back to indexRyan Graves: UFOs, Fighter Jets, and Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #308
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How are these interacting with our fighters if they are?
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How are they interacting with the weather
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and their environment?
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How are they interacting with each other?
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So can we look at these and how they're interacting
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perhaps as a swarm?
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Especially off the East Coast where this is happening
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all the time with multiple objects.
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The following is a conversation
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with Lieutenant Ryan Graves,
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former Navy fighter pilot,
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including roles as a combat lead,
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landing signals officer and rescue mission commander.
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He and people in his squadron detected UFOs
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on multiple occasions.
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And he has been one of the few people
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willing to speak publicly about these experiences
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and about the importance of investigating these sightings,
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especially for national security reasons.
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Ryan has a degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering
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from WPI and an interest in career roles
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in advanced technology development,
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including multiagent collaborative autonomy,
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machine learning assisted air to air combat,
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manned and unmanned teaming technologies,
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and most recently, development of materials
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through quantum simulation.
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This is a Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Ryan Graves.
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What did you think of the new Top Gun movie?
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How accurate was it?
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Let's start there.
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I thought the flying was really accurate.
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I thought the type of flying they did
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and how they approached the actual mission,
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of course, had a lot of liberties.
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But one thing that seems to be hard to capture
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on these types of things are the chess game that's going on
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while that type of flying is happening.
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The chess game between, like in a dog fight,
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between the pilots and the enemy,
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or between the different pilots?
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I'll even speak to just that particular mission.
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And for that particular mission,
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it's kind of a chess game with yourself
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to get everything in place.
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So what kind of flight they flew
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is called a high threat scenario,
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which means they have to ingress low
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due to the surface to air threats,
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the integrated air defense systems that are nearby.
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And they have to ingress low and pop up
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like we see in the movie.
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And in that particular movie,
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that was a preplanned strike.
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They knew exactly where they were going.
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But there's a scenario where we have to operate
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in that type of environment,
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and we don't know exactly where we're going to strike
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or we're going to be adapting to real time targets.
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And so in that scenario, you would have
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one of those fighters down low like that
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operating as a mission commander,
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as a forward air controller.
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And he's out there calling shots,
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joining on those other players
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in order to ensure they're pointed at the right target.
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So that's a bit of the chess game that he'll be playing.
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Can you actually describe for people
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who haven't seen the movie what the mission actually is?
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What's involved in the mission?
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So in this particular mission,
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it's kind of what we would call a preplanned strike.
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So there's a known location
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that's in a heavily defended area.
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And the air crew, in this case,
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I believe it was four F18s on the initial package,
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their job was to ingress very low down a canyon
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to stay out of the radar window of the surface
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What does ingress mean?
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Ingress means that they're going to be pushing
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from a start location towards the target or the objective.
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So there's an ingress portion of the mission
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and an egress portion of the mission.
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Like the entrance and the exit type of thing.
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But it changes our mindset tactically quite a bit, right?
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Cause when we're entering someplace,
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we have the option to enter.
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But when we go drop a bomb on location, we're exiting.
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We don't have that luxury.
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We don't have that option.
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So it actually changes our tactics and our aggression level.
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And so they were flying low to the ground
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and then there's a surface to air missiles
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that forced them to have to fly low.
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Is that a realistic thing?
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So driving those aircraft in the clutter,
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you know, all radar systems or most I should say
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are essentially line of sight.
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And so they're going to be limited by the horizon
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or any clutter out there.
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And even a number of radars, if they are located up high
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and looking down towards that aircraft,
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the clutter or all the objects such as trees and canyons
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can have effect on radar systems.
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And so it can be a type of camouflage.
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So that's a camouflage for the radar,
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but what about the surface to air missile?
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Is that a legitimate way to avoid missiles flies so low,
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like fly I guess below their level?
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As far as I know, you know,
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you can fly under any radar right now.
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We don't have necessarily radars
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that can look through anything.
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So there is always going to be the ability to mask yourself,
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but with a larger number of assets
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and distributed communication networks,
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where those radars are looking,
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it makes all the difference.
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And I said, they're ingressing past an IAS
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and that's an integrated air defense system.
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And that linking of air defense systems
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is what makes it so hard, so complicated
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is that the sensors and the weapons
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are disassociated from each other.
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So that if you took out the target that was shooting at you,
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it still has ability to intercept you
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from another radar location.
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So it's distributed and it's stronger that way.
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You mean the surface to air missiles,
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like it's a distributed system
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in that if you take out one,
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they're still able to sort of integrate information
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about your location and strike at you.
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And there's a lot of complication that can go,
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you know, once we start thinking about
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distributed systems like that
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and the ability to self heal and repair
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and adapt to losses, it's an interesting area.
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Are you responsible for thinking about that
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when you're flying an airplane?
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To some degree, when we ingress to an area like that,
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we're presented with information about targets,
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air to air or air to surface,
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or surface to air, I should say.
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And we can essentially see where essentially
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the danger zone, if you will, is located.
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And so essentially we would stay out of that.
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And so having a full picture of the environment
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is extremely important because, you know,
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at the end of the day, if we go in that circle,
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we can die pretty quickly.
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So it's absolutely crucial.
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So there's regions that have higher and lower danger
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based on your understanding of the actual,
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whatever the surface to air missiles systems are.
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So you can kind of know.
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That's interesting.
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I wonder how automated that could be too,
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especially when you don't know.
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It seems like in the movie they knew
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the location of everything.
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I imagine that's less known in most cases.
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And also, a lot of those systems
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might be a little bit more ghetto
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if I can use that technical term.
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Like I've gotten, ad hoc maybe is the,
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But having just recently visited Ukraine
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and seen a lot of aspects of the way that war is fought,
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there's a lot of improvised type of systems.
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So you take high tech, like advanced technology,
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but the way you deploy it and the way you organize it
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is very improvised and ad hoc and is responding
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to the uncertainty and the dynamic environment.
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And so from an enemy perspective
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or whoever's trying to deal with that kind of system,
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it's hard to figure it out.
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Because it's like me, I played tennis for a long time
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and it's always easier to play,
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this is true for all sports,
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play tennis against a good tennis player
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versus a crappy tennis player.
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Because the crappy tennis player is full of uncertainty.
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And that's really difficult to deal with.
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It seemed like in the movie the systems
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were really well organized.
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And so you could plan.
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And there's a very nice ravine
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that went right down the middle of them.
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That's how movies work, isn't it?
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But no, I absolutely agree.
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So what you say is a very good point.
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And if we were to take a chunk of airspace
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and break it up into little bits,
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there'd be places that are better to fly
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or less good to fly.
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And we are seeing that now
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with what they call manned unmanned teaming.
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We see tactical aircraft or some type of aircraft
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or platform that's being automated.
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And it's not being automated in traditional sense
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where people think aircrew are flying them around
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to conduct missions.
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But it's very high level objective orientated
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mission planning that allows the aircrew
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to act more as a mission planner,
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mission commander versus having to just pick
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the right assets or fly them around
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or manipulate them somewhat physically.
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So actually going back to the chess thing,
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can you elaborate on what you mean
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by playing a game of chess with yourself?
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What's, when you're flying that mission,
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what exactly do you mean by that?
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Well, there's a few people you're usually fighting against
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in the air, you know, there's the bad guys
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and then there's physics and mother nature, right?
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So when we're down at about 100 feet,
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it's a chess game to stay alive for the pilot
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and it's a chess game for the whizzo
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to process the information he needs
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and then communicate it to all those other aircraft
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that were flying around to ensure
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that they're putting their weapons on the right target.
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What's the whizzo?
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Wizzo is a weapons systems officer.
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He's a backseater who is not a pilot,
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but they're responsible for radar manipulation
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and communications and weapons appointments
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of certain natures.
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So the chess game is against physics,
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against the enemy.
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Time, what about your own psychology, fear, uncertainty?
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No, there's no time for that type of self reflection
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while we're flying.
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I want to get to that, but I don't want to forget
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the point that you made about increased randomness
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being a tactical advantage.
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You know, as we, as you mentioned, you know,
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you can introduce autonomy into there
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and when you bring autonomy in there
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and my expectation would be as we bring different abilities
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and machine learning, as we gather more data,
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we're going to be able to bring the tactical environment
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around that jet, the war space that it goes into
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will almost be at a stochastic level from the enemy's
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perspective, where it'll almost seem like
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every tactical environment they go in will be random
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and yet very deadly because the system is providing
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a new tactical solution essentially
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for that particular scenario.
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Instead of just training to particular tactics
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that have to be repeatable and trainable and lethal, right?
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But not necessarily the most lethal
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because they have to be trainable.
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But if we can introduce AI into that
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and to have a level of randomness
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or at least appearance of randomness due to complexity,
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you know, I would consider it like a stochastic
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tactical advantage because even our own blue fighters
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won't be able to engage in that fight
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because it would be unsafe essentially for anything else.
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And I think that's where we have to drive to
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because otherwise it's always this chicken and mouse
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cat game about who's tactics and who knows what.
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But if knowledge is no longer a factor,
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it's going to make things a lot different.
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That's really interesting.
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So out of the many things that are part of your expertise,
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your journey, you're also working on autonomous
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and semi autonomous systems, the use of AI
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and machine learning and manned on man team
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and all that kind of stuff.
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We'll talk about it.
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But you're saying sort of when people think about
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the use of AI in war, in military systems,
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they think about like computer vision for perception
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or processing of sensor information
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in order to extract from it actionable knowledge
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But you're saying you could also use it to generate
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randomness that's difficult to work with
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in like a game theoretic way.
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Like it's difficult for human operators to respond to.
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That's really interesting.
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Okay, so back to Tom Cruise and Tom Gunn.
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What about the dog fighting?
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What aspects of that were accurate?
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So dog fighting is kind of an interesting conversation
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because it's not the most tactically relevant skill set
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nowadays by traditional standards
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because the ranges with which we engage
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and play weapons are very significant.
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And so if we're in a scenario where we're in a dog fight
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like that, a lot of things have probably gone wrong, right?
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And that's kind of how this mission was set up, right?
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It was a no win type scenario, most likely.
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And so for a dog fight, the aircraft size
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and the ranges and the turn radiuses
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make it so it's not very theatrical, right?
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The aircraft looks small.
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And while it's intense with the systems I have
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and the sensors and what I'm feeling and all that,
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if I, you know, we've done it and we've done it, right?
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We take video of that and it's just like a blue sky
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and you see a little dot out there.
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So not very interesting.
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And so anytime it really looks interesting
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in dog fight arena, that's most likely a fiction
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because we really only get close for a millisecond
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as we're dipping past each other at the merge.
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You're breaking my heart, right?
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I know, I'm sorry.
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You're breaking my heart.
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In a dog fight, you can go and have fun,
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but you know, in a dog fight specifically.
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Maybe that was more common in the earlier wars,
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the World War II and before that,
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where the, is it due to the sort of the range
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and the effectiveness of the weapon systems involved?
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And the accuracy of the targeting systems at range.
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But there's also a train of thought
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that hasn't actually been tested out yet,
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which is with the advent of advanced electronic warfare,
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EW and or unmanned assets,
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the battle space may get so complex
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and missiles may essentially just get dropped out of the sky
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or wasted such that you're gonna be in close
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with either IR missiles or guns,
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if it's a no kidding, you know, must defend type scenario.
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First of all, what's electronic warfare?
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You know, it's basically trying to get control
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of electromagnetic spectrum for the interest
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of whatever operation is going on.
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So in the tactical environment,
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a lot of that is trying to deceive the radar
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or can we deceive the missiles or just, you know,
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stop their guide and things of that nature.
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Man, it's a battle in the space of information,
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of digital information.
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Yeah, well F22 and F35, right?
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F22 is a big expensive aircraft
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and it was made to be a great fighter.
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But the F35 is not as great of a fighter,
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but it's an electronic warfare
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and mission commander platform of the future
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where information is what's gonna win the war
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instead of the best dog fighter.
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And so it's interesting dichotomy there.
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What's the best airplane ever made, fighter jet ever made?
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I know the aviators in the audience are gonna hate my answer
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because they're gonna want that sexy, you know,
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muscly F14 Tomcat type fighter
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or maybe P51 type aircraft.
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But the F35 is maybe not the best dog fighter,
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but it doesn't have to get in a dog fight, right?
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It's like how you'd be the best knife fighters,
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not getting a knife fight sometimes.
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Lockheed Martin F35 Lightning II, it looks pretty sexy.
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There's two real strengths you can have as a fighter.
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You can have the ability to kind of out muscle your fighter,
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your opponent and beat them on Gs and power
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and raid around on them.
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And then there's the other side of that,
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which is you can be overly maneuverable.
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You can bleed energy quickly.
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And that's what the F18 was good at
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because it had to be heavier to land on aircraft carrier.
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We had to give it extra bulk,
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but it also needs a special mechanism
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to slow down enough to land on aircraft carrier.
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And so it made it very maneuverable.
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And what that leads to a lot of times
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is the ability to get maybe the first shot in a fight,
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which is very good, but if you do make that sharp turn,
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you're gonna bleed a lot of your energy away
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and be more susceptible for follow on shots
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if that one's less susceptible.
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And so there's just kind of aggression,
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nonaggression game you can play depending on
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the type of aircraft you're fighting.
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Where does the F35 land on that spectrum?
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The F35 lands somewhere behind the F22s.
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So there'll probably be a row of F22s or F18s
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and F35 will be out back,
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but it'll be enabling a lot of the warfare
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that's happening in front of you.
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Is it one of the more expensive planes
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because of all the stuff on it?
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It certainly is, yeah.
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In the movie, they have Tom Cruise fly it over Mach 10.
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So maybe can you say what are the different speeds,
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accelerations feel like, Mach 1, 2, 3, or hypersonic?
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Have you ever flown hypersonic?
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How tough does it get?
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I'm just gonna call out the BS of ejecting at Mach 10
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just for the record, because in the movie,
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there's been I think at least one ejection
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that was supersonic, and I'll just say it was not pretty,
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So there would have to be some interesting mechanisms
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to eject successfully at Mach 10,
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but I'll digress on that for the moment.
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Yeah, that seemed very strange.
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And he just walked away from it, but anyway, so.
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He seemed disheveled.
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Okay, it's Tom Cruise.
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It's like Chuck Norris or something.
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Indestructible, yeah.
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He also doesn't age.
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But anyway, so what's interesting to say
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about the experience as you go up?
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Does it get more and more difficult?
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In the end of the day, crossing the sound barrier
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is much like crossing the speed limit on the highway.
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You don't really notice anything.
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To cross that, at least in F18,
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because we have a lot more weight than most fighters,
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typically we'll do that in a descent.
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We'll do that full afterburner,
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just dumping gas into the engine.
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And so that'll get us over the fastest
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I think I've gone with about 1.28.
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But what's interesting, people realize,
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is that if I take that throttle in an afterburner
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and I just bring it back, just bring it back to mil,
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which is full power, just not afterburner,
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the deacceleration is so strong due to the air friction
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that it'll throw you forward in your straps.
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Almost, I would say, maybe like 70% as strong almost
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as trapping on the boat, it's pretty strong.
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So it's almost like a reverse car crash
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just for the deacceleration.
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So the acceleration is usually kind of slow
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and you don't feel anything, of course,
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when you're crossing through it,
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but the deacceleration's pretty violent.
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The deacceleration's violent, huh, okay.
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But is there a fundamental difference
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between mach one and hypersonic, mach five and so on?
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Does it require super special training?
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And is that something that's used often in warfare
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or is it not really that necessary?
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No, so hypersonic human flight, if it exists,
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is not something that's employed tactically
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in any sense right now that I'm aware of.
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So I think of hypersonic technology,
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I think of missiles and weapons systems
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and delivery platform, I don't think of fighter aircraft
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necessarily, I can think of bomber
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or reconnaissance aircraft perhaps,
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but those would be more efficient, very long range.
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So I imagine acceleration would be kind of gentle, honestly.
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The thing you experience is the acceleration,
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not the actual speed.
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There's been just a small tangent,
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a lot of discussion about hypersonic nuclear weapons,
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like missiles from Russia bragging about that.
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Is this something that's a significant concern
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or is it just a way to flex
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about different kinds of weapons systems?
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Hypersonics, I do think pose a challenge
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for our detection systems because there are,
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you know, there are design considerations
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in these sensor systems as always, right?
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And when you build them and the technology progresses
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to a point where maybe it's not feasible
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to use that technology, you know, there's a problem.
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But with the all domain and kind of cross domain
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data linking capabilities we have,
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it's less of, you know, it's more of an integrated picture,
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And so the hypersonics are really,
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what it is is how fast can we detect and destroy a problem?
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You're just shortening the time available to do that.
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We call something like that the kill chain, right?
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It's from locating a target and identifying it
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and, you know, essentially authorizing its destruction
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by whatever means, employing,
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and then actually following up to ensure
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that you did what you said you were going to do
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in some sense, right?
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Does it need another reattacks, something of that nature.
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And so there's an old dog fighting framework
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you could call it, it's called the OODA loop
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that kind of made its way in the engineering of business now
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but the old observe, orientate, decide act
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was initially a fighter mechanism in order to get inside
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that kill chain of your opponent and break it up
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so that he can't process his kill chain on you.
