# Navy SEAL Operator: From 9/11 to Fighting ISIS | Joe Taverner

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 9 May 2026, 1 h 29 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/71931854/jope_t_navy_seal_spreaker.mp3

Former Navy SEAL Joe Taverner joins us to discuss his career from joining the Navy before 9/11 to deployments in the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the fight against ISIS. He breaks down hunting Abu Sayyaf in Zamboanga, working with Polish GROM in Baghdad, the Battle of Najaf, and the 2016 Battle of Tel Skuf where Charlie Keating was killed in action. This episode also covers leadership after loss, how the SEAL Teams evolved during the GWOT, and Joe’s current work in directed energy weapons, laser defense, and counter-drone technology. https://www.aureliussystems.com/ Today's Sponsor: Quince⬇️ go to: https://www.quince.com/house for free shipping and 365 day returns GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Blue Chew ⬇️ https://bluechew.com/ Get 1 month free when you buy 2 of BlueChew Gold with code "HOUSECALL" For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ PRE ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 — Start 01:08 — Joining the Navy in 1999 and choosing the SEAL Teams 03:31 — 9/11 during workups and the war becoming real 05:31 — First deployment: the Philippines, Zamboanga, and Abu Sayyaf 10:27 — Hunting Abu Sabaya and the boat interdiction mission 13:24 — From pre-9/11 FID missions to real combat deployments 16:41 — Iraq 2004: working with Polish GROM in Baghdad 19:46 — The Battle of Najaf and fighting through urban combat 24:04 — Iraq 2007: Haditha, partner forces, and the SEAL Teams evolving 31:10 — Afghanistan 2009: Khost, partner forces, and the CIA base attack 36:08 — Afghanistan 2014: the Tangi Valley, firefights, and tribal realities 40:12 — Iraq 2016: Mosul, ISIS, and the Battle of Tel Skuf 48:43 — Charlie Keating killed in action and the medevac under fire 51:13 — Leading after loss: keeping the platoon focused after Charlie’s death 01:04:52 — Transitioning out of the military and finding the next mission 01:07:13 — Directed energy weapons, laser defense, and the future of counter-drone warfare 01:20:31 — TBI, veteran recovery programs, Home Base, and closing thoughts Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hey everyone, this is episode four hundred and ten of
[0:03] Speaker 1: The Team House. My name is Jack Murphy, and we
[0:05] Speaker 1: are here with our guest today, Joe Taverner. He is
[0:08] Speaker 1: a former Navy Sealed the joined the Navy in nineteen
[0:12] Speaker 1: ninety nine, served in Sealed Team one with Deployment Staffghanistan, Iraq, Asia,
[0:17] Speaker 1: Pacific Theater and all the way up to the battle
[0:21] Speaker 1: against ISIS and around twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, and now
[0:25] Speaker 1: works in the private sector working on directed energy defense
[0:29] Speaker 1: systems and other cool gadgets. We're going to talk all
[0:32] Speaker 1: about that stuff in this interview. Joe, thank you for
[0:35] Speaker 1: joining us.
[0:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, glad to be here.
[0:40] Speaker 1: So, Joe, the first question I always ask about your
[0:44] Speaker 1: origin story. If you can tell us a little bit
[0:46] Speaker 1: about you know, your upbringing and why you joined the Navy.
[0:49] Speaker 1: I mean, nineteen ninety nine, America is supposedly at peace
[0:53] Speaker 1: during this timeframe.
[0:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what it was. And just still growing
[1:01] Speaker 2: up for whatever whatever reason it was. You know, I
[1:05] Speaker 2: didn't grow up in a military family. I had an
[1:06] Speaker 2: uncle in Vietnam. My brother had done uh you know,
[1:10] Speaker 2: four years as a as a CV in the Navy
[1:12] Speaker 2: and did everything he could to convince me not to
[1:15] Speaker 2: join on what a horrible idea was. But for you know,
[1:20] Speaker 2: just the growing up, I really felt the desire to
[1:24] Speaker 2: do my part, put in whatever time it was gonna
[1:26] Speaker 2: gonna take, and kind of, you know, I just felt
[1:31] Speaker 2: it was partially kind of my responsibility to serve back
[1:35] Speaker 2: to the country you know that that has protected us
[1:37] Speaker 2: and then everything for us. So at the same time,
[1:39] Speaker 2: I'd grown up as an athlete, you know, I ran
[1:41] Speaker 2: across country and track all way through high school, college
[1:45] Speaker 2: and light kind of the small unit, the teams, the
[1:47] Speaker 2: small group that that is, and work together, account on
[1:50] Speaker 2: each other. So when I kind of decided, yeah, I'm
[1:54] Speaker 2: gonna I'm gonna enlist, I'm gonna serve after college, I
[1:58] Speaker 2: wanted it to be with a with a great group,
[2:00] Speaker 2: a great team and you know, unit that I could
[2:03] Speaker 2: count on to be there. So I enlisted in July
[2:07] Speaker 2: of ninety nine, after I had graduated in June, with
[2:10] Speaker 2: a contract to go to BUDS. So I went through
[2:14] Speaker 2: boot camp a school and then immediately checked in the
[2:17] Speaker 2: Buds in January of two thousand.
[2:19] Speaker 1: Where did you know, I'm just curious, you know, in
[2:22] Speaker 1: the growing up in the nineteen nineties. How did you
[2:24] Speaker 1: even know about the Navy seals? How did that come
[2:26] Speaker 1: up on your radar as a young man.
[2:30] Speaker 2: Well, so I spent three years as an engineering major,
[2:34] Speaker 2: but graduated with history. So I'd always loved history. I
[2:38] Speaker 2: loved reading a lot. I read a lot of Vietnam books,
[2:41] Speaker 2: World War two, and and just through kind of that
[2:46] Speaker 2: avid reading and just researching on history, I had learned about,
[2:51] Speaker 2: you know, both the army as well. But for whatever reason,
[2:53] Speaker 2: it was the the sealed teams that kind of resonated
[2:57] Speaker 2: my eye a little bit more, right, resonated a little
[2:59] Speaker 2: bit more.
[2:59] Speaker 3: And so that's the direction I decided to go.
[3:04] Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about you know, if
[3:08] Speaker 1: I'm looking at my notes, here, were you at buds
[3:11] Speaker 1: when nine to eleven happened?
[3:14] Speaker 2: No, when nine to eleven happened, I was, Uh, we
[3:16] Speaker 2: were doing a work up.
[3:18] Speaker 3: It was actually up in Saint Clemente.
[3:21] Speaker 2: We were doing assults training at Camp Pendleton, and woke
[3:25] Speaker 2: up in the morning and turned on the news.
[3:26] Speaker 3: And the first tower had already been struck.
[3:30] Speaker 2: And you know, I'm sitting there watching the news trying
[3:32] Speaker 2: to figure out, like, what's the deal, what's going on
[3:35] Speaker 2: and you know, watch watch the second plane impact that
[3:40] Speaker 2: you know, the second tower, and knew the second of
[3:43] Speaker 2: that happened.
[3:44] Speaker 3: That everything just changed that you.
[3:45] Speaker 2: Know, the training we're doing, everything got very real very quickly.
[3:51] Speaker 1: What kind of orders or what kind of information was
[3:53] Speaker 1: coming down from high to the to you guys at
[3:56] Speaker 1: the team level, at the platoon level.
[3:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, was there wasn't a I think initially, at least,
[4:03] Speaker 2: there wasn't really a lot going on. The initial you know,
[4:07] Speaker 2: we were up at Pendleton, like I said, doing a
[4:09] Speaker 2: much of work. But I know that that night I
[4:12] Speaker 2: got called back because you know, you're the new guy,
[4:14] Speaker 2: so you get to go do security and we had
[4:17] Speaker 2: you know, machine gun nests up on all the roofs,
[4:19] Speaker 2: and you know, security was crazy. Trying to get back
[4:21] Speaker 2: on Pendlton the next morning took a significant amount of time.
[4:26] Speaker 2: But at that point, I think the focus was pretty
[4:30] Speaker 2: drastically shifted. I should say.
[4:32] Speaker 3: It wasn't like, hey, this is all fun. Now we're
[4:34] Speaker 3: just going to go and do whatever.
[4:35] Speaker 2: Now it's like, okay, this is like very very serious.
[4:41] Speaker 2: Pretty quickly afterwards, I think that you know, the realization
[4:44] Speaker 2: of what had really happened and taken place. You see that,
[4:46] Speaker 2: you saw the Pennsylvania and the Pentagon and everything else
[4:51] Speaker 2: that happened, and you started getting some of the intel
[4:54] Speaker 2: back of you know, the responsibility and what happened in
[4:58] Speaker 2: the direction we were going to go, I think as
[5:00] Speaker 2: a as a nation.
[5:03] Speaker 1: And then your first deployment was actually to the Philippines
[5:07] Speaker 1: rather than Afghanistan or Iraq that was coming down the line.
[5:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. We had kind of already had some
[5:14] Speaker 2: some groups set up. They did pull from all multiplatoons
[5:19] Speaker 2: to kind of create some additional units going through Afghanistan
[5:22] Speaker 2: as well, but my specific platoon we had already kind
[5:26] Speaker 2: of been designated. Uh and so the Philippines, it was
[5:30] Speaker 2: so off week there we were in yeah, two thousand
[5:33] Speaker 2: and two in Southern Philippines, down down in zambo.
[5:38] Speaker 3: And I think we'd you know, kind of mentioned the.
[5:42] Speaker 2: There had been a lot of planning done, a lot
[5:43] Speaker 2: of a lot of the initial planning for you know,
[5:49] Speaker 2: with the Taliban and and well all Kainda I should say,
[5:54] Speaker 2: I guess the planning from Aakada and what they had
[5:56] Speaker 2: done over the Philippines and Indonesia in that role that
[5:59] Speaker 2: that that had in the attack on the Twin towers,
[6:04] Speaker 2: and so even though we were over in the Philippines instead,
[6:07] Speaker 2: there definitely was still a feeling that it was still
[6:09] Speaker 2: an important place and a place that we needed to
[6:11] Speaker 2: get control of.
[6:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, do you want to leigh out kind of like
[6:14] Speaker 1: the situation in two thousand and two in zambo because
[6:21] Speaker 1: you know, at that time, especially anything any international terrorist
[6:26] Speaker 1: group that even remotely touched Al Qaeda or like money
[6:29] Speaker 1: terror terror money coming out of the Middle East, it
[6:32] Speaker 1: was like game on at that point.
[6:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. And we had a great working relationship
[6:38] Speaker 2: there with a lot of the the Filipinos, you know,
[6:42] Speaker 2: special Forces, the Seals, the mass Off guys, and then
[6:45] Speaker 2: a lot of their other intelligence groups, and so we
[6:49] Speaker 2: helped a lot of targeting. We were actively very involved
[6:53] Speaker 2: in the Obously group and Abbasabaya the turn into the
[7:00] Speaker 2: operation to eliminate him, to take him off the battlefield,
[7:02] Speaker 2: as he was one of the big leaders of kind
[7:05] Speaker 2: of that movement in the southern Philippines. So it was
[7:08] Speaker 2: the great mission to be part of. When I went
[7:11] Speaker 2: back to the Philippines years later, part of ob is
[7:13] Speaker 2: by his boat was still up on the wall there
[7:16] Speaker 2: in the Marine Corps Museum.
[7:18] Speaker 3: So it was kind of an interesting thing to see
[7:20] Speaker 3: to get.
[7:20] Speaker 2: To go back and talk to the commidant of the
[7:21] Speaker 2: Marine Corps and explain how I had been a part
[7:24] Speaker 2: of that mission that is now at you know, up
[7:27] Speaker 2: on the wall along with Sabia's sunglasses.
[7:30] Speaker 1: A boot Sabaiah, if I recall correct, though he was
[7:33] Speaker 1: like their propagandist. Was that that was his primary job.
[7:37] Speaker 2: That was a big part of what he did. He
[7:38] Speaker 2: was the definitely kind of the larger than life figure.
[7:42] Speaker 2: You know, he was kind of a key person for
[7:43] Speaker 2: the obvious saf group, but it definitely was you know,
[7:47] Speaker 2: he was he was kind of the figurehead for sure
[7:49] Speaker 2: that was on the news, that larger than life person
[7:53] Speaker 2: always you know, h representing I guess the Terriers organization,
[7:58] Speaker 2: even though I think at that point for him and
[8:00] Speaker 2: a lot of what they did was kidnapping, this kidnapping
[8:02] Speaker 2: for ransom, just being involved, you know, in having that
[8:07] Speaker 2: prior connection to kind of put a huge, huge target
[8:11] Speaker 2: on their back for us.
[8:14] Speaker 1: I remember talking to some of the retired Filipino like colonels,
[8:18] Speaker 1: Marine Corps colonels, you know, smoking a cigarette like a
[8:21] Speaker 1: bousabaya was very noisy, it instant, it like come out there.
[8:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, they you know, they had kidnapped a lot of
[8:32] Speaker 2: I think one of the things that definitely did not
[8:34] Speaker 2: help him, and he was started kidnapping you know, Americans,
[8:38] Speaker 2: other people that wasn't you had missionaries exactly. It wasn't
[8:42] Speaker 2: just uh, you know, wealthy Filipinos anymore. The Burnhams Martha
[8:49] Speaker 2: and yeah Burnham trying to think what her husband's name is.
[8:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, the husband was sadly killed in the rescue attempt,
[8:56] Speaker 1: if I recall correctly.
[8:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. But but we were there for the rescue
[9:02] Speaker 2: for for her, and it was.
[9:04] Speaker 3: One of my medics that escorted her from.
[9:05] Speaker 2: That rescue back oh really through northern through northern the Philippines,
[9:09] Speaker 2: then back to Japan.
[9:11] Speaker 1: Did you ever did you buy chance work with a
[9:13] Speaker 1: CIA officer named Kent Clisby.
