The Team House - …BRRRRT...A-10 Warthog Pilot | Kim "KC" Campbell | Ep. 163

Episode Date: September 17, 2022

Kim Campbell is a retired Air Force Colonel who served in the Air Force for over 24 years as a fighter pilot and senior military leader. She has flown 1,800 hours in the A-10 Warthog, including more than 100 combat missions protecting troops on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2003, Kim was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for Heroism after successfully recovering her battle-damaged airplane after an intense close air support mission in Baghdad. As a senior military leader, Kim has led hundreds of Airmen both at home and abroad in deployed locations and enabled them to succeed in their missions. She has experience leading complex organizations and driving cultural change. Kim knows what it takes to be a successful leader, to inspire and empower high performance teams to achieve success. Kim is passionate about leadership and feels strongly that leaders earn trust by leading with courage and connecting with their team. Check out Kim here: https://kim-kc-campbell.com/ Today's sponsor: SAP Gear (Stately Asset Protection) https://SAPGEAR.com Veteran-owned company, Stately Asset Protection’s retail store specializes in handmade and unique survivability products. Use the code “TEAM” for 15% off your order! https://SAPGEAR.com Thanks for supporting the companies that support the show! To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -2 bonus episodes per month -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests -Ad Free audio feed Subscribe to our Patreon! 👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #a10warthog #a10thunderboltBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Yeah. If you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. 63 of the Team House. I haven't even started drinking yet. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. Dee's producing. We're really excited tonight to have our guest on the show, Kim KC. Campbell. She is a retired 8-10 whart hog pilot. I flew numerous operations in Afghanistan.

and Iraq, had the distinction of almost getting shot out of the sky and making an emergency landing. And she is today, does public speaking engagements. She has a book coming out in March and a number of other things that I'm sure we're going to get into in this interview. So, Kim, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it. Yeah, you bet. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And we are drinking the Oban tonight. What do you have there? I've got a, I've got myself a gin and tonic. Nice. Awesome. Oh, gin. I love gin. I love gin. So let's jump into, you know, the classic question about your origin story. I'd like to hear a little bit about your upbringing, where you came from, and how you ended up in the military

and becoming a pilot, of course. Yeah. You know, I think for me, everything goes. back to fifth grade a long time ago. And that was 1986, so I'll date myself. But in 1986, I was watching the Challenger accident, a Challenger launch that then turned into a pretty horrific accident. And there was something about that that just, I don't know, it just resonated with me in terms of the pilots, the astronauts died doing something that. that they believed in something that was more important than themselves. And it was just this immediate connection to realizing that there were things out there that were just bigger and more important than me.

And I also really like this idea of flight and just the freedom that goes with it. And I started talking to my parents really about how to be an astronaut. And my dad, who had spent some time in the Air Force, told me that most of the astronauts had been pilots first and many of them had gone to the Air Force Academy. And so right there, fifth grade, I decided that I was going to the Air Force Academy. I was going to be a fighter pilot. And initially, my intent was to go on to be an astronaut. So I decided that in fifth grade. That was 1986. And women weren't actually allowed to fly fighters at that time. I had no idea. And my parents never told me that. They just kind of said, all right, if that's what you want to do,

then go after it. That's awesome. Interesting start. I mean, I don't know why that, still to this day, I mean, it's obviously been a long time, but I don't know why that challenger accident just connected so much with me in that way. I think it's fascinating how sometimes these like horrible events or horrible things are the incidents, the events that spark this idea in the minds of young people that drive them towards governmental service. It just like reminds me of like we're talking about with Amy Forsythe, the movie Full Metal Jacket inspired

God knows how many people to join the Marine Corps. It's a horrific movie. Like Stanley Cooper- directed that film to scare people away from war, I think. But instead it inspired so many people. It's just interesting that, yeah, you saw

this horrible accident, all these astronauts, you know, blowing up during a launch. And that was what made you think, yeah, I want to do that. that's where I want to go. I know it's like the opposite, right? Yeah, yeah.

It should have happened. Yeah, I just, you know, I remember watching and just my mom was sitting next to me and she's, you know, I was just devastated by it. Like it just, it was like I knew the astronauts personally, which I didn't. But for some reason, it just really hit me of realizing that they died doing something that they believed in. Yeah. You connected with their mission and with a sacrifice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and their purpose. And on that, I mean, on that particular launch, I think civilians were more attached to the crew because Krista. Krista McCallough, teacher in space. Yeah. Yeah. So how did you, from the age of five until you were in high school, how, did you just have that in your mind?

Or did you prepare for it? Did you say, you know, these are the things I want to get good at or, like, how did you prepare yourself? Yeah, I would say that that totally flipped a switch for me. I don't know that I was totally committed to school or really anything else prior to that. And when I told my parents that I was going to the Air Force Academy, they were like, well, it's time. You need to get your shit together. Lack of better words. I mean, they didn't tell me that in fifth grade.

But that's essentially what they were saying. Like, hey, you have to be ready for this. This isn't just an easy thing that you can say you want to do. You need to put in the effort. And I think that decision really changed my path because I became totally committed to school. I was already involved with sports and things like that, but I realized just kind of that being well-rounded, committing to sports, committing to extracurricular activities, volunteering, being involved, all of those things would help me go to the academy.

So it just really kicked me into gear in terms of having a path and a goal that I was, that I wanted to go after. right. Like that was the difference. Nobody can tell you like you got to work really hard to go to the academy. You have to want it for yourself. Yeah. And I was totally committed. And so by high school, you're putting in your application for the Air Force Academy. Yes, I, that was the only place I wanted to go. I did not apply to any other service academy. It was, it was the Air Force was for me the only school that I wanted to go to. My parents made me apply to other schools as probably good parents do, just in So I had applied to a few other schools, but I put everything towards going to the academy. It was a good thing.

My parents made me apply to other schools because I actually got a rejection letter from the academy in the spring of my senior year, which was totally devastating, right? Like, this is everything that I worked for, and essentially the academy said, thanks for applying, but you're not competitive enough, which sucked. I mean, it was terrible. I wasn't very good at my SAT scores. So all the other stuff that I did, you know, it was great. But my SAT scores weren't so good. I eventually took the ACT and was able to get a competitive score. But I did not get an acceptance letter to go to the academy until about three weeks before basic training started.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So how did that work? If you got that in your senior year. So then you had to like take the ACT and reapply, like, quickly? or you know, I got that rejection letter and that was all I had ever wanted. I mean, I had other, you know, I had some other school applications in, but my liaison officer, who is the person that works with all the candidates before they go to the academy, he said, look, if you're, if you are

totally committed to this, then don't quit and write the academy a letter every week. And so I did. I wrote the academy every week. I wrote the registrar's office and I said, hey, I'm still interested. somebody else turns down their spot, I'm here and available. And I would like send them a letter and say, I could do five more pushups. And I sent them letters, you know, updating my scores and updating, we actually had to update my ACD scores in the system, but every week I wrote them a letter. It got to the point where, you know, as time went on, I figured my letter writing campaign wasn't actually going to work. And so my next plan was to just show up on in processing day and hopes that like somebody would be afraid to get off the bus and wouldn't go.

And I would be like, hey, I'm still here. Right, right. I'm ready. Thankfully, that didn't happen. But yeah, they just updating them. And I don't know, I think eventually probably someone turned down a spot and they eventually got to wherever I was at on the list and got the appointment. But I'd like to think that all those letters worked.

No, I, I mean, I can't imagine they didn't. Like, that's really showing dedication. You would have thought Selma Hayek would have that when I was sending her letters, but I got a restraining order instead. No, but I'm sure that they helped. You know, like, did you ever get to talk to anybody in admissions about that? So, yes, after basic training during some point in the early part of my freshman year, I got back from class one day and there was this letter sitting on my desk and it said, please report to Harmon Hall, which is our like the administrative building where the three. Restar General is that like no cadet ever wants to go to. And it was signed from the admissions office. And so I, you know, found my way up there. And they actually, they were like, we had to meet you. You wrote us all

these letters. We had to meet you. And they very nicely, they said that they took every letter. They put like a little smiley face on it and put it on the, the admissions office, like the prime officer on his desk. That's fantastic. So, yeah, so hopefully we work. So your letter writing campaign was effective. You got into the Air Force Academy. Tell us what the Academy was like and sort of what that pipeline is like. Do you go to the Academy first and then flight school? Do you have to get selected for aviation?

I'm just an Army guy. I don't know any of this. So if you could walk us through a little bit of that, it would be cool. Yeah, you bet. So four years at the Academy, about our probably junior year time frame, we put in our dream sheet of what we want to do after we graduate. And the, you know, the academy is a tough place. It's, I wouldn't really say that it's, like, fun to go through.

It's one of those things like, looking back, I wouldn't change it for the world. I love the opportunities that it presented. All the challenges, I think, made me better in the long run, but it's a pretty tough place to be. It's not your traditional four-year college at all. But I met incredible people there, learn a lot of, myself as you know kind of going through all those hard things. But every, you know, you're, you're how you perform at the academy as a direct correlation to getting the job you want.

