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Speaker 1

00:00

How are these interacting with our fighters if they are? How are they interacting with the weather and their environment? How are they interacting with each other? So can we look at these and how they're interacting perhaps as a swarm, especially off the East Coast where this is happening all the time with multiple objects?

Speaker 2

00:16

The following is a conversation with Lieutenant Ryan Graves, former Navy fighter pilot, including roles as a combat lead, landing signals officer, and rescue mission commander. He and people in his squadron detected UFOs on multiple occasions, and he has been 1 of the few people willing to speak publicly about these experiences, and about the importance of investigating these sightings, especially for national security reasons. Ryan has a degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from WPI and an interest in career roles in advanced technology development, including multi-agent collaborative autonomy, machine learning assisted air-to-air combat, manned and unmanned teaming technologies, and most recently, development of materials through quantum simulation.

Speaker 2

01:08

This is a Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, Here's Ryan Graves. What did you think of the new Top Gun movie?

Speaker 2

01:20

How accurate was it? Let's start there.

Speaker 1

01:22

I thought the flying was really accurate. I thought the type of flying they did and how they approached the actual mission, Of course, had a lot of liberties, but 1 thing that seems to be hard to capture on these types of things are the chess game that's going on while that type of flying is happening.

Speaker 2

01:40

The chess game between, like in a dog fight, between the pilots and the enemy, or between the different pilots?

Speaker 1

01:47

I'll even speak to just that particular mission they flew there. And for that particular mission, it's kind of a chess game with yourself to get everything in place. So what kind of flight they flew is called a high threat scenario, which means they have to ingress low due to the surface-to-air threats, the integrated air defense systems that are nearby.

Speaker 1

02:07

And they have to ingress low and pop up like we see in the movie. And in that particular movie, that was a pre-planned strike, they knew exactly where they're going. But there's a scenario where we have to operate in that type of environment and we don't know exactly where we're gonna strike or we're gonna be adapting to real time targets. And so in that scenario, you would have 1 of those fighters down low like that operating as a mission commander, as a forward air controller.

Speaker 1

02:30

And he's out there calling shots, joining on those other players in order to ensure they're pointed at the right target. So that's a bit of the chess game that he'll be playing.

Speaker 2

02:38

Can you actually describe for people who haven't seen the movie what the mission actually is? Yeah. What's involved in the mission?

Speaker 1

02:45

So in this particular mission, it's kind of what we would call a pre-planned strike. So there's a known location that's in a heavily defended area. And the air crew, in this case, I believe it was 4 F-18s on the initial package, their job was to ingress very low down a canyon to stay out of the radar window of the surf to air threats.

Speaker 2

03:06

What does ingress mean?

Speaker 1

03:07

Ingress means that they're going to be pushing from a start location towards a target or the objective. So there's an ingress portion of the mission and an egress portion of the mission.

Speaker 2

03:16

Oh, okay. Like the entrance and the exit type of thing. Got

Speaker 1

03:21

it. But it changes our mindset tactically quite a bit, right? Because when we're entering some place, we have the option to enter. But when we go drop a bomb on location, we're exiting, we don't have that luxury, we don't have that option.

Speaker 1

03:33

So it actually changes our tactics and our aggression level.

Speaker 2

03:37

Got it, and so they were flying low to the ground and then there's surface to air missiles that force them to have to fly low, is that a realistic thing?

Speaker 1

03:48

It is realistic. So driving those aircraft in the clutter, all radar systems, or most I should say, are essentially line of sight. And so they're gonna be limited by the horizon or any clutter out there.

Speaker 1

04:00

And even a number of radars, if they are located up high and looking down towards that aircraft, the clutter, all the objects such as trees and canyons can have effect on radar systems and so it can be a type of camouflage.

Speaker 2

04:16

So that's the camouflage for the radar, but what about the surface-to-air missile? Is that a legitimate way to avoid missiles as it flies so low, like fly, I guess, below their level?

Speaker 1

04:30

As far as I know, you can fly under any radar right now. We don't have necessarily radars that can look through anything. So there is always gonna be the ability to mask yourself.

