Speaker 1: So, Josh, did we meet in Vegas? Is that where
Speaker 1: this all started?
Speaker 2: No, we actually met in Anchorage, Alaska. You were up
Speaker 2: there on the USO.
Speaker 1: Tour, That's right. Vegas was after that. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: just after that.
Speaker 2: And it was funny, you know, this email comes out,
Speaker 2: it's like, hey, we need somebody to volunteer to give
Speaker 2: some country music artists people a tour by the USA Tour.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I love country music, Yes, I'll
Speaker 2: do that. I had no idea who it was, and
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, it's this guy named Granger Smith. He's
Speaker 2: here for the USO tour. It was like, you got
Speaker 2: to be kidding me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So my roommate from the Air Force Academy's from Texas,
Speaker 2: from Shureline, Texas, and and he obviously loves Texas country music,
Speaker 2: read drop music, all that stuff. So I just kind
Speaker 2: of got indoctrinated into that in college. Yeah, and growing up,
Speaker 2: and my first my first CD that I got as
Speaker 2: a gift was like a Christmas stocking stuffer was clay Walkers,
Speaker 2: like self titled nineteen eighty three album. And you know,
Speaker 2: so I love countries growing up, and then I started
Speaker 2: learning about text music more and fell in love with it.
Speaker 2: And then obviously when I heard those you is really cool,
Speaker 2: you know, and we did that and then then you
Speaker 2: were there for NFR in Vegas after that when I
Speaker 2: was down there as well.
Speaker 1: That's right, So I went up there. It was for CMT,
Speaker 1: right and yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, it was for CMT,
Speaker 1: but it was connected to the USO. It was a
Speaker 1: USO CMT and I was with Cody Allen. Yep, you
Speaker 1: remember that, which is you know, my predecessor at after midnight.
Speaker 1: That's so that's the interesting connection with us. But but
Speaker 1: when I met you, still to this day, you are
Speaker 1: probably top three coolest guys in my phone that I
Speaker 1: know that I can text because you are a fighter pilot,
Speaker 1: and not only a fighter pilot, but an F twenty two,
Speaker 1: which is what is the most sophisticated aircraft in the world, right.
Speaker 2: And yeah, in terms of in terms of neeverabilities, speed,
Speaker 2: all the performance numbers you can think of, it's definitely
Speaker 2: the top out there right now.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's anybody in Russia have anything better than that.
Speaker 2: I think they're trying really hard.
Speaker 1: But China, nobody has any better.
Speaker 2: They're trying, they're they're trying, but I think they have
Speaker 2: twenty two, you know, without getting a specific so I
Speaker 2: would just simply say that I would take an F
Speaker 2: twenty two to combat against anything out there in the Skuys.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so it's we've been how long have we been?
Speaker 1: We've been recording only two minutes and I'm already saying
Speaker 1: this top gun, Sorry, we're bringing it up. That that
Speaker 1: and the newer one. Yeah, the Russian jet that's in that.
Speaker 1: It's like everyone's in awe about That's where's the F
Speaker 1: twenty two stack up against that?
Speaker 2: I still think in terms of capability, it's it's better.
Speaker 2: You know, Russia is definitely producing stuff. What is and
Speaker 2: top gun fifty seven? I believe what they had in there,
Speaker 2: and then if if I recall correctly, I watched it,
Speaker 2: like I can't watch it twice now, but I think
Speaker 2: what they had in there, and that's like their their
Speaker 2: next generation stealth kind of equivalent fighter. They haven't produced
Speaker 2: a whole lot of them, and they just don't have
Speaker 2: a capacity and and the tech development I think is
Speaker 2: still lacking. So we still retained a really nice advantage
Speaker 2: in terms of just manufacturing processes. The intellectual aspect of
Speaker 2: making these airplanes really lethal and survivable. So, yeah, they
Speaker 2: have twenty two is just, in my opinion, pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: When did you stop flying combat missions? So I stopped.
Speaker 2: My last deployment was in twenty sixteen, and then I
Speaker 2: did the demonstration team job for three years. I think
Speaker 2: the last time I saw you was in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: I believe when we came out to the ranch. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then I left active duty in August of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. So I left active duty. Now I'm part
Speaker 2: time and then about a International Guard. No longer flying
Speaker 2: fighter jets, but still flying lots of other airplanes. And yeah,
Speaker 2: so I was kind of my time in the Air Force.
Speaker 2: Did a deployment the fifteen first, and then they have
Speaker 2: twenty two later on.
Speaker 1: It's like, I said, one of the coolest guys, and
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: No, you know, I do want it. Since we were
Speaker 2: talking about anchorage and talking about CMP tour on stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, I think the reason that we connectively on
Speaker 2: in Vegas was honestly because you're incredibly kind. And I
Speaker 2: don't remember if you know this, or I don't know
Speaker 2: if you remember this at all, but the day after
Speaker 2: you or the day you left. That morning, I think
Speaker 2: it was, we had like a seven point two magnitude
Speaker 2: earthquake and anchorage. Remember that I was at work, you know,
Speaker 2: we just finished awesome time going to show you run
Speaker 2: the airplanes, get to listen to play and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And then the next morning at work, we get an
Speaker 2: earthquake happening, and I was like, all right, well, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, it's an earthquake, no big deal. And
Speaker 2: then we start getting tossed from chairs and we're like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a serious one, you know, and you had landed.
Speaker 2: I don't know sure if you came back to Texas, Okay,
Speaker 2: Seattle and you text me and you're like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: I heard this really big earthquake.
Speaker 1: Are you doing okay?
Speaker 2: And I was like, this is the guy that I
Speaker 2: used to listen to on my computer in college, you know,
Speaker 2: when like a little you like came out like back
Speaker 2: in the day, Granger Smith. And I was like, this
Speaker 2: is this guy texting my personal number asking if I'm
Speaker 2: okay because an earthquake that just happened. You know, I'm like,
Speaker 2: how many other millions of things do you have going on?
Speaker 2: And the fact that you were so kind to take time.
Speaker 2: I'm just to ask how I was doing. After that
Speaker 2: was amazing. And then I was like, well, I'm doing well,
Speaker 2: but I'm head out of town going to Vegas because
Speaker 2: we got this conference. You're like, well, I'm going to Vegas,
Speaker 2: you know. And then we met up there for the show,
Speaker 2: which was great, and uh yeah, it's just all through
Speaker 2: your kindness. And that's how this.
Speaker 1: Doesn't seem like a big deal at all, though I
Speaker 1: mean it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't, but you know, you'd imagine, like, you know, it's
Speaker 2: just like, hey, taking care of other people, being kind
Speaker 2: and consider it, sadly is not as common as I
Speaker 2: guess you would expect, and especially when it's like some
Speaker 2: of you've you've you know, been listened to on the
Speaker 2: radio for the last whatever fifteen years. You're like, that's
Speaker 2: that's pretty crazy. I just text my personal cell phone number,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: I remember that that was that was wild because we
Speaker 1: we took off from Anchorage on on a flight to
Speaker 1: I guess it was like maybe Delta, but we landed
Speaker 1: in Seattle, and right when we landed and turned our
Speaker 1: phones on, it was like, you know, our phones were
Speaker 1: blown up. It was a major earthquake in Anchorage within
Speaker 1: the short amount of time we were in the air
Speaker 1: if we had waited any longer to take off, that
Speaker 1: they weren't. They weren't flying planes out of that that airfield. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for a while after that, so so yeah, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: it's josh okay. So that was that was a little
Speaker 1: crazy incident. I actually totally forgot about it, so you
Speaker 1: mentioned it. But the the time itself in Anchorage was
Speaker 1: my first time to see you and the and the
Speaker 1: f twenty two and you know, you let us walk
Speaker 1: around it. Have you seen that in have you seen Oh, well,
Speaker 1: after this, I'll show you. Like when he was on
Speaker 1: the demo team there some of those videos like their
Speaker 1: Instagram account. What's that Instagram between two demo tea team?
Speaker 1: Demo team? That is a good follow on Instagram because
Speaker 1: that aircraft does things that just the mind can is
Speaker 1: not capable of understanding what it's seeing. It looks like
Speaker 1: some kind of cgi. It looks fake. I mean that's
Speaker 1: the they basically tell us what I mean. It basically
Speaker 1: stalls in the air and could reverse and go different direction,
Speaker 1: like what's happening with the twenty two.
Speaker 2: Just wizardry it's basically wizard Yeah, it's wizardry.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The it's a testament right to all the engineers and
Speaker 2: folks that designed the airplane, because they did a phenomenal
Speaker 2: job with the flight control laws and how to make
Speaker 2: the airplane do some amazing things, the things that really
Speaker 2: make it unique and different in terms of moverability. The
Speaker 2: engines are remarkable. So they produced seventy thousand pounds of
Speaker 2: thrust total. The airplane full of gas, full of weapons
Speaker 2: weighs about sixty five thousand pounds, so even at takeoff,
Speaker 2: you're producing more thrust than you weigh at takeoff, so
Speaker 2: you can accelerate going straight up.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit more than a tour bus by
Speaker 1: the way, weighted down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe, maybe not as much as a you know,
Speaker 2: a germ Ax. I don't know, but yeah, it's close.
Speaker 2: I've got to coming diesel, but you know it's close.
Speaker 1: I'm not about thrust. I'm not about the weight of
Speaker 1: a fully fully weighed down towards yeah six okay, wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was that heavy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this but the airplane, you know, the engines
Speaker 2: produce amazing thrust, but also on the back of vector thrust.
Speaker 2: They have nozzles in the back, so imagine taking your
Speaker 2: finger putting on a water hose, you know, and like
Speaker 2: moving your thumb and the water goes different directions. But
Speaker 2: you're just doing that with seventy thousand pounds of thrust,
Speaker 2: so you have vector thrust. The flight controls are all
Speaker 2: basically it's fly by wire. So I'm making inputs. I'm
Speaker 2: moving the stick or moving the throttles, and the airplane says, okay,
Speaker 2: the pilot wants XYZ effect whatever it happens to be,
Speaker 2: and then it figures out how fast my going and
Speaker 2: how high am I All these are the parameters and
Speaker 2: gives me the combination of flight controls I need to
Speaker 2: get the effect I'm asking for. And you've seen the
Speaker 2: thunderbirds fly, I'm sure. So they have F sixteen's amazing airplanes.
Speaker 2: To put it in perspective of size, the F twenty two,
Speaker 2: the tails in the back are the same size as
Speaker 2: the F sixteen main wing, so these are massive surfaces.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gone skydiving? No?
Speaker 2: Okay, So skydiving, when you're falling through the sky, you're
Speaker 2: basically using your hands and feets like deflect air and
Speaker 2: That's what the F twenty two does, is it's in
Speaker 2: that postal regime where it's no longer fit like flying.
Speaker 2: It's not producing enough lyft to overcome the weight of
Speaker 2: the airplane. It's basically using this flight control surfaces that
Speaker 2: are the same size as an F sixteen main wing
Speaker 2: to deflect air like you would be skydiving. And that's
Speaker 2: what allows it to be, you know, completely controllable, even
Speaker 2: those in those regimes where it's it's stalled.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the bottom of that aircraft too.
Speaker 2: Which which port? Oh yeah, where the bays are?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we had a chance to look in the
Speaker 2: bays and we carry missiles combination of bombs down there,
Speaker 2: and the doors will open up really quickly. The missiles
Speaker 2: or weapons will kick out of the bottom of the
Speaker 2: airplane then close back up to keep us stealthy. So
Speaker 2: having those weapons or missiles are.
