Speaker 1: Oh, beat force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software UP Radio, Special Operations,
Speaker 1: military news and straight talk with the guys and the community. Well,
Speaker 1: hello out their internets, and welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: SOFTWAREP Radio. As you've already guessed, I am not Navy
Speaker 1: Seal Brandon Webb, nor am I s a s badass,
Speaker 1: big phil campion. But who I am is Alex Hollings,
Speaker 1: tech editor and senior staff writer for softwarep dot com
Speaker 1: and journalists that spent the last few years trying to
Speaker 1: study the way defense technology informs foreign policy. And in
Speaker 1: that pursuit, I've met some pretty interesting dudes. One of
Speaker 1: them we're gonna be talking to today. In just a
Speaker 1: few minutes. We're gonna talk to Justin Lee, Major Justin
Speaker 1: Hazard Lee. He's an F thirty five pilot instructor who
Speaker 1: has nearly four hundred hours of combat flight time at
Speaker 1: the stick of an F sixteen. He transitioned from the
Speaker 1: F six team to the F thirty five. I want
Speaker 1: to say sometime after two thousand fifteen, is that right, Justin? Yeah,
Speaker 1: about two thousand seventeen. I transferred from the sixteen to
Speaker 1: the F thirty five. Now, he makes his living teaching
Speaker 1: the next generation of fighter pilots how to handle the
Speaker 1: F thirty five, who, unlike Justin, are actually coming up
Speaker 1: and they're going straight to the F thirty five as
Speaker 1: opposed to learning on a fourth generation platform. Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We call them pitching babies because they don't know how
Speaker 1: hard it was back in the day. I feel like
Speaker 1: that's like my daughter is growing up in a world
Speaker 1: where we have Netflix and like a TV in the
Speaker 1: living room and you can watch anything you want, any
Speaker 1: time you want. She's never really going to appreciate just
Speaker 1: how bad things were with the twenty five in n
Speaker 1: TV and a VCR. You know, Yeah, they they're spoiled
Speaker 1: absolutely now. Other than being an F thirty five pilot,
Speaker 1: Justin's a busy dude. He also hosts The Professionals Playbook,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast that focuses on kind of gleaning
Speaker 1: the experiences and the wisdom from other guys that are
Speaker 1: kind of the top echelon and their respective fields. You know,
Speaker 1: Justin's interviewed c i A operatives, Navy seals, astronauts. I
Speaker 1: think most recently you interviewed MLB picture Jim Abbott on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Can't recommend The Professionals Playbook enough, not just
Speaker 1: because I was once a guest on the show, but
Speaker 1: also because it's really a great opportunity to learn the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of these really interesting fields that you
Speaker 1: might not have thought of otherwise. You know, justin how
Speaker 1: long have you been running the podcast podcast? It's been
Speaker 1: going on for about a year. It started as a
Speaker 1: speech I gave on Memorial Day the city of care Free.
Speaker 1: You wanted somebody who had been to combat who could
Speaker 1: discuss their experiences. So after I gave the speech, there's
Speaker 1: a woman in the crowd who is a member of
Speaker 1: the Veterans Heritage Project, and she reached out and she
Speaker 1: wanted me to come speak to some of the groups
Speaker 1: and schools that they're associated with. And after doing a
Speaker 1: bunch of the speaking, I realized that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there that want to do something great,
Speaker 1: but they don't know what or they don't know how,
Speaker 1: And so I thought I could help bridge the gap
Speaker 1: by going to some of these world class experts and
Speaker 1: talking to them about what their successes were like, what
Speaker 1: their failures were like, how they over came those failures
Speaker 1: and what they do on a day to day basis
Speaker 1: to perform at a high level, you know. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I really do enjoy about your show,
Speaker 1: not to just make this an advertisement for your podcast,
Speaker 1: but it really humanizes these experts in a real way
Speaker 1: for me. You know, it's easy to think of enough
Speaker 1: thirty five pilot or let's say, an astronaut or a
Speaker 1: fortune CEO as not real people. You know. It's easy
Speaker 1: to think of them in terms of their accomplishments or
Speaker 1: in terms of the objectives they have in their day
Speaker 1: to day tasks. It's harder to think of them as
Speaker 1: like a real guy or a real girl who goes
Speaker 1: home and has insecurities, has to work at being good
Speaker 1: at what they do, you know. And that's the thing
Speaker 1: I really appreciated about your podcast. It's not just learning
Speaker 1: about how to excel in different fields, but it's also
Speaker 1: about learning about how to excel as a human being,
Speaker 1: you know, like as a real person with real challenges. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're just normal everyday men and women. And I think
Speaker 1: the big difference I see in them is they have
Speaker 1: a growth mindset, and every day they're trying to get
Speaker 1: a little bit better at something. One of the commonalities
Speaker 1: is that they're able to see a goal way off
Speaker 1: in the distance not be intimidated by that goal. So
Speaker 1: they see that goal, they start heading up that mountain
Speaker 1: and then they're just looking looking at their feet as
Speaker 1: they're walking every day and not going too far out
Speaker 1: to get intimidated. Well, at the risk of sounding like
Speaker 1: I'm kissing your ass, that's kind of how you ended
Speaker 1: up in the seat of an UGH thirty five as well, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think another attribute that I see out
Speaker 1: of these guests is mental toughness. And for me, that
Speaker 1: dates back to when I boxed at the Air Force Academy.
Speaker 1: So that was in Colorado Springs, and color of Springs
Speaker 1: is right next to the Olympic Training Center, and so
Speaker 1: we would have sports psychologists come over and talk to
Speaker 1: us about visualization, mental self talk, staying in the present moment,
Speaker 1: all these things that the Olympians did. I was able
Speaker 1: to apply it to boxing, but more than that, I
Speaker 1: was able to apply it to flying, and I think
Speaker 1: that's why I was able to do well and excel
Speaker 1: on poly training. You know, I watched Broken Arrow just
Speaker 1: recently with my wife. We're working on I was doing
Speaker 1: this for another article I was writing. John Travolta and
Speaker 1: Christian Slater played b two Pilots and Broken Arrow, and
Speaker 1: the movie opens with them in this huge, like incredible
Speaker 1: boxing jim just beating the hell out of each other
Speaker 1: without headgear on, like this is terrible sparring. And I
Speaker 1: turned to my wife and I was like, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: like air first pilots really go box. I'm an asshole.
Speaker 1: It turns out your first pilots really go box. I
Speaker 1: love to mix it up. Yeah, Well, I know you
Speaker 1: do a lot of combative sports, and I think it's
Speaker 1: great for like I said, mental toughness. It's boxing is
Speaker 1: one of the toughest things I've done. You're training against
Speaker 1: an opponent that is training every day to kick your ass,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna fight under the bright lights with your
Speaker 1: friends and family watching, and it could end an embarrassment,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of things. You can get hurt, a
Speaker 1: lot of things could happen, and you have to overcome that.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a huge point. Man. When I back
Speaker 1: in my m m A days, I was on the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps first mixed martial arts team and then my
Speaker 1: first civilian tournament, which was kind of my first big
Speaker 1: audience fight, I did exact way that I almost got
Speaker 1: tapped out by kind of a chunky guy with blackmail
Speaker 1: polish on who is too fat to go shirtless. He
Speaker 1: wore an under arm or shirt into the cage. What
Speaker 1: you're saying really rings true for me. The idea that
Speaker 1: you know you can practice and you can train, but
Speaker 1: until you really step into the ring, you don't know
Speaker 1: how your training is going to manifest, and you don't
Speaker 1: know how your opponents training is going to manifest. But this,
Speaker 1: this actually leads me to a question. I wrote an
Speaker 1: article a few years ago about strategy for air combat
Speaker 1: and how there are parallels between that and mixed martial arts,
Speaker 1: or I would argue boxing, and that, like for the
Speaker 1: in the F thirty five, you have a system that
Speaker 1: actually tells you ahead of time, if at all possible,
Speaker 1: what aircraft it is that you're closing with, if it's
Speaker 1: an enemy aircraft, and what capabilities it has. Is that
Speaker 1: accurate to say so? Yeah, the plane does as much
Speaker 1: as it can to augment what we're doing, but ultimately
Speaker 1: it comes down to the pilot, And like you said,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of similarity. I would say the
Speaker 1: biggest thing is the enemy always has a vote. You
Speaker 1: could be going up against an opponent you don't know
Speaker 1: what he's doing. He could be the Golden Gloves champion,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna get your asking no matter what happened.
