would be fun. Yeah, that would be cool. Well, all right, Ryan, thank you, man. I appreciate it. And thank you everyone out there who joined us live and we'll listen to this. And we will.