So, Josh, did we meet in Vegas? Is that where this all started?
No, we actually met in Anchorage, Alaska. You were up there on the USO.
Tour, That's right. Vegas was after that. Yeah, it was just after that.
And it was funny, you know, this email comes out, it's like, hey, we need somebody to volunteer to give some country music artists people a tour by the USA Tour. And I was like, I love country music, Yes, I'll do that. I had no idea who it was, and they're like, oh, it's this guy named Granger Smith. He's here for the USO tour. It was like, you got to be kidding me.
You know.
So my roommate from the Air Force Academy's from Texas, from Shureline, Texas, and and he obviously loves Texas country music, read drop music, all that stuff. So I just kind of got indoctrinated into that in college. Yeah, and growing up, and my first my first CD that I got as a gift was like a Christmas stocking stuffer was clay Walkers,
like self titled nineteen eighty three album. And you know, so I love countries growing up, and then I started learning about text music more and fell in love with it. And then obviously when I heard those you is really cool, you know, and we did that and then then you were there for NFR in Vegas after that when I was down there as well.
That's right, So I went up there. It was for CMT, right and yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, it was for CMT, but it was connected to the USO. It was a USO CMT and I was with Cody Allen. Yep, you remember that, which is you know, my predecessor at after midnight.
That's so that's the interesting connection with us. But but when I met you, still to this day, you are probably top three coolest guys in my phone that I know that I can text because you are a fighter pilot, and not only a fighter pilot, but an F twenty two, which is what is the most sophisticated aircraft in the world, right.
And yeah, in terms of in terms of neeverabilities, speed, all the performance numbers you can think of, it's definitely the top out there right now.
So yeah, it's anybody in Russia have anything better than that.
I think they're trying really hard.
But China, nobody has any better.
They're trying, they're they're trying, but I think they have twenty two, you know, without getting a specific so I would just simply say that I would take an F twenty two to combat against anything out there in the Skuys.
Okay, yeah, so it's we've been how long have we been? We've been recording only two minutes and I'm already saying this top gun, Sorry, we're bringing it up. That that and the newer one. Yeah, the Russian jet that's in that. It's like everyone's in awe about That's where's the F twenty two stack up against that?
I still think in terms of capability, it's it's better. You know, Russia is definitely producing stuff. What is and top gun fifty seven? I believe what they had in there, and then if if I recall correctly, I watched it, like I can't watch it twice now, but I think what they had in there, and that's like their their next generation stealth kind of equivalent fighter. They haven't produced a whole lot of them, and they just don't have a capacity and and the tech development I think is
still lacking. So we still retained a really nice advantage in terms of just manufacturing processes. The intellectual aspect of making these airplanes really lethal and survivable. So, yeah, they have twenty two is just, in my opinion, pretty awesome.
When did you stop flying combat missions? So I stopped.
My last deployment was in twenty sixteen, and then I did the demonstration team job for three years. I think the last time I saw you was in twenty twenty one, I believe when we came out to the ranch. Yeah, and then I left active duty in August of twenty twenty three. So I left active duty. Now I'm part time and then about a International Guard. No longer flying fighter jets, but still flying lots of other airplanes. And yeah, so I was kind of my time in the Air Force.
Did a deployment the fifteen first, and then they have twenty two later on.
It's like, I said, one of the coolest guys, and I know.
No, you know, I do want it. Since we were talking about anchorage and talking about CMP tour on stuff, you know, I think the reason that we connectively on in Vegas was honestly because you're incredibly kind. And I don't remember if you know this, or I don't know if you remember this at all, but the day after you or the day you left. That morning, I think it was, we had like a seven point two magnitude
earthquake and anchorage. Remember that I was at work, you know, we just finished awesome time going to show you run the airplanes, get to listen to play and all that stuff. And then the next morning at work, we get an earthquake happening, and I was like, all right, well, you know, it's like, oh, it's an earthquake, no big deal. And then we start getting tossed from chairs and we're like, oh, this is a serious one, you know, and you had landed.
I don't know sure if you came back to Texas, Okay, Seattle and you text me and you're like, hey, man, I heard this really big earthquake.
Are you doing okay?
And I was like, this is the guy that I used to listen to on my computer in college, you know, when like a little you like came out like back in the day, Granger Smith. And I was like, this is this guy texting my personal number asking if I'm okay because an earthquake that just happened. You know, I'm like, how many other millions of things do you have going on? And the fact that you were so kind to take time. I'm just to ask how I was doing. After that
was amazing. And then I was like, well, I'm doing well, but I'm head out of town going to Vegas because we got this conference. You're like, well, I'm going to Vegas, you know. And then we met up there for the show, which was great, and uh yeah, it's just all through your kindness. And that's how this.
Doesn't seem like a big deal at all, though I mean it.
Doesn't, but you know, you'd imagine, like, you know, it's just like, hey, taking care of other people, being kind and consider it, sadly is not as common as I guess you would expect, and especially when it's like some of you've you've you know, been listened to on the radio for the last whatever fifteen years. You're like, that's that's pretty crazy. I just text my personal cell phone number, you know.
I remember that that was that was wild because we we took off from Anchorage on on a flight to I guess it was like maybe Delta, but we landed in Seattle, and right when we landed and turned our phones on, it was like, you know, our phones were blown up. It was a major earthquake in Anchorage within the short amount of time we were in the air if we had waited any longer to take off, that
they weren't. They weren't flying planes out of that that airfield. Yeah, for a while after that, so so yeah, I was like, man, it's josh okay. So that was that was a little crazy incident. I actually totally forgot about it, so you mentioned it. But the the time itself in Anchorage was my first time to see you and the and the f twenty two and you know, you let us walk around it. Have you seen that in have you seen Oh, well,
after this, I'll show you. Like when he was on the demo team there some of those videos like their Instagram account. What's that Instagram between two demo tea team? Demo team? That is a good follow on Instagram because that aircraft does things that just the mind can is not capable of understanding what it's seeing. It looks like some kind of cgi. It looks fake. I mean that's
the they basically tell us what I mean. It basically stalls in the air and could reverse and go different direction, like what's happening with the twenty two.
Just wizardry it's basically wizard Yeah, it's wizardry.
You know.
The it's a testament right to all the engineers and folks that designed the airplane, because they did a phenomenal job with the flight control laws and how to make the airplane do some amazing things, the things that really make it unique and different in terms of moverability. The engines are remarkable. So they produced seventy thousand pounds of
thrust total. The airplane full of gas, full of weapons weighs about sixty five thousand pounds, so even at takeoff, you're producing more thrust than you weigh at takeoff, so you can accelerate going straight up.
It's a little bit more than a tour bus by the way, weighted down.
Yeah, maybe, maybe not as much as a you know, a germ Ax. I don't know, but yeah, it's close. I've got to coming diesel, but you know it's close.
I'm not about thrust. I'm not about the weight of a fully fully weighed down towards yeah six okay, wow, I didn't realize it was that heavy.
Yeah, so this but the airplane, you know, the engines produce amazing thrust, but also on the back of vector thrust. They have nozzles in the back, so imagine taking your finger putting on a water hose, you know, and like moving your thumb and the water goes different directions. But you're just doing that with seventy thousand pounds of thrust, so you have vector thrust. The flight controls are all
basically it's fly by wire. So I'm making inputs. I'm moving the stick or moving the throttles, and the airplane says, okay, the pilot wants XYZ effect whatever it happens to be, and then it figures out how fast my going and how high am I All these are the parameters and gives me the combination of flight controls I need to get the effect I'm asking for. And you've seen the thunderbirds fly, I'm sure. So they have F sixteen's amazing airplanes.
To put it in perspective of size, the F twenty two, the tails in the back are the same size as the F sixteen main wing, so these are massive surfaces.
Have you ever gone skydiving? No?
Okay, So skydiving, when you're falling through the sky, you're basically using your hands and feets like deflect air and That's what the F twenty two does, is it's in that postal regime where it's no longer fit like flying. It's not producing enough lyft to overcome the weight of the airplane. It's basically using this flight control surfaces that are the same size as an F sixteen main wing
to deflect air like you would be skydiving. And that's what allows it to be, you know, completely controllable, even those in those regimes where it's it's stalled.
