Hard Men Podcast
Hard Men Podcast
Fighter Pilot: Robin Olds & The Softening of the Air Force with Ethan Senn
As the U.S. military has pushed the leftist agenda, it has inevitably emasculated and weakened itself. While the Air Force, for example, used to be a place for hard men like Robin Olds, one of the most decorated fighter pilots of all time, now it's just another bastion of DEI stupidity and Covid nonsense. In turn, like other branches, it has driven away the real men and American patriots who once made it great.
In this episode we'll talk with Ethan Senn, Chief of Staff at New Christendom Press, about his ten years in the Air Force as an A-10 pilot. Eventually Ethan was kicked out of the military for refusing to wear a mask during The Great Shamdemic.
We also talk Top Gun 2, real life Mavericks, and the need for fathers to teach their sons the martial virtues, something the military doesn't really do anymore.
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This episode of the Hard Men podcast is brought to you by Joe Garrisi, with Backwards Planning, financial, by our friends at Alpine Gold, by Max D Trailers, salt and Strings, butchery, premier, body Armor and finally by Reformation Heritage Books. As we've covered previously on this podcast, our current culture celebrates the rise of the beta male. The best kind of man is the one who gets in touch with his feminine side, vents his emotion and takes a sort of queer eye for the straight guy approach to life. The country songs of yesterday celebrated country boys who really could survive. The music that passes for country today is all about getting in touch with your sensitive side, as the new song from Noah Kahn and Kelsey Ballerini highlights. In that song, titled Cowboys Cry 2, we're told that it was wrong for cowboys to harness their feelings and quote saddle up and be a man. We're told likewise that the ethos of the old British stiff upper lip, the kind of resilient frame of mind that got so many men through two hellacious world wars, is the stuff of repressive cave dwellers, from public educators to songwriters. We're told that masculine dependability and stoic resolve is actually toxic. We're told that men should be more like women vulnerable, vocal about their anxieties and quick to throw in the towel when things get hard. And yet, for all that therapy-induced catechesis, the rugged masculine archetype is what really wins our hearts in the end. Take, for example, top Gun 2 Maverick and its very masculine lead character, pete Mitchell. Released in 2022, the follow-up to the original feature film grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide, making it one of the highest grossing films of the year and 13th all-time.
Speaker 1:In an era in which the beta male is praised, moviegoers gave two raving thumbs up for the audacious and courageous fighter pilot, perhaps because our country is starved for such men. The movie begins with Mitchell, aka Maverick, going on a dangerous test flight despite being ordered to stand down. He was tasked with reaching Mach 10, and he actually succeeds. He was tasked with reaching Mach 10, and he actually succeeds, but as he reaches the barrier, he thinks aloud just a little more. This moment embodies the spirit decor of centuries worth of military commanders and kings, adventurers, conquistadores and navigators. It's that part of masculine energy that pushes limits and reaches for audacious goals and throws caution to the wind. It's what has made Western man so great for so long. That's what a maverick is, after all Someone who is somewhat unorthodox, unbroken, wild, untamable. The man who refuses to get with the latest soul-destroying Safety First program. The exchange between the rear admiral, played by Ed Harris, and Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, encapsulates the progressive modern notions about how toxic masculinity needs to die and yet, like Mitchell, refuses to.
Speaker 2:Maverick. 30-plus years of service, combat medals, citations, only man to shoot down three enemy planes in the last 40 years. Distinguished, distinguished, distinguished. Yet you can't get a promotion, you won't retire and despite your best efforts, efforts, you refuse to die. You should be at least a two-star admiral by now, if not a senator. Yet here you are, captain. Why is that? It's one of life's mysteries, sir, this isn't a joke. I asked you a question. I'm where I belong, sir. Well, the Navy doesn't see it that way, not anymore.
Speaker 2:These planes you've been testing, captain, one day, sooner than later, they won't need pilots at all. Pilots that need to sleep, eat, take a piss, pilots that disobey orders. All you did was buy some time for those men out there. The future is coming and you're not in it. Escort this man off the base, take him to his quarters, wait with him while he packs his gear. I want him on the road to North Island within the hour. North Island, sir. Call came in with impeccable timing, right as I was driving here to ground your ass once and for all, it galls me to say. But for reasons known only to the Almighty and your guardian angel, you've been called back to Top Gun, sir. You are dismissed, captain. The end is inevitable. Maverick, your kind is headed for extinction. Maybe so, sir, but not today.
Speaker 1:No matter how much society tries to replace him, the masculine maverick refuses to go away. Yes, time and loss has made him wiser and less annoyingly braggadocious. His best friend Goose you remember him from the first movie is dead and Mitchell has battle scars which temper his character. He assumes a more steady father role for Goose's son and yet, as the film demonstrates, his type of masculinity is necessary. After all, maverick ends up flying a mission that no one thought possible, largely because he has an immeasurable mix of talent, experience and brass cojones. He is the masculine matured. Now, at this point, you might say to yourself yeah, but that's just a movie, and you're right to some extent. But what if I told you there was once a man out there who makes Maverick look well? How should we say this kind of tame? Well, in fact there is.
Speaker 1:His name was Robin Olds, one of the greatest fighter pilots to ever live. Olds would go down in history as one of the most distinguished fighter pilots in US Air Force history. He was known for his otherworldly audacity, eagerness to get in the fight and skill as an aviator. His father was an Air Force general and pioneer of aviation in the early 20th century. Robin was raised on airbases, where his father taught him to recognize planes merely by the sound of their engines. He had an astonishing 16 confirmed aerial kills during his career 13 while flying the P-38 Lightning in World War II and three more while flying the F-4 Phantom during Vietnam. He would also pilot the P-51. Mustang.
Speaker 1:Olds graduated from West Point in 1943, where he played football, earned All-American honors and forged himself into the ultimate hard man. During one game he was playing quarterback and he had two of his front teeth knocked clean out of his mouth. He went out of the game for two plays, then returned unfazed and sans teeth. This event only solidified his rugged persona, personal toughness and tenacious spirit. He was a stud, athlete and eager to get into combat. Previously he even tried to sign up for the RAF at 17, but was turned away because he wasn't old enough and his father refused to sign papers to allow him to serve in the Air Force.
Speaker 1:His first two confirmed kills occurred over the airspace in France. His squadron had been tasked with destroying a bridge to help halt the German retreat, but the mission was launched in the pre-light conditions of early morning. Two planes, in fact, had driven off the runway. He was able to take off, but he barely missed one of the crashed planes, which he didn't see until the very last moment. Later, in fact, fellow airmen would discover his tire marks on the bomb-loaded wing of one of the P-38 Lightnings that had run off the runway. That's how close this takeoff was, nearly ending in complete disaster. In the darkness, his squadron got disoriented and he was left alone. Despite his fear, he relished the opportunity to come face to face with the enemy and to prove his mettle In an era that predated GPS and in-flight digital navigation.
Speaker 1:Olds single-handedly made a headway for the target the French Bridge. He dropped his bomb, which struck the bridge in the center of its mass, thus destroying it. A few seconds later, he spotted two German aircraft. After noticing the planes, he recounts the following in his autobiography titled Fighter Pilot I wanted those shadowy shapes to be Focke-Wulf 190s. My instincts told me they were Jerry's, not a couple of jugs out of 9th Air Force. Please, bogeys, please turn just a little. Give me an aspect where I can get a positive ID on you. I'm closing fast. There isn't much time left.
Speaker 1:I pressed rudder and slid the tipper onto the trailing aircraft's left wing. Another second and suddenly I could see the iron cross on the side of the lead plane's fuselage. No time left now. I squeezed the trigger. The wingman's bird lit up with strikes, spewed heavy smoke, rolled inverted and hit the ground with a huge explosion. I had to get the other 190 before he gained an advantage on me. He made a violent left break the moment his wingman was hit. I followed, staying inside his turn, knowing my left wingtip was no more than 20 feet off the ground. The G-forces came on hard, but I was scarcely aware of them. The ground the G-forces came on hard, but I was scarcely aware of them. I flew the tipper slowly through his fuselage, pulling ahead, trying to get about a 100mm lead. I pressed the trigger in a short burst and watched as strikes moved down his fuselage. Perfect.
Speaker 1:Another burst, more strikes and he suddenly pulled up straight. The canopy separated and the pilot came out as though he had a spring in his seat. His chute opened immediately and he swung under it. I had pulled up with him and rolled inverted in time to see his aircraft hit in the middle of a farmer's field. I rolled into a hard left bank and watched through the top of my canopy as the Jerry landed close to his burning aircraft. He started running as I came around my circle to point my nose at him. I dove at him and he flopped onto his belly. He thought I was going to strafe him. Ha, no such thing. I buzzed him there in the mud and pulled up to do two victory rolls. I hoped he saw them. Then I felt like an ass doing such a silly, damn fool kid thing like that. Obviously I'd read too much of Hogan's G8 and his battle aces and watched too much of Wings and the Dawn Patrol.
Speaker 1:The flight home was uneventful, except for a mixed feeling of elation, disbelief and nagging worry. I hoped my camera had worked. Confirmation of kills couldn't stand on my word alone. That was a grim thought. The camera in the P-38 was mounted in the nose, right under the 20mm gun. It jiggered and bounced like crazy. When the gun started firing, instead of getting a record of what was being shot at, it often quit, leaving kill claims unconfirmed.
Speaker 1:I also knew the circumstances would take some explaining. I didn't want to be too closely questioned on how hard I might have tried to find the others or what I was doing roaming around Burgundy alone. I even wondered if I should mention the bridge at Chalon-sur-Saône. I thought I had hit it, but didn't hang around long enough to find out. I never did join up with the rest of my flight.
Speaker 1:It was a lonely trip back with a lot of time to think. Sure enough, my debriefing was met with obvious skepticism. I didn't press the point, just felt sick to my stomach. Then Colonel Zemke walked into our squadron ready room. Uh-oh, I thought, here it comes.
Speaker 1:All of us knew that Hub wasn't a man to be trifled with. His reputation as the leader of the famous Wolf Pack had us totally in awe of him, to say nothing of the fact that he had more combat time than any of us had total flying time. He came up to me as I snapped to attention, looked me in the eye and said you don't know how lucky you are, captain. I just got a call from the 355th group. They were passing overhead and they saw your engagement, the whole thing. Your two claims are confirmed. I don't think I remember if I whooped out loud in the colonel's face, but I sure was whooping.
Speaker 1:On the inside I had the Olds who had a chiseled jawline and mustache that made him look like Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York would finish his career as a brigadier general and a triple ace. He retired in 1973 after 30 years of service in several theaters. He also got himself into constant trouble with the bureaucratic higher-ups, mainly because he spoke his mind, which was quite often the unvarnished truth. His inability to rise higher as a general officer is because of his maverick views to quote one source and his unwillingness to soft-pedal obvious truths about combat. You can see the obvious similarities between the fictional Pete Mitchell and the very real-life Robin Olds, as we'll talk about in today's episode.
