24th STS Operator | Chad McCoy (throwback episode)

I'd really like to hear first off, you know, sort of what your path was, you know, growing up as a kid and what like sort of took you towards the air force?

throwing pinklaan grenades, you know. And so, uh, you're also an amorurby movies, you know, and so you know the movies that were kind of formative for me were you know, the same as everyone else you look at like I want to be Rambo, right and uh and probably a lot of Navy seals became Navy seals because of the movie. You know, it was awesome, and so we kind of had a culture there for a while that was kind of glamorizing the military experience and specifically the special operations experience.

And so all I wanted in my life was to wear all you know, ballaclava, hav An MP five in a flight suit. That's all about rappel through skylights all I want in life. And you know, once I got the balaklava, it wasn't very comfortable, and MP five wasn't very you know effective.

had no context what war was. I didn't know how real it could be. I just knew it was kind of sexy, right and so and pair rescue was one of the few jobs in the military that was always kind of employed, right, you know, regardless of war not. They were rescuing people outside of the mountains, they were jumping in the middle of the ocean. They were badasses to begin with, and you know, icing on the cake was maybe if a war kicks off, I can go

do that stuff too. But but it was this like nineties, right, and so you know that was kind of leading up into me going to the military. So not to get ahead of it, but you know that was kind of the genesis of it. Was I wanted to do something exciting and cool and and recruiters are you know listening

to this? Is that the things ours was enamored by was you know, guys putting their kid out there and showing me scuba tanks and you know, guns and you know, motorcycles, Like that's what That's the life I want, you know, and you can get it in a number of different ways. You know, you can go be a ranger and do all the same things. You can go be a seal, you can be in Green beret. You know, no one really has really cornered the market on the coolness. They

all have it. It's just you know, how accessible is it. And and per rescue was the quickest way just to be canning with you was the quickest way to get all those things grafted the bad Yeah, and it sounds cheat, It sounds like cheating, but you know, it was truly. I can go to scuba school, I can go to you know, I went to Key Wes, you know, special Forces Combat High School as an eighteen year old. You don't get that in the army, right, You're a senior guy.

You've cut your teeth, you proved yourself, and you actually want to do that crap. And I knew I could get those things off the bat. Went the free Fall School as a you know, eighteen. I turned nineteen at Freefoll School, and so that's not normal. Maybe it's normal today, you know, it's more accessible today, but back in the day, it wasn't. And so that was the path I chose.

he's he's legit. I am nothing. I'm a punk that was in high school last year and here I'm going to Special Forces scuba school and I don't deserve to be there. And they reminded us that every day. You know, Airport fuge, you know, and air Force got a bad rap because you know, we go in there and we smoke these things. But it was because our selection was good, and so you had like really talented guys at the top of the food chain going through these courses and

they crushed them, you know. And but we were a bunch of pricks, you know, we were young guys, we were you know, arrogant and uh but yeah, for sure, we probably deserved everything we get. You know, we had, so you're.

the progression of my career. But like I ended up running selection training at the unit, and the guys we were bringing on were better than us. They were. Was it harder, maybe not, but were they better? Yes? We were better at selection. We're better at selecting the right people. And so it's kind of funny to look back and think, like back in the day, it was like who is the hardest? And you could just get through hard things?

But does that make the best operator? It doesn't. It makes a guy that's really good at carrying heavy things, right, And here I was trying to blend in with those those hardcore guys you know, and you know, fake it till I make it. But but yeah, so a lot of growth through the process.

Force Special Operations, can you sort of give us the lay And it's changed over time too, I guess, but can you give us the way out of what it was when you were there and what it's become now.

of this. And so Vietnam kind of was the galvanizing kind of environment for pjs, and they just did hard stuff all the time. Man like you guys are in a tick, you know, a bunch of SF dudes or conventional you know, army guys. They were gonna the guys are gonna go to the hoist under fire and try to take out their casualties. And you know, Vietnam's you know, was a good, you know, kind of litmus test for

you know, being a speck ops guy. You know, the Seals, Green Berets, they all cut their teeth there, right, And so here pj's were. They were one offs. You know, they're these guys that just were kind of uh, you know, kind of the rebels of the Air Force for sure, but their job morphed into protecting aircrew, and so it became this kind of safety net for for aviators. So

I'm gonna fifteen pile I'm flying. And here's a really good example is you know the Gulf War, you punch out, a PG is coming to get you, right, and you know he's going to come with an armada. Not only Hilicotter's a tens flying with him, and so it's it's a legit package come with him. So pj's morphed over the years and then the g what happened, and then it was the chance for pj's to say, hey, man, like, what do we want to be when we grew up?

Because this is no kidding the test and so that's going to have the conversation, Oh it's great.

excellent j tax. But CCTs were initially designed to do kind of austere ATCs air traffic control basically stand up a remote site and bring air aircraft in like out of their rucksack. Yeah, remote airfield. So well, you look at Desert one, right, there were the guys bringing in those aircraft and that was kind of the genesis of it. But then it became okay, there's a necessity to have these guys call close air support and can they do it really well? A high level absolutely can, And so

they kind of repurpose them. And so over the past, you know, over the past twenty years, they repurpose them to be excellent j tax and you know, they're just badass dudes. They could get the job done. They could bring in you know, your your infil Xville, but also called casts, you know, manage ir and so kind of jack of all trades as well, you know, and so, and then you got pjs who traditionally come from the rescue side. So you have rescue the air force, and

their their job is to rescue pilots, that's it. And so they do it and they're they're the best at it, you know. They you know, come in helicopters, they jump out of airplanes, they do the NASA mission, I mean, they do the rescues off McKinley. I mean, they're everything, right. But then within soft you take those pjs and you say, how do we purpose these guys to support ground forces more effectively? And so in the early days, Desert one is a good example when you start building up jsock.

They realize that, hey, man, we can use pjs and be these kind of these this enabling force that protects our guys and provides confidence to ground force commanders to say, man, like, if anything happens, that you guys are gonna do it.

And a good example that is black Hawk Down. You know, we had pjs there that went down and and guys I had the the man It's it's hard to put this into words, but like when I was a young man, I looked at you know, these magazines and I saw guys like Tim Wilkinson and Scottie Fails, and I was enamored by them. And then I got to meet them in person and and and then become have a relationship

with them. That's so cool, which was amazing to me, And it probably wasn't amazing to them because I'm a nobody, right, but like for me, it was a big deal. And so, but those are the guys that put themselves in harm's way. They're kind of the lesser known portion of black Hawk Down in the story of uh, you know, Gothic Serpent. But they, you know, they risk their lives to save others and cut those guys with those helicopters, and so you know, then the the Assault Force understood, holy crap,

these guys are really good this. We can use them on the maritime missions, we can use them on these helo soft forces, and so they became kind of a necessity, you know, over time. Yeah, and correct.

and the one sixtieth was very, very busy. They were getting on more on anybody, and my job was to protect those guys, not on the aircrew, but everyone else is on those you know those uh you know those infill and x fil you know birds, and so you know, that was a primary mission of our unit. And then on top of that, we would basically adule pj's and controllers out to the Army and Navy and so, and that's where it gets kind of exciting, right because everyone

wants to be part of that. You touch that magic, and there's a lot of magic there, right. And so you know pj's controllers. You know, it sounds like pejorative, but they were commodities for a while. And so and that's not a bad thing to me because you're on the best missions and you're with the best operators, and so my job is to be the best PJ with them and protect them and save their lives and uh and think ahead of problems as they happen. And so

and the comic controller is running. I mean he's the busiest guy on the target. Yeah, you know what I mean. He's got multiple radios going multiple aircraft. Maybe he's calling casts, maybe he's calling you know a black HLC to ring. You know, casually is out and the has a cool job because if no one gets hurt, you got a pretty sweet gig man because you're running down on the best of them, and then when someone gets hurt, you

refocus man, and that's your your primary task. And so so yeah, it's it's a it's a different, different gig man.

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

many magazines. They had under rounds on me. I don't know, man, but you know I was. I thought I was John Rambo and I was going to go save anyone who needed me right, But the fact is that you're just a safety net and you know, we hadn't really started yet, and so you know, it's kind of an interesting kind of transition to what the GAT became because I didn't have any experience, you know what I mean, I wasn't nobody, and so yeah, it's interesting. Man.

task force assets. Those would be to convention, you know, protect everybody, right, And so if it didn't fall under our purview, they would be the ones that take care of it. And so it's not necessarily like I'm better than you. It's a different mission. And so you know, you know, we we use the term you know, White Side for you know, kind of conventional soft where Seft's not conventional. But you know that's the term we use.