Tell me about the bottom of that aircraft too.
Which which port? Oh yeah, where the bays are?
Yeah?
Yeah, So we had a chance to look in the bays and we carry missiles combination of bombs down there, and the doors will open up really quickly. The missiles or weapons will kick out of the bottom of the airplane then close back up to keep us stealthy. So having those weapons or missiles are.
Nothing's hanging out like the F sixteen, stuff everywhere underneath it.
Yeah, and everything's carried internally for twenty two And just like the F thirty five, So the F thirty five is is kind of the F sixteen replacement, much like the F twenty two is fifteen replacement and everything's carried internally to keep us stealthy, so we can sneak around,
you know. And when you think about other airplanes out there flying that aren't stealthy, that's where those airplanes really shine because imagine, you know, you're you're you're a bad guy airplane and you see in your radar, you look outside and you see these things popping up because they have really big radar cross sections, and you get very attract It's like, you know, a moth to flame kind
of thing. And then you have these airplanes that are very stealthy, like Ninja is just rolling around hinjustars, you know. So it's it's pretty great, pretty amazing capability for sure.
I do you were you ever just pinch yourself? Surely half fast? How fast? Fly top top speed that you that you could go? Yeah?
Gone twice the speed of sound. So it's about fifteen hundred miles an hour.
So you're in the middle of the desert somewhere or over an ocean going that. I mean, are you ever just like, Wow, I'm the fastest man on north right now? Uh? Yeah, like thinking about that.
Yeah, there's like, you know, the s R seventy one was faster, right, and there are airplanes that were faster, but I mean twice the speed of sound is pretty fast. And then you're doing that at you know, sixty thousand
feet roughly, and that's it. It's interesting because at that point, you know, there's a lot of heat, right, so you're going through the air really quickly, and then there's lot of heat that's generated from that from the friction, and as a result of the airplane is trying to cool itself off too because it's it's getting hot and wants keep everything electronically in the skin and everything cool.
So you get some cutback.
Actually, we gets very quiet because they're diverting air to other things that are more important than you probably as the pilot, and to keep it flying all those things, and it's really eerie. You're at you know, sixty thousand feet going twice as be a sound and fifteen hundred miles now roughly, and it gets really quiet and you're just seeing like the earth rotate underneath you and you're like, this is super trippy, you know, it's just uh, it's a pretty cool feeling for sure.
About six thousand feet up yeah, yeah, yeah, roughly unbelievable.
And we you know, we go supersonic obviously if we needed to in combat, but in our training air spaces when we need to do it for training, we don't. We aren't allowed to go super sonic over the domestic using from point to point. However, I did get approved one time by the FA. I was flying out of North Dakota taking a jet to Salt Lake City and the Birds are actually performing. I flew a jet into an air show and I wasn't the demo pilot at
the time. I was just bringing a jet there to talk to folks about the airplane, and the thunder Birds a little bit delayed taken off and finishing their show. So I get delayed taken off out of there, I
take off. I like that FN so I like rip up, and I'm going to Salt Lake and I'm looking at the time, I'm gonna be late, and the people that were this on a Sunday, like I'm gonna be late, and the people that were working there, they're all contract employees, you know that are civilians coming in on a Sunday to get this airplane, Like, hey man, we close at whatever five And looking at the time like I'm gonna be late, feel bad, you know, And so I asked
the air traffic control guys like, hey, I come over North Dakota right now. There's nobody down there, you know, do you mind if I go super sonic? And he's like, oh, what do you want? It's like one point too, so one point two time speed of sound.
He's like, yeah, I approved. So I go to super you know.
I go one point two for about about a minute a half two minutes, and then he comes back on the redo and he's like, yeah, my supervisor's sow what we were doing, and he said we couldn't do it anymore. Okay, all right, so I swing back down. It helped me catch up a little bit of time. But it was pretty funny because that was the one time it was like legally allowed to go super sonic over the States and they were like all on board until they weren't.
So how far was the trip total time wise? I think it was.
I think it was about hour and a half if I recall correctly.
Yeah, it's still a long time in the cockpit, Yeah it is.
I've done twelve hour flights in the Raptor and the Eagle, and it's a long time. To be in that airplane for that long, but you also get you know, used to it. I'm an average hype build kind of guy five ten, you know, and you get comfortable in there. And also there's some some cool things you can do in terms of like you're you're never flying by yourself, right,
you're flying with the wingmen. You're flying with somebody else. Yeah, so you have like fun games to play crosswords and whenever I was back and forth, if you're just not doing anything going on, you know.
So I want to get to because I know that there are some stories that you, you and I have shared, Yeah, and part of it has to do with passing time there. But but before we get to that there, there was you remember you guys put me in that fight suit yep in anchorage and it's like that it controls the g's for what's that what's that suit called? So, yeah, just called it a G suit.
The one you were, the one you had on was called an a TAGS which is like the advanced something something G garment And effectively it's that one's really nice because it's one bladder. So it's a bladder of air that goes around your abdomen, your legs and your calves.
And what it's designed to do is take air from the airplane as you're pulling g's inflates to squeeze your legs and that allows your upper body to keep the blood flow and oxygen that your heart and lungs need to and your brain needs to just stay conscious, conscious when you're flying and fighting with these airplanes. So, yeah, you put that on. You put the surval vest on, the harness all crazy.
Yeah, I mean, it instantly sucks you in and texture protects your limbs. But it's working along with the aircraft correct. It knows exactly where what to put pressure on and when to do it.
Yeah, I mean, it's a really simplify it's just like it's probably way more complicated. I'm not an engineer by trade, but imagine like a metal plunger and then you have it in this volume of air, and then as you pull g's, the g forces pushed down on this which then allows airflow to come in. So the more g's you pull, the more, you know, I guess, the more that plunger drops a lot more airflow into the bladder itself. And you're doing this, you know, people go out there
and fly airplanes. You've probably seen these funny videos on social media where people are passing out in the back of Yeah, yeah, I ever seen those. So it's like these people, they're only focus. Only folks in life right now is to not pass out a flying fighter jet. You're like, Okay, when you're actually in the airplane, flying a fighter jet, you're doing that, but you're also working all these switches you're working, You're like looking outside your turn.
You're contorted because you're fighting other airplanes that are trying to potentially kill you. And it's it's a you know, it's it's a it's a full contact sport for sure. You know, like it's beats you. I've never passed out an airplane, thank goodness. Yeah people have. Play no plane people have, and you know, like everything else. If you're training for a marathon, you don't start borrowing a marathon,
you start you sure. Yeah, And all the airplanes you fly in the Air Force gradually build in terms of G capabilities. So the T six, the first one you fly, is about five to six g's, and the T three it's about seven, and then the F twenty two is over nine, and you know it'll pull over nine it's it's it's remarkable.
It's just on your body.
Yeah, yeah, I mean almost every air show.
Every year, because you're doing crazy stuff on the shows.
Yeah, and even even in like the training missions and not stuff. All our combat missions were typically dropping We're dropping bombs on our commt missions, so like dropping weapons. And that's not like very aggressive by any means. It's more of just taking information really quickly from somebody else, passing information, putting it in correctly in the airplane, and
making sure in a position to employ the weapons. But in the air to air side we do training, there are times where you know, you'll pull over nine g's for over a minute, you know, and you're just like this. You get back like I'm smoked, you know. And I do remember this funny story. We were on a we were on doing a trip down in Florida, and that's where we do a lot of our live missile testing.
So we were down there and at the time, he was the wing commander, was Colonel Colonel Corcoran Corky Corkoran. We went out and flew and he went on to become a general and he's recently retired. But you know, I was a younger guy at the time, and uh, you know, he's just you know, full bird colonels. He's been around the block quite a bit in flying airplanes. I had this great idea. I was like, Oh, we're near a training mission and we're gonna go out do
some dog fighting together. Like I'm a young guy, I've got a neck that's still expendable. You know, I can still you know, get some g's. It's like, I'm gonna get into this like very aggressive, heavy g you know, fight with him and we fit Like as we do this thing, I'm looking across and we're fighting, you know, and I see him and he just mashed me a step for step, you know, and it was just amazing. I was like, this guy is crushing it right now.
