The Team House with your hosts Jack Murphy and David Park. Welcome to episode two hundred and one of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park and our guest on tonight's show is Dustin Ward. Dustin served in the infantry as a sniper and in the long range for conaissance teams, and then went over to the Ranger Regiment and served as a platoon sergeant in the battalion Wreckie section,
amongst other positions that you had over there. Dustin, thank you for coming out here to Godless New York City.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for invite fly it up here. Man, it's awesome to have you here in person.
Thank you.
So, look, we're going to start at the beginning, So tell us about, you know, kind of like how you grew up in sort of like what it was to sort of like directed towards the military.
What's your origin story this story? Yeah, so I was born to a military family. My dad was in the Air Force over twenty two years. My mom was a typical stay at home mom, military spouse. I have one brother, as we always five years younger, moved around a lot. It was born in Mississippi, and then we pretty much ended up North Dakota for the majority of my life. My dad worked on B fifty two's, so mine in North Dakota a great place I got a chance to go.
Towards the end of that, moved down to Texas and that's where I graduated high school and joined the army and stuff. But you know, growing up, I said, I had an awesome household. My dad was gone a lot tdy taking care of the family. My mom took care of us at home, and I just had this outdoorsman military mentality growing up, like I wanted to. I was always one of my dad's BDUs. We're outside playing set up hide and seek. We called a man hunt, yeah,
make it more manly. But anytime I went back to my grandparents' house in Missouri, I was out in the woods. You know, I probably I've probably been shooting guns. I was, you know, six years old, shooting twenty two's and you know, hunting squirrels, hunting ear I always knew I was going to join the military. I think one of my favorite movies still to this day is domin As. It is is uh the Rock. It's a great movie. It's a
lot of fun. It's a it's a good movie. And I just remember having like a little play MP five and I had this somewhere, this little battery charger for a game boy that had a cord and I'd put in my ear like as an earpiece. My dad freaking out shocked myself this battery charger. But I don't know. I always had this, uh, this war mentality. I think every able body mail should serve their country in some aspect, and that's the route I took. I did initially join
the Air Force after high school. I was in the Depth program. I was gonna pass all the prerecs. I was gonna be a PJ. But they told me, hey, we'll call you within six months to leave for Basic. And I was like, no, man, I quit my job yesterday. So I took a year off after high school just
kind of enjoy after high school life. And they're like, well, that's not gonna happen because there's only so many pipelines a year, and you have to hit the pipeline at a certain time or go to Basic at a certain time, something like that. So I watched across the hall the Army recruiter and walked in. There's this big cardboard cut out of a green beret standing there, and he's like, what do you want to do? I was like, jump out of planes and shoot people. Man, how do I
do that? And showed me the old cliche, you know, ranger recruiter view guy coming up out of the swamp. He's actually, it's actually my friend.
Now.
I know, it's kind of funny we have that. Well, we have the documentary VH. His name is Mike Connor. But show me that and, like I said, cliche put his arm around me. It was like, that could be you.
Man.
Yeah. I was like you're right. I was like yeah, I was like that could be me. He's like, yeah, I signed here you leaving two weeks and here's twenty thousand dollars. I was like, sweet, you got an enlistening bonus for that. Yeah, that's fantastic. What what year was this? Five? Okay?
So the world was already kind of on fire in terms of like military and yeah, yeah.
And I remember I remember the war kicked off and O three not Afghan War obviously, but the Iraq War and my buddy and I know at the time, I think its aol. I am you know, aim. So they're message each other like, oh my god, when you hurry up, the war's gonna be over by the time we get out of high school, like won behold twenty years later, still going on, so plenty of time to enjoy the war. But uh, yeah, they gave me a bonus. It was a Special Forces intent bonus, just the intent didn't actually
have to go. Oh really yeah, joined five January oh five. Now did they have an X ray program at that time? They did? I was an eleven X ray okay, dodge that bullet in eleven extra.
Yeah, I went in eleven X ray too. I meant an eighteen X ray though.
Could you go, could you uh see dodge that bullet?
What does Less say about all this?
Less awesome guy?
Man?
That's why I'm here because Less he told me to give a shout out, So I'll give a shout out Less. But yeah, did not become an eleven Charlie came love in Bravo. I don't know if eighteen X ray program was a thing. Yeah, I think it was around by that was it? So I went to I went to s AS and oh seven, and there's some eighteen X rays there, So it might. Yeah.
Now so for people who are watching don't know, uh in you know, in the military jobs the moss the eleven series is the infantry series, and uh the Charlie Well Bravo is riflemen, Charlie is mortarman. They also used to have eleven mics, which was motorized.
That was still a thing. But when you go in X, you're gambling, you're rolling the dice.
I think I think all of us were eleven X ray. I don't think you can go in specifically for oh you can. I don't think you can know.
Now did you know you were rolling the dice? No? I did not. Yeah, they did not explain that at maps.
So yeah, so uh so you you go to basic, do all that and then where where do you go from from there?
So graduated based training. In May five eleven, Bravo went to Fort Lewis, Washington, kind of my basic training cohort at that time. There's a unit standing up in Fort Lewis called a Second Cavalry Regiment two c R. They just moved up there from four Polk I think, but they're staying there. Ended up. So we were the first lower enlisted guys there besides, you know, senior leadership. We showed up. The first question they asked was, hey, out
of all you, who qualified expert in basic training? Kind of raised my hand like sniper section. I was like, hell, yes, that worked out. Yea. And the funny backstory with that is, you know, my mom would tell a story and she'll laugh about it. But I was probably in fifth or
sixth grade. We're like a family reunion down in Missouri somewhere, and one of my relatives asked me when I want what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I said something about being an assassin, and my mom looked at me and looked at my relatives like dusting, shut up, do not say that. I was like sorry, But when I went to sniper section, I called my mom. I said, I was like, guess what.
I made the same mistake when my my high school guidance councilor asked me what I wanted to do with my wife, and I said, I want to join the film and be a sniper. This very nice woman. We'll follow your dreams.
I mean, if we're all gonna embarrass ourselves, Like when I went to the Army recruiter and asked them about special Forces.
I asked them if there was a knife guy. I wanted to be the knife guy.
The knife throw EXTP.
Yeah, yeah, because you know, because I thought there was a demo guy, there was a gun guy there.
That's what G I. Joe led us to believe.
That is where G.
I Joe in the eighteen is where I got my knowledge on a special forces nice.
So you became an assassin for the army.
Came in an assassin for the army. I did that from five to eight in that timeframe. I did a well that you and I was then reflagged to second Mstry Division and then we deployed to Iraq for fifteen months during the surge and we spent three months in uh Baghdad. That was about three months in Baghdad and then went and ripped out with a new unit or you know, replacement and U Bakuba or Bakuba everyone to
say it and Fiber war Horse. We spent the rest of deployment there and that was that was a wild West was now out of curiosity.
You know, you were one of the first guys to show up to the sniper session this newly formed unit. Did they send you to the Army Sniper School like immediately.
No, I didn't go until it's like March of O six.
And then did they have anybody with experience come on to be like the.
We all went together, so there was team leader and all shooters went to sniper school together.
So one of the one of the challenges with snipers sometimes is having somebody who can teach young officers how to properly employ snipers. Right, U, how did you guys manage that, especially for your first deployment.
Uh? So they had this course at the time called the Sniper Employment Officer Course, and I can't remember if our PO went to it or not, but I mean he was all about letting us do our thing, and he didn't micro manage us at all. He's like, hey, whatever ranges you want, whatever shooting you have to do, you know, you guys, go do that and just be proficient at your task. And we got we got the
M one on seven barretts. We got those, and they held a course kind of locally on Fort Lewis for that just to kind of break them in and get to know the weapons system. So he came to that too, kind of learned, learned, the job a little bit. Yeah, but yeah, the Squalader had at the time one of my favorite squalders over had. I look up to him to this day and kind of based my leadership skills off him. He was he had the ESF mentality of everyone needs to know everybody's job and you know, just
kind of spread the knowledge. And he he was prior service, got out, came back in, so he had some experience already done a couple of deployments, but he was he let's do a thing that was good.
So what was the mission up at Bakuba?
So it's funny. Uh, we were at Bagdad. Uh. You know, Jaysack was obviously operating in Iraq and they were doing the at the time, the thing we called them tst missions and times since some target missions and they would get a lock in a guy and launch. Well, there were so many targets. They didn't have enough personnelity to get all these targets. So they came down and trained
us how to do it. The Sniper Platoon or sniper Team, Battalion Snipers and Battalion Recky Platoon which I was in Snipers a part of Battalion Recky in the big Army trained us how to do it and how to use the assets and everything. So we tagged along in that mission. We were sharing targets with them, which was probably one of the better ways to spend fifteen months, sure, because the rest of the line companies, they were out and uh, you know, a little outpost in the middle of the
city just burning pooping a barrel. You know, it felt so bad for those guys because we just got ahead of target, come back and go to sleep. Yeah, like, but that's that was our target set or mission set. What we did for fifteen months, go out almost every night, and we did you know, it varied from based off the target and based off what happened when we got to the target, you know, doing silent entries and silent clears and waking them up in their sleep and like
taking their guns from them while they're sleeping. Would you like taking their guns from the whi they're sleeping and then waking them up like hey, sorry, we're here, yeah, or be a you know, court on and call out, just depends on the situation. In about what year was this, That was seven oh eight.
Okay, yeah, so people had kind of moved beyond the explosive breaching when they could do somethingthing else generally.
Yeah, yeah, we didn't do any explosive breaching. Yeah, we didn't have that capability in the big armor. Yeah. I think the most explosive breaching we did we'd drive a striker through the gate. Yeah. Yeah. It worked.
So they kept you guys pretty busy, and I mean that was a busy time in a rack to begin with.
Like I said, Baka was the wild West. When we showed up the sister unit we're replacing from thurber Gate to Day, we're fourth GD to Ida. They were thurber Gade to I D. And I think they had like twelve working strikers at the time when we showed up because they were just getting blown up. There was like seventy six acts a week when we got there, and then after us for after us being there for I don't know, three or four weeks, it dropped to like twelve sigacts a week, and we put a hurting and
hurting on them so bad. I mean, the biggest ID is going off maybe pop it around the striker, and there was some suicide bombers that hit us, hit personnel, But as far as like view id's they weren't doing much.
What did you guys do to change the tempo?
A strict curfew and then every military age male got pretty much rounded up and then put in the bat hide system. So biometrics rounded them all up, put them in bat hide system, and then strict curfew.
And then.
I won't say any names, but uh, I mean like an I d would go off somewhere and this wasn't my directing is another company, but I remember Ide would go off and if he saw a dude on a phone anywhere near that, he could just shoot him. And they learned like they don't mess around. These guys aren't playing and the bag Dad was a nose hot at the time too. Before we went to Bakama, we were
responsible for putting in all the t walls. I don't know if you guys remember that all the t walls through Baghdad door sector, which was there's a lot of infighting between Soni and Shia. They were just murdering each other left and right and things like our second or third week during right seat rides. For the entire deployment. I mean, we just pulled up and there's like five d's hog tied and executed outside the road, like what
the heck is going on? And you bang on the door like, hey, what's up with the bodies in the road, like what bodies? Yeah, this is gonna be huh. Yeah, And it was. It was hot. Yeah, it's a good time.
So what were what were your when you weren't working for you know, doing the TSTs. What was sort of the conventional armies? Were you guys doing a lot of presidence patrols? Was there a lot of Were there a lot of targets.
That they they did just clearar and zops. So it was almost like a it's just a vicious, endless cycle. You start in this sector and start working your way around the city and by the time you go back here starting all over again because all the guys he pushed out of here are down here now, you know.
So they just just kept doing that. We did a lot of palm grove clearing, Yeah, just online walking through the palm groves and one hundred and twenty degree heat, you know, trying to find cashing these yeah, ID so you find a lot. Yeah, we did. Yeah, I remember distinctly. One time it got handed over to us. We didn't find it specifically we went out and took it over because I think the people that found it, uh detained the personnel and then left with them, and then we
took over the site. But I mean there was over five hundred anti tank mines double stacked like in rows, like almost in a like a farmer's field. They're just lined up, you know, like five or six fifty five gallon drums filled with initiators and timers and yeah, how many uh like two hundred and five gallon drugs and nitric acid. There's a suburban rigged with a VB I
D like ready to go. I mean the funny thing is after we gathered all that and bipped it and whatever, the EOD guy he's like, yeah, we probably knocked this cell out for like two weeks. Oh wait, that's it. Two weeks like all that for two weeks. It was crazy. Man.
You guys demo it insighte EOD did.
Yeah?
Did you now being in like the sniper was it a section or.
A platoon we had It was just a section eighteen, a squad in the recky platoon.
Okay, so so you were you fell under Rekie then, so how did you guys operate in that environment.
Were there a lot of sniper specific missions.
Were you working with Wrecky a lot, or were you just kind of folded in to.