But they did a lot of great things, and especially in Afghanistan, you know, they did a lot of rescues, a lot of notoriety with you know, special Forces teams that they came in and save. But when you talk about you know, kind of the tip of the spear, when you kind of neck it down to mission, it becomes a little bit more exclusive, right, and so it's a smaller club of people, and you know that's by design.

You know, there's a different selection process, which I'm sure we'll talk about, different training, and also different understanding of assets available. And that's usually the differentiator between White Side and Tier one, right, it's assets. You know, operators. You know, you can teach a guy to shoot really well and do all these things, but what assets do you have

available to you? And so when you have dedicated casts every every target, you have a one thirty every single night, which people don't have and and I'm used to that. I'm like, we don't have ac went there. How we gonna go out right? And how do we do this because you know what we're gonna tick, you know and comment. You know, White Side guys are like, yeah, man, we'll just fight through it, and you know Tier one guys like, well, we got to just drop it and we'll move on, right.

was gonna be, did you work up, did you train for it?

so we're drinking these things called white dogs. It's like like Koreean yogurt and like soju, and we're tearing it up, man, just the two of us. You know, no purpose, just that's what you do, right, And we watched the world Trades that happen wow and together, and remember sitting on the couch watching it. I'm like and I'm trying to rationalize it. I'm like, oh, I must be beacons and the towers and I'm like trying to make sense of it. And then you start see more and more like holy crap.

And then he starts getting all these phone calls and I didn't. So I was at a rescue squadron and he was at a special tactic squadron in Okanawa, and I'm like, you're getting calls. I'm getting calls like you guys don't want me. And here I was this, you know, I thought I was this pipeiting guy, and when nine to eleven happened, I assumed i'd be a part of whatever the response was. And I was in the Pacific

and I wasn't. And we started doing oh yeah, Philippines, which was a thing okay, And we had a U A forty seven out there that crash, Yes.

don't know whatever it had on me. And we go out there and we think we're going to war, and it was this kind of like posture and it was like, Okay, there's things going on here, but we don't know what you guys can do. How do you contribute to that?

And so it was really frustrating for me as a young guy because I started reading Stars of Stripes when nine eleven happened, and I started, you know, reading about these SF guys they're going with like, you know, shooting forty millimeterre of the mountains and getting these ticks and pulling back, and I'm like, that's what I signed up to do. And I'm in the Pacific, and so I did a you know, I was stuck out there. I

was stuck. I was PCs out there. I had a you know, another at a commitment for another year, and I was miserable and ended up getting an ulcer. Like I end up getting ulcer as a you know, twenty twenty year old or twenty whatever whatever it was.

right because black Ward was the thing back then. Or I could go to twenty fourth Sts, which I knew was going to deploy. You knew you were going to war if you went there. The problem was I wasn't nobody. I had no experience. I was a young guy. I had nothing to give them. And traditionally the twenty fourth sts was taken like, you know, guys in their thirties, they were the best of the best. And here I was. I was barely twenty one. I was like twenty two,

I think at the time. And so I put in a package and they're at war already, and I put in this package and I was up in Alaska. Actually I was doing some rescue stuff with the Alaska guys for a month. It was great. And I flew from Alaska to Fort Bragg to do selection by myself as a nobody, and you know, do you like do a PT test? And actually a funny story, uh PT test. So I'm I'm super nervous, like I'm an like I got no shot coming up here. They're not gonna pick me.

And so I wake up with three in the morning. Got a pttest, I think at five, wake up with three. I'm stretching, like doing random stretches before HP was a thing. I'm like like touching my toes and I'm like I need to take some multi items because that'll make me run faster, right, figure some gatorade. I'm doing everything wrong. And I show up at five and this multi vedom in my stomach is I have no food in my stomach.

And I know that I know better now, but you know, you have to do this three miun to running and it's like show what you got. And so the chief that was there was this runner. He was like a marathon guy. He's like, do you mind if I run with you? What I'm gonna say no? So, of course, so he's running with me and I'm running. He's talking

to me the whole time. I'm like, I'm trying to run a six minute mile, which is hard for me, and he's talking to me, and my stomach's turning and I got to vomit, but I'm not going to stop. So I keep running and start vomiting on myself and I'm puking on myself and he keeps talking to me. I'm like talking to him puking and I puked three

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

trash you. They rip you apart. And again, I'm a nobody, right, I'm a twenty something, the kid who's never done anything in my life. And I come in there and they're like, first of all, we never see anybody vomit on themselves on this run the whole time. That's kind of weird. Like I get it, kid, Like you want to be here like you do. And I told him I was very honest with him, and I said, listen, guys, and I wasn't. There's no ego attached to it was no.

to do one more deployment. I went to Korea. It was a short diploma, is like thirty five days, forty five days. And this is what I was telling you about you two crash. Yeah, And so I'm out there. I wasn't an alert. We didn't fly alert for the U twos because they're like high high stuff, like very low probability and shot down, and so we're not alert for them. And it's like, I forgue, what time was in the mornings, like seven eight? Maybe I'm hungover, maybe

I'm not. I don't know the holy to it. And they knock on my door like Chad, hey, you two just punched. You gotta go rescue this guy. I'm like, oh yeah, cool, yeah, let's go. And so we went out there and the you two. This funny story. Has actually met the pilot recently. He lives in my town. Oh really yeah, awesome story. But he basically limped his YouTube across the border ejected in the space suit.

in a space suit, breaks his back. We go down to him this mudfield, litter him out or put him in stakes, litter raise him out and rescue him, you know. And then I behind and like I'm gonna go like secure this crash site. Don't tell I'm doing No one taught me how to do this stuff. And I ended

up finding this black box. This recorder is a giant, real recorder that there's two Koreans are pulling out this apartment complex and I got a gun on you right, and I'm like, and Chad now knows I could have like locked these dudes up and like zip tied them and like probably took them away because they're probably.

a week? I'm like hell yes, Like that's all I want to do. And I had no training, So you're supposed to go through training, right, you have a year of training there, like we're gonna we want you to go. Now. I'm like, yeah, man, I'm in like, I have no gear, I have nothing, you know, like we got you. So I go to the arm ring and they got this little shorty M four and I never seen one. Now it's normal, right everything whatever, it's ten in. I never

seen one for like, that's the coolest thing ever. And they had painted it for me. I'm like, dude, I am bigger, I am, I am varsity I now yeah, I can any I can kill anything, like I am the man, Like this is to your one right now right, and we got the rain. We sit in and I'm like, dude, this is everything. It's a culmination of everything I want in my life.

It was like, you know, I thought it was the man before and now I know I'm not, and I know I need to grow to this. And so, you know, that was a pretty formative experience for me. And so I come back home from that deployment and I start Green Team, right, so Green Team is our selection.

employment schools and basically foundational schools to put it all together at PJ school to make you a PJ. Right, and so but before that you go to selection, and I guess I kind of super glossed over this. It's pretty important. So our selection used to be it's not the same. Now it's completely different.

it was like ninety, I don't know whatever. So one hundred people out of basic training come there and they're all eager to be PJS because it's sexy. Right. You see this guy, he's got blouse, boots, cool bret, he's jacked, you know, he's probably taking a ton of rooids, and he's briefing you guys, and you're like, I want to be that guy, right, And here I am, you know, scrawny, like one hundred and forty five pounds going yeah me man. So I came in the Air Force to be that guy. Yeah.

I had already made up my mind. So I had already done the passes before it came in in Hawaii and Honolulu, I did it with a prior controller. I was committed. And so the stakes are high, right, because you come in and a lot of guys don't make it. Most of them don't make it, and so you're come to be a PJ. You're probably gonna be, you know whatever, a load master or a cop or something. My motivation was to not be that. My motivation was to be what I wanted to be, and so I came in

to do that. I finished basic training.

it now. So now they break guys out and they actually you know, build them up to go pre selection.

was a young kid. I didn't never done anything hard in my life. You know. I was a kid from Hawaii. I was a surfer. I was good in the water. I was comfortable being, you know, uncomfortable in the water. That was my saving grace. I wasn't super fast, you think, being that skinny of you fast. I wasn't fast. I wasn't strong. But I would go through every day knowing that I had to get to the end of the day, and I wasn't thinking about it in the week or within the month. I was sitting at the end of

the day. And that was the only thing that saved me through the process was that I took it very incrementally, and so I'm like, I'm gonna get through this run, and then I know I'm gonna go to a water confidence session. I'm gonna get through that, and I'll get to the end and I'll get to eat dinner and I'll go to sleep, and I'll do it again. And it got me through the whole process. And I was unassuming. If you, if you had a lineup of guys, you would never have picked me to get through it. There's

no way. Because the guys are big, buff guys. They all quit. They all quit, and they quit from runs, they quit from swims, they quit from water confidence. And the water is a great equalizer, right, And the Navy knows that. The seals know this is that when you get the water and you're uncomfortable and you can't breathe, you're gonna quit unless you can reprogram your brain to say, man, listen, I got this. And so one of the things we do is buddy, breathe in. But every readings really hard.

