The following is a conversation with Commander David Fravor, who was a Navy pilot for 18 years

and commander of the Strike Fighter Squadron 41, also known as the Black Aces, a squadron

of 12 airplanes consisting of several hundred people.

He's also famously one of the people who with his own eyes saw and chased a UFO, an

identified flying object in 2004 that is referred to as the Tic Tac and the incident more formally

referred to as the USS Nimitz UFO incident.

His story, corroborated by several other pilots from my perspective as a curious scientist

and an open minded human being, is the most credible sighting of a UFO in history, at

least that I'm aware of.

He's a humble, fascinating, and fun human being to talk to.

I put out a call for questions on Reddit and many other places and tried to ask as many

of the questions that people posted as I could.

And overall, I really enjoyed this conversation and I'm sure if the world wants us to, and

if there's more questions to be had, we'll talk on this podcast again.

Quick summary of the sponsors, Athletic Greens, ExpressVPN, and BetterHelp.

Please check out the sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that the world of UFOs and UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomena,

and aliens in general is foreign to me because of the high ratio of outlandish conspiracy

theorists to actual hard evidence.

I'm a scientist first and foremost, but an open minded one, often looking and thinking

outside the box.

I'm often disheartened by the closed mindedness of the scientific community.

And in equal part, I'm disheartened by the lack of rigor and basic scientific inquiry

and study on the part of the conspiracy theorists.

I believe there's a line somewhere between the two extremes that more inquisitive minds

should walk.

I think we humans know very little about our world, what's up there among the stars and

the nature of reality and the nature of our very own minds.

The path to understanding can only be walked humbly.

The very idea that there is a possibility that David witnessed a piece of technology,

whether human made or alien made, that moved in the way it did, should be inspiring to

every scientist and engineer on this earth.

There may be propulsion and energy systems yet to be discovered that, once understood

and mastered, will put distant galaxies within reach of us human beings.

Paradigm shifts in science and leaps in understanding can only happen, I think, if we open our eyes

and allow ourselves to dream, to think from first principles, and remove the constraints

and innovation placed on us by the scientific conventions and assumptions of prior generations.

If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 Stars on Apple Podcast, follow

on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Freedman.

As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle.

More and more I'm trying to make these ad reads unique and interesting and less adzy,

more personal, but I give you timestamps so you can skip, but still please do check out

the sponsors by clicking the links in the description, it is honestly the best way to

support this podcast.

This show is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the all in one daily drink to support health

and performance.

I drink it every day to make sure I'm not missing any of the nutrition I need.

Now let me take a hard left turn and talk about fasting.

I fast often, sometimes intermittent fasting of 16 hours and then an 8 hour eating period

of 2 meals, sometimes 24 hours, that's one dinner to the next.

I've been even considering doing a 48 or 72 hour fast that some people I look up to

have done.

People who have done it tell me that outside of weight loss and the different health benefits,

it's a chance to meditate on the finiteness of life.

Not eating somehow is a reminder that we're immortal, that every day is precious.

I certainly experienced this with the 24 hour fast and I think it goes even deeper for the

48, 72, and even week long fasts.

Anyway, I always break my fast with Athletic Greens, it's delicious, refreshing, just makes

me feel good.

So go to athleticgreens.com slash lex to claim a special offer of free vitamin D for a year.

Again go to athleticgreens.com slash lex to get free stuff and to support this podcast.

This show is also sponsored by ExpressVPN.

Get it at expressvpn.com slash lexpod to get a discount.

You probably know there's a show called The Office that I fell in love with, first with

the British version with Ricky Gervais and then the American version with Steve Carell.

ExpressVPN lets you pretend your location is somewhere else, choosing from nearly 100

different countries and then watch one of the nine totally different other versions

of The Office in other countries.

Also it protects you when you do shady things on the internet that you shouldn't be doing.

Like checking the website of this very podcast that for some reason was not available in

Russia for a long time, not sure if it still is, but if it isn't you can use ExpressVPN

to access it.

I think of ExpressVPN like a pirate ship, and regular VPN free life as a boring cruise

from one place to another with no excitement in between.

Choose wisely my friends.

Again get it on any device at expressvpn.com slash lexpod to get an extra three months

free and to support this podcast.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp, spelled H E L P help.

Like you would try to spell if you were on a deserted island and trying to get an airplane

to notice you.

Check it out at betterhelp.com slash lex.

They figure out what you need and match you with a licensed professional therapist and

under 48 hours you can communicate by text anytime and schedule weekly audio and video

sessions.

Now, hard left turn, let me talk about desert islands.

Whatever you think of it, I love the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks and the idea of spending

time on an island, alone, with potentially no hope.

The natural question is, if I could, what would I bring to this island?

The answer is complicated, but let me pick one thing, the first thing that popped into

my crazy mind which is the Introduction to Algorithms book, also called CLRS for the

first letters of the last name of its four authors.

I find algorithms beautiful, like a little toolbox for a simple world inside computers

when the real world outside is an impossible chaotic mess.

I would love pondering the puzzles in that book for months, far away from human civilization.

Anyway, check out BetterHelp at betterhelp.com slash lex to get a discount and to support

this podcast.

And now, finally, here's my conversation with David Fravor.

You're a graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School.

Yeah, I am.

Better known as Top Gun.

Yeah.

Let me ask the most ridiculous question, how realistic is the movie Top Gun?

So it's funny, we used to joke, and a friend of mine who was a Top Gun instructor said

this, there's two things in the original Top Gun that are true, that are very realistic.

One, there is a place called Top Gun, and number two is they do fly airplanes there.

Other than that, I went through in 97, class 497, and there's actually a log of every single

person that's went through, kind of like a SEAL training.

There's a list.

Because there's a lot of posers out there, oh, I was a Navy SEAL.

No, you weren't.

Well, I went to Top Gun.

You can actually go to Top Gun, and matter of fact, just to get a Top Gun patch, the

real patch, you have to have gone there.

So a lot of the patches you see running around are not real.

The real ones are controlled.

The people that make them honor that.

And when you go in, they look up your name.

If you want to get one, they look up your name.

You just tell them, they go, okay, here, and they'll sell them to you.

If you are not on the list, you ain't get no patch.

Because it is, it's a pretty big deal to go through, but for me, probably one of the best

experiences of flying, because everyone there is extremely competent.

It's very, very challenging, but it's what we all signed up to do.

So it's, it's just the entire group that is, when you want to be that, you know, that level,

you know, where you go, everyone really cares, and everyone really wants to be good.

Is it competitive?

Like, what was it, in the movie?

No, it's, when you go through, it's, you know, it's, if anything, it's more of the

students, you know, and then there's the instructor side, then the instructor sides are really,

you know, they're guys that, you know, they just chose to stay up in Fallon.

And it's extremely difficult job, because they have, they have a very small tolerance

for not being good.

So they're briefs, the guys when they give a lecture, so let's just say there's a fighter

employment lecture, which is one of the hardest ones.

It takes about two days to give the fighter employment lecture.

The guy who gives the lecture goes through multiple, what they call them murder boards,

where he's scrutinized by his peers, and he practices, by the time they actually stand

in front of a class, they pretty much have their 250 PowerPoint slides memorized, and

they don't even turn around, they just click and they know them in order.

And they repeat the same thing over, it's, and it's standardized.

So they are extremely, extremely standardized when you go through the school, and there's

a reason for that, because what they're doing is they're training, so when you come out

of Top Gun, you're called a Strike Fighter Weapons and Tactics Instructor, okay?

So you're SFTI.

When you come out of that, your job is to go usually to one of the weapons schools on

the East or West Coast and train the fleet squadrons, and then you visit the squadrons

and train and do upgrade rides and all that.

So there's a, there's a reason that they are extremely particular when you go through the

course.

It's, it is literally one of the best things, and it's not, it's not a rank based thing,

just think, oh, Navy, you can come in as a, you know, like an 04 Lieutenant Commander.

The lieutenants, the hierarchy, or at least to be, I don't know how it is exactly today,

but I imagine it's the same.

The hierarchy is actually based on seniority at the school, not necessarily rank.

So when the tactical decisions are made, which are based on fact and trying things out in

the Fallon Ranges, they set the top X number of folks that have been there seniority wise,

and I mean time wise, are the ones that actually make the decision.

And when the door, you may not agree, but when the door opens and everyone comes out

from the staff, they all speak the same language.

It's and it has to be that way, which is why the school has been so effective since it

was founded.

So it's just a, it's an incredible group of individuals.

So there's a bar of excellence that, that the instructors demand.

Oh, very much so, and they're held to it.

So it's not a, hey, I'm now an instructor, so I can do what I want.

There is a standard and they have to live up to that standard.

They have to, and I mean every moment of every day.

So if they go someplace, if they go from Fallon and they come down and do, they're called

site visits where they come down and they'll come to Lemoore, California, which is where

the West Coast Fighter Wing is at for the Navy.

And they go around and start flying sorties with the fleet squadrons to kind of pass on

some of that knowledge, that's that same high level of standard.

It's they can't just drop your guard because you wear the Top Gun patch.

And people know that.

And they wear light blue shirts.

So it's pretty easy to identify them when they're out there.

And you know, and then everyone else who's been through the school, including them, have

the patch on their sleeve.

So there's a standard that's expected when you come out of there.

So you were a Navy pilot for 18 years.

Yes.

Can you briefly tell the story of your career as a pilot?

Yeah.

So, you know, first I was in, I was enlisted, I was a Marine.

And then the Marines actually sent me, recommended me to go to the Naval Academy.

So it's always better to be lucky than good.

But I got to go to the Naval Academy and I finished and I've had that dream to fly.