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And so hypersonics are a way of shortening those windows
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of opportunity to react to them.
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I wanted to, like, how much do you have to shorten it
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in order for the defense systems not to work anymore?
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It seems like it's very, you know, I'm both often horrified
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by the thought of nuclear war, but at the same time,
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wonder what that looks like.
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When I dream of extreme competence in defense systems,
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I imagine that not a single nuclear weapon
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can reach the United States by missile
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with the defense systems, but then again,
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I also understand that these are extremely
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complicated systems, the amount of integration required,
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and because you're not using them,
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I mean, there could be, you know,
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there's like an intern somewhere that like forgot
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to update the code, the Fortran code
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that like is going to make the different,
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because you don't have the opportunity
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to really thoroughly test, which is really scary.
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Of course, the systems are probably incredible
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if they could be tested, but because they can't be
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really thoroughly tested in an actual attack, I wonder.
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I guess one assumption there would be that
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these hypersonic missiles would only be launched
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in the case of an attack.
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It'd be interesting if there were other hypersonic objects
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that we could use to flex those systems.
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Another thing that actually happened,
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and I just have a million questions I want to ask you,
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it's fascinating to me, is there's a bird strike
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on the plane, does that happen often?
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Yeah, it's a serious issue.
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And it damaged the engine, and they made it seem
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like it's a serious, exactly a serious issue.
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I've hit birds, I know someone that took a turkey vulture
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to the face, through the cockpit, right,
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shattered the cockpit, knocked him out.
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I think that, actually, I don't know him personally,
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but it was a story I know from the command I was at,
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and I believe the backseater had to punch out
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and punch them both out because he was unconscious
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in the front seat from the bird.
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It can kill you from hitting you,
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it's like a bowling ball going 250 miles an hour.
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It can take out an engine very easily.
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Every airport I've flown at in the Navy,
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I've had to check the bird condition, if you will,
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to see how many birds, and we've had to cancel flights
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because there's too many of them around the airport.
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Some airports even have bird radars, military airports.
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Is there systems that monitor the bird condition?
link |
There is, yeah, there's actual radar systems,
link |
and you can go in the, certain bases you have to call up,
link |
and they'll tell you what it is for the day
link |
or for that hour, and other ones have it
link |
in their weather report that goes out over the radio.
link |
What are some technological solutions to this,
link |
or is this just, because it's a low probability event,
link |
there's no real solution for it?
link |
I would say it's not a low probability event.
link |
This is happening a lot.
link |
Although the hits themselves aren't necessarily that common,
link |
or I'll say a catastrophic hit, either a near miss or a hit
link |
or the pilot having to actively maneuver to avoid it
link |
is pretty common, and in fact, it seems stressful.
link |
It is, it's so common in fact that we know
link |
that you never want to try to go over,
link |
or you never want to go under a bird
link |
if you see it in front of you.
link |
You always want to try to go over it
link |
because what they'll do immediately if they see you
link |
is, and you startle them, is they'll bring their wings in
link |
and just drop straight down to try to get out of the path.
link |
It's interesting, I didn't know they did that,
link |
but so if you immediately, if you try to go under them,
link |
they're gonna be dropping into you,
link |
so you typically want to try to go above them.
link |
Is this something you can train for, or no?
link |
Is this one of those things you have to really experience?
link |
It's a skill set that you somewhat train for
link |
in the duties of being a fighter pilot in a sense, right?
link |
Being able to react to your environment very quickly
link |
and make decisions quickly, so.
link |
Is that one of the more absurd things,
link |
challenges you have to deal with in flying?
link |
Is there other things, sort of maybe weather conditions,
link |
like harsh weather conditions?
link |
Is there something that we maybe don't often think about
link |
in terms of the challenges of flying?
link |
Birds, in a way, aren't a ridiculous threat for us.
link |
It's a safety threat that anything physical in the air
link |
is something that we really have to be careful about,
link |
whether we're flying formation off of the aircraft
link |
right next to us or whether it's a turkey vulture
link |
at 2,000 feet or a flock of 5,000 birds,
link |
like at the runway, we have to wave off, you know?
link |
And although they're low probability,
link |
a lot of bases will have actual
link |
Environmental Protection Agency employees
link |
that are responsible for safely removing migratory birds
link |
or different animals that may be in the runways
link |
Wow, I didn't know what a turkey vulture is,
link |
and it really does look like a mix
link |
between a vulture and a turkey.
link |
And look kind of dumb, no offense to turkey vultures.
link |
In that movie, who was the enemy nation?
link |
Was it, I mean, I guess they were implying it's Iran.
link |
I didn't think they were implying
link |
any particular nation state, frankly.
link |
I think they did a somewhat decent job
link |
of having some ambiguous fifth generation fighters.
link |
The location and the stockpile,
link |
I get how the story kind of insinuates certain things,
link |
but they seem to do a good job
link |
of not having anything directly pointing to another nation,
link |
which I thought was the good move.
link |
I enjoy these type of movies as an aviator
link |
and as an American, right?
link |
Because it's a feel good movie,
link |
but we shouldn't be celebrating going to war
link |
with any particular country, China, Russia,
link |
whoever may have these weapons.
link |
It's fun to watch,
link |
but it would be an incredibly serious event
link |
to be implying these weapons.
link |
Yeah, and we'll talk about war in general,
link |
because yeah, the movie's kind of celebrating
link |
the human side of things
link |
and also the incredible technology involved,
link |
but there's also the cost of war
link |
and the seriousness of war
link |
and the suffering involved with war,
link |
not just in the fighting,
link |
but in the death of civilians
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
Well, you were a Navy pilot.
link |
Let's talk a little bit more seriously about this,
link |
and you were twice deployed in the Middle East
link |
flying the FAA 18F Super Hornet.
link |
Can you briefly tell the story of your career
link |
So I joined the Navy in 2009, right after college.
link |
I went to, essentially, officer boot camp,
link |
officer of Canada school.
link |
I applied as a pilot, and I got in as a pilot.
link |
That was the advantage of going that way
link |
is that I could essentially choose what I wanted,
link |
and if I got in, great.
link |
If not, I didn't get stuck doing something else.
link |
So you knew you wanted to be a pilot.
link |
I went through my initial training.
link |
I went through primary flight training
link |
that all aviators go through,
link |
and I did well enough that,
link |
one of the first lessons they teach you in the Navy
link |
is that you can have a great career in the Navy
link |
and you can see the world and do what you want,
link |
but at the end of the day,
link |
it's all about the needs of the Navy and what they need,
link |
so they may not have the platform you like
link |
or you may not necessarily get to choose
link |
your own adventure here,
link |
but I was lucky enough that there was one jet slot
link |
in my class, and I was lucky enough,
link |
fortunate enough to get it, so.
link |
It was a jet slot.
link |
So yeah, what that means is that I was assigned
link |
actually a tail hook at that point,
link |
which meant I would go train to fly aircraft
link |
that land on aircraft carriers,
link |
and there's essentially three aircraft
link |
that do that at the time.
link |
There's the F18 and the E2 and the C2.
link |
C2 is kind of like the mail truck for the boat.
link |
E2 is one of the big radar dish on top,
link |
and then there's all the F18s.
link |
So E2 is comms, is C2 mail truck?
link |
C2 basically brings all the mail.
link |
They pack on the shore,
link |
and they're the ones that bring supplies
link |
to the ship via air and people.
link |
Sorry if I missed it.
link |
Is it a plane or is it a helicopter?
link |
All right, and the F18 is a fighter jet.
link |
So I selected tail hook,
link |
which meant I could get one of those other ones,
link |
but 80% of them or so are jets,
link |
so I was in a good spot at that point,
link |
and that's when I went to Merde, Mississippi
link |
to fly my first jet, which was the T45 Gauss Hawk.
link |
Cool, so what kind of plane is that?
link |
Is that what you were doing your training on?
link |
That's the jet aircraft you get in
link |
before you actually go to the F18.
link |
It is a carrier capable,
link |
so go to the boat for the first time in it during the day,
link |
drop fake bombs, do dog fighting,
link |
low levels, formation flying, day and night.
link |
Oh, it's a pretty plane.
link |
Yeah, and it looks like a cone so that no one hits it.
link |
Okay, so it's usually not used for fighting,
link |
it's used for training?
link |
It's used for training how to fight.
link |
So what was that like?
link |
Was that the first time you were sort of
link |
really getting into it?
link |
Yeah, that was really interesting,
link |
because before that it was a 600 horsepower prop plane.
link |
Going from that to the T45 is one of the biggest jumps
link |
in power and like Navy machine operation.
link |
How much horsepower does the T45 have approximately?
link |
Maybe like 15,000 or so.
link |
So it's a huge jump from 600 you said horsepower about?
link |
Cool, so it's a big, big leap.
link |
But it's a jet, so it performs differently, it's faster.
link |
What that means, not just because it's faster,
link |
your whole mind needs to be faster.
link |
Everything happens faster in the air now, right?
link |
Those comms happen faster,
link |
your landing gear has to come up faster,
link |
everything just happens faster in a jet.
link |
So it's a big jump.
link |
And I'll never forget going on my first flight
link |
in that aircraft, it was a formation flight for someone else.
link |
And I was just in the back watching
link |
and there was an instructor in the flight.
link |
And so what that means is the instructor
link |
is in a single aircraft and then there's three
link |
or four other aircraft and they're learning
link |
how to do joins and they're learning how to fly in formation.
link |
And as a new student in the back, it's amazing, right?
link |
Cause you know, photo op time and all this,
link |
like I'm seeing aircraft up close for the first time,
link |
it's awesome, and on the way back,
link |
we couldn't get our landing gear down, ironically.
link |
So to make a long story short,
link |
cause it's overall not that exciting,
link |
we couldn't get the gear down,
link |
we actually went to go do a control ejection
link |
to the target area where that is,
link |
about 15, 20 miles to the north of the base.
link |
Wait, did you just say that's not that exciting?
link |
Cause that to me is pretty exciting.
link |
That, I mean, how, first of all,
link |
I mean, that must be terrifying,
link |
like early on in your careers,
link |
I haven't seen those things that,
link |
yeah, like how often does that kind of thing happen?
link |
Decent, more than you would think.
link |
More than you would think.
link |
There was no significant panic?
link |
This is like, this understood?
link |
This is what has to be done in this case?
link |
I think I was probably just too dumb
link |
to realize the significance of it,
link |
cause as a new student, you know,
link |
not really appreciating, you know,
link |
just what is ahead of me if we are ejecting.
link |
But at the time it was more, it was just like rote, right?
link |
Cause I was back there,
link |
and then I went from a observer mode to a,
link |
I'm gonna provide you the help that I can provide you
link |
as a member of this crew, you know, mode.
link |
And so it was less about, you know,
link |
on this 20 mile trip and thinking about my,
link |
how vulnerable I am, you know,
link |
we're going through checklists,
link |
we're talking to people, we're getting ready.
link |
So no, it wasn't fearful.
link |
And the whole time we were doing one of these
link |
to try to get the gear down.
link |
So we're unloading the jet and then loading it back
link |
to try to get the gear out with the stick.
link |
And it came down, it came down halfway there,
link |
So it came back around and we did like a safety trap
link |
in case there was a problem with the gear.
link |
And that was my first flight, you know,
link |
a little bit of serendipity,
link |
but I'm gonna fast forward a bit.
link |
And I went back to that squad as an instructor
link |
about five or six years later,
link |
and I was an aviation safety officer at this point,
link |
which meant I was responsible for investigating mishaps.
link |
And a student went in and he went in the back seat
link |
of a form flight, just like the one I went on.
link |
And he went out and he ended up ejecting on that flight.
link |
Exact same type of flight.
link |
They went out and they had a runaway trim scenario.
link |
And it caused the aircraft essentially
link |
just inverted itself almost 180 degrees
link |
at about 600 feet over the ground.
link |
And they punched out just slightly outside
link |
the ejection window at about 300, 400 feet or so,
link |
but they were completely fine.
link |
So, you know, and then about two months later,
link |
we had another ejection.
link |
About three months after that, we had another ejection.
link |
So unfortunately, you know, it can be more common
link |
than people think.
link |
What does it feel like to get ejected?
link |
Thankfully, I don't know.
link |
I can describe it to you.
link |
I can tell you what it's like from what I've heard,
link |
but I truly think it's one of those things
link |
that you just don't understand until it happens.
link |
It's like instantaneous about 250 Gs,
link |
which is only possible because of inertia in our blood.
link |
All right, so you can actually get like 250, 300 Gs
link |
for like a few milliseconds,
link |
and then it backs off to like 40 or 50 Gs
link |
to get you away from the vehicle itself.
link |
And so, you know, you may lose consciousness.
link |
If you do, you know, who knows where you wake up.
link |
You know, you could be in a tree,
link |
you could still be falling, you could be in the water, so.
link |
The physics of that is fascinating, how to eject safely.
link |
Do you know the story about how that was tested at all?
link |
I don't know the full story,
link |
but there was an airport.
link |
I'm guessing nobody knows the full story.
link |
It's probably a lot of shady stuff going on.
link |
But anyway, you mean like in the early, early days, or?
link |
They took a flight dock up to a rocket sled
link |
and just see how much their body could take it.
link |
And he turned a lot of his body in the mush
link |
in the process of getting that science done,
link |
but he saved a lot of lives.
link |
People used to be tougher back in the day.
link |
Yeah, that's how science used to be done.
link |
So how did your training continue?
link |
So how, take me farther through your career
link |
as you worked towards graduating towards the F18s.
link |
So in VT9, where I was a student, there's two phases.
link |
There's an intermediate and an advanced.
link |
Intermediate is getting very comfortable with the aircraft.
link |
And at that point, you truly hear,
link |
all right, you're going jets now,
link |
or you're gonna go one of the other aircraft
link |
that land on the aircraft carrier.
link |
I was told I was going jets at that point.
link |
And then we go into same squadron,
link |
same aircraft, same instructors,
link |
but it's called advanced now.
link |
And now we're learning how to dog fight for the first time.
link |
We're doing what we call tactical formation,
link |
which is just like aggressive position keeping.
link |
We are doing dog fighting in low levels
link |
and all sorts of great stuff.
link |
So it's really that first introduction
link |
to that tactical environment
link |
and really putting Gs on the jet
link |
and on your body and maneuvering.
link |
Is there like tactical formation,
link |
is collaborating with other fighter jets a part of that?
link |
So flying in a, that's what you mean by formation.
link |
So literally having an awareness.
link |
Is this done for you or are you as a human
link |
supposed to understand like where you are in the formation,
link |
how to maintain formation, all that kind of stuff?
link |
Is it done autonomously or manually?
link |
There's a great autonomy point
link |
on the end of this I've thought about.
link |
So, but what we do, it's all manual.
link |
And so I'm looking at his wing
link |
and I'm looking at different visual checkpoints
link |
that form like a triangle, right?
link |
Like an equal out triangle essentially.
link |
And then as that triangle is no longer equal,
link |
I can tell my relative position against that aircraft.
link |
That's really cool.
link |
And so that's what I'm staring at first,
link |
sometimes hours on end, several feet away,
link |
doing one of these if I'm in the weather, that's all it is.
link |
So you get, it's almost like, is it peripheral vision
link |
No, we're staring directly at it.
link |
The peripheral is going on my, on my.
link |
That's interesting.
link |
My sensors and all my instruments.
link |
And so he is my gyroscope at that point, right?
link |
While you're flying, not looking straight.
link |
Correct, I'm flying like this for hours.
link |
It can hurt your neck.
link |
We don't like doing this as much.
link |
And I don't think it's just me, right?
link |
It's a weird thing where when you're like this,
link |
it's actually harder to fly formation slightly than here
link |
because being in line of your hand movements
link |
and of the aircraft somehow has an effect
link |
on our ability to be more precise and comfortable.
link |
But so there's a symmetry to the formation usually.
link |
So one of the people on the other side
link |
really don't like being on that side.
link |
Is it, does it, who gets like the short straw?
link |
How do you decide which side of the formation you are?
link |
It's a good question too
link |
because there's kind of rank in some sense.
link |
So if it's a four person formation, right?
link |
You have the vision lead who's qualified
link |
to lead a whole division, but maybe the other ones aren't.
link |
And he has a dash two and that's his wingman essentially.
link |
And then in a division, there's two other aircraft.
link |
And then you have another senior flight leader.
link |
That's the dash three position.
link |
And then you have dash four, the last one.
link |
And if you were all lined up on one side,
link |
like fingertip, one, two, three, four,
link |
that dash four guy is gonna be at the end of that whip.
link |
So if you're flying formation,
link |
each one's making movements relative to the lead.
link |
Dash four is kind of at the end of that error.
link |
And so his movements are kind of like a whip.
link |
It's very difficult to fly in that position in close.
link |
Can you elaborate?
link |
Is it because of the error, the aerodynamics?
link |
If this is a flight lead and this is dash two,
link |
flight lead is rock steady and just doing his thing.
link |
And flight two is gonna be working that triangle
link |
moving a little bit, right?
link |
And he has this small error bubble
link |
that he's doing his best to stay.
link |
And then, but dash three is flying off dash two.
link |
And so his error bubble is dash twos plus his own.
link |
So it gets more and more stressful
link |
as you get farther out.
