back to indexDavid Fravor: UFOs, Aliens, Fighter Jets, and Aerospace Engineering | Lex Fridman Podcast #122
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The following is a conversation with Commander David Fravor, who was a Navy pilot for 18 years
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and commander of the Strike Fighter Squadron 41, also known as the Black Aces, a squadron
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of 12 airplanes consisting of several hundred people.
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He's also famously one of the people who with his own eyes saw and chased a UFO, an
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identified flying object in 2004 that is referred to as the Tic Tac and the incident more formally
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referred to as the USS Nimitz UFO incident.
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His story, corroborated by several other pilots from my perspective as a curious scientist
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and an open minded human being, is the most credible sighting of a UFO in history, at
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least that I'm aware of.
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He's a humble, fascinating, and fun human being to talk to.
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I put out a call for questions on Reddit and many other places and tried to ask as many
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of the questions that people posted as I could.
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And overall, I really enjoyed this conversation and I'm sure if the world wants us to, and
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if there's more questions to be had, we'll talk on this podcast again.
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Quick summary of the sponsors, Athletic Greens, ExpressVPN, and BetterHelp.
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Please check out the sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that the world of UFOs and UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomena,
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and aliens in general is foreign to me because of the high ratio of outlandish conspiracy
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theorists to actual hard evidence.
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I'm a scientist first and foremost, but an open minded one, often looking and thinking
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I'm often disheartened by the closed mindedness of the scientific community.
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And in equal part, I'm disheartened by the lack of rigor and basic scientific inquiry
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and study on the part of the conspiracy theorists.
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I believe there's a line somewhere between the two extremes that more inquisitive minds
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I think we humans know very little about our world, what's up there among the stars and
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the nature of reality and the nature of our very own minds.
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The path to understanding can only be walked humbly.
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The very idea that there is a possibility that David witnessed a piece of technology,
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whether human made or alien made, that moved in the way it did, should be inspiring to
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every scientist and engineer on this earth.
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There may be propulsion and energy systems yet to be discovered that, once understood
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and mastered, will put distant galaxies within reach of us human beings.
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Paradigm shifts in science and leaps in understanding can only happen, I think, if we open our eyes
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and allow ourselves to dream, to think from first principles, and remove the constraints
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and innovation placed on us by the scientific conventions and assumptions of prior generations.
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If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 Stars on Apple Podcast, follow
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on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Freedman.
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As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle.
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More and more I'm trying to make these ad reads unique and interesting and less adzy,
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more personal, but I give you timestamps so you can skip, but still please do check out
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the sponsors by clicking the links in the description, it is honestly the best way to
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support this podcast.
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This show is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the all in one daily drink to support health
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I drink it every day to make sure I'm not missing any of the nutrition I need.
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Now let me take a hard left turn and talk about fasting.
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I fast often, sometimes intermittent fasting of 16 hours and then an 8 hour eating period
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of 2 meals, sometimes 24 hours, that's one dinner to the next.
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I've been even considering doing a 48 or 72 hour fast that some people I look up to
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People who have done it tell me that outside of weight loss and the different health benefits,
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it's a chance to meditate on the finiteness of life.
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Not eating somehow is a reminder that we're immortal, that every day is precious.
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I certainly experienced this with the 24 hour fast and I think it goes even deeper for the
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48, 72, and even week long fasts.
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Anyway, I always break my fast with Athletic Greens, it's delicious, refreshing, just makes
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So go to athleticgreens.com slash lex to claim a special offer of free vitamin D for a year.
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Again go to athleticgreens.com slash lex to get free stuff and to support this podcast.
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This show is also sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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Get it at expressvpn.com slash lexpod to get a discount.
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You probably know there's a show called The Office that I fell in love with, first with
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the British version with Ricky Gervais and then the American version with Steve Carell.
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ExpressVPN lets you pretend your location is somewhere else, choosing from nearly 100
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of The Office in other countries.
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Also it protects you when you do shady things on the internet that you shouldn't be doing.
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Like checking the website of this very podcast that for some reason was not available in
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Russia for a long time, not sure if it still is, but if it isn't you can use ExpressVPN
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I think of ExpressVPN like a pirate ship, and regular VPN free life as a boring cruise
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from one place to another with no excitement in between.
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Choose wisely my friends.
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Again get it on any device at expressvpn.com slash lexpod to get an extra three months
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free and to support this podcast.
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This show is sponsored by BetterHelp, spelled H E L P help.
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Like you would try to spell if you were on a deserted island and trying to get an airplane
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Check it out at betterhelp.com slash lex.
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They figure out what you need and match you with a licensed professional therapist and
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Now, hard left turn, let me talk about desert islands.
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Whatever you think of it, I love the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks and the idea of spending
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time on an island, alone, with potentially no hope.
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The natural question is, if I could, what would I bring to this island?
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The answer is complicated, but let me pick one thing, the first thing that popped into
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my crazy mind which is the Introduction to Algorithms book, also called CLRS for the
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first letters of the last name of its four authors.
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I find algorithms beautiful, like a little toolbox for a simple world inside computers
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when the real world outside is an impossible chaotic mess.
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I would love pondering the puzzles in that book for months, far away from human civilization.
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Anyway, check out BetterHelp at betterhelp.com slash lex to get a discount and to support
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And now, finally, here's my conversation with David Fravor.
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You're a graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School.
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Better known as Top Gun.
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Let me ask the most ridiculous question, how realistic is the movie Top Gun?
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So it's funny, we used to joke, and a friend of mine who was a Top Gun instructor said
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this, there's two things in the original Top Gun that are true, that are very realistic.
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One, there is a place called Top Gun, and number two is they do fly airplanes there.
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Other than that, I went through in 97, class 497, and there's actually a log of every single
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person that's went through, kind of like a SEAL training.
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Because there's a lot of posers out there, oh, I was a Navy SEAL.
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Well, I went to Top Gun.
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You can actually go to Top Gun, and matter of fact, just to get a Top Gun patch, the
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real patch, you have to have gone there.
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So a lot of the patches you see running around are not real.
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The real ones are controlled.
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The people that make them honor that.
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And when you go in, they look up your name.
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If you want to get one, they look up your name.
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You just tell them, they go, okay, here, and they'll sell them to you.
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If you are not on the list, you ain't get no patch.
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Because it is, it's a pretty big deal to go through, but for me, probably one of the best
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experiences of flying, because everyone there is extremely competent.
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It's very, very challenging, but it's what we all signed up to do.
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So it's, it's just the entire group that is, when you want to be that, you know, that level,
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you know, where you go, everyone really cares, and everyone really wants to be good.
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Is it competitive?
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Like, what was it, in the movie?
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No, it's, when you go through, it's, you know, it's, if anything, it's more of the
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students, you know, and then there's the instructor side, then the instructor sides are really,
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you know, they're guys that, you know, they just chose to stay up in Fallon.
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And it's extremely difficult job, because they have, they have a very small tolerance
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for not being good.
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So they're briefs, the guys when they give a lecture, so let's just say there's a fighter
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employment lecture, which is one of the hardest ones.
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It takes about two days to give the fighter employment lecture.
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The guy who gives the lecture goes through multiple, what they call them murder boards,
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where he's scrutinized by his peers, and he practices, by the time they actually stand
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in front of a class, they pretty much have their 250 PowerPoint slides memorized, and
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they don't even turn around, they just click and they know them in order.
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And they repeat the same thing over, it's, and it's standardized.
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So they are extremely, extremely standardized when you go through the school, and there's
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a reason for that, because what they're doing is they're training, so when you come out
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of Top Gun, you're called a Strike Fighter Weapons and Tactics Instructor, okay?
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When you come out of that, your job is to go usually to one of the weapons schools on
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the East or West Coast and train the fleet squadrons, and then you visit the squadrons
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and train and do upgrade rides and all that.
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So there's a, there's a reason that they are extremely particular when you go through the
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It's, it is literally one of the best things, and it's not, it's not a rank based thing,
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just think, oh, Navy, you can come in as a, you know, like an 04 Lieutenant Commander.
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The lieutenants, the hierarchy, or at least to be, I don't know how it is exactly today,
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but I imagine it's the same.
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The hierarchy is actually based on seniority at the school, not necessarily rank.
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So when the tactical decisions are made, which are based on fact and trying things out in
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the Fallon Ranges, they set the top X number of folks that have been there seniority wise,
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and I mean time wise, are the ones that actually make the decision.
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And when the door, you may not agree, but when the door opens and everyone comes out
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from the staff, they all speak the same language.
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It's and it has to be that way, which is why the school has been so effective since it
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So it's just a, it's an incredible group of individuals.
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So there's a bar of excellence that, that the instructors demand.
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Oh, very much so, and they're held to it.
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So it's not a, hey, I'm now an instructor, so I can do what I want.
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There is a standard and they have to live up to that standard.
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They have to, and I mean every moment of every day.
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So if they go someplace, if they go from Fallon and they come down and do, they're called
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site visits where they come down and they'll come to Lemoore, California, which is where
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the West Coast Fighter Wing is at for the Navy.
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And they go around and start flying sorties with the fleet squadrons to kind of pass on
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some of that knowledge, that's that same high level of standard.
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It's they can't just drop your guard because you wear the Top Gun patch.
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And people know that.
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And they wear light blue shirts.
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So it's pretty easy to identify them when they're out there.
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And you know, and then everyone else who's been through the school, including them, have
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the patch on their sleeve.
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So there's a standard that's expected when you come out of there.
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So you were a Navy pilot for 18 years.
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Can you briefly tell the story of your career as a pilot?
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So, you know, first I was in, I was enlisted, I was a Marine.
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And then the Marines actually sent me, recommended me to go to the Naval Academy.
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So it's always better to be lucky than good.
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But I got to go to the Naval Academy and I finished and I've had that dream to fly.
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So when I got selected,
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You've always dreamed of flying.
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Since 1969, when I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.
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I was at that point, I asked my mom, I remember watching it, I was just prior to being five.
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And I said, wow, yeah, it's so cool, mom.
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And she said, well, you know, they were all pilots.
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And then at that point it was like, I'm going to be a pilot.
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And if you knew me growing up, cause I was a little bit of a delinquent, people are just
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like, yeah, right.
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I used to joke, I'm going to fly, I'm going to fly jets, I'm going to drop bombs.
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And if people that knew me as a kid, they'd be like, yeah, and they'd be like, ah, not
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And then when I did, I actually had a, it's a funny story and I'll get to it, I'll finish
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But I was at my cousin's wedding and we all grew up in the same neighborhood.
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We kind of, they had Italian side of the family.
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That's how we grew up.
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So it was my house right down the street.
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It was my cousin, Chad.
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And then right around the corner is my cousin Ray and my aunts and uncles and stuff.
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The guy two doors down from my house, the paper boy in the neighborhood, so they all
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And I went to my cousin's wedding and Mr. Race looks at me and he says, David Fravor.
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I go, Mr. Race, how you doing?
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He goes, you fly jets, Top Gun and all that.
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He goes, man, I figured you'd be in jail by now.
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And it was kind of a, to me, it was a little bit of a badge of honor going on and I kind
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What do you attribute that to?
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So you, I've heard you before and just now say that it's better to be lucky than good
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and you talk modestly about just being lucky, but if you were to describe your trajectory
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maybe in a way of advice, like retrospectively, how'd you pull it off to be like, to be truly
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The easiest way is one, never, never take no.
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Don't let anyone put you down and say you can't do it or those.
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I mean, I knew, I knew what I was capable of inside, you know, and if I really believe
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if you want something and you want to do something, then you can achieve it.
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Not in all cases, like if I loved basketball and I really wanted to be in the NBA, there's
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a realism that says I'm five foot eight and I got like a really short vertical leap and
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I'm really not that good at basketball, it's probably not ever going to happen no matter
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how hard I try and practice.
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It's just the way it is.
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Or for me to be in the NFL, I'm not fast, you know, I'm not that big, it's just physically
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I'm incapable of doing that.
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But there's things that don't really tie to a true physical ability as far as size and
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strength, but it's, it's mental and I'm not saying you have to be a genius and super smart
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to be a fighter pilot.
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Matter of fact, you don't.
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It really comes down to the ability to think very quickly, 80% solution is typically good
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enough because if you overthink it, you're, you're behind and then in an air to air fight,
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that's what happens.
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People try and overthink it and before you know it, because it's happening so fast, you
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don't have, you can't get to the nth degree, you know, six decimal places, 80% solution
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You have a really strong gut for the 80% solution, just yeah, I'm a big believer in the 80% solution.
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If you get 80% you can go and then you can always adjust, which is exactly what, like
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if you're fighting in BFM, the 80% solution is it's like a chess game, but it's a really,
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really fast chess game where you go, I'm doing this and then I know that if I do a maneuver,
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if he's going to counter it correctly, he should do a, if he doesn't do a, he does some
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degree less like BCD and then I know how bad his, his error is and then I capitalize.
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So my mind, I don't have to be perfect, you know, I don't have to go, I need to go to
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47 degrees, nose high.
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If I just kind of get above 40, then I'm good and I can watch how it reacts and then I can
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And you, and you continually work that problem and you chip away because if you start neutral,
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you're just basically chipping away and gaining advantage, advantage, advantage till eventually,
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you know, and if you're really, you know, fighting, you know, just guns only rear quarter
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where you got to get behind the guy, kind of world war II dog fight and type stuff.
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Then it's, it's literally, it's a, it's a very, very fast chess game that happens at,
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you know, 400 knots, 300 knots depends.
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So to get to be one of the rare individuals that are able to do that, he just had the
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dream and didn't take no for an answer.
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Well, you know, you know, part of it is family, you know, my dad was, I used to call him a
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fire ready aim guy, you know, he'd smack me and then asked me what I did wrong.
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Um, back then, you know, I, I joke and people look, cause you know, at times it was kind
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of tough, you know, cause he can be pretty demanding, but on the other side, you know,
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I probably needed to be reined in a little bit at times.
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Uh, but then everyone else in my family, you know, my mom was really awesome when I was
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Uh, my, uh, my grandfather who is a big, big part of it.
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My mom's dad, uh, who he taught me a lot and you have a question there that we'll talk
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about, uh, about him, but, uh, huge, huge influence.
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Very, very positive.
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And a lot of the stuff that I do today and decisions are based on things that he taught
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Um, and, uh, you know, and I figured, you know, it was the first funeral I ever went
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to and it was, uh, it was about three miles long and church was overfilling and people
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It was a big guy, dead serious.
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And you go, there's someone asked who died the Pope.
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Um, uh, so, so a lot of people love them.
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So back to, back to my career question, cause I'm getting down at rabbit hole.
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Uh, no, I, when I was at the, I was going to, I was going to stay in the Marines.
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I really wanted to go, man.
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I think it's, uh, of all services, it's that one, everything is in a ball and they're very,
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very professional and it was a great, great organization to join.
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Uh, but I went out to the Nimitz on my, uh, freshman cruise after your freshman year at
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the Naval Academy, you go out on a ship and you, you're an enlisted person.
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You get to experience that half when I already was enlisted.
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So it was fine with me.
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Because it comes up a lot.
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You mind saying what the Nimitz is, what a ship is, what like, yeah.
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So Nimitz is, uh, an aircraft carrier.
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So it's, uh, four and a half acres of sovereign us territory that floats around the us oceans
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Does it have weapons on it?
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Uh, the air wing is really the weapons.
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It does have defensive weapons, but for the most part it's a giant moving airport is what
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So I was out there watching the airplanes land and take off.
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Um, and I'm like, Oh, and the squadrons that were out there, one of the squadrons was a
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VF 41 and a 14 squadron, VF 84, uh, an F 14 squadron and then a couple of a six squadrons.
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And we actually ended up part pairing up and hanging out with some of the a six pilots
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So it was really a neat experience.
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And I said, I want to do that.
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And the way to do it was to not, to, to go in the Navy because there are Marine squadrons
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that go out to the aircraft carriers, but most of them are land based, you know, to
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support the Marines.
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Cause there are that, that unit, that whole unit, you know, the Marine Corps is that one
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surface has it all.
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And, um, so when I graduated and I got to, uh, you know, I, I worked hard through primary
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and that's where, you know, I knew Missy, uh, we were in, actually went through together,
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Missy Cummings, uh, we went through primary together and then, uh, I went to Kingsville.
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We all selected the same time.
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I went to Kingsville.
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There was another guy, Scott Weidemeyer, uh, the three of us.
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So I went to Kingsville, Scott went to Beeville and Missy went to Meridian.
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So the three of us that we had all went through, we got, we selected out of primary together.
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We all ended up going jets and that's, that's how, besides from school, I knew her at school
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I got done, uh, got winged.
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It took me two years to the day from the time I graduated the Naval Academy until I got
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my wings and, uh, through some luck, uh, I ended up getting A6s, uh, on the West coast,
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which is a side by side, uh, bomber.
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So it's a pilot on the left seat and the Bombardier navigators on the right seat.
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It was built in the sixties.
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It is all weather, uh, and it flies low at night and it's got a terrain mapping radar.
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How many, I guess, is that a good term to use fighter jets as a broad category for,
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Yeah, that's fine.
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How many fighter jets are side by side like that?
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That was, uh, in the Navy, that was the only one, uh, the Air Force, the F111 was a side
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by side, but the Navy, it was the A6 and then there's the EA6B, which is a derivative of
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And now that those are all gone, the EA6B is just went away a few years ago.
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And now the, uh, E18G Growler, um, is the replacement for the A6B.
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There was never a replacement for the A6, uh, that I flew.
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It really became the F18, which, uh, the A6 could go quite a bit further distance wise
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by fuel, uh, then the Hornet and, uh, the Hornet is the F18.
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Is there usually two people in the plane, but they're usually like in front and behind?
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In a, the modern two seaters, yes.
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Uh, but most of the tactical airplanes in the world today are single seat.
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Single seat, just one person?
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One person, with the exception of, I'll probably, someone will yell at me, but really with the
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exception of the F15E Strike Eagle and the F18F Super Hornet, which is the F is a two
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seater and the G is also a two seater, but it's more of an electronic attack by say full
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up fighter bomber.
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So most of the time that you've flown in your, like I said, 18 year career is, was it two
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That was about half and half.
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So I started off in A6 was a two seater.
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Then I went to single seat F18s and I flew those, uh, all the way up until 2000 and let
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me think 2001 to the end of 2001.
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And then I shifted over and started flying the Super Hornets and I've flown both of those,
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the E's and the S, but I deployed when I had command of VFA 41, I had the two seat, they
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So you eventually ended up commanding the, the Strike Fighter Squadron 41.