Speaker 1:Men in the military have changed since the days when Robin Olds first took flight. They're both a lot more progressive and, as a result, weaker. In the last decades, the military has been plagued with political correctness, including the insistence that women be thrust into combat roles. Though most won't say it outright, the progressive push to include women, to insist upon pronouns and to force vaccine mandates during COVID have caused many to question why they would stay in the military or have anything to do with it in the first place.
Speaker 1:In this episode we'll talk with Ethan Sen, chief of staff at New Christendom Press and also a former A-10 Warthog pilot. Ethan served for 10 years in the Air Force before being kicked out of the military, or refusing to mask up and vax up. We'll talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of his military service, as well as why he thinks men still need to expose themselves to the martial virtues of war. Well, welcome to this episode of the Hard Men Podcast. I am your host, eric Kahn, and joined today by a very special guest. We have Ethan Sen. Ethan, thanks for joining me for this episode. Yeah, it's an honor, eric, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. For people who don't know, ethan works in the basement at New Christendom Press, one of the cool things I get to share an office now with Ethan and I got to say your office, I don't know, it's not trinkets. Your office decor, like your game, is way better than mine. So for those who don't know Ethan, you were an A-10 pilot and so you have like a gun barrel from the A-10. What was the millimeter on that? 30 mil, 30 mil? Yeah, I don't have that. When I walked in I was like why do you have a pipe in the corner Like that's a gun barrel, you idiot. But that's cool, your flight helmet.
Speaker 4:Yep, yep, call sign, maverick, not your call sign no, they used to call me squeak they used to call you squeak.
Speaker 1:So I want to get into that in just a minute. I want to get that story. Uh, we kicked off our cold open with robin olds. We'll talk about him as well. But for people who don't know, you just give me like a flyover because you're a pilot. Do you get it? Got it, it's, it's a, it's a fun. Uh, a flyover, just kind of who you are, your background. Do you get it? Got it? It's, it's a, it's a fun. Uh, a flyover, just kind of who you are, your background, how'd you get here? How'd you get to?
Speaker 4:Ogden yeah, um, no, we've. We moved out here about 18 months ago. Um, I spent um 10 years flying flying jets for the air force before that. And what was it? Was that all a 10? Yeah, I flew the. I flew so for pilot training. You fly as some trainers. Then my first fighter was an a 10. And then at the end I taught introduction of fighter fundamentals, which is in the T 38, same same jet they use for pilot training, and just kind of that bridge that gap between pilot training and the operational world.
Speaker 1:So, 10 years, you're a unlike many of us here, you're a seminary grad. Yep, Yep Did did, uh, did some time at Southern, uh, while I was active duty, okay, and then you got your MDiv from from Southern, from Southern, okay, yeah, you've done some studies at Puritan Yep Worked on some THM work at Puritan as well. Okay. So, and then somewhere along the way, uh, this pesky situation called the covid champdemic happens and you guys just mutually agree to part ways peacefully. Yeah, it was, or something opposite to something like irreconcilable differences, but uh.
Speaker 4:but yeah, it was uh, in hindsight, a huge, huge blessing to be able to be freed from that life and have the ability to come out here and join the church and start over, and it's been a huge blessing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of interesting the story that we'll get into now with Robin Olds. We were talking about it, you and I, and I said what's a great story like fighter pilot, but Robin also. I mean there's some defects here, things that we would criticize about masculine character, but I feel like if, like the real life, maverick was about somebody, it's kind of Robin Olds. So here you have this guy. I think his father is or was a general, one of the first to kind of innovate in the Air Force category, and I think he's he world war one world war two.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so robin flew jets and planes in in world war two and then also in in vietnam. He's kind of claim to fame is a lot of vietnam stuff, but yeah, yeah, that's pretty incredible to have comes from this amazing pedigree.
Speaker 1:yep, uh, he tells a story. I was watching one video where he talks about. He said when he was like four or five, he basically like grew up on an airfield and his dad would have him as based on the sound alone. He would say what, which plane is that? Yeah, so this is one of the cool things with Robin is he grows up on an airfield. His dad's having him identify planes by the sound, so this is like in his blood. I dad's having him identify planes by the sound, so this is like in his blood.
Speaker 1:I think even one of the famous quotes that he has, which I just I find this to be true he said to be a fighter pilot in a good one, you're either born with it or you're not. There's, there's something about it, and I think, with his story correct me if I'm wrong part of it is the audaciousness, the bravado, the masculine energy that it just seems like is missing in a lot of men today. So I guess, just talk about you. You've read his book, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah so it's called fighter pilot.
Speaker 1:Fighter pilots. You just lent it to me so I'm going to dig into that. Um, but what is what do you? What is so impressive about him as a man? His story he looks like bill the butcher from gangs in new york. He's got this great mustache, I mean his jawline. He's got the jawline. He's got like chiseled cheeks. I don't think he was chewing greco gum, probably more red man, or it's probably. It's probably more red man, kind of this man's man, uh guy. But what's so impressive about him?
Speaker 4:I mean, I think there's. There's all kinds of war stories. He's, you know, great triple a's like 17 air-to-air kills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to say one of the documentaries on him. They actually have him talking as an old man. He's flying the P-38 Lightning, which I don't know about you, but as a kid twin engine, weird looking plane I was fascinated with it. I would build models. I was fascinated by that. I think it was like the P-38J Lightning. I would build models. I was fascinated by that. I think it was like the P38J Lightning. It depends. Some of them were bombers, Some of them were not. And then the Mustang yeah, the P51.
Speaker 4:He ends up flying both of those, yeah, and then later in Vietnam he's flying the F-4, which is another incredible plane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just amazing story. But early on I think it's like his first flight he talks about they wouldn't let him engage any of the ground forces in italy, and so him and his wingman concocted this plan where he said I'm going to say, hey, there's a train down there, request to engage, and his wingman would say, roger, that and so. But they acted like the, the base commander had said it yeah, clear, cleared hot, cleared hot. So they get back to the base commander's like I never cleared you hot. And he's like, well, you said, roger, that when I said somebody did. And then later robin is like, yeah, we cooked that up, we just wanted to get into combat. Yeah, uh, but I think, like first or second flight, he has two kills air to air, yeah, which is, you know, that's impressive. Um, so this guy, which is bravado and he's, he's ready to fight. So, yeah, just talk to me about that. I don't know, were there things in your story related to him? Like how did you, where'd you get the idea to be a fighter pilot?
Speaker 4:yeah, I mean, I think I think guys like olds are great, um, they're like, really, they're primarily war fighters, yeah, and, and they, they know tactically, strategically, like this is what we have to do this. Guys like Olds are great. They're primarily warfighters, yeah, and they know tactically, strategically, this is what we have to do. This is how I'm going to use my plane as a weapon system to achieve the tactical objectives, and that's how they're thinking. They're not thinking like political strategists. They're not thinking like what is the news going to say about this? They're primarily like they're here to win the war and do that as quickly as possible, and I think that that sharpness and and being honed toward that mission is something that that we we lack today yeah.
Speaker 1:But what I want to say he has very early on he gets like three, three air-to-air kills and then I think that makes him an ace Five, five.
Speaker 1:Okay, so he gets to five pretty early on, so he's super young as an ace. It reminds me I thought this was one of the good themes in Top Gun 2. There's this scene with Ed Harris where he says you know, your kind is extinct. You know we don't. And I think it really is a picture of masculinity, like we don't need that anymore. Yeah, you know, we're just gonna have drones and whatever. And I love the line from tom cruise where he says maybe so, sir, but not today, not today, yeah, and uh, I've kind of embodied that. You know, it's like I've become the meme, even where I'm like that is something about, yeah, masculinity. So they say we'll go away, but I don't think it ever will well, a lot of people ask me how.
Speaker 4:How believable is top gun? Can you even enjoy it like is it? Is it plausible? What you know? Do they take a bunch of liberties? And and what I usually tell people is the least believable part is where john ham says he's going to do the right thing and kill his career to to strike this target and right, like those generals they won't do that they don't exist in our military anymore. But they won't do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is interesting Another guy that we know who's flying F-35s. It's interesting Cause I asked him. I said how believable is Top Gun 2? And you know like, is that mission that they flew actually difficult? And he said that would be like a very entry level training exercise.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we, we train guys in the B course. So as soon as you're done with pilot training you go to the B course and that that's where you learn to fly the, the fighter that you're, you're assigned to and, like week one, you know, in the A-10, you do three sims in, you know three simulators, and then you go fly your single-seat jet for the first time and in the first week you're doing those kind of Within the first six missions you're doing those low-level pop dive-bomb kind of attacks and so, yeah, it's pretty. That aspect would be pretty rudimentary.
Speaker 1:Ethan's like I could do that in my sleep. So one of the questions I want to ask you when did you first get the idea to join the Air Force, and was it that you wanted to be a fighter pilot when you entered? Is that what you were thinking?
Speaker 4:I was in high school in Maryland so we're really close to the Naval Academy. We used to go to Raven Stadium and see Army and Navy play. Both my grandfathers served in the armies and so that also we were always raised very patriotically and want to serve your country and things like that. But I was just a junior or senior in high school and didn't know what I want to do with my life, thought I want to keep playing football and decided to try to apply to a service academy. So I applied to West Point Navy Air Force and and basically thought you know, half of the grads from the Air Force Academy will go to pilot training. So I kind of made the decision there If I want to go be a pilot, that's my best, best odds of success.
Speaker 1:So to get into the Air Force Academy, how difficult.
Speaker 4:I mean it's a process becomes more and more difficult for white men to do it, you know, as time goes on. But yeah, I mean you need a congressional nomination. You know, do your. It's a college application interviews and all those kinds of things. So there's a lot of applications. There's only about a thousand every class, so it's a relatively hard thing to get into.
Speaker 1:OK. So what? What year did you start? 2009. I was a freshman, ok, 2009. I was a freshman, okay 2009. And then it's not automatic, like when you enroll, when you're accepted, it's not automatic. You're going to be a fighter pilot.
Speaker 4:No, In fact. So you, you compete based on all your different GPAs, to to put down what's your dream sheet I want to be a pilot, I want to be a navigator, I want to be a you know shoe clerk, whatever your, whatever your, your choices are. And then you're competing with your classmates, but out of every graduating class there's about 500 pilot training slots, and so you, you get that slot and there's a lot of guys that don't want to go. They, it's a 10 year commitment. If you don't go, it's only a five-year commitment of of service time. So you know, there are a lot of guys who just don't want to do it. There was a time where, if you didn't want to go to pilot training, you had to go to the commandant, the one star, and explain to him why you didn't want to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. How long are you there before you're accepted into the? Is it like a flight program? Yeah, basically pilot training.
Speaker 4:So I grad four years of air force Academy, then you go to to pilot training so it's after the four years, yeah, yeah so undergrad any, any flying at all in the academy no, no, there are programs.
