The Team House with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David Park.
Hello, everyone, welcome to episode one hundred and twenty three of The Team House.
I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. Tonight.
Our guest on the show is Ryan Fuquet, who served as an Army Apache Attack helicopter pilot and then transitioned over and became a CIA operations officer. Ryan today is also the host of Combat Story, which is another channel on the youtubess that you can go and find. And if you watch The Team House and you like it, you should really go and check it out right away because I can guarantee you that if you found something here you like, that you'll find something on Ryan's channel
that you'll like. Actually, there's an episode that I'm Ryan interviews me on and soon there's going to be an episode where tomorrow tomorrow.
Yeah, so all your dreams have come true.
So yeah, go check it out, and we're gonna, you know, put Ryan on the other end of the microphone this time around and hammer him with our questions. All right, Ryan, back to you. You know what I'm going to ask you right now? Tell us about your origin story, where you grew up, what your upbringing was like, and how that sort of set you up on a path that brought you into the army.
Yeah, sure thing.
I We'll just say I appreciated how David very casually just tied a knot there, like it was no big deal with the growth.
So very cool.
These are a lot of that was a lot of gear that pilots just never had to touch or worry about. So that was cool to see for me. I grew up kind of weird overseas. I spent my childhood in Zimbabwe and Africa. I was in Pakistan during the First Golf War. We got evacuated out and brought back afterwards. I was born in Belgium, so I lived the first thirteen years of my life overseas.
So were your folks spies or missionaries?
Are gypsies?
They were legit State Department?
Really? I like how you say that?
Yeah, yeah, it was the first person I checked out when I got into the agency, when I got the CIA to see if my dad was actually in and have been lying to me all this time and he's a legit state.
Yeah, so did he did he look down on you?
For no? No?
No, he interestingly he had some really good friends over the years who who ended up being pretty high up at the agency. You just get to be close with folks in the State Department. When you're at the agency, you're in the same communities in these places where there aren't a lot of Americans, so you get pretty tight. And he had a few of those and my dad. Look, honestly, there's a lot of stereotypes for State Department folks is
kind of pencil pushers, they're the policy wonks. But my dad flew Hughey's in Vietnam, so he was He was a combat guy from the start, and his true calling was the State Department. He loves to say he was a terrible pilot, although I will say he has a silver Star and a DFC, which is no joke.
Wow.
But he really found his call in with the State Department, and he had I think when he would go and work with different military commands and just with the agency, I think they had a lot of appreciation for the time he spent in uniform. Of course, right, I think as you as you might expect.
Sure when you were growing up like that.
I mean, obviously, the the environment that we're in is normal to us, but did you did you realize that, like your upbringing was different than many than most Americans.
I did a little bit, because we'd go back every two years, maybe for a month over the summer, and so that that would be like my taste of what America was. And I had no idea. I was literally in Africa, like in the middle of southern Africa, running around with no shoes, very few Americans there, So that was what I knew. Occasionally, like a Nintendo game would
just drop in when somebody came to visit. But we go back to the States and like I'd go to a ball game in Chicago, like I'd go watch the Cubs play, or we'd run around northern Virginia seeing friends and family, And that was my exposure to the US and how different it was where I was grown up, in particular the Third World, right, and I know you guys know it better than anybody, the stark contrast of the Third World to the true first world problems we
deal with here in the US. And so I certainly like I recognized some of those early on, but it certainly wasn't until I came back for high school and we moved to Tampa, Florida for my dad's last role at CENTCOM, and that's where I really noticed how different my upbringing was compared to everyone else.
And how was that for you? I mean, did you have a hard time fitting in? Did you just?
I didn't.
I didn't really, But I think it's because of sports, you know. I think sports can be a huge equalizer for people, whether it's you know, because you're on a team, or you just understand how to do something. And I had never played American sports, but I grew up playing rugby, and I swam and tennis and squash and all these
other sports. So I had good coordination and I came in and I started playing football, I ran track, and so I immediately had this group of friends and was accepted because I was pretty good, you know, I was all right at it. Yeah, so I didn't that wasn't that hard. But I will say, like academically, it was much easier coming back to the US from these like international schools. So you know, I started out in basic classes and then kind of worked my way up to
the honors programs and trying to find my way. But early on I was able to get in because of sports.
And then culturally, like, did you when you would hear people talking about first four problems, as you said, did you have sort of an opinion of that or did you kind of adapt to that pretty quickly?
I think I adapted quickly.
And I will say this became really helpful when I was at the CIA, like trying to assimilate in and being liked and other people liking you and that sort of thing. Like, I think I just picked it up from moving around, especially coming back to the US and trying to make friends. So I tried not to dwell
on that. I think the disparity between first and third world problems, and I think the frustration a lot of us might have when you've seen what it's really like in these other places came a lot later, maybe coming out of the military and getting into corporate America and then the Agency.
Okay, so I'm sensing that you are a pretty worldly dude as a young man, and your dad being a Vietnam veteran and helicopter pilot. Am I wrong and sensing that this was sort of the aspirations building within you that sort of took you on that route.
You were not wrong.
I you know, my dad would keep he'd have his like little a little case with his couple of his medals in it, just off to the side. He wasn't ever showing it off or anything, but you know, i'd see it. I remember seeing it when I was young in Africa and we'd drive around back in the States when we were back home, and I'd ask him to
tell me, like, what was Vietnam like? And he would tell me these stories about flying into hot LZ's just like you see and we were soldiers, Like it's exactly the way he described it was how you read about it and see it in that movie. So yeah, like I kind of had that growing up. I had two older brothers who ended up going into the military. One
flew kaiwas the other was an armor officer. So I think it was a pretty clear path for me that that's what I was going to go do coming out of high school at least and getting into college.
Cool.
So what was that like, did you go in and listed or you go went in as an officer?
Yeah, so I went so my dad was an officer for whatever reason, that was the route I took going in. Both of my older brothers were So I did r OTC at Georgetown to kind of get my foot in. They paid for school, thank god, because that place is expensive. I did ROTC there. I played football there, so I was busy as hell during college.
But it was good. You know.
It was another group of guys that I got to meet, a whole new set of folks, both on the ROTC side and on the football side. And that was the first time, truthfully, I was exposed to NCOs or like the NCOs that were running our ROTC program and and impressing honess like how important it is to listen to an NCO, and like giving us the non college side of that experience and what we were getting ready to go into.
How did the NCOs treat you? I mean, did they treat you like recruits? Did they treat you like future officers?
They treated us way too way too well, like, way too nicely. You know, like I'm sure it's really tough.
You got an eighteen year old kid with nothing but tons of opportunity, and these guys would come out of you know, this was just pre nine to eleven, so there wasn't a lot of fighting, but you know, they've had a tough life being in the military and moving and putting up with young lieutenants and here they are faced with like this is the origin story of these dumbass lieutenants I had to deal with for so long, And so actually they were really kind and you could
tell they were just trying to impart as much knowledge on you before you left as you could, Like great example for me. You know, you compete when you're in ROTC to get to these some of the courses over the summer, airborne aerosault dive, whatever. And you know, I worked hard to get into aerosoult school. I went to that and I still remember this guy, a staff sergeant Roper.
He went through my packing list like every single item, and he came out of the one hundred and first and you guys know like the home of the ari assault folks, and no kidding, like you stand there on day one that you get all your gear out. You're in these long lines and they just go through your packing lists and they're checking for everything, and guys get
dropped because they don't have it. And I just remember thinking, like how ucky was I that this guy was there looking out for me at that time and a lot of these guys just didn't have that right.
Was there a was there a reason you went offscer instead of warrant And was there more risk that you wouldn't become a helicopter pilot as an officer.
Yeah, so I never considered warrant. I just didn't know about it. It just didn't come up with my dad, you know, at all, even though he was in the aviation community. He was only in there for a few years in Vietnam. But I was more set on, like literally to the night before I had to choose what branch I wanted.
I ended up picking aviation, but it was.
Down to that in the infantry, okay, and I very easily. It's one of the reasons I love doing the show, like talking to you guys who've been on the ground, because that could have been me in a lot of cases. And I think back on that night a lot when I made this decision, all right, I'm going to go the aviation route, and I think back on it because I have a bit of regret, but I would have regretted it either way.
You know, my dad flew.
I can connect with him on a level I never could had I not been in the cockpit flying. Same with my brother. But I have so much respect for dudes on the ground running around who we were covering when I was up in the air and thinking like that could have been me down there. So that was the reason I went the the officer route. Was I was going to go either of those. The warrant officer track just never came into play for me.
So where were you when nine to eleven happened?
I was in Georgetown, So I was in DC when it happened, and we had a because I played football, we had early morning like workouts and game review and like from the previous season and that season, and I had just come back from that and my room with three other guys on the football team, so I was a senior at the time, and they they did not do r ATC. So I was often the dude like coming home as they were, you know, I was going out the door to do pts.
They were coming back from the bars.
And so to see them up this early watching TV, I knew something was going on. So we sat down and we were watching it. And then later that day we all had mop heads because that's kind of people
we were. We drove down so we could see the smoke coming off the Pentagon later that day and Jack I can't remember if you and I were talking about this, but I remember in the months after that or the weeks after that, and months like every dad read the Washington Post about these SF guys riding on horseback out in Afghanistan and how cool I thought that was, and just trying to follow that as as closely as I could, you know, with the Internet being what it was at the time.
Yeah.
Yes, And now you get your shot to go into the military. As you said, you choose aviation over infantry. What was it like you tell us a little bit about the kind of like training process to become an Apache pilot.
Yeah, I know, you guys have had another at least one age guy on here. I mean I went, I commissioned in the summer of two and I was I asked everybody on my show, almost everybody about this. But like for me, the amount of fomo or whatever you want to call it, Like the the absolute fear I had that I was going to miss the war was staggering.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean flight school is like a year long plus that's just kind of for your basic work and then you got to go and do your advanced aircraft and patches take longer so I was like, oh my god, I'm going to be here forever, this war is going to be over. I'm going to be the only dude without a combat patch. And obviously now you look back and it's completely naive to have thought that that was the case. But at the time you just don't want to be that guy, right coming out without one.
Yeah, and based on you know, the first goal for there was no exactly I think that it wasn't going to be like a quick in and out, you.
Know, exactly exactly. So for us, like we got we go to Fort Rutger. Sorry David, go ahead, please, Now I was going to say, we go to Fort Rutger, and you know, it's it's in the middle of nowhere in Alabama. You got all these students coming in and we had to wait probably four months, maybe three months to start our training. There was like a backlog of pilots going through the course, and so we just sat there and did almost nothing all day for three months.
And I was petrified about just waiting any longer. Like I looked up, could I go to the CIA?
Now? What can I go do to get my ass into this war? Somehow?
But I stuck around and I got put into a class. You're in a flight school class of about thirty guys and girls, and I was one of two ROTC guys.
So it was me and twenty eight west Pointers and it was like the twenty eight west Pointers who have finished one through twenty eight in their order of merit going, you know, coming out of school that year, they all get to pick like when they want to start cl and this is like the most time you could have off to start was this, So like the people who ranked highest took the most time off in the summer and then started course with me. So I was in
there with all these West Point dudes. And I'm good friends with a lot of these guys now, but you're with them every day for a year, and every single day is an evaluation, like you're taking a classroom test or in the aircraft fly in. You know, there's no a pluses. It's either you did this right or you sucked at it. And you're just constantly evaluated over time in these different flight skills. And everybody's competing for an airframe in the end, So some people really want to
go and flash knooks, blackhawks whatever. We had Kaiwa's and apaches, but there are very few gunships that are given out, so it's pretty it's pretty competitive to get a slot for the for the attack helicopters.
