SPECWAR Misconceptions
EPISODE 37
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DO YOU HAVE AN IMAGE OF WHAT AN AFSPECWAR OPERATOR LOOKS OR ACTS LIKE? ON THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS SOME OF THE MISCONCEPTIONS WE’VE COME ACROSS DURING OUR CAREERS. FOR PEACHES THAT’S BEEN A REALLY REALLY REALLY LONG TIME.
INTRO
Intro 00:02
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 a 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 favorite CCT personality, JTAC extraordinaire, embracer of the ridiculous face and like the shortest operator you'll ever meet peaches.
Peaches 00:27
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Ones Ready podcast. We're happy to have you and we appreciate you guys joining us today. Before we get started, I want to hit on one of our sponsors, which would be Eberlestock. If you guys haven't tried out some of their rucks and you're trying and training for the pipeline, then you may want to check them out if you have the resource to do so. If you do that, check out promo code ONESREADY at eberlestock.com and get you guys a good discount. I rock the F1 Mainframe which is the external frame that goes around it. I believe all of you guys also grab that right? Super comfortable. So, if you guys are interested in doing that, use the promo code ONESREADY and you'll be good to go and you're supporting them who is also supporting us. And we don't get any, you know, kickbacks or any payment from that. So on this week's episode, we want to talk to you guys about some of the misconceptions that are associated with Air Force Special Warfare, in terms of, you know, what is it like, not just what is it like day to day, you know, because we've covered that several times. Which is exactly why I'm going to start with him. So, Trent, like, right, right off the bat, what are some of the misconceptions associated with SR?
SPECIAL RECONNAISSANCE
Trent 02:16
Well, it's a little too new to have really, any real misconceptions. I will say, from what I've heard talking to some of you folks out there is people tend to think that within Special Warfare, you're like one thing. So, it's like, Oh, you guys are snipers. We're like, well, we go to sniper school. And they're like, Okay, well, you guys are like the secret squirrel side. You guys are this, that or the other? Like, we all kind of do a lot of everything. And it's, you know, it's the people we're looking for are not, you know, the, the people that you tend to think of, you know what I mean, like, in SOWT, it was easy, right? It was like, you guys are weather nerds. It's like that's true. We also do a lot of other stuff. Like, you know, like you bridge the gap. A lot of times we're doing like, as a SOWT was like kind of combat support side all the way over into like, action side. So I think any misconception is a misconception because the skill sets and the things that you're asked to do are so varied that it's hard to nail it down, if that makes sense to anybody else Brian's Give me the look like I'm the dumbest person but I just keep talking about
Aaron 03:28
It's both sides of the coin to like, you guys don't have an upward limit right now either. Like you guys do have that, you know, not yet clearly defined like cap like, on what cool things are what are going to become your core skills because you guys are going to have to evolve. So that plays a part into
Trent 03:43
Right like when people Combat Controllers like JTACs and airfields guys, right? They're like, what do you guys do? And I'm like, well, this is what we're like, kind of start with the like you said, Aaron. It's like, one of the my favorite parts about the career field is like, I need to go do this and people like why I'm like cool, because I want to There's nothing saying I can so like, really the job is really open ended so that the more you want to do, the more you can do.
Peaches 04:09
So, when you came in, I'm sure you had, you know, assumptions of what things would be like. So did you think that you would have more trigger time then you have Did you think that you would jump more often, you know, ride motorcycles and do demolition and stuff like that more than you do, or more that you have done.
Trent 04:30
I think my expectations were pretty limited. But I will say, my career path I got like the trigger time and all that stuff really early on, which is kind of unusual. So, like it was I went on my first rotation and kind of checked off every box that I wanted to hit, you know, being and calling myself Special Operations. But what happened after that was, yeah, it's the you know, you kind of find yourself in some of those more support roles. And that was A little bit different, but, you know, I just I just roll with the punches and I do what I need to do. And, you know, some guys get a lot of trigger time some guys are like, you know, bullet magnets and TIC magnets. And some guys aren't. So I've kind of had a nice mix of all those things and so anything, I've never felt constrained by an AFSC or by a leadership or anybody within the community, you know, like even once the two three it's like, well, what do you want to go do I, you know, I go to leadership and be like, this is what I want to do. And they're like, good go does never try to do anything and someone told me no. There was nothing moral and ethical.
Brian 05:38
Yeah, the SOWT guys when they were there around, you know, they had those powers to be able to just transition to any team. They're like, CCT that team's going on an awesome trip or whatever deployment like I want to just hit up on that one or a PJ's are going down to Wales to go do some climbing. Like let's jump on that train. Yeah, they're like really You know, like transcend, it's limitless on what you are able to do and SERE kind of, I don't want to compare you too much this SERE but they are kind of along those same lines where, you know, you can do more than really what's in this job, job description if you're squared away dude and be able to, like present yourself in a well-educated manner.
Aaron 06:19
I was going to bring syrup right away I thought I was like SERE is the only one that's even on par. I think they might even have you know; you guys be here. They're so masterful at it. You don't even know what's happening. Sometimes you're like, man, the seer guy got one over on me again.