The folded in We didn't fold in with the line units. We did our own thing with the TST missions with Wrecky pretty much overwatch as the Wrecky platoon was hitting a compound or if a if a line company was doing like a med cap, we would go out there and do overwatch while they're doing like ad med cap, or hand out soccer balls at a school. We'd pull
over watch while they're doing that. Platoon leadership changed out through deployment and we had one one p L that he was He was an EXSF guy, enlisted SF guys, but he he was all about us doing what snipers do. And he's like, hey, I don't care where you guys go, what you do, as long as you follow are we give me attention to grid and have a radio. So we would trunch off into the hinter lands with three or four guys in radio. That's fantastic, I mean just for guys place nineties. Yeah, I mean.
And the reason I said fantastic people are not like and especially conventional, But in any unit there there's really a lot of there are a lot of rules, there's a lot of control. There's not a lot of freedom for you guys to do. But if you guys kind of do your own missions.
A lot of younger pls don't understand how to utilize any sort of like special unit or the special team, be it mortar snipers or connaissance. You know.
So it's so they don't not to bash new pls, but don't understand.
They don't want to.
They don't want to get in trouble. Yeah, they don't want to get in trouble either. They don't want to overstep right right, But that mission, I wouldn't say mission, but letting us go out in three or four guys do our own thing was you know, we're sitting in this house one one day and just an example, since I was over watching this river and this bridge and
just waiting for something to happen. But unbeknown to us, there was a big army I think it's first Calve or something like that, whatever, the big army it is with a horse and the slash calf calf. Yeah, they were doing this big clearing operation through the pong whirs that we were in then they didn't know we were there, and they we saw them coming, we could hear them coming, and they ended up hitting the house that we were
up in. Oh shit. We're yelling down the stairs like hey Eagle, yeah you know, and I remember this first tuner. He kind of like stopped in like, this is my house. Why aren't you wearing your control? Yeah, pretty much what it seemed like. But uh, he's like, who you guys. I'm like, hey, we're sniper section with this unit. And he's like, okay, what are you guys doing? And we kind of told him and it was towards the end
of our mission time one day. Anyways, we're getting read to X Phil and uh, We're like, hey, you're going the direction we're going, right? He was like yeah. I was like, do you mind if we X filled with you guys? He's like a man, go ahead, thank you. Yeah. It's like middle of the day.
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So Dustin, you're after this deployment, you at that point you went over to worse.
Right, Yeah, towards the tail end of that deployment, the first aren't came over and said they're standing up a core long range surveillance unit at Fort Lewis, And if anybody was interested in going and kind of a military history buff, like even when as a kid, I had like flashcards of you know, Fokker airplanes from the little World War two and everything, big military buff, so I knew what LURSE was based off Vietnam LARPs books and everything.
So I raise my hand. I raised my hand and I was like, yeah, I'm interested because I always wanted to go do something special and I looked at it as like the next step of the ladder. I wanted to do it right, and my eyes right was working your way up. I've been ounce for me. You just go to selection or just joined as an eighteen X ray. But uh, yes, I went to that. Uh October eight, it's when I went to LURSE like tryouts, and it was it wasn't eything crazy, just road march test, swim test,
stuff like that land aff. And then yeah, I went there October eight. Then January nine, I mean went straight to pre rangury rengder school everyone, school and everything, and then deployed that next summer at O nine, I was only home for like a year, went for another year or two.
Right now, can you tell us the difference between how a Rekie unit a Rocky element might be used in a LURT unit.
Is there a functional difference between them compared.
To the WRECKI like the reck the you know, you went from snipers, you know, kind of under a WRECKI to LURST.
Oh yeah, So a LURSE reconnaissance detachment operates at a company level by itself. The LURS company operates at anattalion level, So at a platoon detachment level, we're doing MDMP instead
of TLPs. Right, so we're mission planning at a battalion level for a six man operation warribletoon operation versus a big army regulable tune just doing TPS like a ranger school, and our reporting criterion and c ci R is going much higher than a big Army battalion wrecky is going to a brigade battlefields of ans brigade, which then reports to the core and can really shape strategically I wouldn't say strategically, but theater, right, instead of tackling strategically the ins.
The and in the the worse units are interesting in that they really are other than maybe r r C, the closest to the Vietnam WORP teams six man teams going out And Uh, if you'll pardon my little digression, my little, my little rant I have and I'd be interested to hear your opinion, Dustin. Uh, the Army keeps disbanding worse units and then restanding them up. And how many times we've seen them do that just during the GWAT era. Well you kind of lived through some of that.
I mean, what's what's your feelings about how we keep a sea song between this and and really the capabilities of worse and what you guys bring to the table as opposed to all the drones and the the SGANT and immint and all these other technological capabilities that have been great for the military. But is there still a relevancy to that six man team on the ground.
In my personal opinion professional opinion, there will always be irrelevance for boots on the ground. Intelligence. Yes, you know, emmint and drones and singing and all that is great. Technology is awesome. The stuff we do with technology is mind blowing. But can a drone see through the clouds.
Bad weather? Yeah, bada inside a building?
Can those vehicles drive through a muddy road? You know? Can six guys walk through that muddy road? Yeah? Can six guys sit in a hide sight for four to five days at a time and watch them objective of you know, the entire time persistently? Yeah? Can a drone do that? Now it has to go refuel, it's got to bring up another drone and hopefully have a good handoff on emmett or seeing it, and then no bad weather can force them out too. I would say that the limiting factor for you know, six guys on the
ground is depending on who the commander is. Just metavact. You know, bad weather obviously affects meta fact is that saying that nothing is south US military, Well, that's false lightning within fivele stop it every time, right, Yeah, the whole disbanding and restanding up and just they just need to stand them up and keep them. They're still National Guard lurcingits. I think there's one in Indiana, maybe one
in California. I don't know where they're all at, but they need to stand them up and they need to move them underneath special operations. Honestly, if you look at all the other armies in the world, their pathfinder units, their loss units or special operations rights, why are we the only ones that don't have those guys with special operations. It's a special task and they go to special schools to learn how to do that, and they're you know, being asked to do extraordinary missions.
Well, and it's funny and sad. Funny sad there's probably a German word for that. But but that that at the same time, the conventional army is saying these lourse units whatever like there there are other things that we can use to replace them. You have r r D, the Ranger Rekie Detachment getting bigger and becoming a national level asset where it's not it doesn't even have anything much to do with like it's not a regimental level laymore.
It's a national level asset now because we're like, oh, ship, this is really good stuff, you know, and meanwhile they're like, oh, lurship.
But when when you went over to Worse, did you as far as like the special train, did your team get to go to Arslic or any of that.
Yeah, pretty much everybody went to Arsic. We did send the first shot of guys going to Ranger School. I mean I think we sent twelve to sixteen guys at one time. It's unheard of. Yeah, to Rector School from one company, you know, touring school one time, you know, half past half recycled or whatever. And then while we're there, the rest of the guys went to ARSIC. And then after that first push, everybody just kind of trickled into D school on Arsenic.
Could could you tell that the squares out there who don't know the benefit of ARSLIC what that course is and what what you were in there?
Yeah, ARSLIC is the Reconstance Surveillance leadership school or leadership course. It's called something else now, I believe because it falls under a cave in it now.
Really well, I thought it was like a trashoc unit attached to RENDER school.
It's they transitioned because Fort Knock shut down, moved all the armor to Fort Benning. Oh so now Fort Benning is the maneuver center of excellence. Wow, so it's now part of the calve schools. I think. Don't quote me on that, it's just what I remember, what I think
I've heard. Yeah, the arsenal course is awesome course. It teaches you how to operate in a six man element, teaches you how to do the MDMP process not TLPs communications, and then all your optics and observing equipment and teach how to do that, and how to build a hide site and sit there and watch a target for you know, four to five days at a time, and then how to possibly break contact as a six man element, how to land now as a six man element, just everything that can you.
Tell us a little bit about the difference between t is the troop leading procedures and the m d m P, Like why is that, what's the difference in that and why does.
It meaning for troop leading procedures, Internet shows company level below. That's for smaller unit operations. It's faster, it doesn't take as much planning. When you get to m D m P it's battalion echelon planning. So now you're looking at all the back like major backside support that goes along with an operation. It just takes a long time to plan that.
Can I say something really sarcastic for a second, just I wanted to say that, you know, they got rid of lurse units because they don't need them, they can't afford them. But there was enough there weren't enough officers that they wouldn't fire enough general you know, general level officers to rename the arslick to something, you know, to get their get their bennies because we don't let to go general losters anymore.
Or yeah admirals and yeah, yeah, uh so second round interrack with worse. What was the issue this time around?
So we were on the Iranian border and the Hawasam Marshes kind of near Basara. Oh wow, yeah, I think our cob we're at a cob, not a fob. It was a cob adder. I believe it was called and uh, we would go out to the Iranian border for two weeks at a time, legit, living in a patrol base. We're at a border fort, so they were ackis in Iranians they have a border fort system. So along the entire border there's these forts and it's it's legit. Like Saddam told his guys he wants sports, and they just
googled fort. It's it's a square with like four turrets, like four turret towers, and that's it. So there's all these dotted up and down the border, and the Iranians have the same thing.
Just mirror almost like a DMZ animal it is.
There's I think it's like a five kilometer DMZ in between. But yeah, they just Miria Shu. I'll we have another boarder. So we'd go out and link up with the border patrol Iraqi border patrol worthless, but uh, we'd go out there for two weeks at a time, living out of our trucks, you know, mrs for two weeks, no shower for two weeks, Uh, shitting in a hole for two weeks.
We would take trailers attached them to our humvees for enough fuel so we can get back because as there's a three to six hour drive depending on what happened on the way there to get to where we're going. So enough fuel, enough water, enough food. We did do a couple of air aerial resupplies while we're out there, but yeah, we go out there for two weeks to
live our trucks and our main objective. Our main mission was to stop lethal aid from coming from Iran into Iraq, so whether that'd be money, weapons, explosives, whatever, But we'd sit in that patrol base for two weeks and we'd kick out a six man team per night to go do a patrol and we're pretty free to plan our missions however we wanted. I don't remember there being any restrictions on how far we could go away from the patrol base. It was like, hey, as long as you
got six guys, I know where you're going. You know, I trust you in your training. How's the food and that's all right? Sore? Did you get did you have it all?
Any kind of interdiction mission with that or was it observations?
It was in arediction? Did we interdict anybody? But did we stop them because they knew we were out there? Yeah, they knew we were out there because I remember in the middle of the day and we were looking at something. We're taking pictures, and I was like, man, that would be a good good place for heightsight over here next time we come out and the Iranian guard tower. It
is a good distance away. But they had those big giant drop a quarter in binus like a statue delivery, and we could see them looking at us, so they knew we were out there. And they also lobb some mortars at us and shot some pik at us one time. I would say one of the coolest things from that. I was talking to Jack earlier about it, and I felt bad for the younger guys because they had not deployed yet. And this is towards the tail end of
the war. There wasn't a lot of conflict, you know, direct engagements going on, and they just wanted to go to war, right and here we are doing this recky mission. Well cool, Like if you're getting shot at when you're doing reky, you're not doing reky properly. So we didn't get shot at it, so did a good job. But they didn't see all the bigger picture stuff we were doing, or they didn't understand it, or maybe it was our fault as team leaders not telling them, you know, directly
what we're doing. But Iran was flying drones over us, and our unit, our company, not Michaeltoon, but our company was responsible for, you know, creating the first like s op for dealing with our Anian drones because we were seeing them and we were tracking them on Falcon view, like drawing their routes back in Iran, and we scrambled some F sixteens to come try to shoot it down, and these F sixteens flew out and they radio down like, hey, we can't fly slow enough to shoot these things. Sorry,
you know, yeah, it is what it is. We're like, all right, But when we scrambled those F sixteens and they're flying up another border trying to find this drone, Iran scrambled the F fourteen's and they're just going up and down again, marrying each other, and we're sitting there like, oh shit, we're gonna start World War three events. We
got front row seats like this is cool. I was just one of, you know, one of the cool things that we did, like one of the unspoken things that we did that no one really saw or heard about. We did some other stuff. You know, me and probably three other team leaders all we're all still really good friends. Probably the only eleven Bravos that could get their Basic Aviator badge because we did some i SR missions where we flew in the aircraft. Oh cool, we actually got
to fly there. Pilot was like, yeah, take over what you want to take an out?
What aircraft?
Uh, it's a Sesna. It's like a Cessna three three three. Maybe it's a pushpool. It's like Bat twenty one. Think Bat twenty one is that aircraft? Even thought carlsim was a bat and had emblems on it and stuff, but it was just pilot us and then a sensor operator in the back really and flew out to where we were operating. So we'd go out there for two weeks, come back for two weeks. During that refit time, we
would fly with ir to go continue watching. That's cool, well we were supposed to be watching again.
It's like a throwback to like Vietnam era where you'd have worps flying around with bird dog bird dog right the facts, Yeah.
That's exactly what it was. Yeah, we liked we like to jokes say we're like, hey, we're probably the only eleven Bravos that can say that. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So that's a good mission. Yeah, that's awesome. Now when when you guys, because you.