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I love the, the name, the Black Aces.
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What, uh, is there some parts of that journey that are amazing, parts of it that are tough
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that kind of stand out?
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To me, it was one, it was a huge honor.
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Uh, and I got to serve with, uh, you know, I got pulled up because the, the guy, the,
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the people that are exos, cause we fleet up, you go from the number two guy to the number
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So the XO becomes the CEO.
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So the executive officer becomes the commanding officer.
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So I had worked with, uh, now soon to be vice Admiral Weitzel, uh, was the, he was commander
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Weitzel at the time was the XO and he really wanted, because he knew there was a little
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bit of a problem when the Super Hornets came into L'more, L'more had been a single seat,
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a fighter community, uh, since the forever.
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And now all of a sudden you've got the F18F coming in, which has the weapon systems operators
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in the back that are not pilots, they're weapon systems operators.
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And there's a difference.
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Um, and Kenny is a weapon systems operator and, uh, Kenny knew because of my A6 background
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that I have a switch that I can go one seat, two seat, one seat, two seat.
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Because when you fly two seat, there's a lot of stuff that the pilot will offload and take
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the advantage of the weapon systems operator.
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And it's not that one plus one equals two in that environment because it really, there's
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a huge amount of capabilities that the single seat has and the autonomy that comes for the
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ability to make decisions quickly and how well the airplane flies.
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But it does, it does equal more than one.
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I would say that one plus one with two people as well as a minimum of 1.5 because you've
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got an extra head, you've got extra eyes, you've got someone that can monitor systems.
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The airplanes can do two things at once.
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I mean, there's an incredible amount of capability that we add when we do that.
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Can we just pause on that just for me, from like a human factors perspective and also
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an AI perspective, what's, how difficult, uh, so there's like when there's two people,
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there's also a third person that's the AI part, the some level of automation like autopilot
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Maybe you can kind of talk about the psychology of like, you said making decisions really
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quick, 80%, how do you deal with another brain working with you?
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And then also the automation, is there an interesting interplay that you get to learn?
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And also as that changed throughout your career, I imagine it got, it gotten better in terms
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of the automation or perhaps not?
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Well, I can tell you, so let's, let's start just, no, this is, this is good.
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And this is, I'm enjoying this because now we actually get to talk about something other
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So, um, so let's start with the A6.
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The A6 was really an analog airplane, uh, that was built in the sixties.
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And there's been studies done on the crew coordination, which is the interaction between
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the pilot and the bombardier navigator.
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So we would fly low at night in the mountains.
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So I was stationed up in Whidbey Island, Washington.
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So you've got the Cascades and incredible amount of time.
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And we would get in the simulators because unlike normally people think terrain following
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and there's the radars, the 111, the B1 has a system like this, but it'll, the radar can
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see and it'll fly.
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It basically flies a straight line.
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So it goes up and over mountains and back down and up and over mountains where the A6
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was really manual.
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So you do this low level routes where you're going to, you're going to fly in the mountains
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You're going to be at, you know, 500 to a thousand feet above the ground, ripping through
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like fog layers, cause you don't need to see outside.
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You're literally flying a little TV screen and radar.
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What are you looking at most of the time?
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So you're just at a screen.
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It's this really primitive.
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If you look at it now, what we did, you'd think, wow, that was crazy, but it was really
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So is it similar to like the FLIR stuff?
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Is that, is, no, this thing is totally radar based.
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Now the airplane had a FLIR ball as a target recognition and multi sensor was called a
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You're looking at like basically like dots of hard objects.
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No, actually what it is is the, the bomb of your navigator had a radar and he was getting
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raw feed off of a pulse radar in front.
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So it's just basically mapping the mountain.
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So if you look at a mountain on a radar and you're coming up on it, the front side is
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going to be, it's going to give you a really bright return.
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And then the backside, it's just going to be a giant shadow because you can't see on
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So the Bombardier navigators would do that and we, they would have charts and they could
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shade their charts knowing that, Hey, if we turn a little bit left here, we can get in
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We can sneak up this valley and then go around the backside of the mountain, which is what
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the airplane would do.
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And so, and sorry to interrupt, I'm going to just keep asking dumb questions, I apologize.
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But the pilot, can you, can you at a high level say what the pilot does versus the Bombardier?
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So you're, you're actually just control.
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I'm flying the jet.
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The throttle's the stick and I have a, it's about a, probably a four inch or six inch
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wide by maybe four inches, five inches high.
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It looks like it's literally a CRT.
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That's how old it is.
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And what it would do, what the radar would do is the, the, the Bombardier navigator is
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looking at his radar and he's looking out about 12 and a half miles in front of the
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So he has the range really scoped down cause the radar can see a lot further.
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He's looking at about 12 and a half miles when we're in the terrain mode where we're
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dodging mountains and stuff.
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And what the pilot has is there's, they're called range bins and there's eight of them.
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So the very far range bin is the 12 and a half mile, you know, and the closest range
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bin, it's a thing and it'll be like between like a half a mile and or a quarter mile to
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three quarters of a mile.
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And the next one might be three quarters of a mile to two miles.
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And then it just keeps going out like that.
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So if there's a mountain in front, let's say we're on a flat plane and there's a mountain
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out in the distance at 15 miles.
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And we were just driving right at it.
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So when we get to the point where it hits 12 and a half miles where the radar is going
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to see it on his scope, my 12th, my range bin for that would pop up and it would show
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like a big bump, like a mountain.
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And then as I got closer to it, the next range bin would pop up and show it.
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And I could see that that bump was moving towards me.
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And then if I turned a little bit, you know, to go over here, I'd see the mountain go over
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to the right hand side and I could do that, but it wasn't like a video game.
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It's literally like, if you think of the original Atari's.
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But you build up, I imagine that you start to get a really deep sense of like the actual
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3D environment based on that little Atari's solid display.
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You're exactly right.
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And you have to, you have to train.
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So there's been studies, as a matter of fact, a lot of the basis and people probably argue
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with me, but it's true.
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There were studies done watching A6 crews in our simulators, we call it the WIST, the
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systems trainer, and it was not even a motion, it just kind of sat there and you just, you
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could fly these things and they had terrain that they would inject into the system.
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But the crew coordination, so you get, so my first fleet bombardier navigator, who I'll
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name him, his name's Chris Sato, he works at Apple, pretty high up, MIT grad, I think
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computer engineering, he's scary smart.
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So Chris could really work, as a matter of fact, all the guys I flew with, so there's
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another guy, Matt, who also worked at Apple, who's now at SAP, we did our first night traps
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The bond between us, I mean, it's one of those things that you just, you're never going to
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forget, but Chris and I, when we started flying together, we were actually the most junior
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crew in the squadron.
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We'd spent a lot of time training and Chris was amazing at how he could work the system,
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one because he was extremely brilliant and he had that inquisitive mind of, oh, we can
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do all these different things and there's all these degradation modes.
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But we spent a lot of time to see how good we could actually get, because, and it's,
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you almost talk in partials.
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So as the BN is looking at his radar scope, Chris would say, I've got rising terrain,
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that's just what they say, showing rising terrain at 12 miles.
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And I'd see the little bump and I'd say, got it.
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This is going to go to your question on the autonomy and how you work with two heads.
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So when you first get together, the interaction, it's almost like you have to rehearse it,
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you have to know, and you talk in full sentences.
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The more and more we fly together, Chris could go, I'm showing and he'd get like rising out
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and before he finished, I'd say, I've got it.
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So you end up starting to talk in partials because I have to trust him like, I mean,
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there can be no, I can have no doubt that he knows how to do his job because I'm literally
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looking at this little scope that's not giving me this continuous picture of that mountain
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Remember the mountain's here and then it's going to pop up here and then it's going to
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pop up here because there's gaps in the coverage on how the system was set up.
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Remember it's an analog system to where he is telling me, like, I can't see all the way
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to the left and he's got a wider scope on the radar, but my screen doesn't show that.
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So he's telling me, start a left turn, start a hard turn, you know, and we would do that.
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And this is all happening quick?
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Well, you're doing, we would typically fly between 420 and 480 knots of ground speed.
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How many miles an hour?
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Well, 420 is seven miles a minute.
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Or eight, between seven and eight miles a minute is what you're flying.
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I mean, I broke out of clouds.
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I mean, I remember him and I flying, we were on, it's the IR, it's called an IR route, an
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instrument route that's low, they're all around the country.
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There's the IR 344 that we used to fly, which would coast in off of Oregon, you'd fly from
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the land, you go out over the ocean, turn around and then you could practice actually
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coming in on a coastline and we were flying and we ended up in the clouds.
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Keep in mind, we're between 500 and a thousand feet in the mountains and we're in the clouds.
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You can't see anything.
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And I had to turn off our red lights that flash, you know, they're called the anti collision
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lights because it was reflecting off the clouds and it starts to bother you, just gets annoying.
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So I turned it off and we were flying, we're flying, we're flying.
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We break out of that coastal marine layer and poof, we break out and it's a decent night.
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And this is right by Mount St. Helens.
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This is kind of where we're coming in.
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So we're coming in from the east and we're just north of Mount St. Helens is where the
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And you look up, you know, cause you can kind of see the silhouette of this mountain that's
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right next to you, but you're flying along.
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You're just like, you know, you got to trust and you can see houses, you can see the lights,
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they're above you.
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We're literally below people's houses flying down these valleys and stuff.
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So just incredible experience.
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So when you take that and then you move into an F18F.
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So now we're into modern technology that was actually built in this century and you're
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So now, you know, the WIZO is behind us and we're not doing those night low levels, but
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that same type of crew coordination that has to happen because what you're doing is you're
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So most of the communications that go out of the airplane, the WIZO does all the talk
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and he's got actually, he uses his feet.
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That's the weapon systems operator in the back of an F18F.
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So he's going to run, well, the radar kind of runs itself now, but we have a situational
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awareness display and it's linked to all the other airplanes.
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Just out of curiosity, what's the situational awareness display?
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Because that term comes up a lot.
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Think of it as a God's eye view.
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So if you have the back of the Super Hornet has, well, the Block IIs has about an eight
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by 10 display for the WIZOs that they can look at.
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The pilot's is smaller.
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It's down between his, it's a six by six between his legs and they're getting ready to redesign
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But when you looked, it'd be like if you put your airplane and you're looking down.
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So all the stuff, like if your radar seeing bad guys out in front of you, it'd be like
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looking down and going, oh, I'm right here.
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And now there's bad guys out here and my wingman is over here.
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And it shows everything.
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It's just like, it gives you, you can look at that display and go, oh, I can see where
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I can see if one guy's trying to target another guy, it shows you all this.
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It's an incredible amount of knowledge that comes up for the crews to maintain the overall
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picture of what's going on because it's happening so fast and this is where that autonomy piece,
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this is the third brain.
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So we're all looking at it and the third brain is doing fusion.
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It's pulling stuff together going, oh, this is all this guy.
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It's sending it out through the link.
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So all the airplanes are talking to each other through this digital network that we don't
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It just says, that airplane says, hey, I'm over here.
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And it tells us and we go, oh, he's right there.
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And then we can go, his airplane says, oh, I'm looking at this airplane, this bad guy.
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And it shows us, oh, he's over there and he's looking at this guy.
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I mean, it's an incredible amount of visual intake because your eye, you can hear a lot,
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but when you look down at stuff, it's, you know, you can sell the picture really quick.
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The third brain is doing the sensor fusion, the integration of the different sensors and
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gives you a big picture view.
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What about the control?
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Like, is there, and I apologize as if this is a dumb question, but you know, people use
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the high level term of autopilot.
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How much is there, let's use a loose term of AI.
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How much automation is there?
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How much AI is there in helping you control there?
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The AI piece would be more of a control loop because of the digital flight controls.
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So the airplane actually, they had to make the airplane easier to fly.
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And when I say easy, it's relative because people go, I could do it because I did it
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Real life is a lot different.
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In flight sim, you have no apparent fear of death.
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You'll do things on a simulator that you would never do in real life.
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But the autonomy in the airplane to allow you to manage, I mean, because you think about
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it, you've got a radar that's feeding you data.
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You've got a targeting pod that's feeding you data.
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All that stuff is hooked to your head because you've got a joint helmet mounted cueing system
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on that basically maps the magnetic field in the cockpit so it can tell where your head's
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So if I turn my head to the right, the radar will actually look to the right.
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The targeting flare will look to the right.
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And oh, by the way, the backseater has a helmet on too, so he can look to the left and he
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So depending on what sensor he's controlling, so if he's got control of the targeting pod
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and he looks left, the targeting pod looks left.
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But if I have something where I want to lock a guy up that I don't see, that maybe the
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radar didn't see, but I can get over and now point the radar, you know, get the, because
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it's a phased array radar now, it doesn't really scan.
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There's all kinds of cool stuff that that technology brings.
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Because if you just, if you went back 30 years and said, hey, or 40 years ago and said, hey,
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we're gonna have this helmet and you're gonna be able to slew everything to your head.
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And I don't mean a mechanical setup, but I mean literally you're just gonna map magnetic
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resonance and go, oh, look, and I can literally slew my sensors this fast and then mash a
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button and transfer, you know, high quality coordinates from a system into a joint, you
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know, a JDAM, which is a joint direct attack munition that is the GPS bombs that you see
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all the time, and then let that thing fly.
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And I'm solving this problem in seconds, vice minutes, or, hey, I got it, we're gonna have
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to menstruate coordinates and, you know, you bring back the data and then they do all the
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targeting for it and then they send another group out to get it instead of all that.
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Now it's that fast.
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So there's a, okay, I mean, we probably don't have enough time to talk about the beautiful
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fusion of minds that happens when two people are flying, controlling the plane.
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But at a high level, this is a really interesting question for people who don't know what they're
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talking about, like me, which is, what is the difference between a human being and an
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Like what can, what is the ceiling of a current AI technology for controlling the plane?
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Like how much does the human contribute?
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Is it possible to have automated flight, for example, like what is the hardest part about
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flying that a human does expertly that an AI system cannot in warfare situations in
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flying a fighter jet plane?
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So I would say AI systems are usually black and white.
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When you write the algorithm for an AI system, it's really, it's basically you're taking
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thought and turning it into a giant math problem is really what you're doing, right?
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So you've got this logical math problem.
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Math problems are, there's a line that says I can or I can't.
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And it's a very finite line, but you can go up to the line where a human, we all have
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gray areas where we go, eh, maybe, eh, I'll try it.
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So humans can operate within that gray.
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So if you took, if you take an airplane and say, and I'll just take a Hornet for a while,
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a Super Hornet, it doesn't matter, any airplane, and you go, here is the flight performance
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model of the airplane.
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So if you know what an EM diagram is, the energy, so it basically says the airplane
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can fly as slow as this, it can go as fast as this, it can pull this many Gs, force of
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gravity, so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and then based on the airfoil design
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and everything else and how it can pull, here's how it's going to fly, because it's really
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Well, if you, depending on how you write the AI, but typically AI, you don't want the airplane
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to leave controlled flight, right?
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You want to maintain it so that it is flying in a controlled envelope.
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Where there are times, and you can go back to World War I, where people intentionally
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departed the airplane from controlled flight in order to obtain an advantage, which is,
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that's where the human goes, can I do this?
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I know it's outside of where I would normally go, but I can do that.
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So you can do some crazy things now, especially since the flight control logic in modern airplanes
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with digital flight controls, they're extremely forgiving.
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So you can literally, I've done things in Super Hornets that literally, even as a pilot
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inside the airplane, you're just like, wow, I cannot believe it just did that.
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Like it'll flop ends, which defies most logic, and I guess in a way you could probably program
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it, but I still think when you get to the edges that may or may not give you an advantage,
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there are things that a human will do that AI won't.
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And I don't think we've got to the point, because how do you map illogical solutions?
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Most AI is logical.
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It's based on some type of premise when you write the algorithm to control it.
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Yeah, there's this giant mess, like you said, the difference between the simulator and real
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life also gets at that somehow.
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That there is somehow the fear of death, all of that beautiful mess comes into play.
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Is there a comment you can make on commercial flight, like with Sully landing that plane
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famously versus the simulator, all of those discussions, is there some?
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Well, it's very similar to what I was talking about earlier with the A6.
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So one is when you're flying with a crew, there's standardization.
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So you got to remember when Sully flew, when his first officer, that's the co pilot, showed
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up the first time they'd met, and this happens all the time in the commercial world.
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There's six, 7,000 pilots at United Airlines, your chance of flying with the same guy all
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the time is slim and none.
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Where in the Navy, we were crewed.
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So I had a primary and a secondary whizzo that flew with me.
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Oh yeah, for like all of the deployment.
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Because you want to get to know, trust and all of those things.
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It increases the capability of the airplane.
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It's not to say we can't swap out, but for true effectiveness, especially in very complex
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missions like a forward air controller, we're in the air actually controlling ground assets
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and supporting ground troops.
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If you're in a high threat area, which is crazy busy, you have to be melded when you
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You have to have trained to do that job, otherwise you're going to be ineffective.
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So when you get to the commercial world, and I've got tons of friends that fly commercial,
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there is a standardization.
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Like we know that at this point, I'm going to put this switch, you're going to do that.
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And everyone, they know their roles.
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Captain's going to do this, first officer's going to do this.
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And they know that when the emergency breaks out, so in Sully's case, when they take the
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birds and they know they've got a problem, and if you've listened to the cockpit recordings
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of the two of them talking, you got to remember, they're talking to each other when you hear
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the full tapes, but they're also talking to the air traffic controllers in the New York
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And it's like, we got a bird strike and the first officer already knows, hey, silence
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They silence the alarm.
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The first officer is pulling out the book, he's going through the procedures while Sully's
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actually flying the airplane, knowing that they've lost their motors.
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And you got to think his decision process, like they're trying to get him to go into
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an airport in New Jersey, and he realizes, not happening, we're going to put this thing.
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And he made a decision soon enough so that he could prepare everyone on the airplane
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that he was going to put this thing in the Hudson River.
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And he did it flawlessly.
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I mean, every single person walked away from that wreck.
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The only thing that didn't survive was the airplane, and it got fished out of the Hudson.
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What is it about those human decisions you had to make?
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Is that something you put into words or is that just deep down some instinct that you
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develop as a pilot over time?
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When you train, and aviation is a self cleaning oven.
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So if you make bad decisions, and the list is long and distinguished of those who have
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died by making bad decisions.
