Latest / So There I Was / A Pig in Space Episode 142

Transcript

A Pig in Space Episode 142 · So There I Was

• 0:00
  Quiet, numbskulls. I'm broadcasting. Hello, you're listening to the podcast, so there I was.
• 0:05
  It's how all great aviation tales begin. This is episode 142. I'm a pig in space.
• 0:14
  It'll make more sense. It'll make more sense when you hear it,
• 0:17
  but oh my gosh, it was funny when he said it. Oh, it's, but true.
• 0:22
  True. You can't get away from the ground fast enough.
• 0:25
  The sponsors this week include Factor for Meals in Two Minutes from the Fridge
• 0:31
  to Your Plate and HSI Wealth Strategies to help you stay smooth on final approach into retirement.
• 0:39
  So thank you to them for helping bring this show to you.
• 0:43
  I don't know, Fig. Soup, first of all, first of all, Casey's husband.
• 0:47
  Yeah. It's a family business. He's flying A-10s in combat, apparently.
• 0:51
  Right. He was senior to her in the Air Force, but, you know,
• 0:55
  smart enough to admit that maybe not so much at home.
• 0:58
  Smart man. Yeah. Very, very intelligent.
• 1:02
  Sociologically intelligent. No, emotionally intelligent.
• 1:06
  There you go. Or whatever. But what a great, another great interview and fantastic stories.
• 1:13
  Some hair raising. I knew we were going to get good stuff because,
• 1:16
  you know. Calm, sweating.
• 1:18
  Dude's got a DFC or two. but yeah when uh
• 1:21
  actually three but that's not important right yeah but you
• 1:24
  know you know never brought it up not one time no
• 1:27
  not once not once hey look at all my medals big my
• 1:30
  chest nope not at all no started out
• 1:33
  flying a10s still a little time in in korea that was tough flying for those
• 1:37
  guys too man the terrain they were all down in the weeds and marking targets
• 1:41
  for us when i worked with them it was a hard job and then he made it harder
• 1:45
  by going to afghanistan flying the first Operation Anaconda Mission in the A-10.
• 1:51
  That's the sweaty palms story. That's the meat of this episode, yeah.
• 1:58
  With almost 12 hours, hey, you're flying in the morning.
• 2:02
  Right. What? Right. Yeah, that much warning.
• 2:06
  Yeah. But then the Air Force, then he told him, okay, well, this is what I need,
• 2:11
  and thinking it'll never happen.
• 2:12
  And then the Air Force crapped out all the weaponry he needed and put it on his airplane for him.
• 2:17
  Oh, my. It was impressive. Impressive story. Yeah. And, you know,
• 2:21
  the time went so fast like it always does.
• 2:24
  Almost two hours. Felt easily 20 minutes. And then so we have to have him back
• 2:28
  because there's a lot more to his story.
• 2:31
  Yeah. So I'll just leave it at that. Right.
• 2:34
  Exactly. No, definitely getting him back.
• 2:37
  And I think in the meantime, he tickled it once.
• 2:41
  And fortunately, he wasn't sitting on it. And neither should you. So sit back.
• 2:48
  Enjoy this show and don't sit on the ejection seat handle Don't,
• 2:52
  don't sit on it This here is a true story I'm a pig in space At night In the
• 3:00
  world's smallest cockpit,
• 3:03
  On the tanker Through the weather Oh, and to the tanker crew who did that That's.
• 3:08
  Music.
• 3:10
  A lot, we really appreciated that,
• 3:14
  I'm just kidding No, I'm not.
• 3:25
  There I was Crossing the pond And you could see That I wasn't exactly fond Of
• 3:31
  all the Of all the So there I was, for March 2002,
• 3:37
  just crossing into Afghanistan at sunset, 24,000 feet,
• 3:42
  scrolling through frequencies, because, of course, we were sent to a strike
• 3:46
  frequency that no one was on and eventually hit the right frequency.
• 3:53
  And three JTACs came up all at the same time, all troops in contact.
• 3:59
  And one of them jumped up with a voice in a much higher octave,
• 4:05
  screaming that he needed ECAS or emergency CAS.
• 4:10
  And so at that point, we decided of the 37 different JTACs in a five kilometer
• 4:17
  by nine kilometer piece of battle space, White Lightning Bravo was who we would support.
• 4:24
  Oh, dude, the hairs on my arms are standing up right now.
• 4:29
  Right. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait to hear more of that.
• 4:33
  That's going to be cool. White Lightning Bravo was his call sign?
• 4:36
  Yep. 10th Mountain Division.
• 4:39
  And it was ECAS. It was ECAS because the JTAC was down and he was the forward observer.
• 4:46
  So, CAS without a qualified JTAC, as we would call it these days,
• 4:50
  the three of us know it as ECAS back in the day. Right.
• 4:54
  Right. Well, that's how all great aviation tales begin.
• 4:58
  Greetings, everybody. Repeat here, coming to you from New Hampshire tonight,
• 5:01
  and my co-host, Fig, where art thou?
• 5:04
  I am out in Denver, Colorado, doing my big boy job.
• 5:09
  And it is my pleasure, our pleasure, to welcome Soup on board.
• 5:16
  Welcome aboard. So, thank you, Soup. I am all ears now. I want to know the end
• 5:21
  of that. Of course, we'll get to that.
• 5:22
  We will. That's good stuff. For those who have been following this show,
• 5:27
  Supe's bride is KC, killer chick.
• 5:30
  And she apparently didn't have a bad enough experience with us.
• 5:35
  Talked him into coming on and doing it. So welcome aboard for the abuse.
• 5:40
  Is this the same seat she might have been sitting in? Because some of those
• 5:44
  plaques in the back look very familiar.
• 5:46
  Exact same seat. Nice.
• 5:49
  Very cool. She's not here. That's why I get to use the office.
• 5:55
  That's how it is at my house, too, I swear. Right on. There you go.
• 5:58
  I have to ask this before we go back. Which one of you is senior?
• 6:03
  By your group, me. Oh, there you go. All right. Well, we all know the other answer.
• 6:10
  That's what I have to copy on it. There you go. All right. Perfect.
• 6:14
  All right. So when's the first time you looked up into the cloudless blue sky
• 6:20
  and saw an airplane go by and went, oh, I can do that.
• 6:23
  I got to do that. Yeah, I think it was, it might've been coincidence,
• 6:29
  but probably canoeing in upstate New York when I was a kid,
• 6:35
  go to a canoe camp every summer and we, we canoe all over, you know,
• 6:40
  between Lake Placid and, you know, halfway down to the Adirondacks.
• 6:44
  And I remember being on a few lakes from time to time when a couple of Syracuse
• 6:49
  Air National Guard warthogs would come over, you know, back when,
• 6:55
  before they switched to the Viper.
• 6:56
  And then, you know, we had both Massachusetts and Connecticut both had hogs as well.
• 7:02
  So they loved to fly around up there, usually going back and forth to Fort Drum.
• 7:06
  And so, watching those guys come down the lake at 100 feet, that was pretty
• 7:13
  impressive. So, that definitely got my attention.
• 7:17
  Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah. So, we have to ask, did you, yeah.
• 7:25
  I just went blank on General Mitchell's call sign.
• 7:29
  Do you remember a fake whiskey?
• 7:31
  No. What are you talking about?
• 7:34
  General Mitchell. the first A-10 pilot first hog driver we had on board Connecticut
• 7:39
  Air Guard Bacchus Bacchus that's it yeah yeah boy I'm embarrassed I've only
• 7:45
  known him for 20 years so sorry Bacchus.
• 7:51
  Yeah Bacchus and I I listened to his podcast with you guys and I was I eventually
• 7:56
  was flying with those guys at the same time that that stuff was going down and
• 8:01
  he was telling some of his stories from Iraq,
• 8:05
  nice nice very cool all right
• 8:08
  go ahead you're
• 8:11
  from upstate new york that area i am awesome
• 8:14
  that's beautiful country you don't know how big a state it is until you start
• 8:18
  flying to different places and then you go holy shit this is new york this is
• 8:22
  this is forever we've been over the state of new york right right yeah well
• 8:27
  part of the problem is people people to live 30 miles outside New York City
• 8:32
  called Upstate New York,
• 8:34
  which my book, if you're not North of Albany, it's not upstate. Right.
• 8:40
  So United States Air Force Academy graduate. Yes.
• 8:44
  How did you get yourself into that position?
• 8:49
  Did somebody mentor you saying, hey, son, you maybe you should look at an academy or how did that work?
• 8:55
  No, I mean, nobody heard of the academy. You know, I went to a really small
• 9:00
  rural school in upstate farm country.
• 9:03
  And, you know, the guy who gave my appointment to me at graduation was the staff
• 9:09
  sergeant from the local recruiting station.
• 9:14
  So I discovered it through I joined Civil Air Patrol when I was a kid because I wanted to fly.
• 9:22
  And I mean, I'm top gun generation. So, you know, and I want to fly fighters
• 9:29
  and the word on the street was the way you got to pilot training and flew fighters
• 9:33
  was go to the Air Force Academy.
• 9:34
  And so allegedly I told my high school guidance counselor, middle school guidance
• 9:39
  counselor in seventh grade, I was going to go to the academy and be a fighter
• 9:41
  pilot and aeronautical engineer.
• 9:44
  That didn't work out so well. But the other two I got worked out and I just
• 9:48
  started doing my research and was like, that's where I want to go and what I want to do.
• 9:52
  So I put all my effort into that,
• 9:56
  applied and somehow got accepted and kind of a running joke in this house that
• 10:00
  I got an early appointment, whereas my wife still has her rejection letter from
• 10:04
  her initial application to the academy.
• 10:10
  Oh, boy. Would that have put her class ahead of you by chance?
• 10:15
  No, no. She got in. She ended up getting her appointment really late, like in June.
• 10:20
  She like would write that place every week but in
• 10:23
  the end i i used to bring it up when i was working there
• 10:26
  as the vice commandant to the head of admissions that their
• 10:29
  their program might not be spot on if they let me in early and then you know
• 10:34
  that's very very well put sir especially in case your wife ever watches this
• 10:41
  it's very very well right well played well played sir They're well played.
• 10:48
  Yeah, yeah. Your tactics are sound.
• 10:52
  Yeah. So what...
• 10:55
  What was that like? What was the transition to the, you know,
• 10:58
  we've had a few, we've had a few of you Zoomies on, but I don't think we've
• 11:02
  ever asked much about what Academy life was like.
• 11:07
  What was it like? So you started there in 91.
• 11:10
  Correct. Yeah. Okay. It was a shock.
• 11:14
  You know, I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I'd never visited the Academy.
• 11:20
  So, you know, it's like what you're, you know, it wasn't, there wasn't any internet
• 11:24
  back then. And it was like what you read in brochures.
• 11:27
  And so, you know, I didn't know a whole lot about it. I didn't know anybody who went here.
• 11:32
  So it was a shock to the system. I think for me, coming out of such a small
• 11:39
  school, the academics were a huge challenge.
• 11:44
  Like I did very well academically. I'm sorry, militarily.
• 11:48
  I struggled academically. and I ended up dropping my major and I still joke
• 11:57
  about the fact that I was a sophomore,
• 11:59
  and I went in and I could only, because you have to graduate in four years.
• 12:03
  So at that point I had taken too many mechanical engineering and I was a chemical
• 12:08
  engineering major and just what the math department was not going to have me see that through.
• 12:13
  And so I just walked into the registrar's office because there were only five
• 12:18
  majors I could take and still graduate on time, which you have to.
• 12:21
  And at that point. No extra football season allowed at the Air Force Academy.
• 12:26
  Yeah, exactly. No red shirt year.
• 12:30
  So by then I figured out, like, you know, I've been learning the ropes that
• 12:36
  I want to fly. And so my major didn't matter, you know.
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  And so I just walked in and the registrar's office and I said,
• 12:43
  what's the football? What are all the football players taking?
• 12:47
  And she thought I was joking.
• 12:51
  And I said, no, I'm serious. I go, what do all the football players take?
• 12:55
  And she goes, management. I go, sign me up for that.
• 13:02
  Perfect. Because I knew I couldn't, I wasn't going to get it.
• 13:04
  So in this time, we were cutting, as you guys know, right?
• 13:08
  The early 90s, fighter squadrons were going away.
• 13:12
  Pilot, you know what I mean? Yeah. Pilot slot. So my class, you know,
• 13:16
  to put in perspective right now, we hand out about 500 pilot slots a year out of the academy.
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  And my class got cut to 225. And we had 800.
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  I entered with a class of 1,400. We only graduated 1,000.
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  But 800 came in pilot qualified. So it was pretty cutthroat to go to pilot training.
• 13:37
  In fact, I thought about cross-commissioning into the Army for a while.
• 13:42
  Right. did you have to cut anybody's throat I did not.
• 13:51
  Yeah, I didn't have to pour anything into anybody's eye sockets. That's good.
• 13:56
  I can totally relate because in 1993 when I was, oh, sorry, 1996 when I was
• 14:04
  getting off active duty,
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  I had started rushing an A-10 unit, a reserve unit back in Kansas City in a 93 timeframe.
• 14:12
  You know, yeah, actually they were at Richard's Gebauer initially.
• 14:16
  Then they went to White, and they were like, yeah, yeah, man,
• 14:19
  you're an attack guy. Yeah, we'll hire you. We'll hire you. Well,
• 14:21
  guess what happened, right?
• 14:22
  All those A-10 units got bracked and anybody that with an A.
• 14:26
  So when I got off active duty, shit, man, if you, I mean, yeah,
• 14:30
  yeah, I couldn't compete.
