Will Cain Country - The Few, The Proud, The Marines

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

This episode features a conversation from Will's "Elite Warrior Series," where he spoke to the most elite members of the U.S. military to find out what motivates them, what makes them tick, and what drives them to the highest levels of human performance.   Today, Will revisits his conversation with U.S. Marine Corps MARSOC Operator Nick Koumalatsos.  Representing the Marine Raiders, one of the newest units within SOCOM (United States Special Operations Command), Koumalatsos breaks down the history of the unit, how they formed out of an already elite branch, and what makes Marine Raiders unique from other units.    Tell Will what you thought of this conversation at [e-mail]   Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Oh hungry, oh Henry! Hey, Hey, what's up? And today we have a very special episode of the Will Kane podcast, another edition in our series on America's modern, elite, badass warriors. Today, we learn about Marine Raiders. Nick Kumalazos was a. Marine reconnaissance and Special Operation Command Warrior, Marsock, later known as Marine Raiders.

For most of their history, the Marines considered themselves elite. The entirety was special, and therefore, why do you need a special elite unit? The entirety of the Marines is a special elite unit. But in the mid-2000s, as modern warfare evolved into surgical strikes and Special Operation Command took in the seals and the Green Berets. The Marines needed to have a voice in the room, and so they developed out of force recon Marsok, who then later took a name from their history, the Marine Raider. Nick Kumalazos was a Marine Raider, and he has not just great understanding of what that modern warrior and how that modern warrior is defined, but of the entirety of the structure

of Joint Special Operations Command and Special Operations Command. He can give us insight into the Marines, the military, special warriors, and specifically the Marine Raider. Here is Nick Kumalazzoz. All right, Nick Kumalazzo, you are here to teach me why the Marine Raider, the Marine Recon, is a bigger badass than the Navy SEAL than the Green Beret. In truth, what I really want to know, where I want to start, Nick, is what makes and let's focus on the Marine Raider, what makes the Marine Raider unique? I think at least in their

original conception, each of these special operator units had a defined purpose. The Navy SEALs were somewhat tailored to being an amphibious landing organization. Green Beret was deep behind enemy lines training up allied forces. What is it that is unique or special about the Marine Raider? you know you look at like you the great opening right like you just you just laid it out like what the navy seals really are really good at uh what the army is doing um you look at the navy seals now they are really really focused on direct action very very good direct action for instance when we were overseas uh they got thrown into doing foreign internal defense with us in afghanistan hated it.

To be honest, they weren't really trained for it. They just weren't built for it like the Army is, right? Like, you look at a Green Beret, their foreign internal offense is one of their core task. Now you look at, you look at Marine Raiders, I would say that we are kind of the jack of all trades of special operations. We are really focused along, like we have, we can, we do FID very well. We worked very well in Afghanistan doing FID, doing VIL stability operations. We also had components doing very, very good in direct action, which is where our kind of our

force recon routes of Marsok came from. But then we also have this very core, at our core ability of amphibious operations and employment. So if you look at, and I like to, and I, I would like to think that the Marine Raider took a page from the original Raiders in World War II as well as what we've done in, you know, 10 years or plus years, of combat with reconnaissance units. The whole, you know, me being a former recon Marine as well, we prided ourselves in being that jack of all trades, being able to do whatever it need to be done for that particular mission.

I feel like that came over to Marsock. Initially, you know, some of the senior leaders that were in Force Recon over Marsok wanted the Marine Raiders to be a DA platoon, a direct action platoon. They only wanted to do fly in, shoot guns. you know, that's the mission and then we leave. It's like, well, we already have guys that, you know, the government, you know, the DoD was like, we already have guys that do that in special operations. We need something more.

And what we've done very well is just that, is be that jack of all trades and even more so in the, some of the special realms of special operations, they've just really performed well. And I say they's because, you know, I'm long gone. I'm an old guy now, and there's guys doing it right now down the road that are just absolutely some of the most, the highest level of professionals that are operating. You know, I wish, sometimes I wish I was still there doing it because it sounds fun, but nonetheless. So I want to deal with definitions. I want to talk about Marsoc. I want you to treat me like a five-year-old who knows nothing.