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So when you look at what he did or the way we train, because the commercial industry
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and the Navy and the Air Force, for all that, we have what's called, we have emergency procedures
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that we have to know.
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Like engines on fire, the first three steps, you just have to know what they are, right?
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The airline, same type, they go, hey, I know this is, they pull the book out because the
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airplanes are designed, they're built to have some time.
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But there's a point where you have to make a decision and you can't second guess it.
link |
So when he decided I'm putting this in the Hudson River, he couldn't all of a sudden
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halfway through it go, well, maybe I can get over to that airport.
link |
He looked, he made a quick assessment.
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This is that 80% solution where you go, these are not, it's like a multiple choice test
link |
when you go, oh my God, I don't really know the answer, but I know A and D are wrong,
link |
So the Jersey airport and going back to LaGuardia, gone.
link |
So what's my next option?
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Well, the Hudson River's there and that's probably looking pretty good.
link |
Or what is my other one?
link |
Can I get a restart on the motors?
link |
And then if I can get a restart, now can I take it someplace else?
link |
He had to make really, really fast decisions.
link |
And then once they, as they go, that 80% solution, you realize, all right, I'm going into the
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Hudson, there's the 80%, get the book out.
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Let's see if we can get an air start.
link |
Because if you listen to the tapes, they're trying to get it air started.
link |
The closer he gets to the water, the more he's going, I'm ditching the airplane.
link |
So the original decision to, this is my best option right now.
link |
This is where I'm going.
link |
And you start eliminating anything that could possibly change the events, which they tried
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And then he gets to that last minute, he says, we're going in the water.
link |
They changed the plan.
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They secure the airplane.
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They do exactly what they're doing.
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And he does that basically flawless landing on the Hudson.
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But you got to remember, it's every six months for commercial, they go back and they do research
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in the airplane in the simulator.
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Where they train to the airplane being broken.
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You just lost a motor.
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You just lost another motor.
link |
So they go through this extensive training and all these, we used to refer to it in the
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Navy as the pain cave where you're going to get in.
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Because you know that when you get in for your check ride in a simulator, that the airplane
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is going to break.
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You're going to lose hydro, and it's sometimes they're a problem like, oh, I just lost this
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hydraulic system, but I'm having an issue on the other motor.
link |
Well, if I shut down this motor and I've got a hydraulics, because there's two hydraulic
link |
systems, one on each motor.
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Well, if I've got an issue with the left motor hydraulic system and my right motor is starting
link |
to give me indications, do I want to shut the right motor down because that's going
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to kill my hydraulic system that's good.
link |
And now I'm flying on a good motor with a bad hydraulic system and without hydraulics,
link |
the airplane won't fly.
link |
So it's a really, they're challenging problems that you have to think through in real time.
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And of course, the weather's never good.
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It's always crappy.
link |
You're going to break out.
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It's just all this stuff gets compiled on top of you and it's intended to increase the
link |
level of stress because when things happen, like in Sully's case, we like to joke it's
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going to STEM power, you know, where the functional part of your brain shuts down and you are
link |
literally on instinct like an animal.
link |
Well, if you've trained so much that that is the instinctive reaction that you're going
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to have when the main part of your cognitive abilities start to shut down, you're running
link |
that instinct is ingrained so much into you that you know exactly what to do.
link |
And that's literally how it happens.
link |
So there's no, how do I put it?
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Like in Sully's case, do you think he was at all ever thinking about the fact if his
link |
decision is wrong, a lot of people are going to die?
link |
You know, I can't speak for him, but I would say there was so much going on at the cockpit
link |
His, his mindset was probably, I can do this, I'm trained, I'm going to do the procedures,
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I've practiced this before, I've done these things.
link |
And I, you know, I'm assuming that in his mindset, cause I never thought about when
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things were really bad.
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You know, if you're having problems with the airplane that, you know, that I was going
link |
to mort, you know, and, and plant it into the ground, it was always, you know, maybe
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it's an ego thing where you think I can do this.
link |
So you never, have you experienced fear during flight, like, I mean, one, one way we just
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offline mentioned Mike Tyson, I mean, he talked about like, as he's walking up to the ring,
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he's like, he starts out basically in fear and, yeah, worried about how things are going
link |
And it's purely to put in towards his fear, but as he gets closer and closer to the ring
link |
is the confidence grows and grows until the ego basically takes over to where you think
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there's no way anybody could defeat me.
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So like, that's, that's his experience of overcoming fear.
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But do you, did you experience any kind of thing like that?
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Or is that, or do you just go to the part of the brain that goes to the training and
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then you just go to the instinctual 80% solution?
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I wouldn't say I was never afraid.
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I think that would be, I can't, I couldn't tell you that anyone I know that wasn't afraid
link |
And for most of us, especially Navy carrier pilots, it's just, it's, it's usually, especially
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when you're new and you got to go out and it's nighttime and there's no moon and the
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weather sucks and the deck's moving, you know, the, the ship's going up and down because
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it will scare the hell out of you.
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You can definitely say that, so it's about landing and take off that.
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That is, if you, even they used to wire people up, they did it during Vietnam, you know,
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guys would go fly missions, you know, when they were flying low and crazy stuff was going
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on and people were getting shot down a lot.
link |
The highest, the highest anxiety and heart rates were coming back to land on board an
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How hard is it to land on that?
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It seems impossible.
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Like for, for a civilian, I guess, like me, it just seems crazy that a human can do that.
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The problem with night is, and there's different degrees of night, just like day.
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I mean, there's the clear full moon night, you know, where it's like, woo, you know,
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this is not that bad, but you got to remember at night, I think everyone can associate with
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you're driving in your car and it's just a, it's, it's an overcast dark night and you're
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on a country road with no side lights.
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Most people have a tendency to slow down just by nature of, Oh my God.
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Because you, what you'll do is you'll out drive your headlights because it is so dark,
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you know, and you can get outside of, you get outside of the city and get up into New
link |
Hampshire, especially when the roads are curving, you know, and the lines probably aren't that
link |
It's, you know, now take that and multiply it by like a million because you have no depth
link |
What you think is fixed, the runway is actually moving up and down and left to right.
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Yeah, oh, and when it's really bad, you can actually see it move and we have two systems,
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you know, there was a, there's an automatic system that's actually, it stabilizes with
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the inertials on the ship and then there's the ILS.
link |
Now civilian pilots will tell you that ILS is a precision approach, which gives you azimuth
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You know, you come down, it's like a plus.
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On the carrier, it's not, it's really just a beam that goes out and it's considered a
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non precision approach.
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It's not stabilized at all that, and I've been where you can actually watch the needle
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and the, and the tack and needle will move.
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There's all kinds of stuff moving cause the base that it's all sitting on is doing this
link |
and ships don't just go up and down.
link |
They, they, they do this.
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So the bow goes up and down in the tail, like you normally see a ship and then there's,
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so that's pitch and then it has roll.
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So it's doing this and then it has heave.
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So the whole boat is going up and down while it's pitching and rolling and you're gonna
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Um, so, and it's, I mean, I remember landing as I was with Chris, uh, Sato and, uh, Chris
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and I, we were off the USS ranger, which is now decommissioned.
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It's sitting, getting turned into razorblades, um, we're flying the old a six and we come
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in and it was off of San Diego and it was just ugly night cause San Diego always has
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a Marine layer that is about 1200 feet was lower than that, that night and it was pouring
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It was an El Nino year and there's thunderstorms all around.
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It was just craziest night I've ever seen out of San Diego.
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And I remember landing and your adrenaline is so high that you're shaking.
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I mean, you literally can't stop.
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And we had spun around out of the landing area and we parked, we call it the six pack.
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So it's right in front of the Island.
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So if you see an aircraft carrier with the Island and the number of the ship on it, we're
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sitting right in front of that and we're looking at the landing area.
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So it's like you get front row seats to the concert and, and this, this, this EA six B
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comes in, you know, ugly pass.
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He ends up catching a one wire, which is the first one.
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You never want to catch the first one, which means you were not really high above the back
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of the ship when you landed and it comes in and the exhaust on an EA six or an a six actually
link |
points kind of down and it blows and it's blowing all the standing water on the aircraft.
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That's how hard it's raining.
link |
And you literally could not see across.
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I mean, I could see the front of my airplane, his airplane, and then it was just white because
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of the water being blown off the deck.
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And I'm shaking and I, I, I'll never forget.
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I looked over at Chris and I said, Oh my God, I go, Hey dude, man, 10,000 foot runway looks
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really good right now.
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And I go, and I'm, I'm shaking my hands like this.
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And I said, I'm not even, this is, I'm not faking this too.
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I know that's literally, I cannot stop shaking.
link |
I said, that scared the Evelyn out of me, but you, but it scares you afterwards.
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You don't, during it, you're not, I'm not, you don't have time to think about that.
link |
You got to do is we, you know, kind of the quote from Tom Hanks and what's that?
link |
The girls baseball movie where he goes, there's no crying in baseball.
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Well, that's our joke.
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There's no crying in Naval aviation.
link |
I said, you can fly around and cry all you want at night, but you know, there's only
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one pilot in those airplanes and you got to land it.
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So you cry all you want, wipe the tears away, you know, put on your big kid pants and it's,
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it's time to, it's time to, you know, man up and, and land that, land the jet.
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Sorry for the romantic question, but going back to the kid that dreamed to fly, what's
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it like to fly an airplane?
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What it looks incredible to me as a human, like a descendant of ape.
link |
I sit here on land and look up at you guys.
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It seems incredible that human being can do that.
link |
You know what people ask, you know, I'll be sitting around with my friends and they're
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I said, it's the greatest job on the planet.
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I said, you know, it's, it's an office with a view cause you're sitting in a glass.
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You can do you know, it's like roller coasters.
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You go, Oh, it does all these cool stuff.
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So we take people flying every once in a while and it's like, Oh yeah, I like rollercoaster.
link |
So I go, no, take any rollercoaster coolest rollercoaster you've ever been on and multiply
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And I said, it's an experience you know, to put your body under, you know, you know, the
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jets rated at seven and a half, but it'll pull up to 8.1 before it overstresses depends
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So, I mean, you routinely get up there towards eight G's to be able to do that to your body.
link |
I mean, it takes a toll.
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Like I can't really turn my head real good anymore and stuff like that, but would I trade
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It's a dream and how many people get to do that?
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You know, professional, I want to be an NFL, you know, and you end up to the NFL, which
link |
is a very small percentage with, well, I want to fly jets and to fly, you know, at the time
link |
when I was flying the Super Hornets that we had in our squad and we're brand new at like
link |
literally right out of the factory, I'd come off our first Super Hornet cruise.
link |
We had went to the Boeing factory in St. Louis where they were building my new jets that
link |
I was going to get.
link |
And I actually signed the inside of one of the wings while they were putting it together.
link |
So I'm meeting the people that are putting the jet together that's going to get delivered
link |
to me in a couple of months that I'm going to fly.
link |
So just, I mean, I'll tell you what, when I left, when I decided to walk away, I told
link |
myself I wouldn't, I promised myself that, you know, once you get through your O5 command,
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your flying really starts to tag to come down.
link |
You know, even if you, when you're an air wing commander, which is, we call them CAG,
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carrier group commander, you're not flying as much as like the normal pilots, nor should
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I mean, there's young people that are coming up and it's training your relief because that's
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the next generation.
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So like currently I have friends of mine that we serve together.
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Their kids are flying Super Hornets, right?
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So to me, that's really neat because I watched them when they were little and now, you know,
link |
one of them who was good friends, I won't get his last name, but Joey, who lived down
link |
the street from us, was a Top Gun instructor and I'm like, hey, Joey's a Top Gun.
link |
And I'm like, that's cool because, you know, I went there and I knew him, he would come
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And now to see these kids that are, because typically military breeds military, you know,
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because the kids grow up in it.
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I mean, and I, the only reason that my son is not doing it is he's colorblind.
link |
So it disqualifies you for being a pilot, being a SEAL because he had talked about doing
link |
that because he's an incredible swimmer and he likes doing that stuff and water polo player.
link |
But he's, you know, both of my kids are, well, my daughter is a doctor and my son's in his
link |
But there's a, I suppose, I mean, from my perspective, a bittersweet handover of this
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incredible experience of flying to the younger generation.
link |
So you don't, you told yourself you're not going to miss it.
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There are days I do.
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When I hear jets, like if I'm around a base or a jet flies over, but I have all the memory
link |
so I can look at it and go, it can't go on forever.
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You know, Tom Brady can't play football, but there's going to come a time where he has
link |
He seems to have done it for a long time.
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But you know, typically when you look at it, you go, I had the opportunity.
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And I think as automation moves on, especially with AI that, you know, when will, when will
link |
the last man fighter be built?
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You know, and that's that big question, you know, we just did F 35.
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It's seven years late.
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There's all kinds of issues when we try and do it.
link |
And then you look at some of the new stuff that's coming out that the air force is working
link |
on with smaller, cheaper, uh, a trittable platforms that you can go, Oh, we can, because
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if you don't put a man in the box or a person, because there's a lot of incredibly talented
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women that do this too.
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So I'll just say that as person.
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So we say man and he, we mean both men and women because offline you've told me about
link |
a lot of incredible women that flown.
link |
So I had, I had three, three female, actually four, one of them didn't fly anymore.
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She actually lives right around here.
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She, she's a, she ended up going into aircraft maintenance when she couldn't fly anymore.
link |
One of the girls who everyone knows is incredibly, she's one of the most gifted people I've ever
link |
She is the vice president of Amazon air.
link |
You can see her on TV, her name's Sarah, uh, incredible.
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And then I had a page who ended up taking command.
link |
She got out of fighters and went into other platforms.
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Um, and she was a commanding officer.
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And then the other one is a, um, teaches leadership and she is all three of them, actually all
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four of the women that were direct.
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Uh, I'm hoping not forgetting, I don't think I'm forgetting someone, uh, incredibly, incredibly
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talented, uh, and a great addition to the ready room.
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So anyone that gets into the, Oh, you know, women can't do it.
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That's all total horse crap.
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Hey, you know, we can talk about the original integration and stuff, which was not done
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well by the military nor the Navy.
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So women can fly as good as the guys.
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You can't tell if you pass another airplane, you can't tell if there's a man or woman in
link |
It comes down to, uh, stick and throttle the ability to, uh, uh, extrapolate where the
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vehicle is going to be, where the airplane would be.
link |
If you're fighting another one, you have to be able to think fast.
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Anyone has those characteristics, uh, can do it.
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And then I think most important besides that there has to be a desire.
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And I'm not saying that everyone, if you took, cause we used to track.
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So when I ran, we call it the rag, it's the replacement air group.
link |
It's where, so the, the super Hornet training squadron, there's two of them.
link |
There's one on the East coast at one Oh six.
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And there's one on the West coast, which is VFA one 22, one 22 is the first one.
link |
So I ended up going there and I ended up being the operations officer and training officer.
link |
So we tracked the last hundred students.
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So everyone goes, ah, it's funny to hear students talk cause Oh, he's awesome.
link |
If you took the hundred, there's three at the top of the list that are just naturally
link |
They're well, well, well above average.
link |
It's like the person in a math class that sits down in complex math and they just get
link |
You know, at the bottom, there's the three at the bottom that are going to struggle and
link |
there's a good chance they won't get out.
link |
And if they do get out, they're going to have to work really hard to just maintain kind
link |
Sometimes it's just the way your mind works.
link |
Not everyone is good at everything.
link |
If you took the 94 of them in the middle, they're within one mean deviation of, you
link |
They're all, you know, it's a, the bell curve doesn't look real good.
link |
It's just a big hump and it comes back down and everyone's right there within one mean
link |
And then you have the outliers, usually not on the high side because they're going to
link |
get through, but the outliers on the low side that don't make it through.
link |
So for the most part, the Navy does a really good job, as does the Air Force, of screening.
link |
So now what they do, when I went, you just showed up and you started.
link |
Now what you do is you actually go fly Piper Warriors low wing to see, are you adaptable
link |
And there's an evaluation that goes through and then if you hit a certain mark, then you're
link |
good to go and then they put you into primary.
link |
It's kind of like a, it's like a precheck, you know, like the preset, the pre SAT to
link |
go, Hey, how am I going to do on the SAT?
link |
It's, it's, it's very similar to that, but it's more of a hand skill.
link |
Because although we live in three dimensions, like this table is not, you know, we, this
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is, you know, this is all has depth with all that, uh, where it's really relative to aviation.
link |
We are two dimensional.
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Very two dimensional.
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Can you, can you explain that?
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So our perception is actually more limited than the, than that of an aviator.
link |
So we look at, uh, let's look at a tall building.
link |
Let's look at one world trade center in New York cause that's the, everyone knows what
link |
Big tall building.
link |
Um, it's what, maybe 1800 feet tall.
link |
Even the Burj Al Dubai, which is like what 20 some hundred feet tall.
link |
It's not that big.
link |
So a Super Hornet to do a, what a split S is, which is I'm flying, I'm just going to
link |
roll the airplane upside down and then I'm going to do basically a C the letter C I'm
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going to go in the top and out the bottom.