And so you are, you know, one to a thousand in your class ranked and they'll start at the top and whatever the number one cadet wants, then they start working their way down. So there's only so many pilot slots available. And not everybody. pilot qualified medically, but it's really based on your performance, you know, how well you do at the academy, you put in your dream sheet and you hopefully get what you want. And so I was able to get a pilot slot out of there. And then after graduation from the academy, I ended up spending two years in London going to school, getting my master's degrees. And so I took a quick little break. It was just a great opportunity. I couldn't turn down to go live in the UK for a couple

years and then I went to pilot training after that. And what was it like, I mean, flight school, correct me if I'm wrong, it starts off somewhat generic, right? They just put you on a trainer and then from there people branch out into their specialties. And but what year was this? Was, were we still in the period where women were not allowed to fly fighters? So women were allowed to fly fighters starting in 1993, which is when I graduated from high school. So that transition got made. And so by the time I got to pilot training, there were women that had flown fighters, not very many, but there were at least a few that had come before me. So you get to pilot training.

You start out in a trainer. It used to be when I was there at T-37. It's now the T-6. It's a generic trainer. And again, it's based on performance, how well you do. And then from there, you'll track to either, if you want to go fly helicopters, you want to fly helicopters, you want to fly. fly heavies, cargo aircraft, or you want to fly fighters. And I knew from the get-go, like, my plan was to go fighters. And then, like, the first three weeks of pilot training, all I did

was puke on every ride. It was horrible. It's like, great. Here's this plan that I have my goal in life to be a fighter pilot, and I'm just puking from air sickness. It was pretty dang miserable, but eventually I just pushed through it, got through it, my body adapted, and I did well enough, even despite all of that, did well enough to choose the fighter track. And then once you chose the fighter track, how did that start out? Yeah, so you choose the fighter track and they send, there are eight of us that went fighters, and we went to the T-38 was the airplane that we flew. It can go supersonic.

It's kind of an early stage jet fighter, if you will, trainer. But now you're around a bunch of fighter pilots who are teaching you how to fly. You're doing a little bit more formation type stuff. You're doing some low-level missions. For me, it was like, okay, I found my home. This is where I'm meant to be. I realized pretty quickly that the air-to-air work, like the formation was, it was okay. but I loved the low levels.

To me, that was like a really fun mission to do. So that started, you know, at that point, we're all kind of talking about what fighters we want, what are available. You could get a fighter or bomber out of that and really started talking to other pilots about what airplanes they had flown. And the A10 kept coming up to me as something that I thought would be pretty cool to fly, but also just the mission of closer support and supporting troops on the ground.

It just seemed like something that met every criteria for me of, you know, a purpose, something that I believed in, and also just a fun airplane to fly. Were people around you like your teachers and other pilots you knew, were they supportive of that? Were they dismissive of the A-10 as it's, you know, it's not a real fast mover? How was the attitude? Yeah, it's interesting. I think you find the people that have flown the A10 and they are so passionate about it. I mean, I don't know that I really cared what all the other instructors thought, right? Like the A10, I don't think was ever going to be like if you graduated number one in your

class, I'm not sure the back then that the A10 was where people, that's not what people were selecting. You know, they were selecting the, you know, the sleek, sexy F-15, air-to-air, you know, think top gun, right? This is. three nine eleven so uh this is you know we're talking you know potential for an air war and becoming an ace it's all very uh you know i guess it's it's something that a lot of people are interested in which is fine we need those people too uh it just wasn't for me and um i realized that this idea of close air support was really what i was after um so uh i graduated high enough that I could get the airplane that I wanted.

And it was pretty exciting. So the other part of this story is that my husband was flying A10s at the time as well. So I knew about the A10 community, but I wasn't really sure that I wanted to go fly the same airplane as him, right? Right. Like there's got to be a little separation between church and state. Right. But we were trying to figure out how we could actually stay together. And we just, there weren't many options that we're going to be good.

if we wanted to try to keep our assignments aligned. So that was part of the other factor in trying to narrow it down. But I knew what the A10 community was about from him. I had met a lot of his friends and just a great group of guys. I mean, absolutely just totally belief in the mission, despite the fact that this was all pre-9-11. Right. There wasn't a huge mission for us at the time.

Yeah, it was not a, I mean, now everybody knows the A-10. It's a sexy bird that, that, You know, but back then, I mean, they got, they got some in the Gulf War, right? But again, you're right, not too many people on the out in the civilian world probably had a clue. Yeah, I mean, a desert storm was another, you know, talk, we've talked about getting rid of the A10 for a long time. We still are. But, you know, Desert Storm was another opportunity where the A10 really proved itself. But then things quieted down.

We start talking about getting rid of the A10 and we're kind of right back to there's not really a mission or a purpose. And so the Air Force is again talking about getting rid of the A-10. Obviously, 9-11 changed everything with that. Yeah. Kim, tell us about finally getting to the A-10 and getting trained up on this airframe, what that was like for you. And if you can give us, for the civilian crowd out there, people who don't know, if you can give us a little familiarization with the A-10

ward hog, what this plane is, why it matters, what close air support is. Yeah, absolutely. So I finally got to Davis Month in Air Force Base in Arizona, where we do our 8-10 training in, let's see, about June of 2001. And you go through a lot of academics, a lot of things before you can actually fly in the airplane, which is good because you need to go through everything because the first time you fly this airplane, you are by yourself. It's a single-seat fighter specifically designed for the close-air support. role to support our troops on the ground. It's built around a 30 millimeter gatling gun that's 19 feet long. If you look at the A10 offset, the gun is centered, the nose wheel is off because it is built around this gun. It is, it was designed to take hits while performing its mission. So it's

very durable that the aircraft itself, the fuel tanks are enclosed and protective foam lining to prevent fire after battle damage. It's cut to very reliable engines. Flight controls are all built with redundant systems with manual backups. So it is designed to take hits while performing its mission. But it's just a beast. I mean, it's an awesome airplane to fly, and we spent weeks going through all the training, emergency procedures,

and then it's finally time. We do some simulators, and then we get in the airplane for the first time. And the first time you fly the airplane, your instructor is kind of tucked in right behind you. But you're solo. You're in that airplane by yourself and you take off. And honestly, not the most exciting ride when you fly the airplane for the first time. I mean, it's exciting to take off. And then you're doing instrument work and you're so focused on the instruments and following the procedures that you're not really, I don't know,

you're not really excited about flying the airplane. and you do that for about 10 rides, and then you get to go to the range. And that is really where you become an A10 pilot, is when you go to the range and get the opportunity to shoot the gun for the first time. And that mission is like everybody's excited about it. We're not wearing the A10 pilot patches yet until you fly that ride. But there's a lot of buildup to it and a lot of excitement. And we go out to the range for the first time. and again our instructor is tucked in right behind us,

kind of watching everything we do. We'll do a couple dry passes, meaning we're not going to actually shoot anything off the airplane. And then once you kind of prove that you can do that, then they say, all right, it's time for the hot passes. So we let the range controller know we're going hot and then roll in to shoot the gun for the first time. And I mean, I can remember it to this day

because you pull the trigger and, I mean, the jet shakes, You can smell the gun gases. Like you can see the gas is out the front. I mean, it's rumbling beneath you. And then we're shooting an inert target, so it's not very exciting. So we get little sparkles off the target, which isn't as exciting as it blowing up. But it's a training range. So we see the sparkles, but it's pretty awesome.

I mean, that's like finally, you know, you're an A10 pilot once you shoot the gun for the first time. So that was probably my favorite ride. it out of the entire time at training. And then from there, we go on to just, you know, now we become more advanced where we're practicing not just shooting the gun, but dropping bombs. Then we start bringing ground troops in to kind of do all of that coordination. So it's really a buildup. You go from really the basics of learning how the airplane flies and then really getting technical and tactical with supporting troops on the ground. Six months program. And so, So September 11th happened 2001.

I'm in A-10 training, and we shut down for about a week and then ramped it right back up. And I finished my A-10 training December of 2001, moved to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina and deployed two months later to Afghanistan. Wow, that's amazing. Fast and furious. Yeah. That gun, it's fixed, right, on the nose that that Gatlin. So do- Yes.

So where you point is where you shoot. Do, is it difficult as a pilot when you are flying and shooting and trying to stay on target to keep from getting target fixated and, you know, watching your altitude and everything else that's going on? I would say yes when you first start, right? You can easily become target fixated. I think, you know, the more you learn, the more you practice, you just come. come up with a cross check. You know, you're looking outside, but you're also looking inside.

You're cross-checking the information and the heads-up display that's all there for you. But we would get hammered if we went below altitude that we were supposed to go. And so you learn very early, you will fail the ride and have to redo it if you go below those altitudes because it's upstate. Am I crazy if I recall seeing a video, like a nose cam video, like a nose cam video, or something of an A-10 pilot flying in Afghanistan doing gun runs in the computer system, keeps yelling at the pilot saying like, pull up, pull up, pull up. Yeah, I know which video you're talking about.

Yeah, so, right, there's training and there's combat. Right. And we do different things in combat. I mean, when we are shooting very, so we do some really low strafing where we'll get very low to the ground, very close to the target. We're very accurate that way. and so we do practice that on the range. It's all controlled, but we do get very low,

and you will hear the pull-up, pull-up. We hear that. We call her bitch and Betty. She's actually a real person, and I've met her, which is pretty awesome. No shit. Yeah. I met her at Oshkosh.

Totally separate story, but it was really cool. And I said, could you just say pull-up, pull-up for you? How could you not? So we do practice that on the range. And in combat, you know, ideally you're not that close or low to the ground. I mean, it's a way to get shot at. But I think we do that when if there's troops in contact, we're very close to, we need to shoot very close to friendly forces.