You know.
And it was just so impressive because he's he's an amazing pilot, an amazing leader guy to thankfully fly with him when I was deployed as well. He was the wing commander when I was in twenty sixteen, and just an amazing human. But it was funny. I was like, I can pull some some new guy tricks, just trying to sacrifice my body for an advantage, you know, in terms of this, this flying and fighting, and he was right there with me.
The entire time. And yeah, yeah, man, the stories you must have and and most of them you probably can't even tell, but but you know, the times when you're in anchorage, that was a lot of basically patrols in the ocean. Yeah, because we've got an adversary right across that ocean from from Alaska, yep. And you would you tell me that, yeah, you guys, would you would see any of the aircraft quite a bit.
Yeah, you know, it goes, It goes seasonally, right, there are different you know, whether it's political events or whether it's time of year, things will ramp up or ramp down. And yeah, you know, and quite frankly, we're doing the same thing to other countries as well. We're flying airplanes off their coast much like they're flying put on our coast. And it's a cat and mouse game that will continue forever. And yeah, this is one of the missions we had there.
The vast majority of our missions up there were training missions to prepare for all this, all the different mission sets we had to be responsible for. But that was one of the things where we would sit in alert facility and we have the facilities all around the country, and it's almost like being a firefighter, right, you live in a firehouse, you have a kitchen, you.
Have rooms, same thing.
Yeah and yeah, you know a lot of a lot of days, multiple days spent there in that facility. And some days nothing happens, and some days, like you get a call at two o'clock in the morning and it's like, oh you should you know, like go now, see you run down there and get gone.
So when we were in Vegas together, yeah, and we had how's he doing? By the way, he's doing well. I think he's done.
I haven't spoken with him and it's probably been a bit, but last time I knew I talked to him, he was down in in Louisiana, that's where his family's from, and he was down there flying fifteen's within the Louisiana International Guard.
So if if we had recorded a podcast that night we stood up really late. We did the tour bus in Vague. We just played a concert. It was it was you and me and Tater and maybe a couple other guys. But if we had recorded at that would have been the greatest podcast of all time because those stories were so wild. I don't even know what you could tell from that on this podcast, and feel free
to not share anything. But you guys talking about your deployments and talking about the different calls as a firefighter that you would get, you know, essentially, and there was there were some times when like you guys would be and you guys have different deployments, right, I don't think you were deployed together, were not, but but you these guys would get called in. I'm talking to aim into.
They would basically get called in and and there would be something happening on the ground and aircraft would get called in, but not to do anything, but just to be there just in case. And and so they're they're flying and just circling a situation, right and just listening in and read to go and like knowing that they can do they could solve this problem right now. But the guys on the ground are trying to solve it.
And they're in the air like I could solve it, and they're like no, hold, Like go, okay, we'll keep holding. It's eight hours to go by.
Yeah, you know, we would typically do and that that kind of mission is called closer support. So the F twenty two by far As is not the best airplane for that mission set. We're we're designed for aero combat and go into you know her other airplanes.
That's like an F fifteen F sixteen thing right.
Yeaheen fifteen, Yeah, like fifteen E is the two seat version of the fifteen that's optimized for ady ground. He was flying F sixteen's and then F thirty five A ten. If you ask anybody on the ground, they'd probably gonna tell you the E ten is what they would want for closer support for sure, and then in the Navy
Marine Corps a F eighteen. But yeah, closer support is is really you're hanging out and you're waiting to see if anything you know is needed, and then it goes from goes from zero to you know, a thousand miles an hour really fast, because you could be you know,
especially like over Amadi, over most of whatever. It is middle of the night, nothing's happening, and you're like, Okay, I've been flying now for six hours in this airplane it's been dark the entire time, and going tune from the tanker getting gas every hour, hour and a half, and now I'm just like all right, I'm gelt tired, like,
this is all right, we're just orbiting right now. And then it goes from that to people on the ground are being contacted, and then you need to be able to work with somebody on the ground to get the information that you know, like the targeting information to drop a weapon at the right time, at the right place. And you're doing this all in close proximity friendly forces. So if you mess it up like you can potentially could kill a lot of people. Yeah, like and people on your team.
So how how what kind of target can you hit from from? That was called the F sixteen.
Yeah, so the F sixteen. In Tater's case, you have a targeting pod. So he could either use laser gutted weapons where he is using a laser from his airplane to illuminate a target. Then he would drop and that weapon would follow the laser in somebody else could support it with a laser. He could also drop GPS weapons, so basically just give it a GPS coordinate.
So how close of a target could he hit? How small of the box could he hit? That's real small? I can't I you can't tell me. I could give you like the Yeah.
The resolution of the weapons themselves, but like if you wanted to put a weapon through a building window like on the west side, third floor, you probably could do it.
You know, Like this is crazy. So they're telling these stories and they're just like they're trying to find a solution on the ground and they're like I could do it. They're like no, you know, hold, he's like telling you I could do it. I get in this right now. Yeah.
And then sometimes they'll also use the airplanes for like a show of forest show presence. So you know, you can imagine if you're on the ground on the bad guy side and you see an F sixteen or eight ten or whatever it is fly overhead real fast, roll low, making a lot of noise, you're just like you think twice, like maybe maybe maybe Nick Tay is not the day
for this, you know, yeah, for sure. So and that's a way for us to use the airplanes to de escalate and hopefully allow our folks just some time and space to get out of there, you know, because our goal really with that mission set is to make sure there's many American and coalition partners can make it back to their families of course, right, Like that's that's the thing, and it's well, the twenty two wasn't meant for that mission set, and it was designed for area of combat,
and we obviously did not get the preponderance of all the missions out there with the F twenty two. I really found it incredibly valuable, you know, and I would just stay out there for as long as they would have let me, just because it was like, man, people are people are going home to their families because what we're doing, and that's important.
So when you're flying your deployment in Iraq, did you have an Iraq and Syria? So where are you? Where is your airfield?
Yeah, it's it's so it's in the ribbon golf. We would take us about an hour and a half to two hours to get to where we need to be in Iraq or Syria.
Okay, how how many miles is that?
Yeah it's probably rough math, probably five hundred miles.
Okay, So you're sitting five hundred miles away somewhere, yeah, roughly. You get called in Saints the middle of the night, like the firefighter scenario you builts, say, it's midnight, you've just got into bed and you get called you got to go, And it might be a twelve hour mission.
That's that's for the the stuff in Alaska we're sitting to like intercept airplanes in the Middle East as an example, we just had twenty four hour presents. So you know, you'd be assigned Okay, here's your whatever, three four, five, six hour time slot that you were like, Okay, you're responsible for this geographic area for this long and then when you're down with that time, why so somebody else
will replace you and then you'll go back home. So that's why I'm saying, like sometimes we'd be up there to orbiting and nothing would happen.
So in Alaska, though, when when you're called in at midnight, how do you prepare your body? You haven't slept, you're you're How expensive is the F twenty two.
I think they're saying about one hundred and fifty.
Million, one hundred and fifty million dollars aircraft at you know, under your control and you haven't slept.
Yeah, they do give us empeticians really high quality INFETA means.
So I just I didn't know if you could say that on the podcast, but you said it. We talked about tour bus like yeah, go pills like you gotta take you got to take a meth pill basically.
So it's a it's got like a medical grade or whatever.
Whatever.