Speaker 1: So there's that area of uncertainty, the fog of fog
Speaker 1: of war, and that applies to boxing and applies to
Speaker 1: flying fighters as well. It's that old football adage that's
Speaker 1: why we play the game right. Just because someone's the
Speaker 1: favorite on paper doesn't mean will be the victor of
Speaker 1: that absolutely. But what I'm getting at with the idea
Speaker 1: of kind of knowing what you're squaring off against. When
Speaker 1: I was in my fighting days, I would do my
Speaker 1: best to know as much as I could about my
Speaker 1: opponent ahead of time to kind of inform my training
Speaker 1: strategy leading into that fight. If I'm going to be
Speaker 1: fighting against a guy who's a stand up fighter who's
Speaker 1: got a significant reach, my training is going to aim
Speaker 1: towards mitigating those strengths that he's got, right, I'm going
Speaker 1: to focus on my ground game. Conversely, if my opponent
Speaker 1: is a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: focus on my stand up game and trying to keep
Speaker 1: him there. I have to assume there's a certain bit
Speaker 1: of that when it comes to mitigating threats posed by
Speaker 1: enemy aircraft. If you're gonna be going into contested airspace
Speaker 1: and you know for a fact that they have certain
Speaker 1: air defense assets, you're gonna adjust your strategy to suit.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're going into uncontested airspace but maybe you
Speaker 1: have concerns about enemy air assets or something like that,
Speaker 1: you're gonna take on a very different approach. Is that
Speaker 1: fair to say? Mission planning and finding the weaknesses, finding
Speaker 1: your strengths as compared to the enemy is where the
Speaker 1: game is won. So we do a lot of intel,
Speaker 1: we do a lot of research, we do a lot
Speaker 1: of training, We do a lot of mission planning so
Speaker 1: that we can compare our strength with the enemy's weakness.
Speaker 1: And mission planning really is kind of that missing magic
Speaker 1: ingredient to stealth that a lot of people, I think
Speaker 1: don't really understand. When people say stealth, you know, when
Speaker 1: they're talking about a platform like the F thirty five,
Speaker 1: they tend to think of it as like this one technology,
Speaker 1: Like there's a box that you bolt in that makes
Speaker 1: the F thirty five invisible to radar. But that's not
Speaker 1: really what stealth is. Stealth is, you know, a bunch
Speaker 1: of different overlapping technologies kind of approaches to the fight.
Speaker 1: Right that you need to make sure that you're you're
Speaker 1: leveraging the strength of the aircraft against the weakness of
Speaker 1: the opponent. Right, And I would go even further past that.
Speaker 1: It has to do with how we're fighting these these
Speaker 1: tactical battles and ultimately the strategic wars. So you have
Speaker 1: to assess your strengths and be able to be honest
Speaker 1: with yourself. So that's probably the toughest thing in assessing
Speaker 1: your strengths, and then you have to the tougher part
Speaker 1: is assessing the enemy's weakness, the enemy strengths and figuring
Speaker 1: out a way to to mitigate that. And that goes
Speaker 1: across the entire spectrum from the from the Army guys
Speaker 1: on the ground to the Navy seals out there to us.
Speaker 1: I think as a U S force, what really makes
Speaker 1: us strong use our teamwork, and that starts at exercises
Speaker 1: like Red Flag where we have people come in. You'll
Speaker 1: be the mission commander and you'll be in charge of
Speaker 1: seventy aircraft out there, and your job is to win
Speaker 1: a tactical objective out there and bring the group together,
Speaker 1: because that is ultimately where the wars are won in loss,
Speaker 1: not in the sexy you know, stealth and the missiles
Speaker 1: that go you know, super far, super fast. It's one
Speaker 1: in the communication and making sure everybody's on the right crypto,
Speaker 1: to make sure everybody's on the right page, to make
Speaker 1: sure everybody has the right contracts so that when when
Speaker 1: shep hits the fan, that you're able to be a
Speaker 1: part of the team. Now, for anybody who's not familiar
Speaker 1: with Red Flag, I think the best way to describe
Speaker 1: it would really be kind of a scrimmage between air assets.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got pilots that would be assigned to
Speaker 1: either side, and it really is like a pretty large
Speaker 1: scale mock air battle. Yeah, it started in Vietnam, so
Speaker 1: we're realizing that we're losing a lot of pilots out
Speaker 1: there and that if we could just get a pilot
Speaker 1: past ten missions in combat, that his chances of survival
Speaker 1: went up astronomically. So they started Red Flag to be
Speaker 1: as close to combat as possible, where we're bringing in
Speaker 1: different assets and we're going up against top tier enemies,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the best training tools that I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. You know, That's something that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't realize about Vietnam is that the
Speaker 1: air war, the air battles over Vietnam, we're really dramatic,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of ways, the dog fights over
Speaker 1: Vietnam were more like the dog fights that you see
Speaker 1: in movies and a lot of other you know, more
Speaker 1: modern conflicts really were. The Vietnamese pilots actually had a
Speaker 1: really high success rate against American pilots for some time there,
Speaker 1: to the point where there are even legends about like
Speaker 1: a Colonel tomb who's supposedly had I think it was
Speaker 1: something like thirteen kills against American fighter pilots. I wrote
Speaker 1: a story about this recently because I think that's actually
Speaker 1: kind of bullshit. But one thing that is in the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese pilots favor is that those guys were in the
Speaker 1: engagement through the entirety of the conflict. To your point
Speaker 1: about if you've got ten combat missions, your your experience
Speaker 1: levels make you that much more likely to survive. You know,
Speaker 1: these guys had an entire wars worth of missions under
Speaker 1: their belt, whereas most combat pilots from the United States
Speaker 1: Air Force had one year in theater to accumulate kills.
Speaker 1: So when you hear about like there being a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of really successful fighter pilots out of Vietnam,
Speaker 1: there is some truth to that. But they also had
Speaker 1: a lot longer than the American pilots to rack up
Speaker 1: that air kills. But to Justin's point about Red Flag
Speaker 1: and also about the Navy's Top Gun School, these are
Speaker 1: both programs that came in a very real way as
Speaker 1: a result a bus kind of getting beat up by
Speaker 1: old Soviet era aircraft that had been given to the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese during the Vietnam conflict, and the paradigm had changed
Speaker 1: a little bit. So in the fifties and sixties it
Speaker 1: was all how high and how fast you could go.
Speaker 1: It is all about going mocked two point five at
Speaker 1: sixty feet. But in Vietnam we realized that it's more
Speaker 1: of a turning battle, and these missiles that we had
Speaker 1: weren't doing as well as they should have. And what
Speaker 1: came out of that was John Boyd and his Uda
Speaker 1: lup as well as coming up with the F sixteen,
Speaker 1: which was again the paradigm had changed from going high
Speaker 1: and going fast to being able to turn extremely tight.
Speaker 1: And today that paradigm has changed again to being all
Speaker 1: about data sinser fusion, being able to work together, having
Speaker 1: network aircraft. So uh so it's just about keeping up
Speaker 1: with technology. Well, absolutely absolutely, And to that point, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't I really would like to talk to you about,
Speaker 1: let's say now, as an F thirty five pilot, Let's
Speaker 1: say in some future conflict and whatever war, whatever nation
Speaker 1: it may be in you're given a target that needs
Speaker 1: to be neutralized. What as an F thirty five pilot,
Speaker 1: as a member of the overall command structure, where do
Speaker 1: you go from there? You know that we've got a
Speaker 1: structure that's full of bad guys. We know we need
Speaker 1: to put a whole bunch of ordinance on it. Not
Speaker 1: what we'll all talk to what we do in training here,
Speaker 1: because that's a little bit a little bit better for
Speaker 1: for talking on here. But we work from the target backwards.
Speaker 1: So what are we trying to do? What effect are
Speaker 1: we trying to have? Are we trying to take out
Speaker 1: a leader? Are we trying to take out a power supply?