link |
Okay, what's the experience of that staring
link |
for long periods of time and trying to maintain formation?
link |
How stressful is that?
link |
Because we're doing that when we drive, staying in lane.
link |
And that becomes, after you get pretty good at it,
link |
it becomes somewhat, it's still stressful.
link |
Which actually is surprisingly stressful.
link |
When you look at lane keeping systems,
link |
they actually relieve that stress somehow.
link |
And it actually creates a much more pleasant experience
link |
while you're still able to maintain situational awareness
link |
and stay awake, which is really interesting.
link |
I don't think people realize how stressful it is
link |
to lane keep when they drive.
link |
So this is even more stressful.
link |
So are you, do you think about that?
link |
Or is this, yeah, I guess how stressful is it
link |
from a psychology perspective?
link |
It's very stressful.
link |
So I taught students how to do this as well.
link |
And so at our feet, we have two rudders.
link |
And if I'm flying off a flight lead over here,
link |
what you'll find a lot of times is you'll be flying,
link |
or like if I'm the instructor and the student's flying,
link |
I'll start to notice that he's having a harder
link |
and harder time keeping position.
link |
What I'll notice typically is he's locked out his leg.
link |
They'll lock out the leg that's closest
link |
to the aircraft they're flying against
link |
and push on the rudder subconsciously,
link |
because their whole body's trying to get away
link |
from the aircraft because they're so uncomfortable
link |
being close to it.
link |
And so I'll tell them, I can fix their form
link |
with just a couple of words.
link |
I'll say, wiggle your toes.
link |
And they'll wiggle their toes and they'll realize,
link |
and they'll loosen all the muscles in their legs
link |
because they realize they've been locked up
link |
and their formation flying will get a lot better.
link |
And so, there's a lot of stress associated with that.
link |
There's some interesting psychological or visual issues
link |
such as vertigo as you're flying.
link |
So if you're flying with him
link |
and then you fly right into a cloud, right?
link |
That's when it's very stressful
link |
because you have to be very close
link |
in order to maintain visual
link |
and you might be on a thunderstorm, right?
link |
And so you have to be very tight.
link |
You might start raining and then he's turning,
link |
but you might not even know that.
link |
You might not even be able to see that turn.
link |
And so all of a sudden you might look
link |
while you're in a turn thinking you were straight and level
link |
and you look just maybe back at your instruments very quick
link |
and you realize you're like in a 30 degree turn
link |
and your whole concept of where you are in the world
link |
starts getting very confused.
link |
And you immediately get this sense of, it's weird.
link |
Like I look at the HUD and it feels,
link |
all my senses are telling me it's spinning, but it's not.
link |
And so I have to trust my instruments
link |
even though it feels like it's spinning.
link |
And the same thing can happen
link |
when you're flying formation off of someone
link |
and it can be very dangerous and disorientating.
link |
But the point is to try to regain awareness
link |
by trusting the instruments,
link |
like distrust all your human senses
link |
and just use the instruments
link |
to rebuild situational awareness.
link |
Not in this particular case
link |
because our situational awareness is based,
link |
it's predicated off of our flight lead.
link |
So in a sense, I'm just trusting his movements.
link |
And so he's my gyroscope, but you're absolutely right.
link |
And if I was by myself, I would trust my instruments,
link |
but I can't just stop flying form and trust my instruments
link |
because now I'm gonna hit him.
link |
Oh yeah, you have to pay attention to him.
link |
So he's my reference.
link |
So the instruments are not helping you significantly
link |
with his positioning.
link |
Not, it's all completely manual.
link |
So is there a future where some of that is autonomous?
link |
Yeah, and I've thought about automating that flight regime.
link |
But when I started thinking about it,
link |
I realized that all the formation keeping that we do
link |
is designed to enhance the aviators
link |
ability to maintain sight, right?
link |
So we fly very tight formation so that we can go in weather
link |
and to reduce groups of traffic coming into the boat.
link |
We fly in one particular position
link |
so that all of the flight crew can look down the line
link |
and see the flight lead.
link |
So everything has based,
link |
everything has to do with the two air crew
link |
visually maintaining sight of each other
link |
and defending each other, right?
link |
In a combat spread, I might be looking,
link |
I may be three miles away from him flying formation
link |
directly beam and looking around
link |
to make sure nothing's there.
link |
So as I'm looking into automating this process,
link |
I thought, well, sure it's easy to get a bunch of aircraft
link |
to fly in formation off each other, right?
link |
It's trivial, but why?
link |
What is the best formation?
link |
Why are they doing that?
link |
And that opened up a much more interesting regime
link |
of operations and flight mechanics.
link |
And that's when we get back to that kind of stochastic
link |
mindset where we can bring in aircraft close
link |
to do some type of normal flying
link |
or reduce congestion around airports.
link |
But when we consider flying or formation
link |
in a tactical environment,
link |
we can be much more effective
link |
with nontraditional formation keeping
link |
or perhaps no formation keeping perhaps.
link |
So autonomy used for formation keeping,
link |
not for convenience, but for the introduction of randomness.
link |
Like to a real time mission planner, yeah.
link |
And then that's where you also have some human modification.
link |
So it's like unmanned teaming enters that picture.
link |
So you use some of the human intuition
link |
and adjustment of this formation.
link |
The formation itself has some uncertainty.
link |
I mean, it's such an interesting dance.
link |
I think that is the most fascinating application
link |
of artificial intelligence
link |
is when it's human AI collaboration,
link |
that semi autonomous dance
link |
that you see in these semi autonomous vehicle systems
link |
in terms of cars being driving,
link |
but also in the safety critical situation
link |
of a airplane, of a fighter jet,
link |
especially when you're flying fast.
link |
I mean, in a split second,
link |
you have to make all these kinds of decisions
link |
and it feels like an AI system can do
link |
as much harm as it can help.
link |
And so to get that right is a really fascinating challenge.
link |
One of the challenges too,
link |
isn't just the algorithms of the autonomy itself,
link |
but how it senses the environment.
link |
That of course is gonna be what all these decisions
link |
And that's a challenge in this type of environment.
link |
Well, I gotta ask.
link |
So F18, what's it like to fly a fighter jet as best?
link |
I mean, what to you is beautiful, powerful?
link |
What do you love about the experience of flying?
link |
For me, and I think I'm an outlier a bit.
link |
It wasn't necessarily the flying itself, right?
link |
It wasn't necessarily the soaring over the clouds
link |
and looking down at the earth from upside down.
link |
I came to love that,
link |
but it wasn't necessarily the passion that drove me there.
link |
I just had no exposure to that.
link |
The only exposure I had was reading
link |
and going in the woods and science fiction and all that.
link |
And so, what seemed to kind of drive me towards that
link |
was just a desire to really be operating as close
link |
to what I thought was the edge of technology or science.
link |
And that's the path that I chose
link |
to try to get close to that.
link |
I thought that being in a fighter jet
link |
and all the tools and the technology and the knowledge
link |
and the challenges and the failures and victories
link |
that would come with that just seemed like something
link |
that I wanted to be a part of.
link |
And it wasn't necessarily about the flying,
link |
but it was about the challenge.
link |
And like I said, as a person from a small town,
link |
small high school, being able to get my hands
link |
or even just near something of such technological
link |
significance was kind of empowering for me.
link |
And that's kind of what bore the love of flight from there.
link |
Becoming, having some level of mastery in the aircraft,
link |
it really feels like an extension of your body.
link |
And once I got there, then kind of the love of flying
link |
So you sort of, one, is the man mastery over the machine.
link |
And second is the machine is like the greatest thing
link |
that humans have ever created arguably.
link |
The things that Lockheed Martin and others have built.
link |
I mean, the engineering in that.
link |
However you feel about war, which is one of the sad things
link |
about human civilization is war inspires
link |
the engineering of tools that are incredible.
link |
And it's like, maybe without war,
link |
if we look at human history, we would not build
link |
some of the incredible things we built.
link |
So in order to win wars, to stop wars,
link |
we build these incredible systems
link |
that perhaps propagate war.
link |
And that's another discussion I'll ask you about.
link |
But this, to you, this is like, this is a chance
link |
to experience the greatest engineering humans
link |
have ever been able to do.
link |
Like similar, I suppose, that astronauts feel like
link |
when they're flying.
link |
And I wanted to be an astronaut.
link |
I wanted to take that route.
link |
I was gonna apply to test pilot school.
link |
It just didn't work out for me.
link |
I ended up having a broken foot during my window.
link |
But long story short, I ended up after my time
link |
in my fleet squadron, and we can get back to the rest
link |
of the timeline if you want,
link |
but I went to be an instructor pilot instead, right?
link |
And then, I was talking about this
link |
with a squadron mate earlier today about how,
link |
I certainly wouldn't be talking with Lex today
link |
if I ended up going to test pilot school.
link |
I never would have, I never would have had the,
link |
I wouldn't, maybe recklessness, I don't know,
link |
but the willingness to have a conversation
link |
about UAP while I was, that led me to the decision
link |
to get out once I went there.
link |
And it kind of enabled me to talk about UAP more publicly.
link |
And if I stayed in the Navy, then I don't think
link |
that would have happened.
link |
I wouldn't have been able to if I went that route.
link |
Well, as a small tangent, do you hope to travel
link |
Do you think you'll step foot on Mars one day?
link |
If you asked me that five years ago,
link |
I would have said, yes, I want to.
link |
In fact, I would like to die on Mars.
link |
Now, today, now I have some hesitations
link |
and I have some hesitations
link |
because I'm hopeful and optimistic.
link |
And I think that, you know, I think that we are truly
link |
like on the brink of a very wide technological revolution
link |
that's going to kind of move us how we used to move
link |
information and data in this last century.
link |
We're going to be manipulating and managing matter
link |
in that next century.
link |
And so I think that, I think our reach as humans
link |
are going to get a lot wider, a lot faster
link |
than people may realize, or at least.
link |
Wait, are you getting like super ambitious beyond Mars?
link |
Is that what you're saying?
link |
Like Mars seems kind of boring, I want to go beyond that.
link |
Is that what, do you mean the reach of humanity
link |
across all kinds of technologies?
link |
Or do you mean literally across space?
link |
Across space, you know?
link |
So, you know, we're going to be, I think that
link |
as artificial intelligence and machine learning
link |
start broaching further into the topic of science,
link |
the area of science, and we start working through
link |
new physics, we start working through,
link |
or I should say pass the Einsteinian frameworks
link |
as we kind of get a better idea of what space time is
link |
or isn't, we may have, we may find, you know,
link |
answers that we didn't know that we were looking for.
link |
And we may have more opportunity.
link |
And I'm not saying this is something I'm, you know,
link |
betting the farm on, of course, but maybe that's a road
link |
I want to explore on Earth instead of on Mars.
link |
Maybe there's technology that can be brought to bear
link |
with new science and harder engineering that is a road
link |
that doesn't go past Mars to get outside the solar system.
link |
So there are different ways to explore the universe
link |
than the traditional rocket systems.
link |
If we can continue sort of your journey,
link |
you said that you were attracted to the incredibly
link |
advanced technologies of the F18s and just the
link |
fighter jets in general.
link |
Let me ask another question, which seems incredibly
link |
difficult to do, which is landing on a carrier
link |
or taking off from a carrier and landing on a carrier.
link |
So what's that like?
link |
What are the challenges of that?
link |
Taking off's pretty easy.
link |
It's procedurally somewhat complex where there's a lot
link |
of moving parts, almost like a clock, you know.
link |
You're almost in a pocket watch.
link |
So then you're a part of the machinery.
link |
And so long as you press the right buttons
link |
and do the right things, you're gonna go shooting
link |
So there's like a checklist to follow and there's
link |
several people involved in that checklist
link |
and you just gotta follow the checklist correctly.
link |
Lots of ways to screw it up, but you'll know
link |
how to screw it up.
link |
But landing on the back of the boat is a whole
link |
There's a lot more variables.
link |
There's essentially one or two people responsible
link |
for the success of that.
link |
The landing signal officer who actually represents
link |
a team of specially trained aviators who are responsible
link |
for helping that aviator land on the boat.
link |
And the pilot himself.
link |
And it is a hard task to actually fly precisely enough
link |
So to fly quote unquote the perfect pass,
link |
you essentially have to fly your head through a one foot
link |
That's essentially the target you're shooting for.
link |
Plus or minus probably about five knots on airspeed,
link |
although we don't really judge it by airspeed.
link |
It's something called angle of attack.
link |
But generally pretty tight parameters there.
link |
And you can do everything perfect and still fail.
link |
So when we go to touchdown, we immediately bring
link |
the power up and we rotate as if we were doing,
link |
as if we were bouncing off the deck.
link |
And if we catch it, then we slow down.
link |
And then someone tells us to bring the power back,
link |
which we do, we don't do it on our own.
link |
Cause it's such a violent experience.
link |
Think you're trapped or not, or something breaks
link |
and you bring your throttle back.
link |
And that's a very serious thing.
link |
It happened to best of us, I'll admit I've done it once.
link |
When I first got to the squadron,
link |
it's called ease guns land.
link |
And so I came in the boat and I brought the power.
link |
I cracked the power back a little bit
link |
before I've been told to her that my aircraft
link |
had finished settling in.
link |
And that was a big faux pas, right?
link |
So, especially as a new guy.
link |
So it's a very serious business.
link |
There's a lot of eyes on you
link |
and there's a lot of ways to screw it up.
link |
But the physical rush of like having a great pass
link |
and then like the crash of into the boat and all that,
link |
the physical sensation from it,
link |
when everything's going great,
link |
it's top of the world, it's a great feeling.
link |
How much of it is feel?
link |
How much of it is instruments?
link |
How much is other people just doing the work for you,
link |
catching you, as long as you do everything right?
link |
There's a few systems we use.
link |
One is called the BAL.
link |
And the BAL is external to our aircraft.
link |
And it's B A L L, BAL, like BAL, okay.
link |
It's a iFloss landing system,
link |
which stands for something very long convoluted.
link |
But essentially it's a mirror with lights on it.
link |
And you see the light at a different cell
link |
based on your position relative to an ideal glide slope.
link |
So if you're right on it, you're right in the middle.
link |
And if you're below, you're low.
link |
And as I add power and maneuver the aircraft,
link |
that BAL, I see that BAL rise, I see that BAL low.
link |
It's a lagging indicator though, right?
link |
And your jet is a lagging engine too, right?
link |
It takes time to spool up the engine.
link |
So that adds to the complexity.
link |
You have to think ahead a bit.
link |
So you don't want to,
link |
you can't just bring the power up and leave it there.
link |
You have to bring the power up, touch it, bring it back.
link |
And oh, by the way, your landing area is moving,
link |
not just away from you, but also on an angle, right?
link |
Cause we have an angled deck.
link |
And so you're constantly doing one of these
link |
to correct yourself as you go.
link |
That seems so stressful.
link |
And every time you do one of those,
link |
maybe it's a 30 degree angle bank, right?
link |
I'm losing lift, right?
link |
And so I have to compensate with power each time I do that.
link |
So I'm doing another one.
link |
Cause you have to maintain the same level
link |
you're always lowering.
link |
It's a constant rate of descent
link |
that's increasing from about 200 feet per minute
link |
And every time you do this, that's messing with that.
link |
So you have to compensate.
link |
And you're doing that manually.
link |
And then of course, as you come down that glide slope,
link |
it becomes more and more narrow.
link |
And you have to, of course,
link |
modulate your inputs such that they're smaller and smaller
link |
cause they have a bigger and bigger effect
link |
as you get closer in.
link |
And what happens too, when you get in close is that
link |
right before you cross over,
link |
if this is the boat right here, your table,
link |
right before you kind of get your wings
link |
over the boat itself,
link |
this big wind from the main tower of the boat
link |
is where it dips down.
link |
So the wind actually goes down and it's called the burble.
link |
And it'll actually pull the aircraft down,
link |
increase your rate of descent.
link |
So at that particular point,
link |
you need to increase your speed.
link |
You know, increase your power
link |
and try to compensate against that.
link |
And so that's kind of a third variable
link |
that's trying to screw you up on your way down.
link |
What's the most difficult conditions
link |
in which you had to land
link |
or you've seen somebody had to land?
link |
Because I think you were also a signal officer as well.
link |
I was the head landing signal officer for my squadron.
link |
So you've probably seen some tough landings.
link |
I've seen a ramp strike,
link |
which is when a part of the aircraft hits
link |
before the landing area,
link |
which is basically the round out of the boat.
link |
That is before the landing area.
link |
So they basically struck the back of the boat coming in.
link |
It was just their hook.
link |
So it wasn't their craft.
link |
And they were fine.
link |
That one was kind of ugly.
link |
But it like rips that part of the aircraft.
link |
And then you land on your bellies, that kind of thing.
link |
In this particular case,
link |
it hit and then it gave
link |
and essentially dragged the hook on the surface after that.
link |
And so he was able to grab a wire at that point.
link |
When does that kind of thing happen?
link |
Is it just a miscalculation by the pilot
link |
or is it weather conditions?
link |
I wouldn't even call it a miscalculation.
link |
I mean, I'm going to put the blame on the pilot
link |
because he's the only one in the cockpit.
link |
But then the day he's reacting to the situations
link |
he's dealing with.
link |
And so it may be errors or he may be doing the best
link |
with the conditions that he's been given.
