Special Warfare TACP Selection
EPISODE 22
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WELCOME TO THE TEAM ROOM FOR AN EXCLUSIVE ONES READY PODCAST. ON THIS EPISODE WE SIT DOWN AND CHAT WITH AMANDA. SHE SHARES HER PERSPECTIVE ON THE TACP SELECTION AND TRAINING. YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS THIS ONE!
INTRO
Intro (00:04):
You're listening to the Ones Ready podcast, a team of Air Force Special Operators forged in combat with over 70 years of combined operational experience as well as the decade of selection instructor experience. If you're tired of settling and you want to do something you truly believe in, you're in the right place. Now here's your host, PJ team leader, Jujitsu lover, and dad joke aficionado, Aaron Love.
Aaron (00:28):
Welcome everybody to the Ones Ready podcast. You are here in the team room with the entire squad plus a very special guest.
Thanks for following us. Be sure to subscribe and leave us comments.
Check out the friends of the podcast. Eberlestock, AlphaBrew Coffee, and StrikeForce Energy.
So to the heart of the issue this week on the team room, you guys have asked about a guys and girls have asked about a million times. Can you get an officer on, we want to know a little bit more about TACP. So we asked you the air national guard episode last week and now we're going to get into it again and we're going to talk about the TACP pipeline assessment selection with our friend. Amanda. Welcome. Amanda, how are you doing?
ABOUT AMANDA
Amanda (01:51):
Pretty awesome. Thanks for having me.
Aaron (01:53):
Oh, it was a pleasure to have you. We begged, we begged her to come on. Amanda has a really, really distinctive story that we're going to get into here. Amanda, just start us off with how did, how did you get into the Air Force and, and what, what job did you do first before, spoiler alert, you went through TACP assessment selection.
Amanda (02:12):
So I went to the air force Academy and I graduated in 2008 and going there, I wanted to be a fighter pilot and as one does, I saw Top Gun one too many times and then we did. So I decided that the idea of being a pilot was cooler than actually being a pilot. So I decided that I didn't want to fly and I went with Force Support. So that's what I commissioned into 2008.
Aaron (02:59):
I want to talk a little bit about that. What is Force Support? So for people that might have like no idea what does for support do?
Amanda (03:06):
It is a little bit of everything. So it's the personnel section, human resources where you get your evals taking care of decorations, ID cards, SGLI and then it comes to under the umbrella is the dining facility, the fitness center. You have the bowling alley, the child development center, you've got the youth center, and then we also do mortuary and search and recovery.
Aaron (03:31):
Can you go into kind of that, that mortuary affairs? Section of the job. Cause that's, that's interesting. I don't think people really understand exactly what Force Support does as far as that goes.
Amanda (03:49):
When an Airman dies overseas they handle everything. Gather equipment. Drape the coffins. Salute the fallen. Inspect the Airman. Make sure their service dress is correct. Get them home the right way.
They also conduct search and recovery in the event of a downed aircraft.
Aaron (05:57):
Yeah, that's crazy. And you know, I think we talked about it. I've done a couple of aircraft recoveries before and I was, I was kind of shocked. Usually we're there like right when it happens. We, we clear everything out and we leave. But it was, it was really interesting to hear that, you know, there was somebody specifically you on the back end and for support that actually provides that function. So that's cool. How long are the, how long did you do support?
Amanda (06:20):
Going on 12 years.
Trent (06:23):
So when did you first hear about a Special Warfare?
INITIAL INTEREST IN SPECIAL WARFARE
Amanda (06:49):
The Sandhurst guys were mostly future Special warfare Officers.
Amanda had no interest in that type of work.
Hated land nav.
Amanda (07:43):
Amanda tells a fun story about how not to land nav through a tree.
Peaches (09:32):
What was the trigger that really pushed you to like I'm going to cross train. This is what I want to do. This is the right path for me.
WHAT TRIGGERED CROSS-TRAINING
Amanda (09:46):
Tasked deploy as an Air Advisor shortly after commissioning. Issued an absurd number of grenade pouches.
Air Advisor was a new thing so she was sent to a lot of combat oriented pre-deployment training. SERE, driving, weapons, combat lifesaver.
First deployment set the mindset. Second deployment, 1 year in Afghanistan, continued her down the path.
In 2015 Amanda was invited to participate in the Women in Service Review (WISR) after all of the combat related jobs were opened to females. Amanda completed all of the training and tasks which gave her the confidence to pursue a SW job.
She entered her application to be a TACP Officer.
PREPARING FOR THE PIPELINE
Brian (14:45):
We get a lot of questions about females in the pipeline. What did you struggle with and what did you do to prepare?