• 14:32
  So you know that, you know, the rest of the story.
• 14:35
  That's brutal. I would, I would. They were taking guys who were almost finished
• 14:40
  with flight school in the Navy and the Marine Corps and going,
• 14:43
  or actually the Navy, I think was worse going, hey, thanks very much.
• 14:46
  We got, we got one of those guys in our squadron. I don't know if you remember him, Repeat.
• 14:51
  He showed up just as we got back from Westpac.
• 14:56
  He was a Navy guy, and they said, yep, we're cutting you guys.
• 15:00
  And then they said, well, you could take a commission in the Marine Corps.
• 15:03
  He was already winged, finished with flight school, and he had to go to the
• 15:06
  basic school to get his Marine Corps. Remember that?
• 15:10
  He showed up to the Harrier rag from the basic school.
• 15:14
  That's nice. I know. That is painful. all right well enough about that let's
• 15:20
  what better than walking let's talk about it let's talk more about eight tenths
• 15:23
  so uh where'd you do your pilot training at what base,
• 15:29
  i actually went to whiting field oh that's right i read that so was that your choice.
• 15:36
  It was. I was the first class to, yeah.
• 15:40
  I mean, actually it was the greatest choice I ever made. I was the first class
• 15:45
  to get offered this new branding program. And only two of us went the first
• 15:50
  year on exchange with the Navy.
• 15:53
  And I talked to, we had a Navy exchange officer who was a, who was an aviator
• 15:58
  and talked to him about it.
• 16:00
  And he's like, dude, he's like, you know, you're the first, they're going to take care of you.
• 16:04
  It's going to be way better than Air Force pilot training. So I did.
• 16:07
  And so I went to Pensacola, did API, and then, you know, went to Whiting, BT3.
• 16:13
  It obviously took, yeah, it took a little longer, you know, because Air Force
• 16:18
  pilot training is on the rails, 50 weeks and you're done.
• 16:21
  And so with API, it took me about nine months to get through the Navy side of the house.
• 16:28
  And then I went back to Vance Air Force Base. So I selected with all the Navy guys.
• 16:33
  So like, just like you guys do it right on a weekly basis, you finish what's your NSS cut line.
• 16:40
  The Air Force had some fancy conversion to figure out what my NSS would have
• 16:44
  equaled in the previous class.
• 16:48
  And so I qualified for jets and I went back and flew T-38s at Vance Air Force Base.
• 16:54
  Okay. So after primary, you went back into Air Force pilot training.
• 16:59
  Yeah. So we, yeah. I so wanted to do intermediates. Right. But go to the boat.
• 17:05
  Yeah. The Air Force wasn't having any of that. And so we did kind of a pseudo
• 17:09
  intermediate program in T-34s.
• 17:12
  So they built out like a bunch of extra rides because you guys are so heavy
• 17:16
  on instruments in primary and we're a lot more heavy on formation.
• 17:22
  And so we did a bunch of extra formation and also contact, our contact phase, you know, aerobatics.
• 17:32
  We had to do some advanced aerobatics and some additional formation before we
• 17:36
  went back to T38. But it was fun.
• 17:40
  That's awesome. Well, did you, did they treat you any different than they did
• 17:47
  the Marine and Naval aviator students?
• 17:50
  You guys, you two?
• 17:53
  Not really because VT3 was like the joint squadron at the time.
• 17:58
  So the skipper was actually Air Force.
• 17:59
  Really? And yeah, and the XO was Navy.
• 18:02
  And so there were probably a
• 18:05
  handful of Air Force instructor pilots by then okay so
• 18:08
  that the air force has started doing it like two
• 18:11
  years before what year is this by the way are we talking 96 ish
• 18:15
  95 96 yeah okay that
• 18:19
  makes sense i was in kingsville as an
• 18:22
  instructor and i was taking the
• 18:24
  goshawk which was brand new at the time over to
• 18:27
  del rio and giving del rio ips
• 18:31
  rides in it and and they were coming over you know we were doing a lot of cross
• 18:35
  back and forth so that's that's that that jives so my question for you is you
• 18:42
  got you got into the aviation mindset that direction and then then you then
• 18:47
  you went to you said vance for t-38.
• 18:52
  Was there a big difference in philosophical operations
• 18:56
  that you could tell or what was your program pretty
• 19:00
  air force sized when you were in vt3 okay
• 19:04
  it was it was massively different yeah
• 19:07
  i learned i learned early you know in the
• 19:10
  navy if it doesn't say you can't you can yes in the air force
• 19:13
  if it doesn't say you can you can't and right and like
• 19:16
  like like the guys were floored by the fact
• 19:18
  that we were doing vfr night low levels in
• 19:22
  you know and primary like it blew
• 19:25
  their minds you know what and
• 19:28
  it suited me well right because you you start figuring out as
• 19:31
  an a10 guy we're the masters of manipulating 11 214s
• 19:36
  the air force instruction i'm like you know you should fly ifr to the max extent
• 19:41
  you know possible at night and we would just be like max extent yeah it's not
• 19:47
  mac you know like i'd fall back to my navy time be like no we're gonna be there's no.
• 19:54
  There's not a cloud in the sky. Yeah, right. And I mean, everybody else is coming
• 19:58
  home with an instrument approach to Nellis and the A-10 guys would always come
• 20:01
  in and turn a one mile visual, you know, because we couldn't do an overhead.
• 20:06
  You know, the airport doesn't allow overheads at night, but it was good because it,
• 20:11
  Kind of taught me some big boy flying early on because you weren't handheld nearly as much.
• 20:18
  I mean, you guys know this. I'm not going to tell you anything you don't know.
• 20:20
  But for Air Force guys, they were shocked when I told them, like,
• 20:24
  I'd go up to Whiting, you know, for a 545 AM sim and done at,
• 20:30
  what, 730? And they're like, OK, bye.
• 20:33
  And I'd go home and go to the beach for the rest of the day.
• 20:37
  A little study in here and there. Yeah, but the Air Force was a formal release program.
• 20:42
  So you were in the flight room or the ready room for 12 hours a day,
• 20:46
  regardless of what your flight schedule was. Oh, I had no idea that was the case. Oh, yeah.
• 20:52
  Oh, yeah. I had just heard that recently. That hurts thinking about it.
• 20:56
  That makes me tired already. Yes. Yeah.
• 20:59
  And so I got back to 38s and I showed up with Vance and all my classmates are
• 21:05
  like, oh, man, this is so awesome. and we don't have formal release anymore.
• 21:10
  And I'm like, this is still Mickey Mouse compared to how the Navy does it.
• 21:15
  I'm playing on the soccer team for VT3 in the Commodores Cup,
• 21:20
  and that's more important than flying based on the schedule.
• 21:25
  Right? Yeah. Oh, that's great. Far more important.
• 21:29
  So, hey, we had a listener here, Sim asks, did you keep your gold wings on the
• 21:33
  Air Force uniform? But yeah, if you don't get, you don't get your wings out of primary.
• 21:38
  So right. Nope. I did. I didn't get gold wings. So Air Force wings are made of lead.
• 21:47
  Sorry, dude. Had to do it. So when you went, so you got, you selected A-10s out of Vance, right?
• 21:55
  And your A-10 rag was at, help me. Was it Davis Monthon?
• 21:59
  Yep. Okay. And then did you stay there in an operational squadron or did you, Go somewhere else.
• 22:05
  No, I went to what we used to refer to, because now it's an army base, appropriately.
• 22:11
  No Hope Pope. Oh, yeah. So, Pope Air Force Base.
• 22:15
  Vietnam. I've actually been there many times, and I'm familiar with the No Hope Pope.
• 22:22
  Well, we flew all your guys' ranges all the time, like BT-11,
• 22:26
  BT-6. Oh, yeah. BT-9, yeah.
• 22:30
  Or BT-9, yeah, BT-9, the old boats and the waters. The boats out there,
• 22:34
  yeah, and the sound there.
• 22:36
  That's okay. We used to go up to New Hampshire and fly in the Yankee 1 and 2
• 22:40
  MOA and just tell, you know, are you guys A-10s? Yeah. Okay. Here we are.
• 22:45
  An A-10 only MOA. I don't think so.
• 22:48
  We want to fly up there. so did you did you deploy or did you go to korea out
• 22:56
  of fly out of osan yeah so i i did is that was where did you meet drinking out
• 23:01
  of here where did you meet your bride,
• 23:03
  oh i met her at the academy okay okay but underclassmen
• 23:07
  yeah yeah the running joke she was two years behind me we started dating we're
• 23:14
  lieutenants i was the first lieutenant she's a second lieutenant but as you
• 23:19
  guys know from your podcast with her she went to grad school for a couple years
• 23:22
  that's right well i was at pope and so i did a couple of southern watch deployments,
• 23:27
  when i was at pope and then i went
• 23:31
  to osan after weapon school so i went
• 23:33
  to weapon school out of pope so after my first assignment i
• 23:36
  went to weapon school and then after i
• 23:39
  finished weapon school i showed up at osan in january of 2000 so or sorry i'm
• 23:45
  sorry january of 2001 so i was over an osan for 9-11 so okay oh okay and you
• 23:52
  were okay you were there for the fall in the fall,
• 23:58
  so i did a one-year a one-year remote at osan from january 01 to january 02.
• 24:07
  So you so you you opened with your uh story that that took place in march of 02,
• 24:15
  was that was that the first time you'd been over over to afghanistan.
• 24:25
  That was real early in that war, too. I got home back to Pope in January of 2002,
• 24:36
  and my squadron, the 74th Fighter Squadron, was on the hook for Southern Watch
• 24:43
  because at the time, the A-10s were not committed to Afghanistan.
• 24:47
  So we were still sitting C-SAR alert for Southern Watch. And so we spin up the weapons officer.
• 24:55
  So, you know, the the chief of weapons and tactics for the squadron who graduated
• 25:01
  just after me at weapons school.
• 25:05
  His wife's pregnant and she's she's due to pickle while we're supposed to be deployed.
• 25:12
  So I go over as the I was a flight commander at the time.
• 25:15
  I go over as the weapons officer and we're going over Southern Watch.
• 25:20
  Right. We get there in early February.
• 25:22
  Where were you based at the time? Al Jabber. Al Jabber, okay.
• 25:28
  It's now Jabber's built up because Jabber used to be our base.
• 25:31
  Nobody else hung out there because it's miserable.
• 25:33
  That was our Southern Watch hangout. The Vipers usually had a Viper squadron
• 25:37
  there with you, but it's usually us.
• 25:39
  We would sit CSAR alert and they would do fly into the box and maybe occasionally
• 25:47
  drop on a repeater tower. Hey, Sue, real quick.
• 25:51
  We're all, you know, we throw acronyms around like it's nothing.
• 25:56
  Would you define CSAR for our non-tactical aviator listeners?
• 26:02
  So combat search and rescue. So in, unlike the Marine Corps,
• 26:07
  which does TRAP, the Air Force, we do CSAR. So in combat search and rescue.
• 26:13
  Fixed wing runs the show as the rescue mission commander.
• 26:19
  So typically if there's an event, you have an on-scene commander.
• 26:22
  So whoever's there closest, they hand it off to a rescue mission commander who's
• 26:27
  a qualified for us, CSAR pilot, which we always fly under the call sign Sandy. Right.
• 26:31
  Okay. Which is, you know, its roots go back to Vietnam with A1 guys who did CSAR.
• 26:37
  And so for a CSAR and CSAR is a separate upgrade for us. So you you'll be in
• 26:44
  an operational squadron.
• 26:45
  It doesn't matter whether you're, you know, a wingman, a two ship,
• 26:49
  a four ship, lightly an instructor, an evaluator.
• 26:52
  CSAR is its own upgrade because of the very specific tactics involved.
• 26:57
  So you actually go through to be a Sandy four, three, two, one.
• 27:01
  And so Sandy one is a qualified rescue mission commander. OK.
• 27:05
  And for since the end of Desert Storm, we had A-10s on alert.
• 27:12
  And so we would sit with the jets fully cocked and ready to go so that you could
• 27:18
  run out there, flip a switch, the engines would go and like within minutes, you'd be taxiing.
• 27:25
  And so we would, so that's what we did was we had to support all the guys going
• 27:31
  into the box. Thank you for that.
• 27:32
  And yeah, so it's, you know, it's like our experience is flying, right?
• 27:39
  There's so much time of bored, you know, punctuated by the times of extreme
• 27:47
  emotional, significant emotional events.
• 27:49
  Sure terror. Right. That's Seesaw, right?
• 27:53
  You could sit years of Seesaw Alert, never launch. And so we were told,
• 27:58
  you guys are sitting Seesaw Alert. You're not doing anything.
• 28:01
  Don't worry about what's going on in Afghanistan. And we had a squadron of Strike
• 28:05
  Eagles, a squadron of Vipers,
• 28:07
  and D-model Hornet Squadron there, and Marine Corps Hornet Squadron,
• 28:13
  who happened to be the guys I spun up in Iwakuni before I left Korea.
• 28:18
  Or I'm sorry, C model. They were C model guys. And they were complaining about
• 28:23
  going back and forth because if you think about it, December of 2001 was Tora Bora.
• 28:30
  And that was the almost the crescendo. We thought the war was over.
• 28:34
  Nothing was going on. And so these guys were doing milk runs to Afghanistan
• 28:38
  every day and bringing all their bombs home. They weren't doing anything.
• 28:42
  And, you know, in a fast moving jet, it's only a three hour each way flight.
• 28:47
  Unlike for us, which was five.