Do you so I was gone in for that.
Do you fly every airframe while you're in the class.
No.
They start you out flying a civilian version of a Kiowa, so it's a Bell Jet ranger unless you're like six foot five or taller, which my roommate there was, and they fly Huey's, which is hilarious, Like nobody else gets in a Hueie. It's pretty cool to see these things still flying around. So he was out flying Huey's while
I was in this little jet bell aircraft. And then that's just for like making sure that you're safe in the aircraft flying around you solo in that, you learn to hover in that, and then when you start doing like low level navigation routes that sort of thing, they transition you into an older version of the Kiowa and then you're in that through the end, and then at the end you go and pick your final airframe and then then you go to a separate course just for that.
How'd that work out for you?
Did you have to like score it a certain percentile to because you said it was very competitive to get onto a gunship.
Yeah, so they everything just like the military.
There's you know, an OML that's running around all the time, classroom flights, you're you know, all the grades that you get, and then there's a little bit of physical but since we're pilots, we don't we don't wait it too heavily, you know, like we're not too worried about the fitness side of things. But yeah, so there's the order of merit and by the end of it, we got two apaches in our class and they went one and two and the third aircraft was a Kiowa and the rest were Chinooks and Blackhawks.
Wow wow.
So it was no kidding. It's like everybody in a room. Hey, number one student is so and so what do you want? All right, Apache's okay, it comes off the list and it's just like that for thirty people. So it's it's nerve wracking day of But there's a lot of like there's there are personalities for aircraft, and I don't know if people outside the flight community understand that, but like people who fly chnooks tend to be like the pretty
laid back chill. You know, they don't mind sleeping with the roof over there head if they got to hang out in the back for a while. They're cool haveing other people watch them fly, whereas in the APACHE, like you got a copilot, that's it. There's no crew chief watching you screw up. So everybody. Every airframe has its own personality. So you do have some folks who really want to get these lift aircraft. But for us it was like the first three were attack and recon ryan.
Actually, for the people who might not be super familiar with military airframes, can you give us a rundown on the choices you guys had?
Yeah, we had five, you're right, you know, so we had five different aircraft, so apaches, right, so just two seat, two engine gunships. Then there were kaiwas which single engine, no doors, kind of cool little reconnaissance aircraft. And then you've got Blackhawks, so that that also includes your METAVAC. But the classes we were in it was just strictly like you were going to a conventional unit to fly
black Hawks, not for METAVAC. And then Chooks, so you got your dual rotor big old lift aircraft carrying thirty guys and then we also had one spot for a fixed wing to go and fly VIPs. And to me it was like, why would you want to go do that? Like if you wanted to do that, why not go to the Air Force. But there was one guy you got it. It was a perfect fit for him and it made a lot of sense. You could go and fly some almost like some intel work vip flight. He
had a great career doing that. But those were our aircraft. And now there's a they've retired, I think the kiawah and they have a Lakota in there I believe it is now. So then you get actually, hey Jack, sorry, this might be interesting at the time. So this is just after nine to eleven kicked off. This is probably still the same today. One sixtieth, which you guys worked with for sure, like the cream of the crop for the aviation community.
They would come around and they would pull one or two.
Guys or girls out of well guys at the time, out of flight school, like right out of flight school into one sixtieth. It was rare, but you could do it, but you'd have to go fly schnooks and I shouldn't say it, like you have to go fly right if you had aspirations to go in and flying little bird guns, which is if you're flying guns at all, that's the only thing you'd ever want to go fly, then you got to go and do your time in conventional units.
But they were pulling a.
Couple people every now and then out of flight school, so that was something you also had to weigh, like, hey, do I want to give up this gun slot to go and fly in one sixtieth which would be amazing, But I'm going to be flying lift for my future basically. So that is one other wrinkle that they threw in at.
The end, because once you get on an airframe, they kind of like keep you on it, right, Like, how how does that work?
Like with the little bird pilots do they come out of?
Like were they former conventional black HALWK pilots? What's that normal trajectory?
Like? Yeah, So.
As you can imagine, just like in your guys career paths, you're with these folks, you end up going to the elite units just like you both did, and so you end up knowing these people. So I ended up with a couple of guys who I knew who went into one sixtieth and typically like the gun side of one sixtieth is looking for people who had flown Apaches, and Kyle was like, who had experience pulling the trigger for
the guns? Like I think you could. You could be in a Pache pilot and fly a little bird where you're infilling somebody, you know, the the MH version, right, Yeah, the MH version. I think they would also take Blackhawk and Chinook guys. But I think it's pretty competitive when you're trying to get into one of those gun slots that you come from a gun community beforehand, So you.
Hit your Apache training, what was that like leor into you know, now you're getting into like learning your dream job, right, Yeah.
No, it's funny because the the pressure that you put on yourself or the pressure that's put on you kind of changes when you come out of like you're no longer competing for the slot. That's all done, and now you're just like now it's real in terms of I got to make myself the best pilot I can before I get to my unit, because I need to be safe and I need to once I hit that unit, I got to be progressing through this ladder that we have in aviation. So you can kind of stand out
and get to the jobs you want. So as we're getting into training, it's more like I had a guy who had just come out of the war zone, like he was in right in the evasion of Iraq, like he had combat experience.
It was great learning from him.
So it was really like, how much can I soak up from this guy in this very short period of time before I get out the door. And it's actually like in the basic part of flight school there are thirty students, but here there might have been a class of six. It's really small and more intimate as you're going through it. And one of the things that you know, if you guys have heard somebody talk about flying the bag, it's kind of an interesting story. It only happens in
the Apache community. It's how they train you to fly looking out of just one eye. Have you guys heard of this yet? So this I think it. You just don't hear about it unless you come out of this community. But it's a really tough part of flight school. That's kind of interesting. So in the Apache you got this thing on the front. It's your flear. We call it the forward looking Infra red. So it's all thermal sights.
And the only way you can see at night in the APACHE if you're not wearing MVGS is through your monocle. So it's like this little glass eyepiece that you wear, but it projects an image of thermal signatures in your eye and this tiny little optic in front of your
right eye. And you have to train yourself because as you look through that monocle, you're looking at something that's right here, but your other eye is looking out into the distance, and so you got to be able to look inside the cockpit with your other eye and out and look for other aircraft and obstacle, antaid shots and stuff. So to learn how to fly like that takes several hours for you to overcome the sickness that comes with
it because it's so disorienting. So they call it the bag where they put this tarp over the cockpit so you can't see out. So the dude flying behind you, you're up in the front seat of the Apache. The guy flying behind you, who's the instructor pilot, he can I think he can see out, or he's using the fleer as well because he's experienced with it. And then
you have no way to look outside the cockpit. You're one hundred percent flying with just what you can see in this little eyepiece, and it a lot of guys end up puking going through this part of it, and it's super disorienting, and it's one of the other ego crushing parts of flight school that you go through on the APACHE track.
Yeah, so what's that like? Having an instructor in like behind you and I don't, like, I don't even know an APACHE does does like your your copilot can't?
Do they have control? Can they take control in a normal APACHE?
And then with an instructor, do they have like like a driving instructor like the brakes and stuff like that.
Yeah, So the the APACHE that we use in flight school is the same one that we use in the regular part, okay, And so you can do everything from both seats. Okay, So you could fire technically, you could fire a hell fire missile from the back seat, although it's super rare because of the way you do it, but you could. So they have all the controls necessary for when you inevitably screw up that they can control it and bring you back down to the ground safely.
But a couple of the things with it. We like to joke with Blackhawks and Chinook's and Kaiwa's that we sit front to back so that you can't hold hands with the other pilot, right, so you would you wouldn't like fly with us because you can't hold the hand of your co pilot, you know. So we'll give them, we'll haze them a little bit with that. But there is a there's like a glass shield between you. And the only reason I bring that up between the two pilots front to back is in the Cobra they didn't
have that. So almost every guy I ever talked to who flew Cobras would say that the instructor pilot in the back seat would like dump their ash tray on you in the front if you screwed up, or they do something to yell at you through there, and you couldn't do that in the Apache because you had a blast shield in between the two cockpits.
The best fascinating what did your dad? Did your dad fly Cobra? I forgot what your dad flew me.
Just Huie's Huey slicks, so no armament, no guns.
What did he think of you like flying an Apache?
Did he? I thought he?
You know, I think he found it pretty cool that I was going down this path. And when I was in flight school, I went to one of his reunions. He goes to your reunion every year with these pilots that he was with in Vietnam. It's awesome, and they were all telling stories about how he used to fly and some of the ops they were on. So I think it to him he didn't really care what I was flying, you know, that didn't really matter to him. He just I think he thought it was interesting that
we both flew. And it truly wasn't until I came back from Afghanistan that we had some no shit discussions on like it was kind of like my baptism by fire, and then we started talking real about some of these events.
That's amazing. And how long was the APACHE training.
It's probably four to five probably four months, four to five months, I would say once once you come out of basic, yeah, you go through that Apache pipeline, and
actually I went through. I flew there. We called it the Alpha model, so it's like the older model Apache that they used early golf for not early golf, early in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they had just transitioned to this thing called the Delta model at the time, So I did the the alpha and then had to do the secondary course for the Delta, which suck because it
kep me there longer. But this thing gave us a whole host of different capabilities, but one critical one was the optics were way better, so we could see bad guys miles out now where before they could hear us, which was not the case years earlier. So that was a huge advantage by the time we got to Afghanistan.
Can you give us a brief rundown on the armament that the Age sixty four can carry, because it is pretty impressive the amount of uh hate, Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, I bring some hate, man.
Yeah.
So so this on the small end, it's got thirty mili rounds, which are like, you know, six or seven inches long.
They're the bullets.
They're like the small armament you carry, and you usually have about three hundred of those. And you got this cannon that sits down just below where the front seater sits that is running these things through And I mean when that thing fires, you can kind of feel it underneath your butt as you're flying.
It's a cool sound. And you kind of smell it. It's awesome.
And then it's also got these two point seventy five inch rockets, right, so I think I've heard you guys talk about them before, like coming from an A ten, which is pretty badass, but they have a different sets of warheads on them. We would carry like some white phosphorus, some more explosive type rounds with those rockets, and we usually carried we carry about a pot of God, I'm sure an instructive pilot's going to hit me somewhere, but probably like twelve of those we'd have on board, but
because of weight, we just couldn't carry that much. And then we'd have two to three hell fire missiles, which are like five foot tall, bad ass missiles that have their own internal computer system. So this is kind of like fire and forget. So you're lasing the target, you fire it. That thing is going and it's going to hit that target. And you had different warheads that could go on that as well, for you know, thermobaric and
high explosive type type work. And we carry maybe two of those three on a good day in Afghanistan.
Yeah, and did they have to?
I mean I assume that there were people who figured out all that because of the temperature and the altitude in Afghananastan where you were going, you know, the lift capability of helicopters, So would every time you load it out for a mission, did it have to be a different load out based on all those environmental factors?
Pretty much? Yes.
I mean, as you guys know very well, the difference in temperature in those places, whether it's Iraq or Afghanistan, you know, can be significant. So you know, we might be able to squeeze in a few more of those. But for the most part, it was a fairly consistent load and we had some extended fuel tanks, you know, just so we could spend a little more time up
in the air. But yeah, for the most part, it was a consistent load set based on in Afghanistan, not just the heat, but the altitude, right sucks it out of these aircraft.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan, But I mean the Apache is designed to be like a tank killer, right, that was the initial conception behind it. Could you talk to us a little bit about what the Apache was designed for versus what.