I want to talk about the history of Marine Raiders and Marine reconnaissance. But first, it sounds to me, Nick, I'm a big sports fan. And, you know, basketball has gone over this huge evolution of the last, you know, decade to 20 years. And it's evolved from having defined positions, guys with specialty skills, into everyone on the court has to be a jack of all trades. The day of a point guard and a center are starting to meld until everyone is a wing, right? Everyone can handle the ball. Everyone can shoot and everyone can switch on defense. From the outside, it sort of feels like the special operations community, though, is headed towards that jack-of-all-trades, where the seals are doing things completely removed from water, where green berets are obviously all throughout Afghanistan and Iraq, you know, dealing in direct action.

And you guys are on the scene, Marine Raiders. Is that fair? Is it everyone is sort of becoming a wing in basketball? Is everyone becoming a jack-of-all-trades? I think you got to look at the the battlefield, right? Like we train and equip and operate based off of what the need of our country is and the way the battlefield's laying out, right? We adapt to the changing environment. That's essentially, that's like one of the core foundations of what a special operator is, right? So we adapt to those environments, even down to the way we look, the way the clothes that we use, the weapons that we use.

so I say yeah I think that as as battlefields change as mission sets change you're going to see you're going to see so calm adapt to those things and it's going to go down to it's going to make its way down to the team level now you might have some like some rubbing of the ways of doing things you know there's always there's always the old guy that says well this wasn't that's not the way we did it in my day well things change and and you've got to adapt but that's part of being special operations is being able to adapt And I do. I think that you're, you will see in the coming future, especially with cyber and things going on, you will see special operations adapt to and all those teams kind of have to pick up some areas that they're not necessarily their core task or what it used to be 20 years ago. Okay. So let's deal with definitions. And I think as part of definitions, we'll probably have to get into to some history. So people are familiar with Green Berets. People are familiar colloquially. You know, They know the story. Thank you, John Wayne. Exactly. They're familiar with Navy SEALs. Thank you, Charlie Sheen, or whatever it may be.

Marine Raiders aren't as well known. Marsok's not as well known. And that's because it's at the same time old and new. So tell us a little bit like what is Marsoc? Marsok is Marines special operations, essentially. I made a video that went viral, you know, years ago talking about what's the difference between a forced recon Marine and a Marine Raider. And basically, Marsok is falls under U.S. Socom, but we've got a stepdad that is still

the Marine Corps. So we still fall under the Marine Corps administratively. So we have to, we have to answer to two fathers, which is always, always super fun when you're, when you're there. But that's what it is. We have, you know, just like we have a registrar. We have companies, and then those companies are broken down into teams. All right.

So, so yeah, Marsox under Socom. I saw your video, by the way, and people should know Nick is, he was a Marine Raider and also Marine Reconnaissance. So you were forced recon, which is under the Marine Corps' oversight instead of I would say that the best way to explain, you know, what recon is. And when I came up, the recon was the top. Like, that's the, you know, if you made it to Force Recon, that was the top of the Marine Corps. What I could say is you could say that they're the special operations capable unit for the Marine Corps, for the Mass, for the Muse, you know, Marine Expeditionary Force.

When you see a big military, a big Marine Corps unit, it is their special operations unit is that reconnaissance element. They're the ones that can jump in. They can dive in. They can take small craft in. They can, you know, they can do the DA. They can take helicopters and fast rope and all the cool. guy stuff that you know that you know navy seal has been making movies forever they have those capabilities and have been doing it for years you know decades and and marsock then is under

so calm along with special forces green berets and navy seals and marsock by the way is also marine raiders same thing same same same organization too like what yeah what you call a green beret what you call a navy seal which is what you call a marine raider so give me nick give me the history because um i know the marines didn't want to play in the sandbox of of socom they didn't we're all special you know we're all special so i wouldn't say that the marines i wouldn't say that the marines didn't want to play in the sandbox i would say that there were some some career staff officers that didn't want to pay in the sandbox the same same box because because like you said there's no special within the special you know the fact that you have an eagle of an anchor and you

and you earn the title Marine, that's as good as it gets. There's no better than that. So it was funny, you know, in the transition of becoming Marine Raiders, you know, we'd have these guys come down from Quantico and they'd be like, remember, you're not special. And we'd always be like, but isn't it special in the name of the unit? But, I mean, I guess that's what you get with, you know, essential politicians, you know. So, but the Marines become. because they saw the entire Marine Corps as special, didn't want to dedicate a special unit,

and I've seen your video, I believe I'm getting this correct, to SOCOM, didn't want to single it out, but that changed when? Was it about 2010, 2007? When did the Marine Raiders become a thing? Yeah, 2006, they took, you know, actually we had our first shot when U.S. Socom stood up, and then the Marine Corps said, no, no thanks. and they came up with Marine Expeditionary units and Special Operations Capable, Mussock.