So when I got selected,

You've always dreamed of flying.

Yeah.

Since 1969, when I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

I was at that point, I asked my mom, I remember watching it, I was just prior to being five.

And I said, wow, yeah, it's so cool, mom.

And she said, well, you know, they were all pilots.

And then at that point it was like, I'm going to be a pilot.

And if you knew me growing up, cause I was a little bit of a delinquent, people are just

like, yeah, right.

I used to joke, I'm going to fly, I'm going to fly jets, I'm going to drop bombs.

And if people that knew me as a kid, they'd be like, yeah, and they'd be like, ah, not

a chance.

And then when I did, I actually had a, it's a funny story and I'll get to it, I'll finish

my career.

But I was at my cousin's wedding and we all grew up in the same neighborhood.

We kind of, they had Italian side of the family.

That's how we grew up.

So it was my house right down the street.

It was my cousin, Chad.

And then right around the corner is my cousin Ray and my aunts and uncles and stuff.

The guy two doors down from my house, the paper boy in the neighborhood, so they all

knew me.

And I went to my cousin's wedding and Mr. Race looks at me and he says, David Fravor.

I go, Mr. Race, how you doing?

He goes, you fly jets, Top Gun and all that.

I go, yes, sir.

He goes, man, I figured you'd be in jail by now.

And it was kind of a, to me, it was a little bit of a badge of honor going on and I kind

of overcame that.

But...

What do you attribute that to?

So you, I've heard you before and just now say that it's better to be lucky than good

and you talk modestly about just being lucky, but if you were to describe your trajectory

maybe in a way of advice, like retrospectively, how'd you pull it off to be like, to be truly

a special person?

The easiest way is one, never, never take no.

Don't let anyone put you down and say you can't do it or those.

I mean, I knew, I knew what I was capable of inside, you know, and if I really believe

if you want something and you want to do something, then you can achieve it.

Not in all cases, like if I loved basketball and I really wanted to be in the NBA, there's

a realism that says I'm five foot eight and I got like a really short vertical leap and

I'm really not that good at basketball, it's probably not ever going to happen no matter

how hard I try and practice.

It's just the way it is.

Or for me to be in the NFL, I'm not fast, you know, I'm not that big, it's just physically

I'm incapable of doing that.

But there's things that don't really tie to a true physical ability as far as size and

strength, but it's, it's mental and I'm not saying you have to be a genius and super smart

to be a fighter pilot.

Matter of fact, you don't.

It really comes down to the ability to think very quickly, 80% solution is typically good

enough because if you overthink it, you're, you're behind and then in an air to air fight,

that's what happens.

People try and overthink it and before you know it, because it's happening so fast, you

don't have, you can't get to the nth degree, you know, six decimal places, 80% solution

is good enough.

You have a really strong gut for the 80% solution, just yeah, I'm a big believer in the 80% solution.

I love that.

If you get 80% you can go and then you can always adjust, which is exactly what, like

if you're fighting in BFM, the 80% solution is it's like a chess game, but it's a really,

really fast chess game where you go, I'm doing this and then I know that if I do a maneuver,

if he's going to counter it correctly, he should do a, if he doesn't do a, he does some

degree less like BCD and then I know how bad his, his error is and then I capitalize.

So my mind, I don't have to be perfect, you know, I don't have to go, I need to go to

47 degrees, nose high.

If I just kind of get above 40, then I'm good and I can watch how it reacts and then I can

adjust for that.

And you, and you continually work that problem and you chip away because if you start neutral,

you're just basically chipping away and gaining advantage, advantage, advantage till eventually,

you know, and if you're really, you know, fighting, you know, just guns only rear quarter

where you got to get behind the guy, kind of world war II dog fight and type stuff.

Then it's, it's literally, it's a, it's a very, very fast chess game that happens at,

you know, 400 knots, 300 knots depends.

So to get to be one of the rare individuals that are able to do that, he just had the

dream and didn't take no for an answer.

Yeah.

Well, you know, you know, part of it is family, you know, my dad was, I used to call him a

fire ready aim guy, you know, he'd smack me and then asked me what I did wrong.

Yeah.

Good parenting.

Um, back then, you know, I, I joke and people look, cause you know, at times it was kind

of tough, you know, cause he can be pretty demanding, but on the other side, you know,

I probably needed to be reined in a little bit at times.

Uh, but then everyone else in my family, you know, my mom was really awesome when I was

a kid.

Uh, my, uh, my grandfather who is a big, big part of it.

My mom's dad, uh, who he taught me a lot and you have a question there that we'll talk

about, uh, about him, but, uh, huge, huge influence.

Very, very positive.

And a lot of the stuff that I do today and decisions are based on things that he taught

me.

Um, and, uh, you know, and I figured, you know, it was the first funeral I ever went

to and it was, uh, it was about three miles long and church was overfilling and people

were out.

It was a big guy, dead serious.

And you go, there's someone asked who died the Pope.

Um, uh, so, so a lot of people love them.

So back to, back to my career question, cause I'm getting down at rabbit hole.

Uh, no, I, when I was at the, I was going to, I was going to stay in the Marines.

I really wanted to go, man.

I love the core.

I think it's, uh, of all services, it's that one, everything is in a ball and they're very,

very professional and it was a great, great organization to join.

Uh, but I went out to the Nimitz on my, uh, freshman cruise after your freshman year at

the Naval Academy, you go out on a ship and you, you're an enlisted person.

You get to experience that half when I already was enlisted.

So it was fine with me.

Because it comes up a lot.

You mind saying what the Nimitz is, what a ship is, what like, yeah.

So Nimitz is, uh, an aircraft carrier.

So it's, uh, four and a half acres of sovereign us territory that floats around the us oceans

giant thing.

Does it have weapons on it?

Uh, the air wing is really the weapons.

It does have defensive weapons, but for the most part it's a giant moving airport is what

it is.

So I was out there watching the airplanes land and take off.

Um, and I'm like, Oh, and the squadrons that were out there, one of the squadrons was a

VF 41 and a 14 squadron, VF 84, uh, an F 14 squadron and then a couple of a six squadrons.

And we actually ended up part pairing up and hanging out with some of the a six pilots

and BNs.

So it was really a neat experience.

And I said, I want to do that.

And the way to do it was to not, to, to go in the Navy because there are Marine squadrons

that go out to the aircraft carriers, but most of them are land based, you know, to

support the Marines.

Cause there are that, that unit, that whole unit, you know, the Marine Corps is that one

surface has it all.

And, um, so when I graduated and I got to, uh, you know, I, I worked hard through primary

and that's where, you know, I knew Missy, uh, we were in, actually went through together,

Missy Cummings, uh, we went through primary together and then, uh, I went to Kingsville.

We all selected the same time.

I went to Kingsville.

There was another guy, Scott Weidemeyer, uh, the three of us.

So I went to Kingsville, Scott went to Beeville and Missy went to Meridian.

So the three of us that we had all went through, we got, we selected out of primary together.

We all ended up going jets and that's, that's how, besides from school, I knew her at school

too.

The long story.

I got done, uh, got winged.

It took me two years to the day from the time I graduated the Naval Academy until I got

my wings and, uh, through some luck, uh, I ended up getting A6s, uh, on the West coast,

which is a side by side, uh, bomber.

So it's a pilot on the left seat and the Bombardier navigators on the right seat.

It was built in the sixties.

It is all weather, uh, and it flies low at night and it's got a terrain mapping radar.

How many, I guess, is that a good term to use fighter jets as a broad category for,

for the public?

Yeah, that's fine.

How many fighter jets are side by side like that?

That was, uh, in the Navy, that was the only one, uh, the Air Force, the F111 was a side

by side, but the Navy, it was the A6 and then there's the EA6B, which is a derivative of

that.

And now that those are all gone, the EA6B is just went away a few years ago.

And now the, uh, E18G Growler, um, is the replacement for the A6B.

There was never a replacement for the A6, uh, that I flew.

It really became the F18, which, uh, the A6 could go quite a bit further distance wise

by fuel, uh, then the Hornet and, uh, the Hornet is the F18.

Is there usually two people in the plane, but they're usually like in front and behind?

In a, the modern two seaters, yes.

Uh, but most of the tactical airplanes in the world today are single seat.

Single seat, just one person?

One person, with the exception of, I'll probably, someone will yell at me, but really with the

exception of the F15E Strike Eagle and the F18F Super Hornet, which is the F is a two

seater and the G is also a two seater, but it's more of an electronic attack by say full

up fighter bomber.

So most of the time that you've flown in your, like I said, 18 year career is, was it two

seater?

That was about half and half.

So I started off in A6 was a two seater.

Then I went to single seat F18s and I flew those, uh, all the way up until 2000 and let

me think 2001 to the end of 2001.

And then I shifted over and started flying the Super Hornets and I've flown both of those,

the E's and the S, but I deployed when I had command of VFA 41, I had the two seat, they

were F squadron.

So you eventually ended up commanding the, the Strike Fighter Squadron 41.

I love the, the name, the Black Aces.

What, uh, is there some parts of that journey that are amazing, parts of it that are tough

that kind of stand out?

To me, it was one, it was a huge honor.

Uh, and I got to serve with, uh, you know, I got pulled up because the, the guy, the,

the people that are exos, cause we fleet up, you go from the number two guy to the number

one guy.

So the XO becomes the CEO.

So the executive officer becomes the commanding officer.

So I had worked with, uh, now soon to be vice Admiral Weitzel, uh, was the, he was commander

Weitzel at the time was the XO and he really wanted, because he knew there was a little

bit of a problem when the Super Hornets came into L'more, L'more had been a single seat,

a fighter community, uh, since the forever.