• 28:49
  And so we were just told, hey, don't you guys worry about Afghanistan?
• 28:54
  And all the pointy nose guys were like, you guys don't want any part of Afghanistan
• 29:00
  because nothing's going on.
• 29:01
  And so we were just going about our business, didn't cease our alert until about
• 29:07
  a week out from the start of Anaconda that this whole thing got rolling.
• 29:11
  Okay. Right. Hey, I went up. And so it has in the notes there,
• 29:15
  you were on the first flight leading that first A-10 mission into Afghanistan.
• 29:20
  So that would have been your first real combat.
• 29:24
  Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I had O one, as you guys know, you know,
• 29:29
  combat sorties into a rack, but you know, I mean, nobody's shooting at you and,
• 29:33
  but yes, it was my first one.
• 29:36
  In fact, we, we had no expectation of it.
• 29:39
  I was actually working out in the gym on the night of the third and I got pulled out of the gym,
• 29:45
  told to go direct to the mission planning center or mission planning cell,
• 29:50
  you know where we intel and everybody else
• 29:54
  is getting ready to you know prep for a sortie
• 29:56
  and i walk in and the group commander deputy
• 29:59
  group commander and my squatter commander all standing there oh what i do yeah
• 30:04
  i know i guess i'm getting fired i don't remember doing anything but uh there's
• 30:12
  only one reason for all these guys to be here and i just walked in and they
• 30:15
  said hey the the cfax so the company,
• 30:18
  the Combined Forces Air Component Commander, so the guy who owns all the air
• 30:22
  assets in CENTCOM, so the AFSENT Commander,
• 30:27
  Joe Mosley, was committing A-10s to Afghanistan the next morning,
• 30:32
  and I was going to lead the sortie, and I was immediately in pilot rest.
• 30:37
  So go to bed, because in 12 hours, you're walking back in the door,
• 30:41
  getting briefed up, and you're going to go.
• 30:44
  Well, there's a long and comfortable night's sleep ahead. Yeah,
• 30:48
  I'm sure that was good. I'm guessing. Right?
• 30:52
  I at least got about five minutes to huddle up with the wing weapons officer. Okay.
• 30:59
  And I just said, hey, because he's like, what are you thinking?
• 31:04
  And I said, well, we have to completely re-weapon the aircraft because sit and cease our alert.
• 31:10
  You are completely built out for combat search and rescue and anti-armor.
• 31:14
  So everything we were carrying at the at the time
• 31:17
  we were carrying two cans of cbu-87 so
• 31:20
  cluster bombs two cans of cbu-89 which
• 31:25
  is gator mines because we had used
• 31:28
  those to protect the survivor if they were ever down there mavericks we
• 31:31
  had armor piercing incendiary so depleted
• 31:35
  uranium in the gun to kill armor we
• 31:39
  had aim nines out on the outer pylons we
• 31:42
  had an ecm a 184 pod so it
• 31:45
  was built for the Iraq theater which is an armor threat
• 31:48
  yep and now we're going into a completely soft target
• 31:52
  theater and so I just told him I said look dude I go I don't know what we're
• 31:55
  walking into say but I need airburst Mark 82 so 500 pounds with airburst fuses
• 32:01
  on them because I knew we were going against excuse me soft targets I need I
• 32:07
  said I need a bunch of willy heat, white phosphorus rockets.
• 32:10
  I need some Illume. So in this case, we loaded up Lu 19s, which is covert illumination flares.
• 32:18
  So these giant, you know, canister parachute plates. And I said, change the gun out.
• 32:24
  I want high explosive incendiary in the gun, not armor piercing.
• 32:28
  And I don't want A-9s and ECM pod.
• 32:31
  That's two wasted stations because on the A-10, on those furthest out stations,
• 32:37
  stations 1 and 11, because we have 11 hard points. Wow.
• 32:43
  We have seven. And so unlike most airplanes, right, your outermost pylons,
• 32:50
  it's the physics of the wing structure.
• 32:53
  Sure. you got to carry something a little bit light well we can carry 500 pounders
• 32:57
  damn so i was like i want 500 pounders out on the wingtips and that's awesome
• 33:03
  so so i at least had time to to you know go through that but you're absolutely
• 33:09
  right repeat i i went to find my wingman,
• 33:13
  canine and i was like this is never going to happen like i'm not getting my
• 33:18
  hopes up this is going to be canceled sometime during the night they're never
• 33:22
  going to commit us you know they Air Force has hated this weapon system my entire career.
• 33:28
  So there's no way they're going to let us get into the mix. And woke up in the
• 33:31
  morning. It was still bites on. Wow. And did you get your weapons?
• 33:36
  I did. Very cool. All right. Our maintainer guys, our maintainers. Those guys.
• 33:44
  To turn two jets, like that massive change. Oh, yeah. I mean,
• 33:48
  a weapons loadout. Are you kidding me? That was huge. Yeah. Huge.
• 33:51
  Those guys are amazing. That was like two hangers worth of weapons that they
• 33:55
  had to download, for crying out loud. Yeah.
• 33:57
  And find the new ones. You know, where on the base are these other ones even
• 34:02
  stored? So the first day was a flight of two?
• 34:05
  You guys were a flight of two? Okay. Okay. Hey, I got one other quick stupid physics questions.
• 34:11
  Since you had 500 pounders so far out, that's a hell of a moment arm.
• 34:14
  Did you have to break them off symmetrically? Okay.
• 34:17
  No, we're not. No. Okay. And it's mainly because, I mean, one,
• 34:21
  the jet, that thing doesn't, it doesn't.
• 34:26
  It's a dump truck. I mean, it just, because most of the time you've got on the
• 34:32
  outer pylons, even though they're, you have an ECM pod.
• 34:36
  So a long pod 184, which is over 500 pounds.
• 34:40
  And then you would have two A9s on a dual rail adapter.
• 34:45
  And that thing weighs 500 pounds. So the reality was, from a wait-moment arm
• 34:49
  perspective, it doesn't change much.
• 34:51
  It was just like making the airplane more practical. Sure. Absolutely.
• 34:56
  Okay. I just – That's pretty awesome. You know, and you've mentioned it about
• 35:00
  being, you know, the hated weapons platform, the most effective,
• 35:03
  most hated weapons platform probably in the history of the United States military.
• 35:08
  You know, they want to get rid of it, but there's nothing else,
• 35:11
  which I want to ask you more about later.
• 35:14
  But, you know, they keep wanting to get rid of this airplane,
• 35:18
  and I don't understand what they think they're going to do to replace it because
• 35:21
  you've got to be able to support your troops.
• 35:26
  Yeah. Yeah. I'd hate to be an Army guy, but it's. Yeah.
• 35:32
  Well. Those guys. Hey, before we go any further with Afghanistan,
• 35:38
  before Afghanistan, Korea, do you have any funny questions,
• 35:42
  Crazy Korea flying stories. Oh, yeah. There you go.
• 35:47
  Because we spent a little time over in Iwakuni, and we would go over to Osan
• 35:51
  and occasionally fill the blivet with gear and bring it back.
• 35:56
  Occasionally. I mean, both Repeat and I went up in the, was it Papa 518? 518. 518. Yeah.
• 36:03
  I know you guys pretty much lived over there.
• 36:06
  You know, the few times that I went, every time I had some weird,
• 36:10
  you know some kind of spoofing or somebody would come
• 36:13
  over the go over the we got com jammed all the time or
• 36:15
  or some perfectly english sounding
• 36:19
  voice would say by your call sign turn turn
• 36:22
  left heading this right now to it basically would
• 36:25
  be flying you right into the wes uh you know
• 36:28
  north korea so do you have any kind of crazy operational
• 36:31
  stories or any kind of buffoonery you want to talk
• 36:34
  about it happened all the time i
• 36:37
  mean like it was it was always interesting working
• 36:40
  with the rock af with the you know south koreans air
• 36:43
  force you know especially you'd work with their f4s or f5s like just how they'd
• 36:49
  employ and especially if you worked with the south korean jtacs the joint terminal
• 36:54
  attack controllers and we had a running joke in the squadron and it was always
• 37:01
  that you'd get on the radio with them,
• 37:03
  you'd start working with them and trying to help them train to like work with
• 37:06
  American air crews to close air support up.
• 37:09
  We'd be up in P518 and almost every talk on, you know, we'd go through the litany
• 37:15
  of a nine line and everything else.
• 37:17
  And we, you know, I mean, you guys have been there. There are a lot of bridges
• 37:22
  in Korea and that's their favorite starting point.
• 37:26
  And so we would go through this whole thing and the South Korean JTAC would just say.
• 37:33
  You see Bridgie? And we would say, yes. And, you know, contact.
• 37:37
  And they're like, Bridgie, not your target.
• 37:40
  And I'm like, we're going to get the launch of it as something else.
• 37:44
  And I was just like, why don't we start there?
• 37:48
  Or they would start with like a blue roof building. And like they're all blue roof buildings.
• 37:54
  No, that's not true. That's not your target. There's three buildings in Korea
• 37:57
  that are not blue. Did you see blue roof? Yes, that's not true. That's not your target.
• 38:02
  Don't hit that It was never a dull moment up there,
• 38:07
  Oh man I'm wondering That may be a show title Bridgie not your target Why not
• 38:14
  start with Okay you see the river Yes,
• 38:19
  Don't go on the west side of the river Don't go nowhere to the river Roger that,
• 38:27
  Oh too funny okay
• 38:30
  this just flashed into my mind
• 38:33
  do you happen to own or
• 38:36
  did you own at any time a suit
• 38:39
  made by mr limb i have
• 38:43
  a couple of shirts made by mr limb because these are party shirts and my my
• 38:50
  my suit was actually made by mr o okay okay falcon tailors and so yes so That is, that is. Yeah. Mr.
• 39:00
  Lim, Mr. Lim is world famous with the 20th fighter squadron. Yep.
• 39:07
  Fantastic. Okay. I had two suits made by Mr.
• 39:10
  Lim, and now my sons own them, and I think they became party favorites or something. Party suits.
• 39:18
  Okay. I don't know. All right. Let's press on. Repeat. Where are we going with
• 39:22
  this? My IQ has dropped to a severely low level at the moment.
• 39:26
  Well, we have, but that's okay. So we had some other stuff later on,
• 39:31
  but I'd have to go back and just circle back onto flight school real quickly
• 39:35
  and or the rag and see if there were any times,
• 39:39
  for that matter, any time in your career that was either the funniest or the scariest.
• 39:44
  And when I stumped my first guest with that question, did you ever reach for the handle or pull it?
• 39:51
  I never pulled it. I got close. Okay.
• 39:55
  I was at weapons school as a student, and I was on a night air interdiction ride,
• 40:00
  four ship working with a navy seal team doing a
• 40:03
  calm out attack with with again
• 40:06
  i'm flying the a model back in 2000 at weapon school
• 40:09
  so we're dropping dumb bombs mark 80 we're dropping
• 40:12
  mark 84s you know we used to call them crowd pleasers and we were going flying
• 40:20
  this really complicated attack and i was the flight lead in a four ship and
• 40:25
  as a student and just as we're starting to turn into of the range complex at Nellis,
• 40:32
  I lose oil pressure on one of my motors and it's snow loom and I've got a jet
• 40:41
  that probably weighs 47 or 48,000 pounds.
• 40:46
  And again, the A-10 produces 18,000 pounds of thrust on a good day.
• 40:51
  And so I've got Mark 84. I'm like wall to wall, like every pylon is loaded.
• 40:58
  And so we turn around with my instructor. For our listeners real quick,
• 41:01
  the 84 is a 2000 pound bomb.
• 41:04
  So I've got two 2000 pounders on board and then all the rest of my stations
• 41:09
  are loaded with 500 pounds of ordnance.
• 41:12
  So I've got a ton of weaponry on the jet all live because it's weapon school
• 41:17
  because we don't we don't drop blue bombs at weapon school. Right.
• 41:21
  And so I turn around and the jet is so heavy.
• 41:25
  It's summertime. So it's in August, September at Nellis, Nevada.
• 41:29
  Oh, boy. And, you know, Las Vegas.
• 41:31
  So the airplane's coming downhill and I've got about a three degree glide slope
• 41:37
  on the TVB and my heads up display. So my total velocity vector.
• 41:41
  Yeah. So the best I can do is three degrees, nose low and not stall the airplane.
• 41:46
  I'm flying about 150 to 160 knots. and I'm in and out of the stall tone and
• 41:53
  I'm just nursing this airplane home and I've got one throttle and idle.
• 41:58
  I got the other one at max and the engine that's at idle, the oil pressure is
• 42:03
  coming down, coming down at 30 PSI in the A-10.
• 42:06
  You have to shut the engine down or it's going to seize. And so I'm watching
• 42:11
  the oil pressure and like, this is not good.
• 42:14
  I can't get to the jettison area for because i've
• 42:17
  got all these live weapons on board and i'm stuck if
• 42:20
  you think about nellis las vegas right go
• 42:23
  straight north out of las vegas right in interstate
• 42:27
  15 and i'm actually coming down interstate
• 42:30
  93 which intersects i-15
• 42:34
  and now i've gotten i've
• 42:37
  descended i can't get into the range to jettison my
• 42:40
  weapons i have no power it's dark i can't see it i'm on night vision goggles
• 42:45
  and now i'm flying down parallel to i-15 and i gotta jettison something or i'm
• 42:52
  gonna like if i shut the motor down i'm out like like if i can't get keep that thing in idle i'm out and,
• 43:00
  i'm like and so my instructor and i are talking to
• 43:02
  the supervisor of flying the soft who happens to be another one of my instructors
• 43:07
  and he's like can you get to jettison hill i'm like i can't get there and he
• 43:12
  goes well my best recommendation he goes on the goggles find a really dark spot
• 43:18
  on the hillside up against the Alamos which is the,
• 43:22
  Moas that border the range complex inside Anelis and he goes get rid of the 84s.
