5th Special Forces Group in Iraq | Rob Leach | Ep. 393

I read it, really enjoyed it. We'll get into the book a bit later on in this interview, But first off, Rob, thanks for joining us on the show tonight.

about an hour and a half north of Tampa, about an hour south of Gainesville, and you know, stayed there throughout middle school, high school. Left as soon as I graduated high school, I left for the army. You know, four days later, I was out the door. I couldn't get out quick enough. That was in two thousand, when

I graduated high school. So that was pre nine to eleven, pretty any kind of real war since you know, the Gulf War, and that was the only thing that most people had in their minds of what war looked like for the United States was a quick, you know, in and out overmatch and we're done. So yeah, that was kind of where I thought this, you know, military track was going. Uh signed up for the infantry, as a lot of you know, rural country Ish kids tend to go.

But yeah, I went into the Army in two thousand, ended up out at Fort Lewis, where I did my

first four years and my very first deployment until Iraq in two thousand and three.

for the rest of the deployment. That was, you know, two thousand and three, late two thousand and three, mid two thousand and four. That was kind of the beginning of the insurgency kind of popping up, you know, small ambushes, small arms fire, small IEDs, nothing too drastic. We did have some you know, some contact things like that, but most of it was just kind of hit and run tactics.

Like the armor they carried, the firepower they could bring to the battlefield, like strikers are unmatched in my opinion. Yeah, they were awesome.

You remember the food gas stuff like nap Yeah, it was like a napalm soap stuff. So we got hit by some of those, but they didn't really do anything to the striker. See, I was, you know, an eventful deployment. First look at combat, first look at you know, what the army life is overseas. And I was actually stop lost on that trip because I was trying to get out.

So as soon as that trip got over, I got out of the Army, went back to Florida, went through the law enforcement academy, and was a sheriff's deputy down in central Florida for a really short period. It was probably six months, seven months as a shriffe, and I just you know, I decided I couldn't do that anymore.

the police force. How jaded you are with some of these people. And it was just frustrating how the system works a lot of the times. How you know, people get you arrest someone that's a bad, bad dude, and you know they're out. You see him on the street the next day or two days later, and they're doing the same stuff all over again. It's just got you know, real repetitive, real quick. And I was like, yeah, I can't do this for twenty five years. I'm gonna go

back in the Army. I prefer that you know that route anyway.

Fort Lewis again. So right back out to Fort Lewis, and I want to say it was six months later we deployed for the search. So soon as we got there, everybody was locked in. You weren't allowed to go do any any schools, you know, any SF selections things like that. They locked us all down. And we deployed for the Surge two thousand and seven with fourth Brigade, Second Infantry Division. Yeah, for one of the long long ones.

east out to Iran. And we started in Taji and it was kind of like hands across the desert coordinated Clearing operation and they moved from Taji and we cleared all the way that whole corridor of nothing but NonStop operations throughout there. I was kind of fortunate on that one. When I signed in at Fort Lewis, they're like, hey,

you know you've got combat experience. We're looking for some NCOs to help set up this new platoon, infantry platoon that we're forming, and you're going to run the Brigade PSD, the Personal Security Detachment. I'm like, I don't even know what that is, but I guess I don't really have

a choice. So I'm in and we took you know, we got handed twenty I think it was like twenty one twenty two brand new privates, straight out of basic training and like four or five of US NCOs and they're like, you have, you know, four months to deploy, get them ready to go. And it was a lot, you know, it was a lot of training a lot real fast trying to get these you know, young kids up to par for what two thousand and seven Iraq

was going to look like. We're just watching videos, you know, YouTube videos of abrams tanks getting cut in half by deep buried idds and you know the large stuff that they had going on then. So we we we did the best we could and we got them ready and then we deployed. That was a fifteen month trip on

that that burn. Yeah, it was rough, but you know, doing the PSD mission, it was it was going out every single day taking the kernel and the Brigade CSM out to go either do kl's or to go out and check out with the different fobs we had all over the place, so we were constantly on the road. So it was a lot of you know coordination to you know, wrote clearance and everything else trying to make sure we weren't going to catch any of these IDs

that were hitting everybody out there. We ended up splitting up because we were you know, six strikers deep with the Brigade commander and the CSM and you know, all these antennas and looking like the biggest target in the world. So we ended up splitting up into three and three and I took the CSM and he, you know, his whole goal in life was to go out and check on the boys. You know, he just wanted to go out and to the different fobs and he loved walking dismounted.

So we're doing dismounted, just me and the PSD and him going through you know, Bakuba and all these different areas in two thousand and Seven's not you know, my idea of a picnic, but it was. It was a rough trip. You know, we got hit a few times, we had some IDs strikes, we had you know, some e FP hits, and you know, it was just a it was a long trip to be dealing with that kind of stuff all the time. So as soon as I got back from that trip, I went to selection,

like two months three months after I got back, I was like, I am not doing this again.

was it was a rough trip. You know. They adapted well and I kind of hated. I felt bad. You know, we got back, but going to selection, I got picked up and I was gone, you know, months later, so I didn't really get to stick around and help them de transition and kind of settle back in. But you know, they had some good NCOs to help them out, so it worked out. I think.