[9:17] Speaker 3: I don't recall the names of some things.
[9:20] Speaker 2: I wish I could recall all of the names of
[9:22] Speaker 2: the people we worked with, but it's very possible Kent.
[9:24] Speaker 1: Kent sent me a picture of her coming off the
[9:28] Speaker 1: helicopter that he took, so it must have been yeah, yeah, yeah,
[9:34] Speaker 1: Kent Kent. We did a previous interview with Kent many
[9:37] Speaker 1: years ago. Now, if you guys, go deep, deep into
[9:39] Speaker 1: the archives of this podcast, you'll find, uh the interview
[9:43] Speaker 1: with Kent Clsby very interesting to hear his point of view.
[9:45] Speaker 1: And actually another guy, Ron Mohler, who was an agency
[9:51] Speaker 1: may have been Air branch at that time. We have
[9:54] Speaker 1: a couple of interviews with him where he was watching
[9:56] Speaker 1: the whole operation unfold on the drone feed. But Joe,
[10:01] Speaker 1: I mean, can you tell us about it from your perspective,
[10:03] Speaker 1: what you experienced and what you saw.
[10:06] Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. But also I will say that throughout the
[10:10] Speaker 2: multiple decades of working with with the agency, very rarely
[10:13] Speaker 2: did you get an actual first name.
[10:15] Speaker 4: Or real name.
[10:15] Speaker 2: Yeah people, Yeah, uh yeah. So I guess going back
[10:22] Speaker 2: to that operation itself, though we had gotten information about
[10:28] Speaker 2: Sabayah wanting to move. He was getting he was getting
[10:31] Speaker 2: kind of pinned down, getting cornered. He needed he needed
[10:34] Speaker 2: to get kind of pulled out and trying to move
[10:37] Speaker 2: to a different island through one of his contacts that
[10:42] Speaker 2: ran a lot of his financing.
[10:44] Speaker 3: We knew where that was and he was going to
[10:45] Speaker 3: be the one to go in the boat.
[10:46] Speaker 2: So we we kind of put some of our own
[10:50] Speaker 2: or the Filipino I should say, mission forced a couple
[10:54] Speaker 2: of their guys on that boat along with some some
[10:57] Speaker 2: tracking strokes, and then we followed them in. So we
[10:59] Speaker 2: had had, uh you know, a couple of our ribs,
[11:02] Speaker 2: a couple of the Filipino ribs as well, and then
[11:06] Speaker 2: like you mentioned, we had the ISR flying overhead, uh
[11:09] Speaker 2: trot kind of tracking behind. So we moved up the
[11:12] Speaker 2: coastline under darkness, and then right as first light was
[11:15] Speaker 2: kind of getting ready to come up, called him into
[11:18] Speaker 2: the shore. So they went in and picked them up.
[11:19] Speaker 2: And then as soon as that boat got far enough offshore,
[11:24] Speaker 2: the two naps off our naps out boats moved in
[11:28] Speaker 2: the intercept if you want to call it intercept with
[11:32] Speaker 2: with a lot of guns blazing, and it turned into
[11:34] Speaker 2: a pretty interesting little firefight there that it lasted not
[11:37] Speaker 2: not too long as they ran over the boat and uh.
[11:40] Speaker 3: Splintered it in the pieces pretty quickly.
[11:43] Speaker 1: And uh the fate of Sabaya himself. He went into
[11:47] Speaker 1: the water, didn't they yay?
[11:49] Speaker 3: So he went into the water.
[11:50] Speaker 2: And again every person it was on that initial boat
[11:54] Speaker 2: loves to claim credit for filing or for firing the
[11:57] Speaker 2: fatal shots. They pulled out his glasses and again pieces
[12:02] Speaker 2: of the boats, but that was one of the bodies
[12:05] Speaker 2: that was never pulled out. They did find a couple
[12:07] Speaker 2: of other bodies, but not his. It was never recovered.
[12:11] Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right.
[12:13] Speaker 1: There are all kinds of war stories people saying they
[12:15] Speaker 1: got his nineteen eleven and stuff. It's like, okay, yeah,
[12:26] Speaker 1: so it was NAVSOG, the Filipino Seals, you know that
[12:30] Speaker 1: you were partnered with. They're also the Filipino Marine Corps
[12:34] Speaker 1: was pretty involved in that operation too.
[12:35] Speaker 4: I believe they had.
[12:37] Speaker 2: A lot of the support out there. After we pulled
[12:40] Speaker 2: them off, they did the recovery of all of the equipment.
[12:42] Speaker 2: They also did the transfer of the people that were
[12:45] Speaker 2: pulled out, all kind of went under their boats, and
[12:48] Speaker 2: then they yeah, kind of did a lot of the
[12:51] Speaker 2: recovery of whatever was left the situation and kind of
[12:54] Speaker 2: an SSC, if you will.
[12:56] Speaker 1: What was that sort of like for you guys in
[12:59] Speaker 1: Zambo I mean, prior to nine to eleven, being deployed
[13:02] Speaker 1: to Guama the Philippines was kind of like not exactly
[13:05] Speaker 1: a hardship tour for a seal platoon I imagine, But
[13:08] Speaker 1: now now you're in combat, I mean, this is real.
[13:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I mean I guess you're still thinking
[13:17] Speaker 2: though of like all of your other buddies that are
[13:19] Speaker 2: in getting you know, I can understand at the time,
[13:21] Speaker 2: and they're they're getting after a little bit a little
[13:23] Speaker 2: bit differently. It still is very real, you know, there's
[13:26] Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of gunfire going on. There's
[13:29] Speaker 2: you've obviously got the bodies all over that you're trying
[13:31] Speaker 2: to help recovery, help recover. We talked about the the
[13:37] Speaker 2: mission with the with the Burnhams as well, so I
[13:40] Speaker 2: think you do feel that you're very active before that.
[13:43] Speaker 2: I think most of the people in the teams would
[13:46] Speaker 2: have seen the deployment to like Sri Lanka where you
[13:48] Speaker 2: were doing some live fit as kind of like the
[13:52] Speaker 2: the higher end missions, you know, and you weren't really
[13:54] Speaker 2: doing anything.
[13:54] Speaker 3: You're just training.
[13:56] Speaker 2: You're training the Sri Lankans and getting them to go
[14:00] Speaker 2: training them out, you know, to go fight the TMIL tigers.
[14:02] Speaker 3: And this was completely different, you know all.
[14:06] Speaker 2: I think when you talked to some of the older
[14:08] Speaker 2: guys at that point, they we had one person that
[14:11] Speaker 2: had done Desert Storm and that was about it. There
[14:16] Speaker 2: was very very little experience, you know, and they talked
[14:19] Speaker 2: about when they were new guys when they were young,
[14:21] Speaker 2: and their older guys that had all been like the
[14:23] Speaker 2: Vietnam guys. So you're looking at the guys from like
[14:25] Speaker 2: the early eighties that are now in there, you know,
[14:27] Speaker 2: been in the teams for twenty plus years, and how
[14:30] Speaker 2: they were in the early eighties with the Vietnam vets
[14:33] Speaker 2: having all that experience and they've got nothing. And so
[14:36] Speaker 2: I think that that was just that transition period going
[14:39] Speaker 2: from the early two thousands through you know, mid you know,
[14:43] Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, twenty ten, and just that that
[14:45] Speaker 2: growth and wealth of experience in development and the teams
[14:49] Speaker 2: and really the military in general.
[14:53] Speaker 4: Did you you did Sri Lanka too?
[14:56] Speaker 2: I did not do a Sri Lanka as the platoon
[14:58] Speaker 2: that I joined, they had to Sri Lanka the previous deployment,
[15:01] Speaker 2: so that was their big experience from from their previous deployment.
[15:05] Speaker 3: Was talking about Sri Lanka.
[15:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask because this again before
[15:09] Speaker 1: nine to eleven, Sri Lanka was like that was like
[15:11] Speaker 1: a very kind of like closely held secret that we
[15:15] Speaker 1: had special forces and seals over there training those guys.
[15:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't really talked about a
[15:22] Speaker 2: whole lot, but it was it was at least it
[15:26] Speaker 2: was some pretty decent action and a good a good
[15:30] Speaker 2: place to hone skills.
[15:31] Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[15:33] Speaker 2: My yeah. I was just gonna say, my my father
[15:39] Speaker 2: in law actually he was a pharmacist and he spent
[15:42] Speaker 2: a lot of time over in Sri Lanka for the
[15:45] Speaker 2: army as a lieutenant colonel. He ended up getting to
[15:49] Speaker 2: the point that he had been over in Sri Lanka
[15:52] Speaker 2: so many times that he was like the person the
[15:56] Speaker 2: locals trusted and the rest of the military wasn't even
[15:59] Speaker 2: able to get in the locate unless he was there
[16:00] Speaker 2: to help like coordinate and work with him because that's
[16:04] Speaker 2: who they trusted.
[16:05] Speaker 1: Was Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
[16:10] Speaker 4: Oh uh So then I two things.
[16:16] Speaker 1: I mean, you go, I assume you're going back to
[16:19] Speaker 1: the United States, getting doing going through another work up,
[16:22] Speaker 1: and this time you're getting ready for Iraq.
[16:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, so now we're looking at Baghdad in two thousand
[16:28] Speaker 2: and four. Definitely an interesting time. You know, we spent
[16:34] Speaker 2: three months just doing assaults there, working with the Polish
[16:38] Speaker 2: from which is a fun time. And then we got
[16:44] Speaker 2: tasked with taking over the PSD mission, so we did
[16:47] Speaker 2: three months basically, you know, it was a protection detail
[16:51] Speaker 2: for the Iraqi leadership and then right towards the NA
[16:55] Speaker 2: also got to go to the assault on on a
[16:58] Speaker 2: joff the city of Ona Joft, which which was an
[17:01] Speaker 2: interesting time as well.
[17:03] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[17:04] Speaker 1: Well, I mean, let's start off, I mean, what was
[17:06] Speaker 1: it like working with the Polish Grom.
[17:09] Speaker 2: The Polish Grom were a lot of fun to work with.
[17:12] Speaker 2: They are They're yeah, they're They're a great group. They're
[17:17] Speaker 2: very well trained, very professional. It can be a little
[17:19] Speaker 2: on the crazy side, but you know, I mean that's
[17:22] Speaker 2: that's their mission. They're they're a national asset for those
[17:24] Speaker 2: guys there for Poland. You know, they are one of
[17:27] Speaker 2: those groups that can work with in the country and outside.
[17:30] Speaker 2: So uh, you know, I mentioned that later I went
[17:34] Speaker 2: back and did the assault of on the JOF. I
[17:37] Speaker 2: was the j tech and communicator for the for the
[17:42] Speaker 2: Grom sniper group that I was with, So I was
[17:44] Speaker 2: the only American and I was with the team of
[17:46] Speaker 2: like about I think we had about eight Grom with us.
[17:49] Speaker 2: So after that, I've got my it's in one of
[17:54] Speaker 2: these boxes here, but my honorary official GRAM certification in
[17:59] Speaker 2: my coin and all other stuff. So I think I'm
[18:01] Speaker 2: official GROM number number twenty eight or twenty seven back
[18:06] Speaker 2: in two thousand and four. So I don't know how
[18:08] Speaker 2: many there are now, but at that point there'd only
[18:09] Speaker 2: been you know, less than thirty.
[18:12] Speaker 4: Yeah, that's unreal.
[18:15] Speaker 1: It's interesting to read about the Polish and how like
[18:19] Speaker 1: the CIA formed a very close partnership with them after
[18:23] Speaker 1: the wall came down, and then and then our militaries
[18:26] Speaker 1: did too. I guess it's just a cultural thing that
[18:28] Speaker 1: we have a lot in common with them.
[18:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, they I think just the attitude they had everything
[18:35] Speaker 2: just really aligns well with with the soft groups. You know.
[18:39] Speaker 2: I guess most most soft elements that I've worked with
[18:41] Speaker 2: throughout the years, be it the the SAS or SBS,
[18:45] Speaker 2: the cans off with Canada, you know, same with the GROAM.
[18:50] Speaker 2: It's always kind of a great working relationship. There's always
[18:56] Speaker 2: a little bit of a you know, like who's better
[18:58] Speaker 2: we got to you know, fellow, but it's healthy, it's
[19:01] Speaker 2: in a good way. It's not.
[19:03] Speaker 3: There's always just a lot of support.
[19:04] Speaker 2: You're always there to help cover each other, to support
[19:06] Speaker 2: each other and to figure out, you know, like hey,
[19:08] Speaker 2: what can we do to help take care of you.
[19:10] Speaker 2: You're there for a cure after the other one, whatever
[19:15] Speaker 2: it needs to be, You're always there to support.
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[23:36] Speaker 4: Bye well, tell us about the NAJAFF operation.
[23:43] Speaker 2: Then oh yeah, so in onodof on that had been
[23:52] Speaker 2: Basically it was kind of a big holdout spot right
[23:54] Speaker 2: for a lot of a lot of terrorists, and the
[23:57] Speaker 2: Marines actually led that off defensive, basically had the whole
[24:01] Speaker 2: city of Avona draft surrounded, uh going in and uh
[24:08] Speaker 2: they it was a it was a pretty good dog
[24:12] Speaker 2: fight for for multiple days.
[24:14] Speaker 3: For actually it was a little.
[24:15] Speaker 2: Over I think uh we were there for about two weeks.
[24:18] Speaker 2: It was a little bit longer than that total. And
[24:23] Speaker 2: that was one of those spots where initially, at least
[24:25] Speaker 2: the ROI or the uh yeah rules of engagements the
[24:28] Speaker 2: ro O s were were literally given to us of
[24:31] Speaker 2: like there was nobody good in the city.
[24:32] Speaker 3: If you see anybody moving, you can shoot them.
[24:34] Speaker 4: Holy sh uh.
[24:37] Speaker 3: It was like that was that's what you were given.