You pass a snorkel back between your buddy. You have an instructor. You beat the crapety the whole time, and the guy you're with can screw you because if he's a spas and he wants you're not getting a breath. And then when he gives back to breath. They cover your smoke, but you're not getting breath either, and so you got to like mentally prepare for not breathing. And

so I was pretty comfortable. I was like, man, you know, if you surf the north Shore Hawaii, that's worse than any water concession you ever have in the military, right, you know, like getting held down at sunset is a big deal. And when you get held down for two waves, you are gonna die, right if you survive it. Man,

life is life is good. So I came straight from you know, surfing big waves, going to in doc and like they would do drownproofing, which sounds really dangerous, but like I would like I pretend like it was a dolphin. I make noises and go down and take a little piss in the bottom and come back and breathe. It was comfortable. I was like, this is like meditation was

early before mindfulness was the thing. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, so yeah, so you know you do that, you do you know, increment, Like it's harder, harder every week you do a six mile run at the end, a ton of push up, some of the pull ups instead of all that crap. And then you graduate and so once you graduate that you're in the pipeline. And so then you do that two years you're describing, and so you know, you usually start off at scuba school. You go to we used to go back and you go to Key West.

We have on school of school now. We go to Key West with all the SF guys and we would crush it because we were so comfortable in the water, Like, you couldn't beat us, man, you couldn't crush us. And these open water swims were easy. We'd crush everything. Man. The runs, you know, runs were hard for me because I wasn't the good of a runner. But we were studs, you know. And you go from that. You got a scuba bubble, which means nothing to anybody except guys have

been to scuba school. And you go to airborne school and people like, what is that because it looks like a little astronaut. You a welder?

understand medicine when I left there. I was clueless, Like if you were shot in front of me after the soccer, I'm likes, I seen it safe. You're like, what do you keep saying that for? I'm like, my glove's on. Yeah, you know. Pharmacology was foreign to me and it never made sense to me until someone explained it to me in a way that I could understand it. And the process is so much better now, man like, and so everything's improved after the war, everything improved.

it was. And so, you know, I go through all these courses and then I get to PG school and they put it all together that you climbing and some hyngle rescue stuff, but it's real, it's real basic, you know, because it's hard to make someone an expert hiengele rescue in a few months. It takes years, right because that

I mean that alone is especially skilled. But to be a good medic, to be a good parachutist, to you know, to be able to do you know, we do rams jumps, which is basically folding a zodiac up and pushing on the back of a plane, getting the ground, you know, get to the ocean, pop it. You know, a scuba cylinder, inflate it. You know, all these things, and you're supposed to get all of them. Right, You're not good at any of them, right. You're you're you know, you're competent,

but you're not an expert. And so medicine is make or break. All these other things aren't like they're all make or break, right, because they're all dangerous, right, But medicine is what you're it's your bread and butter. It's what you're asked to do, right, And if you don't rocket at it, like someone's gonna die in your arms.

And so when you go to the twenty fourth, they know you need to top off, and so they start start, you know, kind of finessing those those technical or tactical skills of medicine and make you a really good medic.

put it together right. And so it was like, hey, I went They've sent me to swift water rescue courses in like West Virginia, and I would become an expert swift water rescue. But what does that mean? Right? And you know, they send me to these mountain rescue courses and I would do all this high end like you know, very complicated technical rescue. What does it mean? You know our jump trip? Yeah, you're you're getting very proficient at jumping,

but how do you put it all together tactically? And so it's crazy to think my Green Team vice the Green Team today. Those guys that graduate Green Team today are freaking studs like they are. And I can say it's not about me, it's about them. They are studs because they get the training. So what I went through is you know, I go through advanced free fall. You know, we learned how to jump. You all kinds of equipment. I don't actually know. Maybe we were jumping nods at

the time, which is a big deal GYP nods. People weren't doing it, right. I'm trying to think we you know, really crazy dive trip where we do three weeks of you know, just getting back into draggers and doing you know, line dives, which suck, you know, and f m P is doing CB, which CQB for every other service is very like foundational for us, it wasn't. And so I'd never done CQB when I came up there. You know, it was a good shot, but I did CGB is

very difficult. It's a different game, right, Like, it's a different way of thinking and processing information very quickly, and so you're learning all this stuff within a year and so you pop out of there and you're a Tier one operator now right, Well not really because I've never been in combat, right, So I've been to common that you know, quotations, but I never you know, fired my weapon with your magazines. Yeah yeah, And so when I popped it on the backside, they sent me to a

Tier one unit. And here I am with the best of the best, and I'm a.

and that's when things get get real. Right. So my first big ap I was with the Navy and full compromised gunfight and I'm like, oh man, we're are we fighting?

this is normal, Okay, this is how you act to this. Okay,

this is when you escalate force. And it's not as intuitives you think. And so thank God is with the best of the best. Right, they were the best of the best. And there were guys that have been on two rotations before of combat. They've been there, done that, And here I was a new guy going enamored. I'm like, holy shit, like, yeah, I want to hang with you guys.

there's a humanitarian aspect to my role. And you know you have to be both.

is a very mature reaction. And then the guys that respect the most. And I saw it, I saw it live, and I'm like, holy crap, you didn't do that because this and so you share processes information, and so when I would talk to young guys that were like, you know, you said Whiteside and you're like, well, what's the difference, I'm like, there's a difference because I am seeing things that are very high level where people are making very

good decisions and bad decisions. But I'm learning from it and now I'm competent and capable to make decisions on my own. And so, you know, I said this before to some other folks, is that, you know, being the first person to shoot is something I never wanted to do because you never know if you're right or wrong. But as I got more mature. I'm like, Okay, I know this is right, this is the right thing to do because we are compromised and that guy is a problem.

I'm gonna shoot that guy. And but that is not that is not an intuitive thing. It's something that's learned. And so you know, the high level soft forces, you know, Army and Navy, the guys that are very senior, they're they're wired that way, they understand it, and they're the guys that I want to be next to because they're going to make very good decisions. They're not gonna make it radic decisions, aren't to make emotional decisions. They're gonna

be very you know, deliberate decisions. And that's a very high level skill. And that's what separates White Side from Tier one.

and it's easier to just you know, to live in a black and white world, right and just to you know, shut off the emotion to it. And same with combat, it's easier just to shut out the emotion to it. As you know, then too, I'm I'm in front of the human being who stuffering. I'm in front of him being who's triab to kill me. So I'm gonna kill them first without without necessarily taking away their humanity or just.

them and I treat him humanly. We're not we're not on target. There's no violence here, there's no emotion. You're you're in captivity. I'm taking care of you. I'm not gonna I'm gonna treat you humanely. You wanna go to the bathroom, will take the bathroom. Yeah, it's business. If you want to. You want to get crazy, like, we can deal with that. But like at the end of the day, like if you're bum respectful. And we had

this guy who was there for two days, and I remember he was like really appreciative that I would give him food. I wasn't giving him, you know, benefits. I was like feeding him. I was doing what I should do, right, He's a human being. And turned out he was just a legit farmer. And me and the Master Chief took him down to the gate. We gave a bunch of money.

You know, he blew his door off. He no, he cried, and he thanked us and he got on his knees and and I'm like, man, you know, this could have turned out totally differently if I had treated him, you know, like if I had been a prick, because there's a group thing that goes along in the military, and but I knew better. I was like, man, this is a human being. And even if he has a terrorist like he's going to face his punishment. There's no punishment I'm

going to put on him now. My job is to be ethical with him, right and to watch that reaction when it turned out it was a mistaken identity, like thank god, you know, like thank god that you know we treated him well. And you know, there's a lot of mistakes that happened in the early days of Iraq and when we saw Abu Grave and all those things that were for guys that had been around for a while, like that's disgusting. You know, those were nobody's they did that crap.

be doing the behaviors should be doing. If you're with a group of people that behaves that way, you're gonna be here that way, right because you want to fit in.

It's a it's a it's animal behaviors, right. And so you know, for my saving grace was I was the mature guys that it had been around for a long time, and that were you know, I saw bad things in my career, but like for the most part, very professional guys, and uh, you know, it helped me become the professional that I became and helped me lead effectively later on my career.