The closer, the lower we get, the more precise will be. So, yeah, I know which video you're talking about. It's pretty amazing, you know, but it's what that's what A-10 pilots do, right? Yeah, it's hard core. the troops on the ground and we're going to take more risk in the situations when we need it. So I need to give a quick shout out to our sponsor for this episode. It's sapgear. You guys can find it sapgear.com and they make a whole different series of escape and evasion items. We've talked about them on the show a few times before, necklaces that if you are a pilot,

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We've messed around with their gear before their Faraday bag that we were carrying around DefCon last month or a month or a half ago. So please go check them out. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting.

Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging.

It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Speaking of evasion, escape and evasion, what was Searschool like for you? When did you go to that? So I actually did Sears School when I was at the Air Force Academy. Okay.

So back in the day, we actually had Sears School there, and everybody went through it, whether you were going to be a pilot or not. Sears School is not fun. I mean, there is not, I don't know that there's anything fun. There are probably moments of fun. But am I so glad I had it? Yeah. I mean, I, for, you know, for someone that almost had to use some of those skills, I'm thankful to have gone through it. You know, it was taught me a lot about myself, like in terms of what I was capable of handling and doing.

And, you know, at the time, you know, when I went to the Air Force Academy, we were still about 12% women. So there weren't a lot of women around. And my entire Sear group was men. And, you know, just learning how we work together as small teams, kind of doing survival, you know, going through that together and just how we really came together as a team, especially in the resistance compound, which I won't talk too much about, but solitary confinement is terrible. Really?

That's my favorite part. Well, there's moments of it that were okay if I could catch a nap. But, I mean, we're finally coming together as a team, like finally seeing the guys back together, like, okay, we can handle this. We can get through it. So, but yeah, I don't know if it's, I don't think fun is anything that I would describe it as. All right. I fell asleep in solitary for like 45 minutes.

And when I came out, I felt like I'd been asleep for like three days. I was like, the exercise is over, right? We're going home now. I'm impressed they let you sleep that long. They were yelling at me over the intercom, but I was just too far gone at that point. I didn't, I slept like a baby. Yeah. It was just infiltrating his dreams.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So shortly after you graduated, you went to Afghanistan. What was your first tour like? What was your first combat flight like? Yeah, it's interesting. So we deployed first for Operation Southern Watch in Kuwait. Okay.

And so we were doing combat search and rescue alert there, which in all reality wasn't very exciting. We were supporting kind of the no-fly zone in southern Iraq, but for the A-10 community, meant we were flying racetrack patterns just on alert in case someone got shot down. At the same time, you know, 9-11 had just happened. We're kind of ready to get in the fight.

I mean, for us, that's like, that's what we do. Right. So we're ready to get in the fight. And we eventually start moving A-10s over to Afghanistan. And so I was pretty anxious to get ready and get going. But I was, you know, I'm a young wingman. I mean, I have barely any hours in the, airplane and so I wasn't really sure if I would get that opportunity. But I finally did and we

we were over in Afghanistan, I think maybe June timeframe of 2001. It was really quiet. You know, my very first combat mission was, you know, just convoy escort, overhead watch. And that was really how I spent a lot of a deployment. It was a little bit of frustration, I think, at times just because we were, we were ready to take the fight to the enemy. I mean, we were ready, we were, you know, there. We, 9-11 had happened and we just, you know, we kind of wanted to, you know, do something. And it didn't feel like we were really doing anything. And then on one mission, we were out and we were just, we were, they gave it, we got coordinates. So we were supposed to just look at coordinates and make sure there was nothing happening at these coordinates.

You know, we didn't have a lot of information. We were told the convoy was coming through. And for like 30 minutes, we're staring at these spots on the ground, can't see anything. And finally, you know, the radio starts coming alive and it's a convoy. And this guy that came over the radio, I mean, I could hear the fear in his voice. And they had gotten word of an ambush. They had no controller with them, no JTAC joint terminal attack controller with them. And they think there's going to be an ambush. And we spent probably an hour with them just taking them from where we picked them up to their a forward operating base. And it really changed my mindset.

It really was like, you know, even though we didn't expend ordinance, we didn't drop anything, we didn't shoot anything, just by being overhead. I don't know, maybe we stopped an ambush just because we were overhead and we're screaming down low. But that was honestly, a lot of my first appointment was just overhead, being overhead, being there, other than supporting a few night raids for special forces. I mean, for the most part, very quiet, which was very strong. strange, you know, after 9-11, that that's kind of how things were. I mean, this was after

Operation Anaconda, so things at that point, you know, were very, very quiet. And how long were your deployments as an A-10 pilot? It started as four months. They went to five months. They went to six months. So by the time, you know, my fourth deployment to Afghanistan, I think we were at six months, six month rotations. But I think that first one was just four months. Right. And so how many deployments did you do to Afghanistan before 2000, before the invasion in 2003? Just one. So I spent that first time in Afghanistan, young wingman, you know, no, not many hours in the airplane. And, you know, it's amazing how how experienced we got very quickly, because, we did Afghanistan and our unit turned very quickly around to Iraq in 2003.

Right. So we were home for a few months and then we turned around to go to Iraq. And you know, it's interesting because I don't think we were supposed to go. Like I think it was supposed to be our sister squadron and our squadron commander was like, we're ready, take us, take the 75th fighter squadron. And we all supported that. I mean, we wanted to go. You know, it was, I think, you know, it's one of those things. I think it's like, I don't know if this is a good analogy, but with sports, right? You don't really want to just do all your training and then never play in the game and just sit on the bench and watch. You, if your team is going, if the guys are on the ground, then we want, we want to be there, right? We want to be there to support that. So we were, we're all very supportive of going to Iraq. And we ended up leaving and arrive. we left late February, arrived into Kuwait again on March 1st, 2003 for the buildup for Iraqi freedom. The invasion was like, for the air, I guess it was like March 19th, 20th, somewhere around there. And what, for the A-10, because you had all the fast ones out there on their bombing runs.

Yep. For your operations, what were your guys doing? So we were tasked to push with the Army. And so we, as the Army move forward, we move forward with them. So it was pretty eye-opening for us when they said, yeah, you're going to go all the way to Baghdad. Because Baghdad, if you look at a map that has the surface-to-air engagement zones on it, it's surrounded, but what we call the supermez, a missile engagement zone. I mean, there are missiles all over Baghdad. So for an airplane that's really meant for low to medium threat environment, it was kind of eye-opening when they told us that we were going all the way to Baghdad.

You know, we had, obviously, we had supportive other aircraft along the way, but that was our tasking. And so we, you know, we had kind of conversations like, I'm not sure we're going to bring everybody home. Yeah. This is pretty high threat. And our squadron commander actually made us all right letters home. that if we didn't make it, he would have letters to deliver to our family. He told us we couldn't

fly until we wrote those letters. That was eye-opening to write those letters. Where's your husband during all of this? Because he's an 8-10 guy also, right? Yeah. So my husband's in the sister squadron that didn't get to go, which is always a little sore spot for him. Because they probably should have gone and we went instead. He ended up, he was a, at this point, he pretty experienced A-10 pilot weapons officer, which is our version of the top gun. So weapons officer, and he ended up deploying with special forces on the ground to do some work as an air, we'll call it an air liaison, as an officer for that perspective, just helping them with air support. So he eventually got to fly, but he spent a lot of time on the ground initially.

What do you know, did you guys ever get any visibility on why they sent A-10s down a missile service to air corridor? Because like you said, your planes aren't really cut out for that. Did somebody just not understand your aircraft capability and mission? I think the intent was we would take out those missiles, we, meaning the U.S. Air Force, not A-10s, would take all the key missiles out before we got there. So that was the intent that they'd start striking all those missile sites. And as we moved forward and got closer to Baghdad, we had what we call suppression of enemy air defense.

So sea platforms would go out in front of us, and they would kind of soften the area so that we could then go in. Because, I mean, our whole focus is the ground troops. So we don't really want to be worried about all the other missiles. but, you know, it was always really interesting. The closer we got to Baghdad, we have on our airplane, something called a radar warning receiver, and that thing just nonstop chirping.