And now all of a sudden you've got the F18F coming in, which has the weapon systems operators

in the back that are not pilots, they're weapon systems operators.

And there's a difference.

Um, and Kenny is a weapon systems operator and, uh, Kenny knew because of my A6 background

that I have a switch that I can go one seat, two seat, one seat, two seat.

Because when you fly two seat, there's a lot of stuff that the pilot will offload and take

the advantage of the weapon systems operator.

And it's not that one plus one equals two in that environment because it really, there's

a huge amount of capabilities that the single seat has and the autonomy that comes for the

ability to make decisions quickly and how well the airplane flies.

But it does, it does equal more than one.

I would say that one plus one with two people as well as a minimum of 1.5 because you've

got an extra head, you've got extra eyes, you've got someone that can monitor systems.

The airplanes can do two things at once.

I mean, there's an incredible amount of capability that we add when we do that.

Can we just pause on that just for me, from like a human factors perspective and also

an AI perspective, what's, how difficult, uh, so there's like when there's two people,

there's also a third person that's the AI part, the some level of automation like autopilot

maybe.

That's correct.

Maybe you can kind of talk about the psychology of like, you said making decisions really

quick, 80%, how do you deal with another brain working with you?

And then also the automation, is there an interesting interplay that you get to learn?

And also as that changed throughout your career, I imagine it got, it gotten better in terms

of the automation or perhaps not?

Well, I can tell you, so let's, let's start just, no, this is, this is good.

This is good.

And this is, I'm enjoying this because now we actually get to talk about something other

than a Tic Tac.

So, um, so let's start with the A6.

The A6 was really an analog airplane, uh, that was built in the sixties.

All right.

And there's been studies done on the crew coordination, which is the interaction between

the pilot and the bombardier navigator.

So we would fly low at night in the mountains.

So I was stationed up in Whidbey Island, Washington.

So you've got the Cascades and incredible amount of time.

And we would get in the simulators because unlike normally people think terrain following

and there's the radars, the 111, the B1 has a system like this, but it'll, the radar can

see and it'll fly.

It basically flies a straight line.

So it goes up and over mountains and back down and up and over mountains where the A6

was really manual.

So you do this low level routes where you're going to, you're going to fly in the mountains

at night.

You're going to be at, you know, 500 to a thousand feet above the ground, ripping through

like fog layers, cause you don't need to see outside.

You're literally flying a little TV screen and radar.

What are you looking at most of the time?

So you're just at a screen.

It's this really primitive.

If you look at it now, what we did, you'd think, wow, that was crazy, but it was really

fun.

So is it similar to like the FLIR stuff?

Is that, is, no, this thing is totally radar based.

Now the airplane had a FLIR ball as a target recognition and multi sensor was called a

tram.

You're looking at like basically like dots of hard objects.

No, actually what it is is the, the bomb of your navigator had a radar and he was getting

raw feed off of a pulse radar in front.

Okay.

So it's just basically mapping the mountain.

So if you look at a mountain on a radar and you're coming up on it, the front side is

going to be, it's going to give you a really bright return.

And then the backside, it's just going to be a giant shadow because you can't see on

the other side.

So the Bombardier navigators would do that and we, they would have charts and they could

shade their charts knowing that, Hey, if we turn a little bit left here, we can get in

this valley.

We can sneak up this valley and then go around the backside of the mountain, which is what

the airplane would do.

And so, and sorry to interrupt, I'm going to just keep asking dumb questions, I apologize.

But the pilot, can you, can you at a high level say what the pilot does versus the Bombardier?

Yes.

So you're, you're actually just control.

I'm flying the jet.

The throttle's the stick and I have a, it's about a, probably a four inch or six inch

wide by maybe four inches, five inches high.

It looks like it's literally a CRT.

That's how old it is.

A CRT screen.

And what it would do, what the radar would do is the, the, the Bombardier navigator is

looking at his radar and he's looking out about 12 and a half miles in front of the

airplane.

So he has the range really scoped down cause the radar can see a lot further.

He's looking at about 12 and a half miles when we're in the terrain mode where we're

dodging mountains and stuff.

And what the pilot has is there's, they're called range bins and there's eight of them.

So the very far range bin is the 12 and a half mile, you know, and the closest range

bin, it's a thing and it'll be like between like a half a mile and or a quarter mile to

three quarters of a mile.

And the next one might be three quarters of a mile to two miles.

And then it just keeps going out like that.

So if there's a mountain in front, let's say we're on a flat plane and there's a mountain

out in the distance at 15 miles.

And we were just driving right at it.

So when we get to the point where it hits 12 and a half miles where the radar is going

to see it on his scope, my 12th, my range bin for that would pop up and it would show

like a big bump, like a mountain.

And then as I got closer to it, the next range bin would pop up and show it.

And I could see that that bump was moving towards me.

And then if I turned a little bit, you know, to go over here, I'd see the mountain go over

to the right hand side and I could do that, but it wasn't like a video game.

It's literally like, if you think of the original Atari's.

Yeah.

But you build up, I imagine that you start to get a really deep sense of like the actual

3D environment based on that little Atari's solid display.

You're exactly right.

And you have to, you have to train.

So there's been studies, as a matter of fact, a lot of the basis and people probably argue

with me, but it's true.

There were studies done watching A6 crews in our simulators, we call it the WIST, the

systems trainer, and it was not even a motion, it just kind of sat there and you just, you

could fly these things and they had terrain that they would inject into the system.

But the crew coordination, so you get, so my first fleet bombardier navigator, who I'll

name him, his name's Chris Sato, he works at Apple, pretty high up, MIT grad, I think

computer engineering, he's scary smart.

So Chris could really work, as a matter of fact, all the guys I flew with, so there's

another guy, Matt, who also worked at Apple, who's now at SAP, we did our first night traps

together.

The bond between us, I mean, it's one of those things that you just, you're never going to

forget, but Chris and I, when we started flying together, we were actually the most junior

crew in the squadron.

We'd spent a lot of time training and Chris was amazing at how he could work the system,

one because he was extremely brilliant and he had that inquisitive mind of, oh, we can

do all these different things and there's all these degradation modes.

But we spent a lot of time to see how good we could actually get, because, and it's,

you almost talk in partials.

So as the BN is looking at his radar scope, Chris would say, I've got rising terrain,

that's just what they say, showing rising terrain at 12 miles.

And I'd see the little bump and I'd say, got it.

This is going to go to your question on the autonomy and how you work with two heads.

So when you first get together, the interaction, it's almost like you have to rehearse it,

you have to know, and you talk in full sentences.

The more and more we fly together, Chris could go, I'm showing and he'd get like rising out

and before he finished, I'd say, I've got it.

So you end up starting to talk in partials because I have to trust him like, I mean,

there can be no, I can have no doubt that he knows how to do his job because I'm literally

looking at this little scope that's not giving me this continuous picture of that mountain

moving.

Remember the mountain's here and then it's going to pop up here and then it's going to

pop up here because there's gaps in the coverage on how the system was set up.

Remember it's an analog system to where he is telling me, like, I can't see all the way

to the left and he's got a wider scope on the radar, but my screen doesn't show that.

So he's telling me, start a left turn, start a hard turn, you know, and we would do that.

So my truck.

And this is all happening quick?

Very quick.

Well, you're doing, we would typically fly between 420 and 480 knots of ground speed.

How many miles an hour?

Well, 420 is seven miles a minute.

Okay.

Or eight, between seven and eight miles a minute is what you're flying.

That's fast.

At night.

I mean, I broke out of clouds.

I mean, I remember him and I flying, we were on, it's the IR, it's called an IR route, an

instrument route that's low, they're all around the country.

There's the IR 344 that we used to fly, which would coast in off of Oregon, you'd fly from

the land, you go out over the ocean, turn around and then you could practice actually

coming in on a coastline and we were flying and we ended up in the clouds.

Keep in mind, we're between 500 and a thousand feet in the mountains and we're in the clouds.

You can't see anything.

And I had to turn off our red lights that flash, you know, they're called the anti collision

lights because it was reflecting off the clouds and it starts to bother you, just gets annoying.

So I turned it off and we were flying, we're flying, we're flying.

We break out of that coastal marine layer and poof, we break out and it's a decent night.

And this is right by Mount St. Helens.

This is kind of where we're coming in.

So we're coming in from the east and we're just north of Mount St. Helens is where the

route goes.

And you look up, you know, cause you can kind of see the silhouette of this mountain that's

right next to you, but you're flying along.

You're just like, you know, you got to trust and you can see houses, you can see the lights,

they're above you.

We're literally below people's houses flying down these valleys and stuff.

So just incredible experience.

So when you take that and then you move into an F18F.

So now we're into modern technology that was actually built in this century and you're

flying.

So now, you know, the WIZO is behind us and we're not doing those night low levels, but

that same type of crew coordination that has to happen because what you're doing is you're

sharing the load.

So most of the communications that go out of the airplane, the WIZO does all the talk

and he's got actually, he uses his feet.

That's the weapon systems operator in the back of an F18F.

So he's going to run, well, the radar kind of runs itself now, but we have a situational

awareness display and it's linked to all the other airplanes.

Just out of curiosity, what's the situational awareness display?

Because that term comes up a lot.

Think of it as a God's eye view.

So if you have the back of the Super Hornet has, well, the Block IIs has about an eight

by 10 display for the WIZOs that they can look at.

The pilot's is smaller.

It's down between his, it's a six by six between his legs and they're getting ready to redesign

that Boeing is.

But when you looked, it'd be like if you put your airplane and you're looking down.

So all the stuff, like if your radar seeing bad guys out in front of you, it'd be like

looking down and going, oh, I'm right here.