Speaker 1: Nothing's hanging out like the F sixteen, stuff everywhere underneath it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and everything's carried internally for twenty two And just
Speaker 2: like the F thirty five, So the F thirty five
Speaker 2: is is kind of the F sixteen replacement, much like
Speaker 2: the F twenty two is fifteen replacement and everything's carried
Speaker 2: internally to keep us stealthy, so we can sneak around,
Speaker 2: you know. And when you think about other airplanes out
Speaker 2: there flying that aren't stealthy, that's where those airplanes really
Speaker 2: shine because imagine, you know, you're you're you're a bad
Speaker 2: guy airplane and you see in your radar, you look
Speaker 2: outside and you see these things popping up because they
Speaker 2: have really big radar cross sections, and you get very
Speaker 2: attract It's like, you know, a moth to flame kind
Speaker 2: of thing. And then you have these airplanes that are
Speaker 2: very stealthy, like Ninja is just rolling around hinjustars, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's it's pretty great, pretty amazing capability for sure.
Speaker 1: I do you were you ever just pinch yourself? Surely
Speaker 1: half fast? How fast? Fly top top speed that you
Speaker 1: that you could go? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Gone twice the speed of sound. So it's about fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 1: So you're in the middle of the desert somewhere or
Speaker 1: over an ocean going that. I mean, are you ever
Speaker 1: just like, Wow, I'm the fastest man on north right now? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like thinking about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like, you know, the s R seventy one
Speaker 2: was faster, right, and there are airplanes that were faster,
Speaker 2: but I mean twice the speed of sound is pretty fast.
Speaker 2: And then you're doing that at you know, sixty thousand
Speaker 2: feet roughly, and that's it. It's interesting because at that point,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of heat, right, so you're
Speaker 2: going through the air really quickly, and then there's lot
Speaker 2: of heat that's generated from that from the friction, and
Speaker 2: as a result of the airplane is trying to cool
Speaker 2: itself off too because it's it's getting hot and wants
Speaker 2: keep everything electronically in the skin and everything cool.
Speaker 1: So you get some cutback.
Speaker 2: Actually, we gets very quiet because they're diverting air to
Speaker 2: other things that are more important than you probably as
Speaker 2: the pilot, and to keep it flying all those things,
Speaker 2: and it's really eerie. You're at you know, sixty thousand
Speaker 2: feet going twice as be a sound and fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: miles now roughly, and it gets really quiet and you're
Speaker 2: just seeing like the earth rotate underneath you and you're like,
Speaker 2: this is super trippy, you know, it's just uh, it's
Speaker 2: a pretty cool feeling for sure.
Speaker 1: About six thousand feet up yeah, yeah, yeah, roughly unbelievable.
Speaker 2: And we you know, we go supersonic obviously if we
Speaker 2: needed to in combat, but in our training air spaces
Speaker 2: when we need to do it for training, we don't.
Speaker 2: We aren't allowed to go super sonic over the domestic
Speaker 2: using from point to point. However, I did get approved
Speaker 2: one time by the FA. I was flying out of
Speaker 2: North Dakota taking a jet to Salt Lake City and
Speaker 2: the Birds are actually performing. I flew a jet into
Speaker 2: an air show and I wasn't the demo pilot at
Speaker 2: the time. I was just bringing a jet there to
Speaker 2: talk to folks about the airplane, and the thunder Birds
Speaker 2: a little bit delayed taken off and finishing their show.
Speaker 2: So I get delayed taken off out of there, I
Speaker 2: take off. I like that FN so I like rip up,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to Salt Lake and I'm looking at
Speaker 2: the time, I'm gonna be late, and the people that
Speaker 2: were this on a Sunday, like I'm gonna be late,
Speaker 2: and the people that were working there, they're all contract employees,
Speaker 2: you know that are civilians coming in on a Sunday
Speaker 2: to get this airplane, Like, hey man, we close at
Speaker 2: whatever five And looking at the time like I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be late, feel bad, you know, And so I asked
Speaker 2: the air traffic control guys like, hey, I come over
Speaker 2: North Dakota right now. There's nobody down there, you know,
Speaker 2: do you mind if I go super sonic? And he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: what do you want? It's like one point too, so
Speaker 2: one point two time speed of sound.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, I approved. So I go to super
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I go one point two for about about a minute
Speaker 2: a half two minutes, and then he comes back on
Speaker 2: the redo and he's like, yeah, my supervisor's sow what
Speaker 2: we were doing, and he said we couldn't do it anymore. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, so I swing back down. It helped me
Speaker 2: catch up a little bit of time. But it was
Speaker 2: pretty funny because that was the one time it was
Speaker 2: like legally allowed to go super sonic over the States
Speaker 2: and they were like all on board until they weren't.
Speaker 1: So how far was the trip total time wise? I
Speaker 1: think it was.
Speaker 2: I think it was about hour and a half if
Speaker 2: I recall correctly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still a long time in the cockpit, Yeah
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: I've done twelve hour flights in the Raptor and the Eagle,
Speaker 2: and it's a long time. To be in that airplane
Speaker 2: for that long, but you also get you know, used
Speaker 2: to it. I'm an average hype build kind of guy
Speaker 2: five ten, you know, and you get comfortable in there.
Speaker 2: And also there's some some cool things you can do
Speaker 2: in terms of like you're you're never flying by yourself, right,
Speaker 2: you're flying with the wingmen. You're flying with somebody else. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you have like fun games to play crosswords and
Speaker 2: whenever I was back and forth, if you're just not
Speaker 2: doing anything going on, you know.
Speaker 1: So I want to get to because I know that
Speaker 1: there are some stories that you, you and I have shared, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and part of it has to do with passing time there.
Speaker 1: But but before we get to that there, there was
Speaker 1: you remember you guys put me in that fight suit
Speaker 1: yep in anchorage and it's like that it controls the
Speaker 1: g's for what's that what's that suit called? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: just called it a G suit.
Speaker 2: The one you were, the one you had on was
Speaker 2: called an a TAGS which is like the advanced something
Speaker 2: something G garment And effectively it's that one's really nice
Speaker 2: because it's one bladder. So it's a bladder of air
Speaker 2: that goes around your abdomen, your legs and your calves.
Speaker 2: And what it's designed to do is take air from
Speaker 2: the airplane as you're pulling g's inflates to squeeze your
Speaker 2: legs and that allows your upper body to keep the
Speaker 2: blood flow and oxygen that your heart and lungs need
Speaker 2: to and your brain needs to just stay conscious, conscious
Speaker 2: when you're flying and fighting with these airplanes. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: you put that on. You put the surval vest on,
Speaker 2: the harness all crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it instantly sucks you in and texture
Speaker 1: protects your limbs. But it's working along with the aircraft correct.
Speaker 1: It knows exactly where what to put pressure on and
Speaker 1: when to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a really simplify it's just like
Speaker 2: it's probably way more complicated. I'm not an engineer by trade,
Speaker 2: but imagine like a metal plunger and then you have
Speaker 2: it in this volume of air, and then as you
Speaker 2: pull g's, the g forces pushed down on this which
Speaker 2: then allows airflow to come in. So the more g's
Speaker 2: you pull, the more, you know, I guess, the more
Speaker 2: that plunger drops a lot more airflow into the bladder itself.
Speaker 2: And you're doing this, you know, people go out there
Speaker 2: and fly airplanes. You've probably seen these funny videos on
Speaker 2: social media where people are passing out in the back
Speaker 2: of Yeah, yeah, I ever seen those. So it's like
Speaker 2: these people, they're only focus. Only folks in life right
Speaker 2: now is to not pass out a flying fighter jet.
Speaker 2: You're like, Okay, when you're actually in the airplane, flying
Speaker 2: a fighter jet, you're doing that, but you're also working
Speaker 2: all these switches you're working, You're like looking outside your turn.
Speaker 2: You're contorted because you're fighting other airplanes that are trying
Speaker 2: to potentially kill you. And it's it's a you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's a it's a full contact sport for sure.
Speaker 2: You know, like it's beats you. I've never passed out
Speaker 2: an airplane, thank goodness. Yeah people have. Play no plane
Speaker 2: people have, and you know, like everything else. If you're
Speaker 2: training for a marathon, you don't start borrowing a marathon,
Speaker 2: you start you sure. Yeah, And all the airplanes you
Speaker 2: fly in the Air Force gradually build in terms of
Speaker 2: G capabilities. So the T six, the first one you fly,
Speaker 2: is about five to six g's, and the T three
Speaker 2: it's about seven, and then the F twenty two is
Speaker 2: over nine, and you know it'll pull over nine it's
Speaker 2: it's it's remarkable.
Speaker 1: It's just on your body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean almost every air show.
Speaker 1: Every year, because you're doing crazy stuff on the shows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even even in like the training missions and
Speaker 2: not stuff. All our combat missions were typically dropping We're
Speaker 2: dropping bombs on our commt missions, so like dropping weapons.
Speaker 2: And that's not like very aggressive by any means. It's
Speaker 2: more of just taking information really quickly from somebody else,
Speaker 2: passing information, putting it in correctly in the airplane, and
Speaker 2: making sure in a position to employ the weapons. But
Speaker 2: in the air to air side we do training, there
Speaker 2: are times where you know, you'll pull over nine g's
Speaker 2: for over a minute, you know, and you're just like this.
Speaker 2: You get back like I'm smoked, you know. And I
Speaker 2: do remember this funny story. We were on a we
Speaker 2: were on doing a trip down in Florida, and that's
Speaker 2: where we do a lot of our live missile testing.
Speaker 2: So we were down there and at the time, he
Speaker 2: was the wing commander, was Colonel Colonel Corcoran Corky Corkoran.
Speaker 2: We went out and flew and he went on to
Speaker 2: become a general and he's recently retired. But you know,
Speaker 2: I was a younger guy at the time, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, he's just you know, full bird colonels. He's
Speaker 2: been around the block quite a bit in flying airplanes.
Speaker 2: I had this great idea. I was like, Oh, we're
Speaker 2: near a training mission and we're gonna go out do
Speaker 2: some dog fighting together. Like I'm a young guy, I've
Speaker 2: got a neck that's still expendable. You know, I can
Speaker 2: still you know, get some g's. It's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: get into this like very aggressive, heavy g you know,
Speaker 2: fight with him and we fit Like as we do
Speaker 2: this thing, I'm looking across and we're fighting, you know,
Speaker 2: and I see him and he just mashed me a
Speaker 2: step for step, you know, and it was just amazing.
Speaker 2: I was like, this guy is crushing it right now.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: And it was just so impressive because he's he's an
Speaker 2: amazing pilot, an amazing leader guy to thankfully fly with
Speaker 2: him when I was deployed as well. He was the
Speaker 2: wing commander when I was in twenty sixteen, and just
Speaker 2: an amazing human. But it was funny. I was like,
Speaker 2: I can pull some some new guy tricks, just trying
Speaker 2: to sacrifice my body for an advantage, you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of this, this flying and fighting, and he was
Speaker 2: right there with me.