Amanda (15:23):
Rucking, pull-ups, and rucking were no problem.
Running with an LBE and canteens was a struggle.
Everyday presented new and unforeseen challenges.
Aaron (16:16):
What do you wish you had known beforehand?
Amanda (16:33):
How to stand up with a 90lb ruck. There is technique involved.
Trent (17:56):
How did you prepare psychologically?
Amanda (18:19):
I think my, I was fortunate for the deployments that I'd had before to kind of get me into that tougher mindset. And then I had some really good TACP mentors Chachi Pachasa and Dill Bickel.
Chachi said “I heard you want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane”. I was like, of course I want to, and he's like, I'm going to get you to airborne school. Like he never, he never looked at me as a chick. He just looked at me as someone who had desire to go somewhere and he just never looked at you as a chick.
Aaron (19:09):
Okay, so walk us. Well, what was your closest call during the TACP assessment selection. What did they call it back then? So when you went through it was called what?
Amanda (20:01):
The ALO aptitude assessment. The AAA. Endless calisthenics and then leadership tests. Yeah that's kind of a blur. But yeah, you take the PAST, you get your ruck timed to then name between there you get yelled at a lot, lots of Cals, problem solving. And then we did they, it was the basic prep course and then it was just the three level at the schoolhouse to TACP.
LEAST FAVORITE AND MOST FAVORITE EVENT
Peaches (20:45):
With the assessment and all that stuff. And through the pipeline. If you had to pick your favorite and your least favorite event, what would they be?
Amanda (20:54):
LBE runs.
Peaches (21:34):
We have received questions on that from people that are aspiring TACPOs, STOs, CROs or even cross trainees and they want to know kind of what is expected of them as an officer going through assessment and selection and the pipeline.
Amanda (22:02):
I would just say you have to have your shit together because not only do you have to take care of yourself, you have to take care of your dudes and possible ladies. It's not just about you at that point. And that's where I ran into some issues at the school house at when I went to field cause I wasn't eating enough and I eventually like almost passed out on the field. And that's how I had a medical wash the first time I went through because I wasn't eating. I was just like too stressed out, like taking care of my guys. But you have to take care of yourself so you can take care of other people. It's the team that gets you through. But as the officer, you don't want to be the weakest link. Like you want to be leading from the front always. Like you don't want them to be dragging you around.
Aaron (23:03):
So other than getting stuck in a tree well and then getting glued to the earth by your ruck. That's your worst one. Well what was your favorite one? What? What event did you walk into and you knew you were just like, I'm going to smoke this. I'm ready for it.
Amanda (23:24):
The PAST test as I was doing great, that was the best I'd ever done. I was, I was crushing it. You know like I was running 9:30 getting faster, 14 pull ups and just get kept going like 55, 57 push-ups, which is great for a female. So 65 abs.
Brian (24:15):
So I actually just have another question about the female, cause you're bringing it up. The female aspect. I don't want to go too crazy on this, but I do get a lot of messages like girls coming in, they ask, what do you think about a girl coming in and being able to do that stuff? It sounds like you had physical stuff in the bag. What were the challenges that you had specifically being a female, if any, or if you had smooth sailing and everyone responses and you know,
Amanda (24:40):
My airmen and my Lieutenants were great. They would give me feedback if I needed it. I was told to not bark at the dudes so much. During the prep course, they get pissed you have to do the inspection ahead of time and you have, like with the guy on my guys at the flashlights to make sure that they shaved. You're saying them back to make sure that they're tight and sometimes they get pissed and I'd make them go back. So cause obviously I don't have to shave so they get pissed cause they have to go do it again. So one day I listened, like fine, you don't want me to criticize, you don't want me talking. And then we got smoked, destroyed then they listened.
Aaron (27:21):
What happened that caused you to not become a TACPO?
Amanda (27:59):
It was a night navigation. So I missed my target by 143 meters.
Aaron (29:03):
What are things you learned about yourself in the pipeline and what advice would you have knowing what you know now, looking back on it with hindsight being 20/20, and you were going to give somebody that's just about to make their journey and going into TACP to try this thing, what advice would you give them and what did you learn from it?
LEARN TO FAIL
Amanda (29:59):
Well, you just have to learn how to fail and not like, you can't let that get you down because I had failed a few times up to that point. And you just have to keep on trucking. One of the guys, he was going through the PJ assessment and you've got to burn the boats. I don't know if you've heard, if you've heard that.
Aaron (30:22):
I've never heard that one. It's one of the worst slogan. It doesn't make any sense. If there's any company that uses it and tagline, not support that company. Not one minute. And that will be available on beapj.com. We just did a, we just did a podcast yes. Recently on how to fail and how to make failure kind of worked for you or fail forward. So that's awesome.
