The Morning Formation Podcast
Hosted by KP Phillips—a U.S. Army combat veteran, former law enforcement officer, and seasoned instructor in tactics, firearms, and combatives—The Formation Podcast is built on the core pillars of Survivability, Situational Awareness, and the mindset to Adapt & Overcome.
Drawing from over two decades of real-world experience in combat zones and high-risk environments, KP leads authentic conversations with warriors, protectors, and everyday individuals who’ve faced adversity head-on. This podcast is more than content—it's a movement for those who understand that the fight begins before the event.
Through storytelling, lived experience, and expert insight, The Formation Podcast equips its listeners with the mindset, tools, and awareness to remain vigilant and prepared—whether on the battlefield, in the streets, or in everyday life.
The Morning Formation Podcast
Nobody Kicks Ass Without Tanker Gas: Leadership Lessons at 20,000 Feet with Mark Hasara
Lieutenant Colonel Mark Hasara shares his extraordinary experiences from 24 years in the Air Force as a KC-135 aerial refueling pilot, revealing how tanker missions form the backbone of modern combat operations while offering profound leadership lessons.
• Childhood dreams sparked by watching aircraft at LAX led to a career flying the KC-135 tanker despite facing discouragement from teachers and counselors
• First combat mission during Desert Storm refueling Wild Weasel aircraft suppressing Iraqi air defenses — the specialized mission hunting and destroying enemy radar and missile sites
• Saved 32 F-16s that were critically low on fuel deep in Iraqi airspace, with one fighter down to just six minutes of flying time remaining
• Key leadership philosophy centers on relationships, trusting your team to solve problems their way, and thinking jointly across all military services
• Conned a 102,000-ton aircraft carrier during an underway replenishment — illustrating how small adjustments (1% throttle changes, 1-degree heading shifts) apply to both operations and life
• After being fired from his dream job, discovered it was "God's vector check" redirecting him to where his skills would be needed most following 9/11
• Modern air operations depend entirely on tanker support, with B-2 strikes requiring six refuelings and over a million pounds of fuel for a single mission
• Transitioning to civilian work revealed stark differences in mentorship, relationships, and purpose compared to military service
Check out Mark's book "Tanker Pilot: Lessons from the Cockpit" and his YouTube channel (@MARKHASARA) for more insights into aerial refueling operations and leadership lessons.
Check out our website
Please Support & Donate to the Podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/themorningform
USA Made socks with a Purpose. 20% off with code: TMF
https://www.solediersocks.com/tmf
Episode Powered By Act Now Education
Warriors fall in, it's time for formation. Welcome back to another episode where we dive deep into the stories of survivability, strategy and leadership from those who've lived it on the front lines. Today, I'm honored to sit down with a true patriot and warrior, lieutenant Colonel Mark Hasara, a retired US Air Force officer with decades of experience in aerial refueling and operational planning. Lieutenant Colonel Hasara has supported some of the most critical combat missions in recent history and today we're going to get more into it his leadership and his mentorship and his national security advocacy. Sir, I want to thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
Speaker 2:KP. It's great to be with you, brother, and I really appreciate this opportunity to talk to you. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about and I'm going to give you examples of training, leadership, mentorship and some really crazy operational planning things where I screwed up.
Speaker 1:It'll be a lot of fun. Failing is one of the best things in life, because it causes you to have to brush yourself off and get back up. And, as a leader, it causes you to have to brush yourself off and get back up. And as a leader, uh, you know, it's it to me. I've learned over the years that failing is okay. Failing forward is what's most important. So, uh, I just wanted to mention too. Like you, you go by sluggo right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, s L U G G O is uh how they spell it. I got it when I was in pilot training, uh, kp. So I got it when I was in pilot training, kp. So I got it really early, all right, what was?
Speaker 2:that about my birth certificate. I weighed 10 pounds 14 ounces and was 23 and a half inches tall when I was born. Wow, yeah, I was a big kid. I was a really big kid. My dad told me a story. He says people would go by the nursery at Sentinella Hospital. I was born in Englewood at Sentinella hospital and people would go by and go. What's that three month old doing in there? My dad had just smiled.
Speaker 1:You were overcooked man.
Speaker 2:I was. I was. I came out, you know, red with a lot of, uh, black hair. Okay, and all that black hair, all that dark brown hair, turned gray when I was about 28.
Speaker 1:Wow, so so you, so you go by Sluggo. And then, how many years did you serve in the military?
Speaker 2:24 and a half, 24 years, six months, 29 days is what it says on my DD 214.
Speaker 1:Wow, and, and you know what I loved every minute of it, and so you were involved in how many different conflicts.
Speaker 2:Desert Storm was my first, then Kosovo in 1999. And then Afghanistan and Iraqi Freedom, the Shakanah campaign and Desert Storm. I was flying KC-135s, I was flying the old A models, the old water-burning engines, and then, right after the war ended, we came home back to Okinawa, where I was stationed at Kadena, and our squadron upgraded to the R model with the new CFM-56 engines, which was, you know, it's a great, great airplane. So Afghanistan and Iraq obviously were, you know, sad because of what happened on 9-11. From 1999 to 2001, I stood up and was the deputy commander of the KC-135, at that time called Combat Employment School, now the 509th Weapon Squadron of the famous US Air Force Weapon Squadron Weapon School, and there was only two lieutenant colonel graduates of the school, me as a deputy commander and my boss, bobby Fowler, and we'll talk about this too. The colonel that I was working for actually fired me and said your leadership is no longer needed here, and we'll get into this when we talk about leadership and everything. So that was April of 2001. Everything changed on 9-11, as you can imagine, eight days later I was in the Gulf flying missions. I was the chief of the air fueling control team three times during Operation Anaconda which, as you well know, did not go well. You know I was watching the Battle of Roberts Ridge in real time off of a Predator Ridge in real time off of a Predator. Then the run-up to the second Gulf War. It was called Operation Southern Focus, where we just started nugging down targets in Iraq, and then for the Shakanah campaign too.
Speaker 2:But I have test experience. I worked at our Operational Test and Evaluation Center it's crazy, kp because I'm a tanker guy never shot a gun, never dropped a bomb, never released a missile and I had all joint weapons, you know, like JDAM AIM-9X small diameter bomb, those kinds of things, which was a lot of fun. And that was my last assignment in the Air Force. I left in 2007. I went to work for Rockwell Collins for about seven years and then they sequestered you know all the money from my programs. I got laid off and I said you know what? I can go live on my pension and and do some other things. And that's when I wrote my book tanker pilot lessons from the cockpit, which is this book here. I took that picture from the backseat of an F-15, by the way.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's your picture. Yeah, that's my picture, that's not stock.
Speaker 2:No, I took that picture from the backseat of an F-15. I have a lot of flying time in other airplanes, including 10 catapult-assisted takeoffs and 10 arrested landings on eight aircraft carriers. I'm a joint warfighter.
Speaker 1:I was designated what's called a joint specialty officer because I taught at the Joint Forces Staff College and taught campaign planning for three years. I've met so many pilots and all you guys are so highly technical, highly educated and a lot of times you guys don't give yourselves enough credit, that's for sure. Like I've talked to top gun pilots before, helicopter pilots in the Army, I've worked with them exclusively in Iraq and you guys are definitely lifesavers. Everything that you do, you know and I can't thank you enough for doing you know, for your service of 24 years supporting our troops and supporting our soldiers out there on the lines. Now you mentioned when you transitioned out of the military. You worked for Rockwell. What is?
Speaker 2:that Rockwell Collins. Rockwell Collins is avionics. It is now branched off into other things because it was bought out by Raytheon, I think owns it now. But we did cockpits okay, and I had flown in a lot of different airplanes and I was actually a systems engineering manager of a team of about 12. And I would joke with my boss, kp Toshi, I've gone as far in engineering as my political science degree will allow you know, political science degree will allow you know. But the thing, the great thing, kp, of being a systems engineering manager was I got to see what was behind the instrument panel. You know what is in a multifunction display, what makes it run, how does the graphics run, how do you program it, how do you maintain it, those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:And I and I really learned a lot in the seven years that I was there at Rockwell Collins. Um, I got to fly a lot of really cool simulators. Uh, they would have some of us pilots you know that were in the military. Uh, fly different. We had a reconfigurable cockpit where they could put big displays, small displays, new radios, all those kinds of things in it. And the base that they flew at KP was Jackson Hole, wyoming oh yeah, because it's up high. So during the summer it's hot, you know, and the air pressure's down, you know hot and humid, you know, which affects performance. And then you know hot and humid, you know which affects performance. And then, of course, during the winter, you have monster snowstorms, you know blizzards, and so you had all four different kinds of weather that you could fly through KP and really test these new avionics.
Speaker 2:And you know, like the heads-up guidance systems, you'll go into a cockpit of an airliner now and I have this piece of glass. You know, down in heads up guidance systems. You'll go into a cockpit of a of a airliner now and I have this piece of glass. You know down in front of the pilot and, uh, that has really changed the way a lot of uh pilots do things, because it will literally take you right down to the runway and, um, it was just a lot of fun, like I said, said learning what was behind the instrument panel, and then, uh, I did the sales and services. You know how you maintain those things. One of our biggest contracts was with 160th soar, because the cockpits of their little birds, their mh 60s, uh, mh 47s, is all made by rockwell. So you.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned something as simple as putting a glass sort of at like at the feet of the pilots, where you can see the runway is, is, is helpful.
Speaker 2:It's, it's a, it's a HUD in front of you like this. Oh, it's a heads up guidances. So you've got this. When you walk into an airline cockpit, some of them have them. When you walk into an airline cockpit, some of them have them, some of them don't. I've seen this. They have this big piece of glass that folds down in front of you.
Speaker 2:Right, it's just like the heads-up display on a fighter. Okay, you're not dealing with dropping bombs or, you know, shooting the gun or anything like that. But what you're dealing with is you're using that KP, because it's very precise when you're locked into, like like an instrument landing system or ILS approach. But the really cool thing is you have what's called EVS enhanced vision system, which is a camera, an infrared camera, on the outside of the airplane KP, and it sees down through the Merc. So you know all the bad weather and everything. This thing actually sees down through it.
Speaker 2:And the other piece of the puzzle, too, is what's called synthetic vision.
Speaker 2:So when you're flying into, like I mentioned, jackson Hole, wyoming, it actually puts all the terrain on the display in front of you, okay, synthetically, and it shows you where all the mountains are, where all the peaks are everything, but it also puts that up on the heads-up guidance system.