Speaker 1

04:41

But with a larger number of assets and distributed communication networks, where those radars are looking makes all the difference. And I said they're ingressing past an IADS and that's an integrated air defense system. And that linking of air defense systems is what makes it so hard, so complicated, is that the sensors and the weapons are disassociated from each other. So that if you took out the target that was shooting at you, it still has ability to intercept you from another radar location.

Speaker 1

05:11

So it's distributed and it's stronger that way.

Speaker 2

05:14

You mean the surface-to-air missiles, like it's a distributed system in that if you take out 1, they're still able to sort of integrate information about your location and strike at you. Correct.

Speaker 1

05:28

And there's a lot of complication that can go, you know, once we start thinking about distributed systems like that and the ability to self-heal and repair and adapt to losses, it's an interesting area.

Speaker 2

05:39

Are you responsible for thinking about that when you're flying an airplane?

Speaker 1

05:43

To some degree. When we ingress to an area like that, we're presented with information about targets, air to air or air to surface, or surface to air, I should say. And we can essentially see where, essentially the danger zone, if you will, is located.

Speaker 1

06:00

And so essentially we would stay out of that. And so having a full picture of the environment is extremely important because at the end of the day if

Speaker 2

06:08

we go in that circle we can die pretty quickly. So it's absolutely crucial. So there's regions that have higher and lower danger based on your understanding of the actual, whatever the surface to air missiles systems are.

Speaker 2

06:21

So you can kind of know. That's interesting. I wonder how automated that could be too, especially when you don't know. It seems like in the movie, they knew the location of everything.

Speaker 2

06:33

I imagine that's less known in most cases. And also, a lot of those systems might be a little bit more ghetto, if I can use that technical term. Like, I've gotten ad hoc, maybe, is the, I don't know. But having just recently visited Ukraine and seen a lot of aspects of the way that war is fought, there's a lot of improvised type of systems.

Speaker 2

06:58

So you take high tech, like advanced technology, but the way you deploy it and the way you organize it is very improvised and ad hoc and is responding to the uncertainty in the dynamic environment. And so from an enemy perspective or whoever's trying to deal with that kind of system, it's hard to figure it out. Because it's like me, I played tennis for a long time, and it's always easier to play, this is true for all sports, play tennis against a good tennis player versus a crappy tennis

Speaker 1

07:28

player.

Speaker 2

07:29

Because a crappy tennis player is full of uncertainty. And that's really difficult to deal with. It seemed like in the movie, the systems were really well organized.

Speaker 2

07:39

And so you could plan.

Speaker 1

07:40

And there was a very nice ravine that went right down the middle of them.

Speaker 2

07:43

That's how movies work, isn't it?

Speaker 1

07:44

Yeah. But no, I absolutely agree. So, you know, what you say is a very good point. And as, you know, if we were to take a chunk of airspace and break it up into little bits, you know, there'd be places that are better to fly or less good to fly.

Speaker 1

08:00

And, you know, we are seeing that now with what they call manned, unmanned teaming. We see tactical aircraft or, you know, some type of aircraft or platform that's being automated. And it's not being automated in a traditional sense where people think aircrew are flying them around to conduct missions, but it's very high level, objective-orientated mission planning that allows the air crew to act more as a mission planner, mission commander, versus having to just pick the right assets or fly them around or manipulate them somewhat physically.

Speaker 2

08:34

So actually going back to the chess thing, can you elaborate on what you mean playing a game of chess with yourself? What's, when you're flying that mission, what exactly do you mean by that?

Speaker 1

08:43

Well, there's a few people you're usually fighting against in the air. You know, there's the bad guys, and then there's physics and Mother Nature, right? So when we're down at about 100 feet, it's a chess game to stay alive for the pilot, and it's a chess game for the WIZO to process the information he needs and then communicate it to all those other aircraft that were flying around to ensure that they're putting their weapons on the right target.

Speaker 1

09:08

What's the WIZO? WIZO is a weapons systems officer. He's a backseater who is not a pilot, but they're responsible for radar manipulation and communications and weapons deployments of certain natures.

Speaker 2

09:19

So the chess game is against physics, against the enemy. Time. Time.

Speaker 2

09:26

What about your own psychology? Fear, uncertainty? No.