It ended up being used for during you know, your deployments.
Yeah, and actually this like this brings up just a very important memory for me. So we were truly when I was in flight school and we went out and did our gunnery. So we go out to the range and actually shoot for the first time. We did it like we were Cold War apaches, which is how they were designed, exactly like you said, Jack, going out like you should go out as a battalion with eighteen to twenty four apaches at the same time on a line
behind a tree line. Everybody at the same time pops up, but just enough so you could get like your radar above the tree line, scan ninety Russian tanks and all of you fire missiles because you pretty much only have sixteen missiles at these tanks and hit them all at the same time without ever exposing yourself. So you're out a hover pulling up, not exposing yourself, firing and leaving.
That was the plan behind it so early in Iraq in two thousand and three, there's a significant in date March twenty third, two thousand and three in in Iraq when the Apache community was supposed to have this like it's got all this new armament on it. It goes out, it goes to a hover, and it hovered like this battalion goes out. Some of them crash on takeoff because they brown out. They're not used to the weight restrictions,
and so some of them don't make it out. They get online, they're hovering right above enemy positions, they're getting shot up, they limp back the base. It's kind of like a black eye for the APACHE community early on in the war, which is not good. So they immediately start changing the tactics to what everybody has seen in Vietnam from Cobra's basically like moving while you shoot.
But it's not normal.
It's not how everybody has been trained for the past fifteen to twenty years in this airframe, So they didn't even train us on that. In two thousand and four, as I was coming out of the pipeline, when I went to Germany, which was my first year the assignment,
our second gunnery run, we started doing these tactics. So we're shooting on the run and sounds easy, and after you get the hang of it, like it's easier, but when you're in like a ten to twenty degree dive, ten degrees doesn't sound like a lot, it's significant, like you're pulling g's it's it's a totally different experience than like pulling up to a hover when you're really low, popping.
Up and shooting.
So we would do these gunnery exercises out in at Grafenvier for those like tons of people here, but I'm sure you guys Paly spent time there one of the other training centers and anyway.
Like we're out there, we're shooting.
And actually it was the first time I had done gunnery as a piloting command. So you get to a unit, you're a nobody. You work your way up to when somebody says, okay, you're safe enough to put another human's life in your hands, you're a piloting command.
So I was a PC.
We call it for this this round of gunnery, and it's day and night shooting. And we went out at night, and I mean it was like white knuckle flying for me, just on flying at night, you know, flear this other human's life is in my hands. We're firing down range, like we just don't fire a lot. So we went
through and did fine on our gunnery runs. But one of the knights, one of the air crews, so a CW three, a senior warrant officer and then a W two, a guy who had just made W two, both former rangers who had transitioned over to be pilots, which is not uncommon. They went in on a gun run, got fixated on a target and weren't able to pull up and flew straight into the ground. Oh my god, and so like just disintegrated. There's just nothing left after that
type of crash. It's really bad. So that was, you know, I was a junior lieutenant at the time, and it was like a rude awakening of what can happen if you.
If you don't.
Appreciate how dangerous flying is. Like, and they were good pilots and they just got fixated on targets.
Yeah, straight into the ground.
Now, when when you're doing that type of the run, are you actually because I know, you know, helicopter can move in different several directions, are you actually like a plane, diving towards your target or are you angled and still moving forward?
Yeah, you're diving down towards it like like a plane analogy, as you would have said.
And you do that for several reasons.
One is like, I mean, you get up to altitude and you come in quick, but you cut all your rotor wash that's coming down is going behind you, so it's not just you know, it's not distorting or disrupting the the munitions as they're coming off the aircraft, and it just gives you a better alignment with the wind as you're trying to take shots. So it serves several purposes, but it's necessary. So you've got to come in pretty hot.
And target fixation is no joke. Yeah, every pilot's had to deal with it.
Yeah, Ran, I want to ask you about, you know, getting deployed overseas and you know, not missing the war as.
It turned out.
Tell us about your first time getting to ployed overseas. Ryan, Where were you going? What was the mission?
Yeah?
So I was in Germany as my first assignment and the unit I got to had just redeployed from Iraq. So I was sitting there doing nothing and desperately wanted to go down range and it just wasn't. Our unit just didn't get tapped. So I went back to our career course. So instead of going to the aviation when I went to the infantry one.
So that I was.
Actually interesting seeing what guys like you do at Benning as you're running around on a regular morning, because it's sure as hell is not what pilots are doing at that time of day, right, We're not doing combatives by
any means. So anyway, I went through that, but it was great because I got to meet a lot of guys who ended up being company commanders on the ground in Afghanistan when I was overhead flying, and it was awesome to know just to know them personally, but to understand how they're thinking through you know, breaching a target or their scheme and on the ground.
So I found that really valuable.
I went to Campbell and then we deployed to Afghanistan in just at the end of two thousand and seven, so I was there throughout two thousand and eight.
Right just out of curiosity how does that work?
Because you would think as a helicopter officer that you would go to a helicopter career course or whatever, like what's the difference in why did you get to go to the infantry career course?
So they keep a couple slots at all of these career courses for other branches. So like, if there's anybody listening who's going that direction, I would highly recommend jumping out of your current branch to go try something else for the career course, just to learn from other folks. Now, at the Aviation career course, it's notorious for doing frisbee golf, like that is the exercise of choice there and ultimate frisbee, and that sure as hell was not what we were
doing at betting. Like there was a whole set of guys who were going to SF and they were going to be team leaders. I was put with all the tankers and heavy met guys because I was an APACHE guy.
So we played, we did.
We played the SF dudes in ultimate frisbee one day and got annihilated. Like it's not even fair to put these guys with a bunch of tankers and heavy mech and pilots. But anyway, no, so it was really good. There were only a couple slots and there were marines there. A marine was the number one dude coming out of the Army Infantry Career Course, which I thought was amazing. But anyway, so it was good cross pollination, and you know, you just completely learned how they thought and operated.
Yeah, did do you think that having gone to that it helped you when you did have your first combat tour.
One hundred percent. Yeah. I thought it was huge.
I mean truly, Like I was on the radio one time and a guy goes, hey, is that huge it is that you? And I was like, yeah, it's me man, and he you know, he told me who he was, and so we just had that connection. H or guys who I knew when they were in contact, Like it meant a lot to me to get overhead if there was a dude on the ground on you. Not like I wouldn't try if they or someone else, but there's
this personal connection that you have. But also like there was like the worst event that we had and we can get to this later, but it was it was more of like a deliberate operation into a valley. And when we were doing the briefings and everything, I was a company commander, so we were kind of going through the briefing and as the as the ground battalion commander is briefing, I understood everything you was talking about.
It all made sense.
Why you want to put positions like we got a block here, we have to move here.
You know.
All of that made sense to me at that point in time, and it never would have from an aviation perspective.
Yeah, well, let's start talking about this a lot.
Any significant operations that you were involved in overseas as an Apache pilot.
Yeah, how about your first combat, your first encounter?
Yeah, so, Jack, I think when you and I were talking, you may have brought up one that I was in because I was at Salerno and you, I think you asked me, you were like, hey, were you there when the base got attacked? So anyway, so we could talk about that. That wasn't my first one, but my first one. And I asked everybody this as well, like what was your first time going outside the wire? And some people it's crazy, you know, violent, For me, it was not.
I was just out on a day flight, daytime flight, going out to ship and there was some contact on the ground, but it was kind of in this area that had a bunch of compounds with pretty dense foliage inside compound walls.
So the enemy had moved.
Into that position like where we couldn't really see them and there was a ground unit moving on them, and so we covered them for a while before we had to break station and it just wasn't that kinetic, so we left. But I will say like that first time outside the wire, I thought, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking I'm going into like World War two here, because that's just that's my my feeling at the time, was thinking like, oh my god, what's going to happen.
We're gonna be shooting off all of our rounds. We're going Winchester here in a minute.
And it was like that, Yeah, and Winchester, for those of you don't know, is just going dry on AMMO.
And I will just take a second to mention in the intro, the team house intro, there's a clip in there of an Apache doing a gun run. That's actually something I filmed in a rack of Apaches coming in and doing and doing gun runs to support a ranger operation and outside Missoul.
That's awesome.
No, And to your so as I just kind of alluded to. So, I was at Salerno and there was Chapman nearby, which everybody knows from. Unfortunately two thousand and nine, big attack there on some CIA folks, but they weren't too far apart. But in July of two thousand and eight, when I was at Salerno, I was on our QRF, so our quick reaction for US, So we had two aircraft at all times that were ready to launch and go help people throughout like five provinces and like pilots.
So we're on a night cycle. So we wake up late at night, we go to the chow hall to eat midnight chow and it's four dudes sitting there. We're all eating way too much food. And then we get a call on the radio like, hey, bas is getting attacked. Everybody, you know, get to get to the aircraft. You do not want to see four pilots run, period, but certainly not after eating like eggs and bacon and all this stuff. So so we get in some gators, you know, we're driving.
They're driving us out closer to the airfield before we start our our like two hundred meters sprint, you know, if we even made it in without having to stop. But this was the first time I had been this close to fire like this. So, like, Celena is a pretty big base, you know, comparatively, certainly from where you've been. I'm sure Jack out in the middle of nowhere say it and you, David, So it's got a pretty big perimeter. Tons of air not tons, a lot of aircraft there.
So as we're running out to the flight line like we could we could hear rounds coming in like mortar around. We could see tracer fire. And when you launched it. In Apache, you have a crew chief who sits on the wing with you or who's outside the aircraft connected with a mic, so it's the two pilot copilot, and then you've got your crew chief who owns the aircraft basically,
and they're checking you off as you're ramping up. And it was the most intense I'd seen, Like I'd never had people shooting at me like this when I was outside of an aircraft just getting in. So we're getting into the aircraft, rounds are coming in, our crewchiefs are still on the line and I'm I'm the company commander at the time, and I'm telling these guys, I'm like, guys, disconnect and get in. We'll be all right. We can take off on our own. And they stayed with us,
which I just thought was badass. I loved seeing it. Like crewchiefs in the Apache side of the world, they don't get to fly with you, like there's no room for them to fly, so they're kind of confined to the base. And this night, in particular, I just saw some serious bravery from these guys. I loved seeing it, and there are unsung heroes in this community. But we finally took off and it was insane. So the base that at Sealerno at the time was kind of owned
by an artillery unit, right, so what infantry guys? Oh wait, two thousand and eight, July two thousand and eight, and what set all this off was a v bid that hit our front gate and then like a basically a coordinated attack on the base, which had really not happened that often. It was rare for that to happen. So we took off and artillery folks are manning the perimeter, but they're not you know, they're not infantryment, so they're not used to like moving outside and closing with the
enemy the same way an infantry unit is. So when we got in the air, we're trying to get situational awareness on the ground and it was mayhem.
Just so we're we got night vision.
Usually in the Apache, one guy I'll be flying flear so the thermal and one guy I'll be up on night vision goggles depending on what the moon and illumination is. And we're just initially like usually we take off, when we fly for fifteen minutes at least sometimes an hour before we're in contact, and here it's.
Immediate and the radios are blowing up.