So, you know, Marine Expedition Unit Special Operations capable, which, you know, they have the fast teams. The thing that happened in Bosnian was at 98. They made a movie about it. Owen Wilson played the movie. That was a Musok that went out there and did that. So in history, there's been some things that the Marine Corps has responded to, like, you know, in a special operations capable way.

But, yeah, finally, actually, it was in 2001, I believe Donald Rumsfeld decided, he said, I want to try out a Marine Corps special opera user in. They created Debt One and a bunch of, and it was a collaboration of, a collaboration of some forced recont, some, I mean, you want to talk about some of the names, and I'm not going to name drop here, but some of the most amazing men in the Marine Corps went to that unit. I mean, guys that I looked up to as a young, as a young recon Marine, just the most, guys that they should make movies and write books about. And they got a hosh-bosh of these operators and put this unit together and then operated as debt one. If you look at the history, it falls under there.

And I think they operated for about three or four years, did exceptionally well. and that laid the groundwork for Marsok to stand up. So in 2006, they took first force reconnaissance unit and second force reconnaissance unit and then a FID branch that was called a foreign military training unit and made that first, second and third Marine Special Operations battalions, which are now Raider battalions. We didn't have the name quite yet. But in 2006, those units rolled up, which kind of sucked for the Marine Corps because they, we gutted, we gutted their force recon capability. So all these senior level force recon Marines became now part of SOCOM. And the Marine Corps had to rebuild kind of from the bottom up, their force recon capability, which they have at the, you know, to date they have, they have done that.

So I want to, so let me back up and then I'll catch us back up. So let me ask you this. And I'm going to, I'll do some name dropping only because it advances the conversation. So a friend of mine is Joey Jones, who was a Marine bomb tech. And he and I were hanging out this past weekend. And Joey said the same thing you said. There's no special within the special. So why is it that's a mentality of the Marines?

I would say he's pretty special. Joey is special. Yeah. I would say he's pretty special. But go ahead. But why is that a Marine mentality versus someone in the Army or the Air Force? force or the Navy. Why is that the culture of the Marines? I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I think that there's pros and cons to that mentality, right? And I was talking about this on another

podcast. When you look at the Marine Corps as a whole, like me as a young man coming in the Marine Corps, that's what brought me to, that's what drew me to the Marine Corps, was this idea that you were something bigger than yourself. And then you go to Marine Corps, you know, everybody knows that at the entry level of the military, the Marine Corps recruit training, is the hardest, you know, three months that you'll do, right? The Air Force, they get like, the Army and Air Force get like weekends off. You can take your cell phones, you know, it's Marine Corps is very, very, you know, recruit training is very different.

They strip you away, they break you down, and you really, I mean, you, you speak in the third person for three months. It's really about making you not special. And it's the reason why that is not, you know, stripping away your individuality and everything goes to the team. Everything goes to your platoon, your squad. It's not about you. It's about you as a group.

That's everything. That's all that matters. And they're getting young men. I mean, how else do you get young men to, when bullets are flying at you, you teach a bunch of 18-year-olds to run into bullets, run towards them. That's the fact that you can do, you can train. human beings to do that mentally is amazing. And the Marine Corps is one of the, at the entry level, the Marine Corps does it better than

anyone. So I think that's one of the purposes. You're not special. You're not a singular individual out of the squad. It's all about your team. It's all about the platoon. That's what matters most. Is that a hard transition for you?