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and then it was in the nineties. So it was like an up and down roller coaster of weather, which I think broke a lot of people off, Like they people were dropping left and right because we were constantly wet or freezing or hot. But selection, So my biggest you know mistake going into selection for those out there that might be interested, was just came back from a deployment and I bought new boots coming back because my

boots were so trashed from that fifteen month. So I got new boots and went to breaking them in and these were just regular army issue boots back then, that's all you could wear. So my feet got destroyed like day two immediately, they were just trashed. So I had to deal with you know, blisters and you know, toe nails falling off and all that good stuff from the miles and things were you know, I wasn't performing as well as I thought I could, mostly because I couldn't

hardly put my feet on the ground. You know, made it through the I think it was three weeks back then, and like I said, we started with a little over four hundred. I think at the end of the three weeks there was like one hundred and fifty people left, and out of that it came out to be like one thirty ish got selected. You know, making it to the end is always a boon for your survival chances. But some people still didn't make it. Hopefully they went back and tried again. But you know, I got picked

up on my first go. You know, at the end of selection, you sit down with your counselor whoever they are, and they tell you, hey, you did you know you have this GT score, you did this well on your language aptitude tests, and they're like, we want you to you know, you did really well in your language test and you have a high GG score. We want you to be a delta and we want you to do

I forget what they said Arabic or Mandarin or something right off the gat and I was like, if you put Delta down, I am not coming back. I got no desire to be a Delta. That's hard. I am not a medical guy. I like guns. So I was like, I want to be a Bravo weapon sergeant. And I remember the guy looked at me and he's like, i'll give you weapon sergeant. Well originally I said I want weapon sergeant, and I want Spanish, and yeah, he looked at me and he's like, I'll give you a weapon sergeant,

but you are not doing Spanish. You don't get to two or the easier side. You're gonna you want to do weapon sergeant, you gotta do Arabic. And I was like, all right, whatever Arabic it is.

final stage portion of it. I think that's the order they did back then. I think it's all different now, but.

that one. Yeah.

You know, I don't even know why they teach the modern standard anymore, Like just go leventeen because it's what they actually understand and what they talk.

of the guys switched out. I want to say a handful of the originals stayed there throughout the time I was on the team. So they were lucky and dodged a lot of the schools and whatever else they get pulled for.

was on leave. And then we had I forget when in twenty eleven, but we took off again and this time we were in cal Siou so just south the bag Dad and this was you know, Operation New Dawn, so we operation we're not allowed to go do anything. But well, what was happening in Calsiu specifically, like we were getting hammered within direct fire, so I mean rockets, not really mortars then, but it was a lot of rockets, a lot of katushas and some of the bigger ones.

But it was like a nightly event to the point where like I would I remember, I'd sit in my chew and our chos lined up and there's bunkers in between the choos, So like right outside my door was a bunker and you had like blasted blankets and sandbags and everything else on these on these bunkers, and I would sit there and I have a little TV, you know, and I'd be playing video games or watching TV at night, and I would set my foot flops up at a runner's stance so I could hit them and stride and

not even have to slow down because that alarm would go off like every single night, and they were coming in close, like hitting in the compound to the point that, you know, we finally got the green light and tough to do in twenty eleven, but we got the green light to go unilateral without partners, without anybody, and we were able to go roll up I think most of those cells pretty quick. I mean, we knew who they were, we just weren't allowed to go out and do anything

about it. So I think, I don't know if someone got wounded on the base or if the command had enough and they got approval. But yeah, we had a couple, you know, a month or two month period where we were doing ops like every night and just rolling guys up until that area is settled down for a while, which was great because I had enough of you know, the rockets every night.

We'd go out and set up you know, sniper operations to kind of do like train denial stuff, watch for any of these teams that were coming in and trying to set up their rockets. It was a it was a mixed bag of things. We end we did go out a few times with some partner forces, were able to find some partner forces that wanted to work and went out and kind of rolled up some of the bad folks out there in the areas. But it was

a little mixed bag of different types of looks. Just to even get out there and doing presence patrols, you know, at some point, just to let them know we were allowed outside the wire even though the big army folks weren't at the time, So it's just us.

like I said, every day we're still getting rocketed while we're doing all this like administrative tasks and stuff and kind of the bigger pictures like we were trying to hand over Iraq back to the Iraqis at the time, and what a lot of people don't know what that looks like is it's a lot of State Department back and forth of you know, how many US soldiers are even loud in the country at the time, Like that was like a real issue, is we couldn't even bring

in certain enablers, if you know, that added to the total number of the US footprint because they didn't want any more numbers. Like they had a cap they couldn't go past it. So we were constantly, you know, back against the wall of we're tearing everything down, we're turning everything in. This teamhouse had been there probably since the invasion, so it was packed full of junk and gear and confiscated weapons and like all you name it, and we

had to get it all out of there. So it was a lot of a lot of the uh, you know, packing things up and then you know, getting told, hey, never mind, you're not you're not closing this one down, this one staying, you know, open it back up. They're like okay, and then a month later like, no, you're closing down. We changed our mind. Uh, you got to close it up.

not wanting to continue to do missions and operations. You know, Like I said, these rockets were legit problems because they they got big, you know, they the Katooshas were like the smaller ones and what I forget what those are, you know, bad bravo that I am, but you know, one fifties or whatever they are, and they just kept going up till we were getting like the two hundred millions sized rockets coming in. And those are large, large explosions that you feel, you know, even when it's on

the other side of the FOB. So it was, you know, we're lucky, you know, on our side and the FOB to not get any of our folks hurt.