[24:39] Speaker 2: And then sometimes you would find some people that you're like,
[24:41] Speaker 2: that is definitely not got to like a kid or whatever,
[24:43] Speaker 2: and you've got to you've got to you know, hopefully
[24:46] Speaker 2: have that that moral decision making ability to not engage. Uh.
[24:52] Speaker 2: But ther the ro O s were clear like if
[24:54] Speaker 2: there was anybody there, we have told them over and
[24:56] Speaker 2: over again, and this is now an open city, like
[24:58] Speaker 2: anybody moving s free game.
[25:02] Speaker 4: How did that kind of Operation unfold.
[25:06] Speaker 2: We we just slowly, slowly, slowly started moving, you know,
[25:09] Speaker 2: into the into the center of the city. I think, uh,
[25:12] Speaker 2: you know, I'm glad that I wasn't on the other
[25:13] Speaker 2: side where they had the cemeteries, because they had a
[25:16] Speaker 2: lot of a lot of movement, and as the Marines
[25:18] Speaker 2: were moving through and trying to throw the cemetery, they
[25:20] Speaker 2: had just dug in a lot of tunnels and they
[25:23] Speaker 2: were just moving and popping up behind, popping up behind,
[25:27] Speaker 2: you know, anything they could find. And that was a
[25:32] Speaker 2: tough movement. On our side, it was just straight urban warfare.
[25:35] Speaker 2: We got stuck into a couple of big buildings. They
[25:39] Speaker 2: got been down a few different times.
[25:42] Speaker 3: There's a.
[25:45] Speaker 2: First time that I think, at least for me, where
[25:48] Speaker 2: you know, we were just completely pinned down in a building.
[25:50] Speaker 2: There's nowhere that we were going. Uh. You got to
[25:54] Speaker 2: low crawl up to the front to you know, engage
[25:57] Speaker 2: a couple of people, and then you're just you're just
[26:00] Speaker 2: do an urban movement, doing whatever you can to break
[26:02] Speaker 2: contact and get out of there. Because you know, at
[26:06] Speaker 2: that point I had a small group of grom I
[26:07] Speaker 2: had two ARMYSF guys with me doing this movement piece,
[26:10] Speaker 2: and we were just stuck and there was there was nowhere,
[26:14] Speaker 2: nowhere else that you're going, so uh, real quickly you
[26:18] Speaker 2: learn that, Okay, we got to count on, count on
[26:21] Speaker 2: your ability and your training. Move fast, don't don't stop.
[26:26] Speaker 4: So how do you fight your way out?
[26:30] Speaker 2: Uh? You know that's basically what we did. You figure
[26:33] Speaker 2: out where they are. We put in a two person
[26:36] Speaker 2: blocking you know, some sort of a blocking team, like okay,
[26:38] Speaker 2: I need you doing you know, I need you to
[26:40] Speaker 2: engage this building, this building, because even at that point,
[26:42] Speaker 2: at a couple hundred meters, you're like, I think they're
[26:44] Speaker 2: in that window, but they could be in that window,
[26:46] Speaker 2: and either way they were moving in on our position.
[26:49] Speaker 2: So we couldn't stay. You know, at that point it
[26:51] Speaker 2: was like we gotta move or we're gonna be done.
[26:53] Speaker 2: So we put a couple of blocking positions in moved
[26:57] Speaker 2: down about.
[26:58] Speaker 3: A blockdown is where we had to get to you.
[27:00] Speaker 3: So just did kind of.
[27:02] Speaker 2: A rolling like real contact basically rolling brake contact drill,
[27:10] Speaker 2: just like you would in any sort of your workup cycle. Uh,
[27:13] Speaker 2: and more or less just moving down an alley or
[27:16] Speaker 2: a street is there's nowhere else to go, we thought
[27:19] Speaker 2: we'd be able to get out the back, but it
[27:21] Speaker 2: was a solid there was no no exit through that
[27:24] Speaker 2: through that that direction, so we had to move down
[27:26] Speaker 2: the down the front of the street right into an
[27:29] Speaker 2: open courtyard, which was not very fun, for about fifty
[27:32] Speaker 2: meters to get to an alley that then we could
[27:34] Speaker 2: escape back towards the towards friendly forces.
[27:40] Speaker 4: What was kind of the result of that battle? That
[27:42] Speaker 4: was it? The Marines signed up clearing the city basically.
[27:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, so they finally called a true spire a ceasefire
[27:49] Speaker 2: and they and more or less surrendered and gave up
[27:52] Speaker 2: the city. So that kind of ended it at that point,
[27:57] Speaker 2: but it took yeah, they it was.
[27:59] Speaker 3: It was a big holdout spot for for a while.
[28:03] Speaker 4: And you rotated back to Iraq in two thousand and seven.
[28:07] Speaker 2: Yes, yes, So back to Iraq in two thousand and
[28:09] Speaker 2: seven over in Naditha. Again it was a lot a
[28:12] Speaker 2: lot quieter at that point, but it was still it
[28:17] Speaker 2: was still a good a good tour, so we had
[28:20] Speaker 2: a lot of good mobility, a lot longer trips heading
[28:24] Speaker 2: out towards the Syrian border and doing some clearance operations
[28:28] Speaker 2: out there. So I think it really at that point,
[28:32] Speaker 2: you're starting to see a lot of the SLPs that
[28:36] Speaker 2: had been built over the previous you know, five or
[28:37] Speaker 2: six years really starting to take place, really starting to
[28:40] Speaker 2: take hold. So you've got at that point, you know,
[28:43] Speaker 2: all of your mobility training and all of these that
[28:46] Speaker 2: had been like we're just figuring it out. No. Four.
[28:48] Speaker 2: By time to get back those seven, a lot of
[28:50] Speaker 2: these things are really ironed out. So that was one
[28:52] Speaker 2: thing you definitely noticed. But Western Iraq out there, at
[28:56] Speaker 2: least for the most part, was a lot quieter than
[28:59] Speaker 2: I think that what we were expecting.
[29:01] Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
[29:04] Speaker 1: It's like a lot of like tribal areas and small
[29:06] Speaker 1: villages out that way. Were you guys by this time,
[29:10] Speaker 1: was it mostly like doing HVT strikes or was it
[29:13] Speaker 1: already sort of like working with a partner force and
[29:16] Speaker 1: kind of trying to get them out.
[29:17] Speaker 2: There you're pushing. We were building at this point, we
[29:21] Speaker 2: were building like our local swat force team, kind of
[29:25] Speaker 2: a local militsier military and then we would use them
[29:28] Speaker 2: to kind of try to partner and then as there
[29:31] Speaker 2: would be like a larger operation that they would want
[29:33] Speaker 2: to go to a clearance of a lot of times
[29:35] Speaker 2: it would be with a conventional unit that we would
[29:38] Speaker 2: team up with and they would maybe have a larger
[29:41] Speaker 2: movement and we would kind of have a small piece
[29:44] Speaker 2: within kind of a larger operation that they had planned.
[29:49] Speaker 1: And as far as like how the seal platoons had
[29:53] Speaker 1: evolved over time, were I mean, as I recall, what
[29:58] Speaker 1: is a seal team like something like sixteen guys that
[30:00] Speaker 1: you started deploying like two platoons together as one kind
[30:04] Speaker 1: of action element.
[30:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, so initially we had sixteen guys. There was two
[30:10] Speaker 2: squads of eight basically a mirror image of each other.
[30:14] Speaker 3: Slowly over the years by.
[30:16] Speaker 2: The time we get up a few years later after this,
[30:18] Speaker 2: even a lot of times you're looking at twenty four
[30:21] Speaker 2: people got twenty five people. There was just too much
[30:25] Speaker 2: going on for one sixty man platoon to manage. And
[30:29] Speaker 2: then they made the task element, like you're saying, so
[30:31] Speaker 2: the task element kind of has shifted. A couple of
[30:35] Speaker 2: times there was two platoons, and it was three platoons,
[30:37] Speaker 2: and it's two platoons again. They still haven't I don't
[30:41] Speaker 2: think as of last year it was supposed to go.
[30:43] Speaker 3: Back to two platoons.
[30:43] Speaker 2: I think total, but you know, it's really kind of
[30:46] Speaker 2: like an AOB or an AOB light type of a
[30:50] Speaker 2: group led by an O four, you know element. So
[30:55] Speaker 2: when we were there in two thousand and seven, actually
[30:57] Speaker 2: basically are un or our troop commander at that point
[31:02] Speaker 2: as AN four, I think he probably had the size
[31:06] Speaker 2: of what previous that would have been an entire seal
[31:08] Speaker 2: team that he was in charge of.
[31:09] Speaker 3: So we had four platoons.
[31:11] Speaker 2: I think he had three odas and he had another
[31:15] Speaker 2: not a marstock team, but he did have another like
[31:17] Speaker 2: civil affairs or something else that he was responsible for.
[31:20] Speaker 2: So it is a pretty big size element for an
[31:23] Speaker 2: O four and out of all asad.
[31:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, the machines getting rolling there and let's see you're
[31:32] Speaker 1: going back home. I mean, I guess before we jump
[31:35] Speaker 1: over to Afghanistan, do you have anything else you want
[31:39] Speaker 1: to mention about how you saw the seal teams kind
[31:41] Speaker 1: of evolve through the War on Terror and some of
[31:43] Speaker 1: the things that changed as you got deeper into the conflict.
[31:47] Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if the timing was just if
[31:52] Speaker 2: it just a line correctly or what, but you know,
[31:54] Speaker 2: prior to really two thousand and two, we did what
[31:57] Speaker 2: was called a big we did a force optimization thing
[32:01] Speaker 2: at that point, where before that it was each team
[32:04] Speaker 2: would deploy two sealed teams at a time, so you
[32:07] Speaker 2: had and that was only with six sealed teams, So
[32:09] Speaker 2: he had six six platoons deploying at a time from
[32:13] Speaker 2: the West coast, six platoons from the East coast. Uh,
[32:16] Speaker 2: and that was that was it. And right at that
[32:20] Speaker 2: time with force optimization, they wanted to have an O
[32:24] Speaker 2: five headquarters along with kind of the troop headquarters be
[32:27] Speaker 2: able to deploy to represent the team. And that just
[32:30] Speaker 2: happened to align, you know, well with the beginning of
[32:35] Speaker 2: the war. So you saw going from two platoons, you know,
[32:39] Speaker 2: with two three's running the platoons, to all of a
[32:42] Speaker 2: sudden you'd be deployed and you'd have a national five headquarters,
[32:45] Speaker 2: no four headquarters. And I think that that ability to
[32:48] Speaker 2: manage the teams also led to a lot more of
[32:51] Speaker 2: the advanced intelligence and the intelligence package, the development of
[32:55] Speaker 2: the sorts or the sense of activity teams initially uh.
[33:00] Speaker 2: And it really allowed at least from the NSW side,
[33:05] Speaker 2: for the teams in the community to grow and to
[33:08] Speaker 2: become kind of a much more fordable, yeah, kind of
[33:14] Speaker 2: piece of the battlefield. As you've got that entire operating engine,
[33:18] Speaker 2: the intelligence engine, the operators, you can fully develop a
[33:22] Speaker 2: target package instead of waiting for some other sort of
[33:28] Speaker 2: stiegea soda agency, whoever it is, whoever it was, to
[33:32] Speaker 2: just bring you that target package.
[33:34] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[33:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, the intelligence capabilities exploded. And also I mean the
[33:39] Speaker 1: equipment and the gear, and quite frankly, the amount of
[33:42] Speaker 1: money I think that was coming to these units was
[33:44] Speaker 1: also pretty amazing. I remember talking to a guy he
[33:48] Speaker 1: was a sealed during the nineteen seventies, and he's like,
[33:51] Speaker 1: all we had back then was a snorkel, flippers and
[33:54] Speaker 1: a k bar knife and your UDT shorts and that
[33:56] Speaker 1: was about it.
[33:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. If you look at even early the
[34:02] Speaker 2: two thousand and four deployment, when we were there and
[34:05] Speaker 2: you're driving around Bagdad, you know, and you had you know,
[34:07] Speaker 2: rout Michigan Route Irish whatever and everything that was going
[34:09] Speaker 2: on there, we were driving around and thin skin humdies
[34:12] Speaker 2: with no doors and you had, you know, you had.
[34:16] Speaker 3: Just machine guns everywhere.
[34:17] Speaker 2: You'd have a fifty kel or something up top, and
[34:20] Speaker 2: then you'd have both of the back seats had some
[34:22] Speaker 2: sort of a saw at the back of the Humby
[34:24] Speaker 2: had two more. Uh so you're just driving around. You
[34:27] Speaker 2: look like a porcupine with guns just everywhere, running rails
[34:31] Speaker 2: on the side. So as you're rolling up to the target,
[34:33] Speaker 2: guys are like jumping off and instantly either entering the
[34:36] Speaker 2: target or get you ready to enter a target. And
[34:38] Speaker 2: then you look even just to two thousand and seven,
[34:41] Speaker 2: just with all of the id's and the development that way.
[34:44] Speaker 2: Now you're in you know, armored vehicles and humbi's and
[34:47] Speaker 2: then soon after that you've got your mat bees or
[34:49] Speaker 2: your strikers or whatever else you're driving around on. So
[34:52] Speaker 2: I think as you talk about the technology, it's also
[34:55] Speaker 2: the safety and security. Is it changed a lot? You
[34:59] Speaker 2: know after just the four or five years of kind
[35:01] Speaker 2: of continual combat.
[35:04] Speaker 1: And then you get over to Afghanistan in two thousand
[35:08] Speaker 1: and nine. What was that first trip to Afghanistan?
[35:11] Speaker 2: Like you're, I mean, it's just different, right, You're. I've
[35:17] Speaker 2: been used to Iraq and you're in especially western Iraq.
[35:20] Speaker 2: It's flat, there's nothing out there. And now I'm pretty
[35:23] Speaker 2: far east close to the you know, Pakistan border.