I assume you were pretty far from the nearest air base, how long would it take like F sixteens to get to you when you guys called them or scrambled them.
I couldn't even give you a guess mine on that.
Yeah, I don't remember did you have air air assets if if the Iranians.
Or or we did we had a patches on call F sixteen's obviously it's funny to bring that up because I remember the I remember this guy's name, General Cohne. I won't say bad things, but I'm not a fan. He flew out one time to visit us. He was like the our m NCI South general, gotcha, Yeah, he came out to visit us, and he was just he was flabbering acid. He's like, you guys have this support and this support. I'm like, yeah, he's like, I don't even have that. Well, you're a general, you're in a jock.
Yeah you're not. You're not thirty guys out here sitting by yourselves. Yeah, you know, but yeah, we did have that support. That's good.
So that deployment winds down, and uh, when does the ranger regiment start to enter into your peripheral vision?
Oh, towards the end of that deployment, probably the year after we kind of got in that training mindset, you know, the war pretty much over in Iraq. I was still trying to keep my guys in shape and ready to go for Afghanistan. So we're doing a lot of rocking and a lot of hill climbs and stuff like that. But the Lauris Unit at Fort Lewis was the only other airborne unit besides First Group and two seven five. So a lot of guys that got rfs from two seven to five came to the Lars unit because it's
the only other airborne unit. They don't want to lose their jump pay. And then we keep doing you know, ranger things. So I'd say, you know, like seventy percent of our leadership, senior leadership at the Lauris unit was two seven five. MYLP Petuniasar was a two some five guy, and you know, and so and so, and they pushed that ranger mentality, you know, which I loved the discipline, mentality and the respect and everything that you don't see
another units. Honestly you don't. And then I had a Platuna sarn't Zach who was a wreckie guy at two some five, super awesome mentor. I mean, he just texted me the other day talking about, you know, just how proud he isn't me and everything, and he's a he's a good guy, and he talked about two and recky Rekie that forced us to have an sp book and just all the little things that people don't think about,
you know. And then RC came around and gave a recruiting brief for RC and I set in on it, and uh, I was like, I'm gonna go do that because that's like the next step in my Rekie path, you know. So I went to r C selection and I went to Spring selection in twenty twelve, did not make it, and then I went to the Fall selection that same year and got picked up. And then immediately following r C selection, you go to RASP to get selected for a regiment. Which that's an interesting what is
r is RC? Like rope?
Is it?
The new.
RASP two is what replaced rope?
Yeah?
Okay, and I would like to just talk about this for a moment because I think it's really interesting that Again, another little digression, but RRD was the Regimental Reconnaissance Detachment, then became the Regimental Reconnaissance Company and for the longest time from when did it stand up, like nineteen eighty four, it was the nineteen eighties, it was like eighty four, I think, and their job was really just to do
reconnaissance for airfield seizures. So there were three teams. Each team was for each battalion, each of the three battalions, and then they kind of grew, especially as the war kicked off, they grew into something else. But those guys were always drawn from within the regiment. And then you were I think about probably the first like generation of guys that they started recruiting from the conventional military.
Yeah, I think I'm not trying to put words anybody's mouths or anything, but I think they realized, like, there's some good dudes in the big army that, right, it could be beneficial, right, right, just like any you know, I mean, it's like gag. I mean, they recruit from everybody, right, you know, So why weren't they doing the same thing and I think that's what they realized. And maybe because some guys went from big army to regiment and then r D, that might be a reason. I don't know
why specifically. I'm not gonna put words anybody's mouth, so I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, I mean back then it was just because it was, it was, it was. It was regimental like it was, it was someplace. She went from battalion like you know what I mean. Uh, then I think it got bigger and then they.
Also yeah, so it was a r D was a detachment from regimental headquarters. Right then they became a company under rs TV Special Troops of Battalion and went from you know, the three teams to eight, eight teams maybe six.
Now I don't know what was I'm interested in, you know, your experience. What was it like going to selection for for that course or for that unit.
I won't get into the specifics of selection because I don't want to ruin it for right other people going like a spoiler. It's part of the fun. Yeah, I probably signed an NDA too, I don't know, but no, it was. It's fun as your typical army selection, a lot of rocking, a lot of rocking. I would say total. If you don't get lost, you're probably looking at two
hundred miles you're walking total for the three weeks. But I mean it's the typical you know, your twelve mile road mars, you're PT test, your Ranger PG test, now Army PT test, some psychological testing and IQ tests and stuff like that, and then you have, you know, a practice week where you know, you learn how to land have because I'm pretty sure CAG does it the same way.
It's they're going under the assumption that nobody knows how to land a right, so they want to make sure everyone's on the same playing field, and they teach you. It's like two three days of land and a classes. They teacher land have and you go out and do some cadal lead and uh there's another road march in there that's disguised as you know, another training event. It's
a timed event. And then uh yeah, then move on to stress phase and you're doing land half every day and sleeping out in the woods with the culmination event that I won't spoil.
And after you on the second time around get getting selected. Uh and then you go and then you had to go to RASP so that's an interesting thing too. You had to go to two selection courses essentially to get picked up for the regiment.
Yeah, so the rd selection RC selection was for the company and then RASP is for the regiment and uh yeahs sucked. You know it was ras to like. It sucked. Man, it was not fun. What can you tell us about it because it wasn't. So it wasn't a gentleman's course at all. I mean it was there's no yelling and screaming, yea thing, but it's just it's physical, physically and mentally training.
At the time when I went through, I don't know what it's like now, but a lot of class learning about the regiment and the history of the regiment and how the regiment operates because you're a you known commissioned officer or officer officers too, so you're learning how the regiment operates. And then you know again you're going out
and doing land alf. The land alf piece is interesting because you they parry up with the RASP one guy, so rip guys, they pay up with one of them or two of them, and it's your job as an n c O to teach them how to land out. So you're doing land A with GRASP one, so if they suck, I was just like, it's a nightmare. But I was good and we got all our points and I was like, all right, guys, sit down, sit down. He didn't worry. Let's hang out. There's a couple other
physical events. Yeah FTX. You do an FTX as a class, and there's some stressful events during that, and you really kind of see who can handle being an NCU right in the regiment or an officer under a stressful situation. You know.
Yeah, because the the so I use it's rasped too. It used to be rope, which was different than RIP because so for people who don't know for a lot, the way regiment works is you're a private eighteen years old or twenty seven, however old you are when you.
Go in and.
You know, you go to your infantry basic, you go to the Ranger and Doctrination program or now it is rope one right, Ranger Orientation.
Program, Ranger Assessment Selection.
Program, rangers okay, and then you go to Range Battalion.
Can you grow up in Range Battalion?
You go through private and you know, to specialists and you know whatnot and ready battalion, but they also have opportunities for people who did not grow up in battalion to come into battalion.
Well, the interesting thing is they're really the regiment's really strict about making guys go back through selection to get back into the regiment. So even if you were an enlisted ranger, you go green to gold, become an officer, and now you go do your pl time in the eighty second wherever you're at. And now you want to come back to the ranger regiment and take a ranger platoon, you got to go back through RASP.
Yeah, so that's a thing.
They don't mess around.
So that's his thing now too with NCOs started twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen Abrams Charter, which is why officers went out and came back, went out and came Now NCOs also have to go.
Out and they're bringing that back. Yeah.
So every time you go from my platusar in to first Art and a first arm to ops or whatever you're taking the next leadership position. As an NCA, you got to go out for a year and come back. Oh, you have to go out to the big army. So I say big army going desk.
So comm Still Abram's charter was, you know when they stood up the Ranger Regiment in the eighties or no, I'm sorry, in the seventies. It was supposed to be like a role model for the rest of the supposed
to Vietnam army exactly. Yeah. And so the idea, I'm not trying to lecture you, dust, and I'm trying to just tell folks out there who maybe don't know what we're talking about that the idea was that you would grow this nucleus of highly skilled, trained soldiers and then they would go out into the larger army and spread that knowledge and those skills around.
And that's yeah, that's why they brought back NCO's going out was to do that. Right. Two problems though, is some guys are going out to the big army. I'm like, oh, it's not that bad, right, I can kick it. I can just sit back.
And I'm kind of a legend here, exactly. Yeah, I'm kind of a legend.
Yeah, guys would go out and not come back like, you know, I'm a big fish in a little pond instead of a little fish.
If they're chilling down at McDill and Tampa, they're like beach is pretty nice.
Yeah, exactly. And the other problem was Regiment realized that guys weren't coming back by choice, and numbers started kind of getting depleted. So instead of sending guys out to the regular army to spread the knowledge, guys would go to Socom or Jay Socker us of Sock and do an ops job for a year instead of doing what they're supposed.
To make them miserable on staff. They'll come right back.
So that's what happened to that. I love Regiment death, I will always love Regiment. It's the best time in my life. But Regiment is a snake eating its own tail. Just you know, it keeps moving and keeps getting rid of good guys, keeps moving, keeps getting ready. Because you can have a guy that gave his whole life to the Regiment from private to sixty seven, he steps on his dick one time, Yeah, a minor thing, yeah, and then gone, yeah, dude.
I was actually going to bring that up because you mentioned that when you were at like the Lurch unit that you had I think a lur unit or a recommend but you would have guys who would rfs now in range of battalion in the regiment, RFS is released for standards. And what that means is you did something and it may have been something heinous, but generally something heinous.
Will get you kicked out of the military.
Subjective, yeah, but generally it's something that that you know you might you might get RFS forgetting.
It could be got into a bar fight, a bar.
Fight and you had had a drink, even if the fight wasn't your fault, it was an alcohol related incident. Like and it really depends on what your chain of command feels about you and feels about covering their ass at that point in time or not you get released for standards. And so when you get released for standards, it's not you. You don't get kicked out of the military. You're just like you can't be arranging more. You gotta
go down the road. Uh And and second or like in Fort Lewis, down the road is larse or hopefully hopefully it's lurse because they could be condemned to.
Like Korea a fate wret exactly.
I mean, like another another example of the whole go to RASP thing. You know, one of my guys I worked with at the LURT unit to go RFS. He spent twelve years that two seven five. Yeah, and then he had to go to RASP again because he made his seven he's gonna take him two star job and and the board they said no. And the reason was he's not aggressive enough. His mentality wasn't aggressive enough to be in regiment. I was like, what because he's like us,
Like he's just laid back. Yeah, you don't need to be a chest beating all the time. Right.
Well, when you when you say it's a snake eating its tail, it's exactly what you're alluding to there is that you recruit and select and breed a generation of soldiers that are really tightly wound and really intense, and then it's like you cut them loose on a three day weekend. It's like no ship, they got a d U y Yeah yeah, yeah, you know, you stress these guys the hell out.
They got in a bar fight Seattle.
I'm shot. I am shocked.
How did Yeah? The thing the thing of being a regiment too, is it's there's only so many positions available. Someone's always trying to get your job, but no one, no matter what position you're in, someone's waiting for you
to mess up or for you to leave. So it's almost like you're always kind of walking on eggshells all the time too, Like is this It's a stressful place to work, honestly, especially when I was there the position I had no I was we haven't got there yet, but I was the youngest platoons are in the most senior between starting position, and it was just every day I felt like I was gonna just mess up. Get sound.
Let's yeah, let's walk towards that. You make it through RASP and then the next step is there's the RRC has its own sort of like operator training course.
Right, Yeah, they call it RTC, the Reconnaissance Training Course. Roughly ten months long, right, I think it's ten months long. Started that in January of thirteen. It broke up into three phases. Phase one ended in May. I'm not going to get into what the training is for their training course, but arslicon steroids and a bunch of shooting programs and in free fall school and all that stuff. Yeah, I made it through Phase one and the Phase one board.
I got the thanks, but no thanks, not really. They don't give you a reason why. They don't tell you why you're not a good fit. I think I know why, but yeah, So I left there, went to the three Shop at rs TV as the r n c O for a couple of weeks, and then the Stormy major came over and he's like, hey, I think I got a job where you are you interested? I was like, yeah, what you got? And he said three some five Wrecky And that's where I went? And so what are you?
What rank are you right now? No master or retired master? No, not right now at this point in time, he's six and what year is this? Thirteen?
Okay, so things are still hot, relatively hot, like things are still happening, and you get offered this job for Reki your knee six?
Is that a? Is that a t L? And Recky? What a Joe? Okay? I showed up to three some five WRECKI the platoon staring at the time. My buddy Matt he uh, he's a prior RC guy too, except he got out of the army, went National Guard, realized real world sucks, came back in the army and it was it three sent five Wrecky now. But I showed up.
He kind of knew my background, did an interview with me, and you got to know me, and then I was like, hey, man, I need your help, like, I need your help shaping this platoon and what it should be into a wrecky balltoon not I call it a senior squalor hang apple tune. A lot of guys did their squalor time and their reward was to go to recky and go do uh yeah mega thing and stuff like that. Yeah, go grow beard. Yeah. How old was Reki at this point in time and
in regiment and here there? And they stood was it? Oh three?