Speaker 1: What is the best way that we can have the
Speaker 1: effect that we want because it's gonna cost a lot
Speaker 1: of fuel, it's going to cost a lot of time,
Speaker 1: potentially will cost lives sending in pilots to go and
Speaker 1: take out this target. So you need to have the
Speaker 1: intel correct and you need to have the coin correct
Speaker 1: as well, making sure that you're having the effect. Once
Speaker 1: you have the effect that you want, say it's taking
Speaker 1: out a building, then from there you work backwards. So
Speaker 1: what do we need. We need a GBU thirty one
Speaker 1: to impact with a you know, a slight delay, all right,
Speaker 1: So what aircraft is capable of that? Well? F sixteen
Speaker 1: is F thirty five, is F fifteen is pretty much
Speaker 1: they all are. Is this an extremely heavily contested area. Well,
Speaker 1: if that's the case, then potentially that's when you're going
Speaker 1: to use an F thirty five, which has stealth, to
Speaker 1: go ahead and and go in there. So it's all
Speaker 1: about working from the target backwards. You're also gonna need
Speaker 1: a whole lot of support assets. So are their enemy
Speaker 1: fighters out there? Okay, Well you're probably gonna need some
Speaker 1: sort of air support. So the strength of the raptor
Speaker 1: probably comes into plane. You probably want some raptors out
Speaker 1: there that are taking out enemy fighters. All right, what
Speaker 1: about the surface air missiles that are trying to shoot
Speaker 1: you down? Okay, well we probably need thirty five in
Speaker 1: the mix so that, you know, we can mitigate that.
Speaker 1: We probably also need some growlers out there that are
Speaker 1: doing some jamming. Oh, you know this is going to
Speaker 1: be more than a couple hundred miles away. You're probably
Speaker 1: gonna need tankers on station. You also are gonna need
Speaker 1: all those big aircraft out there. You're gonna need a wax,
Speaker 1: You're gonna need a rivet joint. You're gonna need a
Speaker 1: ton of a ton of stuff goes into all this,
Speaker 1: and like I said before, it's all about getting these
Speaker 1: people on the same page, making sure we're communicating, making
Speaker 1: sure our contracts are correct. We don't want, you know,
Speaker 1: some random aircraft out there transmitting a bunch of bad data.
Speaker 1: We want to make sure it's necked down to the
Speaker 1: appropriate amount so that they're not basically spamming you. They're
Speaker 1: giving you relevant data. It can't be too narrow that
Speaker 1: they're never gonna see it. So it's it's coming up
Speaker 1: with these contracts, and so, just like anything, the devil
Speaker 1: is really in the details. Well, that's one thing I'll
Speaker 1: think a lot of people don't realize is that air
Speaker 1: combat operations in a real way are like conducting a symphony, right,
Speaker 1: because there's a real risk that if things aren't exactly
Speaker 1: on time, you're gonna lose lives, and not even to
Speaker 1: enemy fire. When it comes to refueling, for instance, Not
Speaker 1: only is that an incredibly dangerous thing to do that
Speaker 1: you guys you know, do like it's an old hat,
Speaker 1: but as we saw last year with the U. S.
Speaker 1: Marine Corps F A E T and Super Hornet, it
Speaker 1: is incredibly dangerous and little mistakes can cost a lot
Speaker 1: of lives when it comes to midair refueling. So, when
Speaker 1: you're talking about so many really dangerous variables that are
Speaker 1: all ultimately in the interest of combat operations, where you
Speaker 1: really are it's us against them, lives are almost always
Speaker 1: going to be lost during combat ops, right, So the
Speaker 1: idea is to make sure that it's not none of
Speaker 1: our lives that are lost. That's about mitigating risk, not
Speaker 1: just at the point of attack, not just when that
Speaker 1: F thirty five is dropping that GPU thirty one, But
Speaker 1: that's about mitigating risk for the tanker cruise mitigating risk
Speaker 1: for the air support cruise, mitigating risk for the troops
Speaker 1: on the ground that might be gathering intelligence, or for
Speaker 1: the intelligence apparatus. There is a huge number of variables
Speaker 1: that go into play, even for what we would consider,
Speaker 1: you know, as a journalist, a pretty straightforward air strike,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of air strikes that we tend
Speaker 1: not to cover because in Afghanistan we blow up another
Speaker 1: mud hut. The media at large tends not to be interested.
Speaker 1: But as far as the people that are actually conducting
Speaker 1: the operations, there are a huge number of variables. There's
Speaker 1: a lot more work that goes into it than just
Speaker 1: hopping aboard your fighter jet and going zooming around looking
Speaker 1: for a target. One of the harder things to plan
Speaker 1: is just the taxi plan, So just who's going to
Speaker 1: take off in one sequence. We're flying with fighters that
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of gas. So you know, if
Speaker 1: you have a hundred aircraft that are getting ready to
Speaker 1: take off, that's going to take a long time. And
Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen a lot of mission planners overlook
Speaker 1: that and that costs them the mission, you know, And
Speaker 1: when we're talking about a fighter running out of gas,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about running out of gas on a
Speaker 1: road trip. You know, if you are in a enough
Speaker 1: thirty five that runs out of gas, you're now dead,
Speaker 1: you know, unless you found to find a place to land,
Speaker 1: you're in a whole lot of trouble. So when we
Speaker 1: talk about things like fuel, where we really are talking
Speaker 1: about life or death. It's all about fuel, all about weapons,
Speaker 1: and being in a fighter's kind of a it's kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting experience because in Afghanistan a place like that,
Speaker 1: you'll be flying around and you'll be pretty comfortable, definitely
Speaker 1: compared to a lot of your listeners who are who
Speaker 1: are in the mud. So you're you're a twenty feet
Speaker 1: you're pretty comfortable, but you always know in the back
Speaker 1: of your head that you are five minutes away from
Speaker 1: having to outrun a group of Taliban that are chasing
Speaker 1: you up a hill, and all you have is your
Speaker 1: M nine pistol out there. So it's kind of a
Speaker 1: kind of a eurie feeling, especially when we're just flying
Speaker 1: around as a two ship and your wingman is is
Speaker 1: long gone, he's gone to the tanker and you're just
Speaker 1: out there by yourself. So it's it goes back to
Speaker 1: that mental toughness that I learned in boxing. No, that's
Speaker 1: a really really good point. That's not something that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us think of often, is the
Speaker 1: chance that you might end up being shot down and
Speaker 1: having to eject, and then you are going to be
Speaker 1: very much alone out there. That actually leads me to
Speaker 1: a question. I knew last year the Air Force star
Speaker 1: contracting out for M four service rifles that could be
Speaker 1: broken apart to be carried inside the cockpit of aircraft,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't sure when they were going to start
Speaker 1: actually getting distributed. So I'm assuming that you guys have
Speaker 1: not yet received those, so you're still sticking with just
Speaker 1: a side arm in the cockpit. Yeah, I haven't heard
Speaker 1: about that. I know some some of the European countries
Speaker 1: were flying around with that. That would be nice, but honestly,
Speaker 1: it's probably not going to turn out well for a
Speaker 1: single pilot that ejects out there. You're talking about one
Speaker 1: of the most violent things that can happen to the
Speaker 1: human body, ejecting from a jet. So we will pull
Speaker 1: up to nine g s in our day to day flying.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever been on a roller coaster and
Speaker 1: you kind of had your head pushed down a little
Speaker 1: bit from a from a loop that's about two and
Speaker 1: a half geese, and we'll pull up to nine g
Speaker 1: s and at that G force, you'll see the world
Speaker 1: closing in, so it's basically like you're looking through a
Speaker 1: toilet paper roll. What we're trying to do is we're
Speaker 1: trying to squeeze that blood back into our brain, because
Speaker 1: if you pass out at the speeds we fly, you're
Speaker 1: gonna impact the ground in about fifteen against and it
Speaker 1: takes about thirty seconds for you to recover from a blackout.
Speaker 1: So we've lost about one pilot a year for the
Speaker 1: last thirty years to a G induced loss of consciousness.
Speaker 1: So that's nine g s. That's about what the human
Speaker 1: body can handle ejecting. You're talking about fifteen g s
Speaker 1: and that's not even the wind blast. If you're going
Speaker 1: you know, three knots four and or knots supersonic, you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna break every bone in your body. So it's
Speaker 1: not gonna not gonna end well. After that, you're having
Speaker 1: to do a p l left with a small shoot
Speaker 1: that's probably been ripped apart a little bit, so it's
Speaker 1: like jumping off a two story building probably similar to
Speaker 1: what a lot of your listeners have done, so trying
Speaker 1: not to roll an ankle. We don't practice doing those
Speaker 1: plfs too much. So at this point you're probably injured,
Speaker 1: is probably cold in the middle of the night, and
Speaker 1: you're not sure exactly where you are, and now you
Speaker 1: have a group of Taliban who just saw a jet
Speaker 1: crash and they're trying to trying to chase you down.