You know, because at the point where you become force recon and then you go Marine Raider, now you're embracing more individuality. I know you're still dedicated to the team, but as you just mentioned, you're tailoring it to your environment. I know I've seen you talk about this. Now it's, it's beards, you know,

and longer hair. So is it kind of like a hard transition from the initial Marine Corps culture into the Marsok culture? Not for me. You got to look, even in the reconnaissance culture

where you're really taught team, like really, really big team. There's not a real big individuality in the reconnaissance community other than maybe just personalities, just ego. You know,

it might be a little big. But when it came to, when there were some, I'll be honest, and people will hate me for saying this, but there are some people that did not transition well from the regular Marine Corps, conventional Marine Corps, reconnaissance units, to special operations. Because there is a component, for instance, in selection, you're basically graded and selected completely on an individual. level. Even when you're doing team things, it's really not about the team. It's about how you're doing in your position as an individual. So you're right. So there is a component of transition that some people did not make well at the time. I did. I did embrace that. I was fortunate enough

in the reconnaissance community to do some things on some my deployments that kind of set me up for success within special operations, and having the understanding of what kind of work works and changes the battlefield versus what doesn't. So me personally did, but absolutely, there's people that did not make that change very well. We're going to step aside here for a moment. Stay tuned.

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on the other side. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com. How many Marine Raiders are there? How many guys are in Marsat? I can't speak to that. I mean, whatever's public, I don't know.

Small. Is it, is it bigger than, are there more or less than brays and seals? I would say that we're probably the smallest, the smallest branch for special operations. Yeah. Okay. And so how long were you in the Marine Corps? I was in from 2000 until November of 2012.

Okay. And then of that, when did you join Force Recon? 2003. And I took selection. Okay. And then from that, Raiders in what year? So I was with, yeah, I went to second force, then third recon was supposed to go back to second force at Camp Lejeune. And that's in 2006, they showed, they turned over.

I came back from Iraq. And then with my recon platoon, got orders back. But it was second Marine Special Operation Battalion, took selection, which was funny. I was like, I'm a staff and COO. I've been here for this long. I got to go through select. How many times do I got to prove? myself. So I went through selection again for for more stock, which I loved and I absolutely

believe that once I went through and actually ended up being cadre before I got out, I was like, this is amazing. And an amazing selection process. There was actually young recont marines that did not get selected. They truly have a great product and know exactly what they're doing and to pull people out of there. And so I went through selection. again in 2007 and then and then ran the rest of my career until 2012 so tell me about selection process what's so amazing about it what are they looking for uh to find a marine raider oh man i'm trying to answer these as as public as possible without um oh really am i asking you questions that they don't want they don't want the answers to public no i won't i won't say anything

they're looking for somebody who can think they're thinking they're looking Looking for somebody who can, can make decisions, you got to look at it this way. As a special operator in Socom across the board, you might be put, you as an individual, this is a reason why it's so important, you as an individual might be put in a situation to where you literally, your decision could create a national conflict. Like one person could make a decision in a village with a village elder or something else going on that could. and will, most of their stuff lands on POTA's desk, could cause a national incident. You think it's probably important that individual can think on their feet, understand the rules of engagement, the Geneva Convention, and make a decision. That's in the best interest of our country.

And their teammates there at the same time and potentially local individuals there as well. It's a pretty big shoes to fill. So intelligence or judgment. Right. So you're, you know, you think, most people think they see special operations and they just think hammer all the time. You know, they look at a Navy SEAL, Green Beret or Marine Raider, and they're like these big muscle guys. And they're just like, they just go around and smash. And the reality is, it's much more of the scalpel is as much more what's being used than a hammer.

Do we have the capability to use the hammer? Do we sometimes like being the hammer? Yes. But the real work comes in with the scalpel. And that's what you need. You need somebody who can operate a scalpel just as well as they can operate a hammer. So here's another name I told you I would just advance the conversation. I've gotten to know a little bit, former Greenberry Scott Mann,

and I was having a similar conversation with him about this. And I said, what are you looking for? Like, what do you look for in Special Forces? He said, entrepreneurs. I want guys who are entrepreneurs, who can build some. something from the ground up. Here's the question, and I'll go back to yours. You're looking for somebody with intelligence and judgment who can think on their feet.

How do you vet for that? Like, what is the selection criteria? What is the Hell Week for weeding out the guys who have bad judgment and aren't making good calls on the fly? So I'm glad you brought up Hell Week, right? You look at something, and I'll use a civilian version. So a friend of mine runs a project for men. It's actually called the project, the modern day, night project. 75-hour experience for entrepreneurs and people that are not living to their potential as a man.