And now there's bad guys out here and my wingman is over here.

And it shows everything.

It's just like, it gives you, you can look at that display and go, oh, I can see where

everything's at.

I can see if one guy's trying to target another guy, it shows you all this.

It's an incredible amount of knowledge that comes up for the crews to maintain the overall

picture of what's going on because it's happening so fast and this is where that autonomy piece,

this is the third brain.

So we're all looking at it and the third brain is doing fusion.

It's pulling stuff together going, oh, this is all this guy.

This is this guy.

This is this guy.

It's sending it out through the link.

So all the airplanes are talking to each other through this digital network that we don't

even see.

It just says, that airplane says, hey, I'm over here.

And it tells us and we go, oh, he's right there.

And then we can go, his airplane says, oh, I'm looking at this airplane, this bad guy.

And it shows us, oh, he's over there and he's looking at this guy.

I mean, it's an incredible amount of visual intake because your eye, you can hear a lot,

but when you look down at stuff, it's, you know, you can sell the picture really quick.

The third brain is doing the sensor fusion, the integration of the different sensors and

gives you a big picture view.

What about the control?

Like, is there, and I apologize as if this is a dumb question, but you know, people use

the high level term of autopilot.

How much is there, let's use a loose term of AI.

How much automation is there?

How much AI is there in helping you control there?

The AI piece would be more of a control loop because of the digital flight controls.

So the airplane actually, they had to make the airplane easier to fly.

And when I say easy, it's relative because people go, I could do it because I did it

on flight sim.

Real life is a lot different.

In flight sim, you have no apparent fear of death.

You'll do things on a simulator that you would never do in real life.

But the autonomy in the airplane to allow you to manage, I mean, because you think about

it, you've got a radar that's feeding you data.

You've got a targeting pod that's feeding you data.

All that stuff is hooked to your head because you've got a joint helmet mounted cueing system

on that basically maps the magnetic field in the cockpit so it can tell where your head's

at looking.

So if I turn my head to the right, the radar will actually look to the right.

The targeting flare will look to the right.

And oh, by the way, the backseater has a helmet on too, so he can look to the left and he

can do things.

So depending on what sensor he's controlling, so if he's got control of the targeting pod

and he looks left, the targeting pod looks left.

But if I have something where I want to lock a guy up that I don't see, that maybe the

radar didn't see, but I can get over and now point the radar, you know, get the, because

it's a phased array radar now, it doesn't really scan.

There's all kinds of cool stuff that that technology brings.

Because if you just, if you went back 30 years and said, hey, or 40 years ago and said, hey,

we're gonna have this helmet and you're gonna be able to slew everything to your head.

And I don't mean a mechanical setup, but I mean literally you're just gonna map magnetic

resonance and go, oh, look, and I can literally slew my sensors this fast and then mash a

button and transfer, you know, high quality coordinates from a system into a joint, you

know, a JDAM, which is a joint direct attack munition that is the GPS bombs that you see

all the time, and then let that thing fly.

And I'm solving this problem in seconds, vice minutes, or, hey, I got it, we're gonna have

to menstruate coordinates and, you know, you bring back the data and then they do all the

targeting for it and then they send another group out to get it instead of all that.

Now it's that fast.

So there's a, okay, I mean, we probably don't have enough time to talk about the beautiful

fusion of minds that happens when two people are flying, controlling the plane.

But at a high level, this is a really interesting question for people who don't know what they're

talking about, like me, which is, what is the difference between a human being and an

AI system?

Like what can, what is the ceiling of a current AI technology for controlling the plane?

Like how much does the human contribute?

Is it possible to have automated flight, for example, like what is the hardest part about

flying that a human does expertly that an AI system cannot in warfare situations in

flying a fighter jet plane?

So I would say AI systems are usually black and white.

When you write the algorithm for an AI system, it's really, it's basically you're taking

thought and turning it into a giant math problem is really what you're doing, right?

So you've got this logical math problem.

Math problems are, there's a line that says I can or I can't.

And it's a very finite line, but you can go up to the line where a human, we all have

gray areas where we go, eh, maybe, eh, I'll try it.

So humans can operate within that gray.

So if you took, if you take an airplane and say, and I'll just take a Hornet for a while,

a Super Hornet, it doesn't matter, any airplane, and you go, here is the flight performance

model of the airplane.

So if you know what an EM diagram is, the energy, so it basically says the airplane

can fly as slow as this, it can go as fast as this, it can pull this many Gs, force of

gravity, so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and then based on the airfoil design

and everything else and how it can pull, here's how it's going to fly, because it's really

physics based.

Well, if you, depending on how you write the AI, but typically AI, you don't want the airplane

to leave controlled flight, right?

You want to maintain it so that it is flying in a controlled envelope.

Where there are times, and you can go back to World War I, where people intentionally

departed the airplane from controlled flight in order to obtain an advantage, which is,

that's where the human goes, can I do this?

I know it's outside of where I would normally go, but I can do that.

So you can do some crazy things now, especially since the flight control logic in modern airplanes

with digital flight controls, they're extremely forgiving.

So you can literally, I've done things in Super Hornets that literally, even as a pilot

inside the airplane, you're just like, wow, I cannot believe it just did that.

Like it'll flop ends, which defies most logic, and I guess in a way you could probably program

it, but I still think when you get to the edges that may or may not give you an advantage,

there are things that a human will do that AI won't.

And I don't think we've got to the point, because how do you map illogical solutions?

Most AI is logical.

It's based on some type of premise when you write the algorithm to control it.

There's bounds.

Yeah, there's this giant mess, like you said, the difference between the simulator and real

life also gets at that somehow.

That there is somehow the fear of death, all of that beautiful mess comes into play.

Is there a comment you can make on commercial flight, like with Sully landing that plane

famously versus the simulator, all of those discussions, is there some?

Well, it's very similar to what I was talking about earlier with the A6.

So one is when you're flying with a crew, there's standardization.

So you got to remember when Sully flew, when his first officer, that's the co pilot, showed

up the first time they'd met, and this happens all the time in the commercial world.

There's six, 7,000 pilots at United Airlines, your chance of flying with the same guy all

the time is slim and none.

Where in the Navy, we were crewed.

So I had a primary and a secondary whizzo that flew with me.

For months?

Oh yeah, for like all of the deployment.

Because you want to get to know, trust and all of those things.

It increases the capability of the airplane.

It's not to say we can't swap out, but for true effectiveness, especially in very complex

missions like a forward air controller, we're in the air actually controlling ground assets

and supporting ground troops.

If you're in a high threat area, which is crazy busy, you have to be melded when you

do that.

You have to have trained to do that job, otherwise you're going to be ineffective.

So when you get to the commercial world, and I've got tons of friends that fly commercial,

there is a standardization.

Like we know that at this point, I'm going to put this switch, you're going to do that.

And everyone, they know their roles.

Captain's going to do this, first officer's going to do this.

And they know that when the emergency breaks out, so in Sully's case, when they take the

birds and they know they've got a problem, and if you've listened to the cockpit recordings

of the two of them talking, you got to remember, they're talking to each other when you hear

the full tapes, but they're also talking to the air traffic controllers in the New York

area.

And it's like, we got a bird strike and the first officer already knows, hey, silence

the alarm.

They silence the alarm.

The first officer is pulling out the book, he's going through the procedures while Sully's

actually flying the airplane, knowing that they've lost their motors.

And you got to think his decision process, like they're trying to get him to go into

an airport in New Jersey, and he realizes, not happening, we're going to put this thing.

And he made a decision soon enough so that he could prepare everyone on the airplane

that he was going to put this thing in the Hudson River.

And he did it flawlessly.

I mean, every single person walked away from that wreck.

The only thing that didn't survive was the airplane, and it got fished out of the Hudson.

What is it about those human decisions you had to make?

Is that something you put into words or is that just deep down some instinct that you

develop as a pilot over time?

When you train, and aviation is a self cleaning oven.

So if you make bad decisions, and the list is long and distinguished of those who have

died by making bad decisions.

So when you look at what he did or the way we train, because the commercial industry

and the Navy and the Air Force, for all that, we have what's called, we have emergency procedures

that we have to know.

Like engines on fire, the first three steps, you just have to know what they are, right?

So they know.

The airline, same type, they go, hey, I know this is, they pull the book out because the

airplanes are designed, they're built to have some time.

But there's a point where you have to make a decision and you can't second guess it.

So when he decided I'm putting this in the Hudson River, he couldn't all of a sudden

halfway through it go, well, maybe I can get over to that airport.

He looked, he made a quick assessment.

This is that 80% solution where you go, these are not, it's like a multiple choice test

when you go, oh my God, I don't really know the answer, but I know A and D are wrong,

gone.

So the Jersey airport and going back to LaGuardia, gone.

So what's my next option?

Well, the Hudson River's there and that's probably looking pretty good.

Or what is my other one?

Can I get a restart on the motors?

And then if I can get a restart, now can I take it someplace else?

He had to make really, really fast decisions.

And then once they, as they go, that 80% solution, you realize, all right, I'm going into the

Hudson, there's the 80%, get the book out.

Let's see if we can get an air start.

Because if you listen to the tapes, they're trying to get it air started.

The closer he gets to the water, the more he's going, I'm ditching the airplane.

So the original decision to, this is my best option right now.

This is where I'm going.

And you start eliminating anything that could possibly change the events, which they tried

to do.

And then he gets to that last minute, he says, we're going in the water.

They changed the plan.

They secure the airplane.

They do exactly what they're doing.

And he does that basically flawless landing on the Hudson.