It's like that. You know, they have to keep positive control and who has it to get you know whatever, because it's a controlled substance. But that's that's one of the ways obviously. And then sometimes you know, there's obviously natural adrenaline too, if you had woken up like the funny story, we were we were Alaska. This is back in twenty twelve when I was flying at fifteen. So
we run a two day rotation. So every two days we'd be at the alert facility and then we'd have you know, other folks that were either on standby or whatever it was. But then you have two days off as well. So we had buddies gone to the bar, you know and whatever, and two o'clock in the morning when the bar is closed down, you know, you'd call the alert facility as like a prank call. You know, these guys are sleeping and and you'd prank call them
like scramble, scramble, scramble. You know, you're like, oh, that's a joke, you know, And so I think it was like I think it was jam or third of twenty twelve. It was somewhere around there because it was cold and snowy and dark. But the guy I was el sitting alert with Soup. We were we had gone to bed at two o'clock in the morning. The phone rings and he picks it up and he like he thought it was a prank. Yeah, and it was definitely not a prank.
And you're like, oh, shoot, better get ready, you know. So we throw our stuff on, get the airplane go, and you do a lot of things like you you know, load. I would just take beef turkey with me and like waters and whatever else and keep it in the airplane because you really don't have time once that call comes in. There's sometimes where like they know, okay, in three hours, we need you to be airborne. But sometimes it's like not now, but right now, and then you really have
no time to get ready to go. And Soup and I took off at like two o'clock in the morning, two thirty in the mornings when around there, and I remember they like opened the alert facility doors and there's snowplows like plowing a little pathway for our jets to go through to the rungway.
Because the snow was so bad.
And we were airborne for about twelve hours and it was and you don't know.
That it's going to be twelve hours. It might be thirty minutes, it could be.
Yeah, you have no idea how long it's going to be. So timplately, about twelve hours, they'll like have somebody else come in and replace you, and you know, roughly, yeah, you have no idea. So you just take a bunch of water, a bunch of a bunch of food, and then piddle packs. You have to pee at some point, so uh, those are those are pretty handy, and then you just take off and go and we end up.
It was January, so it was dark and we were pretty far north in Alaska, so it was just dark the entire time, except like the last half hour flight where like we could actually start seeing daylight again. That was a long night, for sure.
It is the aircraft monitoring you and your consciousness, and you're like it does it know if you fall asleep?
No, there's no like monitoring of you. In terms of the airplane itself. There's there's a system in the twenty two that that's helpful, and the sixteen has it and have thirty five has it as well. It's called auto GCASS or Auto round Collision Avoidance system. So what that does is that scenario we talked about earlier, like passing out as an example, if I'm fighting and pulling GE's and I pass out, it may take me, you know, twenty thirty seconds to come back to consciousness, and even
when I do, like, I'm probably not fully there. So now we add another thirty seconds, so potentially out for a minute. And just imagine a fighter jet pointed at the ground going full after burner. It's going to go real fast, so like, you know, like that's bad, and the autogcast system allows the airplane to recognize, okay, you have told me I don't want to go blow a
thousand feet today. As an example, if the airplane recognizes it's going to go blow a thousand feet given the current parameters, it'll start recovering.
For you.
That saved countless lives because I've lost good friends who have passed away because of that scenario described and like, and this system is saving lives, which is amazing. So there are things like that, but in terms of like just he dozed off, went to sleep, there's nothing that you know, tells the airplane, Hey he's asleep.
Wow. I'm like really struggling with what I should ask and what I shouldn't ask. But I guess you could always just say I can't answer that. But did you did you end up in air to air combat situations? No?
I mean the last time that well, that's not true. That's that's changed recently. But the air to air world, like fighter jets against fighter jets, yeah, is not very common anymore.
When you think it doesn't seem like it.
No, yeah, you know world War two. I mean we had we built I think fifteen thousand people do one of Mustangs. We built one hundred and ninety five f twenty twos. So scale wise just very different. And these airplanes are very expensive. So if we use one hundred fifty million dollars airplane to shoot down let's say, trying to Russia whoever, right, I'm.
Not yeah, forecast, Yeah, we have some variety.
If we shoot down with an airplanes with our one hundred fifty million dollar airplane, that becomes a real big deal. So that the stakes of like using those airplanes in that capacity are pretty high, and it sounds a very big signal on the international stage. So and also when you're in the adversary and finding against a raptor, it's it's not they're not go at odds, So you're like, that's probably not a good idea. You know, We've had
people intercept Iranian fighters for example. It's open source. You can readround the news of like intercepting Iranian fighters and had no idea they were there, no idea the raptors were there. They just were on there, you know, on the Merry Way, and had no idea the raptors just sitting right there next to them, just raptor just showed
up next to them. Yeah, they had no idea. So it's just not it's not common because there's such a there's such an asymmetric you know, difference between our capabilities and most other countries out there in the world. So it's mostly been air ground. We have intercepted, like we mentioned before, like other you know, you know, avasary airplanes in Alaska in the Middle East intercepted, but never had to like shoot anything back and forth at each other.
So you said earlier that the twenty two was literally built for air to air combat, yep. But yet still you haven't really used it because you haven't had to. I guess because it was made I guess you could say it was made so well, yeah, for the purpose it was made for that no one wants to go against it.
Yeah, I mean it's a massive deterrent for for aggression, which is you know, I mean you obviously know tons of people in the military, and I think, uh, I feel pretty confident saying this is the unanimous across most people in the military, Like nobody that's gone to combat wants to go to combat in terms of like, we don't want to see loss of life. We don't want to see innocent pop being hurt like that, and that's a bioproduct of combat like that that will happen.
It's happened in.
Every every historical battle where n s people are hurt, and none of us want that. So if we can de escalate, if we can use we can say like hey, our airplane is that good? Probably not a good idea for you guys to try this, and it deters them from aggression, then like we win, you know, like we won, we got the objective accomplished, and nobody got hurt in the process, which is great.
It's you know, it's it's a there's.
A fine balance there, right. My uncle pitched professionally, player professionally for a while, and he was like, hell, you like flying jets, And I was like, I love flying jets the fifteen. I've twenty two amazing airplanes. So imagine being in the major leagues, being a pitcher and being the bullpen for twenty years, never pitching one ending like coach, put me in, Like put me in, coach, I.
Want to play, you know.
And that's that's kind of the air to air world is because it hasn't been used in so long, because the airplanes are so good that there is there is this fine balance of like, I know we have amazing capabilities, but I also know, like if we have to use them, if I have to use an after two in combat, like things have gone sideways, Yeah, it's.
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yee dot com. Remember the new stuff. The summer launch comes out June thirteenth. You ever see anything really weird out there my UFOs? Maybe? Maybe not? Well, we could start with just saying drones we're seeing, like the weird lights.
I mean, do you know I haven't seen any UFOs that I'm aware of, like they I know, like I haven't seen any that I'm aware of. I have seen drones flying before, and that's obviously that's that's obviously not great because they oppose a pretty significant rest to the airplanes, especially at air shows.
You know. Oh yeah, man, we were in I flew the.
Air show in Chicago in twenty twenty two and there's a there's a drone that happened like that started flying like right after our show was done, and it was just like stopped everything because like we can't risk obviously all these hundreds of thousands of people in Chicago on the on the shoreline there, you know, potentially get damaged because this airplane hits a drone and then it goes out of control.
Or whatever it is.
So yeah, definitely, like there's it's interesting. The drone stuff is very interesting. And if you've kept track of the war in Ukraine and how that's going and progressing with how they're using commercial off the shelf very inexpensive you know, like radio shot kind of drones to very high effectiveness rates. It changes the damag quite a bit. And yeah, you know there's a there's a company called Firestorm in San Diego.
They're they're doing amazing work and Dan is the CEO and his team is like basical they're makes making these like amazing drones that are like three D printed in a in a like a cond of a shipping container that you can stop off and print.
These things on the.
Front line are our service members can have very little training to be able to operate these. They click together like legos that they're just they're very, very awesome. So I think we're adapting to that drone that drone fight. It's just I don't think anybody realized how widespread it was going to be until we saw it unfold in Ukraine and Russia and realized, like, hey, things are changing and we need to change with them.
So that you typically always in history it's it's certain conflicts that push forward a certain technology.