Trent 06:35
I always see those guys like in the parking lot of Hurlburt and from a distance that look like one of my guys. I'll start like jogging over. Okay, and then I'm like, Oh, never mind. Alright. But I think what the reconnaissance thing it's a lot, you know, and the same thing You know, if you guys are going to be climbing, it's like, well, we might need to climb. You know, we're going to, we need ski trips, we need to go out there and see what you guys are doing. I need to understand a little bit about what everybody's doing in case I need to go check things out and understand, you know what I need to pass to everybody.
Peaches 07:15
But that's kind of the kind of people that we want there. Because we don't want people that if something comes up, that needs to be done, in that person go, Well, that's just not my job. That is not who we want. That's like somebody that's like, PJ or an 18D get shot my job get out. Yeah, it's like a PJ or an 18D get shot. And I'm just going to sit there and while I say my job.
Trent 07:44
There are dudes over there. I need your help. Yeah. But like, you know, I've had controllers doing nerdy type weather stuff, helping you set up sensors and that's the good thing about SOF. I think people think It's hard to understand is if you're a PJ and you're out there and something needs to get done. I've never had a PJ be like, bro. No, I'm not going to do that DCP. So, this one for you Trent may be a little skewed just because of the current position that you're in. But are you do you have as much office time as you expected? Or is it a lot more office time than you expected. You know, right now it's 100% off It's time. It's a but yeah, I think Getting into the career field early on. It's surprising how much work has to be done before the fun stuff happens. You know, like the first few years not so much, but then you become a Staff and Tech and start moving up the ranks and all this other stuff has to happen. But as long as you understand the processes and the reason behind it, and this stuff has to happen, you know, getting the paperwork done so you guys can get your guys out there and train and get everything they need. It's not that big of a deal. You know, I've never been like chained to a desk until you know, recently for long periods of time.
Peaches 09:31
Yeah, I understand and I feel the pain. So, okay, so we're going to move on a little bit and go to Brian and Aaron about PJ. So, what are some of the misconceptions about PJ that exist? I'd like to start with one that I know has been asked several times and I get it a lot as well. is, what is the difference between Combat Medics in PJs?
PARARESCUE
Aaron 09:57
Oh man, I think Brian and I are supposed to act. Like really, really mad and start having big opinions on this one, right? I, I'll say the same thing like, yeah, we have, it's just another skill set that we have, right? Like I think it's a disservice to the 18D types like 18D smoke us, that stuff that we don't really understand that well like field medicine, or, you know, helping with indigenous populations. And oh, by the way, they're experts in you know, unconventional warfare and irregular warfare. And those are the because they're Green Berets, like that's what they do. And Ranger medics are awesome at trauma. I'd never take anything away from those dudes, but we're just it's part of our skill set. Yeah. And we trained to a high standard, of course, because it's important, but it isn't like, what encapsulates us as a job, you know, that's just part of the bag of tricks that we bring to the entire capability, you know, that we have. So that's how I see it. I'm Brian, I don't know how you feel about it.
Brian 10:47
Yeah. I don't get super offended about any of these questions that people ask but it is important to clarify. Yeah. You know, combat medics are for the most part, basic trained of BMT
Aaron 10:59
68W in the Army.
Brian 11:01
Yeah. And additionally, there most of the time assigned to one platform when you know, PJ's are used in any platform, whether vehicle, or just on foot type of thing where we're assigned to an aircraft for a different deployment, but not the entire time. We're not always on the 60. We're not always on, you know, whatever aircraft, it's whatever we have is what we're going to go into, to use. And then, you know, worldwide technical rescue capabilities are the other thing that kind of sets us apart with having the freefall capabilities, as well as like Swiftwater, Arctic, all the other different kinds of rescues that we can do. So, you know, it's not like the medicine that we do. Obviously, I don't want to take anything, anything away from the Combat Medics that are out there do awesome stuff, and they're really great at their job. But it's just a different skill set. Again, this has to do with what Special Operations is as an entity and we don't try to restrict ourselves to one type platform, one type of way of doing things. It's always just how can we think through this process and how can we use are the tools that we had available to execute the mission the best.
Peaches 12:02
I've always compared, not as a comparison, like in the In this sense, but whenever I'm trying to explain to people what the difference between an 18D is and a PJ is 18D are phenomenal at, you know, clinical type medicine, they're not necessarily going to be great at any kind of rescue. Whereas you guys are phenomenal at triage, rescue and recovering people. But I'm saying that from a Controller's point of view,
Brian 12:36
I was actually going through PA when I was going through PA do my clinicals the 18D are they're doing the same stuff and expected to know the same stuff is, you know, most of the PAs do. So, they do a lot of clinical medicine for sure. Yeah, they get it on.
Aaron 12:47
Yeah, it's a Yeah, for sure. Especially the clinical side of it. Like I said, you know, indigenous populations and knowing crazy things and being able to do that in the field is pretty impressive. You know, the stuff that they go through, so yeah, That's awesome.
Trent 13:00
If you look at the names Combat Medic and Pararescue, you mean, you can figure out the difference between the two?
Aaron 13:11
Don't, don't start bringing logic or this is just going to be like what questions make us the most upset all the time. And that's how this was going to go.
Peaches 13:20
So, what's another misconception from you guys, Brian.