link |
On that particular one,
link |
you just got too high rate of send.
link |
And that's what you see it with new pilots.
link |
You see it with older pilots, right?
link |
New ones and complacent ones.
link |
What you see is they'll try to make the ball go
link |
right where they want it in close.
link |
They think they can beat the game a little bit.
link |
And they try to, and so we have sayings,
link |
we teach pilots as a landing signal officer,
link |
we tell them like, don't recenter the high ball in close.
link |
It's one of the rules to live by.
link |
And so when the ball's up high,
link |
don't try to bring it back in close
link |
to like the center point when you're in close.
link |
Cause what you're doing is you bring the power off
link |
and you're going to crash right down.
link |
And that's what happens, right?
link |
Cause you got the burble pulling you down.
link |
You might be correcting, which is decreasing your lift.
link |
And then you have that type of maneuvers.
link |
How are you supposed to do all of this
link |
in harsh weather conditions?
link |
And so that's the one I wanted to tell you about.
link |
That's the hardest one.
link |
And what you hear is if you hear 99 taxi lights on,
link |
that's a really shitty day.
link |
99 taxi lights on, what's that mean?
link |
Everyone put your taxi lights on
link |
because you're about to land on the boat.
link |
And you don't see the boat?
link |
Weather is so bad that the landing signal officer
link |
on the boat can't see you either.
link |
And you can't see the boat.
link |
And you won't be able to see it when you touch down.
link |
So we call that a zero, zero landing.
link |
And you turn on the taxi lights so that the LSO
link |
who has a radio in his hand that looks like a phone
link |
from 1980 is talking directly to the pilot.
link |
And he's looking at that little light in the rain
link |
and he's telling them you're high, you're low,
link |
power, things like that.
link |
Come right, back to left.
link |
And literally talking him down to land
link |
on the boat right there.
link |
And the pilot, usually it comes as a surprise
link |
to the pilot, the landing,
link |
because he's just listening to the voice,
link |
can't see the ball, can't see the boat.
link |
And all of a sudden you just hit the boat.
link |
You crash, I mean you crash.
link |
We're going about 1,600 feet per minute descent
link |
So you're going super fast.
link |
So all of this is happening fast.
link |
You don't know the moment it's gonna hit.
link |
So you're just going into the darkness
link |
and just waiting for it to hit.
link |
Maybe not dark though, a lot of times it's white.
link |
You're just going into the light.
link |
And then there's a voice from an 80s phone.
link |
But so you still have to,
link |
so this kind of thing happens.
link |
You still have to land.
link |
Sometimes you just don't have a place to divert.
link |
But in a sense we're trained for that
link |
because we do the night landings as well.
link |
And I think you'll find this interesting,
link |
but I always found that the night landings
link |
where in these particular cases,
link |
you're usually lined up behind the boat,
link |
maybe 10, 15 miles, whereas the other ones,
link |
it's like a tight circle, the landing pattern.
link |
And so we can potentially see the boat way out there
link |
if the lights were on, which they're not.
link |
But we can maybe see like the string of aircraft
link |
But what's interesting is that it can take a while.
link |
You might be 15 miles out
link |
and your lights are turned down as dim as possible.
link |
You have a cloud deck maybe at six or 7,000 feet
link |
so that the starlight, there's no moon,
link |
but let's say the starlight's blocked out
link |
because just the starlight alone, no moon,
link |
you can see the boat, you can see the water.
link |
But when that goes away, it's like closing your eyes.
link |
You can't tell anything.
link |
It could be upside down.
link |
It could be in any position.
link |
And for me, it was almost a meditative process
link |
that I had to snap myself back out of
link |
when I was on like a long straightaway.
link |
And then I would see the light pop up
link |
in the sea of darkness.
link |
No lights anywhere.
link |
Can't even see the horizon.
link |
And I just see a light out there.
link |
My instruments were telling me, and they're turned down
link |
as far as they can go, right?
link |
So I can barely see them.
link |
So my eyes can adjust.
link |
And I'm just staring at this light in the distance.
link |
And it's just very meditative and it's the hum behind you.
link |
And then at like four miles, you know,
link |
almost like, oh, the light is a little bit bigger.
link |
And you almost kind of have to snap back to it
link |
and be like, oh, I need to like kind of like
link |
look around a little bit and engage my brain,
link |
link it back to my body and like do this thing.
link |
Because you're going to have to actually land.
link |
Well, is there just, you said you don't necessarily feel
link |
the romantic notion of the whole thing,
link |
but is there some aspects of flying where you look up
link |
and maybe you see the stars or yeah, that kind of thing
link |
that you just like, holy crap,
link |
how did humans accomplish all of this?
link |
Like, am I actually flying right now?
link |
I used to have those moments on the boat
link |
when I was catching planes land.
link |
I would, they would trap and it'd be nighttime.
link |
And it's just all this chaos in the middle of the ocean
link |
And I would have these moments where I'd be like,
link |
how the hell did I end up here?
link |
You know, there's one moment in time next to an aircraft
link |
landing on a boat in the middle of the ocean, you know,
link |
where did my life, you know,
link |
how did my life go to end up here?
link |
But what I did start to enjoy was the night vision goggles
link |
and putting those on and looking up at the stars
link |
flying around, especially over the ocean.
link |
What do they look like?
link |
And there's just so many, there's just so many stars
link |
that, you know, you normally can't see.
link |
They're shooting stars all the time.
link |
Almost every flight you'd see them with the goggles on.
link |
And so it was a great pleasure to take advantage
link |
of the lack of light pollution in some cases,
link |
especially on deployment to go grab some goggles at night,
link |
go out some quiet spot in the ship that no one can see me
link |
and just kind of look around, you know.
link |
Yeah, it's humbling.
link |
Quick break, bathroom break?
link |
Yeah, wouldn't mind a quick stretch of legs.
link |
You got a few cool patches.
link |
I do, so this is a VFA 11 Red Rippers patch.
link |
Typically going actually on our arm.
link |
So this is actually what we call the Boar's Head or Arnold.
link |
So this is actually the Boar's Head
link |
from the Gordon's Gin bottle.
link |
In 1918, we were in London or the UK somewhere
link |
and we apparently partied with the owner and founder
link |
of Gordon's Gin and we had a great time
link |
and there's a signed letter in our ready room
link |
that says we can use the logo in perpetuity.
link |
And yeah, so I'd like to give you that patch.
link |
I drank quite a bit of gourd, so this is good.
link |
And I'd like to give you that coin from our squadron.
link |
The Red Rippers, that's a badass name.
link |
Thank you, brother.
link |
So let's jump around a little bit,
link |
but let me ask you about this one set of experiences
link |
that you had and people in your squadron had.
link |
So you and a few people in the squadron
link |
either detected UFOs on your instruments
link |
or saw them directly.
link |
Tell me the full story of these UFO sightings
link |
and to the smallest technical details,
link |
because I love those.
link |
So we returned from, and when I say we,
link |
I mean, not my squadron, but VFA 11, the Red Rippers.
link |
I was a somewhat junior pilot at the time.
link |
I joined them on deployment in 2012,
link |
where they had been already out there
link |
for about six months or so,
link |
operating in the vicinity of Afghanistan.
link |
I joined them and then we flew back
link |
and still as a relatively new guy,
link |
we came back and we entered
link |
what's considered a maintenance phase
link |
where we slow down the tactical flying a bit,
link |
kind of recuperate, do some maintenance on the aircraft.
link |
And our particular model of the F18, the lot number,
link |
was plumbed for the particular things
link |
that were needed to upgrade the radar
link |
from what's known as the ABG 73 to the ABG 79.
link |
And the ABG 73 is a mechanically scanned array radar.
link |
It's a perfectly fine radar,
link |
but the AESA radar is kind of a magnitude jump
link |
in capability, kind of an analog digital kind of mindset.
link |
So it's a leap to digital.
link |
ABG 73, so I mean, are these things on a carrier?
link |
Like what are we talking about here?
link |
How big is the radar?
link |
So this is actually the radars in the F18 itself.
link |
Okay, so when you say they were chosen,
link |
this is to test the upgrade to the new, the 79, ABG 79.
link |
Less of a test and more of just,
link |
hey, it's your turn to get the upgrade.
link |
Like we're all going to these better radars.
link |
They were building ones off the line with the new radar,
link |
but we were this weird transitionary squadron
link |
in the middle that transitioned
link |
from the older ones to the new ones.
link |
But it's not particularly rare to fly with different types
link |
of radar because in the,
link |
and we call the fleet replacement squadron,
link |
essentially the training ground for the F18,
link |
you have all sorts of F18s with different radar.
link |
So you are used to having multiple ones,
link |
but in the actual deployable combat squadron, we upgraded.
link |
And when we upgraded, we saw that there were objects
link |
on the radar that we were seeing the next day
link |
with this new radar that weren't there with the old radar.
link |
And these were sometimes the same day.
link |
You might go on two flights.
link |
The one in the morning might be with the older radar,
link |
the one in the evening with the new radar.
link |
And you'd see the objects with the new radar.
link |
And that's not overly surprising in some sense.
link |
They are more sensitive.
link |
Perhaps they're not filtering out everything
link |
they should be yet,
link |
or perhaps there's some other type of error.
link |
Maybe it needs to be calibrated, whatever.
link |
It was relatively new and we were somewhat used
link |
to there being software problems
link |
with these types of things occasionally,
link |
just like anything else.
link |
And so, okay, maybe this is a radar software malfunction.
link |
We're getting some false tracks, as we call them.
link |
What were you seeing?
link |
And so what we would see are representations of the objects.
link |
So this is off of our radar.
link |
We're not seeing a visual image here.
link |
This is kind of like what's being displayed to us
link |
almost like in a gaming fashion, right?
link |
Like the icon, right?
link |
So the icon is showing us, hey, something is there.
link |
And here's the parameters I can understand about it.
link |
So this is in the cockpit.
link |
There's a display that's showing some visualization
link |
with the radars detecting.
link |
And there's two different ways to do that.
link |
The first one is like the actual data,
link |
like the radar where I am,
link |
it's showing me the data kind of as if it's in front of me
link |
and I'm selecting those contacts.
link |
And there's another screen
link |
called the situational awareness page.
link |
And that's kind of a God's eye view
link |
that brings all that data into one spot.
link |
And so I'm gonna talk about this from the SA page,
link |
from the situational awareness page
link |
versus the individual radar ones,
link |
because it's easier, but.
link |
Can you, sorry to linger on that.
link |
So the individual displays are like first person
link |
when you say God's eye view, it's like from the top,
link |
the integration of all that information
link |
as if it's looking down onto the earth.
link |
Is that a good way to summarize it?
link |
It is, but for the aviator, it's slightly different
link |
because those two radar displays I talked about
link |
are at the bottom of that display
link |
is kind of representative of where I am.
link |
And so I see what's in front of me.
link |
Whereas the situational awareness page,
link |
the aircraft is located in the center of that.
link |
And then all around me, based off of the data link
link |
and wherever I'm getting information from,
link |
I can see that whole awareness page.
link |
I can see all the situation.
link |
So I'm gonna kind of talk about this
link |
from the situational awareness page,
link |
which is a top down view, just to kind of frame our minds
link |
instead of jumping around.
link |
And so what we would see out there
link |
is we'd see these indications
link |
that something would be there
link |
and they would have a track file.
link |
That track file, that thing that represents the object
link |
has a line coming out of it.
link |
And that represents,
link |
it's called the target aspect indicator.
link |
So there's some tracking from the radar.
link |
Correct, so it's showing you where the object's going.
link |
This is all pretty cool that the radar can do all this.
link |
So radar locks in on different objects
link |
and it tracks them over time.
link |
That's coming from the radar.
link |
That's like a built in feature.
link |
So out there we're seeing it.
link |
We don't have to necessarily pull things
link |
into our tracker in some sense, right?
link |
It's all out there
link |
and then we can kind of choose to highlight on stuff
link |
or to kind of focus in on it more so.
link |
But the information should all be out there.
link |
And so we'd see that that target aspect indicator,
link |
that line on a typical aircraft,
link |
it would kind of look like this.
link |
It would be coming out and it would go steady
link |
and if they turned, it would be like boop, boop, boop,
link |
and you see them turn, right?
link |
But this object, the target aspect
link |
would kind of be like all over the place,
link |
like kind of randomly in the 360 degrees
link |
from that top down view, that line would be in any place.
link |
So kind of, is it unable to determine the target aspect?
link |
And that's just how it puts it out
link |
and it's not used to seeing it.
link |
So I'm not saying that's necessarily super weird,
link |
but it was different than what we were used to seeing
link |
because we weren't used to seeing stationary objects
link |
out there very much.
link |
And what was also interesting is that
link |
these weren't just stationary on a zero wind day, right?
link |
These are stationary at 20,000 feet, 15,000 feet,
link |
500 feet with the wind blowing, you know?
link |
And so much like the sea, when we're up there fighting,
link |
it affects everything.
link |
We consider the wind when we're shooting missiles,
link |
when we're flying or fuel considerations,
link |
it's like operating in that volume of air,
link |
like the ocean, everything's going with the current.
link |
And so anything that doesn't go with the current
link |
is immediately kind of identifiable and strange
link |
and that's why these were initially strangers
link |
because they would be stationary against the wind.
link |
So if you had something like a good drone
link |
in a windy conditions, what would that look like?
link |
Would it not come off as stationary?
link |
Would it sort of float about kind of thing?
link |
No, I think with the drone technology we have today,
link |
they could stay within a pretty tight location.
link |
Well, I meant like DJI drone,
link |
I'm saying like generically speaking,
link |
not a military drone.
link |
No, I have a DJI drone myself even,
link |
and you know, maybe not a hundred knots,
link |
but if that thing's in 30 or 40 and not winds,
link |
the amount of distance it's going to be kind of
link |
doing one of these, like that change
link |
is not something I'm gonna detect from maybe many miles away.
link |
So it could look very stationary,
link |
but that wasn't necessarily,
link |
and what's interesting about this story
link |
is that there's not like the one smoking gun, right?
link |
You have to kind of look at everything.
link |
And that's what I don't like about the Department of Defense
link |
and just generally people's take on this
link |
is that everything is kind of based around a single image,
link |
you know, or that one case,
link |
but a lot of the interestingness comes from the duration
link |
or the time it's been out there,
link |
how they're interacting relative to other objects out there.
link |
And you don't get that information
link |
when you just look at a frame for a second, you know?
link |
Everyone kind of bites off on the shiny object, but.
link |
So you yourself, from your particular slice
link |
of things you've experienced and seen directly
link |
or indirectly, you've kind of built up an intuition
link |
about what are the things that were being seen.
link |
I wouldn't go that far.
link |
I've just been able to eliminate some variables
link |
because of how long I've observed it.
link |
So like you said, yes, can a drone stay
link |
in a particular position against the wind like that?
link |
Certainly, but I don't think it can do that
link |
and then go 0.8 Mach for four hours after that, you know?
link |
And so when you look at outside of that one,
link |
that moment in time, then it eliminates
link |
a lot of the potential things it could be,
link |
at least from my perspective.
link |
So what kind of stuff did you see in the instruments?
link |
We'd see them flying in patterns,
link |
kind of racetrack patterns or circular patterns
link |
or just going kind of straight east.
link |
Occasionally see them supersonic, 1.1, 1.2 Mach,
link |
but typically 0.6 to 0.8 Mach,
link |
just for extremely extended periods of time,
link |
essentially all the time.
link |
And this is airspace where there's not supposed
link |
to be anything else at all.
link |
And it's pretty far out there.
link |
It starts 10 miles off the coast, goes like 300 miles.
link |
Can you say the location that we're talking about?
link |
Off the coast of Virginia Beach.
link |
Got it, and so nobody's supposed to be out there?
link |
It's possible for people to be there.
link |
It's not necessarily restricted,
link |
but it's well monitored and we're out there
link |
every day, all day.
link |
And so people know to stay clear.
link |
If a Cessna goes bumbling in there,
link |
everyone's gonna know about it.
link |
FAA is gonna call them out, gonna tell us about it.
link |
So incursions happen, not a big deal,
link |
but they're pretty rare, honestly,
link |
because everyone knows the area
link |
and we've been operating there for decades.
link |
And what are the trajectories at 0.6 to 0.8 Mach
link |
that these objects were taking?
link |
Typically, they would be in some type of circular pattern
link |
or kind of racetrack pattern when they were at those speeds,
link |
or I just see them kind of,
link |
and it wasn't always like a mechanical flight description.
link |
And when I say that, I mean like an autopilot
link |
is gonna be just very precise, right?
link |
It's gonna be locked on straight.
link |
Whereas I could see an airplane,
link |
I could tell if the pilot's flying it, right?
link |
Because it's not gonna be perfect.
link |
The computer's not controlling it.
link |
And these seemed more like that.
link |
Not that they were imprecise,
link |
but that they were even much more erratic than that.
link |
So like, it wasn't like a straight line in a turn.
link |
It was just kind of like a weird drift like that
link |
in that direction.
link |
So it wasn't controlled by a dumb computer,
link |
or not disrespect to computers.
link |
So it wasn't controlled by autopilot kind of technology.
link |
That's not the sense that I got.
link |
So how many people have seen them in the squadron?