But you got to remember, it's every six months for commercial, they go back and they do research

in the airplane in the simulator.

Where they train to the airplane being broken.

You just lost a motor.

You just lost another motor.

So they go through this extensive training and all these, we used to refer to it in the

Navy as the pain cave where you're going to get in.

Because you know that when you get in for your check ride in a simulator, that the airplane

is going to break.

You're going to lose hydro, and it's sometimes they're a problem like, oh, I just lost this

hydraulic system, but I'm having an issue on the other motor.

Well, if I shut down this motor and I've got a hydraulics, because there's two hydraulic

systems, one on each motor.

Well, if I've got an issue with the left motor hydraulic system and my right motor is starting

to give me indications, do I want to shut the right motor down because that's going

to kill my hydraulic system that's good.

And now I'm flying on a good motor with a bad hydraulic system and without hydraulics,

the airplane won't fly.

So it's a really, they're challenging problems that you have to think through in real time.

And of course, the weather's never good.

It's always dark.

It's always crappy.

You're going to break out.

It's just all this stuff gets compiled on top of you and it's intended to increase the

level of stress because when things happen, like in Sully's case, we like to joke it's

going to STEM power, you know, where the functional part of your brain shuts down and you are

literally on instinct like an animal.

Well, if you've trained so much that that is the instinctive reaction that you're going

to have when the main part of your cognitive abilities start to shut down, you're running

that instinct is ingrained so much into you that you know exactly what to do.

And that's literally how it happens.

So there's no, how do I put it?

Fear of death.

Like in Sully's case, do you think he was at all ever thinking about the fact if his

decision is wrong, a lot of people are going to die?

You know, I can't speak for him, but I would say there was so much going on at the cockpit

in that time.

His, his mindset was probably, I can do this, I'm trained, I'm going to do the procedures,

I've practiced this before, I've done these things.

And I, you know, I'm assuming that in his mindset, cause I never thought about when

things were really bad.

You know, if you're having problems with the airplane that, you know, that I was going

to mort, you know, and, and plant it into the ground, it was always, you know, maybe

it's an ego thing where you think I can do this.

I mean,

So you never, have you experienced fear during flight, like, I mean, one, one way we just

offline mentioned Mike Tyson, I mean, he talked about like, as he's walking up to the ring,

he's like, he starts out basically in fear and, yeah, worried about how things are going

to go.

And it's purely to put in towards his fear, but as he gets closer and closer to the ring

is the confidence grows and grows until the ego basically takes over to where you think

there's no way anybody could defeat me.

So like, that's, that's his experience of overcoming fear.

But do you, did you experience any kind of thing like that?

Or is that, or do you just go to the part of the brain that goes to the training and

then you just go to the instinctual 80% solution?

I wouldn't say I was never afraid.

I think that would be, I can't, I couldn't tell you that anyone I know that wasn't afraid

at one time.

And for most of us, especially Navy carrier pilots, it's just, it's, it's usually, especially

when you're new and you got to go out and it's nighttime and there's no moon and the

weather sucks and the deck's moving, you know, the, the ship's going up and down because

it will scare the hell out of you.

Can I say that?

You can definitely say that, so it's about landing and take off that.

That is, if you, even they used to wire people up, they did it during Vietnam, you know,

guys would go fly missions, you know, when they were flying low and crazy stuff was going

on and people were getting shot down a lot.

The highest, the highest anxiety and heart rates were coming back to land on board an

aircraft carrier.

How hard is it to land on that?

It seems impossible.

Like for, for a civilian, I guess, like me, it just seems crazy that a human can do that.

The problem with night is, and there's different degrees of night, just like day.

I mean, there's the clear full moon night, you know, where it's like, woo, you know,

this is not that bad, but you got to remember at night, I think everyone can associate with

you're driving in your car and it's just a, it's, it's an overcast dark night and you're

on a country road with no side lights.

Most people have a tendency to slow down just by nature of, Oh my God.

Because you, what you'll do is you'll out drive your headlights because it is so dark,

you know, and you can get outside of, you get outside of the city and get up into New

Hampshire, especially when the roads are curving, you know, and the lines probably aren't that

good.

It's, you know, now take that and multiply it by like a million because you have no depth

perception.

What you think is fixed, the runway is actually moving up and down and left to right.

Yeah, oh, and when it's really bad, you can actually see it move and we have two systems,

you know, there was a, there's an automatic system that's actually, it stabilizes with

the inertials on the ship and then there's the ILS.

Now civilian pilots will tell you that ILS is a precision approach, which gives you azimuth

and glide slope.

You know, you come down, it's like a plus.

On the carrier, it's not, it's really just a beam that goes out and it's considered a

non precision approach.

It's not stabilized at all that, and I've been where you can actually watch the needle

and the, and the tack and needle will move.

There's all kinds of stuff moving cause the base that it's all sitting on is doing this

and ships don't just go up and down.

They, they, they do this.

So the bow goes up and down in the tail, like you normally see a ship and then there's,

so that's pitch and then it has roll.

So it's doing this and then it has heave.

So the whole boat is going up and down while it's pitching and rolling and you're gonna

land on that.

Um, so, and it's, I mean, I remember landing as I was with Chris, uh, Sato and, uh, Chris

and I, we were off the USS ranger, which is now decommissioned.

It's sitting, getting turned into razorblades, um, we're flying the old a six and we come

in and it was off of San Diego and it was just ugly night cause San Diego always has

a Marine layer that is about 1200 feet was lower than that, that night and it was pouring

down rain.

It was an El Nino year and there's thunderstorms all around.

It was just craziest night I've ever seen out of San Diego.

And I remember landing and your adrenaline is so high that you're shaking.

I mean, you literally can't stop.

And we had spun around out of the landing area and we parked, we call it the six pack.

So it's right in front of the Island.

So if you see an aircraft carrier with the Island and the number of the ship on it, we're

sitting right in front of that and we're looking at the landing area.

So it's like you get front row seats to the concert and, and this, this, this EA six B

comes in, you know, ugly pass.

He ends up catching a one wire, which is the first one.

You never want to catch the first one, which means you were not really high above the back

of the ship when you landed and it comes in and the exhaust on an EA six or an a six actually

points kind of down and it blows and it's blowing all the standing water on the aircraft.

That's how hard it's raining.

And you literally could not see across.

I mean, I could see the front of my airplane, his airplane, and then it was just white because

of the water being blown off the deck.

And I'm shaking and I, I, I'll never forget.

I looked over at Chris and I said, Oh my God, I go, Hey dude, man, 10,000 foot runway looks

really good right now.

And I go, and I'm, I'm shaking my hands like this.

And I said, I'm not even, this is, I'm not faking this too.

I know that's literally, I cannot stop shaking.

I said, that scared the Evelyn out of me, but you, but it scares you afterwards.

You don't, during it, you're not, I'm not, you don't have time to think about that.

You're doing it.

You got to do is we, you know, kind of the quote from Tom Hanks and what's that?

The girls baseball movie where he goes, there's no crying in baseball.

Well, that's our joke.

There's no crying in Naval aviation.

I said, you can fly around and cry all you want at night, but you know, there's only

one pilot in those airplanes and you got to land it.

So you cry all you want, wipe the tears away, you know, put on your big kid pants and it's,

it's time to, it's time to, you know, man up and, and land that, land the jet.

Sorry for the romantic question, but going back to the kid that dreamed to fly, what's

it like to fly an airplane?

What it looks incredible to me as a human, like a descendant of ape.

I sit here on land and look up at you guys.

It seems incredible that human being can do that.

You know what people ask, you know, I'll be sitting around with my friends and they're

like, how was it?

I said, it's the greatest job on the planet.

I said, you know, it's, it's an office with a view cause you're sitting in a glass.

You can do you know, it's like roller coasters.

You go, Oh, it does all these cool stuff.

So we take people flying every once in a while and it's like, Oh yeah, I like rollercoaster.

So I go, no, take any rollercoaster coolest rollercoaster you've ever been on and multiply

it by a thousand.

And I said, it's an experience you know, to put your body under, you know, you know, the

jets rated at seven and a half, but it'll pull up to 8.1 before it overstresses depends

on fuel weight.

So, I mean, you routinely get up there towards eight G's to be able to do that to your body.

I mean, it takes a toll.

Like I can't really turn my head real good anymore and stuff like that, but would I trade

it?

It's a dream and how many people get to do that?

You know, professional, I want to be an NFL, you know, and you end up to the NFL, which

is a very small percentage with, well, I want to fly jets and to fly, you know, at the time

when I was flying the Super Hornets that we had in our squad and we're brand new at like

literally right out of the factory, I'd come off our first Super Hornet cruise.

We had went to the Boeing factory in St. Louis where they were building my new jets that

I was going to get.

And I actually signed the inside of one of the wings while they were putting it together.

So I'm meeting the people that are putting the jet together that's going to get delivered

to me in a couple of months that I'm going to fly.

So just, I mean, I'll tell you what, when I left, when I decided to walk away, I told

myself I wouldn't, I promised myself that, you know, once you get through your O5 command,

your flying really starts to tag to come down.

You know, even if you, when you're an air wing commander, which is, we call them CAG,

carrier group commander, you're not flying as much as like the normal pilots, nor should

you be.

I mean, there's young people that are coming up and it's training your relief because that's

the next generation.

So like currently I have friends of mine that we serve together.

Their kids are flying Super Hornets, right?

So to me, that's really neat because I watched them when they were little and now, you know,

one of them who was good friends, I won't get his last name, but Joey, who lived down

the street from us, was a Top Gun instructor and I'm like, hey, Joey's a Top Gun.

You know?

And I'm like, that's cool because, you know, I went there and I knew him, he would come

down to my house.