Brian 13:24
So, you know, when I was coming in, there was a lot of books out there on the downed pilot mission. And you'll see a lot of medals that came out of Vietnam that were just about when dudes you know, burned into the jungle in Vietnam. Guys, we've come down on the penetrator. And that's kind of what's shown on some of the movies that have been coming out and everything but like I said, in the Combat Medic thing, you know, we do all sorts of different kinds of missions. And it's not just one type of mission. And it's been it's even hard to kind of break the mindset, sometimes on some of the higher up people that have been in the Air Force for a while because its kind of see PJs as like break glass in case of emergency, which we've had to overcome. And I think we have, you know, over the last, you know, decade or so, a slow process of being able to do that. But yeah, we're not going to be doing too many of the down pilot missions, thankfully. I mean, we don't want to have dudes crashing. But we have other types of missions that we occupy our time with.
Aaron 14:20
I had an old a Green Beret friend of mine, he just hit me up on insulin. He was like, hey, do you guys are you guys attached to like ODA teams and SEAL teams on the regular now some kid that's in he's in college on the East Coast? And he was like, Yes, I'm kid I ran into said that, you know, he had done that. And I was like, Yeah, man, that's actually fairly common. He's like, holy crap, you guys have come a long way. You know, he got out probably eight years ago, that really wasn't a thing. The guys that had done that really was a few and far between. and now it's every rotation. We're flushing guys to get guys as far forward as we possibly can. So, people think we're attached to the helicopter because of the Combat Rescue shows and you know, where they see this very small portion of our job and they're like, Oh, well, that's what they do. There, you know, flight paramedics essentially. So That show was great because it helped us out but it hurt us in some regards to and you know, that was part of it was looking at that one really specific mission because it played well on NatGeo.
Peaches 15:24
So, I will say that there is another misconception that I'd like to ask Aaron about and that would be PJ's and their hairstyles.
Aaron 15:34
Oh, man. I feel first of all honored I want to thank everybody is electing me as the number one SME on all thing’s PJ hair. So, I was on Hazard Ground podcast today. it'll drop it a little bit. Same question. He's like, Hey, I'm looking at your profile here. It looks like you got great hair. I was just like, hey, thanks, man. I don't know. I don't know what it is if the if the job attracts the hair if the hair is just drawn to the job, but that's not a misconception all PJ have great hair. Like look at Brian's hair right now.
Brian 16:02
Boom. It's gorgeous. This is after a really long day of work. And you know, it just pops up in the morning.
Aaron 16:08
Better what's up Out of Regs pomade in my hair right now? Look, it's gorgeous. Look those flowing locks it's the greatest I don't know what it is. It's a that's always that's one of my favorites inside jokes is the PJ and their hair thing. The other jokes about always having a rope like that seen in Boondock Saints was like go get your rope then. Yes, definitely. Yeah.
Peaches 16:32
I'll ask you a more serious question then Aaron. So, what would be your stereotypical you know, Special Operator or PJ? Or the stereotype or the misconception with that?
Aaron 16:46
Okay, yeah, that everybody has to fit inside of this like box. We have people from every single like dudes that are homeless and like live in their van all the way to guys with like, Doctor level of PhDs that enlisted because and you know, worked on ski teams in their life and everybody in between like hardcore lifters that listen to heavy metal and then dudes that are straight up vegan and like, no kidding hippie granola type dudes like we have all types of guys.
Brian 17:14
And I don't think there's like a typical body type right on that, like people. I've gotten a ton of messages where they're asking like, do I should I gain an extra 30 pounds or something like that I only weigh 150-160 whatever it is, and I think I should put on some muscle or whatever. Like now just train to the job standards. If you can ruck if you can run if you can do the push-ups, sit ups, pull ups, and all things that are required of you carrying this heavy gear than anything else is just extra sure if you want to get those Hollywood muscles you can get those Hollywood muscles but you don't need to really look at yourself in the mirror and say Do I look like a Special Operator right now? look like a Special Operator today is what I'm supposed to look like. Yeah, because if you look at a lot of dudes that are out there, and they've been in for a really long time, they're not like super jacked dudes.
Peaches 18:15
Alright, so, you know, we've got a decent number of followers and listeners at this point. I don't mind saying that. So, I would be willing to bet that a lot of the audience feels that we are pretty cocky. Especially the PJ's. It's just what it is. So, I will throw it to you, Aaron. Okay, on this one. What is misconception about cockiness? I know that Controllers get stereotyped quite a bit.
Aaron 18:55
Yeah. Well, I mean, if you, you know, call somebody a horse wants, you know, punch that guy. knows if you if you get called a horse twice, you might be a horse, right? So, I mean that that perception is out there. I think when you walk on that line, like, we do impossible things like think about Assessment & Selection, that's the hardest thing that people have done up until then. So, you need to be right on that line of super confident, you know, not necessarily cocky, but super confident that you can do impossible stuff. And that carries over a whole bunch of times and I do a bad job managing it because sometimes your just kind of talking crap with your friends and be like, I'm going to smoke you and everything and that doesn't sound like confident and fun. That sounds like me being super cocky and not a cool dude.
Brian 19:36
Yeah, this career field breeds competition. And there's a certain point where you know, you have to even if you don't know if you can completely do what that person is saying. Like they're challenging you. You got to talk it up and talk. We're going to do this no matter what because I'm not going to back down off of whatever this dude is challenged me to do.
Peaches 20:03
But your kind of you kind of want that though, right? You don't want somebody who's going into a sticky situation to be second guessing themselves. You want them to be confident, you want them to go in there believing that they are going to have a mission success, and they're going to make it out even in the crappiest situations. So, you know, are we cocky? Yeah, probably. But I would say that most of us, I would say most of us are not necessarily, you know, a-holes, but I've been proven wrong before too.