not die. Yeah, so we're not going to go anywhere. We're not going to do anything. Keep the Iraqis off our base. When you bring them on, you have to take their guns because we don't want them to shoot out. It was like really like a conflicting missions that felt like.

into the woods. We're getting in filled right, and I remember like one of the first calve guys like, hey, hey, can you pick that up and hand it to me? And I'm like, what the hell?

lots of training opportunities, UH. Kind of bounced around and then we had you know, deployments every year or twice a year to j sets UH joint combined Exercise training events UH with partner nations over there in the Middle East. For me, so I did trips to Lebanon. I think I've been to Jordan probably four or five times. Got to do UAE for a while, which was nice. That included by rain on that trip. You know, spend some

time in Kwait back in the day. So I feel like I've been to almost all of them in the Middle East. I don't know, there's many left to pin on my map, but lots of short trips for those. So those are two months, four months, you know, here and there once a year, twice a year, depending on

what's going on. And that was from you know, we got back in twenty twelve from Iraq and then the team as the fourth Patalions started changing their structure, so the team got disbanded in twenty fifteen, late twenty fifteen, I think early twenty sixteen, somewhere around there. So you know, everything changed in the Fourth Paalions then and they weren't doing straight odas anymore, and then everybody had to kind of go their own ways.

course for the Lebanese Special Operations. It was kind of a mixed bag of their Marine Special Operations and they have their Navy Seal equivalent types and some other rangers. So ran a target interdiction designated marksmanship course for them. That was my first exposure of Lebanon and Lebanese So it's definitely an interesting country. If you've never been, you know, you'll drive down. I was up in the Hamat area,

so north of be Route. There's an air base training area up there. But you know, you're driving through the city, small town, whatever you want to call it, and it's

like one city block. You drive down. It's what you would think of the Middle East, as you know, traditional Middle East attire, and the women are wearing you know, the full head to toe coverings and then you turn a corner and it looks like you're on a beach in California and women are wearing you know, barely anything and the men are in you know, board shorts and flip flops, and it's like, I don't know what's happening

here right now. But you know, the neighborhoods are so like, you know, Muslim to Christian to you know, Druze, like they're just right on top of each other and everyone has its own flavor. But I really enjoyed that trip. You know, the Lebanon's beautiful. All the history is amazing,

the culture and everything they have going on there. You know, the soldiers that we worked with were their quality, you know there I don't think there's enough of them, uh to kind of go around on the quality side, but you know, they were pretty good shots and they they

caught on pretty quick. I remember we're up so when you're up in the Hamad, it's at kind of the top of like a hill mountain area and if you go all the way down, you're down at the beach and that's where the shooting range was with the beach, and we would you know, drive down there every day. Some days we'd walk down with the soldiers as kind of a road March, and one day we had the idea of, hey, let's do a you know, a stalk.

Let's have them stalk down and we're gonna try to see them coming towards the beach with bino's and stuff. And I tell the Lebanese captain, I'm like, hey, I'm going to walk with the with the boys down there. I want to follow them and see how they do. And he just kind of laughed. He's like, all right, good luck. He's like, they're a part mountain goat. I just warning you, And he wasn't kidding. Those guys like I have never seen like mountain movement like that before.

They had rucks on, they had long rifles, they had all their gear, and they were just hopping foot to foot from like, you know, boulder to boulder all the way down. You know, one wrong step is you know, a broken leg or they didn't. They didn't seem to care, so they left me in the dust. I had to end up pitting on the road, as embarrassing it is, But I don't know how they got down that quick. I think probably because they've used that route, you know,

one hundred times and I've never done it. But uh yeah, they were. You know, it was an interesting trip. Learned a lot from those guys and hopefully taught a lot, made some good memories and some friends over there that you know, last a while.

lot of downtime in Jordan. I've seen all there is I think to see in that country at this point, and spent a lot of time there. But I was doing Jordan trips. We did a j set I think was the Jay said to Jordan was before I went to Lebanon. It was my first trip to the Middle East when it wasn't like a combat deployment, you know, so it was a kind of a cultural shock for me.

You know, we get a rental car and we leave the airport and we're driving through you know, Aman, and when you're in some of the outskirts of Aman, like it looks like Iraq. You know, it's the same kind of buildings and writing and everything is in your like, you know, it wasn't six months ago I was fully kitted up with a gun in a place like this, and now we're in civilian clothes going through the same neighborhoods, and you know, it kind of makes you a little

nervous first time experiencing that from the other side. So it was a good, good trip and you know, eye opening and seeing that there's more to you know, special Forces than just combat operations and you know, working with partners, and you know, I've been fortunate enough to travel a lot to a lot of countries and meet a lot of interesting people over there, and Jordan was definitely high on the list.

you want to do. Uh, then you can you know, head out from the city and you have open desert, open terrain, you can drive around, do vehicle maneuvers, live fires, all sorts of stuff out there. You just have to watch out for the bed one that also came up in the book.

move and communicate and you know, move through building. So but even then they're you know, they're motivated and they're trying, and you know they want to be more proficient at ITU and then their premiere one. You know, those guys are top notch counter terrorism operators. We had nothing but respect for them.