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So and I'm just against basically a vertical displacement of the airplane.
link |
So I'm going from high to low.
link |
It's very, very tight and it doesn't in about roughly about 2,500 feet, give or take a little.
link |
So you go, that is, that is a really tight vertical turn.
link |
For example, the a six in order to do that was about 9,000 feet.
link |
And we look at a building that's 2000 feet high and think that is tall.
link |
So in, in aviation sense, when you're starting to do vertical displacement numbers going
link |
from 35,000 feet down to 20,000 feet in a matter of seconds and maneuvering the airplane,
link |
because the human brain thinks we really are.
link |
We like to be flat.
link |
I see what you mean.
link |
So if I'm fighting, how you really get an advantage when you're fighting another airplane
link |
is to work in the vertical, because most people will do like one move in the vertical and
link |
then they want to start to flatten out because that's where we're comfortable.
link |
So they're profound.
link |
Do you still think in like stacks of 2d layers or no, or do you, do you truly start to think
link |
in that third dimension, like the rich 3d world of, uh, like of, of fighting that can,
link |
do you start to actually be able to really experience the 3d nature?
link |
You do because you have to project where you're going to be.
link |
So you have to know the performance of the airplane knowing that, Hey, if I do this maneuver
link |
that I am going to go, it's, it's kind of like when I, when I talk about when we were
link |
chasing the Tic Tac.
link |
So the Tic Tacs coming up and I'm at about, you know, and I've been doing this for at
link |
the time, 16 years.
link |
So I'm looking and I'm going, Hey, I'm here.
link |
He's there on the other side of the circle.
link |
I'm going to do a vertical displacement.
link |
I'm going to go like this.
link |
I'm going to cut across the circle and I'm not going to him.
link |
I'm going out in front of him.
link |
I'm going over here because I know that by the time I get through this maneuver, that's
link |
where he's going to be.
link |
And I'm trying to, you know, basically join up on him.
link |
But I also had to look at it to go, do I have enough altitude to do this?
link |
Because what I did before here and I do this, I'm going to end up over here and he's going
link |
And then, you know, I have to get that energy back to get up to him.
link |
And when you're doing a max performance, it's a trade.
link |
So you have, this is, this is really important when you're, when you're fighting airplanes
link |
and you're really max performing.
link |
So when you go to an air show and you see the air demo, he's literally playing with
link |
He's got a finite amount of energy, right?
link |
He can add some with the motors and stuff, but you're, what you're really doing is it's
link |
a trade off and you can trade off kinetic energy, speed for altitude, which gives you
link |
The other piece is, is I can trade some of that kinetic energy for performance.
link |
Because I know if I do a nice, easy turn, the airplane will make it at what doesn't
link |
But I know if I do a real tight, that 2,500 foot split S, that it's going to cost me energy.
link |
So if I enter the split S at 200 knots and I do it right, I'm going to come out at the
link |
bottom at probably 200 knots.
link |
Although I lost 2,500 feet of potential energy, I converted that to that, to kinetic and that
link |
kinetic was transitioned and bled off the wings in order for me to get that high performance
link |
So you've got to constantly evaluate where you're at and it's your overall energy package.
link |
So you can have a guy that's behind you that looks like he's going to kill you.
link |
But if this jet is at 400 knots and this jet is at 110 knots, this jet's just going to
link |
pull away, drive around and kill him in about 30 seconds.
link |
It's overall energy package and that's that you've got to be constantly evaluating where
link |
And this is that 80% solution.
link |
Can I afford to do this or not?
link |
And you have literally a split second to make the decision.
link |
That's the most incredible dance of human decision making.
link |
It's just incredible.
link |
I know a million people want me to talk about Tic Tac and I definitely will, but let me
link |
ask the one last ridiculous, subjective question.
link |
What's the greatest plane ever made in history?
link |
You don't get to like...
link |
From Pure Speed, I would say SR71, I think it's an engineering marvel that was actually
link |
developed in the fifties by Kelly Johnson, Skunk Works.
link |
For what that was able to do, and then when you get into history of it, you know how they
link |
The CIA actually made like six companies in order to buy the titanium from Russia to bring
link |
it back and build an airplane out of titanium that we would fly over Russia.
link |
To me, that's an incredible...
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Engineering marvel.
link |
I think that like the X15, you know...
link |
By the way, the SR71 still holds the speed record of any plane as far as I can understand.
link |
What's funny when you get into it is it's...
link |
Remember, fast is relative.
link |
When I say that, I mean, so if you're going 3000 miles an hour, a hundred feet above the
link |
ground, you're going 3000 miles an hour through, you know, that's how fast you're going.
link |
When you get up to altitude, there's an indicated airspeed and there's, you know, your ground
link |
So your indicated airspeed is really how fast the air is going past your airplane.
link |
Well, the air is so thin up there, you may only be showing like 300 knots.
link |
But at 300 knots, you're really doing 2,500 miles an hour over the ground.
link |
So you know, like we would take the airplanes up to 50,000 feet when we had to do full the
link |
maintenance check flights on them.
link |
So when you're doing 200, you know, in some odd knots, it's actually slow for the airplane.
link |
It's, you know, you're getting, you know, it's kind of like, it's not, you know, there's
link |
maneuvering speeds.
link |
You know that if I hit a certain speed in a Super Hornet, that I have the full capability
link |
If I'm below that speed, I'm going to stall the airfoil before I get to the maximum G.
link |
So when you look at something like that, you go, well, is it really going fast?
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When you look at an SR71 that's flying upwards of, you know, 70 plus thousand feet, the air's
link |
so thin, you know, just like the X15, you can get to a much higher speed, but the relative
link |
speed of the air going over you is actually relatively low.
link |
So the stresses on the airframe are not like they would be if you were down low.
link |
But because you're going fast to get enough air over your pedostatic system to show that
link |
you're going 300 knots, you're screaming.
link |
I mean, the fastest I ever got was, I was with the, well, soon to be Vice Admiral White.
link |
So we had taken a check flight and I got it up to 1.78.
link |
I got a Super Hornet up to Mach 1.78 and it was, and we were just right by Pebble Beach
link |
What's that feel like?
link |
Or is it just like...
link |
When you get that fast, it started, to me, it got a little bit weird because you realize
link |
in your brain, and I did, that there's no out.
link |
If something happens, I can't eject.
link |
The ejection would kill me.
link |
Isn't that kind of liberating in a way?
link |
You always want to push the limit.
link |
You know, it's like how fast, I could have got it going faster.
link |
It was literally still accelerating when I stopped, but I had, it was fuel limited and
link |
space limited because I'm off the coast of California, Big Sur, and I'm going and I can
link |
see Pebble Beach out in the distance, the whole Monterey Peninsula.
link |
You're just going fast.
link |
And you're doing almost 18 miles a minute.
link |
I mean, you're screaming.
link |
And then you have to turn...
link |
Well, the airplane didn't have anything on it.
link |
It was a slicked off Super Hornet, so it was basically just the airplane.
link |
No pylons, no pods, no nothing.
link |
And then we had to get it turned around because we got to go to the exit point for the area.
link |
And I'm trying to get it down below to subsonic.
link |
And there's a bunch of things that are disabled, like the speed brakes that normally we pop
link |
out when you're going that fast, they don't, because the Super Hornet really doesn't have
link |
speed brakes, it deforms the flight controls.
link |
They don't function.
link |
So you really, you're trying to maneuver and when you're going that fast, you can't turn
link |
because a 7G turn at 1.5 Mach is a pretty big turn.
link |
So it's just, it's crazy.
link |
It's incredible that a human can do this and a human can engineer the system which allows
link |
another human to control that system.
link |
To me, I think it's a great experience.
link |
Was it sad to see the SR71 go?
link |
I think it was during your career.
link |
I mean, do you guys romanticize the different planes?
link |
We would see it flying.
link |
When I was flying Hornets, because West Coast flies and it's called R2508, which covers
link |
the Navy China Lake area and Edwards.
link |
It's actually, I think, we had a guy from Switzerland come out because they had Hornets
link |
and he's like, this is bigger than our whole country, because it's a pretty big area in
link |
California that you fly, but you would see the SR71s, they had a loop because NASA was
link |
flying them out of Palmdale and they would take off and they'd go up towards Washington
link |
State and Montana and they'd do a loop.
link |
So you'd see them coming back down, they'd descend above 60,000, they'd get contrails,
link |
the white lines behind airplanes, they'd come down and hit the tanker and then they'd go
link |
So it was cool to be able to see them in my lifetime flying.
link |
But I think with money, age, the advent of satellites, because they're everywhere now,
link |
I mean, you've got commercial companies putting satellites up, how much of that need was really
link |
Because you've got to remember when those things started in the 50s, Sputnik wasn't
link |
It was the U2 and the SR71 that were out there doing that work.
link |
So at the time it was needed, if you think about it really, it was an incredible feat
link |
of aviation for that time.
link |
I mean, literally we have yet to pass that and then you also ask, well, is there a need
link |
I go, I don't know, we got stuff in space, so do we need to make an airplane that goes
link |
I think the next one is you get into the hypersonics where you don't have to put a person in,
link |
it does all kinds of crazy stuff.
link |
And all the work with automation, all that kind of stuff.
link |
So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is you happen to be one of, at least in
link |
my view, one of the most credible witnesses in history of somebody who's witnessed a UFO
link |
literally an identified flying object.
link |
And not only witnessed, but got to, how do you put it?
link |
Like chase it, essentially?
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So let me just lay out, I think it's easier than you telling the story.
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Maybe me and my dumb simpleton ways trying to explain the stories, I understand it.
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And then maybe you can correct me.
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So on November 10th, 2004, the USS Princeton, which is one of the carriers.
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So you can't land on a.
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No, helicopter, it has a helicopter pad on the back.
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And it has weapons on it.
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It shoots the missiles up.
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But it has a nice radar.
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It has an incredible spy one system phased array, four panels.
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So it looks in quadrants.
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So they started noticing on November 10th that there is a few objects flying around
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at 28,000 feet with speed of what I guess is considered a low speed of 120 miles an
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Don't know what that's in knots, but on the coast of California.
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And they kept detecting these objects for just about a week.
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Then comes in like your part of the story, which is on November 14th from the, I guess
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it's from the USS Nimitz.
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You flew and witnessed a 40 foot long white Tic Tac shaped object with no wings flying
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in ways you've never thought possible.
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And in some interview somewhere, you said, I think it was not from this world.
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So there's a mysterious aspect to this object, to this entire situation.
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There's videos involved.
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The video of a flare forward looking infrared receiver has also the visible lights.
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You can switch as a TV mode.
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So that gives you visible light and then as an IR mode.
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And Chad Underwood recorded that video.
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And those are the videos that were released by the Pentagon later.
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One of the three videos, the two other videos, go fast and gimbal were recorded in 2000 something
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14 and 15 on the East coast of the United States that had different kinds of objects,
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but they're weird in the same kind of way in terms of at least the videos and the experiences
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that people have described were similar in the degree of weirdness.
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But the differences is actually on the East coast of 2014 case, very few people have spoken
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And even in your situation, very few people have spoken about it.
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So there's a mystery to it, but it's in some sense, it's a quite simple story without much
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resolution to the mystery.
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And it's fascinating.
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And there's a lot of opinions.
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There's division of opinions because it's a mysterious, I mean, it's truly is a UFO
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in the sense that UAP, unidentified aerial phenomena.
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So can you maybe correct me on any of the things I've gotten wrong, elaborate on some
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key things and describe that experience in general.
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So here's what I know.
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So yeah, we went out on our mission to go train and they canceled the mission and they
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There's all kinds of rumors out here.
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There's all kinds of, after this has come out, so originally it was the four of us.
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There's two jets, two people in each jet, they're F18Fs, okay?
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There is no video from our event.
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It was all four sets of eyeballs staring at this thing.
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And then when we came back and told it when Chad and his pilot took off, that's when Chad
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got the video of it.
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And we're like, that's it.
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That's exactly it.
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So when you say eyeballs, you mean literally your eyes are seeing a thing?
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So as we're flying out, we get vectored.
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They come up and tell us, hey, we're going to cancel training.
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This is a USS Princeton.
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So this is a Aegis Cruiser.
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So we're talking to one controller who is like, hey, sir, first you ask what ordinance
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And I laugh because we don't carry live ordinance in training typically because bad stuff happens.
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Usually someone forgets to put a switch on and then the missile comes off and hits a
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good airplane and it's not good.
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So we had what's called a Catam 9, which is really just a blue two with the AIM 9 seeker
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on the front of it, which is an IR missile.
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So there's only two ways to get it off.
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You can beat it off with a sledgehammer.
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You can take this thing and you put a wrench in it and it unlocks the lugs and pulls the
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lugs back in that hold it on.
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When it really fires the impulse from the engine, actually throws the lugs forward and
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breaks that release and it comes off down the rail.
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That's how it works.
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So they said, hey, well, we have real world tasking.
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So as we're going out, my wingman, the other pilot, she maneuvers the airplane to the left
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So she's kind of stepped up like this and I'll use your mic box to start.
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So as we're going out, they're calling ranges are called bra calls, bearing range and altitude.
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And they're telling us, hey, it's at 40 miles or 50 miles and 40 miles and 30 miles.
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So they're saying, hey, two, seven, zero, 30, 20,000, that's all they say.
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So we got our radars and we had to mechanically scan radars at the time, APG 73.
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Good piece of gear, APG 79, new one's way better.
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And I apologize if I interrupt the story, hopefully it's useful, but they're telling
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you a location of a thing that you should look at.
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They're telling us they have a contact on their radar.
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They don't know what it is.
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They just have a blip.
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They have a little blip.
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Well, they've been watching these things and what he told me is they had been looking at
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these things as we're driving.
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He says, sir, we've been tracking these things for about two weeks.
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That's we had been at sea for two weeks.
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This is the first time we've had planes airborne.
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We want you to go see what these are.
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So they kind of interrupt the mission to say, check it out.
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That's exactly it.
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So we start driving out there and as we get down to, he's going, you know, 20 miles, 15
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And then you get to a point where they call merge plot, which means we are inside of the
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resolution cell of the radar because radars don't see everything there.
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So they have a range and they have an azimuth resolution, right?
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So and it's basically think of a little cube so they can, and the whole sky is made of
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all these little cubes and they're looking.
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So if you're inside a cube with something and you're both inside the same little cube,
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then the radar can only see one thing.
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Does that make sense?
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So they call merge plot.
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Well, when we say merge plot to us, it means he's right around, something's around you,
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get your head out.
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So we're not looking at radar scopes anymore and the wizos, the wizos can look, but everyone
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When they say merge plot, you're done looking at your displays inside.
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You're doing this and you're trying to find it.
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So as we look out to the right and you look high and low, because he could be anywhere
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from the surface all the way up.
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Now keep in mind the ship is like probably 60 miles away, so it can't see the surface
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and you can do your standard radar horizon calculation and go, hey, it's the thing is
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40 feet off the water, the panel, can he really see, you know, there are radars that can see
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around the curve, but let's just say that it can't at this time.
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So you go, is it, you know, where is it at?
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So as we're looking around, we see, now this is a, it's a clear day.
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There's no clouds and there's no whitecaps.
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It's just a calm, it's actually a perfect day.
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If you own a sailboat, it was that five to 10 knots of wind and you just want to kind
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of go out there and you're not going to get beat up and have whitewater coming out.
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It was the perfect day to own a sailboat.
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How many miles out do you see?
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Like seven, like you see just, it's a clear day.
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It's 50, it's unrestricted visibility.
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You can see literally all the way to the horizon.
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And we're basically off the coast.
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If you look at a map and you go San Diego and then inside of Mexico, we're kind of in
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And we're probably about, by the time this all hits, we're price, I don't know, 80, 100,
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I don't know, but somewhere out, it's pretty far off the coast, but from 20,000 feet, you'd
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You can do the calculation.
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You can see stuff, you know, you'll see land 50 miles away, you know, you can see, you
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know, and when you're looking at a continent, it's really easy to see you're not looking
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I mean, you're looking at Mexico.
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And you can see on the whitecaps in the water, if there is any.
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Oh yeah, they're easy.
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For us, we look at it because we know if it's natural wind or, so if it's a really whitecap
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windy day, then the ships just kind of barely be moving when we land on it.
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It makes it actually easier.
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If the ship has to move or it's got a big weight because it has to make its own wind
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when we land, which is the day that it was this day, you go, oh, okay.
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And it creates what's called, we call the burble, but when the air flows across the
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flight deck, it drops behind the ship, you know, and then it kicks back up.
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So when you're coming board to land, it's going to make you go up a little bit and then
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you're going to fall and you got to anticipate that to stay on glideslope.
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So we're pretty conscious of what's going on out there with the waves and the wind.
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So there's no waves, there's no wind, there's no whitecaps, and we look down and we see
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So if you put a piece of land, a seamount below the surface, like, you know, even 20
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feet below the surface, it's big enough.
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As the waves come in, you know, waves have height and length.
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When they come in, that's what happens on the shore, when a wave comes in, it hits and
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then it starts to collapse and it pushes the wave height up because it can't go anymore
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and then it breaks over the top and that's where you get the weight.
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So what happens is at sea, when you get a seamount, you'll see stuff come in, the wave
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will crash and you'll get whitewater.
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You can go out when it's high tide in any one of the coasts, you can go out here off
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of Boston and go, hey, at low tide, I can see those rocks and at high tide, I can't
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see the rocks are covered, but there'll be whitewater around those rocks.
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You'll be able to tell there's something underneath the surface.
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Does that make sense?
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So that's what it was.
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We don't see an object because there's all kinds of, oh, they saw another craft below
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We didn't see anything below the water.
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We just saw whitewater.
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But the whitewater, and I like to shape it, you can say it was a cross.
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I say it's about the size of a 737.
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So it looks like if you took a 737, put it about 15, 20 feet below the water so the wave
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is breaking over the top and you're going to get whitewater where the plane is at, you'd
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see this kind of shape.
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So it looks like a cross.
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So as we're looking down off the right side, the backseater in the other airplane, Jim,
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says this is that talking in partials again.
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He says, hey, Skipper, do you?
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And that's about what he gets out of his mouth.
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And I go, what the hell is that?
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Do you see that essentially is what he's saying?
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So we see the whitewater and that's what draws our eyes down there.
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Otherwise we'd have never seen it.
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So we see this whitewater.
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I would have loved to see the look on your face when you see that.
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And then we see this little white tic tac because we're about 20,000 feet above it and
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it's doing, it's going basically north, south, and then east, west, north, and it's abrupt.
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So it's not like a helicopter, if a helicopter is going sideways and it goes once, it's going
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sideways left and it goes right, what it'll do is it'll go, it's got a speed, it slows
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down because there's inertia and it stops and then it goes back the other way.
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This thing's not, it's like left, right, left, right with no.
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So moving in ways that doesn't feel intuitive to you of the things you've seen in the past.
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So as a pilot, the first thing you think is it's a helicopter, right?
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So you go, oh, what is, cause when we see it's moving, we're like, oh, helicopter.
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So the first thing you look for to see if it's a helicopter when they're doing that,
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because usually when they get down there towards that 50 feet, you'll get rotor wash.
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You see it in the movies when the helicopter's by the water, it kicks, the water comes up
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the sides cause the downdraft, you know, like a thunderstorm will do that.
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It pushes the air down and then it has to come up the sides.
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So you see it and you go, well, there's no, there's no rotor wash.
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What is that thing?
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So by this time we're driving around.
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So as we're, if we were at the six oclock, we're driving around towards that nine oclock
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position and we're just watching this thing.
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And it's just, it's still pointing north, south, and it's going left, right, and it's
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kind of moving around the object.
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And if it had, if I had to say it biased itself, it was biased towards the bottom half.
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So if you've got the east, west, and then the north, south kind of across, it's hanging
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out on the southern thing that's hanging out.
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It's just kind of moving around up, down, left, and it's crossing over it and it's going
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It's just kind of, so now we're like, what the hell is that?