[35:27] Speaker 3: It's mountains everywhere. It's you're at altitude.
[35:30] Speaker 2: You know, you're you landing initially in baff whatever, but
[35:32] Speaker 2: then get a ride out to our little fob and
[35:37] Speaker 2: one of the agency's helicopters, because that's all that was
[35:39] Speaker 2: really going out there to provide any sort of support,
[35:42] Speaker 2: and you just you instantly you're like, Okay, this is
[35:44] Speaker 2: a slightly different, slightly different battle. It's a different different trip,
[35:48] Speaker 2: you know. And a lot of those roads where we were,
[35:50] Speaker 2: you you can't take a lot of the same vehicles.
[35:52] Speaker 2: We're in armored vehicles a lot, but it was now
[35:54] Speaker 2: you're in highlexes, you're in other vehicles that that can
[35:57] Speaker 2: handle those roads.
[36:00] Speaker 3: You know.
[36:00] Speaker 2: When I was there a couple of years later, we
[36:02] Speaker 2: did have some matt v's and and and rgs. But
[36:06] Speaker 2: also we managed to get one stuck pretty good one time,
[36:09] Speaker 2: and you know, that is never a good position to
[36:11] Speaker 2: be in. So I think the smaller vehicles and the
[36:16] Speaker 2: ability to just kind of adapt to the area something
[36:18] Speaker 2: that you have to learn very quickly.
[36:21] Speaker 1: What area, what was the area of operations you were in,
[36:24] Speaker 1: and kind of what was the mission at that time.
[36:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, we were so we had a partner for us
[36:30] Speaker 2: that we were working with and training with, and and
[36:32] Speaker 2: again I was out in so I was out in
[36:34] Speaker 2: the kast, so pretty pretty far over, and I was
[36:38] Speaker 2: working with some other Partner Force groups, So it was
[36:41] Speaker 2: it was it was a good trip that I was
[36:43] Speaker 2: kind of attached to another group. Uh some guys I
[36:47] Speaker 2: actually knew, but it was an awesome experience and opportunity
[36:51] Speaker 2: for sure.
[36:52] Speaker 4: Yeah. Any memorable experiences from that deployment.
[36:57] Speaker 3: I mean there's a I guess you've got a couple.
[36:59] Speaker 2: I remember, you know, we went and did another like
[37:01] Speaker 2: multi day kind of an SR deal and again now
[37:06] Speaker 2: you're starting to get really close to the border, but expecting,
[37:09] Speaker 2: because of the partner force that we were with and
[37:11] Speaker 2: where we were expecting that to get a lot harder
[37:15] Speaker 2: than did. But then we left and almost right away
[37:18] Speaker 2: they started receiving a lot of a lot.
[37:20] Speaker 3: Of mortar fire and a lot of a lot of contact.
[37:23] Speaker 2: So I don't know if they were waiting for us
[37:24] Speaker 2: to depart the area or if it was just you know,
[37:30] Speaker 2: dumb luck on their's part. And then you know, we
[37:34] Speaker 2: left in I think Steptember or so, and then, uh,
[37:40] Speaker 2: you know that five got hit by an ID in December.
[37:45] Speaker 2: I think it was just a couple of months after
[37:47] Speaker 2: we left, and one of the partner groups that we
[37:49] Speaker 2: had worked with, Yeah, they had had a good portion
[37:51] Speaker 2: of that group was was killed. The American you know,
[37:55] Speaker 2: the a team of agency guys that we were working with. Yeah.
[38:00] Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty tragic, is there. I mean, I
[38:05] Speaker 1: know you weren't. You probably had very little oversight, if any,
[38:08] Speaker 1: on the kind of intel stuff they were doing. But
[38:13] Speaker 1: do you have any thoughts about why that incident happened
[38:16] Speaker 1: and what went wrong that day? I know you weren't
[38:18] Speaker 1: there at the time, but.
[38:21] Speaker 2: I was not there at the time. I know quite
[38:24] Speaker 2: a few people that worked on that operation of what
[38:29] Speaker 2: was going on. And I think that the high Risk
[38:34] Speaker 2: meet significantly changed after that in the protocol for how
[38:39] Speaker 2: you that individuals coming onto a camp. So I think
[38:43] Speaker 2: that there was a lot of desire to get the
[38:46] Speaker 2: intel that this person they thought had then, and because
[38:50] Speaker 2: there was so much of that just like no, we
[38:54] Speaker 2: need this intel, they let security down a little bit.
[38:57] Speaker 2: And I think that that's the reason why you had
[38:59] Speaker 2: a lot of change from protocols later. It really forced
[39:03] Speaker 2: you to kind of double down on like Okay, what
[39:06] Speaker 2: is the process, how are we going to make sure
[39:08] Speaker 2: that this is craft or that this person is safe
[39:09] Speaker 2: or that this is not going to be some sort
[39:11] Speaker 2: of an ambush that we're walking ourselves into.
[39:15] Speaker 1: Just to remind our listeners out there, two thousand and nine,
[39:18] Speaker 1: we had basically no intel on where bin Laden was.
[39:22] Speaker 1: I mean, we kind of had nothing. So that leads,
[39:24] Speaker 1: I think into the I don't know if I want
[39:27] Speaker 1: to say desperation, but there's a high level of motivation
[39:30] Speaker 1: to gather up any intel that we could on where
[39:34] Speaker 1: his location was, or to get someone inside his organization.
[39:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, and they thought this doctor had access to some
[39:45] Speaker 2: of that information, and so they kind of dropped their
[39:47] Speaker 2: guard a little bit.
[39:49] Speaker 1: So the next time that you went to Afghanistan, who
[39:51] Speaker 1: was twenty fourteen, Now, actually we've been lauden, it's been killed.
[39:57] Speaker 1: Is it a different war the second time you go
[39:59] Speaker 1: over there?
[40:02] Speaker 2: It was different? The first time. Also while we were
[40:05] Speaker 2: there was when what is his name walked off or
[40:08] Speaker 2: walked off the fob and so there was a yeah, burbough.
[40:11] Speaker 2: So there's a huge that was another piece of intel
[40:14] Speaker 2: that you know, people were searching for. It was you
[40:16] Speaker 2: could you know anything that you can do to get
[40:18] Speaker 2: a piece of information for his location was also a
[40:23] Speaker 2: huge requirement that everybody was just looking for go fast forward,
[40:28] Speaker 2: like you said, a couple of years, and it very
[40:31] Speaker 2: much was like a different lobe, different war. I guess
[40:34] Speaker 2: I think that at that point I really started to notice.
[40:39] Speaker 2: I mean, they are very much a tribal nation, right,
[40:42] Speaker 2: That's just what they care about is their people, their group.
[40:45] Speaker 3: They didn't really care about anything else. They wanted that.
[40:48] Speaker 3: You know, we I think we may have discussed this before,
[40:51] Speaker 3: but you know, we're in.
[40:51] Speaker 2: The middle of a it was about a twelve fourteen
[40:55] Speaker 2: hour firefight, and you two hundred meters to the direction
[41:02] Speaker 2: without a band I guess, to the north of where
[41:04] Speaker 2: the enemy force was. As a guy out there with
[41:07] Speaker 2: his with his donkey clearing his field because he's got
[41:10] Speaker 2: to eat. Like the fact that we'ren the moil of
[41:12] Speaker 2: a firefight, doesn't get his fields done. So we're calling
[41:15] Speaker 2: an a tens and you've got apache's and at fifteen's
[41:17] Speaker 2: and all these things, and he's just out there plowing
[41:19] Speaker 2: his field back and forth for three or four hours. Well,
[41:22] Speaker 2: we're just getting after it.
[41:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard stories like that before, the guy coming
[41:28] Speaker 1: out and like hoe in the field, you know, some
[41:30] Speaker 1: eighty year old Afghan guy because Yeah, his life doesn't
[41:34] Speaker 1: stop just because there's a war.
[41:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, he's still got to feed his family. So, uh,
[41:40] Speaker 2: you started seeing and you started seeing the insurgency different
[41:45] Speaker 2: because you would you would see this very much seasonal,
[41:48] Speaker 2: you know, like Okay, it's very much downtime, and then
[41:50] Speaker 2: it's like, oh, it's more time, and you'd start seeing
[41:52] Speaker 2: the flood of people, the flood of insurgents kind of
[41:55] Speaker 2: coming through. You know. We were right at the southern
[41:58] Speaker 2: tip of the Tenye Valley. This wasn't too long after
[42:00] Speaker 2: Extortion U Constortionian helicopter went down just a couple of
[42:03] Speaker 2: miles north of where we were, and so I think
[42:07] Speaker 2: that it was just kind of a for us.
[42:08] Speaker 3: It was a very pivot location.
[42:13] Speaker 2: Because of that, you know, and we did have a
[42:15] Speaker 2: couple of really great joint ops that we got to
[42:18] Speaker 2: do with with both our other platoon and with an
[42:21] Speaker 2: Odia that had been up a little bit north as well.
[42:24] Speaker 2: That they came down because their previous I think was
[42:28] Speaker 2: their previous cycle they had lost one of their guys
[42:31] Speaker 2: in a fight right that journal area, so they wanted
[42:32] Speaker 2: to come down and work with us and kind of
[42:35] Speaker 2: make sure that, you know, let's let's period this area up.
[42:39] Speaker 3: It was personal for them as well.
[42:40] Speaker 1: So yeah, well you're writ a lot going on in
[42:44] Speaker 1: that one AO at that one time, and any memorable
[42:49] Speaker 1: experiences from that one you'd like to share before that
[42:52] Speaker 1: sounds like there was a few.
[42:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, those are they're all.
[42:56] Speaker 2: I mean, you you have some just some really tough
[43:00] Speaker 2: some really tough times. You know. We we had helped
[43:03] Speaker 2: build up a new file for a new like a
[43:05] Speaker 2: police for police station and and had the police come
[43:08] Speaker 2: over and and had talked to them about, uh, you know, hey,
[43:13] Speaker 2: we just put this here. Make sure you have security.
[43:15] Speaker 2: We need to make sure this is maintained. We can't
[43:17] Speaker 2: just put this up and run. They decided they were
[43:19] Speaker 2: gonna have a huge party instead they left like four
[43:21] Speaker 2: people there. It got completely overrun. All four of those
[43:23] Speaker 2: guys were killed. And we said, they're watching it on
[43:25] Speaker 2: I sorry to watch the whole thing happen. And you
[43:28] Speaker 2: know that's a tough thing to do. You just put
[43:30] Speaker 2: it in all that time, an effort, you know, in
[43:34] Speaker 2: a in a fight on our own, but to make
[43:36] Speaker 2: sure that that spot could be set up and then
[43:39] Speaker 2: maintained hopefully, and instead of leaving the force that we
[43:43] Speaker 2: knew they were gonna need they just they kind of
[43:47] Speaker 2: left it and let it get let it get over
[43:49] Speaker 2: run when it's never you know the stories of sitting
[43:54] Speaker 2: there and watching the partner force just get annihilated like
[43:57] Speaker 2: those always those are always tough, you know, tough events
[44:01] Speaker 2: to think back on.
[44:05] Speaker 1: And speaking of which, so twoy eighteen, twenty nineteen, you're
[44:11] Speaker 1: starting to look at Iraq again, right as the ISIS
[44:14] Speaker 1: war is picking up.
[44:16] Speaker 2: Well, So in twenty sixteen.
[44:18] Speaker 4: We're back in Iraq, gotcha.
[44:20] Speaker 2: Initially, so we're in Iraq in up north, a little
[44:24] Speaker 2: bit north of Moses, and we're setting the stage for
[44:27] Speaker 2: basically the clearance operation for moslah So and that's where
[44:32] Speaker 2: that's where the Battle of the Telescoff happened, and that's
[44:35] Speaker 2: where that's where we.
[44:36] Speaker 1: Lost, Chuck, Charlie Keating, Can you tell us about that
[44:41] Speaker 1: operation and how things unfolded as it was, ISIS was
[44:44] Speaker 1: overrunning a pesh Morga position, if I recall right.
[44:48] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So we you know my Platina we deployed
[44:53] Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen. We've got two different sectors up there
[44:57] Speaker 2: between Sector six Ingrash six point one and then other
[45:00] Speaker 2: platoon had Sector seven, which is going out towards the west.
[45:04] Speaker 2: It's just a huge line, you know. At that point
[45:07] Speaker 2: you've got truly a flat it's like a burm basically
[45:10] Speaker 2: that the Petsch murderer managing.
[45:12] Speaker 3: And on the other side of it was all it
[45:14] Speaker 3: was all isis.
[45:16] Speaker 2: So Charlie and my platoon o Ice were over at
[45:20] Speaker 2: Muzzle Dam and then I stayed over by the hook
[45:24] Speaker 2: with my AIC and we had been checking the border
[45:30] Speaker 2: trying to figure out what was going on since we'd
[45:32] Speaker 2: gotten there.
[45:33] Speaker 3: We got there like late February, by March third.
[45:37] Speaker 2: The other platoon Charlie's platoon for their world the same platoon,
[45:40] Speaker 2: I guess, but his squad they were actually doing recon
[45:43] Speaker 2: and there was a huge assault on the buzzle Dam
[45:46] Speaker 2: then that they had repelled, and that ended up being
[45:52] Speaker 2: a pretty pretty crazy fight as well. Then they had
[45:55] Speaker 2: multiple vbid's driving almost right up on their position. If
[45:58] Speaker 2: they had known that they were shape group of Americans,
[46:00] Speaker 2: they probably would have all been dead because they drove
[46:02] Speaker 2: by within about one hundred meters of them. They tried
[46:06] Speaker 2: law rockets whatever, and they just like bounced off these
[46:08] Speaker 2: armored trucks that they built, you know, the mad max
[46:10] Speaker 2: trucks that isis would put together. They finally got some
[46:15] Speaker 2: cast in there, took care of the the IDs. We
[46:17] Speaker 2: showed up to assist after of course everything's done and
[46:21] Speaker 2: then it's too late as you're trying to do you know,
[46:23] Speaker 2: show up as a goof. But anyway, that was March third,
[46:26] Speaker 2: So then fast forward a couple months later, we'd been
[46:29] Speaker 2: doing our own recond meeting with all of our partner
[46:32] Speaker 2: forces and kind of figured out this week spot that
[46:35] Speaker 2: we thought was going to be the weakest spot in
[46:36] Speaker 2: the line. They just didn't have the funding, didn't have
[46:38] Speaker 2: the support. Both of the other sides where there're guys
[46:42] Speaker 2: where Charlie his guys were more of like Dronal Brozani's forces.