• 43:29
  And so I went over there, I selectively jettisoned the 284s.
• 43:34
  I got talked through to my tapes, to my instructor, okay, flashing.
• 43:38
  This is the old analog A-10, flashing green ready, spent there coming off safe.
• 43:42
  And I selectively jettisoned that 4,000 pounds.
• 43:45
  So the airplane became a lot more flyable at that point because I immediately had to shut a motor down.
• 43:51
  And as soon as I jettisoned them, you know, I snapped back towards the airfield
• 43:55
  and I see a flash in the back of my goggles. Oh, you're thinking,
• 44:00
  I thought those were going to be safe. Oh, no.
• 44:04
  And so I didn't have any time to worry about it. So I had to bring this jet
• 44:08
  in single-engine. Must have hit a fuel truck.
• 44:10
  Yeah. And so my instructor goes back, circles up.
• 44:13
  And by the time I got out of the debrief and talking to safety and everybody,
• 44:17
  the news was outside the gate.
• 44:21
  Oh, yeah. I'd started a massive forest fire and I was burning down the protected
• 44:27
  prongworm antelope range.
• 44:34
  But I was, I was exonerated because the fusing wires were not on the airplane.
• 44:40
  So they went away safe, but it turns out when you drop, you know,
• 44:44
  a 2000 pounder at 10,000 feet and it hits granite, it went lower.
• 44:50
  So the EOD guys found one of the bombs and they found the other one and said
• 44:53
  it went low order, but low order, you know, for a Mark 84 is still 80%.
• 44:59
  And so it started a three-day forest fire and I killed a bunch of protected species.
• 45:05
  So there was some livestock. There was some livestock damage. Repeat.
• 45:10
  This is a reoccurring theme on this show. This is a recurring theme on our show.
• 45:16
  Elephants and and water buffalo and
• 45:19
  antelope oh my antelope oh
• 45:23
  thank you for that brutal that that was a good
• 45:26
  core workout there for a second i was with you by the
• 45:28
  way the whole time my hair on my back
• 45:31
  was standing up going oh i mean
• 45:35
  like you guys know like i mean like you're sitting there and you're
• 45:38
  like in the a10 you have you don't have a progressive beeper you
• 45:41
  just have so four to 12 knots above stall
• 45:45
  speed you get a steady tone and that goes to the
• 45:48
  chop a chop or that's four to 12 is the chop tone
• 45:51
  so you have a steady tone when you're max performing the airplane and
• 45:54
  the slats come out the leading edge slats come out and then once it gets into
• 45:58
  a chop tone you're in this no man's land of four to 12 knots above stall you
• 46:04
  don't know where it is it's not progressive and so at any moment i was pretty
• 46:08
  violently when it goes side slip departure oh,
• 46:12
  those engines are too far apart and so if it if you lose it in that state it's
• 46:19
  not pretty yeah and you were not yeah oh wow okay so that's that was kind of fun sure yeah yeah.
• 46:31
  And that was when you were going through weapons school as a student yeah oh
• 46:37
  shit yeah all right Well, I know you didn't complete the mission,
• 46:42
  but did they give you credit for killing some livestock,
• 46:46
  starting a forest fire, and getting the jet back safely? Hey,
• 46:49
  that kills a kill. Oh, no.
• 46:51
  I had to redo that. Oh, geez. Oh, man.
• 46:58
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  If you're looking for expert advice from someone who truly understands the cockpit
• 50:08
  and the challenges of planning for retirement as a pilot, Check out HSI Wealth Strategies.
• 50:14
  Call Robbie Walling today at 214-538-7030 or email him at robert.walling at novembermike.com.
• 50:26
  That's robert.walling at nmovembermike.com.
• 50:33
  Because when it comes to your financial future, you only get one approach.
• 50:37
  Make it count with HSI Wealth Strategies.
• 50:45
  So i forgot that uh in that piece there that i didn't put anything over it and
• 50:52
  that it was you reading fig how could you do that to me,
• 50:56
  sorry i was not aware i was being recorded visually but you did just fine i
• 51:03
  would have put on my mustache it screwed me up because i went oh crud fig's
• 51:08
  talking i'm supposed to be running this piece.
• 51:14
  HSI Wealth Strategy doesn't care. No, and they do good work for you.
• 51:19
  So if you're looking at financial advisors, these guys got it figured out.
• 51:24
  So thank you to Factor and HSI Wealth Strategies both for helping bring these stories to you.
• 51:30
  And that's why Fig and Bago, when they're here, the show goes so much more smoothly.
• 51:35
  Sticks and Bago. Sticks and Bago. That's what I meant.
• 51:39
  This is another reason why we need one of those guys in the background,
• 51:42
  because we're just knuckleheads. Right?
• 51:47
  Oh, man. It's so true. Bridgie, not your target. No, we're well past that.
• 51:53
  Oh, killing the antelope.
• 51:55
  Yeah. And fighter weapons school. Yeah. So what was it like to get selected
• 52:01
  for fighter weapons school? And then what was the hardest part?
• 52:05
  Choosing which two hours of sleep you wanted to get each night?
• 52:09
  I i honestly it was the challenge was
• 52:12
  i was i was too young to be there okay i had two and a half years in the jet
• 52:17
  and i went to fighter weapons school wow i had 500 hours 550 so i was just over
• 52:25
  the minimum yeah i've been an instructor for maybe seven months and,
• 52:33
  And, you know, I credit my leadership that, you know, they saw something in me.
• 52:40
  In retrospect, you know, I showed up full of piss and vinegar.
• 52:44
  You know, I thought I was the shit. You know, I'm a two and a half year guy
• 52:49
  in the, you know, on the line and now I'm at weapons school.
• 52:53
  But that hurt me because I was, you know, as an instructor, I was not mature enough to be there.
• 52:59
  I was just, I was probably way too arrogant, thought my stuff didn't stink,
• 53:06
  which it only took a few rides to figure out that it did. Uh-oh.
• 53:13
  I got the crap kicked out of me early and often.
• 53:17
  But it was good. It was, I mean, I had a great class. We had one guy wash out
• 53:24
  of my, you know, so we had five of us, we had four graduate.
• 53:33
  And, but I mean, I credit it to everything I was able to do.
• 53:38
  You know, that I joke about it now, but leading that first mission in Afghanistan
• 53:45
  was easy compared to weapons school.
• 53:49
  Old i i can only imagine
• 53:52
  holy cow and what's that
• 53:55
  class like how many are in the class how many different airframes
• 53:59
  are there what what's that class structured like can you
• 54:01
  tell us about what fighter weapons school is so for
• 54:05
  the air force it's it's huge compared to the navy and you know i i work with
• 54:10
  and have a lot of top gun friends and it's a different class it's you know at
• 54:16
  that time five and a half months long show up in july and you graduate mid-december for me and,
• 54:24
  so you have all the you don't have just the fighter platform so it started where
• 54:30
  it was just the core weapon school
• 54:32
  for a long time was just the fighter platforms so f-15 f-16 a-10 f-15 e.
• 54:41
  And then Intel, so the intelligence squadron, and then air battle management.
• 54:47
  So the guys who ride in the back of the AWACS.
• 54:51
  And then it continually expanded with, we brought everybody in.
• 54:57
  So airlift, tankers, bombers, all of it, you know, became part of the WIC,
• 55:05
  the weapons instructor course. And so what happens is you go through.
• 55:10
  And so for like three months, you just focus on your weapon system, your jet.
• 55:15
  And then you start doing integration.
• 55:18
  So for us that I used to run as an instructor. I was the close air support phase
• 55:24
  manager. So I ran our cast phase, which no surprise for the A-10.
• 55:28
  And it's two months long.
• 55:30
  And we would have JTACs, SEAL teams, combat controllers all out there on the
• 55:38
  ground. And then we would bring in other weapon systems to integrate with our guys.
• 55:43
  So they got used to like we would even bring in EA6s out of Widbey.
• 55:49
  So we would go, OK, how do you like when we were doing our high threat rides,
• 55:52
  how do you employ the EA6?
• 55:54
  How do you put a prowler out there properly to jam when you're doing a high
• 55:59
  threat run in at 100 feet, you know, with SA-15s and stuff out there?
• 56:05
  And so you go through that, you go through integration phase.
• 56:08
  And then at the very end, you have what we call mission employment phase,
• 56:12
  which is if you guys think of red flag. Yeah.
• 56:16
  It's red flag, but just the weapons school. So everybody who's flying in red
• 56:21
  flag is a weapons school student or instructor. So it's red flag on steroids.
• 56:26
  So we do some pretty insane missions in that.
• 56:31
  I can't imagine how long those days are. Just even preparing to go brief and
• 56:38
  fly those. Well, then the debriefs, right?
• 56:39
  The debriefs. Well, you know, they're debriefs for days, it seems like, right? Yes. Right?
• 56:45
  Yeah. I mean, we would debrief, we would just debrief simple CAS sorties for
• 56:51
  eight hours because you would bring everybody in.
• 56:55
  So you'd have Intel and you would have the JTACs and all the support assets.
• 57:01
  And so you do a mass debrief and then you start kicking people out.
• 57:06
  You'd shrink it. And so typically we'd keep the air breathers in the room and the JTACs.
• 57:11
  Then we'd kick out the support assets. So the non-weapon school,
• 57:15
  F-16s or whoever we had supporting us so we could integrate,
• 57:21
  then you would debrief with the JTACs and then you kick them out.
• 57:26
  And then now we start a flight debrief, which starts with the students debriefing
• 57:30
  and then the instructors would debrief.
• 57:33
  So eight hours was not out of the question for a two-hour sortie.
• 57:39
  Repeat, that sounds just like sheer harassment, doesn't it? Yeah.
• 57:45
  It's like making you sit in the ready room when you're not on the flight schedule, too.
• 57:50
  Right? That's just... Okay. Yeah. Jeez. I know, right? Oh, man.
• 57:55
  Yeah, at some point, it seems counterproductive. But having never been in that
• 57:58
  environment, maybe not. I don't know. It just...
• 58:02
  It would it would you'd have to you'd always have to measure it and when i was an instructor,
• 58:07
  like you'd get to the point like and you know
• 58:10
  there was beer and jack daniels and everything in
• 58:13
  the debrief well that's my kind of debrief now all right that
• 58:16
  loosens things up a little bit makes it a lot easier there
• 58:20
  you go all right so once the once we took the the
• 58:23
  markers as the instructors is wide
• 58:26
  open for the students like start pouring it because it's
• 58:29
  going to ease your pain because here it
• 58:32
  comes you know and then a lot of times there
• 58:35
  was a there was a famous bar it's not there
• 58:37
  anymore outside the gates of nellis called the two
• 58:40
  five club and like the
• 58:43
  students always knew like if you got to a certain point in the debrief you'd
• 58:48
  be like all right let's everybody get your stuff we're going to two five club
• 58:51
  and the students were always like we passed like they don't care at this point
• 58:56
  they don't care what you have to say anymore because if we're going to the 2-5
• 59:00
  club, then we'd pass this ride.
• 59:03
  It's like a dog. Blah, blah, blah, blah, Jinger. Blah, blah, blah.
• 59:08
  Oh, wait. There's a tree. Yeah, right? Exactly.
• 59:14
  Oh, man. Listen, I'm being selfish to repeat. I want to hear the rest of the opening story.
• 59:20
  So do I. So let's get there. Let's get there.
• 59:24
  All right. So can you set us up again? So it's the first combat mission into
• 59:27
  Afghanistan that you flew.
• 59:29
  And you were leading a flight of two and you took off from El Jabber? El Jabber.
• 59:35
  So it was, so our brief in the morning to like set the stage.
• 59:40
  So if, you know, for folks who don't know what this, these dates are pretty significant.
• 59:45
  If you know what happened on Roberts Ridge, when a combat controller by the
• 59:50
  name of John Chapman won the Medal of Honor, that was going on.
• 59:54
  Okay. So we had parked, you know, we had lost Neil, you know,
• 59:59
  Petty Officer Neil Roberts,
• 1:00:01
  Navy SEAL, DevGrew guy, SEAL Team 6, off the back end of a 47 that got hit on
• 1:00:07
  the way into the top of this mountain called Takargar, Objective Ginger.
• 1:00:11
  The 47 limps off the mountain, MH47 out of the 160 SOAR.
• 1:00:17
  They send in a QRF and the QRF gets shot down.
• 1:00:21
  And now the QRF is fighting for their lives on top of this mountain.
• 1:00:25
  And this is all unbeknownst to me when I'm getting ready to go out that morning.
• 1:00:31
  This is happening real time.
• 1:00:34
  And so the best we could get. So Divot Bartley comes in and then who is leading
• 1:00:40
  the two ship of F-16s has supported those guys on top of the mountain. won a silver star.
• 1:00:47
  And then the two strike Eagles who won silver stars, junior short and Panzer were, came in.
• 1:00:56
  So Divock, the F-16 flight league came in and gave me a quick, no kidding.
• 1:01:00
  He was just walking in from doing this where they're strafing danger close on
• 1:01:05
  top of a 12,000 foot mountain and dropping LGBs, laser guided bombs.
• 1:01:11
  And he gives me the, hey, here's how you get in and out of Afghanistan.
• 1:01:16
  Kind of like, here's the rules of the road coming and going.