Speaker 4:They're power flight. There's glider programs. I did jump, so you know they throw you out of an airplane five times with a parachute and I did that. But I wasn't involved in any of the other powered flight kind of programs that they have, so you did have to jump out of planes. I chose to jump out of planes for some, some, some reason some odd reason never, uh, never got to enjoy it, uh. But how many jumps do you know? Five, five five jumps.
Speaker 1:What's the difference? So, headmaster love, kevin love was, I don't understand he was part of like the actual jump team, yeah, wings of blue.
Speaker 4:So he, he, he participated on that and they, they do competitions, they, they compete against other skydiving teams. They'll do demonstrations where they jump into, like you know, super bowls and things like that. So, yeah, he, he did that. But this was just kind of like a short summer program to to earn your, you know, parachute.
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Speaker 1:America is built on the backs of hardworking blue collar Americans. That's why we're so excited to join forces with Max D Trailers, a Texas based and family owned company, to bring you this episode. We're proud to partner with Max D to see the vision of new Christendom established. One small business at a time. Max D builds innovative, hardworking trailers for the builders, fixers and growers of the world. You can follow their stories by checking out Max D Trailers on Instagram or by visiting the link in the show notes. Learn more about Max D trailers by visiting maxdtrailerscom, where you can check out the article 10 ways to make money with your trailer. Okay, so, so you graduate. Then you go into the flight program. Yeah, so I went to Vance.
Speaker 4:Is that in? No, it's in Enid, enid, oklahoma. Okay, we have, we have four pilot training bases and I went to Oklahoma, okay, and then that process from and at that point you don't know you're in the A10. No, you just know you're in pilot training. Okay, pretty high attrition rate to to even make it through pilot training. And then so you're in a class with 20 or 30, you know, guys and girls and um, and you're, it's a lot of teamwork, it's a really it's a fire hose program, right, they throw everything at you at once A lot of studying, a lot of practicing, a lot of chair flying. But when you say chair flying, like you'll put up your little you know picture of a cockpit and sit in a chair and then my wife would practice radio calls with me.
Speaker 4:So, I'd be sitting there in our living room and she'd be the tower controller or whatever. And so, yeah, so you do it's a, it's a, it's a lot of work and some fire hose, um, so it's a team support where you, you know the guys in your class you got to work together to to share knowledge that you know it cause it. It only you only have so much time to work through the program. How long is the program? It takes about two years, start to finish. You start in the T six and then you track. There's a trainer, yeah, it's a, it's a single engine, prop, two seater, and so you do that for about six months and then you track either a fighter bomber track or a heavy track. And so if you go to the heavy track, you're flying the T one, which is kind of like a Learjet, and if you go to the fighter track, then you're you're flying the T 38, which is a, you know, two seat jet, uh, with afterburner. Okay, yeah, and which did you do? So I did the fighter track t30 38s, okay. So, yeah, you track and you're competing for the track because they're, you know, almost everybody wants to go be a fighter pilot. So you know, you might.
Speaker 4:In a class of 20, you might have two or three, four fighter slots, so you're competing. Then then you'd spend another six months flying the t38 and then you, you have a drop night and that's where you figure out. You rack and stack all you know 22 planes in the inventory, what you want, and then, based on how you do, they pick for you. It's, it's uh, they put together this algorithm based on how good you are, your grade sheets, how much the instructors like you. Like, there's a, there's a miscongeniality aspect to it, but ultimately, you know you, you get ranked in your class, number one gets his number one pick, and then it just depends on what are the needs of the air force. We need four F-16s, so this is what you guys get. Or you know we need five F-22s, or you know whatever. So, yeah, that, that's how that works.
Speaker 1:Did they have the F-35 program at that time?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, they did. Okay, yeah, the two fighters that dropped out of my class were an F-22 and an A-10. Okay, everybody else went. Bombers heavy C-17, c-5, things like that.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure you've seen these, the like TikTok videos of the pilots at the ceremony or whatever, where they're told Drop night, yeah, that told drop night. Yeah, that's drop night, yeah.
Speaker 4:But what's funny is like they're like you're in the c-130 and guys are like, oh, they're like trying to look happy yeah yeah, so there's definitely some of that, there's definitely some disappointment, but I mean, ultimately, people generally like where they, where they end up yeah, I feel like it's a good fit for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, what was your reaction when you found out you're in an a10?
Speaker 4:I mean, I was. I was really pumped. I didn't. We hadn't dropped any a-10s in a lot of months, so I didn't even think it was going to be a possibility. I put it first because I really liked the mission air to ground, close air support, combat, search and rescue and then my my sponsor, dad's, a while I was at the academy he was an a-10 pilot, so he was the one who really really proselytized me to like this is you know that.
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny because we have Ben Garrett Deacon Ben Garrett and he was, I guess, an engineer at Hill on the ATAN program Yep. Yep, so he's doing like maintenance engineering stuff like that.
Speaker 4:But he told me that it can fly with no wings. Well, I mean, it's a very survivable jet, so everything's redundant, so you can get a wing shot off or a tail shot off and there's multiple hydraulic systems and then, if you lost all your hydraulics, there's an actual like cable and pulley system where you really fly by, fly by wire and get back to the friendly territory. So, like you're, you're sitting in a bathtub, you're pilots, protected from, from AAA and things like that. So it's definitely one of those very survivable planes against those threats.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious what was the most difficult thing about the training program? Is it the mental, Is it the physical demands? What would you say was the hardest?
Speaker 4:So the different mission sets so close. Air support is a lot of supporting the guys on the ground. There'll be JTACs embedded with armies or Marines, or you know these are the guys calling in like airstrikes.
Speaker 4:They're the ones calling, talking onto a target you know, giving you coordinates, saying cleared hot. The guys like Jace who, who we worked with, so that that's one mission set. That's maybe the bread and butter of the A-10, pointing at the ground, shooting bad guys, saving friendlies, Like that's a really rewarding mission. Combat search and rescue is another mission. That's also really, really important. So if somebody gets shot down behind enemy lines, how are they going to get back home?
Speaker 1:Gene Hackman is the answer to that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that 2-1. So what you do is you need to need to find him, you need to identify. That's actually our guy down there. You've got to protect him. You got to bring in helicopters to go pick him up. You've got to protect the helicopters, cause, like every war movie you've ever seen, helicopters get shot down. That's, that's just reality, right. And so we have, you know, sandy's protecting, protecting the helicopters, and then, so that you know that mission is one that's really complex because you're you know you're coordinating strikes, you're coordinating all of the other assets that are around. You're bringing helicopters, protecting them, finding the guy on the ground, making sure he's a guy. You know all those things that while the enemy is actively searching for him and trying to kill him, so we're capturing him.
Speaker 1:So that one so you're actually flying the a10 during training. Yeah, yeah, okay, yep, absolutely, so you actually get to do that is how long?
Speaker 4:it's about a six month um initial qual course and then you go into your operational unit where you're going to deploy and things like that I'm assuming they don't have like a trainer a10, there's no trainers. There's no two seats. There's no two seats they.
Speaker 1:There's no two seats, they're all single seats.
Speaker 4:So you have, you have simulators on the ground that are, you know, pretty, pretty accurate. But uh, you know, first time up you're, you're flying by yourself. How was that experience? I mean, it's it's a really cool jet, it's it's it's hard to employ as a weapon In pilot training. It's all about how do you start the jet, how do you taxi out, how do you fly an approach or land In the operational world. You don't talk about that at all. Getting to and from is all admin and it's basically like we're not going to talk about that at all. We just assume you can do it and not screw it up. We're going to talk about the mission. What happened, from when you checked in to checked out what happened on all your nine lines? Why did you miss that target? Why did you hit the wrong target? All of those kinds of questions. That focus is very mission-oriented.
Speaker 1:Do you remember your first flight in the A-10? Yeah, vividly.
Speaker 4:Nervous, yeah, vividly nervous. Yeah, I mean it's nerve-wracking to be flying a 18 million dollar jet and like you can't blame anybody but yourself if you screw it up. So, um, but yeah, it's, it's uh definitely a memorable experience yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Uh, one of the things I want to ask you we had talked about this quite a while ago. Uh, I think it was a year and a half ago. Somebody was arguing with me online because, you know, we're very much uh into the discussion, obviously, on this show with sexed piety, and you know what are men and women for, and one of the things that we've, you know, been pretty clear about is no women in combat. Yeah, and there was a lady on x and she was like actually in the air force, the best pilots are women, and so I was like, well, I can't really I don't have any first world, first-hand experience of this. Yeah, um, so I asked you and jace and I was like is this true? You guys both laughed and uh, yeah, just want, I want to get your take on that. Is that good to have women in combat, because there's a combat role.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, it's 100 100 of combat role and it's pretty recent onset in the last less than 30 years were there ladies like in your program?
Speaker 4:oh yeah, oh yeah, we had ladies in pilot training, flew with ladies in the in the a-10 and, yeah, I mean, ultimately, should women be in combat? The answer is obviously no, yeah, it's, it's. It's clear that for a lot of different reasons, that's a, that's a bad situation, and I can, I can tell you firsthand experience, like all of the situations, that it's just. Men and women are built different, right, they're made for different things, they're good at different things. That God's ordained different roles and different responsibilities, and war fighting is not one that women should be doing, and it's really an indictment on our country that we promote that and allow that to be the case.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm curious as well it's probably like the most pressing question I've had about flying so we sit in the office and we're like every hour like we chug water and so everybody has to go to the bathroom how?
Speaker 4:like you're. You're on long flights, yeah, I mean in combat. We're flying six, eight, ten hour sorties regularly. You obviously don't just hold it. Yeah, you just hold no. Six hours. Kidney failure? No, it's really easy for guys. We have piddle packs. There's just little plastic bags with the you know the diaper, you know powder in them, so they gel up and just go when you need to and then throw them all away in the dumpster. When you get, when you land, save them, yeah, make sure to close. You just hope, you just really hope that that's all you got to do. No, number two no, it's, it's been done. Just, uh, not done.
Speaker 1:Well, not done. Well, I mean, you got a flight suit.
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, if you think about all this, you have a g suit on your flight suit on, you have your harness on, you have combat vest. You know, if you're flying over the ocean, you've got a essentially a dry suit. You got to take off all these things, you got to take them off in in the space of, like you know, the cockpit, which is about the size of this chair I'm sitting in. Yeah, not big, and so to be able to do that while, because you can't hand the plane off to somebody else, say, hey, can you fly while I take care of business? You know you're, it's not a commercial airline flight. Yeah, the autopilot's pretty, pretty iffy. So, yeah, you, it's. It's a real, real challenge. You don't want to be in that situation. You don't want to have to call code brown yeah, that would be bad.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about your is. Would you call it your call sign or your?
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah, okay yeah, um, not maverick no, a10s, don't give uh cool call signs like maverick.