[46:47] Speaker 2: In front of us was another general who was part
[46:49] Speaker 2: of like the fresh maurya part of went kind of
[46:54] Speaker 2: another you know, higher ranking official. He had a lot
[46:57] Speaker 2: of his own funding. And then you've got to tell
[46:59] Speaker 2: ustuff and it was kind of, ah.
[47:02] Speaker 3: Just kind of an open area.
[47:03] Speaker 2: You had forces, but you know, they didn't have a
[47:05] Speaker 2: lot of food, they didn't have a lot of supplies,
[47:07] Speaker 2: they didn't have any tanks, they didn't have any like
[47:08] Speaker 2: armored vehicles, or not not many at least, and so
[47:13] Speaker 2: we had kind of felt that that was probably the
[47:15] Speaker 2: weakest point and something happened, that's where it was gonna
[47:18] Speaker 2: that's where it's going to take place. Plus you've got
[47:20] Speaker 2: a direct line road coming from the border through the
[47:23] Speaker 2: through the town there at Telescoff and the almost all
[47:26] Speaker 2: the way to uh to the buzzle Dam. So not
[47:28] Speaker 2: only was it a weak spot, but it was also
[47:30] Speaker 2: a very pivol spot that gave them direct access up
[47:33] Speaker 2: to straight up to the hook and then over to
[47:35] Speaker 2: or over to the buzzle Dam. So that morning we
[47:39] Speaker 2: started getting calls at about about two am saying like, hey,
[47:42] Speaker 2: we're the floss getting attack.
[47:45] Speaker 3: Like, okay, let us know if it gets worse.
[47:47] Speaker 2: So again that throughout the time we keep getting calls
[47:51] Speaker 2: and by probably four AM, my ground force mander now
[47:58] Speaker 2: AI c from the ball too. He wakes me up
[48:00] Speaker 2: to and s like, hey, this is we end a
[48:01] Speaker 2: stick thing ready, We're going to figure this out. So
[48:03] Speaker 2: him and I set up for a while, we'll start
[48:04] Speaker 2: figuring out what the plane is going to be. And
[48:05] Speaker 2: finally by by six at least we're we've got our
[48:10] Speaker 2: whole group up. Now we're head not on a vehicles,
[48:12] Speaker 2: and we're going to that spot because we know that's
[48:14] Speaker 2: going to be a weak spot. As we're driving into
[48:16] Speaker 2: the town, my communicator is on for my translator on
[48:22] Speaker 2: this actually is oncoms with their partner PERP you know
[48:28] Speaker 2: from the General is saying that Nope, tole Stoff is
[48:30] Speaker 2: still secure. We still have the town there on the south,
[48:33] Speaker 2: but they're you know, they've reached the flop, but they're
[48:35] Speaker 2: still south of the town. They don't have access to
[48:36] Speaker 2: anything else. So I go, okay, well, we're going to
[48:38] Speaker 2: go to the general's headquarters. We'll get up on the roof,
[48:40] Speaker 2: we'll get to some some cast support, we'll figure out
[48:43] Speaker 2: what's going on. And then as we start pulling into
[48:46] Speaker 2: the village, we start taking small ange fire. So at
[48:49] Speaker 2: that point we're like, okay, what's going on, what's the deal?
[48:52] Speaker 2: So stop the convoy. A couple of hundred meters before
[48:55] Speaker 2: we into the town. There's a there's a two past
[49:00] Speaker 2: humbi's that are kind of blocking the road a little
[49:02] Speaker 2: bit that we can use as a little bit of cover.
[49:04] Speaker 3: So we pull over.
[49:06] Speaker 2: We I've got my one armored vehicle at the front
[49:09] Speaker 2: and we're on Colm trying to figure out what the
[49:12] Speaker 2: heck is actually going on, because obviously the intel we
[49:14] Speaker 2: had was not correct with the status of the city.
[49:18] Speaker 2: And almost immediately the past people in the group in
[49:24] Speaker 2: the two Humbi's start driving away, and our armored vehicle
[49:27] Speaker 2: at the front takes and RPG airbags are gone. We're
[49:33] Speaker 2: not driving that vehicle anywhere. Then are fifty starts taking
[49:37] Speaker 2: a bunch of bullets. So now we're basically down two
[49:40] Speaker 2: vehicles not really going to be able to get out
[49:43] Speaker 2: of their well. And the decision that I make is
[49:45] Speaker 2: too We're gonna consolidate and we're gonna hard point in
[49:50] Speaker 2: a building complex about seventy five meters or so off
[49:54] Speaker 2: to the side. So just like before, it's like, okay,
[49:56] Speaker 2: let's uh, let's set up some blocking positions, let's stay down,
[49:59] Speaker 2: laid on some fire, and let's get behind cover. We
[50:02] Speaker 2: can't just sit here in this bowling alley. That's definitely
[50:04] Speaker 2: not going to end well for us. So that's what
[50:07] Speaker 2: we do. We move over to the building, and as
[50:08] Speaker 2: we are entering the building and just getting there, then
[50:12] Speaker 2: Charlie and his guys show up as a QRF. They
[50:16] Speaker 2: we had sent them over to go check out another area.
[50:18] Speaker 2: They had already done that. Brazianna's guys had confirmed that
[50:22] Speaker 2: that areas clear, so they came to join us.
[50:25] Speaker 3: So we all link up as a platoon.
[50:27] Speaker 2: Actually almost so what and a half le tunes because
[50:29] Speaker 2: we had another group up visiting us and they were
[50:32] Speaker 2: getting ready to go on another another event and when
[50:38] Speaker 2: this took place, but we've been housing them for the night,
[50:41] Speaker 2: so it just lucked out for us that we had
[50:43] Speaker 2: an additional about ten guys. So we're sitting there with
[50:46] Speaker 2: about we probably had about thirty about thirty people there,
[50:52] Speaker 2: and we just hard point this building. We start getting
[50:56] Speaker 2: a lot of it ends up being a school, but
[51:00] Speaker 2: from the schools, it's north of the town maybe two
[51:05] Speaker 2: hundred meters or so. We've got multiple v VI I
[51:08] Speaker 2: d's coming up towards us going off. You know, doors
[51:10] Speaker 2: are flying directly over your head. We've got a small
[51:15] Speaker 2: field in front of us, and then a line of
[51:17] Speaker 2: like three story buildings, so they've got altitude on us,
[51:20] Speaker 2: and they've got AMMO. They've got basically everything task please
[51:23] Speaker 2: appear to where we are. So not really the best
[51:26] Speaker 2: again position to be in, but I don't have anywhere
[51:28] Speaker 2: else to go, and it's the best cover we can get,
[51:31] Speaker 2: so we hard point there and just set up. You know,
[51:35] Speaker 2: we've got our javelins for some of the id or
[51:37] Speaker 2: some of the bigger vehicles, whatever we can do with
[51:39] Speaker 2: that one are automatic weapons, and then our own sign
[51:43] Speaker 2: for teams, and we're just in a battle for multiple hours.
[51:48] Speaker 2: We're finally getting our cast support, so we're starting to
[51:50] Speaker 2: be able to engage with some casks. We weren't getting
[51:53] Speaker 2: as many aircraft as we wanted. The flood of the
[51:56] Speaker 2: vehicles in the flood of the of the forces of
[51:59] Speaker 2: Ice from the south was still continuing pretty heavily, and
[52:02] Speaker 2: so the headquarters decided that they were going to keep
[52:07] Speaker 2: part of the forces themselves, and they were engaging the
[52:11] Speaker 2: vehicles as they were trying to move from further south
[52:14] Speaker 2: in Iraq up up across the flot. I don't I
[52:19] Speaker 2: don't know if that would have made it a difference
[52:22] Speaker 2: for Charlie or not, but we definitely had the building
[52:26] Speaker 2: that we're pretty sure he was. He was, you know,
[52:28] Speaker 2: shot from on our list. We were trying to get
[52:30] Speaker 2: air support in order to uh take that building out,
[52:36] Speaker 2: but before that was able to happen, I tasked him
[52:38] Speaker 2: because we were getting a lot of very very accurate,
[52:41] Speaker 2: you know, a snapper fire from kind of that area.
[52:43] Speaker 2: He was our lead sniper and spent years as a snipers.
[52:46] Speaker 2: I had Charlie try to work on figuring out where
[52:50] Speaker 2: that was and and hopefully take care of that threat.
[52:53] Speaker 2: While he was in the process of doing that, up
[52:55] Speaker 2: on the roof, he took took a single round right
[52:58] Speaker 2: kind of by his cloud gloper you know, colarbone, and
[53:02] Speaker 2: uh that was that. He basically rolled over and had
[53:05] Speaker 2: had said, you know, he was hit and and then
[53:07] Speaker 2: he was he was gone.
[53:10] Speaker 5: You know.
[53:10] Speaker 2: We continued to work on him for for as long
[53:12] Speaker 2: as we could. We got him off the roof, got
[53:15] Speaker 2: in the Metavac bird. They launched that almost immediately. Grid
[53:20] Speaker 2: was the grid was passing correctly, not from us, but
[53:23] Speaker 2: we passed the tinging to grid. Uh. Metavac Bird's take
[53:26] Speaker 2: and eight digit grid. Instead of taking off digits five
[53:32] Speaker 2: and ten, they took off digits nine and ten, which
[53:36] Speaker 2: completely changes the grid and they ended up directly on
[53:39] Speaker 2: top of the town that all of the forces were
[53:42] Speaker 2: coming from. Instead, they did make it up finally after
[53:47] Speaker 2: they finally got to us and we were able to
[53:49] Speaker 2: get some smoke out to call him into the position
[53:51] Speaker 2: I took Charlie, loaded him up on our one other
[53:53] Speaker 2: armored vehicle, and along with basically a security detail in
[53:57] Speaker 2: a medic they they drove about five kilometers up the
[54:02] Speaker 2: road further north to get away from the contact where
[54:05] Speaker 2: we finally had the helicopter coming to land. And then
[54:09] Speaker 2: they got out of there. And at that point they
[54:12] Speaker 2: when they got back, one of the helicops I think
[54:16] Speaker 2: never flew again.
[54:16] Speaker 3: It was done.
[54:17] Speaker 2: I think they had I forget one hundred something bullet
[54:19] Speaker 2: it was. It was pretty wrecked. Both of them had
[54:21] Speaker 2: quite a few bullet holes in them. So those pilots
[54:26] Speaker 2: were amazing. They did everything they possibly could for sure
[54:30] Speaker 2: to do what they could. They changed I think the
[54:35] Speaker 2: the sps after that too, because they were supposed to
[54:36] Speaker 2: be escorted by a couple of apaches. The apaches were
[54:40] Speaker 2: slower than they were, so they just said, we're not
[54:42] Speaker 2: waiting for you, and they took off. After losing basically
[54:45] Speaker 2: the two helicops, they said no, no, no, you guys go
[54:47] Speaker 2: as a team. You need to keep your armored escort.
[54:49] Speaker 2: You can't just take off on your own. So but
[54:54] Speaker 2: after Tarlie took or after Charlie was was met BacT out,
[54:57] Speaker 2: we still had another couple of hours of the fight
[54:59] Speaker 2: before we and have that they could take over the fight,
[55:03] Speaker 2: and we were able to break contact and get out
[55:05] Speaker 2: of there.
[55:07] Speaker 1: I remember you telling me that, you know, after oh sorry,
[55:10] Speaker 1: after losing Charlie, but it was a kind of a
[55:13] Speaker 1: leadership challenge for you. Is the platoon chief to kind
[55:16] Speaker 1: of like hold the you know, you're the senior guy,
[55:19] Speaker 1: You're the adult in the room, and you got to
[55:21] Speaker 1: hold this thing together because the deployment's not over, and
[55:24] Speaker 1: obviously everyone's upset that, you know, their friend was just killed.
[55:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that, uh, it really brings up that
[55:33] Speaker 2: leadership issue that you know, I'm not the only person.
[55:36] Speaker 2: A lot of people have had to deal with it before.
[55:39] Speaker 2: But it's not something that you can ever plan for
[55:41] Speaker 2: and not something that you can ever train for. It's
[55:43] Speaker 2: something that you know you have to just take care
[55:46] Speaker 2: of at the time. But the guys are you know,
[55:50] Speaker 2: the guys want to get after it. The guys are well, one,
[55:53] Speaker 2: you're already all everybody's everybody's struggling from TBI after that
[55:56] Speaker 2: with all the VBA d's and everything else. I think
[55:58] Speaker 2: I don't think there was a single person didn't have
[56:00] Speaker 2: headache for at least three days after that. So when
[56:04] Speaker 2: got everybody, well, supposedly got everybody in the bulltoon baseline
[56:09] Speaker 2: tested for TBI at our reveal, of course they lost
[56:13] Speaker 2: all those records, so I don't know what happened to them,
[56:15] Speaker 2: but we tried so some people can see that there
[56:17] Speaker 2: was something that was supposed to be put it in
[56:19] Speaker 2: the record from repeal, but you can't open it. The
[56:21] Speaker 2: files were corrupted, unfortunately. So but after that you got
[56:27] Speaker 2: it too.
[56:27] Speaker 1: You know.