Speaker 2:So it not only helps you get to the runway in bad weather, but it's also a big safety feature, kp, because now you can see what's around you around the airplane due to this enhanced vision system, this camera, infrared camera, and the synthetic vision of the terrain that's around you. It makes it really safe to go into some of these really high altitude. You know, going into a mountain bowl valley, so to speak, particularly like Aspen all right, aspen's a really crazy approach where you're coming in over the mountains like Aspen All right, aspen's a really crazy approach where you're coming in over the mountains and and it's kind of funny because the terrain avoidance system will go off on the approach you know, terrain, terrain, terrain, because you go over this big peak as you come and turn and come into the runway and all of that is all presented on this piece of glass right in front of you. And, uh, you know, for all the military fighter pilots that were HUD cripples, this makes life easy for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have those on commercial airlines too, right? Yeah, because I recall like I was in a 787. I have a cousin that flies for Hawaiian Airlines and he let me get in the I think it was a 787 simulator out there in Hawaii and I want to say that I do remember that that screen that folded down, yeah, um, I would not make a good pilot, like, I'll tell you that right now I was terrible man. It was. It was so hard to do, so hard to control, and like the pedals and everything I was controlling. I mean, you guys are highly technical and and are quick on your feet and decisive. Um, but and I want to take it back to the beginning At what point did you realize that you wanted to get into this type of, like, highly technical, professional type of job? You, you were born in Englewood, you did, you grow up in Southern California and then, yeah, and then you mentioned Orange County, fountain Valley, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:Okay, um, kp, my aviation journey started where you're at, in Southern California, at Los Angeles International Airport in the 1960s.
Speaker 2:Okay, I was about five years old. My grandfather and grandmother, my paternal grandparents, lived about two miles or less from LAX, so I could actually watch airplanes from their backyard land on the Sepulveda runways. And so, as a five-year-old kid my sister, seven years old, me at five years old, my younger brother, four years old we'd stand on the hood of Grandpa Andy's car, underneath the approach paths to the runways, the two south runways, and at that time there wasn't any fences or anything. There were jackrabbits running everywhere. And I remember this. You know, here I am 67, almost 68 years old and I still remember this feeling and everything.
Speaker 2:When this happened, we were standing on the hood of grandpa Andy's car and 707s and DC eights and jetliners were just coming into being. Okay, american airlines was 707s, pan Am, uh, with DC-8s, united, and at that time they didn't have a displaced runway, so the runway was literally right across the fence. As you know where those railroad tracks are If you've ever been there, there's railroad tracks on Aviation Boulevard and then you have the railroad tracks. Then you have the end of the runway and a 707 went over the top of us and I could feel it going to ground effect, pushing us down, the air underneath it, the pillow of air underneath the airplane pushing us down. It was really humid that day, you know, because it's by the beach, and so vortexes were coming off of the wingtips and off the corner of the flaps, which you can hear, okay, it's this sound okay. And I remember being pushed down on Grandpa Andy's hood and feeling that go over the top of me. And then an American Airlines 707 taxi's up and they're waiting for a while and the pilot, the captain, opens his window and he's got it open and of course he's got his head down doing all kinds of stuff and we're just kids, we're just waving like crazy, and finally he looks at us and he sees us and he kind of sticks himself out and he waves to us. You know, enjoy the takeoff, kids. And then he shuts the window and takes off.
Speaker 2:And that's when I said to myself why work for a living when I can do this? And from then on I studied airplanes. I studied airplanes by building plastic model planes, reading books, watching movies, talking to a lot of pilots. So, you know, I was born in Southern California but I was actually raised in the San Jose area and I had a lot of airline pilots that lived around me. One flew 707s for Western, one flew for Pan Am or no TWA, you know, and I talked to them all the time, incessantly learning all that I could about the aviation world, and so from a very, very young age, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to fly 707s, and for 24 years I got to fly a 707, like the one you see behind me and loved every minute of it. I loved the air refueling mission all right, and everybody goes to pilot training and wants to be, you know, a fighter pilot. All right, right.
Speaker 1:Everybody wants to kick doors down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But you know I didn't do well enough in pilot training. As a matter of fact, I almost washed out but I finished, got my wings and I flew KC-135s for, like I said, 24 years and I got to. I was fortunate enough to be able to do it in all different aspects of air refueling, enough to be able to do it in all different aspects of airfueling. I have time in British tankers, kc-10s. I even had S3 Viking time off of an aircraft carrier and I think that's something I would tell all of your listeners is I had a lot of people tell me I wasn't a good school student. All right, because I was studying airplanes. And I had a lot of my counselors tell me you know, you don't have the math scores or the science scores, you know, and pilots have to have math and science, all that kind of stuff. And I had a P-47 pilot that lived next to me in San Jose, kp. His name was Ed Reinhart. He flew with the 56 fighter group, okay, the famous Thunderbolt group, okay, and Francis Grabeski. All these guys were people he flew with.
Speaker 2:And I was telling him one day in high school I just come home and I had another counselor meeting. You know, what do you want to do with your life? I'm going to go fly airplanes. No, you don't have the math scores. You're on the science course. And I told him. I says I'm so depressed and so discouraged by this because they're telling me you know, I don't have the aptitude for this. And he goes, he goes, mark, it's all BS what they're telling you. I didn't have math science, I wasn't a good student and yet I flew P-47s all over Europe with one of the greatest groups of men that has ever walked the face of the planet. Don't believe in it. Don't believe it. If you want it bad enough, go get it. And that's what I tell all your listeners. Okay, if you have a goal, that you want to be a pilot, then go do it. Go do it okay, because right now is the best time to become a pilot. We're hurting for pilots, not just in the military, but in the commercial side too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love, I love your story, man, because I was in the same boat Like I. Uh, I was told by my guidance counselor that I wasn't college material, I wasn't allowed to take college classes, I didn't have the best grades in the world, but that was because of external circumstances of my home life not being very together, so I could never concentrate, um, but I knew that I wanted to go to college. I knew I wanted to do certain things and I love how you were told no, but then you ran into that one person that told you don't believe them. And that's a great message for today, for folks out there that might be listening, that you know, don't limit yourself to the end of your block. Like, think about beyond the horizon something bigger. Um, that's an amazing story. And what, what made you go to BYU.
Speaker 2:Oh, Brigham Young University. I'm a member of the LDS church and, and so that's where I ended up and, and literally, KP. I went down BYU's catalog and I said what will get me out of here the fastest? Okay, that's how I picked my major.
Speaker 1:Poli-Sci.
Speaker 2:Exactly KP. That's exactly what it was. Okay, and guess what? Byu had a national security track, and so I could study all of the workings of the national security apparatus. But KP, I wasn't interested in it. I was a C student in college. Me too. That's not what I wanted to become. I didn't want to become a politician or a political scientist. I did it because that's what was required of me. To be a pilot, I had to have a four-year degree. A friend of mine flew with an F-111 pilot. You know what his degree was in.
Speaker 1:Modern dance and jazz dance. I was going to gonna say criminal justice, but that's even worse. You know what he?
Speaker 2:you know why he did it? Because he knew he could meet more women by doing that.
Speaker 2:Okay so he had a plan he had a plan, okay, but again and and that's kind of on me that I wasn't a good student all right, I just wanted to get through school and get into pilot training, all right. And so my study habits weren't real good when I got to pilot training and I suffered for that when I was going through pilot training. But I still made it through because I wanted it more than other people, right, and I saw people that were about to wash out or had washed out, and I had one of them come up and tell me hey, you're struggling through this, you need to just leave and I'm going. No, I'm finishing. You know, I don't care what you think, okay, I don't care what my counselor thinks, I don't care what you think, my goal was to fly 707s as a kid and I'm going to do it and I did.
Speaker 1:I love the stubbornness, man. I love the stubbornness because, at the end of the day, it's it's that grit. And I I used to explain to employers cause, when I was getting out of the army, they they told me like, hey, like, when you interview, the other people that are going to be interviewing that same day with you are going to be Academy guys, they're going to be guys that had 4.5 GPAs, and so you're going to have to describe yourself as a gritty fighter. You weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth, et cetera, et cetera, and I'm like, that's who I am, like, I don't give up, I keep fighting, and that's what I'm hearing from you.
Speaker 1:Man is like, despite the fact that everyone told you, no, this isn't your thing, you stayed in place and you kept going, which I think is important. And you know what? Going back to what you said earlier, the power of that airplane. The power of that airplane motivated you for your future career and I think we need to do a better job as parents and as leaders of putting kids in the driver's seat. To feel that motivation, similar to what you did like is get up close, like that, to where you feel that power and that power of that aircraft pushed you in that direction, to have 24 years of honorable military service.
Speaker 2:It's amazing and you know what it was. A childhood dream come true. Kp and I had had I mean, just phenomenal experiences. Now your first combat mission's a little scary, you know, because you don't know what's going to happen. You know, amen. You know what your strengths and weaknesses are, but they're about to be tested to the max. But they're about to be tested to the max and I've become good friends with the flight lead of my very first combat mission, refueling the first Wild Weasel package into Baghdad. And it was being led by a guy by the name of John Boy Walton, and in my book that is the first story I have. In my book it's called Drinks for Puba's Party. Puba is this famous, famous wild weasel electronic warfare officer and he designed the takedown of the integrated air defenses of Baghdad. And so here I am flying this mission and if our mission fails, nobody goes into Baghdad because the weasels, the F4G wild weasel, its whole purpose is to go in, hunt surface-to-air missile sites and kill them.
Speaker 2:And I'll never forget that night, you know, two o'clock in the morning, with these guys on the wing, and yeah, you're scared, all right, but you know how to compartmentalize that because you have a mission. You have a mission to perform. You've got great buds around you and you go and do it. And I flew KC-135, tail number 8019, and the crew chief her name was Vonnie Peterson. May she rest in peace. She died from cancer about 10 years ago. Red-haired, freckled glasses, but one of the best crew chiefs on the planet, and I can't say enough good things about crew chiefs that are out there three, four hours before a mission, knuckle-busting on airplanes. And she just beamed when I told her your airplane's making history tonight, bonnie. This is what it's doing and we're all scared, we're all frightened and everything like that. But you learn to compartmentalize that and put it behind you, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the fear of your first combat mission. And then hearing the E, e3 AWACS calling out MIGS airborne SAMs are launching all these different things, you know, and your blood pressure goes up. But you have a mission to do and my mission was refueling the first weasel package into Baghdad and the number four guy in the formation had a fuel system malfunction and couldn't get his gas. So we got to the end point and we said our job is to fill these guys up and sure enough, after you know, recycling switches and everything he finally was able to get his full load of gas. But it ended up putting this tanker three ship okay, tuna 6364 and 65 was our call sign two miles from the Iraqi border, on the opening night of a major air campaign. But that was our job and we turned and came home and I remember saying on the interphone we're going to go like crazy to get home. Okay, because this is going to be on CNN.