Yeah? The battalion Rekie was two thousand and four. Yeah, so I was on. I was a sniper, but I was on the first apployment with the battalion Recki guys. Yea, so just about ten years old, okay. But the guy was talking about Matt when he was in the National Guard. He was in alerts in it yea. So I went from RC to National Guard Alurse and then came back to three five Reki.
So he knew what Lurse is and what Reki is and had a very good understanding of what it should be. And me and him kind of molded this platoon into what it should be. And I'd say about three to six months later, I was just be bopping down the hallway and going to my office and he stopped me and he was like, hey, man, did did First Turn talk to you yet? I was like no, why. He's like, well him, Starry Major talked and he needs to talk to you. I was like, fuck, I just got here, man, Like,
what's going on now? So I go to First Arm's office and I walked in and he's like, hey, what do you think about being Platoon's art? You want to take over Reki? And I was like, oh shit, yeah, absolutely, I'm not gonna turn it down, you know. And that's that's when I became the potinion aren't for three five Recky, and I wasn't for three and a half three and a half years, so.
So Reki wasn't new, it was ten years old. But you guys sort of created this thing, is it because at that time or during that time, there wasn't that Lurst experience that nobody knew what Rocky should actually look like.
I think that's exactly what the problem was. Okay, they didn't have a a good Reki background, as you said, and there just wasn't a there wasn't a mission for him. Yeah, you know overseas, it was a strike forces going out and hitting targets, like, what's what's reck you gonna do? Right? You know you got you know, you got the prids right, you know every ir asset you can think of for all task force over your target? Why do you need Recky out there? That was the mentality, and they didn't have a.
Mission when when I mean this is like ancient history, you know, taking baby steps. But that first deployment, I remember the guys doing some ctrs, uh, doing some you
know on foot kind of reconnaissance stuff. And then when we did get some strike operations, I remember the guys going out and like doing like because actually we started doing FID too with a SWAT team out in cowst and so taking those guys out and doing like VPS and you know, black side security and so that that was sort of but it was all very like a nascent sort of form, right yeah.
And I mean like if you're doing CTR, so CTR is close hard connaissance, and in that environment, if you're doing CTR, you're either like in a vehicle or you're tasking dage to do it.
Like it's very hard sometimes to do it. And that wasa that was our mission was the CTRS. Yeah, like an airfield. Yeah, that would drive by in vehicles and film or do whatever would do.
But now we're at the point where are our c is out doing secret squirrel stuff And so you're you're saying that when you got there, sort of the battalion reckie teams were sort of in limbo that not quite sure they were in limbo.
We had the Inner Agency Mission program and then also had guys tasked to r C to help them with their program. So they were filling billets for RC as well. And that was a funny story too. Well. I left r C went over three some five. When I showed the three some five, I mean like the next day, he's like, hey, you need to go over r C
to talk to them about this deployment coming up. And I was like, what the fun go back over there and knock on the door and uh, guy that was on my board, Terry, he answered the door and he's like, what's up.
Man.
I was like, I was told to come over here. I guess I'm working with you now, and he's like huh. He was like that worked out, didn't it?
Yeah? Yes?
So yeah, so was there are you formal uh And Jack Hugan asked me, was there a formal because like in the cniper section you went to SODIC right, you know, at least SO two if not Stotak one, but you'd go to SODIC H the Special Operations Target and Addiction course for Reki when they stood them up.
Was there a formal training program for them? I don't know.
Well, back when they stood up, it was like again they were all, you know, building an airplane in flight. But they did have a training program that they were standing up. Yeah, but it was in house training, yes, okay. And I can't remember if they went to Arsenic or not. Mean, I would have to hit up some of those guys from back in the day and talk to them. But I mean, what was it like when when you got there?
When I got there, when I was a petween start, I didn't send anybody to Arsenic because I could teach Arseny. Yeah, and that's what I did with my guys. Yeah, taught the squaladers how the team leaders how to do it, and then they taught their guys how to do it
the way the army should work. In my in my mind at the time, all Arsenic would do for me is yeah, cool, gave them an identifier, but I also lost I just lost that guy for three or four weeks, you know, So I would rather instead of top down training, I would go bottom up, like, you know, go to my team leaders, what does your team need to learn? What do you guys need? You know, you have the manuals. What do you not know in the manual? And then we would go.
Over Now, was taught like a tradec school? Was it taught like a soft school?
Trade school? Trade x? Okay, trade school? And again that's another reason, like we don't want to go do that, right, not saying we're better than that, but.
But you are, and and and and so when we talk about trade doc and soft we're talking about training and.
Doctrination, training in doctrine, doctrine in doctrination, doctors, all the schools all so.
Yeah, so it's very formalized process that's been put together up by an officer who may or may not know what they're doing. And like, it's very formalized training that teaches to standard, not to or whatever it is like, but but they don't necessarily always teach things the way
they need to be taught. So you're sending somebody to a school that is an army taught school, which means it's a bureaucrat taught school exactly, and not saying that the artick instructors aren't great at their job or or anything like that, but but the curriculum itself has been laid out.
By the bureaucracy. It's been laid out by the bureaucracy, and seventy five percent of south they're teaching is from Vietnam. Yeah, which I mean, it's still applicable, you know, but I would rather teach my guys what I know and what has worked right and what does work right versus what trade dock is telling me to teach me. So when you guys.
Turn the or when you sort of you know, developed this recky element, this rocky section, how do you impress upon the command what your new improved capabilities are or or get sort of operational okays.
So that was well, you have a couple of different avenues. You got your TFTs, your Task Force Trainer missions, and you've got m LAT Multilateral Training Missions. TFT is just kind of a smaller m LAT per se minus the airfield. We're not seizing an airfield during TFT. But the real big kind of kicker for us. We went to NTC and it was like the first time regiment's gone to
NTC and who knows how long. And we were supporting a big army unit that was going through their rotation as a soft capability enabler, so we were we were separated from them, but we knew what their mission was. We had I think our our BC and a small staff was in their jock with them, and then they tasked us. I think we had one or two line platoons there and then wrecky platoon and the BC called us in. The called me in and he was like, dust and check it out. He's like, I don't care
what we have to do. We're here to win. Like, so do you gotta do to win? I was like Roger, thatsked her? But we did our thing. We went and we got our four wheelers and our m raisers and drove out. Climbed up a mountain, the biggest mountain we could find. I think it's t Fert Mountain in NTC. I don't know why I remember the name, but because it was big, we climbed up there and we climbed up there knowing our four is not coming up there. No one's climbed this mountain to come find us, Like
it's a pain in the ass. It took us, you know, all night to get up there and set up our hid sight and we're observing the battlefield and the battlefield we could see the battle space we could see was the staging area for the OP four before they moved into the engagement area with the rotational unit to start off.
Before the war, the simulated war even kicked off. We could see something way off in the distance and me and my JA attack are sitting up there and I'm like looking through the spotting scope and looking at a map and just looking at We probably spent thirty minutes an hour just kind of you know, just just guestimating where it was at the found We just fat finger around the map, was like, whatever, whatever that is is right here, and it's not friendly because the friendly is
over there, and he tells a big development and so we called up a simulated high mar strike and it ended up being the enemy brigade like their their talk, their staging area and uh did the simulate Harmar strike wiped out their Bria Talk. Task Force launched a strike force in Osprey's to go clear through, and I remember the NTC General whatever general's in charge of NTC came storming in the talk and I was like, no, no, no, no,
like they're still alive. Send them back, like brought the strike force back, like they didn't even get to land and clear. It's sort of like when you're playing like yeah, like we just won like our twelve of this war, Like what's what's the problem anyway, So they came back alive whatever. And then uh, they were staging in that little court, the court where I was talking about, and they just had all their armor, abrams, paladins, Bradley's, everything
just in a line. And we took pictures of it all and sent it up via h p W sat to the talk with reports and everything, Intel report, and then they struck that alive again. Anyways, say all that to say, we Xfield got back to our talk and as soon as I walked in my office, the phone rings and it's the BC who's at the rotational units talk, and he's like Ward, He's like that was awesome. He's like this unit is eating up everything you're giving us.
Can you go back out in twenty four hours. I was like, oh my god, that's what you get for me A good Yeah, we just spent four days out there, like, you know, freezing our butts off. So yeah, we went back out, you know, twenty four hours later to the other side of that corridor I was talking about, and did some more stuff back there. I think that was a real proving point for us, Yeah, because they saw what we were capable of doing. On top of that, when he said, uh, you know, I'm here to win.
Do what you gotta do for us to win, I sent my guys to go do a you know, low viz Afo type operation. I was like, you know, go put your civilian clothes on, take one of our beacons, go into the enemy motor pool and tag their triple A pieces, which they did. So I was like, give me a plan, don't just go out there and wing it. So they gave me a plan, and they went out there and tagged their triple A pieces, their anti air and we just tracked them all through the box at NTC.
As soon as they stopped, we.
Struck those the form mafia strikes again.
So we eliminate their anti air like ra off the rip and it was. It was pretty awesome. It was even better was when the war was over and the fours back in their motor pool, you know, downgrading whatever they're doing, and sent my guys back over to recover the beats, right, and they didn't put on civvies and just walked in. It was like, hey, there's something that vehicle I need to get and the guy's like, who
are you? Like, what what are you getting? He's like, don't worry about it, just like pull this pelican box off them.
I mean, when you guys did the AAR for NTC, I mean, they must have been fairly pissed overall of this.
I didn't sit out on it, but I'm sure it was. Yeah, so to catch people up. So NTC and it's j RTC right in Louisiana. Yeah.
So they're basically war games. And I never went to either of them, but they're basically war games. And the op for the people who are actually stationed on those bases are good. And it doesn't necessarily mean they're great combatants. I don't know, but they're good at wargaming. It's like it's like going it's like a swat team going up against professional paintballers.
I mean, those guys are probably the most well trained unit in the army realistically, because they're doing it all the time.
All the time, right, and they know that they know the train, they know everything else like that. So, like I said, I don't know about combatants because I don't know, but but they're good at what they do there, and it's very hard to beat those units in these war games. So and you guys basically beat him three times.
They they weren't used to fighting a special operations unit because we had ISR, which big army units typically don't have all the time, we had high mars, we had casts, we had everything, and we just I mean we just sat there and called it in all day. And I remember watching there was one unit that was close enough to us when I called in a strike on him.
I remember watching him through just binos like look up in the sky and like throw his hands up, yeah, and like a guy come to gi him a couchy card, like you're dead. Then they packed up and drove off, and I was like.
Yeah, So meanwhile back at battalion, Uh, your your platoon's getting deployed now, So walk us through some of that, like what's going on in the war at this.
Point twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen.
Twenty thirteen, least start where you want to start.
Twenty thirteen. I didn't. I did not deploy as a platoon start. I was a jockeencio, and then I went out to a coast to do the interagency thing for a little bit. Twenty fourteen, the strike force is still going out. I don't remember how many platoons we had
over there. Companies wasn't really involved in that. I was the wrecky platoon was tasked with an interagency mission, and we supported that by sending, you know, five guys to five different locations, so as platoons aren't Like, not only did I have a platoon to manage, but now I had to manage you know, four to five different teams right at four to five different outstations, and what those
outstations were doing. Granted, those guys that I sent out there, they were there their own team leader out there, which is cool. I was very hands off as a leader, like only hit me up if you need something, bro, you know, like, I'm not going to micromanage you. You're a big boy. Do your thing. But the recupe tune to the inn the interagency mission for that deployment or every deployment I did, and I mean we were going out every night just about hidden targets.
Could could you describe that mission as far as you're you're able to like what it entailed? What what you guys were tasked with?
Yeah, with the inter agency mission. Again I say interagency, it is conglomerate of agencies, right, You got any three letter acronymy you can think of, or three letter agency you can think of that we're working with. It's just
a it is a task force. And as the big not big army, but as the army representative of that task force, our team was responsible for being enablers to provide capabilities to those civilian agencies because civilian agencies don't have a hatchies, they don't have F six teams, they don't have you know, ISR as much as we do. They have ISR but not as much as we do.
And we provide further intel support, more targeting abilities. You know, it's you always want as many tools and a tool bag as you can have, and that's what we did. The team leaders, including myself at each ouse station was we're the eyes and ears and voice of the task force commander for that inner agency commander.
So like if you're going out with for instance, maybe maybe I like the FBI as there because there's a poppy field they want to investigate. They can't talk to the military, they don't have air support, they don't have whatever.
Yeah, I I'll just say I talked to somebody who is part of a other governmental agency and he was describing me how when they tried to call, the only thing they really could call, he said, was ecasts like emergency close air support, which takes you know, who knows
how long that's going to take. But when you have rangers out there on target with you, clos air support, METAVAC, all this sort of like good army stuff supports stuff that comes along along with you guys, is suddenly available and drastically shortens the amount of time that all of these things take.
Yeah, because our teams that we had at each outstation was comprised of you have the team leader, an assistant team leader, and then he had a j tech, a medic, and rto in an e guy. So you have pretty much every capability and think of in one team. Not everyone you know, not everyone's Leven Bravo, and not everyone's a trigger puller, but everyone's either a ranger or better and can really bring some hurt to the battlefield and needed.