[56:27] Speaker 2: It's like most guys want to get after, they want
[56:29] Speaker 2: to get revenge, they want to get whatever. So it's
[56:31] Speaker 2: a matter of keeping guys focused, keeping guys busy, not
[56:34] Speaker 2: letting them just kind of go crazy, continuing the mission
[56:38] Speaker 2: and keeping them kind of tied in. So really started
[56:43] Speaker 2: making a huge point of breaking down like okay, here's
[56:46] Speaker 2: today's operation, here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it,
[56:50] Speaker 2: so that the guys knew exactly what the job was
[56:54] Speaker 2: that day, and it wasn't like you could see sometimes
[56:57] Speaker 2: that it was maybe that the guys were teleband whatever
[56:59] Speaker 2: the me under sorry isis that need. You want to
[57:02] Speaker 2: get some sort of cast in and start putting people up.
[57:04] Speaker 2: But sometimes I need this talent to maintain it's cap
[57:07] Speaker 2: one classification so that we can continue to do.
[57:12] Speaker 3: Strikes or whatever. But if it thinks, cut one cat too.
[57:16] Speaker 2: But you've got to have a certain amount of footage
[57:19] Speaker 2: of you know, video footage and just reacon on the
[57:23] Speaker 2: town showing hey, look we're here for this long. This
[57:25] Speaker 2: is all we've seen. There's only been isis, there's no
[57:28] Speaker 2: other threat. So sometimes it's like, look, this is more important.
[57:31] Speaker 2: We have to continue the mission. We have to do
[57:34] Speaker 2: the job that we're tasked to do. We can't just
[57:36] Speaker 2: go do like follow these guys and go do something else,
[57:39] Speaker 2: because that's what you.
[57:39] Speaker 3: Want to do to you know, get revenge.
[57:41] Speaker 2: And and it worked very well making sure that guys knew, okay,
[57:45] Speaker 2: this is exactly what we're doing this today, and it
[57:48] Speaker 2: kept them from kind of straying on whatever other little
[57:52] Speaker 2: tangent they wanted to go do. But it also by
[57:56] Speaker 2: getting into a good kind of rhythm, it kept guys
[57:58] Speaker 2: focused and not just get kind of I guess answer
[58:01] Speaker 2: or it's like, okay, we took a few down days
[58:03] Speaker 2: and I Okay, now it's time to get back after
[58:05] Speaker 2: it again and you go to do an OP you
[58:06] Speaker 2: take it down day or whatever. Just go do an
[58:08] Speaker 2: OP taken down day and just stay busy, stay busy,
[58:11] Speaker 2: but also focused.
[58:14] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think like one of the interesting key points
[58:16] Speaker 1: you make there is like the issuing of precise instructions
[58:20] Speaker 1: to your subordinates that they know exactly what they're doing,
[58:24] Speaker 1: why they're doing it. As you mentioned, but sometimes the
[58:28] Speaker 1: worst thing that can happen in combat, it's not a
[58:30] Speaker 1: bad decision, it's confusion, confusing instructions, or no decision being made,
[58:36] Speaker 1: which is often a lot worse.
[58:39] Speaker 2: Yeah, clearing concise decisions or clearing concise instructions are huge.
[58:43] Speaker 2: It's also not the time to start questioning authority and
[58:47] Speaker 2: questioning instructions. You know, I had a boss both in
[58:51] Speaker 2: Afghanistan and then a different one there, and we spent
[58:53] Speaker 2: a lot of time discussing like leadership and wanted to
[58:56] Speaker 2: take and the timing that it takes to get to
[58:58] Speaker 2: know your people, understanding you know their strengths and their
[59:02] Speaker 2: weaknesses and when they're having a down day or an
[59:04] Speaker 2: off day and what does that look like. But that
[59:07] Speaker 2: also turned into I think a lot of times, like
[59:09] Speaker 2: earlier in a workup cycle, earlier in a in a
[59:12] Speaker 2: training piece, like answering some of the questions, answering like hey, why.
[59:16] Speaker 3: Are we doing this?
[59:17] Speaker 2: Or why do you want me to do that? Or
[59:18] Speaker 2: what are we doing? So that then when we were
[59:20] Speaker 2: in combat that didn't ask questions, then it was like
[59:23] Speaker 2: now it's just time to listen and move right because
[59:26] Speaker 2: you already had to build You built that confidence earlier.
[59:29] Speaker 2: You know, just because you've got eight years or ten years,
[59:33] Speaker 2: or you've got the rank or you've got whatever, it
[59:35] Speaker 2: doesn't mean that you're going to always be right. Uh.
[59:38] Speaker 2: So you've got to at least teach those that you
[59:41] Speaker 2: know they should it need to be following, and it
[59:44] Speaker 2: just it it.
[59:46] Speaker 3: Takes time to build that that trust and that confidence.
[59:49] Speaker 2: You know, they're they're putting their trust in me as
[59:51] Speaker 2: a leader that I'm going to make the right decision
[59:53] Speaker 2: and I'm going to keep them safe for you know,
[59:54] Speaker 2: at least to the best of my ability. So I've
[59:56] Speaker 2: got to show that that that trust is worth than
[1:00:00] Speaker 2: you know, putting in me.
[1:00:03] Speaker 1: The other thing I wanted to ask you about is
[1:00:06] Speaker 1: from you know two or you joined the Navy in
[1:00:09] Speaker 1: ninety nine. Now we're getting in the twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
[1:00:13] Speaker 1: twenty sixteen we just talked about, but even the subsequent years,
[1:00:18] Speaker 1: how you're starting to see the battlefield change and how
[1:00:21] Speaker 1: drones are starting to become a normal, regular facet of
[1:00:26] Speaker 1: tactical level operations.
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, and that even is from our side, right, because
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: early you didn't have a lot. Now we're running with
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: like be Ad, a raven or whatever. We've got our
[1:00:36] Speaker 2: own smaller drones, not just the Preds and the Reapers
[1:00:40] Speaker 2: and a lot of the other tactical scan eagles, but
[1:00:43] Speaker 2: even the smaller ones, you know. And after the twenty
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: sixteen deployment, I started moving more into the intelligence side of.
[1:00:51] Speaker 3: What Naval special Warfare offers and worked a lot with both.
[1:00:56] Speaker 2: You know, our city and teams and are are intels
[1:01:00] Speaker 2: and teams and you really learn to leverage on our side.
[1:01:05] Speaker 2: Those started platforms are how important they can be. But
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: at the same time, that's right when we started having
[1:01:10] Speaker 2: ices flying over with small drones and they learned how
[1:01:13] Speaker 2: to just fly them over and drop grenades. You know,
[1:01:15] Speaker 2: you look at how that has shifted from twenty sixteen to today,
[1:01:19] Speaker 2: as you've got FPV drones and you've got I mean,
[1:01:22] Speaker 2: it's very, very impressive what they can do with a
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: lot of these drones today, taking out tanks, taking out
[1:01:28] Speaker 2: any almost any armored vehicle. They they are so small
[1:01:31] Speaker 2: and precise with these fvs, they can fly them to
[1:01:34] Speaker 2: the smallest creases. And back then they couldn't do anything.
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: And if they were just going to drop a grenade
[1:01:39] Speaker 2: on a tank with the reactive bomber of Bradley anything
[1:01:42] Speaker 2: like that, it wasn't going to do anything. Now you
[1:01:46] Speaker 2: look at all of the tanks that we've sent over
[1:01:48] Speaker 2: to Ukraine today and they don't move any of them.
[1:01:50] Speaker 2: They can't. They are the army operating concept of using
[1:01:54] Speaker 2: you know, mechanized infantry and these armored and Bradley's is
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: just not functional. And so that's a huge shift. I
[1:02:03] Speaker 2: think that the Army is figuring out now like, okay,
[1:02:06] Speaker 2: we need to figure out a bigger and better count
[1:02:10] Speaker 2: us policy and capability to defend our armored vehicles.
[1:02:18] Speaker 1: What are you allowed to tell us about the tail
[1:02:21] Speaker 1: end of your Navy career as you kind of dealt
[1:02:23] Speaker 1: into the side.
[1:02:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, we get to I mean a little bit. I
[1:02:29] Speaker 2: think I did a lot more work. So from twenty
[1:02:31] Speaker 2: eighteen all the way until I retired in twenty twenty five,
[1:02:34] Speaker 2: was just a lot more with the SENS activities, a
[1:02:37] Speaker 2: lot of work with the creation of like the rampant
[1:02:40] Speaker 2: so Calm, and a lot of work with them when
[1:02:42] Speaker 2: I was at the at work, they have a special
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: Warfare Command and then a lot of Beltway tours, so
[1:02:48] Speaker 2: we you know, you work with with all of the
[1:02:52] Speaker 2: partners that you probably think of over in the Beltway
[1:02:55] Speaker 2: the three letters and a lot of numbers as well,
[1:02:59] Speaker 2: but you know, close relationships with with a lot of
[1:03:02] Speaker 2: these groups, uh, and you start really understanding what does
[1:03:06] Speaker 2: the targeting cycle look like, what is the like, what
[1:03:08] Speaker 2: goes into developing some of these these target packages near
[1:03:13] Speaker 2: the you know said as a platoon, as an operator,
[1:03:16] Speaker 2: you don't necessarily see you're just seeing the end. You
[1:03:19] Speaker 2: don't see the you know, week week on week of
[1:03:25] Speaker 2: twenty hour days that these Intel and it'll start putting
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: in sitting behind our computers and building out what their
[1:03:30] Speaker 2: targeting network looks like and understanding how the task assets
[1:03:33] Speaker 2: and what does that look like. And you know, when
[1:03:35] Speaker 2: you're building patternal life or you're building building out a network,
[1:03:40] Speaker 2: be it a physical network, worry, you know, a cellular
[1:03:43] Speaker 2: network or whatever it might be. You don't see the
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: work that goes into into that. So I really appreciated
[1:03:53] Speaker 2: that all that time and helping me develop kind of
[1:03:57] Speaker 2: that whole cycle understanding of Like look, going from going
[1:04:01] Speaker 2: from just being a door kicker, which was a lot
[1:04:04] Speaker 2: of fun, but then to really managing and running an
[1:04:08] Speaker 2: entire intelligence platform is just I don't know, I really
[1:04:11] Speaker 2: enjoyed it. It was a great way to kind of
[1:04:15] Speaker 2: finish off, I think my career and maintain a lot
[1:04:19] Speaker 2: of I guess just feel that you're very relevant, you know,
[1:04:25] Speaker 2: like the rest of the pletunes like that's essential, Like
[1:04:27] Speaker 2: they can't do it what we need them to do
[1:04:30] Speaker 2: without what you're doing as well.
[1:04:33] Speaker 1: People get upset with me sometimes when I say this,
[1:04:35] Speaker 1: but I do think it's true that the operators a
[1:04:38] Speaker 1: lot of times really just don't understand everything that goes
[1:04:42] Speaker 1: into the operations that they're sent on, you know, on
[1:04:44] Speaker 1: the back end.
[1:04:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I agree, one hundred percent. And it's it's fascinating.
[1:04:53] Speaker 2: I think the capabilities that we have as a nation
[1:04:58] Speaker 2: and what goes into you know, like quite honestly, one
[1:05:04] Speaker 2: of the more interesting places to ever visit. You know,
[1:05:06] Speaker 2: if you can go to the f A headquarters or
[1:05:09] Speaker 2: CIA headquarters or whatever, but go to NSA headquarters and
[1:05:12] Speaker 2: you're like, this is a very interesting place full of
[1:05:15] Speaker 2: some full of sme uh, very very bright. Uh not
[1:05:19] Speaker 2: always not always the best communicators though in that in
[1:05:24] Speaker 2: that building.
[1:05:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, they have a hard time making eye contact and
[1:05:28] Speaker 1: shaking hands.
[1:05:29] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. They They always have a great joke of
[1:05:34] Speaker 2: of you know, the the outgoing ones are the ones
[1:05:38] Speaker 2: that look at your shoes instead of their own shoes
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: talking to you.
[1:05:42] Speaker 4: Uh.
[1:05:43] Speaker 1: You know, I was gonna ask like, was that hard
[1:05:45] Speaker 1: for you as a frog man going from that sort
[1:05:49] Speaker 1: of very like more kinetic environment to going to this
[1:05:52] Speaker 1: intel inner agency deconfliction coordination sort of role. It sounds
[1:05:57] Speaker 1: like it was a real eye opener for you and
[1:05:59] Speaker 1: you really enjoyed it. But I mean, was that a
[1:06:00] Speaker 1: tough transition for you to make? Initially?
[1:06:04] Speaker 2: I think it was tough kind of more on the
[1:06:08] Speaker 2: deployment side, when you're you're there and and everything we
[1:06:12] Speaker 2: were doing was essential with my task group that I was,
[1:06:14] Speaker 2: you know, kind of running because we ran that whole
[1:06:16] Speaker 2: intelligent But then you see the platoons and you see
[1:06:19] Speaker 2: what they're doing, and you definitely miss that piece. At
[1:06:22] Speaker 2: that time, I think you start seeing like a right,
[1:06:26] Speaker 2: you know your days as being that operator or over.
[1:06:29] Speaker 2: You know that it's coming. You know that you're getting older,
[1:06:31] Speaker 2: and you know the body is fragile, and after close
[1:06:36] Speaker 2: to twenty years in the teams, you just I don't know.
[1:06:39] Speaker 2: Another another work about it out at Nyland was probably
[1:06:42] Speaker 2: just not in the carbs. You just start breaking down physically.
[1:06:45] Speaker 2: So you know that is where you start looking at like, okay,
[1:06:48] Speaker 2: well where's the best spot that I can go.
[1:06:49] Speaker 3: And still be a contributor.
[1:06:51] Speaker 2: So as difficult as it is, it also I think
[1:06:54] Speaker 2: was a way to maintain relevancy.
[1:06:56] Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And then you did the SOCOM Fellowship program
[1:07:05] Speaker 1: at the tail end of your career. You can tell
[1:07:07] Speaker 1: people what that is.