Speaker 1: The entire time. And yeah, yeah, man, the stories you
Speaker 1: must have and and most of them you probably can't
Speaker 1: even tell, but but you know, the times when you're
Speaker 1: in anchorage, that was a lot of basically patrols in
Speaker 1: the ocean. Yeah, because we've got an adversary right across
Speaker 1: that ocean from from Alaska, yep. And you would you
Speaker 1: tell me that, yeah, you guys, would you would see
Speaker 1: any of the aircraft quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it goes, It goes seasonally, right, there
Speaker 2: are different you know, whether it's political events or whether
Speaker 2: it's time of year, things will ramp up or ramp down.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you know, and quite frankly, we're doing the
Speaker 2: same thing to other countries as well. We're flying airplanes
Speaker 2: off their coast much like they're flying put on our coast.
Speaker 2: And it's a cat and mouse game that will continue forever.
Speaker 2: And yeah, this is one of the missions we had there.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of our missions up there were training
Speaker 2: missions to prepare for all this, all the different mission
Speaker 2: sets we had to be responsible for. But that was
Speaker 2: one of the things where we would sit in alert
Speaker 2: facility and we have the facilities all around the country,
Speaker 2: and it's almost like being a firefighter, right, you live
Speaker 2: in a firehouse, you have a kitchen, you.
Speaker 1: Have rooms, same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah and yeah, you know a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of days, multiple days spent there in that facility. And
Speaker 2: some days nothing happens, and some days, like you get
Speaker 2: a call at two o'clock in the morning and it's like,
Speaker 2: oh you should you know, like go now, see you
Speaker 2: run down there and get gone.
Speaker 1: So when we were in Vegas together, yeah, and we
Speaker 1: had how's he doing? By the way, he's doing well.
Speaker 1: I think he's done.
Speaker 2: I haven't spoken with him and it's probably been a bit,
Speaker 2: but last time I knew I talked to him, he
Speaker 2: was down in in Louisiana, that's where his family's from,
Speaker 2: and he was down there flying fifteen's within the Louisiana
Speaker 2: International Guard.
Speaker 1: So if if we had recorded a podcast that night
Speaker 1: we stood up really late. We did the tour bus
Speaker 1: in Vague. We just played a concert. It was it
Speaker 1: was you and me and Tater and maybe a couple
Speaker 1: other guys. But if we had recorded at that would
Speaker 1: have been the greatest podcast of all time because those
Speaker 1: stories were so wild. I don't even know what you
Speaker 1: could tell from that on this podcast, and feel free
Speaker 1: to not share anything. But you guys talking about your
Speaker 1: deployments and talking about the different calls as a firefighter
Speaker 1: that you would get, you know, essentially, and there was
Speaker 1: there were some times when like you guys would be
Speaker 1: and you guys have different deployments, right, I don't think
Speaker 1: you were deployed together, were not, but but you these
Speaker 1: guys would get called in. I'm talking to aim into.
Speaker 1: They would basically get called in and and there would
Speaker 1: be something happening on the ground and aircraft would get
Speaker 1: called in, but not to do anything, but just to
Speaker 1: be there just in case. And and so they're they're
Speaker 1: flying and just circling a situation, right and just listening
Speaker 1: in and read to go and like knowing that they
Speaker 1: can do they could solve this problem right now. But
Speaker 1: the guys on the ground are trying to solve it.
Speaker 1: And they're in the air like I could solve it,
Speaker 1: and they're like no, hold, Like go, okay, we'll keep holding.
Speaker 1: It's eight hours to go by.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we would typically do and that that
Speaker 2: kind of mission is called closer support. So the F
Speaker 2: twenty two by far As is not the best airplane
Speaker 2: for that mission set. We're we're designed for aero combat
Speaker 2: and go into you know her other airplanes.
Speaker 1: That's like an F fifteen F sixteen thing right.
Speaker 2: Yeaheen fifteen, Yeah, like fifteen E is the two seat
Speaker 2: version of the fifteen that's optimized for ady ground. He
Speaker 2: was flying F sixteen's and then F thirty five A ten.
Speaker 2: If you ask anybody on the ground, they'd probably gonna
Speaker 2: tell you the E ten is what they would want
Speaker 2: for closer support for sure, and then in the Navy
Speaker 2: Marine Corps a F eighteen. But yeah, closer support is
Speaker 2: is really you're hanging out and you're waiting to see
Speaker 2: if anything you know is needed, and then it goes
Speaker 2: from goes from zero to you know, a thousand miles
Speaker 2: an hour really fast, because you could be you know,
Speaker 2: especially like over Amadi, over most of whatever. It is
Speaker 2: middle of the night, nothing's happening, and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I've been flying now for six hours in this airplane
Speaker 2: it's been dark the entire time, and going tune from
Speaker 2: the tanker getting gas every hour, hour and a half,
Speaker 2: and now I'm just like all right, I'm gelt tired, like,
Speaker 2: this is all right, we're just orbiting right now. And
Speaker 2: then it goes from that to people on the ground
Speaker 2: are being contacted, and then you need to be able
Speaker 2: to work with somebody on the ground to get the
Speaker 2: information that you know, like the targeting information to drop
Speaker 2: a weapon at the right time, at the right place.
Speaker 2: And you're doing this all in close proximity friendly forces.
Speaker 2: So if you mess it up like you can potentially
Speaker 2: could kill a lot of people. Yeah, like and people
Speaker 2: on your team.
Speaker 1: So how how what kind of target can you hit
Speaker 1: from from? That was called the F sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the F sixteen. In Tater's case, you have
Speaker 2: a targeting pod. So he could either use laser gutted
Speaker 2: weapons where he is using a laser from his airplane
Speaker 2: to illuminate a target. Then he would drop and that
Speaker 2: weapon would follow the laser in somebody else could support
Speaker 2: it with a laser. He could also drop GPS weapons,
Speaker 2: so basically just give it a GPS coordinate.
Speaker 1: So how close of a target could he hit? How
Speaker 1: small of the box could he hit? That's real small?
Speaker 1: I can't I you can't tell me. I could give
Speaker 1: you like the Yeah.
Speaker 2: The resolution of the weapons themselves, but like if you
Speaker 2: wanted to put a weapon through a building window like
Speaker 2: on the west side, third floor, you probably could do it.
Speaker 1: You know, Like this is crazy. So they're telling these
Speaker 1: stories and they're just like they're trying to find a
Speaker 1: solution on the ground and they're like I could do it.
Speaker 1: They're like no, you know, hold, he's like telling you
Speaker 1: I could do it. I get in this right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then sometimes they'll also use the airplanes for like
Speaker 2: a show of forest show presence. So you know, you
Speaker 2: can imagine if you're on the ground on the bad
Speaker 2: guy side and you see an F sixteen or eight
Speaker 2: ten or whatever it is fly overhead real fast, roll low,
Speaker 2: making a lot of noise, you're just like you think twice,
Speaker 2: like maybe maybe maybe Nick Tay is not the day
Speaker 2: for this, you know, yeah, for sure. So and that's
Speaker 2: a way for us to use the airplanes to de
Speaker 2: escalate and hopefully allow our folks just some time and
Speaker 2: space to get out of there, you know, because our
Speaker 2: goal really with that mission set is to make sure
Speaker 2: there's many American and coalition partners can make it back
Speaker 2: to their families of course, right, Like that's that's the thing,
Speaker 2: and it's well, the twenty two wasn't meant for that
Speaker 2: mission set, and it was designed for area of combat,
Speaker 2: and we obviously did not get the preponderance of all
Speaker 2: the missions out there with the F twenty two. I
Speaker 2: really found it incredibly valuable, you know, and I would
Speaker 2: just stay out there for as long as they would
Speaker 2: have let me, just because it was like, man, people
Speaker 2: are people are going home to their families because what
Speaker 2: we're doing, and that's important.
Speaker 1: So when you're flying your deployment in Iraq, did you
Speaker 1: have an Iraq and Syria? So where are you? Where
Speaker 1: is your airfield?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's so it's in the ribbon golf. We
Speaker 2: would take us about an hour and a half to
Speaker 2: two hours to get to where we need to be
Speaker 2: in Iraq or Syria.
Speaker 1: Okay, how how many miles is that?
Speaker 2: Yeah it's probably rough math, probably five hundred miles.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you're sitting five hundred miles away somewhere, yeah, roughly.
Speaker 1: You get called in Saints the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: like the firefighter scenario you builts, say, it's midnight, you've
Speaker 1: just got into bed and you get called you got
Speaker 1: to go, And it might be a twelve hour mission.
Speaker 2: That's that's for the the stuff in Alaska we're sitting
Speaker 2: to like intercept airplanes in the Middle East as an example,
Speaker 2: we just had twenty four hour presents. So you know,
Speaker 2: you'd be assigned Okay, here's your whatever, three four, five,
Speaker 2: six hour time slot that you were like, Okay, you're
Speaker 2: responsible for this geographic area for this long and then
Speaker 2: when you're down with that time, why so somebody else
Speaker 2: will replace you and then you'll go back home. So
Speaker 2: that's why I'm saying, like sometimes we'd be up there
Speaker 2: to orbiting and nothing would happen.
Speaker 1: So in Alaska, though, when when you're called in at midnight,
Speaker 1: how do you prepare your body? You haven't slept, you're
Speaker 1: you're How expensive is the F twenty two.
Speaker 2: I think they're saying about one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: Million, one hundred and fifty million dollars aircraft at you know,
Speaker 1: under your control and you haven't slept.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do give us empeticians really high quality INFETA means.
Speaker 1: So I just I didn't know if you could say
Speaker 1: that on the podcast, but you said it. We talked
Speaker 1: about tour bus like yeah, go pills like you gotta
Speaker 1: take you got to take a meth pill basically.
Speaker 2: So it's a it's got like a medical grade or whatever.
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Speaker 2: It's like that. You know, they have to keep positive
Speaker 2: control and who has it to get you know whatever,
Speaker 2: because it's a controlled substance. But that's that's one of
Speaker 2: the ways obviously. And then sometimes you know, there's obviously
Speaker 2: natural adrenaline too, if you had woken up like the
Speaker 2: funny story, we were we were Alaska. This is back
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve when I was flying at fifteen. So
Speaker 2: we run a two day rotation. So every two days
Speaker 2: we'd be at the alert facility and then we'd have
Speaker 2: you know, other folks that were either on standby or
Speaker 2: whatever it was. But then you have two days off
Speaker 2: as well. So we had buddies gone to the bar,
Speaker 2: you know and whatever, and two o'clock in the morning
Speaker 2: when the bar is closed down, you know, you'd call
Speaker 2: the alert facility as like a prank call. You know,
Speaker 2: these guys are sleeping and and you'd prank call them
Speaker 2: like scramble, scramble, scramble. You know, you're like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: a joke, you know, And so I think it was
Speaker 2: like I think it was jam or third of twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: It was somewhere around there because it was cold and
Speaker 2: snowy and dark. But the guy I was el sitting
Speaker 2: alert with Soup. We were we had gone to bed
Speaker 2: at two o'clock in the morning. The phone rings and
Speaker 2: he picks it up and he like he thought it
Speaker 2: was a prank. Yeah, and it was definitely not a prank.
Speaker 2: And you're like, oh, shoot, better get ready, you know.
Speaker 2: So we throw our stuff on, get the airplane go,
Speaker 2: and you do a lot of things like you you know, load.
Speaker 2: I would just take beef turkey with me and like
Speaker 2: waters and whatever else and keep it in the airplane
Speaker 2: because you really don't have time once that call comes in.