Speaker 1:You know they're yeah, I noticed this. So it's like, uh, all the f35 guys, number one, they like drive fast cars, yeah, and then it's all like thunderbolt, phaser, razor, razor, yeah, and then. And then you guys are, are not that way. Is that just part of the ethos of the pilots and the A-10 programs?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean it's definitely a different culture, like you know, in terms of the different, every, every fighter kind of has its own culture. Are you focused on air to air? Are you focused on air to ground? Is it a mix, and so different, different airframes really develop unique cultures. You know, f-15es, the strike eagles, have a wizzo in the back, so that that changes the culture as well a wizzo is like goose, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:So you know flying around two guys, you know that that changes the culture as well, but, um, you know, without, without, uh, deriding any of the other you know platforms, I think you know, because of the mission, the air-to-ground mission, there was, you know, deployment. They would have something written above the doorframe that said, um, the, the mission is the 18 year old on the ground with a rifle. Everything else is support. So, when you think about things in terms of that, you're not trying, you know, you're not trying to be an ace, you're not trying to, like you know, win the air war. You're, you're very focused on air to ground. Tactically, what's going on the ground, supporting the troop, exactly, yeah, so troops in contact, combat, search and rescue, close air support is is very focused on on that aspect of it. So I think it's just a way that that guys don't take themselves too, too seriously yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:Uh, so squeak is your call sign. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Um, and I want to hear the story. How did you?
Speaker 4:I think usually you have to buy somebody a beer or something If you want to hear the story.
Speaker 1:but I'll buy you a beer, okay.
Speaker 4:All right, old fashions later Deal. So I was a brand new Lieutenant in in my squadron and we went up to Alaska, to Fairbanks, to fly in a red flag, which red flags is a great big air war where you know, there's a hundred, a hundred planes simulated Well, yeah, I mean nobody's getting shot down but like you're, you're practicing like like it's, like it's a real war, as you have, you know, good guys, bad guys and uh, and so we're flying around, there's all these, everything you can think, everything the air force has, from AWACS to, you know, electronic warfare, to fighters, bombers, everything is is helicopters and so, um, it was like pretty early on in the in the week long exercise and I was flying. I I'm the least experienced guy in the squadron. I'd been in the squadron for like three minutes and I'm flying around with the most experienced guy. He's the wing weapons officers. He's like a real life top gun, like Air Force's version is weapons school. It's far, far harder than top gun, really. Yeah, oh yeah, but um, but he's, you know he's, he's the the wing, the wing top gun, if you will. And so I'm, I'm, I'm the wingman, we're flying around. We've completed.
Speaker 4:You know we'd call it end of exercise, everyone's just trying to get home and land, and so we have more gas than a lot of the fast movers. They're always out of gas, you know, always got to go, and so they give them priority to land back at you know, the airfield and they vector us nowhere in the middle of nowhere, just away from the airfield, away from anything, and eventually we both get to a point in our gas where we don't have enough gas to go anywhere. There's no auxiliary fields Like we're. You know we're going to punch out two perfectly good jets we're going to punch out because we ran out of gas and so, which is not good, yeah, it was really bad. It's like that's career career ending. Obviously, you know $36 million in the ground Cause you ran out of gas.
Speaker 4:Um, so, luckily there was a, an emergency tanker airborne so we could. We declared emergency, went and refueled on the tanker and we were fine. Um, so, luckily, that was the case. But you know they, they named me squeak because they said that I squeaked in on gas, and you know that. That's, that's the long and short of it. How like, how close was it? Well, it's a good thing that the tanker was airborne, right, it's a good thing we could refuel airborne Cause. If we couldn't, we would have been ejecting.
Speaker 1:That would have been terrible. Yeah, uh, when you got back I'm I'm supposing you guys do like a debrief. Was that something that you got grief for?
Speaker 4:You know, uh, the flight lead that I was following around had the same amount of gas as I did, and so somehow I got a pass, and I think he took most of the blame. Okay, good, that's what good leadership is for.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly.
Speaker 4:We got a little bit of that left.
Speaker 1:Take the blame for it.
Speaker 4:So that's pretty early on after you're done with flight school. Yeah, that was about two years of flight school, six months of the B course and then you know into the operational unit.
Speaker 1:Okay, so at what point do you actually like? Deploy, yeah, real combat.
Speaker 4:That could have been a real deployment. We go on these rotations, so typically it's six months on and then 18 months off, so you kind of know your squadron. When you're here, you're usually in a squadron for two, about three years, and so you'll know when you show up. Hey, we, we just got back in December, we're going to go again in 18 months, or you know whatever. So when I showed up we deployed the following January. It just kind of depends on when you show up.
Speaker 1:What at that time was. It was that Afghanistan.
Speaker 4:That was OIR. So operation inherent resolve was the all the ISIS, syria, iraq, that that whole thing. So that's what, like that was 2017. 2017. Yeah, early 2017. Okay, yep, yep. So we were for that deployment. We were living in Turkey and then flying into Iraq and Syria for the missions.
Speaker 1:Okay, so tell me about that. You deploy, you fly planes over there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. So basically we were in Arizona and we flew from Arizona to Maine, spent the night, maine to Spain, spent the night, and then Spain to Turkey, and we just took six, you know, six jets at a time, each with their own tanker, and just.
Speaker 1:So you got to be like crossing the Atlantic, you got to refuel multiple times.
Speaker 4:You're constantly refueling. You're kind of, if you have six jets on a tanker, you got to refuel multiple times. You're constantly refueling. You're kind of, if you have six jets on a tanker, you're just constantly taking turns topping off. So if you know there's an emergency or anything, you've got as much gas as you can.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you get over there. Are you like in combat immediately?
Speaker 4:Yeah, pretty much you, you, there was a squadron there before us. So there's a little bit of orientation and handoff of this is the mission, this is where we're going, this is what we're doing. But then you know, your first flight you're flying into syria or iraq or both, um, for a certain, for a certain amount of time. They're usually scheduled for four to six hour flights, but a lot of times we would extend and fly eight, ten hour flights pretty easily, and just, you're refueling every couple hours. So, yeah, there was, it's all coming out of turkey into those other. That's where we were. There were people all over the place. So different, different jets. There was a you know carrier flying, flying Hornets, um, and they they were flying in. They were you know all over the place, but yeah, we were in. We were in Turkey for, for, for that one.
Speaker 4:So I guess, uh, take me through sort of typical mission, what does that look like? Just some of the details of that. So you would be scheduled for different missions, that you might be scheduled for a close, uh, close air support mission where you say there are these, this certain team on the ground, and you're going to support them. This is a call sign, check in, see what targets they have for. So you had some some of that like more pointy end of the spear stuff. You had um stuff you could check in and it could be more like deliberate targeting where you know in this couple square miles we're looking for tanks or we're looking for up armored vehicles that are going to be used for vehicle-borne IEDs or different things like that.
Speaker 4:So you would go knowing these are the targets. Then you would call back and say, and they can see your feed right Through your targeting pod, the guys back, you know, back at the base, could see what you were looking at and they could say, yep, that's target cleared hot. Isis had taken over all of the oil fields in Syria and that's how they were making a bunch of revenue, and so a huge part of the mission was destroying oil trucks, oil tankers, oil rigs, pump jacks, oil wells, all the refining equipment. So personally, we blew up millions and millions of dollars of oil, the kind of stuff where you could be back in Turkey flying and still see the fire in Southern Syria. Yeah, it was. It was pretty incredible.
Speaker 1:Insane. So are you. Was it mainly like bombing those facilities?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was a combination, I think. On that deployment I dropped like 90 bombs, shot a couple of missiles and then shot about 5,000 rounds of the gun, so 30 millimeter.
Speaker 1:Is it mostly like that conflict? Was it mostly direction from base or is it a mix of jtac on the ground calling in?
Speaker 4:it was a mix. Yeah, it was definitely a mix. There we had guys on the ground, we had guys back at the base. You know robots everywhere with live feeds that people you know back at the base can can see what's going on. They can. They can talk you onto a target or give you grids and drop a bomb on that building or that vehicle, or hey, there, there are these enemy, enemy people, you know enemy personnel and and just depend on what the target was.
Speaker 1:How much of that particular operation was um. You know like what kind of threat are you facing?
Speaker 4:from the ground it was pretty minimal threat. So, you know, man pads surface to air, heat seeking rockets and heat seeking missiles. That would be probably the highest threat where we more common threat. Actually, on my first, first combat sortie, I was flying with my squadron commander and we were in Iraq, basically Missoula, so that's where nineveh is, you know, um, and so we're, we had they just finished the uh, the eastern side of missoula, tigris runs through it, and we were starting to move to the west and there were two trucks crossing the tigris. They were just nominated as a target.
Speaker 4:And we're, we show up and they say, they, they want us to shoot the trucks. And, uh, and they're trying to cross the river. And so I, I roll in from the North and shoot the lead, the lead truck, and usually, so you know, pull off, get back in the wheel, set up to strike the next truck, and usually you want to come in from a different axis, right, if you, if you're constantly coming down the same pipe, eventually they're going to start shooting back. So we said, hey, can we come in from the East or can we come in from the South? Like to mix it up? So it's not, they don't already have their gun trained on where?
Speaker 3:they know you're coming. They know you're coming.
Speaker 4:And they said, no, I can't remember the reason they they said we couldn't, we need you in from the North again. Okay, so I roll in again, shoot the second truck, and so like they start shooting back and I I pull off and I'm telling my flight lead, I'm janking triple a, you know target area. And uh, and he's like oh, yeah, sure, sure. Squeak, like yeah, keep your, keep your pants on. And uh, so at the time I don't think he believed me, he didn't see the tracers. Luckily we get back and we debrief and with everything's recorded and in the HUD tape there, you know, you saw the tracers flying by the jet. So I was kind of exonerated there and it's like no, it turns out you actually were getting shot.
Speaker 1:Is, um, I'm curious that first go around. Did you? Were there any like close calls, uh, just sort of that thing, or anything, anything more intense.
Speaker 4:No, not, not on the, not on our side of things. I mean, it's it's always very intense whenever you're in combat, like the, the adrenaline that you get when, when it's like time to time to roll in time to you know and and obviously it's a, it's a weighty thing taking lives. You know that's, that's the mission, that's that's the job description, but it is a serious thing. So you know it's always is this the right target? Do we get talked on to the right target? You know, is this a valid target? All those things are constantly running through your mind to make sure you're not making a mistake and doing something that you would regret.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we, we sort of lightly tease you about is your propensity for writing everything down by hand. Yeah, yeah. But you guys, I guess just walk me through this but you got actually had like notepads, it's like on your thigh.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so most guys will fly with two kind of clipboards strapped to their thighs. Okay, and you know you have different stuff on there. But one of the things you carry around are these nine line cards. So nine line is your target brief. So I honestly it's been a couple of years, I can't remember what each one of the lines are, but essentially it's what are the grids, what's the target, what's the elevation? Where are the friendlies relative to that? How close are they? Are there any restrictions on only drop a 500-pound bomb, or you can only come in from the east because they're friendlies to the south, or something like that. And this is coming from the JTAC, telling you the target brief, typically. And so you're writing this stuff down, you're plugging it into your system so that you can slave your targeting pod to the grid, you can see the target, you can look outside the jet and you can. You can see what's on the ground. So that whole process involves there's no really fast way to do it other than than manually.