You got different units trying to defend different parts of the base, and you got folks trying to move when they're not tactically used to doing that. And then we got Chatman Fob Chapman nearby, which has all these kick ass operators there, and they're coming out to play also because they're like, oh shit, there's a fight and it's here, we're coming out. So we spent at least twenty or thirty minutes just trying to figure out who the good
guys were and who the bad guys were. Right, And one of the things we do when we're on a tight target like this is the Apache is one of the most advanced aircraft you have, so you've got different displays up in the cockpit, different screens, and so what we'll do is we'll drop these different boxes on the screen and basically text them to the other aircraft so
it shows up on their screen. Cool, and we'll will basically drop a line that says, hey, don't cross this line, like you guys, stay north of this, we'll stay south and then we can kind of focus on what's going on around us without having to stay in a formation right, which we'll do in other scenarios, but in this case, it was like, let's drop a line. You stay over there, we'll be over here. And we got lined up to take a shot. So I'm in the front seat, which
is where you do most of the shooting from. And you've got this system with these like handles, joysticks basically to do all your shooting, and my back seater, who's the most experienced to do in the unit, is flying us around. And actually, sorry, no, no, no, so this is I was in the back seat. He was in the
front seat. So the most experienced guy was in the front seat and I was in the back seat because we thought like, hey, we're on QRF, it's unlikely we'll launch, but we're getting complacent here, so let's switch up seats. So I was in the back where I'm flying mostly where as the company commander, I'm usually the guy directing the fight. I shouldn't be flying, I should be taking shots and coordinating. So I'm in the back were flying around.
I clear him for a shot and like a second before I'm like, you're clear, And just as I say that, our wingman flies right in front of us, so like, if he had pulled the trigger, we potentially could have shot down our wingman.
It was one of the worst experiences in my life.
So I am like, I'm shook at that point. Yeah, ten seconds, So I pull out and I just start coasting for a little bit to regain. And this guy JT. I interviewed him. He was the dude in the front seat. He was the second interview I ever did, and we talked about this on air, and he like the amount of poise he showed in not tearing my ass apart. And he's a warrant officer, right, so he's a CW four, So technically I outrank him, but not in reality, right,
Like the hierarchy there is. He's an incredible pilot and I'm a newbie basically, and he's like, hey, are you good, sir?
You ready to go?
And you know, we took like maybe ten seconds, and I was like, yeah, let's get back in, and we got back in and we and so we ended up helping here. We took some shots. I don't think we actually I doubt we would have killed anybody there. Like, it was a really chaotic scene. But we got back in and helped kind of like calm calm the situation down landed. But I still remember that as like we
did what we were supposed to do. But man like it was it was another ego check for me that you just can't be You got to be on the details of everything, and I couldn't be trying to run the battle from the back seat. And I was really appreciative of how he handled that situation with me.
It could have been worse.
What was that a result of your your wingman breaking in that line or.
That was that was me losing situational awareness? Yeah? You know, And Jack, I think back to.
You telling me that story about the first time you pulled the trigger and almost having a friendly fire, and you know, like owning up to it, like I don't want to tell this story. It makes me sound like I don't know what I'm doing, right, you know, But it's chaotic in combat. Yeah, so people who want to know what it's like, it is chaotic, man, right, especially you got all these radios blown up, we got air to air, we're talking to our talk, we're talking to
the artillery talk. We got new guys coming in from Spooky Land, from Chapman who are all parts of different organizations we're.
Not allowed to know about.
We've got artillery men trying to move like infantry units, and then we're just trying to deconflict. So it just gets crazy. But it's reality out there.
Yeah.
I think, you know, for people who have been in combat, they understand what the fog were actually is. I think that if you haven't been that situation, like it's conceptual, like, oh, things can confuse it. You're making split second decisions that might cost you your life or somebody else's life, and you know, and it's easy to get target fixated. It's easy to you know, make the wrong call or it's just easy.
Yeah, you know, as Ryan points out, I mean when we tell these kind of like warst stories and deployment stories, we have a tendency to talk about the ones where things went really good and we feel really good about.
But we all wish that the way it worked was you go in and.
It's nice clean head shots on some Alcaeda terrorists and the bad guys die and the good guys get home to the fob in time for hot sandwiches and soup, but the reality is it often doesn't work out that way.
Yeah.
So yeah, no, I absolutely agree that, you know, it's important to tell some of these stories.
Yeah, and so it's interesting.
So generally you said that the more senior person generally, or the more experienced person generally sits in the back and are there are they responsible for flying?
Can they?
Are they elevated where they can see out the cockpit as well as the person in front.
Yeah, so they're elevated, so they're sitting behind and up from the guy in the front seat, so they can see everything and they're in a better position to fly. In the front seat, you're kind of down like just behind this your panel, your instrument panel. It's got all everything on it, so you can kind of see out,
but it's not as it's not as natural. So the natural place to fly is the back seat, and the front has a set of systems on it that are designed for target acquisition and firing that it does not it's not available in the back seat. So you want to put the pilot in command in the back responsible for just flying and making sure the flight is safe, and the person coordinating and shooting is upfront.
That's really interesting.
It reminds me of a like a sniper team because most like most people think that the most experienced person is the one shooting, but that's not the case.
The spotter is.
Yeah, the spotterer is the most experienced one because they need to be able to read the winds, read trace, you know, like they're the ones dialing a person in. Because anybody can be trained to pull a trigger, but all the mechanics of it actually fall on the spot a generally.
So were there any any other like significant operations that noteworthy operations, good or bad, that you think are worth discussing?
Yeah, I do, so there's one that comes to mind. And for me, like this was the craziest hop I was ever on. And when I interviewed the same guy who was in this flight with me and this senior warrant, I interviewed him and I asked him, you know, so he had I think four thousand flight hours, he did four deployments, And I said, what was the worst day you ever had?
And it was this day? So it was a daytime flight we infilled.
So it was in Wardak Province, so near Goosney, you know, like, I don't know if you guys ever spent time there. It was in this valley called the Jaalres Valley, and my aviation battalion commander was west point classmates with the infantry ground space commander right, so the battalion commander on the ground, and so they were paired up pretty tightly and he wanted to support him all the time. So this guy in the ground wanted to go in and
go into this area and pick a fight. And every time we went into this area we picked like somebody got shot in this place. Anytime we ever flew in there, someone was getting shot. So they infilled a company in on the ground and kept them there for a week, and then they can't The idea was they'd pick a fight, find out where the bad guys were, and then come back out. So they after this, So this is two thousand and eight. I think in nine or ten they
ended up putting a fob in this valley. But at that time there was nothing like it was the end of the world.
As far as we were concerned.
So we infilled this infantry company one week, completely quiet, infill, nothing going on. We drop them off like chinooks. They ground infill they drove in half the unit. Half of them we infilled by air. Nothing happened for a week, and then we went to X Film and we just knew this was going to be bad. And I went with this guy to our battalion commander and I was like, hey, if there's a way we can change up how we're
doing this, Like we think we need to. We think somebody is going to get killed here, Like we just what we know about this area is bad. We shouldn't be going in here. But we went in anyway. And so I stacked the teams for this basic, this one mission with who I thought was the best in our unit. So we had multi ships, but we had two apaches going in with two Chinooks and then we would rotate
because it was going to take hours. It was it was probably an hour and a half flight just to get there from our base and get them back home, and then we'd have to refuel. It was going to
take all day. So we stacked the teams. We fly in, and as we're flying in, we started getting so it's two Chinooks and then two apaches behind them, and we started getting air burst RPGs coming up broad daylight and it's prob probably probably like three or four thousand foot mountains in a pretty narrow valley with a single road in and out, like there was no and maybe like three hundred meters of terrain on either side of the road right, so it's single road, high steep valley like
steep steep mountains. And we're flying in and we're already taking air bursts. The schnooks are able to x fill folks, so we x fill with them, and then we come back to cover the ground convoy and there's been no contact on the ground, just us getting shot at as we fly in, and then is the ground convoy is x filling. We're overhead and again like it was a clear blue day and we're talking with the ground convoy. Everything's good. They come up to this like area that
has an overpass and they get ambushed. And so it's starting out here like we're scanning hell out of this area. And one of the dudes who's on the other front seater, so I'm in the front seat, and our other front seater is a guy who has gone on to be a little bird gun pilot like flight lead in one sixtieth, so an incredibly gifted pilot he used to find people when no one else could see them, and he couldn't find anybody, and so already we're on the back foot.
It's a no shit ambush.
They initiated it by hitting a dude in one of the humbies, like directly with an RPG. So dude took it in the chest in an RPG. So it's immediate chaos, Like we've got to call in a METAVAC. Got to get out of these guys, out of the kill zone.
And we could not see any enemy guys on the ground, no one, like, we just could not see them, And so we're flying around overhead for a couple of minutes and it's insane on the radios, Like I don't know if you guys were ever in this scenario, but there were a few times where I heard guys on the ground like screaming into the radios because it's no shit, life or death at this moment, you know, it's not.
We're observing this like we're taking fire. We got to get out of the kill zone, puts led down here. So we're incredibly frustrated in the air. We just can't see anyone and we don't want to pull the trigger and hit one of our own guys. It's truly danger close. So at one point, the same guy, JT says to us, we're commute. We're talking air to air, and he says, hey, guys,
can't we can't get a shot off. Let's fly down low and see if they'll shoot at us instead of these guys and get them out of a kill zone. So he's like, I want to make sure you guys are okay doing it because we might get killed. And so we said, yep, let's go ahead and do it. So we come in and we did a couple passes low and we were coming in low on one of them, and we could feel our aircraft like bump up a couple of feet, which is rare, and it was small
arms fire hitting us. And then we saw an RPG fly out our left window, like I don't know if it was ten meters, but we just me and my back seater were joking afterwards. It looked like an ACME rocket. It was so slow, like it was wiley coyote or something like just cruising by us. And if it had an air burst, I don't know what would have happened. But this guy had a beat on us and just missed us. So like for me, that was probably the closest I came to dying, and it was, you know,
to me, it was nerve wracking. So we got back up. We're flying and in the Apache, when you're sitting on the controls in the front seat, it's designed to be like a long range shot, so you're shooting missiles and rockets usually from the front seat, and you can shoot the gun, but usually you have like more freedom to maneuver and space to shoot. But we were real tight
on this one because of the terrain. So the guy in the back seat ended up taking the gun and in the Apache, like wherever you're looking with the monocle, you could pull the trigger and shoot thirty mil. So he started putting rounds down, just looking at targets and pulling pulling the trigger, which was rare, like daytime, like shots from the back seat kind of in that in
that scenario are rare from what we had seen. So we were just trying to put some rounds down and we ended up getting some hits and getting these guys out of the kill zone. But this ended up being a ten hour day for us, Like we needed a general order approval, a general officer's approval to continue flying because we had to go back in so many times to get these guys out. METAVAC came in, they got shot up on the way out, and then just making sure like everybody was safe back at their base before
we landed. So at the end of the day, we landed back in coast in Salerno and I hopped out of the aircraft. We turn it off, Me and the co pilot woul jump out, and as soon as the pressure leaves the aircraft, like there's not all this stuff circulating, like the fluid can settle, and it just started pouring out of bullet holes that we had all over the airframe. And then the crew chiefs they're like, god, damn it, sir,
like I gotta get you know. They it's they're glad you came back, like it's all good, good natured fun.
But they're like, you got my aircraft shot up? What the hell?
But they would go and they pulled out they pulled out rounds, and they pulled out one from our fuel cell and this was pretty damn cool. So like I still have this this ak round that we got hit with in our fuel cell in our fuel bladder. So the bladder was designed so that it would seal. It would self seal as a round came in, so that you didn't get any air into the fuel system to combust. And I never believed it would work. And that shit worked.
Who we needed it, that's, you know, amazing.