[1:07:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, So the SOCOM Fellowship with a care coalition, they
[1:07:13] Speaker 2: basically a so came will sponsor you with an outside company.
[1:07:18] Speaker 2: They do a specific contract for every company they do.
[1:07:22] Speaker 2: Go see your care coalition rap if it's something you're
[1:07:24] Speaker 2: interested in, and that is up to six months that
[1:07:28] Speaker 2: you can do. So unlike Steelbridge where it's changed multiple times,
[1:07:32] Speaker 2: last time. I think when I was retiring, you was four.
[1:07:34] Speaker 2: I've heard it might be down to even three months.
[1:07:37] Speaker 2: And it's got me. With the steel Bridge like certified company.
[1:07:40] Speaker 2: With the SOCOM Fellowship, you could go to any company
[1:07:43] Speaker 2: at all. You write a separate contract or the care Coalition,
[1:07:47] Speaker 2: We'll write a contract for you and it gets routed
[1:07:50] Speaker 2: up through SOCOM, signed by the I think it's the
[1:07:54] Speaker 2: deputy commander, one of the senior civilians at all of
[1:08:00] Speaker 2: signs it from their side, and then the company representative
[1:08:03] Speaker 2: signs it from from their side. And then once it
[1:08:05] Speaker 2: was signed, basically you're gone. I would check in. It
[1:08:09] Speaker 2: wasn't our requirement, but I'd call back to work on
[1:08:11] Speaker 2: as that's where I was at the time, about once
[1:08:12] Speaker 2: a month, just to check in. And then every month
[1:08:15] Speaker 2: on the first I would get a survey of like
[1:08:17] Speaker 2: how is this going, what are you learning? What did
[1:08:19] Speaker 2: you know?
[1:08:20] Speaker 3: Are you getting opportunities?
[1:08:22] Speaker 2: And so you just fill out this survey of like
[1:08:24] Speaker 2: about ten questions and break out like here's the things
[1:08:27] Speaker 2: I've done, Here's who I'm.
[1:08:28] Speaker 3: Talking to, or how I'm growing. I guess what you're learning.
[1:08:32] Speaker 2: And then at the end of it, they just asked
[1:08:35] Speaker 2: you to kind of do basically the same thing rute
[1:08:38] Speaker 2: another survey about how great it was or what your
[1:08:40] Speaker 2: opinions on it, and it was just it really gave
[1:08:44] Speaker 2: me the opportunity to network, you know. I started networking
[1:08:52] Speaker 2: through the on A foundation. I did the on A Foundation,
[1:08:54] Speaker 2: and you start talking to people, you start kind of
[1:08:57] Speaker 2: growing a little bit there. You start figuring out what
[1:08:59] Speaker 2: a resume looks like, what you might be interested in doing,
[1:09:01] Speaker 2: how do you translate your military resume into civilian speak.
[1:09:05] Speaker 2: And in that process I had run into an old
[1:09:09] Speaker 2: friend of mine that we had done a couple of
[1:09:10] Speaker 2: platoons before. He had a company that was like, hey,
[1:09:14] Speaker 2: if you want to do this, like, I will totally
[1:09:16] Speaker 2: sign up for it. And he allowed me to join
[1:09:20] Speaker 2: to join this company and they did some investment stuff
[1:09:22] Speaker 2: with a It was a nonprofit, a nonprofit VC company basically,
[1:09:30] Speaker 2: but it allowed me to just start networking. That's what
[1:09:32] Speaker 2: he wanted. He's like, come in, I need you to
[1:09:34] Speaker 2: help me with this, and then I want you to
[1:09:35] Speaker 2: just start talking to companies.
[1:09:37] Speaker 3: And in the process of talking to all these other companies, I.
[1:09:40] Speaker 2: Met Michael and my current CEO, and I started helping
[1:09:45] Speaker 2: them a little bit as well with a few things,
[1:09:46] Speaker 2: and he offered me a position in about I think
[1:09:49] Speaker 2: it was in November when I was retiring in the
[1:09:51] Speaker 2: end of January, and I thought, well, this is awesome.
[1:09:54] Speaker 2: I don't have to worry out finding a job. But
[1:09:56] Speaker 2: I still got three months, so that was a huge,
[1:09:58] Speaker 2: a huge relief actually of like not there was just
[1:10:01] Speaker 2: no pressure at that point.
[1:10:02] Speaker 3: I could really focus on just transitioning out of the military.
[1:10:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, the Socom Fellowship and the stuff, the Honor Foundation
[1:10:10] Speaker 1: sounds like it's great as far as you know, a
[1:10:13] Speaker 1: lot of the problems that we've had with you know,
[1:10:16] Speaker 1: special ops guys retiring and having a pretty rocky transition,
[1:10:20] Speaker 1: which I think it's a little going to be rocky
[1:10:21] Speaker 1: no matter what. But it sounds like those programs really
[1:10:24] Speaker 1: help guys, you know, land on their feet and have
[1:10:26] Speaker 1: a good transition out of the service.
[1:10:30] Speaker 2: Yeah. And I know some people that have done the
[1:10:32] Speaker 2: SODA and a few of the other programs, and I
[1:10:35] Speaker 2: think they're all great programs. I don't know that one
[1:10:37] Speaker 2: is necessarily better than the other. I very much enjoyed
[1:10:41] Speaker 2: the the on a foundation. The time that that I
[1:10:45] Speaker 2: spent there was a lot of work it's definitely time consuming.
[1:10:48] Speaker 2: It's not an easy thing to you know, you're dedicating
[1:10:52] Speaker 2: a lot to go through that process, but I think
[1:10:55] Speaker 2: it's worth it.
[1:10:58] Speaker 1: And so you found a pretty goodly think it sounds
[1:11:00] Speaker 1: like at a Railius Systems.
[1:11:03] Speaker 4: Tell us about that company and what you guys do there.
[1:11:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, so we build directed energy weapons. We build basically
[1:11:10] Speaker 2: laser guns, so laser guns, small laser guns to take
[1:11:13] Speaker 2: out Group one, Group two drones. So we use everything's
[1:11:17] Speaker 2: built software wise, everything's built in house. Hardware wise, we
[1:11:22] Speaker 2: build all of the materials. We are looking at vertically
[1:11:26] Speaker 2: integrading air laser, but currently we are buying a laser
[1:11:30] Speaker 2: in the cameras and wit greadar. We're not going to
[1:11:32] Speaker 2: build those things ourselves. But the company is doing great.
[1:11:36] Speaker 2: We are we close the seed round already. We're currently
[1:11:41] Speaker 2: working through some Series A stuff as we are just rapidly,
[1:11:46] Speaker 2: rapidly growing and the demand signal from the government is huge.
[1:11:49] Speaker 2: Of like, we need the system now. You do have
[1:11:52] Speaker 2: some other good systems out there. You've got like the
[1:11:55] Speaker 2: build Blue Halo aero vironment system, but it's just a
[1:11:58] Speaker 2: lot bigger. We're looking at us magnificantly smaller. You know,
[1:12:02] Speaker 2: at the biggest side would be the back of like
[1:12:05] Speaker 2: a JLTV or a vehicle of some sort. You know,
[1:12:10] Speaker 2: a few hundred pounds type of ideal that you can
[1:12:13] Speaker 2: really move anywhere. Runs off a battery, you're going to get,
[1:12:17] Speaker 2: you know, a pretty significant amount of shots off of
[1:12:21] Speaker 2: a battery. You're looking at, you know, the smaller size
[1:12:26] Speaker 2: the group one, group two is the final line kind
[1:12:29] Speaker 2: of a defense.
[1:12:29] Speaker 1: Though.
[1:12:30] Speaker 2: So if you if you're looking at a big fob
[1:12:33] Speaker 2: and you've got the ten or twenty million dollar blue
[1:12:37] Speaker 2: halo system, that's awesome. I think that's a it's a
[1:12:40] Speaker 2: it's a great, very capable system. But when you start
[1:12:43] Speaker 2: having some of these largest warms, or if you're forward
[1:12:45] Speaker 2: and you can't move a system that big, that's where
[1:12:49] Speaker 2: the system where building kind of comes in.
[1:12:51] Speaker 1: So just to translate that for folks out there listening,
[1:12:54] Speaker 1: when you say group one, group two drones, you're talking
[1:12:57] Speaker 1: about the smaller drones that are like ten feet to
[1:13:00] Speaker 1: five hundred feet off the ground.
[1:13:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're looking at group one drones are basically
[1:13:05] Speaker 2: like zero pounds like djis or normal ones that you're
[1:13:08] Speaker 2: flying around town up to group twos. So think of
[1:13:11] Speaker 2: anything probably really twenty to like even up to like
[1:13:14] Speaker 2: forty pounds. I think fifty five pounds is technically the
[1:13:17] Speaker 2: cut off from group two to group three. But you're
[1:13:19] Speaker 2: looking at the smaller drones, the FTV drones, the really
[1:13:23] Speaker 2: the small group one drones that we're talking about, just
[1:13:25] Speaker 2: like your your ten pounds or last drones that people
[1:13:28] Speaker 2: have at home. That is the number one cause of
[1:13:31] Speaker 2: casualties in Ukraine. That is, like over eighty percent of
[1:13:33] Speaker 2: casualties are caused by these drones. They're the ones with
[1:13:36] Speaker 2: the FPV that that they can take into these creases
[1:13:38] Speaker 2: and they can you know, like decrease in the tank
[1:13:40] Speaker 2: and the turret and they can destroy the tanks.
[1:13:42] Speaker 3: They're the ones that are targeting with explosives.
[1:13:45] Speaker 2: Basically you're putting a shape charge on this and you're
[1:13:48] Speaker 2: turning it into an airborne and ID you know, with
[1:13:51] Speaker 2: the shape charge. That's basically what it is.
[1:13:55] Speaker 1: And I know that counter uas your counter drone stuff
[1:13:59] Speaker 1: is as you said, there's a huge demand right now.
[1:14:01] Speaker 1: This is like something the entire military I think is
[1:14:04] Speaker 1: thinking about and trying to find systems to protect our
[1:14:08] Speaker 1: troop formations, forward operating bases, forward medical facilities.
[1:14:14] Speaker 4: All that sort of stuff needs to be protected.
[1:14:17] Speaker 1: And how would you know this system that you're working
[1:14:19] Speaker 1: on at Aurelius, how how would it actually do that?
[1:14:24] Speaker 2: Well, so Trent I have to explain, you know, Mike,
[1:14:28] Speaker 2: Michael's great at some of these explanations stuff. I love
[1:14:31] Speaker 2: the operation side, but really so everything that we built right, well,
[1:14:34] Speaker 2: you've got e oi R, but you've also got a
[1:14:36] Speaker 2: radar that we can integrate with. You can integrate with ATTAC,
[1:14:39] Speaker 2: you can integrate with any of these things for kipping queuing.
[1:14:42] Speaker 3: System, locate whatever these drones are.
[1:14:46] Speaker 2: And then with the lazy you're really just you can
[1:14:49] Speaker 2: do a couple of different things and we train our
[1:14:52] Speaker 2: language bottle on how to target. You can look at propellers,
[1:14:55] Speaker 2: you can look at the body, you can look at
[1:14:57] Speaker 2: the battery, you can so you're basically training your model
[1:15:00] Speaker 2: on like what are the weakest spots of these different
[1:15:02] Speaker 2: types of drones. And then the system itself then is
[1:15:06] Speaker 2: an autonomous system ideally is going to target that weakest
[1:15:10] Speaker 2: point of the drone and if that's the case, then
[1:15:13] Speaker 2: they get they drop pretty quickly.
[1:15:16] Speaker 1: M So it has some sort of radar and algorithm
[1:15:20] Speaker 1: is processing the data that's coming into the system and
[1:15:23] Speaker 1: then it's going to like rapid fire these laser beams
[1:15:26] Speaker 1: at the drone.
[1:15:28] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly if you've got a swarm coming in, you know,
[1:15:31] Speaker 2: that's what exactly what you do, and you're looking at
[1:15:33] Speaker 2: whatever you can to help you with your queuing. We
[1:15:36] Speaker 2: have done a lot of integration to work with Equidine specifically,
[1:15:39] Speaker 2: but we can integrate with whatever radar to give us
[1:15:41] Speaker 2: an additional like queuing from outside of what we're getting
[1:15:45] Speaker 2: with our internal EUI or cameras, or we can just
[1:15:47] Speaker 2: run passive off of our own camera systems and stuff.
[1:15:51] Speaker 2: You know, as a as a soft person, the last
[1:15:53] Speaker 2: thing you want is to be required to have some
[1:15:58] Speaker 2: sort of a radar or something that's active, something forward. Uh.
[1:16:01] Speaker 2: You know, that's just an electronic signature that you want
[1:16:03] Speaker 2: to not be forced to use if you don't have to.
[1:16:07] Speaker 2: You know, most people know at this point that if
[1:16:10] Speaker 2: you have even like a Harris with Alice radio, if
[1:16:13] Speaker 2: you have anything radar that is going active, if you're
[1:16:16] Speaker 2: over in Ukraine, and as soon as you turn that on,
[1:16:18] Speaker 2: that signal signal is getting picked up immediately and you're
[1:16:21] Speaker 2: gonna have some incoming rounds within minutes, you know. So
[1:16:27] Speaker 2: if you can maintain just kind of a passive attitude
[1:16:29] Speaker 2: and you don't have to go active, great, you know,
[1:16:32] Speaker 2: then then that's awesome, and you can you can set
[1:16:34] Speaker 2: up out there in a ford fob or a forward
[1:16:36] Speaker 2: position and you can still use the system passively. But
[1:16:41] Speaker 2: if you're on the southern border of the US, or
[1:16:43] Speaker 2: if you're at an airport or a stadium or a
[1:16:46] Speaker 2: large fob, you've got active radar all over the place,
[1:16:50] Speaker 2: like get as much information as possible. We will intake
[1:16:52] Speaker 2: that for our queuing. Set it up so that you
[1:16:54] Speaker 2: can you're ready if the swarm is coming in, uh,
[1:16:57] Speaker 2: and you can exactly like you said, you just one
[1:17:00] Speaker 2: after the other as you're prioritizing the incoming drones.