Speaker 1: So it's not an ideal situation. If you're interested in
Speaker 1: trying to test your ability to do this, what I
Speaker 1: would recommend is jumping into a video game, like a
Speaker 1: racing game like Forsa, get into one of the faster
Speaker 1: cars that you can get, get going as fast as
Speaker 1: you can, and then have a friend choke you out,
Speaker 1: and then when you wake up, try not to crash
Speaker 1: and you can go from there. You know, but I
Speaker 1: can only imagine, especially when it comes to just the
Speaker 1: sheer force of the ejection itself has been known to
Speaker 1: really really hurt, even compress the spine of pilots in
Speaker 1: the past. So if once you land, assuming everything goes
Speaker 1: according the plan, which what's the real likelihood that everything
Speaker 1: will go according to plan? You see it all the time.
Speaker 1: Even with the United States with the most advanced air
Speaker 1: force on the planet, ejection seats don't always work. A
Speaker 1: year and a half ago, a b n B Lancer
Speaker 1: crew attempted to eject. There was a malfunction in the
Speaker 1: ejection seats. They had to land the stricken aircraft themselves,
Speaker 1: which was really real heroism if you ask me. But
Speaker 1: that's not because a b n B Lancers are a
Speaker 1: broken down, rickety old aircraft. It's because sometimes things just
Speaker 1: go wrong. For that to happen over the United States
Speaker 1: was an incredibly dangerous set of circumstances that they were
Speaker 1: able to manage. If that were to happen over Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: you know, you're looking at it and another thing entirely,
Speaker 1: you know, and our strength is flying fast, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna be real far out there from the front line.
Speaker 1: So if you adjecked, it's going to take a long
Speaker 1: long time or a helicopter to come pick you up.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. Now, while we're talking about prior to that ejection,
Speaker 1: while everything's still going well, when you're up there zooming
Speaker 1: around in the F thirty five, I want to go
Speaker 1: back to talking about like the red flag exercises, because
Speaker 1: one of the things I really wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you about is the F thirty five data fusion capabilities. Now,
Speaker 1: Justin and I have talked a bit about the F
Speaker 1: thirty five offline. Actually right now, if you go to
Speaker 1: news stands, I think it's still out there. You can
Speaker 1: pick up an issue of Popular Mechanics that's got a
Speaker 1: picture of a guy driving around on a leafblower hovercraft
Speaker 1: on the cover. Right there, on page sixty eight, you
Speaker 1: can find an interview between Justin and I talking about
Speaker 1: what it's like to fly the F thirty five. So
Speaker 1: if after this episode you're really interested in what it's
Speaker 1: like to be at the stick of this aircraft, I
Speaker 1: really recommend you go out and get that. I'd love
Speaker 1: to tell you it's my writing that made this interview interesting,
Speaker 1: but really it's Justin's answers. You get to learn a
Speaker 1: lot about the platform that I didn't know from all
Speaker 1: the open source journalism that I've done over the years,
Speaker 1: that Justin was really able to shed a lot of
Speaker 1: light on. But but getting back to that, those red
Speaker 1: flag exercises something that I always hear. I hear it
Speaker 1: from you, I hear it from the Lockheed Martin reps
Speaker 1: that I speak to is this phrase quarterback in the
Speaker 1: sky to describe the F thirty five. The stealth capabilities
Speaker 1: of the platform tends to be less touted, and I
Speaker 1: think that's because we all know that the thirty five
Speaker 1: is a really stealthy platform, but this quarterback on the
Speaker 1: sky thing, I think a lot of people aren't as
Speaker 1: sure about. Could you explain to me what that is?
Speaker 1: So we're gonna have fortune fighters, and by fortune I
Speaker 1: mean F sixteens and F fifteens that were designed in
Speaker 1: the seventies. They're gonna be around until at least the forties.
Speaker 1: So it would be nice if we could I could
Speaker 1: just snap my fingers and everything would be a fitch
Speaker 1: in fighter. But these things are gon to be around
Speaker 1: for a long long time. And so what that means
Speaker 1: is we have to work together as a team. And
Speaker 1: that fifteen can carry a lot more missiles than I
Speaker 1: can in my F thirty five, so it's important that
Speaker 1: we work together as a team. My strength and that
Speaker 1: thirty five is being stealthy and being able to see
Speaker 1: a lot of things. So with those two strengths, I
Speaker 1: can be a quarterback out there and let the Fortune
Speaker 1: fighters know where the bad guys are. If it's a
Speaker 1: really bad guy, obviously we want to say our missiles,
Speaker 1: but if it's a real tough target, then we'll go
Speaker 1: in and kill that target so that we're not risking
Speaker 1: the Fortune guys out there. But ultimately we want to
Speaker 1: use their weapons and their missiles so that we can
Speaker 1: stay on station longer. We're not having to burn gas
Speaker 1: and use our missiles and have to go home, so
Speaker 1: we'll be the quarterback out there. Additionally, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of situational awareness, so no plan survives first contact
Speaker 1: with the enemy. You need to have a mission commander
Speaker 1: out there that can see the battlefield and make real
Speaker 1: time smart audibles when things don't go perfectly according to plan.
Speaker 1: And I think that's super important again to focus on
Speaker 1: that point you made at the beginning. These fourth generation
Speaker 1: fighters are gonna be around for a long time to come.
Speaker 1: I mean the Air Force is ordering new fifteen e
Speaker 1: x is that are going to start production here, in
Speaker 1: which means those platforms, I mean, with twenty flight hours
Speaker 1: anticipated out of them, are gonna be around for decades.
Speaker 1: For those who aren't that familiar with fourth generation versus
Speaker 1: fifth generation fighters. There isn't really an exact definition that's
Speaker 1: axempted worldwide differentiating between them. It's kind of more branch
Speaker 1: and industry specific. You know, some companies have some variations
Speaker 1: on what they consider the definition. But a fifth gen
Speaker 1: platform usually is stealthy by design. Instead of being an
Speaker 1: aircraft first and then stealth added to it, salth was
Speaker 1: intrinsic to the design of the aircraft. They tend to
Speaker 1: have data fusion capabilities. They tend to be multi role fighters. Justin,
Speaker 1: is there anything I'm missing out on that you would
Speaker 1: say really differentiates a fifth generation fighter from a fourth
Speaker 1: generation one? I think you old it with that, And
Speaker 1: so fourth generation fighters, the big telltale characteristic that you
Speaker 1: would say differentiates them from something like the F thirty
Speaker 1: five Justin's flying, is that they're not stealthy. You know,
Speaker 1: they do pop up on radar. The F fifteen has
Speaker 1: got a huge radar cross section when compared to the
Speaker 1: F thirty five. But there are some benefits to having
Speaker 1: those fourth generation fighters around, Like Justin just mentioned the
Speaker 1: F thirty five when it's in stealth mode, I guess
Speaker 1: you could call it when the thirty five is trying
Speaker 1: to be stealthy. It's payload capacity is only four weapons,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe four air to air missiles or two
Speaker 1: aired air missiles into you know, kind of ground bombs.
Speaker 1: The F fifteen isn't trying to be sneaky, so you
Speaker 1: can strap all kinds of ordinance to that platform and
Speaker 1: feasibly using an F thirty five to to kind of
Speaker 1: coordinate the battle. You can leverage the firepower an F
Speaker 1: fifteen or on S sixteen carries into the battle way
Speaker 1: better than you ever could before. Right, you nailed it.
Speaker 1: And part of that part of that situational awareness that
Speaker 1: you get. I know you can't talk too much about
Speaker 1: the eat A fusion capabilities the thirty five offers, but
Speaker 1: I do want to make sure people understand just how
Speaker 1: how awesome and important it is. Part of that is
Speaker 1: the helmet interface, right, you know, the thirty five has
Speaker 1: got famously these four hundred thousand dollar helmets that can
Speaker 1: show you way more of the battle space than you
Speaker 1: were able to really understand in one streamlined view when
Speaker 1: you are in F sixteen pilot, is that something you
Speaker 1: can talk to sure imagine it's true augmented reality, So
Speaker 1: imagine the battlefield and you can look out there, and
Speaker 1: you can see circles over all the good guys, and
Speaker 1: then you can see numbers with the flight positions for
Speaker 1: anybody that's flying in your formation. When you look out,
Speaker 1: you see diamonds over all the bad guys, and you
Speaker 1: can see you know, who's targeted to them. It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing, the true augmented reality of it. It's it
Speaker 1: goes back to the sensor fusion. So in that sixteen
Speaker 1: there's none of this. Every censor was tied to a
Speaker 1: different display. In fact, in the sixteen we had quite
Speaker 1: a few pie it's mis prioritized and they would run
Speaker 1: into mountains and kill themselves. Again, we talked to one
Speaker 1: pilot a year was lost to a a g lock
Speaker 1: about a pilot a year was lost to a sea
Speaker 1: fit controlled flight into terrain. So it was the pilot's
Speaker 1: brain that was having to fuse all this information together.