Speaker 2: There's sometimes where like they know, okay, in three hours,
Speaker 2: we need you to be airborne. But sometimes it's like
Speaker 2: not now, but right now, and then you really have
Speaker 2: no time to get ready to go. And Soup and
Speaker 2: I took off at like two o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: two thirty in the mornings when around there, and I
Speaker 2: remember they like opened the alert facility doors and there's
Speaker 2: snowplows like plowing a little pathway for our jets to
Speaker 2: go through to the rungway.
Speaker 1: Because the snow was so bad.
Speaker 2: And we were airborne for about twelve hours and it
Speaker 2: was and you don't know.
Speaker 1: That it's going to be twelve hours. It might be
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, it could be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have no idea how long it's going to be.
Speaker 2: So timplately, about twelve hours, they'll like have somebody else
Speaker 2: come in and replace you, and you know, roughly, yeah,
Speaker 2: you have no idea. So you just take a bunch
Speaker 2: of water, a bunch of a bunch of food, and
Speaker 2: then piddle packs. You have to pee at some point,
Speaker 2: so uh, those are those are pretty handy, and then
Speaker 2: you just take off and go and we end up.
Speaker 2: It was January, so it was dark and we were
Speaker 2: pretty far north in Alaska, so it was just dark
Speaker 2: the entire time, except like the last half hour flight
Speaker 2: where like we could actually start seeing daylight again. That
Speaker 2: was a long night, for sure.
Speaker 1: It is the aircraft monitoring you and your consciousness, and
Speaker 1: you're like it does it know if you fall asleep?
Speaker 2: No, there's no like monitoring of you. In terms of
Speaker 2: the airplane itself. There's there's a system in the twenty
Speaker 2: two that that's helpful, and the sixteen has it and
Speaker 2: have thirty five has it as well. It's called auto
Speaker 2: GCASS or Auto round Collision Avoidance system. So what that
Speaker 2: does is that scenario we talked about earlier, like passing
Speaker 2: out as an example, if I'm fighting and pulling GE's
Speaker 2: and I pass out, it may take me, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty thirty seconds to come back to consciousness, and even
Speaker 2: when I do, like, I'm probably not fully there. So
Speaker 2: now we add another thirty seconds, so potentially out for
Speaker 2: a minute. And just imagine a fighter jet pointed at
Speaker 2: the ground going full after burner. It's going to go
Speaker 2: real fast, so like, you know, like that's bad, and
Speaker 2: the autogcast system allows the airplane to recognize, okay, you
Speaker 2: have told me I don't want to go blow a
Speaker 2: thousand feet today. As an example, if the airplane recognizes
Speaker 2: it's going to go blow a thousand feet given the
Speaker 2: current parameters, it'll start recovering.
Speaker 1: For you.
Speaker 2: That saved countless lives because I've lost good friends who
Speaker 2: have passed away because of that scenario described and like,
Speaker 2: and this system is saving lives, which is amazing. So
Speaker 2: there are things like that, but in terms of like
Speaker 2: just he dozed off, went to sleep, there's nothing that
Speaker 2: you know, tells the airplane, Hey he's asleep.
Speaker 1: Wow. I'm like really struggling with what I should ask
Speaker 1: and what I shouldn't ask. But I guess you could
Speaker 1: always just say I can't answer that. But did you
Speaker 1: did you end up in air to air combat situations? No?
Speaker 2: I mean the last time that well, that's not true.
Speaker 2: That's that's changed recently. But the air to air world,
Speaker 2: like fighter jets against fighter jets, yeah, is not very
Speaker 2: common anymore.
Speaker 1: When you think it doesn't seem like it.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, you know world War two. I mean we
Speaker 2: had we built I think fifteen thousand people do one
Speaker 2: of Mustangs. We built one hundred and ninety five f
Speaker 2: twenty twos. So scale wise just very different. And these
Speaker 2: airplanes are very expensive. So if we use one hundred
Speaker 2: fifty million dollars airplane to shoot down let's say, trying
Speaker 2: to Russia whoever, right, I'm.
Speaker 1: Not yeah, forecast, Yeah, we have some variety.
Speaker 2: If we shoot down with an airplanes with our one
Speaker 2: hundred fifty million dollar airplane, that becomes a real big deal.
Speaker 2: So that the stakes of like using those airplanes in
Speaker 2: that capacity are pretty high, and it sounds a very
Speaker 2: big signal on the international stage. So and also when
Speaker 2: you're in the adversary and finding against a raptor, it's
Speaker 2: it's not they're not go at odds, So you're like,
Speaker 2: that's probably not a good idea. You know, We've had
Speaker 2: people intercept Iranian fighters for example. It's open source. You
Speaker 2: can readround the news of like intercepting Iranian fighters and
Speaker 2: had no idea they were there, no idea the raptors
Speaker 2: were there. They just were on there, you know, on
Speaker 2: the Merry Way, and had no idea the raptors just
Speaker 2: sitting right there next to them, just raptor just showed
Speaker 2: up next to them. Yeah, they had no idea. So
Speaker 2: it's just not it's not common because there's such a
Speaker 2: there's such an asymmetric you know, difference between our capabilities
Speaker 2: and most other countries out there in the world. So
Speaker 2: it's mostly been air ground. We have intercepted, like we
Speaker 2: mentioned before, like other you know, you know, avasary airplanes
Speaker 2: in Alaska in the Middle East intercepted, but never had
Speaker 2: to like shoot anything back and forth at each other.
Speaker 1: So you said earlier that the twenty two was literally
Speaker 1: built for air to air combat, yep. But yet still
Speaker 1: you haven't really used it because you haven't had to.
Speaker 1: I guess because it was made I guess you could
Speaker 1: say it was made so well, yeah, for the purpose
Speaker 1: it was made for that no one wants to go
Speaker 1: against it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a massive deterrent for for aggression,
Speaker 2: which is you know, I mean you obviously know tons
Speaker 2: of people in the military, and I think, uh, I
Speaker 2: feel pretty confident saying this is the unanimous across most
Speaker 2: people in the military, Like nobody that's gone to combat
Speaker 2: wants to go to combat in terms of like, we
Speaker 2: don't want to see loss of life. We don't want
Speaker 2: to see innocent pop being hurt like that, and that's
Speaker 2: a bioproduct of combat like that that will happen.
Speaker 1: It's happened in.
Speaker 2: Every every historical battle where n s people are hurt,
Speaker 2: and none of us want that. So if we can
Speaker 2: de escalate, if we can use we can say like hey,
Speaker 2: our airplane is that good? Probably not a good idea
Speaker 2: for you guys to try this, and it deters them
Speaker 2: from aggression, then like we win, you know, like we won,
Speaker 2: we got the objective accomplished, and nobody got hurt in
Speaker 2: the process, which is great.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's it's a there's.
Speaker 2: A fine balance there, right. My uncle pitched professionally, player
Speaker 2: professionally for a while, and he was like, hell, you
Speaker 2: like flying jets, And I was like, I love flying
Speaker 2: jets the fifteen. I've twenty two amazing airplanes. So imagine
Speaker 2: being in the major leagues, being a pitcher and being
Speaker 2: the bullpen for twenty years, never pitching one ending like coach,
Speaker 2: put me in, Like put me in, coach, I.
Speaker 1: Want to play, you know.
Speaker 2: And that's that's kind of the air to air world
Speaker 2: is because it hasn't been used in so long, because
Speaker 2: the airplanes are so good that there is there is
Speaker 2: this fine balance of like, I know we have amazing capabilities,
Speaker 2: but I also know, like if we have to use them,
Speaker 2: if I have to use an after two in combat,
Speaker 2: like things have gone sideways, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Probably really bad. Yeah. Wow, I didn't think about it
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Speaker 1: summer launch is June thirteenth. This is a really good launch.
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Speaker 1: yee dot com. Remember the new stuff. The summer launch
Speaker 1: comes out June thirteenth. You ever see anything really weird
Speaker 1: out there my UFOs? Maybe? Maybe not? Well, we could
Speaker 1: start with just saying drones we're seeing, like the weird lights.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you know I haven't seen any UFOs
Speaker 2: that I'm aware of, like they I know, like I
Speaker 2: haven't seen any that I'm aware of. I have seen
Speaker 2: drones flying before, and that's obviously that's that's obviously not
Speaker 2: great because they oppose a pretty significant rest to the airplanes,
Speaker 2: especially at air shows.
Speaker 1: You know. Oh yeah, man, we were in I flew the.
Speaker 2: Air show in Chicago in twenty twenty two and there's
Speaker 2: a there's a drone that happened like that started flying
Speaker 2: like right after our show was done, and it was
Speaker 2: just like stopped everything because like we can't risk obviously
Speaker 2: all these hundreds of thousands of people in Chicago on
Speaker 2: the on the shoreline there, you know, potentially get damaged
Speaker 2: because this airplane hits a drone and then it goes
Speaker 2: out of control.
Speaker 1: Or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: So yeah, definitely, like there's it's interesting. The drone stuff
Speaker 2: is very interesting. And if you've kept track of the
Speaker 2: war in Ukraine and how that's going and progressing with
Speaker 2: how they're using commercial off the shelf very inexpensive you know,
Speaker 2: like radio shot kind of drones to very high effectiveness rates.
Speaker 2: It changes the damag quite a bit. And yeah, you
Speaker 2: know there's a there's a company called Firestorm in San Diego.
Speaker 2: They're they're doing amazing work and Dan is the CEO
Speaker 2: and his team is like basical they're makes making these
Speaker 2: like amazing drones that are like three D printed in
Speaker 2: a in a like a cond of a shipping container
Speaker 2: that you can stop off and print.
Speaker 1: These things on the.
Speaker 2: Front line are our service members can have very little
Speaker 2: training to be able to operate these. They click together
Speaker 2: like legos that they're just they're very, very awesome. So
Speaker 2: I think we're adapting to that drone that drone fight.
Speaker 2: It's just I don't think anybody realized how widespread it
Speaker 2: was going to be until we saw it unfold in
Speaker 2: Ukraine and Russia and realized, like, hey, things are changing
Speaker 2: and we need to change with them.
Speaker 1: So that you typically always in history it's it's certain
Speaker 1: conflicts that push forward a certain technology.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think it's also for us. I think
Speaker 2: in some ways very fortunate that we get to see
Speaker 2: this unfold somewhere else and we're not involved in terms
Speaker 2: of like directly involved with it. Obviously we've we've given
Speaker 2: funds and et cetera, but like being directly involved, we're
Speaker 2: not having to learn that lesson and pay, and you know,
Speaker 2: pay with American blood if you will. So I think
Speaker 2: one of the problems we have with was really anything,
Speaker 2: but I think the military specifically, and it's a higher
Speaker 2: stake I think in that scenario is like we plan
Speaker 2: for the last war. We don't plan for the next war.
Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is you look at
Speaker 2: the F twenty two as an example, an amazing airplane.
Speaker 2: It competed against the YF twenty three at the time,
Speaker 2: which you know, I don't have all the data for,
Speaker 2: but looking at the airplane, it appeared to be more stealthy,
Speaker 2: it was a bigger airplane, appeared to carry more weapons,
Speaker 2: more fuel, all these things. And we went with the
Speaker 2: F twenty two specifically because it was very maneuverable, and
Speaker 2: there were other couple of factors as well, but it
Speaker 2: was like the super like cool maneuverable fighter jet that
Speaker 2: the generals were like, we just finished the Cold War,
Speaker 2: this is what we want. We want this really cool
Speaker 2: maneuverable fighter jet. And it's amazing, Like it absolutely is amazing.