Speaker 1

09:32

No, there's no time for that type of self-reflection while we're flying. I want to get to that, but I don't want to forget the point that you made about increased randomness being a tactical advantage. As you mentioned, you can introduce autonomy in there.

Speaker 1

09:49

And when you, when you bring autonomy in there, and my expectation would be, as we bring different abilities and machine learning, as we gather more data, we're going to be able to bring the tactical environment around that jet, the war space that it goes into will almost be at a stochastic level from the enemy's perspective, where it'll almost seem like every tactical environment they go in will be random and yet very deadly because the system is providing a new tactical solution essentially for that particular scenario instead of just training to particular tactics that have to be repeatable and trainable and lethal, right? But not necessarily the most lethal because they have to be trainable. But if we can introduce AI into that and to have a level of randomness or at least the appearance of randomness due to the complexity, I would consider that like a stochastic tactical advantage because even our own blue fighters wouldn't be able to engage in that fight because it would be unsafe essentially for anything else. And I think that's where we have to drive to because otherwise it's always this chicken and mouse, cat game about who's tactics and who knows what.

Speaker 1

10:51

But if knowledge is no longer a factor, it's gonna make things a lot different.

Speaker 2

10:56

That's really interesting. So out of the many things that are part of your expertise, your journey. You're also working on autonomous and semi-autonomous systems, the use of AI and machine learning and manned-on-man teaming, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2

11:12

We'll talk about it. But you're saying, sort of when people think about the use of AI in war, in military systems, they think about like computer vision for perception or processing of sensor information in order to extract from it actionable knowledge kind of thing, but you're saying you could also use it to generate randomness that's difficult to work with in a game theoretic way. Like it's difficult for human operators to respond

Speaker 1

11:43

to. Exactly.

Speaker 2

11:44

That's really interesting. Okay, so back to Tom Cruise and Top Gun. What about the dogfighting?

Speaker 2

11:51

What aspects of that were accurate?

Speaker 1

11:53

So dogfighting is kind of an interesting conversation because it's not the most tactically relevant skill set nowadays by traditional standards because the ranges with which we engage and employ weapons are very significant. And so if we're in a scenario, we're in a dogfight like that, a lot of things have probably gone wrong, right? And that's kind of how this mission was set up, right?

Speaker 1

12:17

It was a, you know, a no wind type scenario, most likely. And so for a dogfight, the aircraft size and the ranges and the turn radiuses make it so it's not very theatrical, right? The aircraft looks small and while it's intense with the systems I have and the sensors and what I'm feeling and all that. If I, you know, we've done it and we've done it, right?

Speaker 1

12:36

We take video of that and it's just like a blue sky and you see a little dot out there. So not very interesting. And so anytime it really looks interesting in dogfight arena, that's most likely a fiction because we really only get close for a millisecond as we're zipping past each other at the merge.

Speaker 2

12:50

You're breaking my heart, right?

Speaker 1

12:52

I know. You're breaking

Speaker 2

12:52

my heart. No, I understand. In a dogfight, you can

Speaker 1

12:55

go and have fun, but in a dogfight specifically.

Speaker 2

12:58

Maybe that was more common in the earlier wars, the World War II and before that, where the, is it due to the sort of the range and the effectiveness of the weapon systems involved?

Speaker 1

13:09

Basically.

Speaker 2

13:09

Correct,

Speaker 1

13:09

and the accuracy of the targeting systems that range, but there's also a train of thought that hasn't actually been tested out yet, which is with the advent of advanced electronic warfare, EW, and or unmanned assets, the battle space may get so complex and missiles may essentially just get dropped out of the sky or wasted such that you're gonna be in close with either IR missiles or guns if it's a no kidding, you know, must defend type scenario.

Speaker 2

13:40

First of all, what's electronic warfare?

Speaker 1

13:42

You know, it's basically trying to get control of electromagnetic spectrum for the interest of whatever operation is going on. So in the tactical environment, a lot of that is trying to deceive the radar or can we deceive the missile or just stop their guidance, things of that nature.

Speaker 2

13:58

Man, it's a battle in the space of information, of digital information.