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So then I go, hey, I'm going to go check it out.
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And the other pilot says, I'm going to stay up here.
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And I said, yeah, stay up high.
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Because now we get, we get a different perspective.
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So she's up here and I'm down here as I'm descending.
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She can watch, because right now all I'm watching is the Tic Tac.
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She can watch me and the Tic Tac.
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So she gets a God's eye view of everything that's going on, which is really important.
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You know, you can hear people say it's high cover, whatever.
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She's watching me, which is, it's perfect as the story goes on, because it gives us
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two perspectives, you know, of a perspective that's about 8,000 feet above us when that
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And they don't, you know, because if it's just like, oh, I lost it and they go, no,
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it's over to the right.
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We can still see it.
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We all lost it at the same time.
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So as we come down, we get to about 12 oclock and I'm descending and it's an easy descent.
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I'm doing about 300 knots, which is a really good airspeed for the airplane for maneuvering
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because I have, I have everything available to me at that speed.
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So I'm coming down and as I get to 12 oclock, as the Tic Tac's doing this, it literally,
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it's like, it's aware of us and it just goes bloop and it kind of points out towards the
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West and starts coming up.
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So now it's obviously knows that we're there.
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Whatever this thing is, it knows that we're there.
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So as we drive around, it's coming up and I'm just coming down.
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We're just, I'm just watching it.
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Now, you gotta remember this whole thing is like, this is like five minutes.
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This is not like we saw it and it was gone or, oh, I saw lights in the sky and they were
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We watched this thing on a crystal clear day with four trained observers, watch this thing
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So we're like, okay.
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So I get over to the eight oclock position and I'm a little, I'm a couple thousand feet
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above it and it's about, so I'm probably at about 15 K I think it is.
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I think that's my story is about 15.
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It's just estimating.
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So you can see it's just a really easy descent because.
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I thought it was 8,000.
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No, the other plane ends up about that.
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So they're still at about 20,000 feet.
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So they're driving around and I'm descending.
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They're staying up there.
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So I'm kind of doing this as they drive around.
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So I'm looking at this thing and it's about the two oclock position.
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We're about the eight oclock position and I'm like, oh, I've got, I've got enough altitudes.
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I'm going to, I'm going to cut across the circle.
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I tell the guy in my back seat, dude, I'm going to, I'm going to do this.
link |
He's like, go for it.
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Cause I was a skipper.
link |
So I cut across the bottom.
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So I'm kind of almost coming out coaltitude as this thing's coming up, I'm going to meet
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And I'm driving and I get to probably it's, I'm probably about a half mile away, which
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you think, well, a half mile is pretty far.
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Half mile in aviation isn't, it's nothing.
link |
It's I mean, you can tell there's a pilot in an airplane.
link |
You can see all kinds of stuff at a half mile.
link |
You can see pretty good detail.
link |
So I'm like right there and it's coming across my nose.
link |
So now I'm basically pointing back towards east.
link |
So I'm cutting across cause I'm going to the three oclock position.
link |
It's at two oclock and I'm going to meet it at three oclock.
link |
So as I do this, it goes, it just accelerates and disappears.
link |
So this happens at around, estimating about 12,000 feet.
link |
So they've got about 8,000 foot of altitude above us when this happens.
link |
And it just, as it crosses our nose, it just, it accelerates and literally in less than,
link |
you know, probably less than a half second, it just goes and it's gone.
link |
And so we're like, and I had the first thing is, dude, did you guys see it?
link |
The other airplane's like, it's gone.
link |
We don't, we have no idea where it's at.
link |
So we kind of spin around real quick.
link |
I go, well, let's see what's down here.
link |
And I turn around and we're looking for the whitewater and we can't even, the whitewater's
link |
It's literally all blue.
link |
And I remember telling the guy in my backseat, like a dude, I'm, I don't know about you,
link |
but I'm pretty weirded out because this is, I mean, you know, I had at the time like 30
link |
some hundred hours of flying.
link |
I'd been doing it for 18 years.
link |
It's nothing like anything you've seen.
link |
So as we turn, we go, well, let's just go back, you know, because now I got to put on
link |
my real hat, which we have to train because we're getting ready to deploy to overseas.
link |
So we got to get our training done.
link |
So that's my mindset, especially as a CEO, cause I got to get, I got to get training
link |
out of the flight time because I'm responsible to do that.
link |
So, Hey, let's go back.
link |
And the, the, the guy who's going to be the bad guys is the CEO of the Marine squadron.
link |
And so Cheeks is at the, he's listening to all this happen, you know, cause he's just
link |
like, cause he, they, when he first went out, they were going to do him, but the little
link |
Hornets, the legacy Hornets, the F18Cs don't have as much gas as the Super Hornets.
link |
So he had launched first and they were going to do him.
link |
And then when they knew we were off the deck, they just told him, hey, go to your cap point
link |
down South, and we're going to send, we'll pass this off to the Super Hornets.
link |
What's a cap point by the way?
link |
That's where we hold.
link |
So it's called a combat air patrol point.
link |
So we're just going to hold at one end.
link |
He's going to hold at the other end.
link |
It's kind of like, Hey, you guys are going to get, it's, it's, if it's a football field,
link |
we're going to sit on one goal line.
link |
He's going to sit on the other goal line.
link |
And when they say go, we're going to run at each other and then try and do something in
link |
the middle of the field and then go back to our set reset points.
link |
So you're talking to him.
link |
He's, he's, he's listening to the, he's just listening.
link |
We don't talk to him at all.
link |
He's just listening.
link |
Cause they know that we all know the frequencies.
link |
So he's listening to what's going on because he's like, cause they canceled training.
link |
So what else is he going to do?
link |
He's just going to hang out there and do circles while he's waiting for him and his wingman.
link |
So they just, they're listening to all this go on.
link |
And then at this point you move on.
link |
We come back up to train.
link |
We go back as we're flying back the controller.
link |
Cause we're talking to the kid on the Princeton, the, the, uh, the, uh, they're called OSs
link |
or operations specialists.
link |
They're the ones that run the radars and we're talking to him and he's like, Hey, sir, you're
link |
not going to believe this.
link |
He's like, that thing is at your cap.
link |
It showed back up.
link |
It just popped up.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
This is like 60 miles away.
link |
It just reappears.
link |
We're like, Oh, okay.
link |
So we got the radars out.
link |
We're looking for it.
link |
Uh, we get out there.
link |
We never see it again.
link |
Uh, we do what we need to do.
link |
We come back to the ship.
link |
Of course, now we're like, Oh, this is going to be, we're going to, you know, I told him,
link |
I told him, I go, dude, you know, we're going to catch, we're going to catch shit for this.
link |
When we get back to the ship, word's going to get out and we're just going to catch maximum
link |
We were joking, you know, so the ship plays movies, we have movies on the boat and they
link |
do 12 hours of movies.
link |
So they repeat cause there's a day check and a night check.
link |
So the same movies in the morning and night play.
link |
So you never get to ever get to watch a whole movie on the boat, which drives my wife crazy
link |
cause I'll watch stuff on TV that way too.
link |
I'll be like, Oh, Hey, I've seen this and it, I'll jump into a movie in the middle and
link |
then I'll pick it up later and I'll see the beginning and I'll put it all together, uh,
link |
because that's how we have to do it.
link |
Cause we're so busy.
link |
Well, the movies became, and I, it was men in black, aliens, uh, uh, independence day.
link |
Definitely going to catch some shit, but let, let, uh, let me just ask some dumb questions.
link |
So just take him, cause it's whatever, whatever the heck you saw, whatever the heck happened,
link |
it's, you know, one of the most fascinating things, um, events in recent history.
link |
So whatever it was, it's interesting to talk about it, different kinds of angles.
link |
There's no good answers, but it's interesting to ask some dumb questions here.
link |
Uh, so first of all, you mentioned, see, you saw at some point X, Y, and then, uh, somebody
link |
in the Princeton said, you're not going to believe this, sir.
link |
It's at your cap point that that's a different place.
link |
How the heck did it know what your cap point is?
link |
That's a good question.
link |
And that's the one of you to no one, you know, you don't, we don't tell it, we don't broadcast
link |
it, we have a waypoint in the system, but I don't know.
link |
Maybe it knew where we were going.
link |
Cause we use the same one day after day after day, but it, it obviously knew, but you never
link |
Never saw it there.
link |
Chad, when he took off, when he got the video, we landed, we told them, Hey, look, we just,
link |
we just chased this thing.
link |
They're like, what?
link |
I got to chase it.
link |
And they're like, well, I go, dude, and I go, and I told him, I said, dude, get video.
link |
And he goes, and so, and that's how he is.
link |
He's like, I'm going to go.
link |
And he, he was, he, he was determined that he was going to find this thing.
link |
So when you look at his video, and this is the stuff that isn't out, that they don't
link |
see because not all the, all you see is the FLIR tape.
link |
That's the targeting pod, the forward looking infrared receiver.
link |
I'll probably overlay the video for people to see.
link |
When he goes out, it's you know, what he's looking at on his displays is he has basically
link |
two radar displays up.
link |
He has azimuth and range on the right one, and he has azimuth and elevation on the left
link |
So this is called the Azel display.
link |
And this is called, this is basically the PPI, which is the, you're at the bottom of
link |
You're at the bottom of the square.
link |
It's really taken this.
link |
It's taken a cone because a radar really looks left and right from a point and it squares
link |
So the entire bottom of the scope that we look at is us because they do this.
link |
They square it off.
link |
So, so he goes out and when he first sees it, he gets a radar return on it because when
link |
he's not trying to lock it.
link |
So the radar is just throwing energy out and getting it, you know, it's a Doppler radar.
link |
So when it's in search mode, that's all it's doing.
link |
It's going, oh, I can see you.
link |
And it's looking for return.
link |
So he gets a return.
link |
So he wants to see what it is because all you get is a little green square, unless it
link |
builds a track file on it, but a little green square is just sitting there.
link |
It's not moving because it's, it's sitting in one spot in space.
link |
He locks it up when he goes to lock it up.
link |
Now he's putting a bunch of energy on it, but he's telling the radar, stare down that
link |
line of sight and whatever's there, I want you to grab it and build a track file on it,
link |
which will tell us how high it is, how fast it is and the direction that it's going.
link |
So the radar is smart enough that when the signal comes back, if it's been messed with,
link |
it will tell you, it'll give you indications that I'm being jammed.
link |
So that's all it is, is you send a signal out, something, it manipulates the signal
link |
either in range and velocity or whatever, and it sends it back and the radar was smart
link |
enough to go, that is not a return that I'm expecting.
link |
Something's messing with me.
link |
And it shows you and it puts strobes up, it gives these lines on the radar and it does
link |
So you can mean, well, it does, it goes full into, it's being jammed at about every mode
link |
you can possibly see because everything comes up and this aspect gets along, it's all kinds
link |
of, I don't want to get into details, but you can tell it's being jammed.
link |
So and it's what it does.
link |
As you said on Rogan, by the way, that jamming is an act of war, right?
link |
Active jamming is, when you actively jam another platform, yes, it's technically an act of
link |
It feels like you should be freaking out at this point, I mean.
link |
So well, he does it and then in the back seat, so they don't have a stick and throttle, they
link |
have their side stick controllers so they can control all the sensors and they can just
link |
toggle around and do stuff.
link |
So he has the ability to just move one switch real quick and it will go from that azimuth
link |
elevation on the radar to the targeting pod.
link |
Well, as soon as he commanded the radar to look at that target, the targeting pod goes,
link |
oh, what's over there?
link |
And it'll stare because it goes down the line of sight because all the systems are hooked
link |
You can decouple them, but they're going to automatically couple up.
link |
So when he castles over, it's a switch, it looks like a castle switch, what's a castle?
link |
So when he moves that thing to the left and he swaps the displays out and he says, instead
link |
of looking at the radar, I want to look at the targeting pod, he sees it on the targeting
link |
pod because the targeting pod's already looking there.
link |
And now he's on a passive track because he's not literally sending any energy out, he's
link |
just receiving IR energy from the tic tac and then the system itself will track the
link |
pixels and the contrast differences, it depends on what mode you're in.
link |
So it says, oh, and that's where those little bars you see in the video where the bars come
link |
up left and right.
link |
There's doing some vision based tracking.
link |
That's exactly what it is.
link |
So and then he goes through.
link |
Changes zooms, changes the mode.
link |
He goes through all the modes, so there's a narrow, medium and wide.
link |
So wide is far away, medium and then narrow.
link |
And then there's the TV mode and he goes from IR mode to the TV mode.
link |
The cool thing with the TV mode is narrow IR mode is only medium TV mode.
link |
So you can actually get closer with narrow TV mode.
link |
It's got a better zoom capability when you go into TV mode.
link |
So he goes through all those things and that's when you see it going from a black background
link |
to a white background.
link |
So you can figure out what the heck is this?
link |
Well, yeah, and he wants to get as much data as he can on it based on the different modes
link |
instead of just staring at it going, what is that thing?
link |
So the video has been out, it actually was on YouTube for years before the government
link |
It was leaked in 2007?
link |
No, the guy that was in my backseat sent me an email and I had retired.
link |
So this is about, nope, because I was working down in San Diego.
link |
So this is about 2008, early 2009, he sends me a link to strangeland.com, which is not
link |
suitable for work.
link |
Oh yeah, it's top notch.
link |
And he says, I can remember the email, hey Skip, does this look familiar?
link |
And I look at it, I'm like, how the hell did that get on strangeland.com?
link |
So next thing you know, it ends up on YouTube, which was cool because you can send a YouTube
link |
You don't send strangeland.com to someone because you don't know what you're going to
link |
It's like Googling kittens.
link |
So it ends up there somehow.
link |
So it gets on YouTube, which was cool because I would go out with my friends and we'd be
link |
drinking and they go, dude, what's the coolest thing you ever saw flying?
link |
It's kind of like you were asking what it's like.
link |
And I go, oh dude, I chased a UFO and they're like, get out.
link |
And I'm like, no, serious.
link |
This is literally how it happened.
link |
So I was sitting with my friend Matt.
link |
So Matt and I did our, he was the guy in my right seat of the A6 when I did my very first
link |
And we were friends to this day.
link |
Because when you do stuff like people like that, I had to have faith in him, he had to
link |
have faith in me, they become like your brother.
link |
And these are guys that literally, I don't talk to them on a regular basis, like Chris
link |
who works at Apple.
link |
If Chris called me up tomorrow and said, dude, I need help.
link |
I'd be like, all right, let's figure this out and let's do it.
link |
Because it's, they're like family, you do it.
link |
And most Navy guys, we don't send letters to each other weekly.
link |
You know, I have friends that I haven't talked to in 10 years that they showed up on my door,
link |
you know, pop a bottle of wine, grab a beer, shoot the shit, take about first 10 minutes
link |
And then it's like old times and it's amazing how fast it's happened.
link |
So I'm out to dinner with Matt and I'm telling him this story and he's like, get out of here.
link |
So he goes back and he tells our friend Paco, Paco has fightersweep.com, it's a blog site.
link |
So Paco's obsessed, like he is way into UFOs.
link |
So Paco calls me up, he says, dude, I was talking to Matty.
link |
That's what we call him.
link |
He goes, I was talking to Matty.
link |
He goes, dude, you got to tell me this story.
link |
So I'm like, all right.
link |
I'm going to spend a chunk of time and so he calls me one day and I'm like, I got to
link |
Hey, give me a call.
link |
So I call him up and he answers the phone, but I could hear people in the background
link |
and I go, hey dude, what's going on?
link |
He goes, hang on, hang on.
link |
I got to put you on speakerphone.
link |
I go, what are you putting me on speakerphone?
link |
He goes, you got to tell the story.
link |
I'm having a dinner party.
link |
You got to tell the story.
link |
So he's literally having a dinner party with his cell phone in the middle of the table
link |
as I tell a Tic Tac story.
link |
So he calls me up again.
link |
He says, hey, I got this blog and he just writes about fighter stuff.
link |
Like he wrote about that we call them the shit hot break.
link |
That's a guy that when you're laying on a carrier, comes in, turns and gets ready to
link |
Like breaks it off right at the back of the ship and one of the guys, when we were junior
link |
officers on the USS Ranger, one of the department heads in the other squadron is a guy, Nasty.
link |
And Nasty was notorious for coming in in a Tomcat and cranking off the shit hot break.
link |
So he literally wrote a thing about the shit hot break with Nasty and there's another guy,
link |
Mav, was one of our landing signals officers for the air wing.
link |
It's a good article on how this was and how it kind of forms you in Naval Aviation, kind
link |
of being part of the club.
link |
So he's like, I got to write about this thing.
link |
I'm like, what do you guys, I got to write about it.
link |
Because at first I would say no.
link |
I'm like, dude, I don't want this out there.
link |
So you haven't really before then talked about it much.
link |
My wife didn't even really know the whole story.
link |
Just as a comment, is it just because you caught some.
link |
You know, it was just, I'll tell you what, three days we had the incident for about two
link |
They played the goofy movies.
link |
There's a comic on the back of the air wing schedule that they would put.
link |
It was like first one was a far side and the second one was me and the guy in my back seat
link |
and it was men in black, but it had our names, you know, protecting protecting the Nimitz
link |
battle group type stuff.
link |
It's just funny shit like that.
link |
So to me it wasn't that big of a deal.
link |
It was like, okay, that's weird.
link |
We're never going to know what it was.
link |
I want to get out there because this is important because there's all kinds of rumors.
link |
There's a group of folks there.
link |
No one ever came out in suits to talk to us.
link |
Nobody looking like me.
link |
No came out on a, no, no one came out of the helicopter.
link |
No one came out on an airplane.
link |
You know, you get, oh, I was told to turn over this classified.
link |
What's funny is all the COs and several of them are still in the Navy.
link |
There's one that is a, he, I think he just finished up.
link |
He was a captain of an aircraft carrier.
link |
You know, so he'll end up making Admiral and all that stuff.
link |
Those guys are all my friends.
link |
I talk to them daily.
link |
So just for people who don't know, there's a story that both on the Nimitz and the Princeton
link |
folks in a helicopter landed.
link |
They showed up, they took the data, quote unquote.
link |
So all the sort of recordings associated with this incident and they took it and presumably
link |
So there's a kind of story to that.
link |
And then from what I've seen, you said that you believe, just like we were talking about
link |
offline, that jokes spread faster than, or just rumors spread faster than anything on
link |
these ships, that it might've been a joke that started and.
link |
So here's the joke.
link |
So they had come down, right?