Speaker 1:When you say weasel package, what is that so?
Speaker 2:a great question During the Vietnam War. I'm going to give you a little bit of history of the weasels. During the Vietnam War is really the first time surface-to-air missiles showed up, radar-guided surface-to-air missiles. They were called SA-2 guidelines and they're like 80-foot-long telephone poles flying through the air with like a 300-pound warhead and they radar direct them to you and then of course a fuse goes off and it basically sends little shrapnel everywhere and it takes out airplanes right. So they had to come up with a way to neutralize or suppress these new surface-to-air missiles. And they came up with a new mission in the Air Force and the Navy Navy calls it Iron Hand, we call it Wild Weasels and the reason they took the name Wild Weasels is because you know of the little vermin. You know they go out and hunt rats and mice and all that kind of stuff, and that's exactly what they did. So they had electronics in the airplane that would show them okay, there's a SAM site here at one o'clock'd get what's called a strobe and it'd just be a line and what it is? It's an electronic pulse from the radar saying we're painting you and we're getting ready to fire, and what happens in your headset is you know you hear this. It sounds like a rattlesnake when the radar goes into what they call high PRF, that means they've launched a missile at you.
Speaker 2:They had to find a way to neutralize or suppress those SAM sites, and so the Wild Weasel mission was born. They first started with F-100 two-seat models. They went and got B-52 electronic warfare officers, and one of them, by the name of Al Donovanovan, came up with this. He said okay, let me get this straight. You want me to fly in the back seat behind a crazy fighter pilot. You want me to go up, find these radar sites, let them shoot at me and then we're going to kill them. Is that what you're telling me? And they went yeah, that's what you're telling me. And Al Donovan looked at the guy that was telling him this and he goes you got to be shitting me.
Speaker 1:So that's where.
Speaker 2:YGBSM came from for the weasel community and they still use that. So the F-100s weren't fast enough. They went to the F-105s, then they went to the F-4s and the last one was called the F-4G Wild Weasel and it had this system in it that would actually talk to the missiles and tell the missiles. This is where I want you to go, and the missile is called HARM High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile, and so you can basically be outside of the SAM ring and shoot this missile in the radar and take the radar out, which is extremely effective, and so it's called suppression of enemy air defenses, sead, or destruction of enemy air defenses, deed, and often cases they'll have one of the weasels that hunts the radar and then they'll have an airplane on the wing that's carrying cluster bombs or precision-guided bombs, you know, lgbs or JDAMs that will take the rest of the side out, and it's called C-DED.
Speaker 2:Okay, suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, destruction of Enemy Air Defenses. It is the most complex and dangerous mission that the Air Force and the Navy flies, but it is vitally important to be able to go in and bust the electronic radar wall down so that other airplanes could come in and do that. They're always the first ones in, they're always the last ones out, and they do it with F-16s now. And, of course, the Super Hornets do it for the Navy, and extremely successful at it now.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a whole different world, man. So I want to ask you what were your thoughts on now you're looking back at it what were your thoughts on the Iraqi Air Force?
Speaker 2:You know, the Iraqi Air Force, we knew was probably not going to be a player, particularly in Desert Storm. Okay, we knew was probably not going to be a player, particularly in Desert Storm. Okay, the Navy, in their naval intelligence group in Washington DC. They have a group that all they do is they marry up intelligence officers with operators, pilots, f-18, f-14, all these different things, and it was called SPEAR Strike Projection, evaluation and Anti-Air Research Division of Navy Intelligence and they wrote an incredible report on how the Saddam's integrated air defense system would work and it was spot on and that's how we were able to take down the entire network in about three days, because our intel was superior. Yeah, our intel was superior. Okay, ea6b electronic warfare officer or pilot, and you sit down and you look really closely at not only how the radar is painting you but what it's connected to, who's telling that radar to turn on, and go up that whole chain until you find what's called a sector operations center, until you find what's called a sector operation center. And that was what the F-117s went after the very opening strikes of Desert Storm, where F-117 strikes on these four or five basically brains of the integrated air defense system. And this Spear report was, I mean, just an incredible piece of work by these people. I had no idea that it even existed and that was my first trip out to an aircraft carrier, kp and they showed me this. You know, I'm just a tanker guy. You know I don't deal with any of this stuff. Like I said, you know, I've never shot a gun, never released a missile, never dropped a bomb. You know I've never shot a gun, never released a missile, never dropped a bomb. But I'm reading this and I can tell, hey, this is really good work.
Speaker 2:And sure enough, during the second Gulf War, speer did another report on the degraded system of Iraq. And so we knew that during the first Gulf War, how to handle it and how to take it down, and that's what? Uh, then brigadier general Larry Henry Puba was able to create this integrated air defense takedown. And then, believe it or not, larry Henry, in the 2000 time period, was alive I think he's still alive and he came to Shaw Air Force Base and went through everything that he had planned during Desert Storm with the planners from 9th Air Force on how to go and re-attack the Iraqi integrated air defense system. And, as you saw, I think there was eight flights in the 26 days of Shakana. I think there was eight fighter flights and that was just to reposition them to different places. They just they. They were not a threat, and Saddam had a lot of science projects and a lot of missiles and all this kind of stuff, but we were able to take it all down and and pretty short order.
Speaker 2:So that's the wild Weasel mission. The Iron Hand mission is what they call it, or the Navy calls it Iron Hand, and it is the first thing that you have to do in any major air campaign is go in and suppress the integrated air defense. Now, recently you had the B-2s that went to Iran and, fortunately for us, the Israelis had pretty much destroyed the integrated air defense in Iran and had dealt a severe blow to it because you had F-35s, f-22s, b-2s. Go in basically unopposed, drop the weapons and then come back out. They never had a shot fired at them, from what I'm hearing, and that's what you want.
Speaker 1:Right, man, that's intense and I can understand what you're saying about your first mission. It's like walking into a dark room, like you don't know what to expect. You hear news, rumors, claims and you're like you're prepared for a fight and you've got extra magazines, you've got extra armor, you've got extra everything for, like bad day, worst case scenario, and you get that pucker effect, as as as a lot of us military folks call it, right, um, and, and just getting that under your belt is is huge, um, what would you say would be your most defining moment from the time that you were in the air force? That that shaped your overall leadership philosophy?
Speaker 2:Oh, geez, what a great question. Kp. Um, you know what? Three things. Number one, kp relationships the relationship that you have with the people around you.
Speaker 2:I had a team of 30 people when I was the chief of the for all air refueling operations in the Middle East, for the Chakanaw campaign and then for Operation Anaconda, and the relationship that I developed with my team and the other teams that I dealt with I think is critical as a leader in a leadership role is critical as a leader in a leadership role, okay, during the time period of the shock and awe campaign. One example I'm walking up the stairs into the planning cell and at the top of the stairs is a F-18 pilot in the Navy who used to be my next door neighbor when he was doing an exchange tour and F-15s in Okinawa. We hadn't seen each other in what two decades. But their trigger was stand at the top of the stairs. It's a small military. Yeah, it is Okay. And then there was other people that I began dealing with too. My last cat shot and trap on an aircraft carrier was on the John F Kennedy and the chief of the Naval Air Liaison Element, the NAIL, had been the air wing commander on the John F Kennedy. Okay, admiral Bill Gortney he was a captain at the time and so here's he goes by Shortney. Shortney was, you know, just a couple of tables over from me, and you know what those relationships were so important because I knew these people, I knew how they would act, react, I knew how they wanted to do things and the team that I had around me was the same.
Speaker 2:I got to pick the team and I did it with two other guys that were on my team, okay, mike Taylor Gramps, and another guy who had been through the KC-135 Weapon School, which wasn't very old at the time We'd only had like four classes through and we knew each other. We'd worked with each other before and those relationships forged a team of experts the likes that I've not worked with since, seriously, since the Chakanal campaign. We were given some of the toughest things to do in the air campaign and because I had these experts around me and knew them and knew them well, it worked fantastically. Okay, another leadership principle you and I have both worked with leaders that will never forget their names, and leaders we hope we do forget their names. Okay, and one of the things that I've noticed of the leaders that I want to continue working for is. They told their subordinates this is what I need, but didn't tell us how to do it Right. They didn't tell us how to do it Right. They didn't micromanage you Exactly. Okay, they let you use your innovation, your techniques and your mind to basically work through some complicated problems and get it done. Here's an example General Mike Mosley, lieutenant General Mike Mosley, was the CFAC, the Combined Forces Air Component Commander for the Shakanah campaign and he came up to me on about night three of the war and he said Sluggo, the gas is in the wrong place.
Speaker 2:It's all down here in Saudi Arabia. People are having to go too far. I want you tomorrow to move tanker tracks into Iraqi airspace so that we don't have to go as far as the gas. And he told me something else. He says Sluggo, we can't keep you tanker guys back here in Saudi Arabia in safe airspace. You have to assume some of the same risk that we're all assuming going into Baghdad, assume some of the same risk that we're all assuming going into Baghdad. And I said okay, sir, I'm on it. And I went to Mike Taylor Gramps and a couple of other guys Bart, okay, bart O'Dell. His call sign was Bart Dave O'Dell, and I said you're not going to believe what he just asked we have to put tanker tracks inside Iraq tomorrow night. And you know we all went just ask we have to put tanker tracks inside Iraq tomorrow night. And you know we all went, it's too soon, it's this, it's that you know. But he didn't tell us how to do it. He just said Sluggo, I need you to do it.
Speaker 2:And so we came up with some extremely innovative ways of defending the tankers from guns and missiles shooting at them. And this is where I made a mistake. I didn't include you guys on the ground, because I'm an air guy. I don't think in the same terms that you do on the ground, kp. I left out a critical piece that was vital to the defense of tankers, and it was the Special Forces guys. So what we came up with, kp, was we had two air refueling areas that were just inside Iraqi airspace, over the deserts, on the food desert. The fighters would come up and refuel in four ships, and what we did was we split them up. Two would refuel and the other two would run around with all their sensors and try and find things on the ground that were shooting at us, trying to kill us, and often they did.
Speaker 2:The A-10 LNO I'm going to get to the special forces here in just a second. The A-10 planner was from Boise, okay, his call sign was Oatmeal. And I'm reading over this report one night of the tankers being shot at and I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do about this? There's never been a tanker shot down ever. And I'm the guy that's running tankers and I'm going to have one get shot down. You don't want that label for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:And Oatmeal, from down about four or five desks down goes Sluggo, what are you reading? And I said I'm reading all of these surface-to-air fire engagements where they're engaging the tankers. He goes what. He says Sluggo, have all your tankers, go to frequency white one. That's the A-10 threat frequency. We'll go and find them and punch their lights out. And I said, oatmeal, come here and let's talk about this.