Speaker 1

14:03

Yeah, well, F-22 and F-35, right? F-22 is a big, expensive aircraft, and it was made to be a great fighter. But the F-35 is not as great of a fighter, but it's an electronic warfare and mission commander platform of the future, where information is what's gonna win the war instead of the best dogfighter and so it's interesting dichotomy there.

Speaker 2

14:24

What's the best airplane ever made, fighter jet ever made?

Speaker 1

14:27

I know the aviators in the in the audience are gonna hate my answer because they're gonna want that sexy, you know, muscly F-14 Tomcat type fighter or maybe P-51 type aircraft, but the F-35 is maybe not the best dogfighter, but it doesn't have to get in a dogfight, right? It's like how you'd be the best knife fighters, not getting a knife fight sometimes.

Speaker 2

14:49

Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. It looks pretty sexy.

Speaker 1

14:53

There's 2 real strengths you can have as a fighter. You can have the ability to kind of out-muscle your fighter, your opponent, and beat him on Gs and power and raid around on them. And then there's the other side of that, which is you can be overly maneuverable.

Speaker 1

15:09

You can bleed energy quickly. And that's what the F-18 was good at because it had to be heavier to land on aircraft carrier. We had to give it extra bulk, but it also needs special mechanisms to slow down enough to land on aircraft carrier. And so it made it very maneuverable.

Speaker 1

15:22

And what that leads to a lot of times, the ability to get maybe the first shot in a fight, which is very good, but if you do make that sharp turn, you're gonna bleed a lot of your energy away and be more susceptible for follow-on shots if that one's less susceptible. And so there's just kind of aggression, non-aggression, game you can play depending on the type of aircraft you're fighting.

Speaker 2

15:40

Where does the F-35 land on that spectrum?

Speaker 1

15:43

The F-35 lands somewhere behind the F-22s. So there'll probably be a row of F-22s or F-18s and F-35 will be out back, but it'll be enabling a lot of the warfare that's happening in front of it.

Speaker 2

15:53

Is it 1 of the more expensive planes because of all the stuff on it?

Speaker 1

15:57

It certainly is, yeah. In the

Speaker 2

16:00

movie, they have Tom Cruise fly it over Mach 10. So maybe, can you say, what are the different speeds, accelerations feel like, Mach 1, 2, 3, or hypersonic? Have you ever flown hypersonic?

Speaker 2

16:14

No. How tough does it get?

Speaker 1

16:17

I'm just gonna call out the BS of ejecting at Mach 10, just for the record, because in the movie, there's been, I think, at least 1 ejection that was supersonic. And I'll just say, you know, it was not pretty, but he survived. So there would have to be some interesting mechanisms to eject successfully at Mach 10, but I'll digress on that for the moment.

Speaker 2

16:36

Yeah, that seemed very strange.

Speaker 1

16:37

And he just walked away from it.

Speaker 2

16:38

But anyway, so, you know. He seemed disheveled. Yeah.

Speaker 2

16:42

Yeah. Okay, it's Tom Cruise, you don't, it's like Chuck Norris or something.

Speaker 1

16:47

Indestructible, yeah. Indestructible. Also doesn't age.

Speaker 2

16:49

Yeah. But anyway, so what's interesting to say about the experience as you go up? Does it get more and more difficult?

Speaker 1

17:00

In the end of the day, crossing the sound barrier is much like crossing the speed limit on the highway. You don't really notice anything. To cross that, at least in F-18, because we have a lot more weight than most fighters, is typically we'll do that in a descent.

Speaker 1

17:13

And we'll do that full afterburner, just dumping gas into the engine. And so that'll get us over the fastest I think I've gone with about 1.28. But what's interesting people don't realize is that if I take that throttle and I'm an afterburner and I just bring it back and just bring it back to mil, which is full power, just not afterburner, the deacceleration is so strong due to the air friction that it throw you forward in your straps, almost, you know, I would say, you know, maybe like 70% as strong almost as trapping on the boat, it's pretty strong. So it's almost like a reverse car crash just for the deceleration.

Speaker 1

17:46

So the acceleration, you know, is usually kind of slow and you don't feel anything, of course, when you're crossing through it, but the deacceleration is pretty violent.

Speaker 2

17:53

The deceleration is violent, huh? Okay. But is there a fundamental difference between Mach 1 and hypersonic, Mach

Speaker 1

18:02

5,

Speaker 2

18:02

and so on? Does it require super special training? And is that something that's used often in warfare or is it not really that necessary?