Speaker 2: But they were thinking about how do we fight the
Speaker 2: Cold War in Europe. We don't need these massive distances
Speaker 2: to be covered like we need, you know, high performance,
Speaker 2: short distance kind of fighter, and the F twenty two
Speaker 2: is all those things. When you look at the fight
Speaker 2: in Asia, General Hawk Carlile talked about it in the
Speaker 2: Tyranny of distance and how like, unless you've been to Asia.
Speaker 2: You have no idea how vast it is.
Speaker 1: It is huge.
Speaker 2: You know, go from Anchorage to Japan's like ten hours,
Speaker 2: another ten hours to get to Australia. You know, these
Speaker 2: are massive distances. And any think about that airplane that
Speaker 2: what would be helpful for that? It may or may
Speaker 2: not be that twenty two, you know, And but we
Speaker 2: were planning for the previous conflict, not planning for the
Speaker 2: next one. So I just you know, I think in
Speaker 2: the drone scenario, we're seeing it unfold elsewhere and we're
Speaker 2: able to plan for what we foresee happening in the future.
Speaker 2: You know, we're like skating to the puck as opposed
Speaker 2: to waiting for the waiting for the puck where we're at,
Speaker 2: you know, which I think is good and hopefully we'll
Speaker 2: will help us if you know, Kno Gona Wood, nothing happens,
Speaker 2: but if it does happen, we'll be more prepared than
Speaker 2: we would be otherwise.
Speaker 1: And how close are we for unmanned aircraft to be
Speaker 1: the main aircraft.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know how close are that. I
Speaker 2: think we'll have mant That's why I got outkid.
Speaker 1: The wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we'll do man unmanned teams for a while.
Speaker 2: There are airplanes their programs out there see which is
Speaker 2: basically a companion aircraft that goes with a man fighter aircraft,
Speaker 2: and I think that'll be good. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I think fundamentally there's a trust element, right especially with airplanes.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine two hundred people getting on a delta
Speaker 2: airplane with no pilot? Not right now, I can not
Speaker 2: right now? Right people just trust factors like I don't
Speaker 2: trust it. But like in terms of scale, you have
Speaker 2: people getting their Tesla's full self driving and just going
Speaker 2: down the road no care in the world. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: they're trusting a computer to operate a car, but they
Speaker 2: won't trust to operate an airplane. And I think it's
Speaker 2: the same thing. We transpose that to military aviation, where
Speaker 2: it's like, I know the computers is going to do
Speaker 2: a great job. It's all these things. But if there
Speaker 2: is if there's the decision of taking or preserving life
Speaker 2: that needs to be made, I want a human making
Speaker 2: that decision. I don't want to computer and making that decision.
Speaker 2: And I think that's that's going to be the that's
Speaker 2: going to be the hurdle that we have to overcome
Speaker 2: over time, and I think eventually we'll get there. And
Speaker 2: the phrase I've heard is like human on the loop
Speaker 2: as opposed to human in the loop, where I'm actively making,
Speaker 2: you know, making decisions, where I'm just like human on
Speaker 2: the loop, monitoring what's happening, and then if I have
Speaker 2: to step in, it will, But otherwise I'm sure to
Speaker 2: let it do its thing. And I think it'll be
Speaker 2: an evolution of that. But I think for for man
Speaker 2: fighters will have them for a while longer. I don't
Speaker 2: know how long that's going to be, but I just
Speaker 2: I think in the future of combat, if our abbasaries
Speaker 2: are not using man fighters, we potentially could be at
Speaker 2: a disadvantage.
Speaker 1: If we tell you too, that's a good point, you.
Speaker 2: Know, because and it's all you know, a computer is
Speaker 2: gonna do things that you and I would not think
Speaker 2: make any sense. If you and iron airplanes were fighting,
Speaker 2: duking it out, at no point would you consider just
Speaker 2: running your airplane into my airplane. But a computer maybe like, well,
Speaker 2: here's how much gas I have, Here's how far is
Speaker 2: to get home. I don't have enough gas to get home.
Speaker 2: The next logical thing for me to do is to
Speaker 2: use airplane to run that airplane to take out of
Speaker 2: the fight. Yeah, you know, and you're just like you're
Speaker 2: fighting this thing, like that's just that's just the thing
Speaker 2: you would never consider as human being.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So so I just think, you know, they're a natural
Speaker 2: evolution of things, and we either, you know, either adapt
Speaker 2: or we don't. And obviously my vote isn't adapting.
Speaker 1: So why did you get up?
Speaker 2: A variety of reasons? Quite a few. Actually, I was
Speaker 2: very thankful for the time I had in I did
Speaker 2: about fifteen years and two months ACTI duty and then
Speaker 2: I'm still serving part time with Then about it International Guard.
Speaker 2: There were a couple of things air force wise, like
Speaker 2: structurally and like leadership wise and culture wise that I
Speaker 2: just was not super keen keenon. And to me, the
Speaker 2: next path for me activity wise was to go be
Speaker 2: in charge of different squadrons. You know, I was running
Speaker 2: thetenty two demo team, which which is amazing. It's like
Speaker 2: fourteen people, you have almost one hundred percent autonomy on
Speaker 2: the road you're in charge with, you know, in charge
Speaker 2: of three hundred million dollars with the airplanes and these
Speaker 2: people to go travel around the globe to do this show.
Speaker 2: It's like I'd imagine it's like being on tour where
Speaker 2: you're like every weekend you're gone somewhere new doing this
Speaker 2: show and talking to people and this whole thing. And
Speaker 2: that was amazing, And the leadership side of that I
Speaker 2: thought was really impactful because you connect with people on
Speaker 2: a personal level and you're on the road. You see
Speaker 2: you know the stressors that happen with people being on
Speaker 2: the roaway from their families for a long period of time,
Speaker 2: and you have to like help solve those things while
Speaker 2: also having a mission balancing that and you have a
Speaker 2: lot of autonomy. If the airplane's break, like it's up
Speaker 2: to you and your team if they either get fixed
Speaker 2: on time or not. And turns out most airport air
Speaker 2: Force baces in the States don't. They don't work on
Speaker 2: Saturdays and Sundays. He's a Monday, Monday through Friday things.
Speaker 2: So when you have an air show on the weekends
Speaker 2: and your part breaks, you're like, well, shoot, I've got
Speaker 2: to you know, we got to figure out a way
Speaker 2: to get apart. And that's that has included me and
Speaker 2: the superintendent at the time driving fifteen hours to meet
Speaker 2: somebody halfway to pick apart, then drive back to South
Speaker 2: Padre Island, Texas to fix it, and then fly that
Speaker 2: show the next day. But those those problems a man skills,
Speaker 2: I think were amazing. So I was very thankful that
Speaker 2: I had that experience going on. Though there are some
Speaker 2: things that I just had reservations about and being then
Speaker 2: put into a responsibility position of a squadron as an example,
Speaker 2: it was like, I can't, I can't good conscience say
Speaker 2: these things and do these things if I don't feel
Speaker 2: aligned with that. That was just a moral conflict for me,
Speaker 2: internal like internal conflict, I would say. It was like,
Speaker 2: there's things I'm like, I'm not really on board here, and.
Speaker 1: There an example the can you not sign? I mean,
Speaker 1: I could respect if you don't want to. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: I don't want to jump into it too much because
Speaker 2: I'm still like, still sure in the air forces capacity,
Speaker 2: I do think there was a too I guess make
Speaker 2: it as simple like I guess as generic as possible.
Speaker 2: I feel like our focus went away from killing things
Speaker 2: and breaking stuff and across all services Air Force and Evey,
Speaker 2: Marine Corps, Space Force, coastcar like and all these like
Speaker 2: that's at the root, at the root of it, like
Speaker 2: that is our job. We don't want to have to
Speaker 2: do it right, we want to we don't want to
Speaker 2: kill stuff and breaking stuff. Well it's like you know,
Speaker 2: national defense, right, Yeah, I got you, so like that
Speaker 2: that is our job at the end of the day, okay.
Speaker 2: And there were some things that to try from that,
Speaker 2: and I just it's a zero sime game. We either
Speaker 2: spend time getting really good hoping that we never have
Speaker 2: to use it, or we spend time on a lot
Speaker 2: of other things, and then when we actually are tested.
Speaker 1: We're not good enough. And that is terrifying to hear
Speaker 1: you say that.
Speaker 2: The impact like impacts everybody across the country, you know.
Speaker 2: And and the vast majority of my family moved here
Speaker 2: from Cuba. They came here with second and third G educations,
Speaker 2: three kids didn't speak the language, got here, worked incredibly hard,
Speaker 2: and provided a life for their family. And I'm so
Speaker 2: incredibly thankful to be born here. And I love this
Speaker 2: country a lot, like it's it's just the land that
Speaker 2: provides so many opportunities for so many countless people and
Speaker 2: has done so for decades and decades and decades. So
Speaker 2: to me, like I want to make sure that I'm
Speaker 2: in line with leaving this place better than how I
Speaker 2: found it. And now that I have, you know, an
Speaker 2: eight week old little dude, I want to make sure
Speaker 2: that I leave this place better than you know, better
Speaker 2: for him as well as he grows up. And so
Speaker 2: there were some there were some conflicts I had in
Speaker 2: terms of where we were going as an organization. And
Speaker 2: then also a really good friend of mine, Brian Phillips,
Speaker 2: he flies a fifteen's and he asked me when I
Speaker 2: first started the demo team job. He was like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: this is a two year thing. You have a really
Speaker 2: interesting story. Your your folks. You know vast majoriya family
Speaker 2: moved here from Cuba, you grew up your first thingguage
Speaker 2: of Spanish. You know, you go to the Air Force Academy.
Speaker 2: You've lost both parents, lost his sister. Like You've all
Speaker 2: these things have happened to you in your life, but
Speaker 2: you've still found a way to be successful. It's like
Speaker 2: you should really consider, like what is important to you
Speaker 2: and what do you want to look back at when
Speaker 2: you're eight years old, Like what do you want to
Speaker 2: be proud of? And I don't really get hung up
Speaker 2: on the word legacy. A whole lot, because to me,
Speaker 2: legacy is somewhat ego driven. It's like, how's the world
Speaker 2: going to like you know, you me and I realized
Speaker 2: in two three generations to my name, and it's not
Speaker 2: going to matter to anybody at that point in time.
Speaker 2: It's like, how do you impact the people around you?