link |
Sort of how many times were they seen?
link |
How many were there times when there's multiple objects?
link |
Once we started seeing them on the radar enough,
link |
and we would get close enough,
link |
we'd actually see them on our FLIR as well.
link |
So our advanced targeting pod.
link |
It's essentially a infrared camera
link |
that we use for targeting,
link |
mostly in the air to surface environment.
link |
We don't use it in the air to air arena.
link |
It's just not that good of a tool, frankly.
link |
But we would see IR energy emitting from that location
link |
where the radar was dropping us off.
link |
So the radar, we'd lock onto the object
link |
and our sensors would all look there.
link |
And so then we could see that it's looking
link |
at that right piece of sky,
link |
but there's energy actually coming from there.
link |
So now we started thinking that, okay,
link |
maybe not radar malfunctions, maybe more,
link |
maybe something is physically here, of course.
link |
And then people started to try to fly by it and see it.
link |
And at this point, I would say maybe 80 to 90%
link |
of our squadron had probably seen one of these
link |
on the radar at this point.
link |
Everyone was aware of it.
link |
There was small communication, I think,
link |
between squadrons of the same area that had the same radar.
link |
So I knew it wasn't just our squadron
link |
for whatever strange reason,
link |
because other squadrons would be out there
link |
and we would talk to them,
link |
like, hey, careful, there's an object.
link |
Are you aware of that?
link |
So they would be aware of it.
link |
And then, of course, people would want to go see
link |
what they look like, right?
link |
So people would try to fly by it.
link |
I try to fly by it.
link |
I like how that's an of course.
link |
Of course you don't want to fly by it.
link |
There's an argument against that kind of perspective
link |
that maybe the thing is dangerous, so maybe we don't.
link |
But perhaps that's part of the reason
link |
you want to fly by it,
link |
is to understand better what it is if it's a threat.
link |
We have a lot of context now that we didn't back then.
link |
So it was still, hey, is this a balloon?
link |
Is this a drone at a certain point?
link |
And we're also aware of potential intelligence gathering
link |
operations that could be going on.
link |
We're up there flying our tactics.
link |
We're practicing our EW.
link |
We're turning at particular times.
link |
There's stuff that can be learned.
link |
It's not a secret.
link |
And countries keep different fishing vessels and whatnot
link |
in international waters off there.
link |
So it's not exactly a secret
link |
that we're being observed out there.
link |
So to think that a foreign nation would want to
link |
somehow intercept information,
link |
whether that's our radar signals or jamming capabilities
link |
to try to break that down or understand it better,
link |
be ready for that next fight, I mean,
link |
that's what scares me about this scenario
link |
because we didn't jump right to aliens or UFOs.
link |
We thought, this is a radar malfunction
link |
we need to be aware of.
link |
It's a safety issue.
link |
And then this could be a tactical problem right here
link |
because everything we do is based off a crypto
link |
and locations, everything's classified we do out there.
link |
And so over time, if you gather enough data
link |
about those fights and just monitor them forever,
link |
just like some nations do with other
link |
piece of technology or software,
link |
they could probably learn a lot.
link |
So we have to be cognizant of the fact
link |
and defend against it.
link |
So what can you say about the other characteristics
link |
of these objects like shape, size,
link |
texture, luminosity, how else do you describe object?
link |
Is there something that could be said?
link |
So you said like this is a tech town radar step one.
link |
Now you have FLIR images that can give you a sense
link |
that that's actually a physical object.
link |
What else can be said about those physical objects?
link |
So eventually someone did see one with their own eyeballs,
link |
multiple people and they saw it
link |
in a somewhat interesting way.
link |
The object presented itself at the exact altitude
link |
and geographic location of the entry points
link |
into our working areas.
link |
So we enter at a very specific point at a certain altitude
link |
and people leave the areas at the same point
link |
at a lower altitude.
link |
Probably one of the busiest pieces of sky
link |
on the eastern seaboard.
link |
So two jets from my squadron went out
link |
and they went flying and they entered the area
link |
and one of these objects went right between the aircraft.
link |
So they're flying in formation
link |
and the object went between the aircraft.
link |
They went between the object I think.
link |
I don't think that the object was moving.
link |
I don't think it aggressively went at them.
link |
I think it was located still there
link |
and then they flew through it.
link |
But they didn't have it on their radar.
link |
And I think the radar might have been malfunctioning.
link |
I don't know that for sure.
link |
I would like to look into it
link |
but my supposition is that if their radar was malfunctioning
link |
it would make sense that they wouldn't avoid the object
link |
because they knew these were physical at that point.
link |
And we would go up to these objects all the time
link |
and try to see them and couldn't see them.
link |
And we didn't know what it was.
link |
Was it, were they just not there or being fooled?
link |
Was something happening?
link |
Were they moving, dropping altitude at the last minute?
link |
We're going by pretty quick so it's difficult to tell.
link |
But perhaps if his radar wasn't working
link |
it wasn't receiving energy from the jet.
link |
And the jet of course didn't know that it was there.
link |
And so whatever the case was, they flew right by
link |
and they described it just as a dark gray or black cube
link |
inside a clear translucent sphere.
link |
And the kind of the apex of the cube
link |
or touching the inside of that sphere.
link |
That's an image that's haunting.
link |
So what do they think it is?
link |
What did they think at that moment?
link |
That they, is it just this kind of cloud of uncertainty
link |
that they're just describing a geometric object?
link |
It's not on radar so it's unclear what it is.
link |
Yeah, what was the, any kind of other description
link |
they've had of it in terms of the intuition
link |
from a pilot's perspective?
link |
You have to kind of identify what a thing is.
link |
To answer the first part,
link |
they actually canceled the flight and came back
link |
because they were, it's like if there's one of these
link |
out here and we're almost hitting them
link |
and it's right there, then perhaps we need
link |
to get a different jet with better radar.
link |
So they came back and they're in their gear
link |
and they're talking to the front desk
link |
and talking to Skipper and like,
link |
hey, we almost hit one of those damn things out there.
link |
And this kind of was one of those kind of
link |
slight watershed moments where we all were kind of like,
link |
all right, like this is a serious deal now.
link |
Maybe it was a, maybe we thought they were balloons
link |
or drones or malfunctions, or maybe we thought it was fine.
link |
But at the end of the day,
link |
if we're gonna hit one of these things,
link |
then we need to take care of the situation.
link |
And that's actually when we started submitting
link |
hazard reports or hazard reps to the Naval Aviation Safety
link |
kind of communication network.
link |
And it's not like a big proactive thing
link |
where people are gonna go investigate.
link |
It's more of a data collection mechanism
link |
so that you can kind of share that aggregate data
link |
and make sure that things are progressing.
link |
So it wasn't a mechanism that would result
link |
in action being taken, but we were hoping
link |
to at least get the message out to whomever
link |
was maybe running a classified program
link |
that we were not aware of or something like that,
link |
that hey, like you could kill somebody here.
link |
Like you've grown too big for your bridges here.
link |
So that was our concern at that point.
link |
That's kind of where we were thinking this was going.
link |
What's the protocol for shooting at a thing?
link |
Was there a concern that it's a direct threat,
link |
not just surveillance, but a thing that could be a threat?
link |
At least from my perspective,
link |
like that never really crossed into my mind.
link |
I thought it was potentially an intelligence failure
link |
that could be being watched and information gathered.
link |
But I didn't think that it was something
link |
that would proactively engage me in a hostile manner.
link |
It wouldn't really make sense either too.
link |
It would be shocking to like have one of these objects
link |
take out an F18, but there's no real tactical advantage
link |
other than fear perhaps.
link |
Psychological, yeah.
link |
I've learned a lot about the psychological warfare
link |
in Ukraine as a big part of the war
link |
in terms of when you talk about siege warfare,
link |
about wars that last for many years, for many months,
link |
and then perhaps could extend to years.
link |
But yes, it didn't seem,
link |
it didn't fit your conception of a threatening entity.
link |
So looking back now from all the pieces of data
link |
you've integrated, you've personally added,
link |
what do you think it could be?
link |
I don't know what it could be.
link |
I think we've been able to categorize it successfully
link |
into a few buckets.
link |
We've been able to say that this could be US technology
link |
that someone put in the wrong piece of sky
link |
or perhaps was developed and tested in an inappropriate spot
link |
by someone that wasn't being best practices.
link |
Is there, sorry to interrupt,
link |
is there a sort of modularity to the way
link |
the military operates, the way it's possible
link |
for one branch not to know about the tests of another?
link |
Yeah, I think it's perfectly reasonable
link |
to think that that could occur, right?
link |
And so if we just make that assumption,
link |
we can integrate that into our analysis here
link |
and just say, okay, but at the point we're at now,
link |
we have to assume that that's not the case, right?
link |
With everything that's been going on
link |
and the statements have been made and the hearings,
link |
I think that if it was a noncommunication issue,
link |
we're in big trouble at this point.
link |
What about it being an object from another nation,
link |
from China, from Russia?
link |
Or even one of our allies, perhaps, right?
link |
Maybe that's, you know, I don't think it's controversial
link |
to say that our allies could be gathering information
link |
about us or anything of that nature,
link |
but that would be an extreme case,
link |
but I think it's just important to say, right?
link |
To not just say Russia or China
link |
and just call them the bad guys
link |
and assume that if they don't have it, no one can do it.
link |
And so from my perspective, you know, anyone else,
link |
anyone else, and it doesn't necessarily need
link |
to be a foreign power.
link |
It could be a non government entity, perhaps,
link |
although I think that's very unlikely.
link |
But again, these are things you must consider
link |
if you kind of throw everything,
link |
everything other than the US under scrutiny.
link |
But you know, from what has been reported
link |
and the behaviors that have been seen,
link |
it would be, I would expect to see remnants
link |
of that technology elsewhere in the economy.
link |
There seems to be too many things
link |
that require advanced technology
link |
that would be beneficial commercially,
link |
as well as in other military applications
link |
for it to be completely locked away
link |
by one of our competitors.
link |
Now I could see us perhaps locking something away
link |
if we're already in the lead
link |
and having it to pull out as needed.
link |
But for someone that's perhaps in a power struggle
link |
and they're in second place,
link |
they might be more aggressive with the development
link |
of different types of technology
link |
willing to accept bigger risks.
link |
Do you think it could be natural phenomena
link |
that we don't yet understand?
link |
I think that there are a number of things
link |
that this is going to be, right?
link |
I don't think there's one thing at the end of the day,
link |
but I certainly think that that is part
link |
of what some of this could be.
link |
I don't think it's what we were seeing on the East Coast,
link |
and I don't think it is related to the Roosevelt incident,
link |
or I'll even go out and say the Nimitz incident, but.
link |
What's the Roosevelt incident?
link |
The Roosevelt incident, typically referred to as the gimbal
link |
and or the go fast video.
link |
And then the Nimitz is from what the David Fravor
link |
has witnessed directly and spoken about.
link |
We'll talk about that as well.
link |
I'd just love to get your sort of interpretation
link |
of those incidents.
link |
But yeah, so in this particular case,
link |
natural phenomena could be a part of the picture,
link |
but you're saying not the whole picture.
link |
Yes, yes, and we can't discount it.
link |
Oh, the other thing is what about the failure
link |
of pilot eyesight?
link |
Like sort of some deep mixture of actual direct vision,
link |
human vision system failure, and like psychology.
link |
Like seeing something weird and then filling in the gaps.
link |
Because in order to make sense of the weird.
link |
I've tried to expose myself to scenarios like that
link |
that I don't necessarily think are right,
link |
but I've explored them to see if they could have some truth.
link |
And one example is let's imagine a scenario
link |
where if we're seeing these objects every day
link |
off the East Coast, I can imagine a technology
link |
or an operation where you had some type
link |
of traditional propulsion system operating drones
link |
in order to gather data like we had discussed.
link |
And I could envision a clever enough adversary
link |
that could perhaps destroy or somehow remove these objects
link |
and replace them with new objects essentially
link |
when we're not looking, right?
link |
And that accounts for the large airborne time.
link |
And so I explore options like that
link |
and I try to see what evidence and assumptions
link |
need to be made in order to prove or disprove that.
link |
And you would need so much infrastructure.
link |
You'd need so many assets.
link |
And so I try to explore some of those fallacies
link |
and some of those concerns.
link |
And as aviators, we're trained into many
link |
like actual physical, like eyesight
link |
and kind of illusion training.
link |
So like at nighttime flying,
link |
there's so many things that can happen
link |
flying with false horizons.
link |
And so we receive hours of training on that type of stuff,
link |
but this just falls outside the category
link |
from my perspective.
link |
What was the visibility conditions
link |
in the times when people were able to see it?
link |
And we just earlier discussed complete nighttime, darkness.
link |
In this case, was it during the day?
link |
It was a perfectly clear day that particular incident, yep.
link |
In a world that's full of mystery,
link |
I have to ask what do you think is the possibility
link |
that it's not of this earth origin?
link |
I like the term nonhuman intelligence in a sense,
link |
because again, there's a lot of assumptions in there
link |
that may cause us to go down the wrong roads.
link |
It could, you know, these could be something
link |
that are weather phenomena of earth, right?
link |
Or something else that is just something we don't understand
link |
and can't imagine right now that's still of this earth.
link |
If we consider extraterrestrials or something
link |
that came from a physical place far away in space time,
link |
you know, that leads us to some detection assumptions
link |
that we would need to make.
link |
And so I just try to not categorize it under anything
link |
and just say, hey, is this demonstrating intelligence?
link |
And start from there as a single object.
link |
What can we learn about it kinematically?
link |
How it's performing?
link |
What does that mean for its energy source?
link |
What does that mean for the G forces inside?
link |
And then step it out a level and say, okay,
link |
how are these interacting with our fighters?
link |
If they are, how are they interacting with the weather
link |
and their environment?
link |
How are they interacting with each other?
link |
So can we look at these and how they're interacting
link |
perhaps as a swarm, especially off the East coast
link |
where this is happening all the time with multiple objects.
link |
And so we might be able to determine some things
link |
about their maybe, you know, sensor capabilities
link |
or the areas of focus, you know, if we can determine
link |
how they're working in conjunction with each other.
link |
But, you know, seeing one little flash of an object
link |
doesn't provide that type of insight.
link |
But we have the systems for it, and it's kind of,
link |
you know, an irony, but it's a fact of life,
link |
the reality that many of these well deployed,
link |
highly capable systems are held under the military umbrella,
link |
which makes it difficult to provide that data
link |
for scientific analysis.
link |
So there's probably a lot more data on these objects
link |
that's not being, that's not made available,
link |
probably even within the military for analysis.
link |
Yeah, I think there's a lot of data
link |
that could be made available.
link |
And, you know, that's one of the reasons why, you know,
link |
I've been engaged with the American Institute of Aeronautics
link |
and Astronautics to build, you know,
link |
a large resources of cross domain expertise
link |
so that if or when that data is available
link |
or that there's additional analysis needed, you know,
link |
we can spin up those teams and make that analysis.
link |
So there was a recently a house intelligence subcommittee
link |
hearing on UFOs that you were a part of.
link |
What was the goal of that hearing?
link |
And can you maybe summarize what you heard?
link |
The hearings, from my perspective,
link |
seemed a bit disingenuous, kind of top level.
link |
Who was it run by, sorry to interrupt,
link |
like who were the people involved
link |
and what was the goal, the stated goal?
link |
Congressman Andre Carson did chair the committee
link |
and he was, I think, ultimately responsible
link |
for bringing it all together.
link |
You know, I think the intent from Congress
link |
was to try to bring light to what has been happening
link |
with the Navy and to help show the American people
link |
that Congress is taking this serious
link |
because something serious is happening.
link |
But, you know, the sense I got seemed a bit disingenuous.
link |
They talked around it a lot.
link |
They, you know, advertised their love of science fiction,
link |
but they, you know, they didn't treat this,
link |
I would say, in the manner it deserved
link |
as a potential tactical threat
link |
if it's coming from a foreign power.
link |
And I get it though, at the same day,
link |
they have very specific objectives
link |
within the DOD, right?
link |
They have a very important job.
link |
Their job isn't necessarily to do exploratory science
link |
So I applaud and I encourage their efforts
link |
on the intelligence side to help understand this,
link |
but my concern is that they play a role
link |
they're not well suited for, which is doing science.
link |
And the Pentagon has opened a new office
link |
to investigate UFOs called
link |
All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
link |
What do you think about this office?
link |
Do you think it can help alleviate in a way
link |
which this hearing perhaps has failed
link |
to improve more the scientific rigor
link |
and the seriousness of investigating UFOs?
link |
I think that remains to be seen.
link |
I think it's a step in the right direction,
link |
but it's a step that was taken
link |
because the previous step didn't happen, right?
link |
So the AOI MSG was the progeny, essentially,
link |
of the AARO or AERO.
link |
And the name was changed because nothing was happening
link |
and it was essentially just a confusing mess of words
link |
that were created to make this topic unpalatable.
link |
The Airborne Objects Identification
link |
Synchronization Management Group.
link |
Quite the mouthful.
link |
But the new All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office,
link |
from my perspective at least,
link |
at least the perspective that they're putting out,
link |
they seem to want to be open.
link |
They put out a Twitter handle,
link |
they're going out on Twitter and communicating,
link |
saying they want to keep this open.