Speaker 1

18:10

No, so hypersonic human flight, if it exists, it's not something that's employed tactically in any sense right now that I'm aware of. So, you know, when I think of hypersonic technology, I think of missiles and weapon systems and delivery platform. I don't think of fighter aircraft necessarily.

Speaker 1

18:30

I can think of bomber or reconnaissance aircraft perhaps, but those would be more efficient, very long, long range. I imagine acceleration would be kind of gentle, honestly.

Speaker 2

18:40

The thing you experience is the acceleration, not the actual speed. There's been just a small tangent, a lot of discussion about hypersonic nuclear weapons, like missiles from Russia, bragging about that, is this something that's a significant concern or is it just a way to flex about different kinds of weapon systems?

Speaker 1

19:00

Hypersonics, I do think, pose a challenge for our detection systems because there are design considerations in these sensor systems, as always, right? When you build them and the technology progresses to a point where maybe it's not feasible to use that technology, there's a problem. But with the all domain and kind of cross domain data linking capabilities we have, it's less of, it's more of a integrated picture, I'll say.

Speaker 1

19:30

And so the hypersonics are really, what it is is how fast can we detect and destroy a problem? You're just shortening the time available to do that. We call something like that the kill chain, right? It's from locating a target and identifying it and essentially authorizing its destruction by whatever means, employing, and then actually following up to ensure that you did what you said you were going to do in some sense, right?

Speaker 1

19:54

Does it need another re-attack, something of that nature. And so there's an old dogfighting framework you could call, and it's called the OODA loop, that kind of made its way in the engineering of business now but the old observe, orientate, decide, act was initially a fighter mechanism in order to get inside that kill chain of your opponent and break it up so that he can't process his kill chain on you. And so hypersonics are a way of shortening those windows of opportunity to react to that.

Speaker 2

20:23

I wonder how much do you have to shorten it in order for the defense systems not to work anymore? It seems like It's very, you know, I'm both often horrified by the thought of nuclear war, but at the same time wonder what that looks like. When I dream of extreme competence in defense systems, I imagine that not a single nuclear weapon can reach the United States by missile, with the defense systems.

Speaker 2

20:52

Defense systems. Defense systems. But then again, I also understand that these are extremely complicated systems, the amount of integration required. And because you're not using them, I mean, this is, there could be, you know, there's like an intern somewhere that like forgot to update the code, the Fortran code that like is going to be make the different, Because you don't have the opportunity to really thoroughly test, which is really scary.

Speaker 2

21:21

Of course, the systems are probably incredible if they could be tested, but because they can't be really thoroughly tested in an actual attack, I wonder.

Speaker 1

21:32

I guess 1 assumption there would be that these hypersonic missiles would only be launched in a case of attack. It'd be interesting if there were other hypersonic objects that we could use to flex those systems.

Speaker 2

21:45

Another thing that actually happened, I just have a million questions I wanna ask you, it's fascinating to me, is there's a bird strike on the plane. Does that happen often?

Speaker 1

21:53

Yeah, it's a serious issue.

Speaker 2

21:54

And it damaged the engine, and they made it seem like it's a serious, exactly, a serious issue.

Speaker 1

21:59

I've hit birds. I know someone that took a turkey vulture to the face through the cockpit, right? Shattered the cockpit, knocked him out.

Speaker 1

22:08

I think that, actually, I don't know him personally, but there's a story I know from the command I was at, and I believe the back seater had to punch out and punch them both out, because he was unconscious, you know, in the front seat from the bird. It can kill you from hitting you. It's, you know, it's like a bowling ball going 250 miles an hour. It can take out an engine very easily.

Speaker 1

22:30

Every airport I've flown at in the Navy, I've had to check the bird condition, if you will, to see how many birds. We've had to cancel flights because there's too many of them around the airport. Some airports even have bird radars, military airports.

Speaker 2

22:43

Is there systems that monitor the bird condition? There is, yeah.

Speaker 1

22:46

There's actual radar systems, and you can go in the certain bases, you have to call up, and they'll tell you what it is for the day or for that hour, and other ones have it in their weather report that goes out over the radio.