Speaker 2: And how do they change and live their lives as
Speaker 2: a result of your impact? And it could be negative
Speaker 2: or positive, but like that impact is like an internal
Speaker 2: like I know I had a positive effect on somebody,
Speaker 2: and that positiveffect I don't even know what's gonna happen,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know how it's going to propagate the
Speaker 2: next generations. I have no idea, but I know it's
Speaker 2: a good impact, and I'm happy with that. Right and
Speaker 2: when I'm eighty, like what am I going to be
Speaker 2: proud of and happy about? So I thought about that,
Speaker 2: and part of that is really how do I shape
Speaker 2: the next generation of American youth to leave this place
Speaker 2: better than I found it? And there are a couple
Speaker 2: of lines of effort. There's a five, ten, fifteen year
Speaker 2: game plan for this because I think it's it's a
Speaker 2: thing that I want to commit to you for a
Speaker 2: long time in the near term, going to start off
Speaker 2: with the basically a flying podcast, and we're going to
Speaker 2: do to peop up in an aerobatic airplane that goes
Speaker 2: to Sedan, all those things. And I think there's something
Speaker 2: magical about flight where if you've never flown an airplane
Speaker 2: and you go up there and I let you fly it,
Speaker 2: like I'm flying this airplane. I didn't think I could
Speaker 2: do it before, but now I'm doing it, and I'm
Speaker 2: upside down. I'm doing these things right. But you have
Speaker 2: a conversation about really it's focused on younger adults, So
Speaker 2: eighteen to twenty five is demographic I'm looking at, and
Speaker 2: I really want to find really impressive young adults who
Speaker 2: overcome hard things and how they used faith, family, at
Speaker 2: the military, working out, academia, Like there are tons of
Speaker 2: things they could have used to get past that obstacle
Speaker 2: in their life, but what do they use, how do
Speaker 2: they use it, and how can we share that information
Speaker 2: to other young kids? And a fifteen years old and
Speaker 2: it ultimately like there could be a sixty year old
Speaker 2: person out there who's incredibly successful and could have come
Speaker 2: from the exact same circumstances. However, it's not relatable anymore,
Speaker 2: you know. And I realized as a thirty eight year
Speaker 2: old guy, like, I'm not relatable to fifteen year old
Speaker 2: kid anymore. I remember when I was going to college,
Speaker 2: some of my instructors were like my age, and I
Speaker 2: was like, dude, are they they kicking the bucket next week?
Speaker 2: I don't know, like they're pretty old. Yeah, And now
Speaker 2: I'm that person, right, And it's like, Okay, I'm not
Speaker 2: relatable to fifteen year old anymore. But if I find
Speaker 2: somebody that demographed age wise, is close to them like that,
Speaker 2: that's how we meet them where they're at, you know.
Speaker 2: We find somebody that that speaks our language, understands the
Speaker 2: way they grew up. You know, sixty year old spent
Speaker 2: two thirds of their life without the internet, without cell phones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like what was that like?
Speaker 2: You know, and you have to go back and pull
Speaker 2: back some memories to remember what that was like. And
Speaker 2: kids nowadays have no idea what that was like. So
Speaker 2: how do you relate to them in a way they understand,
Speaker 2: in a way that's impactful, in a way that can
Speaker 2: help them change the vectory of their life, you know,
Speaker 2: into a positive way. So that's the first line of effort.
Speaker 2: There's some other stuff later on, but it'll be the
Speaker 2: first line effort.
Speaker 1: Sounds like there's a lot kind of going on behind
Speaker 1: the curtain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. Yeah, and I'm very excited,
Speaker 2: you know. But that was that was one of the
Speaker 2: main driving factors as well, in addition what I mentioned
Speaker 2: about the Air Force in general, Like that's one of
Speaker 2: the big factors for me that I just looked at
Speaker 2: the five years of time, like, yeah, the easy buttonist
Speaker 2: to send the military for five more years, get my retirement,
Speaker 2: and like go off to other things. And I just thought, well,
Speaker 2: that's five years of opportunity costs and I'm missing that.
Speaker 2: I could be doing something else impacting, you know, other
Speaker 2: people in a positive way. And life takes these twists
Speaker 2: and turns, and you know, get married, have a little kid,
Speaker 2: like it's just life spins that it does, you know,
Speaker 2: and and you just you appreciate it for the twists
Speaker 2: and turns, you know. And and sometimes there are things
Speaker 2: that happen, like whether it's serious stuff or inconsequential stuff.
Speaker 2: For the time I was little kid, I want to
Speaker 2: fly fifteens. At pilot training, there were no fifteens available
Speaker 2: to the point where like on my dream sheet of
Speaker 2: like what I want to fly, I put on fifteen
Speaker 2: one through like twenty six or whatever it was. My
Speaker 2: flag commander looked at me. He was like he was
Speaker 2: an fifteen guy, and he's like, this is hilarious. I
Speaker 2: appreciate it because I love the fifteen two, but you
Speaker 2: have to give the other options. I was like, okay, fifteen,
Speaker 2: eight ten, and I don't care whatever happens. The next
Speaker 2: you know, there were no fifteens available. There were eightens available,
Speaker 2: So I got eighten out of pilot training actually, and
Speaker 2: then four months go by and there were two guys
Speaker 2: that wanted eight tens that got F fifteen's. There were
Speaker 2: some switch that happened and a flying fifteens. But my
Speaker 2: point with that is like had I gone to fift
Speaker 2: and ease or F sixteen's, I never had to flow
Speaker 2: in the fifteen which they are planning. I wanted to
Speaker 2: fly as a little kid. I would have never flown
Speaker 2: up twenty two, never done the demo job, wouldn't be
Speaker 2: where I'm at right now. Like unfortunately, you know, like
Speaker 2: they're there are things in life that just don't go
Speaker 2: our way at the time, and we're like, I don't
Speaker 2: understand why, and slowly they'll reveal themselves to you. And
Speaker 2: sometimes it takes a lot of times, sometimes it takes
Speaker 2: four months.
Speaker 1: You have a faith, I do.
Speaker 2: I was raised, uh, I was raised Roman Catholic, probably
Speaker 2: like most of every there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have not been.
Speaker 2: Actually I really want to go. For for multiple reasons,
Speaker 2: I can't go right now. One affiliation with the military obviously,
Speaker 2: and two there's some just like I don't want I
Speaker 2: don't want that government to have a single cent on money.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's kind of that. My grandfather is a He was
Speaker 2: a mechanic for like fifty years his life, and he
Speaker 2: only only ever bought Craftsman tools. He was like, it's
Speaker 2: not made America. I don't want it, you know. And
Speaker 2: this is a guy that would not he wouldn't even
Speaker 2: drink vodka. He's like, that's a communist drink. Yeah, like
Speaker 2: this is in Sweden. He's like outcare, you know, and
Speaker 2: it's very he's just very principal in that way. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, I would love to go visit. But yeah,
Speaker 2: So I was raised Roman Catholic growing up and continue
Speaker 2: that faith, and you know, I think living around the
Speaker 2: globe has exposed me to a lot of other religions.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that I've I've found, at
Speaker 2: least my interpretation, is that there's so many common threads
Speaker 2: across the major religions on the globe, Like and at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, like.
Speaker 1: What do I still read?
Speaker 2: I still read the Bible, that's the that's the text
Speaker 2: I choose to read. But there's so many common threads,
Speaker 2: And I feel like religion in some capacities has has
Speaker 2: gotten people in the place where they're like, well they're
Speaker 2: not the way they don't believe the way I believe,
Speaker 2: so for it must be at conflict. And there's so
Speaker 2: many things about being a good human. There's like just
Speaker 2: even ten commandments, Like there's so many things that are
Speaker 2: just common threads about being good human, taking care of
Speaker 2: your neighbor, tak care of family that I deeply appreciate.
Speaker 2: I think my the thing that just has I guess
Speaker 2: bothered me not about my faith in religion, but just
Speaker 2: about globally is like how people use religion as a
Speaker 2: weapon to hurt other people, and that, to me is
Speaker 2: is his travesty.
Speaker 1: I stand in line with that as well. It's orrible
Speaker 1: for people to take to take that. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: if you if you believe there's a God, then you
Speaker 1: would believe there's there's also an adversary to God, and
Speaker 1: it's only from the adversary that to use God as
Speaker 1: a weapon. I mean that that that's that's not an
Speaker 1: argument against religion. That's that's a testament to there is
Speaker 1: a God, because there wouldn't be so much controversy over
Speaker 1: it if there wasn't. But there's als there's obviously a
Speaker 1: force pushing against it. Have you ever been in a
Speaker 1: cockpit at a time and looked up into the stars
Speaker 1: and just thought about your smallness? I mean, surely you've
Speaker 1: been in places on this globe where no other human
Speaker 1: has been. Yeah, I have.
Speaker 2: And do you want to address the point you mentioned
Speaker 2: just now, because I think it's an important one where
Speaker 2: I think a lot of folks in the military who
Speaker 2: either raised in some religious capacity, they go to the
Speaker 2: military and they see horrible things.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I have friends from high school that enlisted the Army
Speaker 2: and lists the Marines and have seen horrible things and
Speaker 2: it makes them question their faith because they're like, well,
Speaker 2: how can this happen? If there's a god, and I
Speaker 2: think you brought up, you know, a great point where
Speaker 2: it's like there's a counter force there. I mean Roum's
Speaker 2: twelve twenty one, I think is an important one, you know,
Speaker 2: like it's just like, do not be overcome by evil,
Speaker 2: but overcome evil with good, and it lets you know
Speaker 2: there's a balance there. There is a good and a
Speaker 2: bad and you have to understand that there are bad
Speaker 2: things that happen, but they are also good things that happen,
Speaker 2: and there's this balance there and you have to choose,
Speaker 2: and I choose the good, you know. And I just
Speaker 2: I say that because I've met a lot of folks
Speaker 2: in the military who have lost their faith as a
Speaker 2: result of their service, and it's been disheartening to see.
Speaker 1: For sure, I understand that, but the logically, I continue
Speaker 1: to to go back on this podcast to like the
Speaker 1: logical argument, but to say something evil happened. Therefore I
Speaker 1: cannot believe there's a god. Is going from one worldview
Speaker 1: to another one, and the other worldview that they go
Speaker 1: to also doesn't have an answer to evil either. If
Speaker 1: we're all just you know, come from pondscum and we've
Speaker 1: all evolved, then the problem of evil is not solved
Speaker 1: with that. Either. There's still an evil that we can't
Speaker 1: explain that happens within the human heart that starts that
Speaker 1: wants to kill and still and destroy other humans. And
Speaker 1: just from a pure scientific evolutionary background, that doesn't explain
Speaker 1: it either. In fact, I think it makes least sense
Speaker 1: from an atheist perspective. It makes more sense if you say,
Speaker 1: there is a god, and there is a purpose, and
Speaker 1: there is a way, and there is an adversary. And
Speaker 1: just as in any great movie or any great novel,
Speaker 1: there is no story unless there is our two forces
Speaker 1: that are counteracting each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the like you said, there is an adversary,
Speaker 2: and I wish there were more. Obviously this hope and
Speaker 2: hope iss not get a game plan, but you know,
Speaker 2: I wish more people from multiple faithce realize there's there
Speaker 2: is a common good, there is common ground, and we
Speaker 2: may believe slight differently, like there is there is good
Speaker 2: and there's evil, you know, and there's there's good in
Speaker 2: all of us, and there's there's bad in all of us.
Speaker 2: Like it's just there's there's this fighting force, right that
Speaker 2: we have to contend with and we have to choose.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think that's like that's been my biggest
Speaker 2: the biggest thing that I've I've seen at least traveling
Speaker 2: around the globe is like a little bit concerning of
Speaker 2: like how you know, it can go back two thousand years,
Speaker 2: how it's been the case where we use religion in
Speaker 2: a negative way to hurt people, and it's like, shoot man,
Speaker 2: like this is not this is not meant for that,
Speaker 2: you know, to.
Speaker 1: Ever to ever think that from a biblical perspective. Now
Speaker 1: there are other religions that would definitely advocate for violence, yep.