link |
But that's gonna run into a classification wall.
link |
Well, so Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick seems like an interesting guy.
link |
So he's got a, Evan looked in too deeply,
link |
but he seems to have sort of,
link |
he's coming from like a science research perspective,
link |
like a background.
link |
So he might be, at least in the right mindset,
link |
the right background to kind of lead a serious investigation.
link |
I'll just say generally,
link |
the office has been receptive to AIAA reaching out
link |
in order to collaborate, which has been a positive sign.
link |
Also pass the same kudos to Dr. Spergel
link |
and NASA's effort as well.
link |
I see these organizations that are standing up,
link |
I do see them as good faith efforts
link |
that are coming about through a lot of difficulty
link |
and negotiation most likely, right?
link |
And I see these as a small door opening
link |
that if we can take advantage of,
link |
can lead to a much more productive relationship
link |
between these organizations.
link |
How do you put pressure on this kind of thing?
link |
Does it come from the civilian leadership?
link |
Does it come from sort of Congress and presidents?
link |
Does it come from the public?
link |
Does the public have any power to put pressure on this?
link |
Or is the giant wall of bureaucracy
link |
going to protect it against any public pressure?
link |
What do you think?
link |
I think we've been in that latter state for a while,
link |
but society seems to be a bit different nowadays.
link |
We have the ability to communicate and to group
link |
and to form relationships in a way
link |
that hasn't been able to be present in the past.
link |
We've been able to do research for better or worse
link |
on our own in a way that hasn't been able to happen before.
link |
And so I sense that people are a bit less willing
link |
to kind of buy the bottom line statement
link |
from those in power as they used to be
link |
back when they didn't have access to those tools.
link |
And so I do think there is a massive role
link |
for the general society, general populace to play
link |
to show that they are interested in this.
link |
Because it's not that I don't think the politicians
link |
or the leaders in the Pentagon,
link |
it's not that they don't like this topic necessarily
link |
or think it's toxic per se,
link |
but they exist in a culture where this has been toxic
link |
and they don't feel comfortable talking about it.
link |
And these are people that have spent their entire careers
link |
working towards a goal and getting to very high positions
link |
within government.
link |
And so this is very against their nature
link |
to take a stance on a topic like this.
link |
And so the fact that these are standing up,
link |
even if they do have a small budget
link |
or if they struggled a bit at first,
link |
I still think it's a massive change
link |
and it's a big step away from that stigma
link |
that has been pervading this topic for so long.
link |
And you're actually part of alleviating the stigma
link |
for somebody that's as credible, as intelligent,
link |
as varied in background, able to speak about these things.
link |
That's a big risk that you took,
link |
but it's extremely valuable
link |
because it's alleviating the stigma.
link |
I thank you for saying that,
link |
but it didn't feel like much of a risk for me.
link |
I didn't come out about aliens or whatever.
link |
I had a safety problem that I started asking questions about.
link |
And I went down a road
link |
as a Navy trained aviation safety officer, right?
link |
That sent me to school for six weeks
link |
and Pensacola would be a safety officer.
link |
We're almost hitting these objects
link |
and it's not something that happened in the past
link |
and we want to understand it, it's happening right now.
link |
Like these occurrences are still happening.
link |
Aviators are flying right now,
link |
are still flying by these things.
link |
And in fact, I mentioned I was an instructor pilot.
link |
And I had a student call me about eight months ago or so.
link |
And he's like, hey, sir, I made it to the fleet finally.
link |
I had trained him how to fly.
link |
And then he goes to F18, he goes another year of training.
link |
And then he gets out to his squadron on the East Coast
link |
and he's flying with a senior member of the base,
link |
NAS Oceana, where the fighters fly out of Senior 0506.
link |
And it was kind of a bad weather day.
link |
And so they said, hey, if the weather's not good enough
link |
for us to do this dog fighting set,
link |
we'll go out and do a UAP hunt,
link |
and see if we can't find any things
link |
or take a look at them.
link |
I don't know if it was ingest or not,
link |
but I actually would say it's not ingest
link |
because there were notices that were being briefed
link |
about this being a safety hazard at this point.
link |
And so now that I think about it, it likely wasn't ingest.
link |
Long story short, they went flying.
link |
The weather was too bad.
link |
They did go on a UFO hunt and they physically saw one.
link |
And he called me up and said,
link |
hey, sir, I saw a Cuban sphere.
link |
They're still out here years later.
link |
And so it's almost like a generational issue
link |
for these fighter pilots, at least on East Coast.
link |
But that's great that they can talk about it, right?
link |
They feel at least comfortable.
link |
They have a reporting mechanism.
link |
And so that was one of the problems that I noticed
link |
that we have a lot of reporting mechanisms
link |
to take care of safety issues and even tactical issues
link |
when the time's right in order to keep track
link |
of what's going on,
link |
but there's no way to communicate about this.
link |
Sure, we could submit a hazard report,
link |
but nothing's actually being investigated
link |
and if this is a tactical vulnerability or something more,
link |
it deserves attention.
link |
If I could ask your sort of take your opinion
link |
of the different UFO sightings
link |
that the DOD has released videos on.
link |
So what do you think about the Tic Tac UFO
link |
that David Fravor and others have sighted?
link |
That's a truly anomalous experience.
link |
I can't do like mental models in my head
link |
to find potential solutions to discredit that, right?
link |
Like as much as I try, right?
link |
Just as a logical process, as a practice,
link |
I can't pick it apart in the way
link |
that we were just talking about a moment ago
link |
about thousands of drones being like sent up
link |
in very tricky manners, right?
link |
I can't really bring myself to a clever solution
link |
that other than just saying the pilots are lying
link |
or it was error, you know?
link |
And I believe, you know, I know Dave Fravor,
link |
you know, I consider him a friend, we talk a lot.
link |
I have zero, zero reason to disbelieve anything he says.
link |
Yeah, I agree with you, but in terms of the actual UFO,
link |
is there something anomalous and interesting to you
link |
about that particular case?
link |
Maybe one interesting aspect there is how much
link |
do I understand about the water surface
link |
and underwater aspects of these UFOs?
link |
It seems like a lot of the discussions
link |
is about the movement of this particular thing
link |
that seems to be weird, anomalous, seems to defy physics,
link |
but what about stuff that's happening underwater?
link |
That's interesting to me.
link |
If I had advanced technology, I would certainly
link |
like to operate in part underwater
link |
because you can hide a lot of stuff there.
link |
You think it would be somewhat as easy
link |
as traveling through interstellar space, at least, right?
link |
You know, I wish I had a great answer for that,
link |
but as an aviator, that's kind of a black box for us.
link |
We don't have great, what I would call
link |
cross domain tracking, right?
link |
I can't see something go underwater
link |
and then follow it underwater.
link |
So it's literally not your domain,
link |
like underwater, like leave that for somebody else.
link |
Yeah, and you know, I use that terminology
link |
because it's kind of important, right?
link |
Cross domain tracking is something that we haven't had
link |
to necessarily worry about, right?
link |
Because airplanes operated in the air
link |
and submarines operated underwater
link |
and space planes operate in space, right?
link |
But you know, there's going to be, you know,
link |
that's going to blur, I think, as we move along here,
link |
especially in the air and space regime
link |
and being able to perhaps transition my radar contact
link |
at 40,000 feet to another radar system
link |
that can track it up to 200,000 feet,
link |
you know, that might be a value.
link |
And so we seem to be missing that right now.
link |
So what about the go fast and the gimbal videos
link |
that you mentioned earlier?
link |
There was a, like, what's interesting there to you?
link |
So the gimbal, I'll talk about that one first.
link |
I was airborne for that one.
link |
The person that recorded it was a good friend of mine,
link |
but I mean, both air crew, I knew both of them,
link |
but the wizard himself, very close friends,
link |
went through a lot of her training together.
link |
We went to the same fleet squadron.
link |
He ended up transitioning to be a pilot
link |
and then came to where I was instructing.
link |
So I got to instruct him a bit on his transition.
link |
And, you know, the way that was,
link |
was we went out on a air to air training mission.
link |
So simulating a air fight against our own guys,
link |
they're acting like the bad guys
link |
and kind of go head to head against each other.
link |
And when we fly on those missions,
link |
we all fly out together, more or less,
link |
we set up and then we kind of attrite from the fight
link |
as we either, you know, run out of gas or something happens.
link |
And so people usually go back onesies or twosies.
link |
And so the air crew that recorded the gimbal,
link |
they were going back to the boat
link |
and we were on what's called a workup training event.
link |
And so this is like a month on the boat
link |
where we're essentially conducting war time operations,
link |
more or less, to stress ourselves out
link |
and to kind of do the last training block
link |
before we go on deployment, essentially.
link |
So it's pretty high stress.
link |
They actually do send aircraft from like land bases
link |
to kind of try to penetrate
link |
and we're expected to go intercept them.
link |
And so we're kind of practicing like we play.
link |
And so he saw these objects on the radar,
link |
the gimbal and a fleet of other aircraft or vehicles.
link |
And they initially thought it was part
link |
of the training exercise that they were sending something
link |
in to try to penetrate the airspace.
link |
And so they, you know, they flew over to it
link |
and as they got close enough to get on the FLIR,
link |
you know, I think everyone has heard their reaction
link |
and they realized that it wasn't something
link |
they were expecting to see.
link |
Can you actually describe what's in the video
link |
and what's the reaction in case they haven't seen it?
link |
Yeah, a lot of swearing.
link |
But so what you see on the FLIR footage
link |
is a black or white, depending on when you look at it,
link |
object that's somewhat shaped like a gimbal.
link |
It appears almost as if someone put two plates together
link |
and then there seems to be almost like a small funnel
link |
of IR energy that's at the top of the bottom
link |
of those plates in a sense.
link |
So almost as if, you know, there's a stick going in
link |
between two plates, but not that pronounced, right?
link |
So there's an energy field that kind of went to a funnel
link |
on the top and the bottom,
link |
at least that's how it's being portrayed on the FLIR.
link |
There's a lot of conversation about that being glare,
link |
things of that nature,
link |
but it was actually a very tight IR image.
link |
It just was nondescript shape, which was interesting.
link |
Typically we would see the skin of the aircraft,
link |
we can see the flames coming out of the exhaust,
link |
especially at those ranges.
link |
And there was no flames or there's no exhaust here.
link |
There was no exhaust, there was no, you know,
link |
there was no outgassing of repellent in any manner, right?
link |
It was just an object that had nothing emitting from it
link |
that was stationary in the sky.
link |
Well, not stationary, but it was moving along a path, right?
link |
It wasn't falling out of the sky.
link |
And it continued along, if we were to consider it
link |
from a God's eye view, again, on the SA page,
link |
it continued along in a path.
link |
And from the perspective, that top down view,
link |
it just went in another direction.
link |
So no, just an instantaneous direction change
link |
from that perspective.
link |
You also hear them, you know, very excitedly talking
link |
on the tapes about, you know, whatever the heck this thing is
link |
and look at the SA, there's a whole formation of them.
link |
And so the SA is a situational awareness page.
link |
And again, it's a large display that gives
link |
that God's eye view of all the radar contacts.
link |
So the video is actually showing just one
link |
and then they're speaking about many of them
link |
on the SA display.
link |
And what they essentially saw was,
link |
if we were to consider above the object north,
link |
so kind of offset to the north of the object,
link |
there was a formation of about somewhere
link |
between four and six of these objects
link |
in a rough wedge formation, you know,
link |
so kind of side by side like this.
link |
And again, not in a like autopilot type manner
link |
where it was very stiff.
link |
It was very kind of non mechanical,
link |
the flight mechanics again.
link |
And these objects were in that formation
link |
and they were going along and then they turned
link |
pretty sharply, but they still had a radius of turn
link |
and then went back in the opposite direction.
link |
And during that turn, they were kind of like
link |
all over the place.
link |
Like it wasn't tight.
link |
They weren't even like super,
link |
they weren't flying in a way I would expect them
link |
to be flying in relation to a flight lead.
link |
They were flying as if they were flying close
link |
to each other, but not in formation,
link |
which was kind of strange, right?
link |
And then when they rolled out,
link |
they kind of tightened back up.
link |
Like, so when they basically,
link |
they started that turn and then 180 degrees out,
link |
essentially they start flowing in the opposite direction
link |
and kind of got back in that formation.
link |
And while that was happening,
link |
the gimbal object was proceeding, let's say left to right.
link |
And as those, the formation kind of turned up to the north
link |
and was just passing back it,
link |
the gimbal just kind of went back in the opposite direction.
link |
So to follow it back in that direction.
link |
And in the FLIR itself, you see the object
link |
changes orientation quite a bit.
link |
So you see it more or less level,
link |
maybe candid about 45 degrees.
link |
And then you see it kind of moving around like this,
link |
almost as if it was a gimbal.
link |
I've come to learn after some,
link |
having seen some research online
link |
and people really looking into this,
link |
that it seemed that the object actually climbed
link |
during that maneuver.
link |
And so the reason it looked like it turned immediately
link |
is because it turned like this.
link |
It turned in a vertical fashion like that,
link |
which is pretty interesting.
link |
That's kind of like another example of a flight mechanics
link |
that we don't normally operate
link |
because we don't change our directions
link |
by maneuvering in the vertical.
link |
If we can help it, you're just killing the fuel.
link |
And so if you're like a surveillance platform
link |
looking to spend as much time around something,
link |
you're not gonna climb 500 feet every time you make a turn.
link |
Unless you're Tom Cruise.
link |
Unless you're Tom Cruise, naturally.
link |
Okay, so is that one of the more impressive
link |
flight mechanics you've seen in video forms
link |
or not the direct eyesight reports,
link |
but like in terms of video evidence that we have?
link |
We were seeing a lot of these,
link |
but we weren't just going on recording them all day.
link |
We just kind of put them in that safety bucket,
link |
be like, all right, there's objects over there.
link |
We're just not gonna go near it.
link |
And so we weren't putting our sensors on them that much.
link |
We were gathering the data kind of secondarily,
link |
but we weren't primarily focusing on it
link |
to see all the details.
link |
That's so fascinating because you have a busy day.
link |
You have a lot to do.
link |
All right, well, there's some weird stuff going on there.
link |
We're just not gonna go there.
link |
And that says something about human nature,
link |
about the way that bureaucracies function,
link |
the way the military functions.
link |
It fills up your day with busy, important things,
link |
and you don't get to, I mean, that is something
link |
that I'm in a sort of absurd way worry about,
link |
which is like we fill our days with so much busyness
link |
than when truly beautiful things happen,
link |
whatever they are, truly anomalous things.
link |
We just won't pay attention
link |
because they don't fit our busy schedule.
link |
Beautiful, I think that's right on the nose.
link |
And it's on my nose because I didn't give this topic
link |
the attention it deserved until I left, right?
link |
Until I left and I went to be an instructor pilot
link |
where I had more time.
link |
I had more downtime to kind of process and think
link |
and get out of exactly what you just described.
link |
And that's kind of what broke me out of it
link |
and got me thinking more about it.
link |
Why do you think the DOD released these videos?
link |
It's a great question.
link |
Did the DOD release it or did they kind of get out
link |
on their own in some sense?
link |
So I don't know the answer to that question,
link |
but my understanding of the situation
link |
is that the DOD talked about them so much
link |
because they were already out there in a sense.
link |
And so they had a choice where they could have
link |
just straight up lied and said it wasn't theirs or it was fake.
link |
But again, I think our culture now is too open
link |
and the information moves too freely to do things like that.
link |
And it kind of left them in a pickle
link |
that they had to respond to.
link |
So what was the role of Pentagon's
link |
Advanced Aerospace Threat Intelligence Program, AATIP?
link |
From your perspective, from what you know,
link |
maybe your intuition, is AATIP a real thing that existed?
link |
I was in a position as an aviator
link |
that never would have exposed me to anything like that.
link |
But I was curious about what people knew.
link |
And I think in my mind, maybe you hoped or,
link |
hope someone was looking into this in some sense.
link |
But on the day that Gimbal was recorded,
link |
I heard that they caught something extra interesting
link |
on the FLIR, and I went to the Intel debrief space
link |
to go see the film.
link |
And everyone's gathered around watching it,
link |
very interesting, and I heard the admiral was coming down.
link |
And so I was like, I'm gonna hang out back quietly,
link |
mind my own business, and just wanna see his reaction,
link |
try to read it to see if this is brand new
link |
or if it is something that they've been dealing with.
link |
And you know, he came in and he watched a video
link |
for like five or six seconds,
link |
and he went, mm, and then like turned around and walked out.
link |
And you know, I was like,
link |
he's definitely seen these before.
link |
There's no way that you only watch that for a few seconds
link |
and don't have more interest.
link |
It was, you know, too bizarre.
link |
So kind of going back, does the office exist?
link |
Well, you know, I've heard that the admiral essentially
link |
reported back to the Pentagon about that case real time,
link |
essentially, after he left, right?
link |
So he basically went back and I was told he reported that
link |
to either ATEP directly or to other, you know,
link |
somehow the information got there.
link |
So from my perspective and from what I've experienced,
link |
it seems like, yes, it was a thing.
link |
But you know, as an aviator,
link |
I wouldn't know either way, right?
link |
That's just my experience from what happened.