It's scary to me. I hate being one hundred fet off the ground and being off one, you know, drinking piece of pro and looking down like this is gonna not only am I gonna die, but I'm gonna fall along the way and I'm gonna Yeah. But I like jumping, right, So there's Scot Evers that really like jumping, and there's guys that were like medicine. Guys were like shooting, and so you gravitate to a certain kind of discipline. You have to be good all of them kind of, but

you're gonna be good at one really well, right. And so you know we have the guy I hate. You're the jump guy, right, You're the guy loves jumping tan you know, Bundles, You're the guy loves medicine, right, and so you're.

So tanna masters, you know, a f fi allose things. I also love shooting, right, But you know, how do you put all those things in to become a good operator? And so what does the customer need you to be? If we're commodities, you know, what does the navy ask me to be? They're asked me to be really good at medicine. They asked me really good rescue and not be a liability on everything else, right, And so to not be a liability, you have to be good at those other things too.

It's like day two. I'm in this outstation roal remote outstation. I'm like, he's like, hey man, hey chet, you cut this out of my armpit. I'm like, you want me to cut it out your armpit? He's like yeah, how can that be? Like like I understand, Like I got to do minor surgery.

carry these books on me.

lighted open just plus comes all everywhere. It's just like so much, it's like an ice cream cone, like and uh.

screwed because I probably shouldn't be doing this. And you know, he's like, yeah, that's good.

we're not flying daytime over Baghdad, like not happening. And I'm like, well, I need a ride, Like someone needs to take care of this. It's bad. And you know, they asked me to do it. I took responsibility for it. It's mine now, it's my project. And I'm trying to find a ride. I can't get I can't get to where I'm going. And so there was some British uh they were called super Pumas I believe, and so we

jumped on those. I mean they had M sixties in the door daytime flight and we flew down and this is when Bagdad was kind of gnarly, you know, And so we dropped on the ground. Had my ranger we call them SSTs or Star Security Teams, and they're basically my security perimeter. And I had my team, my PG team and comic controller and so we get down there. I'm the team leader and you know, long hair. At the time, long beard, I was wearing real tree camis, which was cool because it was back in the day.

It was cool to looked different, and so I wanted to be this different as like a look, and so I was doing that. It's so stupid to think about now. But again, on the ground and this wreckage is like strewn for you know, as far as you can see, and on fire. There's fire in this river and this ditch. It's a mess. And so I'm like, okay, guys, here's what we're doing. And my half my rangers we were talking about radios. Half my rangers had radios, half of

them didn't. I'm like, okay, so I need radios in every VP. So we're gonna split get heavy upon here because that's where the you know, most of the city is. And we're gonna do this. Okay, it don't matter. We don't have security. We're gonna do this. We didn't have casts, so the controllers trying to get on call casts. You

guys were the first on the ground. Yeah, first, And in my mind I knew the city was gonna start waking up to what was going on, and you know, potentially tunists like terrorists because this is back when there's like a lot of different tar cells. They're gonna come and like and they're trying to punch at us, you know. So we we get on the ground and my team was you know, I had a great team of guys, my controller. You've got falcon view up. Back in the day,

we have falcons. Oh yeah, you know, you center plot and we had no security. And they're they're bringing back bodies, right and so but it's not bodies like you think, you know, it's not bodies. It's pieces. And uh be super respectful to kind of you know, because these are all British. There are some says folks and some uh you know, some British uh you know, aviators, and we're

bringing back these bodies. And I told the team, I said, listen, we're gonna start putting bodies together based on like, okay, right hand, left hand is a body you've got you know, you have a torso it's a body. And so we'll get accountability eventually. And I want you guys to get the weapons all those things and we'll get this done. We'll get out of here. And it turned in to a huge event and it was it was massive and so excuse me. So guys are bringing back stuff and

we talked about compartmentalizing information. I did very well. It didn't it didn't mean anything to me. I was very professional. It was very processed, like here's what we have to do, we're gonna do it. And so we're about six seven hours into this. The guys are doing great. My rangers are hole in their positions. No one's pushed on us yet, and they bring another super Puma down. Maybe it's a links I forget which bird. It was with some SCS guys and two two guys and they're like, you know, hey,

am I, what do you want us? And uh, I'm like, hey, we have some vulnerable positions over here. Some there's apartments or some buildings. I was like, if you guys could go do some soft knocks, it'd be great. And they're like, yeah, absolutely, and they're guys right, They're like, yeah, we're in and so, you know, it didn't They didn't ask any questions, like we got it. And so they went out there in the city and they started doing their things. They all

spoke Arabic. They was doing a thing and you know, the sun goes down, you know, my guys hadn't eaten,

you know, in a day, and I I knew there was bodies in the ditch. So there was like a basic you know, in Iraq there was all these like irrigation ditches and it was on fire, was diesel and burning and ord JPA whatever, and like, you guys gotta get your dry suits on it. It was winter time in Iraq. I was like, you got to go in the ditch and dig for bodies. So I was like, put a line on them, you know, put a rope

on them, and go down there and do it. And so you know, we had all our gear and so you guy puts his dry suit on, you know, young PJ. PJ goes on top to tether him, you know, fire pulling bodies and weapons out on the pitch, and the sun goes down. We're alone, you know. And at the same time there was an accident in Missoul where a teammate of mine was in a panda with the army and a Ranger striker hit That was right before I

got there. They collided and my buddy Chad Gezagi was in there and his head got rocked pretty hard and he really needed to get his head drilled to releave the pressure. And you know, Chad is still you know, he's quadriplegic still to this day. The accident, but it happened right when we're in the field, and so everyone kind of turned their attention to supporting that x feel and they forgot about us in the field. And so we're just know what the Bagdad, We're doing a thing.

And and it was the right call. I mean, they needed more help than we did. We were self sufficient for the most part. It could have gone really bad for us, but it didn't. And but I was like, why is there no comms? You know, but the entire task force kind of went to le leaning on Missoul and so, you know, here was on the ground. The Brits had a kit bag delivered and I'm like, oh, thank god, what is this? And we pull up and it's it's these flasks of tea and I'm like like,

cool man, Like I might go some tea. I'm like, yeah, I'm drinking tea is like creamer and it's delicious tea. And I'm like it's not my thing, but yeah, let's let's do some tea. So we drink some tea and this work gets funny. So we we survived that night, and we're still we're still cleaning this crashlight. It's a mess. So day two goes in and this Marine's come out. Lav's come out to me, and I'm the team leader.

I'm running the crash. It's my crash night. And this Marine major shows up and again I look like I you know, I'm like a hobo, right, you know, which is what you want to look at and soft back in the day. It's like you want to look as weird as you can look, and I look pretty weird. And he comes up to me. He's like, you're in charge.

I'm like, yeah, look, here's where I want you guys from a falcony, push your you know, your your vehicles out there, heavy weapons and basically telling him where to go. And so he listens. He puts the folks out there. So about ten hours in the next day, we're still working. He starts to figure out that I'm an listed guy because the way people the rangers are talking to me,

ay bro, and he loses his mind. A Marine Corps major is a big deal, right yeah, And they don't take orders from a list of guys, and he finds out I'm listed, and he goes ballistic on me and I stay on my ground. Of course, you know, I'm like, listen, this is my crash site. Like you're in support of me. I was like, if you want to fight over rank, you can do that, but here's what it needs you to do. And you know, it was hard for him to process. And I'm like, listen, man, like I'm being

respectful to you. I'm not, I'm not being a dickhead. I was like, I need you to help me, and here's what I need you to do. And it was it was like it was an inflection point for the operation. Like it was like the mood changed, right, it was like do we want to help you guys at that point? And we end up spending three days out there on the ground. We end up you know, coming back and it was, you know, it was one of those offs. It was like, it was really strange. We came back

and we didn't support the task warts. The task warts stood down off because we're out there we couldn't support them. And you know, I you talk about compartmentalizing things, and I shared this with somebody else recently, is that I did a really good job of compressing or compartmentalizing my you know, whatever I was seeing, I just did a great job of packaging it really well. You know. I taped it up and I put it in the corner. It didn't exist, It did not exist in my life,

it didn't exist in my mind. Nothing. And so we came back to the bee huts we were refitting. We just needed some sleep. We had to go basically sport the task force in six hours. So we're getting like five hours sleep as a chow and the chaplain and the psychedic came to a bee hut and this is before you could talk to child and the psych dogs, you know, like knocking the door and like what they're like, do you guys need to talk to us? Like why

would we need to talk to you? That was my reaction, right, And I was the team leader, and I should have been more cognitizant than my guys. Maybe we're suffering. My guys maybe were dealing with stuff that I wasn't. Because I was I was maybe the problem, right, I was the guy that could just figure this stuff out in a negative way. And I said no, I turned away, And because I said, if I'm good, they're good. And years later, I I reached out to one of the guys on that mission with me and I said, I

apologized to him. I said, I'm sorry, man, I messed up as a leader. That wasn't how leaders supposed to behave. I should have been cognizant of where you were at in your life and I didn't. And you know, it's one of my regrets as a leader. I learned from it, but I also I continue to compartmentalize things to my career. And so you say, you know, seventeen combat deployments. There's a lot of compartmentalization in that, right, And when you get really good at it, it becomes your process. It

becomes natural to you, and it's not healthy. So it's healthy for the unit because you're still on the line, right, deployed, right. It keeps you on your job right the.