Brian 20:38
I think as you know, you graduate from pipeline and or you graduate from ETD or something like that. And you're just like top of the world because the rest of the guys that you know, didn't make it or whoever's on base, they see you and they see you and ascots or whatever, and they see an ad graduate and they're just like, Wow, those guys made it through whatever. An American hero of mine and then you feel like, wow, I really did something important. But really, you just graduated from kindergarten. That's how we always kind of equated INDOC/Selection to its kindness you getting into the door into real school, so you can actually do a real job. Now the real training begins. So, you know, it feels great not to diminish those guys that are graduating or anything. But just put in perspective, you haven't done anything yet. And now you're really beginning to learn all this stuff that you really need to do. So, whenever you first kind of graduate, you have that chip on your shoulder and then you still start to learn and you be around other PJ's that have been in for a while you're like, man, I don't know anything at all. So, you really begin to learn that self and just learn a little bit of humility whenever you go out onto the teams. I think, you know, there's a place in time for you to be humble and a place for you to step up and say, Hey, I got this and that's kind of I wrote down a couple other things here, but it's kind of gets into the way that the Air Force perceives Pararescue. And really any AFSW job is those guys if something happens, they're not going to feel like they're scared. To talk, they're not going to feel like they're scared to act, they're not going to feel afraid to, you know, do what they have to do. They look to those people for answers and the look to them to be calm, whenever there's a situation when, you know, everyone else is kind of freaking out. So, you got to have a little bit of confidence cockiness kind of mixed in there a little bit. And sometimes it's, you know, all fake sometimes it's real. But a lot of times you just kind of like in on the inside, you're going 100 miles a minute and then on the outside, you're just trying to stay Oh, yeah, you're trying to beat it. This works. Yeah. Holy cow. I just told him man, you know, I don't know. But I keep ringing back to Trey last week or you know, the week before when we were talking to Trey free and he was talking about those five attributes they look for. I think you're allowed to be confident you're allowed to ride that line as long as it doesn't affect your interpersonal communications as long as you can communicate that to your team appropriately and they know you're there for the good of the team and for the right reasons. I think that's pretty okay. I actually like seeing that and people Assessment & Selection
Trent 22:43
I think sometimes people perceive some cockiness, when really all it is like, when you're having a conversation about like the past tests or the PT tests that we have to take. You say, yeah, you know, you run three miles and you have to do it in this amount of time. They're like, that's really hard. And you're not trying to be cocky. You're like, nah, nah, that's easy. You know, like, you know, the things that you start to perceive as easy and normal in the community. In normal conversations may come across as, you know, this guy is really full of himself. And when all you've done is reset the standard for, you know, your own personal expectations of yourself.
Brian 23:41
Yeah, that's actually really true. I, when I first went home after going through the pipeline, everything, you know, my friends had asked me like, oh, what do you do when you're in the Air Force in our whatever? And I was like, well, I jumped out of planes. It was a nightmare. I kind of started. I was like, what do you guys been up to? And they're like, well, I work at you know, Red Lobster now. Or like, you know, whatever. And I didn't say any of those things that sound cocky in it. I was just trying to tell them like what I've been doing. But I really felt like I was being arrogant by telling them all the cool stuff that I've been doing over the past year and a half or whatever. So, I guess it does kind of come across like that.
Peaches 24:16
So, this This next one is not AFSC specific, but it's something that I think we should probably cover. And Brian, you brought it up prior to starting a recording, but I would say candidates and, you know, operators that have already graduated on the teams expecting to have the right answer immediately. You know, so I think everybody thinks that they've got to have you know, if they're asked a question or presented with a problem, that they need to have a response and it be correct immediately, when that is not the case whatsoever.
Brian 24:59
Yeah, I think one of the important things about this is, whenever something happens is like that if there's chaos, you know, that requires a lot of problem solving. Time goes by a little bit slower for us. And we have time to think because, you know, when we're going through selection/INDOC, what we did was we took our mad minute, and we stopped, thought about it for a second, and then continue to go. We don't have instantaneous answers all the time to everything unless we constantly trained like there's a bleed. All right, we have instant answers, or you know, something like that there's a threat. We have instant answers for that. But a lot of things that require problem solving, we wouldn't have instant answers for we sit there and we think about it because we have the capacity to just calm ourselves down. And we increase the ability of ourselves to problem solve, because we can stay calm the situation and, you know, put all of our efforts toward that. And then we move forward and continue thinking about that we don't have we never have the answers to a huge problem right away and you don't want to go about a huge problem in that way anyways, you don't want to just instantaneously act unless, again, like I said, it's something that requires an immediate action like a thread or a bleed or some lot that you want to take just a second. However, it's easier
Aaron 26:11
to because that's what I was sorry. But that's, that's what experience gets you to is you can shorten that chain. If you've seen all the steps in between where you are, and you're like, Oh, I recognize this scenario, oh, I've dealt with something like this before. So, you actually know, because of your experience, how to weave your way through that you actually become more adept at taking on bigger problems, because you're actually eliminating decisions that you don't need to think about anymore. You're like, Oh, this is a no brainer, dealt with it, bam. And that's where experience pays off. And that decision making as well.