link |
We had the tapes and they were Chad's tapes.
link |
So we use those tapes over and over again.
link |
They're consumable, but remember, I have a budget as a squadron, so I have a budget.
link |
So I have to buy those tapes, all that stuff that we use, I'm accountable for.
link |
And the tapes are actually classified secret because of the data that's on them.
link |
So we had the tapes.
link |
So the intelligence guys, the intel officers came down from what's called Civic, CVIC,
link |
which is Carrier Intel Center, came down and said, hey, we need the tapes.
link |
These guys are gonna come, they're gonna come and get them.
link |
So we're like, I'm like, oh, whatever.
link |
So we hand them the tapes and then someone, because I have, you know people, shortly after
link |
they came and got the tapes, someone came to me and said, you know, they're messing
link |
with you, they're playing a joke.
link |
So I said, oh, well, let's see how well that goes because I'm a CO and they're not.
link |
So I went down to Civic and it was a, I think he was a Lieutenant or Lieutenant JG, so he's
link |
And I said, hey, I want my tapes back and he looks at me and I go, I know you guys are
link |
I know there's no one came out.
link |
And I go, and you have about 30 seconds to get me my tapes before I start tearing this
link |
That's literally what I told him.
link |
And I said, and if your boss has an issue, he can come and see me because it's not gonna
link |
I said, because this is bullshit and I need those tapes.
link |
Then he literally walked right over to a filing cabinet, opened it up, they weren't in a safe.
link |
He opened up a filing cabinet and pulled them out and handed them to me.
link |
I said, and I basically said a few things to him, like, don't ever fuck with me again.
link |
And I left, I had the tapes.
link |
So this, no one came out.
link |
There's no flying going on when all this is happening.
link |
And I took the tapes back and then I copied the tapes.
link |
So I took two brand new eight mil tapes and I copied the sections that I want.
link |
So there's a rumor or two that, oh, the original FLIR video is 10 minutes long and there's
link |
some, one of these petty officers is saying, I saw it, that's total crap.
link |
The original video is about a minute, 30 seconds long.
link |
What you see on the release video is the entire video.
link |
So you have mentioned, I apologize if I say stupid things, please correct me, but you
link |
have mentioned that, like on Roguen, I think that you watched it on a bigger screen.
link |
It felt like it was higher definition.
link |
So let me ask the question, is there a higher definition version, do you think, of the FLIR
link |
video that would give us more pixels and more information presumably because of the high
link |
Because I don't know where, the stuff that the government released, I don't know where
link |
So the stuff that was on Strangeland and YouTube, someone pulled off of a secret, it looks like
link |
There's tape machines in there and it gets converted to digital and stored on a hard
link |
drive and they pulled it off that hard drive and they put it on YouTube.
link |
No, it's just like, anytime, even a digital media, the more you copy digital media, there's
link |
some quality that gets, it degrades.
link |
So this, you don't know how many times this has been copied.
link |
So we were looking, the videos I've seen are right off the original, they're Hi8 tapes,
link |
it's basically pulled off the back of the display, so it's not filmed with cameras,
link |
it's literally a digital feed that's pulled off the back and put onto a Hi8 tape.
link |
That's how the recorders work.
link |
Now it's actually digital to digital, it's not even on tapes anymore, it's a digital
link |
recording system, but we were still in that process of slowly, because originally we had
link |
little cameras here that shine, so if the light hit, it would wash out the displays.
link |
So it's a pretty good feed, when you put it on, so instead of looking at it on your tiny
link |
little computer monitor or whatever, I'm looking at it on like a 19 inch, because it was still
link |
normal TVs back there, we had just put flat screens in the ready room that I had bought,
link |
so we could watch movies.
link |
A nice, huge 19 inch screen.
link |
It's maybe 20, it was nice.
link |
I can get for like 50 bucks, you can get like 60 inches.
link |
So you look at it as this big thing.
link |
You could see, so when you get to the TV mode, when I say there's little things coming out
link |
of the bottom of it, you could see those.
link |
It was very clear.
link |
But in terms of the actual visual on the Tic Tac, did you get much more information from
link |
the higher, from the clear?
link |
Little things out of the bottom.
link |
We didn't see those visuals.
link |
So the bottom information.
link |
So when you see it, because he's coming almost coaltitude with it, you can see the bottom
link |
It looks like little, you know, like if you look at a Cessna, there's little antennas
link |
hanging out of the bottom.
link |
Kind of like that.
link |
There was two little things out of the bottom.
link |
There's nothing on the top.
link |
There was no plume, no IR, no visible propulsions, even heat signature.
link |
You know, it's all that stuff.
link |
And then the other thing that people didn't see is they didn't see the radar display,
link |
which that really raises a classification of it, especially to see what the radar does
link |
when it's being jammed.
link |
You know, matter of fact, when they did the unofficial official investigation in about
link |
2000 and let me think about 2009.
link |
I got a call on my cell phone from a guy who government employee and said, hey, he told
link |
He's still in the government.
link |
I'm friends with him.
link |
And he said, hey, we're going to investigate your Tic Tac thing.
link |
This is literally five years later.
link |
And I said, OK, whatever.
link |
And he did a pretty good job.
link |
I caught the unofficial official report because it was really never official.
link |
But I'll give you the history of why I say that and why it never came out in FOIA requests.
link |
So he does the report.
link |
He sent me the report.
link |
And all he said is, hey, I'm going to send you this report.
link |
Please don't distribute this report.
link |
The report is now out because Harry Reid got it to George Knapp and they were good enough
link |
But there's a few versions of it unredacted and I'm very protective of the other people
link |
that were involved in this.
link |
So Jim has talked, but he's off the grid.
link |
He doesn't talk to anyone now.
link |
The pilot of his airplane, she has come out on unidentified, but they don't release her
link |
name, although people are starting to do it.
link |
And she's had weird shit happen around her house.
link |
She's got kids, you know, so I'm very protective of her.
link |
And I've told people like Jeremy and George, if I know that the names ever came from you,
link |
I will never talk to you again about this.
link |
And Jeremy's been really good about it.
link |
And then, but George knew who the names were because he got the report from Senator Reid.
link |
And then the other crew.
link |
So the pilot of the airplane that took the video that Chad was in, if you talk to that
link |
individual, they really don't have the recollection.
link |
They were just out flying that day and it wasn't a big deal.
link |
So it's you need to protect because not everyone wants people knocking.
link |
I don't want people knocking on my door and, you know, and there's rumors are you talk
link |
You know, you're about the 23rd person that I've talked to total.
link |
And that includes, you know, the newspapers and stuff.
link |
And I've been selective because there's so much, I mean, if I turned down like, I turned
link |
I can give you her name when we're done here.
link |
She called, she not only called me, she called my wife, she called my daughter, she called
link |
my son and she called my son in law because they're persistent.
link |
So I'm pretty protected.
link |
I'm very particular.
link |
I mean, the reason I'm talking to you is because I knew we would have a conversation that wasn't
link |
based just on the tic tac and the incident, but we can actually talk about some of the
link |
science and some of the theoretical to get into, to get more people involved to go.
link |
Cause I think there's, you know, and when you talk to, you know, Lou Elizondo or Chris
link |
Mellon, you know, the group at TTSA, you know, that whole thing, that's to the stars Academy.
link |
That's the Tom DeLonge group that got started.
link |
So you go, well, you know, cause I think Tom has caught a lot of crap for this, but he's
link |
actually, when you talk to him, he's, he's, he's very smart and I asked him, how'd you
link |
And he goes, oh, when I was traveling around with Blink 182, he goes, you read a lot of
link |
books when you're laying in a van as you're driving to your next gig before you make it
link |
And he goes, and he read, he was reading books and he read one of them on UFOs.
link |
I'm trying to think of the title.
link |
That's one of the big ones that's out there real popular.
link |
And so he started just, he started asking more and through his fame with Blink 182 in
link |
the band, he got more and more connected.
link |
You know, if you talk to Chris Mellon, who is an undersecretary of defense for intelligence
link |
and he's part of the Mellon dynasty, you know, from Carnegie Mellon type, very, very smart.
link |
He knows, he, he, he definitely knows how the government works cause he worked there.
link |
And so when I went down to DC to talk to people, he's one of the first people I'll go to.
link |
When I did Tucker Carlson about a month ago, month and a half ago, I asked, he texted me,
link |
I texted him, Tom, Lou to go, Hey, cause they were like, you gotta do it.
link |
Cause I turned to, I turned Tucker down a couple of times before and his, his producer
link |
had called me and I'm like, all right, I'll do it.
link |
Because those guys like, you gotta, you gotta do this for us.
link |
So from my perspective, just to give you some context.
link |
So to me, there seems to be some stigma.
link |
So I come from the scientific community and I really appreciate you talking to me today.
link |
And I think that people who listen to this include, you know, of faculty, fellow faculty
link |
at MIT and major universities.
link |
And it feels like there's some stigma to the subject from, from the scientific community.
link |
A lot of people, especially when they hear your story are like, wow, this is really interesting,
link |
but you, you don't even know you, one, you're afraid to talk about it.
link |
And two, you don't know what the next steps are, like how can we seriously try to think
link |
about what you saw, how to think about how we further look for things like it, how we
link |
develop systems and plans for how in the future we can immediately collect a lot more data
link |
and try to react properly, you know, try to communicate, try to interpret this in the
link |
best way possible from the scientific perspective.
link |
And I, I just would love to remove stigma from this subject.
link |
Well, I think that's the first step we have done in this country, an absolutely terrible
link |
job with these things.
link |
So you go, and I joke, you know, go back to Roswell.
link |
So the first reports that came out of Roswell was we have this crash flying saucer.
link |
That's literally what came out.
link |
And then magically the next day it's a weather balloon and they're showing your pieces of
link |
mylar and you go, well, that doesn't look like what they showed us yesterday.
link |
Then you get into Project Blue Book, you know, so there's that whole series about Project
link |
But the bottom line of Project Blue Book is it really did two things.
link |
It investigated sightings and it did everything it could to debunk and disprove to the point
link |
where it actually went to discredit, you know, to make you look.
link |
So there's always been this, I don't know if you'd call it an aura around it or a mystique
link |
about UFOs that if you're talking about them, they're nuts.
link |
With ours, because I'm not a UFO guy, I'm not a junkie.
link |
If you ask me, do I believe that there's life outside of Earth, I would say you probably
link |
have a better chance of winning the mega ball lottery than we're the only planet that has
link |
life on it in the universe.
link |
The odds are against it.
link |
If you do just do the math, you have to accept, because there only has to be one other planet
link |
that has life on it and then I win and you lose.
link |
And then more and more science is showing that there's habitable planets out there,
link |
that yeah, everything we've learned so far, we know very little, but everything we've
link |
learned so far about the planets out there, exoplanets, Earth like planets, it seems that
link |
it's very likely that there's life out there.
link |
Intelligent life is another topic, but life.
link |
Well, we as humans, you know, and even more as Americans, we have this hubris about us
link |
that says, ha ha, we're it and you go, not so much.
link |
Maybe we're not so intelligent.
link |
Because we are, it's just how we learn.
link |
So our main mode of transportation and what people figured out years ago was the internal
link |
combustion engine, which led us to jet engines and solid rocket fuel.
link |
What if you're in another planet where you figured out the ability to create a gravity
link |
field or you used, you know, because electromagnetics are becoming bigger and bigger and bigger,
link |
you know, catapults on ships were steam powered and the new Gerald Ford is electromagnetic.
link |
Roller coasters used to use a chain to get you to the top of the hill.
link |
Now they shoot you with electromagnetics and you're going.
link |
So there's a whole new realm of propulsion that, you know, sometimes it's our ability
link |
to develop the technology to support theory.
link |
You know, we are just now proving, you know, recently theories that Einstein had where
link |
people actually joked about them.
link |
And now we actually have the technology to prove that gravity can bend light.
link |
You know, we've proven that.
link |
So you look at that way and you go, well, does that mean that, you know, 70 years ago
link |
Einstein was wrong or 80 years ago Einstein was wrong?
link |
Or do you go, we just didn't have the ability to look that deep into space to actually find
link |
something that we could, to actually measure.
link |
And you know, and I've seen this stuff.
link |
And that's just a hundred years and the kind of things that can happen in a few centuries.
link |
Look what we've done in the last 20 years.
link |
Let me direct, cause it's such an interesting topic from a career perspective, from a science
link |
perspective, you're, I mean, you've spoken, you've been brave in, you know, telling your
link |
story, not some dramatic thing, but just telling the things you've seen.
link |
Did it encounter, did it impact your career?
link |
Is that why more people haven't come out?
link |
Like you've mentioned Roswell, like how, what advice do you give to people, to the community,
link |
to me as a scientist for ways to go forward about this topic and still have a, you know,
link |
not being put in a bin in society that he's a loon or she's a loon or that person.
link |
Mine is to get away from the little green men, just divorce the two little green men.
link |
And you know, and I've talked to Lou Elizondo about this, you know, and the group that they're
link |
working with, which is incredible.
link |
I mean, they've got Steve Justice who used to run Skunk Works where they built, you know,
link |
Now, Lou Elizondo, as you mentioned, was a program director.
link |
He ran the ATIP program at the Pentagon.
link |
And ATIP was a program that was tasked with investigating any kind of UFOs, UAPs.
link |
So what's funny is the unofficial official report that I joke about, the guy who wrote
link |
the unofficial official report was actually an original member of ATIP.
link |
And the original stuff that ATIP did was FOIA exempt.
link |
And people go, how do you know that?
link |
I go, because I stood there with the memo in my hand that said these are, it literally,
link |
I watched the DOD memo that said it and it was signed.
link |
So that's why the, that's why I call it the unofficial official report.
link |
It was never, it was never releasable because people go, oh, I put in a FOIA request and
link |
I didn't get that.
link |
I go, well, just because you put in a FOIA request and get it, I go, because how much,
link |
how much time do you think that guy is going to spend to get you the information that you
link |
requested if he can't find it?
link |
I actually got called by the Navy.
link |
I had a commander in the Navy call me about right before the article came out in the New
link |
It was, this was starting to come back and she had called me because there's been, there
link |
was a FOIA request for stuff about the Nimitz incident.
link |
And I said, do you know of anything?
link |
She called me, she goes, do you know of anything else besides the situation reports that come
link |
And you know, and you got to remember when the situation report comes off the ship, that's
link |
So we tell someone, they tell someone, that person has to write it up.
link |
So there's all kinds of inaccuracies in it.
link |
But then there's the unofficial official report that's actually pretty well written.
link |
There's some errors in it, but it was, you know, I didn't help write it.
link |
And he did a really good job of researching it and figuring out who's who in the zoo and
link |
So she called me and said, is there anything out there?
link |
And I said, officially out there.
link |
I said, I don't know anything.
link |
I knew of the unofficial official report, which is that one, but I'm not, you know,
link |
if you don't know about it, I'm not going to tell you because it's not my job and nor
link |
I mean, did, in that whole situation, you mentioned Lou, I mean, did you think about
link |
your impact to your career?
link |
Just to get back to the question, do you think others, other pilots, other thing, other people
link |
like in the Roosevelt are thinking about this kind of thing, why aren't they talking about
link |
Why are people afraid to talk about this?
link |
Well, honestly, the military and the press, there's a distrust.
link |
I'll just tell you that right now.
link |
We typically don't like talking to the press because if I talk to you, you know, especially
link |
when I do, even the TV shows, you know, cause I've been on a couple of shows, when you look
link |
at it, you know, they come to my house and they film me for two hours.
link |
And then what you see on the screen is five minutes.
link |
Well, and the other thing with the press, let me give you my perspective from Autonomous
link |
Vehicles is the clipping happens, yes.
link |
But also the incompetence.
link |
Let me just call out journalists.
link |
They're not thinking, I mean, so here's the thing, I have a PhD and I've taken painfully
link |
too many classes from like physics, math, and I also have a deep curiosity about the
link |
That seems to be missing with journalism.
link |
So you're talking to a person who is not going to push the story forward in an interesting
link |
way, not the story, but the actual investigation of perhaps one of the most amazing things
link |
that humans have witnessed in history.
link |
Like you, it might've been nothing, who knows what you witnessed might've been from a sort
link |
of debunking perspective, might've been some kind of trick of mind.
link |
You and others have hallucinated something that could be some simple explanation, but
link |
possibly it was something not of this world and to not do justice to this story from a
link |
scientific perspective, it seems at best negligence.
link |
And so that's true for journalists, that's true for other scientists.
link |
It's just a human nature.
link |
If we see something that we can't explain, then sometimes if you just, eh, maybe it's
link |
just me and you let it go away and you don't think about it, maybe it'll just, you ignore
link |
The other side is the inquisitive mind that says, well, what was that?
link |
And I want to dig more into it.
link |
And if you look at it or you're going against the norm, you can get ostracized.
link |
And if you look at, and Einstein's the perfect example, I mean, when he started coming up
link |
with some of his theories, some of the top physicists in the world were like, dude, you're
link |
He's, he's literally proving them, but he didn't have, you know, he proved them in theory,
link |
but he didn't have the means to actually do the experiment to prove his theory.
link |
There's a great book that I recommend people read called Proving Einstein Right by Jim
link |
Gates that talks about like the hard work that people try to do years after to try to
link |
experimentally validate the predictions that Einstein made with, with his theories.
link |
But yes, at the time, it's kind of crazy what he's saying.
link |
If you look at it back at the time, don't we, we look at it now and go, well, the guy
link |
was a walking genius and he was, but if you go back in time when he was doing it, it was
link |
like, what are you talking about?
link |
But one of the challenges is your eyewitness.
link |
One of the challenges is you're essentially an eyewitness account.
link |
Like we don't have good data.
link |
We have very limited data of the incident that you've experienced.
link |
So let me kind of dig in, let me just ask some questions of maybe to see if there's,
link |
just to paint more and more of the picture.
link |
One you kind of mentioned, so Tic Tac Shape, let's break apart two situations.
link |
Let's look at the actual eye account, the eyewitness account that you saw with your
link |
What's the, what can you say about the shape of the thing?
link |
Is there interesting aspects outside of the Tic Tac?
link |
Like, is there any appendages?
link |
Is there some texture to it that, no smooth white Tic Tac, you know, we don't, you don't
link |
see there's no, no wings, no visible propulsion, no windows, no probes that we could see.
link |
We don't notice, like I said, we don't see the little things on the bottom of it until
link |
we see the video in the TV mode when it's zoomed in, right before it's shortly, you
link |
kind of see them zoom in.