And now to see these kids that are, because typically military breeds military, you know,

because the kids grow up in it.

I mean, and I, the only reason that my son is not doing it is he's colorblind.

So it disqualifies you for being a pilot, being a SEAL because he had talked about doing

that because he's an incredible swimmer and he likes doing that stuff and water polo player.

But he's, you know, both of my kids are, well, my daughter is a doctor and my son's in his

third year.

So.

But there's a, I suppose, I mean, from my perspective, a bittersweet handover of this

incredible experience of flying to the younger generation.

So you don't, you told yourself you're not going to miss it.

You miss it?

There are days I do.

When I hear jets, like if I'm around a base or a jet flies over, but I have all the memory

so I can look at it and go, it can't go on forever.

You know, Tom Brady can't play football, but there's going to come a time where he has

to stop.

He seems to have done it for a long time.

But you know, typically when you look at it, you go, I had the opportunity.

And I think as automation moves on, especially with AI that, you know, when will, when will

the last man fighter be built?

You know, and that's that big question, you know, we just did F 35.

It's over budget.

It's seven years late.

There's all kinds of issues when we try and do it.

And then you look at some of the new stuff that's coming out that the air force is working

on with smaller, cheaper, uh, a trittable platforms that you can go, Oh, we can, because

if you don't put a man in the box or a person, because there's a lot of incredibly talented

women that do this too.

So I'll just say that as person.

Yeah.

So we say man and he, we mean both men and women because offline you've told me about

a lot of incredible women that flown.

So I had, I had three, three female, actually four, one of them didn't fly anymore.

She actually lives right around here.

She, she's a, she ended up going into aircraft maintenance when she couldn't fly anymore.

One of the girls who everyone knows is incredibly, she's one of the most gifted people I've ever

met in my life.

She is the vice president of Amazon air.

You can see her on TV, her name's Sarah, uh, incredible.

And then I had a page who ended up taking command.

She got out of fighters and went into other platforms.

Um, and she was a commanding officer.

And then the other one is a, um, teaches leadership and she is all three of them, actually all

four of the women that were direct.

Uh, I'm hoping not forgetting, I don't think I'm forgetting someone, uh, incredibly, incredibly

talented, uh, and a great addition to the ready room.

So anyone that gets into the, Oh, you know, women can't do it.

That's all total horse crap.

Hey, you know, we can talk about the original integration and stuff, which was not done

well by the military nor the Navy.

So women can fly as good as the guys.

Yeah.

You can't tell if you pass another airplane, you can't tell if there's a man or woman in

it.

It comes down to, uh, stick and throttle the ability to, uh, uh, extrapolate where the

vehicle is going to be, where the airplane would be.

If you're fighting another one, you have to be able to think fast.

Anyone has those characteristics, uh, can do it.

And then I think most important besides that there has to be a desire.

And I'm not saying that everyone, if you took, cause we used to track.

So when I ran, we call it the rag, it's the replacement air group.

It's where, so the, the super Hornet training squadron, there's two of them.

There's one on the East coast at one Oh six.

And there's one on the West coast, which is VFA one 22, one 22 is the first one.

So I ended up going there and I ended up being the operations officer and training officer.

Okay.

So we tracked the last hundred students.

Right.

So everyone goes, ah, it's funny to hear students talk cause Oh, he's awesome.

If you took the hundred, there's three at the top of the list that are just naturally

gifted aviators.

They're well, well, well above average.

It's like the person in a math class that sits down in complex math and they just get

it.

You know, at the bottom, there's the three at the bottom that are going to struggle and

there's a good chance they won't get out.

And if they do get out, they're going to have to work really hard to just maintain kind

of average.

Sometimes it's just the way your mind works.

Not everyone is good at everything.

If you took the 94 of them in the middle, they're within one mean deviation of, you

know, it's there.

They're all, you know, it's a, the bell curve doesn't look real good.

It's just a big hump and it comes back down and everyone's right there within one mean

deviation.

And then you have the outliers, usually not on the high side because they're going to

get through, but the outliers on the low side that don't make it through.

So for the most part, the Navy does a really good job, as does the Air Force, of screening.

So now what they do, when I went, you just showed up and you started.

Now what you do is you actually go fly Piper Warriors low wing to see, are you adaptable

to this?

And there's an evaluation that goes through and then if you hit a certain mark, then you're

good to go and then they put you into primary.

It's kind of like a, it's like a precheck, you know, like the preset, the pre SAT to

go, Hey, how am I going to do on the SAT?

It's, it's, it's very similar to that, but it's more of a hand skill.

Can you adapt?

Because although we live in three dimensions, like this table is not, you know, we, this

is, you know, this is all has depth with all that, uh, where it's really relative to aviation.

We are two dimensional.

Very two dimensional.

Can you, can you explain that?

So our perception is actually more limited than the, than that of an aviator.

Very much.

And here's why.

Yeah.

So we look at, uh, let's look at a tall building.

Let's look at one world trade center in New York cause that's the, everyone knows what

it looks like.

Big tall building.

Um, it's what, maybe 1800 feet tall.

Even the Burj Al Dubai, which is like what 20 some hundred feet tall.

It's not that big.

So a Super Hornet to do a, what a split S is, which is I'm flying, I'm just going to

roll the airplane upside down and then I'm going to do basically a C the letter C I'm

going to go in the top and out the bottom.

So and I'm just against basically a vertical displacement of the airplane.

So I'm going from high to low.

It's very, very tight and it doesn't in about roughly about 2,500 feet, give or take a little.

So you go, that is, that is a really tight vertical turn.

Yeah.

For example, the a six in order to do that was about 9,000 feet.

And we look at a building that's 2000 feet high and think that is tall.

Right.

All right.

So in, in aviation sense, when you're starting to do vertical displacement numbers going

from 35,000 feet down to 20,000 feet in a matter of seconds and maneuvering the airplane,

because the human brain thinks we really are.

We like to be flat.

I see what you mean.

We think 2d.

So if I'm fighting, how you really get an advantage when you're fighting another airplane

is to work in the vertical, because most people will do like one move in the vertical and

then they want to start to flatten out because that's where we're comfortable.

Yeah.

So they're profound.

Do you still think in like stacks of 2d layers or no, or do you, do you truly start to think

in that third dimension, like the rich 3d world of, uh, like of, of fighting that can,

do you start to actually be able to really experience the 3d nature?

You do because you have to project where you're going to be.

So you have to know the performance of the airplane knowing that, Hey, if I do this maneuver

that I am going to go, it's, it's kind of like when I, when I talk about when we were

chasing the Tic Tac.

So the Tic Tacs coming up and I'm at about, you know, and I've been doing this for at

the time, 16 years.

So I'm looking and I'm going, Hey, I'm here.

He's there on the other side of the circle.

I'm going to do a vertical displacement.

I'm going to go like this.

I'm going to cut across the circle and I'm not going to him.

I'm going out in front of him.

I'm going over here because I know that by the time I get through this maneuver, that's

where he's going to be.

And I'm trying to, you know, basically join up on him.

But I also had to look at it to go, do I have enough altitude to do this?

Because what I did before here and I do this, I'm going to end up over here and he's going

to be above me.

And then, you know, I have to get that energy back to get up to him.

And when you're doing a max performance, it's a trade.

So you have, this is, this is really important when you're, when you're fighting airplanes

and you're really max performing.

So when you go to an air show and you see the air demo, he's literally playing with

it.

He's got a finite amount of energy, right?

He can add some with the motors and stuff, but you're, what you're really doing is it's

a trade off and you can trade off kinetic energy, speed for altitude, which gives you

potential energy.

The other piece is, is I can trade some of that kinetic energy for performance.

Because I know if I do a nice, easy turn, the airplane will make it at what doesn't

bleed energy.

But I know if I do a real tight, that 2,500 foot split S, that it's going to cost me energy.

So if I enter the split S at 200 knots and I do it right, I'm going to come out at the

bottom at probably 200 knots.

Although I lost 2,500 feet of potential energy, I converted that to that, to kinetic and that

kinetic was transitioned and bled off the wings in order for me to get that high performance

turn.

So you've got to constantly evaluate where you're at and it's your overall energy package.

So you can have a guy that's behind you that looks like he's going to kill you.

But if this jet is at 400 knots and this jet is at 110 knots, this jet's just going to

pull away, drive around and kill him in about 30 seconds.

It's overall energy package and that's that you've got to be constantly evaluating where

you're at.

And this is that 80% solution.

Can I afford to do this or not?

Yes, no.

And you have literally a split second to make the decision.

That's the most incredible dance of human decision making.

It's just incredible.

I know a million people want me to talk about Tic Tac and I definitely will, but let me

ask the one last ridiculous, subjective question.

What's the greatest plane ever made in history?

You don't get to like...

From Pure Speed, I would say SR71, I think it's an engineering marvel that was actually

developed in the fifties by Kelly Johnson, Skunk Works.

For what that was able to do, and then when you get into history of it, you know how they

actually built...

The CIA actually made like six companies in order to buy the titanium from Russia to bring

it back and build an airplane out of titanium that we would fly over Russia.

To me, that's an incredible...

Engineering marvel.

I think that like the X15, you know...

By the way, the SR71 still holds the speed record of any plane as far as I can understand.

Yeah.

What's funny when you get into it is it's...

Remember, fast is relative.

When I say that, I mean, so if you're going 3000 miles an hour, a hundred feet above the

ground, you're going 3000 miles an hour through, you know, that's how fast you're going.

When you get up to altitude, there's an indicated airspeed and there's, you know, your ground

speed.

So your indicated airspeed is really how fast the air is going past your airplane.