Speaker 2:And what we did is we took A-10s that were on combat, search and rescue alert. We launched them and had them run underneath the tankers to find stuff. Okay, and we made a agreement with oatmeal If you guys have to go, get a downed pilot, you will be our number one air refueling priority. We will come down to 10,000 feet and we refuel the A-10s, much lower than the rest of the fighters. We will come down 10,000 feet and we will refuel you guys so you guys can go do your mission. All right, that's the contract I'll make with you. He said perfect.
Speaker 2:So this area underneath four or five air refueling areas in Iraqi airspace got nicknamed the pig pen because of the warthogs running around underneath it punching people, you know, punching these trucks with guns and missiles, punching their lights out. And he said Sluggo, you need to include the ground forces in this. I said what do you mean, oatmeal? He says the special forces guys are all running around underneath us. Have them go look for this stuff too. Oh, yeah, because I wasn't thinking jointly, kp, and that's a mistake that I made. I wasn't using all of the tools that were available to me. Because if I told you, as a ground army guy, I want you to add another target to your mission set, I want you to go find these trucks with guns on them and these mobile missiles and everything like that, what would be your response to that KP? I'd look for Overwatch. Yeah, I'd bring it. You'd bring it, wouldn't you? Oh, I got more things to kill, I got more things to shoot at. And that's exactly what the Special Forces guys did.
Speaker 2:And, sure enough, one guy sent a picture back. One of these Special Forces guys you know, a scraggly beard, you know, look like hell, all right had a mobile surface air missile truck go by them in their hide site. And he came out of the hide site and took a Javelin missile off of his back and started running toward it and all of his buddies are like going what are you doing? What are you doing? Don't do that. You know he goes, he's over his shoulder. He goes take a picture with the missile heads, take a picture with the missile heads. And he goes ka-funk.
Speaker 2:And that missile goes, you know, thunk out of the thing. Does its little thing go up like this? And it came down on that mobile launcher and, sure enough, kp. He turned around just before the missile hit and he's going like this. And that guy snapped a picture and you see this missile system behind him blowing up like this with this soft soldier. You know, all unwashed and unclean, unshaven, everything going like this. And I sent that picture throughout the entire command center to say they've got our back. They've got our back. The Air Force exists to take care of you guys, on care of us, and we appreciated it. Because I didn't think of that, I didn't think of that.
Speaker 1:You got to think of those resources and those assets, man, like we used to use uh, the uh, the uh helicopters you know, the Blackhawks, the Kiowas to do a lot of our, our overwatch, or to do some of our route clearances and things like that, and we use the engineers to also do that as well Um, just your sheer presence is a is a huge deterrent, uh, for any potential attacks.
Speaker 1:So the uh, I can say that the appreciation goes both ways, no doubt because we definitely need the fuel, the bullets, the beans, all that stuff to do our job and and that that that's amazing that you had that, had that, had that experience and that revelation as a leader to kind of look forward and find those assets and utilize those assets. And those guys are grateful for you doing what you were doing back then. And you're kind of talking about some of the intense combat missions that you've done. Out of all the missions that you've flown refueling missions that you've flown, what are some of the most intense combat zones that kind of stick out in your mind? What was the most challenging mission that you think you ever flew?
Speaker 2:The first night of Desert Storm was one mission that you think you ever flew. The first night of Desert Storm was one. And then about four days later, we had another really intense one. Okay, and this goes back to the tanker community in the Air Force has an impeccable relationship with the people around us and also a uh, a great community that is looked up to and, um, god, what's the word I'm looking for? You know, a respect, okay, and um, I'm going to give you two stories from two different air campaigns to illustrate this. Okay, and you're going to love these. Okay, and your listeners are going to love this.
Speaker 2:My crew on the fourth day of Desert Storm was coming in to fly and we had a mission already that we knew We'd looked it up the day before and as we walked in, we're coming up the stairs. It up the day before and as we walked in, we're coming up the stairs and Lieutenant Colonel Dave Wright. D Wright, who was the deputy chief of the planning cell, is at the top of the stairs and he's pointing down at me like this he's going are you coming in to fly Sluggo? You and your crew, and I go. Yeah, we sure are D Wright. What's up. He goes your mission is canceled, go to mission planning and wait for me there. And I'm like going, d-right, what's going on? He goes just go to mission planning, wait for me there. We made a promise to somebody and we're trying to fulfill it. And I went. He just says go wait for me in mission planning. I get there. There's already two crews sitting there waiting. We're the third crew. Another crew that had just walked in behind us becomes the fourth crew and D-Wright tells us you need to take off in 35 minutes and meet 32 F-16s that did not get pre-strike refueled. They literally went to their target without getting gas on the front end and if you guys don't make it to them, we're going to have the largest combat search and rescue in the history of the Air Force, with airplanes literally dropping all over southern Iraq.
Speaker 2:And so we did a quick brief. I was not leading this, I was number three. Dan Favorite from Beale was the lead. And here's another leadership principle okay, establish standard operating procedures and KP. You know exactly what I'm talking about here and how important those are. Okay, establish standard operating procedures. And so our formation brief was from a standard operating procedure like checklist that everybody had to be tested on and sign off on before you could be in a formation. And once you had gone through all of the standard operating procedures, signed off all that and being tested on it both on paper and orally, being tested on it both on paper and orally, then you are assigned to be a cell lead. And so Dan Favorite says okay, jeta, formation procedures, everybody got it. Yes, we all got it. We all understood what that meant. We all understood what our responsibilities were and we all understood what Dan was trying to tell us. That standard operating procedure is how we're going to operate today.
Speaker 2:The other thing D Wright told us is you will probably have to go into Iraqi airspace to pick these guys up, and at that time very few tankers had gone inside of Iraq and we were going to do it at 21,000 to 23,000 feet. So we're going to be hanging it out big time. And he said go as far as you dare go. Well, obviously there's a lot of questions about that. What do you mean by that? We don't know. And he didn't know because we didn't. He didn't know where we're going to pick the F-16s up. So we take off, and normally it takes 45 minutes to do a walk around of a KC-135.
Speaker 2:But another stand-in operating procedure that we had there KP was we had crews that couldn't fly because of illness or whatever cock on the airplanes. In other words, all you had to do was get in the airplane, start the engines, taxi and take off and fortunately that cut about 15 minutes off this time period. We take off, go to Lime Pre, we go straight up toward Baghdad, straight up toward Baghdad, kp, and we get on the radio and we check in with the F-16s and he goes I will call your turn, we're about 40 miles in Iraqi airspace. And he says in Iraqi airspace. And he says turn south now. And so four tankers turned and it was raining F-16s. There were four, eight ships of F-16s. The guy that came to my boom one of the guys that came to my boom, kp, had 800 pounds. He had six minutes of flying time left and he was still not connected to the boom. That's nothing.
Speaker 1:You're running out of fuel at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're 40 miles in Iraq, so they're all calling in. You know I've got 1200, I've got 900, I've got 1500, you know they're all extremely low on gas. So we turned South and I and I I had my camera with me and my copilot had his video camera. I've got this all on film. And it's raining, these F-16s and my boom operator, rick Brack, told Pug 6, all the F-16s were named after dogs, come straight to the boom, just come straight to the boom, okay. And he reached out, plugged him, okay, and we gave everybody a thousand pounds of comfort gas. Comfort gas because now they aren't sucking up seat cushion, they've got some time. And then we recycled them all back through and they went up to a higher altitude when they're all done and left for their base and says we cannot thank you guys enough for what you did. You are really hanging it out. And then the AWACS called us again and says turn 270 now, turn west. Now we're like is somebody shooting at us? What's happening? What was going on was an F-14 had been shot down the night before the Rio had been captured. The pilot was still evading and sure enough, they found him and the A-10s were on him and the helicopter Moccasin was just getting ready to pick him up. But the A-10s needed more gas. All right, the A-10s hold about 9,000 to 10,000 pounds and these guys took 8,000 pounds. That's a lot of gas for a hog, all right. But they were able to refuel the hogs and get them home and Boots Jones, the F-14 pilot, was rescued and was flying two days later.
Speaker 2:Well, in 2004, 2005, captain Brooks Boatwright, when I was at the Joint Forces Staff College, says hey, sluggo, you need to go over and talk to that guy right there. And I go. Why is that? He goes. Your lives are intertwined. And I've heard you tell the story. Go talk to him, go tell him who you are. And I walk up and it's Captain Boots Jones and I shake his hand and I said God, it makes a lump in my throat. Boots, I was one of those three tankers above you giving gas to the Wild Weasels and the A-10s during your recovery. You know what he said to me Drinks are on me, sluggo, drinks are on thee. You know how many times I've heard that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Drinks are on me, Sluggo.
Speaker 1:When was that F-14 shot down? Was that during the Gulf War Desert Storm?
Speaker 2:yeah, the first Gulf War. They were on a combat air patrol mission and got hit by an SA-2. And it's a famous story the two hog drivers get the Silver Star. Pj Johnson was the lead and there's a classic, classic picture I'll see if I can find it, kp, and I'll send it to you when the pararescueman in the helicopter, the Pavelo, is out and he's running up to Boots Jones and Boots Jones is running up to him and the pararescue guy hits his wrist and so he drops the pistol out of his wrist, out of his hand, and he literally grabs him, throws him in the helicopter. Then he gets in the helicopter and they leave. I mean, they're only on the ground, like you know, 15, 20 seconds, but one of the other PJs had his camera with him and took a picture of it and it shows boots running to this PJ and they finally get on the moccasin, the Pueblo, and then leave and it saves the day.
Speaker 1:It's amazing that in 1991, right 1991, you guys are had the mind to take pictures and videos, because when I was in Iraq in 04, you know, social media wasn't wasn't existent back then. So taking pictures was a little more cumbersome because we didn't have digital cameras, we had regular cameras that had film. So you took a picture. You didn't know what was the result until later on you developed it. You guys had the state of mind to actually capture those moments like that, yeah, hey, let me tell you the second story.
Speaker 2:Okay, and it has to do with training and leadership. All right, and it has to do with training and leadership, all right, and it wasn't a combat mission, but it was probably one of the best learning events in my career. It's right after Operation Anaconda. John F Kennedy is now getting ready to go up into the Northern Arabian Gulf and to fly Southern Watch missions. Their strike lead was a guy that had helped us create our weapons school, and the C2 carrier onboard delivery airplane broke, and so I ended up five days on the aircraft carrier with my camera. I was taking 60 rolls of film a day, kp, of airplanes being loaded. You know guys slinging bombs. I mean it was an incredible watch. And they had to underway replenish where a store ship. Kp comes up next to them, kp comes up next to them and for about six hours they're connected by fuel hoses replenishing the fuel that they put in the fighters.