So they take this military component. They've got military guys on the team. They take this military component. They put them in there. So what they do is, just like Hell Week, they wear them out physically and mentally. They just break them down to where they are exhausted. They're passing out. They've got nothing left in them.

It literally, physically, they're done. Now it's just about do they have the mental capacity to continue to go forward, even though they physically can't lift the log up, they can't pick the boat up anymore. They're just smoked. But will they quit or will they just, you know what I mean, crumble and whatever? And then that's when the work begins. Once they haven't slept in 48 hours, once they're physically exhausted and they literally couldn't do a 20-pound dumbbell curl, that's when they start to do the brain work.

So they put these guys through that whole experience, and then the real work begins on getting vulnerable, solving mental problems. So the same thing happens within, you know, a selection process through Hell Week or through whatever. You wear these guys down to where there's nothing left, and then you put them in mentally fatiguing positions and have them make decisions. what happens then how do they carry themselves do they do they crumble they they go inward or they do they have their wits about them and they can still operate on it on another intellectual level

so is there if let's go through that selection that that hell week concept before we even get to the mental um the mental test of it and i know you've talked about this like what i know there are physical standards to to meeting the requirements or surviving the test of of of Marsox selection. Is there a, have you ever found, and I've always warned this, and I've met a lot of guys who were in different, who were special operators, is there a physical profile? Because there are guys all over the map. I mean, I don't know that there's guys as skinny as I am.

I don't know if there's guys as skinny as I am in any of those things, but, but like, physically. Some of the most, Will, some of the most amazing guys I've seen are literally 5, 4, 125 pounds. Really? I've been passed. We're carrying the same weight. I'm 225, 6 foot. We're carrying the same amount of weight.

And I've watched one of my buddies literally pass me walking up a mountain. Carrying the same amount of weight. Carrying the same amount of weight. So there's this perception that everybody's like, like, Commando at Arnold Schwarzenegger. At least it was when I was it, when I was a kid, right? It was like everybody, every, you know, Navy SEAL, Green Beret, whoever that is in Special Operator, looks like Commando or Sylvester Stallone and that's simply not the case. I've seen guys that look like like a dad, you know, a 1985 dad with New Balance white

shoes and high, high crew socks and a polo and a braided belt absolutely crushed the high school athlete quarterback. I cannot tell you how many in shape physically special. guys show up and it's almost like as soon as you see them you're like that guy's going to quit okay but is that is that about quit is that about intestinal fortitude because i i buy that on like the you never know who's going to quit thing i do buy that you never know who's got actually if you do the job long enough you get in when they walk in it's funny when you when you get a a group in it doesn't take long i mean very quickly do you figure out who Who's got it in them and who doesn't?

Oh, you got to tell me how? You got to tell me how do you figure that out? It's hard to say. It's almost like a look, like a feeling. Like they're weird to say, but the or they put off, the way their eyes, you know, if they have that look. But I cannot tell you how many people who, when you look at them, you go, oh, that's a physical specimen. He's going to crush that. And they'll be the first out of the door.

As soon as it gets hard, they just go inward and fall apart. I had one of my kids soccer coaches one time says I can tell how a kid walks onto the field during a tryout, whether or not he's going to be good or not. Like just how he walks out onto the field. I don't know if that's true or not, but... No, absolutely, because it's experience. And now when we, like, we'll run these events

and we run these courses, even with civilians now, right? We put these guys, I mean, you got to look at like the Go Ruck culture. You got to look at all these different things that are military base, but civilians do. It's the same thing. You get a crew in, and you, you immediately know there's just if you have experience in that field you it's almost like a feeling like a spider sense you look at them and you go you know and you can be wrong but at the end of

day like experience says a lot you look at them and you go I don't think that one's going to make it I mean I'm tempted to say I want to think it's the guy who walks in all cocky and and and brags but I'm sure some of those guys are tough too like I just can't imagine I can't fit the profile yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah What's the attrition rate? Like, what is the, what is the failure rate on, on the selection process? It's well over 50%. I'll tell you back in the day, so I know with, I know with our unit, because you have

multiple, you have to go through like pre-selection, right, and you'll lose guys there, and then you get selected, and then you'll lose a ton of guys of selection, and then you've got to go through your actual Q course or ITC or whatever, right? which is a very long process, up to, you know, a year or more. And then, you know, if you, there's certain things, I mean, the attrition rate once you get into the course is very low, but there's certain things, there's still, there's still wickets and still phase lines that you have to hit and pass for fail items that you have to pass.