And so you're constantly trying to figure out, you know, what's looking at you, what the threat is, you know, kind of what's going on on the ground, do you need to move out, do you need to move up? It was just kind of a constant analysis of the threat and what's going on and the risk that you're willing to take. sport the ground troops. I can't imagine how insane that would be, you know, just how on this, like on the ball,

you had to be at that point in time. Yes. I mean, tell us about that, about going into Baghdad for the invasion. You know, it was the first day, I remember, I think probably one of my first couple sorties, like just seeing this mass of troop movement. I mean, you could see this dust trail because, you know, honestly, we were moving so fast. initially. And it was just this massive dust trail towards Baghdad. And then it slowed down dramatically as we got closer to Baghdad. You know, there are days that we would launch on a mission

and we'd come back with all our ordinance. When we'd come back with everything, there were no targets, there was no threat. It was just eerily quiet. And we finally got smart. And we were stationed in Kuwait with the Marines as well. And the Marines were always, they'd come back and they'd have, you know, their ordinance is gone. And they're like, yeah, there wasn't enough, you know, there's so much to do today. We didn't have enough airplanes. And so we finally started working this plan that we, in the morning before we took off, we would brief with the Army ground liaison officer, the glow. And then when we were done with him, we'd go in the Marine talk, tactical operations center, and we'd talk to the Marines and figure out what their scheme and maneuver was for the day. And

So now, you know, instead of taking off if the Army didn't need us because there was nothing to attack or they weren't facing any resistance, they'd actually send us over to the Marines, which actually made a lot of sense, you know. So we figured that out pretty quickly. So we bounced back and forth between kind of the west side and the east side of the area of operations and just, you know, just whatever needed to be done. I mean, that's the thing about the A10. You take off. You don't know, you might know a general idea of where you're, going, but you don't really know what you're going to be tasked to do until it happens. I mean, it changed. You'd print all the, we had maps for everywhere, I mean, the entire country. And at the time, we didn't have this nice moving map display. We're just all in the system. We had paper maps, and we just toss them all up in the front of the canopy, and we'd pull out maps for wherever we were going. So flexibility was, I mean, you cannot adapt.

or you cannot perform if you can't adapt to that flexibility. I mean, you just, you have to be able to adjust. It sounds like you're taking a road trip to Florida or something, a bunch of road app or something, the dashboard. The old school, all the paper maps and the atlases, yeah, I mean, that's kind of what it was. You had to be ready to take out for whatever map you're going. Well, and then as we got closer to Baghdad,

then it was almost more traditional in terms of we got certain killboxes that we would go to, so a certain, if you want to call it like a square on a map, and you guys are familiar, but, you know, a certain space. And we kind of got familiar with the ones that we were always seeing action in. And that's where really the close air support happened was when we got to Baghdad. We did a lot of almost interdiction before that, where we were dropping on weapons, caches, you know, buildings and facilities for enemy troops, things like that, tanks out in the open. We did a lot of that.

And then we finally kind of got to the point where now the Army is receiving effective fire. And once we kind of got to that early April stage, we were doing a lot of close air support and supporting troops on the ground. When you guys are flying like that, particularly for like the weapons caches and things like that, like what is your cruising altitude? So generally we like to say we'll stay up high if we can, right? There's no reason to go into that threat envelope. So we can stamp up 20,000 feet if we can. You know, back then, we did not have the capability to drop precision munitions. So everything is point at the ground and drop it to hit the target.

And, you know, but we tried to stay high as much as possible to stay out of the threat envelope. Really the only time we got low was troops in contact. Weather was another factor that drove us lower. but otherwise we tried to stay high. And there's no reason to get down low and get into the threat if we didn't have to. Because some of those weapons caches were very, like they're very dangerous for pilots that

because of what they were composed of. I mean, they would blow sky high. We dropped one day in southern Baghdad. I don't remember exactly where it was at. And they told us about this site. When we went to the site, we initially saw missiles. And we're, you know, then we're like, wait, we got to stand off.

Well, we turns. out the missiles were decoys because we dropped on them and they like puff you know did nothing um and uh but we had seen some like tank tracks and things like that it was very clearly an enemy area and they uh we got approval to take the building out which is you know there's a lot of approval that goes into dropping on a building uh to make sure that it's clearly identifiable as enemy and we dropped on a building and the it was like like a fireworks factory i don't know i mean it was just stuff was going off everywhere and the color of smoke was not normal. It was like reddish orange and brown. It was eye opening. I mean, that was when we suddenly were like, I think we're going to stay even higher.

We don't want to be anywhere near the smoke that's coming up. But that was a huge building. We dropped everything we had on that building and kind of in that vicinity. And it was eye opening to see the explosions that came from that. Can you tell us about some of the times when the Marines or the Army needed close to air support and they called upon, you know, your services? Yeah, those are, I mean, the air interdiction, the dropping on the buildings is, you know, is one thing. But troops in contact is one of those things that like if an A-10 pilot hears that over the radio,

it's suddenly like you're so focused. It's like game on. Like it is, we have to perform at the highest level right now. And whether it was Iraq or Afghanistan, I mean, we just, it was like our, everything went into focus at that moment of getting the nine line,

getting all the information of, you know, where the friendlies are at, where the enemy is at, gathering target information, but then getting in there as fast as you can. I think for me, you know, my most memorable mission is the April 7th mission of supporting our ground troops. And

that was a day where the weather was terrible. You know, we flew up to Baghdad air refueled and then we just waited in these stacks. You know, at that point, you know, we're talking five, six, seven April, we're just doing, we're running aircraft stacks around Baghdad now because there's so much contact with the enemy that people are, they're just pulling aircraft from the stack as quickly as they can. But on April, seventh, the weather was terrible. I mean, we couldn't see the ground below. We did not think we were going to be able to do anything. And we waited, we waited and then got the call that there was a troops in contact. And, you know, it's just everything comes into focus of that moment in terms of

what you have to do and how quickly you have to get in there. We wrote everything down as quickly as we could, we actually write most things down with a grease pencil on our canopy. It's just a quick way to have everything right there, plot all the information on our maps, and then get moving. I mean, the A10 isn't all that fast. So we want to get over to the target area as quickly as we can. But we got over the target area, we still couldn't see the ground below. But when you hear troops in contact, it's one of those things where you're going to do everything you can. So my flight lead said, look, we're going to get down below the weather. We're going to find a way.

And I remember we're just, he told me we're going to plan on the gun. It's just straightforward. The situation was that our guys were on the west side of the Tigris River, enemies over on the east side of the Tigris River, which is very nice to have that nice, clearly identifiable river. It doesn't always happen that way. And then we were, so our target was the enemy hiding underneath, what we referred to as the North Baghdad Bridge.

and my flight lead said, all right, we're going to go in. We'll use the 30 millimeter to strafe underneath the bridge. And we just got to get down below the weather. So I remember he saw this hole and he just disappeared. He was gone. He was just like, hole in the clouds. I'm going. And all of a sudden, I'm like, about the weather, I'm by myself.

And I'm like, all right, this is interesting. And then he says, all right, Casey, you can come down below the weather too. And I found a hole in the clouds and just as fast as I could to dive down through. and then got down below the weather. And now we're low. And I can see the firefight. I mean, I had not,

before this, I don't think I've quite experienced that where I could actually see, like just the smoke and the tracer, everything, just very clearly back and forth across the river. And it's that half second of like surreal. You know,

this is like, this is everything that we talk about, everything that we train for. And then suddenly, How high off the deck are you at this point? We're at about six to seven thousand feet. Okay. Which is not a, that's not a good place where it tends to be.

We're highlighted against the sky, you know, now the gray clouds and you've got our airplane underneath. And we're trying to just stay as high as we can out of the kind of the, you know, try not to get shot at by just small arms fire. And but trying to get in there pretty quick. So my flight late immediately, I think I'm just getting down below the weather. and he strafs from north to south on the enemy location and the ground controller immediately comes back with not effective. You got to come in from south to north. So now we're below the weather. We're coming in from one way to take out the enemy. We use a couple passes or well, one pass each of guns and then we switch to rockets trying to just spread out the fire a little bit and using high

explosive rockets. And I remember at this point, my flight leave was like, hey, we need to, we're going to do one more pass and then we got to get our energy back. We got to reassess the situation because it was, you know, at this point, we had started to see like these puffs of gray and white smoke flashes in the air next to us. So we're just trying to keep our jet moving, but trying to get in there pretty quickly. And that is that last rocket pass came off target, got the rockets right underneath the bridge, came off target, and then just felt and heard this huge explosion at the back of the airplane. There's no doubt in my mind. I knew I knew immediately that I had been hit. At this point, the jet kind of nosed over. I'm looking down at Baghdad below,

and I pulled back on the control stick and nothing, like absolutely nothing happened. Yeah, it's kind of that moment of like, oh, now what? You know, I'm my airplanes, I can, can see Baghdad, like it's getting closer. My airplane's not responding. I don't know exactly how much time had passed because I didn't want to have a good indication, but time definitely slowed down in that moment of like just, I remember seeing the Tigris River. I remember like the colors. I remember looking outside. There was this half second of like, okay, if I have to eject, I think there's this green patch of grass, but it was on the east, I was over the east side of the river at that point, right where the enemy was.

Right. So those thoughts are going through my mind. And I honestly, I went back to my training. I went back to our basic, you know, maintain aircraft control, analyze the situation, take the proper action, and then land as soon as conditions permit. But it was like, okay, I got to get this airplane under control. Like that is primary. I have to do that.

But I got to figure out what's wrong. So I remember running through everything and then looking at we have a caution panel. And it's like, I don't know, there's probably, I'm going to say 36 lights, semi-10 pilot out there, correct me. I don't know how many lights are on it, but it felt like half of them or more of them were on. And the lights are lit up. And I remember looking at the top lights, which are hydraulic lights for pressure and reservoir. They're all four of them for the left and right side are on.

I look up at my hydraulic gauges, and they're at zero. Like the whole system is just depleted. at this point I know that the only thing I can do other than ejecting is to put the aircraft in our backup emergency mode called manual reversion, which now-wire-guided. What's that? Like, it's flown by wire. Yes, that's what you do. I mean, you take the hydraulics off the airplane, which I had none anyway, and now you're flying on old school, like cranks and cables. So it's almost like going from power steering to manual only in an airplane where it actually really matters.