link |
But it seems like there's somewhere to report to.
link |
At the time, it seemed like there was at least someplace
link |
to complain to, if not report to.
link |
Let me ask you about sort of people that are taking
link |
a serious look at the videos
link |
and just the different UFO sighting reports.
link |
So there's a person named Meg West who is a skeptic
link |
and tries to take a skeptical view
link |
on every single piece of evidence on these UFO sightings.
link |
What do you think about his analysis?
link |
He tries to analyze in a way that debunks some of these
link |
videos and assign probabilities to their explanations,
link |
sort of leaning towards things that give a very low
link |
probability to alien extraterrestrial type of explanations
link |
What do you think about his approach to these analysis?
link |
Well, two parts to his approach.
link |
One, I commend him for all the good work
link |
and effort he put into it.
link |
I've seen him build some models and things of that nature.
link |
And so I think that's something that's absolutely needed
link |
in this environment.
link |
No one's asking anyone to believe anyone here, right?
link |
Trust but verify should certainly be the mantra.
link |
But where I have a disagreement with his approach
link |
is that he's approaching from a debunker standpoint.
link |
And from my perspective, not speaking for everyone,
link |
but when I hear that, that tells me that you're driving
link |
towards a particular conclusion,
link |
which has been a very safe process for the past X years.
link |
It's been like a very safe business to be in
link |
to tell people that they haven't seen aliens,
link |
but times have changed a little bit.
link |
And the tactics I've seen to try to retain that
link |
view on reality has included things such as
link |
completely dismissing what the aircrew are saying.
link |
And I think that is a fallacy to think that
link |
we have to take the human outside of that analysis.
link |
So those are the two things I disagree with.
link |
When you put the night vision on and you look at the stars
link |
and you look out there in the vast cosmos,
link |
only a small fraction of which we can see,
link |
how many intelligent alien civilizations
link |
do you think are out there?
link |
Do you think about this kind of stuff?
link |
You know, I'm of the theory that we are not
link |
the only people out there.
link |
I think it would be a statistically silly comment
link |
to assume we are, although I get that we are
link |
the only data point that we currently have.
link |
Although I'm willing to jump over that fence
link |
and say that yes, there most likely is
link |
intelligent life elsewhere.
link |
Although I'll concede that it is a possibility
link |
we are early or it could be limited
link |
or it could be in a manner that we don't recognize
link |
or can really understand.
link |
I spend so much time thinking about
link |
how we anthropomorphize things on this UFO topic.
link |
And we've done it to ourselves with media in a sense.
link |
We've trained ourselves what to think about,
link |
what we think is true or what this would be like.
link |
And by doing so, I think we're closing ourselves off
link |
to a lot of what the possibilities could be
link |
and the things that we could miss.
link |
You beautifully put that the thing that drew you
link |
to fighter jets is the technology.
link |
So if you were to think, to imagine
link |
from an alien perspective, what kind of technologies
link |
would we first encounter as human beings
link |
if we were to meet another alien civilization
link |
in the next few centuries?
link |
What kind of thing would we see?
link |
So you're now at the cutting edge
link |
and you see the quick progress that's happening.
link |
That was happening throughout the 20th century,
link |
that's happening now with greater degrees of autonomy
link |
with robots and that kind of stuff.
link |
What do you think we will encounter?
link |
I think we're gonna see the ability to manipulate matter
link |
like we used to manipulate information.
link |
Like I think that's what, whether that means
link |
being able to pop something on the table
link |
that didn't exist or to influence a chemical reaction
link |
somewhere, but being able to manipulate
link |
and treat matter as if it was information.
link |
And so being able to design specific materials,
link |
being able to move past a lot of the barriers
link |
that seem to limit our progress with things
link |
such as miniaturized fusion or even just fusion in general
link |
is a lot of it is matter based, is material based
link |
and our ability to not manipulate,
link |
we can only discover materials in a sense.
link |
And so I think that a complete mastery
link |
of physical reality would be one of the key traits
link |
of a very intelligent species.
link |
Well, you're actually working on some,
link |
maybe you can correct me,
link |
but sort of quantum mechanical simulation
link |
to understand materials.
link |
So is that, do you see sort of the early steps
link |
that we're doing at quantum computing side
link |
to start to simulate, to deeper understand materials,
link |
but maybe to engineer and to mess with materials
link |
at the very low level that aliens will be able to do
link |
and hopefully humans will be able to do soon?
link |
Yeah, I think that's, you know,
link |
so if we think about how, what materials are made of,
link |
it's just a collection of atoms,
link |
but each one of those atoms has a lot of data
link |
associated with it.
link |
So if we wanna kind of calculate
link |
how they interact with each other,
link |
it requires a massive amount of computational resources,
link |
so much so that it can't be done in a lot of cases
link |
with classical computers.
link |
And that's where quantum computers come in.
link |
Although we don't have a perfectly functioning
link |
quantum computer at this point,
link |
one of the things that we're working at
link |
at quantum general materials is to essentially
link |
bridge that gap between what a classical computer can do
link |
as far as simulating materials.
link |
And of course, what a fully functioning quantum computer
link |
would mean for being able to design materials.
link |
And so, you know, having the ability to study matter
link |
at a very fundamental level
link |
and unleashing artificial intelligence
link |
to machine learning on that problem,
link |
I think is, you know, in a sense, you know,
link |
alien in a way that we're able to advance our science
link |
using, you know, a process that we may not fully understand
link |
with perhaps a non human based intelligence in some sense.
link |
And so we may find patterns in the processes, right?
link |
How does our machine learning output, you know,
link |
can we match behaviors with what we're observing
link |
with what may be a machine learning algorithm with output,
link |
Can we try to classify the intelligence
link |
in that manner, perhaps?
link |
And so, you know, at GenMatt,
link |
as we're looking at these materials,
link |
we're considering what these algorithms
link |
could have used for later on.
link |
Could we perhaps reverse the process
link |
and determine what a unique or anomalous material,
link |
what type of properties it potentially could have?
link |
And you said GenMatt, right?
link |
What's, what is GenMatt?
link |
GenMatt is a quantum general material.
link |
So it's the company I work for.
link |
We essentially are working on a couple of verticals.
link |
One of them is our quantum chemistry work.
link |
We're essentially, we're bridging the gap
link |
between essentially physics and chemistry.
link |
We're working on those problems and again,
link |
implementing artificial intelligence machine learning
link |
into that process so that we can design those materials
link |
from the ground up.
link |
Additionally, we are what we consider
link |
a vertically integrated material science company,
link |
which means we can generate our own data.
link |
And so within the next quarter coming up,
link |
we are launching a satellite in the space.
link |
They'll have a fairly advanced hyperspectral sensor
link |
in there, which is intended to be the first launch
link |
that will help us detect different types of materials
link |
using our advanced knowledge of quantum chemistry, right?
link |
We're gonna be leveraging that experience
link |
in order to better analyze that data.
link |
So materials that are strange or novel out there in space.
link |
Not necessarily, but we'll be looking back at Earth
link |
to be able to detect mineral deposits on Earth.
link |
Getting the greater perspective from out in space
link |
to do analysis of different materials.
link |
Yeah, I was really impressed by the DeepMind.
link |
I got to hang out with DeepMind recently
link |
and they really impressed me
link |
with the possibility of the application,
link |
as you were saying, of machine learning
link |
in the context of quantum mechanical simulation
link |
for materials, so to understand materials.
link |
It's really, really, really interesting.
link |
So manipulate matter, huh?
link |
I would say the next thing is horses, right?
link |
So manipulating or managing gravity.
link |
Can we maneuver within fields in some manner
link |
that allows us to perhaps move propellant less
link |
or in other manners, right?
link |
And so I think essentially having a deeper understanding
link |
of different fields and being able to interact with them,
link |
I think would be a potential avenue for travel
link |
or advanced travel, right?
link |
Propellant less travel.
link |
Can we quantum entangle gravity fields together
link |
and propel a ship by the gravity field of a planet,
link |
the mass of a planet, and a drive on a ship?
link |
You know, there's all sorts of interesting things, but.
link |
Yeah, people will look back at people like you
link |
and say, well, they used to fly,
link |
like with this kind of propellant,
link |
it seems like to be a very antiquated way of flying,
link |
and they were very impressed with themselves,
link |
these humans, that they could fly like birds.
link |
It's like so much energy is used to fly
link |
such short distances from that perspective.
link |
We can only throw so many rocks out the back.
link |
There needs to be a better way.
link |
It just seems dumb, like these.
link |
It's like Flintstones or something like that.
link |
We're good at it, but there's a limit, right?
link |
Like we need to be good.
link |
I mean, that's an interesting sort of trade off.
link |
How much do you invest in getting really good at it?
link |
I tend to believe the reason why it would be very important
link |
and very powerful to put a human on Mars
link |
is not necessarily for the exploration facet,
link |
but in all the different technologies that come from that.
link |
So there's something about putting humans
link |
in extreme conditions where we figure out
link |
how to make it less extreme, more comfortable.
link |
And for that, we invent things,
link |
like the DOD sort of helping invent the internet
link |
and all the different technologies we've invented.
link |
It's almost like an indirect consequence
link |
of solving difficult problems,
link |
whether that problem means winning wars
link |
or colonizing other planets.
link |
And so I don't think Mars will help us figure out
link |
propulsion systems or to crack open physics
link |
to where you can travel close to the speed of light
link |
or faster than the speed of light,
link |
but it will help us figure out
link |
how to build some cool technology here on Earth, I think.
link |
So I'm a big proponent of doing really difficult things,
link |
really difficult engineering things
link |
to see what kind of technologies emerge from that.
link |
But let me ask you this.
link |
Do you think US government is hiding some technology
link |
like alien spacecraft technology?
link |
I have no information either way.
link |
And if you did, you probably wouldn't tell me.
link |
But my assumptions, like what did my heart tell me?
link |
My heart tells me something's going on,
link |
but I have no evidence for that.
link |
Maybe that's me wanting something to go on.
link |
Maybe that's a human feeling to want to know
link |
that my government's in control
link |
of what some strange unknown thing is.
link |
What's your sense if such a thing happened?
link |
Would this kind of information leak?
link |
Would this kind of information be released by the government?
link |
I mean, that's the worry that you have
link |
is because when you don't understand a thing
link |
and it's novel, you want to hide it
link |
so that some kind of enemy doesn't get access to it
link |
and use it against you.
link |
I wonder if that is the underlying assumption.
link |
It's the one people always jump to,
link |
that it's for to maintain secrecy of technology.
link |
And I assume that's part of it.
link |
I wonder if there's any other reasons
link |
that we would want to not talk about it.
link |
I imagine that such information would have a shock
link |
to the social economic system of any country,
link |
And so I wonder if perhaps that was part
link |
of the concern as well, how society can react to it.
link |
Maybe we're anti fragile enough now
link |
with everything that's going on
link |
and with our communication networks that,
link |
That's something I think about as well.
link |
Yeah, the effect on the mass psyche of something like this,
link |
that there's another intelligence out there.
link |
We had trouble enough to deal with a pandemic,
link |
to have something of this scale,
link |
basically having just an inkling of a phenomena
link |
that we have no understanding of
link |
and could lead to complete destruction
link |
of human civilization or a flourishing of it.
link |
And what do you do?
link |
What does a bureaucracy of government do with that?
link |
Especially when they're the ones holding the range of power
link |
and such a communication would relinquish that power
link |
essentially, to some degree.
link |
Since you think there's aliens out there
link |
and you're somebody that's thought about war quite a bit,
link |
do you think alien civilizations,
link |
when we meet them, would want war?
link |
Would they be a danger to us?
link |
Would they be a friend to us?
link |
What's your intuition about intelligences out there?
link |
My intuition tells me that when two people like yourself
link |
or myself or anyone get together,
link |
often the output is greater than the individuals.
link |
And when we work together,
link |
we can typically do things that are more impressive
link |
and better than if a single person works alone.
link |
And now I know that war has driven technological progress,
link |
but perhaps there's other mechanisms that can do so.
link |
But regardless, I wonder if we truly think
link |
about an advanced society that has been perhaps thousands
link |
or millions of years ahead of us,
link |
I would imagine that same truth to be there,
link |
that people working together or creatures working together
link |
is a good thing for society or its society as a whole.
link |
And if we consider that,
link |
as we imagine a society growing and expanding,
link |
in a sense, the ultimate output of a planet
link |
could only be achieved in some senses
link |
if everyone was working towards the same goal.
link |
And there might be wonders and secrets and things
link |
that we can't imagine just simply because of the timeframes
link |
that we live under and we think in.
link |
But if a planet has a single unit
link |
and it almost is as an entity itself at a certain level,
link |
if everything's working towards the same output,
link |
I could almost imagine an intelligent species
link |
that approached us planet to planet
link |
instead of person to person,
link |
because that's how they've evolved
link |
and they've assumed any intelligent species
link |
would understand that working together is better than not.
link |
And so my heart tells me that at a certain point,
link |
love and caring and the desire to work together
link |
is much more powerful than the technological progress
link |
that war would bring.
link |
I hope so as well.
link |
Well, let me jump to the AI topic that you've done.
link |
So you've done research and development efforts
link |
focused on multiagent intelligence
link |
for collaborative autonomy,
link |
machine learning AI stuff
link |
that we've been talking about for combat,
link |
for air to air combat,
link |
manned, unmanned teaming technologies,
link |
all that kind of stuff.
link |
What's some interesting ideas in this space
link |
that fascinate you?
link |
Randomness, being able to not predict
link |
what the enemy is doing almost no matter what,
link |
because there's a level of randomness
link |
that's within the tactical envelope.
link |
Even if utility of randomness.
link |
The utility of randomness in an increasing.
link |
Sounds like a book you should write.
link |
That would be a good title.
link |
So yeah, can you elaborate that?
link |
So like trying to deeper understand
link |
how you can integrate randomness through AI
link |
in the context of combat.
link |
In order to make yourself,
link |
in order to take away the enemy's ability
link |
to try to predict what you're gonna do
link |
to disrupt their technological progress cycles
link |
so that they don't have a clear target to aim at.
link |
And if you don't have a clear target to aim at,
link |
it's hard to hit it.
link |
Additionally, more distribution of assets and capability.
link |
So imagine being able to digitally model
link |
your weapon or your system
link |
or your entire tactical engagement or scenario,
link |
or allow a machine learning
link |
to help you better understand the technology
link |
that you need to build
link |
in order to defeat a particular scenario.
link |
And I'm talking hardware now, not just the tactic itself.
link |
And being able to use large amounts of simulation
link |
and machine learning to build individual assets
link |
that are small boutique using advanced manufacturing
link |
techniques for a mission or for a particular battle.
link |
Instead of just having these large things against an enemy,
link |
you're building systems and technology for individual cases.
link |
What about manned and unmanned teaming?
link |
So man and machine working together.
link |
Is there interesting ideas there?
link |
I approach it from the position
link |
that the human should be commanding
link |
from the highest level possible, right?
link |
So mission, objective, base, targeting.
link |
And so if, just for an example,
link |
if there's a building here and I want that building
link |
to go away, that's the message I wanna communicate.
link |
I don't wanna tell certain vehicles
link |
to be in a certain spot.
link |
I don't wanna know how much fuel they have.
link |
I don't even wanna know
link |
what capabilities they have necessarily.
link |
I just wanna know that I have the ability
link |
to select from a cloud of capabilities
link |
and the right assets are gonna arrive
link |
such that they deal with the contingencies
link |
around the target such as protection systems or EW
link |
and then can prosecute the target
link |
to the high enough probability of satisfaction
link |
that's needed by the mission commander.
link |
And that's the power of the human mind
link |
is it's able to do some of these strategic calculations
link |
but also ethical calculations, all that kind of stuff.
link |
That's what humans are good at.
link |
Does it worry you a future where we have increasingly
link |
higher autonomy in our weapons systems, in our war?
link |
So you said building.
link |
What about telling a set of fully autonomous drones
link |
to get rid of all the terrorists in the city?
link |
So you said multiple buildings, region,
link |
that kind of, so greater and greater autonomy.
link |
So that's a fear, right?
link |
You're viewing it from a we can cover more perspective
link |
which is fair and a lot of,
link |
I don't approach it from that topic.
link |
At least I don't think of it that way, at least morally.
link |
I think that with the advancement of warfare,
link |
assuming we have a just and moral leadership,
link |
if that's the case, then I am an advocate
link |
for increased autonomy and technology
link |
because I see it as an ability to be more precise.
link |
And if we trust the moral leadership of our government,
link |
then we would want to be as precise as possible
link |
in order to mitigate effects that we don't want.
link |
So I know that's not a satisfying answer
link |
and it leaves us maybe with bad feelings but.
link |
No, because having experienced sort of directly seen
link |
what it looks like when deliberately or carelessly
link |
war leads to the death of a large number of civilians
link |
as it does currently in Ukraine,
link |
the value of precision given ethical leadership
link |
So there's something distinctly unethical
link |
about the murder of civilians in a time of war.
link |
And I think technology helps lessen that.
link |
Of course, all death is terrible
link |
but there's something about schools, hospitals
link |
being destroyed with everybody inside being killed.
link |
It's particularly terrible.
link |
It is and you approached it from the angle of
link |
more autonomy enables a wider swath of destruction.