And now we're we're also getting into another sort of like interesting role change and that yeah, there's a REKI component, but also like you guys are going out on like strike operations.
Right, we were going out more more than the strike force, right. Honestly, I felt bad for the strike force and the line companies that would deploy for regiment because yeah, yeah, squalidors, the twos aren't set grew up through the early two thousands, I mean getting after it with Team Meryl, Team Derby and all these things, and then you get to the mid twenty tens and it slows down drastically, and like Taliban wasn't allowed to be targeted because we're in peace
talks with them, right, right, But the Interagency Task Force was allowed to target him, so we were going out after him because we were part of that task force. But the strike force, yeah, I mean five to ten times the entire deployment.
They're going out, and that's gotta be a frustrating thing, especially for a young Ranger. Oh my god, it came in to get at it.
I mean they just they they did do. And we're referencing like less is when he was talking when Les was talking about doing the Nangahar clearing operation, and I've talked to other folks were like the Ranger Regiment sounds like they were involved in some like a couple really substantial large scale combat operations in Afghanistan.
Yeah, that that Nangahar clearance operation happened multiple times. The first time was in I was in twenty sixteen, towards the tail end of our deployment. We actually extended for like thirty days for that operation to happen. And it sucked for us as a Jaybad during that time. And it sucked for us because task Force was saturating that Nangahar valley and jaybads right there in nangahart if not,
you know, next to Nanghar. They're saturating that valley with fires high there's a high mar strike you know, two to three times a day every day. And then just I SR and so they took all of my assets. As Inneragency team leader, I'm like a man, I can't do anything. Give my assts back. But Uh yeah, they flexed over. Man. I think we pushed over the rest, like the rest of the battalion, So almost all the three seven five was there for the operation Less was
talking about. And before that operation kicked off, the SAR Major and some other first arms came down to Jbad to kind of do a PDSs because that's where the warm base was that they were gonna launch. How them and asked my opinion. He's like hey, He's like, you know, what do you think about this? And I looked at him. I was like, the you're gonna die? Man? He was like what. I was like, It is hot, this is middle of July, and you're gonna send an entire Ranger
battalion quote unquote online right through that. Like, we are not built for that, right. We are a direct action hit a target and leave, yeah, not get online and walk right for a valley, you know, and well wehold guess what happened? You know, guys had I mean there's multiple heat cats. Yeah. I think one dude had kidney failure because his heat cat was so bad, Oh my gosh.
And it was just terrible personal professional opinion. They can chalk it up as a success because we killed some isis, guys, but like the grand scheme of things of a failure, like it was just an utter failure. The fact that we had to do it, you know, version one, version two, version three, there were version of four. Should be it should just be version one, you know.
And if you guys go back and watch the episode with less Sian dusky, you'll hear the sort of like boots on the ground the account of it.
We tried to get boots on the ground from where I was at as the interagency task force that we had there at Jabad, because we to provide with our task force, you know, all the stuff that we talked
about earlier, providing as far as fires and metavac. But with the indigenous personnel that we had, we would be able to be able to provide you know, one hundred one hundred trucks and dishkas and RPGs and mortars, anything on a sunny you can think of, and we can just drive there is right down the road instead of flying guys in and not be able to leave unless the birds came back. That was a big problem. But we got shut down. We couldn't couldn't go because of inner agency Higher said no.
So could can you talk a little bit about the indigenous force that you worked with.
I will say it is a conglomerate of Afghans from the entire country, and it's really awesome to watch them work together. That was one of the coolest things I've seen in country, because there's a lot of infighting, you know, those tribes and cost and Dari and who's Beck's and tajeeks and just everybody hates everybody. But those guys that I worked with genuinely wanted Afghanistan to be better, and
they genuinely liked each other and they worked together. And sounds bad to say, but they hated the the typical Afghan almost more than we did. Like they would put boots to the head and mess these guys up, you know, the Taliban and Isis and everybody, and they would they'd rough them up good and make it a point like, hey, quit, you know, quit fucking our country up.
Man.
Yeah, you told me, you know, as sort of a point of reference that it reminded you of like the American military in the sense that it's like some dude from North Dakota and some cat from New York working together.
And that's exactly it was. Yeah. So they worked so well together. They're paid very good. We'll say a Afghan in that unit, a private in that unit made about nine hundred dollars a month, good money compare in Afghanistan. Yeah. Yeah, if you compare that to Afghan National Army in general, he got nine a month. So we paid them very well. We treated them very well. They had good food, that air conditioning, good barracks, and uh worked on the referral program.
So I vouch for you, you vouch for me, like, hey, Jack's a good guy, he should come work here. But if you mess up, I'm gone too. Yeah. And that's how you keep them loyal along with the money. Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, some of those guys didn't make it out. A lot of them did, thank goodness. Yeah. I don't know where they're at. They might be sitting in some other country right now, wait to get their visas or whatever. But a lot of them made it out. Some didn't. And it's terrible.
What uh what was was there a minimum rank to go to reki at at the time.
Uh? I tried to put E five on it, so they at least had to be tabbed. They had you had to be tabbed. So is that? Why is it? I was trying to figure.
Out why RECKI got this essential essentially len o job, basically right or less liaison job. Was it because of the overall maturity of the RECIE elements?
I think it was the maturity and mentality, because those interagency jobs you got to have the right personality and the right person in those positions. If you know anything about ranger regiment, you know you're from private on up, you know it's ranger injury. I'm just I'm just trying. I'm trying to think of the words of that offending somebody, but just chest that you know, fire fire breathing team leader. You know you don't you don't want that in those positions.
You need somebody that can it's kind of mellow, can read the room, speak intelligently and know when to talk and when to listen, not embarrass the regiment or the army, right, you know, because you never know when you're working with a bunch of civilians.
You never know who's right.
So I think that's why we got that that.
Job, and and what works great as a t L or a uh you know, uh squad leader or whatever on the line, like get you know, flighting a fire under people's asses, like getting them, especially when you're dealing with you know, eighteen year olds fresh off the street, Like there's nothing wrong with that there.
It's great for that job, they need it, right.
But sometimes it takes a different sensibility to work in each other in these other positions.
Yeah, then we're not. When I was, dudes aren't Like I I pride myself when I was a pudens aren't to not have a single incident, not a single incident, alcohol related or other. And I think a big part of that was treating them like men. And then also I don't think I yelled one time. Yeah, I don't think I smoked anybody one time. I did more of the the disappointed dad leaders right right, you know what I mean, you treat you treat a boy like a man and the man up right.
Well.
Also, the I think one of the keys to avoiding alcohol related incidents incidents is like a tight team and a hasty X film like like combat part Yeah.
Right. I mean it was like two weeks after I left, there's a du you know, two weeks after and they're like, why did you leave us?
It's not my choice.
I'm sorry.
So, as you're going on these deployments, I mean, and I mean, it's it's really cool to hear about this because I think that the cliche about Rangers even to this day with some folks is that Rangers are like a blocking force for you know, delta force operations, and it's like, well the truth. Yeah, the boys have gone off and done all sorts of interesting unique things, be it direct action or otherwise with.
The Arkansas National Guard like the Rangers.
Yeah.
So, uh, you know, as you were going off on these these sorts of unique missions, I mean, there are any of them that kind of like stand out in your mind that you know, you'd like to talk about.
Uh. I would say one of the one of the most impressive ones we did was a kind of proof of concept, a national strike proof of concept, you know, for that the deployment of stationed just outside Cobble and we wanted to see, want to prove that we could go as far as we can go Mez, which is you know, northern Afghanistan. So we uh came up with a plan, found a target that was still active up there, and we you know, we sent some guys in civilian vehicles.
They drove all the way up there Afghans, our indigenous force, and then we flew some guys commercial air up there undercover, you know, and then the rest of us took a private jet, which I thought was ridiculous. It's like, are we really in a private jet right now? And the pilot was like, it's a it's a ninety three model. I was like, it's still a private jet, dude, Like, are you kidding me right now? You guys are?
I mean, that's that's about as bowler as it gets me and you're like, uh u Ranger, Hunter, killer teams. It's like a private jet.
It's like running in a two thousand and five limousine.
It's like, I don't care to do that still lim Yeah, he got a booze carte. And then when we sent it's like a civilian see one thirty is called one hundred. So we loaded up some called scooby vans. It looks like a mystery machine.
Excuby doo.
Loaded those on there and flew those up there, and uh we all linked up up there. Me and one of my interagency partners. We walked up to the gate guard. There's a big army like probably a National Guard guy or something, and you know, here I am, or here we are, you know, looking like this, and I was like, hey man, and you know, like fifteen minutes you're gonna have you know, about twenty Afghans show up in civilian vehicles with weapons, so you can't stop them. Don't search
them there with us, just let them through. They're coming over here. And he's just like just sir. I was like, thank you as easier and I thought it was gonna be go talk to somebody else, but uh, we all link up their vans, vehicles, guns and everything together and we go out and hit this target out in Mez that I mean, no one's operating a mez and probably five years ish, so he had no idea we were there.
We show up and you know, banged out his door and scoop him up, and he just looked at us like, well, who the hell are you know? Where'd you guys come from? I haven't been bad, like I stopped being bad, you know, and uh, detain him, take him back to the hangar. And kind of felt bad for the guy because he honestly hadn't done anything bad. In a couple of years and I don't know what he did before that, you know,
he was still a target, so whatever. And uh, but he sat in the corner of that hanger, you know, ear muffed, blindfolded and handcuffed for probably about twelve hours. Like it was kind of I felt bad. I was like, man, this guy has no idea what's going on right now? And then we load him up on the l one forty five minute flight back to Cobble and he's peeing himself and pooping himself and throwing up the entire time
because he has no idea where he's going. By first time he's ever been on a plane ever, landing Cobble, take him off that we get on I seventeen helicopter fight our base. Again, he has no idea what's going on where he's going. He just lost and saw us and take him back there and debrief him and I think they just putting on a commercial air and blew back. Thanks for the concepts, Sorry, broh, but that was pretty cool to be a part of that.
It shows, Uh, you know, I think we're talking a little bit before we started the show. I mean, it kind of shows like what could have been and you know, like in full disclosure. I was like, definitely in favor
of US pulling out of Afghanistan. But on the flip side to it, what you guys were doing shows I think that there could have been a very light footprint American presence in Afghanistan maintaining that sort of residual counter terrorism force large or really almost entirely working through Afghan partners. And that operation shows, Yeah, it could have been a national asset, not just regional.
Absolutely. Another another mission that comes to mind. You know, my my j Tech he got he got shot up one night, We got shot four times and we were going after this svest facility. So we hit hit the suspected s facility and there's like a legit family in there, and he's like, not us, I might want to talk to the guys across the street though, So we go across the street and uh, as we were maneuvering, they
squared it out the back and took off running. We had a passes overhead already we collapse collapsed him in overhead, so they had eyes on. We're kind of chasing after these guys in the the farm fields in Afghanistan, you have a field and then there's like an irrigation dish that runs through or it's raised for a walkway, So
either one it's either sunking down or raised up. And we were getting ready to come up to a cross section or intersection where these irrigation dishes and walkways crossed, and my jay Attack was standing up on the race section and he's talking to birds and he's like, hey, do you have you know, eyes on hotspot. They're like, yeah, it's about twenty five meters in front of you. And as soon as he said that, they just started ripping
rounds at us. And he was the first person they could hear and see because yeah, there's probably a full moon for all now. But he was lit up. You can see him playing his day standing on this berm, and you know, he took it on the thigh, the abdomen, the ribs, and his helmet and he didn't have his chin strap buckled, which I think saved his life honestly, because that round was sticking through the inside of his helmet.
So if it was tight, it would have had something to right, some type of what's the word I'm looking for, some type of resistance would push stabilized. Yeah, but his helmet was unbuckled, so it knocked it off. And you know, I was about fifty meters to his left, a couple of guys.
Down from him, so he got a full burst.
Yeah, I mean straight eyes. Yeah, and uh, I said, knocked his helmet off. He's yelling I'm a hit. I'm shooting back and yelling him to put a tournique on it. The rest of the team is shooting back, yelling for the medic, shooting back, yelling for the medic again because he's shooting so he can't hear me, like, come over here, you know, medic, because he was probably about twenty five meters my left, so he's running across all these all
this fire to get to him. Meanwhile, my j Tach had the wherewithal to scoop his helmet back up, put it on his head, key up to the birds, you know, while he's bleeding out, and tell them that he's hit. Take all commands from two to one. Who was me the GFC, And I thought that was pretty cool that he had the Yeah, he was able to do that. Yeah, he could think through things. He wasn't freaking out. But as he's yelling I'm hit, I'm yelling at him to
put a tourniquet on him. I'm like shooting, like I can't help you right now, man, trying to kill these guys first started trading grenades back and forth. I was like playing hot potato with grenades. I mean, legit, like the grenade landing from me to you, and you know, the entire time you've you've grown up in the army. When the grenade comes at you, what do you say, You're supposed to jump awaynade you when you throw when you say frag out, one comes into yogrenade my buddy.