Absolutely, and I think it's also for us. I think in some ways very fortunate that we get to see this unfold somewhere else and we're not involved in terms of like directly involved with it. Obviously we've we've given funds and et cetera, but like being directly involved, we're not having to learn that lesson and pay, and you know,
pay with American blood if you will. So I think one of the problems we have with was really anything, but I think the military specifically, and it's a higher stake I think in that scenario is like we plan for the last war. We don't plan for the next war. And what I mean by that is you look at the F twenty two as an example, an amazing airplane.
It competed against the YF twenty three at the time, which you know, I don't have all the data for, but looking at the airplane, it appeared to be more stealthy, it was a bigger airplane, appeared to carry more weapons, more fuel, all these things. And we went with the F twenty two specifically because it was very maneuverable, and there were other couple of factors as well, but it was like the super like cool maneuverable fighter jet that the generals were like, we just finished the Cold War,
this is what we want. We want this really cool maneuverable fighter jet. And it's amazing, Like it absolutely is amazing. But they were thinking about how do we fight the Cold War in Europe. We don't need these massive distances to be covered like we need, you know, high performance, short distance kind of fighter, and the F twenty two is all those things. When you look at the fight in Asia, General Hawk Carlile talked about it in the Tyranny of distance and how like, unless you've been to Asia.
You have no idea how vast it is.
It is huge.
You know, go from Anchorage to Japan's like ten hours, another ten hours to get to Australia. You know, these are massive distances. And any think about that airplane that what would be helpful for that? It may or may not be that twenty two, you know, And but we were planning for the previous conflict, not planning for the next one. So I just you know, I think in the drone scenario, we're seeing it unfold elsewhere and we're able to plan for what we foresee happening in the future.
You know, we're like skating to the puck as opposed to waiting for the waiting for the puck where we're at, you know, which I think is good and hopefully we'll will help us if you know, Kno Gona Wood, nothing happens, but if it does happen, we'll be more prepared than we would be otherwise.
And how close are we for unmanned aircraft to be the main aircraft.
I don't I don't know how close are that. I think we'll have mant That's why I got outkid.
The wall.
Yeah, I think we'll do man unmanned teams for a while. There are airplanes their programs out there see which is basically a companion aircraft that goes with a man fighter aircraft, and I think that'll be good. I think, you know, I think fundamentally there's a trust element, right especially with airplanes. Can you imagine two hundred people getting on a delta airplane with no pilot? Not right now, I can not right now? Right people just trust factors like I don't
trust it. But like in terms of scale, you have people getting their Tesla's full self driving and just going down the road no care in the world. Yeah, so they're trusting a computer to operate a car, but they won't trust to operate an airplane. And I think it's the same thing. We transpose that to military aviation, where it's like, I know the computers is going to do
a great job. It's all these things. But if there is if there's the decision of taking or preserving life that needs to be made, I want a human making that decision. I don't want to computer and making that decision. And I think that's that's going to be the that's going to be the hurdle that we have to overcome
over time, and I think eventually we'll get there. And the phrase I've heard is like human on the loop as opposed to human in the loop, where I'm actively making, you know, making decisions, where I'm just like human on the loop, monitoring what's happening, and then if I have to step in, it will, But otherwise I'm sure to let it do its thing. And I think it'll be an evolution of that. But I think for for man
fighters will have them for a while longer. I don't know how long that's going to be, but I just I think in the future of combat, if our abbasaries are not using man fighters, we potentially could be at a disadvantage.
If we tell you too, that's a good point, you.
Know, because and it's all you know, a computer is gonna do things that you and I would not think make any sense. If you and iron airplanes were fighting, duking it out, at no point would you consider just running your airplane into my airplane. But a computer maybe like, well, here's how much gas I have, Here's how far is to get home. I don't have enough gas to get home. The next logical thing for me to do is to use airplane to run that airplane to take out of
the fight. Yeah, you know, and you're just like you're fighting this thing, like that's just that's just the thing you would never consider as human being.
Yeah.
So so I just think, you know, they're a natural evolution of things, and we either, you know, either adapt or we don't. And obviously my vote isn't adapting.
So why did you get up?
A variety of reasons? Quite a few. Actually, I was very thankful for the time I had in I did about fifteen years and two months ACTI duty and then I'm still serving part time with Then about it International Guard. There were a couple of things air force wise, like structurally and like leadership wise and culture wise that I just was not super keen keenon. And to me, the next path for me activity wise was to go be in charge of different squadrons. You know, I was running
thetenty two demo team, which which is amazing. It's like fourteen people, you have almost one hundred percent autonomy on the road you're in charge with, you know, in charge of three hundred million dollars with the airplanes and these people to go travel around the globe to do this show. It's like I'd imagine it's like being on tour where you're like every weekend you're gone somewhere new doing this
show and talking to people and this whole thing. And that was amazing, And the leadership side of that I thought was really impactful because you connect with people on a personal level and you're on the road. You see you know the stressors that happen with people being on the roaway from their families for a long period of time, and you have to like help solve those things while also having a mission balancing that and you have a
lot of autonomy. If the airplane's break, like it's up to you and your team if they either get fixed on time or not. And turns out most airport air Force baces in the States don't. They don't work on Saturdays and Sundays. He's a Monday, Monday through Friday things. So when you have an air show on the weekends and your part breaks, you're like, well, shoot, I've got to you know, we got to figure out a way
to get apart. And that's that has included me and the superintendent at the time driving fifteen hours to meet somebody halfway to pick apart, then drive back to South Padre Island, Texas to fix it, and then fly that show the next day. But those those problems a man skills, I think were amazing. So I was very thankful that
I had that experience going on. Though there are some things that I just had reservations about and being then put into a responsibility position of a squadron as an example, it was like, I can't, I can't good conscience say these things and do these things if I don't feel aligned with that. That was just a moral conflict for me, internal like internal conflict, I would say. It was like, there's things I'm like, I'm not really on board here, and.
There an example the can you not sign? I mean, I could respect if you don't want to. Yeah, you know.
I don't want to jump into it too much because I'm still like, still sure in the air forces capacity, I do think there was a too I guess make it as simple like I guess as generic as possible. I feel like our focus went away from killing things and breaking stuff and across all services Air Force and Evey, Marine Corps, Space Force, coastcar like and all these like that's at the root, at the root of it, like that is our job. We don't want to have to do it right, we want to we don't want to
kill stuff and breaking stuff. Well it's like you know, national defense, right, Yeah, I got you, so like that that is our job at the end of the day, okay. And there were some things that to try from that, and I just it's a zero sime game. We either spend time getting really good hoping that we never have to use it, or we spend time on a lot of other things, and then when we actually are tested.
We're not good enough. And that is terrifying to hear you say that.
The impact like impacts everybody across the country, you know. And and the vast majority of my family moved here from Cuba. They came here with second and third G educations, three kids didn't speak the language, got here, worked incredibly hard, and provided a life for their family. And I'm so incredibly thankful to be born here. And I love this country a lot, like it's it's just the land that provides so many opportunities for so many countless people and
has done so for decades and decades and decades. So to me, like I want to make sure that I'm in line with leaving this place better than how I found it. And now that I have, you know, an eight week old little dude, I want to make sure that I leave this place better than you know, better for him as well as he grows up. And so there were some there were some conflicts I had in
terms of where we were going as an organization. And then also a really good friend of mine, Brian Phillips, he flies a fifteen's and he asked me when I first started the demo team job. He was like, hey, man, this is a two year thing. You have a really interesting story. Your your folks. You know vast majoriya family moved here from Cuba, you grew up your first thingguage of Spanish. You know, you go to the Air Force Academy.