got compromise. We're at rp orcent of ladders and compromise, dogs barking gunfire from every compound and it was like it was on and like I said, being around confident people, they all pushed forward, and I pushed forward because they were doing it right now, because I not because I was the man, not because I had you know, big balls. I was like, we're going forward, going forward, and we push up there and you know, it was the first

time I had you been in a big firefight. It is the first time I fire my weapon, you know, at another human being. And but then we had a bunch of casualties and they're like PJ. And I'm like, oh crap. I'm like, not only is this target chaos? Now we got people shot. And so I go over there under fire and I'm like, oh crap. So you know, guys are shot, two guys shot, and the target is supposed to be secure. Guy comes out the doors, are shooting from one of the compounds supposed to be already cleared.

I'm like, holy crap, this is insane. So I'm pulling guys across a compound under fire. It's insanity. It's chaos. Other compounds are just blown up all around us. We have no clue what's going on, and we're in a hostile kind of region and the city is waking up. And we had one asset overhead and they were working it man and the CCT was working it. And he's a stud. He actually lives in close to me in my neighborhood. Now he's done, and uh, he managed that

chaos very well. But I started getting more casuals. Guys like I had a guy coming to me. He's like, hey, I'm shot in the head. I'm like huh, I'm like where And so I pulled off his helmet in the round. It struck the front of his head, bounce, stuck in the back of his helmet, and I'm like, holy crap. I'm like, I check his helmet. His skull is not broken. I'm like, dude, keep clearing, man. Yeah, we were so

so thin. It was like, keep clearing. He ended up spraining his ankle and he was complained about spraining ackle warming his shot the head, and then that guy shot their legs and uh, it's just chaos. And so you know, it probably was only maybe an hour and a half maybe two hours of kind of conflict, but it felt like all night. Yeah, and we end up pulling this guy out. I had a I went super light because we end up pumping like eight hours to this target. So I was like super light. And this is back

when none of the seals would carry any gear for me. Right, they wouldn't carry a schedcoat, they wouldn't carry it nothing. I mean they they wouldn't even carry a blow of kids on their own. Kid. It was like Chad you got it, right, I'm like, not for everybody. And it got better three years, right, it got better. But we were so lean and mean that it was like we were pulling them out on a poll of slitter. If you've ever carried somewhe on a pole of slitter, it's

pretty difficult. You talk about CrossFit workouts, that's the workout of the day. And we humped him down to this, uh this road. The city was waking up there, coming on like Hunchback nor Dame kind of style, and the forty seven almost crashed on top of us because they were so hyped up. And I could have touched the bottom of forty seven when they landed. And so you know, I'm covered in blood. My uniform is covered in blood.

And we get back and you know, it's when you get back from debris from big ops like that, it's it's kind of like, uh, you know, everyone's kind of chipping away. How many people are killed and number You're like, that's like four thousand people right right? That wasn't people there, but you know, and then here I was, you know, dealing with like, you know, what could I have done better?

And I could have done a lot of things better and and I, uh, I have a lot of remorse from that operation for the things that I didn't do well, and I learned from it, and so I committed myself to being way better than I was on that op and I became obsessive about it. Honestly, as an operator.

lot of crazy experiences. But for me, that was one that I could have proved myself on and I and I failed, and it was, you know, failure to me. I'm hypercritical. I'm like, okay, I could do this, this and this, but I committed myself to never make any mistakes again and you know, maybe one day walk on the street in New York. Maybe all I'll get the chance.

do the no Can hostage rescue. We're just gonna, like, we're gonna fix it. Right. If they get the hinterland, they're gone. And what happens with hostage and Somalia is they basically hold them for the year. They go black and they pop on the net make their demands, but it's really hard to find them. And so we had very little guidance and you know, we we went down. I was in an apartment complex and I can't tell you what country, but like, hey, guys, who want you

guys to go like, all right, we got parachutes. Now, we found some parachutes in ic U ninety that were expired by a couple of years. And I'm like, parachutes don't like, they don't turn into like, you know, they don't turn to like toxic waste every two years. Like, they're probably fine, and this is pretty important. Let's just

jump them. And so when you talk about oram in the military, it's a non starter. I'm like, screw it, man, I'm the jump master. I don't know if I'm allowed to make that decision, but we're gonna do it. We jumped. It was all fine. We got there, you know, and we were part of the solution. And so the squadron sent up a really small contingent of folks to where we were already, and then it resolved itself the way it did. I can promise you it didn't go the way the movie went or the TV you know, said

it did. It was. It was much more any kind of low key operator stuff. You know. There were some heroics that happened that night. There's some guys that did some pretty awesome stuff. But the end of the day, it was it was you know, kind of potshots from

very very close distance, you know, pulling him out. And then what people don't realize is that when we pulled him out, I flew back to the main aircraft with him, and Discovery Channel basically blurred my face and said I was an Avy seal, which is the highest praise I ever got in my career, to be called a Navy seal. My wife saw it, She's like, let's you walking. But when we did that, we came back, the pirates attacked

on their ship. This never made the news, is that they attacked another ship in retaliation and they just so happened to drop off their cargo so that they were sitting very high in the water and they couldn't get on the ship. And so they called us and were like hey, it was like six of us, can you guys come help us? Like made a and so the destroyer around, like can you guys go? And so the regular squadron was going back and like high five in

each other, like you know, you know, cocktails whatever. We were on this ship, and Phillips was with us. So he's with us on the smaller ship and we're like, yeah, we'll go. And so we went and basically did hook and climb on the ship and did you take Phillips with you or no? No, okay, he's chill on like captain's bag. Okay. I was like yeah. So we went out this ship and we thought there's pirates on it because there was RPGs. They went lowerder in the side

of it. I mean, it was bad. It was like, holy crap, this is legit, and maybe it was a little bit of humorist. We're like, yeah, we got it. And so me and one other seal we cleared the front of the super tanker, which is like Conics boxes, like multiple football fields. They're insanely big. I didn't know how big these things were. And we're clearing this, the two of us pining off Conics boxes, just one after the other, thinking we're gonna tick nobody, armor catches, masks, nods,

and you know, we had four sixteens. We didn't have MP sevens. We had four sixteen's, and the rest of the team went to go to the superstructure, which they thought everyone was locked down in, and so we're assuming we're getting in a gunfight and there's no one on the ship and it was the eeriest thing and so it was just out there floating. No, they they attacked

this thing. They couldn't hook onto it because it's so high and we didn't know this, and so the crew had locked themselves in the superstructure thinking they were under duress, and they called may day and so here we are to save the day and there's no one there, yea, So we have to we have to ride back with this ship for like two days. And they're like merchant marines on this thing. And I don't know if you guys know what these people are. They're like full on

like criminals. Man, They're like they're they're making shanks. Yeah, and I'm sleeping this bed. I'm more scared of them than smaly pirates. And I'm like, these guys are gonna kill me and they're gonna eat me. And but no, it was, Uh it was an interesting like dynamic. But there was so much more to the story. Eventually it will come out. I'm assuming somebody will talk about it. But uh, yeah, it was. It was cool. It was cool to be there. I didn't know it was a

big deal. It was during Easter and so you know, I would call from the fantail of the ship on my my ridium. I had to readeom folks that I'm a bougie guy, right yeah, and so oh it's like she's like, what's going on there? Like nothing? What do you hear? She's like, it's a big deal back in the States. Yeah.

it was cool man. We did went and did the thing. We wouldn't do another thing, you know. Yeah, So you're constantly looking for the next thing, right to kind of fill.

got local food. You can't go outside because you have to be If you see a white guy there, it's a big deal. So people say they're living in a safe house, You're like, dude, when you're living in a safe house, you don't walk outside, right, So a lot of that grunt work on that.

can do it in Europe. But there's not a lot of people that do it. There's people say they do it because they go into country and they're like, hey, I have a passport and I'm wearing a suit. That's not OPE. When you're actually doing tasks and saying hey, i'm gonna you know, I'm gonna fix this problem for you. You know, those are the problem sets that are more difficult, and it takes a more refined kind of team. And so it takes guys that are smarter. It takes guys

that are able to work on their own. And so I did that for a while.

from like intelligence gathering to identifying landing zones to all.