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and thank you ghost bed for sponsoring the show. Please check out the link down the description and support our sponsor. In around this time frame, I'm just sort of, uh, sort of imagining in the back of my mind here are we starting getting into, like the rise of Isis and the Syrian Civil War? And is that sort of stuff starting to play into these deployments at all.

Jordan trips and some of the other ones. You know, I'm keeping an eye on things that are going up in Syria and you know, Egypt and Libya, you know kind of you know, Yemen was hot at the time, you know, so there's a lot going on in the whole region with that whole Arab Spring kind of movement pushing around and all the riots and protests, and you know, seeing what was going on in Syria with the you know, the civil war hit the southern Syria first, right, so

that's where it kind of started, and the Dara government down there in the south, and you know that's right on the border with Jordan. It's really you know, stones

throw from where we're at in northern Jordan, if we're at that cosotic location, and you know, the Jordanians definitely worry about it, you know, because that their country can't handle a whole lot of refugee uh you know, crisis at you know, any given time. They just don't have the capabilities or the resources to handle a bunch of

refugees and absorb a bunch of refugees. So I know they were setting up and trying to push like refugee camps on the Syrian side of the border of Jordan, but just near Jordan, so they could funnel resources and food and water to them, but keep them in Syria because Jordan didn't want that influx down in their own territory. So there was a lot of border stuff going on up there. You know, drones and you know, those kind

of technologies weren't really prevalent yet. I mean, large scale ISR type birds were up there, but nothing, nothing small, that's nothing that we would use or that that we teach them how to use to keep eyes on their border, because their border, for you know, for most of the whole stretch of it, it's just a dirt burn right, there's nothing to it, so anybody can get over it. They do have border guards and border patrols and all that stuff, but it's just such a large border to

patrol and keep everybody out. So that was definitely you know, happening. Weren't seeing ISIS at the time yet, you know, that was more starting to see some of the beginnings of Neustra front so al Kaeda type stuff, but you know, it wasn't seeing a whole lot of Like I don't remember when ISIS finally emerge. I forget what year that was now, but maybe yeah, thirteen fourteen, so yeah, that was yeah, I'm trying to remember now, but I don't remember seeing a lot of ISIS stuff on the Jordan trips.

I think we kind of disbanded as a team, right His ISIS was starting to get going, turning to emerge like a as a real threat in the area.

to come down and work with them. Uh. If there was you know, VIPs or guests coming in, I have to meet him at the airport and get them in and get them to a hotel and kind of show them the later. But yeah, it was a four month trip living by myself and u AE. It was definitely not rough in it. You know, they had us put up in a very nice hotel for those four months, so I cannot complain about that one.

So it it's definitely you know, on the special forces side. And I talked about this on a different show is on, But you know special operations right large, everybody has a specialty. You know, seals, you know have the water, you know mar sok is, you know Marine Corps, you know in the Navy and you have you know, everyone has their little piece of the pie. But I think, obviously I'm biased, but Special Forces I think has the largest piece of the pie because we have to be, you know, so

good at so many unexpected things. You just have to be a thinker and a problem solver, and then you get put into the problems and you have to decide is the solution, you know, violence, or is the solution diplomacy And you have to be able to balance those equally and apply each one equally, you know, on a moment's notice.

own ways. We're still stay in touch, you know, we were on a team, close team for quite a while. We still talk pretty regularly. Yeah, everybody just had to pick what their next adventure was going to be. For me, I went, I was ready for a break, you know, I'd been going pretty heavy for most of my career. So I went and joined up with the Special Warfare Planning Detachment out of Fourth Time. We're responsible for, you know, doing operational level kind of planning for Fifth Group predominantly,

but really Special Operations rit large. So I went down to Special Operations Command Central sockscent down in Tampa, took a break down there for about two years doing you know, larger scale planning. Got to see behind the curtain a little bit, got to learn what you know strategy and you know operational tactics and maneuverability and you know logistics and how all this comes into play on the big

scale and the big picture piece of it. As before, my you know, my wheelhouse was very small, very niche like I was the eighteen Bravo was the eighteen Fox. I knew my little area of operations. I paid attention to what was happening in the region, but you know, my time at SOCKS and I was able to see what's happening in syentcom you know, Central Area responsibility and how you know, an action in Jordan effects an action and UAE and Iraq and how it's all kind of

interplayed and tied together. So it was a really good time broadening. Definitely broadening for me to kind of learn some of the big picture stuff. Yeah. I did that for two years and then came back to Fort Campbell and I took over the Fort Campbell side of the planning detachment as the senior enlisted advisor. So it's technically

a company, but there's only about sixteen of us. So I took over that position and then did that for the next three ish four years, I guess until I retired twenty twenty three.