Peaches 26:38
Well, it you know, in reality, it is okay to have an 80% solution and be 80% correct, and then press on because being 80% correct and 20% wrong is better than no decision at all. The hesitation. Not only is that a detriment on your leadership and your followership quality. But, I mean, you run the risk of, of really hurting somebody or yourself, you know if you start hesitating. For anybody that doesn't know what danger close is that is probably one that you want to be a little bit more than 80% on danger closes whenever you are dropping munitions from aircraft within a very small distance from yourself. And that is in an extreme situation so not something that we generally practice often.
Brian 27:46
Actually, so think about it, but not too long. Yes. That's the whole thing. Don't take too long. realize what's going on around you don't just sit there and stutter. Yeah, so Exactly.
Peaches 27:58
Trent I'm going to give this one to you man. Are the instructors at A&S and prep and pre-dive and dive school. Are they actually trying to drown you?
Trent 28:08
Yeah, they're terrible people and they want to hurt you. That's
Aaron 28:15
standard instructor answer. No, they're so mad at you and all of your friends and everything about this day. They're already so mad. They showed up to the event mad. They don't even know why sometimes they're just mad.
Brian 28:25
You already have half a dozen take Mark showing up.
Trent 28:29
No, understand that the instructors are working off curriculum, and they are supposed to get you from point A to point B. And they have the toolset to get you there. And noise and feigned anger. And sometimes anger is real, or it's more like frustration, especially if you've been an instructor for a while. You see the same thing over and over and over again. But not like those guys don't care. You know, they're not trying to hurt you. They can About you more than, you know, you'll probably ever realize, especially if you graduate.
Peaches 29:05
Brian, when your instructor did you care?
Brian 29:09
I really didn't care about it. No, I it's like Trent said we're following a lesson plan. And by that lesson plan, it may feel like we're trying to drown you and like we hate you in the moment because there are a lot of times, you know, we get in people's faces in UCL not as much anymore because selection is different than INDOC was but we used to, I'm sure hurt a lot guys feelings and they would think, you know, Sgt Silva really doesn't like me for whatever reason, and in reality, I just, I didn't really put a lot of stake into whatever he did that he thinks that I hate. But I run the lesson plans and by this time, people should be jumping in the water, they should be done with their underwater so I'm going to say go and then if they don't go now it's up to them whether or not they want to drown themselves or not. I recommend you just do the correct strokes. And with a lot of time, as I give to you, I'll give you a warning. kind of.
Peaches 30:14
I bet you were interesting as an instructor, because you've got that just like you just did. And you just supposed to do exactly what I told you to do. Just like the channel really quick. He would just
Trent 30:27
Yeah. Well, one of the misconceptions, I think, is that the instructors are going to smoke you no matter what, when 97% of the time if you came out that day and did exactly what they told you to do.
Aaron 30:39
That's my dream.
Peaches 30:43
All right, so I'm going to ask this question to both you and Brian or Aaron and Brian, but I'm going to give it to Brian first because you guys come at this question from a different perspective and the question is Pararescue and being deployed as a Pararescue man is did exactly what you thought it would be. And you know, Brian, you came in as a new recruit and Aaron, you actually had some, you know, Air Force experience. And probably, I would bet to say a better idea of what PJ's do deployed and home station. But Brian, I want to throw it over to you first and see if what you had thought is pretty accurate.
Brian 31:22
I did not think that it didn't end up planning out like I thought it was going to be because you know, the only thing I really had as far as exposure to the career field before joining was one of the books called federalism I live by Jack Brown. And he was a guy that was an Iceland, PJ and he kind of recounted some of the stories that were going on around that time. And, you know, there wasn't a ton of combat missions that were going on. There wasn't a lot of missions outside of basically the water stuff like the RAMZ jumps, the submarine type of lockout things that they were doing back then and then civilian rescue, so I kind of thought that it was going to be a lot Like that, and obviously, after 9/11 happened, then we started actually going into war, things changed a lot. And the types of missions that we were doing and again, I, you guys can listen back to the other episode where I was talking about, I really didn't know exactly what the career field did, I just knew people were going to get rescued by me. And I'm going to have some skill sets to do that. So, you know, the amount of capabilities that we carried, and I didn't know about, like being able to shoot any gun that's out there. And then you know, have the ability to freefall into all the combat situations use rotary wing and fixed wing aircraft in different areas around the entire world. I just didn't know that capability. And I didn't know the depth of what PJ was really allowed to do. And I just thought it was kind of more rescue type of stuff. When I joined so pleasantly surprised by you know, the amount of stuff that we were able to do. Sometimes the ops tempo was a lot lower than I really wanted it to be. On certain deployments, not going to lie on that. But then there are other ones who are, you know, picked up a lot. So,
Aaron 33:06
Yeah, it's a double-edged sword. Too many ops not enough ops and I kind of a little bit different for me is I had a little bit of an idea of what PJ's did and had close friends that had gone through the pipeline and, and I still kept in touch with so I had a good idea of what to expect but pleasantly I was completely surprised by it. And I've gotten due to do a good, diverse group of things from you know, covering the NATO air policing mission and being up in Iceland for a little while to seeing Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, and I still get to be on the team. So, it's great. I weaseled myself in this position now to avoid that desk job. So, for me, it's, you know, a lot more than I expected. There are always some things like, Man CSAR, just as the as the shirt says might be, come sit and relax. Just like Brian is saying, like you might not get a call for a long time. And there's only so much work out and playing Xbox, you can do like and so much training you can do like I get it. It's It takes a special kind of person to get through that. So, I think that's probably from my optic.