So it was awesome, And we got a bunch of pictures of like where the rounds came in.
We got to keep some of them.
But to me, like that was a huge deal personally, that was the worst I'd ever been in.
Why did you guys need a general officers approval to Was it because of the length of the operation or.
Its flight time?
So I'm sure you guys have both been in situations where you've had aircraft and been like we got crew rest, we got to go. It's an unfortunate part of flying.
I think.
Yeah, we had basically when Clay, when Clay Hotmaker was on he talked about it was he was the one sixtieth commander and at a certain point, the pilots will get to a certain point and he'd have to either ground them or bless off on extending the amount of time they can fly. And he's like, yeah, sometimes I extended it, and then if the pilot, you know, his rear roador eclips the side of the hangar, it's like, well, that's my fault.
I shouldn't have authorized that.
Exactly, And so it goes up the chain of command. So if you're flying daytime, you can fly for like eight hours, I think if you're flying night vision at six, if you're flying just flear, I think it was like four or five, because it justs it mentally drains you from having to be on the ball like that. And look, man, I mean talking to ground guys, you're going through much worse, but they're just so worried about a catastrophic incident with an aircraft that they don't want to mess with it.
So as you start like breaking those thresholds, you kind of have to go to your battalion command than to the brigade, and then eventually it gets up to like general officer level where they have to say, all right, keep them flying because they're in some serious shit.
Yeah, what did you guys have a problem? Was it situational whether you could fly daytime?
Office?
Because I know that was a huge issue with the Air Force trying to get them to fly daytime operations.
I think for us, no, so we would fly daytime, we do convoy escort, we'd be QRF. I don't know why that is with you with the Air Force. I mean, certainly you know AC one thirties I know are only going at night, and obviously one sixtieth is operating at night. I feel like every time I've talked to a one sixtieth guy who got shot down, it was in the daytime. Yeah, so I see why they go at night. But no, for us, we were going daytime. And I will say
at night. And you guys know this in Afghanistan, like, you can operate with mbgs a lot, but because of the terrain, if the moon isn't very bright or it's behind some of those mountains, MVG's don't do a whole lot right because you've got to be able to see. So if you have flear, you can get out there and fly at night. It doesn't matter what the illum is. So patches could go out and operate at night when
a lot of others couldn't. Really, it was US and METABAC birds like Ceestar birds from the Air Force that always had flear, so we were usually out on moonless nights.
But were there any other deployments as an a patchy pilot or the army before you started getting a bug in you about transitioning to other governmental agencies.
No, No, that was it. So I did one deployment. I can't even believe it because it was almost eight years post nine to eleven, and just the luck of the draw, that's where I was, and I I will say, I regret that to this day that I didn't do more.
You said that some of your viewers had asked you about like the whole.
Close support, like what it was like on your side versus like what it was like on our side?
Can you can you tell us what it was like? What was that feeling?
Man?
Yeah, that's that's a great way to put it. So, Yeah, a lot of a lot of people who listen to combat story have asked, Hey, could you talk to somebody who's been on the ground when there's an APACHE up over it? Not like talking to the APACHE, but just like what it's like, and you could talk about kind of what it's the feeling is for you and the
aircraft and them on the ground. So for us, like the whole reason we exist is to support you guys one hundred percent, which is why I went to that infantry course, Like I just wanted to know how you operated, what your weapons could do, how to be better partners when we're up in the air. Like it sounds corny, but like you guys were our customers. How do we make your life easier and getting your work done and
keeping you safe. So for us, it was very it was very much this idea of we're there to keep you guys alive, and if you need us, we will be there. And that's why we love a ten pilots too, Like we felt like those were our cousins or something, the type of work they used to do with y'all. But you know, I'd be curious what it was like for you guys on the ground seeing inn a patch.
Yeah, as I was, we were talking a little bit before we started the show. I got to call in gun runs from cobras in training, but in combat there was somebody much more qualified than I was doing that.
We had in Iraq, we definitely had a patch.
He's doing gun runs for us, doing support, and I mean it's awesome to see them come in and start. You know, a lot of times reducing targets that we had actually hit as infantry men. And then just because it was kind of a scorched earth campaign against Aqy at that point in two thousand and five, so it wasn't uncommon to have like AC one thirty or a patches come in and just destroy the target after we
raided it and got everyone out of there. But yeah, it's a it's a good feeling when to know those guys are overhead.
We had I don't know if you had an opportunity to.
We had uh Lewis Fernandez on who is eighty second right, and he talked about when he was on, you know, he could like they could hear the guys talking, you know, they were that close the bad guys and called you know, and I believe it was an APACHE that came in and he's talking about, you know, he can't hear the apatching the patches like, no, we're right out, you know, and when you guys are flying the nap of the earth and masking the sound and then that feeling of
the APACHE, and my heart was like racing because like close air support, having those guys come in, especially when especially when you're like looking at your Buddy's like, well, we're gonna we're gonna go to the last round, but like this feels like it and having close air support come in.
It's like a spiritual experience.
I mean, it's it's like on a really cold cold night, you know you've been and then the sun, you know, Bob, the big orange ball comes up over the horizon starts warming you. That's exactly what it's like when when you guys show up on station, when it's like when it's down to the wire and you know, and your your optics, your ability to see people, your ability to engage it.
I like I said, I can't describe it as anything other than a spiritual experience today to like be pulled out of that by these guys that just roll in and you guys are always so calm, cool, collected on on the on the radio.
You know, no matter what we like when we keep the mic for you guys.
Yeah, no matter what's going on, it's like, yeah, we got this.
Dave and I have had the conversation too, which I think most like ground guys have had it or have experienced when suddenly you're on target in a place like Afghanistan and suddenly you hear like a woman's voice come over the net and everyone starts looking around the target.
Like, who the hell there's a girl out here?
And then you find out later, oh, she said the air like I remember we had a I think it was a female AC one thirty pilot actually, and once in a while you'd hear her come over the net and everyone's like, she sounds cute.
Where is she awesome? Yeah?
Yeah, it's it's sort of like in Lord of the Rings when when when they're kind I don't remember the battle and they're coming out of the asshole and then get off on the the cavalries up on the mountain and they come down.
It's like, oh my god, thank god. Thanks.
So Ryan does what does this idea come into your mind? Like, Okay, I'm a pretty badass Apache Company commander here, but I think I want to go and try something different and serve my country in a different way.
What was that sort of like progression like for you?
So for me, it was early on in life I really wanted to be you know, I followed my dad's footsteps very closely as you could see, Like I went into combat and actually the day that I was just talking about that nasty operation was the same day of the year where my dad got his silver star in your eye, So it's really weird, like fifty years a part, forty years apart, forty years apart anyway, so that meant a lot to me. But growing up, I love living
in these different places. I liked the idea of these embassies in this lifestyle, but I really thought that the AA side of it was cool. I just always thought that there was something neat and interesting about it. But when when I got out of the military, it was really like I'm making a clean break.
I had gotten an MBA. I was like, I'm gonna go.
And do something normal, make some money, and probably three months in, I hated my life, hated it. So any anybody who has been in the military and has come out and had to try to fill this void knows what I'm talking about. But I just I was still young, you know, I felt young, and I wanted to do more, and I threw everything I had at getting into the agency, so I applied. It takes a long time to get in with security clearances and background checks, so for me,
it was a year start to finish. But you know, I was living in North Carolina, and I just told my wife, like, I'm miserable. We're moving to d C. We're gonna move to the epicenter, and I'm just going to get closer to it. So I ended up doing consulting work for you know, an army client. I went back to school and got another master's degree.
In d C.
Like, whatever I could do to get me closer to people in this world I wanted to do. And you know, I finally got picked up by the recruiter and it took a year to get in the door, but it was from childhood for me, like wanting to get into this world.
You were kind of set up for it pretty well too. I mean, with all this experience abroad, are you speak any foreign languages?
No?
At the time I didn't, so I got trained when I was there to pick up French. But you know, growing up, I took Spanish when I was younger. You know, I could speak Flemish because we lived in Belgium. That was it, you know, I lost that and not surprisingly, it's not a language that you really need.
Did you have a desire?
Look, with all the different jobs in the agency, did you have a specific focused did you want to get into the aviation or operations or.
So this this war on me a little bit because well, first of all, like many people, you don't know anything about the agency because it's so routed in secrecy, So I didn't know what the hell I was doing. They just said, hey, you're coming in. You're going to go do this job. Does that sound okay? And I was like, I'll go and mop floors and toilets for you if you will let me come into this build. So I'll do whatever you want me to do to get my foot in here. But yeah, hell yeah, I'll.
Go do You're like Forrest Gump going through the farm. Oh man, oh man, do whatever you tell me. Yes, whatever you want me to do, I'm going to go do. But yeah, there's, as you guys know very well, there's a paramilitary side to the agency. That's that's usually hunting down people who have any not any type of military
like specific skills and aviation. It's it's kind of rare to get a pilot in the agency because usually pilots want to fly, and all they want to do is fly, and they stay in and they have bonus structures set up to keep them in service.
Flying, so it's not often you get folks who are Yeah.
When when we first talked Ryan, I asked you, I was like, well, were you an air branch like flying spooky under cover helicopters and You're like no, as an ops guy like polar opposite.
Yeah, no.
So for me though, there was this like, God, I would love to go over to that side of the house and do that because I just loved I would have if I could have gone back to Afghanistan as a PMO and you know, like supported that mission again, like all the guys I had served with were back down range again, and I hated myself for not being there right and I was thinking, God, I'm going to go somewhere and just watch this happen. So it's it really wore on me. But their deployment cycle is rough.
You know, it's a tough deployment cycle for those guys, and they're in difficult places. And I think a lot of them want to go and do traditional roles on the op side so they can take a breath. So it's probably a blessing. I didn't end up doing that, but it weighed on me heavily as I started out.
For sure, for sure. Yeah, so you you went.
So you went in the ops and you got accepted and you went to the farm.
I assume or and I should say, because you guys did introduce me as an OPS officer, and if there are people who know me, they would say, no, no, you weren't actually an OPS officer. So as a collection manager, so it's separate. We get trained in the same way as OPS officers, but we have different roles and folks will reach out to me who are interested in getting into the agency and we'll talk through some of this and we can because it's all on the website. Like
I'm not giving away secrets here. But it's a different role. Where OPS officers are out there meeting assets, collecting intel. That is their job, like one hundred percent, that's what they're working on. In my role, I was trained to do that and I did that as part of my job. But the other part of my role was to understand for whatever issue I was assigned to. If we just say like, hey, you're working on terrorism right in this
particular country. If we set Afghanistan, you know, my job is to understand where our sources are in Afghanistan on this target set so I need to know where they are and what they have information and access to, and then I need to understand what the people who are meeting that intel in the end, what they need to know, like what are their intel gaps, and then I need
to close those gaps. So if somebody like a military customer or somebody on the policy side is thinking, what is the situation with this terrorist group in Afghanistan, it's my job to then go and say, hey, Bob the ops officer, you're going out to meet with this guy. I know you've got a meeting coming up. When you go meet with them, if you can only ask two questions, they need to be these two questions right, and they're going to know those for the most part, like they're
going to know these better than anybody. But it's my responsibility to be tied in with the customer, the consumer of the intel to understand what they need and make sure that when that guy's going out, he knows this is what I'm asking for. If I have no time available, like I got to get this intel out and then I help them produce the intel and get it back to the person who's reading it so we can be in the US as a collection manager, you can be
forward deployed in stations. I did, and I'm out there handling, but I'm also I'm kind of like almost like an editor in a newsroom, if you would imagine, and journalists are coming back with their copy like all right, here's what I got, and then I'm massaging it into this thing that it needs to look like as it goes out into the community.