we need to know what that looks like. And they would bring us up to wherever that planning operation was happening, and we'd get involved with it and help out and bring our you know, expertise to it, because you know, you've got a lot of these headquarters aren't always staffed by special operations people, so you know, they would be doing planning and they would say, hey, we want you know, five o DA's next year for this, and we'd be like,

that's never going to happen. You're not getting that many, but let us come help you plan it and we'll give you what's actually realistic and we'll help you meet the same objectives that you're trying to get. So there's a lot of that type stuff, but it was fun. I got to learn a lot kind of big picture stuff, like I mentioned, I got to learn a lot about you know, operational design. I got to learn a little

bit about, you know, the higher level military planning. Got to do a trip to Israel and hang out with the Israeli General Officer College for a couple of weeks. One of the instructors. There is retired general named Shimone Navay. Some people will either love him or hate him. Apparently he's a contentious guy over there, but he's kind. He's the actual architect of the Army design methodology that we use right now, So he came up with that when he worked at SOCOM for a while. So he's a

very brilliant guy, real creative thinker. So I really got to see kind of behind the curtain on some of these things where it's like, we don't have to follow the military decision making process when we do these plans, because if you do nine times out of ten, we

all come to the same conclusion. Right, So how do we apply creativity to planning as opposed to just following a checklist, it done and then just going over there and trying to solve it on the ground, right, How do we get the right resources?

that second order effect actually going to be? You know, and you know, maybe we need to do action Y instead in order to cause that second order effect, not just the first order effect we wanted. So it's really you know, a couple of layers deep higher level thinking that you know, I just really enjoyed the heck out of it. I think really that that set the foundation for me on you know, wanting to go down the pipeline of writing a book, especially like the book that

I wrote. But we'll get into you know, why I did it and what what the intent is. But I wanted to be able to show what that you know, new scenario could be because I see so many people are just washing and repeating, you know, the same stuff that they're being told over and over again, and they're not applying that critical creative thought to how you know, the future could change very quickly, and so.

that sounds interesting. And like I said, you know, at this point, I'm all in on this, like creative thinking and like looking at things differently. And when I heard the word innovation, I said, well, I need to see what this is all about. So talk to this you know guy for a while. Found out that, you know, what he's doing is something right up the alley of what I would love to get involved with.

it's all top down driven stuff. So you got the F thirty fives and you know, new tanks and you know, whatever new vehicle or new weapons system that's getting fielded out there. But for me, like I'm more interested in what's coming from the soldiers and their ideas. So this when I heard about this program, I jumped all over it.

So Catalyst Pathfinder is soldier driven tactical innovation. So we partner at the unit level and we'll set up you know what we call like dirt labs or maker spaces, So we put in three D printers, see and C machines, fab you know, textiles, whatever it is, and we'll set up these maker spaces that the unit runs with us. And then you know, soldiers come in, they have an idea for something, and we'll help them try to build it.

You know, we have the CAD files, you know, the cat expertise, we have the engineer support, and we'll try to help them solve whatever problem they have, whether that's a new piece of equipment, a different type of rucksack, a new pouch, or you know, a new drone. You know, we try to figure out how we can get them the solutions they need at the tactical level. So there's no like long army requirements process. It's just here's what

they want. We're going to put them under, you know, a contract to get this done as quick as possible.

And we do that either down or hands getting dirty in the shop, or if it's something that hey we can't you know, we don't have the expertise, or it's two time consuming to do ourselves here in the house, then I can contract out through partnerships with universities or with small industry so you know, a smaller business, not the big prime vendors that I'll never get anything done with, but a small you know, young company that yeah, somebody

who's eager, you know, or a small drone company or whatever. And I'm like, hey, this is what the unit wants. I'm willing to pay you, you know, to knock this out for us and get the answers and get the capability to the soldier as quick as possible. So that that's essentially what I do. Now. I work again at Fifth Group. Again, I didn't go far. I'm stealing forth

Italian and we set up a innovation shop. Fifth Group's been all in on the innovation work, and you know, we've been just knocking project after project out down there and they've been, you know, eating it up. They've been doing amazing stuff. So really pushing the limit on capabilities.

to allow that. So they wanted a repairable drone that they could build and teach partner forces how to use so they can get their hands on some equipment. So I found a company out of Knoxville called Echo mav Technologies, and I came to him and said, hey, you know, this is what they want. We would love to see a three D printed you know SRR so a short range reconnaissance type bird, not like a first person view thing you see in Ukraine all the time, but like

an actual like reconnaissance cloud copter. We want three D pended. We want the soldiers to be able to build it themselves, and we want it to be, you know, as capable as some of the bigger name things, but with cheaper components so it doesn't cost so much. And you know, within six months we had a working finished, you know,

almost finished prototype that you know, Fifth Group has started using and fielding one hundred and first bought a hand you know, one hundred of them, I think, and they put a bunch out there and I've been testing it, so it's still a prototype, you know at the time. So it's still getting evolved and changing, and you know, the soldiers try it, they like something, they don't like something, I give feedback to the company, They make the changes

and then the soldier gets the new version right. So it's like I'm the go between that usually doesn't exist between soldiers and the industry because I'm able to get those answers and those changes back to them quick. But yeah, three D printed drones have become big. That one was a big success story. And then you know, i'd say with a lot of the units now, a lot of them are focused on you know, aerial technology. Drones is

what they want. And that's you know, the nature of current conflicts, that's the nature of technology, you know, evolving, and that's just where it is right now. Everybody wants drones. Everyone wants every every kind of drone you can think of. That's all they want.