But typically, if that you get selected, you're pretty good, long as you don't make a big mistake or do something dumb. Back in the day when I went through Infibious Consent School at Fort Story, Virginia, which is no longer there. I showed up with 72 people, and we graduated 14. Really? Day 1, 72, graduation day was 14. And by the way, is that attrition, like, in our minds,

like, as we sort of envision that, we figure, because we've seen and read about it, it's like somebody ringing the bell because they have that quitting them. But we're not just talking about physically or emotionally quitting. We're also talking about failing, too, right? Like that judgment test, that intelligence test. There's an 80. Yeah, so like there's, yeah, absolutely there is a, there is a failing component. You have to maintain, everything's graded.

You have to maintain an 80% or above. And if you fail, literally fail a test, like a written test or some sort of operation that you're supposed to do, you know, the grading criteria, even down to like land navigation. There's a score on that. And if you get below an 80 or your average is below an 80 or you get below an, 80 on a test, that you're out. Mm-hmm. So, and not to mention injury.

Like, it's a dangerous job. Like, doing all the things that you're doing, you know, I can't tell you how many rolled ankles, broken shoulders, broken bones, you know, getting an infection, getting staff, getting, you know, bit by a spider. Now you've got a hole in your, you know, in your body somewhere.

Things happen. All right. We're going to step aside here for just a moment. stay tuned it is time to take the quiz it's five questions in less than five minutes we ask people on the streets of new york city to play along let's see how you do take the quiz every day at the quiz dot fox then come back here to see how you did thank you for taking the quiz all right and then so you know um nick you make it you're your force recon you spent i think i added it up three or four years as a marine recon and then you were also another good five years as a marine

Raiders, to the extent that you can, and I understand I'm going to ask a question that you probably can't answer or you have to search for a way to answer it. Like, what kind of mission does a Marine Raider typically get sent on? So that's, see, that, that is trying to put it back in the box. I mean, you're, in my day, obviously, we were, I heavily operated in Afghanistan, and we were, for in all intensive purposes, doing what's called FID for an internal defense. You know, we were operating as a small team going into a village, establishing a security force, a local security force, for them to be security in their own villages.

You know, for instance, my last deployment, we had 14 actual raiders and enablers. and, um, which is people that are attached to the team like your friend, um, and EOD, you know, and some special, some special signals intelligence type stuff and some other people. Um, but we had a, at a lot, we had a small group of us and we had 314 man local security force that we trained, equipped and operated with, um, majority of which all on motorcycles, which, you know, if you hear, if you hear the old, if you Google the old like Marsock motorcycle gangs on Google a bunch of pictures and articles will come up and that was that was our generation but we really was we were we were an afghan motorcycle gang you know it was 14 of us and 314 of them

um so wild so like it was one of the highlights of my life will is you know riding off the back of a c h 47 on a motorcycle with a bunch of dudes and guns i mean i don't think that you know like it sounds pretty awesome watching 80 watching 80s move these as a kids growing up, you know, and then getting to do that in real life, it was definitely a tick on, you know, a high mark of my life. But honestly, when it comes to like your daily life or a mission, it really is, goes back to the beginning of our conversation, what the nation needs and what the countries that we're operating in, what they need, what the current mission is there.

And a lot of it starts out with FID. A lot of it starts out with foreign internal offense. and then it kind of branches off from there. So you can be doing FID and the next thing you know, you are doing direct action or you are doing an amphibious operation. You know what I mean? But it really comes down to, I mean, you got to think, at the core of special operations,

it's about working with host nations, you know. So you get into an area, you're trying to shape a battle, you're doing asymmetrical warfare, you're shaping a battle space to make it better in conjunction with the, I'm going to say it, but the goals of the State Department, whatever the hell of those could be at the time, you know, based on politics.

But then once you get in there and you're working with your host nation, there might be something that needs to be done. And that's why it's really great that Marine Raiders are so versatile because they can very quickly pivot to do all these other operations right there in the country. One more thing I'd love for you to clarify for me. And by the way, anybody listening or watching should go check out Nick's video on YouTube. It did go viral. I did watch it.