I go do an LZ service? Yes? I can. You know, if you're a really you know, high end competent, you know, because there's different types of seals, right, and the seals that we're with are very high functioning guys that are like, can solve problems? Can you go do X? Yes? We can. Can you work with this partner for us? Can you

build this safe house? Yes? And so it's not sexy stuff all the time, but a lot of times it devolves into very dangerous activities, and especially if you're in environments that are very nascent and there's no footprint.

like pull us out of remote regions. And it became a thinking man's game, which was really good for me because I was intellectually stimulated right and I was like, holy crap, this is fun.

like we don't need a gun. We need guys that can do the gun work but also do the you know, the tech stuff. And so a lot of operators became kind of dual purpose where they had a basic understanding I'm not going to overinflate my you know worth, but a basic understanding of how sing it works, of how networks work, and then how to get after those things and how to how to employ you know, tactics and techniques to uh set conditions for other folks to come

in and be successful. Right, and so you know, you look at the theater right now for Europe and even pay Com. You know, there's a lot of prep work that has to go on to make those those theaters successful.

They were all you know, it wasn't joint anymore. It was like this is a bohemoth, you know, task force. They can do everything right, and this one was too, and so you know, it became kind of a dog fight for mission, you know, and so everyone could do it. And so those very bespoke capabilities you're talking about, they were important and they would definitely be involved in it was very high level. Otherwise they're like, we got it right. And so it was a really interesting dynamic to watch

develop over the years. And like I said, I came in you know, two thousand and two to selection in two thousand and three, and then watched the whole transervation of the command and it became a monster, right, you know.

get the best medical training you can get. And that's the differentiator too, between white white side and Tier one is that, like if I want to go, you know, to the best burn center in the world, like I can go there and top off on on burn injuries. And that's the thing when you talk about going into remote medicine and some of the safe house stuff, is that you have to specialize then, because I would have to do pharmacology stuff in the safe houses where it

wasn't expected to be. On the on the assault side, I don't care, like just do just do good, you know, pain management, that's all we care about. If I'm living in a safe house and guy gets sick, I gotta take care of him. And so I would have to top off on those skills. And so guys like eighteen Deltas is very intuitive to them, they would know how to do it. But here I was the guy that could integrate with the assault mission, go back and forth

to the IFO mission. But then I just need to top off on the medicin right here, and I can get I can get there fast, right And so I think that's the biggest uh. One of the best attributes of pjs within that world is that they're very quick to react to needs. And so you know, if you look at like a tech company, the successful tech company as the ones that can react to the needs of the customers very quickly and build a build a thing.

PJS within a Tier one units are that, and they can say, oh, you want me to be in a ropes expert, gotcha, let me go to Montana real quick, or you know, get topped off and I'll become a you know, you know, elite climber. You know amg A certified and it's it's like that.

stabbings and shootings. You're getting reps right, and you know, you know, and I I dote on the Rangers a lot, but the Ranger medics, their medics became the best in the tiers. I I feel like they had so much trauma, whether it be internal you know, to the regiment also host nation. They were doing so much stuff, and their pas and doctors were training them NonStop. So when they come off the missions when everyone else is playing video games, they were doing classes. And that's why they became so

good what they did. And so when I I, I you had to do refreshers every two years, you know, to keep your currencies up. And every two years I would go through Softness, which is at Fort Bragg. And I could have gone to like you know, the the Gucci ones like and gone skiing and like done some medicine, get refreshed, right, But I knew it was so important that had to go with the best guys. They were

doing no kiddy Military Medicine. So I did every single time, every single refresher I did at Sophomass, every single one of them. I never went to New Hampshire and went skiing. I never did in my whole career. And guys are like, dude, why don't. I'm like, I want to, but I have to have to be good at this. And what I realized was when I go there Ranger Medics, these guys would teach me a ton and then they started becoming

instructors of softness. And I was so impressed by these guys because they were so switched on and they'd seen so much and they were able to uh instruct very well. I was. I was very impressed by the range of medics man. And so I I championed us getting back into that program because we kind of got pushed out of it and we got pushed back in. But I

have a ton of respect for him man.

like that was my chance. And so if these guys were getting chances every night, man, they are going to be the best very fast. And so when you're working with very high end soft guys, they're not getting shot all the time, you know what I mean, You shouldn't be getting shot all the time, right, So the Rangers were getting shot a lot, you know, no offense, but they were getting shot a lot because they're going in

some dangerous missions. And the Rangers took over Atfghinistan and they were basically a Tier one four in Afghanistan and they were killing it. Man, they were doing so many ops and they were kicking ass. Because everyone else is so focused on everything else in the world, They're like, we got this, and so they got a little reps. And so that's why I am That's why I love what they did and I respect the hell out of them.

there's a PJ controller in theater. Like yeah, like okay, well we could just use them, right, And so these guys came out and was like I forget five or six guys and they're like, hey, you guys go to this OTV, Like, how hard is it. It's a swim into the beach. It's not rocket side. And so we did one one shakeout swim. They'd done like weeks of work up, we had done zero. Me and the controller like, how hard is this gonna be? It's like, it's a swim and so we uh we go into a destroyer.

We go into a rib uh noel h X ribs, but uh we go to zodes and the zodes kick us off and we swim in, and we swim in to the hinterland in this remote region. We walk in and uh, I'm not on a night schedule, so I was really tired. And they were doing something. There was an activity. There's like a terrace camp right next to us, and uh, it's like our wreckie. We were doing something. I can't tell what, and I'm like bored out of

my mind. It was the most boring. I mean, there was like a hundred guys sleeping like down a ridge line. You can see him, and like, we can't do anything about them, but we, uh, we do. We do our thing, whatever we're doing, and then we pull out to patrol out.

And so I'm in the back of the formation. And if if there's any Navy you guys watching this, they'll know maybe you guys are not really good at like, uh, you know, patrolling, like the basic fundamentals of like you know, uh, you know, line formations or passing signals back and forth. They just kind of wing it right, So they're patrolling. Everyone's got their heads down, all in MP seven's and

I'm walking in the back. I'm the second man. There's Roos security and these guys go to this ridge line and there's this uh there's just like this animal pen. So in this region they have like these they built these walls with those sticks to keep the lines out, and they have one entrance and so they know when the line's coming or whatever. And so and these guys rustle because these birds kick up and they come out

and I see them nods. I'm like, holy crap. So I put my laser on them, and I stop, and I I'm like you no, no one's gonna look at it like this, and no one stops. They could keep going. I'm like, okay. So it's me and him and we're about to get a tick, and so my laser's on them. These guys get up. They got weapons, and I'm like, oh my gosh, of course, what's gonna happen right now? And the guy behind me sees it, puts his laser

on it. So two of us and we stop. We're holding these guys know something's going on outside, and you know, like people in movies, you're like, oh, it's you know, two or three guys. It's easy to clean up. Like no, it could be very nasty, right, and so, but our entire force has gone over the beach to get their fins on to go swim back out, and we're standing there. I'm like, okay, and so we just stop and we wait. We'ren't there for five minutes, which is an eternity or not.

Those guys never came back. They don't even notice we're even there. And so these guys finally chill out. They turn back around their weapons and go back down and you can see the ever little candle in there, and we patrol back out the we go back to the beach.

the back. She's like, I know, y'all out there killing black folks, like we didn't kill anybody different. She's like going off on us, and one of the master chiefs there rips her new one, and I'm like, do people really say that kind of stuff? Like we come off an op like it's fucking crazy. No one has no idea what we're doing. And to make that comment is like, dude, like, no, we're actually really civilized people or doing some very gentlely stuffed in the inter lendstage, you know.

part of the solution. And so I think a lot of military folks because within the past twenty years, there's only handful of people that went to combat, right, the lot of people deployed. Within the people that deployed, there's only handful people actually went outside the wire and fought. But to the civilian, they look at it like, oh, you're in the military. I think of your service. You're like, oh,

you went to Afghanistan. No, you're you're a bogram and you're a logistics person and you'd never left the wire, like and you had you know, you had coffee every day and good chow haul. And there was certain people that went and fought. And it's a very small group of people, and that's hard for people to understand, Like it's a small group man.

like FML, It's like this is my life now. And so I did that for six months and they're like, hey, Green Team Selection open up and we need a senior guy to go there. Do you want to go do that? I'm like, yes, yes, absolutely, give me out of ops. And so I went there and and that that was really formative for me as a leader. I learned how to lead in a different way. I had been leading the past, leading the way I saw other people lead, and I thought that was where it would do it,

and it was not authentic for me. And so I got a chance to kind of reset for myself and say, listen, I'm not a hard ass. I'm not. I want to be, but I'm not. I'm never going to be. I'm a nice guy. You know. I can connect with people, and so that's what I need to do. And so when I ran selection training, I got to kind of cut my teeth doing that. And then from selection training I went to twenty fourth sts and became the chief there as the senior you know enlisted.

had to pick like a fictional or a real character.

the Rage Attalia, you're a hard ass, right. But what I realized was that my superpower was you know, connecting with folks and being empathetic and having high IQ with folks, and so I could still be just as effective and not have to be that guy. But it took me a while to figure it out because I was immature, you know. And so as I became more mature and became more self aware and comfortable in my own skin,

I realized that I could lead a different way. And you know, is that a kind of gentler you know, military maybe. I mean, you know, I still have a temper. I can still get mad.