Speaker 1: But to read the Bible and to end up at
Speaker 1: the very end of Revelation, at the end of the
Speaker 1: New Testament, and to close it and go, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to fight to kill some people, then you need
Speaker 1: to go back and start. You've completely missed it completely.
Speaker 1: When Jesus says, love your enemies, do good to those
Speaker 1: who hate you, turn the other cheek. To see a
Speaker 1: man at the epicenter of the Christian faith, to see
Speaker 1: a man on a cross being killed and praying to
Speaker 1: the Father saying, forgive them. They know not what they do,
Speaker 1: and the very act of him dying on that cross
Speaker 1: is to forgive the men that were killing him. To
Speaker 1: take that idea and to think that that means we
Speaker 1: should go to war, for this is a complete atrocity
Speaker 1: misunderstanding of what Jesus came to do and say to
Speaker 1: bring his people to God. So sorry I took a tangent.
Speaker 1: You had a question. I'm glad you did, but from
Speaker 1: a pilot's perspective, Oh yeah, you asked me if I've
Speaker 1: ever liked Actually, don't want to go there yet because
Speaker 1: now I want. I wanted to say one more thing
Speaker 1: to this conversation. There's the whole epicurious idea of and
Speaker 1: what what's happening to your buddies is. It's the the
Speaker 1: epicurious idea of if there is a god and he
Speaker 1: is all powerful, then why doesn't he stop evil? And
Speaker 1: if he's not, then he's benevolent. He's if he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to stop it, then he's benevolent. If he can't
Speaker 1: stop it, then he's not all powerful. But the problem
Speaker 1: is that there still is evil, so that means there
Speaker 1: must not be a god but that but that's wrong
Speaker 1: thinking because there is that there is another option to this.
Speaker 1: If we believe there is a god and he is
Speaker 1: all powerful and he and he is all knowing, and
Speaker 1: he is good. Okay, Because if if he was all
Speaker 1: powerful and evil still existed, that means he would be
Speaker 1: he would be bad un less unless he allowed evil
Speaker 1: for the purpose of good. And that's the part that's
Speaker 1: never understood. What if God is working for a greater
Speaker 1: good all along and for the accomplishment of a greater good,
Speaker 1: evil does exist so that it could be overcome. And
Speaker 1: we see this, you'll know this. And just a few
Speaker 1: years with your boy as you have to discipline him
Speaker 1: or if he does or there's going to be times
Speaker 1: when you let him get into trouble on purpose so
Speaker 1: that he sees the lesson of the greater good. But
Speaker 1: you're all what, You've never left him. You always know
Speaker 1: what's going on. You're always there for his good. But
Speaker 1: the existence of evil doesn't automatically mean either there is
Speaker 1: no God or God's bad, because what people often forget
Speaker 1: is he can allow evil for a greater good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's a great analogy the way
Speaker 2: you described it with like you know, raising a silent
Speaker 2: of him getting in trouble, I like, yeah, the stoves
Speaker 2: hot bud, like you know, like, hopefully it only get
Speaker 2: burned too bad.
Speaker 1: I say this a lot, and I say this a lot,
Speaker 1: and people, you know I could put it this way.
Speaker 1: What if I told you right now, Josh, like I
Speaker 1: do I do something to my kids. I I will
Speaker 1: take one of my boys to another man, and that
Speaker 1: other man will pin him down and hurt him. And
Speaker 1: there has been times when he even cries. My boy
Speaker 1: will cry and you'd go, granger, evil man, No, no,
Speaker 1: I will I will pay that man to do this, hm,
Speaker 1: And you'll say you are sick, and I'll say, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the dentist I thought actually works. But uh I,
Speaker 1: I know that this is going to hurt him. I
Speaker 1: know that that that he might think it's evil in
Speaker 1: the moment when he's six years old. But I also
Speaker 1: have in mind good teeth because I have the good,
Speaker 1: the good result, because I want the good for him.
Speaker 1: He has no idea about good teeth or why he
Speaker 1: needs to sit in his chair and be pinned down.
Speaker 1: And this guy's got these knives basically sticking them in
Speaker 1: to his mouth. He hates it, and and that's a
Speaker 1: bad example, but it's still a small example that that
Speaker 1: evil or bad could exist. If there was a greater
Speaker 1: good that will accomplish at the end of it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I agree, Like, I agree with you for sure, I
Speaker 1: know you do. I'm just talking kind of out loud
Speaker 1: for your buddies that cause the military guy see it
Speaker 1: all the time like I see evil. So I'm out
Speaker 1: there is no God to me, and I go, well,
Speaker 1: your new world view doesn't answer the evil still there.
Speaker 1: You've you've denied God, rejected him. Okay, I understand that.
Speaker 1: But you didn't pick a new world that doesn't have evil?
Speaker 1: Do you still have the same problem. You didn't solve anything.
Speaker 1: And but anyway, these these are common things. So back
Speaker 1: to the cockpit. Now, have you ever been there, like
Speaker 1: on a on a night like you're describing an Alaska
Speaker 1: and you're just there by yourself and had a moment
Speaker 1: maybe I think one of the.
Speaker 2: I guess too too funny stories and a serious one.
Speaker 2: So the first funny story was on the same mission
Speaker 2: with with soup, when I was like tours over Alaska.
Speaker 2: You know, I take the we have these anti exposure
Speaker 2: suits as well, So you have these like rubber necks
Speaker 2: and seals or your feet and all that stuff to
Speaker 2: keep you from if you had to reject and get
Speaker 2: into cold water, like you're gonna at least survive maybe
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes longer than you would have otherwise, hopefully get rescued. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some somehow in Alaska, no nowhere, but different, different, So
Speaker 2: we're in these things.
Speaker 1: I take one of those go pills.
Speaker 2: I don't remember I told this story in Vegas at all,
Speaker 2: but I remember Taylor gopill. We're on the tanker. So
Speaker 2: the tanker is like a mobile gas station effect that
Speaker 2: we're swapping out getting gas. And I look at Soup's
Speaker 2: airplane and I started seeing like these like light these
Speaker 2: like colors, right, and I just take the go pill, like,
Speaker 2: am I is something happening to me? Because I just
Speaker 2: took this amphetamine like what is gone?
Speaker 1: Like pulling the you know, the seal.
Speaker 2: And then I realized is the Northern lights, which is
Speaker 2: which is awesome, and it's like just amazing, like this
Speaker 2: amazing backdrop, you know, And I was like, holy cow,
Speaker 2: that's super cool. But for a second, they I had
Speaker 2: a little bit of panic. And then there was another
Speaker 2: night where on the night vision goggles, I was at
Speaker 2: like forty five fifty thousand feet and we have the
Speaker 2: night vision goggles on and you're that high and you
Speaker 2: look them in the stars, the amount of stars you
Speaker 2: can see, and just the vastness of of like and
Speaker 2: just put some perspective how small we are, you know,
Speaker 2: or even like flying over New York City you look
Speaker 2: down and you're like, there are millions of people with
Speaker 2: millions and millions of problems down there. I have no
Speaker 2: idea what any of those are because I'm up here
Speaker 2: and I see it from a different perspective, and I
Speaker 2: think astronauts kind of like have the same same kind
Speaker 2: of idea where they see no borders, they see just
Speaker 2: the globe because their perspective is different.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, But I guess the serious one was. I was
Speaker 2: in in Alaska, Flapps went tw us and I came
Speaker 2: back and had a catsh trophic landing gear problem. So
Speaker 2: this is actually, I think, before I'm at you, it's
Speaker 2: October of twenty twenty eighteen, and the left main landing
Speaker 2: gear collapsed through like a mechanical failure. So actually I
Speaker 2: didn't recognize at the time. I thought it was another
Speaker 2: problem because the airplane was landing and it was still
Speaker 2: somewhat controllable. Then it eventually stopped being controllable. The left
Speaker 2: wing tip hit the run way through me off in
Speaker 2: the grass, and and I was actually like, I think
Speaker 2: I think the only person to take in F twenty
Speaker 2: two like at being but like in the dirt, you know,
Speaker 2: bounce around and yeah, it's just yeah, Earl Divil's just
Speaker 2: hanging out with me, you know. But uh, there's a
Speaker 2: small building in front of me. So I liked to
Speaker 2: like get the airplane back in the air after offerating
Speaker 2: a little bit, and I missed that building by by
Speaker 2: like ten feet or less. So I think about when
Speaker 2: it related back to faith and like why that's important.
Speaker 2: Everything had to happen at the right time. So the
Speaker 2: failure had to happen when it did. The airplane had
Speaker 2: to go off the rung way when it did. My
Speaker 2: decision making had to happen when it did. The engines
Speaker 2: had to like spool up from like idol thrust a
Speaker 2: full after burner when they did, which just happened. It
Speaker 2: doesn't happen like instantaneously. It takes some time. My responsiveness
Speaker 2: had to happen just so that I didn't hit this building.
Speaker 2: And if you think about the consecutive minor miracles it
Speaker 2: had to happen for me to survive that scenario. Like
Speaker 2: the list is along and I had just lost my
Speaker 2: mom the year before, so to me, you know, like
Speaker 2: I definitely, I definitely believe in God, and I also
Speaker 2: believe they're like there are other things out there, whether
Speaker 2: it's my mom, my grandfather who's a massively influential person
Speaker 2: in my life who passed away eighteen years ago now.
Speaker 2: But it's like, I know, I'm a good pilot, but
Speaker 2: I'm not that good, right, there are all these things
Speaker 2: that had to have happened just so that led to
Speaker 2: an outcome where I survived. Like I said, I'm good,
Speaker 2: And the my skill all those things is simply a
Speaker 2: byproductally amazing instructors and teach that I had along the way.
Speaker 2: It mentored be and helped guide me, you know, And
Speaker 2: that's what was also the mentorship, you know, Like who
Speaker 2: who were my instructors going up to that point? You
Speaker 2: know I had I had. Yeah, I've been flying airplanes
Speaker 2: for ten years, like fast juts for about ten years
Speaker 2: that point, So those people are in my control. If
Speaker 2: there were so many things out of my control that
Speaker 2: happened in a way that allowed me to survive, you know,
Speaker 2: and incredibly thankful for that. And then for the next
Speaker 2: couple of months. You know, I'm flying back home after
Speaker 2: training mission and the distance from the airport and anchorage
Speaker 2: to the training airspace is pretty far, so it's probably
Speaker 2: a fifteen minute commute, if you will. Yeah, and you
Speaker 2: have a lot of time to think, and you know,
Speaker 2: you just think about that, and you think about, man,
Speaker 2: had something gone slightly differently out of just like been gone,
Speaker 2: you know, and cease to exist. But all these minor
Speaker 2: miracles happened in a way that allowed me to live
Speaker 2: and survive. Incredibly thankful for that. And I think that's
Speaker 2: anytime you have like a near death experience, you reflect
Speaker 2: on that, you know. And going back to the military example,
Speaker 2: we have people that you know, when they're in a
Speaker 2: really bad spot, like people pray. So you can't tell
Speaker 2: me one second that you don't believe there's God because
Speaker 2: there's evil. And then when you face with mortality or
Speaker 2: your pray, you pray, you know, like there's a there's
Speaker 2: a conflict there in terms of ideas. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: was incredibly thankful and it just reaffirmed my beliefs and
Speaker 2: also reaffirmed that like there is a bigger plan, bigger,
Speaker 2: bigger picture out there that I'm not aware of.