[1:17:04] Speaker 1: Is the current thinking that at least during warfare, it's
[1:17:09] Speaker 1: going to have to be autonomous, that a human being
[1:17:12] Speaker 1: won't be able to select and target each of those
[1:17:15] Speaker 1: drones fast enough that a machine will have to do it.
[1:17:19] Speaker 2: Well. So I think that I think that the consensus
[1:17:23] Speaker 2: is it's a lot easier to build it autonomous and
[1:17:25] Speaker 2: then to add a human in the loop than it
[1:17:27] Speaker 2: is to build it as a human loop and then
[1:17:30] Speaker 2: create it autonomous after the fact. But then also to
[1:17:33] Speaker 2: your point, a lot of these drones the way that
[1:17:36] Speaker 2: they are operating right now. If you look over in Ukraine,
[1:17:38] Speaker 2: they're either they've got a spot or drone that's flying
[1:17:41] Speaker 2: up fairly high. You know, they might be ad a
[1:17:43] Speaker 2: couple of kilometers even away, and they're just in a
[1:17:46] Speaker 2: hover with a really good camera and they're doing spotting
[1:17:48] Speaker 2: and they've got somebody sitting next to them after they
[1:17:52] Speaker 2: identify the target, and so they're coming in very very low,
[1:17:55] Speaker 2: maybe behind a bridge line, you don't even see them,
[1:17:57] Speaker 2: and by the time they hit the ridge line or
[1:18:00] Speaker 2: through the trees or whatever it is, you've only got
[1:18:01] Speaker 2: a few seconds. It's just not enough time. I think
[1:18:05] Speaker 2: that I'm from at least the staff, even with the
[1:18:09] Speaker 2: Department of War now that I've spoken with, there's a
[1:18:11] Speaker 2: pretty open recognition that the long term plan is going
[1:18:15] Speaker 2: to have to be at least in some locations, you
[1:18:17] Speaker 2: have to be able to run autonomous or you're not
[1:18:19] Speaker 2: gonna be able to You're not gonna be able to
[1:18:20] Speaker 2: make it. There's gonna be more sensitive areas where that's
[1:18:23] Speaker 2: probably not gonna be the case, and you're gonna want
[1:18:25] Speaker 2: to be able to keep that human in the loop
[1:18:27] Speaker 2: to make that final decision, even if they're tracking and
[1:18:30] Speaker 2: everything else is all done autonomous, the actually firing of
[1:18:33] Speaker 2: the laser itself, that can still maintain human loop.
[1:18:41] Speaker 1: Anything else about what Aurelius is doing that you want
[1:18:44] Speaker 1: to talk about, or anything else about this system.
[1:18:50] Speaker 2: We've got some great testing, the opportunities coming up, and
[1:18:52] Speaker 2: then you know, we're looking at integrating our own our
[1:18:58] Speaker 2: own laser. I think that that lead times on supply
[1:19:02] Speaker 2: chain are very difficult piece right now, and I think
[1:19:08] Speaker 2: that's not just for us across the board. So to
[1:19:11] Speaker 2: really solidify that supply chain, the feeling is that we
[1:19:17] Speaker 2: have to integrate that ourselves.
[1:19:19] Speaker 3: We've got to vertically integrate the laser system.
[1:19:22] Speaker 2: There's only a few companies in the US, and they're
[1:19:25] Speaker 2: just they're maxed out. But honestly, the few that you have,
[1:19:29] Speaker 2: you're looking at four to six months and they're just
[1:19:31] Speaker 2: running full speed all the time, and so it's hard
[1:19:36] Speaker 2: to grow if that lead time is what you've got
[1:19:38] Speaker 2: to to wait for all the time. So I think
[1:19:41] Speaker 2: that as we do that, you're going to continue to see.
[1:19:47] Speaker 3: It's going to help us grow.
[1:19:48] Speaker 2: I think because we'll also be able to sell potentially
[1:19:50] Speaker 2: those two to outside markets. You know, right now we're
[1:19:52] Speaker 2: trying to make everything is everything is as costs as possible.
[1:19:55] Speaker 3: We want it to be commercial off the shelf.
[1:19:58] Speaker 2: That's how we keep costs down, keep cut down by
[1:20:01] Speaker 2: somebody mass producing these products. And that one is just
[1:20:05] Speaker 2: one item.
[1:20:05] Speaker 3: That's just it's not happening right now across the board.
[1:20:08] Speaker 2: So well, the.
[1:20:10] Speaker 1: Laser itself correct, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't exactly buy
[1:20:15] Speaker 1: one of those at Walmart.
[1:20:17] Speaker 2: No. But the funny thing is they, i mean, the
[1:20:19] Speaker 2: ones that we supposed to use, right they are. They're
[1:20:21] Speaker 2: built for automotive industry for the most part. That's that's
[1:20:25] Speaker 2: kind of what they're built. They're built and expected to
[1:20:28] Speaker 2: basically be on twenty hours a day just sitting there.
[1:20:33] Speaker 2: You know, well, the gay cutting sheet metal for automotive,
[1:20:36] Speaker 2: so they're very robust. These these are built to laugh
[1:20:39] Speaker 2: for a long time. We know that you can use
[1:20:42] Speaker 2: them for an extended period of time. What the team
[1:20:46] Speaker 2: is doing is they're really they're putting a lot more
[1:20:48] Speaker 2: focused and effort on the software stack and on the
[1:20:51] Speaker 2: targeting piece of it so that they can use kind
[1:20:53] Speaker 2: of lower grade laser if you will, because as soon
[1:20:57] Speaker 2: as you go from like these commercial days, as we
[1:21:00] Speaker 2: try to get some of these other more of a
[1:21:02] Speaker 2: bespoke laser, uh, it's like a ten x increase in
[1:21:05] Speaker 2: costs and it's no longer an affordable system that you
[1:21:09] Speaker 2: can put in a ton of different locations.
[1:21:11] Speaker 4: Gotcha. I am well, Joe. I appreciate you sharing all
[1:21:15] Speaker 4: this with us.
[1:21:17] Speaker 1: Is there anything else you want to discuss or anything
[1:21:19] Speaker 1: you want to plug before we get going to that? Uh?
[1:21:24] Speaker 2: I you know, I always think it's worth mentioning to
[1:21:27] Speaker 2: everybody the mental health piece and and staying on top
[1:21:30] Speaker 2: of your mental health, you know, through let's see where
[1:21:37] Speaker 2: you want to go with at. I don't personally, I
[1:21:39] Speaker 2: struggled a lot. I struggled for a long time, do
[1:21:41] Speaker 2: a lot of therapy still, and it was hugely beneficial
[1:21:48] Speaker 2: for me. You know, I had a lot of guys
[1:21:51] Speaker 2: that that I could tell were struggling and being able
[1:21:53] Speaker 2: to share that story of like, look, it got to
[1:21:55] Speaker 2: the point where my wife left, she was like, I'm done.
[1:21:58] Speaker 3: You need to figure this out.
[1:21:59] Speaker 2: And it took, you know, about eight months of really
[1:22:03] Speaker 2: hardcore focus and therapy and meditation and a lot of
[1:22:08] Speaker 2: work and now we're great. You know, I've retired, we're together,
[1:22:13] Speaker 2: and we're doing awesome, better than we probably ever have.
[1:22:17] Speaker 2: But it's because I had to put in the focus
[1:22:21] Speaker 2: and I had to put in the time, and I
[1:22:23] Speaker 2: still have to. It's not something that just ends. It's
[1:22:26] Speaker 2: not just like, oh, I did therapy for two months
[1:22:28] Speaker 2: and now I'm better. It's an ongoing thing that people
[1:22:31] Speaker 2: need to continue to be on top of, and it's
[1:22:34] Speaker 2: just very easily. You know, how many not only how
[1:22:38] Speaker 2: many funerals have we been to from people we lost,
[1:22:41] Speaker 2: but then how many funerals also we've been to from
[1:22:43] Speaker 2: suicide after people.
[1:22:44] Speaker 3: Have gotten back is they've gotten to that mental state.
[1:22:47] Speaker 2: And my wife has been pretty open saying that if
[1:22:50] Speaker 2: I hadn't shifted when I did that, she feels that
[1:22:53] Speaker 2: I'd probably be another suicide statistic now. So I'm very
[1:22:57] Speaker 2: grateful for all of the opportunities I've had to take
[1:22:59] Speaker 2: care of myself in the therapy and the support both
[1:23:03] Speaker 2: from from all the different foundations and groups that are
[1:23:06] Speaker 2: out there.
[1:23:07] Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great.
[1:23:08] Speaker 1: Are there any particular that you that you found helpful
[1:23:11] Speaker 1: or that you like that you recommend to people?
[1:23:14] Speaker 2: There are a couple. Now you just said that, I'm
[1:23:21] Speaker 2: trying to think of the one that I go to
[1:23:22] Speaker 2: in Boston that was absolutely huge. So the the Boston
[1:23:31] Speaker 2: Red Sox Foundation pays for its sponsors the whole the
[1:23:34] Speaker 2: the event. They've got two different two different groups there.
[1:23:39] Speaker 2: One is I think it's called Combat. It's a one
[1:23:42] Speaker 2: week deal and it's really only for soft operators. But
[1:23:44] Speaker 2: then they also have a two week that is a
[1:23:46] Speaker 2: in depth cognitive or a therapy session that's kind of
[1:23:50] Speaker 2: a group of like ten people. And you can do
[1:23:53] Speaker 2: a soft one or you could do kind of a
[1:23:56] Speaker 2: joint but it's it's still basically all military people that
[1:24:01] Speaker 2: have have suffered, you know. And I ended up doing
[1:24:04] Speaker 2: the joint one for that and and grateful that I
[1:24:09] Speaker 2: did because I got to see some of the things
[1:24:11] Speaker 2: that happened to the other you know, just like maybe
[1:24:13] Speaker 2: an army or whatever. It's just other individuals that they
[1:24:16] Speaker 2: had gone through and how similar to what we've gone
[1:24:21] Speaker 2: through as well. It's just because you're a soft doesn't
[1:24:23] Speaker 2: make the PTSD any different, you know.
[1:24:26] Speaker 3: It's it's it's still what it is.
[1:24:29] Speaker 2: I want to look it up real quick and figure
[1:24:30] Speaker 2: out who I think, why can I not think of
[1:24:33] Speaker 2: a why can I not think of the name? Yeah,
[1:24:38] Speaker 2: but that.
[1:24:39] Speaker 3: Was probably the best one for me.
[1:24:41] Speaker 2: A lot of support, and then afterwards they follow up
[1:24:45] Speaker 2: every We did follow every month for a year. I
[1:24:48] Speaker 2: think I just had my last call because I did
[1:24:51] Speaker 2: that one last.
[1:24:53] Speaker 3: April, the combat one.
[1:24:56] Speaker 2: But you know, I went over there and within the
[1:24:59] Speaker 2: first day, you've got like two or three different MRIs,
[1:25:02] Speaker 2: You've got X rays, you've got full body scanded, and
[1:25:04] Speaker 2: you're going to speech, you're going to a therapist, you're
[1:25:07] Speaker 2: going to like just everything like, Okay, let's see what's
[1:25:10] Speaker 2: going on with you physically and mentally and figure out
[1:25:13] Speaker 2: and develop a plan going forward to you know, make
[1:25:17] Speaker 2: you whole. I guess as best as possible.
[1:25:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, you go ahead and look it up and we
[1:25:24] Speaker 1: can shout it out here. Home base, home base, Okay.
[1:25:30] Speaker 2: Home based what that one's called. Yeah, and they were.
[1:25:31] Speaker 2: They were fantastic. You could look them up on the
[1:25:33] Speaker 2: website and apply and if that isn't working, then reach
[1:25:38] Speaker 2: out to to you and I can give you the
[1:25:41] Speaker 2: details and definitely people can can get in contact with them.
[1:25:44] Speaker 3: But they were they're phenomenal.
[1:25:47] Speaker 1: We will put links down the description for our viewers
[1:25:51] Speaker 1: and where can people find a rarely of systems.
[1:25:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, so really is systems dot com. Uh, And we
[1:26:00] Speaker 2: are based out of San Francisco, and we're going to
[1:26:02] Speaker 2: be all over you touring at soft Week and at
[1:26:06] Speaker 2: t rex and everything else. And if somebody wants to
[1:26:08] Speaker 2: support also the C four Foundation. As we talked about
[1:26:11] Speaker 2: Charlie a little bit, we are sponsoring a Memorial Day
[1:26:15] Speaker 2: event on the USS Hornet in San Francisco.
[1:26:17] Speaker 3: I continue that link as well.
[1:26:18] Speaker 2: We're looking for people to show up and do a
[1:26:20] Speaker 2: little bit of a workout and then have some drinks
[1:26:23] Speaker 2: and some food and Charlie's dads three is gonna be
[1:26:27] Speaker 2: up there with me to speak a little bit, and
[1:26:30] Speaker 2: it's gonna be a great event, all right.
[1:26:31] Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope to see you at a soft Weeek.
[1:26:33] Speaker 1: Then I'll be down there for a couple of days.
[1:26:36] Speaker 3: Okay, now, yeah, it sounds great. Look forward to it.
[1:26:39] Speaker 1: And thank you for joining us, Thanks for coming on
[1:26:42] Speaker 1: and sharing your experiences with us. And thank you everyone
[1:26:46] Speaker 1: who watched the program tonight. So I guess we'll see
[1:26:49] Speaker 1: you next time then, thank you, Joe, thank you. Hey, guys,
[1:26:58] Speaker 1: I want to take a moment to tell you about
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[1:29:00] Speaker 1: Yeah,

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