Speaker 2:Lettuce, hot dogs, bombs everything is coming across from the USS Seattle and I'm standing there in the Ox Conning Tower and it's these wings that are off the side of the bridge. Whenever you go on a Navy ship, they'll have these wings off the side of the bridge that they do this with. And I'm standing there and the captain of the ship his name is Harv Henderson and they call down to some place because the next Lieutenant, who's supposed to come up and basically drive the ship while it's refueling, they don't know where he's at. They're trying to figure out where he's at and they find out he's not coming. And this is a mark of great leadership.
Speaker 2:Harv Henderson says to me hop in there, sluggo, con the carrier. And I turned around and I looked at him with a straight face and I said, with all due respects, harv, are you out of your mind? I'm going to drive the aircraft carrier while another ship is 180 feet off the right side. He goes hop in there, sluggo. This will be good training and education for you. And so my first response, kp, was I can't do this. I'm an Air Force guy. I've never conned a ship. I'm an Air Force guy, I've never conned a ship. You know, I'm driving 122,000 tons, 102,000 tons of aircraft carrier 180 feet from another boat, really, really. But Harv said to me hop in there, sluggo.
Speaker 1:You can do this.
Speaker 2:He says it's just like flying formation with another airplane. What you do is you make one percent increase on the screws, the inboard uh carrier screws propellers every 20 minutes and you keep that blue line on the ship right off your shoulder. You make one degree heading changes. Okay, Just like flying formation with an airplane. Okay, that's all you got to do, all right? I mean, think about that KP 1% thrust, one degree heading changes. We all think we have to make these five degree cuts and got to have all the power up and everything like that. But the greatest learning events in our lives often come with 1% increase on the thrust, one degree heading changes, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:I love that connection.
Speaker 2:I hopped in there and I'm like going, this is crazy that I'm doing this, but I'm going to do it. And I settled down and he says hey, sluggo, you're doing a great job, man, this is good. Okay, I'm watching the lines come across, the fuel lines come across, 26,000 heads of lettuce, 16,000 hot dogs, 18,000 hamburger patties, the buns for them all and 300 bombs. I'm watching this all come across, all right, and they're basically replenishing, or they call it underway replenishing, or unwrapping. While this is all going on, well, harv Henderson calls over to the captain of the USS Seattle and he goes hey, giggs, are you sitting down? That is not what you want to hear when you're doing this, okay, and of course, giggs calls back. He goes why should I be? And Harv, in a perfect voice, goes Air Force is conning the ship. And all seven heads in Giggs OXCONN turn around and go, like this Air Force is driving the carrier. And of course, giggs asks me. He goes hey, who are you? And I says well, I'm the chief of the air fueling control team. Right now I'm a KC-135 pilot. And there's this dead silence and Giggs goes we love tanker guys, you know over the radio. Well, in 2023, I attended the Tailhook Convention. Guess who I met, jim Gigliotti.
Speaker 2:Giggs, the captain of that ship and one of my good friends, an AVF-18 guy, says you need to go talk to Giggs. You need to go talk to that guy right there. I said why. He says you have him in your book. I go what do you mean? He's in my book. He says yeah, the guy that you called Iggy in the book is actually Giggs, and that's him right there. Go talk to him. So I walked up to him. I says you have no idea who I am, but our lives were intertwined on a day in April of 2003. You were the captain of the USS Seattle, weren't you? He goes yeah, I sure was. I said I'm that KC-135 guy that was conning the JFK when you guys were underway replenishing, and so now he and I are good friends too. Giggs great guy. He works for Lockheed in the F-35 program.
Speaker 2:Small world, the small military man. But here's the thing. Okay, this is a great leadership lesson. All right, let your people grow. Dare to let them grow. I'm an Air Force guy. I'm not even in Harv's chain of command, but he knows you're an Air Force guy. You need to understand what goes on here. You need to just hop in there and do it, and I did, and it was awesome. It's one of the great events of my career is sitting next to the USS Seattle. By the way, I emailed you the picture of that, so you've got pictures of this. Okay, nice, all right, and I sent us a few more also.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm going to write this time down and make sure I put them in the video portion of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, please do. Okay, you know an hour and five minutes, because, again, it's all about logistics and the carrier had to unwrap every three days. Well, go forward now to Shakana. There's five carriers in the Gulf, okay, and I know, every three days those guys are going to come offline for about eight hours and underway replenish. Only one carrier continued flight ops while they were replenishing and he showed me the video of this. They're shooting airplanes while they're up next to the underway, the store ship getting gas, getting bombs and everything, and they're still doing flight ops. It's crazy, but Harv said this will be good experience. Sluggo, and of course, you fear that you go oh man, you know, out of my comfort zone. I'm not a Navy guy, I'll never do this again. And coordinate all that and work with two teams the team that's in the bridge of the John F Kennedy and the team that's in the bridge of the USS Seattle. While I'm driving a ship, one degree heading changes, 1% increase on the thrust.
Speaker 1:And I like how you connected that with life. Yeah, everyone thinks you have to take these big steps. I've been doing this podcast for three years and it's been a slow growth for me, just learning how to speak, learning how to and it's been like that my whole life, where you slowly start to work towards certain things in certain directions, and I I like how you connected that experience to life in general and just your overall shout out to everyone that you work to. I mean, sometimes these conversations, people are the main character, but you've mentioned so many names during this conversation and given people credit for doing great things and remember what I said about relationships.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's about relationships. Yeah, it is, you know, and, and sometimes that relationship is built during events where you're a little scared out of your mind. Okay, all right, harv, seriously, you want me to drive the ship while you've got another one 180, 180 feet away from you and uh, and and do this, and yeah, okay, oh, here's the other thing about this, too. Here's the other crazy thing about this they stay in formation at 180 feet apart, using pvc pipe. There's a little christmas tree right outside the window, kp, and it's made of pvc pipe and it has uh, so you have this long stick going out this way and then you have little branches coming off this way.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, and the 180-foot visual reference that it's got, you know, just like a sight on a gun. It's got one up here and then it's got one down here, and you line those up and you're exactly 180 feet away, all right, and it's got like 170, you know 170, 160, 150, you know all the thing, and then it goes up, I think, like 210 out the other side. All right, but literally, think about that, how easy that is and how crazy that is that these two ships are maintaining formation using a PVC pipe Christmas tree right outside the window.
Speaker 1:Using a PVC pipe Christmas tree right outside the window, tons and tons of steel moving through the water, literally being led by PVC pipe, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:That's insane man.
Speaker 1:Overall, what would you say like how critical is aerial refueling to modern warfare and what do you think civilians uh, oftentimes misunderstand about it altogether great question so our motto is nobody kicks ass without tanker gas, nobody, whenever.
Speaker 2:And and military air operations kp, sit on a three-legged stool. You have joint integrated fires, and by fires I mean, like you guys knocking in doors, you have your overwatch of a10s and you've got somebody controlling them, okay. Joint integrated fires, where you got t-lamps coming in, bombs coming in, all these different assets dropping weapons, uh. You also have non-kinetic fires, electronic spectrum, all those kinds of things too. That's the first one. Joint integrated fires, persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. That can be by drones, be by the AC-130 gunship with its sensors. B-52s have a targeting pod that have a sensor on them, and I interviewed a guy on my Lessons from the Cockpit podcast who's a B-52 guy and they were doing drug interdiction with a B-52 using the sniper pod and basically were a forward air controller airborne for the Coast Guard on the ground with a B-52.
Speaker 2:And then the last one, kp, is continuous humanitarian operations. So joint integrated fires, persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and continuous humanitarian operations. That's kind of the three-legged stool that air operations stands on. You can't do any of that without tankers. Air operation stands on. You can't do any of that without tankers. An F-15 consumes 8,000 pounds of fuel an hour at tactical speeds, 2,000 pounds a minute in afterburner. That's the rule of thumb for most fighters, except for the F-16, because it's a single engine airplane, it's about 3,200 pounds an hour.
Speaker 1:All right, burns less.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the B-52 is burning 22,000 pounds an hour through its eight engines. So for those joint integrated fires to keep going and you know it's all about range payload and endurance Okay, that's why you have air refueling range payload and endurance you have to keep dumping gas into those things. The B2s that recently struck Iran probably had six refuelings and they were taking about 80,000 pounds every time they hooked seven airplanes. That's over a million pounds of gas KP. Wow, Just to do that one mission.
Speaker 1:All right, six refuelings, leaving from where and going to where.
Speaker 2:Going from Whiteman Air Force Base in beautiful Knob Noster, missouri. Okay, there's a.
Speaker 1:Walmart there you said Missouri, say no more. I went to basic training in Leonard Wood.
Speaker 2:Okay, so Whiteman's, right outside Kansas City. Okay, okay, just east of Kansas City. So Kansas City to their targets at Fordow in Iran and back One hop, you know. 36 to 37-hour flight, all right, the F-35s, f-22s were stationed locally at bases throughout the Southeast Asia, you know, but they still needed gas. Now, persistent ISR intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance.
Speaker 2:During the ballistic missile chaos going into Israel, more than likely, the Air Force had what's called the RC-135 Cobra Ball aircraft. It is a 135 airframe that is missionized for space and missile intelligence collection and whenever you have ballistic missiles flying around, this airplane's flying somewhere watching it all and it's really good KP at what it does. Particularly, where did the missile come from, what's its time of flight and where it's going, where is it going to drop. And that works into the ground system of Iron Dome, the Patriots and everything as another piece of the puzzle that tells the operators and the leadership where the ballistic missiles are coming from, what's their flight route, where they're going to land, and saying, okay, this one is a target, this one's going to land in the middle of the desert, we don't need to fire on it. So you're able to make decisions because you can see intentions. And that's the thing about intelligence is what are the enemy's intentions? Well, if these ballistic missiles are coming from this spot, we know where they're coming from and of course we'll probably pass that to our allies, particularly Israel, and have them go hunt that thing down. Or we'll go hunt it down like a Scud missile. Or for national security, the RC-135 rivet joint flies what they call burning wind missions where they're off the coast of some country collecting electronic signals and communications intelligence. That's what we call persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance.
Speaker 2:Now for humanitarian. The best example I can think of was remember the big tsunamis in Southeast Asia back a couple of years ago. They had the tremendous earthquake, and the Philippines too. Right, yeah, oh yeah, the Philippines, thailand, malaysia just got wiped out. Okay, yeah, well, we're probably the only Air Force that can respond to that. And they started putting C-17s, c-5s on alert to take all kinds of humanitarian supplies over to some lily pad that we could drop that all off at and start sending it out, either by C-130s or helicopters or whatever. And start sending it out either by C-130s or helicopters or whatever.