• 1:01:19
  And that's all we had time for. And so I had no idea on what to expect.
• 1:01:26
  And the group commander pulled me aside and he goes, look, he goes,
• 1:01:29
  I know you guys don't know any of the rules of engagement or any of that because
• 1:01:33
  you weren't prepared to go do this.
• 1:01:35
  He goes, go employ tactically sound.
• 1:01:41
  And don't worry about the rules of engagement. i've got your back
• 1:01:44
  i said wow okay and that's
• 1:01:48
  an 06 right saying that to me as a captain and
• 1:01:52
  because what i didn't know at the
• 1:01:55
  time was there's a 10 000 foot hard deck which
• 1:01:58
  in an a10 that has not happened right not fully
• 1:02:01
  later oh you know two two
• 1:02:04
  days later i'd be down at about a hundred feet at dusk
• 1:02:08
  on nvgs escorting a couple of mh-47s around
• 1:02:11
  because it was tactically sound yeah but in
• 1:02:14
  this case he just said go get the job done like there are guys dying on the
• 1:02:19
  ground you guys need to get in there and do what you do that's what he told
• 1:02:22
  me he's like do what you guys do best he's like nobody else in the world does
• 1:02:26
  what you do go do it i was like yes sir and so i threw a backpack behind the
• 1:02:30
  ejection seat because i didn't know we didn't know where we're going.
• 1:02:34
  We had no idea where we were going to land. And so we were told you could land
• 1:02:38
  in six different places.
• 1:02:41
  Afghanistan's, you know, at that time is closed. There's no open airfields in Afghanistan.
• 1:02:45
  So there were a lot of really bad options and, you know, or you could come all
• 1:02:50
  the way home. We don't know.
• 1:02:51
  So take off, get on the tanker, five hour drive to Afghanistan,
• 1:02:55
  get in there, talk to, wasn't AWACS because at the time we didn't have enough coverage.
• 1:03:02
  So it was the J stars and get on with them.
• 1:03:08
  They, I get no AO update whatsoever. Um,
• 1:03:12
  It's just like, go, go, go do what you guys do.
• 1:03:16
  And what I didn't know is, you know, we're going to a kill box, which is 30 by 30 miles.
• 1:03:21
  But the reality of the situation is the battle space is five by nine clicks.
• 1:03:25
  And you guys know what that means. Yeah, it's tight.
• 1:03:29
  It's tight. It's small. Right. That's a knife fight in a phone booth. Yeah.
• 1:03:34
  And what I also didn't know is there was probably about 30 to 45 aircraft stacked up in there.
• 1:03:40
  And back in 2002 there's no
• 1:03:43
  such thing as a stack so if you guys think back we
• 1:03:46
  had not transitioned to like we
• 1:03:50
  were we had just employed the new
• 1:03:53
  joint close air support hub but
• 1:03:57
  we are doing it in draft so type one two
• 1:03:59
  and three control were brand new and so
• 1:04:03
  i had grown up under positive direct like you
• 1:04:06
  guys know right positive direct indirect and reasonable assurance
• 1:04:09
  now we're going to this one two and three and oh
• 1:04:12
  by the way we're throwing all these jets in there that have never trained
• 1:04:15
  for cass in their entire life you know
• 1:04:19
  the the strike eagles no idea bombers no
• 1:04:23
  idea right i mean the only guys who knew what the hell they were
• 1:04:25
  doing were the hornets the bomb cats
• 1:04:29
  like who had been getting into that business at that time and us
• 1:04:32
  and the ac-130s and so it was
• 1:04:35
  a chocolate mess nobody had control there
• 1:04:39
  was like no one entity so what the command of
• 1:04:42
  control was doing is they were just feeding airplanes into the
• 1:04:45
  kill box with no deacon this is kind of a nightmare
• 1:04:48
  scenario oh all by itself and
• 1:04:51
  i had no idea how bad it was because ignorance was
• 1:04:55
  bliss at this point in time because some rolling
• 1:04:58
  in there i'm like you know i'm only a year out of.
• 1:05:00
  Weapons school so i'm like super tactical like we're blacked out you know i'm.
• 1:05:05
  Goggles so like no envis lights or our ir lights aren't on we're black we're
• 1:05:10
  blacked out we're trying to use it it's about an hour after sunset so the worst.
• 1:05:15
  Time you and there's no elume oh sweet so there's no no moon,
• 1:05:21
  And we get in there and so I'm rolling through strike frequencies and I finally,
• 1:05:26
  you know, my smart pack and I finally find one and I get on it and it explodes.
• 1:05:32
  And I've got two JTACs and this White Lightning Bravo guy and they're all screaming,
• 1:05:37
  troops in contact, danger close.
• 1:05:40
  And I've got to make a choice because I can only support one of them.
• 1:05:44
  And that's when i decide
• 1:05:47
  this white lightning bravo you know
• 1:05:50
  dude like i can tell by his voice like it's
• 1:05:53
  not good yeah he's having a bad night he's having a
• 1:05:55
  really bad night and i go okay we're gonna you know we're going to him you guys
• 1:06:00
  need to clear off this frequency so and no kidding he's pretty much like hey
• 1:06:06
  you know ecast so i know he's not qualified jtac and he goes we got heavy machine guns and mortars,
• 1:06:14
  troops in the open,
• 1:06:16
  700 meters south of our position.
• 1:06:18
  I need bombs on target cleared hot. And I'm like, that's not going to work.
• 1:06:25
  You got to give me a little more, bud. You know, because you're looking down
• 1:06:29
  in the abyss and there's just tracers flying everywhere because we have fielded
• 1:06:35
  three army battalions on the ground.
• 1:06:38
  And, you know, again, not known at the time, I would know later,
• 1:06:42
  there's 37 different JTACs out there and they're all in different frequencies.
• 1:06:46
  There's no, there's no ASOC because the ASOC is at Bagram and they have no line
• 1:06:51
  of sight communications to the Valley.
• 1:06:55
  They have no SAT, they have no HF. And so they're blind.
• 1:07:01
  They're all just doing their own thing. So every time something hits,
• 1:07:04
  three JTACs are saying Troops in Contact, which they are.
• 1:07:08
  And so there was no coordination. There was no C2.
• 1:07:12
  And so we start working through this problem set. So my immediate problem set is this kid.
• 1:07:19
  Probably 18 year old with a rifle with 10th mountain division
• 1:07:22
  in a radio right and i said to
• 1:07:25
  him i go i go can you pull a grid for me no i
• 1:07:28
  go do you have any marking devices no because i find out later like if you read
• 1:07:32
  all this all the literature you know these guys hit the ground and because the
• 1:07:36
  enemy was not where it was supposed to be it was 10 times the size of what it's
• 1:07:40
  supposed to be they were in the low ground right you don't have to be an infantry
• 1:07:44
  officer go to TBS to know you don't want the low ground.
• 1:07:47
  So they got the high ground. So as soon as they got off the helicopters during
• 1:07:51
  the air assault operation, they were dumping gear because they were scrambling for cover.
• 1:07:57
  And so they had no pointers or lasers or any of this stuff.
• 1:08:02
  And so I was like, dude, I can't just drop 500 pound airbursts.
• 1:08:08
  And at the time, because airbursts we're still, we hadn't spent the time to Seek Eagle.
• 1:08:14
  So for your listeners, Seek Eagle is who takes a weapon and tells us what the
• 1:08:19
  risk estimate distances are, right?
• 1:08:21
  So 0.1%, you know, probability of incapacitation of a dude who's laying on the
• 1:08:28
  ground prone in heavy weather gear, right?
• 1:08:31
  And we all know what those numbers mean. Well, we had no numbers for airbursts.
• 1:08:35
  They'd never see Eagle the airburst fuse.
• 1:08:38
  And so we were ballparking at the time. You didn't want to get within a thousand
• 1:08:43
  meters because like the frag pattern, we just didn't know what it was. Right.
• 1:08:48
  So I'm telling you, I'm sitting here with this empty feeling in my gut and I'm
• 1:08:52
  slack jawed hearing this.
• 1:08:54
  And I mean, it's like you didn't take out a battalion that night.
• 1:09:00
  That's what I was worried about. And like, you know, this kid saying 700 meters
• 1:09:04
  south, lay it on me, Sandy.
• 1:09:07
  He's in the blast. He's in the frag pattern, man.
• 1:09:10
  Oh, yes. And I was just like, you're close. so
• 1:09:13
  i i said to him i go you know like we're trained to
• 1:09:16
  you know extract information when you know you're not working with a jtac so
• 1:09:20
  you ask the right questions you're asking and so finally i was like i was like
• 1:09:24
  dude do you have any way to mark your position and he goes just a second and
• 1:09:29
  he whips out an iron stroke puts on his helmet okay so now there it is in the dark.
• 1:09:35
  The beacon in the night and but i have no weight like 700 meters i don't have
• 1:09:40
  a targeting pod this This is an A model A team. Yeah.
• 1:09:43
  So how do you guess distance when it's infinity? You can't tell what a, right?
• 1:09:50
  Yeah. What an inch or a mile is. Yeah. What you do is you put down Willie P.
• 1:09:55
  So I tell him, I go, look, I'm going to put down two white phosphorus rockets.
• 1:10:00
  So that was our standard technique. Because if I put two rockets down,
• 1:10:04
  I have multiple units of measure because now I have his position.
• 1:10:08
  So I have his position and two rockets on the ground.
• 1:10:11
  So I put one rocket down where I think it's 700 meters, you know,
• 1:10:16
  because I'm just, you know, sure.
• 1:10:18
  TLR, right? Yep, that looks about right. Looks about right.
• 1:10:21
  So I ripped one down and then I bracket one further because the,
• 1:10:25
  in my mind is, well, worst case scenario, if I put it too close,
• 1:10:31
  it's white phosphorus, he's going to live and they're going to live.
• 1:10:34
  They're going to be, they're going to be burned, but they're going to live.
• 1:10:37
  And so I go, let's put down white phosphorus. So I put down two rockets and
• 1:10:41
  he goes from the closest mark move at 300 meters and,
• 1:10:46
  closer to me oh and so like well either my rocket is at a click or his estimation
• 1:10:54
  is off yeah and so i told canine because i'm a pig in space trying to climb back up.
• 1:11:04
  I'm a pig in space that's awesome climbing at 150 knots and trying to get back up to altitude dude,
• 1:11:14
  because I can't get back up to do a 45 high altitude dive bomb,
• 1:11:17
  which is about a, you know, me rolling in at 20,000 feet.
• 1:11:21
  And I tell K9, I'm like, hey, dude, rip two, just like rip two.
• 1:11:26
  I'm like, so the distance, like, so that tells me based on his estimation,
• 1:11:29
  the distance is a thousand meters, move it a third of the distance closer to him.
• 1:11:34
  And he rolls in and and he drops to 82s go off.
• 1:11:43
  And it to me, it's temporal distortion in the moment.
• 1:11:47
  It feels like infinity. And I'm like, we just killed them.
• 1:11:52
  We killed friendlies. Like the radio goes dead.
• 1:11:56
  I mean, the reality is probably, you know, I listen to my tapes.
• 1:11:59
  It's probably half a second.
• 1:12:01
  And he just jumps on the radio. He's like, shack, shack.
• 1:12:04
  We're no longer taking effective fire. We're, you know, egressing to the north.
• 1:12:10
  And, you know, good to go. Wow. Whoa.
• 1:12:14
  Whoa. But, I mean, for a few microseconds, which felt to me like forever, I thought.
• 1:12:20
  That was it. We had killed for various families.
• 1:12:26
  But then that was a very tactical, acute, like, let's handle this.
• 1:12:33
  And then all of a sudden you stop because they've disengaged.
• 1:12:37
  They broke contact. They're disengaged.
• 1:12:40
  And I'm like, okay, so we had other JTACs on this frequency.
• 1:12:42
  We need to roll into the next guy.
• 1:12:45
  And all of a sudden I'm starting to talk to another JTAC.
• 1:12:50
  And you know a red strobe goes and
• 1:12:54
  splits my formation and we're
• 1:12:57
  only at that we're only a mile apart so we're 6 000 feet in a wheel you know
• 1:13:02
  so we're circling somebody cut right through your circle right through co-alctuary
• 1:13:06
  oh shit and i'm like a red strobe that means it's a navy guy because he's got
• 1:13:11
  his lights on probably some dude you work your primary with bro.
• 1:13:20
  And so right then i go i'm like hey dude
• 1:13:23
  we got to go envis all so like we brought up all our
• 1:13:26
  covert lights so in the a10 we got covert top you know top lights and bottom
• 1:13:32
  lights so we brought up all our covert lights and you know so then we start
• 1:13:36
  you know talking and then talking to the jtac he's starting to get our eyes
• 1:13:40
  on an area and like a string of 2 000 pounders blows up under my formation.
• 1:13:46
  Oh, wow. And I'm like, wherever those came from dropped through my formation.
• 1:13:52
  And probably within. Yeah. Bob's going by your canopy? Yeah.
• 1:13:59
  Five minutes later, or within a few minutes, like something that,
• 1:14:04
  you know, it's just like your spidey sense picks something up.
• 1:14:07
  And I look up, which is an 810 guy. I never do.
• 1:14:10
  I look up and there's a predator right off my canopy. Oh, my gosh.
• 1:14:17
  That's blacked out. And I can see it.
• 1:14:22
  And so, and I was just like, holy shit.
• 1:14:28
  And I, I told, I told K-9, I go, dude, we're going to die from our own forces.