Speaker 2

22:58

What are some technological solutions to this, or is this just because it's a low probability event there's no real solution for it?

Speaker 1

23:07

I would say it's not a low probability event. I mean, this is happening a lot. I mean, although the hits themselves aren't necessarily that common or I'll say a catastrophic hit either a near miss or a hit, or the pilot having to actively maneuver to avoid it is pretty common.

Speaker 2

23:22

And in fact- It seems stressful.

Speaker 1

23:24

It is. It's so common in fact that we know that you never wanna try to go over, or you never wanna go under a bird if you see it in front of you. You always wanna try to go over it because what they'll do immediately if they see you is, and you startle them, is they'll bring their wings in and just drop straight down to try to get out of the path.

Speaker 1

23:39

It's interesting, I didn't know they did that. But so if you try to go under them, they're gonna be dropping into you. So you typically want to try to go above them.

Speaker 2

23:45

Is this something you can train for or no? Is this 1 of those things you have to really experience?

Speaker 1

23:50

It's a skill set that you somewhat train for in the duties of being a fighter pilot in a sense, right? Being able to react to your environment very quickly and make decisions quickly, so.

Speaker 2

24:01

Is that 1 of the more absurd things, challenges you have to deal with in flying? Is there other things, sort of, maybe weather conditions, like harsh weather conditions, is there something that we maybe don't often think about in terms of the challenges of flying?

Speaker 1

24:17

Birds, in a way, aren't a ridiculous threat for us. It's a safety threat that, you know, anything physical in the air is something that we really have to be careful about. Whether we're flying formation off of the aircraft right next to us, or whether it's a turkey vulture at 2000 feet or a flock of 5,000 birds like at the runway and we have to wave off, you know.

Speaker 1

24:37

And although they're low probability, a lot of bases will have like actual environmental protecting agency employees that are responsible for safely removing migratory birds or different animals that may be in the runways or flying about.

Speaker 2

24:53

Wow, I didn't know what a turkey vulture is and it really does look like a mix between a vulture and a turkey. Turkey. And look kind of dumb, no offense to Turkey vultures.

Speaker 2

25:06

In that movie, who was the enemy nation? Was it, I mean, I guess they were implying it's Iran, or is it Russia?

Speaker 1

25:16

I didn't think they were implying any particular nation state, frankly. I think they did a somewhat decent job of having some ambiguous fifth generation fighters. The location and the stockpile, like I get like how the story kind of insinuates certain things, but they seem to do a good job of not having anything directly pointing to another nation, which I thought was the good move.

Speaker 1

25:39

I enjoy these type of movies as an aviator and as an American, right, because it's a feel-good movie, but we shouldn't be celebrating going to war with any particular country, China, Russia, whoever may have these weapons. It's fun to watch, but it would be an incredibly serious event to be employing these weapons.

Speaker 2

25:57

Yeah, and we'll talk about war in general, because yeah, the movie's kind of celebrating the human side of things and also the incredible technology involved, but there's also the cost of war and the seriousness of war and the suffering involved with war, not just in the fighting, but in the death of civilians and all those kinds of things. Well, you were a Navy pilot. Let's talk a little bit more seriously about this.

Speaker 2

26:26

And you were twice deployed in the Middle East flying the FAA-18F Super Hornet. Can you briefly tell the story of your career as a Navy pilot? Sure,

Speaker 1

26:36

so I joined the Navy in 2009 right after college. I went to officer, essentially officer bootcamp, officer of candidate school. I applied as a pilot and I got in as a pilot, that was the advantage of going that way is that I could essentially choose what I wanted and if I got in, great.

Speaker 1

26:51

If not, I didn't get stuck doing something else. So you knew you wanted to be a pilot? I did. I joined, I went through my initial training, I went through primary flight training that all aviators go through.

Speaker 1

27:02

And I did well enough that, you know, 1 of the first lessons they teach you in the Navy is that, you know, you can have a great career in the Navy and you can, you know, see the world and do what you want, but at the end of the day, it's all about the needs of the Navy and what they need. So, you know, they may not have the platform you like, or, you know, you may not necessarily get to choose your own adventure here. But I was lucky enough that there was 1 jet slot in my class and I was lucky enough, fortunate enough to get it. So.