Amanda (31:13):
That's awesome. I just wish I had trained differently for it. Like I knew nothing about nutrition when I went through. I knew, I'm pretty sure like through this quarantine is the most I've stretched probably ever in my life. I didn't start like, you know, they're like here, like I had a lacrosse ball but I never used it and I had a foam roller. I just kind of looked at it and I just kind of like, yeah, I'm going to go to sleep. So I wish I had done a lot more recovery.
Aaron (31:44):
Insane to me to hear that you just like basically like went in blind. You're like, Oh yeah, I mean let's go ahead and see if I can throw my hand in this wood-chipper.
Amanda (31:52):
I knew enough about lifting. Like I ran a division one track in college so I knew enough about lifting, but I didn't recover as well as I should've. Or nutrition like my husband taught me all about those magical thing called macros, all them, how much protein you're supposed to be eating, like cut out sugar, like all this stuff that you're supposed to you. Like I wish I had known about that. I wish I had stretch or not necessarily yoga, but there is a lot of stretching that you can do for recovery that's not quite as woo-woo if you will. You're not another woo-woo.
Peaches (32:33):
Kelly Starrett, it's Supple Leopard, so a lot of mobility stuff. I'd know he'd just started up a new company, I think called The Ready State now, but fantastic stuff that I wish I had known when I came in.
Amanda (32:56):
Absolutely. I've been doing 20 minute stretches by this guy, Tom Merrick, the Body Weight Warrior that he does all crazy, awesome stretches. Like a lot of squat mobility, hip mobility, shoulders, all kinds of goodness. And he'll do stretches or like, I didn't even know. I could bend that way. And why is that burning?
Trent (33:36):
Did you have any fun/good times?
Amanda (33:57):
Every day. Like because it was always something I'd never done before. Like I learned how to program radio. I was like I can barely function my cell phone. And I'm like Holy shit, I passed radios like I did the thing like this is amazing. Like land nav was huge for me cause it's sometimes I'll still get lost in the mall parking lot. Like I got unlost in the dark. That's amazing. Using the magical company, so every day and then the guys, they're just so motivating. Like, this is how these gung ho dudes just getting after it every day. I'm learning from them. They took care of me every single day. So it was awesome. I miss the team aspect and the dudes.
Peaches (34:46):
That's awesome. You got like that's great to hear that you got accepted and they pulled you in and they probably didn't look at you any different than anyone else either.
Amanda (34:54):
No. And that's, that was, that's what was amazing and they taught me so much cause I didn't know anything thing about boot and foot care.
Aaron (35:04):
First time that that is the best. Like nothing about nutrition, no mobility. Not that you're just a division one athlete and then you were just like, all right, let's do this thing.
Amanda (35:14):
I know. So the for after the first wreck, like I had these massive blisters that as I walked through all the guys were like.
Peaches (35:23):
Those massive ones. And then you're just like, I don't know whether I should pop this or not but here hurts really, really bad.
Amanda (35:29):
Oh yeah. I had to go to the popping cause they couldn't get my boots back on. But yeah, they taught me, you know that this magical thing called foot powder.
Amanda (35:43):
Yeah. And they helped me cause none of the gear fit me. So one of my airmen, Travis Ross, like he just sat me down and he's like this is how you adjust your body armor. This is how we can make all your stuff that you like. I had no, I had no idea how to make all the adjustments on a pull it apart and he took the time on a weekend and just fixed me which made it so much easier for me to, to work, to run in the LBE Cause now it's not like shaking like this is like actually like snug to my body. So it was awesome. So moments like that, there's so great.
NUTRITION
Peaches (36:19):
Peaches didn’t eat enough at dive school. Once corrected it all got better.
Eat for performance.
Amanda (37:29):
Yeah. I had to learn how to, I had to learn how to eat before working out because all my life I'd never, it was always like fasted, whatever you know, cause like before track meets, I'd never eat anything cause I just didn't want to throw up for some reason after the race. But during the prep course they made you eat. So even though I wanted to throw up my oatmeal cause I wasn't hungry, just choking that down and it gets you through
Brian (37:53):
The pipeline is not a 20-60 min workout. It’s an endurance race. You need calories. Lots of guys try to come to their first workout of the day without eating. It leads to lots of gatorade puking.
Trent (39:09):
Not the time to worry about body comp.
Brian (39:26):
And you're not there to get a six pack anyways. You're there to perform. And that's more important than having that six pack. Even if you have a little bit of extra on there and as long as you perform, then you perform just a little bit of extra reserves.