I don't know if it was like the stress of the moment or something, but he was like fragging. I was like, what.
Blew up right there in front of this.
I was like, oh my god. And we started start throwing him back. I watched some guy just like limprous one had to you know, kind of die from that. But uh, we ended up, you know, taking care of that problem. But those guys actually had like a defended, fortified sandbag position. Yeah, Like they ran to it waiting for us to come to that. And it was a near ambush. We were within twenty five meters. I mean
we were you can see him. It was a fallback position. Yeah, we end up smoking them worked on the J tag. He Uh. I remember him like laying on the stretcher and he like passed out and I was like, oh shit, he just died. And he was like, you're my best friend. I was like fuck. I kind of look at him, look at the medic. I'm like, medic's not freaking out, Like what the hell man? And I kind of slapping
on the face my Trevor. Come back to me, man, and he uh stayed pasted out in the medical is like, hey, dude, he's in He's in that k hole. Yeah, kennymine. He's like, just let him go. He's in a good place. I was like, all right, if you say so. But uh, he had pop back up. He like woke up, like pop back up, and he's like dusting. I was like, what's up. Stop you going, man, what's up? He's like, hey, man, make sure you eat big, lift big, get big, and
you like passed back out. I was like, seriously. They woke back up again, and uh called out to our r t O Jeremy. He's like Jeremy, He's like, yeah, what's up. He's like, give me a dip. He's like, I looked at him, like, you're not getting a dip right now, You're not You're not getting a dip. Sorry. He's like all right, passed back out. Doc Bowman at that time did a freaking phenomenal job saving that guy's life. Man,
I mean from TARNI kits to freeze dried plasma. I don't know if anybody, I ef anybody knows the freeze dried plasma. At the time, it's still we're the only ones using it. It was kind of experimental. We're the guinea pigs. It's French. It comes in two glass bottles. One's powdered plasma, one's the solution to mix it, and you gotta like suck it out of the string. His
vacuum stilled. And now I was pulling on that syringe as hard as I could, trying to get as much solution as I could and shoot it into the powder mix and the other glass bottle. So Doc always had this. It was like a see a less bag with these two glass bottles. And you think carrying glass bottles on like a mission, like they're gonna break, you know, but they're like bubble wrapped and everything but then you swirl it.
You can't shake it, you gotta swirl it. So I'm sitting there like swirling the solution like a drink, like swirling the solution, like waiting like is it good yet? He's like, yeah, give it to me. Gave them the freeze dried plasma. You know, like I said, turn quits addressing is freeze dried plasma? Uh, the fennel pop ketamine. Just everything was awesome. Doc did a phenomenal job.
You guys did, Like I mean, I know there's a difference between blood and plasma, but essentially you kind of gave them like a blood.
So it's it's like an infusion, so it can carry oxygen.
It's exactly unlike an ivy fascinating. This amazing. Really, when you give something an iv all you're doing is increasing their blood, right, so right, but the plasma actually carries the oxygen. Right. So bird came in pissed me off because the lz were lazing. They said they couldn't land at they said it was too small. They're like, hey, we got to push over some ls This was a conventional bird. Then ye regular dust off and they landed like two fields over which was the exact same size
that fills out. Frankly pissed me off. It was is like that field wasn't cleared right. They could have landed on an id or something, you know. So they land and we you know, come walking over there to like try to clear a path as best as we could
visually to bring the casualty over loaded him up. The doors are off the the the black Hawk, the pilot and copilot doors, the cockpit doors they had off, and the pilotte sitting there, you know, looking down at his screens, just waiting, and I kind of walked up and I slapped him on the shoulder and scared the ship out like what I was like, Hey, I was like thank you, like shook his hand and they took off. Yeah, got back to uh go back to Jabad Bass and uh. You say, you know, he's a life today.
That's awesome.
He's a really good dude, really good friend. It was exciting at the time because I said he was shot and he said, take all commands from two to one. I'm not a j tack. Yeah, but when you call up the task force, you say eagles wounded, they're pushing everything they have to you. Yeah, Luckily me and him
and worked together for three years. He had been my personal j tag for three years and we had this bond and we were always kind of cross training, like keep you quiz me on things, and I've just listened, just listened to him talk to aircraft. You learn, you know what to do and how to talk to him and h Once he gave me control of the assets and task force pushed me every asset. So like I was in control of like three I s R Birds, two apaches, two F sixteens, two A tens at AC
one thirty. I just had all this stuff and I was like instead of stressing out, yeah yeah, yeah, like I knew what to do. Yeah, it was cool and I was thankful.
I was thinking, yeah, well when we blown up today, it fell on you then to like smoke check that position, right, yeah, yeah.
Smoke check it. And then the apaches left with the dust off. I left them escort, yeah because they're pretty much being go anyways. But then just controlling all the sensors like watching us on the way back and if something happened on the way back, how to control them as well. And it was yeah, that was so cool. It was just cool. To be able to do like know how to do that paying attention to him because the first time me and him worked together and got into an engagement, I think I was an E six
at the time. Yeah, I was knee six at the time. We had some guys maneuvering on us, and he came over and he's like, hey, we got guys you know coming up. Can I shoot? I was like, yeah, man, tell the apaches tell him to shoot. And he walked away, came back like a minute later, he's like, hey, are you sure. I was like, yeah, dude, like as long as you don't hit any civilians or blew up in civilian buildings, like I don't care shooting. And uh He's like okay, I just I just never had an E
six clear me hot before. I was like, you have now. Yeah, Like it was at that point, like our synchronicity whatever, you know. It just kind of just kind of mind melded and worked worked together very well after that because he knew what my expectations were and I knew he wasn't gonna do anything stupid, and we just I mean half the time we use fires. That's just like having you know what I want, man, yeah, I just do it.
And and and those guys, and we've talked about on this show before, whether they're J tax or CCTs or TACPs or those guys were so good at their job.
Here's here's the interesting thing. Tell tell them who this J attack was.
Though he was an Army jtack, he's a ranger, he's a fister. Yeah.
To get to that level like calling an artillery and calling a naval gun fire, I mean it's it's one thing calling an aaron a in an engagement like that, You've just got to be cool as a cucumber to be able to do that.
It was weak and they're just he was awesome. And uh, I said he was an Army J attack, which for people out there far and few in between. Yeah, but it's usually an air force job, but regiment has their own. He's thirteen fox so he's an artillery Yeah, artillery man. So he was a fish in the regiment. He wasn't an attached attack. Now he's a fister in the regiment. That's amazing, But we don't have artillery assets, so that's their job there attacks, which kind of screws them talking
to him, you know, throughout our time together. Kind of screws them career wise, right, because they're artillery exactly going to like he's seventy eight boards, right, and the start of major and charge of boards is like, I don't give a shit about you j tax stuff like that has nothing to do with being an artillery man, right, which is stupid because it's better than being an artillery man. Like they're they're they're actually more like they sound more like.
They're Anglico guys. You know, they're more like the marine Anglico there gunfire leaves. Yeah, it's interesting because I had a similar experience early on in Afghanistan. Nobody got injured, fortunately, but it made me realize that there are no like squirters.
There are only maneuver elements like style. Yeah, yeah, is uh I was saying. I showed him a picture earlier today. You know, he took a round to the helmet. There's a p K round and if it wasn't for his helmet being unbuckled, it probably would punch all the way through because in the picture you can it's sticking through his helmet. It scratched his head. There's a scratch. Yeah, And what's crazy is the offscore helmet. It's only rated to nine milimeter and there's a p K round.
Yes, it's a light weight yeah yeah round yeah.
Yeah. It punched through and stopped when it touched his head. But I mean it was right here in his temple, like I went through where the rail is on the helmet. Yeah, if anybody knows what I'm talking about. And uh, I mean if he would have been looking to the left, to the righter up and he would have took you to the face.
It looked like either the bullet came at like maybe an upward angle or or or the round keyhold through the helmet. I wasn't there. I have no idea which it was, but it was interesting, the hole in the side of the helmet.
I think what it what happened was because obviously he got hit here first, second, third, Yeah, I think it zipped up as that one hit he you know, flinched, yeah or whatever.
In his end that Yeah, that makes sense.
This is a fraction of a second that saved his life.
What did you said that the that the the Afghanians that you worked with, that they got along, how were they in terms of combat?
I would say I I trusted them with my life. I still do. I mean I did. I had to trust them all my life because there's five of us and five interagency people and then you know one hundred Afghans or avermenting we had and sitting they're the ones that are hitting the targets, their their primary breach, their
primary everything. We are technically advisors and to kind of sit back a couple of times, you know, every now and then and just watch them put a ladder on the wall, climb up the ladder, pull security, go over, open the gate from the inside, everybody flow in and secure everything. It was awesome. It's like watching us hit a target. They're well trained, they know what they're doing, and they need to be utilized still to this day, like we need to be utilizing those guys. They're very
well trained. I'll caveat it with if one of those Afghans has been carrying a ladder for ten years, it doesn't matter if you can go hit a tent in the middle of the desert, he's still going to carry a ladder because if you take that ladder away, he didn't know what to do. Yeah, if that makes sense. They were very good at what they were trained.
On but if there was a complex problem or if something was out of the ordinary that they might Something I would also.
Like to point out is to as far as I'm aware, that program that you guys were working on pretty large a lot of Afghans throughout twenty you know, essentially twenty years of war, I'm not aware of any Green on Blue incidents, zero at all. Zero, Yeah, which I think I think speaks a lot to the efficacy of the program and whatever you guys were doing, it was working in that regard.
Man, there's zero Green on Blue. We thought we might have had one one, not an actual green on blue, like a developing Green on blue. We were able to nip it in the bud and fired both those guys and got them out here because the refer program. Yeah they were gone. But uh yeah, not a single Green
and Blue incident. And even you know, some of those outstations that we had shut down, like the one in a Sadabad shut down, However, those guys stayed there and operated on the Really, those Afghans stay there and operated on their own with no American help. They finally did get some American help towards the end of twenty sixteen, through Uh, just some just some funding and weapons here
and there. But they stayed there and police their own community, and they would come down to Jabad like once a month and kind of give us a debriefing of what they've been doing. And they're still getting after it on their own.
Did they ever get to the point where they were able to have their own j tax and like talk to Afghan helicopters?
No?
No, I mean even talking to Afghan course.
Uh, I'm sure the KKA probably did a regular Afghan army, but our guys weren't Afghan Army, so they wouldn't talk to them anyways.
Gotcha. Oh yeah, I see what you're saying. So answer your three years as Reckie platoon sergeant or winding? Now what's sort of the next step for you?
Got finished? Star, got moved to the three shop, you know, a glorious three shop. Spent about a year there as the AOPs and c O. And I was just miserable if the guys deployed again without me, And I even emailed Sarmer Major. I was like, hey, I'll go just as a trigger puller. I won't be in charge of anything. Just let me go. Yeah, And he's like, no, we need you back here. And I was like, this sucks. Like working an office job is my nightmare, Like that
is my nightmare. And I like working with my hands. I like being in the field. I like teaching. I like, you know, being with the guys. And uh, that was just miserable. My job performance was probably not great. Like I tried to go to work as less as possible, like I just some days I I won't even show up whatever, and uh it showed, not ashamed to say it.
And I finally got the I got the invite to leave regiment, Like the the ops arm major pulled me in and he's like, hey, man, like, you know, I think it might be time for you to find somewhere else to go.
Thank you for your service.
Yeah, And I asked him. I was like, am I being an r FST. He's like no, no, no, He's like you're not being an r FS. Don't take it that way. He's like, you personally need to find somewhere else. He's like, you're miserable. I was like all right, So I kind of went and uh hunted around. I went to Ranger Training Brigade where Ranger school is, and this arm major of the brigade was my previous arm major of Italian. Awesome guy Vic is one of the best armators you could ever work for, and uh, you know,
just cold knocked his office. Actually I knocked on his office. He wasn't there. I waited in the park lot U till he got there, watched him walk in and I walked in behind him and I was like, hey, what's up. But I told him what was going on and he can give me a job because the retention guy of Italian was like, hey, man, you're either going to go to the s FAB which screw that, or go to Fort polp j r TC. And I was like, I will go a wall before I go to J I
was like, there's always another way. I was like, I refuse to let the army tell me what I'm gonna do. And uh, someone talked to Vic and he was like, hey, what do you what do you want to do. I was like, I'll be a ranger instructure man, like I don't I don't care. I'll be on the woods. And he kind of looked at me and he's like, he's like, you don't want to do that. I was like what He's like it sucks. He's like, you're gonna be out there rain, shine, snow, heat, holidays away from your family
twenty four on, like forty eight off. Like he's like it's not fun. I was like, all right, well never mind. Then then he goes, but we just took over a jump Master, Airborne and Pathfinder. Okay, so that all funds falls under ar TV. Now, oh really airborne ranger training. And I was like, well, I'll do jump Master. A Pathfinder. That's a nice badge and you haven't had it before. So I went to be a idead pathfinder.
You did, well, can you tell us about the Pathfinder school, because it's not it's it's a coveted school and not.
A lot of people get it still exists.