Speaker 1:Are you guys? Uh, in that scenario are you mainly doing smart bomb drops?
Speaker 4:Yeah, um. So in 2008, the A-10 got the C model upgrade, so it really brought it into the 21st century with smart bombs and different laser guided stuff.
Speaker 1:Is that guided from the plane mainly, or from the ground?
Speaker 4:We have different bombs, so like GB-38, gb-31,. You just type in the 10 digit coordinates and send it, and it just goes to the GPS coordinates.
Speaker 1:Interesting. What elevation are you typically dropping from?
Speaker 4:Oh it, it depends. I mean, we were really happy to be in, like the low teens, like 13, 15,000 feet, but that wasn't as much for the bombs. That's more of how quickly can I roll in with a gun and point of the ground. So that's why you maybe trying to balance that quickly can I roll in with a gun and point it to the ground? So that's why you maybe try to balance that. I don't want to be low enough that the threats are going to feel like they can engage me, but I don't want to be so high where I have to go through the stack because we have all kinds of other planes in this stack and so you have a bunch of drones, you have a bunch of C-130s and U-28s and everything else that you have to get out of the way so that you can descend and employ your gun. So, so yeah, the bombs you can drop from really any, any altitude, as long as you can throw them far enough.
Speaker 1:OK, the the other question I have is in terms of like dogfighting.
Speaker 4:I'm assuming the A-10 is not particularly built for air to air, not really the premier dogfighting platform, but they train you in it. Dogfighting platform, but they train you in it. Yeah, we do, we do train in it um a little bit. We, we, obviously we have the gun and we will carry um heat seeking missiles, area missiles, but if an a-10 is dogfighting, it's like really bad.
Speaker 1:That's for the war, but because you typically would have other support planes.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I mean you're gonna have f-16s and f-22s and f-35s and f-15s and everybody else who can dogfight better. But we do train to it more in the just learning to how to fly the jet, what are the limits of the jet, just kind of learning the platform is one of the main reasons to practice the dogfighting.
Speaker 1:What in terms of top speed?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, if you're pointing at the ground like you roll in on a straight front, you could see 400 knots, I think. The note do not exceed is like 420. So I don't know if the wings fall off. I've never gone that fast.
Speaker 1:Not sure what knot wise. What is that mile per hour? Do you know?
Speaker 4:I mean it's kind of close, it's fast. The thing is with the A-10, you know, we in combat we'll fly a lot of medium altitude kind of stuff, but in training we'll practice down to a hundred feet, oh really. So you know, we'd fly around in the desert at a hundred feet and doing 300 knots at a hundred feet is like you're feeling, like you're, you're screaming, you're cooking, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then I guess my other question is in terms of number of G's, that like max, what do you?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean we have some jets are 9g capable jets like the f-16, but you know for the most part in the sevens would be the, the max g that most pilots would be. You know, typically in uh, enduring but just flying around, turning, rolling in like you get really comfortable flying like constant 5gs. Um, you know, you know, just normal, normal flight.
Speaker 1:How long did that take you to adjust to? I mean, you and I were talking about this the other day and I was like, if I get in an F 15 and I'm in the back, am I thrown up? And you're like, yeah, probably.
Speaker 4:I mean, uh yeah, the, the, the G strain, the G lock is one thing, the air sickness is a different thing. So I never, never, dealt with air sickness, except for when I was teaching introduction to fighter fundamentals because we would have students. So these are guys who graduated pilot training. They're learning to be fighter pilots, so we're training them on basics of dog fighting, basics of bombing, all of those kinds of things in the T 38. So, as the instructor, I'm the instructor in the backseat. So he's flying the plane and in mississippi, in the heat, you don't know what this guy's doing. You, you'd start to feel a little little like I'm gonna fly the jet for a while. So it's definitely worse if you're not flying. Oh yeah, if you're flying it, most people don't have a lot of a lot of issue with it because you're in control.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the, the g's are, are something that you grow accustomed to. You know it's just like anything else. You get acclimated to it. Really, how long did that take you? I never really had an issue with it, but the more you do it, the better you get at it. Where at the beginning they teach you, they put the G suit on really tight. The G suit connects to the plane, so it inflates so that you have something to strain. It's giving you pressure, yeah, it's giving you pressure. Yeah, it basically gives you like an extra g or g and a half, you know, based on what you could do with your body without anything on. So you know, at the beginning you have your g suit really tight, you're really doing your g strain where you're doing your breaths and you're you're squeezing your legs tight and but you know, by the time you get, you know, proficient, you don't really have to do that interesting I watched a video on this and they had like a guy.
Speaker 1:He was old, he was like in his nineties at the time. They did it, but they took him, I think it was an F 15. Yeah, and they were taking all these people up and everybody's like, you know, they pass out and G lock or whatever and getting air sick. And this guy, he was like a world war two pilot. Yeah, and they take him up and he's just, you know, they're doing everything that they were doing with the other guys and they're like how are you doing back there, sir?
Speaker 4:he's like fine, barely anything to me they don't, they don't make them like that anymore no, they don't.
Speaker 1:I I'm assuming like that, probably those early fighter pilots. Do they even have g-suits?
Speaker 4:I don't know when those, when those came on, but I mean they were all smoking like a couple packs a day and they they said for for breakfast they would, uh, they would have a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a long, slow look around the room. So you know, just just physiologically they were more prepared for it that's where you get into robin old's and his jawline man.
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Speaker 4:No, not any. I'd love to be able to fly an F-4, you know, p-51, but never had those opportunities. Actually, the oldest plane I've flown is the T-38, which was built in the sixties. Really, that's a prop. No, this is a, this is a jet. This is what we still train pilot training students on today. The last one was built before my mom was born. Really, yeah, so it. These things are archaic, they're. They're dangerous, like they're they're. They're not fun to fly interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was the other question I was going to ask. You is kind of the the technology progression.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so even the a10 is pretty old oh yeah, I mean we, we built them in the uh 70s, you know was it uh, mcdonald douglas fairchild. Okay, okay, actually the the a10 so old. My father-in-law flew him in the 80s really um page's dad and and they made him go to a different jet because the A-10 was going away in the eighties, in the eighties.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Still around, so for some reason it's hung on.
Speaker 1:I've heard that they're finally phasing it out.
Speaker 4:That's, I've heard recently, like another four, four or five years and it'll be. It'll be completely, completely decommissioned.
Speaker 1:But Do they have a different plane for that air to ground stuff?
Speaker 4:No, the Air Force doesn't care about air to ground stuff. No, I mean, if they wanted to, yeah, we could have a really, really great new A-10 kind of platform, but the Air Force has never really cared about air to ground combat, so it's not surprising that there's no replacement for it.
Speaker 1:Are they mainly going F-35 or?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, that's the argument, right, right, the b1 is the premier cast platform, or the, the f35, but like, at the end of the day, you just can't do the same kind of stuff and and the same thing. It would be stupid to say I can fly an a10 into china on day one of the war and think I'm not going to die in four seconds, right, right, but it's the same thing. It's like the f35 doesn't carry enough ordinance. You know, the gun is not nearly as accurate. You know it's not nearly, as you don't have enough bullet, just their limitations, gas, all those things, but it's not. Also, it's not meant to be an air to ground fighter, right, so can it do some of those things in the, in the environments that we've been fighting wars in for the last 30 years? Yeah, yeah, it can.
Speaker 1:But it's, it's not made for that. If you got to pick and you could fly one old plane. Let's start with world war two.
Speaker 4:I mean the Mustang is really cool. It's just one of those like iconic looking planes. I think there are better. You know P 47 or or you know something like that would be really cool as well. But I mean, if somebody said there's a Mustang out of the ramp, go, go for a joy ride Like that would be hard to hard to pass up.
Speaker 1:Would you know what to do, like you would know how to fly it.
Speaker 4:You know, I don't know, to be honest with you, it's, it's been, if Tom Cruise can fly it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think you can figure it out. I bet you could figure it out. Yeah, mine was always the Spitfire. Yeah, there's just something cool about the Spitfire. Yeah.
Speaker 4:The F4 is awesome. Yeah, I think that would be a really cool, cool jet to fly. But do they still fly any of those? No, not really. I mean, the Air Force does have this program where they'll take like F4s and actually F-16s and they'll make them into drones. Really, yeah, so they're, they're they have no pilot, but they're they're an F4 and F16. And then they'll use them for training at some of these like like at WESA, like what we do here at Hill or down in Florida. So Really, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Did you ever fly in any of the bombers?
Speaker 4:in a B-2 and a B-52, but never flew them. I did fly an AC-130 in combat one time. Really. A girl from my pilot training class was stationed with me there in Turkey and got me on a flight and we got to go fly on a combat mission. That was pretty interesting. What are they doing in combat? Same kind of stuff, close air support. They've got a couple of different guns where they're engaging targets on the ground, mostly anti.
Speaker 1:You know personnel I think it was in.
Speaker 4:Have you seen the covenant?
Speaker 1:uh, yeah, yeah. The scene at the end, where they're on the dam and they have the gunship which is once that thing like turns on its side and starts unloading. It's like obliterating everything on the ground. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty accurate though.
Speaker 4:It can be. It can be where it's made to fly. It can be really accurate. Unfortunately, because of the threats on the ground, they fly at a higher altitude. Okay, so what I saw was more like paintball, where, like, they're seeing where the impacts are and then adjusting based on the impact and, and you know, shoot enough rounds and you'll you'll get the target based on the impact and, and you know, shoot enough rounds and you'll get the target.
Speaker 1:Walk me through. I want to know about the call danger close.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, danger close. Obviously you have friendlies on the ground and you have these minimum distances that you can drop different ordnance from. Okay, so a bomb might be 200, 300 meters, right. A rocket might be 95 meters, like for a laser, laser guided rocket. The gun, the a10 gun, used to be 65 meters, where you could shoot at 70 meters away from friendlies, and that wasn't danger close really.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and so they just changed the rating, they changed the numbers because everybody else's gun was 95 meters so they just had to make it. Yeah, make it match. But yeah, we'll do this demonstration sometimes where we'll do a low angle strafe, so basically like close to the ground, on like a three degree, ten degree angle, and the first guy will. He won't tell the jtac. This is like a training environment. He won't tell the jtac whether he's pointing at him or whether he's pointing 95 meters away, you know, 100 meters away from him, and the jtac has to make the call cleared, hot or or abort, right. How does he know? Because he has to look at the plane and the nose and the tail and see is he pointing at you or is he pointing at a target a hundred meters away? And he has to be able to make that call. So that's a. That's a cool demonstration that we used to do in training with Jays and other guys, interesting.