link |
And that's where we get back into
link |
who's making the decisions based off of this.
link |
And my hope again would be that we would have the leadership
link |
that would use these things when needed
link |
in the precise way as possible to minimize that.
link |
And I've seen that firsthand, I've seen that in country,
link |
I've seen not blue forces but I've seen truck bombs go off
link |
on school buses, driving around Afghanistan
link |
while escorting convoys and it wasn't easy then
link |
and I'm sure it's not any easier now
link |
especially after what you've just seen.
link |
Do you have thoughts about the current war in Ukraine
link |
maybe from a military perspective,
link |
maybe from the Air Force perspective?
link |
So I can just mention a few things.
link |
There's the Barakhtar drones that are being used.
link |
I think they have capability to be autonomous
link |
but they're usually remotely controlled.
link |
They're used for reconnaissance but they're also used
link |
by the Ukraine side for reconnaissance
link |
and I think also to destroy different technologies,
link |
tanks and so on, different targets like this.
link |
So there's also on the Russian side the Orlan 10.
link |
There's the fighter jets, MiG 29 on the Ukraine side
link |
and the Su 25 on the Russian side.
link |
Is there anything kind of stands out to you
link |
about this particular aspects of what this war looks like
link |
that's unique to what you've experienced?
link |
Maybe not unique but it's just been absolutely incredible
link |
to see the footage.
link |
We're watching war on Twitter essentially
link |
and to see these aircraft flying down low,
link |
spitting flares out, getting shot down,
link |
it's incredible to see this happening live
link |
for everyone to see.
link |
So that's just kind of a quick meta comment
link |
but as far as the actual,
link |
I think these small form factor UAVs
link |
where they're just like strapping weapon to it
link |
and flying over and trying to drop it at the right time
link |
or any of these type of commercial applications
link |
of technology into this ad hoc warfare area
link |
is incredibly interesting
link |
because it shows how useful that technology can be
link |
outside of the military.
link |
Especially like DJI, right?
link |
Like there's obviously a lot of technology in there
link |
is being leveraged for other capabilities
link |
within PLC military or at least we would assume.
link |
What happens if that is more widespread, right?
link |
Like what if we were creating our own drones
link |
and they were being used against us?
link |
Would we want to have some type of kill switch
link |
or something like that, right?
link |
So what I think governments are gonna have to consider
link |
like all these tools that are gonna be easily available
link |
to just any person could be turned into a tool of war
link |
or how do we stop that from being turned against us?
link |
Especially as we look at 10 years from now
link |
when we have a large number of autonomous UAVs
link |
delivering packages and doing everything else
link |
over our country and any one of those
link |
could be potentially a weapon
link |
if we don't have the proper security.
link |
Well, we're now in Texas and Texas values its guns
link |
and it sees guns as among other things
link |
a protector of individual freedom.
link |
You could see a future perhaps where,
link |
and I've certainly have experienced this in
link |
the empowering nature of this in Ukraine
link |
where you can put the fight for independence
link |
into your own hands by literally strapping explosives
link |
to GGI drones that you purchase on your own salary.
link |
I mean that one of the interesting things
link |
about the voluntary army in Ukraine
link |
is that they're basically using their own salary
link |
to buy the ammunition to fight for their independence.
link |
It's the very kind of ideal that sort of people speak about
link |
when they speak about the Second Amendment in this country
link |
that it's interesting to see
link |
the advanced technology version of that,
link |
especially in Ukraine.
link |
Sort of using computer vision technology
link |
for surveillance and reconnaissance
link |
to try to integrate that information
link |
to discover the targets and all that kind of stuff.
link |
To put that in the hands of civilians
link |
is fascinating to see.
link |
So to sort of fight for their independence,
link |
you could say that to fight against authoritarian regime
link |
of your own government, all that kind of stuff.
link |
It shows you how complicated the war space in the future
link |
is gonna be invading a land like that
link |
where people have that many different types of resources.
link |
It could absolutely change warfare.
link |
I mean hopefully that creates a disincentive to start war.
link |
To go to war with a, yeah,
link |
sort of it changes the nature of guerrilla warfare.
link |
I don't think Putin was expecting to be in that engagement
link |
quite as long as he has, of course,
link |
but it can show you how you can get caught up.
link |
If land wars turn into an inescapable quagmire each time
link |
due to the complications around the society's ability
link |
to access interesting tools,
link |
it could be a huge demotivator for aggression.
link |
Well, let me ask you about this.
link |
Do you think there will always be war in the world?
link |
Is this just a part of human nature?
link |
Until we move past resource limitation,
link |
there's always gonna be at least
link |
that one particular cause of conflict.
link |
And then we can also consider all our psychological
link |
lizard brain emotions that cause us to act out,
link |
although hopefully we have enough things in place
link |
to stop that from rising to the level of war.
link |
But we have our own biology, our own psychology
link |
and evolution to combat.
link |
But there are pragmatic reasons
link |
to exert violence sometimes, unfortunately,
link |
and one of those cases could be resource limitations.
link |
And so your question was,
link |
do I think there will always be war in this world?
link |
My unfortunate answer is perhaps yes,
link |
but once there's more than one world
link |
and we're less resource constrained,
link |
then perhaps there'll be a valve of sorts for that.
link |
I talked to Jacco on this podcast.
link |
I told him about a song called Brothers in Arms
link |
by Dire Straits, and the question I asked him,
link |
I'd like to ask you the same question,
link |
is like the song goes, do you think we're fools
link |
to wage war on our brothers in arms?
link |
And Jacco said, our enemy is not our brothers in arms,
link |
they're the enemy.
link |
And so this kind of notion that we're all human,
link |
that's a notion, that's a luxury you can have,
link |
but there is good and bad in this world, according to Jacco.
link |
I hear that anger and hate when I was in Ukraine
link |
amongst some people, where there was a sense
link |
where you could be brothers and sisters,
link |
you can have family, you can have love
link |
from Ukraine to Russia, but now that everything's changed
link |
and generational hate for some people have taken over.
link |
So I guess the question is, when you think about the enemy,
link |
is there hate there?
link |
Do you acknowledge that they're human?
link |
I had never had any hate or discontent
link |
when I was doing my job, I'll say,
link |
but I was also never in a true life or death situation
link |
where they were gonna kill me if I didn't kill them.
link |
But I think that environment isn't one born out of hate,
link |
being in that type of scenario,
link |
in a sense it's how to be alive, right?
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I mean, our natural state is to be fighting
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for our survival in a sense.
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And so I think there's great power and strength
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and clarity perhaps in that, and it's not always born out
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of hate, but out of necessity,
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and we can't always control that.
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And I think as we focus on ourselves so much,
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we only dance on that pinhead when we find ourselves
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fighting for things that we need,
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and we're always taking from someone else at this point.
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And so as someone that's been in combat
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and very high above it, I'll say, right,
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where I didn't feel like I was in particular danger,
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I rationalized it and I made my way through it,
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knowing that there were people on the other side
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that were going to die that were on our side than not.
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So it was always a very human thing.
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It was never a reaction, emotional reaction of any sense.
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So you were able to see the basic, it's human versus human.
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There's some aspect of war that is basically
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one people fighting each other.
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Yes, at the end of the day, especially I would say
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in aviation, tactical aviation, there's almost a kinship
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with your enemies in a sense, because you know them
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in a sense, right, you know what they've been through,
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you know what training they've been through,
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you know where they failed, and you know what type
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of person they are, because it's a very unique person
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that does that job and usually can spot them.
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I guess it's the kind of respect you have
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for the craftsmanship of the job that's taken on.
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Certainly, and that person didn't come out
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in his $100 million jet because I pissed him off.
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It's not an emotional response.
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We're both there, maybe because we chose to be in some sense,
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but at the behest of someone else
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and outside of our control and power.
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And so in a sense for me, it's almost a challenge
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that we've engaged upon agreeably,
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but that's such a romantic version that I have the luxury
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to have being high in my castle in the jet up there,
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not on the ground.
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So I understand that it's a bit more romantic
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than perhaps, you know, someone on the ground
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experiencing all the horrors down there,
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because everything looks very small from above.
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And that's another aspect of war with greater autonomy
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when you're controlling the mission versus,
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you know, have a Genghis Khan type of intimacy
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in terms of the actual experience of war
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where you directly have, you murder with a sword
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versus a gun versus a remotely controlled drone
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versus a strategic mission assignment
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to an autonomous drone that executes.
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Abstracted away until it's just a small decision.
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And my worry is the people without a voice
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are completely forgotten and silenced
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in all of these calculations.
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I spoke to a lot of people, poor people that feel like
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they've never really had a voice
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and they're too easily forgotten,
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even within the country of Ukraine.
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It's the big city versus the rural divide, you know.
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It's easy to forget the people
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that don't have a Twitter account
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and that their basic existence is just trying to survive,
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trying to put food on the table
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and they don't have anything else, anything else.
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And they are the ones that truly feel the pain of war,
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of the supply chain going down,
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of the food supplies going down,
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of a cold winter without power.
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You're still young, but you've seen some things.
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So let me ask you to put on your wise sage hat
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and give advice to young people,
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whether they're fascinated by technology
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or fascinated by fighter jets,
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whether they're fascinated by sort of engineering
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or the way the stars look at night.
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What advice would you give them?
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How to have a career they can be proud of
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or how to have a life they can be proud of?
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I'd suggest that they don't fear looking foolish.
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I spent a large portion of my life
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considering the laughter or the comments
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at my statements as indication
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that I shouldn't pursue that.
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And so I kind of woke up to that fact a bit later,
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but I would advise that people trust in themselves
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and trust in the things that they care about.
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It doesn't matter if they're good at it.
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All that matters is that they find something
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that they can apply love and care to
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and they will grow better at it
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and then most likely make the world better because of it.
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And don't be afraid to look stupid.
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Don't be afraid to look stupid.
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Yeah, that's one of the things that I think
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as you get older, you're expected to be,
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to have it all figured out
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and so you are afraid to take on new things.
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But I think as long as you're always,
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okay, looking stupid and having a beginner's mind,
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you can get really, really far even later on in life.
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So this isn't just advice for young people.
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This is really advice for everybody.
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Maybe a dark question,
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but has there been a difficult time in your life,
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a really dark place you've gone in your mind
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that stands out that you had to really overcome?
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I would suggest that I've been pretty firm ground
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for most of my life.
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I haven't had too many personal tragedies.
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I'll say that have really defined me.
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Certainly none that I would think are outside the norm.
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So there was no truly low point.
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Actually, I have one and it's tough for me
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because I've spent most of my life beating motions
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and high emotional responses out of my system
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because that's what flying is, right?
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It's keeping a steady line and doing what you need to do.
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In fact, there's been studies
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that show reduced adrenaline production in fighter pilots
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for a number of years after they get out.
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But getting out of the Navy was difficult for me.
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And I wasn't expecting it to be.
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A lot of bravado and machoism, of course, in the military,
link |
especially in fighter community.
link |
And we all have our plans made up to get out
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and none of it really accounts
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for any type of mental health or anything like that.
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It's all very much, where am I gonna get my paycheck from?
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Where am I gonna move to?
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And whether it's the Navy or just individuals,
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truly understanding the difference that makes.
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And when I got out, it was difficult for me.
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I think a lot of guys in that job, when they get out,
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they almost, at least I had anxiety when I got out
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because I was so used to being highly involved
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in something that just was I was always involved with
link |
that when I got out,
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I didn't know how to fill that space essentially.
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And while I wouldn't say it was an overly
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traumatic experience, I think it's one
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that's not accounted for enough
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that people that are getting out,
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so I would encourage them to take it serious
link |
and actually think about it and respect the change
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because it is a big one.
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Well, if I may say, you found a place in nature currently,
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a home, is there, can you speak to that
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being a source of happiness for you?
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An escape from the world?
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Certainly, it very much is.
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Was it deliberate that you found it there?
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That's home for me.
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So, I moved back up to the Boston area
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and my wife and I had an idea after moving
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about eight or nine times in the Navy
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of kind of what we wanted just generally.
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And it was all really about the land
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and not about the house,
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we just wanted privacy and to be nearby.
link |
And so we ended up finding a lot of land,
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a parcel of land, we put a house on it
link |
and it provides me with a sense of peace
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that I think I can only get when I'm in nature.
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And a sense of clarity that helps me think,
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helps me relax, maybe it's so relaxing
link |
that helps me think, I don't know.
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But being surrounded by nature and birds and animals
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for me has always allowed me to,
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I don't know, feel most in touch
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with my own thoughts in a sense.
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It just provides clarity.
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And so this little sanctuary you could say I've built
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allows me to interface via a fiber line at my house
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but also feel like I'm a million miles away sometimes,
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which is the best of both worlds.
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A, you can just walk outside to escape at all.
link |
To experience life as hundreds of generations
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of human species have experienced it.
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Maybe it's the dichotomy, my desire for the fastness
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of technology and experience compared
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with the most basic baseline that we have.
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Isn't that strange?
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How do you square that?
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How drawn you are to the cutting edge
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and still the calm you find in nature.
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I think it makes sense.
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Nature is vastly superior to almost all of our technology.
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From a technology perspective?
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And so in a way, it's being surrounded
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by perfection in a lot of senses.
link |
In the military and in general,
link |
have you contemplated your mortality?
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Have you been afraid of death?
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What's your relationship like with death?
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Well, I was willing to accept an oversized amount of risk,
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I'll say, when I was younger as an aviator.
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Not in the jet, but just that was my life.
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I felt like I was gonna live forever.
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And going out in the war, strangely,
link |
didn't really change that because as an aviator,
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again, we're riding up high on our horse up there.
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So there were times when I was in situations
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that could have resulted in death from flying
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or from emergency in the aircraft.
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But I'll be honest, I never really kind of sat down
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to think about the mortality of it afterwards.
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I feel like I kind of signed a check at the beginning
link |
and it was my job to perform as well as I could.
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And if something happened in that,
link |
then I better damn well be sure
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I would do my best at the time then.
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So I maybe didn't personally reflect on it
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as much as I one would think,
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because once you get in that machine,
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it doesn't give you a lot of time
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to sit back and philosophize on your current situation.
link |
And the same, just like we weren't seeing these,
link |
or when we seen these objects off the coast,
link |
we weren't necessarily examining them every day, right?
link |
We'd put them into that bucket
link |
because it wasn't something
link |
that was gonna kill us right away.
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And thinking about death when you're so close to it
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all the time would be debilitating.
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It would probably make you worse at your job.
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Well, maybe you can think about death
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when you look out, when you go out into nature
link |
and think like the fact that this whole ride ends,
link |
it's such a weird thing.
link |
And the old makes way to new.
link |
And that's all throughout nature.
link |
And if you just look at the cruelty of nature
link |
or the beauty of nature, however you think about it,
link |
the fact that the big thing eats the little thing
link |
over and over, and that's just how it progresses.
link |
And that's how adaptation happens.
link |
Death is a requirement for evolution.
link |
And whether evolution allows us
link |
to see objective reality or not,
link |
it still gives you some interesting thoughts
link |
about perspectives of death,
link |
and especially considering it's a biological necessity
link |
as far as evolution is concerned.
link |
It's weird that there's been like 100 billion people
link |
that lived before us,
link |
and that you and I will be forgotten.
link |
This whole thing we're doing now is meaningless
link |
in that sense, but at the same time,
link |
it feels deeply meaningful somehow.
link |
I guess that's the question I wanna ask.
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When you go out to nature with family,
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what do you think is the meaning of it all?
link |
What's the meaning of life?
link |
Or maybe when you put on the night goggles,
link |
the night vision goggles and look up at the stars,
link |
I can't speak for everyone,
link |
but at least the way I interpret it,
link |
or at least I feel like I interpret my way here,
link |
my job is, I feel like my role is just to be curious
link |
about the environment in a manner that allows us
link |
to understand as much as possible.
link |
I think that the human mind,
link |
whether it's just the mass inside our skull,
link |
or whether there's some type of quantum interactions
link |
going on, our mind has incredible ability
link |
to output new information in a universe
link |
that is somewhat stale of information, right?
link |
Our minds are somewhat unique in that we can imagine
link |
and perceive things that could never ever
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have possibly naturally occurred,
link |
and yet we can make it happen.
link |
We can instantiate that with enough belief
link |
that it's true and it can happen.
link |
And so for me, I feel like I just need to encourage that,
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to encourage interaction with reality
link |
such that it leaves us a newer and grander interactions
link |
with this universe.
link |
And all that starts with a little bit of curiosity.
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Ryan, you're an incredible person.
link |
You've done so many things,
link |
and there's so much still ahead of you.
link |
Thank you for being brave enough to talk about UFOs
link |
and doing it so seriously,
link |
and thank you for pushing forward
link |
on all these fronts in terms of technology.
link |
So from just the fighter jets, the engineering of that,
link |
to the AIML applications in the combat setting,
link |
that's super interesting, and then now quantum.
link |
I can't wait to see what you do next.
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Thank you so much for sitting down and talking today.
link |
It was my pleasure.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation
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with Lieutenant Ryan Graves.
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To support this podcast,
link |
please check out our sponsors in the description.
link |
And now, let me leave you with some words from Buzz Aldrin.
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Bravery comes along as a gradual accumulation of discipline.
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Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.