It's gone, it's gone, no longer coveted. Well now it's doubly covet. You go back in just to wear that badge.
They still have them for the National Guard, but.
It's like a glider badge people with that.
I want the Army space badge. D have you seen nothing they have that? Yeah, it's like space goes Holy shit, looks awesome. But yeah, so I went to be a pathfinder, a pathfiner, instructor. That's where I went after Regiment be a Pathfinder instructor as a drop zones instructor. So Pathfinder School teaches sling loads HLZ operations and drop zone operations. Teaches all three of those. You don't have to be airborne to go. You can get sling load certified from
the Single Load Certification course it's called SLICK. You can get airt HLZ certified from Aerosolt School. But Pathfinder is the only one that teaches all three in one shot, the only one that teaches drop zone operations. Basically you're learning and the history of path Hunder School comes from World War II when the Pathfinders went into Europe before the invasion and set up drop zones for the paratroopers
from eighty second hundred first to jump in. And that's why everybody goes to Pathfinder schools to learn drop zone operations. They're not going there for single loads hlz's because like I said, you can go to other schools for those. You're going there to learn drop zones and that's what we're knowing for. And you learn how to calculate width and length of drop zones and green light time and drop zones. How many jumpers and equipment you can put on a drop zone, what type of aircraft a drop
zone can accommodate? Just everything along those lines.
What is it? The L the L shaped with the flares that you put out when they I'm talking about bundle.
Drops about it like a gm RS drop This might be more.
High tech than even what we were doing back in that time.
Yeah, there's a I think what you're talking about said it's a ground marked release system, right, So you pretty much make an L with via seventeen panels for the daytime, or strobes or flares at nighttime, but you make an L shape and as the aircraft flies over that jump master is looking out the door, you know, the L is this way. This is the long axis of the drop zone, so they're flying up this way. As soon as these lights get online and they're in line, that's
his green light. That's when he's pushing everything so he doesn't have to talk to anybody on the radio. So for special forces or wrecky teams, gim RS is very h enticing because I can go out and set up a gm RS drop zone to receive my resupply of food, AMMO, whatever, equipment, whatever I need. I can set that up and not even have to be there. I can go back off into my hide sight or my patrol base and you know, hear the plane fly over. I don't have to talk
to anybody. They're just gonna line those panels or strobes up or flares up, kick out where they're kicking out, and then I'm gonna go out and pick it up, break everything down.
Do they do any adjustments for like the wind at the time or anything like that, or oh during the he did the drop?
Yeah, the aircraft is not. No, that's that's on you on the ground. Okay, So so you just have to beat the villagers and everything. Yeah, yeah, I kind of wing it.
Yeah. They're also like five hundred feet off the ground too, right, you.
Can't be yeah three hundred yeah.
Yeah, Now that's fascinating and that, Like I said, I they don't talk like.
You don't hear.
Much about what happens at the course. It's just it was always one of the most coveted badges. It's it's a beautiful badge. And you know the army is all about.
They still have they still have the National Guard. We're training center at Fort Benning. Yeah, they still run their Pathfinder School. Fort Campbell still has their Pathfinder School, but the regular Army deemed it necessary to shut down the
Pathfinder School. Sure, the proponent for all Pathfinder operations because like we were at that schoolhouse, we were responsible for the trainings National Guard Warrior Training Center and responsible for Campbell A. We go up and audit them, you know, but then you're gonna shut down the schoolhouse.
Well, like the like the worst teams that'll be back one day and.
They will hopefully they don't reinvent it.
Yeah, I mean I get guys, you know, guys that came through Pathfinder when I was an instructor. They're at regiment. I mean, I had a guy hit me up like three or four weeks ago. He's like, hey, I'm doing this and this like on this drop zone. Can I do this or this? And I sat there and explained it to him, like yeah, you can do this, but think about this and whatever. And he was like, can I get you to come out here and like go
over the stuff. He's like, I feel like this is a dying art and it needs to be taught.
And I was like, yeah, man, so if if they didn't have a specific school for the drop zone.
They had it for the other things, but they don't have it. Who where do people learn those disease skills? Now, Warrior Training Center, National Guard or Campbell. They tried a pilot program. I don't know. Well, so John Master teaches a little bit. John Master teaches CARP drop zones, which is air Force drop zone. So there's Army drop zones
and air Force drop zones. Army drop zones is GMRS and Verer's gm RS is ground march release system and Vier's is verbally initiated release system, so you're talking on the radio telling them when to drop. So those are Army. Air Force is CARP computed air release points, which means the computer on the aircraft that CE seventeen or SEE one thirty is calculating everything. Give them a grid and it does everything, and that's the green light. So the
green light and the aircraft one something mean jump. That's all ran by a computer. John Master teaches that. So John Master still teaches KARP. Not sure if they started teaching viers or gmrs at all. There was a pilot program where they were just gonna do you think I think Pathfinder is just gonna do drop zones, which I could see be a viable option because you can get those other certifications at other schools, So why not just
teach drop zones. But we fall back, and what we talked about at the beginning of the interview was pathfinders and lurse are not viewed as special right in the American Army for whatever reason. I don't know. I don't know why they don't. I think it's honestly a senior people. This is my personal opinion. Senior people went to these schools or tried off these units and didn't make it, and they're like, no, no, no, you know, they're never
gonna be special. I didn't make it. No one could make it, you know, So they don't want them to be special or elevated to something higher than them. Yeah, if that.
Makes sense, No it I mean, look, it's sort of like giving I mean, if rangers are special, it obviously is the black that makes them.
So so let's.
Give you the whole army, and the whole Army will be special exactly. I mean, I get it, But but it just seems like a real lack of foresight in that, you know, we're moving to this near peer. We don't know at any given time what combat will look like.
And you know, we can say that we have you know, drones.
And ISR platforms and all these things, but as sigin or is like uh, signals warfare, electronic warfare, cyber warfare come online, all of those things may be counter.
I think just looking at what we are planning for right now, what what d OD is looking at its potential uh expeditionary warfare on the Pacific, looking at exactly right right, very like long long range like it's not going to be these uh like a thirty minute helicopter trip. These new vertical takeoff and landing helicopters we're going to adapt. They're like much longer insertions. Having people way out there. Uh So I think that, yeah, having disease and these sorts of skills are imperative.
It's like when you have this in the Indo Pacific pay calm area, an island hopping campaign, right, who's on the ground setting upright?
Yeah, exactly, you got to have somebody there, absolutely.
And you know, and we can throw all the electronics in the world out there, but again, there are countermass that and even if they're just setting up like you know, isolated random EMP burst like to clear areas there. There are so many countermeasures that even when we start talking about augmented reality and and you know blue force trackers and what people might see in their headsets if somebody hacks into that, you have a lot of blue on blue, Like,
we still need to have the old techniques. Well, like people still need to be able to navigate via compass and map. They still need to be able to set up uh you know uh uh you know a non computer you know, assisted drop, you know these things because the other thing is you encrypt your signal so that nobody knows what you're saying, but they still know somebody's saying it.
If you're blasting out, you.
Know, it might be able to jam it.
Not only do they know that you're saying something, they can they can figure it out.
They can get a clocked direct with AI like it's gonna they're gonna be able to try and so quickly once that comes online and is like set up that, you know, it's it amazes me that we have to relearn these lessons every single after World War two, after Vietnam, like we you know, we have to relearn them every time.
But because I'm a megan NERD, I read like the publications from Fort Benning and stuff like that, and they talk about how, you know, the electronic warfare environment may become so intense that you know, Sniper Team it's using these old school techniques being both action rifles, glass scopes, making field sketches with pencil and paper that they can actually penetrate into that e W bubble and do their operations and maybe take out the jam, takeout jammers or
whatever else needs to be done out there, you know, without having their their equipment interfered with. Yeah, without having a signature right right, So yeah, it's it's very interesting. So after you do your time at Pathfinder working as an instructor there and uh, what's the next assignment for you?
I was a Pathfinder instructor for two years and I moved on to uh so Ranger Branch called was like, hey, are you tired of for Benning? I was like kinda, He's like, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? I was like, man like I would uh what a mind RTC if you got it? And he's like, all right, what a what region? I said Southeast, all right, I'll call you tomorrow. Calls back and he's like, hey, how does a University of Alabama sound?
And I was like, dude, that sounds great like roll Tide. Man. He's like, all right, you'll have orders in like thirty minutes, and I was like, cool, I get these orders. And I look at him and it says University of Alabama at Birmingham. I was like, what is this university at Birmingham? So id to like google it. It's a whole nother university I don't know existed. It's called UAB University of Alabama at Birmingham. So not the role Tide I was thinking.
But yeah, it was only two hours away, and it actually worked out better, I think, than going to University Alabama a smaller program. I was the MS three instructor, so I taught the juniors and got them ready for their summer camp. I think Go too one of the
most rewarding assignments I've ever been to. All the other stuff was cool, and you can write books and movies and stuff about, but teaching those young future army officers what right is and showing them the ways and just kind of making that first impression on them before they come in and be an army officer, and to have them still contact me almost daily like hey, this is an update, Like Hey, I'm an XO now you know.
Are you proud of me? Yeah, I'm proud of you, but just kind of guiding them through their college career and their life. You know, I can't tell you how many times I've had a cadet on my couch my office just break down crying because something's going on in their life. So here I am again.
Dad being like being a.
Yeah. They looked at me as like a big brother. You know, there was still an n c O in charge of me. He was like the dad figure and he was awesome guy. I love working with him. Travis is one of the best ncas I've ever worked with. But uh, he's very professional, you know, he's very just. I told him when I left, I was like, you're so professional it pisses me off. Why do you have a high tight.
We've had a couple of guys on here who they're final n c O to. Their final assignment was r O. T. C Uh. Javier Mackie and Paul Howe both come to come to mind and they had similar things to say that it's a very rewarding experience.
It is very rewarding, and it's it's also you know, one of the reasons I wanted to get out of the army too, because I you know, the ones that I enjoyed teaching and the ones that were receptive awesome, but there's always ones that slipped through the cracks, right, you know, and you see that caliber of people coming in the army, and then also and they're going to be leading the army, right, and then the direction of the army was going at the time too, you know,
not what we're used to, right. I was like, man, this this is gonna be my last assignment, Like I'm done after this. But Archie C was fun. It was a good I think, I think the best last assignments.
I think Paul had something similar to say. And I don't want to put words in Paul How's mouth because I'm a little afraid.
Of him, but U.
But I think I think he had a similar impression that he loved working with the soldiers and mentoring those guys. But it was like also like not totally happy with the direction the army.
Was going in because that was my last assignment. I medically retired at seventeen years and I made that decision. It wasn't a light decision to make, you know, and three three years ago, but I looked at it and I was like, can I do three more years? Because that what if I was going to do three more years? That was not going to be my last assignment, Like where was I going after that? And to that point in my career, the Army had never told me where
to go. I had always chosen or volunteered, like they never told me, hey, you're going here, You're going here. So I didn't want the Army to tell me to
go somewhere that I didn't want to go. And I was I don't want to spend three more years unhappy in an assignment that possibly sucks, or don't want to medically retire now and get the same benefits I would as if I retired, actually even better benefits and go out on a high note, like gout and go off and be happy and make more money and do my own thing, not be told what to do every day for out of curiosity.
For the ones you say that we're like slipping through the cracks, Like what was their motivation for going into the mills, like why did they want to put themselves through money?
Money?
Yeah, not really the right reason to be there that kind of.
Job money or just you know, to get out of where they were. Well that the army that can sort of get well the arm like that, Like the army paid for their school. They couldn't pay their school, so the army paid for which is I guess money but right, same thing.
Yeah, DoD Do we have any questions for okay, questions for Dustin from the chat?
Why are you so monotone?
From Jackson?
Mum hm?
How much cross pollination is there between uh B and Reki and r r C. Also are B and Wrecky guys more likely on to take CAXT selection than rangers?
Much cross pollination between what battalion Recky, Battalion Recky, and r C. I would say cross pollination is or was decent when I was there, like I said, we filled filled some of their billets because they didn't have enough people to fill all their teams, so natural.
A lot a lot of those guys go to selection too. For r C.
Uh my time there, I maybe had two guys.
Go okay, Does I mean a lot of line rangers go to well not a lot, but you know it's it's a thing to go to CAG selection. Is that also with r C or do they more? I mean not RC, but RECKI U or do they?
Is he still you still have that mentality? Sure you still have that. I want to go killit right right, I want to go be the best of the best, right you know. I had a couple of guys go, a couple of peers go as well. While I was there, they had another guy. He was on the fence of you know, should I go to r C selection or should I go to CAG selection. And one of my buddies, that's the RC guy. I told him, like, go to CAG selection. Dude, Like why not go varsity? If you
can go varsity, go try out for varsity. And I think that's That's one of the biggest issues in today's society as a whole, civilian and military, is it's so easy to be a rock star because mediocricy is just rampant, Like God's honest truth, Like people are so mediocre, they will self select and like, oh I'm not good enough, They'll never select me. Like you don't know that, man, Just go try like go. I can't tell you how
many selections I've been to. I've tried out for everything under the sun, and I've been told numerous times you throw it off ship of the wall. Eventually something stick, so it works out.