Yes, I don't, it's supposed to be harder to control, but in that moment, I don't, I didn't notice. Like everybody said, oh, did you feel much pressure on the stick? And I was like, no, because I pulled back on the stick and it started to climb. Like, that's all I cared about. And so, like, finally, like, once I did that and the airplane started to climb away from the ground, I was like, all right, I might, I might actually survive this. Like, I, you know, I have a long way to go, but I might actually survive this. somewhere in there I let my flight lead know that I've been hit neither of us saw the missile coming unfortunately I mean we're jumping the gun a little bit here but you did come to find out it was a missile I mean I saw the picture that you sent us like the enemy vibe checked you pretty good that day

like the aircraft was beat up pretty good what was the how did it happen what was the nature of the damage to the aircraft so we never fully knew they wanted to send a essentially like an Intel team to evaluate the airplane afterwards. And the rule at the time was if you're not boots on the ground, the warfighters, you're not coming into theater. So they ended up not sending them into theater. So our in-house intel did an analysis on it.

And what we believe happened is, and we sent pictures to the people, the experts that look at that kind of stuff. they think that that missile hit the back horizontal stabilizer, so kind of the horizontal part of the tail. And then the shrapnel from that explosion then went into the fuselage. And, well, I could see that myself after I landed, but I could see that it sheared the right hydraulic line completely. And then the left hydraulic line had a hole big enough that it depleted the system. So the good news on our airplane is that the hydraulic lines are all separated. The bad news for me on that day was that, you know, a lucky hit on their part and that it hit, the shrapnel went into a very narrow part of the aircraft and just blew out both the right and left side. Any thoughts on what type of missile this was? Like was it a man pad, like an SA7 or something bigger?

Something bigger. We never really know. We likely know that it was Russian made because there were screws that they could, there were. screws left that they found in my airplane that were identifiable. But no, they believe it was likely something bigger than that. Now, when you went to manual mode and started to climb and then kind of work back, were you fighting the plane? Or once you were in that manual mode, was it a fairly safe flight? I don't want to say safe because you had no idea what was going on with the plane, but was it a very stable flight for you back to base? No. It was it was rough. I was very thankful to like get out of Baghdad and above the weather, right? Like that was like, okay, relief. Like if I have to eject, I'm at least outside of Baghdad, right?

And out of the city, I probably have a better chance of survival and rescue all of those things. But flying back was, it was difficult. I thankfully had heard from other A10 pilots who flew during Desert Storm. that had flown in manual aversion. And so I had heard about kind of their stories and how they flew the airplane. It was very heavy. Like that it was just very difficult to fly. You know, the best thing that I've heard people equated to

and you said it is this idea of like driving a car without power steering. Right. But it's actually like driving a semi truck or a dump truck without power steering. Right. I haven't done. But it was just,

it was like very sluggish and difficult to fly. and because I had emergency jettisoned all my ordinance so I had so that I could climb, if I took my hand off the stick, it just wanted, it would do these rolls because there was a very heavy classified and expensive countermeasures pod out on the left wing. And so it just wanted to roll. So I was constantly fighting that. It got better once I figured out, you know, what the right airspeed was to fly that worked for my airplane. I kind of got to the point where I was comfortable with it. And then I just took turns of flying, you know, my right hand on the stick, left hand on the stick, full hands on the stick, trying to just make it as normal as possible. But it was pretty

exhausting mentally and physically. How long was the flight back? An hour. Yeah, I would like to ask you at this point, too. Being a, it's a single seat fighter as you describe, which on one hand, that's a, that's a, like kind of cool, right, that you're up there by yourself, doing your own thing, living by your wits in a sense. Like everything is on you, right? But you control your little world. But now you're up there. You must have felt pretty alone at that moment trying to limp back back home. Yes and no. I mean, I'm there with me. And so, you know, he flew right up next to me and I could see him at that.

Yeah. He was flying real close. Once he rejoined after I got hit, like I could see him out there. And it was kind of this reassuring like, okay, yes, I'm in the cockpit alone, but he is right there and he is going to provide me mutual support. And, you know, I was a young wingman at this time. So he's a, the way we worked our combat pairs is that we would be paired with somebody that was more experienced than us. And so he had a lot of experience. He had blown in Desert Storm. You know, he was, he was absolutely critical, you know, like that moment when I got hit, you know, and I told him that I was hit, you know, I'm so tasked to have. focused trying to just fly the airplane. And he's telling me to put out more chaff and

flare, to move to the west side of the river in case I have to eject, you know, to jettison all my ordinance. So having him for that mutual support was huge. But it's still a single-seat fighter, right? And so he at one point says, Casey, you need to start thinking out, thinking about if you want to eject or stay with the airplane and try to land. And I knew this because of I was in manual or version. Like I knew this, that I was going to have to make this decision. But then when he finally said it out loud, I was like, you know, how do you make that choice? Like, what's the right choice? I don't know. I mean, it was just, there was part of me that was hoping that he would just make the decision. Right. That would be really easy. But he was like, hey, you're, you're flying a single

seat fighter and the choice is yours and I will back you up no matter what. Which was awesome. Like, the fact that he had that much faith and confidence and trust in me. I recently watched, there was an ABC News episode that interviewed him after this happened. And he was just so matter fact about it. He was like, yeah, she's a good pilot. I let her make the decision. You know, I just, I can't imagine being him and having to let me make that decision at the same time. But, you know, I had an hour fly the airplane and really get a feel for it. I knew that I could eject at the last minute if I needed to. We have a zero, zero seat, meaning you can eject at zero feet, zero knots,

and it's still supposed to be effective. Oh, really? So, yeah, I mean, I knew all of that. Yeah. You know. Right. That airplane is so nice and warm and safe and there's a titanium bathtub around it. Like, I'm like, I don't want to jump out of this thing.

Right. But the alternative of that is landing this beast in manual mode where you're kind of wrestling with it, wrestling at the whole way to the ground in a stable position, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it was one of those things where I evaluated the situation as best I could. You know, we kind of thought through the pros and cons. I mean, we did decide to go all the way back to Kuwait and not land.

at Talil Air Base, which we had, I guess, owned, taken over at the time. I mean, these are the conversations we're having. My flight leads like, well, there's only a fire truck there. There's no ambulance. There's no hospital. So let's go all the way to Kuwait so that if something happens, you at least have the support team behind you. You know, so we're talking through those hard conversations.

And I just decided, you know, I'm going to fly it for a while and then make a decision. And after flying it for a while, I was like, you know, it's fine. What I thought was pretty well and knew that we'd have to get back into friendly territory, do what we call a controlability check to slow it down. I had to see if I could get the gear down. I mean, none of that stuff was working. Right. And so once we went through that, then I was like, okay, now I feel pretty comfortable with this decision.

So that's, is the landing gear based on the hydraulic system too? Did you have to do a manual with the landing? I did. So landing gear breaks, you name it. It's all with hydraulics. But we have, again, you know, we have all these backup modes. So we have a way to extend the gear without hydraulics. We have, you know, ways to break without hydraulics, not very many options to break. But it was all built to take these hits. So how do you lower the landing gears? They're like a little windch like. And the break is like Fred Flintstone like on the air part on the ground? It's actually, it's pretty impressive that, you know, that designers designed it this way. But if you look at the A10, the gear come up this way. So all that you pull a lever, you pull out the lever, and it releases these uplocks that hold the gear in place. And then they kind of come down into the slipstream into the wind. And so it takes a long time.

I felt to me like it was this, I don't know, I was just staring at these lights. You know, you have three green lights that tell you when each gear is down and locked. And I just stared at those things. It felt like forever. I mean, it was not very long, but it felt like it took forever to see through the room lights. But I needed those to land. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm kind of critical. So at what point did you decide 100% that you were going to land that bird? Once we were back in Kuwait and the controllability check was done. As soon as I put the gear down, there was some kind of the airplane became a little bit harder to control until I got to the right airspeed. And once I figured out what that airspeed was and I could maintain that airspeed, I felt very comfortable. And so it was honestly, my final decision was right before we kind of got into Kuwait, got closer to the runway.

And I was like, all right, I'm going to continue with my final approach, knowing that I could still eject with that. And you get your three green lights by. some miracle and tell us about putting this thing down on the runway. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, I remember coming down for the final approach. And as I'm coming in, the controller in the tower, they had sent another A10 pilot up there, happened to be a good friend of mine. And I remember hearing him say, like, hey, if you still want to eject, like the rescue

helicopters are there for you. and he kind of gave me the location. And it's just that, okay, I'm all right, I know they're there. Thank you. I hopefully do not need them. And they said the rescue team, the crash recovery team is waiting for you. I'm like, a great. I don't need to build you up, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's reassuring that like they're all there. Right, right. I don't want to use you. And then I, you know, as I came down on the final approach, I just, I think I was so focused. I just, we had learned from Desert Storm that you can't pull back the power in manual version, which is what we do on every landing. So this landing was going to be different because I could not touch the power to slow down.