link |
You don't see it typically on the YouTube stuff that's out there, or remember we're
link |
looking at the original tape, so there's not, there's basically no degradation.
link |
But when you saw with your eyes, there's no kind of appendages.
link |
What about, like somebody asked, a lot of people asked you questions.
link |
So I appreciate you spending your time here.
link |
Let me ask some of them.
link |
Did you, I mean, you chased it, so we flew close to it, relatively speaking.
link |
Was there, did you feel any wake?
link |
Like any, did you feel it in any way in terms of your interaction, like aerodynamically?
link |
So another aspect of it, there's an interesting thing you've developed a feel for, for objects
link |
Did you feel like it was surprised by your arrival?
link |
Or did it, let me ask a few questions around it.
link |
So did you, did it feel like the thing was surprised?
link |
Did it feel like it wanted to be seen, almost to show off its capability?
link |
And did it, what did it feel like relative to if you were doing a, an air fight against
link |
a sort of like a, I don't know, a foreign jet?
link |
So one, I think it, I think it knew we were there when we showed up.
link |
It's just, it's me.
link |
It's kind of like an animal.
link |
If you've ever been around deer in a field, you know, the deer will look up and if it
link |
sees you and you're on the other side of the field, it'll actually go no threat and it'll
link |
You know, they don't put their tail up.
link |
As you move closer to the deer, then it goes, oh, it's there and I'm going to react or I'm
link |
So as we were up high and it's down doing whatever it was doing, you know, which I don't
link |
know if someone asks, what do you think?
link |
I go, oh, maybe it was communicating with something.
link |
I joked on good morning America.
link |
Maybe it's like talking to the whales, kind of like Star Trek, you know, and actually
link |
It was kind of funny, but yeah, we're a little human centric.
link |
We think like it would, it'd show up to talk to us, but maybe he's talking to the dolphins.
link |
It was to whatever, you know, cause it was hanging around that whitewater and I don't
link |
know if it was, there's something there as a seamount.
link |
We just didn't find it again.
link |
But once we started to descend and it actually reoriented its longitudinal axis and it started
link |
mirroring us coming up and it was obviously where we were there and it was really coming
link |
Just, you know, you figure I'm at 20 and it's coming up and it ends up getting up to 12
link |
where I cut across the circle.
link |
I think it was very aware that we were there because it interacted.
link |
We call it a two circle fight when you're fighting another airplane.
link |
But you know, was it, was, were we afraid?
link |
I mean, and to me it was more curious, you know, the curiosity overcomes any fear that
link |
And I always felt to be honest, if I was inside the airplane, especially as long as much time
link |
as I'd spent inside the airplane flying and doing stuff, I felt totally, it was like a
link |
I mean, I felt totally comfortable inside the airplane as most, you can't, if you're
link |
in the airplane and you feel scared, it's not the job for you.
link |
You have to feel that because the airplane is part of you now.
link |
You know, I am inside, I have the stick, I have the throttles, I've got my wizzo in the
link |
back seat, he's running all the displays.
link |
We're in the state of the art airplane, you know, brand new.
link |
You feel pretty good.
link |
And then you get something that, you know, can climb from the surface up and then accelerate
link |
like it did, like it was like no big deal, you know, for an airplane, if you just put
link |
me from a standstill, let's just say slow flight, just get me at a hundred knots above
link |
And for me to, you can't just start a climb, I'd have to lower the nose, I'd have to accelerate
link |
and then I'd have to start coming up and this thing just like, just did it like it was like
link |
You mentioned that like kind of your reaction to it was, it like, it's something that you
link |
would love to fly almost.
link |
So this object, just the curiosity you experienced is like, like what it almost like, what the
link |
heck is that piece of technology and I want to fly it.
link |
Like what made you feel like it's something that you could fly?
link |
Do you think it's something that a human could fly?
link |
Like in terms of interpreting what you saw as a piece of technology, because another
link |
perspective on it is it was not that the thing under the water was the key thing.
link |
And what you were seeing is some kind of projection or something that like, I don't think it was
link |
I think it was a real object.
link |
It was an op, a physical hard object that could be flyed.
link |
I think all four of us will tell you the same thing.
link |
It wasn't, it wasn't, this was not, cause you go, okay, let's just go on.
link |
It's a light projection.
link |
Well, if we were both sitting next to each other and we were looking at it from the exact
link |
same angle and all that, and I go, okay, there's a, in theory you could have that, but with
link |
an 8,000 foot altitude difference flying, you know, and they're, you know, she's probably
link |
not directly above me.
link |
She's kind of hanging out watching this whole thing happen.
link |
You know, you're getting two different perspectives from two different altitudes over a clear
link |
You know, if you've ever been at sea and I don't mean like coast, I mean like when you
link |
get out at sea, the ocean is the bluest, it's incredible.
link |
You know, you've got a bright white object over a deep blue ocean that you got pretty
link |
And for this thing just to disappear, it wasn't, I'm telling you, I would, I mean, I know we,
link |
we all have the same recollection of what happened.
link |
You know, there's some details because it's so long ago, but for the most part, we know
link |
what we saw and we all came back and looked at each other like, what the hell was that?
link |
What if, I mean, do you think about the thing under the water that's not often talked about
link |
if there's something under the water, couldn't have been something gigantic?
link |
Like, do you ever think of this?
link |
Big ship comes up.
link |
I mean, that's why as a person, so I love like swimming out into the ocean by miles
link |
and Olympic swimmers.
link |
Like I love that feeling, but I'm also terrified when I swim because the abyss, it could, anything
link |
could be under there.
link |
Like there's not enough focus on that perhaps because there's no visibility, but is it,
link |
is there anything interesting to say about the possibility that was anything underneath
link |
I mean, think about it.
link |
If you're going to hide on this planet, what's the least explored spot on the planet?
link |
Two thirds of it's the ocean.
link |
There's literally, I mean, come on, the Malaysia airplane, the triple seven, it was a triple
link |
seven that crashed.
link |
You know, they turned, they didn't go where they're supposed to and they just disappeared
link |
and they've been searching for it and they found pieces of it, but you would think there's
link |
large objects that, you know, when that thing hit the water, depending on how it broke up,
link |
there's big pieces that would be, you'd find something, they haven't found anything except
link |
So to hide something underwater I think would be easy.
link |
Let's go a little bit in speculation land, but it's the best, it's the best we can do,
link |
which is the basic question of what do you think was it?
link |
So if you had to put money on it, is it like advanced human created technology?
link |
Is it alien technology?
link |
Is it an unknown physical phenomena?
link |
You know, like a ball lightning, for example, there's a lot of fascinating things we probably
link |
humans don't really understand.
link |
Is it like I said, some perception cognition that led you some kind of hallucination that
link |
made you to misinterpret the things you were seeing?
link |
Let me put those things on the table.
link |
Or is it misinterpretation of some known physical phenomena like an ice cloud or something like
link |
What do you think it was?
link |
I don't think it's an ice cloud because ice clouds don't fly around and react to you.
link |
Do I think it was a light?
link |
I'd say no, because of the aspects and what we looked and watched it do.
link |
What do you mean by light?
link |
Like a light ball, you know, some type of perception, you know, there's their experience
link |
like plasma, you can do plasma and you can go, oh, I can see it, but it's really not,
link |
you know, it's plasma.
link |
So you would see distortions, I think, as it moved.
link |
I'm not a theoretical physicist and some, you know, I'm not an MIT.
link |
I would say no, I mean, it looked from all my experience and I had quite a bit of it
link |
when this happened, no, I think it was a hard object.
link |
It was aware that we were there.
link |
It reacted exactly like if I was another airplane and I had to come up and do something exactly
link |
You know, it mirrored me.
link |
It wasn't aggressive.
link |
You know, there's talk, oh, it flopped behind us.
link |
It was never offensive on us.
link |
It never did that.
link |
It just mirrored us.
link |
So as we're coming down, it's just like, you know, you're kind of, you know, you said you
link |
do martial arts, you know, or wrestling, you know, you see people out on the, when they
link |
get into the ring, especially with collegiate wrestling, cause my roommate in college was
link |
a collegiate wrestler.
link |
So I de facto became a wrestler cause he beat me up every night and we joke.
link |
I talked to him literally probably three, four times a week.
link |
But you know, you see wrestlers when they get out, they kind of, you're kind of feeling
link |
each other as you walk and boxers do the same thing.
link |
It was doing that same thing.
link |
It's like, what's going on as it comes around, as it comes around and then it was like, Hey,
link |
we're going to get here.
link |
And then when I got too close to it, you know, it decided I'm out of here.
link |
And then it did something that we've never seen.
link |
The other question is what if I didn't cut across the circle, what if I just kept going
link |
We just keep going.
link |
I could have just watched it.
link |
I mean, my one regret out of the whole thing is we have a camera in our helmet and the
link |
There's a little camera, but we never use it because it's nauseating to watch because
link |
you've ever put a GoPro on someone's head where they're looking around like this all
link |
the time, it'll nauseate you.
link |
So we never turn that on and all, you know, it's the one thing I didn't do is reach down
link |
and hit the switch, you know, and then we didn't go back and cause our tapes didn't
link |
have anything cause we didn't get it on radar.
link |
Because I tried to lock it up because I can move the radar with my head, but I couldn't,
link |
The radar wouldn't lock.
link |
And so, so then the question is, and this is unanswerable, but let's try to get some
link |
Do you think it's human, like advanced human created technology that's simply top secret
link |
that we're just not aware of?
link |
Or is it not something not of this world?
link |
So you, if you'd asked me in 2004, I just said, I don't know if you ask me now.
link |
So we're coming up on 16 years ago for a technology like that, you know, and let's assume that
link |
it didn't have a conventional propulsion system in it because I don't think it did.
link |
I would like to think that if we had a technology that would advance mankind leaps and bounds
link |
from what we normally do, then it would start coming out.
link |
But to hide something like that for 16 years, you know, and I understand, you know, and
link |
I don't speak for the United States government and I never will speak for the United States
link |
government, but I understand how some of that stuff works for classification levels and
link |
why we classify stuff, you know, is it detrimental to national defense?
link |
But there's a point where you have to look and go, if we had a technology like this that
link |
could literally change the way mankind travels, how we get things into space, our ability
link |
to do things, you know, you talk about, you know, are we going to go to Mars?
link |
Well, if you have something that has the ability to go, because remember, these things were
link |
coming down when the cruiser tractor from above 80,000 feet, which is space, and they
link |
would come down and they would come straight down, they'd hang out at like 20,000 feet
link |
and then three or four hours later, they'd go back up.
link |
You don't have anything that can come down, hang out and once, you know, and I'm talking
link |
hold out in a spot.
link |
Well, we all know there's winds.
link |
They're not drifting like a balloon.
link |
They're just sitting there and then they would go back up and they tracked up to the, when
link |
I talked to the controller, he's like, we've seen up to 10 of these things.
link |
There's other guys and it was raining and all this other, let's just say they tracked
link |
a groups of these things coming down, hanging out and going up.
link |
So it's not just propulsion and the way it moves, it's also fuel.
link |
The whole of it indicates a kind of technology that's highly advanced, but you don't think
link |
in your sense that you actually don't know, but you know more than a lot of people, in
link |
your sense, the top secret military technology, if you think about skunkworks, if you think
link |
about it like that, cannot be more than 15 years ahead.
link |
I would say for a leap like that, and a perfect example in modern times is the 117.
link |
Because now a lot of the data on the 117 is out like it was developed at this time.
link |
It flew for this long before it was actually acknowledged by the United States government.
link |
That's the stealth fighter, the original stealth fighter, not the B2, but the stealth fighter.
link |
So you look at that, you know, yeah, you can, I think you can hide things for a while.
link |
But I think a technology, a leap, I mean, this is not a, hey, we developed this and
link |
we're kind of pushing the edge of technology.
link |
This is a giant leap in technology.
link |
You know, and the other one is, do we have the basis to do that?
link |
You know, because usually when you have a technology like that, universities, especially
link |
the one you're working at, MIT, a lot of the leading edge stuff is coming out of the top
link |
tier universities, you know, so you've got MIT, you've got Caltech, you've got Stanford,
link |
Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, I'm just naming schools, Naval Postgraduate
link |
School is another one.
link |
There's usually indicators, there's papers of, hey, this is where we're going.
link |
I don't think there's a whole bunch of papers on developing a gravity based propulsion system
link |
that literally, I've got an object, because how do you, how much power would it cost to
link |
create a gravity field of your own that could actually be strong enough to counter the giant
link |
orb that we live on?
link |
Also by the way, you mentioned gravity based.
link |
That's kind of like the hypothesizing that people do in terms of propulsion, like what
link |
kind of propulsion would have to be involved in order to result in that kind of movement.
link |
To me, all the gravity discussion just seems insane from a physics perspective, but of
link |
course it would seem insane until it's not.
link |
Because remember, we only know what we know, which is very little.
link |
Someone has to think out of the box to go, is this possible at all?
link |
So you're saying that if you had to bet money, all your money, it would be something that's
link |
alien technology, so it's not human created technology.
link |
Well, I don't like to get into little green men, but I would say that I don't think we've
link |
I don't think we've developed it.
link |
Because the other one, someone asked me, they said, what if there wasn't, maybe it was just
link |
a drone, maybe it was a UAV that got sent here from someplace else.
link |
I mean, we've got stuff out there flying around.
link |
I mean, I'd like to sit around and talk to some of the giant brains that think this stuff
link |
I was supposed to be on a podcast with one of them.
link |
Which you mean for drones?
link |
Just space travel technology.
link |
Because if you look at where we're going, because everyone talks about Mars, and you're
link |
okay, and we're, hey, are we going to be able to colonize?
link |
And I know Elon is big into that.
link |
Yeah, what do you think about Elon, SpaceX, NASA?
link |
We put humans back up there.
link |
My theory, so it's funny because I know one of the guys that was, he was one of the original
link |
employees at SpaceX.
link |
He's a friend of mine, and I won't say his name.
link |
But he knows Elon.
link |
And he actually worked on the entire Falcon 1 project.
link |
He's one of the lead guys on that.
link |
So he's got some great, as a matter of fact, there's a movie, there's a book coming out
link |
that comes out in about a year on this.
link |
The original, the first years of space, first six years of SpaceX.
link |
And he's named in the book.
link |
And they're supposed to make a movie on it.
link |
So I'm like, hey, who's going to play it?
link |
But what he's done, to me, it changed the game, and here's why.
link |
Because I said, I think it was 62 when Eisenhower warned of the industrial defense complex.
link |
Which it has become, everything he warned us of, it has become, and it's really driven
link |
by, there's the big three in defense, which is really Northrop, Lockheed, and Boeing.
link |
Those are the big, those are your biggest, and Raytheon's kind of right, like a subset
link |
But Raytheon's pretty big too.
link |
But in US defense, those are the big guys, right?
link |
That's actually where a lot of military guys go when they retire, they go do stuff like
link |
And you look at that, and you go, and the way government contracting is working, and
link |
how we charge, and why things cost so much.
link |
And then you go, you got Elon, who's got an ego, and he doesn't like to do things a certain
link |
And I've talked to the guy that worked there on, because the government likes to have oversight
link |
of contracts, where he was like, no, just tell me what you want, I'll build it, and
link |
I'll give you a bill when it's done.
link |
And then if I do it for half the price, I make a ton of money, because he's a money
link |
driven guy, which I like, capitalism at its best.
link |
So now you look at the two things.
link |
So you got the SpaceX, which is the Dragon capsule, right?
link |
And then you've got Boeing.
link |
So Elon did what Boeing is contracted to do in less time for half the money.
link |
And oh, by the way, because he can reuse the boosters, because they come back and land,
link |
and you don't have to, like Morton Thicol, we've reused them on the space shuttle.
link |
But they had to take them all apart and do a bunch of stuff, because they landed in Saltwater,
link |
and then he had to put them all back together.
link |
Where Elon gets them down, because I was joking with this guy, go, what do they do?
link |
Do they like rehaul, overhaul, because no, actually they clean them up, and they can
link |
They're reusable systems.
link |
Incredible leap in technology that no one thought of, but here's a private company.
link |
So being able to put people in the capsule and the spacesuits, I mean, it's literally
link |
like sci fi when you watch when they went up.
link |
So I'm a huge fan of what he and his company have been able to do, because the fact that
link |
we were paying huge amounts of money to the Russian government, and oh, by the way, if
link |
you didn't know, because I have some friends that are astronauts, they all have to learn
link |
And they have to do, it's what, level five, where the test is a phone call, where they
link |
call you up and they, because they would go, so I went to the pinning, two friends of mine.
link |
The one actually had a mission date, the one got one later.
link |
So it's cool when you're watching your friends doing a spacewalk, because I would pull up,
link |
because if I knew what was going on, I'd pull up the NASA thing.
link |
I was in a meeting one day, and I've got NASA on and makers out there floating around doing
link |
And I saw one, he's in the space station while they're doing a spacewalk, so it's kind of
link |
cool when you go, oh yeah, I know that dude, he's up there in space, floating around.
link |
So when you look at what those, they're capable of doing, and then you go, what Elon is bringing
link |
to the fact that now it's back in America, it's actually, to me, it's cost effective
link |
for us to be able to do more stuff.
link |
I think it opens the door to, do we go back to the moon?
link |
Is there a reason to go back to the moon?
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Personally, I think if they're really going to go, in years from now, go to Mars, I think
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that the moon is the stepping stone to go back, to start proving some of the technology,
link |
to go, hey, we can build this, we can get on the moon, and now we can get back off the
link |
Because we did this on less than a compact computer in the 60s, which is the whole reason
link |
that I flew, because I'm obsessed.
link |
Matter of fact, I have the giant Lego Apollo at home, and the Lander, and I have one that
link |
my dad built me in 1969, right after that, and Neil Armstrong's an Ohio boy, and so
link |
Matter of fact, I have a picture of him in a car in Wapakonet, Ohio, at the parade after
link |
he walked on the moon, because his parents didn't live far from my aunt and uncle in
link |
Wapakoneta, and they were out at the parade.
link |
So I've been obsessed with this since I was a child.
link |
Do you hope to, do you think, do you hope that you'll go out to space one day?
link |
If I had the opportunity, I'd go in a second.
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Because, I mean, that's one of the hopes of the commercial space flight, is that, you
link |
know, like people like, I mean, it would be tourism, but you certainly wouldn't want to,
link |
in terms of, you're not kind of a civilian, right, I mean, in a sense that you're just
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a normal person, you're not a 5G pilot currently, but it seems like if we send a civilian up,
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there would be somebody like you in the next, like, 20 years.