You actually even have a whiteboard where you kind of lay out how this all breaks down under Socom and under the Marine. Well, you know one mistake I made there that people called me out on? What? I left. I think I totally left out the Air Force. No, you didn't. You had Air Force under Socom. I did?

No, you had seals, special forces, Air Force. I think you did. Definitely. Oh, okay. Which I have left it out in this conversation. I'm wearing an Air Force shirt right now, but I've left it out because. I like all the BJs and all the CCTV guys. I love you guys too.

So my point is you have this great understanding, though, of the hierarchy. And I think that I want to, and I'm not sure it's appropriate for me to create this sort of like pyramid and try to understand how it is. And it may not work that way. But, you know, colloquially there's like, I think people talk about tier one, tier two. I do think, and tell me if I'm wrong, there's something above SOCOM, right? Isn't there J-Soc where essentially would it be Sealed Team 6 or Dev grew and then Delta are in there? Does the Marine Raiders have, is it, am I right? Is there another tier higher and do the Marines have a representative?

I have read books that there is. I've read books and seen movies that there is. For the Marines? No, no, no, in general. Okay. What you just said, I've read books that there are other units out there. but I don't know anything about that. So cagey.

You're so cagey. I can't tell if you're being honest or not. All right. So, Nick, I appreciate this. It sounds to me like if I'm asking, if I were a young man and I was thinking about, hey, I would like to, I would like to think that I could survive the selection criteria for some special operations, whether or not it's in Navy or in the Marines or in the Army. And I was talking to you, your sales pitch to me on why it should be the Marine Raiders is. This is what I tell. This is what I tell young people right here is there's a lot of things that you don't have control over, right?

Obviously, you're going into an unknown, which I think is a beautiful thing, right? The whole process to me is just absolutely beautiful. So as I'm looking at this, I go, okay, any operation, and I get kids to think about it this way. This is the way that you have to think as a special operator. You have to be trained for everything. You have to be prepared for everything. all right but how do we handle the unknown okay well what we do is we control what we know well i know i know i need to be an extremely physically fit right i know i need to be able to walk with a lot of

weight on my back and have my feet um condition to that so i'm not getting blisters and blah blah blah blah i know i need to be able to execute this many they they know what the basic standards are all right so what i tell people is remove the like anytime that i've ever done anything if it's uh climbing a mountain. Well, you know, I live at sea level. So one of the things that I can do is sleep in a , you know, a chamber. So, so I slept, I put a tent. My wife loved it. I put a tent over our bed and I slept at 14,000 feet for three weeks. That's one variable that I could remove. And when I went in some of it, guess what? Hypoxia was not, you know, altitude sickness was the one thing that I, I didn't have any issue with. So you find the variables that you could mitigate. You mitigate all of those

risk whatever those the ones that you know find what you know and mitigate all of them and now you all you have to deal is do with the unknown now you only have to focus on what is going to be thrown at me because i'm not i'm physically fit so i'm not going to get smoked you know i mean i get smoked but i can handle it um i always tell people say you imagine that imagine on your best day you can get a 300 well then you then you really need to get a 400 so on your worst day you get a 300 because you're going to be at your worst and you need physical fitness test right and just anything right

so if the level that you need to be at is a 300 on your best and all you can get is a 300 on your best then that means at your worst you're going to get a 200 well maybe a 250 is the line so that means that you need to be at a 400 so when you're at your worst

because you will be there you're still in range so it's about so going through any selection process, going through anything, being prepared for anything is about mitigating as much risk as possible. So controlling the known, the rest, you just have to handle. And that's where right there is exactly where the selection process comes into play, because that's when you find out who can handle the unknown in that environment.

And I saw in your video, you said you can't sign a contract off the street to go into Marine Raiders selection. You can sign a contract with the Marine Corps to go into reconnaissance. And then you spend some years in that. I think you said three years or so. And then maybe you could get into selection for Marine Raider. Yeah, if you apply, yeah. Yeah. And your pitch for wide Marine Raiders, by the way, of the special operators,

your pitch for wide and Marine Raiders, what I've gathered today would be, A, you're already a Marine, which makes you somewhat special, even though you're not, nobody's special. And, and D, versatility. Yeah, I think that it's a unique, it is a unique unit. I wouldn't change. I honestly, if I, like, going back and look, I get that question all the time, would you join the Seals? Will you do the Green Berets? I honestly wouldn't change anything.