Speaker 1: And now some of those f sixteens have some augmented
Speaker 1: reality systems, but this is that on steroids. So you
Speaker 1: can just look out of your jet and see all
Speaker 1: the data that would normally have been through different dials
Speaker 1: and screens in front of you. Now, just think about
Speaker 1: all those people who tell you about distracted driving, right,
Speaker 1: you know, don't look at your cell phone while you're driving,
Speaker 1: don't change the radio while you're driving. Imagine that you're
Speaker 1: in a combat aircraft, you know, flying at mock one feasibly,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to keep tabs on multiple displays that
Speaker 1: are just below your field of view as well as
Speaker 1: three and sixty degrees of what's around me. How fast
Speaker 1: am I moving and how far am I from the ground.
Speaker 1: That's just how complicated the job biz for your average
Speaker 1: fighter pilot. And that's one of the ways that the
Speaker 1: F thirty five is really changing the game, as it's
Speaker 1: alleviating a lot of that stress and giving guys like
Speaker 1: justin the chance to focus on the task at And Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people ask me what was more fun
Speaker 1: to fly the F sixteen or the F thirty five,
Speaker 1: And I think it's both equal. Like F sixteen when
Speaker 1: it was designed, it was cutting edge, and people said
Speaker 1: the same thing, it's too automated, it's doing too many
Speaker 1: things for you. Same with the thirty five. But what
Speaker 1: that allows you to do is take it a level up.
Speaker 1: You're able to be a little bit more strategic, You're
Speaker 1: able to again going back to being the quarterback out
Speaker 1: there and making decisions that are just outside of your jet,
Speaker 1: outside of your flight, so you can help out other
Speaker 1: formations out there. So I think as fighter pilots, our
Speaker 1: job is to make good decisions, and there are thousands
Speaker 1: of decisions to be made every flight, and it augments
Speaker 1: those decisions so we can make more of them and
Speaker 1: better decisions throughout the course of a sorty, you know.
Speaker 1: And this is a really this is a really important
Speaker 1: thing to talk about as well, because the third five
Speaker 1: wasn't built to be a dog fighting platform. That's not
Speaker 1: its purpose. You know. The F twenty two raft, which
Speaker 1: is also a fifth generation fighter. For those of you
Speaker 1: guys that may not be that familiar with these aircraft,
Speaker 1: the F thirty five does draw a lot of the headlines.
Speaker 1: But prior to the F thirty five, there was the
Speaker 1: F twenty two, which is really an air superiority fighter.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the next generation of the F five
Speaker 1: keys lineage, Whereas in a way you could kind of
Speaker 1: say the F thirty five is the next of the
Speaker 1: F sixtien lineage. Is that fair? Yes, the F twenty
Speaker 1: two is kind of based on that fifteen and the
Speaker 1: F thirty five is semi based on F sixteen. And
Speaker 1: because of that, if you're trying to plan an operation
Speaker 1: like Justin was mentioning earlier, and you've got enemy fighters
Speaker 1: that you're worried about, the F thirty five is not
Speaker 1: necessarily the platform that you would send to go engage
Speaker 1: enemy fighters. The F twenty two, theoretically is the one
Speaker 1: we have purpose built for those reasons. But the F
Speaker 1: thirty five has had huge success in these red flag
Speaker 1: training operations. I don't want to quote the number off
Speaker 1: the top of my head, but we're talking like double
Speaker 1: digits to one in terms of F thirty five enemies
Speaker 1: killed versus F thirty five is lost. And these mock
Speaker 1: dog fights. So obviously, even though the F thirty five
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily built to be a dog fighter, it is
Speaker 1: really really good at engaging enemy fighters. But I would argue,
Speaker 1: kind of in contrast to what we were talking about
Speaker 1: with the Vietnam conflict, the F thirty five real moneymaker
Speaker 1: is engaging opponents before they even know it's around, as
Speaker 1: opposed to getting into real tight, turning dog fights like
Speaker 1: you might have seen in the nineteen sixties. Is that
Speaker 1: something you can talk to it all or is that
Speaker 1: kind of verging on on the territory of up SEC.
Speaker 1: I would say the paradigm is kind of changed again.
Speaker 1: So we talked about how fighters were all about going
Speaker 1: high and fast, then they became about turning. Now becomes
Speaker 1: about detecting other fighters out there and being able to
Speaker 1: be stealth and have them not see you. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest strengths of that thirty five is
Speaker 1: we can see a lot of things. They have trouble
Speaker 1: seeing us. So but that that raises a really, really
Speaker 1: good point about when we're talking about the F thirty
Speaker 1: five versus the F twenty two and what they're built
Speaker 1: to do. The F thirty five wasn't necessarily built to
Speaker 1: engage enemy fighters, but because of that paradigm shift, but
Speaker 1: because the way air combat is changing, the F thirty
Speaker 1: five has become dominant, at least when it comes to
Speaker 1: these mock battles. We haven't seen the F thirty five
Speaker 1: square off against an enemy fighter in real life yet,
Speaker 1: but I want to make my prediction here because I
Speaker 1: know for effect, no matter how are I try to
Speaker 1: get Justin to talk about enemy aircraft, Justin will not
Speaker 1: talk about Chinese airplanes, Russian airplanes, anybody else's airplanes, even
Speaker 1: if I keep poking them. So I'm gonna make my prediction.
Speaker 1: People always ask if the Sue thirty five could be
Speaker 1: in F thirty five and a dog fight. The thirty
Speaker 1: five is Russia's most capable fourth generation fighter, their fifth
Speaker 1: generation fighter, the S fifty seven is dog shit. I'm
Speaker 1: not worried about that. The thirty five is a very
Speaker 1: capable fighter, but in my opinion, the F thirty five
Speaker 1: would kill it before it put his pants on. The
Speaker 1: thirty five and an F thirty five and the knuckles out,
Speaker 1: you know, dog fight. Maybe you know it's real acrobatic,
Speaker 1: it's real fast, it's got real tight turns. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: the F thirty five would be the sniper in this instance,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't bother getting in the ring. I know
Speaker 1: Justin won't probably talk about it, but I'll ask you anyway.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want, you can just kind of
Speaker 1: like say wink and nod to me if you think
Speaker 1: I'm right or all right, that's fair, that's fair. The
Speaker 1: most important question I have for you, though, about this
Speaker 1: augmented reality and these fo dollar helmets is are they comfortable.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got a lot of hardwarell especially under
Speaker 1: G so it's gonna be a little bit heavier than
Speaker 1: our fortune. Hammocks that we're fine within that sixteen. So
Speaker 1: it's a little bit heavier, a little bit more cumbersome.
Speaker 1: And now that the thirty five can pull up to
Speaker 1: nine G s hurt your neck, so both short term
Speaker 1: network right, yeah, I mean we'll do network A. Net
Speaker 1: workouts and leg workouts are the biggest thing that that
Speaker 1: will do to be able to survive the G forces.