Well, the air is so thin up there, you may only be showing like 300 knots.

But at 300 knots, you're really doing 2,500 miles an hour over the ground.

So you know, like we would take the airplanes up to 50,000 feet when we had to do full the

maintenance check flights on them.

So when you're doing 200, you know, in some odd knots, it's actually slow for the airplane.

It's, you know, you're getting, you know, it's kind of like, it's not, you know, there's

maneuvering speeds.

You know that if I hit a certain speed in a Super Hornet, that I have the full capability

of the airfoil.

If I'm below that speed, I'm going to stall the airfoil before I get to the maximum G.

Okay?

So when you look at something like that, you go, well, is it really going fast?

When you look at an SR71 that's flying upwards of, you know, 70 plus thousand feet, the air's

so thin, you know, just like the X15, you can get to a much higher speed, but the relative

speed of the air going over you is actually relatively low.

So the stresses on the airframe are not like they would be if you were down low.

But because you're going fast to get enough air over your pedostatic system to show that

you're going 300 knots, you're screaming.

I mean, the fastest I ever got was, I was with the, well, soon to be Vice Admiral White.

So we had taken a check flight and I got it up to 1.78.

I got a Super Hornet up to Mach 1.78 and it was, and we were just right by Pebble Beach

too.

And then...

What's that feel like?

Or is it just like...

When you get that fast, it started, to me, it got a little bit weird because you realize

in your brain, and I did, that there's no out.

If something happens, I can't eject.

The ejection would kill me.

Isn't that kind of liberating in a way?

Or no?

Okay, maybe not.

You always want to push the limit.

You know, it's like how fast, I could have got it going faster.

It was literally still accelerating when I stopped, but I had, it was fuel limited and

space limited because I'm off the coast of California, Big Sur, and I'm going and I can

see Pebble Beach out in the distance, the whole Monterey Peninsula.

You're just going fast.

And you're doing almost 18 miles a minute.

I mean, you're screaming.

Yeah.

I mean, that's...

And then you have to turn...

Well, the airplane didn't have anything on it.

It was a slicked off Super Hornet, so it was basically just the airplane.

No pylons, no pods, no nothing.

And then we had to get it turned around because we got to go to the exit point for the area.

And I'm trying to get it down below to subsonic.

And there's a bunch of things that are disabled, like the speed brakes that normally we pop

out when you're going that fast, they don't, because the Super Hornet really doesn't have

speed brakes, it deforms the flight controls.

They don't function.

So you really, you're trying to maneuver and when you're going that fast, you can't turn

because a 7G turn at 1.5 Mach is a pretty big turn.

So it's just, it's crazy.

It's incredible that a human can do this and a human can engineer the system which allows

another human to control that system.

To me, I think it's a great experience.

Was it sad to see the SR71 go?

I think it was during your career.

I mean, do you guys romanticize the different planes?

We would see it flying.

When I was flying Hornets, because West Coast flies and it's called R2508, which covers

the Navy China Lake area and Edwards.

It's a huge area.

It's actually, I think, we had a guy from Switzerland come out because they had Hornets

and he's like, this is bigger than our whole country, because it's a pretty big area in

California that you fly, but you would see the SR71s, they had a loop because NASA was

flying them out of Palmdale and they would take off and they'd go up towards Washington

State and Montana and they'd do a loop.

So you'd see them coming back down, they'd descend above 60,000, they'd get contrails,

the white lines behind airplanes, they'd come down and hit the tanker and then they'd go

back up.

So it was cool to be able to see them in my lifetime flying.

But I think with money, age, the advent of satellites, because they're everywhere now,

I mean, you've got commercial companies putting satellites up, how much of that need was really

there?

Because you've got to remember when those things started in the 50s, Sputnik wasn't

flying around.

It was the U2 and the SR71 that were out there doing that work.

So at the time it was needed, if you think about it really, it was an incredible feat

of aviation for that time.

I mean, literally we have yet to pass that and then you also ask, well, is there a need

to pass that?

I go, I don't know, we got stuff in space, so do we need to make an airplane that goes

that fast?

I think the next one is you get into the hypersonics where you don't have to put a person in,

it does all kinds of crazy stuff.

And all the work with automation, all that kind of stuff.

So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is you happen to be one of, at least in

my view, one of the most credible witnesses in history of somebody who's witnessed a UFO

literally an identified flying object.

And not only witnessed, but got to, how do you put it?

Like chase it, essentially?

Chase it.

Chase it.

So let me just lay out, I think it's easier than you telling the story.

Maybe me and my dumb simpleton ways trying to explain the stories, I understand it.

And then maybe you can correct me.

So on November 10th, 2004, the USS Princeton, which is one of the carriers.

That's a cruiser.

It's a cruiser.

It's a cruiser.

So you can't land on a.

No, helicopter, it has a helicopter pad on the back.

Gotcha.

And it has weapons on it.

Okay, gotcha.

It shoots the missiles up.

But it has a nice radar.

It has an incredible spy one system phased array, four panels.

So it looks in quadrants.

Perfect.

So they started noticing on November 10th that there is a few objects flying around

at 28,000 feet with speed of what I guess is considered a low speed of 120 miles an

hour.

Don't know what that's in knots, but on the coast of California.

And they kept detecting these objects for just about a week.

Then comes in like your part of the story, which is on November 14th from the, I guess

it's from the USS Nimitz.

You flew and witnessed a 40 foot long white Tic Tac shaped object with no wings flying

in ways you've never thought possible.

And in some interview somewhere, you said, I think it was not from this world.

So there's a mysterious aspect to this object, to this entire situation.

There's videos involved.

The video of a flare forward looking infrared receiver has also the visible lights.

You can switch as a TV mode.

So that gives you visible light and then as an IR mode.

And Chad Underwood recorded that video.

And those are the videos that were released by the Pentagon later.

One of the three videos, the two other videos, go fast and gimbal were recorded in 2000 something

14 and 15 on the East coast of the United States that had different kinds of objects,

but they're weird in the same kind of way in terms of at least the videos and the experiences

that people have described were similar in the degree of weirdness.

But the differences is actually on the East coast of 2014 case, very few people have spoken

about it.

And even in your situation, very few people have spoken about it.

So there's a mystery to it, but it's in some sense, it's a quite simple story without much

resolution to the mystery.

And it's fascinating.

And there's a lot of opinions.

There's division of opinions because it's a mysterious, I mean, it's truly is a UFO

in the sense that UAP, unidentified aerial phenomena.

So can you maybe correct me on any of the things I've gotten wrong, elaborate on some

key things and describe that experience in general.

So here's what I know.

So yeah, we went out on our mission to go train and they canceled the mission and they

sent us down.

There's all kinds of rumors out here.

There's all kinds of, after this has come out, so originally it was the four of us.

There's two jets, two people in each jet, they're F18Fs, okay?

There is no video from our event.

It was all four sets of eyeballs staring at this thing.

And then when we came back and told it when Chad and his pilot took off, that's when Chad

got the video of it.

And we're like, that's it.

That's exactly it.

That's it.

So when you say eyeballs, you mean literally your eyes are seeing a thing?

Yeah.

So as we're flying out, we get vectored.

They come up and tell us, hey, we're going to cancel training.

This is a USS Princeton.

So this is a Aegis Cruiser.

So we're talking to one controller who is like, hey, sir, first you ask what ordinance

we have on board.

And I laugh because we don't carry live ordinance in training typically because bad stuff happens.

Usually someone forgets to put a switch on and then the missile comes off and hits a

good airplane and it's not good.

So we had what's called a Catam 9, which is really just a blue two with the AIM 9 seeker

on the front of it, which is an IR missile.

So there's only two ways to get it off.

You can beat it off with a sledgehammer.

You can take this thing and you put a wrench in it and it unlocks the lugs and pulls the

lugs back in that hold it on.

When it really fires the impulse from the engine, actually throws the lugs forward and

breaks that release and it comes off down the rail.

That's how it works.

So they said, hey, well, we have real world tasking.

So as we're going out, my wingman, the other pilot, she maneuvers the airplane to the left

hand side of me.

So she's kind of stepped up like this and I'll use your mic box to start.

So as we're going out, they're calling ranges are called bra calls, bearing range and altitude.

And they're telling us, hey, it's at 40 miles or 50 miles and 40 miles and 30 miles.

So they're saying, hey, two, seven, zero, 30, 20,000, that's all they say.

So we got our radars and we had to mechanically scan radars at the time, APG 73.

Good piece of gear, APG 79, new one's way better.

But anyway.

And I apologize if I interrupt the story, hopefully it's useful, but they're telling

you a location of a thing that you should look at.

They're telling us they have a contact on their radar.

They don't know what it is.

They just have a blip.

They have a little blip.

Well, they've been watching these things and what he told me is they had been looking at

these things as we're driving.

He says, sir, we've been tracking these things for about two weeks.

That's we had been at sea for two weeks.

This is the first time we've had planes airborne.

We want you to go see what these are.

Gotcha.

So they kind of interrupt the mission to say, check it out.

That's exactly it.

So we start driving out there and as we get down to, he's going, you know, 20 miles, 15

miles, 10 miles.

And then you get to a point where they call merge plot, which means we are inside of the

resolution cell of the radar because radars don't see everything there.

So they have a range and they have an azimuth resolution, right?

So and it's basically think of a little cube so they can, and the whole sky is made of

all these little cubes and they're looking.

So if you're inside a cube with something and you're both inside the same little cube,

then the radar can only see one thing.

Does that make sense?

Yep.

Yep.

So they call merge plot.

Well, when we say merge plot to us, it means he's right around, something's around you,

get your head out.