Speaker 1: And now here you are married, have a little boy. Yep,
Speaker 1: that that is now that you now have because you
Speaker 1: didn't crash into that building that day. So let's run that.
Speaker 1: Let's take that scenario and then run it back through
Speaker 1: the test that we just did. Because this this same
Speaker 1: God that performs the miracles to save you and to
Speaker 1: correct all that, would you say, micro miracles, all the
Speaker 1: small miracles that happened in order for you to not
Speaker 1: hit that building, He's also the same god that allowed
Speaker 1: the landing gear to malfunction. So think about it that way,
Speaker 1: this same God, it would have been easier in our
Speaker 1: in our minds to think, just let the landing gear
Speaker 1: come out normal, then none of this happens. But then
Speaker 1: you and I are not having this conversation, you're not
Speaker 1: reflecting on it. There is no gratefulness or thankfulness in
Speaker 1: your heart that you're thinking about because of the miracles,
Speaker 1: and so by allowing the the evil really of the
Speaker 1: malfunction of the landing gear. This is a small example
Speaker 1: to someone who's who's you know, some of your buddies
Speaker 1: that have lost somewhere I'd seen death. So we don't
Speaker 1: want to compare the two, but it's still a it's
Speaker 1: the same idea that that the malfunction of the aircraft
Speaker 1: and the continued events with the same God allowed them,
Speaker 1: the same God fixed them, the same God care wrecked it,
Speaker 1: and now the same God is drawing in you in
Speaker 1: your heart to reflect on it. Yeah, it's interesting. God
Speaker 1: is not a boring being, Like you don't sit here
Speaker 1: and go man, I've been flying all these years and
Speaker 1: everything was perfect. Yeah. No one goes yeah, I've never
Speaker 1: I've never lost anybody in my family mom, dad's grandpa,
Speaker 1: great grandpa. Everyone's still alive like everything. No one says
Speaker 1: that we walked through life with wounded soldiers. Really, you know,
Speaker 1: just just event after event, and God could have stopped
Speaker 1: all of it. And then we just want to you
Speaker 1: know what do we do. We end up in his
Speaker 1: presence just like hey, what's up? Man? Thanks God? You know, No,
Speaker 1: we go to him and just go you it was you.
Speaker 1: You had me all the whole time. For some reason.
Speaker 1: The plan that he had is for us to walk
Speaker 1: through the valley of the Shadow of Death, and there
Speaker 1: is no other way than to go through that valley.
Speaker 1: That's where we go. That's the path that humans take,
Speaker 1: and no one's immune from it, religious or not, believe
Speaker 1: in God or not, everyone still walks that valley of
Speaker 1: the shadow of Death. Some people walk it alone and
Speaker 1: some people walk it with him. That's the only difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's what was happening. In my mind though, is
Speaker 1: I was thinking you took back off, you missed the building.
Speaker 1: That didn't that only temporaries solved the problem. Don't know
Speaker 1: what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I get airborne. Obviously I knew something was
Speaker 2: catastrophically wrong.
Speaker 1: I know it was. That's the word catastrophic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's catastrophic for sure. So we come back around
Speaker 2: and we don't do anything by ourselves as fighter pilots.
Speaker 2: We have a team of people that help us. You know,
Speaker 2: whether other airplanes are on the ground and flew down
Speaker 2: the runway, have the people in the control tower look
Speaker 2: with the binoculars and they're like, everything looks fine because
Speaker 2: the component that failed really, you know, nothing got bound up.
Speaker 2: It was just like not supporting the weight. So imagine
Speaker 2: like I, you know, put the gear down, or there's
Speaker 2: something in the middle that's broken. It's just not supporting
Speaker 2: the way of the airplane anymore. So to like summarize it,
Speaker 2: they look at nothing's wrong, and we elect to I
Speaker 2: basically don't like to take a cable, which is like
Speaker 2: you said you saw on top going with the land
Speaker 2: on the ships the cable. I'll just tell your cable
Speaker 2: and land land the airplane that way. So the left ear,
Speaker 2: you know, collapsed again the wing topits are own way.
Speaker 2: But I was in the cable at least caught it.
Speaker 2: There were some things I had to do to make
Speaker 2: that happen, but it slowed me to stop and get
Speaker 2: out of the airplane. And uh, yeah it was. It
Speaker 2: was funny because like the crash by rescue guys show up,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a big cloud of dust. Thankfully nothing
Speaker 2: was on fire.
Speaker 1: Was good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and crash for the rest of you guys show
Speaker 2: up and they saw that last part. They didn't see
Speaker 2: the first like off roading bit and like get airborne again.
Speaker 2: It's like, yah, are you okay? Like they had missed
Speaker 2: the whole thing, And I was like, yeah, d I'm fine.
Speaker 2: This jet is not good, you know, like yeah, it's
Speaker 2: just pretty bested up. But yeah, it was that was
Speaker 2: that was an interesting, interesting event.
Speaker 1: You know. Now your new mission, yeah, is to figure
Speaker 1: out why the Lord saved you in that time in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen for this moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's a question I asked myself a lot,
Speaker 2: you know, and thinking.
Speaker 1: Not putting pressure on you. Well, I don't. We could
Speaker 1: talk about it on text as you go back to Vegas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure can, I think, you know, I think it's
Speaker 2: just this constant pursuit of like, how do I how
Speaker 2: do I live in a worthy way?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: How do I help others around me? How do I
Speaker 2: live a good life? And how do I And we've
Speaker 2: all made mistakes. We've all we've all had you know,
Speaker 2: like every's sand everyys had mistakes, Everyone's done all these things, everybody.
Speaker 1: Every single person.
Speaker 2: So the fact that we have a compassionate guy that
Speaker 2: is willing to accept you for those faults and sees
Speaker 2: that you're making amends and working in a positive direction
Speaker 2: to fix things, like that's pretty I'd rather be on
Speaker 2: his team, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does. And the Bible says, the New Newton
Speaker 1: Testament will say very clearly that he accepts you on
Speaker 1: one ground, and that's his son that's what John three
Speaker 1: sixteen should be read as God soul, love the world.
Speaker 1: He gave his only son so that whoever believes in him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's compassionate because he provided away. He gave us.
Speaker 1: He gave away for guilty sinners that have rejected him.
Speaker 1: Like you said, everybody in the world has rejected him,
Speaker 1: and he gave away for those sinners to be reconciled
Speaker 1: to him through his son, who went to the cross
Speaker 1: and died the death that we deserved, saying, look to
Speaker 1: him and you'll be forgiveness. That's the greatest story ever told.
Speaker 2: And I'm really I'm really excited to kind of go
Speaker 2: through that journey again with my son as he grows up,
Speaker 2: like to see it as see it through his eyes
Speaker 2: and see it from that perspective. And I'm sure I'll
Speaker 2: ask thousands of questions.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He's just like I never never thought about that way.
Speaker 2: Let's let's think about that, you know. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 2: excited to go on that journey.
Speaker 1: And fatherhood teaches you a lot about your relationship with
Speaker 1: the father. Absolutely, we're very grateful and very excited this
Speaker 1: next chapter. You know, the previous chapters were good the
Speaker 1: jets are great, but man, I just want to be
Speaker 1: home and hang him and not doing anything, you know,
Speaker 1: like my goal is to make every baseball practice, every
Speaker 1: jiu jitsu match, every music you know recital, Like that's
Speaker 1: so cool. And you'll even take him to the dentist
Speaker 1: occasionally occasionally, Hey, I want to finish with one thing. Yeah, randomly.
Speaker 1: I saw this this morning. I fought, like, you know,
Speaker 1: my daily news, and and I was reading it. I
Speaker 1: was like really early this morning and actually texted him
Speaker 1: and man, but I was like, this is an interesting headline.
Speaker 1: I wish I could discuss this with somebody. Wait and
Speaker 1: wait a second, Josh is gonna be the headline? Is this?
Speaker 1: US Navy loses a sixty million dollar jet at sea
Speaker 1: after it fell overboard from the aircraft carrier. Did you
Speaker 1: read this? I did see that. Yeah, because he did
Speaker 1: the the ship captain did a maneuver and it literally
Speaker 1: threw the jet off the side. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of this? I have.
Speaker 2: I mean I imagine there's some like tie them down
Speaker 2: as well, So I'm not sure if it was tied
Speaker 2: down properly, if it was improperly tied down, I have
Speaker 2: no idea what Obviously I don't speak on half the
Speaker 2: Davy as the air Force, but it's just a tragic
Speaker 2: back like it's like Holy Cow, like we lost an
Speaker 2: airplane that is very difficult to replace, you know. Thankfully
Speaker 2: nobody was hurt, right, but.
Speaker 1: So evidently along with Pharaoh's chariot it's at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the Red Sea. Wow. True with the Egyptian chariots.
Speaker 1: It sits along with an F eighteen Super Hornet. Do
Speaker 1: they go down there and try to get anything.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there'll be some recovery efforts of different pieces,
Speaker 2: like thirty class fight elements. I'm sure they'll try to collect.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't fly F eighteen, so I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: exactly on the airplane that they'll need to recover. But
Speaker 2: anytime we lose a sensitive asset, you we'll try to
Speaker 2: recover as much as we can.
Speaker 1: So they'll send divers down there to get computer assets.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I'm not sure what they'll get, but they'll
Speaker 2: send some rescue teams down there. Some of you laugh
Speaker 2: of the Pharaoh's chariot. I was laughing because we were Uh.
Speaker 2: Lisa and I had this conversation the other day. We're like, how,
Speaker 2: what's your favorite animated movie? And she was like listening
Speaker 2: to stuff, you know, like the nineties, and I was
Speaker 2: like Prince of Egypt, and I was like, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine this moment? It must have just been
Speaker 1: like slow motion, just like I think it's going to
Speaker 1: the jet is going off the side.
Speaker 2: And just yeah, when their videos from like Vietnam where
Speaker 2: they're pushing airplanes and helicopters off the carriers, that's right
Speaker 2: because they couldn't come back with them. I've never I
Speaker 2: haven't heard of anything where like it was an unintentional
Speaker 2: like oops a daisy, that's a pretty big opsidaizy. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm curious to see what happens.
Speaker 1: There's always more to the story, though, you like you
Speaker 1: probably saw headlines of something you were involved with and
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, that one the whole story for sure,
Speaker 1: for sure. Like this just says that there was fire,
Speaker 1: the enemy fire or a threat and so the captain
Speaker 1: turned the ship too hard and the ship tilted and
Speaker 1: F eighteen falls in the water.
Speaker 2: There has to be a little bit there has We
Speaker 2: don't know because you've seen you've probably seen videos of
Speaker 2: like especially like the baring sea and like they're just
Speaker 2: pitching up and down. There's water coming over the deck
Speaker 2: of the ship. That's like washing over the ship. And like, well,
Speaker 2: if they didn't lose an airplane on the carrier dover
Speaker 2: under that, then how do they lose it here? There
Speaker 2: has to be more to the story, So like that's
Speaker 2: why it's harder, Chuck spears until we get the full,
Speaker 2: full story.
Speaker 1: You know, Well there's the answer. That's that's the answer
Speaker 1: we needed. Bro. Thank you so much, man, there's an
Speaker 1: absolute pleasure catching up. Yeah, let's do it again sometimes. God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely appreciate it absolutely. Thanks for joining me on the
Speaker 1: Grangersmith podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could
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