• 1:14:34
  Like, I'm not worried about, you know, we had some 23 millimeter coming up and
• 1:14:38
  man pads, but it was, it was lowbrow stuff.
• 1:14:43
  And so I was like, dude, like we're our own worst enemy right now.
• 1:14:47
  And so I told him, I go, go call back to Stiletto, to the command and control
• 1:14:52
  aircraft, to the J-Stars.
• 1:14:53
  And by now, Bossman had returned, which was the AWACS.
• 1:14:57
  I was like, I want to know who's in here.
• 1:15:00
  And we got the laundry list.
• 1:15:03
  Everybody's here. Yeah, it was a party. It was a party. Oh, my gosh.
• 1:15:08
  With no deconfliction. None. Nobody owned the airspace because AWACS was just
• 1:15:14
  – and it wasn't their fault. They weren't trained to do this.
• 1:15:17
  They were just feeding jets in and out.
• 1:15:19
  I'm just stunned nobody died that night from that. Oh, we should have had guys die that night. Yeah.
• 1:15:25
  Get into each other or bomb each other. And, like, I mean, I found out later
• 1:15:28
  that those JDAMs that came right through my formation came from flight level 390 off of a buff.
• 1:15:35
  A whole string. Wow. Of 2,000 pounders.
• 1:15:37
  Wow. And, you know, it's like big sky, you know, big sky little bullet.
• 1:15:42
  Little bullet, yeah. Big sky little bomb. Um, and, and so that was the point
• 1:15:45
  where we just said, I just was done with it.
• 1:15:48
  And both Kay and I were both forward air controllers.
• 1:15:51
  And so I said, tell boss man, I'm taking the airspace.
• 1:15:56
  I'm like, I'm now in control of the airspace. I have on scene command.
• 1:16:00
  I'm the forward air controller.
• 1:16:02
  I said, you're going to be the TACA.
• 1:16:06
  So the tactical air coordinator. So as you guys know, but for the audience,
• 1:16:10
  when you're running a FACA, TACA construct, The TACA brings everybody in,
• 1:16:15
  checks them in, gives them the appropriate information,
• 1:16:19
  and then feeds them into the fight, deconflicted.
• 1:16:23
  And so I told K9, I go, here's how we're going to run the fight.
• 1:16:26
  We're going to run on our back radio, which was FM, Fox Mike.
• 1:16:31
  So we are on FM on the back radio between us. I said, I'm going to run strike
• 1:16:36
  frequency on UHF, and then we'll stay tied to command and control on VHF because
• 1:16:41
  the A-10's got three radios.
• 1:16:43
  And at the time, it was UHF, VHF, and now it's much more robust.
• 1:16:48
  And so I said, look, you rack and stack everybody, figure out who to send in
• 1:16:52
  based on gas and bombs, and then I'm going to start running strikes.
• 1:16:56
  And so for the rest of the night, which was a 12-hour mission,
• 1:17:00
  I just did forward air control all night long.
• 1:17:03
  So, Soup, I got to interrupt here for just a second because I want to tell the
• 1:17:10
  listeners, particularly those who don't fly.
• 1:17:15
  He's doing this from a single seat jet with a wingman coordinating the radios,
• 1:17:24
  coordinating the airspace, And taking over,
• 1:17:27
  having made this decision and taking over and trying to get shit stacked where
• 1:17:32
  it needs to be so people don't die.
• 1:17:35
  And there are people in multi-crew aircraft all over the place that this should
• 1:17:40
  have been planned and executed with them controlling the airspace.
• 1:17:45
  God bless you. That is off the charts amazing that you had not only the wherewithal
• 1:17:51
  to do it, but then the ability to do it in a single seat airplane.
• 1:17:55
  Because you've got shit to do that doesn't have anything to do with controlling airspace.
• 1:18:03
  You have to, like, not fly into the ground.
• 1:18:05
  And, oh, my God. I am so impressed. That is amazing.
• 1:18:10
  Can we assume that you hit the tanker multiple times over that 12-hour period?
• 1:18:15
  Yeah, I think I tanked five, six, maybe seven times. Wow.
• 1:18:22
  And, yes, it was an A model. So we had no sensors, we had no targeting pods.
• 1:18:28
  We had night vision goggles, and then what we used to call the poor man's fleer,
• 1:18:35
  so forward-looking infrared, was the IR Maverick.
• 1:18:38
  So I left the IR Maverick on the jet.
• 1:18:41
  When I weapon-eared the loadout, I wanted the IR Maverick, not because we were
• 1:18:46
  going to shoot it, but because I needed the IR picture. The ability to see at night. Yeah.
• 1:18:52
  Wow. That's awesome. It was sporty. Wow. It was a long night. Well, well done, sir.
• 1:18:59
  Well done, indeed. I am shocked. I bet you felt like they poured you out of
• 1:19:06
  a bowl of jelly when you got out of that jet after that.
• 1:19:10
  I fell asleep on the way back.
• 1:19:15
  That does not surprise me in the least. Yeah, it scared the shit out of me.
• 1:19:20
  We were on our last run to the tanker and i
• 1:19:25
  hooked up to the tanker and they said hey they've
• 1:19:28
  made a decision of where you guys are to recover because we didn't know i
• 1:19:30
  thought i was like i was dreading it i'm like i gotta fly five hours
• 1:19:34
  back to kuwait and they
• 1:19:38
  said hey you guys are gonna go land in pakistan and in jacobabad which is kind
• 1:19:45
  of the middle of pakistan and we had a soft base there But we didn't talk about
• 1:19:52
  it for years and years that we were actually there.
• 1:19:55
  But they could only get two jets. We only got two jets approved that day.
• 1:20:00
  We were the only show in town of A-10s.
• 1:20:03
  And so they said, hey, you guys need to go back in the box for one more pump.
• 1:20:08
  Like, go run the show for a little more. Come get gas, and they're going to go to Jacoba Bat.
• 1:20:13
  And your guys are going to be there waiting for you. So luckily,
• 1:20:17
  I had all this information before I left Kuwait.
• 1:20:20
  Some combat controllers gave me, like, the whole, hey, if you have to go here,
• 1:20:25
  if you have to go here, this has an approach, this doesn't have an approach.
• 1:20:28
  And one of the things they told me, like, look, if you have to go into Jakobabad, it's Thrakon Delta.
• 1:20:33
  Like, I mean, you know, you guys know it's probably just as bad over on that
• 1:20:37
  side of the border than on the Afghan side of the border.
• 1:20:40
  And they go, so the whole thing is the airfield is blacked out.
• 1:20:44
  It's a box in one. And so to explain, a boxing one means...
• 1:20:52
  At the end of the runway, you have four infrared lights that are 500 feet apart vertically.
• 1:21:00
  Makes a 500 foot box to land in. Right. Yeah. 500 foot box.
• 1:21:05
  And then at the approach end, and then at the far end, there's one single strobe,
• 1:21:11
  IR, infrared strobe, tell you the end of the runway. But you need to stop by this point.
• 1:21:17
  And so the crazy thing is we weren't certified to land on MVGs yet.
• 1:21:21
  This is 2002 nobody no no fighter platform
• 1:21:24
  was and luckily i had an
• 1:21:27
  mc-130 guy in my squadron because i knew it was a possibility i
• 1:21:30
  just said hey man how do you do this he goes 20 feet
• 1:21:33
  on the radar altimeter just flare like all
• 1:21:36
  right we'll probably do that so we go
• 1:21:40
  flying in there and 20 minutes out i call the command post
• 1:21:43
  and they're like who are you i'm like oh great
• 1:21:46
  i'm the mf or who's landing here like
• 1:21:49
  like i have no options dude i'm like in the middle
• 1:21:52
  of pakistan there's no tankers i'm like i'm landing and
• 1:21:56
  you know and so like all right and so we we do
• 1:21:59
  the blacked out nbg landing no problem pull
• 1:22:03
  into this horribly tiny revetment or end
• 1:22:06
  of eor at the end of the runway because it's built for
• 1:22:09
  like mig 21s and our wingspan's a
• 1:22:12
  lot bigger and you know
• 1:22:15
  a bunch of soft guys come out and they're like set up a cordon around
• 1:22:18
  our jet you know like with guns pointed
• 1:22:21
  out i'm like we definitely did not land in a good place well.
• 1:22:24
  At least the guns weren't pointed in you know yeah exactly you know
• 1:22:28
  it's a matter of perspective it counts small blessings in life yeah and
• 1:22:31
  we get a couple of soft helicopter guys
• 1:22:35
  who come out and start trying to pin the jet and one of them was an a10 guy
• 1:22:40
  10 years prior and he's doing his best i mean the gear pin was in the gun and
• 1:22:45
  you know like and and so we we taxied in and we couldn't get into the revetments
• 1:22:52
  because it was like the whole thing was like no one can know you're here
• 1:22:55
  and i'm like well these revetments are built for mirages and
• 1:22:58
  mig-21s you can't fit a hog in there so we kind
• 1:23:00
  of like just nose in shut it down go
• 1:23:04
  into the command post i call back to the mothership and the 06
• 1:23:07
  the group commander's like good job i'm waving
• 1:23:09
  your pilot rest i need you guys airborne in
• 1:23:12
  eight hours because you're the only two ship in town the
• 1:23:16
  army's got their a-10s they want a-10s and the
• 1:23:19
  cavalry's on its way find a bed in two
• 1:23:23
  hours they'll get there they'll turn the jets they'll be ready to go but i need
• 1:23:26
  you guys to get right back in the air it's nice of them to wave your rest for
• 1:23:29
  you thanks because you didn't need that oh wow so so you you found a cot in
• 1:23:40
  a tent somewhere, I suppose.
• 1:23:43
  Yep, the airbase wing commander's tent.
• 1:23:47
  The dude was gracious, like heard we were coming in because they were freaking out about it.
• 1:23:52
  So they woke him up and he's like, I got boys, I got a couple of cots in the
• 1:23:56
  back of my tent. You go to my tent.
• 1:23:58
  And so it was awesome. And we walked out in the morning, the jets were turned
• 1:24:02
  around, fully armed, ready to go.
• 1:24:04
  So did they fly a crew in with our armament into that little airfield to do
• 1:24:10
  all that in the middle of the night?
• 1:24:12
  That's shit hot. And loaded you up. That's shit hot right there.
• 1:24:15
  C-130, our maintenance troops, my commander, everybody showed up and sent us
• 1:24:21
  out the door the next morning. Wow.
• 1:24:24
  And so day two was a repeat of day one only during its daylight hours sort of thing?
• 1:24:30
  Well, that was kind of the funny part is we immediately violated the State Department's
• 1:24:35
  rules because they said nighttime only. And so the army is like,
• 1:24:41
  no, you need we need you airborne now.
• 1:24:43
  And so we launched it about, I don't know, early afternoon.
• 1:24:48
  And the daytime was quiet because it was the enemy's backyard.
• 1:24:53
  If you look at the history of the Shariqat Valley, the Soviets got destroyed
• 1:24:58
  in their mines everywhere.
• 1:25:00
  Our troopers are in waist deep snow. The valley floor is 8,500 feet.
• 1:25:06
  You got guys up on 12,000 foot peaks. It's brutal, brutal. It's March. Right.
• 1:25:10
  And so the, our guys moved, they would move to contact during the day,
• 1:25:16
  but at night they would go defense and the enemy knew that was their time to go.
• 1:25:23
  Cause they knew the terrain, our guys would hunker down.
• 1:25:26
  And so every night they were getting hit by this counterattack. And so we get out there.
• 1:25:31
  We go out. It's pretty quiet. It's daylight refuel.
• 1:25:36
  There's much, much less air up there. But we were still the designated port air controller.
• 1:25:41
  So after the first night when I called home, I said, look, I go,
• 1:25:44
  we need a fact a on the ATO on the air tasking order.
• 1:25:48
  So everybody knows who's running the fight like when you get there.
• 1:25:52
  And so luckily, besides us, we had an F-16 squadron out of Alaska,
• 1:25:57
  block 40s who had forward air controllers.
• 1:25:59
  Great and so we always had a fac a on station and so that was we're building
• 1:26:04
  the air tasking order to do that and so we got out there we relieved the vipers
• 1:26:09
  to take over for the night and so we go in not much going on we're just kind
• 1:26:15
  of looking around keeping an eye on things it's pretty quiet,
• 1:26:18
  go out hit the tanker and we come back and all of a sudden so i've got 101 so
• 1:26:25
  101st airborne jtac on top of a hill,
• 1:26:29
  two hills, excuse me, north of Roberts Ridge, who's talking to a combat controller
• 1:26:35
  who's embedded with an Australian SAS team on the south end of the valley.
• 1:26:41
  And they follow these four technical vehicles into this really deep valley on
• 1:26:47
  the south side of Roberts Ridge, which we know now at the time we called it Objective Ginger.
• 1:26:52
  And it's a very very very deep
• 1:26:56
  steep canyon in there and i
• 1:26:58
  can't see because now the sun's coming down and i
• 1:27:01
  can't use my goggles it's too bright but there's shadows in
• 1:27:04
  there and i don't have a targeting pod and so we're playing the relay game because
• 1:27:08
  the jtac or the combat controller hots hoteling has got a feed coming down off
• 1:27:15
  of a cia predator and so they they actually had rover capability at the time.
• 1:27:22
  They had way more capability than our Preds had.
• 1:27:24
  And so we're playing a telephone game.
• 1:27:27
  And so he tells me he's got 200 to 300 dudes that just came out of the hillside.
• 1:27:34
  They're getting up behind these four technical vehicles, and they think they
• 1:27:38
  finally found this counterattack force that's been coming in every night.