to when I was retiring. I was I think I was like jotting down some notes or some ideas I had, and my wife, you know, it was all credit to her. She's like, you should write a book. You should try to write a book. And I'm like, I don't know anything about writing a book. But I started just you know, just typing away and playing around. It was horrible. It was really bad. I found one of my original copies of the book that I started, like when I was getting out of the army, and it was real bad

to read. But one of the things I didn't talk about when I was getting out of the army. I did my Skill Badge program with a retired Sergeant Major SF Sergeant major named Randall Searles s U r l e. S. But he's a editor and author himself, and he basically let me do a sk bridge with him, you know, remotely online, and he helped me kind of understand how the structures of books work, you know, specifically on the fiction side, like how do you structure it, what are

the different acts? You know, how does the character development, character arcs, like all these words that I'd never even heard of before, and I just thought, you know, good books for good books and bad books sucked, but there's a whole rhyme or reason why some of them suck and why some of them are really good, and you can kind of follow along, and there's you know, there's some good books out there that literally are written to

talk about how books are structured. So I worked with him for probably two months and you know, got to help him do some developmental editing and go through his process and really helped me set a foundation for how do you write a book? So I, you know, took that and then I took the original kind of manuscript that I had been playing around with and just started over again and took some of the same ideas and

started going with it. But the basic idea of the book was really kind of came to life out of frustration, right.

So I see, you know, at the last year in the army, like I said, I was focused on all the creativity, creative thinking, pushing people to get out of the box and to think of and look at things differently, or I was, you know, real concerned what you're seeing, you know, with isis and everyone else is like, if we keep thinking that the same old ways of doing things are going to work in the next conflict, I think we're going to get caught, you know, unfortunately, like

we tend to do, and you know, militaries across the world tend to do is they fight the last war. And that's really what you know, frustrated me because I was pushing on, you know, in these planning sessions and everything else, trying to get people to think a little harder about issues and how do we do stuff differently than we did last time? And it was just like

running into a brick wall over and over again. The idea got born there, and I started working on, Hey, what if I wrote a book about, you know, what the next conflict's going to look like?

In mind was you know, five years from now. You know, I'm writing about an ODA because that's what I know, and I want to see them in an environment that I know, you know, just doing a jay set, doing training over in Jordan, and then you know, all hell breaks loose, so the everything that you don't want to see happen happens all at once, and new technologies that I think are going to be readily available probably within

the next five years. And you know, it took some creative license on some of it because it is a fiction book, but I wanted to be able to showcase like, hey, this is where it could go pretty quickly, and this is where you know, on our side could go. And there's you know, an enemy type force could put in, and like, here's the different ideas that I had of, Hey,

this is what I think it might be. And I wanted to write that out in a fiction because I think fiction does a fantastic job of, you know, bringing it to reality and helping readers kind of immerse themselves in that world so they can kind of actually see what that looks like.

rehash of all the stuff I had read before. And I really liked that about it, and I really liked you bringing your own experiences into it. And the protagonist, the team sergeant, was an interesting character because you kind of capture that person at that time in his life that he's been doing this for a while and he's kind of jaded, kind of cynical about you know, this

part of the world and about his job. And also there's like this aspect of like he's getting older and he doesn't necessarily understand the technology that the younger guys on the team take too. Yeah.

morphed them all into one, you know, sprinkle on a little my own personality in there, because that's the question I get is like, you know, are you the team sergeant, are you the weapons sergeant? Like which character are you? And I'm like, I'm every single one of them. Unfortunately, you get a little piece of everything.

stop picking at each other. Uh. And it's just you know, the you know, if if the Walls had ears sort of situations, some of the team room chats that you'll never talk about are probably some of the funniest moments you've ever been in, you know, in your life.

you know, eleven personalities minus yourself? You probably include yourself in that too, but like you're managing all these different personalities and man and SF types special operations types for sure, you know, you get a mixed bag of you know, who thinks they're you know, God's gift to the special Operations mantra and who's this here to work and who's you know in between, So you get a little bit

of everything, you know, good batter and different. And I try to kind of show that mentality in the book, so hopefully it sits well.

the captain. You know, they have to maintain that level of respect while learning and understanding and being a part of a team. So it's it's hard for you know, officers and special forces world for sure. You know, my hat's off to the good ones. You know, I've had some great ones out there. But trying to show that the captain's in charge while still listening to the team sergeant's advice and having to deal with the knuckleheads on the team who think, you know, they're in charge most

of the time. But trying to put that dynamic, that family dynamic together was fun on paper, but yeah, difficult in real life.

unknown drone that kind of crashes around their area. Then you know, regionally, you start to see things heating up in the north Turkey is you know posturing and staging and on northern Syria and on their border, and then you have a flashpoint and you have you know, without going into too much detail, you have you know, Turkey invasion of Syria with some you know, pretty futuristic technologies

that no one expected. And you know, when I've made those technologies, some of that stuff is already around, right, So you know, using a large drone now just throw these teasers out there to mess with people until they buy the book. But you know, using a large drone as a signal relay or a mother ship, you know,

that's happening in Ukraine right now. Right Obviously I take some license with it, and what I think is actually going to be where it could go, where you have these larger drones and you know, automation or artificially intelligent systems or whatever that are controlling smaller drones on mission sets.