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I'd be, you know, if Elon wants to throw me on one of those things, I'd be all over
link |
I'd be like, okay, but, you know, sometimes you gotta get your kicks while you're alive.
link |
I'd love to hear that discussion with your wife.
link |
Listen, there's the pros and cons.
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She's, I mean, I've known her since high school, so she, yeah, she knows how I am, you know.
link |
Most people that know me are like, yeah, you're pretty much the same person you were in high
link |
You know, I was a class clown and I still am that way.
link |
So let me ask you this question.
link |
So I'm talking to Elon again soon, I'm curious to get your perspective on it.
link |
If I wanted to talk to him about TICTAC, about these weird out there propulsion ideas, which
link |
are obviously, just like you said, if there's something to it, if it can be investigated
link |
somehow, it would be extremely useful for us to understand in the effort of developing
link |
propulsion systems that can get us cheaply out to space.
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What should Elon think about this stuff?
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What should he do?
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What should people like him do?
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I think people need to open their aperture up and stay off of, take the next step and
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go, you know, we are tied to fuels and either solid rocket or liquid or whatever we do,
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but it's a thrust generated where we rapidly expand gas to create thrust, which is really
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in layman's terms, you know, we can get into what, but that's what it does.
link |
If you have something that you can contain that is a fuel source that would last a significant
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amount of time, you know, those rocket boosters go and when they're done, they're done.
link |
There's enough to get them back down and that's it.
link |
There's not a huge, you know, they're not coming back and go, oh, I still got three
link |
quarters of a tank.
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Let's bolt them on and do it again.
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His system's not doing that.
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But you know, the way contracting, especially in the government, the government has tons
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of money, but you got to remember the government has to justify how they spend our tax dollars
link |
for the most part.
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There are times where they can hide money in the budget to get stuff done.
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But then when you look at, and I'm just going to throw a few out there, but if you look
link |
at what Amazon, you know, does with Bezos and you've got Elon, there's some big money
link |
I mean, you're talking, you know, Bezos alone could buy companies like big companies.
link |
Apple's another one.
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These companies had huge, huge amounts of money.
link |
And then just go over to the Gates Foundation and they've got gazillions and gazillions
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We've got universities.
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There's so much money out there.
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If we really wanted to do it, aside from what the government wants to do, because we do
link |
live in a free society, I think there's enough to go, how do we do this?
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And because when you work outside of what the government would want to do, let's, we're
link |
not working on this necessarily for the United States, although I am a huge giant.
link |
You're talking to somebody born in the Soviet.
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I can't believe you agreed to this.
link |
But, but when I haven't killed me yet, you're here and you've been here for a while.
link |
I'm an American citizen.
link |
I'm actually pretty much American.
link |
But see, when you do that, so you look at, let's just look at American universities.
link |
There are some brilliant minds and we'll just use MIT because you worked down there.
link |
There's some brilliant minds, but there's a huge chunk of those brilliant minds that
link |
are not American citizens.
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So if you want to get into government stuff and you are not an American citizen, it gets
link |
really, really, really hard.
link |
But if I take money like Bezos money, Elon money, and they, let's just say they want
link |
They can split it up 50, 50, the two of them when the technology gets developed.
link |
But now I'm not constrained by who has to do the work.
link |
I just want to make sure that I try and keep it in the United States because technology
link |
And if it gets developed and gets over to where a country gets a hold of it and then
link |
just basically uses it for their own, because you save them all the research time, you don't
link |
But if we can get to the point where we can, we do it on the International Space Station.
link |
We realize that space was too expensive for one country to do alone.
link |
So we made the International Space Station and we have a conglomerate.
link |
That's the one thing that the Russians and the U.S. actually work together on.
link |
We work together on space because we realize it's way too expensive for us to do alone
link |
So we've got this thing that's been out there floating around for God, now what is it, like
link |
20 years that thing's been up there floating around?
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So it's getting old.
link |
We're going to have to replace parts and do stuff.
link |
But if we can pool the money together and come up with something that would literally
link |
change mankind and change travel and allow us to actually do a more effective thing of
link |
engineering, because if you develop that technology, you don't even have to send a man person.
link |
If you can develop a technology that's so, and with our automation and where we're progressing
link |
and our competing power to send something out that's not just floating around when,
link |
you know, that can react a lot quicker, something that could actually go down to the surface
link |
So right now, everything we get out of Mars, it goes down there and then it just sends
link |
But if I've got a technology that can go up there really quick, I'm not worried about
link |
I don't have life support systems and all that.
link |
But if it can go down, it can go, it can cruise around, it can hover above, it can take samples
link |
and it can actually take Martian soil and then bring it back.
link |
So we can analyze it here.
link |
That's a game changer.
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It's a complete game changer because it opens up all the planets.
link |
So in a sense, the Tic Tac is a symbol.
link |
So whatever you think, even from a debunking perspective, there's a nonzero probability
link |
that it's alien technology.
link |
In that sense, it serves as a beacon of hope and a reason to, like you said, widen the
link |
aperture and to invest big amounts of money into thinking outside the box.
link |
It's almost a hope to say we can do better propulsion.
link |
We can overcome physics in an order of magnitude better way and it's worthwhile to try.
link |
I think, and I don't think the money, if you look at a big picture with the amount of money,
link |
some that's out there floating around these private companies, I think if you said, hey,
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I've got, let's just say a hundred million dollars, which really a hundred million dollars
link |
relative to Bezos has got, what, a hundred and some billion dollars in that work.
link |
So if he said, hey, a hundred million dollars, you drop a hundred million dollars and I go
link |
and I'm going to put a, like the government will send a broad area announcement out that
link |
says, hey, we're looking for this technology or a DARPA program.
link |
But what if I just said, hey, who's to stop Bezos and Elon from doing that on their own
link |
to say, hey, I want to go pool universities because they have fewer restrictions because
link |
it's not tax dollars.
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They don't have the checks inbound.
link |
They can do whatever they want.
link |
So their money, sorry about that, to go, hey, I'm going to put this out and I'm going
link |
to get the best physicists that are working at CERN, that are at MIT, that are at Caltech,
link |
at the schools I mentioned.
link |
And, oh, by the way, a few of these guys are propulsion experts and I'm going to basically,
link |
I'm going to fund you guys for 10 years.
link |
So you get $10 million a year and I'm going to give you your salaries and we're going
link |
to do that or whatever the amount works.
link |
So let's cut it down to five so we can pay you well, right?
link |
To do the research.
link |
But, oh, by the way, the research is, it's not classified, but it's controlled.
link |
So we're not going to publicly just put this out in journals, but if we make a leap that
link |
we think would advance because although those, let's say there's 10 of them, those 10 scientists
link |
come up with something and they put out a paper, there might be a number 11 at another
link |
university that reads that paper and says, hey, I kind of had this idea and now you can
link |
get a thought pool that pushes us in and gets us out of the mindset.
link |
Because we have a tendency to, we evolve the stuff that we create, but it's like I was
link |
joking because I know a ton of guys with PhDs and girls.
link |
And I said, but how much, when a person gets a PhD in engineering, how much new math is
link |
really being done?
link |
I said, there's a handful of people in the world that are really doing, I'm talking Stephen
link |
Hawkins type brilliance that is going, I'm really doing something that's totally different.
link |
That's a big dramatic thing now going on in physics that everybody's converged towards
link |
this local minima or local maxima, whatever you think about it.
link |
And it's again, same as with the TICTAC, thinking outside the box is not accepted and it probably
link |
But it's hard because if you go back, go back to Einstein, back to the original, he was
link |
He did not think the norm.
link |
That's true genius.
link |
Had he not thought out of the box and came up with some of his theories, where would
link |
Okay, we're jumping around a little bit.
link |
So we've talked a little bit about Elon and Mars and space, but let me jump back to a
link |
few questions that folks had.
link |
I have to kind of bring up some debunking stuff because I think not the actual facts
link |
of the debunking, but the nature of the true believers versus the debunkers hurts my heart
link |
a little bit because people are just talking past each other, but let me kind of bring
link |
Mick West, I've just recently started to pay attention just in preparing to talk to you
link |
And Mick West is one of the better known people who kind of makes a career out of trying to
link |
Sort of his natural approach to all situations is that of a skeptic.
link |
I think it's very useful and powerful, especially for me coming from a scientific perspective
link |
to take the approach he does.
link |
And I think no matter what, I think there's, I hope that people, quote unquote, true believers
link |
are a little bit more open minded to the work of Mick West.
link |
I think it's quite useful and brilliant work.
link |
So let me ask, he has a bunch of videos, a bunch of ideas where he kind of suggests possible
link |
other explanations of the things that were out there.
link |
He has some explanations of the things that you've seen in with the Tic Tac, like with
link |
He says that it's possible that you miscalculated the size and the distance of the thing and
link |
so on when you were flying around.
link |
I don't find that as, I mean, maybe you can comment on that.
link |
Let me do it right now.
link |
So, cause that comes up.
link |
Like how, how did you know it was about 40 feet long?
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I go, okay, so 16 years flying against other airplanes, know what stuff looks like.
link |
You know, I've looked down on things.
link |
So if I know, I know, here's the known things.
link |
I know when we saw the Tic Tac, I was at 20,000 feet ish, right around there.
link |
So when I look down, I know what a Hornet looks like looking down on them cause I've
link |
done it for all those years.
link |
I mean, I got a good idea.
link |
So that's, that's why I said 40 feet cause it's about Hornet size.
link |
So and as I go around, you know, you get to the point where you have to be able to judge
link |
distance when we fly out of experience and you can tell if something small or big, you
link |
So I would argue the fact of, you know, peer experiences, you know, professional observers,
link |
which is what we're actually trained to do.
link |
And having done it for so long, no, it was, and everyone came back with the same thing.
link |
They're like, yeah, it's about size of Hornet.
link |
From a human factors perspective, how often in your experience of those 16 years do you
link |
find that eyes, what you see is the incorrect state of things.
link |
So like how often do you make mistakes with vision?
link |
You actually, you make vision issues a lot because you're, and the sad part is, is your
link |
brain believes what your eyes see.
link |
We are actually trained to do the opposite of that, especially when you instrument fly
link |
because your brain and eyes can tell you one thing, but you got to trust your instruments.
link |
Let's go back to landing at night.
link |
So your eyes assume that the runway and your brain assumes that
link |
the runway is fixed, but you know that the runway is moving.
link |
So if I try and do stuff visually, I would, you die every time, not every time, but you
link |
die close to every time trying to land on a boat.
link |
So we actually use instruments, which are counter to your brain.
link |
So, and there's actually all kinds of things that we go through in training.
link |
They have this thing, I think they still use it.
link |
It's called the MSDD multi spatial disorientation device or the spin and puke.
link |
It looks like a giant carousel and you're in these little modules.
link |
And when you get out, you think the thing goes really fast and they can, you can make
link |
yourself think that I'm descending or climbing, but we were actually only going around in
link |
circles at a very slow rate, as fast as a human can talk.
link |
But as they spin you around in a little sub thing and slow it down and speed it up, your
link |
body does this and you, you know, and then by visuals of showing you like they can spin
link |
it sideways to the outside wall, but they can show like lines that are, they can make
link |
the line stand still because they're moving the same velocity.
link |
They can move the other way and you'll think you're screaming.
link |
You see it in amusement parks all the time.
link |
You do all that because it gives you a sense of the A, but you're really not doing, you're
link |
So we get trained on all that stuff.
link |
So if you, if you want to look at it and go, well, you're, you're disoriented or this,
link |
I'd be like, I'd argue going, no, I'm not.
link |
Because you know, when I'm flying the airplane, even as I'm looking at the Tic Tac, I've got
link |
a heads up display that tells me what my airplane's doing.
link |
So I've got, I know what I'm doing.
link |
I can look outside.
link |
I've got a sense of what I'm doing, but I'm also looking inside to cross check of what
link |
I'm seeing is in reality, what I'm doing.
link |
You actually, your brain gotten good at combining almost adding extra sensory information.
link |
You have to, you have like supervision, so you're combining what you're seeing and adjusting
link |
what the sensors, what you call an instruments are giving you.
link |
And that, that in turn is a loop that adjusts the perception system that like, that, that
link |
adjusts your brain's interpretation of what you're saying.
link |
You'd be amazed at how good, so here's a, here's another example.
link |
So if we go out over the water, so there's no land in sight and we're going to fight.
link |
So when we fight, you know, two airplanes, we're going to dog fight.
link |
As an instructor and I was for all, most of my time, you have to come back and you have
link |
So we call it drawing arrows.
link |
So you have to recreate that stuff.
link |
So you get pretty good at going, you know, like I would take off and say, all right,
link |
we're starting heading due east and I know where the sun is at because in the short couple
link |
minutes that we're going to fight, the sun's really not going to move much.
link |
It's going to be in a relative zone.
link |
I know that the sun is at, you know, let's just say 195 degrees, right?
link |
So I'm starting going east and it's actually be down off my right hand side.
link |
So now I know as I'm fighting, cause in the water you don't have any reference.
link |
And you can't use clouds cause clouds do move.
link |
But you got to come back cause you go, here's where I started.
link |
And then you, when, as soon as you end, you go, all right, I ended heading 355.
link |
And then you recreate the turns and the amount of turns and use the sun relative.
link |
So you can create this entire battle that went on with arrows so that you can come back
link |
and debrief the guy that you were teaching on exactly what happened.
link |
And you get really, really good at that.
link |
So when you come up and go, well, Dave, how do you know you were at six oclock?
link |
And he went around and he came up here.
link |
I go, because I'm trained to do all that.
link |
And I take all the notes, why I'm flying, you can do it.
link |
But usually it's, you memorize it all and you get done and then you, as soon as you're
link |
done, you knock it off, you look at the other airplane, you get set and you start writing
link |
all your notes down.
link |
And you're writing it really fast on your card and you go out with a stack of cards
link |
and you stick the new one on your knee board card so you're ready to go and here's the
link |
It's kind of, it's in some way similar to what like at the, at the highest level chess
link |
I mean, you're, I mean, they, they, they recap the games.
link |
But the, the richness of the representation that they use in remembering like how the
link |
It's not like it's much richer than the actual moves.
link |
It's like these, a bunch of patterns that are hard to put into words, like, like all
link |
the richness of thinking they have about the way the game evolved.
link |
It's more like instinctual from years and years of experience.
link |
So they try to put it into words, but they really can't.
link |
I understand that.
link |
It's because for us, if we don't come back with anything, then there's no learning to
link |
Because the whole thing is the debrief when we get back and we talk about, that's really
link |
where the learning is.
link |
And it's the same thing if you want to go back to chess, you know, when you start off,
link |
you try and learn because you're remembering what you're doing.
link |
If you play against someone, I'm always a big place, play with someone better than you.
link |
That's how you learn.
link |
If you're constantly beating people, you're not learning anything.
link |
You're just learning that they're not good and you're better.
link |
When you challenge yourself against someone that is better than you, you learn.
link |
So I learned how to fight an airplane with, he's actually one of my best friends, we'll
link |
I won't give his call sign because I don't know what his name is.
link |
So Tom took me out and taught me how to fight because Tom had just left Top Gun.
link |
He was the training officer at Top Gun, which so that's the guy, the training officer is
link |
the main guy at Top Gun.
link |
So Tom was the training officer at Top Gun.
link |
So Tom, when I learned, because I had come out of A6 and we really don't fight because
link |
So I get in F18s and I want to learn how to fight because it's a whole other side of the
link |
It's the F and F fighter attack.
link |
The F18 is fighter attack.
link |
So I had to learn how to fight.
link |
So now I got one of the best fighter pilots in the world who's going to teach me how to
link |
And I would do something and then he would go, I'd get to a situation where I had never
link |
And then I would go, well, I'm going to do this.
link |
And then he would destroy me and he would come back and go, here's why you don't do
link |
And then I would take that knowledge and I would put it in my little basket of tricks.
link |
And over time, because you don't, no one walks out into that world.
link |
I don't care how gifted of an aviator and go, I am the man or the woman.
link |
No, it's a learning process.
link |
And so over all those years, you've gotten good.
link |
So what are the chances that your eyes betrays you when you saw the Tic Tac?
link |
Well, I mean, I'm not zero.
link |
Yeah, I am ninety nine point nine percent.
link |
So point one percent.
link |
My eyes deceive me.
link |
But remember, if it deceived me, it had to deceive the other four people.
link |
So the percentage is even lower.
link |
Well, I don't find that particular debunking case that you said, but I'm glad you put it.
link |
You you said those words out loud.
link |
So for me, from my perspective, coming into this world and looking at it, I'm a little
link |
bit more skeptical.
link |
So your eye account, I think, is the most fascinating story.
link |
And that I think that's inspiring to me and should be inspiring to a lot of scientists
link |
out there on so many levels, just like we said, an engineering level that maybe there's
link |
propulsion systems we can actually build that can do some crazy, amazing stuff.
link |
So it's at the very least intriguing and at the best inspiring.
link |
I just want to say that.
link |
But on the video side, it's like it's the videos for the Flir video, the go fast and
link |
They are only interesting to me to me in the context of your story.
link |
Like without that, they're kind of low resolution.
link |
It's like it it's easier to build a debunking story to be skeptical.
link |
So this is where I'm coming from.
link |
Maybe you can convince me otherwise.
link |
But so to bring up Mick West one more time, he looks at the Flir video and he says that
link |
one of the most amazing video parts of the Flir video for people haven't seen it is at
link |
the end of it, the Tic Tac flies or appears to fly very quickly to the left off the screen.
link |
And what Mick West says is that, you know, Mick West, probably others, that the way to
link |
explain that is the tracking system.
link |
Like we said, this vision based tracking simply loses the like the object.
link |
The tracking loses it.
link |
And so it simply allows the object to float off screen because it's no longer tracking
link |
So I find that at least a plausible explanation of that video.
link |
Looking at your face, you do not.
link |
So can you maybe comment to that to that debunking aspect?
link |
So it's funny how people can extrapolate stuff who've never operated the system.
link |
And that's like me going because I'm a big Formula One fan.
link |
You know, that's like me going, oh, my God, Lewis, what were you doing?
link |
You could have done this with the car and you'd have won the race.
link |
You know, and Lewis Hamilton right now is, you know, defending world champion two time
link |
ways, four time, four or five time world champion.
link |
But that would be pretty stupid of me to try and tell Lewis Hamilton how to drive a car.
link |
Or a matter of fact, anyone driving a Formula One car.