• 1:27:43
  And I can't see him. So we're going through the game. Like, I got a nine line.
• 1:27:48
  The coordinates aren't good. I got a, you know, an A model, A10.
• 1:27:52
  So I got a GPS, you know, an Iggy. But it's still the coordinates aren't super awesome.
• 1:27:59
  So, like, I put white phosphorus down to go, is this it?
• 1:28:03
  So now all of a sudden I've got a section of Hornets with me. So they show up.
• 1:28:09
  And they've got air bursts on board now, too.
• 1:28:13
  So I asked the JTAC and I go, Hey, I go, here's the game plan.
• 1:28:16
  I go, you can take control. Cause we're going to do type two.
• 1:28:21
  Cause he can't see the target, but the CCT can see the target.
• 1:28:25
  I go, you take type two on me and I'm going to take type one on the Hornets. Is that a deal?
• 1:28:32
  He's like, he wants nothing to do with this. He's like, deal.
• 1:28:35
  So I roll in, I put four or 500 pounders down immediately gets secondary. So I know I hit.
• 1:28:42
  The technicals and we had briefed
• 1:28:45
  the game plan is like we're going to walk the bombs in because they
• 1:28:48
  they have nowhere to go if we hit them up front they have
• 1:28:51
  to try to escape out to the east which
• 1:28:55
  there's nowhere to go we're going to box them in and as
• 1:28:58
  you guys know if you're in a tight canyon somebody's dropping
• 1:29:01
  air bursts on your ass they ain't going to be a good day for you so i i dropped
• 1:29:07
  four my wingman drops two we bring the hornets in they drop two they drop two
• 1:29:11
  And then I just make a emotional decision that the army at this point has not heard the Goway.
• 1:29:22
  And every army guy on the planet knows what the Goway sounds like.
• 1:29:28
  I said, it's time to let everybody know we're here. I said, we're going to re-attack with guns.
• 1:29:34
  So wedge shooters guns, we put 700 rounds of high explosive incendiary down on them.
• 1:29:41
  And so we ended up, we ended up in the end, the attack ended up getting the,
• 1:29:46
  the, the BDA from the, the combat control team was two to 300. Holy shit.
• 1:29:54
  That's, that's awesome.
• 1:29:56
  Yeah. Right. That is awesome.
• 1:30:00
  It was, it was a good feeling. Like for us, like from the standpoint of our
• 1:30:05
  guys aren't going to get hit today.
• 1:30:07
  Like these dudes, we just, we just laid waste. and they're going to think twice
• 1:30:12
  about ever doing this again.
• 1:30:15
  Well, and those guys weren't going to do it again either.
• 1:30:18
  No attacks that night or the night after that.
• 1:30:23
  Nice. What a good feeling that must have been to know you're saving those lives.
• 1:30:29
  As you guys know, I mean, nothing's better than when those dudes on the ground
• 1:30:34
  can sleep better, right?
• 1:30:36
  Like knowing that you're on their shoulders.
• 1:30:38
  Right. and hey I'm here nothing's going to touch you dude,
• 1:30:44
  Yeah.
• 1:30:46
  Oh, man. I'm exhausted hearing that. Holy shit.
• 1:30:54
  And this is day two. Yeah. Yeah, we've still got 20 years to go.
• 1:31:03
  Holy shit. At any point, did you look at yourself like an out-of-body experience
• 1:31:08
  while you were there going, holy shit, man, I'm doing this is the real thing.
• 1:31:13
  Everything i've trained for up to this point now i'm really doing it and damn.
• 1:31:19
  It's real now i got no time like i mean no time to do that yeah it just became the,
• 1:31:25
  you're just executing and then everything was
• 1:31:29
  so you know because every day i was
• 1:31:32
  going to get a break right like day one you were
• 1:31:35
  waving your pilot rest and then you know day two so i
• 1:31:38
  go up do that day three i got pulled out of the
• 1:31:40
  shower of course
• 1:31:43
  you did and i wasn't supposed to be flying and
• 1:31:47
  somebody thought we had ubl and it's like getting the jet right now like because
• 1:31:53
  no like at this point nobody nobody's flown like nobody has the experience that
• 1:31:58
  you have with like navigating the terrain and the the command and control and
• 1:32:02
  they're like we got this thing We're going to store somebody on your wing. You need to go now.
• 1:32:07
  And, you know, and so for me, it was four days straight of no rest for the wicked.
• 1:32:12
  And I just like, thankfully, to my commander's credit, my squadron commander's credit.
• 1:32:19
  When I finally got sat down after four days straight, you know,
• 1:32:22
  and every sortie was in the 12 to eight hour, you know, somewhere in that range.
• 1:32:26
  Then you felt like you were sucked through a straw.
• 1:32:29
  Yeah. I was destroyed. And, you know, like between the adrenaline and everything
• 1:32:34
  else, I was like, I just, I need to, like, I need to stand, take a knee. Right. Yeah.
• 1:32:39
  They knew that at that point. Thank goodness.
• 1:32:43
  And so he did, but, but the interesting thing was that I wanted to just like
• 1:32:47
  walk away and go sleep for a decade.
• 1:32:50
  And he goes, before you go, I need you to write all this. Oh, come on.
• 1:32:56
  Yeah. Well, not, not for a bad reason. So he had a pass down,
• 1:33:00
  right? So, so somebody else could read it and walk in there.
• 1:33:04
  And he was a, he was a war horse. He was a desert storm guy.
• 1:33:08
  He was an allied force guy. He was a, he was a war horse.
• 1:33:12
  So this is his third tango.
• 1:33:15
  And he goes, he's, He's like, if you don't do this now, you will never capture,
• 1:33:21
  like, the emotion and, like, every, like, bit of it.
• 1:33:25
  He goes, just, I just want you to sit down in front of a computer and type out raw.
• 1:33:31
  He's like, I'm not using it for anything. He goes, this is for you. He goes, type it out raw.
• 1:33:35
  Like, the last four days, what happened? And I have it.
• 1:33:40
  And it never got submitted for anything.
• 1:33:43
  Like you know like it wasn't used by anybody because it's
• 1:33:46
  like there's a lot of f-bombs in it and
• 1:33:48
  whatnot and probably inappropriate comments and but i have it and so i thank
• 1:33:54
  him for that yeah that's actually really oh that's cool yeah no i'm glad he
• 1:34:00
  thought of that i thought he was thinking about it to you know i did too to
• 1:34:03
  pass as part of the part of the after action report and all that.
• 1:34:08
  That was my initial thought. Okay. That was my initial thought.
• 1:34:11
  Wow, that's some serious leadership shit right there, dude.
• 1:34:16
  Yep. Right. Learned a lot from him. Learned a lot from him on that.
• 1:34:21
  And that was your squadron commander? Yep, yep. Lieutenant Colonel Arden Dahl,
• 1:34:26
  surgeon was his call sign. All right.
• 1:34:29
  When did you guys leave?
• 1:34:33
  Did you ever, were you ever based like flying out of Bagram or?
• 1:34:39
  Yeah. So when did that happen?
• 1:34:41
  We got kicked out of Pakistan because the State Department couldn't take the
• 1:34:47
  heat anymore. So we were there for about seven to 10 days.
• 1:34:51
  We went back to Kuwait and within two weeks we deployed to Bagram. Okay.
• 1:34:55
  And at that point, Bagram was in pretty bad shape.
• 1:35:00
  It's like half of the runway was usable, right? Mines everywhere, everywhere.
• 1:35:07
  So the number one emergency procedure we had briefed every day was a blown tire.
• 1:35:14
  Because, you know, so 5,000, it was a 9,500 foot runway at the time.
• 1:35:19
  So 5,000 feet we'd made usable for the C-17s. But we needed,
• 1:35:24
  it's an A-10 density altitude.
• 1:35:27
  We needed the whole runway.
• 1:35:31
  Unless you took off without weapons right i mean you know yeah
• 1:35:35
  your choice no weapons or no gas you know
• 1:35:38
  you pick oh so the whole thing was yeah
• 1:35:42
  you'd be going down that runway and you know
• 1:35:45
  once you get to the second half you're in no man's land
• 1:35:48
  because on the right side it's all cratered out
• 1:35:51
  like you could park a humvee in some of those right and both
• 1:35:55
  sides of the sides of the runway are mined and so like we were talking about
• 1:36:00
  like if you if you blow a tire like you're in for a significant emotional event
• 1:36:05
  and you have to choose whether you're going to shear the landing gear off and
• 1:36:11
  ride the titanium bathtub,
• 1:36:14
  into the minefield or you're going to pull the handles and hope you don't land
• 1:36:19
  in the mine yeah Ride the silks into the minefield, yeah.
• 1:36:23
  You've got to decide what's the worst of the two evils there.
• 1:36:26
  I was always going to ride that sucker in. I trusted the jet.
• 1:36:30
  Yeah, the titanium is more protective than silk. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:34
  I'm not pulling those handles.
• 1:36:38
  Oh, dear God. Yeah. That's sporty. That's sporty.
• 1:36:45
  So, wow. How about this? I mean, I hate. How about this? Call sign soup.
• 1:36:53
  How did that happen?
• 1:36:56
  Real simple. Last name, Campbell. Of course.
• 1:37:03
  Why didn't I put that together? Holy cow, Fig. I am such a dumb fuck.
• 1:37:10
  Wow. You're usually really good at that stuff. I know. Also,
• 1:37:13
  I totally lost track that his last name was Campbell.
• 1:37:16
  I mean, I really did. I know it, but I lost track of it. I thought soup was
• 1:37:20
  an acronym for something. And I was thinking of all these different things it could be, right?
• 1:37:25
  Jeez. That's it. Look at Bagel busting your balls. The king of call signs has
• 1:37:30
  finally failed. Thanks, Bagel.
• 1:37:33
  Hey, I've had a long day. A really long day.
• 1:37:37
  Yeah, you know, it was like 12 hours in combat, you know, managing airspace
• 1:37:42
  and dropping bombs and not hitting people in the dark.
• 1:37:45
  Was that kind of a long day, Fig? No. No, not even close to that.
• 1:37:49
  Right on. I couldn't resist. Fig, Fig, don't be sorry. The number of times I've
• 1:37:56
  been asked that and I'm like, read my name tag. Right.
• 1:38:00
  Scott Campbell. I've had the same thing. You've had the same thing,
• 1:38:05
  right? I'm like, dude, why Fig?
• 1:38:07
  And I'm like, really? Point to my name tag.
• 1:38:10
  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The big Fig Newton.
• 1:38:15
  It could have been a lot worse, trust me. It probably, by all right,
• 1:38:19
  should have been a lot worse. Yeah, the mad crapper comes to mind.
• 1:38:24
  There's too many syllables in that. Too many syllables.
• 1:38:29
  Oh, geez. Well, dare we go out of there and move forward in your career?
• 1:38:35
  Because you didn't finish as captain. You did a few other cool things.
• 1:38:41
  And you deployed as the air planner for JSOC at the start of OIF.
• 1:38:47
  What was that like? That sounds like a challenging...
• 1:38:52
  It was not by choice. Yeah, of course not. No one wants to do that shit.
• 1:38:58
  Was that from the deed? From the CAOC? No.
• 1:39:03
  No, I was in RR, which is, you can Google map it.
• 1:39:08
  It's this horrible little spot 10 miles off the Iraqi border near Jordan,
• 1:39:14
  Iraq, and Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia.
• 1:39:17
  What happened was I had led the entire spin-up. So we came home from Afghanistan.
• 1:39:26
  And as you guys remember, it's time to get ready for Iraq. Right. Yep.
• 1:39:30
  And so we're getting spun up for 1003 Victor, which is the plan for Iraq.
• 1:39:38
  And Pope, because of our location, was always the go-to A-10 squadrons to support JSOC.
• 1:39:48
  So we had a habitual training relationship because, well, Delta lives next door
• 1:39:53
  and SEAL Team 6 is up the street. And...
• 1:39:59
  So we had prepared a group to get ready to go and direct support of JSOC.
• 1:40:09
  And so what they had planned was they were going to directly task one of the
• 1:40:15
  two squadrons at POPE to support them, to do specifically Tier 1 JSOC missions.
• 1:40:22
  And so we were doing all and we had had that relationship.
• 1:40:26
  So we had been doing this training for a long time. So we had a very habitual
• 1:40:29
  training relationship with the 160 SOAR, so both the DAPs, so the UH-60,
• 1:40:36
  or I'm sorry, the MH-60 Limas, so the gunship 60s, and the little birds, the H-6s.
• 1:40:44
  So we had developed tactics with them. And so we had a close working relationship with everybody.
• 1:40:50
  So we got spinning up and we went up to the north end of the Nellis Ranges,
• 1:40:58
  Tonopah, in October of 2002 to do rehearsals.
• 1:41:04
  So we were rehearsing for the start of OIF with specifically those units.
• 1:41:11
  And so this was the beginning of what we called CAFSOF integration in the Air
• 1:41:16
  Force, which is conventional Air Force and special operations forces.
• 1:41:22
  So we were always the close in guys because we had all these tactics and working relationships.
• 1:41:29
  And then if you think about it, you build an onion out.
• 1:41:32
  So the onion is based on distance from the friendly force.
• 1:41:35
  So we would do everything close in, really tight with the daps and the little birds.
• 1:41:41
  And then he'd go out and it was the Tomcats. And then out from there was the Strike Eagles.
• 1:41:46
  And so we developed these tactics and we rehearsed for a couple of weeks.
• 1:41:50
  And I was running this whole thing.