Speaker 1:Years ago, long time ago, I was in 20s and I was fascinated. You know, special forces, uh, ranger, just different, different groups, green berets looking at what they did. And I remember a military guy told me he said if you want to know who the real ba guys are, to the j tax and part of it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, like with jays's, you've got a.
Speaker 4:You're basically running airstrikes, yeah, but it's actually kind of complicated yeah, it's really complicated because you got to be an expert, not like for a pilot, you have to be an expert on your plane. For those guys, they have to be an expert on all these different platforms. They don't know who's going to check in. Are they going to have hornets today? Are they going to have a10s? We're going to have f35. Are they going to have Hornets today? Are they going to have A-10s? Are they going to have F-35s? They really have to have a wide breadth of knowledge in order to and know what each one can do. Yeah, to employ them, because a lot of times the JTACs are doing they're implanted on the ground yeah, a lot of times. So JTAC is a qualification. Could have an Army Ranger who's JTAC qualified? You could have a conventional Air Force TACP who's JTAC qualified and he's attached to an Army unit. So you know, it's a qualification to be able to say you know, cleared hot on the radio.
Speaker 1:But they're doing a lot of special forces stuff too on the ground.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it really just depends on the career, you know who they're working for. Is this, is this, task force stuff? Is this, you know, special stuff, or is this more conventional warfare it? It really just depends Interesting.
Speaker 1:Did you ever think about getting into JTAC, or was it just like I want to be in the plane?
Speaker 4:I think I had some like backup plans if it didn't work out to. You know, be a pilot, you know truck driving school or you know ice road truckers. And I always thought those guys you know truck driving school or you know, uh, ice road truckers. And I always thought those guys you know were really really BA and and um and I. But I also know it's really hard. You know what. What they do is really hard in the body. It's really hard. Like family life is really hard. You know, that was the nice thing about how the fighters deploy is like you know you're going to be gone. You know you're going to be gone for six months. Everybody is gone. All the families are home together, so they kind of take care of each other, where a lot of other platforms might just deploy single crews or single, single jets and like you don't know when you're going to be gone, you're a C-17. You're gone for this two weeks, then you're home for a week, then you're. You know it's just a much more difficult schedule for the family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes it hard. I'm curious. We kind of talked about deployment one. How many did you have 10 years?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, if you, if you start when I started, graduated college, started pilot training to when I was kicked out is 10 years, 10 years, yeah. So how many deployments total? So that that was the only deployment that I that I had was there was OIR in 17.
Speaker 1:Okay, yep, and do they like, I guess, a squadron? Do they normally keep the same guys together?
Speaker 4:No, guys, guys move around a lot. That's another challenging part of of being a pilot is, in this career field you move every three years Really At at best. You know, you know, so your your family, everything, everything you go from base to base and pcs and so that's that's a challenge, but you feel like by the time you get settled and you know your house is all, in order to have some friends time to time to move again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're constantly moving guys in and out of the squadron so we fast forward to covid years and I guess, just walk me through, like when did you first know that there was going to be problems, issues? Uh, is this like early 2020, later?
Speaker 4:yeah, it was uh, so it was 2020 and covid was a thing. People reacted to it differently. Trump was in office, yeah, so there were no mandates in 2020. I was in a training command, so not a combat command, but I was in a training command and training command is, like, notoriously gay on a lot of things. Yeah, and, and I'm I'm confident that it's you know, god's providence that he put me there, cause I I think I'd still be in right now if I wasn't, if I was in a combat command. Really, just the way that things are handled and how people handle things differently. So, um, even though there were no mandates, my squadron commander was very progressive and he mandated masks in the squadron, even though it wasn't on the base, it wasn't for the Air Force, really Anything. He made him yeah, I was, I was his executive officer, so I was like his number two guy and I told him sir, I think this is a bad idea, here's why. And he's like nope, we're going to do it. So for you, you know, last half of 2020, in the squadron, everybody wore masks and then you know, we had the election.
Speaker 4:A lot of, uh, a lot of thoughts about the election, and election is in scare quotes yeah, yep, and, and that really got me starting to think about how is this going to go, what, what does it look like to be a pilot to, to be a warfighter in a regime that you know is wicked?
Speaker 4:You know how far, how far can you take it, when, when's the right time to punch? And it's really hard to weigh that against the commitment because you, you go to pilot training, you signed up for 10 years, so it's really hard to get out from underneath that, and so that really got me thinking. After the election, you know, before the inauguration, I started asking questions in my church to a lot of friends in the squadron who went to the same church as me, and we started talking about you know what's the line, when can the Christian no longer do this with a good conscience? And you know I had all kinds of answers, but for the most part people didn't think about the question, didn't have an answer and, you know, ultimately didn't, didn't really have a line Right, because if you don't think about it beforehand, when the time comes, like you're not doing all of this.
Speaker 1:You'll just pass the line, yeah.
Speaker 4:You'll just pass the line because you never. You never drew that line to begin with.
Speaker 1:Were they mandating vaccines too, or was it just?
Speaker 4:That came later. So that came, so that came into the fall of like September of 21. Okay, that's when those came out. But you know, my resistance started in January, february of 21. Okay, and that was when Biden mandate came down about masks for DOD personnel.
Speaker 4:And so I read the. You know it came through the DOD, came through the Air Force, and I read it and this is the first time that I knew that medical or religious accommodations existed. They said this is a mandate, this is what you have to do. You have to wear a mask all the time, unless you're in the shower by yourself. You know kind of stuff. But they listed all these exemptions, all these exceptions to the mandate. And so I read that and I thought about it and I prayed about it and you know, I'm like, no, I, I don't think we've been doing this, I don't think they work, I think it's a lie. I think that you know, by continuing to participate in wearing this, I'm, I'm giving tacit approval that that the narrative is actually true, that I'm saying, yeah, this does protect you and it does protect me, and you know it's it's loving your neighbor, it's, you know, doing the right thing. So, because I read that I I didn't know there's a religious accommodation, so I applied for it, so that no, I actually think this violates a bunch of different stuff.
Speaker 4:But you know, ninth commandment is is one of the bases of my argument, and the way that religious, religious accommodations work is basically the air force has to bend over backwards to accommodate sincerely held religious belief. And they do this with Indians smoking peyote. They do this with people who claim they're Norse pagans and want to grow a beard, you know, but they do it all the time. But for Christians pushing back against COVID, they approved no religious accommodations. Really, and rather than prove their compelling government interest of why they couldn't approve, why they couldn't give you an exception, they just hand-waved it and said flat denial all the way up. So I kept appealing it and essentially all the way up to the Surgeon General denied, denied, denied. And then they started punishing me when you say punishing what was happening.
Speaker 4:So they started by grounding me so I couldn't fly. They took my off-flight status, took away flight. Pilots get extra flight pay. They took away flight fly. They took my off-flight status, took away. You know pilots get extra flight pay. They took away flight pay. They took away my access to security. You know classified information. So my commander decided, like nominated me to be a security risk because I have a sincerely held religious belief, because of the masks, yeah, and it progressed into testing and the shot eventually. But by that time the cards had kind of already been been dealt. So then they start hitting me with letters of reprimand which in the you know, in the military, these are the LORs, yeah, yeah, and they started hitting me. I got seven LORs and they just kept escalating and eventually you would say, well, why didn't they give you an article 15? This is the way that that would lead to court martial.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly why did it? Seems like after a couple of hours they're not changing your mind, You're not, they're, they're not going to rehabilitate. Why not just give you an Article 15? And the answer is because if they give a service member an Article 15, they have the opportunity to take it to a court martial where you have due process. And they didn't want to do that because then they're in a court with a judge and they have to prove their case and the precedent of that case affects the entire force. So they intentionally didn't pursue a court martial for that reason. So they they felt they went the LOR route, which resulted in a board of inquiry which is, it looks a lot like a court marshal, but there's no due process. So when I want to make an argument, the judge just says nope, shut up. And it was a kangaroo court because the members of the board were all of the commanders at that base who had given these orders, enforced these orders, punished these orders.
Speaker 1:And you really don't get to say much.
Speaker 4:I got to get on the stand and I was very limited on the things I could say. I couldn't argue that this order was unlawful. I couldn't argue like he said. It's already lawful. It's a lawful order, you know. He showed up and so I gave a testimony, talked about my faith, everybody in the room heard the gospel. But you know, at the end of the day I couldn't really make any, any legal arguments. So we did a BOI. They say we, you should get a general discharge. What is a BOI? The board of inquiry.
Speaker 4:Oh it's really just a hiring and firing. It would be like if you worked at Walmart and they convey you know it's like HR.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Three supervisors to say is this guy's good, I'll weigh his bad. No, he's fired. So that's essentially what it was. So you got fired. Yeah, I mean, it's an involuntary discharge, right? And so they recommended a general discharge. So a lot of people ask were you dishonorably discharged? Right? And that was never on the table. You have to commit a felony or kill or rape somebody to get dishonorably discharged. So the discharges that were on the table were honorable, general and other than honorable, and they gave me a general discharge.
Speaker 1:So, as you look at that process, how long was the like from the first LOR to when you were out it?
Speaker 4:took over three years Really. Yeah, yeah, it took a long time. The paperwork and bureaucracy and everything. It took a really long time.
Speaker 1:It's interesting now too, because that stuff has kind of gone away. Yeah, you know how Fauci is saying yeah, the mask never did anything. Yeah, as you reflect on some of that, obviously you know resting in God's providence in a way, I'm glad you got kicked out.
Speaker 4:You're here. I wouldn't have in any other way.
Speaker 1:But some of that's got to be infuriating too, as you think about just what they did to a lot of people's livelihoods yeah, over something that was so stupid. My question to you, though, is okay, so you can read Meg Basham's book. It certainly appears that it was orchestrated, that it appears that it was orchestrated, that it wasn't just like a few people acting rogue, like that's not what you were experiencing. Did you get the sense that it was like? This? Is, you know, at some level, an orchestrated attempt to punish certain people?
Speaker 4:I think reflecting on it. Yeah, obviously, like the military, our military today does not want war fighters, does not want men who, who can think critically, who will support and defend the Constitution. Because that's ultimately what it came to Like. It's what started with a religious conviction. Eventually, when I got further into it, it was like no, this, actually, this EUA product is in violation of the law. We have laws like 1107A and Title 21,.
Speaker 4:Right that these things you actually can't coerce what's under an emergency use authorization and that applied to the shot, that applied to the test, that applied to the mask. It's all emergency use. And so to coerce something and say you shall do this is actually a violation of law. And officers take an oath to support and defend the constitution right? The officer oath doesn't say anything about you know, obey the orders. The officer pointed over me. It just says support and defend the constitution. And so eventually, what I realized was I'm actually doing what I swore an oath to do by fighting this and arguing that this is an unlawful order. All of these are unlawful orders that because they violate the law of the land, the constitution.