So when we often hear about problems in the Intel community that the left hand isn't talking to the right hand, your job is to fix that.
Yeah, yes, but I would say that's I think when people say that, it's more like the bureau isn't talking with the agency, which isn't talking to mill and so there is a little bit of that, Like I would be in touch with the people like me at those different organizations making sure we're you know, if we're overlapping, which can be okay, that we're sharing that and that they know what we're doing.
And vice versa.
So so there's no disruption of ops, like that's the last thing we want. And if we've already collected something, we shouldn't waste anybody's time or risk anyone's life to go and collect it again, you know, So there's a little bit of that. Mine is more making sure that the person who's reading the intel has what they need, so slightly different than the left and right talking to you.
Did you ever be that sort of managing in that managing role? Did you ever feel like the request you were getting from up top or from the customers was like that they were just ridiculous and didn't even know what they.
Were asking for.
I didn't, And actually I might equate this as you were talking Jack about calling in Kobris. One of the things on the army side as an aviator that I often noticed was when we would go and do fam fires, you know with ground units, the guys getting on the radios talking to us were so afraid to talk to us right as pilots.
It was like, I'm gonna mess something up.
I got to have this like well structured nine line because they've heard of a JTAC doing it. And we would tell them, like we'd be in these briefing rooms with squad leaders and team like and we just say, guys, just talk to us, just tell us, like what you see where you see it, Like we are super easy to work with. It's not like calling in a fast mover that needs all these different points, right. And so the reason I bring that up is it's the same thing in my role when I'm at the agency and
I'm talking to a consumer. It's like, you tell me what your like hopes and dreams are. We probably aren't going to be able to fill it, but I need to know, like exactly what you want. Don't hold anything back, Just tell me the intel you need and let me
work on getting it for you. So you know, I don't feel like I had anything outrageous in that respect, right, And I will say one thing about the agency is their patience level is what was completely unlike anything I saw in the military, like CET work aside, so counter terrorism work that has to be very quick. But when you're doing like traditional espionage work, you they have a very long time horizon and a lot of patients. So it's okay if you don't have intel right now as
long as you're getting there eventually. And I never expected that when I got in. I was just used to like everything going one hundred miles an hour right away.
Right.
What did you have or what were some of your biggest headaches as a CMO, whether they were kind of general or specific.
I should say the CMO within that community has a bit of a stigma to it, right. So if I'm talking to folks who are in the agency now, like you were a CMO, they'd say, shouldn't you what did you have? Like a cat next to you and you were knitting sweaters? Because the origin of the CMO is they were typically spouses of case officers, of ops officers, like and I'm talking for.
That's what Marty did.
Well, Marty Peterson who we interviewed before she joined the CIA as an operations officer. Her husband was a paramilitary guy doing ops and laws and she was there as his spouse with index cards every day, putting them in, putting the reports where they're supposed.
To go exactly.
So oftentimes they were spouses writing up reports. So when I came in even there was this stigma. But for whatever reason, they hired a whole lot of like older military officers or senior enlisted to do this role like they were I don't know if they were trying to break it or they wanted people with you know, war zone experience or whatever. So there's definitely that stigma I should say so when it comes to headaches, that's not
a headache. But I would be remiss if I didn't touch on this because anybody who's a case officer would be like, ah, cmos, they're always busting my balls because guys would come in and Jack, I know you were a journalist, so I don't know if you got this with editors, but like they're coming in like look at this great intel I got. It's going to set the world on fire. Like actually they collected that over at this station yesterday. So thanks for doing this, but it's
not actually that important or good job. This was written by we're drunk when you wrote this, like why are you using why would you talk like this?
What about these details?
So it was usually a healthy relationship between me and the case officer because they want every they think everything is going to be earth shattering, and usually as a CMO, we have to break some hard news to them about how it's really going to go down when it hits the press.
Thank you for your service, that's fun. Mean, yeah, exactly exactly.
So did you have to sometimes massage egos like tell the Maya's great work.
It's just not needed. We're going to put this in the file in case somebody wants it someday.
Yes, there's a lot of that, and they know, I mean a lot of case officers. They just I think to be a good case officer you have to have this mentality where these types a setback doesn't hurt you. You know, like you've got to be able to roll off, almost like you're a goalie or something, or a kicker where if you miss, it's okay.
You got to get back up and move.
And they almost have like a salesman type personality, so they can mingle chat someone up, be really affable, and then get what they need and get on out. So oftentimes, like I'd say, hey, we've got to change this up, and they take what I had to say.
Pretty pretty easily.
But there are a couple of times somebody would say, no, this is how it is, has to be this way. This is what he said specifically, I'm not going to try to interpret it, and that's important.
And you want somebody to stick to their guns.
So you know, there's a there's a bit of tension there, but there needs to be and it's it's okay, it's healthy.
So Ryan, can you spill the tea. I mean, what can you say about your time at the agency? Where did they send you? What were you doing? Tell us your secrets? Yeah, so I was sent to Europe and Africa. That's all I can say. I was given French language. If you want to try to interpret it, Okay, my time, I guess I would say, like, you know, the farm is training, you know, as we call it. I know you guys know what this is.
But for those who are listening, I know you've had a lot of folks on from the agency are far more experienced than me.
But the farm is, you know, it's kind.
Of the gauntlet for us and getting through into the community and being blessed off. Right, So just speaking at a high level about that, I would say that thing is a mind game in my opinion.
You know, I've gone.
Through sere and flight school and all this other stuff, but the farm was like another level of.
Insecurity. You don't know what's going on.
You cannot trust anyone at any time, Like everyone is paranoid. Anytime you're doing any act, You're like, oh my god, who's watching me? So they really beat it into you that you got to think through these things on your own and I guess I would say coming from the military to this, because not everybody does. At the agency, A lot of folks come straight out of college and
they go right into this career. But coming from the military, where every time I went out, I had a minimum had my co pilot another aircraft, so there are at least four of us, and then we're usually supporting you guys on the ground, so there's there's like a community of us when we're operating at the agency and you're being trained to go out completely on your own, like one hundred percent, no comms off the grid, Like if you screw up, another human's life is at risk, right,
the asset is at risk. So that was a huge difference for me in coming from the military to this, like the level of responsibility, especially as you've got guys coming out of college, guys and girls who are twenty five doing this. There's a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. So the farm, it doesn't cut a ton of people the way. It's not like Buds or Ranger School for you guys, but there's there's a significant triaging process and
vetting process just to get there. So I think they weed out a lot of folks to get to that point. And then when you get to the farm, I mean, it's ruthless. Just there is no again, no a plus. It's either you suck or you did fine, and you can go to the next round. And they do these cuts that are merciless, and one is on the very last day and you've been there a long time, and there are people who just get cut and they don't
tell you why. And there are people you've been with for months now who are packing it up and going home. And oftentimes what I noticed was it was folks who were having trouble and didn't want to talk about it in the group, right. So and you probably saw this, I'm sure when you guys were going through selection and
some of the different courses you went through. If you don't have the self awareness and the humility, I think to just show where you're weak and take on other people's advice, you're not going to make it, and they will see it and they will cut you.
Was there anybody that was cut on the last day that you were just surprised or.
Show, Yeah, there was a person who was going to be basically the intel rep for dev GRU. You know, we just assume one hundred percent this person's getting through. We had a senior, fairly senior Marine officer quit during the course, which blew my mind. I just didn't even think that was in the DNA, And I've seen people not just get cut but quit where I never would have thought someone would quit. But I think the older you get, the harder it is to go through these
types of games. You know, like it's a game in the end, not a game that's not fair because it's good training.
I will say I.
Wasn't in the units you guys were in in the military. I was always conventional, but I had never been through such realistic training as I was at at the agency, like never. It was not even SYR was close to this. So they put a lot into it, but they needed to because of the type of work you're going to do.
On the back end.
Did you have the opportunity to run any any agents in the field.
I did, Yeah, so I handled I handled human assets a few times. Again because I was a CMO. It was like, hey, Ryan, as you have time, you can go do this. So very much like being an officer in the aviation community quite honestly, where your job is not really to fly. Your job is to do officer things like make sure that everybody has the right size boot when you deploy it as as painful as that is, and making sure the battle space is operated in a
certain way and you're liaising right. So as a CMO, my job was to stay in touch with analysts at headquarters and understand what policy makers needed and then know what our stable of assets was. But whenever something came up when there was not, but I was like, help throw me into that. So you know, over time, you build up a reputation and they'll start throwing cases your way. So I did get a chance to handle several cases,
and to me that was the real deal. And I will say, just like my first time flying outside the wire where I was thinking like it's gonna be World War three here. The first time you're cruising around on your own, like you're in regular clothes, you have no comms, you're in in a vehicle you've never really been in before.
Well, you think the KG is gonna pull you into a panel, dude, Yeah, you got.
Like mosques going off, you're stopping because of goats crossing the road, You're questioning everything. Yeah, like the amount you're just so on edge for that, Like that was the real deal for me, was doing those types of Oops.
It's funny because you don't have to be paranoid, but when you're doing like an SDR or something like that, and when you're new, it's like everybody's looking at you. Everyone, right, It's like, person, like, everybody is looking at me.
You have any funny stories about you know, sources making sexual passes at you, or I don't know anything anything funny, or we've heard some pretty good ones been passed that.
So it's I will say to your point, David, of to try to kind of like knock the paranoia off of you when you're going through that training, They'll they'll show you videos of people changing clothes in broad daylight down like a New York street, and they'll it'll just be somebody walking around and they change their whole outfit and nobody even gives them a second book, you know, and they're like, this is what is going on around you you never even see, right, And so they just
try to break that mentality for you as you're going through doing like just learning how to do SDRs and making sure you're not being followed, right, And then you're taking down all kinds of license plate numbers.
Did I see that one before? Did they switch that out? Like?
Can you write that down while you're driving and not crash? Like are you paranoid? And they just the more you do it, the more familiar you get, and every I feel like almost everybody gets it. A few folks maybe don't, but for the most part, you get it over time. Some get it quicker than others. On the funny, on the funny side of things, let me see no so
no sexual passes, which should not be surprising. However, there one of the ways I had to get to meetings at one point in time required me to get massages along the way. So it was pretty it was pretty unreal. So you know, I go and I'm paying cash. I had to make a stop here to I had to sell something. Basically, I had to make sure that people understood why I was in a certain area. So I would get massages, and so I would roll into these meetings like with oil all over me, all over, my
hairs all slicked back, like I'm glistening. You know, I look like I was just using manscaps basically, like I'd just come out of that and then another time, you know, not not that it was sexual, but I was debriefing someone in and there were three of us and we all didn't speak a common language. So I was speaking French. Who is who is translating French to Arabic and coming back to this other guy in Arabic who was coming back to me and French?
And then you're having it translated into English in your mind. Oh, and then I have to write in English.
Like the amount of time it takes to ask a single question when you have this telephone game going on, even when.
You have time available, it's crazy.
Like those are some of the things you find yourself doing like this, like this is what I signed up for.
It's awesome. I loved that. I loved it every second.
So having the government pay for your massages.
That's right, man, Those things are expense. You're ten dollars hard working. You heard it here first.
So what what was it?
You had some pretty good trips, it sounds like, with the agency and learning your job and having a good time doing it.
Why did you end up leaving?
It was so hard for me to leave that place, even the bureaucracy of it.
I loved it.