Peaches 34:05
Okay. Well that's good. It's interesting how different they are and, you know, reading a lot of the posts on Reddit on the Pararescue subreddit, a lot of the stuff that we get an Instagram I think there's a, an idea that, you know, every week every day does change. You know, one week you're shooting one week you're jumping next year diving and so on. But it's also there's also a week or two in between that, where it's appointments, it's medical, it's, you know, it's unfortunately the reality of the Air Force and the military now is that a lot of the computer based training is a reality and you can't really get away from it. So, everybody's got to know how to use a fire extinguisher or not give their ID to whatever her name is on the information assurance.
Aaron 34:58
Trying to sell you on the information insurance and no I don't want your mixtape Charles. Yeah, go back to your desk.
Peaches 35:04
So yes there, there are admin days there are days where or weeks that hey, we're not shooting we're not jumping we're not you know, it could be relatively boring and as much as we hate it like it's probably good for us to give us a chance to throttle back and not relax but sit back and not go you know race car in the red for too long that's just my opinion though.
Aaron 35:38
You're totally right you need that that whitespace you know it needs to be built in there because you do need breaks. I always want to ask people to because it's more of a misconception about SOF in general. For everybody out there how many nights Do you think the dudes go out on target? You guys were asking us like, do you guys kick doors every night like, bro, the pros are going out like I don't know. Not as much as you think like they're not hitting five NAIs a night guy. So, I was thinking like, what do you think the normal ops tempo is? Like? I think that's part of it.
Peaches 36:07
Well, not nowadays before. Probably. Okay. Yeah. Now, that was legitimate. I mean, there were several times that we hit four. It was great.
Trent 36:21
Speaking of Combat Control. Right? can we can we hop on the Combat Control right now? JTACs and misconceptions. Sure. I want to talk about how cocky you guys are.
COMBAT CONTROL
Peaches 36:32
Oh, I thought we were going to cover how short all of them are.
Brian 36:35
No, it's the tattoos that we all want to know about. That's the real, the real thing. He just got the hair CCT got tattoos. How many got
Peaches 36:47
Four? Yeah, I got four.
Aaron 36:51
That's the minimum requirements four tattoos.
Peaches 37:02
Yeah you know the misconception that we all have complete sleeves and body tattoos and we only marry strippers.
Aaron 37:14
Is that a thing is that out there at first, I've heard of it but I'm in I want to hear this theory.
Peaches 37:19
Well, I can't speak for me but I have known some guys that have gone down that route. Probably didn't work out for him but whatever. Okay, I will I will bring it back really quick. One of the one of the biggest misconceptions that are out there and it is a it really is an education piece is that you hear the joint terminal attack controller or JTAC you know matter what, like hey, a team needs a j tack or who's the J tag on the ground? Well I'm pretty sure I've said it before but if not the JTAC skill set is a qualification it is not a job now there's a couple of career fields within the Air Force that can be allowed to be joint terminal attack control qualified you know so you've got your and I'm doing this you know, off the top of my head so maybe I get it wrong maybe I don't but you know, you got your Combat Controllers you got your TACPs, you got your Special Tactics Officers, and then you have your TACPOs. I believe those are the only four career fields within the Air Force that are allowed to be j tack qualified. So when teams are when people are talking about a JTAC, they have to know what they're asking for because, you know, if you get a controller Yeah, he may a JTAC qualified but he's going to be also have the airfield capability, you know if and he's going to be jump and dive and all that kind of stuff. If you go with the TACPs, they're probably going to be JTAC qualified as well. But they are so ingrained with the army. And so, they know the Army really well. And you want to start talking about tanks that you know, like when we had Roomba on here, dude, that just blows my mind the way that they move, shoot, move and communicate with tanks.
Aaron 39:28
That was big brain time. I had no idea. I was like, I'm moving tank target and you're writing formulas up on the fly. That was that was mind blowing to me, I still remember that. But
Peaches 39:36
I mean, the TACPs when it comes to close air support. They are they are really, really good, especially when you start talking about the major combat operations, you know, dealing with those tanks and those large forces on the ground. Whereas you know, us Hey, I'm good whenever I've got, you know, 30 to 60 dudes on the ground with me and we're moving from fast. So procedurally, I'm correct. But there are probably steps in there that I am not taking because I don't have time to. Because we're moving so fast. So that that's the JTAC piece that I wanted to cover. I definitely wanted to make sure that I got that out there is the job exactly how I thought. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard for me to remember, you know, 45 years ago when I came in.
Aaron 40:30
I got you only went 45 you're like, this is enough to satiate them that I made the joke but not too much. You didn't say 60 years ago either. Like 45 is enough for these holes.
Peaches 40:45
But man, I so I don't know. I don't know if it's the same or if it's different, but I do know a funny thing is that, you know, the first time I deployed I was had in my mind that, okay, we're deploying to the desert because at the time I'd never been to the desert. You know, I grew up in the southeast. So, the desert to me was sand dunes. So, I was like, wait a minute, we're going to land aircraft out and sand dunes and just set up tents. And that's where we're living for, for you know, however long and I never voiced that opinion, but I just sit here going like, I don't know how this will work out.