Speaker 1

27:28

It was a jet slot. So, Yeah, what that means is that I was assigned, actually, tail hook at that point, which meant I would go train to fly aircraft that land on aircraft carriers. And there's essentially 3 aircraft that do that at the time, is the F-18, and the E-2, and the C-2. C-2 is kinda like the mail truck for the boat.

Speaker 1

27:50

E2 is 1 of the big radar dish on top. And then there's all the F-18s.

Speaker 2

27:55

So E2 is comms, is C2 mail truck?

Speaker 1

27:59

Yeah.

Speaker 2

27:59

What's that?

Speaker 1

28:00

C2 basically brings all the mail.

Speaker 2

28:03

They literally bring the mail.

Speaker 1

28:04

And they're the ones that bring supplies to the ship via air and people.

Speaker 2

28:07

Sorry if I missed it. Is it a plane or is it a helicopter?

Speaker 1

28:09

It's a plane.

Speaker 2

28:10

Okay. All right, and the F-18 is a fighter jet.

Speaker 1

28:14

Correct. Okay. So I selected Tailhook, which meant I could get 1 of those other ones, but 80% or so are jets. So I was in a good spot at that point.

Speaker 1

28:21

And that's when I went to Myrtie, Mississippi to fly my first jet, which was the T-45 Gozhawk.

Speaker 2

28:28

Cool. So what kind of plane is that? Is that a, is that, that's what you were doing your training on?

Speaker 1

28:32

That's the jet aircraft you get in before you actually go to the F-18. It is carrier capable, so go to the boat for the first time in it during the day, drop fake bombs, do dog fighting, low levels, formation flying day and night.

Speaker 2

28:50

Well, it's a pretty plane.

Speaker 1

28:52

Yeah, and it looks like a cone so that no 1 hits it.

Speaker 2

28:56

Okay, so it's usually not used for fighting, it's used

Speaker 1

28:58

for training? It's used for training how to fight. Got it.

Speaker 1

29:01

So what was that like? Was that the first time you were sort of really getting into it? Yeah, that was really interesting because before that it was a 600 horsepower prop plane. And going from that to the T-45 is 1 of the biggest jumps in power in like Navy machine operation.

Speaker 2

29:17

How much horsepower does the T-45 have approximately?

Speaker 1

29:20

I think like 15,000 or so.

Speaker 2

29:22

So it's a huge jump from 600, you said, horsepower about? Yeah. So it's a big, big leap.

Speaker 1

29:28

But it's a jet, so it performs differently, it's faster. What that means, not just because it's faster, your whole mind needs to be faster. Everything happens faster in the air now, right?

Speaker 1

29:37

Those comms happen faster, your landing gear has to come up faster, everything just happens faster in a jet. And so it's a big jump. And I'll never forget going on my first flight in that aircraft, it was a formation flight for someone else and I was just in the back watching and there was an instructor in the flight. And so what that means is, instructor is in a single aircraft and then there's 3 or 4 other aircraft and they're learning how to do joins, and they're learning how to fly in formation.

Speaker 1

30:04

And as a new student in the back, it's amazing, right? Cause you know, photo op time and all this, like I'm seeing aircraft up close for the first time. It's awesome. And on the way back, we couldn't get our landing gear down, ironically.

Speaker 1

30:19

So, to make a long story short, because it's overall not that exciting, we couldn't get the gear down. We actually went to go do a control ejection to the target area where that is, about 15, 20 miles to the north of the base.

Speaker 2

30:32

Did you, wait, did you just say that's not that exciting? Well, yeah. Because that to me is pretty exciting.

Speaker 2

30:38

That, I mean, how, first of all, I mean, that must be terrifying, like early on in your careers, having seen those things. That, Yeah, like how often does that kind of thing happen?

Speaker 1

30:52

Decent, more than you would think. More than you would think.

Speaker 2

30:55

So there was no significant panic? This is like this understood? This is what has to be done in this case?

Speaker 1

31:00

I think I was probably just too dumb to realize the significance of it because as a new student, you know, not really appreciating, you know, just what is ahead of me if we are ejecting. But at the time it was more, it was just like rote, right? Because I was back there and then I went from a observer mode to a I'm gonna provide you the help that I can provide you as a member of this crew mode.