I love everything about that place. In the military, I didn't have the same impression. I enjoyed being downrange, like when I was out flying in combat, I loved it, But the garrison environment in the military I didn't like at the agency. Even if you're at headquarters, which is kind of like being banished to Siberia. Everybody wants to
be out in the field in stations. But even at headquarters, like every day you're dealing with front page news, like the issue of the day and what's going on, and you're reading about stuff that's happening that just blows your mind amazing.
Ops. Right, So for me, it was really tough to leave.
But I'm married to an attorney who has a great career, and moving every two years is not easy. I have three boys, the oldest is fourteen. When we moved here to California for my last job, he had moved eleven times. So to me, it was a little bit of all right, And I do like I would ask you guys the same question. Like for me, I feel like I am one of maybe five percent of the human population that's gotten to do the job that they love to do, you know, even though I only did it for eight years.
I wouldn't pass that up for anything else. And at some point I felt like I had to move on and put some other people's lives ahead of mine. But I would ask you, guys, if you feel that way about your time in service.
Yeah, it was like a little kid that wants to be an astronaut.
I got to walk on the moon, you know, that's how it feels like so, but like you, I felt like I did the right thing and listing and doing the job, but when I got out, it was also the right time for me to get out.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, like I lived pretty much every dream I had and also, like you, and one of the things we've talked about before is, you know, there's this idea of thank you for your service, but everything that we did what there. I'm not saying we didn't want to serve, but there was also a sort of a selfish intent behind it. We did it because we wanted to, like we were living out our dreams. And yeah, at a certain point, you know, you have to wonder
if the people in your life if that's fair to them. Sure, and you know, uh, like you know, and you have to make decisions based on other people.
Yeah, So I still miss it to this day, Like I'd take anything to go back and do that, but you know, it's a one way door.
You can't go back in there.
Right right Well, And and the other thing is is you did leave for a reason, and even though you miss it, that reason wouldn't change. If you went back and like started living again, then the other than the people you're attached to, would also go back to.
Oh no, I'd be divorced. That's how it would go down. So the only thing I like more than the agency is my wife.
So yeah, let's let's hit up some of your questions and then we'll talk about you know, getting out and your your kind of post service life and combat story and what you're up to now.
So Dickie, thank you very much.
He said, great guests looking at his background and great guests. Yeah, absolutely, I think he meant the background of you know, your I love me Wall, but that's right.
Yeah, the IYE was cool once Wall.
Yeah, Yeah, I mean we all have them. Jackson, thank you. Ryan.
Did you ever work with Brown Branch or Special Activities? What were your experiences like with them? Also did you have any interest maybe trying out for them? And we talked about that a little bit.
I did.
Yeah, So I worked with them, and there were days when I was at the agency where there's one guy that kind of controls their pipeline. And because I had this aviation background, like I was a really good fit and I very easily could have walked in there. And this guy, I mean, he's been around a long time. He's a good reputation. So it was hard for me not to join. But again, like I would have been away from the family and I wouldn't have had this experience that I did. So I elected not to do that,
and I often wish that I did. But I worked with those guys and I was impressed as hell with them. Like it's a really great crop of officers. I mean from where they came from. They I think the impression is they all come from Delta, but that's not the case at all. Like you got different special operators, got a lot of Marines in there. They just for whatever reason,
they do great work in this place. And seeing them operate both in the PMO role and then when they go over to traditional case officer roles every few few cycles, you know they do great work. And some of some of my best friendships were with those guys, I would say, and they're crazy. They get to do some crazy stuff.
One guy was like he rolled into his very nice apartment in this part of the world and had his like parashute gear, you know, like I sure as hell was not doing anything like that, and I thought that was super cool.
Ardie, thank you very much, he said, A ten was my weapon system avionics engineer. That's a smart guys there, And Jackson, thank you again. Is there a Soft Slash CT unit member that you haven't interviewed covered yet that you really want to? And he said, also, thanks for all the work you Jack and David.
Yes, so from my podcast basically from Combat Story. Yeah, yeah, So I will say every single person who leaves a comment asked me to interview Pat mack So.
I don't know if you guys have interviewed him or not, but I have not.
So it Actually he taught a shooting course to my brother's company once and that's the first time I heard of him, and I would love to interview him just for many reasons.
But he's great. I interviewed him on a previous podcast years ago. He's really good.
He's a really good guy.
Yeah, he just seems like it. So I think I think that's out there. But I would say, and just David, just make sure you were saying a soft guy or a non soft guy.
Is there a soft or sleet team member, but really we can help this up. Is there anybody?
So the number one person I want to interview is the guy who wrote No Easy Day. So the guy who was number two in the stack to Kill Bin Laden. I think his when he published the book, which the Navy did not authorize.
I think the name was like Matt Bissonette. Bisonette.
Yeah, So I loved that book. I just really enjoyed the way it was written. I mean it goes into like getting into dev grew. It shows the conventional whatever, the non dev gru seal life progression. And then I think he comes back from this op from killing Bin Laden and he goes to a Taco Bell drive through, like in his pickup truck. He's got his country music on. He cruises up, he gets his Taco Bell, like twenty four hours before that, he's in Afghanistan, Pakistan, killing Ubl.
So I just there was something about that that I thought was so amazing and I would love to interview.
That guy.
Was there for you when you did your combat tour as a helicopter pilot and then coming back to the States.
Was there a decompression period for you?
Was there a like sort of this surreal juxtaposition thank time for you.
I mean I had a lot of trouble coming back, and I had lived in a lot of these places. I mean we were in Afghanistan. I spent four years in my life in Pakistan, so like I knew this place. I almost fired a hell fire. I think I fired one into Pakistan. Actually, So if we want to regroup on that one day and ken, yeah, no, it's all good. It's all recorded, so you couldn't get away from it. But yeah, coming back was tough for me.
I think. So I had a.
Year old son at the time that day where I thought I was going to die, Like you know, that meant a lot to me. I came back and I wrote an email to a friend of mine, my best man at my wedding, and I said, hey, man, I don't know if I'm going to make it back, Like make sure that Owen, my son like grows up to be like a normal kid and does all right, and look out for him, like guy had just resigned myself that I might not make it, so coming back, I
think I still had that in my head. And my wife noticed it immediately, Like she has known me since we were fifteen. She seen me do everything stupid I've ever done. She's seen it. She knows me so well, and she saw it right away. And for years I was like, nah, there's nothing going on until it really got bad. So I would say we had a couple of days of decompression, David, but it was you know, I didn't do well.
Coming back and how long did it take you? Or I mean, how did you deal with that process? Do you feel like you've come back from it poorly?
I dealt with it poorly, is the answer.
So early on, like it came to a breaking point where my wife just said, hey, you're going to see someone or we're done. And I will say, like, this is an interesting part about the agency. The hardest training I ever went through, like bar none was an advanced course at the agency. Like it's very small classes and incredibly intense. I was in there with like a mar SoC GB guy and he said to me, he goes I would go through ranger school. He had done Ranger school.
He's like, I would go through Ranger school three times before I do this again. It was just soul crushing and at the time, like my wife I came, it was all from your home, which made it even worse, Like it wasn't even you were deployed or gone. You were coming home at night and not helpful at all. And my wife was just crying like hey, I need
help here, and I left. You know, I was like, no, I got this thing to do, you know, like that's what my head space was at the time, until she just put her foot down.
I went and got help.
I saw a psychologist, and I will say, like, I know you guys interviewed Greg Kocher, who's awesome, and you did a fantastic.
Job at that interview.
I ended up interviewing him after seeing your guys interview with him, But like he is the pinnacle for me, Like he was a little burg gun pilot, you know, he flew Cobra's an apaches And to hear him talk about PTSD, I hated, like I would never in my life have said to guys like you, I could have had PTSD because I wasn't kicking down doors but to hear a guy like Greg say it, I.
Feel more comfortable, right.
So I dealt with it, man, And I know, like I would never hold that against any other pilot if they had it, I would never hold it against him. But that's just how all of us are. We feel like we're we weren't Delta guys, so we can't have PTSD. So I definitely I dealt with it. I'm in a great spot now. But I hid that thing from the agency as I went in for sure.
Yeah, now, when you were going through that process, I were you cool with the first psychologist you found or did you sort of have to shop to find somebody who you felt rapport with?
So I went in, I did the I did the VAS program, which I mean, I don't know if you guys went through this at all. You don't have to talk about it, but you know it takes a while to get into the pipeline. So I was really lucky that I had a paying job where I could pay my own way to get a psychologist in the meantime. So I found someone local who worked out and then I went and did like a eight week VA program, just one on one, which was really helpful. And to
this day, like probably changed everything for me. But then I went back to this local psychologist who I stayed with for a couple of years quite honestly, and I will say, and I'd be interested to hear your guys take on it, But for me, I was an extremely high functioning person at work and a train wreck at home because of this.
Yeah, yeah, I definitely became that, Yeah for sure.
Yeah, And I I mean, I don't I think everybody like manifestor deals with it differently.
I think avoidance is is a common thing, you know, but a.
Workaholic mentality is a way to yeah too, Yeah, yeah for sure.
Yeah, Now I think it's really common.
And I think that you know, it's funny that you say that as a pilot because you weren't kicking indoors, like it would be hard to say that, but even I think if you were to, you know, talk to guys and dealt or whatever, it would always be well, these people had it worse. So who am I Like, there's always that next notch where you're always like, well this this isn't you know.
Yeah, It's just one of those things.
So so where did combat story?
Like, where did you go from there.
So when we decided we were we as a family like, hey, I'm getting out of this lifestyle. We got to find something else. It took me a long time to wrap my head around what am I going to do next? And one of the cool things about the agency is you go visit some really cool places.
So I was.
In a unique, really nice resort in between ops and I was just sitting there looking at this amazing view and writing down, like I took a whole day just sitting there writing out what else could I go do? And I thought if I could just sit around and talk to folks who did this, who were in it, like no shit in it, and what it was like for them, I'd be happy, Like I could do that
for the rest of my life. And I know you guys do that, so you know, you get it, you understand it, and so that's what I wanted to do. So I asked the agency if I could do it. They said I could. I could record these things, but I couldn't air them so until I was out. So I did three interviews, got out, and then a year after I was gone, I was able to release these things. So I've I kind of went into it full on
after that. So I started in twenty seventeen but didn't release my first one until November of twenty twenty.
Wow, and how who was your first guest?
So my first guest was Elliott Ackerman. And I don't know if you guys have interviewed him or not. He was so he's he's written several best selling books, but he was a marine. He was Marine Officer MARSK and then he was a PMO and he did all of
that in eight years, so real tight grouping. But he was a platoon leader in Fallujah to as a marine, and he went down to like fifty percent strength on his first twenty four hours, like he's on a rooftop and half his platoon is wiped out, like literally combat ineffective. And it was It was funny because we met up and I was like, hey, I'm actually at the agency and he's like, oh, funny because I was too. And we went into a hotel room because it was before
zoom stuff. It was like we were doing an asset, Like I had little food set out so he felt comfortable, and you know, it was in person. We recorded it, but it was it was audio only. But I just I got hooked on it. And the second guy I interviewed was this dude I was talking about JT.
Snow who's this warrant officer?
And that was almost like a release for me to hear him say, Hey, the worst day I ever had in four thousand hours of flying for the same ten hours I was with you, you know, like that meant a lot to me to hear it from a guy who was that season.
Right, Yeah, that's fascinating. I miss one question I want to get you, jim Ga, thank you very much. He said, how much do you miss flying? Have you considered trying to get National Guard or reserve flight slots?