Aaron 41:39
Truth. I think we all had a bit of that though. I mean, I can speak from being on alert and just, you know, seeing the hours tick by sometimes be like, man, there's, I'm glad that there's nothing but still, you know, there's still nothing, you know. So, you're like, I wonder what the pace is supposed to feel like, you know,
Peaches 41:57
In reality, I've been lucky and I and I Know that you know, I've been operational pretty much the whole time with the exception of the Weapons School but even then, I deployed out of there. So, it's I've been extremely fortunate with good assignments and good opportunities. It is absolutely right place right time. Now you do have the guys like Trent mentioned that are you know, they're action magnets and no matter where they go whether they're deployed or not, they are they are seeing something and just you know, and then here you are picking up scrap sometimes.
Trent 42:36
Reference the Thai Cave rescue podcast.
Brian 42:40
We're throwing back a lot of references here. So, I got one for you also peach. So, what do you think about you know, the state of mind that were given from a recruiter is well, if you want to kill people go CCT. If you want to save people go PJ, is what do you what did you say? What would you say to them?
Peaches 43:00
Yeah, well, PJ's are combatants. So, they carry weapons and they're well trained and shooting just like Controllers and SR, SEALs and ODAs stuff like that. So, you know, we train and shoot as much as everybody else. Same with the PJs. So, I mean, if you want to really simplify it, okay, sure. But, you know, PJ's also kill people. I mean, that's just the reality of it. And I'll tell you what you put me on some kind of medical situation. Maybe I killed somebody.
Brian 43:39
He's talking about the patient guys. Yeah, yeah. It's a pretty good one.
Trent 43:43
You missed the part where the recruiter goes on if you want to just creepily watch people go SR.
Peaches 44:05
So, I can't think of any other misconceptions that we would have in terms of Combat Control. And I just think that the misconception that all of all of SOF dudes across the enterprise is, is a bad. Not a bad misconception, but it is can be misconstrued. And that's partly because of Hollywood niches. It's like, excuse me, it's just like the, you know, the veterans, whether it's from Vietnam or whether it's from what we've had going on the last 20 years, but where Hollywood portrays guys coming back being broken, riddled with PTSD. I mean, does that stuff exist? Of course, it does. At the same time, it doesn't mean that every single person that has PTSD is a threat or is a broken person. And that is stuck on opiates and drinking their life way there are those people and I don't I’m not saying they're not because you know we know some but you know Hollywood makes it out that it almost to make you or it is almost made me feel like you guys are trying to make me think that I should be broken. And I'm not I operate just fine. It's unfortunate and it'd be nice if, you know, Hollywood. You know how to fix that image? Because, I mean, how much are we able to fix it right now? You know, we were getting a decent following and we appreciate it to everybody that's out there but until they start making movies and accurately depicting people, it's going to continue.
Aaron 45:58
Yeah, there's lots of crazy things. Do it. I mean, that's the far minority of cases. You have to remember that the vast overwhelming majority go on combat deployments come home and are totally fine mentally adjusted and getting the help that they need. You know, like we're talking about extreme cases.
Brian 46:15
That's not interesting to watch. So, there's never going to be movie about you know, a person that retires and lives happily ever after. So right now, that is a common misconception though.
Trent 46:25
I've gotten a lot here at Lackland from like, civilian tops are like, you guys are really nice. It's not what I expected. It's like what did you expect us to be like?
Aaron 46:34
Just to be mean for no reason like, I got this beret, time to be a dick about it.
Trent 46:38
Every time a car backfires will freak out and start punching people.
Peaches 46:41
What, you guys don't do that, huh? What else you guys Got in terms of misconceptions that I get just bloviate on.
Aaron 47:04
Is bloviate going to be your Chief word?
Peaches 47:07
Yeah, I'm going to focus on haircuts and uniforms that's definitely my jam. And you're ready
Aaron 47:12
you're ready I'm trying to think about jetty you know in general because we do get a lot of generalized questions like the misconception that the career fields are you know, so different I did you know, thinking my way through that one. We are sort of tribal. You guys know all SERE guys are they're basically all sere guys, you can pick them out of a room, right? Like I bet your SERE guy you know, like when we all do it, you know, PJ is the same thing. Why do you guys think that is like, why do you think because it you can tell you can tell across the board. Like we've all met Rangers that were like that dude is 100% a Ranger. That is that is what that guy is down to his DNA, you know, but how can how can we tell? How can we pick them out of a room?
Trent 47:54
Controllers have trucker hats, lippers, tats and they're angry like aggressive angry at you, Js like hey bro. Hey man. No, you can't come train with us but cool.
Brian 48:06
All controllers get angry for like the littlest reason. Like the smallest thing just set them off and you're like, Dude, chill out and obviously that's coming from PJ because I said chill out CCT for the most part wouldn't be like super chill and then I'll get like super hyped up specially if you ever hear some of them on the microphone the first couple times that they come on and you listen to recordings of them and dumb and some of the briefs that we did from guys that were deployed is just like those guys are like just spitting out these friggin these call fires and I was just like, holy cow dude.
Aaron 48:44
There is no there is no place like getting drug at a staff meeting during an Intel update because your radio voice how savage and it happens, I've been there like you're just like, oh, whatever that one their big guy and he's just ashamed. But by the way, he was fighting for his life on the radio?