Speaker 1: So it is cumbersome. There are a lot of pilots
Speaker 1: that end up going on to having neck and back
Speaker 1: issues after flying, and that's true for for all the
Speaker 1: fighters out there. I can only imagine. I don't want
Speaker 1: to imagine. But you touched upon something there briefly that
Speaker 1: I'm not sure people will really understand, and you said,
Speaker 1: given that the thirty five can now call nine ges,
Speaker 1: it's an increased issue. I want to point out to
Speaker 1: people that you're not suggesting that something mechanically has changed
Speaker 1: about the F thirty five in the recent past, but
Speaker 1: we're talking about software upgrades, right, So these jets are
Speaker 1: a lot more like your cell phone than like a
Speaker 1: like an airplane, So everything is software dependent. If your
Speaker 1: cell phone does not have good software, it's just a
Speaker 1: paperweight out there. Same with these jets. So the software
Speaker 1: was lagging a little bit. But we had new software
Speaker 1: last year that allowed us to pull a lot more gs,
Speaker 1: so we were able to pull what the airplane was
Speaker 1: designed for nine g s. It also unlocked the gun,
Speaker 1: so it's a lot like a video game, and that
Speaker 1: everything is tied to the to the software, and overnight
Speaker 1: the jet can get a lot better. So I would
Speaker 1: say it's more like driving a Tesla than a nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties Corvette now. And I mean you really need to
Speaker 1: be a student of your platform all the time then
Speaker 1: in order to stay on top of because I mean,
Speaker 1: I can only imagine if you flew in f thirty five,
Speaker 1: went to bed that night, got up the next day,
Speaker 1: and the capabilities of the platform had been grossly opened up.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, it can do you know, more
Speaker 1: gs and a turn. All of a sudden, it can
Speaker 1: accelerate faster. All of a sudden, you have access to
Speaker 1: a twenty millimeter canon. If you're not staying on top
Speaker 1: of the study side of this, the the the academic
Speaker 1: side A flying this platform, it's going to surprise the
Speaker 1: hell out of you, i'd imagine. Yeah, that's the fun
Speaker 1: part though too. We actually have a say in where
Speaker 1: these tactics are going. In the F sixteen, the tactics
Speaker 1: have been designed over the last forty years and that
Speaker 1: thirty five. We're kind of making up new tactics as
Speaker 1: we go along. So that's the fun part is being
Speaker 1: able to be creative and figure out new things. The
Speaker 1: difficult part, like you said, is things changed constantly, so
Speaker 1: you always have to be studying. Before sortie, I would
Speaker 1: say we've spent about three hours mission planning for the
Speaker 1: flight itself. Will will show up in about two and
Speaker 1: a half hours before we take off, and we'll go
Speaker 1: through a flight brief, going through a rehearsal of everything
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. We'll go and fly and just for
Speaker 1: about an hour and a half, and then we'll come
Speaker 1: back and we'll spend three to five hours debriefing every
Speaker 1: single decision that we made and seeing if we could
Speaker 1: have done it better. And on top of that, we'll
Speaker 1: do some studying every day on new capabilities, on new
Speaker 1: things that we're trying to work on. That's in that
Speaker 1: after action report that the real gems are found. It's
Speaker 1: my belief, and whether you're talking about flying a sword
Speaker 1: in an thirty five or going on vacation with your
Speaker 1: family to Disney World, after action reports them the most
Speaker 1: important part, right, because that's the most important thing. And
Speaker 1: that's actually one of the things that I've learned in
Speaker 1: my podcast is a lot of these top professionals they
Speaker 1: don't do a complete debrief in their field. So that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think the whole world
Speaker 1: can get a little bit better at having their debrief
Speaker 1: a little bit more like a fighter debrief in that
Speaker 1: we go through every decision point afterwards and figuring out
Speaker 1: what we could have done better, consolidating that in lessons learned,
Speaker 1: and then writing that down for the next flight, and
Speaker 1: writing it down from the next flight. That's the crazy
Speaker 1: important part here, because we're talking about not just making
Speaker 1: this better for hazard, for Major League the next time
Speaker 1: he jumps in an F thirty five. The end goal
Speaker 1: here really is the thirty five is going to be
Speaker 1: an operational aircraft for sixty years to come, or more right,
Speaker 1: fifty years from now. Major Lee is not going to
Speaker 1: be there to impart these lessons, right. That's the benefit
Speaker 1: of these after action reports is that the flying that
Speaker 1: Justin is doing today is going to inform the tactics
Speaker 1: that are utilized in combat thirty years from now. And
Speaker 1: when you think about that, that makes your day job
Speaker 1: pretty crazy, right yeah, I mean, especially since this is
Speaker 1: kind of the probably not the first, but the second
Speaker 1: iteration of going through tactics and figuring out what's going on.
Speaker 1: So what we set up right now, it's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna live a long time in this jet, like you said,
Speaker 1: is gonna be around for a very long time, longer
Speaker 1: than I'm gonna be around, that's for sure. This is
Speaker 1: a place where the United States is absolutely at the
Speaker 1: forefront here, you know, because China and Russia both do
Speaker 1: F fifth generation platforms. China has the J twenty and
Speaker 1: eventually the J thirty one. Russia has the Sioux fifty seven. However,
Speaker 1: and both of these instances we're talking about a token fleet.
Speaker 1: You know. China has maybe fewer than twenty J twenties
Speaker 1: that are operational, I think only one that has the
Speaker 1: actual engine system that they intend to field the jet with. Likewise,
Speaker 1: with Russia they have I think thirteen, so fifty seven
Speaker 1: is one that's got the engine that they actually intend
Speaker 1: to field these platforms with. So the United States, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, we have hundreds of F thirty fives
Speaker 1: I think a total of three have been delivered from Lockheed,
Speaker 1: and then we have another hundred and eighty six total.
Speaker 1: So in terms of operational fewer F twenty two, the
Speaker 1: United States has two operational fifth generation aircraft in the
Speaker 1: skies right now, which really sets us apart from other
Speaker 1: nations in the world. But you know what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here is that in fifty years that will no
Speaker 1: longer be the case. So in fifty years, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be this headstart that pilot instructors like Justin are creating
Speaker 1: for the United States that's going to continue to give
Speaker 1: us the advantage as this technology becomes more pervasive worldwide.
Speaker 1: But that leads me to another important question for for
Speaker 1: the folks out there that might not be that familiar
Speaker 1: with F thirty five or just fighter operations in general.
Speaker 1: How much time would you, say, a week or a month,
Speaker 1: do you actually spend in your aircraft getting accustomed to
Speaker 1: flying the platform or really taking into the skies. How
Speaker 1: much time do you spend in the cockpit? Well to
Speaker 1: answer or to add on to what you said before,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. I went through pilot training out here
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. There are only F sixteens out here.
Speaker 1: I came back in two seventeen and there were I
Speaker 1: think they're about fifty thirty five's out here and we're
Speaker 1: just constantly getting a stream of them. My new squadron,
Speaker 1: we started off with two F thirty five and now
Speaker 1: we have a full squadron out here. So it's been
Speaker 1: really fun to see these new jets show up from
Speaker 1: the factory with six seven eight hours. When I was
Speaker 1: flying F six teams before at a Korea that had
Speaker 1: been had been built. I think in the eighties I
Speaker 1: had a buddy was a Harrier mechanic in the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps and he was like, we do not have a
Speaker 1: single aircraft that is younger than me. Yeah, well they
Speaker 1: have that thirty five now, so I think they're the
Speaker 1: biggest jump from going from a Harrier to F thirty
Speaker 1: five by that's one out But in terms of weekly flying,
Speaker 1: it just depends. So we all have different jobs that
Speaker 1: we do on the base, so these different jobs will
Speaker 1: be being a flight commander, being in charge of some
Speaker 1: other pilots out there, making sure that their officer performance
Speaker 1: reports go up, all the standard stuff that's that's in
Speaker 1: the military. So I would say we average about three
Speaker 1: flights a week, but it just depends if you have
Speaker 1: a more important job to the base. If you're the
Speaker 1: wing commander, you're probably flying only once a week. So
Speaker 1: it just depends. It goes in phases as well, depending
Speaker 1: on when people are going on leave, what exercises we're doing.
Speaker 1: So some people are getting a lot more flight time
Speaker 1: than that, some people a lot less. But so that
Speaker 1: goes back to why it's so important. Flying these jets
Speaker 1: is incredibly expensive. So much man hours and time goes
Speaker 1: into building these things. I was able to go to
Speaker 1: the factory and for worth a couple of months ago.
Speaker 1: It's almost a mile long of just people putting together
Speaker 1: parts for that thirty five. And you'll look into one
Speaker 1: of these clean rooms and there are people in these
Speaker 1: clean rooms for ten hours a day that are laying
Speaker 1: carbon fiber strips just to make one panel for your
Speaker 1: f thirty five. So it's it was almost it was
Speaker 1: humbling and also and made me want to be a
Speaker 1: better pilot because so much, so many people are working
Speaker 1: so hard to to make this program work. So that's
Speaker 1: why it's so important to do your studying so import
Speaker 1: into debrief, important to visualize what you're doing. So going
Speaker 1: back to some of that mental training and pilot training especially,
Speaker 1: you can fly a whole sorty in your brain seeing
Speaker 1: different things out there and what you would do. So
Speaker 1: it's it's it's kind of like playing a sport and
Speaker 1: that you can visualize exactly what's going on, and then
Speaker 1: on game day you might see some variations of that,
Speaker 1: but you've already fought the battle in your head. And
Speaker 1: while we're talking about the F thirty five, there's a
Speaker 1: few just easy ones I wanted to toss your way,
Speaker 1: Like one question I really wanted to ask was for
Speaker 1: the people out there who have never been in the military. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I've never been around military aviation. What is
Speaker 1: something about flying the F thirty five or the platform
Speaker 1: itself that you think might surprise folks that their only
Speaker 1: understanding of this aircraft has come from headlines on CNN.