So I don't miss it that much?
And I will say this is interesting about the flight community, the aviation community. When you go up for the first day that you're in the air the first time, for a lot of guys and girls, it is a monumental day in your life, like you've been watching aircraft since you were five. You just want to get up there. For me and there are others like me. For me, the only reason I wanted to be there was to support guys on the ground, Like how can I get to the front line to help these guys as quickly
as possible. So I didn't have a love of flying as much as I did. I just wanted to be where the action was. So I don't have that love. But I will say my fourteen year old wants to fly, and I would love to be the one who teaches him to fly. So I'm trying to use my GI bill to get back in and get an instructor pilot certification. But it's hard when you've got PTSD. So I will say,
like I didn't realize that it makes sense. They don't really want you flying, so there's a lot of hoops you got to jump through, so it's a while before I do that.
Do you, out of curiosity, do you think that sort of the stigma around post traumatic stress and like you just said, it's kind of hard when you have PTSD, do you think that those types of issues, those types of stigmas make guys or make people, I should say, make people reluctant to come forward for treatments if they're going to get a diagnosis.
Yeah, I do. I think it's more my opinion. I think it's more acceptable now for us to say to each other that we have it, we're fifteen years ago, I think we wouldn't say, like the three of us probably wouldn't say much about that. But so I think in that setting it's more acceptable to talk about it. But I will say, even at the agency or the military, I think there's still a fear that if you say you have that, if it's found out, you're coming off the line. Like nobody wants to go sit at if
you're doing the jobs we were doing. Nobody wants to go sit at a desk, right, and that's where you're going to get put. So I don't know how you square that, but I will say, and Jack, you mentioned it, like you can be highly functioning and focused at work with this. It's just you have other things where where you need the outlets. So I think there's a happy medium.
But right now, I think people are still reluctant to admit that they have it because they're afraid they won't get to do what they want to do right.
And I think a lot of that. I mean, and I'm a little bit older, and like in the seventies and eighties, there there was this thing about postraumatic stress with Vietnam veterans, and they would on TV in the movies, it would be like they would.
Go they would go crazy.
It was Mel Gibson sitting on the houseboat holding a Burretta to his head looking at the picture of his dead wife. That's like how we thought of PTSD.
Well, and before that it was like somebody like snap having flashbacks and snapping in the office, you know, up at a belt own and not being able to differentiate their flashback from reality.
And that's you know, not the case, but brad oric ass.
Interesting thing you found out about your guests, Like, what are some of the most surprising things you've found out?
Yeah, so I will say I'd be curious to hear this from you guys as well. For the Tier one operators, one of the consistent themes I've seen there are two, and one of them is visualization techniques, which I did not expect to see and a different kind of no
quit mentality. So almost every one of them I've interviewed, Right, so Dev Drew or Delta or whatever, we'll say that they had these visualization techniques where they sit down and think through operations or how something's gonna go and what they'll do to react, whether it's CQB or I don't know, but I've definitely heard professional athletes do it, and so it doesn't surprise me that they do it, but that I've heard it from almost every one of them, and
not just the tier one like you know, Jack and David. I'd be curious if you guys saw it where you were, because you guys were in the elite communities as well. Was this something that was taught to you guys from psychologists?
Not taught? Definitely not. But I think it's something that like.
Like snipers for sure, think through the shots and visualize it, like before you're going out onto the range or as you're going out onto the range. I think there's some of that internal visualization. But and they probably should train guys to do that sort of that sort of thing. I'm sure there's some sort of benefit there.
Yeah, I remember, Oh go ahead, no.
No, no, go ahead. I was just gonna say that.
I think visualization kind of comes naturally, Like even at CQB, like you you know, you, especially after our run, as you didn't do it well, you like you see yourself.
Doing it well, you know, over and over again, even.
If you're just kind of beating yourself up about it. Oh man, you know, but you're still seeing, you're still working that process.
And the way some of the instructors work too, is they're trying to like put you in that position, like the walk through phase of it, so you can visualize, right, like this is what the right way looks like?
You know? Yeah, I love hearing that.
I haven't done that often, but I remember, like, there's there's a key phase in flight school where you do instrument training, so you're only using instruments to fly around. It can be pretty tough. And I really did that before that particular exercise. I got like a ninety eight or ninety nine on it. It's unheard of, just very rare, and I just thought through all of these scenarios, so I can see the value in it, and I almost wish I could bring it out in corporate America. How
do I do that for my day? How do I ramp up for a meeting I'm going to have on zoom right right? I don't know how you visualize that, but I love to do that. But the other one was this no quit mentality. And I think I don't mean to be cliche about it, but some of these guys I've talked to have just said, yeah, you know, like I'm in selection, this other guy's about to quit, and I'm thinking to myself, like, you're going to have to pull me out of here with my cold dead
hands before I quit on this thing. It's like another level of that, and and I've just felt it in all of these interviews with these folks.
Well, it's interesting because we've talked about this with previous guests too, that for most I think for most people, going through a selection, like quitting isn't even an option. Like selection is just the thing you do to get the job you want. It's not like this big obstacle. I mean, you want to train up for it, you want to be ready for it, but like quitting is never It's like it's like quitting on your commute to work. It's like, oh, the drives ton to get to work.
I'm not going to do it. But that's what like quitting a selection would feel like. It's like this is this is just the.
Commute to get to my job, you know, folks.
I just want to remind everyone out there, please like the video, subscribe to the channel down in the description. You can find a link to our Patreon if you want to support us. Check us out on Instagram. What am I missing?
David the Oh?
Definitely check out Ryan Combat Story on YouTube and also probably every.
Podcast Ptagram yep, yeah, yep, on on all the other audio what's.
Your what's your Instagram title? Handle?
At at Combat Story and at Combat Story right what uh?
As we're start kind of wrapping it up here, what is how has Combat Story evolved?
And where do you see it going into the future? What do we have? What do you have in store for us?
So, I mean, first of all, I really enjoyed the team ass genuinely and the fact that you thanks you guys are talking not just to to operators but also on the intel side, law enforcement, Like I really appreciate that angle. And I've had a lot of trouble personally breaking into the intel space because it's so hard to talk about some of these things.
It's just so sensitive, you know.
So I do know one day I will go down that road and talk to those are my favorite stories or hearing folks who are at the agency and these things that they've done, and a lot of them will never come out they can't, but I do see that at some point.
But I.
Suspect For me, it'll be more it's my outlet to stay connected to the veteran community. And I think what I was surprised about with this, I'd be interested to hear your guys take from the team house. The comments that I get for the people who are reaching out about hearing these stories from others and how it helps them get through tough times, I didn't really expect, quite honestly, and I think that's really cool. So I think as long as people still feel that way about it, I'll still do this.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've definitely uh, we've received comments like that, or we've received comments like Viewers also feel like it's a way for them to stay connected to the veterans community. I even had a gold Star father reached out to us at one point and said, I feel closer to my son who is killed in combat through watching through watching this show and hearing these stories. I'm like, I don't even know how to respond to something like that.
Yeah, God, I mean that's super sad, But how great is that that you guys had that impact on someone's life.
Yeah, it meant something to somebody in a way that I could even that I can't even really comprehend you know, and we.
Just want to say we love your show too, and and we really if if you guys have not checked out Combat Story, do so you If if you enjoy the Team House, you're gonna you're gonna enjoy Combat Story like you will love it. Ryan, You're a phenomenal host. You know, you ask great questions.
Really, if I.
Can Jack so Jack was our episode thirteen, which I thought was hilarious based on Murphy's Law like Lucky thirteen. But some of the comments I got on that one, like god, damn, you keep interrupting him.
We just want to hear Jack talk.
So maybe one day Jack, you'll let me do you around two if you I'd love to talk about the journalist work he did too.
Sure, Sure, there's definitely a lot to get in there. No, I'd be happy to.
And like Dave said, if people like the Team House, they should go and check out Combat Story, they should go see what Ryan's doing over there.
And like I guarantee you you're going to find something there you're interested in.
If you mention in the comments that you're from the Team House or that you you got there from all give you you'll get a on combat story.
On something yeah, Yeah, to be determined.
So aside from combat story, is there anything else that you're working on, any other passions that you're pursuing.
So I do want to give back a little bit more to the veteran community. And I've spent the past two and a hour years at Google, at a big tech company, running an intel team, and I work in this space that's called trust and safety. And I had never heard of it when I was leaving the agency, and I think for a lot of people who come out of military intel law enforcement, you go into corporate America and you're looking for something that has meaning, where
you're doing good work and you're fighting bad actors. And I didn't really think it was out there, and I found it, So I'm in it now. I don't work at Google anymore. I left there and I'm going to another big tech company here in a month. But I want to help get veterans into that to help them fill that void. So I am working on something in
that capacity. It's not related to combat story, but it's more just related to people who are in the spot like me, and places where they want to do more and they don't think they can, but there's a whole world out there that just probably haven't seen yet.
Yeah, super cool, fascinating, And next episode we are going to have Ken Gaudebt in studio. Ken was a warped in Vietnam and then he went and served with a Rhodesian light infantry and then he served in forty four Pathfinder Company with another previous guest of ours, Peter McAleese in South Africa. So Ken is a super interesting guy. We'll have him here in studio and it's going to be a little earlier. We're going to be live around eleven or noon, so it's not going to be at night.
It's an odd time for us because we're working around Ken's schedule before he has to catch a flight out.
But that will be next Friday.
And I'll be on Ryan's show tomorrow. It'll be really smart, right, And who are your next guests?
A couple guests coming up.
So I've run several interviews recently that we're teeing up. I got a Swedish citizen of Kurdish descent who lost his uncle and cousins to Isis in Syria and just picked up and left and went in to fight. And it's pretty interesting. So I did two sessions with him about going through villages that have just been vacated by
ISIS and it's horrible what he kind of saw. I also just interviewed my first this is terrible with me, the first time I've interviewed a female guest, Kim Casey Campbell, badass, a ten Fighter pilot.
That's all sign Casey is killer.
Chick, which I think is one of the coolest damn call signs I've ever heard. And she got hit with a SAM in Iraq and made it back to base.
Awesome's she's the one that put it down safely after getting hit.
Yeah, that's her.
Oh wow, it's awesome man, she's you guys should definitely have her on if you if you haven't already. Just it's super accomplished, very understated and a badass.
Yeah yeah, I got heard from her. That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Well, not appreciate it, guys, Yeah, thank you, Ryan, really appreciate you spend on your Friday evening with us, and you know, apologies to your family as we keep you out here tonight.
We had one last sorry, we got one last donation. Thank you Quovidas, and thank you, Ryan Man. We really appreciate your time.
Guys.
I appreciate your time, and hopefully we'll get around too with you all someday. Actually, I would like to talk to you guys just about your thoughts on your podcast one time the two of you together, Less on the stories, more on like putting this together. Who you want to get on like underrated episodes one you've really enjoyed. I think your fans would really appreciate.
The whole background on how this thing came into existence. It's like such a clutch, right, It's such a cluster fuck. It's it's hilarious.
Everybody wants to know that.
Yeah, how do you how do you get a successful podcast?
I don't know, man, You just start talking and keep talking, right, What.
What in the world possessed you to do it live instead of pre recorded? These are all men, Yeah, important questions I'm still trying to resolve in my own mind.
Yeah, we'll have to do like, okay, shared thing that we do on both of our channels.
That'd be fun. Yeah, fun, that would be cool.
Well all right, Ryan, thank you man, I appreciate it, and thank you everyone out there who joined us live.
And we'll listen to this, and we will