Speaker 2:And another great example is during the war in Afghanistan. We had the first joint integrated fires and persistent ISR going, but we also had continuous humanitarian operations because we were dropping the food packets, remember yeah, we were dropping all the MREs. You know there was like 18,000 of these meals ready to eat that we were dropping on drop zones over Afghanistan so that people weren't starving through the winter. And it took tankers to do that, refueling over the Black Sea, going and coming out of Ramstein.
Speaker 2:And here's the really innovative part of that KP is the Air Mobility Warfare Center created a cardboard box that was strong enough that you could fill it with, you know, 3,000 or 4,000 of these meals ready to eat, thousand of these meals ready to eat, and once it went out the back of the C-17, it would come apart in the windstream at 130, 140 miles an hour and so literally the container would hold all of them. But once it got in the airstream behind the C-17, it would come apart and then the MREs would just fall to the ground and, excuse me, every one of these MREs had been. The menu had been put together with a Muslim chaplain to make sure that we had the right things in it. Okay, we don't. We're trying to save lives, we're not trying to offend people, all right, no-transcript. These areas integrate joint integrated fires, persistent isr commit, continuous humanitarian operations. Tankers are involved, always, always, and that's why they say nobody kicks ass without tanker gas, nobody yeah, it's often overlooked, right, it's often overlooked and not thought about.
Speaker 1:But six, six refuels between missouri and iran, and back and back. So, man, that's, that's insane, that's something that's often overlooked about 80 000 pounds each time.
Speaker 2:Wow, that was our. That was our. That was our typical. What we call rule of thumb for refueling bombers was 80K.
Speaker 1:That's a lot, thank God for people like you that have such a passion and love to do that kind of thing, man, because it sounds like you stayed 24 years. I mean you have to enjoy what you're doing to stay that long. To stay that long and over your years in the Air Force, what were the key differences that you saw when you transitioned out? The differences in how leadership is developed in the Air Force compared to like civilian organizations.
Speaker 2:So what I saw transitioning out was again, talk about relationships. You know the relationships that you had with the military, a brotherhood and a sisterhood, which was fantastic. It wasn't quite that way in my experience with the company that I worked with. Okay, it was more about you know, you didn't reach your bottom line goal, or you know this financial goal or whatever. All right, it was um.
Speaker 1:I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll be honest with you, it was quite discouraging at times. Yeah, and you had people that, um, you didn't want to work with and leadership positions, just like you do in the military, you know. And I had one guy come up to me we were looking at a potential big fighter contract and I was extremely frustrated. All right, they assigned us a strategist. They assigned us a strategist, and during one of the meetings this individual our chief strategist to get us in a completely different market asked the question well, what's a targeting pod? And I went, oh, we're literally starting from scratch here, all right, and the next day, you know, she's kind of crying in the back of the room, you know, about how over her head all this stuff is and everything like that. You know, and I'm realizing they're not picking the right team. They just said, oh well, this person doesn't have anything on their plate. And they didn't understand.
Speaker 2:In an airplane, you have to do three things aviate, navigate and communicate. And for a fighter cockpit, in a cramped space, you can't have things that are heavy, big things like that. And they didn't understand that I did because I'd been in all these things and I had a senior, one of the senior guys come up to me and he's telling me you know, I was an army helicopter pilot. I'm the one who knows how this is going to go. I know how this all goes down. Okay, and I turned around and looked at this guy and I said, when you have 5,000 hours in jets I'm not talking just tankers, I'm talking awacs, I'm talking c-130s, helicopters, cats and traps on aircraft carriers only then will you have credibility in my world. And what you guys are trying to do here is just stupid. Well, that didn't endear me to some of the senior leaders, but you have to be honest, all but you have to be honest. All right, you have to be honest. You're going to spend, you know, tens of millions of dollars to go after this one group of airplanes and you have to understand how they operate. And not only in a fighter do you have aviate, navigate, communicate, but you have weapons and sensors too.
Speaker 2:And some of these people didn't have the first clue about what that cockpit would look like. So a former F-4 WIZO that was working on my team and I sat down and we created a notional fighter cockpit that you could put in a trainer or a fighter, didn't matter. That had all the things that it needed, all the different Ethernet cables, the MFDs, everything that we made and they were commercial, off the shelf, so they were really not that expensive. And that same senior dude looked at me and goes this is really dumb, this isn't going to work, this isn't going to work. And a year later he had that on a slide where he said I'm the one who built this and so the ethics that you and I have with our bros is I got your back, you got mine, and you know this is kind of a negative story. The positive story is again the things that I learned, and I mentioned it already. I was used to looking at the displays and all that stuff. I had no idea what was in that box and that was a great learning experience for me.
Speaker 2:Working with some of these systems engineers was also another great learning opportunity for me and seeing, okay, from an engineer's perspective, this is what this should look like, and having a team that about 12 people and being able to be in a world that I didn't understand but had one particular guy that helped me understand. It again gets back to relationships and he had his master's degree in systems engineering and he took me aside and says here's the book you need to read, here's the stuff that you need to learn, you know all those kinds of things. And so there was a great deal of mentorship going on there. That, um, that helped me get through that. And when I went to another business unit, I didn't have that mentoring. They just said, oh, you'll learn this on on the fly. And I'm like, ah, I hate it when you do that.
Speaker 2:And then finally they realized that they were losing some contracts that they should be winning because it was our equipment. And we had a company called Dardus Communication come in and teach us. And that was a turning point because we had some experts that came in and said engineers, talk like engineers, you know, you know this voltage and and this frequency range and everything. And they came in and basically told us this is why you're losing contracts, because you're speaking like engineers. You need to speak to people at the eighth grade level and tell them this is how this is going to improve your life and that's what you know every salesman is taught. You know, this product is going to improve your life this way Right Over this period of time. And oh, by the way, we have a services division that will help you maintain this cockpit to a certain level, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
Speaker 2:They have to take off. So we had to have 100% on-time takeoff in the 160th SOAR. Well, to do that meant we had to have people on the ground there at Fort Campbell, kentucky. We had to have the parts available that they could go in. And if a multifunction display went bad, you know they can take the Canon plugs out of it. Put, you know, put a new one in. You know, put the Canon plugs to it, screw it in and off they go. And those decisions to do that sometimes are expensive. But we had an incredible relationship and built a rapport with the 160 S SOAR that they said we'll never go with anybody else. And that's the kind of thing that I saw when I transitioned from the military into business. They're more about the bottom line. There's incredible training opportunities to learn if you will accept them and take them and take them on. To learn if you will accept them and take them and take them on. And, um, you know, I I wasn't looked at as as an expert because I wasn't an engineer, and much to their detriment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had similar experiences too. When I got out and and it was really frustrating, where it was more dog eat, dog backstabbing, I oh yeah, I think out of um, out of a big department. There was one other air force guy there and him and I kind of linked up and he sort of watched out for me, um, because I, I didn't know, like you said, it was like here, get on the golf cart, we'll take you to your department and you can just learn, learn on the fly, and it's like, well, like do I have a smart book?
Speaker 1:Like do I have something that shows me the foundations, the basics, the verbiage, the acronyms? Like, do I have anything? No, I don't have anything. So it's like this isn't, this isn't like organizationally planned very well, and it's just. I understand what you're saying and I think that's why a lot of military veterans, when they get out, they reach that frustration of just not having any mentorship or any real direction and it's kind of like well, you just learn, you either tread water or you'll drown. Yeah, that mentality, yeah exactly KP.
Speaker 2:You're thrown in the deep end of the pool and you either sink or swim, okay, right. And when I went to uh services and sales and they said, oh, you'll pick it up. Literally, that's what they told me You'll pick it up. I'm like I've never been in a position like this before. I don't even know who my customers are, you know. Oh, well, you have the Northeast United States. Okay, well, who's up there? Well, you got Boeing. You know, in Philadelphia, the helicopter division. You got this, you know. And there was no introduction to these people, you know.
Speaker 2:And, um, I was very frustrated because I felt I was in a dysfunctional business unit. Yeah, and I, finally, I, finally, you know, I uh, during sequestration, a lot of my programs dried up, but I had an extreme family situation happen and I could not mentally recover from that afterward. And when I got laid off, I basically got fired because I couldn't function and my wife was taking pictures off the wall when I walked in the door at 8 30, she we're moving to utah, you know, we're out of here, you know. And uh, and you know what I remember about that.
Speaker 2:I actually got a good night's sleep because I wasn't so wound up that's awesome right, the dog eat dog world, and, and, and I was working with people that had egos as large as life. Engineers that didn't understand how the military works wouldn't listen to me when I told them how it works, and on a few occasions they did, and I developed great relationships with those guys. But I missed the camaraderie of being in a in a squadron as you would probably in a in a ground unit yeah and and and the difference was was like when you went to the air force you grew within the air force.
Speaker 1:When you get out in civilian world you're kind of thrown into a position and you don't have that growth. There's not even a bridge. There's no bridge, even, it's just figure it out or you're out, yeah, we'll just replace you. And I think there'd be less turnover with military veterans if there was some sort of bridge or some sort of like growth or bring up. But it's not. It's like and I think a lot of times people misunderstand what the military is about Fundamentally, I would expect in America everybody would understand rank, everyone would understand the functions of the Air Force, army, marines, coast Guard and Navy.
Speaker 1:But they don't. And I think with me, when I first got out, they thought because I was an officer, I was enlisted for four years National Guard, then I went active duty as an officer for four years, I think with me. I think they thought I was a drill sergeant and they thought that I like they had watched too many movies and they thought, well, just get in their ass and like, make them do this and make them do that. And it's like, well, that's not leadership, that's not leadership, that's not leadership, and I don't have trainees.
Speaker 1:I'm not dealing with 18 year old kids. Anyhow, these are grown adults that I'm managing now. So it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like full metal jacket. You know, like, and it's. It's interesting to hear that you had a similar uh experience as. But looking at the 10,000 foot view from where you're at now, how has your view of your military service overall changed now that you're looking at it from the outside?
Speaker 2:Now that I'm looking at it from the outside, some of the things that I notice is and you know what, I hear a lot of people talk about this you know the Gen Z phenomenon, you know where, when you and I were in, it was all about the mission OK, and you just got the mission done and it didn't matter how painful, it was, right. And now you have to use a really different leadership style. Yeah, with a lot of the I'm just going to call them young kids, you know, because of my age, but those that are in the military now. And I've got a very dear friend that's in the 2nd Special Forces at Fort Bragg, who was like you, you know, was in a guard unit, enlisted, you know, went to school and everything, and is now, you know, leading people at Bragg and he says, you know, you have to have a very different touch to them because you can't just come down, you know, on them and drop the load of bricks on them, because they literally can't stand it. They don't know how to adjust to.