I do think that's where it could end up, where you have you know, not necessarily like completely autonomous, but you know, if your parameters are so big on the left and right limits of what their mission is and they're operating within them, you know, are they still autonomous or are they autonomous or are they still in control of you know, the guy who wrote the software in

the first place. So that's a question that you know, see comes up in the book a few times and really trying to get trying to explore that kind of concept of when does you know, actual artificial intelligence or autonomous systems become that autonomous if you're giving them such a big parameter to operate in in the first place.

a regional player. But I mean, I think that that was one of the interesting things about your book is it points to one of these other countries really getting the drop on us in a way that we wouldn't have expected.

to come more in book two. But I wanted to show, you know, the ability for you know, a country like Turkey is not a small country. It is a powerhouse in the region, and they're doing some pretty advanced stuff with you know, unmanned technologies. You know, aside from Israel, I would put Turkey at you know, the number two spot right behind them for technology and unmanned systems capabilities.

So picking you know, a out of left field, you know, NATO partner essentially, because now it adds a whole nother layer of you know, what would the US do? What would our response be if you know, a NATO ally invades Syria, you know, are we going to intervene or are we going to stop? Are we going to let it go? How far do we let it go? You know, how much would we let them take, you know, as a world order kind of maintainer before we step in.

And obviously some more stuff happens in the in the book that I don't want to let out too much, but you know, there's complications that that would arise when that happens and there's US forces scattered around the region, like you know, what does that what does that look like? What does it look like? Worst case scenario? And That's what I was really trying to show how precarious our position could be if something like this were to happen.

sort of like information assuredness. I'm not sure what the correct doctrinal term is, but that you know that you know that what you're being told is in fact legitimate.

think a lot of it's already here. I mean, you could look just scrolling through my phone before we started on Instagram, I'm like, I don't know half of these videos are real, you know which ones are fake, which ones are real. So they're only going to get better, you know, and the systems are only going to get more in vain. Maybe they'll hit a wall at some point,

but you know what happens if they don't. What happens if they don't hit a stopping point and they get so advanced that you can't tell the difference anymore, Like, how would I know right now? Or how would you know that we're actually you know, you're actually talking to

a person right we're digital images on the screen. And that's kind of what I try to, like, you know, get into a little bit into the book, and you know, I want people to start thinking about that is the dangers of you know, how far this could go without any handrails. You know, I'm not going to get into the argument of whether or not we should put limits, you know, on you know, is it First Amendment rights

at that point or like whatever it is. I'm not getting into that, But you know, how do you how can you tell what's real and what's not on the Internet now and what's that going to look like in ten years from now? Like how does that play into the evil of just everyday life much less you know, deployed soldiers in a combat zone.

it or something. And my response always to them is, you know, why what are you going to do with that?

And they're like, well, I saw this video. That's how they usually start, and I'm like, all right, let's talk about the video real quick, because you know, what's happening in Russian and Ukraine is shaping everyone's vision of where or what drones and combat are going to look like, right, and it should right that what the Ukrainians have been able to do against the Russians is you know, was shocking.

I when I heard about the Russian stage and on the border, I was, you know, I was all in on man, They're going to roll up the Ukrainians in a week, you know, a month. Maybe I did not think that this was going to be the future of where it was going. Probably shouldn't put that bad you know guests out there, since I wrote a book about the future of war. But that's what, you know, I thought they were done for it. You know, the Ukrainians

have done amazing thing with that technology. However, the doctrine that Russia uses and the doctrine that Ukraine uses is completely different than a doctrine that the United States would use in a military conflict. You know, we don't have a you know, battle drill for digging and then placing trench works as infantry soldiers like, we don't do that. We don't fight defensively. We're a maneuver, you know, army.

We're a combined arms, large scale maneuver. We overwhelm the airspace and then we move in through the ground and take everything out. That's how we've done it since, you know, the Gulf War, since before it's you know, shaped off the blitzkrieg like that is how we do our military maneuvers. The war in Ukraine right now, when you watch a lot of these you know YouTube videos, one, you got to be you know, cautious of the propaganda value that

you're being fed, right, because that's a big part of it. Again, I'm not taking anything away from what the Ukrainians are doing. It's amazing that they're you know, I think the invasions jacked up, and I think the Ukrainians are doing a

hell of the job. But when you watch these videos, you have a single drone flying along or two drones usually, and it's a small group of Russians or Ukrainians where it's like one guy hiding in a hole, or you see like a single vehicle driving down the road, and if you stop and like zoom out and you think about what you're looking at. What you're seeing is like

harassing attacks, right. They're harassing to in order to keep the Russians from massing any kind of force anywhere near the border, in order to stop them from advancing. Right, And the Russians are still advancing right now, They're still steadily advancing. It's slow going. They're losing, you know, a crazy amount of casualties. I think the twenty twenty five CSIS report was like a million Russian total casualties and like three hundred killed, like seven hundred wounded. It's crazy,

it's absolutely bonkers. But you know, the United States, if we were to go in and help Ukraine tomorrow, we wouldn't just go take and plus up their positions along the front. Like, that's not how we do it. So when these guys come in they say, hey, I want this drone that does this because I saw this video.