The community that I had, the jobs that I did, I really, really personally, I really enjoyed. It's very different from the other branches. The culture is very different. That culture very much, you know, at the time, matched up with who I was and who I wanted to be. So it's something that you have to look at. And I get the same question. Should I go officer enlisted? It's about what you want to do in your daily life.

Do you want to do the thing or you want to lead people doing the thing? So it depends on, you know, like with young guys that talk to me and go, hey, I want to, you know, I want to do this. What should I do? Well, tell me what your idea day looks like. What are you doing? You know, because a lot of guys like, well, I want to go be an officer. And they go, okay, tell me what your day looks like. And they tell me, I'm like, well, you're not going to do any of that.

So you should probably go enlist and work your way up. Another thing is that you're right, they can't come in straight off the street and go be a Marine Raider. I personally like this. And I don't, you know, I don't want to anybody yell at me because it's, you know, it's not everybody. But when the Army created the X-ray program, which is the program that you can come off the street, get a contract and go straight to, basically go to, you know, boot camp and then go to special, you know, special forces selection. And then you're straight into the Q course and you're a green beret after that. they had a lot of maturity problems because now you've got a guy that's 20 years old, 21 years old that's that's in a soft unit.

They don't have the life experience to handle some of those decision-making processes in the field. Like that's a very difficult thing to deal with, you know. And as you know, there's a big difference in a 21-year-old. And I'm speaking generally, right? I'm not speaking, you know, there's plenty of 21-year-olds out there that are probably, you know, very mature and can handle this and they do right and this is the reason why selection process is so well but even in the reconnaissance community when we went to recon contracts was which was became a thing

when i was that hasn't always been a thing um when i was actually i was a staff staff in ceo when they opened that door we saw the same thing we saw a lot of maturity issues with guys who were very good, but that ego got to them, right? And they just lacked a little bit of the maturity and, and honestly, just life experience. So now they're putting these big positions, these big roles, but they didn't just, they weren't there yet. And you know what happens? Typically, they get humbled. They get put in their place. You know, they get knocked down a few, notches, which even I was knocked down a few notches in my time. And, you know, and then you move on. But that's the reason why I prefer that the Marines do it the way they do it. They give

these guys some time in the military, not to mention they give them times in the conventional forces to where they realize how good they have it at Marstock. So they see the grass is a little bit greener on the other side. So they have that, they have that, you know, relationship with that perspective. Well, I've, I've read some about your story. So I know, I know some of what you're talking about when you say you've got knocked down from time to time but um listen man i really appreciate you hopping on i've been um i've been very curious about this i i'm enjoying talking to all of you guys in the special operator community of the various branches and um and i think that maybe you know probably yours is the is the least well known so people should learn more about the raiders uh and reconnaissance

for that matter well i'm definitely doing my part um it's it's i've got kids i've got kids i I've got kids now, my business partner and I, because we, years ago, we ironically got into training, like building prep guides for young men going in the military. And now over the years, we've actually guys had gone from high school, joined the Marine Corps, and made it into Marsock since we've been out. You know, it's been 10 years.

And now they are raiders that they've literally followed us since high school. And we've tracked them all the way through, you know, high school, through, you know, recruit training, three years in the Marine Corps, and then took selection, and now they're, you know, young Raiders at the unit, which I think is cool, so. That's awesome. Now you guys just need to get some movies made, right? We just got to make a Marine Raider movie. That's all we have.

That's right. All right. All right. Thank you, Nick. Yeah, thank you, Will. There you go. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Nick Kumalazos. You can check out his book, Excommunicate Warrior, the seven stages of Transcendation. Or check him out on Twitter at Nick Kumalatsos.

If you think Marine Raiders are for you, well, I guess you can go find your local field recruiter. I'll see you next time. Listen to ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members, you can listen to this show, ad-free on the Amazon music app. Fox News Audio presents Unsolved with James Batterson. Every crime tells a story, but some stories are left unfinished. Somebody knows. Real cases, real people.

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