Because in the in manual version, if you pull that power back, the nose dumps. Right. So if you're pulling the power back and you're close to the runway, the nose is going to dump, hit the runway first and you're going to cartwheel down the runway and fireball. So I had that on my mind and just actually put my left hand up on the cockpit, just the glare shield, because I didn't want to accidentally do it. I didn't want to pull the power. I was very focused on doing a Navy-style carrier landing because it was going to be a power on,

really just fly the airplane straight to the ground. No flare, just fly it to the ground. And I think, I'm not sure I was breathing. that point. I think I was just holding my breath, hoping that it was all going to go okay. I remember making my gear down call, trying to sound like calm and controlled. And, you know, well, I'm sure my heart was just beating at an incredible pace at that point. But when all three wheels hit the ground, it was such a feeling of relief. It was just like, thank you, God. Like, I made it. And then I had to get the airplane stop. Now I'm using another.

emergency procedure of having just five break applications and eventually got the airplane stopped. And I think for me, honestly, the best part was like all the guys in my squadron had been several. So one of them was in the control tower. A few of them were in airplanes waiting to launch. And we broke every radio etiquette when I landed. I mean, just the like the cheers over the radio and hearing their voices like was just this like I was. I don't know that I've ever felt that overwhelmed with, like, relief and emotion and, like, camaraderie with my team of, like, how much they were there for me. It was pretty damn cool.

So when you got out of the plane, where you're like, easy day? Were you like, oh, my God, thank you. No big deal, boys. Yeah. That's how you do it. Yeah. I don't know. I tried.

Funny, I got out of the airplane. A bunch of Marines met me at the airport. They were the firefighters there. And I had to try to tell them how to get the ladder open so I could jump out of the airplane. And I remember hopping out of the airplane and they're looking at me and I'm like, what? Like, you know, what is the? And they're just kind of staring at me and they're like, wow. So I walked to the back of the airplane and like it is just, it's dripping with hydraulic fluid.

There's probably 600 holes in the airplane. The whole backside of the jet is black. It's like charred. And from just, again, dripping hydraulic wood. You could push on the airplane. It was soft to the touch. There were pieces of the tail that were no longer, the metal part was no longer there.

And I started looking at the airplane, and I realized that those holes that I thought were all in the back end, because I couldn't see this from the airplane. I mean, I had no idea what the damage looked like other than my flight leads description. And I'm looking at the holes, and they're getting closer and closer to the cockpit. But they're at the end.

There's shrapnel holes on the engine. They're down kind of in the front part. And I, you know, there's a bit of a moment of realization of like how big the hit was and how lucky I was and how thankful I was to have been flying the A10, right? Like, the jet was built to take hits. Yeah. But it was still one of those moments of like, that was really impressive to see that that airplane could fly that well even after all that battle damage.

It's amazing. And, you know, I think you deserve massive amounts of recognition. And you did get a distinguished flying cross for it, correct? You know, it did. It's so impressive. How did you process that, like, in the days, in the following days? You know, I think I was on an adrenaline high for at least, you know, got me through that day. I think that night I sat down.

Someone gave me the advice to write in a journal. Not really a journal person. But thank God I did. I have like my thoughts from that mission on that day. And I think kind of putting it all down on paper and just thinking through it all was a bit of a way for me to decompress. I had to call my parents because my squadron commander made me call my parents. I was like, can I just wait? Nobody will hear about this.

Like, there's a war going on. We got stuff to do. And my squadron commander was like, I don't know. You'll call your parents. So I called my parents, woke him up at 1 o'clock in the morning in California. And, you know, they, I couldn't tell them what happened. I just said, hey, I had a rough day. I just want you to know I'm okay.

I was able to call my husband, thankfully. You know, he was working at a classified location. So I had the ability to tell him everything. through a classified phone. Thank God he was asleep when this happened, though. He was working a different shift, and he did not know about it until after I landed. I was wondering if anybody had reached out to him or if he had heard through the grapevine while it was going on. He found out because in the morning, he was coming in for his shift like normal.

And he, I think his two-star boss stopped him and was like, hey, soup, it's his call sign. I heard about your wife, and I'm really glad she's okay. and he's like, what the hell is going on? Oh, man. And he had a note on his laptop because I had tried to call him, and it was from his intelligence officer and said, hey, soup, your wife got hit over Baghdad. She's okay that you should give her a call.

That's how he found out. And, of course, word got out very quickly. Sure. I'm glad I called my parents because my dad had been in the Air Force, was an academy graduate. This was the early stages of, like, digital media. So someone had taken digital pictures and they went out on email and he got them. He didn't, you know, I wasn't in the picture.

So, but putting that with my phone call, he knew. Right. It happened. And then the Distinguished Flying Cross came after we got home. It's one of those moments. Like, I'm honored, right? Like, you look at, I look at all the people that have received a Distinguished Flying Cross. And I remember standing there like, they're reading the citation and it's just like,

did I really earn this? Like I was just doing my job, right? Like, it's just, this is what we do. I mean, we support troops on the ground and my airplane got hit and I brought it home, but what else was I going to do? You know, it's a single-seat fighter. Like, this is, this is what we do as 8-10 pilots. I think any other 8-10 pilot would have done the same. Probably, maybe, but, I mean, you could have ejected, like, you didn't have to land the bird, you know what I mean? Like, there are a lot of easier choices that you could have made that that day from the beginning to the end. Yeah. You know, sadly, the airplane never flew again.

Like it was unfortunately too far gone, too many holes and not enough time to repair it. But thankfully, they took every part that they could out of that airplane. Maintenance, we call it canned. They took like, they took the ejection seat out. They took the gun out. They took every piece of the part that they could use to then fix other airplanes. I got a few pieces for myself, too. So that was nice.

They gifted a few of me. You know what we haven't asked you about is tell us about Killer Chick. Where did that come from? So fighter pilots get their call sign as soon as we are deemed combat mission ready. Right. So we have to go through an upgrade where they're like, they check us off. and they're like, all right, we would deploy with you. You know, we'd take you to combat.

And when you're, to get a call sign, at least at the A10 community, the way we did it, was in the bar on a Friday night, as most good things happen. And if I were required. And you're not actually in the room when they, so they talk about you behind your back while you're out in the hallway. And they come up with all these great names. Some of them are total jokes. But the stories they tell only have to be 10% true.

So you never really know what you're going to get. But for me, I mean, being an A-Town pilot, being the only female in the squadron, killer chick just seemed to be very fitting. But nobody calls me that. Everybody just calls me KC., which also happens to be my initials. And so most people just assume it's that. I did. Yeah, that's what I figured. Yeah, I did.

No, that's awesome, though. Yeah, it's, I mean, there are a lot worse calls on. So I'm pretty happy with killing. Yeah, for sure. So in every Tom Cruise movie, something that he's like, about. badass and then something bad happens and then he loses his nerve and then he has to get back on back in his game right whatever whatever movie it is uh like did it take you a while to warm back up to the idea like a montage scene of you in the gym yeah yeah i wish it was that taken long walks

taking long walks with your a 10 riding a motorcycle yeah we're in Kuwait there's no motorcycles there's no well there's a gym but i don't know that i think they had closed some of the gyms down. They closed like all the fun stuff down at the time. You know, so my flight lead the next day, I'm pretty sure he signed us up for combat search and rescue alert, like thinking that normally on those combat search and rescue alert missions, you go out to the alert shack next to the runway, you play video games, you read, you sleep, you do whatever, but it's a down day, essentially. I should have asked him. I don't know if he did this intentionally, but that was our mission the next day. And so this is April 8th and hanging out next to the runway

in the alert shack, I think I was sleeping. And the alarm sounds, like not a drill. The alarm sounds at A10 pilot has been shot down in Baghdad. So we raced out to the jets as fast as we could. We stopped to get just our gear on, and then we took an immediate takeoff. We start gathering information. Where's the pilot? What shot him down? Well, he's up in Baghdad, right? Pretty close to where I had escaped my own shootdown.

And we're trying to figure out his condition. Where is he at? Where are the closest rescue helicopters, you know, doing all the things that we normally do on a combat search and rescue mission. And we made it about 30 minutes into Iraq and the AWACS, the Airborne Warning Control Center. tells us you can turn around. And on our inner flight frequency, my flight leaves like,

I'm not turning around. There's an A10 pilot on the ground. They didn't really give us any other information. I mean, I don't know if we thought they were idiots, but like there's a radar. They can see that we're not turning around. Right.

So the control of the time comes every radio. And he's like, hey, Sandy flight, the pilot's been picked up. You can turn around. And amazing. I mean, this pilot had got shot down

and friendly ground troops watched his parachute and airplane go in and were able to pick him up. So he was really lucky. But that's how I got back in the air. You know, it was like the no time to think about it. Pilot shot down. Those guys were going to, there for me the day before, I'm doing the same thing for this pilot. So it was just like, you know, get back on the horse, right? Like I just, I didn't have time to think about it.

So I think, honestly, that was the best way for me to get back in the airplane. Yeah. Not dwell on it, not think about it. not think about it. Yeah. I took the approach of compartmentalize, put it away and deal with it later. Yeah. I'm not a mental health technician or doctor.

I don't know that that's the best approach, but it worked for me. Yeah. I just kind of tucked it away, didn't really think about it or deal with it until I got home. That's an amazing story, Casey. I, I, it's incredible. So what was, what was the next step in your career, uh, from there? You know, it's crazy. This was 2003, right? Like, I was like, I think I was a captain at the time. I mean, I knew to the A10 community. You know, at that point, we came home from that. Actually, while we were still on that deployment, I upgraded to flight lead. So I went from wingmen to becoming a flight lead while we were in Iraq. Granted the mission's quieted down a bit, but I came home from combat as a two-ship flight lead. So now I'm leading.