I can be very honestly and tell you that I did the best I could to be that guy, and I think I did a decent job of doing it. But it was it was an inflection point for me personally, and it was a big growth, you know, moment for me.

point a senior, you're done. And in the Army especially, you know, within the tier one unit you can be an E nine and running gun right until the day you retire, right, And I think that's awesome. In the Navy, you can do it to a certain extent, but they're not the same as the Army because there's a lot of nines in the Army and the Air Force there's

not a lot of E nines. And so if you're in A nine, it's like, holy crap, we need you to go here, and we need you to manage you know, this this program with this unit, and it's not sexy, it's grunt work. We need guys to do it. We need good guys to do it. And so I you know, when I wasn't one of those guys, I was really excited about going to twenty fourth to be the chief. I never aspired to be that A lot of guys did. I never did. But when they asked me to do

I was like, yeah, I'll do it for them. And and my wife knows this, she was like, I was like, I don't know how I can do all this stuff. And I was like, I want to be a good leader for them, and so I really tried. I tried really hard to be well. I should have been in that unit, but it was not prestigious for me. There was no like, uh, it wasn't like meeting my chest.

I was like I made it. I was like, I was like, oh, crap at this job and it's gonna be hard, and I have to deal with all these people issues and all these guys are in harm's way. And we were non stop deployed and we never stopped deploying our unit, just like a lot of these units were deployed since nine eleven into perpetuity and so until

just recently they stopped deploying. Right, you know, Afghanistana racks draw down Syria their home, and that's when the real problems come in, Right, that's when guys are like, now you're getting duys. Now you're getting the guys with you know, domestic issues. I didn't have those issues.

When you're saying, how they make decisions. We put them in situations, ethical dilemmas, We do all these things that really breaks down the individual and how they think, which is way more important than how much you lift. Do We still want you to be a stud absolutely, You got to right, You got to you gotta do the long ruck, you gotta run fast, you gotta care eavy things.

amongst their peers. And so one of the questions, it's funny, like I was thinking about, you know, talking to you guys about this, is that you know, one of the questions is would you want to be in a car with this guy for I think it was like eight hour car? And that's a good question, right, Do I want to ride in a car with you for eight hours? What does that mean? Does it mean I like you? Doesn't mean I can get along with you? Can you? Can you blend into a team room? Can you deal

with other folks? Can you do that and also keep your moral compass? Because that's an ethical dilemma that exists going with other tears and so our guys have done a really good job of staying above afray, and I'm really proud of them.

And you probably do the same thing, and you're like, hey man, he's you know, he's a puss, Like he's not like me, And so you're going to basically dismiss that guy, or if you're an extrovert, he's an introvert, like he can't be like me. Yeah, And what we realized was is that, you know, when we talk about diversity in the military and people roll their eyes at it because it's been it's been miscategorized, it's diversity of thought.

And we want people to think differently and can solve problems differently, differently than me because it makes me stronger, right, And so if we can do that as an organization,

you can be successful. And all of the units are kind of changing their selection models to tease these things out. You know, back in the you know, eighties and nineties, it was like how fast can you run? How good can you shoot? We need more than that now, and we need guys that can operate in their own And so I think the soft operators of today are far superior than of my generation. And I think that's fair

to say because I am that. You know, I think we were pretty good and we're pretty damn hardy because we did a lot of combat. But were we prepared. I don't think we were. I wasn't prepared. We prepared these guys because we looked at all the gaps in our lives and our careers, and we said, we're going to fill those in with training, and we're fill us

in with experience. And so you know, when guys get selected to be Green Toy instructors, there are guys that are combat hardened dudes that can come in there and sit down with you. Go listen, dude, this is why you're messing up. And this is what you need to change. If you're a combat con troubler, here's what you need to think about when you run a stack, and here's why you have to think about it this way. If you're a PJ, this is why you can't do medicine

this way. This is why you're gonna get someone killed. And we finally finally have the experience to sit there and say that very you know, emphatically and with a position of authority, which we didn't have in the nineties. So when I went through sock them, there was a bunch of guys never went to combat. Right they're telling me about how to treat a casually. They never treated casually.

Right now, when I go through soft miss with it ragio medic and he's saying, hey, Chad, you're messing this up. I'm like, holy crap, and knows what he's talking about, right, right, I'm gonna listen to him, right, And so I think that's a pretty important distinction. But here, here's the butt is that we're losing it, and we're losing it today because all senior guys are getting out and leaving because

they're pissed off. Right, And you're gonna have an atrophy of experience, and the next fight is gonna be way harder than the g WAT Right, It's gonna be ten times harder than what we did in Afghanistan Iraq. When we're talking about great power competition, guys fight with nods and lasers and aircraft overhead. Dude, you have to be

the best. And you know technology will tip the scale to a certain extent, we still have to be a very confident operator that knows how to make good decisions and stress.

we're losing it, and we're pushing people out because we want people to comply. Right. I know we're not getting political in this, but there is there is an element of like, hey, you need to play ball or you need to leave. And so a lot of people are leaving. They don't want to play ball like that. It's incongruent with their values. And so you have this, you know, in in industry they call it what the Great resignation and people just you know, or people silently quitting. You

have that in soft too. People are leaving. And so who stays behind? You know, who stays in the senior positions. It's the people that you really want to be senior guys to beat their chest, and not all of them, that's that's not an absolute.

that's very fluid in a lot of ways. Can you select people that or do you try to select people that encompass all that or do you recognize that some people are going to be good at certain things.

and we're like, yeah, guy, listen, I get it. You want to go run again, you probably need to go do this right. And so that exists.

has been your experience is working with soft tax Peeh, what's your take on the restructuring for tech pe moving forward strike teams, reconteams and if you can also lead off with Thomas, what tac P is.

were super super capable guys, their studs. So, you know, the app socks going through a kind of a reshuffle. They're trying to figure out their mission. I think allsoft is, but specifically as SoC and I think a lot of the legacy missions that were we know are going away, and so who will survive this kind of change? I don't know, that's beyond you know, but my my pay grade, I don't have pay grade.

they're going to lose the next fight. That's I mean, that's just the reality. Like, autonomy is a thing, and you know, China is doing it very well, the US is doing it, and the the military is trying to embrace it. But autonomy is scary and the opposite of what we experienced, where you know, the Golden Hour is going to be a thing of the past in a lot of ways.

tip the scale. Every single you know, engagement has been aircraft. When things get too bad, guess what we're calling the air force and they're gonna slam this this compound. Well, if we can't do that, because those guys are in air to air fight, how do you push through, right? And And that's a really I don't know how to answer that.

can you know, kind of multiply the battlefield. And so if they you know, if they focus on those strengths and they flip that into the next fight, they can be very successful as a unilateral force if they try to be a better assault for US, I mean, cool man like.

became the master of all. And is this sort of what they're talking about with ass SoC that there are people who think that okay, well shooting CQB shooting, like, we can do that too, we can have our own teams to do this. Or is it going a different direction.

And you know, for a long time it was direct action was sexy, like you just described, and everyone will do direct action because that was kind of the bar to pass, to be you know, the guy, the cool guy. Yeah, and so now that we're transitioning, you know, SEF is saying, holy crap, we need to go back to our core skills. And they are the navies going back to diving and go back to the maritime missions.

It was a maritime mission obviously in Navy. But the Army, dude, they are I mean that unit for Bragg, they can do any mission on their son and they could probably

do the maritime mission too if they wanted to. But no, there's no favorite.