Peaches (39:43):
You never know when you're going to be able to eat again. You never know when you're going to be able to sleep again, you know? So I just keep a little on me.
Aaron (39:50):
Hey, if you need to lay down and take a nap, you don't know when the next time you're going to be able to sleep as you get them sees, take that little snooze. Well, Amanda, thanks very much for coming on. It was great to hear everything that you brought to the table and, and all this stuff tried. I want to, I wanted to end here any way you're going back? I was off the call for a second, but you got another shot in your what?
Amanda (40:12):
I don't think I can cause I'm too high in rank cause I'm a Major now. My husband actually made it, he was going to try and cross train into the air force from the Army and he made it through AAA as well and had such a hard time cross the Army wouldn't let him go. So by the time they were willing to let him go, he was too high in rank as well. So we're both, that ship has sailed unfortunately. Hopefully I can help other people make it through.
Aaron (40:46):
Yeah, that'd be awesome. And are you okay? Do we want to put out some social or are you okay with people asking you questions direct once they hear this? The tens of people that are following
Amanda (40:55):
My Instagram is, @IamAmanda joy and that's usually where I do all my stuff. I'm not super huge into Facebook. So absolutely. Any questions, any training advice, especially for any females have questions cause you definitely need to train a little bit differently based on how your body handles, how you bear weight. So for sure.
Aaron (41:22):
Okay, that's awesome. I'll make sure to put the handle in the, in the show notes and on the YouTube so people can check it out from there. Brian, you want to wrap it up for us?
WRAP UP
Brian (41:31):
I really, you coming on here and talking to us a different perspective. The TACP specifically selection, we haven't had been able to get anybody on there to talk about that specifically. So I appreciate you talking about that and some of your struggles and the things that you went through. I think overall it's listening to the things that you went through. A big point, and this is true for all of us that go through selection. Pride kind of takes over whenever you start to suck and you don't want to be that person that is on the side of the gunnel looking like you're struggling the most. Because I said the same thing in a couple of the podcasts that we've done is just like, you look over and you're like, you know what, I can do this. If this guy's still there, I can figure and do this. Whatever you got to say to motivate yourself, but a little bit of pride people looking at me, are you kidding me? Yeah. But it's always that competitive edge that gets us going. Like no one's going to beat me. I'm going to do my absolute best. And you know, that's what it sounds like a hundred percent. And just at the end of the day, when you've done your best and 100% of what you could do and you make the best of the situation you got, then you can walk with your head held and that's what I could tell everybody. So I appreciate you also sharing that with us because again, we talked about failures on last week's episode, but it's not an easy thing to talk about, especially when at least 10 people are listening to it. And again, you go ahead and reach out to Amanda if any females have any questions, you guys can also reach out to us or anything. If you have any questions at any time to check out the website. We're going to be putting a couple of updates on there and some new stickers and stuff that we just got in. I'm going to be selling those. So check those out. And again, if you guys ever have any questions or need any advice on any of the career fields, you can always hit us up and we are here for you. Any shows that you want to see us do or any people that you want to see us interview, then we're welcome any recommendations. So again, thank you for taking the time, Amanda, to come out here and talk to us. Anytime you want to come back on, just let us know. Awesome. Thank you for having me. No problem. You guys go out there and train hard. And like Aaron said, burn the boats.
SPECIAL THANKS TO AMANDA FOR MAKING THIS PODCAST POSSIBLE.
GUEST BIO: Maj Amanda Pelkowski
Force Support Officer, Colonel's Group, Headquarters AF, Pentagon
Deployed to Iraq ISO Operation NEW DAWN as an Air Advisor, Sather AB - Mar - Sep 11
Short Tour to Incirlik Jan 12 - Apr -13
Deployed to Afghanistan ISO OEF as the Joint Visitor's Bureau, CJIATF 435, Camp Phoenix, Jun 13 - May 14
"Deployed" to Al Dhafra as the EFSS Operations Officer, Oct 18- Apr 19
TACPness:
Participated in the AF Women in Service Review - 2015
Passed AAA - May 2016
Passed Basic Prep Course - Aug 2016 (first female to make it through, since it was not required for any officers prior to 2016)
Apprentice Course - Aug - Dec 16
I am so thankful I got a taste of badassery at the TACP Schoolhouse. Even though I didn't make it, the experiences, knowing my mental and physical fortitude, and the lessons on leadership and life I learned from my teammates and just being in the pipeline have made me a better Officer and Airman.
TLDR: Amanda gives some amazing insight and advice concerning the TACP-O selection process, and the TACP Pipeline. Eat, stretch and watch out for tree monsters on Camp Bullis.
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