A10s in combat and came home quickly upgraded to four ship flight lead and then instructor and did another deployment to Afghanistan and then kind of, you know, at that point, went on with my career, spent some time at the 422 test and evaluation squadron upgrading the A10 from the A10A to the A10C. So we finally got all the Gucci precision engagement upgrades and targeting pods, all those fancy things that we wish we had. in those early days. Spent some time there doing that. Did school and some staff tours.

Found myself back in the A-10 and deploying again to Afghanistan. Spent some time on the ground working at the ISAF Joint Command headquarters doing air operations as an individual augmentee, not flying. Worst deployment I will say that I've ever done. And the only one that I wasn't excited to go on. Like all of the others, I was just fired up, wanted to be there, felt the camaraderie of a team. And now I'm a major, I've got a two-year-old at home. And they're like, hey, we've got another deployment for you.

But you're not flying. And you don't get to go with your squadron. I'm like, hmm, it's probably my low point in the Air Force. Yeah. So much so that I told my husband, I'm like, I'm getting out. I'm not doing this. You know, this is not what I signed up for. In truth, it is, right?

We sign up for whatever the airport tells us to do. But for an A-10 pilot working as a staff officer on the ground and Kabul wasn't really what I wanted. Right. You know, in hindsight, though, I look back at that deployment and met some incredible people doing amazing things from all over the world. It went by fast. My son, who is two, is now 14 and doesn't remember any of it.

Right. So you didn't get out, though. You were a major, I mean, you retired as a colonel. So how, what happened when you, were you able to control your destiny a little bit more after that trip? A little bit. I mean, I got home and they're all like, hey, you know, you paid the price. You know, you want to come over and be the, the deputy for a fighter squadron. I'm like, hell yes. You know, it's a squadron where we're training the next generation of pilots. You know, how do you say no to that, right? And I, I think I also, but like I had a responsibility. Like I learned a lot from flying in combat

and I felt like I had a responsibility to help train and teach that next generation of A10 pilots. So I spent some time doing that, not very much time because I ended up right very quickly after that promoting the lieutenant colonel and took over as a squadron commander. Spent some time there and then as everybody does, if you stay in long enough,

I spent some time in the Pentagon. thankfully with my husband and we spent some time there together, had another kid and had another boy, another son, and spent some time there really doing some different things. You know, that was where I moved away from the tactical of A10 flying and spent a year at the Atlantic Council and a think tank seeing kind of how things are done in the D.C. environment at the more strategic level. And then went on to be the military assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. And that was fascinating because now I'm seeing how all the decisions are made. And I worked for Christine Wormouth, who is now the Secretary of the Army.

And, you know, she, it was, I felt so empowered by her because she just, she was always asking my opinion. I mean, she's a civilian and she's asking my opinion about high-level military policy. So it was a, you know, not only am I her military system, that she very much values my opinion and thoughts about things that are happening at a strategic level. So I would say a turning point in my career in terms of, you know, now not just the young A10 tactical pilot who, you know, was probably the best I would have ever been in the airplane, kind of at that captain level. And I wasn't really sure if I was ever going to get to go back to the A10. And thankfully, got an opportunity to go be a group commander. promoted to Colonel. Wow.

And went on to be a group commander. And back at Davis Month in Air Force Base, they're short on instructor pilots and got to fly again back in the A10. So, and that's where I finished out my flying career, spending time as a group commander. So now I've got roughly 1,000 airmen spread out around South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, responsible for counter drug operations, humanitarian assistance, disaster. really totally different than flying the A-10. Yeah. But leading people and being in charge of people.

And I, I, you know, if my passion and purpose was supporting troops on the ground, well, I found a new purpose in terms of being a commander and leading people. I just, I loved it. I really loved connecting with my airmen and learning about their missions. So that was an incredible opportunity. And pretty damn cool to be able to fly the A-10 as a colonel and still get back in the airplane. Yeah. You know, the A10 is interesting because, you know, as ground troops, like, we love, we love Spector, right? And we love A10s and we love helicopters. And the A10 is really the most personal airplane, you know, a helicopter, like a helicopter in the sense of, you know, Spector is hitting their targets from a good range. The A10 has the most personality for the ground troops, doesn't it? Yeah, that unique.

And, you know, like, I feel, I don't know, it's one of those things. Well, like, when you remember those 8-10s, like, hit in the mountains when, you know, the hills above you when, you know, fire's coming down on you, like, oh, yeah, you guys are fucked. You guys are screwed. You know, I think one of the things that I love about flying the airplane is just, I think there is a special bond that exists between A-10 pilots and ground troops. And I saw it more than ever in Afghanistan because we lived at Bagram and so did the ground troops. And even the teams that were out at the different forward operating bases would often come through Bagram. You know, and there's something, you know, to be said about meeting the team that you support it, like after the facts. Like just it was really, it just, it kind of reaffirms everything that you do, you know, all the risks you take, the time away from home,

of those things when you see the guys that you support and you're like, yeah, I know we made a difference. And I just think there's a connection. Like we really, like close air support is our bread and butter. It's what we do. We try to learn, you know, I don't pretend to know it as well, but I try to really understand like how our ground troops work, how they operate, we understand the terminology. If the A10 goes ever goes away, which I know it will at some point, that passion, that drive, that purpose has to exist in whatever airplane it is out there. And I think that's kind of the mission for A10 pilots is, you know, how do we continue that? Because that is, that lends credibility to what we do. It, it drives purpose for what we do. And it makes a difference, you know, a pilot that

truly understands what's going on. But that was probably for me when I look back, like that bond, that relationship. You know, people have reached out to me on social, media that like we connect about they were the guys on the ground that I supported you know meeting people after the fact has just been rewarding and you know to meet one of the a young girl sent me a note and she said you know you saved my dad's life I would not be alive today yeah yeah that's what matters yeah it's just it's awesome I love the airplane I'm passionate about it yeah and you know and especially with the 810 well I don't say especially because probably other other air platform also but you guys are often called in when there's no ray of hope when when things are at their

worst and you know people are thinking like this is it and then boy you hear that murp you're like oh you guys pull up yeah yeah right yeah i was wondering if you had ever had the opportunity to meet people who you had supported yeah um it's you know actually a couple of guys came through at Bogram that I met in Iraq. I didn't, unfortunately, I wasn't at that building. I'm not sure where I was at the time, but they came back and they left me a note. And I have it to this day. Like it says, you saved our ass over Baghdad. And I have that scribbled note on a piece of paper. I mean, it's been pretty awesome. Like, it's just, it's, it's definitely been my passion and my purpose of supporting ground troops. And I'll tell you,

It's hard when you retire and you move on to something else. You know, how do you continue that passion and purpose? And for me, that's been why I joined the board for the Special Operators Transition Foundation because, yeah, it's a different, I'm supporting ground troops, but I still am. It's just in a different way, you know, it's a way to give back and bring recognition to the work that our special operators have done and how, you know, how much they've given to our country and an opportunity to help them kind of move on to that next life and, you know, what comes next for them and give them and their family, you know, different perspective,

different views on the things that they can do and how they can contribute to our country just in a different way. So that is the sotf.org, right? Yes. Okay. Yes. What does the foundation do exactly? Yeah, please give us some.

Yeah, so we, um, the special operators when they're looking to transition, so not necessarily retire. We have retired, you know, people that are retiring, people that are transitioning. We help them transition out of the military into their next career fields. We help them bring them into corporate America. It's a, you know, we have people on our team that do coaching for them to figure out what they want to do, you know, where they're specialties. So they're not just putting, you know, they're, what they've done in a system that speaks something out. They're actually talking to them and leveraging their capabilities.

And I find in talking to a lot of our operators, they so underplay everything that they've done. And they've done amazing things. And so helping them understand where that brings value in corporate America. Helping them, you know, we make connections with them. We host events where they connect in different locations, where they want to be, find different, where they can listen to different companies, talk about what they do, really just helping them transition and helping them find kind of what comes next. It's not a one and done. We stay with them until they find what they want. And then if they change their mind, we're still

there and available. It's a pretty awesome team. And it's been a lot of fun. I've only been with them a year on the board, but I love what we're doing. In addition to convincing them that, you know, they're better than a security guard or a bodyguard or whatever, that they can do a lot. Yeah. Is there also a lot of, I don't want to say salesmanship, but are you able to talk to companies and tell them that these aren't just like guys who just carry guns or guys and gals who just carry guns and that's it? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. That's the other big piece of what we do is connecting with different companies and organizations out there to demonstrate what our operators do. and we host events where the operators kind of talk through what they've done, give an opportunity to mingle with people and, you know, you know what their performance speaks for itself, right? These are guys coming in that are taking high-level positions and companies, and there are things that we do in the military that, you know,

sometimes we take for granted, right? You know how to lead a team or be part of a team, how to build a team, keep a team together, make time-critical decisions under stress. I mean, those are things that are valued out there. And so helping not just the individuals see that, but also the companies as well. So we're working both sides of that. It's such a difficult bridge to cross sometimes. And I'm really glad that there's, you know, folks like you guys out there doing that.