Speaker 2:Uh, right, yeah, being put in really pressure situations, all right, and you and I have been in some real pressure situations where we had to think fast, that was the other thing this guy told me too is a lot of these young people in the military now don't like authority figures. They kind of resent some of the authority figures and the way they do things. They kind of resent some of the authority figures and the way they do things and you know, I've been told so many times that it's really a different military now because you know you have to handle them very differently than when you and I were in the military, because of the way they've been brought up, the way they've been educated and they can't handle really complex problems was another thing this guy told me and other people have told me this too where you have to bring together, like I said, a truly joint force and have the communications and organization skills to be able to make that all run, have the communications and organization skills to be able to make that all run. That's another thing that they've I've been told by folks and and that I have observed when I've gone to certain places too, is some of them aren't real deep thinkers. Yeah, okay and um. But you know I ran across that too in in the in too, when I was in the commercial world also. But again, it's a different generation that has grown up differently in a different culture and as a leadership style you have to be able to adapt to that.
Speaker 2:You know Simon Sinek I love listening to him because he's got a lot of really good ways of dealing with some of these leadership issues and these mentorship issues. You know, like, you know his book on, you know the why and all those kinds of things. He's got some great advice about that. But you know, the kids, the young people, have to be able to take that too, and sometimes that takes some really, really intense training, like the weapons school, like Top Gun, like Delta Force or SEAL Team 6, the training process that you go through there. And here's a good indication A friend of mine runs a flight instruction school here in Utah and he says he'll get like 30 people that want to come be pilot and all that stuff. But when the pressure's really on, they take their first check ride, they quit. You know I'm not going to do this anymore because they don't like being critiqued or they don't like being told they're wrong.
Speaker 1:And you know, you, know I. I like being told they're wrong. And you know, you, know I. I really thought about that too, because I agree with you 100 man. And I thought about that, like what is the difference? And when I think back to my childhood and I'm sure back when you were growing up, it was even bigger. But for me, growing up as a military brat, my dad was a ranger. He was all tabbed out and yeah, hoorah and um, my expectations were high. Like when I moved, my dad retired, moved from hawaii and I moved to ohio. Like I worked on a farm, I bailed hay, worked at the local grocery store, I played sports almost year round.
Speaker 1:Um, criticism and criticism, adversity, that was all part of my upbringing, especially in my teenage years. Coaching, and I really feel like this generation doesn't get a whole lot of that. Like even chores, basic chores, like those things fundamentally teach you what you're talking about. Like I remember I was helping my friend down the street here. He had a teenage son and he was cutting rose bushes and he had a rake and he had like a trash can and his dad gave him simple instructions put the clippings in the can.
Speaker 1:And I'm sitting there watching this and it's like this kid couldn't figure out how to take plastic shiv. This kid couldn't figure out how to take plastic shiv, roll duct tape over it and create a makeshift. He couldn't look at these components like what you're talking about and figure out how do I put this together to make a weapon. And then I was like this generation, that's what they're missing. They're missing that that growth as a kid to teenage, to adult, and then, when they're an adult, they're experiencing that criticism and that coaching and that adversity that they never really learned growing up.
Speaker 2:No, and they weren't taught it in school. No, yeah, so when you become a curriculum director, when we were setting up and creating the syllabus for the KC-135 Weapons School, we had to go through an adult education class and the levels of learning it's called Bloom's Taxonomy. You can go look this up. It's changed a little bit. You know there's, you know understanding, all the way up to evaluation, analysis, all these different things, and one of the things that I noticed was one of the higher levels of learning, excuse me, right below evaluation is synthesis Taking this part, this part, this part, this part and making a new whole concept out of that. And that's one of the things that I've noticed is, like you mentioned, there's people that are in the military that can't synthesize like that and can't put like the mistake I made okay, not including the A-10s, not including, you know, ground power. Right, that was a synthesis learning experience for me, because I realized, hey, you say you're a joint warfighter, but you're really not fighter, but you're really not. You didn't include your other sister services in your plan with these assets that can help you.
Speaker 2:And sometimes these younger generation don't even recognize that there's other assets they can use, there's other tools that they can use and they just go and sometimes they just try to use horsepower to get through it, which you know and I know doesn't work. You know, and they get frustrated because they haven't been taught how to take a blank sheet of paper and create a battle plan. They haven't been told how to set goals and as you have a goal and you write it down, well, what are the steps to achieve that goal? What do I have to do? What are, what are the steps to achieve that goal? What do I have to do? What are the things that I need to achieve that goal? And there's a lot of people that are making a lot of money right now that are helping people learn. That you know.
Speaker 2:And a great book that I love and have read several times is a gentleman by the name of Dean Graziosi and he's got a book that's called Millionaire Success Habits. I've got it right here behind me. I keep it close because I go to it quite a bit and he works a lot with Tony Robbins and you know your question would be fascinating to ask Tony Robbins and see what he says. You know, when you started 40 years ago teaching people, what do you see the differences now and how you have to handle situations. Okay, blueprint to help you visualize and see all of the pieces of the puzzle that are around you, how to bring them all together and how to truly be a successful millionaire and develop those discipline, habits and mindsets to get through a lot of these issues that young people are facing today.
Speaker 2:We always hear all the time and people joke about it you're in your mother's basement playing video games. How many times have you heard that, kp? A lot, a lot, okay, a lot. Well, why is that? What would cause a human being to get to a point where I just wanna play video games all day and basically give up on being a millionaire? And Dean Graziosi will tell you it's so easy to make money now off of social media.
Speaker 2:You know my YouTube channel has grown exponentially over the last 15 months 16 months that I created it. I started in February of last year and I, you know I have 225,000 subscribers and I went over 190 million views on my YouTube channel yesterday. Wow, you know that's insane In 15 months. All right, and it's because of people like you, kp, that are doing things like you're doing here your podcast and reaching out to some of these great guests that you've had on that have all of this experience and you're sharing it with other people in the hopes that, hey, that's something I need to reevaluate in my life and change. Okay, and you do a great job of asking the right questions during the you know we've been almost it's almost two hours now. I know you ask the right questions, okay, and and good on you, brother, for being able to see through a lot of the conversation that we've had and other conversations that I've watched you have asked the right questions so that people give you that information to help you improve your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I learned something every conversation and I and I really like how you connected your technical job in the Air Force to a lot of life lessons and it's true Like there's a lot of things that I've done in tactics whether it be military, law enforcement or whatever like that are relatable to life, just life. I don't care if you're a school teacher or if you are just a manager somewhere. Like a lot of the things that you talked about today are really relatable, whether it's a one degree turn, whether it's something as simplistic as a PVC pipe that's actually leading, leading thousands or tons and tons of steel through the ocean. I mean, it's amazing to me to hear your story and stories like yours, where there's so much to learn from people. Even if you think it's not relatable to what you're doing, it is in reality. There's things to take from that.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's because I think, kp, there's common denominators. There really is Okay, discipline being one of them. And, man, you and I, we understood discipline, didn't we? Yeah, and that's even taught differently today, isn't it? If you kind of look at, you know the generations that we're talking about here discipline has kind of a different meaning than it did when you and I first started at this. All right, but you know the discipline to get up early in the morning, make your bed and sit down and read a book. That is going to help improve your life, okay.
Speaker 2:Or listen to, like your podcast and hear some of the stories from these other people, and being able to really synthesize the things that your guests are talking about that apply to these other people's lives.
Speaker 2:You know, and again, it's you know all these little small pieces around.
Speaker 2:You know, but from listening to your episodes, being able to take all those and put them together to make a disciplinary change in your life. But also the mindset and that's another thing that I think is people are struggling with is to do some of these hard things takes a particular mindset and to be able to come in, have a lieutenant colonel go, your mission is canceled. You're doing this now and completely switch your brain into a completely different function, where now I'm going into bad guy territory in an airplane that has no defensive systems on it whatsoever and I'm going to refuel airplanes that are armed and can protect me, that don't have enough gas to do it, can't protect me, that don't have enough gas to do it, but yet my mission is to go and help my brothers and sisters complete their mission, get home and sleep in their own beds, and I think that's the kind of urgency that's also lacking to KP is some of these kids, some of these people don't have a sense of urgency about doing some of these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have a a sense of urgency. Yeah, about doing some of these things, yeah, and then, like you, and, like you said, it looks like with what you just described, that's soul fulfillment. I mean knowing that you did a job that was much bigger than than you and understanding and underlining the importance of that job too.
Speaker 2:You know how I felt when we came home from that mission, where 32 F-16s pilots got to sleep in their own beds. You're freaking euphoric. We did something and we really accomplished something today, okay, yeah, but at the same time we did something that is truly magnificent in an air campaign where a lot of things are happening, and the sense of accomplishment when you get back from that is just freaking surreal. And I'm sure you've been on missions in the military, You've done things in law enforcement, where you came back and you said we really made a difference. Today and I think that's another thing too that may be lacking is that sense of accomplishment. And sometimes to do those hard things, sometimes to do those hard things, you have to go through that in order to have that sense of accomplishment. And there's sometimes where, yeah, it may come close to breaking you.
Speaker 2:You talk to anybody that's been through BUDS or Delta Force selection. You know they talk about. You know I had a run with shin splints. You know Goggins, he's a classic example of that, you know, and all the things that happened to him. You know, yeah, and he's written about that and he's trying to improve people's lives. Like you are Right, Like I am on my podcast. I tell everybody, you know, I'm going to show you how the aviation world works and increase critical thinking skills both in the air and on the ground, and that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to increase critical thinking skills both in the air and on the ground, and that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to increase critical thinking skills both in the air and on the ground, with a generation that isn't taught critical thinking skills.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and they may not have had a bad day because, in reality, my age group, everyone that came into law enforcement specifically, was in my age group. We were Afghanistan or Iraq veterans, yeah, you know, and and nowadays a lot of the kids going into that field and industry are just leaving college thinking that they learned or they understand things, and the reality is the book doesn't teach you as much as the, as the failures that you, that you encompass when you are actually doing something.
Speaker 2:I have a great story about that, because I was a hiring manager while I was at Rockwell on my systems engineering team and we were looking for good systems engineers. All right, kp, I'd look at 200 resumes. I would pick maybe 10 people that I wanted to look at a little closer and out of those 10 people I would call maybe two or three to come do an interview. And I did my interviews a little different. I did scenario interviews and I remember this one person out of Purdue engineering definitely you know a class, a school and sitting down with them and them saying you know, you're going to give me a hundred thousand dollar job. A hundred thousand dollars because you know of my grades and the things that I did going through engineering and I said, really, $100,000 right out of college, really, yeah, six figure. I said OK, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2:And I pushed a blank sheet of paper across the table to this individual and I said I want you to draw me a fighter cockpit that has everything that is needs to be in it Aviate, navigate, communicate, sensors and weapons. Couldn't do it, couldn't do it, didn't have the experience to have a hundred thousand dollar job. And I just and that's what I told this individual. I leaned back and I said nobody's going to hire you at $100,000 because you don't have experience. You have a lot of book knowledge, okay, right, a lot of book knowledge, okay. But you don't have the experience to back it up, right? I just handed you a blank sheet of paper and said build me a cockpit.