Peaches 49:03
Well, I will say, you know, there are, there is such a thing as being too calm on the radio, right? So, if you're if you're real calm on the radio, then the pilots that are flying, they don't necessarily know that there is a sense of urgency even though you're telling them, hey, we're troops in contact, we're taking effective fire. They're like, Okay, well, I mean, you're not out of breath. You're not huffing and puffing, I can hear the gunfire but whatever, until you start getting some kind of inflection in your voice. And then you can see them flip a switch, and they are aggressive. And they are, hey, when they said originally, they were going to be in in two and a half minutes and then you, you know, raise your voice and stuff like that. And then all of a sudden, hey, I can be in 30 seconds. You're like, where that other two-minute go?
Aaron 49:54
Yeah, watch them. Make a timeline. Watch it. You can go home for the day. If throw a timeline. on there, it doesn't matter what that number is or what the task is they will make that timeline.
Peaches 50:06
Yeah, that's so true.
Trent 50:08
I mean, I just got I thought you'd be bigger a lot. But you know,
Aaron 50:15
Maybe there's something to it. Maybe there's not Who knows? I think that's the I think that's the main one there. We definitely do fall in those lanes like and we gravitate towards one another. I love getting off an air like an airplane and being a baggage claim for like a big event. Like, especially like a rodeo or something. And you don't know that dude. But you know that dude, and you're like, I can tell unless you're sponsored by the same North Face company that I am. I think you and I probably have the same boss. So, it's always funny seeing those dudes at the airport when you link up.
Peaches 50:44
PJ's are known for playing hacky sack and I as a Controller have joined in with some hats. Yeah. I won't. I will hack in all day long.
Trent 50:57
Did we just lose our entire audience when we said Brian?
Aaron 51:00
We got to you got to you got to we got to, we got to close this thing up. We went too far inside baseball.
Brian 51:06
Nobody knows what we're talking about. Yeah. All right. So aside from all the hacky sack and all the things that we were talking about just there at the end, because those things you'll find out whenever you come back and listen to this episode, whenever you actually get into the pipeline, and you'll laugh about all this stuff that we're talking about, but you know, talking about some of the stuff from SR the misconceptions of whether or not they're able to do certain things, but it's well within their range to do almost all of the things that both of us do aside from the specialties which are you know, being JTAC, setup airfield and you know, being a medic, doing medical duties, aside from the rare occasion that they might have to, in which case you want them to, but they can go and you know, do pretty much the chameleon blending with any of the people that need to get their support, which is what they're made to do is blend in and then along with the misconceptions of the PJ and we went a little bit more in depth. Hopefully that explains some of the hair stuff, the cockiness that we were talking about. And then also the resolve and being able to stay calm in different situations, you know, we have to be the people that are going to have the answer. Eventually, we want to hesitate too long when we're coming up with that answer. But we also want to eventually be the person that has the answer, because that is, you know, PJ's job is to make sure that we're able to take care of any situation that may come up right now. And then overall, you know, looking at across the different career fields, yeah, there's going to be downtime, it's not going to be Call of Duty and it's not going to be like, as soon as we went into Afghanistan or Iraq, we're just hitting targets constantly. You know, that day may come again. But right now, those guys that are coming in, you shouldn't expect that every single deployment, you're going to be just mission every single hour, two missions a day or any of that kind of stuff. It's going to be, you know, a steady stream and then like Aaron said, You know, sometimes on CSAR and that's also you know, a running joke just for you guys that aren't in the community, the CSAR thing you know, sometimes you're just sitting around boom right there and you're just waiting for something to happen and that's also part of the job is you know, we don't want people to get hurt but we're there in case anything does happen. And then you know, Peaches, we found out how many tattoos you probably have, I don't know if you're hiding any from us next time we talk about where they are. But some of the other stuff, you know, like you just talked about is the JTAC thing and how they're actually utilized versus you know, TACPs and those other career fields that are also considered JTACs. So, all these things are super important. And I want to open it to you guys, if you guys have any other things that you want to send our way. And misconception or some kind of question, we'll try and keep on bringing up different questions that we have, because we want to make sure that you guys have as much information and it's as straightforward as possible. For you guys going through again, our spots are the people that help us out Eberlestock. Make sure you check them out. Use ONESREADY we're not getting any money from them at all. But they have great products and we want to support people that are veterans and support the military community and support ones ready specifically. So yep, and we got some more shirts going to be coming out real soon. You guys check out the onesready.com we have a couple more of the Grey Man that are left. Right now, all the Earn Each Breath flags were gone real soon. So, we'll keep an eye out for the next time we drop some of those. And as always, we're here for you guys. So, if you have anything, any questions at any time, just hit us up on Instagram at Ones Ready or info@onesready.com, you can email us there and we'll answer your questions. As soon as we get a couple days, you know, Peach actually answers must always give him credit on that one. So, thanks again for listening guys. True. I appreciate you and all your support. Go out there. Keep on earning each breath and go get some train hard.
TLDR: LIFE IN THE SOF COMMUNITY IS GREAT. PREPARATION, PROBLEM SOLVING, AND GOOD LEADERSHIP/FOLLOWERSHIP ARE THE KEYS TO THE CASTLE. FINALLY WE AREN’T WORTHY HAVING TREY ON!
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