The Army is like, okay, we can get it first down by doing this right, names like nah, we're going for touchdown, you know.

unlimited potential to be a really great career field. And you know, we need it now because reconnaissance is more important now than ever, and especially if you can overlay technology into reconnaissance. And so I think it's you know, potentially, it's a it's a great pathway. Obviously I'm biased because I'm a PJ. So you know, let me just check

with that a diplomatic answer.

do it. And the Army is the same way if you look at some of the drone racing stuff they're doing. The Army is taking advantage of that big time, and they're bringing industry in Mayby. It's doing the same thing. The air Force is kind of like, you know, you have you have airplanes, right, So here's the dichotomy with

air force. When you look at the Army and special forces, it's all about special forces right with as Socket's not it's about aircraft, and they have really small cutout which is special warfare, which is you know, air Force, air.

And so aspstock's the only one that's like, well, we do all this stuff for the other services, and then we have this small component of folks that do really special stuff, but we also want to help these people, and so it will never reach their potential because they're always looking outwards instead of going how do we empower this? Right? And so the first question, how do you do it unilateral? Well, you have to stop being a service provider, right and

start saying what do we want to do? And if you don't want to do anything, that's fine too, but if you do, you have to do an all stop and say, listen, these TV twenty two's exist for these guys and whatever their mission set's going to dictate. And and that's a it's going to take having some special tactics guys in senior positions, which we do. The A three of ass socc right now is as a former

comic controller as a comic controller general. And that's a big deal for us, you know, isn't rappen for so.

he has a lot of people. And then within uh, you know, the Green Break community, there's there's thousands of them, and not all of them are like, you know, doing everything right. There's like guys are specialists in this and this. Within nsb's a little bit smaller, but still thousands of them. In our career full there's you know, there's maybe hundreds, and so does that make you special? I don't know. I don't know if it does. It's just a numbers game.

It's it sounds cooler, but how do you get to that point? I don't think you do it without numbers? And so if you have a Green Break community you want to go and do ex mission, you can reorient all those people to go do that with the training and money. That's a tough question.

that job for a year. What I what I did do was I got a I got a call and there was an opportunity to go help some orphans from Ukraine to Poland. Oh wow, And I was like a man. And so I went to my boss and I was like, hey, man, I was like, I need to take some unpaid leave. I'm gonna do this, and they were good enough to say, yeah, okay. I think they knew I was probably gonna quit. They didn't let me do it. But I thought I was gonna fill my bucket, you know, in my bucket and

give me a sense of purpose. And I went out there and did it, and it didn't fill anything. And I came back home and I ended up resigning after a month. I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I told my wife. I was like, I just need to maybe go fishing every day and just be retired. And I was retired for six hours. Buddy buddy of mine from a big company called me. He's like chat, he goes, you need to talk to these guys from California. And I'm like, okay. I was on my back porch.

I think I was probably drinking bourbon and these guys and they're like, hey man, you know, just bros from you know, California, and like we're gonna build a low cost cruise missile. I'm like, okay, I didn't expect that. I was like, all right, so what what does that mean? How do you do low cost? They told me, you know, their designs like modular like Lego set for the cruise missile at a manufacturer. I'm like, I'm in And so I joined this team and it was three of us,

and it was the closest thing I felt. You know, this is called teamhouse. It was the closest thing I felt to being back into a team post military, because it was guys that I identify with, that I get along with, and that we're oriented towards a purpose with. And you know, we started this company, Firestorm Labs, and we've been doing it for you know, six seven months now, building a modular US and it's the closest thing I found to get into what you know, we've been describing this whole time.

And I needed it, man, you know, because we talk

about purpose. You know, purpose is really hard to find the backside. And so the guys that get out, you know, I think this is a good opportunity to talk about is that it's not the same and you will be isolated, you're on your own. It's it's never gonna be cool again. And you have to warn that career. And so once you move on from it, you can like grow and and and be better. But for me, you know, join the team that I'm on now with Firestorm, which is

the company. It's been awesome, and so I've taken a lot of other jobs. I've got our you know, you know companies that I work with. One is Lifeline Rescue Tools, which is basically, uh, it's a think about glass break you know, times thousand cuts through lemonade glass, you know, first responder stuff. I'm like, that's great, I get you behind that product. Development's do it. And the other ones.

Fox Trot three is a company we started with a bunch of operators Faith, Family Freedom and so that's basically family values getting back to make that cool again in America. And so things that can wrap my brain around and orient and and really push hard is all I need. And so because you're not part of a team anymore, and you get out, no one, no one cares. Yeah, like you're on your own. Yeah you guys know that, I mean, yeah, yeah, you're forgotten very quickly.

But if you say, listen, I had a great run. It was a cool experience and did some cool stuff and now moving on. And you know, I do these conversations because I think they're cathartic. I think they're healthy. But at the end of the day, like that's my old life, man, exactly, there's nothing to do with me.

I had people to my left and right that I trusted with my life, even if I couldn't stand them, And now I'm out in this world where there really is no meaning.

warn that process. And so that's what I'm going through right now. And it's difficult, man. And like some guys are better than I am. Some guys are more mature than I am and can find success. Maybe it's financially they want it, maybe it's you know, purpose in a in a career. But for me, I found the best kind of segue is I have a small team of people that I trust. We have a we're orienting on a task and a purpose, and I can make it

successful because I know how to do that right. And so I think that's the most important aspect to me. It's healthy for me. But I will tell you going back to the compartmentalization, is that guys like us have been very good at doing that and where we can walk down the street and no one will notice any difference.

The fact is is that we're we're keeping these things wrap and we're doing our own detriment, right, And so until we let those things go and process them, they'll continue to be kind of the mill center on her neck. And so I've been using conversations like this is as

the catharsis of letting him go, right. I mean, I'm gonna tell you guys some cool stories, cool man like, I'm not gonna tell you classified stuff, but let's let it out right, and you know, failures and successes they're here man, right, but this next life is mine, is what I make it right.

me helping me. You know, when you're a conventional troop and you're doing hard yards and Baghdad or even a Afghanistan, like, there's not a whole hell of a lot there for those guys. And so I would tell the guys that are listening, because there's probably guys that are, is that I have a deep respect for those dudes and their

service is no less than mine. We are Prima Donna's and Soft And so you know, getting on black helicopters with the best pilots in the world, right, not good pilots, the best pilots in the world that take us the X and put one wheel down and you jump off on the rooftop and you go slam a target and you get out in thirty minutes.

no resources. And I think there's a lot to be said about that, and I think it gets lost in the kind of the the nostalgia and the romance of soft in that you know, soft isn't any better than.

But you know, I don't take it for granted that those kids were, you know, walking the streets and basically completely vulnerable when I was sitting in a safe you know, mss, you know, drinking beers and when I wasn't supposed to do.

So we had a you know, we had an empty nine and uh, We're like, we're screwed and we're about to get in a tick. We knew it and it was coming any second and it popped off and we we were pinned down. We were fighting our way out of there the main and Salt Force was way back behind us. We were a recue team and we were just getting it. I mean, we're we're like, holy crap, bringing and die. And the controller was back to the Maine Salt Force knew we were in a tick and

we're calling back like holy shit. We're like this is bad, and he got on call E tens. These guys came in literally I'm not exaggerating, one hundred feet off the ground. Two ship one hundred feet off the ground and they straighted this compound. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, I was like, I was a nods. I had to pull nods because there's so much fire. Like after they came in, two came in, I'm like, why don't we use these every night? I'm like,

this is amazing. Have these lettering over head? They destroyed everything. There was nothing left I'm be honest, there was nothing that I'm like, who is eighty one thirty? Was? That is that thing we like? And e tens man, there's a time and place for him. But those guys, here's what I'll tell you. A ten pilots are the closest thing to operators that you will ever find in the aviation community. They are man, they are guys that will like want they'll drinking.

want to help you. It's just you got to ask. And so I have a rollex the folks that I contact all the time because I know that potentially I know,

I think that they need it and I hope that they'll reach out to me when when I did it. But you know, there's a network there. So it's it's different for every community, but there's been a lot of suicides. We we haven't had a lot of suicides within our our group, thank god, but the community, the community real large has and so there's a lot of different factors. Some of it's financial, so it's personal. Some of it's you know, tv I, some of it's PTSD. There's a

ton of cool treatments out there. Some of the Navy guys I was talking to you have been really you know, keyed up on hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which is HBOT in a lot of lives, were kind of reconnecting some of the the the connected tis in the brain and really mending that, really mending some of the damage that's been done. And then the other one, which is a bit controversial, but like you know, there's vets, organizations do a lot of psychedelic stuff is having a lot of good effects.

I've talked to some folks that I know and trust that I've done it and it's saved their lives, and so I respect the process. I've never done it personally, but you know, I think that's important to kind of suss out whatever it's good for you.