I mean, even to this day, I encounter people who want to hire me to be like the guy that carries a rucksack. Right. And it's like, you know, I bring a little bit more to the table than just that. And I'm sure every other guy who comes out of the. military, including the special operations world, has to contend with that when they're trying to get a job. Like, hey, man, I'm a bit more than just the guy that sucks it up, you know, and drives on. I can do a little more than that.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's really what we're trying to share. You know, we kind of skipped over it in a way. I mean, we've talked about some of your deployments, but I, but you flew over a hundred combat missions, right? So, like, you spent a lot of time in the hot seat. Yeah, I spent a lot of time all Afghanistan and Iraq. And, you know, I think when I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy, right, like, this is pre-9-11.

I had no idea where my career would take me. And 9-11 changed the world for all of us. I mean, in many, many ways. And I think there's no place that I would have rather been than in Iraq and Afghanistan. and doing the job that we do. And I did it nonstop, you know, for my first assignment, you know, I ended up staying at the 75th Fighter and longer so that I could deploy again because they needed me.

By then I was an experienced instructor and they needed me to go and I stayed. I mean, there was no doubt in my mind. Did it impact my life? Yeah. I mean, my husband and I waited 10 years before we had kids because we spent, so much time deployed and apart from each other. But for me, there's no place I would have rather been. You know, even, even NASA? Rewarding. What's that? Even NASA? If someone asked me to be an astronaut right now, I would say yes. Absolutely in a heartbeat. But yeah, I guess we had to come back

to that, right? Like, there was this point in my life where I had to make a decision. did I want to go the NASA track to test pilot school? At the time, I was at the test squadron at the 422 test and evaluation squadron. And I love the A10. I absolutely love the A10. I didn't want to give it up. And I knew I would have to. And not to mention, like, my husband and I had been apart for a long time.

And this was, we were finally together. And it was just going to be a turning point for our family and for giving up the A10. just didn't want to. So I would still love to go to space. So if anybody's listening that has the money, that would be fantastic. Well, when we get, when we get Elon Musk on the show for whatever, for a bonus segment or whatever, we will. Yeah, please let them go up with Bezos and Shatter. Yeah, we will absolutely get you on SpaceX or whatever we can do. I'd say yes in a heartbeat. But, you know, no, I'm, you know, sometimes you have these goals in life, right? And then your priorities change. Sure. And they change for different reasons.

And I think sometimes we're hard on ourselves because we're like, oh, I made that goal. I didn't achieve it. But my life took a different path. And the goals, I mean, the things that you did achieve, like nobody sits in when they're five years older, even in high school goes, I want to earn a distinguished flying cross for, you know, landing an A10 in manual mode, which very few pilots have ever done, right?

Yeah, I mean, he flew 100 combat missions deployed all over the place. I had a couple kids in between all of that. And saved a lot of lives. I think that's one of the things that Jack and I being, like, ground guys know how many lives you and your fellow pilots in those 8-10s have saved. Yeah. So you are the literal cavalry riding in to save the day. You know. You have a book coming out in March.

Can you tell us about that? I do. Yeah, it's really exciting, right? Because I have worked on this for a while. I spent my last three years on active duty at the Air Force Academy as an instructor. And then I spent a year as the director for the Center for Character and Leadership Development. I was very passionate about the importance of sharing stories and lessons learned for all the hard things that we have done because we've learned so much along the way. And I think it's so, important to share those stories. And I was sitting in my office one day and one of our other instructors who has actually prior Army came in. He's like, you know, Casey, you talk an awful lot

about sharing your stories. You should write a book. And I kind of laughed it off at first. And then he said, no, I'm serious. You should write a book. And I'm going to hold you accountable. You're going to write the book. So he got me going. And it's been a, you know, it's been a long work and progress for sure. So it's exciting. It's also slightly terrifying, right? Because like, you know, you're putting it all out there. I mean, these are my stories and I'm trying to share with people,

not just all the good stuff, but like the mistakes, the times that I've failed, but most importantly, the lessons that came out of those things. And so the book itself is, it's titled Flying in the Face of Fear. And it's a fighter pilot's lessons on leading with courage. And it's 12 lessons, 12 chapters. about different leadership principles about leading with courage. And I don't know, I'm passionate about it because I believe in it. And I think it's important to share the stories even when you put it out there.

And it kind of exposes like mistakes or weaknesses or things. I think those are the times where I learn the most. Right. You know, right? Those hard times are really for me where I learn the most. So I'm excited to be able to share. Those are really important like stories to share too because it gives people something to learn from the book and take away something from it that, you know, I had the opportunity to write a book

and it's like to write that kind of stuff, it's like maybe if I put this in here, it'll help some kid out and they won't do the same stupid stuff I did, right? Well, that's it, right? Like, I don't want anybody else to have to go fly over Baghdad and get hit with a missile. I mean, that, like, that was not fun. But I learned so much from that scenario, from that mission, from my team. I mean, there's so many lessons that I pulled from it. And I just feel. like it's important to share. I mean, I want people to, you know, the book title itself is flying in the face of fear. And I thought long and hard about using the word fear and the title, because I think sometimes we equate it to like weakness or, you know, just vulnerability. But to me,

it's like, I don't know, like, how can you say that you've not experienced fear in your life, right? Right. We've all faced fear. It's not like this, it doesn't have to be life or death situations. It doesn't have to be things that happen in combat. These are just fears that we all face. And so kind of sharing those techniques that I had, why I think that I was able to handle fear in a really critical moment, you know, it's all these fears that we face now of like fear of failure, change, unknown, not meeting expectations that, I mean, the list is endless, right?

So I thought it was important to talk about it's not the fear that matters, right? It's all about what you do in that moment. And that's really what the book is about, is about overcoming hard things and giving people, giving people some ideas of how they can do it too. So this book, Flying in the Face of Fear, is available for pre-order right now on Amazon. So you should definitely buy it, everybody.

Pre-order it. It's, yeah, your story is incredible. And I mean, honestly, we can't wait to read more of them. there's a lot of stories about flying the A-10 in there for sure you know a lot of different missions and things where I pulled some lessons and then also a lot of stories about me leading my team as a commander and the lessons that I learned from my airmen you know not you know these are lessons that my airmen taught me yeah some of my youngest airmen right taught me some lessons so those are in there too so you're uh the the senior who was

with you on that flight, your wingman. I mean, are you guys still in touch? I mean, is that, I imagine that that was a significant moment for both of you. It really was. I mean, and, you know, I attribute getting home safely to the wingmanship that he provided, right? That mutual support was absolutely critical. I mean, I go back and I listen to the audio frequently. I actually share it in the presentations that I give at the keynote speeches because I think it's so critical to hear just the back and forth and how the things that he said in that moment, how they just, he knew what I needed to hear. He understood that I couldn't get through this on my own and just how his mutual support was absolutely critical. I think for people to actually hear that is really important to know that you don't get through it alone. You have a team.

support you you got to put in the work so that you're ready when that when those right times come but you don't have to do it alone kim uh we didn't know this recording existed and this might be putting you on the spot is there do you have a segment of that recording you can play for us for our audience uh maybe will it come through i have to find it will it come through if she plays it uh no she would have to share it on zoom yeah it's a that's a yeah that might be a bit much right now The A10 is not a technical platform, right? Like technology on the A10 is much lower than the other platforms. Well, if you wouldn't mind sharing a portion of that, we would share it on our Patreon for people who want to listen to that because I would love to hear, you know, I would love to hear it.

And I think that a lot of people in our audience would. That is incredible. So, folks, I hope you'll go check out Kim's book. go pre-order it on Amazon. Check out our website. You also do speaking engagements. And, um, look, if you don't pre-order a book, the Russians win. The communist win.

Why do you hate America? Yeah. That's the question. Why do you hate the troops so much that you're not going to pre-order this book? Yeah. I don't get it. And also, uh, check out, uh, SOTF. dot org, pass it on to your friends. If you're in business, check them out. They can hook you up with

some motivated folks. Links down the description. Also, check out our Patreon page. I always forget to plug it, but if you sign up, you get access to bonus episodes. And also you get access to all of the episodes of the Team House ad-free. So there's no ads on it for you guys. So please go check that out. The link is down in the description. And we'll see you guys next Friday with Luis. He is a former French special operation soldier. So one of our allies, I love having these guys on the show and hearing a different viewpoint. So I'm really excited to talk to him. And if your organization wants to hire Kim to speak, I've been doing some research, it's Kim dash Casey dash Campbell. That's a p.b Campbell.com. That's your speaking platform, correct?

It is. Yeah, you can find out more just about the speeches that I give with some videos and examples of some of the speeches I've done. And, you know, I love it. I actually have three in the next three weeks coming up. So it'll be busy. But I love getting out there to talk to teams and companies about the things that we've done and ways to help them. If she doesn't double your organization productivity by 100%, I'll give you $5. You guys are great. Check her out. I'll pay you to come speak to my daughter when she starts doing bad in middle school. I would love to speak to your daughter. Provide some added motivation. You say that.

I'll get you on the phone with it. I will and I will and I have. So you name the time and place and I'll do it. Kim, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your service. You know, we appreciate you. Oh, and one final shout out to the NYPD.

guy who was shouting at me on the street as I was walking on the sidewalk with my daughter the other day, a guy shouting at me from his police van saying, Jack, Jack, I love the podcast. I watch every episode. Just want to say thank you. We love you, man. Thank you, NYPD, watching the show. Really appreciate it. And, Kim, thank you so much for taking some time out of your Friday evening with us.

And we'll see you guys next Friday. We love you, Kim. Thanks.