Speaker 1: You know, is there is there anything to your experience
Speaker 1: or to the aircraft itself that you think people didn't
Speaker 1: notice that is actually really really cool or just really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's a good aircraft. I think I'm not that biased
Speaker 1: because I grew up on the F sixteen. F sixteen
Speaker 1: will always be my first love, but that thirty five
Speaker 1: is a much better aircraft. I think it's a technological
Speaker 1: s curve. It's like when the first iPhone came out.
Speaker 1: It was it had a lot of issues. It had
Speaker 1: a lot of bugs because everybody was using blackberries at
Speaker 1: the time. But you can see there's no blackberries around anymore.
Speaker 1: Everybody is using smartphones now. And it's the same thing
Speaker 1: with the F thirty five. When it first came out,
Speaker 1: they had a lot of bugs. They were working through it.
Speaker 1: That's same with any new technology. But we finally hit
Speaker 1: the inflection point I think was the big moment when
Speaker 1: you know, we unlocked a lot of the capabilities of
Speaker 1: that thirty five, And in five years this jet is
Speaker 1: going to be a beast. In ten years, it's going
Speaker 1: to be incredible. I have a new kid on the way.
Speaker 1: When that kid, you know, if he becomes a fighter pilot,
Speaker 1: this chet is going to be a whole new animal.
Speaker 1: Look what we did with F sixteen. It was when
Speaker 1: it first came out in the nineteen seventies, it was
Speaker 1: just a BFM machine with some AIM nine papas on
Speaker 1: the wings. And now it's doing SEED, it's doing CA,
Speaker 1: it's doing d c A, it's doing all these mission
Speaker 1: sets that it was never designed to do. So that's
Speaker 1: sixteen fifteen had a had a forty year head start
Speaker 1: in terms of optimization, is going to get there. People
Speaker 1: really do forget that the F sixteen originally was in
Speaker 1: a big way kind of intended to be an air
Speaker 1: superiority fighter. It wasn't really built specifically to be a
Speaker 1: multi role or like you said, a close air support aircraft,
Speaker 1: and and the intervening decades it has proven itself to
Speaker 1: be incredibly effective as a ground engagement platform, but that
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily what it was set out to be. Likewise,
Speaker 1: with the thirty five, it was designed to be a
Speaker 1: ground engagement platform, and it has since proven, at least
Speaker 1: in training environments, to be an incredibly capable dog fighter.
Speaker 1: You know, So, I think that your your analogy really
Speaker 1: holds true that it takes a little bit of time
Speaker 1: to really figure out the real strengths of these aircraft
Speaker 1: once you get them into the sky, once you get
Speaker 1: them into the hands of capable pilots. I want to
Speaker 1: point out that you mentioned you've got a kid on
Speaker 1: the way, which, of course congratulations, because anybody who follows
Speaker 1: me on Instagram knows that I am the world's most
Speaker 1: boring dad. But I want to ask you I talked
Speaker 1: to you about this before. I know that this is
Speaker 1: kind of a sensitive subject, but we really need to
Speaker 1: talk about the movie Iron Eagle, because you got it
Speaker 1: right that I haven't seen this movie in probably twenty
Speaker 1: five years, but I do really remember as a kid.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got I've got vision problems, I've got
Speaker 1: you know, so I would never have been able to
Speaker 1: be a fighter pilot. But when young Alex was aspiring
Speaker 1: to be a fighter pilot, I'd watch movies like Iron Eagle,
Speaker 1: where it seemed a lot like being a fighter pilot
Speaker 1: was just like having like a hot rod that you
Speaker 1: worked on in your garage that you can feasibly take
Speaker 1: out whenever you want. And I can't really remember too
Speaker 1: much of Iron Eagle. I remember he was flying around
Speaker 1: with a walkman, and I remember there's Chappie and he
Speaker 1: went and saved his dad and I ran by himself,
Speaker 1: so I forgot about the memories. Able to play music
Speaker 1: while you're flying unfortunately not and there's just too much
Speaker 1: going on. You want to focus on on the radio
Speaker 1: calls that are out there. Yeah, I can imagine it
Speaker 1: would not go over well if someone was trying to
Speaker 1: talk to you on the radio and you were playing
Speaker 1: you know, the danger Zone. But al right, so that
Speaker 1: was the real choir and Eagles set me up for
Speaker 1: some high expectations. So I I I've been consistently disappointed
Speaker 1: ever since that. I firmly believe that eventually your son's
Speaker 1: gonna get to steal in f thirty five with a
Speaker 1: salty old colonel to go and rescue you from wherever
Speaker 1: it is that we're going to war. But still, Lord knows,
Speaker 1: I hope you're not still a major by the time
Speaker 1: your kids flying. But well, Tom Cruise in his new
Speaker 1: in this new movie, is still a I think a colonel.
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure if he's a colonel. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I will see that. The trailer for Top Gun Too,
Speaker 1: I honestly really enjoyed the trailer for Top Gun Too.
Speaker 1: I stand by the fact that my opinion is that
Speaker 1: Maverick was an asshole. He was not the good guy
Speaker 1: on that movie. I think ice Man is the superior pilot.
Speaker 1: I'd love to get your take on that. But the
Speaker 1: Top Gun two trailer was really really exciting. But man
Speaker 1: Ed Harris is old, so it's just hard to they've aged.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that's one of the we when
Speaker 1: you're asking some questions before about misconceptions, one of the things,
Speaker 1: especially now is will be the mission commander is quite
Speaker 1: a bit and you can't do out there and be
Speaker 1: an asshole and you know, get the best performance out
Speaker 1: of your team, even though everybody has different capabilities, some
Speaker 1: better than others. You can't kind of, you know, be
Speaker 1: an asshole and alienate one of the members of your team.
Speaker 1: So I think it's about being a leader. And we're
Speaker 1: trying to train the next generation of fighter pilots out here,
Speaker 1: and we go to great lengths to try and make
Speaker 1: sure that people are confident, but they're not overly cocky.
Speaker 1: And another misconception was you're talking about eye problems. I
Speaker 1: get asked all the time, they have eye problems, Can
Speaker 1: I still be a fighter pilot? There are a lot
Speaker 1: of fighter pilots out there with glasses. So just go
Speaker 1: see your flight doc, or go see a doctor and
Speaker 1: see if you can actually fly because their surgeries you
Speaker 1: can do. There's waivers, you can get a lot of
Speaker 1: fire pots don't have perfect vision. Unfortunately in my case
Speaker 1: it's temporary blindness. So so I'm out but feeling Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely right. But based on your response there, I would
Speaker 1: assume you're more of an iceman, although ice Man was
Speaker 1: I'll admit gruff, but uh, it's my opinion that his
Speaker 1: position that what we need to be doing is ensuring
Speaker 1: the safety of the other pilots around us instead of
Speaker 1: making sure that we are the coolest fighter pilot. I
Speaker 1: think that's that's a better That's a leader i'd like
Speaker 1: to follow into a fight as opposed to Honestly, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to go back in and rewatch the original
Speaker 1: Top Gun, I'm sure with Top Gun two coming out,
Speaker 1: watch Top Gun again with the Alex Hollings mindset of
Speaker 1: Iceman's the good guy and Mavericks a prick. So I
Speaker 1: actually haven't watched too many fighter movies. They're just so unrealistic.