Speaker 1:Right. One of the other things that's interesting to me about your story is there's also interaction with the church throughout this whole process. Yeah, and it would be great if we could tell a story where it's like, yeah, the church had my back and people in reformed denominations were standing behind people who are going through this and, you know, people in reform denominations were standing behind people who are going through this. Of course, at Refuge we've dealt with a number of servicemen who've had to deal with the same issues, even recently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even recently they're still trying to force things. I think it's it's let up a little bit, but there were people that were. You know, you're in a position where you're like you're going to get vaxxed or you're not going to have a job. So talk to me about the church side of things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was, uh, I was at a PCA church. We were members of a church. We had a lot of guys in my squadron who were also members of the church kind of everybody dealing with it in their own way. I never tried to bind anybody else's conscience with this. When people asked me why I was doing it, or I would you know, give a defense for what I believed. But I never said and you're in sin if you don't. You don't get in my boat with me, or anything like that.
Speaker 4:But, um, the church tried to be as hands-off overall. The church handled COVID in an okay way, like they didn't close down for a bunch of weeks or anything like that. But ultimately the the kind of stuff I kept hearing was you know, romans 13, you gotta, you gotta obey. Or you know, when we talk about like when can the Christian not you know not serve in the military, when, when, what has to like, what has to happen when it's actually going to be sinful for the Christian to stay in the military, the answers I got were, well, jesus didn't tell the centurion to quit his, quit his day job. So I guess you know it's always permissible. It's like, well, yeah, but like for a baby Christian, you know, maybe he didn't get a whole dissertation on just war theory and things like that, but as he grew in his sanctification, those are questions he would have been asking.
Speaker 4:And if Caesar commanded him to do a crime, to do a sin, you know it would have been his duty to refuse to. You know it would have been his duty to to refuse to, you know to resist. And so really, just a lot of the, a lot of guys pointing me to Van Drunen and radical two kingdom stuff and just trying to trying to find a way to have their cake and eat it too, it was like, nope, we just gotta, just gotta submit. The sad part about the church was my, my commander. He was a member of our church, we were friends and he kind of flipped on me. He initially approved my accommodation and then, when his boss got wind of it, he flipped.
Speaker 4:And he said, no, you can't have an accommodation. And this was over the mask. Yeah, this started with a mask. And then he would tell me things like I think you are committing a crime. I think that by refusing to wear this mask, you're committing a crime. I said, okay, well, if that's the case, then I'm also committing a sin and you need to bring me up. On church discipline. You think I'm a criminal? You think that I'm a criminal, that there's, there are sins associated with duties to a superior duty. You know duties, peers, duties to inferiors. If that's your conviction, then you don't have a. We're in the same church. You have to bring me up, but you have to make accusations to our session, and he obviously would refuse to do that and and so that that was a real challenge, trying to navigate the church work, friendship all together, and you know, it's kind of really, really sad how it all turned out yeah, my question and a lot of this is you know, I remember having this thought too early on where do you draw the line?
Speaker 1:because a lot of people could say, well, yeah, but it was just a mask, yeah. But I think what was helpful oddly enough, it was like Rod Dreher at the time was pointing to Solzhenitsyn and live not by lies. And he said the way that they get you, like in Soviet Russia, the way that they got them was just one lie at a time, and so they start stacking up and then, before you know it, you're in a gulag. And so I think for the Christian, particularly in our context in America, a lot of people until that point hadn't thought through what is Romans 13 about? Does this mean it also says that the magistrate is supposed to be doing righteous things? You know, how do we apply the law of God to the magistrate? A lot of people hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 1:No, um, I think people like Matt Truella were helpful because they're talking about the doctrinal lesser magistrates resisting tyranny. That was one of the first things that I connected on Twitter with Pastor Brian about actually was they were one of the few churches that were like we're not going to close and it were pretty outspoken about yeah, you can't refuse assembly. There's actually a constitutional as well as a biblical issue. But as you look at that, I've often thought, ok, now that we've had Fauci, admit, yeah, the mask thing was, we made that up. You know it was unlawful to force people to do that. Certainly the vaccine has way more problems. I think I heard on Tucker that there was something like 70 million plus vaccine injuries and I think these were deaths, yeah, yeah, worldwide. And Tucker was like wait, wait, wait, that's like a world conflict, right, 70 million people have died. And you look at that now. And so it seems like in the Christian camp there ought to be a whole litany of apologies happening, but we haven't seen that.
Speaker 4:No, you really haven't. Here and there guys will say, you know, we closed for three months and we'll never do that again. You know certain churches but by and large I don't think people have really stopped to kind of do a, do a battle, damage assessment, do an after action report and say, hey, we actually didn't handle this perfectly and when, because the play worked great, they're going to run it again, Guaranteed right, Some form or fashion, Something similar. But I think we do need to be prepared for that inevitability and I think that it's incumbent on Christians now, churches, pastors how did we handle it? Would I do that again? Would I have signed up and got a shot and six boosters?
Speaker 1:And maybe for a lot of the people like I think, especially in my role pastorally, I'm also thinking like in the future, we need to do an even better job supporting our people who are coming under the threat, whether it's from a corporation or the government. Yeah, I feel like we have done a pretty good job actually of supporting guys here in the military. We've written a lot of letters.
Speaker 4:Yeah, a lot of letters of support, a lot of, you know, helping people get legal counsel, all sorts of different stuff that you can do.
Speaker 1:But it is sad too, I think, because just relationally, a lot of relationships were burned. Yeah, I again I didn't see a lot of those people coming back two years later. I mean, there were people I know in reform circles who I would post something and they would say you know, you're in sin, you need to take this down. I'm like, well, I'm just, you know, I got banned from Twitter at the time for quoting the CDC website and uh, but it was Christians who were really bludgeoning other Christians.
Speaker 1:And years later, I had one conversation with one elder at a church and I said you know, he wanted to shut the church down. We didn't, and this is not not refuge. And I said I feel like you owe people an apology. And he said, well, I still think I was right at the time, based on the information we had. But you had an elder who was like threatening to turn the church in to the state, to the state, because we like we were not masking, yeah, and it got heated. And I guess my point is it really damaged relationships, yeah, and so there's like a human capital toll here as well. Yeah, but I wonder if you don't think as well some of that worked out in the favor of like a positive sifting Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Because, I mean, people were joking about this right, but it's like I know who would turn me in now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know who your friends are. Yeah, and I think it was a positive sifting in the, in the wheat and the tares, with a lot of people woke up. Yeah, I mean I can say that you know that Roger air book was really influential. He goes through the that's lived, not by lies, see judge, act Right and like that was really influential in us at the time. I think it was like fall of 2020 when that came out, or it was right before COVID is fall of 19. Cause it was like if Rod knew that was the impact that his book was going to have, I doubt he would have published it.
Speaker 4:But, yeah, that see, judge act.
Speaker 4:Like Christians can see things relatively well and they can judge them.
Speaker 4:But then when the rubber hits the road and it's like, well, yeah, I subscribe to the Westminster Confession and this is what it says, well then that means this is what you shall do, if that's you know, but we have a really hard time actually applying our theology to real life.
Speaker 4:I also think that, you know, when you talk about trust being lost, there's a huge amount of trust that's been lost in our, you know, both corporately but also like in the military, people have really showed their cards on what they stand for, whether they're yes men who are just here to get the next promotion, get the next job, not get fired. That's most of our officers, unfortunately. Most of our lieutenant colonels and up are all yes men who will do whatever they're told to do as long as they don't get fired. And that was really revealing, really revealing, and that's really shattered the trust of the people left in the military, who who got through it, or the ones who've joined since, who are, you know, good, good people with convictions, that that's who we have leading our, our military, and that's, that's really bad place to be well, it's interesting too, because I think there's a big carrot right of like why I don't want to lose my pension, I don't want to lose all the benefits.
Speaker 1:There were guys who were close to 20 years, whatever it was yeah, yeah, and so there was a lot of pressure on that front. But I loved Nate Spearing was talking about when he got out. He was an airborne ranger, yeah, and we had him on the show and it was really interesting. He said I looked at what I owed the government if I got out early and it was significant. And he said, look, I'm a high cap guy, I believe in myself, I'll go start a business, I'll pay it off, but there's a price to living as a free man on right principles. And I think a lot of people realize that we're going to have to make choices like that. And I think in our world for not just if you're in the military, but for Christians in general you're going to have to make choices that, yeah, they're going to burn relationships. We see this all over the teaching and the gospels.
Speaker 4:It's definitely not the easy road.
Speaker 1:No, it's difficult and you know it's going to. I mean, I remember going to funerals this is where I got dicey too was like my grandma was in hospice and so she's dying. She's like I just want to go to the hospital and die. It's the middle of covid and they were like we will allow like one person per day to see you and we had some help from family, but basically it was like break grandma out of the hospital so she can die with family in the home. Yeah, and they did. You know, thank God. And I remember being there. It was, you know, just incredible to have grandma, the whole families around her. I remember one of the late nights my mom called me and she said I think mom's dying. She said you know we can't get ahold of, you know, their, their pastor or whatever Would you said you know we can't get ahold of their pastor or whatever. Would you come? You know, just pray with everybody, be with grandpa, whatever. So I got to do that Very special to be there. So I'm glad it worked out that way.
Speaker 1:But you think about the people who died alone. Yeah, I just, I mean the inhumanity. Talk about not loving your neighbor. You know somebody is dying, like literally, this was crazy grandma's dying of cancer. And they're like, no, you can't come in here, you might get her sick. But you know it was so nonsensical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, we knew people who one friend had a stillbirth and they didn't want to let the husband into the hospital. You imagine, no. And in fact, like it got pretty heated in that one, like he was like, uh, I'm armed and I'm going in there. And he was like, if you want to stop me, I guess we'll be on the news, but you can imagine the grief of that situation. Yeah, you just lost your son. And they're they're like, no, you can't go see your wife because this stupid mandate, yeah, the mask mandate.
Speaker 1:So again, just thinking about all that, I think it was a wake-up. And they're like no, you can't go see your wife because this stupid mandate yeah, the mask mandate. So again, just thinking about all of that, I think it was a wake up call to a lot of Christians, certainly a sifting. We've talked about it being an apocalypse. One of the other questions it brings to my mind, though, is we have a lot of young guys who still have probably the zeal I had in the 90s about, you know being patriotic. I think it's a good thing in general to love your country, to love even for young men, to have a desire to serve in a military capacity. But I have teen boys who are getting ready to be you know of age and no way in hell I mean, could you convince me or them to join the military. No, so I want to ask you, just thinking about young guys would you ever counsel a guy to join the military in today's world?