You've lost both parents, lost his sister. Like You've all these things have happened to you in your life, but you've still found a way to be successful. It's like you should really consider, like what is important to you and what do you want to look back at when you're eight years old, Like what do you want to be proud of? And I don't really get hung up on the word legacy. A whole lot, because to me,
legacy is somewhat ego driven. It's like, how's the world going to like you know, you me and I realized in two three generations to my name, and it's not going to matter to anybody at that point in time. It's like, how do you impact the people around you? And how do they change and live their lives as
a result of your impact? And it could be negative or positive, but like that impact is like an internal like I know I had a positive effect on somebody, and that positiveffect I don't even know what's gonna happen, Like I don't know how it's going to propagate the next generations. I have no idea, but I know it's a good impact, and I'm happy with that. Right and when I'm eighty, like what am I going to be
proud of and happy about? So I thought about that, and part of that is really how do I shape the next generation of American youth to leave this place better than I found it? And there are a couple of lines of effort. There's a five, ten, fifteen year game plan for this because I think it's it's a thing that I want to commit to you for a long time in the near term, going to start off with the basically a flying podcast, and we're going to do to peop up in an aerobatic airplane that goes
to Sedan, all those things. And I think there's something magical about flight where if you've never flown an airplane and you go up there and I let you fly it, like I'm flying this airplane. I didn't think I could do it before, but now I'm doing it, and I'm
upside down. I'm doing these things right. But you have a conversation about really it's focused on younger adults, So eighteen to twenty five is demographic I'm looking at, and I really want to find really impressive young adults who overcome hard things and how they used faith, family, at the military, working out, academia, Like there are tons of things they could have used to get past that obstacle in their life, but what do they use, how do they use it, and how can we share that information
to other young kids? And a fifteen years old and it ultimately like there could be a sixty year old person out there who's incredibly successful and could have come from the exact same circumstances. However, it's not relatable anymore, you know. And I realized as a thirty eight year old guy, like, I'm not relatable to fifteen year old kid anymore. I remember when I was going to college, some of my instructors were like my age, and I was like, dude, are they they kicking the bucket next week?
I don't know, like they're pretty old. Yeah, And now I'm that person, right, And it's like, Okay, I'm not relatable to fifteen year old anymore. But if I find somebody that demographed age wise, is close to them like that, that's how we meet them where they're at, you know. We find somebody that that speaks our language, understands the way they grew up. You know, sixty year old spent two thirds of their life without the internet, without cell phones.
Yeah, like what was that like?
You know, and you have to go back and pull back some memories to remember what that was like. And kids nowadays have no idea what that was like. So how do you relate to them in a way they understand, in a way that's impactful, in a way that can help them change the vectory of their life, you know, into a positive way. So that's the first line of effort. There's some other stuff later on, but it'll be the first line effort.
Sounds like there's a lot kind of going on behind the curtain.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. Yeah, and I'm very excited, you know. But that was that was one of the main driving factors as well, in addition what I mentioned about the Air Force in general, Like that's one of the big factors for me that I just looked at the five years of time, like, yeah, the easy buttonist to send the military for five more years, get my retirement, and like go off to other things. And I just thought, well, that's five years of opportunity costs and I'm missing that.
I could be doing something else impacting, you know, other people in a positive way. And life takes these twists and turns, and you know, get married, have a little kid, like it's just life spins that it does, you know, and and you just you appreciate it for the twists and turns, you know. And and sometimes there are things that happen, like whether it's serious stuff or inconsequential stuff. For the time I was little kid, I want to
fly fifteens. At pilot training, there were no fifteens available to the point where like on my dream sheet of like what I want to fly, I put on fifteen one through like twenty six or whatever it was. My flag commander looked at me. He was like he was an fifteen guy, and he's like, this is hilarious. I appreciate it because I love the fifteen two, but you have to give the other options. I was like, okay, fifteen, eight ten, and I don't care whatever happens. The next
you know, there were no fifteens available. There were eightens available, So I got eighten out of pilot training actually, and then four months go by and there were two guys that wanted eight tens that got F fifteen's. There were some switch that happened and a flying fifteens. But my point with that is like had I gone to fift and ease or F sixteen's, I never had to flow in the fifteen which they are planning. I wanted to
fly as a little kid. I would have never flown up twenty two, never done the demo job, wouldn't be where I'm at right now. Like unfortunately, you know, like they're there are things in life that just don't go our way at the time, and we're like, I don't understand why, and slowly they'll reveal themselves to you. And sometimes it takes a lot of times, sometimes it takes four months.
You have a faith, I do.
I was raised, uh, I was raised Roman Catholic, probably like most of every there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have not been.
Actually I really want to go. For for multiple reasons, I can't go right now. One affiliation with the military obviously, and two there's some just like I don't want I don't want that government to have a single cent on money.
You know.
It's kind of that. My grandfather is a He was a mechanic for like fifty years his life, and he only only ever bought Craftsman tools. He was like, it's not made America. I don't want it, you know. And this is a guy that would not he wouldn't even drink vodka. He's like, that's a communist drink. Yeah, like this is in Sweden. He's like outcare, you know, and it's very he's just very principal in that way. And
so yeah, I would love to go visit. But yeah, So I was raised Roman Catholic growing up and continue that faith, and you know, I think living around the globe has exposed me to a lot of other religions. And one of the things that I've I've found, at least my interpretation, is that there's so many common threads across the major religions on the globe, Like and at the end of the day, like.
What do I still read?
I still read the Bible, that's the that's the text I choose to read. But there's so many common threads, And I feel like religion in some capacities has has gotten people in the place where they're like, well they're not the way they don't believe the way I believe, so for it must be at conflict. And there's so
many things about being a good human. There's like just even ten commandments, Like there's so many things that are just common threads about being good human, taking care of your neighbor, tak care of family that I deeply appreciate. I think my the thing that just has I guess bothered me not about my faith in religion, but just about globally is like how people use religion as a weapon to hurt other people, and that, to me is is his travesty.
I stand in line with that as well. It's orrible for people to take to take that. I mean, it's if you if you believe there's a God, then you would believe there's there's also an adversary to God, and it's only from the adversary that to use God as a weapon. I mean that that that's that's not an argument against religion. That's that's a testament to there is a God, because there wouldn't be so much controversy over it if there wasn't. But there's als there's obviously a
force pushing against it. Have you ever been in a cockpit at a time and looked up into the stars and just thought about your smallness? I mean, surely you've been in places on this globe where no other human has been. Yeah, I have.
And do you want to address the point you mentioned just now, because I think it's an important one where I think a lot of folks in the military who either raised in some religious capacity, they go to the military and they see horrible things.
You know.
I have friends from high school that enlisted the Army and lists the Marines and have seen horrible things and it makes them question their faith because they're like, well, how can this happen? If there's a god, and I think you brought up, you know, a great point where it's like there's a counter force there. I mean Roum's twelve twenty one, I think is an important one, you know, like it's just like, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, and it lets you know
there's a balance there. There is a good and a bad and you have to understand that there are bad things that happen, but they are also good things that happen, and there's this balance there and you have to choose, and I choose the good, you know. And I just I say that because I've met a lot of folks in the military who have lost their faith as a result of their service, and it's been disheartening to see.
For sure, I understand that, but the logically, I continue to to go back on this podcast to like the logical argument, but to say something evil happened. Therefore I cannot believe there's a god. Is going from one worldview to another one, and the other worldview that they go to also doesn't have an answer to evil either. If we're all just you know, come from pondscum and we've all evolved, then the problem of evil is not solved
with that. Either. There's still an evil that we can't explain that happens within the human heart that starts that wants to kill and still and destroy other humans. And just from a pure scientific evolutionary background, that doesn't explain it either. In fact, I think it makes least sense from an atheist perspective. It makes more sense if you say, there is a god, and there is a purpose, and
there is a way, and there is an adversary. And just as in any great movie or any great novel, there is no story unless there is our two forces that are counteracting each other.
Yeah, and the like you said, there is an adversary, and I wish there were more. Obviously this hope and hope iss not get a game plan, but you know, I wish more people from multiple faithce realize there's there is a common good, there is common ground, and we may believe slight differently, like there is there is good and there's evil, you know, and there's there's good in all of us, and there's there's bad in all of us.
Like it's just there's there's this fighting force, right that we have to contend with and we have to choose. So yeah, I think that's like that's been my biggest the biggest thing that I've I've seen at least traveling around the globe is like a little bit concerning of like how you know, it can go back two thousand years, how it's been the case where we use religion in a negative way to hurt people, and it's like, shoot man, like this is not this is not meant for that, you know, to.