Speaker 1: But I think that might be a fun, fun day
Speaker 1: going back and watching a bunch of fighter pilot movies.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine because what I hate about watching
Speaker 1: Marine Corps movies is usually the vernacular. You know, nobody
Speaker 1: ever gets the way we speak to each other, right,
Speaker 1: But when it comes to in an aircraft, there's so
Speaker 1: much tech chnical stuff to also get wrong. I think
Speaker 1: it was behind enemy lines that that did it for me,
Speaker 1: That the missile that chased him around for about five
Speaker 1: minutes after that was like, I'm done? Was that Owen
Speaker 1: Wilson was that It's kind of like I have to
Speaker 1: It's kind of like The Fast and the Furious mixed
Speaker 1: with the military movie. A lot a lot of military
Speaker 1: aviation movies really are, you know? But that actually I
Speaker 1: would like to ask you a few questions about kind
Speaker 1: of pilot culture. Here is we're winding down. One question
Speaker 1: I'd really love to ask you about. I know that
Speaker 1: you don't have a ton to say on the subject,
Speaker 1: but it's been big news in the past few months
Speaker 1: that a few videos that were recorded from the nose
Speaker 1: the Fleer camera on the nose of some f A
Speaker 1: E ten super hornets, some Navy aircraft of what looked
Speaker 1: like UFOs or tic tacks or unidentified flying objects unidentified
Speaker 1: aerial phenomenon. A lot of people are calling them now,
Speaker 1: among other things, anomalous aerial phenomenon. Someone corrected me on
Speaker 1: Twitter the other day. So the Navy now is establishing
Speaker 1: a very clear procedure for how to report unusual sightings,
Speaker 1: anomalous sightings up your chain of command to see whether
Speaker 1: or not at warrants further investigation. And in two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen it was revealed that the Pentagon really does investigate
Speaker 1: reported sightings of unusual objects in the sky normally provided
Speaker 1: by military aviators, because there are a few professional observers
Speaker 1: that are more respected when it comes to identifying something
Speaker 1: strange on the horizon, you know, in the sky. So
Speaker 1: just and I get the gist that you've never seen
Speaker 1: a UFO yourself, or anything that you weren't really sure of,
Speaker 1: Is that fair to say? No, I honestly have not
Speaker 1: seen a UFO. I've never even heard of any of
Speaker 1: the pilots that I've been with seeing a UFO. Their
Speaker 1: clints of light things like that. I don't know how
Speaker 1: somebody could I guess it's unidentified. But when you're looking
Speaker 1: at the sky, there's there's lots of clints of light
Speaker 1: and things like that. So I know I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: see some alien spaceship with et on it, but I
Speaker 1: guess that's That's an important question is do you feel
Speaker 1: as though you don't know any pilot who's ever felt
Speaker 1: as a a we's seen anything. Do you think that
Speaker 1: that could be because pilots are reluctant to talk about it,
Speaker 1: or do you think it's that they just really haven't
Speaker 1: seen anything. I'm not suggesting that it's just because they're
Speaker 1: reluctant to talk about it, but I would be interested
Speaker 1: to know among fighter pilots, are you gonna get laughed
Speaker 1: at if you say, hey, man, I saw something weird,
Speaker 1: you know, flying off my left wing on that last storty.
Speaker 1: Will you get laughed out of the room or would
Speaker 1: people listen? It depends on who it is. If it's
Speaker 1: the brand new pilot out there, he might get laughed
Speaker 1: out of the room. But no, I don't. I think
Speaker 1: I think we would definitely definitely accept a you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody saw something out there. I just I guess
Speaker 1: I don't really believe in UFOs out there. There may
Speaker 1: be airplanes that you don't know about flying out there,
Speaker 1: but definitely not some sort of alien spaceship around, so
Speaker 1: I've never seen it. I'm pretty confident that the pilots
Speaker 1: that I fly with, if they saw something, they would
Speaker 1: definitely let me know. And there's so many recording devices
Speaker 1: and stuff on the jets that you'd have a pretty
Speaker 1: good indication be able to look at it afterwards and
Speaker 1: assess what it is. But there are thousands of airplanes
Speaker 1: flying around their different times of the day where the
Speaker 1: sun once off different aircraft and can make it look
Speaker 1: kind of funky. So I really don't believe in UFOs,
Speaker 1: and don't the pilots who are talking about UFOs. I
Speaker 1: think they believe they saw something, but I think if
Speaker 1: you actually go into the physics of what was going on,
Speaker 1: that they just saw some point of lighter something like that. No, man,
Speaker 1: I totally get that, I really do. I'm spoil the topic. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's this is actually this is the way I always
Speaker 1: spoil this topic. Every time I start talking about UFOs.
Speaker 1: I'm torn because I want, I really do love the idea,
Speaker 1: you know, of spawning something unusual, something foreign and truly
Speaker 1: exotic in the sky. But you know, but then I
Speaker 1: do things where you know, I took a map of
Speaker 1: UFO sightings that have been recorded from you know, one
Speaker 1: of those websites that colates them, and then overlaid it
Speaker 1: over military installations in the United States, and you'll find
Speaker 1: that their group over military installations and things like that.
Speaker 1: I do genuinely believe that the vast majority, the vast
Speaker 1: majority of weird lights that people see in the sky
Speaker 1: are misidentified military aircraft, you know, helicopters that aren't flying
Speaker 1: like commercial aircraft. So in the distance, you go, what
Speaker 1: the hell is that? You know? But I will stay
Speaker 1: lighter after burner at night. You know, the thing will
Speaker 1: shoot out about fifty feet behind us. So if we're
Speaker 1: just flying over a rural neighborhood and lighter after burner,
Speaker 1: you don't see anything, and all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: see it is huge flash of light, and then once
Speaker 1: we come out of after burner, it will disappear. So
Speaker 1: I think it's it's more things like that, and it
Speaker 1: will be a tremendous amount of noise as well, So
Speaker 1: I think it's things like that. I am inclined to
Speaker 1: believe you. However, when I see reports like Commander Favor,
Speaker 1: who was the f A team pilot who recorded that
Speaker 1: flee footage. Uh, he's pretty convincing. And I do love
Speaker 1: the idea of not being sure, you know, I'm I
Speaker 1: try my best to keep my mind open to the
Speaker 1: possibility that I'm wrong. Logically speaking, I have yet to
Speaker 1: see any evidence for an thing that really sells me
Speaker 1: on the idea that aliens are here just kind of
Speaker 1: hanging out and making a reality show out of us,
Speaker 1: and on the cell phones are on the planet. Each
Speaker 1: cell phone has a has a camera in it, So
Speaker 1: just show me one good picture of alien spaceship and
Speaker 1: I'll be convinced. But but I think where you and
Speaker 1: I part ways is that you have a bit of
Speaker 1: an adversarial role here. You're You're pretty sure it's not
Speaker 1: whereas I want there to be. UFOs. I just haven't
Speaker 1: seen any evidence that's convinced me yet. But Man, as
Speaker 1: soon as I see some evidence, I'm gonna be stoked.
Speaker 1: You'll see me sharing it on Facebook. I'll be too,
Speaker 1: I'll be just as excited. I think that'd be cool.
Speaker 1: It might be like Independence Day, which actually I that's
Speaker 1: what I should have brought up, but hopefully not quite
Speaker 1: like Independence Day. I mean, we did win at the end,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to have to rebuild the burger
Speaker 1: king down the street from my house. So well, man,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you this has been a genuine blast
Speaker 1: getting to hang out and talk to you. Before we go,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that I one more time
Speaker 1: remind everybody to check out your podcast, which is called
Speaker 1: The Professionals Playbook. You can find it on on Itune wounds,
Speaker 1: but you can find it on Stitcher and all sorts
Speaker 1: of other places where podcasts are available and where else
Speaker 1: can people find you if they just want to engage
Speaker 1: with you on social media or you know, become fans
Speaker 1: of your work. I do do a lot on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Justin Fighter Pilots, so that's probably the best place
Speaker 1: to find me. And honestly, check out his instagram because
Speaker 1: if if you like military aviation, particularly the F thirty five,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see some awesome pictures and some awesome videos
Speaker 1: from the stuff that Justin and the rest of the
Speaker 1: guys he works with are doing. That You really do
Speaker 1: have an incredible job, man, you know, I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty jealous every time I'm scrolling through and I'm
Speaker 1: posting another picture of you know, my keyboard and uh,
Speaker 1: and I see you flying around in ANOUGH thirty five.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I'm pretty jealous. Well, it's it's fun.
Speaker 1: It's something I've wanted to do since I was five
Speaker 1: years old. So it's it's awesome to be able to
Speaker 1: live a dream come true. And hopefully I'm helping out
Speaker 1: other people do that via the podcast, whether they want
Speaker 1: to be a fighter pilot or not. Awesome man, And
Speaker 1: again I remind everybody go pick up this month's copy
Speaker 1: of Popular Mechanics, where it's gotten an interview you with
Speaker 1: Justin Wee in there where you can learn more about
Speaker 1: the F thirty five, more about what it's like to
Speaker 1: fly this platform, and more about how hard it is
Speaker 1: to become Justin how hard it is to become an
Speaker 1: F thirty five pilot. He's a pretty, you know, unassuming guy.
Speaker 1: He makes it seem like he's just a regular dude.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty incredible feat to become, you know, the
Speaker 1: person in charge of a hundred million dollars worth the
Speaker 1: state's secrets, you know. So congratulations to you man for
Speaker 1: your career in the Air Force and for your podcast,
Speaker 1: and thanks a lot for your time today. Well, thanks, Alex,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Awesome. All right, I'll catch you later,
Speaker 1: all right. Use them Listening to self red Radio. New
Speaker 1: episodes up every Wednesday and Friday. Follow the show on
Speaker 1: Instagram and Twitter at self red Radio.