Speaker 1

31:19

And so it was less about I'm on this 20 mile trip and thinking about how vulnerable I am. We're going through checklists, we're talking to people, we're getting ready. So No, it wasn't fearful. And the whole time we were doing 1 of these to try to get the gear down.

Speaker 1

31:35

So we're unloading the jet and then loading it back to try to get the gear out with the stick. And it came down, it came down halfway there, just on its own. So it came back around and we did like a safety trap in case there was a problem with the gear. That was my first flight, you know.

Speaker 1

31:54

A little bit of serendipity, but I'm gonna fast forward a bit and I went back to the squadron as an instructor about 5 or 6 years later And I was an aviation safety officer at this point, which meant I was responsible for investigating mishaps. And a student went in and he went in the backseat of a form flight, just like the 1 I went on, and he went out and he ended up ejecting on that flight. Zach, same type of flight. They went out and they had a runaway trim scenario and it caused the aircraft essentially just inverted itself almost 180 degrees at about 600 feet over the ground and they punched out just slightly outside the ejection window at about 300 or 400 feet or so, but they were completely fine.

Speaker 1

32:38

So, you know, and then about 2 months later, we had another ejection. About 3 months after that, we had another ejection. So unfortunately, you know, it can be more common than people think. What does it feel like to get ejected?

Speaker 1

32:52

Thankfully, I don't know. I can describe it

Speaker 2

32:54

to you.

Speaker 1

32:55

I can tell you what it's like from what I've heard, but I truly think it's 1 of those things that you just don't understand until it happens. It's like instantaneous about 250 Gs, which is only possible because of inertia in our blood. All right, so you can actually get like 250, 300 Gs for like a few milliseconds, and then it backs off to like 40 or 50 Gs to get you away from the vehicle itself.

Speaker 1

33:16

And so, you know, you may lose consciousness. If you do, you know, who knows where you wake up. You know, you could be in a tree, you could still be falling, you could be in the water, so.

Speaker 2

33:27

The physics of that is fascinating, how they eject safely.

Speaker 1

33:31

Do you know the story about how that was tested at all? I don't know the full story, but there was an airport.

Speaker 2

33:36

I'm guessing nobody knows the full story. It's probably a lot of shady stuff going on. But anyway, you mean like in the early, early days or?

Speaker 1

33:44

They took a flight dock up to a rocket sled and just see how much their body could take it. And he turned a lot of his body into mush in the process of getting that science done, but he saved a lot of lives. People used

Speaker 2

33:56

to be tougher back in the day. That's how science used to be done. So how did your training continue?

Speaker 2

34:05

So how did it take me, take me farther through your career as you work towards graduating towards the F-18s?

Speaker 1

34:13

So in VT-9, where I was a student, There's 2 phases. There's an intermediate and an advanced. Intermediate is getting very comfortable with the aircraft and at that point you truly hear, all right, you're going jets now or you're going to go 1 of the other aircraft that land on the aircraft carrier.

Speaker 1

34:30

I was told I was going jets at that point. Then we go into same squadron, same aircraft, same instructors, but it's called advanced now. Now we're learning how to dogfight for the first time. We're doing what we call tactical formation, which is just like aggressive position keeping.

Speaker 1

34:48

We are doing dogfighting in low levels and all sorts of great stuff. So it's really that first introduction to that tactical environment and really putting Gs on the jet and on your body and maneuvering.

Speaker 2

35:00

Is there like tactical formation, is collaborating with other fighter jets a part of that? It is. So flying in, that's what you mean by formation?

Speaker 2

35:08

So literally having an awareness. Is this done for you or are you as a human supposed to understand like where you are in the formation, how to maintain formation, all that kind of stuff. Is it done autonomously or manually?

Speaker 1

35:22

There's a great autonomy point on the end of this I've thought about. But what we do, it's all manual. So I'm looking at his wing and I'm looking at different visual checkpoints that form like a triangle, right, like an equal out triangle essentially.

Speaker 1

35:36

And then as that triangle is no longer equal, I can tell my relative position against that aircraft.