Ever to ever think that from a biblical perspective. Now there are other religions that would definitely advocate for violence, yep. But to read the Bible and to end up at the very end of Revelation, at the end of the New Testament, and to close it and go, well, I'm going to fight to kill some people, then you need to go back and start. You've completely missed it completely. When Jesus says, love your enemies, do good to those
who hate you, turn the other cheek. To see a man at the epicenter of the Christian faith, to see a man on a cross being killed and praying to the Father saying, forgive them. They know not what they do, and the very act of him dying on that cross is to forgive the men that were killing him. To take that idea and to think that that means we should go to war, for this is a complete atrocity misunderstanding of what Jesus came to do and say to bring his people to God. So sorry I took a tangent.
You had a question. I'm glad you did, but from a pilot's perspective, Oh yeah, you asked me if I've ever liked Actually, don't want to go there yet because now I want. I wanted to say one more thing to this conversation. There's the whole epicurious idea of and what what's happening to your buddies is. It's the the epicurious idea of if there is a god and he is all powerful, then why doesn't he stop evil? And if he's not, then he's benevolent. He's if he doesn't
want to stop it, then he's benevolent. If he can't stop it, then he's not all powerful. But the problem is that there still is evil, so that means there must not be a god but that but that's wrong thinking because there is that there is another option to this. If we believe there is a god and he is all powerful and he and he is all knowing, and he is good. Okay, Because if if he was all powerful and evil still existed, that means he would be he would be bad un less unless he allowed evil
for the purpose of good. And that's the part that's never understood. What if God is working for a greater good all along and for the accomplishment of a greater good, evil does exist so that it could be overcome. And we see this, you'll know this. And just a few years with your boy as you have to discipline him or if he does or there's going to be times when you let him get into trouble on purpose so that he sees the lesson of the greater good. But
you're all what, You've never left him. You always know what's going on. You're always there for his good. But the existence of evil doesn't automatically mean either there is no God or God's bad, because what people often forget is he can allow evil for a greater good.
Yeah, And I think that's a great analogy the way you described it with like you know, raising a silent of him getting in trouble, I like, yeah, the stoves hot bud, like you know, like, hopefully it only get burned too bad.
I say this a lot, and I say this a lot, and people, you know I could put it this way. What if I told you right now, Josh, like I do I do something to my kids. I I will take one of my boys to another man, and that other man will pin him down and hurt him. And there has been times when he even cries. My boy will cry and you'd go, granger, evil man, No, no, I will I will pay that man to do this, hm, And you'll say you are sick, and I'll say, I'm
talking about the dentist I thought actually works. But uh I, I know that this is going to hurt him. I know that that that he might think it's evil in the moment when he's six years old. But I also have in mind good teeth because I have the good, the good result, because I want the good for him. He has no idea about good teeth or why he needs to sit in his chair and be pinned down. And this guy's got these knives basically sticking them in
to his mouth. He hates it, and and that's a bad example, but it's still a small example that that evil or bad could exist. If there was a greater good that will accomplish at the end of it. Yeah, no, I agree, Like, I agree with you for sure, I know you do. I'm just talking kind of out loud for your buddies that cause the military guy see it all the time like I see evil. So I'm out there is no God to me, and I go, well, your new world view doesn't answer the evil still there.
You've you've denied God, rejected him. Okay, I understand that. But you didn't pick a new world that doesn't have evil? Do you still have the same problem. You didn't solve anything. And but anyway, these these are common things. So back to the cockpit. Now, have you ever been there, like on a on a night like you're describing an Alaska and you're just there by yourself and had a moment maybe I think one of the.
I guess too too funny stories and a serious one. So the first funny story was on the same mission with with soup, when I was like tours over Alaska. You know, I take the we have these anti exposure suits as well, So you have these like rubber necks and seals or your feet and all that stuff to keep you from if you had to reject and get into cold water, like you're gonna at least survive maybe
fifteen minutes longer than you would have otherwise, hopefully get rescued. Yeah, some somehow in Alaska, no nowhere, but different, different, So we're in these things.
I take one of those go pills.
I don't remember I told this story in Vegas at all, but I remember Taylor gopill. We're on the tanker. So the tanker is like a mobile gas station effect that we're swapping out getting gas. And I look at Soup's airplane and I started seeing like these like light these like colors, right, and I just take the go pill, like, am I is something happening to me? Because I just took this amphetamine like what is gone?
Like pulling the you know, the seal.
And then I realized is the Northern lights, which is which is awesome, and it's like just amazing, like this amazing backdrop, you know, And I was like, holy cow, that's super cool. But for a second, they I had
a little bit of panic. And then there was another night where on the night vision goggles, I was at like forty five fifty thousand feet and we have the night vision goggles on and you're that high and you look them in the stars, the amount of stars you can see, and just the vastness of of like and just put some perspective how small we are, you know, or even like flying over New York City you look down and you're like, there are millions of people with
millions and millions of problems down there. I have no idea what any of those are because I'm up here and I see it from a different perspective, and I think astronauts kind of like have the same same kind of idea where they see no borders, they see just the globe because their perspective is different.
Yeah.
Wow, But I guess the serious one was. I was in in Alaska, Flapps went tw us and I came back and had a catsh trophic landing gear problem. So this is actually, I think, before I'm at you, it's October of twenty twenty eighteen, and the left main landing gear collapsed through like a mechanical failure. So actually I didn't recognize at the time. I thought it was another problem because the airplane was landing and it was still
somewhat controllable. Then it eventually stopped being controllable. The left wing tip hit the run way through me off in the grass, and and I was actually like, I think I think the only person to take in F twenty two like at being but like in the dirt, you know, bounce around and yeah, it's just yeah, Earl Divil's just hanging out with me, you know. But uh, there's a
small building in front of me. So I liked to like get the airplane back in the air after offerating a little bit, and I missed that building by by like ten feet or less. So I think about when it related back to faith and like why that's important. Everything had to happen at the right time. So the failure had to happen when it did. The airplane had to go off the rung way when it did. My decision making had to happen when it did. The engines had to like spool up from like idol thrust a
full after burner when they did, which just happened. It doesn't happen like instantaneously. It takes some time. My responsiveness had to happen just so that I didn't hit this building. And if you think about the consecutive minor miracles it
had to happen for me to survive that scenario. Like the list is along and I had just lost my mom the year before, so to me, you know, like I definitely, I definitely believe in God, and I also believe they're like there are other things out there, whether it's my mom, my grandfather who's a massively influential person in my life who passed away eighteen years ago now.
But it's like, I know, I'm a good pilot, but I'm not that good, right, there are all these things that had to have happened just so that led to an outcome where I survived. Like I said, I'm good, And the my skill all those things is simply a byproductally amazing instructors and teach that I had along the way. It mentored be and helped guide me, you know, And that's what was also the mentorship, you know, Like who who were my instructors going up to that point? You
know I had I had. Yeah, I've been flying airplanes for ten years, like fast juts for about ten years that point, So those people are in my control. If there were so many things out of my control that happened in a way that allowed me to survive, you know, and incredibly thankful for that. And then for the next couple of months. You know, I'm flying back home after training mission and the distance from the airport and anchorage to the training airspace is pretty far, so it's probably
a fifteen minute commute, if you will. Yeah, and you have a lot of time to think, and you know, you just think about that, and you think about, man, had something gone slightly differently out of just like been gone, you know, and cease to exist. But all these minor miracles happened in a way that allowed me to live and survive. Incredibly thankful for that. And I think that's anytime you have like a near death experience, you reflect
on that, you know. And going back to the military example, we have people that you know, when they're in a really bad spot, like people pray. So you can't tell me one second that you don't believe there's God because there's evil. And then when you face with mortality or your pray, you pray, you know, like there's a there's
a conflict there in terms of ideas. But yeah, I was incredibly thankful and it just reaffirmed my beliefs and also reaffirmed that like there is a bigger plan, bigger, bigger picture out there that I'm not aware of.