Yeah, and you got to do some of the coolest stuff that the Army had going on. In my humble opinion, yeah, for sure.
And you know that's one of the things that we've talked about on the show before. It is like we've had some people from the conventional side on before, but like the conventional Army and the Marine Corps, like they were out there hooking and jabbin like NonStop on these long ass deployments. I've been there, and they do not see they don't right, Like, they don't get the credit that they deserve at all.
And I have a lot of guys that I did the long fifteen month or year long deployment with and then they got out afterwards. Yeah, and you know that's that's what they have. They have, that fifteen month Yeah, and that no one gives them enough credit for that. Yeah. And some of the best dudes, I mean, I have a group chat on my phone. It's like six of us from my very first platoon and we talk every day or yeah, bullshit, and uh, that's what they have
and they deserve the credit. Yeah, and uh because they went through some shit. Man. Yeah. You spend fifteen months somewhere, you get to know someone, you you learned somebody. And also in that environment, you kind of lose your community a little bit, man. Yeah, and it takes a little bit to get it back. Yeah, and someone didn't get it back. Yeah.
How was it for you when you went when you went to regiment, Because like I was in Rangers during a peacetime military and it's very different, but there was always this stigma until a guy earned his like it earned his way, right, like and tell him showed that he was a good leader and and you know was a good I don't say operator because at the time, like the Rangers were still you know, like CQB and.
Stuff like that were just coming on board.
Like it was still the premier light infantry and you know, we still did patrol bases and shit like that. But but there was that stigma of being an import right, how was it for you when you first showed up?
I never had that and press pressed on me. I'm sure it was there. The only time I ever saw it happen is our very first It was like the first month or so. I was at the platoon and we're doing team live fire exercises and there was just a hot mess, and the platoon st that I was talking about earlier that was like, I need your help. I was like, hey, man, can you go grab those guys and like teach them how to really break contact
as a team. And I was like, yeah, man, sure, So I kind of had to, you know, kind of nut up and overstep the other team leaders that are already there and pull all their teams in. It's like, hey, guys, like bring it in. Let me let me show you guys how to do this, you know. And those team leaders they kind of stepped off to the side.
And I was like, yeah, they're feeling you out.
Yeah, who the fuck is this? I think it is? You know, like but uh, I think it was like, you know, the week after that, I was sitting in the team room in the cages and I was back there and I had my big old s op binder that Michaeltoons aren't forced me to make as a team leader and lurse and it went everything from individual movement techniques to platoon operations. I was just sitting there flipping through it, just kind of refreshing myself because it's been
a minute. And a squalader or one of the Wreckie team leaders came over. For people who don't know a squad leader in WRECKI is a team leader. It's the same same, same s six but uh he came ouver. He kind of stood on my shoulder, like what are you looking at? I was like my sop book and he was like I see that. I was like, just take it, dude. I was like, you need it. I was like, just take it. You can have it, copy it, you know whatever, because every team should have their own
sp because it operates independently. You know, our teams operate independently. But I said as an import like, I mean, no one was walking down the hallway me in the nuts like nothing bad happened. I was kind of intimidated, to be honest, because I didn't have a scroll on my right shoulder. I had my Lurst patch or my two EDD patch until I did that first deployment and I put a scroll on, never took it off, and people got my respect. It was interesting because I didn't grow
up in regiment. Yeah, so a lot of the East six's in below had no idea who I was because I didn't go to rip with them, I didn't do platoon operations with him. I wasn't in the line with them. But everybody from like platoons aren't above or first aren't above knew who I was and respected me, and it was It's an interesting dynamic for a little bit.
Any more questions for Dustin.
Jopyre Thank you, hey, al, Dustin, you talked about your conventional leaders. What was your experience with officers at regiment? As I understand, operating is really the role of enlisted So how are they at employing your guys' skill enhanced skill sets?
So officers in regiment, I'll talk about regiment as a whole, and we can talk about reki pl if we want. Officers as a whole regiment are very good at managing tasks and shielding their platoons. For lack of a better or bullshit, their main job is, you know, be a politician with battalion, especially company level and platoon level. The pls I had at Regiment, I mean I was there
for three years. I think I went through five pls as a platoon start in that PO, he was in charge of not only the wrecky platoon, but also the risk of platoon, which is the reconnaissance surveillance target acquisition. They do a lot of tech stuff, so he kind of had he was in charge of two platoons, but each platoon had their own platoons Earn it was a weird dynamic. Simultaneously, K nine and Snipers had one PO but platoons arens. That's kind of how that was set up.
As far as specialty patams. But every pl I had was rock solid. They all actually they they all left and went to s F. Yeah.
Questions for Dustin.
One from a Chris Ward. I have a question, what was your favorite moment out of your entire career outside of retirement obviously.
Chris Ward, that's my brother. Uh, Graduating Radar School like that is I would think, Yeah, graduating Rending School was probably the not the highlight of my career, but one of the proudest moments because it is the premier leadership school of the Army, one of the hardest schools anybody could ever go to. You never been to Buds Adventure to say it's harder than Buds.
Sorry, maybe spicy take.
Yeah, spicy take. I mean maybe Steals get to go home every night. Buds. You have a barrass room, bro, or you can go to your house. Don't do that. Ranger school, but yeah, because once your arranger, always Rainer Man. That's the way I look at it, and I'm super proud to graduate Raind School.
Anything else is one last one from a station ward. Oh boy.
My favorite moment was being able to present him with a flag that had been flown on a B fifty two that hit a target he called for.
Yeah, so as my dad the stays of word, he's talking about the operation. We're talking about the Big Push. So my dad was in the Air Force. He's a B fifty two guy, still has friends in the B fifty two community. He's an electronic warfare officer or electronic warfare technician guy. The B fifty two's during that time, they were flying over and dropping bombs the moab, which wasn't from B fifty two, but it's that time. Madison was in charge and shit was just raining, you know.
But my dad caught win that we were also there in Nagahar and talked to the pilots and they flew a flag for me and gave me a certificate.
That's pretty cool.
Got some pull pins from like the arming pins from the from the bombs, like the little leafless they dropped to and he brought it to me on my birthday and stuff is pretty cool.
So how has post military service life been treating you? What are you up to nowadays?
Oh? Man, retirement's awesome. I don't have to shave anymore. Uh yeah, when I first got out. So my actual job job, I'm a I'm a contractor for Department of State right now, just doing stuff overseas when I'm state side. I've started a company called the Light Sleeper, and we make an ultra light. It's basically a woobie. I'll explain it as a wooby with a sleeve to put a sleeping pad in and a pillow attachment. It's just a
light sleeping system for light backpackers. It weighs two pounds, so you don't got to take a whole sleep system or a stuff sack and all that. You know, Bivysack started. That company is doing very well. We just started shipping last week. You congrats, sure shipping last week?
You show me on your website earlier and h it's inexpensive. It's like, what's seventy bucks? Yeah, seventy bucks, and yeah I want one? What?
Yeah, I'm absolutely what's the website where people can get it? The light Sleeper dot com?
The light Sleeper dot Com. The light Sleeper dot Com is gonna be down in the video description by yourself, Al woobie with a sleeping pad.
That's the most amazing.
That's that's the.
Yeah, it doesn't come with a sleeping pad. Okay, it comes with a pocket to put your own sleeping pad in. Because everyone has their own preferences.
So I'm not gonna you had me a woman you like the the only piece of army year that ever.
That's what I wanted. Did what it's meant to do. I came up with the idea because I was I was sitting there packing my son's nap matt for school. I don't know if you know what nap mat is. So I was rolling his up, got out of the dryer, was like rolling up putting his backpack for school in kindergarten. And uh I looked at it, and I looked at my wife, and I was like, why is this not a thing for adults? She's like what. I was like, I love taking naps. Yeah, And I kind of like
just said there and thought about it. From that, I was like, why do not have this in the field? And I hit up some buddies, like a buddy of marsak Andy. I was like, you good. He's like, dude, yeah, why is that not a thing already? I don't know.
I'm gonna go.
I'm I'm hey, everybody, make sure buy the light sleeper the light Sleeper dot com.
You owe it to yourself.
I got I got a Scouts field trip coming up, camping trip with my daughter.
So actually I just had a guy. Uh he was about three for his Scouts all right, all right? Yeah. We shipped over one hundred orders this past week. We just started shipping this last week and over one hundred orders already.
It's been That's FANTASTICO off to the races man.
Other than that, the one got certified as a bounty hunter. Just kind of keep things spicy at home.
Yeah, I got to do that. So you go and knock on people stores unpaid parking tickets, bitch.
I haven't done it yet. Yeah, I just got certified. Last October November. Okay, we and my buddy from RC that retired. Also, yeah, we one got certified together. I was like, dude, we should do this. I was talking to a guy overs I used to do. It sounded real easy. I was like, why are we doing?
Yeah, like I talked to a dude who did a bounty hunting at one point, and he had some wild stories. But yeah, suffice to say, if like a dude that looks like Dustin comes and knocks on my door and it's like, yeah, yeah, you're going to jail now, it's like how much of a fight am I gonna put up? Probably just gonna go along.
That's kind of what the guy was talking to he said, Because I asked him. I was like, you know, what's the you know, it was kind of like a bro code, like you don't know me, so you're not gonna hire me type thing. Yeah. He's like no, no, no, He's like, if you and your buddy asked to work for me, with your resumes and looking the way you do, he's like,
I'm getting every bounty I got. Oh nice. But we just got our company certified back in March, so we haven't had the ability to go out and get anybody yet.
But this looking forward to this dude, I remember him telling me a story about how he got on a flight to Honolulu and they had like forty eight hours to find this guy or they're gonna eat like a fifty thousand dollars bounty.
I was like, holy shit.
But then at the same time, the same guy told me he's like, if I knock on a guy's door and it's like over unpaid parking tickets or something, and the bounty is, you know, two thousand dollars, and he offers me three thousand, I'm taking the money they do.
Yeah, it's perfectly legal too, Oh is it really?
It's not. It's not like you're bribing a public official.
They're paying their bounty. It's it's perfectly legal. Oh. Interesting. As long as they pay their contractual fee, you're good. You don't have to take them to jail every time. If they can pay it right there on the spot, you don't got to take them a jail.
Yeah.
I knew a guy who did it, and he said, it's just it's a lot of detective work. It's like find out who their girlfriends were, stuff like like where are they holding up, you know, and that's why we yeah.
Why we haven't done anything yet, because there's federal databases. You can get access to it. Yeah, but you have to have a company that they give those accesses to a company, not a person. So we had to wait for a company to get certified.
Yeah, and I don't I don't know if I can wrestle a three hundred pounds fellon, But I'll be the guy with the paintball, pepper U pelicat.
I'll do that.
For you exactly. I was thinking about buying a taser, yeah, and I said, no, I was gonna be a backshotgun.
I can do that. I can do that for you. I'll be your backup.
Would you rather? I don't know. I think I would be more rebellious against a taser than a shotgun racking No.
But I'm telling you, man, you just go and knock on the door like, hey, come on, man, like let's go and and like you know.
If you talk to a lot of bounty hunters, that's that's the process. Yeah, just treat them like a man, like it's a it's a business thing. Yeah, dude, like he messed up, come on, right, and they've already been to court. It's not like, yeah, they're gonna go spend like a day or two. Yeah, back forever.
Yeah, it's a bounty hunting. We got some dust and the Bounty Hunter Live TV coming and anything else you want to throw out there that you're working on. Nothing to think of me, okay, ship man, I mean, it's been a hell of an interesting uh military career and post service life. It's a ride.
Was there anything on Patreon? Okay?
Well, dude, thank you so much for flying in and doing this interview. It's been super cool.
Man. Appreciate you guys having.
Absolutely and and thank you Les for yeah, thanks less putting the putting the shout out for us next week. I cannot so after after this whole interview, I cannot, for the life of me remember who's on next week. I'm so sorry, but I promise it's gonna be cool. Every episode of It's gonna be a thing. It's gonna be an event. Jack will be there, I'll be there, Dave will be there, I'll be there, will probably be there if he doesn't quit on.
Us somewhere else that doesn't go out again.
Yeah, Gary, Yes, Gary, So Gary was an FBI negotiator. He was recently on the Netflix documentary Waco American Apocalypse. He was in that documentary because he was one of the FBI negotiators early on and then they kicked him out. It there's a whole thing there that we will we will no doubt talk about. So yeah, I'm excited to talk to Gary. And I'm sorry that I couldn't remember initially. So we'll see you guys next Friday. Episode. We're in the two hundreds now, so episode two hundred and two.
And I also go to the light Sleeper dot com.
If you don't the commis.
Win exactly, the terrorists win. If you don't get yourself a high speed would be stuff sack. And also check out our Patreon again. I'm gonna plug it. Go down there, get ad free episodes.
Man less than a cop of coffee a.
Month, exactly, you can come on do it alcohol. So we will see all of you next Friday. Thank you for joining us. Thank you again, Dustin and