• 1:41:53
  And the time comes, it's in December of 02, and JSOC comes across the street
• 1:42:01
  from Bragg and says, hey, you know, like we're ready to rock and roll.
• 1:42:06
  We're going to RFF, request for forces. So it means specifically detail a squadron
• 1:42:12
  and tell the Air Force, we want this squadron attached to us to do this.
• 1:42:19
  And so it was my squadron's turn to deploy, the 74.
• 1:42:24
  My wife's squadron so we had done afghanistan the
• 1:42:29
  guard reserve came in but then the 75th my wife's squadron
• 1:42:31
  came in so the way we did a pope we we rotated okay
• 1:42:36
  it was so it was our turn so i'm like
• 1:42:38
  okay so we're gonna get this and i'm gonna
• 1:42:41
  run the show because i'm about to be the wing chief of
• 1:42:45
  weapons and tactics and so
• 1:42:48
  we go to this meeting and the jsoc guys are like okay who wants it and i'm like
• 1:42:54
  who wants it like it's our turn and my squadron commander was not quite the
• 1:43:01
  meat eater that her squadron commander was her squadron commander sensed hesitation,
• 1:43:07
  and was like we'll take it and i was like what what the hell just happened what,
• 1:43:13
  and i'm like what like you
• 1:43:17
  know so like the meeting can you know finishes like because jsoc doesn't care
• 1:43:20
  we walk out of the hallway and i go to kim's squadron commander i'm like by
• 1:43:24
  now you're taking me right like i built this whole thing he goes no because
• 1:43:29
  your wife's in my squadron you're not oh i was like oh shit.
• 1:43:35
  And I'm like, are you shitting me? And then all of a sudden.
• 1:43:39
  What the fuck just happened?
• 1:43:40
  Yeah, exactly. Yes, totally. And we joke about the fact that we used to joke
• 1:43:46
  that JSOC had like microphones in the walls in our two squadrons.
• 1:43:50
  Within 10 minutes, the phone rings.
• 1:43:52
  And they go, we hear you're not flying. So you're coming with us. Nice.
• 1:44:00
  And I was like, oh, God. Well, Birdie told you.
• 1:44:04
  And i'm like please no and
• 1:44:07
  so no kidding i got all my gear and the
• 1:44:11
  first week of march i got
• 1:44:14
  a c5 with all the jsoc guys and went to
• 1:44:17
  the middle of nowhere to go run you
• 1:44:21
  know and effectively so as the
• 1:44:24
  deputy master air attack planner you
• 1:44:28
  know a chief of the cell i was
• 1:44:31
  the liaison officer to this whole task force tiger which
• 1:44:34
  was integrating conventional fighters into
• 1:44:37
  jsoc but really what i
• 1:44:39
  was doing was i was working as an air liaison officer to delta and seal team
• 1:44:44
  six so like every night we just sit down and look at what their plan was for
• 1:44:51
  the next day and go okay what do you guys need for your support let me build
• 1:44:55
  it out and because of who we were i could call the CAOC and just go,
• 1:44:59
  I need the following assets to support these guys the next day.
• 1:45:03
  And we would get them. And then I would work through the integration on like
• 1:45:07
  how their JTACs would integrate all those assets.
• 1:45:11
  Yeah. And I'm sorry. I know you said at the beginning, where were you physically located for this?
• 1:45:17
  RR Saudi Arabia. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And how long? So right up on the Northern
• 1:45:22
  border there. How long did that last?
• 1:45:24
  That particular site?
• 1:45:27
  About six weeks. So right after Kim got shot up.
• 1:45:34
  Thankfully, I was in bed when that happened because our guys were,
• 1:45:38
  you know, rotors spinning, ready to go.
• 1:45:42
  Yeah. For the worst case scenario, if we had to put a tier one team down to get her.
• 1:45:48
  I, at six weeks, we are picking up to go to Baghdad.
• 1:45:52
  And so we're going to move the whole task force into Baghdad International Airport.
• 1:45:58
  And they pretty much told me I was paroled. they
• 1:46:01
  were like um they're like
• 1:46:04
  we don't need you anymore and i'm
• 1:46:08
  out like they're like you can you can go home which
• 1:46:11
  is kind of a funny thing when you're in rr saudi arabia as
• 1:46:14
  a captain like a young guy and they're like you can
• 1:46:18
  go home and i'm like how do i get home right in the middle of nowhere yeah and
• 1:46:23
  luckily because of my relationships because i had been building relationships
• 1:46:29
  because we didn't have enough assets all the time because from time to time,
• 1:46:33
  our guys would get hit during the day.
• 1:46:35
  And so I needed all the guard guys who are out in Jordan.
• 1:46:39
  So the Connecticut, Massachusetts A-10 guys, and then the Viper unit that was out in Azrac.
• 1:46:46
  And so I'd been sharing information with them, like letting them in on what
• 1:46:51
  we were doing because we needed more support.
• 1:46:53
  And so when the time came i of course i called back to you know my home unit
• 1:46:59
  it was like can i fly they're like no.
• 1:47:03
  They're like your your wife's here you're not going to fly here and i'm like,
• 1:47:08
  and so i called i called the guard guys up and i go hey and i've been rushing
• 1:47:14
  you know back to your point fig i've been rushing this massachusetts guard unit
• 1:47:19
  and they were recruiting me and i I called them up and I go, Hey,
• 1:47:23
  can I fly with you guys? Cause I'm like cut loose.
• 1:47:26
  They're like, if you can get here and you have your shit, you can fly with us.
• 1:47:29
  Like I'll be there in a day.
• 1:47:31
  And so I went out to H five and Jordan and I got to fly a combat,
• 1:47:36
  a couple of combat sorties and OIF before we declared combat operations over in April of 2003.
• 1:47:44
  But more importantly, I caught a, you, as long as you have your shit and you
• 1:47:48
  can get here. So you took your flight gear with you.
• 1:47:52
  Yeah, smart man. That's a smart man right there. Well played,
• 1:47:56
  sir. Well played. Well played.
• 1:47:58
  Yeah. Fantastic. Hellman G-Suit. I'm good to go.
• 1:48:02
  Right? Oh, man. That's a good call right there. That's some forethought.
• 1:48:07
  Yes, sir. Right. That's not a rookie mistake.
• 1:48:10
  That's strategic planning right there. Yep. Right. Exactly.
• 1:48:16
  I'm going to fly. I hate to say it. We're coming up on about an hour 45.
• 1:48:21
  Five, coming up in two hours. I know.
• 1:48:22
  How is that possible? I feel like we've been talking for 30 minutes.
• 1:48:26
  I know. Is there any chance? We can go two ways. We can keep going for a while.
• 1:48:31
  Or is there any chance you can come back in a couple, three weeks and chat with
• 1:48:34
  us some more? I can come back for sure.
• 1:48:37
  Okay. Absolutely. Okay. I think that'll be... Give everybody a break.
• 1:48:41
  Yeah. But you did some other really cool stuff.
• 1:48:44
  So I'd love to hear more about that, too. But yeah, I think it's probably time
• 1:48:48
  we land this airplane for tonight. and say, wow, holy cow, Fig,
• 1:48:54
  I had no idea this was coming.
• 1:48:57
  I know. So, you know, I thought, wow, we're going to get a good interview in
• 1:49:03
  an hour, and now it's been an hour, almost two hours, and I feel like we just got started. Yeah.
• 1:49:09
  Fantastic stuff. So, oh, goodness.
• 1:49:12
  Well, Soup, thank you for your service, and thank you for taking charge that
• 1:49:16
  night. I'm sure you saved lives just in the air and on the ground.
• 1:49:20
  Doing that oh god bless you if not your own all the other poor aviators that
• 1:49:24
  were up there having stuff flying right by their airplanes they had no idea
• 1:49:27
  that was coming past them,
• 1:49:31
  yeah big sky little big sky little bullet it like served me well for 25 years
• 1:49:36
  but you know it's it's not something you want to rely on i mean it's better
• 1:49:40
  to be lucky than good but i want you to know i also had a close encounter with
• 1:49:44
  a with a some type of uav in afghanistan and I thought,
• 1:49:48
  what the hell is going on out here? Nobody knows who.
• 1:49:52
  It was like, it was the Wild Wild West. I mean, it was literally the Wild Wild West.
• 1:49:57
  Anyway. Well, not to tease it, but when we get into it next time,
• 1:50:03
  the irony of the whole situation is I flew MQ-9s for a year.
• 1:50:07
  MQ-9s, right? Yeah. So the shoe is on the other foot.
• 1:50:12
  May have been soup trying to kill you, things. Let's talk a little.
• 1:50:15
  Okay, let's save that for next time.
• 1:50:18
  I do want to talk about that. Absolutely. I know you got some good stories from that.
• 1:50:22
  Absolutely. Well, I guess in the meantime, we can only thank you for your service,
• 1:50:27
  and we're thrilled that you're here with us.
• 1:50:29
  No, it was great to be with you guys. Fun conversation. Yeah, indeed. Thank you and I.
• 1:50:36
  Indeed. A couple other thank yous we have to get out there, Fig.
• 1:50:39
  Any come to mind for you? Well, I want to say, first of all,
• 1:50:42
  thank you to our producer in the background there, Bago.
• 1:50:45
  Who's his birthday today birthday boy bagel who showed up a little late but by golly he showed up,
• 1:50:51
  Did you say 22? 22 today?
• 1:50:56
  He's 30. It's the big 3-0. He looks 20. I know, I know.
• 1:50:59
  30. You got a note from your mother to be up this late producing our show,
• 1:51:03
  Baggo? Happy birthday, young man.
• 1:51:07
  Indeed. Thanks for showing up at all on your birthday. Baggo's mother joined
• 1:51:10
  us on the hangout a couple weeks ago. That was cool.
• 1:51:13
  She didn't make us any cookies. We need to thank, who's your traveling partner
• 1:51:19
  out to Las Vegas for the biggest show? Yeah, that was Dave Hamilton,
• 1:51:22
  man, over at BackBeatMedia.com, who handles our advertising for us.
• 1:51:26
  Deeply grateful to Dave for giving us the knowledge and BackBeat Media for helping
• 1:51:30
  us find sponsors to bring these fantastic stories to you.
• 1:51:35
  A couple other thank yous. Thank you to Sticks, who isn't here tonight. Hope he gets better.
• 1:51:40
  He's battling the, he thinks, the norovirus. So sharing some HIPAA information
• 1:51:44
  there about you, Sticks.
• 1:51:47
  You know what? Hope you're getting better soon. By the time this comes out,
• 1:51:51
  it'll be history, historical. It's okay. Yeah.
• 1:51:54
  That'll be a good thing. It'll be healthy. Thanks to BDS Aviation Photography
• 1:51:59
  Badass over there who brought us some great photos tonight, and I'll embed them into the show as well.
• 1:52:05
  Yeah, thanks for joining us tonight, Badass, as well. You're awesome. Indeed.
• 1:52:10
  Folks, we got some great merch. It's there. It's that us slash merch,
• 1:52:14
  T-shirts, towels, bikinis, all that good stuff. It's practically bikini season again.
• 1:52:21
  It's coming up fast, and we're working on some new stuff, some keychains and
• 1:52:27
  flasks and all that, customized over at Robin's Birdbrain Designs.
• 1:52:31
  She's going to be doing that for us.
• 1:52:32
  Speaking of flasks, I may have just gotten one, and it's pretty badass.
• 1:52:36
  Thank you for that, by the way. Yeah, yeah, happy Christmas.
• 1:52:40
  Happy New Year. I'm starting to run out. There's a couple others I know I need to thank, but...
• 1:52:48
  If it's the sound effects I'm hearing, we need to say thank you to the two Air
• 1:52:54
  Force F-16 pilots that make the Air Force sound good.
• 1:52:58
  That's the Dos Gringos.
• 1:53:02
  The Dos Gringos. Fantastic show. They lack judgment, but they're amazing musicians,
• 1:53:07
  and their albums are fun.
• 1:53:09
  And as Baggo stuck up there, hey, go to Starowoods.us slash rate and give us a five-star rating.
• 1:53:17
  If you can't give us five stars, go give three stars to another shot.
• 1:53:21
  Well, at least tell us why it's not five, because we're trainable.
• 1:53:25
  You know, we can adjust fire. We can make this a bullseye.
• 1:53:29
  Right? Oh, thinking of that, and Sim points it out, one of our listeners,
• 1:53:34
  yeah, I wish I had a gun like the A-10, which is one of their songs,
• 1:53:38
  which is a fantastic song. So...
• 1:53:43
  Yeah, brapping. Good stuff. All right, everyone.
• 1:53:48
  Well, thanks for hanging in here with us. We hope that you're over the sweats
• 1:53:52
  and the chills and all that after hearing those stories because,
• 1:53:56
  man, that was jaw-dropping.
• 1:53:58
  That was way more than I expected.
• 1:54:01
  Yeah, thank you. So, yeah.
• 1:54:03
  Until next week, everybody, stay safe and check six.
• 1:54:08
  Music.
• 1:54:17
  Well, there I was, crossing the pond, and you could say that I wasn't exactly
• 1:54:22
  fond of all the shit I was wearing on that day.
• 1:54:28
  Now an F-16 is cramped enough, but it's even worse, with all that stuff supposed to save your life.
• 1:54:36
  But we knew there was no way.
• 1:54:40
  Because when you're going down the North Atlantic, man, it's over.
• 1:54:45
  Hold on. What? He said it's over.
• 1:54:50
  Nervous? Yes. First time.
• 1:54:56
  No, I've been nervous lots of times.
• 1:55:01
  And we are out.