And now here you are married, have a little boy. Yep, that that is now that you now have because you didn't crash into that building that day. So let's run that. Let's take that scenario and then run it back through the test that we just did. Because this this same God that performs the miracles to save you and to correct all that, would you say, micro miracles, all the small miracles that happened in order for you to not hit that building, He's also the same god that allowed
the landing gear to malfunction. So think about it that way, this same God, it would have been easier in our in our minds to think, just let the landing gear come out normal, then none of this happens. But then you and I are not having this conversation, you're not reflecting on it. There is no gratefulness or thankfulness in your heart that you're thinking about because of the miracles, and so by allowing the the evil really of the
malfunction of the landing gear. This is a small example to someone who's who's you know, some of your buddies that have lost somewhere I'd seen death. So we don't want to compare the two, but it's still a it's the same idea that that the malfunction of the aircraft and the continued events with the same God allowed them, the same God fixed them, the same God care wrecked it, and now the same God is drawing in you in
your heart to reflect on it. Yeah, it's interesting. God is not a boring being, Like you don't sit here and go man, I've been flying all these years and everything was perfect. Yeah. No one goes yeah, I've never I've never lost anybody in my family mom, dad's grandpa, great grandpa. Everyone's still alive like everything. No one says that we walked through life with wounded soldiers. Really, you know, just just event after event, and God could have stopped all of it. And then we just want to you
know what do we do. We end up in his presence just like hey, what's up? Man? Thanks God? You know, No, we go to him and just go you it was you. You had me all the whole time. For some reason. The plan that he had is for us to walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, and there is no other way than to go through that valley. That's where we go. That's the path that humans take, and no one's immune from it, religious or not, believe in God or not, everyone still walks that valley of
the shadow of Death. Some people walk it alone and some people walk it with him. That's the only difference. Yeah, so that's what was happening. In my mind though, is I was thinking you took back off, you missed the building. That didn't that only temporaries solved the problem. Don't know what happened.
Yeah, so I get airborne. Obviously I knew something was catastrophically wrong.
I know it was. That's the word catastrophic.
Yeah, it's catastrophic for sure. So we come back around and we don't do anything by ourselves as fighter pilots. We have a team of people that help us. You know, whether other airplanes are on the ground and flew down the runway, have the people in the control tower look with the binoculars and they're like, everything looks fine because the component that failed really, you know, nothing got bound up.
It was just like not supporting the weight. So imagine like I, you know, put the gear down, or there's something in the middle that's broken. It's just not supporting the way of the airplane anymore. So to like summarize it, they look at nothing's wrong, and we elect to I basically don't like to take a cable, which is like you said you saw on top going with the land on the ships the cable. I'll just tell your cable
and land land the airplane that way. So the left ear, you know, collapsed again the wing topits are own way. But I was in the cable at least caught it. There were some things I had to do to make that happen, but it slowed me to stop and get out of the airplane. And uh, yeah it was. It was funny because like the crash by rescue guys show up, you know, there's a big cloud of dust. Thankfully nothing was on fire.
Was good.
Yeah, and crash for the rest of you guys show up and they saw that last part. They didn't see the first like off roading bit and like get airborne again. It's like, yah, are you okay? Like they had missed the whole thing, And I was like, yeah, d I'm fine. This jet is not good, you know, like yeah, it's just pretty bested up. But yeah, it was that was that was an interesting, interesting event.
You know. Now your new mission, yeah, is to figure out why the Lord saved you in that time in twenty eighteen for this moment.
Yeah, it's a it's a question I asked myself a lot, you know, and thinking.
Not putting pressure on you. Well, I don't. We could talk about it on text as you go back to Vegas.
Yeah, sure can, I think, you know, I think it's just this constant pursuit of like, how do I how do I live in a worthy way?
You know?
How do I help others around me? How do I live a good life? And how do I And we've all made mistakes. We've all we've all had you know, like every's sand everyys had mistakes, Everyone's done all these things, everybody.
Every single person.
So the fact that we have a compassionate guy that is willing to accept you for those faults and sees that you're making amends and working in a positive direction to fix things, like that's pretty I'd rather be on his team, you know.
Yeah, he does. And the Bible says, the New Newton Testament will say very clearly that he accepts you on one ground, and that's his son that's what John three sixteen should be read as God soul, love the world. He gave his only son so that whoever believes in him. Yeah, so he's compassionate because he provided away. He gave us. He gave away for guilty sinners that have rejected him.
Like you said, everybody in the world has rejected him, and he gave away for those sinners to be reconciled to him through his son, who went to the cross and died the death that we deserved, saying, look to him and you'll be forgiveness. That's the greatest story ever told.
And I'm really I'm really excited to kind of go through that journey again with my son as he grows up, like to see it as see it through his eyes and see it from that perspective. And I'm sure I'll ask thousands of questions.
You know.
He's just like I never never thought about that way. Let's let's think about that, you know. I'm like, I'm excited to go on that journey.
And fatherhood teaches you a lot about your relationship with the father. Absolutely, we're very grateful and very excited this next chapter. You know, the previous chapters were good the jets are great, but man, I just want to be home and hang him and not doing anything, you know, like my goal is to make every baseball practice, every jiu jitsu match, every music you know recital, Like that's so cool. And you'll even take him to the dentist
occasionally occasionally, Hey, I want to finish with one thing. Yeah, randomly. I saw this this morning. I fought, like, you know, my daily news, and and I was reading it. I was like really early this morning and actually texted him and man, but I was like, this is an interesting headline. I wish I could discuss this with somebody. Wait and wait a second, Josh is gonna be the headline? Is this? US Navy loses a sixty million dollar jet at sea
after it fell overboard from the aircraft carrier. Did you read this? I did see that. Yeah, because he did the the ship captain did a maneuver and it literally threw the jet off the side. Have you ever heard of this? I have.
I mean I imagine there's some like tie them down as well, So I'm not sure if it was tied down properly, if it was improperly tied down, I have no idea what Obviously I don't speak on half the Davy as the air Force, but it's just a tragic back like it's like Holy Cow, like we lost an airplane that is very difficult to replace, you know. Thankfully nobody was hurt, right, but.
So evidently along with Pharaoh's chariot it's at the bottom of the Red Sea. Wow. True with the Egyptian chariots. It sits along with an F eighteen Super Hornet. Do they go down there and try to get anything.
I'm sure there'll be some recovery efforts of different pieces, like thirty class fight elements. I'm sure they'll try to collect.
I don't know.
I didn't fly F eighteen, so I'm not sure what exactly on the airplane that they'll need to recover. But anytime we lose a sensitive asset, you we'll try to recover as much as we can.
So they'll send divers down there to get computer assets.
And yeah, I'm not sure what they'll get, but they'll send some rescue teams down there. Some of you laugh of the Pharaoh's chariot. I was laughing because we were Uh. Lisa and I had this conversation the other day. We're like, how, what's your favorite animated movie? And she was like listening to stuff, you know, like the nineties, and I was like Prince of Egypt, and I was like, yeah, that's good.
Can you imagine this moment? It must have just been like slow motion, just like I think it's going to the jet is going off the side.
And just yeah, when their videos from like Vietnam where they're pushing airplanes and helicopters off the carriers, that's right because they couldn't come back with them. I've never I haven't heard of anything where like it was an unintentional like oops a daisy, that's a pretty big opsidaizy. I mean, I'm curious to see what happens.
There's always more to the story, though, you like you probably saw headlines of something you were involved with and you're like, yeah, that one the whole story for sure, for sure. Like this just says that there was fire, the enemy fire or a threat and so the captain turned the ship too hard and the ship tilted and F eighteen falls in the water.
There has to be a little bit there has We don't know because you've seen you've probably seen videos of like especially like the baring sea and like they're just pitching up and down. There's water coming over the deck of the ship. That's like washing over the ship. And like, well, if they didn't lose an airplane on the carrier dover under that, then how do they lose it here? There has to be more to the story, So like that's why it's harder, Chuck spears until we get the full, full story.
You know, Well there's the answer. That's that's the answer we needed. Bro. Thank you so much, man, there's an absolute pleasure catching up. Yeah, let's do it again sometimes. God. Yeah, definitely appreciate it absolutely. Thanks for joining me on the Grangersmith podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes. If
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