So we're not looking at radar scopes anymore and the wizos, the wizos can look, but everyone

it's heads out.

When they say merge plot, you're done looking at your displays inside.

You're doing this and you're trying to find it.

So as we look out to the right and you look high and low, because he could be anywhere

from the surface all the way up.

Now keep in mind the ship is like probably 60 miles away, so it can't see the surface

and you can do your standard radar horizon calculation and go, hey, it's the thing is

40 feet off the water, the panel, can he really see, you know, there are radars that can see

around the curve, but let's just say that it can't at this time.

So you go, is it, you know, where is it at?

So as we're looking around, we see, now this is a, it's a clear day.

There's no clouds and there's no whitecaps.

It's just a calm, it's actually a perfect day.

If you own a sailboat, it was that five to 10 knots of wind and you just want to kind

of go out there and you're not going to get beat up and have whitewater coming out.

It was the perfect day to own a sailboat.

How many miles out do you see?

Like seven, like you see just, it's a clear day.

It's 50, it's unrestricted visibility.

You can see literally all the way to the horizon.

It's just clear.

It's nothing.

And we're basically off the coast.

If you look at a map and you go San Diego and then inside of Mexico, we're kind of in

between that.

And we're probably about, by the time this all hits, we're price, I don't know, 80, 100,

I don't know, but somewhere out, it's pretty far off the coast, but from 20,000 feet, you'd

be amazed.

You can do the calculation.

You can see stuff, you know, you'll see land 50 miles away, you know, you can see, you

know, and when you're looking at a continent, it's really easy to see you're not looking

at an island.

I mean, you're looking at Mexico.

And you can see on the whitecaps in the water, if there is any.

Oh yeah, they're easy.

Yeah.

For us, we look at it because we know if it's natural wind or, so if it's a really whitecap

windy day, then the ships just kind of barely be moving when we land on it.

It makes it actually easier.

If the ship has to move or it's got a big weight because it has to make its own wind

when we land, which is the day that it was this day, you go, oh, okay.

And it creates what's called, we call the burble, but when the air flows across the

flight deck, it drops behind the ship, you know, and then it kicks back up.

So when you're coming board to land, it's going to make you go up a little bit and then

you're going to fall and you got to anticipate that to stay on glideslope.

So we're pretty conscious of what's going on out there with the waves and the wind.

So there's no waves, there's no wind, there's no whitecaps, and we look down and we see

whitewater.

So if you put a piece of land, a seamount below the surface, like, you know, even 20

feet below the surface, it's big enough.

As the waves come in, you know, waves have height and length.

When they come in, that's what happens on the shore, when a wave comes in, it hits and

then it starts to collapse and it pushes the wave height up because it can't go anymore

and then it breaks over the top and that's where you get the weight.

So what happens is at sea, when you get a seamount, you'll see stuff come in, the wave

will crash and you'll get whitewater.

You can go out when it's high tide in any one of the coasts, you can go out here off

of Boston and go, hey, at low tide, I can see those rocks and at high tide, I can't

see the rocks are covered, but there'll be whitewater around those rocks.

You'll be able to tell there's something underneath the surface.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So that's what it was.

We don't see an object because there's all kinds of, oh, they saw another craft below

the wave.

We didn't see anything below the water.

We just saw whitewater.

But the whitewater, and I like to shape it, you can say it was a cross.

I say it's about the size of a 737.

So it looks like if you took a 737, put it about 15, 20 feet below the water so the wave

is breaking over the top and you're going to get whitewater where the plane is at, you'd

see this kind of shape.

So it looks like a cross.

So as we're looking down off the right side, the backseater in the other airplane, Jim,

says this is that talking in partials again.

He says, hey, Skipper, do you?

And that's about what he gets out of his mouth.

And I go, what the hell is that?

In a nice way.

Do you see that essentially is what he's saying?

So we see the whitewater and that's what draws our eyes down there.

Otherwise we'd have never seen it.

So we see this whitewater.

I would have loved to see the look on your face when you see that.

And then we see this little white tic tac because we're about 20,000 feet above it and

it's doing, it's going basically north, south, and then east, west, north, and it's abrupt.

It's very abrupt.

So it's not like a helicopter, if a helicopter is going sideways and it goes once, it's going

sideways left and it goes right, what it'll do is it'll go, it's got a speed, it slows

down because there's inertia and it stops and then it goes back the other way.

This thing's not, it's like left, right, left, right with no.

So moving in ways that doesn't feel intuitive to you of the things you've seen in the past.

So as a pilot, the first thing you think is it's a helicopter, right?

So you go, oh, what is, cause when we see it's moving, we're like, oh, helicopter.

So the first thing you look for to see if it's a helicopter when they're doing that,

because usually when they get down there towards that 50 feet, you'll get rotor wash.

You see it in the movies when the helicopter's by the water, it kicks, the water comes up

the sides cause the downdraft, you know, like a thunderstorm will do that.

It pushes the air down and then it has to come up the sides.

So you see it and you go, well, there's no, there's no rotor wash.

What is that thing?

So by this time we're driving around.

So as we're, if we were at the six oclock, we're driving around towards that nine oclock

position and we're just watching this thing.

And it's just, it's still pointing north, south, and it's going left, right, and it's

kind of moving around the object.

And if it had, if I had to say it biased itself, it was biased towards the bottom half.

So if you've got the east, west, and then the north, south kind of across, it's hanging

out on the southern thing that's hanging out.

It's just kind of moving around up, down, left, and it's crossing over it and it's going

up.

It's just kind of, so now we're like, what the hell is that?

So then I go, hey, I'm going to go check it out.

And the other pilot says, I'm going to stay up here.

And I said, yeah, stay up high.

Because now we get, we get a different perspective.

So she's up here and I'm down here as I'm descending.

She can watch, because right now all I'm watching is the Tic Tac.

She can watch me and the Tic Tac.

So she gets a God's eye view of everything that's going on, which is really important.

You know, you can hear people say it's high cover, whatever.

She's watching me, which is, it's perfect as the story goes on, because it gives us

two perspectives, you know, of a perspective that's about 8,000 feet above us when that

thing disappears.

And they don't, you know, because if it's just like, oh, I lost it and they go, no,

it's over to the right.

We can still see it.

We all lost it at the same time.

So as we come down, we get to about 12 oclock and I'm descending and it's an easy descent.

I'm doing about 300 knots, which is a really good airspeed for the airplane for maneuvering

because I have, I have everything available to me at that speed.

So I'm coming down and as I get to 12 oclock, as the Tic Tac's doing this, it literally,

it's like, it's aware of us and it just goes bloop and it kind of points out towards the

West and starts coming up.

So now it's obviously knows that we're there.

Whatever this thing is, it knows that we're there.

So as we drive around, it's coming up and I'm just coming down.

We're just, I'm just watching it.

Now, you gotta remember this whole thing is like, this is like five minutes.

This is not like we saw it and it was gone or, oh, I saw lights in the sky and they were

gone.

We watched this thing on a crystal clear day with four trained observers, watch this thing

fly around.

So we're like, okay.

So I get over to the eight oclock position and I'm a little, I'm a couple thousand feet

above it and it's about, so I'm probably at about 15 K I think it is.

I think that's my story is about 15.

It's just estimating.

So you can see it's just a really easy descent because.

So what's 15 K?

15,000 feet.

I thought it was 8,000.

No, the other plane ends up about that.

So they're still at about 20,000 feet.

So they're driving around and I'm descending.

They're staying up there.

So I'm kind of doing this as they drive around.

Okay.

So I'm looking at this thing and it's about the two oclock position.

We're about the eight oclock position and I'm like, oh, I've got, I've got enough altitudes.

I'm going to, I'm going to cut across the circle.

I tell the guy in my back seat, dude, I'm going to, I'm going to do this.

He's like, go for it.

Skip.

Cause I was a skipper.

So I cut across the bottom.

So I'm kind of almost coming out coaltitude as this thing's coming up, I'm going to meet

it.

And I'm driving and I get to probably it's, I'm probably about a half mile away, which

you think, well, a half mile is pretty far.

Half mile in aviation isn't, it's nothing.

It's I mean, you can tell there's a pilot in an airplane.

You can see all kinds of stuff at a half mile.

You can see pretty good detail.

So I'm like right there and it's coming across my nose.

So now I'm basically pointing back towards east.

So I'm cutting across cause I'm going to the three oclock position.

It's at two oclock and I'm going to meet it at three oclock.

So as I do this, it goes, it just accelerates and disappears.

So this happens at around, estimating about 12,000 feet.

So they're at 20.

So they've got about 8,000 foot of altitude above us when this happens.

And it just, as it crosses our nose, it just, it accelerates and literally in less than,

you know, probably less than a half second, it just goes and it's gone.

And so we're like, and I had the first thing is, dude, did you guys see it?

The other airplane's like, it's gone.

We don't, we have no idea where it's at.

So we kind of spin around real quick.

I go, well, let's see what's down here.

And I turn around and we're looking for the whitewater and we can't even, the whitewater's

gone.

There's nothing.

It's literally all blue.

So now you go.

And I remember telling the guy in my backseat, like a dude, I'm, I don't know about you,

but I'm pretty weirded out because this is, I mean, you know, I had at the time like 30

some hundred hours of flying.

I'd been doing it for 18 years.

It's nothing like anything you've seen.

No, no.

So as we turn, we go, well, let's just go back, you know, because now I got to put on

my real hat, which we have to train because we're getting ready to deploy to overseas.

So we got to get our training done.

So that's my mindset, especially as a CEO, cause I got to get, I got to get training

out of the flight time because I'm responsible to do that.

So, Hey, let's go back.