Speaker 4:Short answer would be hell, no, yeah. Reasons why, one of them being the. The kind of trust and the kind of leaders that were revealed through COVID is just shattered. The entire institution, where it's a very high trust environment.
Speaker 1:You're putting your life on the line.
Speaker 4:You're putting your life on the line, right. Your, your, your family, you know, could be fatherless, like you know all that, all that is true. But you're like, for example, in the cockpit, you're just the trigger man, right? You don't know who these guys are. You're trusting Intel is good. You're trusting that we're in a just war. You're trusting your government. You're trusting the leaders, you know. You're trusting all of your chain of command, that that target that I just nominated, that that just got nominated on the ground, hey, go kill that guy. He's a bad guy and it's an. And we're in a just war and we're engaging in war in a just way, and that trust has been just completely shattered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the Ukraine situation, yeah, it's a nightmare.
Speaker 4:Like.
Speaker 1:Afghanistan. I mean, like Tucker has mentioned this, but he said, yeah, you got these like conservative war hawks, like Lindsey Graham, and he said you know the interesting thing about Lindsey, he's got no children. Yeah, it's weird. And so you want to send other sons to die in conflict. And when you're looking at it and you're like which one of these are just wars.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you look at just the military industrial complex and it's a mess and so, like, for that reason alone, I would say, as a Christian, you don't want to be in that situation where now you're like, you're in a position where, like you either pull the trigger or you don't, but you actually don't have enough information to make that decision. So you are trusting in the chain of command, you're trusting the intelligence community and everything else and like, why would we trust after everything we've seen? Why would there be any trust left that what I'm doing is a good thing and that you know God would be pleased with me? You know, killing that, that guy.
Speaker 1:Do you think a lot of people cause I've seen this with young people who are still like gung ho on the military are there alternatives? Cause it is good to you know, train with firearms, it's good to have military competencies again in general, yeah, yeah, but it seems like you ought to be any even. You know, with guys I've known it's like okay, we're going to teach our sons like firearm safety. And you know, with guys I've known it's like, okay, we're going to teach our sons like firearm safety, and you know there's still a way to learn these things and work together as communities. But like, okay, go to something like masculinity. Yeah, you know, we've said over and over in the show, you know, men need to be warriors, they need to be protectors, you need to know how to defend yourself and your people. But again, it seems like with the military, you're putting yourself in a position where you're just going to get hosed.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Something Pastor Doug Wilson has said for years is like it's permissible to join the military. Christians can go join the military, but you have to be ready to be fired every day. Yeah, and I think you know, if you go in with your eyes wide open and you're just like I'm not doing it, I'm not taking a shot. I'm not going to call that chick a dude or whatever. I think you're going to get fired. You will not make it to 20 years if you live as a Christian in our political environment today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so knowing that, would that be a good investment of your time.
Speaker 4:No, I mean, there is certain training that you're like I wouldn't be who I am today if I didn't go through the hardship and the difficult training and all those things like and I I'm, you know, great grateful for those experiences, but I but it's not worth it. You know what I mean. There there are other ways that you can, you can get those competencies and you can train and you can, you can be, you know, high capacity and and you know there are other ways than the leftist military that we have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a good point. One of the things I want to close with is kind of the next generation and our sons, because, you know, I find, like this is a it's a tough thing with boys, where I don't want them to like be averse to physical violence, and I know that this is, you know, in our world it's like we hear this all the time. You know, violence is never the answer, and then I think that's really idiotic, though, when you look at world history, there's many times where, whether you like it or not, sort of like the line from Lord of the Rings, whether you choose war or not, war is upon you, and so you better be prepared to fight, whether, that's, you know, you could be in a situation where an angry mob is trying to break into your house and kill your family. Well, you have to have a plan, yeah.
Speaker 4:And you have to have thought about that plan before, right now before it happens. Yeah, like them, knocking on the door is not the time to think about a plan when CPS is knocking on your door trying to take your kids, that's not the time to think. What would I do in that situation? That's right.
Speaker 1:So, as you think through that, you know still wanting to instill in your boys, uh, these masculine virtues of, again, you know, being proficient with a weapon, whether, that's, you know, I don't know take up knife fighting or something like this. Um, that's just the history of the world, that violence is a reality. We live in a sinful, fallen world, and if we're thinking of it in a just war theory, well, it's defensive, but those moments may come. So what sorts of things do you think through in terms of a Christian father preparing his sons? Like, what do you tangibly actually do to make sure that they have those competencies, and I would include in that, like the ability to endure?
Speaker 4:hardship. Yeah, I mean I think you've talked about this before with the manufactured hardship. Yeah, it's just we have to have that right. You have to manufacture hardship, whether it's a hard camping trip, a backpacking trip, like hard you know, land, nav, rock, what you know, whatever you do lifting weights like you manufacture hardship, because when the hard times come, you're you're gonna wish you had it won't.
Speaker 4:It won't have been voluntary at that point you're gonna have hardship then, but it but you're not gonna be ready for it. So I, I think right now my boys are young, I've got, I've got three, five and under. But we, you know we, we practice you know stuff all the time. We, we go up and we, we do firearm know we, we practice you know stuff all the time. We, we go up and we, we do firearm safety. We, we hung up punching bag in the basement and we do do some some boxing. You know we, I'm constantly wrestling with them and trying to make them tough and teaching them self-control.
Speaker 4:You know they're, they're young boys and so they. You know different things happen and tears well up, but you know we're really focusing on that. You got to be self-controlled. Men are tough, right? Men don't cry like, like your little little baby sister, right, like and just. I think different ages are going to look differently but I really, as they get older, really hope to be able to, you know, manufacture some hardship for them, for their, for their good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's one thing we've talked about too at the church. Actually it's come up recently. But in a world like ours and this is actually not new there's a book called muscular christianity and it talks about how, like kind of the teddy roosevelt late 1800s in england and then in america, there was this movement to realize like, wow, you know, we kind of live in a decadent age, there's a lot of comfort and luxury, and so you've got to introduce hardship. And a lot of people don't know this but, like the YMCA, young Men's Christian Association, even James Naismith, who invented basketball, basketball was invented because they were like well, we need a sport where boys can work as a team, they can use their bodies, and so basketball is invented. It's really run a lot through the Y and then it was like a winter time men's sport and I think you know it's it's sad too.
Speaker 1:Like you again, you look at sporting events now and it's like gayified Yep, um, you watch the Olympics. You know exactly what we're talking about, but I still think you've got to find ways to do that Like, do it Christianly. Talking about, but I still think you've got to find ways to do that Like, do it Christianly, but it's good for boys, to even my oldest playing tennis. It's like to go through all day of tennis matches and state tournaments and you're battling, controlling your emotions when you lose. You're battling opponents who are talking smack.
Speaker 4:You know it's boys need that the endurance of, of, of pushing yourself and finding, finding limits and finding new limits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think also having a community where that's valued. Um, one of the things that's concerned me about the pietistic, it's not just in the Anabaptist world, though it's certainly bad there but sort of the like anytime we post about, like you know, men, work out, do hard things. You know, push your body. Maybe it's running, maybe it's powerlifting, whatever it is, Maybe it's rocking, doing things that are really hard physically. The immediate pushback is we know it's better than a physically strong body knowing Christ. And I just look back at Christian history and I think, well, first of all, that's asinine because it's not an either or proposition, right, but even like in first John, he's like young men, you are strong and people want to say, well, that's spiritual strength.
Speaker 3:I'm like I don't think it just is.
Speaker 1:No, it's not, it's all forms of strength.
Speaker 4:It's a Gnostic error to separate the mind and the body, the spirit and the body, to say that they're, they have nothing to do with each other. If you, if you're in horrible shape and you're a fat slob, how, how sharp is your mind going to be? You know, even just get any given week when you work out three or four times a week, you're, you're much clearer thinker, much sharper, much better position, and that's a that's mental, spiritual aspects as well. So the training, you know, and it all goes together, like there aren't days where I work out and don't read the Bible. They go together. Right, that's right. If I skip, I skip everything, and so it's like. You know they, they they're tied together in a way that is self-controlled, is disciplined, is, is habit. You know these habits that are repeatable, habits that make us into the men we want to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think if you understand men us into the men we want to be yeah, and I think if you understand men, you realize that you know even the early church fathers. They were big on some things that we would call ascetic, but you know, like fasting, uh, when they would write about the seven deadly sins, for example, they said you know the, the, the control of the tongue and the stomach, like what you eat. They would say, if you can't control your body, you won't be able to control anything else. And so having that idea of we need to have disciplines that they get to self-mastery of the physical, yeah, and then you think about it and it's like, wow, that's really weird. I started working on being more consistent with that, really watching what I'm eating, it wouldn't you know it. Like I'm more consistent with family worship and personal devotional time, yeah, yeah, wow, that's weird, they go together. Yeah, so it's not an either or and just encouraging guys.
Speaker 1:One of the things I've noticed with with our podcast there's guys who listen to this who they know they're overweight, they know they're not doing what they should, and so what's encouraged me is seeing them be like you know what? Yeah, I need to, I need to start doing something. There's a lot of guys in our local community and elsewhere working with Tate Taylor and just get doing hard things Could be rocking, could be riding a bike, could be throwing on some plate armor and doing some. You know the Murph challenge as best you can Get as far as you can with it, and I think there's different ways to do that, but it's ultimately you're looking at shaping the whole man and I think that becomes really important.
Speaker 1:Ethan, I want to thank you for coming on the show. It's been really cool talking to you about this. We've watched before this countless videos of just you know, the guns going off on the A-10s. We get hyped about this. That was, of course, like I said, my childhood was my dad would buy us, you know, those giant like Barnes and Noble coffee table books of, like planes. Yeah, all the different. It just go through all the specs.
Speaker 4:History of planes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know if people still do this, but we were also into model airplanes. Yeah, we used to do those. Oh, that's great. Yeah, like B-17s, p-38s You'd read the history of the plane, who invented it? All that stuff Still cool, still appreciate all of that. So, yeah, absolutely so, ethan, thank you. I want to encourage our listeners to check us out on Patreon as well. You get exclusive access to content and, if you haven't yet check out Zach Garris' book, ethan did a lot of work on that.
Speaker 4:So, thank you, yeah, it was a great project, really happy with the way it turned out, had a lot, of, a lot of help, a lot of good contractors and you cover design, typesetters and everything but I think the book really, really stands on its own and I think it's really an important, important work for to get in the hands of Christians today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it Just doing the reformed retrieval of biblical patriarchy and biblical sexuality. Calvin Verm formed retrieval of biblical patriarchy and biblical sexuality, calvin Vermigli, luther, a bunch of other people, so that's really helpful. Check that out. You can go to new Christian presscom slash fathers and check that out. That's honor thy fathers by Zach Garris. You can pick up your copy today and until next time, we'll catch you in the next episode, ethan. Thank you again. Thanks, eric.
Speaker 3:Next time we'll catch you in the next episode, ethan. Thank you again. Thanks, eric.