Speaker 2:And you have no idea what goes in that cockpit. And your background was aviation systems engineering. You know, have you even flown an airplane? They had, okay, but they had no idea what goes into a military fighter cockpit. And so I learned from that. You know, hey, of course HR called me and goes why is this individual so pissed off? And I told Steve, the HR guy. I said because I put a blank sheet of paper in front of him and embarrassed him. Well, why'd you embarrass him? Well, I did a scenario-based kind of interview and they couldn't pass it. And once I told him he went hey, that was a pretty smart way to do that. You know.
Speaker 1:I mean, at the end of the day you busted his ego and at some point he may come back and thank you for that. I hope so, because the reality is is like. Everyone needs that. Everyone needs that humbling. You think you have that piece of paper and that's all you need. That's why I'm so glad I went. You know, I, I, I decided to commission after college, during a time of war. I knew that I was going to go. I just didn't know when. I didn't know it's going to be 30 days after landing in Hawaii. So I mean I'm glad that I got my ass kicked in Iraq as a platoon leader. I got chewed out by NCOs. I got I I made decisions, split second decisions that either you know, save lives or cause lives, and it's. It's something that's leadership, that's how you learn in life, and I love how this conversation has gone, where you went from talking about your technical profession to bringing it back to real world here at the end.
Speaker 2:this is awesome and you know what kp. I'll tell you a story here. I got fired from my dream job. I was literally sitting in a dream job and I was moving up the ladder okay, squadron commander was next and I got got fired. I got fired from my job, my position as the deputy commander of the initial cadre for the KC-135 weapons school. I was discouraged, I was disappointed, I was embarrassed in front of my peers, and this goes along with what you just mentioned. You know, having your ego busted. Okay, sometimes that's a good thing, a really good thing. Okay, because it causes you to reevaluate what your position really is in life.
Speaker 2:And two things happened from this okay, they were going to put me in a position where I couldn't use all of this extensive planning and operational and tactical level knowledge and experience. And finally, I told this colonel I don't want this job. And I thought, oh, here we go again. You know I have one knee capped. I'm going to get the other one capped now, all right. And the wing commander said okay, we're just going to put you in a squadron. I said, perfect, put me in a squadron so I can teach these young kids all of this knowledge and information that I have. But now I'm thinking what am I going to do? I just got fired. I'm not going to be a squadron commander, my career is basically done. That was April of 2001. Everything changed on 9-11, didn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, did that, keep me. And you just repositioned even that one degree right, exactly At a time, exactly Because now four years of great military service.
Speaker 2:And now what was happening, kp is they were scrambling for our grads of our school and we didn't have that many at that point. I think within 48 hours of the 9-11 event. On that Tuesday, two of our graduates from our school were down at Tyndall creating the air refueling plan for the air defense of North America, with all the fighters over all the cities and stuff like that. I left eight days later to Incirlik, turkey, and then came home from there, went back to the Combined Air and Space Operations Center at Prince Sultan and I was doing KP literally everything I had taught. And when I got into that position, you know I thought I just got fired. How am I going to pull myself up? You know, my ego has been thrashed and everything. And I just said to myself sit down and do a good job, just do the best that you can and get the right people around you. That will help you do that. And fortunately I did. And one night some army colonel says I don't know what it is, but there's a big, big operation coming and it's named after a snake. Okay, and that's all I know. This is the army guy, all right, and it was operation Anaconda. And, as you know, the first week of Anaconda did not go well Right, there's a lot of, lot of mistakes made and I was fortunate to interview the helicopter pilot that Neil Roberts fell out of. Al Mack, and that's another book you need to go get, al Mack. You know 160th SOAR pilot. I mean just incredible stories. Okay, it's called Razor 3, a Night Stalker's War A Night Stalker's Wars okay, by Al Mack, m-a-c-k. I can't say enough good things about that book.
Speaker 2:But again, here I am. I'm thrown into a position where, you know, my ego is busted but I have to perform. And I'm in a position where all of my education and training and all of my experience comes to an absolute head and the team does absolutely great things, fabulous things. And after my third deployment to Prince Sultan for Shakana man, I came home feeling bulletproof. You know there wasn't anything I could do wrong because I learned so much about myself. And I have a name for it. I call it God's vector check, mark.
Speaker 2:I don't want you to be a squadron commander because you're going to be needed somewhere else. And I know you don't understand what's happening to you right now, your head's spinning because you just got fired. But, believe me, I've got a great position waiting for you where you're going to use everything that you have experienced and learned and you're going to use it in situations that you couldn't have dreamt possible. That is going to really make you somebody and is really going to put you on a great vector for the rest of your life. And it did.
Speaker 2:But it took that punch to the gut, kp, where you're sitting across from this colonel and he's like you know, I have no confidence in your leadership capability whatsoever. Imagine being told that man and you talk about being a platoon leader and facing this. It is. It's a punch to the gut because you think you know, am I enough? What have I done wrong? And it causes you this reevaluation and then, once you're thrown back into, you know the mix you've got to perform, you've got to put that behind you and sometimes that's really hard.
Speaker 2:All right, and fortunately for me, I had great people around me, great people on my team the, the, the Tims I call them the Tims Tim golfing Tim and Tim A All right, two boom operators, enlisted guys that were just incredible tanker planners as boom operators. All right, gramps I've talked about him Waino McCaskill All these different people that were on this team that helped me put all this together and do all this stuff and a lot of this stuff. We had to do on the fly and it's mentally exhausting at times, but you go home and lay down in your bed, you go, man. I really did something today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so it goes back to those relationships you talked about and who you surround yourself with, and you had tremendous resiliency and adapt and overcome when it came to your career, and this has been an absolute amazing conversation. Like I did not expect, I expected this to be an all technical conversation, but here we are full circle, coming back to just life, life choices, picking yourself up, brushing yourself off and you just keep on going drive on.
Speaker 2:You know You've had incredible guests on that have incredible stories, but they also have what we call lessons learned versus lessons observed, and you know what I'm talking about here. You know incredible lessons, incredible lessons that they've learned while they have been in the crucible, ok, and Incredible lessons observed, to where I didn't do that right, okay, but cause you to reevaluate. And you've had a number of guests on on your show, which I think is fantastic because it has truly helped other people kind of see, hmm, maybe I need to reevaluate, or hey, that applies to me in my life. So good on you, brother.
Speaker 1:I really hope so, man, and you know, if I die next year at the end of the day, I really enjoy sharing these stories and I don't want anyone's career experiences, failures, failing forward, none of that stuff to ever be in vain Like. The fact is that you shared and you were honest about and authentic about your career. The times that you failed but you picked yourself up and and here you are today has been absolutely amazing for me to hear and I am blessed to have connected with people like you and have worked with so many great people over my life, and I just thought that's why I started this podcast, that's why I love doing this.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I appreciate that, man, and it's been great to be on with you. It's been great to be on your show and to Thank you. You know I tell everybody I'm just a knuckle dragon tanker pilot, but I've got a lot of experience and a lot of stories that do apply to people in many ways and I appreciate the opportunity KP for being on your show and being able to relate those and hopefully we'll do this again, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, I would love to do that and you're a very humbled professional. Now I also want to mention that you do have a YouTube channel. What's the name of that channel? Just Marcusera Marcusera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just go to at M A R K H A S A R A and, uh, you'll see my banner up there. Uh, uh, I've been very successful at doing these shorts. My uh lessons from the cockpit podcast is there. I just started doing YouTube lives. Um, I've got three or four of those up now. I do them Tuesday and Thursday nights at 7 pm, mountain time, and I've been having a lot of fun with that. A lot of fun with that. A lot of good people have been on and I just ask, I let people ask questions, you know, and if I can answer them, I'll answer them. You know, if there's some, you know, classified stuff that's involved, you know I'll say you know I can't talk about that, but but I'll be straight up with you, you know, and, uh, I haven't been doing it for very long and we had about I don't know 25 people on last night. But, uh, I've my YouTube channel is is, like I said, growing pretty quick.
Speaker 1:Sounds like you're doing extremely well and I'm very much proud of you and your transition. And again, life told you afterwards hey, I got something else for you over here, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, like I said, it's God's vector check. And sometimes, you know, like I said, KP, you have to walk through the fire, literally. You know, standing at the gates of hell holding your son's hand, you know, while he's fighting cancer, and say, hey, I can get through this. I can get through this and you get through it because of the people that you have around you. You get through it because your leadership allows you to use your innovative skills and your brainpower and you're given the tools to accomplish that mission. And sometimes you don't recognize those tools.
Speaker 2:And I'm telling everybody, you know, use everything that you have around you and read some of these good books that I've mentioned. And, of course, you know I'm going to put in a plug for mine once again. You know I'll give you my email address. You can get it on Amazon, but I've got the ones I have. The books that are have the color pictures and 32 color pictures in the softbacks, Okay, and all of the proceeds go to the Airlift Tanker Association Heritage Committee. So I don't make any money off the book and it goes to telling the air mobility story and the air refueling story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Please send me all the links that you'd like for me to put in the show notes. Sure, I would love to put that at the bottom for anyone listening out there, and I hope we were able to reach some folks out there. But, mark, I really appreciate your time today. We're going on over two hours and I know you got stuff to do today and that beautiful mountain weather out there.
Speaker 2:So thank you for the time. My daughter's downstairs screaming at me about something. I've got to go down and find out what's going on. So again, kp, thanks again for having me on, and everyone else out there.
Speaker 1:This wraps up another very impactful episode. Huge thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Mark Hasara for sharing his mission-tested wisdom, his candid experiences from the skies and his commitment to educating the next generation. Remember, real leadership isn't just about rank. It's about responsibility, resiliency and reflection. If today's conversation resonated with you, please share this episode. Leave us a review. Follow Lieutenant Colonel Hasara on Instagram, as well as TikTok and YouTube, for more tactical insight and inspiration. Again, all this stuff ties back to real life stuff. So until next time, stay tuned, stay focused and stay motivated Warriors.
Speaker 1:And dare dominate and dream. There it is.
Speaker 2:Dare dominate and dream Dare dominate and dream man.
Speaker 1:All right. God bless you, sir. Thank you everyone for listening.