I'm like, all right, if you have that drone and you're an infantry platoon leader, right and you're moving and you get contact to your front, tell me how that you're going to integrate that drone into your battle drill without slowing it down like without stopping what you're doing. Like the drones in Ukraine have only become you know, the top of the like the kill chain in the last like two years because they ran out of artillery sales, right That's why they're using them right now. If they

had artillery, they'd probably prefer that, but they don't. They're out. I get it. So I do think drones are going to be you know, the future of conflict. I don't know what it's going to look like yet. And like to your point, if we were to go fight China in the Pacific, you know, where the FPV drones don't have the range to do a whole lot of damage. You know, I worry more about like fpvs and the

small scale drones for insurgencies. And you know, imagine if the drone technology now was out in two thousand and

seven in Iraq, you know, that would have been tough to counter. I worry about the drones, and you know, like the Ukrainian operation what was it called Spiderweb when they put those you know, snuck all those drones way way deep into Russia and then remotely launched them at targets. Like I worry more about that stuff for fpvs and their implications for it unless you know something scenario like the book and that technology comes to that. Because I

haven't talked in the book. I don't talk about battery capability because that's a tough you know, batteries are tough, battery life is tough. So I do have Book two is going to get into the batteries, but I don't want to ruin that. But so like, I think what we think it's going to be is probably incorrect. I think it's going to be different and something that we're

not you know, really sure of yet. And that's what you know, that's a good thing about soldiers wanting to test and play with them, because that's how you get creative and you come up with what that next solution looks like. But I just you know, people that just rely on YouTube for their tactical acumen is usually incorrect.

our military hardware with us. If the Ukrainians had all of our fighter capabilities, on bomber capabilities and all this other stuff that we bring to the table, they would be using that instead.

way to stop them. So most of these drones, for my drone people out there, you know, most of the ones being used in Ukraine are operating on simple two point four gigahertz bands and that's the radio signal that they use to control it, right, And that's essentially the same band as Wi Fi. Right, so if you flew it in a major metropolitan area with Wi Fi all over the place, you would get jammed just by the signals that are out there. So you see a lot

of that jamming happen right now. And then that's where you know, for those that are following it, you start to see some of the fiber optic drones that are coming out. So essentially that's just a fly by wire drone that can't be jammed by a signal, by a radio signal jammer. It actually has a control wire that runs it all the way through and they can fly them for five K, ten K, twenty K. I think

they're getting up there in length. Now. They have these huge canisters that they mount on the bottom of them and it's just full of fiber optic, you know, thin hair like wire and they can go everywhere and not have to get jammed. So that's another thing, because now you have to have a kinetic stop for that, you gotta be able to shoot it down on something.

the book. I don't know, but everyone seems to be really interested in it, and the concept of it kind of like to your point that you're looking to is like it is different, and I wrote it differently on purpose because you know, there's so many big, you know, name like military thrillers out there or military action groups or books, and it's you know, they kind of run a similar script, i'd say, in all of them. I'm

not putting any names out there. I'm not doing that, but a lot of them run kind of similar scripts where you have like this action you know, hero type and he's in horrible situations, he does all the great, you know things, and then you're like switches to scene two and it's like situation room and like, I don't I don't want to know what's going on in the situation room. I'm not trying to go that high in

my books. Uh, there will be some higher headquarters stuff in book two, but really I wanted to show like that tactical nitty gritty, like when you're the team on the ground. You see stuff on the news or you make speculations, but you don't know what's happening, you know, with the president and you know what SECTEF is doing over there, You're just like, what the hell are they

thinking sort of conversation. So it's been the reception has been really you know great, been you know, selling books and getting them out there and you know, getting on platforms like this and talking about it. I appreciate that you having me on let me chat about it, just there's no other way to get it out there to the right type of people that I think will enjoy it.

And most of all, like I want them to, you know, enjoy the book, but I want to take it, think about it, and start trying to like come up with your own ideas of like here's where this could be going. Like if you're a still active duty military or your law enforcement or you know, first responders, like all of

this is applicable. You know, these technologies are going to change the way we do things, whether it's because we're on the receiving end of them or because we know how to counter them and we've come up with the next best thing after this. So that's what I'm trying to do with the book is like, hey, here's where it's going, Here's what I want to show about it.

You know, let's have a conversation and you know, I hope anybody's out there, you know, hit me up on social media and we can we can chat about it. Read the book and let me know each thing.

gods show up and fight on their behalf. Right. So I tried to reimagine that as the technologies that you see in the book, and when the technologies are there, you got you know, overwhelming you know, fire, superiority or force, and you start to see that side winning. I tried to kind of tailor it off of the Iliad. I thought that was kind of a unique way to kind

of play with it. You'll see there are some easter eggs hidden throughout the book, maybe some people's names or some different ideas that might help you kind of figure that out. But when I wrote it about the Iliad, you know, the Iliad stops when Achilles's cousin is killed, and that's it. So the whole trojan horse thing and

all of that, that's actually in a different book. But I'm roping all that into one, and I'm taking three books as my vision to get to the end of this this particular scenario, and don't know yet if it'll go beyond that. I have some couple of different endings in mind of where it may go. It's just going to depend on, you know, what readers think, and if the storyline should continue or if I should you know, be three and done with that and then move on to my next project.

I'm hoping to not have that again.

I know where the you know, the overall story is going. But I'm happy to you know, if you come up with some cool ideas and you want me to throw it in there, let me know, and I'm happy to try to jam that into the book somehow, whatever I can do to make it more realistic and you know, more eye opening for for people. It's kind of the goal.

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